Library clips

This week Twitter decided to not allow you to see tweets people you are following are having with people you are not folllowing.

Previous to this it was an option in the settings, but it turns out this option slows down the servers, and since it is only known or used by 3% of users they decided to remove it. This horrified power Twitter users, see #fixreplies.

Why?

Because eaves dropping on conversations people you follow are having with people you don’t follow is a great way to discover new people. Actually this is the most common, if not only way, that I personally discover new people…it’s recommendations without trying to be recommendations…I trust who people I follow converse with, so there’s a good chance I will want to follow them. I’m not about to go through every person I follow’s contact list and look through these lists for new people…I don’t have the time…so I get more suitable value eavesdropping on conversations…I’ve only used Mr Tweet once, it was handy, but I’d rather find new people in my flow as part of using the system.

Anyway, now Twitter promise new things, so we will see, but at the moment they have kind of come half way.:

“…any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account.”

Meaning…if someone I follow replies to someone I don’t follow using a reply button (which threads the reply to the tweet ID), then I won’t see it. But I will see it if they type the word @user in the text box (rather than using the reply button).

What they are basically saying here, is that when you click the reply button, you are explicitly having a conversation, as the tweet you are replying to becomes a link at the end of your tweet. (You will see this at the end of some tweets, where it will say “inreply to johnt”). Whereas when you type in the reply in the text box this does not link the tweets so can be taken as a shoutout or a mention, which apparently is more appropriate for you to see, rather than a conversation from which you are not in the loop.

Personally I think the option in the settings was the way to go, but since this option could no longer scale, they had to take it away, I’m sure if it did scale there would be no problem with keeping it.

NOTE: what I’m not sure of is if I click the reply button using an alternate interface like peoplebrowsr, filttr, dabr, tweetdeck will the same function apply, or does it only apply when I use the reply button on Twitter itself. My hunch is it will make no difference, as it’s a linked reply and will be treated as such.

Facebook/Friendfeed comparison

It has taken a step backwards in regards to “serendipity”, but it’s no way going to be restricted like Facebook.

I like that Facebook is restricted and private as I use it as a more personal thing, I don’t want the world to know when I’m not home, or personal family happenings. I think this is Facebook’s strength, and they should see this unique feature as something that differentiates them from Twitter and Friendfeed, some don’t think so.

Let’s face it Facebook competes more with Twitter than Friendfeed.

NOTE: Of course they (Facebook and Twitter) are in competition to be the social network you most visit, but in regards to functionality they are different.

Friendfeed is a lifestream and a social network, just like Facebook, only Facebook has all features inhouse, whereas Friendfeed consolidates all your scattered profiles that you have at different services…basically Friendfeed mostly aggregates your stuff, where Facebook does it all. And of course you are free to browse profiles on Friendfeed, where this is restricted on Facebook as they allow people to set privacy settings.

But I will say that Twitter competes more with Friendfeed than Facebook. The reason is that a lot of people use Twitterfeed to auto-tweet their blog posts, bookmarks, photo’s videos, etc…Meaning not every tweet is manually typed, some of them are auto-posts from your happenings elsewhere, which kind of turns Twitter into a lifestream service, if you want to use it that way. It’s not designed for this, as is Friendfeed, but it is done.

As I mentioned before, they are all indirectly in competition because they run on the “social network” model. There is only so many places you can spend time, and you usually will hang out in the service where your buddies are hanging out…whether this service has crap features or not doesn’t matter in the end, what matters is that you can connect with them all in one place.

For me it’s Twitter, if all my Twitter buddies hung out at Friendfeed, then I may give it a try (NOTE: I do use Friendfeed for my lifestream, but I don’t network). And I do use Facebook for family and close friends, but this is more minimal use. I use LinkedIn as well, but it’s not really a place to hang out in. Basically, if juicy stuff happens in Friendfeed, Facebook or LinkedIn, it gets posted to Twitter, ie. Twitter has become the pulse.

Symmetric

Facebook is more about friendship. I can only follow you, if you follow me back (accept my request for friendship)…it’s more about strong tie relationships.

