I want you to keep this number in mind: 57,855. That’s the approximate number of times that Twitter was mentioned in the media over the past seven days. It’s everywhere; omnipresent, in your face and you have to confront it. But, I’m going to throw a wrench into those gears currently churning in your head — Twitter isn’t the only game in town.
Yesterday, while Twitter was busy being mentioned in every news story from Lindsay Lohan’s and Samantha Ronson’s split to ones about Hubble-bound astronauts, geeks Web-wide were in a fuss about a major revision to FriendFeed and if you haven’t yet heard about it, take a few minutes to enjoy the last few spare moments of your life, because now that you know of it, you’ll know you need to be watching it.
FriendFeed is a feed aggregator founded Google alums. For over a year, it’s been the stomping grounds for the Robert Scobles of the world. Useful in many ways, but ultimately hyperbolic.
Yesterday, however, FriendFeed unveiled unleashed a number of updates that as Michael Arrington says puts it,”in danger of becoming the coolest app that no one uses.”
When FriendFeed launched, it featured a spartan layout that emphasized function and payed very little attention to form. It was an aggregator of peoples’ lives, eating feeds from corners of the web, to compile one, semi-synchronize torrent of information. These feeds could feature your data from Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and, actually, you can just look at all the mediums it supports on the FriendFeed Wiki. Combine this with the fact that all of your friends were doing the same, can you quickly had a very robust look at what was happening in your world.
What’s more, FriendFeed allows interaction. You can respond to anything from a Tweet to a Flickr photo, whatever pops up in your feed is commentable — and therein lies the conundrum for our profession.
You knew you needed to be on top of Twitter, you already monitor Facebook and you browse all the topical blogs surrounding your areas of expertise, but now there is another layer and as it happens, this layer is composed of about 30 of its own layers.
You see, when that Tweet hits Twitter, it could also be hitting FriendFeed. From there, a whole slew of individuals might comment (for good-or-ill) and unless you’re monitoring, you’ll never know the better.
But back to those site updates, what FriendFeed did yesterday to its torrent of information, was to essentially open the flood gate. Updates are now available instantly and they can fly by in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it capacity. Which isn’t to say that everyone will miss it, it just means you have to be extra vigilant.
So how should you approach this? Head-on is the best route. If you’re not yet on FriendFeed, then signup. Embed yourself and pay attention. And yes, the fate of your world most definitely depends on it.
