MySocial 24×7, a Friend Feed/ Twitter Firefox sidebar Michael wrote about in April has launched an Adobe AIR application.

Like the Firefox sidebar, the AIR app allows users to filter the view by type of data, comment or bookmark any entry, and users can also reply via Twitter.

The big selling point for the new app is an inbuilt movie/picture viewer, allowing users to view content without the need to revert to a browser window.

Hands on its definitely one of the nicest looking desktop apps in this space, content is rendered clearly and attractively, compared to say Twhirl which isn’t super pretty out of the box. The app though does lack many of the features that have made Twhirl popular, such as click support for direct messaging in Twitter, color customization, and easy access to archives and user details. In its defense it is an alpha release, and not all users will want for the extra features provided by Twhirl. Definitely worth a look if you’re a Twitter and FriendFeed user.

disclosure: Michael is an investor in Seesmic, which owns Twhirl

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Google has added support for Notes to Google Reader, allowing users to share notes or add notes to shared stories.

The add a note feature is located in the “Your Stuff” menu at the top of the Google Reader sidebar. Tumblr style, the feature allows users to share with friends “whatever pops into your head (for better or for worse) by typing anything into the text box at the top of the Notes page,” according to Google.

The share items with a note gives users the ability to add a note with any shared Reader item. Google explains:

If you are like me, you might want to share something in Reader, but think your friends might not “get” why you are sharing it. Use the “Share with note” button on the item toolbar to create a copy of that item with your own note attached to it. Now your friends won’t have to wonder if the B-movie about an evil floor lamp you shared was intended to be funny, sarcastic, ironic or the real motivation behind your next movie night.

Users can also add notes from the browser with a Reader Notes bookmarklet. Minor changes include the choice of new styles from the shared items page, and the Google Reader list view will now highlight when an item is being shared by a friend.

The new additions will provide additional appeal to Google Reader’s sharing feature, which has slowly grown in popularity over the last 12 months (least I see more and more friends sharing this way). The ability to have a discussion around shared feeds is still missing, but as we noted back in September is being developed by Google.

thanks to Bowrd for the tip

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Note: Unless you are a Twitter and/or FriendFeed addict, this post isn’t for you.

Twitter/FriendFeed desktop client Alert Thingy just released version 1.3 of the software.

It is now a fully functioning client for both services (reading and writing). They’ve also added an easy Flickr uploader - just drag a photo into the application and upload it to Flickr.

The thing I like most about the new version of Alert Thingy though is that you access Twitter and FriendFeed in a single window and a single interface (Twhirl, a competitor, requires two windows). That means less desktop space is used. They are also de-duping Twitter messages (since they also appear in FriendFeed), a nice touch.

Switching between Alert Thingy, Twhirl and even the newer browser sidebar with similar functionality is trivially easy - there are no real switching costs. That means all of these products will be in a constant battle over features. That’s great for us users. And since Alert Thingy and Twhirl are more side projects for their parent companies (Alert Thingy is built by Howard/Baines, Twhirl is owned by Seesmic (a company I invested in), there’s little danger of one app driving the other out of business.

Im now planning to switch back to Alert Thingy based on the new features. The current version of Twhirl is freezing periodically as well, requiring regular restarts.

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MySocial24×7, which launched early Tuesday morning, is a Firefox extension that allows users to access most FriendFeed functionality via their API directly from the browser sidebar.

Users can filter the view by type of data (Twitter, RSS feeds, YouTube, etc.), can comment or bookmark any entry, and can also reply via Twitter.

This is one of many desktop based solutions coming out for FriendFeed (we’ve covered two Adobe AIR applications, Twhirl and AlertThingy, as well). Some people will love the sidebar functionality, although I use it for bookmarks so the AIR applications are a better fit.

But this is certainly a nice tool for the FriendFeed junkies. Thumbs up.

The application, created by Sandosh Vasudevan, is built on Google App Engine.

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You haven’t arrived until your web application has a German clone, it seems. Web innovation in that country too often distills down to “copy/paste innovation.”

