louisgray.com - Latest Comments in louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

Re: louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

Paul Kinlan — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:03:00 -0000

I am developing http://www.frienddeck.com (like tweet deck) but for friendfeed and I am trying to take a different look on friendfeed where by you have multiple views on different searches, and users comments, likes and feeds all from one screen, all with the aim of getting the information you want.

Many thanks and warm Regards,
Paul Kinlan

Re: louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

gjenkin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:37:11 -0000

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert at what works and what doesn't as far as internet applications. I'm more of a regular user, if somewhat of an early adopter. So don't expect any Scoble- or LG-like insights in my comments.

I've enjoyed using FriendFeed and think the product has a lot of potential. However, after updating my Facebook profile, accepting friend invites, updating status, Twittering my random thoughts, scanning Digg and Techmeme for latest headlines of interest, blowing a half hour on pointless YouTube videos, there's really not much time left for me to dedicate to FriendFeed. There are only so many hours in the day and so many cool applications out there. Most of my friends are on Facebook and Twitter anyway, so I don't really need to aggregate their activity streams. FriendFeed is cool, but it's just not as useful as these other applications.

Also I'm a little nervous about investing a lot of time and effort in, or become reliant on, a product that has no business model - whether it's FriendFeed or Twitter. Sure it has plenty of VC money, but who knows when they'll pull the plug.

Re: louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

ChangeForge | Ken Stewart — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:40:32 -0000

Nick, thank you for that, and indeed by this source you are correct. I am glad to see this is occurring b/c the developers at Plurk have a fun thing going. I got really tired of the Karma thing, but I found Plurk much more enjoyable than Twitter - just not as much as FriendFeed ;-)

I appreciate you stopping by and thanks.

Re: louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

Nick Laizer — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:08:18 -0000

good comment but i need to nitpick something. Plurk has not quiet down. In fact, it is more popular than FF right now, according to Google Trends :). http://trends.google.com/we...

Re: louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

tinythoughts — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:59:28 -0000

Louis, I read this the other day and have been thinking about it since. Once again, I always find your entries on FriendFeed helpful to me for my work on making Lifestream.fm better. I read through your points and considered how they apply to us as well. I like to think we are a more simple and quieter lifestreaming service. A lot of that has to do with the complaints about how noisy and confusing lifestreaming can be and how some didn't really care for the activity to be happening somewhere other than its original source, which we took into account after acquiring the site and re-developing it.

At the moment, I would say it's sort of like an online profile of where one is online and what they are up to. The interaction between users is pretty minimal. Sure users can comment and favorite things, even send links via our sms service, but I find a lot of users prefer not to follow many others and just use the site to sort of keep their online activity in one place, which makes sense for a lot of people. I do find the profiles maybe a bit too minimal and finding others not as easy as it could be. A user just suggested adding interest tags to help find users with similar interests. Personally, I'd like to be able to find and invite my twitter friends. But at least I don't have to see friends of friends, which is something I just don't get.
We interact with all of our users by sending them their lifestream stats via email. This can be turned off, but I'm pretty sure it gets in touch with those inactive users. And, I am almost always available to users should they have any questions or problems. Most of them just send me a message on twitter to @tinythoughts or a dm on lifestream.fm and I reply as quick as possible. I think the users really aprreciate this personal service. They tell me so, anway, and it makes me feel good that I can help them.
I suppose my favorite feature is our search, which is like having twitter search built in. There are certainly a few things I would change about Lifestream.fm, like getting the Adobe Air app to work properly, and you've given me a food for thoughts on a few other things. So a big thank you for that. I know you were meaning to give them a bit of constructive criticism, hope it's ok if it didn't fit just them :-)

Re: louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

frank — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:12:09 -0000

http://friendfeed.com/franswaa

I've been on FF for a bit, but plan on really trying to 'figure it out' in 09. I'd agree that it's a bit more challenging than twitter and the fact the Tweetdeck came out really helped twitter gain momentum. I use that app daily and hardly ever go to the Twitter.com site.

A desktop and iPhone app are critical ... and for people like me we should throw in a blackberry app. remember, blackberry still owns over 40% of that market :)

@Luis (Luis Gray) or @Robert (Robert Scoble) ... would either of you have some suggested resources for learning the how-to's of FF?

I've seen this video by Scoble: http://www.kyte.tv/ch/6118-...

thanks all !! (Great conversation going on here.)

--
http://twitter.com/franswaa

Re: louisgray.com: What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users