Last week, we wrote that FriendFeed was in danger of becoming “the coolest app that no one uses.” The thought was that while FriendFeed is doing some great things both in terms of its technology and feature-wise, it has failed to capture the growth of the hot micro-messaging service, Twitter. But I think that misses the real key comparison. If you look at it, FriendFeed is actually a lot closer to Facebook these days. You know, that service that 200 million plus people use. They’re doing a lot of similar things — only FriendFeed is doing them better.
Go ahead, take a look at the newly launched beta version of FriendFeed side-by-side with the recently redesigned Facebook. Sure, both also look a lot like Twitter, but look deeper, beyond the appearance and into the functionality. Both of the services’ main pages offer a stream of information, including information piped in from other services. Both have filters on the sidebar (though FriendFeed recently moved its from the left side — where Facebook’s are — to the right side). Both offer the ability to comment and “like” elements within the stream. And both offer the ability to hide information within the stream.
Now, use both services. Immediately, you’ll see what Facebook is trying to do: Show you an up-to-date look at what your friends are doing both on Facebook and around the web. But it’s not actually live — it’s static. You need to refresh the feed to get more information. FriendFeed, on the other hand, is updating in real-time.
At first, there was some backlash against this real-time updating on FriendFeed, with users complaining that there was too much information coming in, too quickly. But that talk has quieted down quite a bit in the week since its launch. And the real-time aspect has so far proven to be a boon for activity on the site. I’m looking at my FriendFeed stream right now compared to my Facebook stream — my FriendFeed stream has a lot more activity on it, despite Facebook having over 200 million users and FriendFeed likely having something south of a million users.
At a glance, FriendFeed feels alive, while Facebook feels, well, static.
Facebook plans to turn on real-time updates as well. But when it does, it could well be looking at another major backlash from users. If we saw a backlash against real-time on FriendFeed — which not only has much fewer users, but also has a user base that is considered to be full of “power” web users — just imagine what the backlash will be like on Facebook. It will be ugly.
And that’s why filters are so important. These allow you to show only certain updates from certain people on your stream. But again, FriendFeed has done a better job on them than Facebook has. Facebook has made it fairly easy to edit who is in what filter, but it’s still not obvious as to how to do that from a friend’s actual profile page. On FriendFeed, it’s obvious.
More importantly, FriendFeed has always made it easy to filter the stream not just by user, but by type of feed element. Facebook recently added this functionality, but it is much less tailored. For example, I can hide YouTube videos, but it will hide all YouTube videos. On FriendFeed, you can hide just YouTube videos from a certain user (but still get other updates from that user). And it’s easy to change those settings as any time. On Facebook, I have no idea how to do that.
And with these weaker filters (and a user base who isn’t accustomed to using them), when Facebook implements its real-time stream, a lot of information is going to go by without being noticed. That’s because while FriendFeed smartly brings elements back up to the top of the stream when a friend comments on or “likes” them, Facebook keeps them moving right on down the stream. This means that we’re not likely to see an 800+ comment stream below items like we saw the other day on FriendFeed during a live recording of the Gillmor Gang (yes, it was talking about FriendFeed, but still).
Obviously, Facebook is a lot more than just a stream of information — it’s the largest social network, with rich profiles, a robust application community, among many other things. But it’s also clear that Facebook wants to be the center of sharing information on the web. And right now, both Twitter and yes, FriendFeed are kicking its ass at that, in terms of execution.
Let’s jump back to Twitter for a second. A lot of people are caught up with the whole Facebook/Twitter comparison — and that probably includes those high up at Facebook (which failed in a bid to buy Twitter at the end of last year). It’s obvious that Facebook’s recent emphasis on status updates comes directly as a result in the surge in popularity of Twitter. It’s also clear that the large icons in the stream come from Twitter as well — something which I think is actually a mistake for Facebook, because the icons are far too large and make information intake even more difficult.
