FriendFeed is Just Digg without the Testosterone

It just hit me today as I was looking over the “Best of the Day” posts on FriendFeed that it is nothing more than Digg without the testosterone of young, aggressive men.  And while that’s a big improvement, it’s hardly earth-shattering.  I’m a big fan of FriendFeed but I’ve found it’s promise yet to be fully realized.  The conversations are driven by Scoble and the FriendFeed regulars and the content is mostly centered around memes that resonate with the community.

As a person that uses the service daily I’ve found myself culling the people I follow, sculpting my information flow in to different rooms all in an effort to get more out of the site.  Still my main feed reminds me of one big running joke from the geek table in high school.  Sure, I sat at the table, but the jokes get old after awhile.

Let’s look at the best of the day from today (1/11/09) in order as a random sample of what I’m talking about:

  1. Robert Scoble
    “Milan and bacon. Gratuitous photo warning.”
  2. Robert Scoble
    “If you want more followers on Twitter and friendfeed here’s what to do:”
  3. Derrick (friend of Lindsay)
    “I’ve never once plotted, thought about, strategized, clamored for, lost sleep over, pondered, or appealed to people in order to gain followers or comments. I was just myself.”
  4. Kol Tregaskes
    “What’s you favourite word or most used word?”
  5. Robert Scoble
    “I really hate IM. People get on there and ask me how I’m doing. What a lame way to start a conversation.”
  6. Lindsay
    “Lindsay’s 3 rules for getting followers on FriendFeed: 1) Be interesting 2) Interact with others 3) Don’t freaking worry so much about getting followers!”
  7. Haggis (Sean) (friend of Lindsay)
    “My Hot Pants. You know you want them.”
  8. Robert Scoble
    “This is my first Windows 7 message. Everything on my main computer upgraded properly. This is a winner.”
  9. Corvida
    “I wish I could filter out all things NFL-ish in my FriendFeed stream”
  10. Dave Winer - Twitter
    “One more question, does it seem very very quiet to anyone else on FriendFeed?? (It could just be that way for me, that’s why I ask.)”

 

Now lets look at the Top 10 Digg items in the last 24-hours:

  1. Man confused why girls don’t talk to him
  2. The best story, ever
  3. Blogger Mistakes Onion Parody for Real ‘Macbook Wheel’ [PIC]
  4. Where Tijuana Meets San Diego (Pic)
  5. I just stepped outside and snapped this photo of the moon
  6. Womans Expression 101
  7. Every Simpsons couch gag
  8. Coda.fm – A Refreshing Music Torrent Site
  9. NYPD Wants to Jam Cell Phones During Terror Attack
  10. White House: Increase in terror attacks since 9/11 a success

 

Is there a difference?

After looking at that list I wonder how much different the two really are?  I mean these top 10 topics for the day at FriendFeed have hundreds of combined comments and likes associated with them representing a ton of community effort around those conversations.  Same with Digg.  But if I look at what people are talking about I can’t get past the fact that they’re both rather similar in nature.

This keeps me coming back to this one main thought – that FriendFeed is (just like Digg) a time waster.  FriendFeed is a place to come geek out, to see funny photos, to read about the latest bacon-based product, to try to one-up each other with obscure findings from the corners of the interwebs and to post cool stuff of limited day-to-day value.  It’s just like Digg, except with nicer, more tolerant, more friendly people.  If Digg is high-school, FriendFeed is the water cooler at the office.

Now all of this is nothing against the people on the site.  I think that FriendFeed is one of the most friendly, accepting places on the Web.  I once called FriendFeed “home” on the Web, and it is still one of my start tabs in FF.  But I can’t keep it up all day, I can’t turn to it and say I’ve gotten real value out of it.  Have I met cool people? Absolutely.  Should that be enough?  It is, but it doesn’t make FriendFeed an essential tool in my daily life, it makes it like the corner bar in my life, and I feel I’m not spending my time wisely if I’m sitting at the bar all day.

Help me.  Help me construct my FriendFeed experience so that I don’t feel like it’s all bacon wishes and lego dreams.  That there is something more.  That it can really be more than just Digg.  Because right now, it’s too similar and I find myself not using either of them with any regularity.

4 Comments

  1. Good post. I do think the FF / Digg analogy holds up pretty well. Although FF started out as a lifestream aggregator it’s more similar to a social news site than I think many of its users would like to admit.

  2. Thanks Jason. I agree, it seems to have become very much the closed circle that Digg often gets criticized for. It will be interesting to see how that plays as FriendFeed tries to go more mainstream.

    I believe the functionality of FF, which allows for mass customization, will let people who really want to customize streams embrace the site regardless of the cliques present, but that it will never fully realize its mainstream potential without a way to eliminate some of the “Diggness” that exists today.

  3. I’m confused. What were you thinking it would be?

    • I wasn’t expecting anything really. I guess I was just pointing out the similarities of the experience. For as groundbreaking as everyone says FF is, it really duplicates the Digg experience w/a different audience set. Of course, it has tons of customization features that Digg doesn’t have, but other than that the two communities have a lot of commonalities.


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