And now, Freundfeed, which doesn’t appear to be a joke. Not only is it a ripoff of the FriendFeed name, they also use the same logo. The service hasn’t launched yet, but I’m willing to make an educated guess and say that it will likely rip off the rest of FriendFeed, too.

This guy is either the founder or an investor. Thanks for the tip, Jodi.

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It’s my own damn fault. I should have never listened to Mike. This morning I installed Twhirl on my desktop in a failed attempt to keep up better with Twitter and Friendfeed. I was hoping it would help me manage the never-ending flow of information from those two services—which, I admit, I’ve been increasingly ignoring. Instead, it took over my desktop and I couldn’t make it stop (see image above).

Twhirl solves one problem (the need to constantly visit the Twitter and Friendfeed Websites), only to create another one (information overload that clutters your desktop). I’m sure there is some setting I could change to fix the issue, but this highlights a bigger problem with the Web today. There is too much to pay attention to and not enough ways to reduce the noise. Even Robert Scoble, the biggest Twitter whore on the planet who follows 21,000 people and receives one Tweet per second, can’t deal with it anymore.

And it is not just Twitter. Lifestream aggregators like Friendfeed are supposed to make things simpler by consolidating the activities of everyone you know across the Web into one single view. But every day a new lifestream aggregator pops up to the point that it’s gotten to be ridiculous. Now, desktop utilities like Twhirl and Alerty Thing are taking these services out of the browser so that they are always on your desktop.

But if you think it is hard enough to keep up with e-mails and instant messages, keeping up with the Web (even your little slice of it) is much worse. Putting Twhirl on your desktop and hearing the constant “ding” of new messages coming in will make you realize that this is IM on steroids. (You will quickly turned off the sound).

Bringing all of this Web messaging and activity together in one place doesn’t really help. It reminds me of a comment ThisNext CEO Gordon Gould made to me earlier this week when he predicted that Web 3.0 will be about reducing the noise. (Some say it will be about the semantic Web, but those two ideas are not mutually exclusive). I hope Gould is right, because what we really need are better filters.

I need less data, not more data. I need to know what is important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know. People like Mike and Robert can do that, but they are weird, and even they have their limits.

So where is the startup that is going to be my information filter? I am aware of a few companies working on this problem, but I have yet to see one that has solved it in a compelling way. Can someone please do this for me? Please? I need help. We all do.

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Alert Thingy, the FriendFeed desktop application that launched just three days ago, just launched v 1.2 of the service, with Twitter support.

In addition to viewing FriendFeed data streams and posting directly to FriendFeed, users can now also post directly to their Twitter account as well. Users cannot directly view Twitter streams through AlertThingy, although they can get that information by following FriendFeed users who include Twitter data.

This makes FriendFeed even more useful. Twhirl, a competitor that was recently acquired by Seesmic, works with Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku, but users rarely use more than one of those services. Lots of people use both FriendFeed and Twitter, however (FriendFeed often to read information, Twitter to post), and they may find Alert Thingy a nice alternative to Twhirl.

I’m finding that I use FriendFeed a lot more now than I have Alert Thingy installed. And if they continue to innovate this quickly, I may find I uninstall Twhirl for good. Things they need to add - the ability to view Twitter directly, outside of friendfeed (including replies and direct messages), and integration with snurl to easily shorten included URLs.

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As we predicted in February, Facebook has opened up the Mini-Feed so users can import updates from other web services, starting with Flickr, Picassa, Yelp and Delicious.

According to a company blog post, users just need to click an import link at the top of their mini-feed to import data from other services. Imported updates will show up not only in the mini-feed on your profile but the News Feeds of your friends as well. Digg and other services are expected to be added soon as well.

While this new feature is a direct threat to FriendFeed and others that aggregate social networking activity from across the web, Facebook isn’t making it easy to access the aggregated information outside of its site. There are still no RSS feeds for the Mini-Feed and News Feed, despite feeds for other data like updates.

It would sound reasonable for Facebook to claim it can’t open this information up because of privacy concerns (who knows where your life will be broadcasted if available via RSS). But FriendFeed has already gotten around this by adding a special token to its RSS feeds.

