Self Inflicted Un-Friendly(feed)
May 08 2008 
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As of lately, members of the social aggregator Friendfeed are really starting to piss people off (including me). Here’s a look at why.
Attitude Problem
The elitist attitude problem is definitely starting to take over on Friendfeed. Users are being down right rude to bloggers who have various issues with Friendfeed. For example, David Risely recently posted "The FriendFeed Orgasm And Why It Is Off The Mark". It’s a pretty controversial post, but only in the mind of Friendfeed users. Risely points out some echoed problems of Friendfeed, including it’s contributions to the "Conversation Fragmentation" arena.
Friendfeed users are complaining that Risely shouldn’t worry about where the comments about his content are going. Well, those same users should’ve left the numerous bloggers who complained about Shyftr doing the same (among other things), the same comments!
No Respect
On top of that, users are hiding behind the walls of Friendfeed riddled with snarky and borderline derisive words for Risely’s opinions.
The FriendFeed community (not as a whole) shows very little respect for those that disagree with the service. They’re doing the same thing that Mac fanboys are prone to doing: being ignorant. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen on Friendfeed.
Not Everyone Is A Friendfeed Junkie
David Risely’s post pointed out valid problems of Friendfeed: really high noise levels and sucks for bloggers. Not everyone could care less about where the comments about their content is headed. While no one owns a conversation, you could still respect an authors opinions on what they’d like.
And who hasn’t said it; Friendfeed’s noise level is really high! Sure you can hide everything for an entire service or for various people, but that’s a tedious process in itself and doesn’t solve everything.
It’s a bit hard to wrap my head around some of the comments because some of these people are bloggers that I respect and who have always been polite and helpful when disagreeing with the opinions of not only myself but others.
This continued shallowness and "eye rolling" attitude will piss people off like crazy. As I stated on Friendfeed to Alex von Halem and Robert Scoble, not everyone is a Friendfeed junkie.
What’s so hard about respecting that?
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I'm not sure this doesn't go back to the difficulty one has showing emotion in text. For instance, I JUST complimented someone in FF on his detailed posts and he apologized for it…Why did he do that ? I love his posts but he thought I was saying they were too long. It's hard to read into this 140 character world. I think we all just need to grow thicker skins :-)…
You make some good points, especially the fact that “Not Everyone Is A Friendfeed Junkie”, but at the same time, bloggers have to understand that not every reader wants to Enter Name, Enter Email, Enter Website and Enter Comment on the blog post. Plus alot of blog post comments lack any real substance anyway.
I do get where you're going with this. I wouldn't say I personally have an elitist attitude towards FriendFeed, but I can easily say that about bloggers who lash out at Friendfeed for “stealing” the conversation (that IMO, never really existed on most blog post comments anyway for a number of reasons).
The bottom line: how do I get the best discussion? Without services like Disqus, Intense Debate, and a few select blog plugins/blog comment services, blogs posts do not make it easy for the reader nor encourage the reader to join/create a healthy discussion.
Note that I comment on you blog posts a lot more than I do on Friendfeed. Why? Because Disqus makes it easy and intuitive to have actual conversations.
The conversation is evolving.
Great counter point of view Corvida. There are two reasons I think bloggers should be fine with comments on FriendFeed as well as their own blog:
1. Shey hits on it – it's just easier to post things on FriendFeed. The “friction” is lowered to commenting, and even little gestures such as “like” have meaning over there. FWIW – here's a blog post I wrote on that http://tinyurl.com/3esdom
2. The comments on FriendFeed get you much wider exposure. The FriendFeed app has interesting ways of spreading your blog virally, and comments are an important part of that.
I do like seeing comments on my own blog. I wouldn't want to lose that. But personally, I'm not bothered with the comments that occur on FriendFeed as well. I actually enjoy them. Especially since wordpress.com doesn't support disqus!
I agree with Shey…the conversation is definitely evolving. But, today I pointed out some drawbacks and it appears to have put some people's knickers in a wad. :) Oh well.
You know, Corvida, it didn't even occur to me I was doing something “wrong” when I commented on the post on FF because I figured that was where the actual conversation (not just by readers of the blog but by aggregated readers from all over) was at. I did take your advice and posted my comment on the OP. What I find really interesting is the long-term implications of this (short) discussion we all have had here today.
