Scripting News - Latest Comments in The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

JMaultasch — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:12:55 -0000

Just posted to Twitter a question for Dave - does his search for this in between solution get solved by the newest evolution of Facebook which handles multimedia and pushes it closer to twitter? I think the new Facebook may be the easy, mainstream solve for users who want more multimedia than Twitter can handle.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Frank Da Silva — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 09:10:53 -0000

Interesting :: I'll have a close look! Check out also: http://www.soup.io

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Guest — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:54:48 -0000

Interesting comparison.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Costa — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:07:13 -0000

This post got me thinking that you could do a lot of what you're describing with a Twitter client. You could follow any links that come through Twitter, and for things like images, videos and music embed the content directly in the client, similar to Friendfeed. Other links could at least show the page's title and URL (after redirects).

Another important bit to Friendfeed is the way it nests conversations. I know with Twitter I always feel like I'm missing context when it comes to replies, and the only solution is to keep clicking those "in reply to" links. So another important part would be to show "in reply to" messages right above replies.

I've actually started working on this as a project called Tweetree, and an initial working release is up at tweetree.com. I think there's a lot of potential to create a rich, graphical interface to the Twitter backend, using the FF model you've described here.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

uwe999 — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:13:32 -0000

great comparison!

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

avs — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:56:18 -0000

with very less knowledge .... can Tumblr fill up the vacuum created by both Twitter & FriendFeed
e.g. www.tinyurl.com/breadcrumbz

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Pierre Henri Clouin — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:05:55 -0000

The command line analogy is a great analogy for twitter.

twitter's versatility has pushed its usage beyond status updates and into sharing, even though it is not as full-featured as richer specialized platforms (e.g. delicious or diigo for bookmarks, flickr for pictures, etc.).

FriendFeed brilliantly aggregates all of these online activities in one place/one feed. There will come a time when they will bring to market a tweetdeck-type lifestreaming filter that makes sense of it all.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

VincentWright — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:03:55 -0000

By their DM's to me, some seem to be suggesting that Utterz may be the "space between Twitter and Friendfeed". Either way: this post is quite helpful... Thanks, and Keep STRONG, Dave!!

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Carter Rabasa — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:20:06 -0000

Dave, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at this: http://twitter2ff.appspot.com

It's a webapp that sync contacts between Twitter and FF. It's written in Python and deployed on Google's AppEngine. As a user of both services, I think you'd find it useful.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Patrick — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:02:17 -0000

Hi Dave, it's been a long time since I commented on a post here, but that's only because I didn't have anything quite as relevant as ffwd to share. The resolution of the Twitter and Friendfeed divide may not come from be a competitive service, but "applications" that make their core services more useful and accessible. As iLike makes social graphs a means for promoting and discovering music, ffwd makes time lines (on Twitter and FriendFeed to start) a means for realtime sharing and viewing of videos (http://blog.ffwd.com/?p=89). Posts made using ffwd are evidently video (regardless of graphics) because of the human readable URL, but the neat part is that clicking on the URL pivots to a dedicated view of all videos related to that person, what one of our users called "Twitter TV". There is an enormous accessibility opportunity in extracting one media type out of the timeline and coherently presenting it, which some enterprising folks will soon attempt in music and still images too. Or if they don't, maybe ffwd will ;)

p.s. - shameless plea: please vote for us to carry on the YouTube revolution in the Open Web Awards (http://blog.ffwd.com/?p=100)

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Jeff Brunelle — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:33:45 -0000

I use Tumblr's dashboard all the time, but I don't follow many people so it's very easy to keep track of what's going on in my own little world. The current dashboard leaves a lot of space in between posts, causing users to scroll a lot in order to view very little. Essentially, if I were following 40+ other Tumblr users, my dashboard would be a mess and it'd be a pain in the butt to follow anyone. If Tumblr can fix this, I think they might be on to something. As is, Tumblr is focused more on the individual doing the posting than on the users following that person. Twitter and FriendFeed are very much the opposite. IMO, if Tumblr can figure out how to integrate a twitter-esque interface with the personal blogging features it already provides, they'd be one giant step closer to filling the gap DW is addressing.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Carlos Granier — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:42:05 -0000

I see two quick ways to create a more graphical twitter:

1. A twitter client (twhirl, tweetdeck, etc) that interprets each incoming link and displays it appropriately, using the client's cpu and connection.

2. A greasemonkey script that does the same for the web client, perhaps using an IFRAME control or some more elaborate logic to inject the resulting object into the web client's twitterstream.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Rahsheen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:46:39 -0000

Good post, Dave. There is a middle-ground between Twitter and FriendFeed. I believe that Rejaw sits in that space. The interface auto-updates, you can embed media with simple links, you can send direct messages to and individual or a group. Of course, there are things it does that you don't want it to do :)

The fact that you want a richer interface without the conversation features is kind of odd to me, as conversation on Twitter is pretty much ridiculous. You guys are all used to how Twitter works, though. Your friends are there. Digging through a stream of unconnected "tweets" to follow a conversation is ok, I guess. I prefer the conversation to all be in one place around the discussion piece, though. Kinda like how this post is set up.

