For the past little while I have been having some doubts about my use of Friendfeed. There have been a number of issues with the service that have irked me somewhat that started with the move to the real-time display. However I hadn’t taken the time to figure out if my continuing to use the service was worth the growing effort it was taking to make the service valuable to me – until now.
This feeling wasn’t helped either by Friendfeed’s recent decision to merge your subscriber counts with your blogs Feedburner subscribers counts. during this period though I did notice that my constant checking of my various Friendfeed groups and timelines didn’t seem to be as important as they once were.
Then today I read Aaron Brazell’s post about how he was on the fence about leaving Friendfeed and deleting his account. For Aaron the problems he had with the service revolved around the community aspects of Friendfeed
Where Friendfeed breaks down is its community. Though many (perhaps most) of Friendfeed users who are active are okay, there has been a much larger proportion of people, as compared to other platforms, that use the platform for nothing more than troll behavior. They disagree just to disagree. They argue just to argue. They call names just to call names. Hardly something that is productive for a business to be involved in and as an early adopter of technologies, I decided to call it quits.
He followed that up with a link to the Friendfeed discussion that happened around his ‘quitting’ announcement there, which had devolved into its usual pointlessness and nastiness. Granted Aaron didn’t help matters with some of his comments, but this is the typical behavior whenever anything negative is said about Friendfeed.
Although when you tie that discussion in with what he wrote in his post it is easy to see why he is thinking of quitting. Interestingly enough though the very thing that people were trying to convince him to do is the very thing that has to be the biggest bitch point of the Friendfeed users.
You see they like to point out all the people who just signup for the service and then never join the conversations that start up around that person’s postings to Friendfeed. They get jeered at as being social media poseurs who don’t understand how it all works. However this is just what people were trying to get Aaron to do.
I have noticed as well over the last little while is that unless you are in the top tier of users and popularity your chances for any conversation happening on stuff posted is negligible. It has almost become as much work to get yourself into one of those lucky groups as it is to maintain a blog, especially if you want to be a good social media netizen.
For myself there aren’t enough hours in the day anymore for me to worry about whether or not people give a shit about what I am posting to Friendfeed. I don’t need the self-doubt to raise its ugly head when post after post seems to disappear in the real-time river of noise that Friendfeed is becoming. Unlike Aaron though I have no intention of ‘announcing’ this break I am taking.
Besides as they like to proclaim in this new real-time Web if what I write, or Aaron writes, is good enough the readers will find it and that is good enough for me.
I just threw in the towel. Agreed, not worth the effort anymore.
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So Steven are you taking a break? That's unfortunate, I found you via Friendfeed and although I knew of your site previously it was Friendfeed that really allows me to connect with you.
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I think Steven missed the point about exactly who should delete their accounts. A-Listers in some other realm of social media, that have for a long time parked all there services, yet ignore the conversations that take place on those posts, could leave and I'd hardly notice their absence. Users who have developed conversations around posts that gather interest tear a big hole in the search and reference utility that makes FF so valuable when all of a sudden they depart, taking hundreds or thousands of comments with them.
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Love this post, Steven! You're absolutely right with that turnaround you point out at the end of this article. Pretty ridiculous.
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Yes I'm taking a break but unlike Aaron (or others) I have no intention of deleting my account. Besides the fact that would be cutting off my nose to spite my face it also is wrong (IMO) to remove any of the 'history' that has built up on Friendfeed because of my participation.
As well because Disqus integrates Friendfeed traffic it would be wrong to delete my account because it would remove that part of the conversation. So really you will still be in contact.
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I don't agree that once people have joined Friendfeed that if they decide to leave that they delete their accounts. They have added to the ecosphere and to then remove that part of the conversation is wrong.
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Glad you liked it and yes as I watch the various Friendfeed comments being made show up here it is pretty funny. At the same time it's giving me some thoughts for another post so even though I don't *need* to participate in the whole FF back-patting I still can learn and draw from the conversation.
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And the nice thing that I noticed when I used to write on tech was that if
you write a well thought-out piece about Friendfeed, like this one is,
whether critical or complimentary, you can always be assured that you'll get
a lot of good conversation here on FF. It's a nice way to revitalize
interest in your site and get people talking about you even more than they
already are.
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If I recall correctly, when you delete your FriendFeed account don't you have the option of whether or not to delete your content? So one could delete one's account and still not “tear a big hole in the search and reference utility.” (Personally I prefer not to physically delete accounts I am no longer using, but for other reasons.)
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Personally, the best use I found on Friendfeed is building your own cluster(s) of People who you care about. In my closed network there are just a few people and their updates are useful for my work and personal life, they work as a better filter. Also having a search engine for your feeds is very practical.
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I don't know about the setting you are referring to mainly because I haven't gone looking. While I can understand some people who prefer that when they delete their accounts that all their contributions are removed as well I don't agree with doing that. Regardless of whether people think my contribution are important or not I think once you have contributed to a conversation removing that contribution is wrong.
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Having been on Friendfeed since almost the beginning (thanks to Louis Gray) I have built up what I consider to be a good core of people that I like to follow so I understand what you are saying. Unfortunately for right now I am not getting the same feeling of value that I once was.
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Many people appear to be breaking away from Friendfeed at the moment which isn't a good indication
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Steven, I may not be trendy, but apparently you are. I assume you've seen who else is taking a break from FriendFeed and noting that FriendFeed comments show up in Disqus. Now Jeremiah Owyang is the supposed impetus, but I think the blogger in question is looking to you for guidance.
Seriously, for those of us who have multiple social media presences, there are certain times when one service will be of most benefit to us, and other times when another service will be of most benefit to us. While one could theoretically maintain an equally consistent presence in all of our outlets, the reality is that this doesn't happen. So it's perfectly understandable if someone temporarily ceases participation in one forum to devote attention to another forum.
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I subsequently saw that you did notice the post in question. Enjoyed your cogent reaction.
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you don't really think that he would condescend to giving *any* credit to a lowly blogger do you?
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It was either that or really snarky comment about how strange it is that just after my posting about Friendfeed and his reactions but I felt it was more important to play with my dog
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Write a long comment, or play with your dog? You made the right decision.
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[...] was a great place to hang out which I did a lot until they made some changes that I didn’t like and it still could be. I just wonder if the heart has been taken out of the service and if any [...]
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