On Thursday afternoon social aggregator FriendFeed pushed out its new look to all its users.
Several things have changed since the company launched its beta program late last month, with the biggest being the look and feel of the site, including a change in navigation from the top of the page to the left side. The heart of the service still lies in linking up various sites you use, but as part of the re-design the FriendFeed post box was also given an overhaul with the inclusion of photo hosting.
The biggest change besides the look is one of the most subtle, and smartest. It now figures out when your friends have posted the same item and will link them together. This serves two purposes: one to keep you from seeing the same thing multiple times, and another to condense conversation into one feed item that you don't have to hunt down. A big problem before this was completely missing related items your friends might have liked or discussed. The new system simply brings all of that together in one place and puts the latest items on the very top.
If there's another item that's somehow related to something that's shared FriendFeed will do its best to let you know. Multiple related entries are sorted by the time they were posted, letting you read through them like a stream of news.
(Credit: CNET Networks)One thing to note is that Beta.FriendFeed.com, which served as the test bed for the new design will no longer be any different from the regular FriendFeed. Site founder Paul Bucheit tells me they may use it once again to test new features, but for the time being it will simply re-direct.
FriendFeed has just made available a new look for users who want to give it a spin ahead of its launch to the general public. Users who visit beta.Friendfeed.com will see the slightly new look that may not seem all that different from the old version, but frequent users will notice a slew of updates the greatly improve the service's social experience.
One of the big new features is the inclusion of photos. You can now post a photo, not just text or a link. Previously the service would pick up photos from some items like from certain news outlets or places like Flickr, but if you found it on an unsupported site it would just show up as a big link. You can now simply upload a shot straight from your hard drive or via URL and it will show up. This could easily be the first step for other FriendFeed-hosted media types like audio clips and videos.
You can now post photos, and not just from certain sites.
Another small but incredibly useful change is the way subscriptions and user grouping are handled. From the account settings you can now mass subscribe and unsubscribe from other FF users. Before today I had had a heck of a time subscribing to people who were subscribed to me. I'd have to select each user one at a time, which also required visiting their FriendFeed page--it was a pain and did not scale well. You're also now able to group certain people like you would in Google's contact manager or Facebook to separate buckets. FriendFeed starts you out with favorites, personal, and professional, but you can make as many other groupings as you'd like. You can also set up "best of" sections for each of these groups in case you feel like weeding out the good stuff.
Of all the changes that are going to take the longest to get used to is the complete shift of the user interface to the right side of the screen. I find it a bit of an abomination considering I consume most of my FriendFeed content from the iPhone, which will probably always have top-sided navigation. That being said, things you've bookmarked and commented on now have a far more prevalent spot, making them easier to go back to in order to see if others have added onto the same discussion or responded to you.
No word yet on when this will be devouring the normal public-facing version of FriendFeed, although given the frequent release schedule of this company it might only be a matter of weeks. If you're still on the fence about FriendFeed check out our Newbie's Guide, which after publishing in early June might be in need of a refresh.
Now checking out someone's stream can be sorted a whole lot easier although the updated side navigation might give old users a tough time learning the ropes yet again.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
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