Asymmetric

Friendfeed and Twitter are less about friendship, as I can follow someone, who doesn’t follow me back…giving it a strength of weak ties scenario. This is great for serendipity, discovery, exploration, research…

As I said each service has it’s strength in the relationship dynamic it offers, at least for me anyway.

Status Updates comparison

To finish let’s compare the experience of Facebook status updates to Twitter. I thought I would cover this as lots of people say, “this feature is on Facebook, so I have no reason to use Twitter”, but they are mistaken…

The only thing Twitter and Facebook have in common is “status updates”, which is just one feature of Facebook, whereas this is the whole concept of Twitter. Due to the differing relationship dynamic they work quite different.

FB - I can only see status updates of people I follow (in order to follow them, they have to follow me back, which means we are friends)
TW - I can visit any profile and see their updates, I can also follow them and see their updates in my homepage (they don’t have to follow me back)

FB - I can see replies from people that are also my friends to status updates on my friends profile
TW - ditto

FB - I can see replies from strangers to status updates on my friends profile
TW - This is no longer a 100% truth, see start of this post for explanation

FB - I cannot see replies my friends make on a status update on a strangers profile
TW - This is no longer a 100% truth, see start of this post for explanation

FB - replies are threaded under an update
TW - replies are at the same level as an update (any update is considered an update regardless if it has the word “reply”)
If you click the reply icon it will publish a link to the tweet you are replying to under your reply. But the tweet you are replying to will not list the tweets that has replied to it

[ADDED 19/05/09 : see Twitoaster and Twonvo for all replies to a tweet]

FB - replies alert you via notifications
TW - replies don’t have notification, they are just another tweet in the stream
But replies to you, are accessed via your reply stream

As we can see here Facebook takes a more blog and comment approach, and Twitter has a full stream approach.

Eg. in Facebook a status update is like a micro-blog post, and comments are threaded (of which you are notified). Whereas in Twitter everything is a same level item in the stream…posts start at the top of the page, and roll off the bottom.

The other thing is that in Twitter you can discover more people through posts (eg. conversations your friends are having with strangers) and visiting profiles, whereas this is restricted in Facebook.

The advantage of Facebook is that after the fact conversations are more distilled, whereas in Twitter if you were not there while it was happening, you have to piece it together, although Twitter Search does have a nifty view called “Show Conversations“, and the use of hashtag channels for tweets on a topic.

Buzzable - a neat interactive newsmastering tool, perhaps similar to a Friendfeed Room.
Create a topic page and invite people to your group (public or private). These people have 140 characters when posting content. If group members use the “@” symbol they can reference posts to one another (ie. conversational chatting). Again this is what I like about microblogging, in the very same stream I am posting a blog-like post, but then a minute later I’m chatting with someone in the same stream…then a second later I’m reading some links someone has posted (read, chat, post, share links within the same stream and network)

Also posts you make in Buzzable can be auto-tweeted to a communal Twitter account. If you need some help populating your stream, you don’t have to rely on your group, you can import feeds to re-syndicate content, and filter those feeds by keyword.

An idea would be to associate a hashtag with a buzzable group. When I use that hashtag in Twitter, it will re-post it to the buzzable group, and it will only do this if I’m a member of that group. If someone replies to that tweet from Buzzable it currently re-posts to a communal Twitter account, which is OK because I will still see that tweet in my reply stream.
I guess this would be like member-based hashtag pages.

Use Google Reader from within Outlook - replace the Outlook RSS feeds folder with Google Reader. This comment suggests you can do the same thing in Outlook 2003.

Google Reader offline - RSS Bandit and Scoop. If you are after an alternative web version, check out Feedly.

Storytlr - We all know Friendfeed has won the lifestream battle, but I thought I’d mention this one as it’s a your very own lifestream page without having to be part of a network, ala the old skool Suprglu. Storytlr has a bonus feature of grabbing items by date range and creating a story. They offer a widget to integrate into your blog, but if you want to go even further try a service called iBegin which is a plugin to create a lifestream page on your blog, check out Elsua’s. [via lifestream blog]

Tablefy - Lots of people may use Google Docs to display comparsion tables, well now there is a service that is made specifically for this use. Robin Good has an example, you can track this table, or even embed it in your blog post. Now we can make our own comparison sites like wiki-matrix, well not quite, this goes one further by allowing you to choose only the products you want to compare.

retaggr is a profile card widget that you can embed in your blog, others I’ve mentioned are txtms, and hyplet.