But I think it’s FriendFeed that Facebook should be more closely following, given what it wants to do with its service. That’s especially true when even more information starts coming into the site by way of Facebook Connect. Twitter has exploded in popularity because it’s so simple — but it’s far too simple for everything that Facebook want to do. But FriendFeed seems to be morphing into exactly what Facebook wants to be.
So the question I have now, is whether or not Facebook will copy these better features from FriendFeed? I think it will. After all, it had no problem borrowing the “like” feature, the importing of third-party stream elements, or the commenting functionality. (Sure, FriendFeed didn’t invent all of these, but they’ve been implemented on Facebook in nearly the exact same way they’ve been used on FriendFeed.) And if Facebook is able to follow that lead, 200 million plus users will essentially be using FriendFeed — just under the moniker of Facebook.
Unlike a lot of people out there, I believe Facebook is on the right track with its recent moves to centralize sharing on the web. But the redesign, in many ways, is half-baked. It needs to be executed better — it needs to be like FriendFeed.
First on MGs first!
nice way to pop his cherry
wow .. what an achievement. sarcasm = off.
Now facebook doesn’t stream “activities” on newsfeed, only “publish”s – that too explicitly permitted by users. Hope fb brings back unpermitted stream of spontaneous activities to newsfeed which if first launched.
So friendfeed’s investors called MG after his dissing article, huh?
Wonderful world.
I saw that incredible post on http://www.clasilistados.org
or
http://www.clasilistados.com
By the way this site is awesome, I like it because I love Spanish…
Pau
2nd on MG’s first!!
GO MG! GET BUSY!!
Some minor js gimmick can make page view remain static, with “too fast” incoming on top – with just scroll bar resize. No big deal.
I remember a time last year when all my twitter friends would actively check out other services like identi.ca, plurk, FF but would always come back to twitter because the people were there.
Of all those services listed above, identi.ca makes the most sense. It is more like the email server you use now – distributed.
So which one is going to copy which other when it comes to making money? Oh wait… nothing much to copy yet.
Nice work, MG. Looking forward to more content on how the FriendFeed/Twitter/Facebook trio will play out. That’s my favorite kind of speculation on the Interweb.
That’s easy Bob — which ever actually makes money first!
C’mon, give me a more specific answer… who are you betting on?
I think it’s actually a fairly tough call. I think Twitter and FB have the easiest path, but the FF guys are smart and could think outside the box when it comes to monetization.
I’ll go with Twitter making some seriously money first just because its costs are much less than FBs.
Don’t forget that FF founder Paul Buchheit invented AdSense, Google’s golden egg.
Did you miss the memo about facebook’s 200+ mil revenue?
Right, revenue. Not profit.
Are Twitter or FriendFeed even generating ANY revenue at all?
Revenue becomes profit if they layoff.
It’s refreshing to see an author interacting with his commenters.
Kudos.
I like the fact that now you can put your witter account here, and by the way, who uses friendfeed?
I’ve been thinking along similar lines to this post and when I talk about the benefits of using FriendFeed I often receive a similar response from Twitter fanatics who can’t seem to see beyond Twitter’s simplicity.
While it may be great for more fanatical FF users to be able to convince Twitter users to migrate en masse, I don’t believe it is necessary for this to be an either/or question. Twitter and FF can co-exist quite nicely but if you ignore FF’s potential and value in ongoing conversations, you are being foolish.
Come to think of it, I’m starting to use Facebook more like Twitter nowadays.
fb has more user than twitter, but fb is always late when it comes to innovation and developing creative features.
I still think FF is very innovative and creative, but they never got the proper credit.
yeap agree..
this thought had been around friendfeeders for quite sometimes just when Zuckerberg learned more about Twitter and FF
But before it happens.. Facebook will have to activate their full search for everything inside their walled garden for a momentum… for the sake of user experience.. efficient and effective…
friend feed to me just isnt cool just let it die . i remember before when i was browsing their site i was lost . i didnt have that issue with twitter.
Yeah Twitter is much more simple no doubt, but Facebook as a whole property can’t run like Twitter as much as it may want to. It’s far too complex.
Just go to http://beta.fri...bleizer/friends and watch. No surfing required!
