Mixed reactions to FriendFeed overhaul

From what it looks like, the fresh, real-time streaming redesign of social aggregator FriendFeed is getting some accolades from already-avid users--but might not sway the masses.

Among existing FriendFeed loyalists, it doesn't look like there's much dissent about the redesign, which is currently available as a beta test. An "anti-FriendFeed beta version" group hasn't gotten much traction. But on Twitter, which some people see as a FriendFeed complement and others as a competitor, opinions were much more mixed.

"I have (Twitter client) TweetDeck to filter and organize noise. Why then would I still need FriendFeed?" inquired user @rbazinet.

"I'm not a fan of real-time scrolling sites like the new FriendFeed. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of history, but I find it distracting," said another user, @griner.

On the wrong side of history, quite possibly. Real-time streaming is the hot ticket in social networking these days, with "the stream" at the center of Facebook's controversial redesign.

And indeed, Facebook was first to the game. "Even after the redesign, I just don't find FriendFeed compelling. All of my 'friends' are on Facebook," said Twitter user @mikeee. Ever since it started introducing third-party information into its News Feed, Facebook has indeed been encroaching upon FriendFeed territory.

Twitter itself, meanwhile, doesn't live-stream your friends on its homepage, and third-party clients like Twhirl and Twitterrific tend to load incoming messages in groups rather than in real time because of Twitter's limits on how many times a third-party app can call up its servers. But if you run a query through Twitter Search, it'll keep hunting for the keywords and will alert you when new results have come in.

FriendFeed's redesign did get plenty of thumbs up. "Interesting to see FriendFeed focus on performance and UI (user interface) simplicity. They 'get it,'" said Twitter user @jimsimmons.

One thing we've seen with major social-networking overhauls--e.g. Facebook's last few redesigns--is that a swift backlash will often be met with eventual reception, whereas initial quiet can be deceptive if members start to gradually come across usability issues. This is still an optional beta, and often the particularly vociferous criticism doesn't come until after a new feature or design's public rollout.

From what it looks like so far, the reception to FriendFeed's redesign has been neither stellar nor terrible so far. But FriendFeed is a niche service right now; what it really needs to do is break out of Silicon Valley and start gaining quasi-mainstream appeal the way Twitter has. It's not clear that this redesign will be enough to accomplish that.

[judsoncollier]

Maybe I'm just a design nut, but I have yet to see friendfeed actually move into the post web 2.0 design era, if I can call it that. It reminds me of 2004.

Still don't see the purpose of friendfeed yet.

[mathewballard]

The purpose of friendfeed is to take in as much information as possible, discover new things, and to have some good conversations. Friendfeed by far is the best social site I have ever used. And it is far beyond 2.0 standards.

[blusky08]

Social networking sites should be called "anti-social networking sites".

Seriously, the egotism and avoidance (of real relationships) involved in social networking phenomenon is astounding.

[clh22793]

I see the purpose of Friendfeed, just not the market for it. The hardcore junkies are all in, but it just doesn't seem practical for the rest of us. It assumes there's a need to follow all our friends activity on the web, but that's only true of a handful of folks. And now that Twitter is experiencing crazy growth, there just isn't much room for another life stream. It's exhausting just keeping up with Twitter.

[mathewballard]

I'm one of those Friendfeed "loyalist" as you call us and although, there are some things that I want to see improved or changed, my experience has been great thus far.

[davidds64]

I think that friendfeed is far more useful than twitter. You can get all the activity of your contacts on the net at youtube, flickr, delicious, blog, facebook. linkedin, twitter and many other services. Anyway, most of the content is from twitter itself, since it is a conversation service. You get all your twitter stuff and much more things to trace your contacts, and can make groups to follow the activity of just a few of them.