If you use a lifestream service like Friendfeed , Profilactic, etc…you can generate a similar widget, and some stand alone services like ShowYourself and others, but retaggr is more than just a profile aggregator widget, it’s a contact and information card, it even contains your latest tweet. This widget is deeper than just one page, if you click the mail icon it turns into a contact list page, and if you click on the email icon it will turn into an email form. If you click on the Twitter icon it displays your latest tweets, in fact if you click on most of your profile icons you can read the latest entries in the retaggr widget.

If widgets take up too much space for your blog, then you can use a button instead, and it will activate your profile card when you click it or hover over it. There is also an email signature version of your profile card (mine is missing my avatar for the moment). There’s another feature where you can retaggr enable your site, this way other retaggr user avatars will appear in comments, and certain words in your posts will be hotlinked to retaggr information.

There are a few more features to check out like searching for other retaggr people.

Here’s my retaggr:

Here’s the mouse over button:

Here’s the clickable button:

EMAIL SIGNATURE

I just noticed that the bottom of the profile card widget has a link to get some embed code, and one is to your profile page on retaggr:

John Tropea

Moopz comes to the rescue for a concern I too have had about Friendfeed, and that is, fragmented conversations within Friendfeed itself.
The issue is that there may be conversations around multiples of the same item:

- just say my blog feed posts my latest item to Friendfeed (it’s a post about something I have on Slideshare)
- my latest Slideshare activity will post an item to Friendfeed as well
- and someone bookmarks that blog post or slidedeck URL on del.icio.us which then shows up on Friendfeed
- someone tweets about it, and that shows up on Friendfeed
- someone may even post directly into Friendfeed about the slidedeck

As you can see above there are 5 opportunities to initiate the same conversation about the same thing within Friendfeed, and the most thriving conversation may be around someone’s bookmarked item of your post, rather than around the feed item of your own post.

As Read Write Web point out, at the moment your re-syndicated blog post may not have any discussion in Friendfeed, but an A-lister who bookmarks your blog post will have lots of discussion around that item in Friendfeed.
This is a new dynamic as now people are becoming a hot spot, a community onto themselves, for not only their own content, but content of others.

Moopz plans to prevent this fragmentation from happening.

For starters it only displays content that has links, so you won’t see tweets saying “Good morning Twitter!”

If a new link that appears is already linked to in another Friendfeed item, then they will be merged (clustered together) preventing fragmented conversation from even happening.

Another good thing about this is that we don’t have to see duplicate items.

And each item is auto-tagged meaning you can browse conversations on a topic

I guess this is a memetracker of sorts based on clusterings, and what gets on the frontpage is decided as a result of people using the system. This makes it a more self organising version of Techmeme and Megite…and a more limited version as it’s only based on content that comes from the aggregate of user profiles.

Megite allows you to enter your OPML, and displays most popular and recommended posts from people you care about (rather than all items ranked), but it’s not a conversation platform. It also displays memes by topic.

At the moment Moopz only has a public timeline, hopefully soon it can be personalised to have a friends timeline.

Like Megite and Techmeme, Moopz will display popular memes based on links, but it doesn’t scour the web for these links and cluster them, instead it scours content people have re-syndicate into it’s own system…the former Memetrackers also use other methods like concept analysis (as two items may be about the same exact thing yet they both don’t point to a common link).
Moopz also has another aspect to popular memes, and that’s based on the amount of conversation that happens within Moopz (Friendfeed) itself.

More

Also checkout how Read Write Web and Louis Gray are incorporating Friendfeed comments back to their blog (the original source)…Read Write Web also allow posting to Friendfeed from within their blog.

Louis Gray has some great Friendfeed tips every Friday, the first one on the hide funtion is a great way to reduce the noise, and same with advanced search.