I guess I've been using friendfeed in a very different way from most folks. Whereas I have a lower bar for who I might follow on Twitter (presently 288 people), I subscribe to all of 12 friendfeed users (plus a few more 'imaginary' friends – God the parlance cracks me up – comprised of feeds for people I know who aren't yet on friendfeed but who are on Flickr, twitter, blogs, etc.). At any rate, the people I follow on friendfeed are those for whom I'd be genuinely disappointed if they put something out there that I missed. (And sure, I could designate a folder w/in a feed reader for that w/ the same effect, but for some reason I like how friendfeed renders this a lot more.)
Bottom line: I use friendfeed as a catch-all for the can't-miss people in my life, which may be IRL friends or select strangers (say, oh I dunno, a certain tech goddess named Corvida…) Consequently, I'm not suffering as much from the high-noise issue (I do, OTOH, feel that a great deal on Twitter for obvious reasons).
I just re-read my own comment and realized what I said about “a lower bar” re: those I follow on Twitter could sound really shitty. All I mean is, there are a great number of people I find engaging enough to follow but it's not humanly possible for me to keep up with them. I suspect that over time, the number of people I follow on Friendfeed will actually decrease even as the number of people I follow on Twitter increases. I'm simply using them for different purposes.
Oh, and I have you to thank for introducing me both to friendfeed & Disqus. “Awesomesauce,” indeed. :)
:D No prob.
I use Twitter and Friendfeed differently also and generally have the same views as you as to who I add on both services. So, my noise ration on Friendfeed is extremely low. However for others, the least we can do is help out where we can. For example, I took my Twitter stream OFF of Friendfeed. If you want it, you have to add me. It's way too much noise for Friendfeed and isn't directed or catering to the friendfeed audience one bit. Hmms…that gives me an idea for a post. :D
BTW It wasn't wrong at all. I was suggesting that it might've come off as rude.
It's a bit tedious to practice, but it's the only solution that I could personally think of. Even though I have the Friendfeed widget on my pages, I don't always check it because I don't always check my comments from my site. For people that go about it in different ways, but still want the conversation, I just post my comments on the article first and maybe post back to Friendfeed, just for courtesy because initially it's something I had a problem with also.
Eventually you just have to get over it because everyone isn't going to try to be courteous nor does everyone think it's courteous. Some might think it's tedious, which to some extent, I do too.
But what if you weren't on Friendfeed or had no intentions of signing up for the service? It's peer pressure for authors in its own way.
I like your comparison between Friendfeed and the Mac. I beleve that sometime in the past, Facebook was seen as the most “mac-like” of the socialnetworks… Now Facebook, due to it's closed nature is being compared to Microsoft.
For starters, I'm on a Mac, and I do believe macbook pro's are still by far the most beautiful laptops, and OS X beats Windows any time. The only thing that I'd consider better than a mac, is Ubuntu on anything, because it's completely free (as in speech).
To me Friendfeed indeeds feels like a mac, compared to other services. I think and hope the same amount of people as the mac have done. I feel sorry for all the people still using Windows.
That said, I believe that IF Friendfeed would be replaced in the future, it won't be by a company, but by something totally distributed. http://code.google.com/p/diso/ gives a hint at things to come. This will be the post-VC era for web technology. But, this is still some time away, Until then, Friendfeed will rock just like the Mac is doing now.
:D No prob.
I use Twitter and Friendfeed differently also and generally have the same views as you as to who I add on both services. So, my noise ration on Friendfeed is extremely low. However for others, the least we can do is help out where we can. For example, I took my Twitter stream OFF of Friendfeed. If you want it, you have to add me. It's way too much noise for Friendfeed and isn't directed or catering to the friendfeed audience one bit. Hmms…that gives me an idea for a post. :D
BTW It wasn't wrong at all. I was suggesting that it might've come off as rude.
It's a bit tedious to practice, but it's the only solution that I could personally think of. Even though I have the Friendfeed widget on my pages, I don't always check it because I don't always check my comments from my site. For people that go about it in different ways, but still want the conversation, I just post my comments on the article first and maybe post back to Friendfeed, just for courtesy because initially it's something I had a problem with also.
Eventually you just have to get over it because everyone isn't going to try to be courteous nor does everyone think it's courteous. Some might think it's tedious, which to some extent, I do too.
