Friendfeed is a social media service aggregator slash community made the news when it got snapped up by Facebook recently. Louis Gray and I got together on a podcast following the announcement to discuss our thoughts on the purchase.
Since that point it’s been pretty quiet on the Friendfeed front with it quietly motoring along. Most recently on a CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast Sean P. Aune and myself ended up talking about Friendfeed in relation to what Facebook had in mind for the service.
Interestingly enough Rob Diana had a post on September 11 that touched on one of the things that Sean and I talked about – the idea that Friendfeed is; or will be, the foundation on which Facebook Lite will grow. Then today I see Dan over at Techwag had a post that even though Friendfeed has quieted down development wise it has seen a spurt in user visits.
While it is nice to see people still using the site – which I still do even though not as much as before – and new people giving it a try I have to wonder why. After all for all intents and purposes Friendfeed is unlikely to see any further development regardless of what the founders might like us to believe.
I say this strictly on the fact that they now work for Facebook and Friendfeed is owned by Facebook. Given those two facts plus the reality that it makes no sense for Facebook to split its attention between to different types of users. Even the people who use Facebook will tell you that while they may use Facebook they use it for totally different reasons than they do Friendfeed.
At some point Facebook is going to pull the plug on Friendfeed – it’s inevitable in my opinion. If that is indeed what is in the cards for Friendfeed one has to ask the simple question – is it still worth spending all that time on a service we all know is going to go away at some point?
Whatever Facebook plans to do with FriendFeed tomorrow, it isn't necessarily going to affect my actions today. If FriendFeed is still useful to me today, I'll continue to use it, even if Bret et al aren't planning the next series of upgrades. The lack of a future roadmap, or even a future future, doesn't really matter.
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[...] user base, and this is where it gets downright confounding. Steven Hodson has a great quote from his post yesterday regarding FriendFeed: At some point Facebook is going to pull the plug on Friendfeed – it’s inevitable in my [...]
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I share your concern, and am actively searching for a more reliable social channel. I've advocated open distributed social media, data portability is now a major issue for me as well.
And I'm not alone, there are many folks working on a solution for a social sharing/feed aggregator that we can count on being around for the forseeable future.
Thanks for capturing this sentiment in your post.
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