I jokingly posted a message on Twitter a while ago as I was travelling home announcing that I felt isolated as I was unable to ‘like’ or comment on FriendFeed from my phone. The thing is, it’s not actually a joke.

Steven Spalding asked: ”Other than Twitter? What is your favorite online community?” My answer was obvious - FriendFeed of course. Now Twitter does some things better than FriendFeed (see later) but, as I mentioned before, it is just not suitable for full and proper discussion. FriendFeed doesn’t just import your tweets it exposes them, it enables you to follow up in a way that @replies on Twitter just can’t. Conversation can quickly get lost in the Twitter stream but, as Andrew Dobrow says:

The threading system of FriendFeed sets aside a little nook for each separate piece of information. And this nook is always there for you to come back to, and to add more towards if you so desire.

Each response to a thread also brings that conversation back in to focus so you don’t have to go looking for it wondering if anyone has replied.

Why just aggregate when you can participate?

Louis Gray posted about this and said the keys to FriendFeed’s success were participation and discovery. He’s completely right on this one. Take away the social aspect and FriendFeed is nothing – just another place to view the information you’ve got elsewhere. It’s like watching your friends at a party through the window because you weren’t invited.

FriendFeed is no longer an aggregator – an aggregator is just a tool that gathers threads of information into one central location; it is now a fully fledged community and commenting solution (particpation) that just happens to let you bring in your - and other people’s (discovery) - stuff and discuss in all in one location.

Going mobile

FriendFeed have been working on a new UI for the iPhone but it is now time to provide full functionality for other mobile devices just as slandr has done for Twitter. Full interactivity is needed – likes, comments, and the ability to send messages from your phone is desperately needed. Twitter was built with mobile devices in mind so beats FriendFeed hands down in that regard but the time has come for FriendFeed to develop and, in a way, negate the need for Twitter or the reliance it has upon it.

Perhaps we have become spoilt by the Web 2.0 bubble and the way in which our online communities have evolved, static pages are no longer enough and when faced with something that is not interactive we immediately turn away. FriendFeed and Twitter are perfect bedfellows but for them to truly complement each other we must be able to interact on all platforms. Part of Twitter’s success is that you do not need to be anywhere near a computer to participate – FriendFeed must follow its lead.

Your thoughts

Is an interactive mobile UI for FriendFeed too much to ask or is it a necessity? How do you view the relationship betweenTwitter and Friendfeed?

UPDATE: Rober Scoble advises me that he can comment from both his iPhone and Nokia N95 so maybe it is just Windows Mobile that doesn’t like the FriendFeed UI. Let me know if your phone does.

Related Posts

• Twitter is a facilitator.

Image by malias.

Yesterday, Michael Martine of Remarkablogger posted the concept of using a ‘blog pack‘ to enhance the promotion of your site. A blog pack is a group of bloggers who set up an ‘alliance’ to cross promote each others sites by way of comments, links, stumbles, etc. in order to:

- Get established
- Build personal networks
- Increase traffic
- Increase RSS subscribers
- Get organic backlinks

At the time I commented that as bloggers we tend to do this anyway; we gravitate towards those with similar interests and, as we leave comments or hook up on social networking sites, develop a relationship and a mutual respect which invariably leads to interlinking and cross promotion. The blog pack is a way of formalising this relationship.

There is the possibility that some people might take offence at the suggestion of being ‘obliged’ to promote others and, as such, we would have to be careful when suggesting the idea in case we undo any good that our existing online relationships provide.

Gaming?

Chris Garrett has set up a blog pack over at the Authority Bloggers forum which has attracted some considerable interest. Each member should follow the others on Twitter, subscribe to the RSS feeds of each blog involved and the interact by way of comments and cross promotion. While this is great idea in principle I can see some potential pitfalls:

• the pack may be too large and unwieldy
• being an unfocused group it may lead to disinterest
• the risk of being accused of gaming the system

Michael argues that a group of like minded bloggers creating a pack is just a “sped-up version of what happens naturally” and so is networked growth rather than gaming but, what about a group created especially for this purpose such as that at Authority Bloggers? Is such a group at risk of being banned by StumbleUpon for gaming the system as they continue to crack down on abuse of the system, for example?

Simplification

If a blog pack gets too unweildy then maybe – as Chris suggested to me – it could be sub-divided. This may also help with the issue of the members being an unfocused group. Dividing members into smaller, related sections based on blog topics etc. would help to restore some relevance.

