Monday, April 06, 2009

Friendfeed Becomes Better, Faster, Stronger?

Image representing FriendFeed as depicted in C...Image via CrunchBase

Friendfeed have today announced a new beta User Interface which you can access by navigating to http://beta.friendfeed.com.

Before I joined Friendfeed I was frequently signing up to 'the next big thing' before another would surface and the repetitive signup process would continue. Friendfeed broke that cycle as the vision of the development team is how I saw the future of the Internet.

Mark Zuckerberg also appears to agree with that vision as Facebook have innovated through imitation of the Friendfeed design with the Newsfeed, Likes, Imported Feeds etc.

FriendFeed was founded by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh. Bret, Jim, Paul and Sanjeev previously worked at Google, where they designed and launched many products, most notably Google Maps, the Google Maps API, Gmail and Google Groups. [Source]

The focus of Friendfeed has always been conversation generated by feeds feeding on feeds, content from other sites imported into a stream allowing other users to consume and action.

The redesigned version of the Friendfeed service that launched today - which is the second since the service launched - sets the standard for real-time discussion by moving the conversation into more of an Instant Messaging environment.

Details from the Friendfeed blog:
  • A consistent look for entries, no matter where they originated from, to help you focus on what your friends are sharing
  • A new and improved share box that can now post entries to multiple feeds
  • The ability to send and receive direct messages
  • Filters so you don’t miss a post from a certain friend or an entry about a specific topic
  • Keyboard shortcuts for the most common commands
  • And, one of the most defining features of our redesign — and what we believe will underlie everything about FriendFeed from now on: real-time. There’s no longer a need for refreshing — every view in FriendFeed now updates in real-time.
Friendfeed, Facebook and Twitter have all favoured imitation over innovation lately as they have adopted each other's popular features. I feel that Friendfeed have released the most intuitive interface though with the core features likely the envy of the more popular social networking sites. Facebook view sharing information as their main objective; Twitter values search, trending topics and filters. Friendfeed have incorporated these features with the redesign and in doing so have provided real-time aggregation, conversation and filters to enhance the experience. How long before Facebook introduce a true real-time Livefeed?

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