NoiseRiver (via LG)

Another way to filter the flow by a feature called “My Interests”, enabling you to use a drop down menu to filter in or out items containing a certain keyword, the filter choices are:
I love it so much!, I love it, I like it, This is nice, It’s OK, I don’t care, It stinks, This is bad, I don’t like it, I hate it, I hate it so much
There’s also a feature called “My Neighbourhood” to filter items from people on a similar filtering menu.
I also noticed:
- you can re-share an item (this posts it as a FF post)
- there is a reply icon next to each item and comment so your comment is pre-pended with that person name eg. @louis
- each item has auto-keywords (not sure why you can add/delete them, you can also filter rate these keywords as explained above)
- “hide all entries with this URL” is a manual way of doing what Moopz already does.

FeedMachine (via LG)

This brings an element of an RSS reader because you can mark read/unread

Friends view - contact list where you can choose a contact and click on a source icon and a box displays latest content from that source…it lacks latest content from all a person’s sources

Good Friends View - When you click on a profile it allows you to tick that person as a good friend, this will add them to your Good Friends section

Stream View - latest items from all friends
When you click on the info icon it loads the original item on the right and the FF comments on the left, where you can post a comment
- sort by: newsest, oldest, unread, user, service, item text, comments, most liked, least liked
- hide duplicates

Just like NoiseRiver and Moopz you filter out entries by keyword, as well as user, service, hide read items, and hide “@” items

Mio News (via LG)

This turns Friendfeed into an RSS Reader, kind of reminds me of Spokeo.

On your subscription pane you have an icon to see your FF stream (mark as read).
You also have an icon for each friend, clicking this will stream the latest from a friend (mark as read).
You can group friends into folders, click on a folder will show you the latest from just those friends in that folder (mark as read).

But, you can’t filter your whole stream, a folder stream, or one friend by service.

This has an MS Outlook feel, as when you click on an item you see the full-text on the 3rd pane, from here you can:
- mark as read, share on FF (also share to your blog, twitter, and email), comment, like, hate, goto native item

There also a bookmarklet and blog and Twitter integration.

Lastly there is a “Topics” feature where you list keywords (also organise in folders)
- clicking on a keyword will display all items from your friends about that keyword (not sure if it’s “about” or just the appearance of the keyword)

At the moment you can’t view rooms, or share an item to a room.

This could be a replacement for Google Reader, it would be good if you could manually adds feeds from non-FF people so I don’t need two RSS Readers.

Related:
FriendFeed Rooms : Interactive topic streams
Friendfeed : social filter conversations

Friendfeed have joined other lifestream services, onaswarm and Mugshot, in adding a groups to their feature set called Rooms.

Set up a public, semi-public (non members can read and comment) or private room where people can post messages and links and comments…this is something Twitter has avoided so far.

If you are member of multiple rooms you can see all content in your “all my rooms” stream.
You can also check a box so the content of a room also appears on your main friendfeed page (this saves you from having to add a Rooms feed to your main page…actually what is my main page, it must be my friends page)

This “Rooms” feature is moving away from the lifestream mainstay, is basically sharing messages and links with a group. This is different than on-the-fly tags (hash tags, Jaiku Channels), with Rooms you actually have to join, perhaps get to know the members…more of a community (I don’t know about that when the numbers get too high).

Rooms also streams feed content…an idea would be to have an option for 2 streams in a Room, one for links and messages, and one for external feed stuff.

The external feed stream makes Rooms powerful as it can be used as a topic stream as well as interactive manual submitting of links, text and comments.

Mugshot and Ziki are a similar group lifestream concept, whereas FriendFeed Rooms don’t stream the lifestream of its members into one stream, it’s purely just a place for a group of people to share text, links and discuss. Just the same Mugshot Groups allow you to submit messages and links and comments, group chat, and even chat around an item…as well as stream external feeds.

Steve Rubel is using a private Room to save links and notes…kind of a read later stream, or even a link blog/stream like del.icio.us and Google Reader Shared Items.

BTW - I finally found a mobile version of FriendFeed.

The FriendFeed Apps page has some interesting hacks that increasingly makes it an alternative to Google Reader:
- read later
- creating group streams (above I mentioned that Mugshot and Ziki have group streams, well this is a similar thing…I guess it’s like grouping people in folders and displaying a folder stream)
- filter by service
- remove visited links
- Twitter enhancements

Related:

Friendfeed : social filter conversations

[ADDED 7/7/08: 13 FriendFeed Tools for Twitter Refugees]