This isn’t technically the first time the Facebook activity feeds have been opened up to 3rd party services. The infamous Beacon project also allows web services to import updates, but that takes the initiative of these other companies themselves. With this new feature, services like Flickr don’t have to opt into sharing data on Facebook - consumers are left with making that choice themselves.

News Feed recently made headlines for a privacy issue that distributed user stories that they had not approved. As far as we know, the issue has not been resolved.

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AlertThingy, the Adobe AIR desktop application for FriendFeed that we previewed last month, has just launched. It is one of the first applications built on the new FriendFeed API.

The application allows users to see the data stream from people they follow on FriendFeed, and post new messages directly to the service. Users can also comment on posted items, and bookmark them. And possibly the best feature: it includes FriendFeed search.

Alert Thingy is now the second Adobe AIR application that is running full time on my desktop (the other is Twhirl, for Twitter). I expect it will be very popular with the Centralized Me crowd.

The application was created by Howard/Baines.

See Sobees for another desktop FriendFeed application, although it runs only on Windows machines. AIR applications are cross platform.

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It’s definitely FriendFeed month in Silicon Valley. The company, founded by ex-Googlers, let you aggregate information and activity streams from all of the various services that you use on the internet - Flickr photos, YouTube videos, blog posts, delicious bookmarks, Twitter messages, and other stuff (33 services total to date). Your friends subscribe to your stuff, and see a stream of data on their home page coming from everyone they follow.

The site also allows users to add content directly, comment on information and, more recently, added an excellent search feature that is still sorely lacking in Twitter. The site is more than a list of feeds that can be re-exported. FriendFeed wants to be a destination site, too.

And their growth is very strong, given that the service only launched publicly a month ago. The number of users was growing 25% per week earlier this month.

Last week the site announced the availability of an API, which allows third party services to easily add in FriendFeed data and features. The first batch of these applications are starting to be released now.

The Centralized Me

But there’s something just a little weird about FriendFeed, some people are starting to mumble. It’s an aggregated “me” but it sits in a centralized site (in fact, centralization is kind of the point). FriendFeed is a (and hopes to become “the”) Centralized Me. It’s a data silo. True, it’s a friendly data silo, with APIs and RSS feeds to move some of the data around, but it’s ultimately housed on their servers, and always will be.

Loic Le Meur sort of summed it all up tonight in a blog post where he says that we grew used to having a Centralized Me in the days before all these services popped up, starting in 2004 and spreading since then. That Centralized Me was the blog. Then we grew used to having a Decentralized Me - your stuff was literally everywhere. Go here for photos, here for the blog, here for videos, and here for bookmarks. Robert Scoble today is sort of the quintessential Decentralized Me - his stuff is everywhere, and he seems to love the chaos.

What Loic wants, and I think other people will want it too, is a place that they control where this information is aggregated. That may be right back at the blog for some people. For others it may be Facebook (who understands this fully). Wherever a person considers their home turf is where they’ll want all this data.

FriendFeed can become that place, but it’s an uphill climb. So many other services have already become the psychological home of their users. Changing that is like swimming upstream.

Is Data Portability The Anti-FriendFeed?

The Data Portability Project may turn out to be the answer that people are looking for. And it may turn out to be a sort of anti-FeedFriend. The whole point of Data Portability is to get social networks talking to each other and exchanging user data, with their explicit permission. Want to add your flickr photos, twitter messages and YouTube Videos to your blog? Data Portability is working to help make that happen through consensus driven policies and procedures. In essence, data portability embraces the Decentralized Me, but lets users re-centralize it wherever they please.

Frankly, not enough people know much about DataPortability yet. That will start to change, as founder Chris Saad is starting a road show presentation to talk at a high level about what he’s trying to accomplish. Some big partners are joining, even if just in spirit so far.

Ultimately, Data Portability is to the Centralized Me (all your stuff) as OpenID is to identity (your literal identity). And just as the big players are sort of supporting/exploiting OpenId to maintain their user accounts, they will also support/exploit Data Portability to remain the place users consider the Centralized Me.

Serious politics and power plays are coming. What I’m wondering is if FriendFeed can get big enough fast enough, and get enough users to think of it as their Centralized Me, to be in the game.

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