During the past few weeks, Twitter has been down or out due to stress. To learn more about Twitter scaling issues read this interview by Jesse Stay. When a service goes down, users will complain. And if happens a lot, they may move on. There was much speculation as to whether they mover to Jaiku (with its newly minted Google money), or Pownce, BrightKite, Tumblr, plurk or FriendFeed.
FriendFeed has been getting a lot of buzz lately. FriendFeed is in a category called digital lifestyle aggregators that let you aggregate all your various feeds and share with your friends. Want a fuller description of FriendFeed? (Read this). Want to go even deeper? Follow the poweruser of FriendFeed, Louis Gray. (And for expert level knowledge, read these blog posts about FriendFeed that Louis Gray has bookmarked.)
In the last few weeks, there has been posts about how conversations have shifted to FriendFeed. Not everyone is thrilled with FriendFeed, some say it is just generates noise and is a parasite. About two weeks ago, FriendFeed added a new feature: rooms. This feature enables a group of people to join and share items they have discovered from their FriendFeeds (or elsewhere) and have micro-discussions. It seems that a room helps with the noise levels because people have to consciously add info to a given room. It doesn't just take everything from a feed. So it's more selective. It's unclear whether this advantage will withstand a larger number of people sharing more items or as more rooms are set up (already we have a nonprofit room, a nonprofit and web2.0 room, etc).
Jonathon D. Colman set up the nptech room on FriendFeed five days ago and 105 NpTechers have joined the NpTech Room. Some participated in the formal experiment I designed which involved a quick knowledge sharing task. In addition, a lot of ad hoc conversation and informal resource sharing unfolded. There was also a bit of reflection to identify how to efficiently use FriendFeed and determine its value to nonprofit.
The jury is still out - there is some value to the conversations and connections that FriendFeed generates, but it is difficult to efficiently scan and participate.
I like what Marnie Webb likes about FriendFeed Rooms. As she says, it combines social bookmarking, feed reading, and the casual interactions of Twitter into something that works somewhat like mailing list, but doesn't add to your email overload. Also, for the past year, I've been summarizing resources being shared through the NpTech Tag, I've felt frustrated that you didn't always know who had contributed the resource and while one could add brief annotations, there was not a space for conversation around those shared items. And as Marnie notes, the conversation in FriendFeed is valuable.
Marnie mentions one downside to FriendFeed - that she is unable to process the information as quickly or as seamlessly as she can with other tools that she is regularly using for social bookmarking, feed reading, and causal interactions. In the comments of Marnie's post, Laura Whitehead points out that FriendFeed may offer ways to widen the conversation, but some of it depends on how we get our information, manage it, and connection. Some people choose one site or method to connect with others, while others are "network weaving," jumping from one site to another.
Here's a summary of some of the topics and discussions that took place in the NpTech FriendFeed Room.
Exploring FriendFeed
One of the first topics of discussion that came up was how to efficiently use FriendFeed. What were some ways to filter the duplications? What are some practical tips for using it?
The formal experiment I designed involved asking people to pick a useful post from the list of FriendFeed bookmarks in del.icio.us identified by FriendFeed expert Louis Gray and say why the resource was useful.
Beth Dunn shared Social Media Club: Join Our FriendFeed Room and Kill A Mailing List
Beth Mazur shared Keep Your Eye on FriendFeed It May Be The Google of Social Networks
Roger Carr shared "Why You Should Use FriendFeed"
Ruby Sinreich shared "Making Real Friends Imaginary"
Chad Norman shared "Let's get Serious About FriendFeed: The 1995 Message Board, The Smart Consolidator and the Stolen Conversation."
Andrew Cohen shared "Three Reasons FriendFeed is Great. Three Reasons to Fear It"
Q: What happens when you put a bunch of NpTechers in a room together?
A: They talk about tools!
Well, not exclusively as you'll not below. But there were a number of quick conversations mentioning new tools.
Blist
Hitwise (new features)
Iceberg
Wordframe
adocu (one word tweets)
NpTech Talk and News
A number of posts were shared and discussed that were not about tools.
Philadelphia Wireless Fights To Stay Alive (posted by Holly Ross who knows a bit about this topic)
The Best and Worst Cities for Nonprofit Efficiency (posted by Sarah Conner Smith)
Social Media and Web Strategy and Marketing
Jonathon Coleman shared The (Lil) Green Patch Facebook app has donated $33,600 to The Nature Conservatory's Facebook Cause (I screenshotted and summarized the discussion thread here)
Causes Raised $2.5 Million in First Year of Operation Allan Benamer asks "What's the average for nonprofit websites and their e-mail lists?" Perhaps you can learn that here. More analysis from Steve MacLaughlin
Eric Johnson shared Text to Save Lives
Reed Stockman shared Is Social Networking/Causes the Next Big Thing?
Clay Newton shared What CEOs need to know about the social web?
Eric Johnson shared "Is Facebook Page a Complete Social Media Strategy?" Covers the pros and cons of running your own branded social network or going with Facebook or Myspace.
Andrew Cohen shared How do you test our web site cheaply?
Jonathon Coleman asked "How do you know if your web content is strategic?" Marnie Webb answered.
Some threads of conversation about the Case Foundation's Social Citizen paper - can be summarized as
"This paper is right on in identifying the current "situation on the ground". The question is, as always, how do you apply the information?"
Will Boyd has a question about non-profit marketing? Can you answer it?
The NpTech Tag started as an experimental community tagging project in 2005. A loosely coupled group of nonprofit techies and social change activists decided to use the tag "NpTech" to identify web resources that would create an ongoing stream of information to promote and educate those working in nonprofit technology. Through TechSoup's Netsquared project, blogger Beth Kanter, was commissioned to write a weekly summary.
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