This is the comparison a lot of people have been failing to make in recent months. Would FriendFeed turn down a buyout offer from Facebook? As you say, it seems Facebook is trying to capture a lot of what FriendFeed is doing, so why not just integrate them whole-heartedly into the system?
I’ll also be watching to see if Twitter ends up taking some of these features (likes/comments) and implements them around their own syntax. I can see it now where tweets will start showing the number of times favorited, the number of replies and the number of retweets. Then if they can speed up the indexing of searchable content, Twitter will be right back on par with competitors, but still with a much simpler interface. We’ll just have to wait and see.
BTW, welcome to the TechCrunch team. Look forward to reading your stuff.
Personally, I think all three have a ways to go before they really make it easy/mainstream to integrate/automate/aggregate/filter the real time conversation… I just did what I call my “social networking spring cleaning” and found lots of features lacking (even if we’ve come pretty far). I blogged about it here:
http://bobcaswe...pring-cleaning/
Come on.. don’t you people get it yet? Facebook is hitting a completely different target market.
Friendfeed encourages following people that are interesting and what not, so if you follow everyone that is merely interesting OF COURSE you’ll get more in your real time feed.
Facebook on the other hand encourages more personal relationships. Sure their are similarities in terms of design but honestly it doesn’t matter. They are two very separate entities in terms of focus and relationships.
Please stop comparing Facebook/Twitter/Friendfeed they are all VERY different from each other. You tech people sometimes think to much in your own little box to realize that.
I believe that WAS true Holden, and still is to some extent. But look at everything they’re trying to do with Pages, this is going far beyond personal relationships.
First off awesome for replying (that is neat love when bloggers do that)
Here’s the thing though, as a HS student in a small town that is interested in tech I get to see things in a different light.
Facebook has established that they are more for personal relationships, this is a main reason why many people have stopped using Myspace in my town, they were sick of all the random people trying to add them that they barely know. Facebook offers a different experience, a more private experience. While this may not be true for the silicon valley types we have to think of the common user. Even I, at times just care about what my friends think and not 1000 other people I don’t know.
Twitter on the other hand EMBRACES following people and vice/versa. Which many people in my town have found to be neat, but I have noticed that they would rather keep Facebook just to their friends.
Two different markets, sure Twitter or Friendfeed might become as big as Facebook but neither will replace them because of the relationship associations.
Good stuff Holden – I agree with you in many regards. You may want to check out what I wrote for my previous job here:
http://ventureb...o-one-is-dying/
That’s actually one reason why I think filters are so important to FB. They need to keep users like you happy who don’t care about it being the center of all this Twitter hype. We’ll see if it can do that. Best.
That is actually a wonderful post on the issue. I have never read venturebeat before till now and I think TC made a really smart move by pulling you into the ranks.
Best of luck to you and seriously looking forward to all future posts.
Just so both sides are represented here, MG:
Please continue to compare Facebook/Twitter/FriendFeed as they are all VERY similar to each other.
i think it is working. i have been turning from twitter to fb more often these days because my fb friends are commenting on my twitter updates.
Yeah, FB activity has definitely gone up in terms of comments since the redesign, but it’s nothing compared to the activity FF threads see. They need some sort of push-to-top option like FF has for lively conversations.
got it. that is true. push-to-top will make a huge difference. and i love the Pause updates button.
cheers!
Wait, your first post wasn’t about Push Notification?
I thought about it Henry! I’ll see what I can do for ya in the coming days.
@Holdenpage said it. Are we really comparing like with like?
Although there is truth in the fact that FB did copy Twitter, so why wouldn’t they copy FF too?
How innovative that would be of FB.
To be fair though, FB did popularize the idea of streams (feeds) in the first place.
I have a friendfeed account, but I never use it. It requires too much of an investment in time to keep up with in real time. It has less than 150-250K users, so its not exactly setting the world on fire.
Reminds me though of how Google “picked up” Its adwords monetization strategy from another smaller player but executed it better. I think Google had the traffic, more than the other company.
Similar to facebook / twitter and friendfeed.
