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.
So there's a new Facebook app out there, designed to poll users on the social network's latest redesign. The results? Hundreds of thousands have responded. 94 percent give it a thumbs-down. Ouch.
Comments range from "WHY FIX IT, WHEN IT WASN'T BROKE, you will be SORRYYYYYYYYYYY" to "It feels counterintuitive and less technologically advanced than the last layout."
Now, this is clearly not an official vote. Chances are, you're not going to install a third-party polling application with the sole purpose of voicing an opinion on the new Facebook design unless you're really opinionated about it. So the 94 percent might be kind of high.
But still. Facebook is so big now--over 175 million members--that even an interface change may throw many of the less technical users completely off guard. And from what we've heard, non-geeks really do find the new design more difficult to use. The new site, particularly the activity feeds on member profiles, really do look different. The blurring between status messages and wall posts doesn't make much sense in my opinion--though I do like the improved news feed filtering tools.
It's easy to wave this off, because Facebook redesigns have brought up one threatened user revolt after another, and the site has just kept on growing. Members grew used to the new features, and in some cases (like the original launch of the news feed) it's hard to imagine Facebook without them. The only changes Facebook has made in response to user outrage, historically, have been in response to privacy concerns.
But Facebook's not just dealing with the young and tech-savvy anymore. When the people who freak out over a redesigned phone bill or cable channel-changing menu have Facebook profiles, "they'll get used to it" doesn't float as well. So this could really be a problem.
The new layout is a forward-thinking one, inspired by streaming content services like Twitter. Executives from Facebook have said that they see "the stream" as the next evolution of how we interact on the Web.
But even though Twitter's all over daytime talk shows these days, it's still just barely out of the gates as something more than an early-adopter toy. It's a fraction the size of Facebook. And the "Twitter plus media sharing" model doesn't have the best track record, as its most notable example, Pownce, was sold to Six Apart and shut down amid dwindling traffic. It probably would've been smarter for Facebook to ease users into the "stream" with a course of smaller tweaks rather than to require them to plunge in headlong.
Facebook's last redesign was finalized in September. That's only six months ago. If a site is putting out changes every six months that a mainstream audience sees as drastic, they could get fed up with it fast.
A look at the new Dropio home page.
(Credit: Dropio)Dropio, a file-sharing start-up that lets you easily toss anything from photos to phone calls in a "drop" (kind of like a virtual storage cabinet), has launched a new look.
The redesign makes the site look a little slicker, and certainly accentuates Dropio's "easy to use" mantra. It's also clearly a consumer-oriented product now--in comparison, the old design looks like a back-end content management system. That's good, because the company hopes to appeal to Luddites as well as techies. (For a business model, Dropio offers premium accounts that get rid of the 100MB free account storage limit.)
Feature-wise, it's pretty much the same, but Dropio's team has said that it's "about a thousand times more customizable and useful" thanks to a newly reorganized dashboard. They also say that the speed of the site should also be a notch higher.
A look at the new Last.fm homepage.
(Credit: Last.fm)Social music site Last.fm has unveiled a new look: a slick new design, an iPhone app, a partnership with Logitech to stream music to compatible home stereo systems, and a host of new features.
With the new features, members can receive music recommendations instantly by naming a few bands and artists they like. Previously, they had to hook up their music libraries so that the site's engine, or "scrobbler," could read and analyze what songs they'd listened to recently. The site's music charts now also update in near-real time.
Unfortunately, when I tried to load the new Last.fm, the site had crashed. TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld said he experienced problems, too. (Update at 12:33 p.m. PDT: the site loads but unreliably.)
That said, we certainly have seen recently that server outages aren't limited to Twitter. Ironically, I managed to get Last.fm's iPhone app working just fine.
(Disclosure: Last.fm is owned by CNET News parent company CBS Interactive.)
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