louisgray.com - Latest Comments in louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

StevenHodson — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:34:56 -0000

I've been saying the same thing Charle

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Alex Hammer — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:33:14 -0000

Yes, but...You forget that Friendfeed popularity has come at the expense of Facebook (not that Facebook is going anywhere). As quickly as Friendfeed sprung up (and Twitter, and Facebook also for that matter), it won't be the last. The other day I was following Scoble on Qik. He may be still doing those, I'm not sure, but not it's a Seesmic revolution. The landscape always evolves/shifts/changes.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

charlieanzman — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:40:43 -0000

Louis - Think Friendfeed needs to get a touch more 'newbie friendly'. I've run it by numerous people who get frustrated and confused at first blush. This was a problem for Facebook as well until several bloggers published guides. If these sites want to stand-out, they need to be user-friendly.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Otus — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:37:43 -0000

Sorry, Louis, gotta disagree with you.

Yes, it'd take a lot to get existing fans of say, Friendfeed, to move. But Friendfeed now has... 0.3% of Internet users? 0.1%? What about the other 99+%? Where are they going to go?

They're gonna go to...
1) Whatever site "feels" or "looks" most like them.
2) Whichever site offers a compelling set of features.
3) Whatever site has the lowest startup costs (note I didn't say *switching* costs).

That site *may* be Friendfeed. But it may very well not. And it won't be about "community" per se, because frankly I don't think you can really understand or feel a community until you're a part of it.

Look at Friendster. I'm betting that a huge chunk of the early adopters of that site stayed with Friendster and may not be on Facebook or MySpace. But early adopters equals, again, what tiny tiny tiny fraction of users of that service? And where did most subsequent Internet users go? That's right... Orkut, MySpace, and Facebook (and I suppose Hi5, etc.)

As I'm fond of saying, this is not and should not be a zero-sum game. As Shawn rightly suggests, there can be many winners, many communities, many happy people on different services. But -- as much as I like Friendfeed -- it's still way way way too early to declare any sort of a turning point or that sort of thing.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Andy C — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:29:46 -0000

Another excellent example is del.ici.ous versus Diigo.

One has a massive, established, loyal 'community', preaching evangelism from the rooftops while the other has a far superior product, an interface that was actually designed, with a small, discerning, informed, 'early adopter' user base but is struggling to make inroads.

This may well change in the future however.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

webomatica — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:00:04 -0000

Good post Louis. I would just add because FF has a great community right now, does not ensure the early adopters won't leave in the future. For example, I among other hardcore users of Digg left that site after it began to attract hordes of mainstream users that just wanted to argue about everything. I think it took about year from Digg's peak of popularity to the early adopters abandoning it.

That said, I think you are spot on about community being a big driver above and beyond features. A lot of people tolerated MySpace's crappy execution because everyone one was on it.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

calebelston — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:19:30 -0000

LOL

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Andy C — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:04:12 -0000

when was the last time you saw, 'Massive Community' listed as a product feature

While it may not be listed as a 'feature', it is inherently obvious.

In fact, I think of the size (and demographics) of the 'community' a lot, every night as I lie in bed wondering how FF/Twitter/Pink condoms will attempt to monetize the service.

It's like following The Clash - do you want them to sell out and do Top Of The Pops (or not) ?

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Shawn Morton — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:54:51 -0000

I'm always ready to talk about Profilactic :) Shoot me an e-mail and let me know when you're free over the next couple of days.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

calebelston — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:51:55 -0000

I think that a major 'feature' of Twitter and FriendFeed *is* there community. If you think of it in these terms, these 2 sites have a major incentive to focus on improving the community feature, so while it may seem that they don't 'add' tons of user facing features, growing their community is their main focus. I know this may seem obvious, but when was the last time you saw, 'Massive Community' listed as a product feature

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Louis Gray — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:51:02 -0000

Sure they can. So when do you want to talk about Profilactic and set me straight?

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Shawn Morton — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:49:28 -0000

I don't think this is an anti-Profilactic post. I just don't think you tried very hard to balance your obvious preference for FriendFeed.

And I'm not disregarding my post. I objected to you using that post (and only that post) to claim that our strategy is only about features. I find that interesting for someone who is an early adopter of social web technologies. You didn't bother to reach out to us at all before summing up our strategy after reading one blog post.

And why is this about "winning." Can multiple services not co-exist?

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Louis Gray — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:41:35 -0000

Right. By "entire community", I meant my "personal community", as Paul Buchheit refers to it. And responding to Mark below as well, I know entire communities can move after key influencers lead the way. In the last decade, I saw that when a small group of AAPL (Apple) investors moved from Yahoo!'s stock boards to Raging Bull to Investors Hub and elsewhere, until the core splintered. But there was always a group of us who moved after some incident disrupted the community.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Andy C — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:36:39 -0000

In order for me to leave FriendFeed for another service, be it Profilactic, SocialThing, Iminta or Plaxo, it would take the entire community shifting at once.

I nearly agreed here saying 'critical mass' but then I realised, for me, it would mean 'my community'. The FriendFeedFaction (FFF) could move en masse to purplecondoms.com tomorrow but if my small but perfectly formed band of friends remained on FriendFeed, then so woud I.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Louis Gray — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:35:27 -0000

This isn't an anti-Profilactic post by any means. But if you're disregarding your own post, you should take it off the front page or update it. Supporting a lot of services is great, but there will need to be more to win.

Happy to talk to you more about Profilactic. The time is still young in this market, especially if you choose to engage with a different set of users than Friendfeed or others have. As for frequency of posting, I did cover a FriendFeedMachine update yesterday, after being notified by the developer, but also had posts on Google Reader, Shyftr and TheStatBot - each of whom I like a lot as well. There's no quota.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Mark Dykeman — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:23:10 -0000

But Louis, you've highlighted an important vulnerability about community-based services like Twitter and Friend Feed - the community itself. Communities do migrate at times. Influencers do lead people from site A to site B. Sometimes people do build a better mousetrap and people go there instead. Normally it would take a significant evolution in functionality (e.g. VHS to DVD, audio cassettes to CDs, Walkmans to MP3 players), but it can happen.

At some point a new system will appear that makes a quantum leap in functionality or usability compared to today's Twitter. The functionality will have to continue to evolve or else, eventually, it will be abandoned.

Having said that, I think that Twitter is safe, because of the size of its community, until that next big shift happens (or else it collapses due to weak architecture). Friend Feed seems to be a bit earlier in its cycle, so who knows.

Re: louisgray.com: The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War

Shawn Morton — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:21:57 -0000

Is this the first official FriendFeed fan blog? 3 posts in 4 days. Wow!

In terms of your analysis of Profilactic's approach to features or community or product, you could do a little better than quoting a two-month old blog post where we are comparing the two services. In many comparison posts, things end up getting summarized in bulleted lists and quantitative distinctions. To try and sum up our product strategy based on one post seems to be a lack of effort on your part. And where did we ever say that it is all about features? You're putting words in our mouth in order to try and make your point.

It's obvious that you love FriendFeed *a lot* and that's great. However, if you're going to do these types of posts, why not reach out to the sites that you're claiming don't understand what makes a great product? If you had bothered to do that, you would have learned that we're not much like FriendFeed at all from a feature or strategy perspective.

Feel free to contact me directly if you'd actually like to learn about what we're trying to do. shawn at profilactic dot com.