Friendfeed may innovate, but FB/Twitter will monetize it better.
Could well be Mukund. But you got the key idea: FF is innovating, helping out FB in many regards now. Can’t wait to see FB turn on real-time updates.
Why does facebook need to be like friendfeed? Why can’t you just use friendfeed if you like it better? And BTW isn’t this what is supposed to happen in the free market? Something better comes out and people move to it?
Yeah but I’m not sold that FB after the redesign is doing what it wants to do as well as it wants to do it. We already know they want to do real-time, and that means they will need better filters, like FF has, is one of the points.
Excellent first post MG. What I love about all of this is that just as FF is out-innovating Facebook in some respects, there are new startups out-innovating FF.
For example, last Friday a startup called Smallaa launched that lets you filter your FF feed by interest/topic. If that could be automated, that would be another step in the right direction:
http://www.tech...erests-invites/
hmmm…..
We’ve come a long way since RSS. It’s like ever since RSS was released there were 80 billion developers looking to usurp it in some way for mass profit.
After all the goal of all these application is to turn people into data streams and create the best content stream out of those streams.
I’m still of the opinion that most of this information is still utter garbage no matter how you slice, splice or filter it. It just is. No matter how many times you process garbage, it’s still garbage.
It’s like a bad band that complains at the studio for bad “mastering”, when ultimately they suck.
I don’t think this has been focused on as the problem to overcome, and let’s face it. This should be THE problem that should be overcome.
There is still room for a new player in this niche that will make, no force people to stop posting garbage.
Great first post, MG!
First, Twitter became the new Facebook. Now, Friendfeed looks like it’ll become the new Facebook. Where the hell is face gonna end up next?
I think Facebook is becoming the new Friendster…
MG, great first post. This is why I like to compare FriendFeed to Apple. Facebook may as well be Microsoft. FriendFeed I can see as the innovator, paving the way amongst the “power users” and “tech elite”, working to please them, while Facebook learns from that and competes by taking the features that hit a mass audience with the greatest effect. IMO, both will survive, although I’m pretty sure FriendFeed will be bought before it gets to that point.
Welcome to TechCrunch MG. Nice meeting you at the Web 2.0 Expo too. =)
Facebook has a tendency to have a neat idea for a redesign that completely breaks what was going on before. When they were just starting out, it was pretty easy to tack on things like photos and groups without too many jarring changes. Then, they added apps, and it turned into a MySpace-style clusterfuck. They counterbalanced by creating Boxes (a ghetto for their once-precious in-network apps) and focusing on the stream. They did great things with it, while supporting another facet of app creation by widening the canvas.
The problem with the newest stream is that it’s definitely a half-baked design. Most of what used to make the stream interesting is now relegated to the sidebar where nobody notices them (a similar fate to what the Boxes tab did to apps). As with every Facebook refresh, there’s a great idea under all of this – fusing what was the publisher into the wall via status updates. It’s a great combination; I just wish they would have executed it better.
Thanks Brenton. Agreed, it’s all about execution here when a big change takes place.
I enjoyed this post MG. I agree it looks like Facebook will likely just lift the best from Friendfeed, but I wonder how long until the mass migration begins at Facebook?
Few (any?) social networks tend to succeed past the six year mark, and the early adopters are not on Facebook, meaning it’s at the end of adoption curve. Friendfeed, conversely, is just now starting their curve.
It’ll be fun to watch play out, but I’m betting on Friendfeed.
This is where the economic growth is- in smartist, globalist web 2.0 companies in the Silicon Valley like friendfeed and facebook and twitter. Huge M&A deals, valuations, and growth. But instead the doom and gloom media is obsessed with job losses and recession. boo hoo hoo lost me job. Meanwhile, the stock market is surging for it’s 5th strait week..http://iamned.com/blog/ because we’re right and the doom and gloomers are wrong regarding the economy. The smartist era is real. Web 2.0 is no bubble. Facebook is worth 30 billion, Twitter 10 billion, and friendfeed 5 billion?
