DISQUS

sofiagk · 1 year ago

Stop me if I'm wrong here but I'm spotting a trend: take care of the community first and the community will take care of you. I couldn't be more in agreement.

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

I've always felt that sites like FriendFeed are the most evenly distributed in terms of who can be visible. Those who participate and engage in a positive manner with their peers are rewarded with similar participation. As I wrote to one gentleman yesterday who was complaining about the lack of participation on his activity, yet doing nothing, you get what you give.

Scobleizer · 1 year ago

One thing I'd add is learn to use lists if you have more than 100 people you're following. In fact, start separating people into lists anyway. Family goes into one list. Geeks another. People who write about your hobbies another. Etc. Etc.

Another thing? Learn to use search. The search engine on FriendFeed is very cool. You can even search on words YOU left on comments. Especially use search during hot news events on the "Everyone" list (learn that search works differently depending on where you are).

Another thing? Understand that moderation is very decentralized. If you started an item, you can delete a comment underneath that item. But, if you delete comments that don't deserve deleting expect the community to yell at you.

Another thing? Look at the "Everyone" feed once in a while. You might discover someone really cool there (I have). Even if you don't, it's neat to see what else people are talking about. Refresh that page during hot news events. I was doing that during the election and it was wild!

Another thing? Use the "Best of Day/Week/Month" feature to see what hot items you missed while you were out.

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

I use lists exclusively these days, but I also made one called "Everyone" that all I follow belong to. That's often where I end up when I want the best cross-section of users. On weekends, it's a must as most folks (not me) are logged off and it takes more effort to be satiated.

Zee. · 1 year ago

Scoble, to be honest - i'm quite disappointed in Friendfeed search. I wanted to search for a phrase and that wasn't even possible...For me, that shows that Friendfeed urgently needs to improve that aspect of it. I'm not as impressed as you with the fact that in can search words in titles and comments really...I would expect that anyway.

Scobleizer · 1 year ago

Zee: oh, I do agree that search could be a LOT better. Agreed. But in talking with people they don't realize what's there. Heck, I keep talking about http://search.twitter.com and people keep replying to me there saying "thanks for telling me about that." So, just because we're using all the features and want more doesn't mean that the average user has discovered them yet.

sofiagk · 1 year ago

here is another way to connect up your blog and friendfeed - Development on a Shoestring has a lovely widget that allows you to display on your Wordpress blog the comments that people make on FriendFeed about your post.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 1 year ago

I like that widget, Sofia. I'm working on figuring out how to restyle it to better integrate it with my blog's Structure theme.

Don't forget to congratulate the plugin's author on his new baby!

Justin Korn · 1 year ago

Great tips Daniel. The only thing I would add is to be sure to utilize imaginary friends to bring content into your stream that doesn't already exist on FriendFeed. Not everyone and everything is on FriendFeed, but there is no reason it can't be.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 1 year ago

Good point, Justin. I have my wife set up as an imaginary friend on FF (sounds weird, I know) and it certainly helps me stay up to date on her many posts.

jorgeblanco · 1 year ago

Tend your shares and promote other people shares are two big ones. With just these two you can become a big part of any community you wish to follow and your impact on friend feed will skyrocket!

svartling · 1 year ago

Excellent article. Thanks.

Rahsheen · 1 year ago

We've all talked about this before. Problem is, you have a different convo going on in each item and those conversations may have nothing to do with the actual item, or may just be in two different directions. Also, you may have completely different people conversing based on who follows who and who shared what. All in all, I think it's fine the way it is. Everyone knows the "official" convo goes on the original "blog" item posted by the author/site.

smernit · 1 year ago

Great post, thanks!

krishna @search corner · 1 year ago

Great post Daniel. I have tweeted this one :-)

ChangeForge | Ken Stewart · 1 year ago

Daniel, wonderful job. I must say this is actually one of the more useful "Top X" type of posts and very handy advice on FriendFeed use. Just when I thought I had the hang of things, you come out and show me a good many tricks I wasn't even thinking about.

Matik72 · 1 year ago

@Keith I am not sure where you get that idea. Not everyone is selling something or themselves.

Keith · 1 year ago

be open about selling - a product, blog, etc

FF is principally used by people for distribution and selling so just be open about it as everyone understands it's a part of marketing

Daniel J. Pritchett · 1 year ago

I'm not sure how to respond to this, Keith- that's a depressing perspective on social media. This certainly an ideal niche for contemporary marketers and cutting-edge businesses but there's no reason the majority of us can't just be here to improve ourselves through sharing.

I can't tell if you have a negative view of marketing or not. Would you mind elaborating on your post?

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

Keith, while there may be some who passively use FriendFeed as another distribution medium, the vast majority of people are engaged and learning from peers. I don't know how you could believe it's about sales and marketing (and this comes from a Marketing/PR guy).

genieyclo · 1 year ago

Great post, one thing I'd like to add is not digging up old posts by "bumping" them with likes or comments to the front page...it gets annoying.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 1 year ago

Thanks, genie. I agree that bumping a year-old post isn't funny, but it's still hard to know where to draw the line. I try to exercise my best judgment when bumping old stuff but I never really know if it's going to bother people. At least there's a Hide button.

Alistair · 1 year ago

This is a good point, but one query about this is when you digg, stumble etc an old post, it jumps back into the feed (assume most people share these services). This post is a good example with numerous entries into ff all with similar conversations. It would be great if ff could aggregate all comments on "related entries" into one conversation.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 1 year ago

I have often wondered about the comment aggregation problem myself, Alistair. I worry that it might squelch some smaller conversations that occur outside of the streams of the most followed FriendFeeders. Can you think of any way to offer aggregation without destroying the feel of some cozier corners of FriendFeed?

atul · 1 year ago

Great post. I would add one more. Check up on ffholic.com once a day to browse the Most Discussed and Most Liked posts on FriendFeed.

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

What FFHolic has done for me is expose some new faces through their content. The social circle I run in differs from many on the site, so tapping into FFHolic every once in a while can help me find things I wouldn't otherwise. Key example... the new Britney Spears video... which I would usually avoid, was found there, and now, like a virus, the song is in my head. Wait... this isn't much of an endorsement, is it?

Zee. · 1 year ago

Daniel, many thanks for the mention and great list of points.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 1 year ago

Thank *you*, Zee. I didn't fully realize it until I started writing this post but you are quite the avant-garde FriendFeeder.

Your stable of rooms, your FF-centered personal site, and your willingness to try private rooms as a team collaboration tool mark you as someone who's very interested in FF and willing to expand its boundaries.

snekse · 12 months ago

I think #13 is very important. I was glad to see it in your list.