Some people still aren’t sure why Facebook would buy FriendFeed. While few would question the talent of FriendFeed’s team, many still considered it to be a product going nowhere. Think again.
The new July comScore numbers are out, and they’re impressive to say the least for FriendFeed. First of all, its last full independent month saw an all-time high in unique visitors. But the stat that really will blow you away is the average time spent on the site. FriendFeed’s choice to move to a live, constantly updating stream of data was a very good choice, it seems.
At the end of April, FriendFeed turned on the live-stream that it had been testing on its beta site, for all users. At first, a lot of users didn’t seem to like it, but many quickly realized its power. From May on, usage of FriendFeed starting going up in terms of unique visitors to the site, after a small dip the month prior. Meanwhile, the average amount of time spent on the site went from just a few minutes in April, all the way up to 6.2 minutes in June. But the most impressive jump was yet to come: July saw users spending 31.2 minutes on the site. Just look at the chart below, the jump is pretty incredible.
Assuming FriendFeed’s internal metrics are close to comScore’s, it looks like a case of where FriendFeed sold high. And it may have been a very smart time for Facebook to buy FriendFeed as the trend was clearly that the site was gaining momentum, and more importantly, that what they had done with the live-updating stream was working. Facebook is of course also working on its own version of a similar stream, but it has so far paled in comparison to FriendFeed’s. Undoubtedly, the FriendFeed team will help change that over the next several months.
You can’t spell great without integrate.
t is brilliant step by FB. This would surely give a boost to it. FB’s integration with FriendFeed and Twitter would help in healthy growth and long survival.
comScore has done a good job, by introducing an impressive metric reports about FriendFeed.
what the gay is this new chat box and drag into share shit all over tc now?
What?
Now I know where all my time went!
I don’t want to think about the cycles I’ve spent there but then again… it’s changed how I think about building quorum. FF in a year? I’m waiting to have my mind blown again like it was with Google Wave.
Very interesting. I hope facebook brings the best of both sites together to make a Monster. Facebook is already a monster – but this move could make them grow even bigger if they play their cards right. I’m betting they will.
I tend to leave the FF stream open in a tab. I guess that’s what most people do. Would count towards time spent. Well, that at Robert’s overall usage off course.
Friendfeed is a better product than twitter.
Quality will out.
You mean like Beta won out over VHS? Actually, if Beta was released today it would probably be a success as most people would assume it was a Google product.
Ineteresting
Actually often poop floats to the top. By “poop” I am being metaphorical, not scatological — please don’t axe my witty comment.
That jump is because Twitter disabled a feature that people were using to track tweet replies. Friendfeed is pretty much all about that feature, and hence when Twitter disabled it, Friendfeed usage soared. It was just the push they needed to gain critical usability.
So what is the Plan? Is FriendFeed going to be shut down? We have stopped using the site because of fear that we will be investing our time on a site that will soon disappear
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Interesting hybrid of comment and spam.
Here’s hoping Faceborg allows a separate friendfeed for those of us who resist assimilation. Fat chance I know.
I guess the normal user behaviour is to keep FF open in a tab / browser window (if someone is still using IE6). After adding the realtime stream, the page is always active and hence it counts towards time spent on the site.
Doesn’t that skew the “time spent on the site” data?
Can people really handle the firehose of information?
I don’t even really read my facebook newsfeed. Tooo much.
http://www.traderbots.com
I find that chart hard to believe, and hence probably not true.
That’s quite a Palin-esque statement.
We just have to wait and see what will be the result ..
Smart move from Facebook. Friendfeed can be huge.
FF has been in the news quite a bit lately because of Facebook. I joined FF when I heard about it, but only because Facebook baught them and I wanted to learn more.
Maybe that’s why it’s gotten so much usage lately. People are just curious.