I consider myself early adopter to mainstreamers, however if a service takes more than half an hour of my time to master, it is probably too complicated for mainstream. Yes, it’s our Stanford/Google fellows’ baby (friendfeed), but If they don’t make it intuitive for new users, Facebook might really kill it off by copying the real feed/what not features. Friendfeed: please do gather bunch of 1st timer, streamline/simplify the work flow. The name, friendfeed, is also kind of techie.
Facebook is not going anywhere neither is Friendster,Twitter etc…Friendfeed is just the new kid on the block.Personally I love them all!
http://www.helptobusiness.com
why Conan is there?
In the year 2000…
Thanks for the backup there Jason
Here ya go.
“Women will lose interest in conan o’brian, when it is revealed he has a raging case of duchovny.”
Straight hilarious.
That’s actually my favorite line.
I only leave this comment to say that the new “Leave Comment” inclusion of a Twitter field is pretty darn awesome.
i agree, friendfeed is awesome, so when will twitter be nice and allow for filters so you dont have to use tweetdeck?
Their position has been to keep it simple and leave that to third parties, but eventually, yeah, that really is a must. Maybe their new UI guy will convince em.
Great read… I must admit to never being hooked by ff. What is the need for it when you can link in everything in Facebook. However I do agree a 100% about the filters. I have certain YouTube vids, blog posts and tweets I only want certain FB friends to see, not my mom. That to me is the real issue. I would like to link my feeds to my FB but I can`t until they
a) allow me to select who sees the feeds.
b) allow me to link in multiple blogs and youtube channels. Maybe this is possible…don`t know..
That said the new wall is too cluttered. I hate it…
Isn’t there anything poor friendfeed can do to keep other companies from copying their features? Digg sent C&Ds to a few Digg clones.
It is the wild, wild west. The only IP that really matters is your users. The rest can be duplicated. I guess once you get them do everything can to never give them a reason to leave. People don`t leave facebook because of their friends….. you have to create emotion based links to the site. Friends are that reason.
Congrats on great 1’st post MG
and plenty of other Pros, it’s feels human, live and kicking!
Jesse shared this post on FriendFeed, most of my TC visits come from FF, rarely happens via Facebook. What i’d really like to see… Facebook offering a wide range of options, for different levels of usage. It’s not only static now, it’s 1 type, 1 size for all.
Bought or not, i join the hope that FriendFeed will keep leading, feature + experience wise. I’ve noticed more people recently turned into power users, simply because they’re using their FF account more. FriendFeed replaced my reader, now it has DM
Forgot to mention Search… huge difference between FF & FB, i hope FB will widen search into content, according to user privacy level.
Seriously, how much has TC been paid to keep writing about Friendfeed to no end
. Either TC has run out of topic, or half its employees work for Friendfeed.
Isn’t it past your bedtime?
Congrats, the smarter TC readers have all started to realize there is some incentive setup.
Especially with Scobe playing the game too.
Um, I’m not paid by either Facebook, Twitter, or friendfeed and have no investments or other compensation from either.
Doesn’t the whole real time updating thing assume that I’m staring at my computer screen for minutes at a time? …which I’m not. I think it’s highly overrated.
depressing.
This whole debate about facebook/twitter/friendfeed misses tan important point. It is not about how much like each other they are but about how different they are and how they are used in different ways.
The beauty of twitter is the APIs if you don’t like the way it works or doesn’t have something for you (ie groups) then build or find a service. FF is about filtering (which they need to put into a subheading as clearly some people ‘get it’ right away and others, like myself, take months.) And facebook is an all in one resource.
The cultures are different and the way they are used by people are different.
It is clear to me that none of these social media sites are all things to all people. It is self-evident as each of them have either been created or evolved to serve a specific communication function.
A more useful discussion around social media at the moment would be to define at what points that it becomes indispensable. Were any of these three services to be suddenly discontinued how adverse would the affect on society be? Also, for all those non- social media users, at what point does not being active in these arenas become a handicap?
It doesn’t seem fair and yet because of Friendfeed building the most awesome product, everyone will get to have a better experience, from facebook to Twitter. FF founders rock!
