FriendFeed vs. Facebook

Guest post by Chris Rodgers – @wizardElite

First off I have to say that I really love the concept behind FriendFeed. Having a place where a user can aggregate all of the content they consume from a host of other sites is quite functional. Plus, with the integration of a Social Network, users get to see content that their friends/connections find valuable and interesting. This provides a tremendous value since users can search for content that they friends find relevant and not have some arbitrary search engine tell us what they think is relevant. This also provides an amazing opportunity in the search arena that could potentially provide competition to sites like Digg, or even Google for that matter.Yet, there is one major flaw to FriendFeed that prevents me from really using the site to it’s fullest potential, User Interface is inaccessible. When I scroll through all of the posts in FriendFeed everything blends together. It’s a huge challenge to sort through the variety of posts and determine who the message if from and what the message is actually saying.

What’s even more frustating is reading thru the comments. Comments on a post are greyed out which again blends together and makes it nearly impossible to read. This especially reigns true if a message is really popular and there are a ton of comments to sort through.

Another thing that I find frustating with FriendFeed is that I can’t or haven’t figured out a way to filter out certain pieces of content that I do not want to see. This increases the noise factor and makes it harder for me to find the content that I want to see.

This is why I don’t use FriendFeed as much as I would like to.

Recently Facebook did a major revamp of their user interface. All of the major tech outlets said that this was a in response to the major attention that Twitter is getting. That might be the case; however in my opinion I think the Facebook redesign is a direct response to FriendFeed.

The biggest change in Facebook is thier News Feeds section where I spend most of my time on. Browsing through the NewsFeed section is much better user experience then what FriendFeed provides. There is enough contrast with each post that I have the ability to tell who the post is from and what’s contained in each message. I have the option to Comment or mark that I Like the post as well. Which is quite similar to what FriendFeed provides.

I also really love the way how Facebook implemented Comments. Each time a comment is made on a particular post it indents the comments in a blue box and separates them off in it’s own section. This makes the comments much, much easier to read and helps you clarify the message that I might want to say.

Another plus that Facebook has done is with the left-hand sidebar. This bar is reserved for certain pieces of content that I want to filter though. I can filter though photos, videos, or even through FriendFeed posts. Which I have to say is 100 times better than their own site. At least I can sort through and actually read the posts that are coming from FriendFeed in Facebook.

This is why I’ve been using Facebook a lot more and will probably use it as my main social network along with Twitter.

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Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 4:14 pm • Category: Social Network • Trackback

Crisatunity

I gave up on FriendFeed a long time ago because of the interface. I would expect that you will receive a tremendous amount of grief for daring to say what had to be said. The FriendFiends are quite vociferous.

nrek

FriendFeed is pretty difficult to navigate and filter. There are Lists and Rooms for seperating content, but all in all, it is way too easy to get too much info, and that kind of UI flubbing will keep FriendFeed from going mainstream. Facebook's new interface is way too darn busy, but the news feed section and left panel on the home page was a great move.

The likeness Facebook's new features has to Twitter and FriendFeed alike shows that they are apying attention at least, now if they can just unclutter the mess they have on the right of the homepage/news feed... all the better.

wizardelite

Looking back, I remember a time when FriendFeed first arrived to the scene. Twitter was having major stability issues and everybody from people like Robert Scoble was claiming that Twitter is dead and that Friendfeed was the new player in town.

Moving to present day we see that Twitter and Facebook are more popular than ever and Friendfeed remains in the realm of the early adopters and high level bloggers/social media purists. Why? Because Friendfeed is to hard to use while the others are simple and intuitive to use.

I hope I get heat for my critiques for what I have to say about Friendfeed. Then maybe we can see these companies actually create a decent product. Guess we have to wait till Monday to see.

jangeronimo

I find your observations about the readability of friendfeed comments true. The interface in Facebook is much easier to navigate. What do use friendfeed for? It's aggregating my activities in all the social media I've subscribed to. But that's just about it. At least for now.

wizardelite

Not only do I use FriendFeed to aggregate my content but I wanted to use it as a way to find interesting and relevant content from other users that share my same interests. Yet with the poor implementation of the user interface, it is an impossible task to accomplish.

Great ideas are a dime a dozen these days. What's vital is execution and if you can't successfully execute your idea it will never truly get off the ground.

I find it intriguing that shortly after this post Robert Scoble announced that FriendFeed is supposed to release a new user interface this coming Monday. I can only hope that FriendFeed realizes the key issues with their site and they make the appropriate corrections.

Expect a follow up post once I've had a chance to try out Friendfeed's redesign.

Sociosophy