I had originally opted in but the concerns listed above have made me rethink and withdraw (if you are an AB Blog Pack member feel free to unsubscribe) especially as I have been making an effort to streamline my RSS feeds and connections.

If nothing else this is an interesting social experiment and it will be interesting to see where it leads.

Your thoughts

Do groups of bloggers need to formalise their cross promotion strategies or is the natural development of relationships enough? Would you be offended by being asked to participate by a contact? Is creating an artificial blog pack gaming the system?

UPDATE: Chris has updated the pack instructions with what I consider to be a far more sensible, and workable set of guidelines including: ”Audition, do not think everyone expects permanent residency in your feed reader! Same with Twitter, keep those who gel, lose those who do not”.

Image by ‘skirkybaby’.

Socialmedian is a social news service that connects people with personalised news and information in a similar vein to sites like BlogRize or Mixx. The service works around ‘News Networks’ devoted to a specific topic such as social media or Twitter; anyone can create a new network on any topic which lets you easily find the news which matters to you – just join those you consider relevant.

Once a network has been created the service will attempt to match known sources against the network topics. Members can add relevant sources either from suggested sources already in the socialmedian database or by adding the RSS Feed of a site – I have added this blog to the ‘social media watch’ for example. Socialmedian will then exmaine the items from each source for relevance and present those stories that match the user defined topic list.

As with other social news or bookmarking sites socialmedian allows users to vote for stories they find of interest – in this context called ‘clipping’ – which in turn notifies those in your networks. Not only do you get the change to clip individual stories but the topic list in any network is also controlled by the end user. Voting up or down for each topic within a network changes their weighting so provides constant fine tuning to ensure the best mix of stories is available. There is also the ability to flag items as not relevant to further streamline the system should anything unrelated get through.

Submit from anywhere

We don’t always live within our services site so socialmedian has a Clip it! boomarklet available which you can use to submit any story from anywhere on the web. One original feature here is that you can highlight a portion of text on the page which is then used as the excerpt when you clip the item – nice touch.

Personalised

On logging in to the sevice you are presented with your MyPage which gives a running feed of what the people in your networks are finding interesting. You can also have regular emails delivered to keep you up to date with what is popular- this is generally sent twice a day unless you choose otherwise.

At present the service is in private alpha so there are a few rough edges but regular updates are being written and all user feedback is considered. A competition is also being held to design the user interface for the site so even that side of things is open to influence from the end user.

Isn’t this the same as all the rest?

While socialmedian does share similarities with a number of other services out there, having spent some time to get to grips with the features available I would say that there is plenty of potential here to really focus on the news you want. The combination of suggested and reader supplied sources gives a nice blend but the real twist is the ability to control what items hit your network by effective use of the Topics weighting feature. The degree of user driven customisation is what makes socialmedian stand out for me and I look forward to seeing it develop.

Local

As you can create networks on any topic you’re not tied in to what’s happening in Silicon Valley and networks don’t have to fall in to any pre-defined category. Why not create local interest groups and add local news sources (newspapers, TV, etc.) in fact the worldwide aspect of such a service is what really appeals to socialmedian founder Jason Goldberg:

That’s actually why I called the company “socialmedian” – the idea being that with social media, everyone now has access to the same information, no matter where they are in the world.  We’re all the median. 

Get involved

Socialmedian is currently in closed alpha but Jason has been kind enough to give me 100 invites for you, the readers of colinwalker.me.uk. If you are not in the U.S. I would urge you to sign up and get your local news flowing. If you are in the U.S. then still sign up and add your choices to the melting pot. To get involved visit the socialmedian sign up page and use the invitation code “colinwalker” (without the quotes).

After the blog post on the BBC, Sky News tonight ran an item on the events around Twitter breaking the news of the earthquake in China and had approached me to appear on TV as an ‘expert’. Unfortunately, this was too short notice and I was not able to go along but it illustrates the interest mainstream media is now having in social media as a tool for modern journalism.

As I mentioned yesterday twitter is ideally placed to distribute quick updates and ‘spread the word’ but with a 140 character limit cannot possibly be used as an authoritative news source.

Recent discussion has posited the idea of comments on twitter much like FriendFeed – with the speed and ease of Twitter combined with the facility to add more details a service would be ideally placed as a ‘go to’ source for as it happens, on the spot reaction.