Another thing I think we're forgetting is that Twitter can't handle anything else. Did they bring track back yet? What about IM? Did they just shut down SMS in some areas? I really don't see them implementing any type of embedded media because I don't think they can afford the load and I don't think it would translate well for the average user, who is used to basically passing text messages back and forth.

For those who insist on directly comparing Twitter and FriendFeed. Please stop. It's apples and oranges. The x-factor being the threaded conversations. As Dave points out, this is a deal-breaker for him and I'm sure it's the reason others find FriendFeed to be "too much".

If you delete all the conversation threads, convert all images and media to links, and truncate all the posts to 140 chars, FriendFeed would look a lot more familiar to tweeters, but what fun would it be then?

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

packtdavidb — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:40:48 -0000

I don't know. Does anybody use the "dashboard" view in Tumblr? I use Tumblr as a blog tool, and I assume that most readers see the whole blog. With Twitter I assume every reader sees my Tweets mixed in with all their other friends. This feels like a big difference.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

packtdavidb — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:38:59 -0000

Macintosh never did kick MS DOS's ass, and it hasn't yet kicked Windows' ass. It's better than Windows, but that isn't the same thing. I was better than many of the other kids at school. They kicked my ass.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

tobiasverhoog — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:00:32 -0000

Some mobile twitter apps or websites add the images from services like mobypicture and twitpic. I know m.slandr.net and m.twitstat.com. I think that might be a beginning to what you are proposing. Just adding the media files to our twitterstream. I've been looking for a desktop application for twitter that does the same, but haven't found one yet.

I would guess there's a space for such a service or upgrade to twitter, but I am happy with Friendfeed right now.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

dave — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:45:37 -0000

I saw it -- pretty snarky!

An 8.6 on the Snark-tor scale.. :-)

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Scobleizer — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:33:23 -0000

I riffed on your comment and this post here: http://scobleizer.com/2008/...

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

rod — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:56:42 -0000

Twitter's beauty is its simplicity. It is supremely effective at communicating nuggets or links to larger chunks of information. I don't have time for FF. With Twitter I can scan my groups, quickly get to info that interests me, and move on. Please @twitter, if you make your UI more G, remember the time-poor information junky... :)

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Peter Huesken — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:57:56 -0000

You mean something (more or less ?) like: http://whoisi.com/

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Adam — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:46:44 -0000

I respectfully disagree. I think the only reason why Twitter is more popular is that, well, it was first. Network effect. People want to be where their friends are, where more action is. In many ways, that's Twitter. If you swapped only one thing -- the number of active users on the services -- I could almost guarantee you that FriendFeed would take off like gangbusters and Twitter would falter.

In other words, I don't think it's about simplicity at all. I've invited non-techie/non-geeky friends to both Twitter and Friendfeed, and I haven't heard once "Oh, but Friendfeed is confusing! Too many options!" Nope. If anything, Twitter's limitations IMHO tend to be *more* frustrating and confusing than Friendfeed's.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

Mark Trapp — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:33:32 -0000

Have you looked at ShoutEm? Lets you roll your own micro-blogging community and lets you set up your own parameters, like message length, whether you can attach links or images, and other options. Found it at: http://www.webappers.com/20... ShoutEm can be found at: http://www.shoutem.com/

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

narendra — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:04:35 -0000

Dave, we implemented the embedded stuff with a Firefox PowerTwitter plugin a long while back (early in 2007). We have a new version about to come out that lets you search on the regular twitter web page and search within user pages. The upgrade should be out tues/weds.

https://addons.mozilla.org/...

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

grvaughan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:57:54 -0000

Tend to agree. FriendFeed is going in too many directions at once to be useful for me the way Twitter is. Maybe Robert Scoble is right that it's something to build custom news/etc. feeds on. This is useful, too, but the simplicity of Twitter is really appealing to me because I can use it while I'm doing something else & so keep it "tuned in" like the radio most of the day.

So I hope that we'll see an enhanced Twitter that fills in this middle ground. The addition of graphics would certainly be welcome, I can't see why that would harm the simplicity of Twitter. It's the discussion features of FF that get it started going off in too many directions from me to keep up with it.

Re: The space between Twitter and FriendFeed (Scripting News)

zota — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:54:38 -0000

First of all, I think you have your polarity reversed. FriendFeed is feels a lot more like a byzantine command line while Twitter feels more like a simple GUI. By your own argument, you seem to have spelled out the pending demise of FriendFeed.

And since you've already brought up PC vs Mac, let me suggest another religious comparison: FriendFeed is like Drupal, and Twitter is like Wordpress. While FriendFeed users rant about the power and flexibility of their awesome theoretical framework, Twitter does it's job in a clear, straightforward manner, and everybody ends up using it.