friendfeed

I’m all over the place…quite literally…

August 20, 2008 By Dan Thornton

How so?

I’ve just published a new post over at www.140char.com on How to back-up your Twitter account and contacts.
Although I’m still using Feedeachother as an online RSS reader (Find me, here), I’ve bowed to public opinion and also signed up for Google Reader. It’s no slur towards Feedeachother, and the hard work by it’s creator,Udi, but I’m increasingly aware that it’s handy not only to export lists of bookmarks, feeds and contacts on a regular basis, but also to have them readily accessible somewhere. It’s also giving me the chance to compare the two services and see which one offers what I need. You can see my Google Reader shared items, here.
I don’t think I’ve ever published the location of my profile on Stumbleupon. If you’re not spammy, you can find me here, as badgergravling. It tends to be a mixture of tech, cars, motorcycles, and some photography and bizarre stuff. Some of the stumbles are for sites I work on, but only if it’s things I think are good enough to share – and I find an equal amount from the aggregate of all the other sites I visit during a day!
I’m also on Del.icio.us, here (I’m not signed up to the delicious.com namechange!), and also on Digg – and quite a few other networks. I’ve got most of them listed on Friendfeed and MyBlogLog, but there aren’t any other badgergravlings I’ve encountered yet – mainly because it’s an intentional mispelling.
I’m also signed up and become part of Seth Godin’s Triiibes group, which was invite-only for those pre-ordering his next book. I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not just an experimental social ant farm, but there’s definitely some interesting things that could come out of it.
And finally, I had to slip in a mention of Dave Cushman‘s latest post on /Message. Mainly because he namechecks me, and by the look of it, it either never gets picked up, or it’s a nofollow blog – which seems a little odd for someone like Stowe Boyd, unless he’s done it to combat spam comments…

Right, that’s cleared some of the decks…

How much is enough when it comes to microblogging

July 7, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’m obviously a big fan of microblogging, having started this site with a few good people. And yet the current buzz around the concept does bring some of the problems to the forefront.

For starters, how fragmented will my identity become? I already have another blog, a profile on LinkedIn, a profile on a group magazine project, a profile on Facebook, one on Myspace, and one on Twitter. And that’s just the main sites I use on a day-to-day basis. And any reasonable input into microblogging requires a lot of time – enough to have an effect on the blogging output of a lot of people. Although surprisingly it can have a positive effect.

But until now, Twitter has been synonymous with microblogging. But with new challengers coming every day, is it really possible to comprehensively update:

Twitter
Plurk
Twoorl
Identi.ca
Globme
Jaiku
Pownce

And still have time to check other comments on Friendfeed and Socialthing?

You can always try cross publishing, and the number of posts brought to you by services like Ping.fm has radically increased. But is it really worth autofeeding yourself across so many networks? In the early stages the same early adopters will inhabit most of these sites, so you’re likely to be bombing most of the same people several times.

Or you can try and manually update each site, and unless you’re able to multitask to the nth degree, you can drive yourself insane within a week.

Luckily the answer to the problem will arrive eventually in the self-selection of the main sites. And that will simply come down to where the groups of friends exist. That’s why I think Twitter is secure for quite a while longer, as most people will have already reached a critical mass of connections that they won’t find on the other networks yet.

The issue it does raise, is a wider one, on how many different identities and personas are possible around an individual with even a wide sphere of influence and a lot of spare time – and where will that time come from?

Swurl follows in FriendFeed’s footsteps

July 2, 2008 By Dan Thornton

A possible rival to FriendFeed, Swurl.com mimics the FriendFeed service of aggregating various social networks, but possibly does better by giving your pooled services their own, custom url eg. justinfleming.swurl.com whilst seemingly borrowing some design tips from socialthing.com.

Since I joined FriendFeed, I’ve always said that the design and presentation cripple the usability. What could be so neat (as in Socialthing which purely due to design, outdoes most other similar services out there), is reduced to a eye-aching busy mess that I just feel like avoiding.

If FriendFeed stole Socialthing’s design then we’d be on to something massive. As it is, Swurl just might win the prize.

www.swurl.com

Internet usability demands centralisation

May 8, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Normally internet usability refers to the design and placement on a website to allow users to easily interact, but I firmly believe there’s an important new item which is hugely important in making any website, widget or service usable.

And that’s allowing centralisation.