Obligations

Yes, mainstream media has the obligation to check the facts and ensure they are providing as accurate a story as possible but the world – and media – is moving at an ever increasing rate. Mainstream media needs to keep up and the media watchdogs need to be realistic with the expectations placed upon journalists in this fast paced environment.

If mainstream media had been watching as Scoble was they could have reported a solid, breaking headline within 5 minutes of it happening but you can’t be watching everything (despite Scoble’s best attempts to do so). What do you do? Hire an army of researchers to monitor social media services 24 hours a day in case you get a scoop?

It is more likely that media organisations will have an outreach on the main social media services instead of just having their RSS feed pumped out to anyone wanting to subscribe. Just as they currently ask for text messages or photos there will be a social point for the public to get in touch with any breaking news. As search tools for social media services become more advanced news desks can be alerted to keywords and trends and then use the data they gather to enhance the traditional channels of delivery.

Connected

These events remind us that we are now more connected than ever and, as such, expectations as to our availability are increased. We live in an always on world with 24/7 coverage and, if at all possible, we should seize opportunities whenever they present themselves. I will be making a few changes at the blog in order to reflect this.

Related Posts

• Twitter is a facilitator.

Image by GiantsFanatic.

I had already planned to write a post about Twitter acting as a facilitator and the unfortunate events in China today re-affirmed what I was going to say.

Back in February I posted:

“Twitter is more the facilitator of communication rather than the end channel so it is probably better to take deeper discussion and analysis away from this environment in order to effectively extend a particular conversation.”

With recent events this has never been more apparent. There have been complaints about Twitter as a medium being limited but such complaints also show Twitter’s true nature, for example:

Exactly. You can’t talk politics in 140 characters. It’s simply not possible. Must be done in person over beer.

Twitter is not intended as a public discussion forum but is a way of bringing people together, breaking news and spreading the word so that the conversation can be shared and then discussed in the most appropriate place – FriendFeed comments or blogs, for example. Admittedly it has moved on from its initial ‘status update’ beginnings and, as people find more uses for Twitter and spend more of their time on it, perhaps it is natural to want something else from it.

Tipping point

Breaking news is widely cited as the one thing that could force twitter past the tipping point and in to mainstream usage. A number of instances have occurred recently and today Robert Scoble remarked about twitter being quicker than mainstream media in reporting the Earthquake in China.

I replied that it is due to there being no limits, no restrictions, and (perhaps most importantly) no fact-checking with Twitter as people are reporting what’s happening directly to them as it happens. No news service could ever hope to keep up.

Recognition

It was interesting to see Rory Cellan-Jones refer to Twitter breaking this news on his BBC Blog and he wondered if this would be “the moment when Twitter comes of age”. The fact that Twitter was only mentioned in the context of a technology blog (albeit from a stalwart of mainstream media) rather than as part of the main story does little to boost Twitter even though a professional journalist is singing its praises. I think it is fair to say that not many people would read his comments, and probably those who do read his blog are already on Twitter – he is therefore just preaching to the choir.

Mainstream media has an obligation to be accurate and unless there is a policy change I can’t see organisations such as the BBC quoting the likes of Twitter as a source for breaking news without undertaking any due diligence. They may announce “unconfirmed reports” but the source of those reports would most likely never be given. Maybe there might also be a conflict of interests, why tell your audience to look elsewhere for their news?

A different animal

Twitter can indeed break reports faster than anywhere but is this news in the traditional sense? Probably not. Even when a service is fastest it is still acting as a facilitator, especially when you are limited to 140 character posts. Twitter allows us to see what is happening and gives us access to the aspects of the story which we must follow and piece together for ourselves. It is fantastic that so many threads can be interwoven from all over the world in such a short space of time but a service like Twitter is a tactic and not the target. It is a means of distribution rather than a destination and, as such, may never take over from traditional ‘reporting’.

Mainstream media may look to sources such as Twitter for breaking news and ‘on the ground’ reactions but the service will remain a way to link people to information rather than being the information source and until mainstream media acknowledges such services in its reports Twitter, and other social media services, will remain a means to an end and not the end product.

Your thoughts

Could a social news service hope to compete with mainstream media? Is it responsible to quote such a source without fact checking or are the inherent delays in reporting unavoidable?