Shooting at Bubbles

Yes I know – yer getting tired of hearing about FriendFeed and to a point so am I. I’m just enjoying using the service almost exclusively as my second; and at times equal, source of ongoing information next to FeedDemon. Now as many of you will have read from the all too many posts already out there FriendFeed has introduced a search feature tonight to the high praise of many and suggestions that Twitter really needs to up its game.

This maybe be the case but I don’t think that the situation is as dire for Twitter as some might think for one simple reason – FriendFeed can’t exist without the services it is built upon. Sure by shear numbers Twitter isn’t going to disappear overnight but to suggest that just because it doesn’t have a native search function that it will fall apart at the seams is pushing a panic button a little too hard and much too early.

All that aside I was watching the posts about the FriendFeed search feature announcement starting to show up right across my FriendFeed pipeline when I realized something. FriendFeed may actually have discovered the secret sauce of success that could potentially raise it; contrary to what many might think, to killer web app service.

Now before you start going off about that cranky old fart of an idiot stop and think about a couple of things. You have spent the last – oh – say year – year and a half creating a wide ranging collection of separate data or conversation sources – otherwise referred to as social networks etc. You use them all for different means. Some might be fore pure fun like Facebook, some might be more business oriented like LinkedIn, another might be your circle of friends at Flickr, and yet others like Twitter you use for feedback or idea sharing.

In effect you have created your own business, conversation and research network except it is all disparate and in different silos which makes being able to collate all that information into a single useable stream. That was until FriendFeed came along.

What FriendFeed is allowing you to do is to take all those disparate silos and use them like building blocks to build the foundation of a central repository of your collected information. It then places itself as your personal librarian on top of that foundation you have created. This is why search was such an incredible feature to add into this mix because now you can search across all your information flows from one central point. This is what could be the killer once people realize the potential.

Yes it would be nice in some cases if you could talk back to those disparate services you have collected under the FriendFeed roof but as Paul posted today FriendFeed has their own feelings on this matter. What remains to be seen is if the requests for a talkback feature is loud enough will FriendFeed bend and add it.

As it is I rarely use Twitter from the web or Witty. Where it once was a major communication point for me it has been replaced to an extent by FriendFeed because now I have a central information flow dashboard of which Twitter is a part. It is in this comfortable lobby from which I can access all the parts of my information flow and then as an added bonus I can have a conversation within that lobby with other like minded folks.

FriendFeed will never work on its own. You need to provide the building blocks for it to then create you personal reference library and meeting place. Those blocks are all the other separated networks you need to join for their individual strengths and then let FriendFeed fill in the weaknesses of them with their own service.

FriendFeed may not be perfect but if you build a big enough and strong enough foundation for it to build on it could be damn close – especially when they release a public API – then it could definitely come close to be a killer.