Now I’ve moved to my own domain, I’m trying to update two years of links – on social networks, blog directories, wikis, forums, websites, other people’s blogrolls etc, etc, etc. And I’ve realised exactly how much work is involved in changing my url on all those sites. And that’s the same for all the major events in my life (such as the birth of my son recently), or even keeping minor details up-to-date and relevant (Do I still like the same music and films as I did when I filled out my Facebook profile, or the last time I updated Myspace?).

More and more people are online, and although the numbers of promiscuous profile creators are small compared to those who are happy with one site and profile, that’s changing. And it will change more and more as niche networks and groups form and grow – and advertisers etc see more value in targetting those niches.

It’s where ideas like Google Open Social work, with an API that works across numerous websites/networks. And although I don’t think it’s always suitable to limit every internet user to one ‘real’ linked ID, I do think it’s now essential that anyone collating information from internet users looks at the best way to allow that information to be updated from one central place. You might lose one or two clicks from someone being forced to update, if they see enough value – but the flipside is it’s too much hassle to update so people don’t bother coming back at all – ever.

And for something like a domain change, it can mean a website stops sending me any referrals, and drops even further off my radar.

That’s why something like Last.fm works, and why so many more users utilise its’ ‘scrobbling’ technology to track the music they listen to, rather than using it to find new music etc. If you’ve got a site which has a field to list music, don’t make me fill it out. Let me link to Last.fm, or Pandora. Or create somewhere that I can update once and feed out to all my various outlets. That’s one reason why Twitter works (I’m @badgergravling btw). A Twitter update can be done via a variety of desktop clients or other sources, and then end up on my blog, on FriendFeed etc, etc. Sites like FriendFeed are tackling the problem from the aggregation perspective, and allowing a huge range of inputs to be put into one place – but where’s a system for allowing me to make a huge range of outputs to all the relevant destinations without traipsing for hours around the net?

Is the Tumblr buzz justified? Is it the new Twitter?

February 29, 2008 By Dan Thornton

It seems that Twitter is becoming an increasingly useful barometer of buzz around products or services. (Services like Twitterbuzz could benefit if you discount Tinyurl!).

It happened recently with FriendFeed, when I noticed about 10 of my contacts on Twitter all signing up or chatting about it. And it happened again yesterday with Tumblr.

There are a load of interesting articles I can, and will, be writing about discovering products in a viral, Word-of-Mouth type way like this, so marketing/PR type people, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

But I’m going to share my first thoughts about Tumblr for the moment. Lots of people have compared it to Twitter, which in some ways is hiding the real competition. Like Twitter, it does allow you to update quickly and easily, via the Bookmarklet tool, and it has an advantage in allowing quick updates of video, pictures, chat, quotes etc. And like Twitter, it’s clean and smooth to use. Hit bookmarklet, edit anything in a pop-up window, and move on – much like bookmarking in Del.icio.us.

BUT– Twitter is all about the social. Like Del.icio.us, it didn’t really give me much value, until my follows and followers numbers reached a certain point – probably around 20 or 30. And the value has grown with each person added…(Waiting for Dave Cushman to pop over from FasterFuture to mention Reed’s Law!)

As yet, Tumblr doesn’t offer any way to easily connect with friends and contacts and follow their Tumbls easily. That’s why I think the real places it competes is with WordPress and Blogger. I’m a fan of both (As you can tell by this blog still appearing on Blogger), and think they both do a good job of allowing non-technical people to start engaging with blogging, writing, widgets, communities etc.

But both WordPress and Blogger do force you to develop a bit of an interest in HTML, Usability, Design etc. Adding videos can be a hassle, unless the website in question has a ‘Blog This’ function and you don’t mind sharing your username. And misplacing a bit of code in your HTML can lead to serious problems (as I’ve continually reminded myself when editing code in a hurry).

Tumblr removes all these problems, and as with the blogging platforms, it can be ftp’d to your custom domain. Essentially, it’s a stripped down, easy to use Blogger, which doesn’t require you to visit the Blogger site to log in and post. It’s ideal for anyone who uses a lot of multimedia, without wanting to cover their sites in widgets, and it’s also a great time saving device.

Personally, although I’ve signed up and played, and can see the benefits, I’m not sure how often I’ll use it. I’ve already got a working blog with a continually surprising amount of readers – and I adore the social side of Twitter to the point of declining in my use of Facebook or email. But if I was looking to start my own blog as a repository for all the things I find during my day, and without wanting to write huge long posts (Never going to happen, right?), then Tumblr is definitely worth looking at.