10 Minute Guide to FriendFeed - Part 1
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By Guest Blogger: Marc Berry
Marc and his wife write real talk about all areas of relationships, from sex to abuse to pure love and the language of flowers at The Incurable Romantic. Marc is also the author of techne-eikon, a blog about Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing. You can also follow Marc on FriendFeed and/or Twitter.
You can also follow Teeg on FriendFeed and Twitter.
FriendFeed for the Socially Inept - Part 1
Read Part 2
As a blogger I am understandably interested in Web 2.0 and online social networks such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Facebook. Unfortunately, when it comes to these networks I am the very definition of socially inept.
I’m not afraid to admit it: I’m a bad friend. I forget about people and sites and networks and all that. I have online ADD, jumping from one thing to the next, and immediately forgetting what I was just doing. It doesn’t help that in order to maintain my involvement in most of these networks, I have to actually go to the site, log in, and play catch-up. Thumb something up, digg it, and oh yeah, twitter it. Add in forums, groups, chats and RSS feeds, and the information overload becomes unbearable.
It’s a wonder I haven’t thrown my computer out of the window yet.
Enter FriendFeed, my newest friend… FriendFeed is an aggregator for all your online social activities. It brings all your friend’s network activities under one roof, making it easy to keep up with what everybody is doing.
Of course, first you have to add them as friends on FriendFeed, but that is usually just a matter of searching for them, and subscribing to their updates. If there is someone that you want to follow, but they aren’t on FriendFeed, sending them an invitation is as easy as typing in their email address, or having FF import your address book.
This naturally brings up the question, “Must my friends be FF users in order for me to follow them”? Thankfully, they do not. FF has a friends setting called “imaginary friends”, which allows you to follow non-members around as they post stuff to their favourite sites.
Only publicly submitted information is tracked, so your friends won’t think that you are too creepy, which is always a bonus. You can also add their blog’s RSS feed, making the service a simple RSS reader, though if you really use RSS, you may find a dedicated reader a better solution.
Comments
Comment from Teeg
Time June 5, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Hi Case, The more I look at FriendFeed, the more I’m impressed with it. For example, consider a twitter post on FF. It doesn’t just show the tweet, it shows all the tweets that came as responses, and any comments people made on FF considering that tweet.
It makes it easy to see why so many people have been switching over to FF while Twitter’s been having problems.
Comment from Ange Recchia
Time June 5, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Hey Marc, I just subscribed to your FF lol… not sure why I wasn’t 
Imaginary friends huh! I didn’t know that one either. FF is a great way to keep in touch with what everyone is doing. Thanks for the heads up 
Ange Recchia’s last blog post..Free Hugs Day Melbourne Video
Pingback from 10 Minute Guide to FriendFeed - Part 2 | SU Comments
Time June 6, 2008 at 3:03 pm
[...] Recent Posts10 Minute Guide to FriendFeed - Part 1Telephones and Chat Rooms Navigate/Search « 10 Minute Guide to FriendFeed - Part [...]
Pingback from Share Anything On The Web With FriendFeed
Time June 9, 2008 at 6:12 am
[...] Marc Berry wrote a guest post for Teeg on Sucomments about Friendfeed, and rather than retrace his steps, I thought that I would add a couple of things that I had noticed about the site. [...]
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Comment from Case Stevens
Time June 5, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Wow, FF is one I’m not that familiar with, so I’m reading this with great interest and looking forward to the next issue. Didn’t know about “imaginary friends”!
Thanks a lot Teeg and Marc.