Social Media Butterfly

FriendFeed’s New iPhone Version vs. FF2Go

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Compared to most websites, FriendFeed is extremely mobile browser friendly. Still, I felt the need recently to see if anyone had used FriendFeed’s api to create an even more mobile-friendly version that I could view on my iPhone.

At first, I couldn’t find anything. But eventually someone told me about FFtoGo (fftogo.com). This was exactly what I was looking for.

Now, FriendFeed has released its own iPhone version. FriendFeed will automatically detect if you’re connecting from an iPhone. You can view the version from a “normal” browser by going to friendfeed.com/i. That should also work if you’re browsing from another mobile device.

There’s hardly any difference between FriendFeed’s iphone version and FFtoGo. FriendFeed has its logo at the top and FFtoGo lacks a logo altogether, but it’s not intrusive. There looks to be a slight font difference between the two, but it’s barely noticeable.

So, I can confidently recommend both for FriendFeed mobile viewing!

FriendFeed and the Need to Control the Noise

Posted by Nathania Johnson

FriendFeed is all the rage among early social media adopters right now, but there is one thing that is so desperately needed: consolidation.

I don’t have all of the same “friends” everywhere. So, something I talk about on Twitter won’t be seen by my StumbleUpon friends. But both feeds go to FriendFeed, so they’ll both show up on my FriendFeed feed. Say that ten times fast.

So, if I submit a link to multiple sites or discuss an item with multiple networks, there will be a lot of repetition on FriendFeed.

This makes me wonder if FriendFeed’s ultimate goal is to become the one place to go, the original (and maybe primary) place to submit content.

Until then or if that’s not the goal, I’d really love it if FF could figure out a way to just show one instance of the same link. This should be easier to do for sites like StumbleUpon and Google Reader than Digg. At this point, I’ll take whatever I can get.

Also, I don’t like when “old” items pop back up in FF applications like Twhirl and Alert Thingy just because a new comment has been attached to the submission. I’d rather only receive the update if I’ve commented or selected that particular submission to track.

Reducing noise would make me use FF more, how about you?

Tired of Waiting for Twitter to Tweak? Go to FriendFeed

Posted by Nathania Johnson

If you’ve been using Twitter lately, then you know that the utility can be down at any given moment. It’s no surprise that more and more FriendFeed invites are arriving in my inbox.

Today, I finally downloaded Alert Thingy, which is like Twhirl (a Twitter client) but for FriendFeed. The thing is sweet and while Twhirl hasn’t been able to give me any Tweets this morning, Alert Thingy has been, well, alerting me for a couple hours now.

But not just of Tweets. FriendFeed (and subsequently Alert Thingy) alerts me to anything my FriendFeed friends are sharing from any of their social profiles - StumbleUpon, Digg, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, del.icio.us, RSS feeds from your blogs and even Amazon wishlists.

But also, you can just post a thought like you would on Twitter. You can either use the “share something” function on the FriendFeed homepage, FriendFeed’s bookmarklet on your browser toolbar to share a web page, or via Alert Thingy. And hey, you don’t have to use a Tiny URL b/c you can hyperlink text instead. Did I mention you can search FriendFeed?

So, unless Twitter gets its act together fast, I think we should all migrate over to FriendFeed. I’m not sure what we’ll call our updates or if we’ll use @ to direct replies to someone. But we’ll figure it out as we go along.

FriendFeed Adds “Rooms”

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Ok, this news is like 6 days old, but it’s still cool. FriendFeed now has “rooms.” That’s a different way of saying groups.

You can create your own group or join an existing one. It’s a great way to just check out updates from a certain group of people. Thus, the reason the word group was even invented.

For example, there’s a new group for peeps from North Carolina, where yours truly resides. This will be a great way to catch up on what’s going on nearby, such as networking events - especially when Twitter is down, which has been a lot lately.

(Speaking of Twitter, they need groups too!)

I like FriendFeed’s growth. First, they got everyone to sign up. Then they added search, and now they have rooms. Steady and slow, just the way growth thrives. I think they have their best tricks still up their sleeves. I hope so, because I still need something more from them in order to be a regular FriendFeed user, you know, on the level of Twitter.

Twhirl-Like Application Coming Soon for FriendFeed

Posted by Nathania Johnson

FriendFeed opened up its API and already there is a desktop application to get excited about. According to TechCrunch, Howard Baines is in the process of developing Alert Thingy. As you can tell, the image to the left indicates that Alert Thingy could be FriendFeed’s Twhirl equivalent.

I love that it’s called Alert Thingy. Social media really thrives on transparency and what better way to name a FriendFeed client than this!

I’m particularly happy to see a search feature, as I feel that’s where the true power of FriendFeed lies. It will be interesting to see what the settings will be. I’d like to be able to track keywords or brands in order to empower online reputation management.

Also, if you can Tweet directly from Alert Thingy, what will be the implications for Twhirl and other Twitter clients? Could it be that Alert Thingy will be a Twhirl killer?

I think it will depend on how most people will use FriendFeed. Watching all of the updates from all of your friends on FriendFeed can be overwhelming. And if you just use AlertThingy for Twitter, it will likely have to offer something more than Twhirl currently does.

Perhaps, the best use will be to watch everything BUT Twitter. If so, it may give a boost to social media sites that may be a little neglected since the Twitter craze took over.

I guess we’ll have to wait until Alert Thingy and the inevitable other FriendFeed applications are released to the public. I know we’ll all be keeping a close eye on these cool apps to come.