Nice Segway…</sarcasm>
I feel like marty mcfly
First of all I have to say that Friendfeed redesign looks worse than the one they had before (which was great BTW). However, the one thing they were wise enough to do is to add the real-time movement. Unfortunately, it still won’t let you to control the speed and the way it is moving now, makes it too harder to follow the updates (sometime it’s even useless).
It was very smart of Facebook to take both Twitter & Friendfeed best features, and combined them together. I believe that when they’ll add the real-time ability, it will be a different story.
I’m a bit mixed about FF’s actual redesign — but I definitely see why they did it (to try and make things simpler). But yeah, real-time is the key Orli. Varying speeds (real-time-ness) is an interesting idea, but even more I’d like a way to set the size of elements. I don’t like how big they are on either FF or FB.
Really interested to see what happens when FB adds real-time as well.
In my opinion another problem with Friendfeed is that it streams content from people you didn’t subscribe to. Some will say this is a good thing, but you don’t actually want to read content from people you didn’t follow on twitter for example, or people who are not your friends on Facebook, so how come Friendfeed forces you to do that?
In most cases I’ll find new friends because of their smart & interesting comments (on friendfeed) or by their @replays (on Twitter)
My point is – if you don’t have complete control of the content, everything looks much more noisy and not so fun to use.
Although Facebook provides an excellent service for social networking, there is one critical flaw… Every user must provide their full, real name as part of their public profile. Given the success of Facebook, it’s clear not everyone considers this an important piece of personal information, but every other service provides this capability. For example, I’m known as Ghodmode on Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, Delicious and many, many more. Most of those services don’t even need my name.
http://www.flic...mode/3436894197 :
–
– Ghodmode
Great pos MG! but a better title could be: “real-time updates battle”. I think the FF will never reach the masses, its too complicated for mom
Not sure I agree about the lack of interaction.
I regularly see HUGE comment threads in Facebook. Every 50 Cent post has 600 comments and 1000 likes. His “happy birthday Tony Yayo” post has 1,300 comments and 6,000 likes.
and please can we stop with the “facebook doesnt innovate” BS?
The News Feed is the very basis of Twitter/FriendFeed
Status Updates predated Twitter
Like/Hide was in the Newsfeed before FriendFeed existed (remember the thumbs up and thumbs down?)
Well, by the time a decision is made between FB and friend feed, there would be a dozen more wannabe top social networking site.
You May Be Reading VentureBeat In The Future – But It May Be Called Techcrunch
Articles on these social sites become more competitive on edge style technology on end users.I think the people or community like us hs also contributed more larger to their growth.
Not too good
The Friendfeed real-time vision I feel is definitely the way forward. Facebook should concentrate on Facebook Connect as that’s where they innovate.
Only if facebook acts now and buys them before Google or MS does. Actually Apple would be a good fit for FF
A Friendfeed post … shouldn’t there be 12 comments from Scoble??
Spot on post MG. Great analysis and addition to the TC team.
I was sleeping. Proof that I am not a bot.
hahahah! Scoble never sleeps!
he just lives over on FriendFeed – NOT TechCrunch (that was for Mike)
@SusanBeebe
Robert, a robot’s software consciousness must have a sleep() function, wait(-1).
As for the Facebook article comment. Lets not even talk about the quality of the timewasting crapware they call “applications” oozing from the website. I see it as this, 200million people on it, and 100million people a day look at that crap? BRB checking Facebook. Phew, at least it still doesn’t hurt my eyes as much as MySpace.
Hardly original thought, but yeah I hope Friendfeed survives.
What a joke. Who’s going to win?
200M users says Facebook’s going to win. 200K users for friendfeed and no unique technical ability, just maybe a small step ahead in functionality.
That’s called “pioneer” – go read some business books.
Yes but does anyone really understand facebook or how the hell to use it ??? People complain that FF is too complex but you need a degree in facebook to use it and they change it every 6 months to a total new product. Didn’t facebook used to be about profile pages ???