FriendFeed

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.