FriendFeed and Scoble and the crowd-as-community problem
Scoble has been all over the web with reasons and twitter posts about how FriendFeed is dead and why he has now found a better way, which interestingly is Twitter (who he left for FriendFeed if I recall) but yes, this is Twitter w/Lists.
*shrug*
Scoble is an early adopter so he always is looking for that next thing that will help him massage and trim his information flow – the rest of it is the usual noise and bluster that accompanies most of the prolific bloggers who are not a specific niche blogger.
But he mentioned one thing that just made me sit up and say out loud “wrong sir”:
But the more public they make Facebook the more connections each user will have, and the more noise each of those connections will bring.
At first this looks like a positive thing, right? Over on FriendFeed people are telling me “we have more conversations.” That’s true, but the more conversations I got involved in the less I found I was learning.
This came full circle tonight when I checked in my “best of day” feed on FriendFeed, picture of that experience here.
I didn’t see any geeks. I didn’t see any tech. I didn’t see anything that was teaching me anything. I had stopped getting much value out of FriendFeed.
What he discusses as being the “chat room/forum problem” indeed has been around since computer programs started allowing folks to assemble and congregate – and I use that phrase on purpose because the problem is not with the software but with the people and the size of the group of people. This issue happens in church groups, political realms, social groups – in fact anywhere folks exceed a certain value.
Some folks have tried to measure that number, which is known as The Dunbar Number and while that may or may not ever be confirmed, I can just say from over 30 years of dealing with groups of people in many sizes that there is a certain sad tipping point where a group will turn on itself or just “go turtle” unless there are a couple strong wills around to keep things on track.
So, back to the point I was trying to make. Scoble is lumping his view of the “best of day” feed on FriendFeed and it’s shortage of “experts” with his thoughts on “chat room/forum problem” but it’s a straw man argument. The reason the “best of day” view is devoid of information is because Scoble has stopped maintaining his list of folks and the ones that have remained in his lists are either gone (they followed him to the next-big-thing) or they are silent. Not because it’s too crowded or full of spammy trolls.
FriendFeed actually has one of the best ways I’ve ever seen to deal with spam/troll folks and it’s implemented in a nice three-part recipe: you can at first hide entries from appearing in your feed and FriendFeed will learn that and keep it from appearing again, and then, if it continues to spread or get worse, you can unsubscribe from the source. If you find yourself still seeing the spam/troll content because others are liking or commenting on it then you can block the source and it will never appear again.
That’s not to say that FriendFeed isn’t going to suffer from it not receiving new/fresh influx of folks – but if the communities that have already discovered it (or the folks who have discovered new friends via it) keep right on using it and making great conversations, then it will exist and be useful as long as Facebook allows it.
So Scoble, please, point out the issue with FriendFeed, point out the issues with Facebook and Twitter Lists – but stop using one site’s set of problems as non causa pro causa reason that the other site(s) are failing. The internets are large enough to have disparate islands with distinct personalities.
And the Scoble haters, please realize that he is early adopter tech/geek folk and as such, will always view things thru the experience of that echo chamber – what keeps me listening/reading him is that occasionally he does break out of that chamber and makes me pause and think.
Tags: technology
2. November 2009 at 03:26
The thing is I would have to do such dramatic surgery on my lists that it would take me more time than I have. I put thousands of hours into building my FriendFeed lists and curating them. Already in one week I've gotten more value out of Twitter's new lists because they are publicly sharable and because they are inviolate (lists ONLY show tweets from those who are on the list).
But FriendFeed is useful for other things for me, like live chat for audio shows. I'll stop poking at it, though. That's one reason I wrote such a long post. I wanted to get everything out of my mind.
2. November 2009 at 03:31
I completely understand your point about the amount of time you would have to spend to massage the lists on both services – it's something that keeps me from truly jumping in with both feet to most of these sites.
I have been waiting to make any “public” comments on the debate going on until just now – but i'm glad at the core you do recognize that they are tools to be used properly. And thanks for the reason-dump, it helped draw me out of my micro-blogging shell and post something more substantial.
2. November 2009 at 03:39
The other thing is that I made a database of people/brands/things I want to listen to and looked at where they were active. 80% or more were only on Twitter. This has only gotten deeper since lists came out (I've followed 8,000 new accounts in the past week or so). Since they are NOT here on FriendFeed and provably so, I just did a personal and business decision: I went where the people I wanted to read are.
2. November 2009 at 03:51
*nod* – and that was the difference I was trying to draw out of your post, so i'm glad to see you reinforce it here.
The fun part is watching the methods and styles of curation and list building work their way thru the older and newer applications and seeing how folks are responding to the limitations.
2. November 2009 at 08:26
The thing is I would have to do such dramatic surgery on my lists that it would take me more time than I have. I put thousands of hours into building my FriendFeed lists and curating them. Already in one week I've gotten more value out of Twitter's new lists because they are publicly sharable and because they are inviolate (lists ONLY show tweets from those who are on the list).
But FriendFeed is useful for other things for me, like live chat for audio shows. I'll stop poking at it, though. That's one reason I wrote such a long post. I wanted to get everything out of my mind.
2. November 2009 at 08:31
I completely understand your point about the amount of time you would have to spend to massage the lists on both services – it's something that keeps me from truly jumping in with both feet to most of these sites.
I have been waiting to make any “public” comments on the debate going on until just now – but i'm glad at the core you do recognize that they are tools to be used properly. And thanks for the reason-dump, it helped draw me out of my micro-blogging shell and post something more substantial.
2. November 2009 at 08:39
The other thing is that I made a database of people/brands/things I want to listen to and looked at where they were active. 80% or more were only on Twitter. This has only gotten deeper since lists came out (I've followed 8,000 new accounts in the past week or so). Since they are NOT here on FriendFeed and provably so, I just did a personal and business decision: I went where the people I wanted to read are.
For instance (and this is a small instance) I could NOT follow all these news brands on FriendFeed easily and I certainly couldn't share them with you the way I can here: http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/tech-news-brands
2. November 2009 at 08:51
*nod* – and that was the difference I was trying to draw out of your post, so i'm glad to see you reinforce it here.
The fun part is watching the methods and styles of curation and list building work their way thru the older and newer applications and seeing how folks are responding to the limitations.