DISQUS

Alex Scoble · 4 months ago

Heh, I don't love friendfeed as an inanimate object. You have to understand that friendfeed is about the people. It's a social connector like none other. I haven't found any other forum where people talk and post about all sorts of different things and connect the way you can on friendfeed. To lose that would be seriously tragic. Not to mention all the effort that the community has put in to it. I'm sure that the friendfeed stakeholders made the best decision they could. We don't know what the details are. We don't know if they were getting close to shuttering without this deal. We don't really know anything other than the small bits of info that they gave us. And that's the problem.

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) · 4 months ago

Alex, good point, and an important distinction.

However, there are those (and I'm not talking about you) who have a belief that tools have to be used in a very specific way. I've seen multiple comments of the vein "Facebook is used to connect to people you know in real life, while FriendFeed is used to connect to interesting people that you may never have met." These statements are cast in stone, and even the people who run Facebook put great emphasis on the IRL aspect.

But it doesn't have to be that way. I believe that with three changes, Facebook could provide as rich an experience as FriendFeed does. (The changes? [1] Multiple RSS feeds per fan page, [2] Move active items to the top of the page, [3] Allow pseudonyms.) Even if only the first two were implemented, Facebook would be a much richer place and would better support true conversations between people.

In many cases, users end up changing the services from the founders' original vision into something richer. Once upon a time, Twitter didn't support replies. Once upon a time, FriendFeed was merely an aggregator of content from other places. Once upon a time, you had to be a college student to join Facebook. All of these services evolved, and it's possible that Facebook could evolve into something rich that would make us happy.

ITBlogger · 4 months ago

Heh, whoa there...I don't think anyone will make a tool that will make this surly lot happy. :)

As for Facebook, yeah, they'd have to change it a lot for it to be useful and I'd have to change how I use it too for it to be anything like friendfeed.

Right now I'm subscribed to way too many random people on Facebook who play Facebook games for it to be useful.

Mark Krynsky · 4 months ago

Interesting post John but I agree with Alex. I only love FriendFeed in the sense that it was the vessel that helped me find and cultivate so many great friendships. I fear that if I begin to focus on just loving FriendFeed and not what it has brought me that I will no doubt need to start spending large amounts of time on some shrink's couch.

sreiser · 4 months ago

Just the other night, I wrote a small piece with my thoughts about the merger ( http://seanreiser.com/content/thoughts-about-fa... ) in which I said "They built a service, let us play there and now they've found their way to make money, good for them. Let me let you in on a secret, that's why they started FriendFeed, that wanted to profit.".

I really don't understand the feeling of betrayal people seem to have over the merger. When I got into FF I knew that odds something would come along and absorb it or shut it down, it's the history of most startups. Honestly, I expected Google to buy them (just because of the people involved). At the end of the day, if we don't build communities on open platforms, this is the risk we run.

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) · 4 months ago

Sean - yes, because of the Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed, you WILL have to become Steven Perez's bunneh vampire. I'll place more relevant comments at your post itself.

app · 4 months ago

I think my feelings are more similar to how one loves and feels comfortable in the home the live in, then finds out the owner of the building sold it to a slum lord that will most likely ransack your apartment when you are not looking, conducting guided tours of your bedroom while you are off at work.

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) · 4 months ago

I just wrote a longish reply to your comment, which Disqus then ate. Rather than retype the whole thing, suffice it to say that even with Facebook's less-than-stellar reputation, I think that any other acquirer of FriendFeed would have been as much of a "slum lord," or perhaps more, than Facebook. (Imagine Rupert Murdoch incorporating FriendFeed into MySpace, for example.)

app · 4 months ago

Have you ever tried to report a serious issue to Facebook? I am referring to something like a security problem that has the potential to affect a lot of people and not something personal like your account being deleted.

It's just like reporting a plumbing problem or leaking roof to a slum lord.

You can't get in touch with them and it won't get fixed. You can not report a security issue to facebook unless you are tattling on a specific user for posting "bad" pics, videos, or links.

They require a name of who to blame (and delete their account) to be reported along with the issue or the form will not submit.

Meanwhile, the roof continues to leak, the toilet is still backed up, there is a big hole in middle of the floor, and the furnace is shutting out the pilot lights on everyone's stove whenever it kicks on.

That was what I meant.

If you have used friendfeed yourself for any length of time, you know the team is approachable and there is a way to report issues, multiple ways in fact.

As far as MySpace goes, their chief security officer was not hard to find (2 clicks from the main page) and they make it quite easy to contact him, so maybe selling out to myspace wouldn't have been as bad you you implied.

And the rest of my original comment is a reference to their horrible IP and privacy policies which allow them the right to take everyone's submitted content, pics, videos, etc and do as they please, including exploiting them for profit.

Are you aware that Facebook can take the photos submitted by every user and start their own stock photo site, selling them to anyone they want, for any purpose, including commercial, without asking the user's permission, notifying the user they are doing so, and not even crediting the user as the source.

Just because they are not doing that now (as far as we know) doesn't mean they can't, or won't. And there is nothing you can do to stop them if they decide to do it, since you agreed they can and gave them the right, by having an account and posting the content.

Maybe, just maybe, a lot of people are not upset about this sale to Facebook because of their love of friendfeed, but in fact because of their hatred of Facebook and it's ways, things that are not likely to change because they have Friendfeed's talent working for them now.

I am watching friendfeeds userbase shopping for a new site in much the same way one shops for a house to buy. If you were right about their feelings then they would be looking for a new site in the same manner that one looks for a date, not a house.