But what if you weren't on Friendfeed or had no intentions of signing up for the service? It's peer pressure for authors in its own way.
I like your comparison between Friendfeed and the Mac. I beleve that sometime in the past, Facebook was seen as the most “mac-like” of the socialnetworks… Now Facebook, due to it's closed nature is being compared to Microsoft.
For starters, I'm on a Mac, and I do believe macbook pro's are still by far the most beautiful laptops, and OS X beats Windows any time. The only thing that I'd consider better than a mac, is Ubuntu on anything, because it's completely free (as in speech).
To me Friendfeed indeeds feels like a mac, compared to other services. I think and hope the same amount of people as the mac have done. I feel sorry for all the people still using Windows.
That said, I believe that IF Friendfeed would be replaced in the future, it won't be by a company, but by something totally distributed. http://code.google.com/p/diso/ gives a hint at things to come. This will be the post-VC era for web technology. But, this is still some time away, Until then, Friendfeed will rock just like the Mac is doing now.
I guess I've been using friendfeed in a very different way from most folks. Whereas I have a lower bar for who I might follow on Twitter (presently 288 people), I subscribe to all of 12 friendfeed users (plus a few more 'imaginary' friends – God the parlance cracks me up – comprised of feeds for people I know who aren't yet on friendfeed but who are on Flickr, twitter, blogs, etc.). At any rate, the people I follow on friendfeed are those for whom I'd be genuinely disappointed if they put something out there that I missed. (And sure, I could designate a folder w/in a feed reader for that w/ the same effect, but for some reason I like how friendfeed renders this a lot more.)
Bottom line: I use friendfeed as a catch-all for the can't-miss people in my life, which may be IRL friends or select strangers (say, oh I dunno, a certain tech goddess named Corvida…) Consequently, I'm not suffering as much from the high-noise issue (I do, OTOH, feel that a great deal on Twitter for obvious reasons).
I just re-read my own comment and realized what I said about “a lower bar” re: those I follow on Twitter could sound really shitty. All I mean is, there are a great number of people I find engaging enough to follow but it's not humanly possible for me to keep up with them. I suspect that over time, the number of people I follow on Friendfeed will actually decrease even as the number of people I follow on Twitter increases. I'm simply using them for different purposes.
Oh, and I have you to thank for introducing me both to friendfeed & Disqus. “Awesomesauce,” indeed. :)
:D No prob.
I use Twitter and Friendfeed differently also and generally have the same views as you as to who I add on both services. So, my noise ration on Friendfeed is extremely low. However for others, the least we can do is help out where we can. For example, I took my Twitter stream OFF of Friendfeed. If you want it, you have to add me. It's way too much noise for Friendfeed and isn't directed or catering to the friendfeed audience one bit. Hmms…that gives me an idea for a post. :D
BTW It wasn't wrong at all. I was suggesting that it might've come off as rude.
It's a bit tedious to practice, but it's the only solution that I could personally think of. Even though I have the Friendfeed widget on my pages, I don't always check it because I don't always check my comments from my site. For people that go about it in different ways, but still want the conversation, I just post my comments on the article first and maybe post back to Friendfeed, just for courtesy because initially it's something I had a problem with also.
Eventually you just have to get over it because everyone isn't going to try to be courteous nor does everyone think it's courteous. Some might think it's tedious, which to some extent, I do too.
But what if you weren't on Friendfeed or had no intentions of signing up for the service? It's peer pressure for authors in its own way.
I like your comparison between Friendfeed and the Mac. I beleve that sometime in the past, Facebook was seen as the most “mac-like” of the socialnetworks… Now Facebook, due to it's closed nature is being compared to Microsoft.
For starters, I'm on a Mac, and I do believe macbook pro's are still by far the most beautiful laptops, and OS X beats Windows any time. The only thing that I'd consider better than a mac, is Ubuntu on anything, because it's completely free (as in speech).
To me Friendfeed indeeds feels like a mac, compared to other services. I think and hope the same amount of people as the mac have done. I feel sorry for all the people still using Windows.
That said, I believe that IF Friendfeed would be replaced in the future, it won't be by a company, but by something totally distributed. http://code.google.com/p/diso/ gives a hint at things to come. This will be the post-VC era for web technology. But, this is still some time away, Until then, Friendfeed will rock just like the Mac is doing now.