Twitter competitor FriendFeed launched a new beta user interface yesterday. From the little I’ve seen of it, it certainly is a big improvement. With real time updates from all of your friends on all that they’re doing, FriendFeed is a pretty cool way to stay in touch.
I’m not a FriendFeed user, however. Not in any real sense of the word. Oh yes, my Twitter postings are echoed to FriendFeed, and occasionally I respond there, but Twitter is where I hang out. Most of what I need is there, or has been supplied by third parties for me. RealTime updates, for example, are handled by TweetDeck. Searches? TweetDeck.
So when Mike Arrington writes that FriendFeed is in danger of becoming the coolest app no one uses, it’s hard to disagree with him. FriendFeed’s problem is that the cool new things it does aren’t enough of a differentiation to shift the masses of twitter users, especially given the momentum that Twitter currently has. I’d add one more item to Mike’s analysis – Twitter’s API, as simple as it is, is the coup de grace. The developer community around Twitter is phenomenal, and FriendFeed simply doesn’t have that kind of support.
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Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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Hey Alec — great post. Re the API, I imagine Calliflower has some plans to integrate twitter into its app?
Do tell!
Already have Gillian, already have! Check out the "Tweet This" button in Calliflower today.
thats great that you are talking about the twitter api,a good example of searching with the twitter api is on twiogle.com because you can search on twitter and google at the same time.
Twitter Search — your google custom search pane totally wipes out the twitter results when viewed in Chrome. I think you have some testing to do on various browsers.