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Sunday
Oct112009
Posterous Catches Friendfeed
Young Urban ProfessionalData via trends.google.com
Since it was acquired, I have basically abandoned Friendfeed. I love the service, but I am waiting to see how the team integrates it into Facebook.
Unsurprisingly, traffic to the Friendfeed site has plummeted since the acquisition in August. And Posterous now has nearly as much traffic (Posterous is the red line above), but trails Tumblr by a wide margin and Twitter by light years.
What does this say about the future of lifestreaming services? I still see a big space in between in between blogs and Twitter that allows you to have a hub and spoke strategy and post in multiple formats. That's one reason I am bullish about both Posterous and Tumblr.
Reader Comments (48)
Yup, I've been visiting a lot less too. I want a curation system that lets me explain what I'm seeing roaring by on Twitter and other aggregators like Google Reader and share it in a place that looks like Posterous or Tumblr. Sorry, Posterous and Tumblr are NOT replacements for the activity that we were practicing on FriendFeed.
@Robert totally agree - it's more about publishing then curating/aggregating. I believe smart search tools will provide what you're looking for and that these will come from Facebook or Google or both.
I am really digging Posterous! Its really easy to post any information and even integrate it with your own blog via custom domain. Wasn't really a fan of FriendFeed anyway. Hope Facebook gives that service a new lease of life!
I can explain Posterous to my NON techie friends and they get it. Twitter not as much. FriendFeed not a chance.
I think that the problem with Friendfeed is that it's not smart enough. I want more than just a free-fall of information and updates from the people I'm subscribed to. I want to see what's hot, what's going on.Aggregation is key. Let's say you post a blog post, it gets commented on, retweeted, tweeted about, blogged about; Friendfeeds needs a way of aggregating all those different points of discussion into one coherent stream as well as letting new content from new users 'bubble up' into the mix.
Bryce: FriendFeed wasn't smart enough in the right areas. And Google Wave has the same troubles. What I want is a curation system. One where I can watch the river going by, like I do with Tweetie 2.0 and one where I can then favorite, comment on, and publish those items (and not just Tweets, either).The problem with FriendFeed is that it forced us to have a comment area underneath EVERY item, which made the UI complex, especially when compared to Twitter, and made the noise level go way up.The other problem is that the search on FriendFeed, while world's better than Twitter, didn't go far enough. It was almost there.The other problem with FriendFeed is that we couldn't build a personal brand there. Until after Facebook bought it, we couldn't even put a picture on our own page. Even Twitter lets us do this and it's a key feature for why businesses and celebrities took to Twitter.I see a potential for a new kind of curation app. Posterous isn't it. Posterous isn't an aggregator, either, and it's not a place where I can have a conversation with a community the way that I can on Twitter and/or FriendFeed. But it is nice for doing something that looks a lot to me like a blog.
totally agreed SteveAm almost at a stage where I will move my main blog to Posterous.Still worried about handing my content to posterous though, what happens with an acquisition,etc?
@Pat, their API supports exporting. @Robert as more users sign up for Posterous I found their reader to become a great source of valuable content - though it's not the solution you're seeking. http://posterous.com/reader/
Robert: I guess that's an area where there are two sets of distinct user types.You prefer the "river" of items, tweets, blog posts, photos, videos to just stream down and you can pick out the ones you like to send to your own spaces across the internet and add your own information too. You can afford to do that, you have the time.I don't have the time to sit and watch a stream hoping to find something interesting, rather, I want to see what's happened and what the important and interesting items are. In a way, you could say I rely on users like yourself to pick out interesting items that I mix with other users to create a filtered and aggregated stream.
I have moved my blog to Posterous (on my own domain), without concern for the service's future -- for two reasons.1. It's a blog, so unlike FriendFeed I can reproduce whatever community features Posterous has in case of acquisition with Wordpress, etc.2. Between autopost and Posterous' API, it's not hard to get content out of the service -- should we need to.While I wouldn't call Posterous a lifestream (sorry, Steve), email posting makes it + Instapaper on the phone the closest thing to Robert's curation system I know. For a blog, anyway.
Bryce: exactly, which is why I need a curation app. One that lets me build a page of what happened in the past few minutes in a way that people like you can read up on. Techmeme is an extreme form, though, of what you're talking about.
Norbert: Dave McClure knows what he's talking about. He's right.
We use posterous for publishing and friendfeed to aggregate. Two different approaches.
I'm still trying to figure out why I would use Friendfeed over Twitter (not that you can only use one of 'em). The interaction seems superior on Twitter
Chris: interaction is way better on FriendFeed. Twitter is simpler, has way more clients, etc but FriendFeed is built for aggregating lots of data sources in and having conversations about things in live mode. Search engine on FriendFeed is better too, but it is all for naught. FriendFeed isn't being worked on anymore -- the engineers have been moved to Facebook.
Robert! Thanks for the response - I know you're a ginormous fan of Friendfeed. I understand the aggregation part - I have not personally have alot of success interacting with others on Friendfeed. On Twitter, I've made very close eFriends and engaged on any number of subjects. I can't seem to get in the flow on Friendfeed. Hopefully, some of those Friendfeed engineers can make Facebook a little less clunky - too many errors these days. Plus my mother-in-law just joined.
Pat's Posterous blog has me almost convinced to switch too. The thing is that with microblogging and its instant gratification of our information addictions most of us have turned our backs on [macro]blogging (both reading and writing). It's not surprising either as digesting let alone constructing a decent post takes a lot of time and energy.While there remains a place for both 140 character microblogging and 1000+ word [macro]blogging, I believe there is a middle ground that sites like Tumblr and Posterous fill: miniblogging. That is, those ~500 word "incomplete thoughts" that are better shared than kept secret but which are too big for a tweet and too small for a full fledged article.Sam
Chris, I'm finding almost exactly the same thing you are with Twitter and FriendFeed. Like you, I'm not finding any movement of the great engagement I've found on Twitter to FriendFeed in spite of a good number of those with whom I engage on Twitter being on FF. I can see great potential for FF being something more than an aggregator of social media feeds, but it seems like making FF something more than an aggregator is an uphill struggle. The bottom line in my case is that Twitter's still where most of the action is.
Posterous has the advantage of numbers, because everyone gets e-mail. I can go up to anyone and explain what Posterous does and they get it, because they get e-mail. For people who are interested in something like a blog, Posterous makes a bunch of sense because to capture interface makes a lot of sense to them. I try to make it to FF at least 2 - 3 times per week. I used to go every day.
Now that is interesting - I didn't even realise you can comment by email (as I am now).Sam
FriendFeed just never stuck with me too much fiddle factor. Posterous's drop dead simplicity make it useful to me and also I can see it being useful to my dad, a man who is just now starting understand email. I think what is missing in a lot of these apps is a consideration for the wider world. If your app requires a Valley zip code to understand, you haven't done a very good job. Posterous will hockey stick because it gets the wider world and lets the user work from the first interaction instead of spending time learning the UI. If only I could say the same for Google Wave! The invite was so exciting and the product so confusing.
I've never had a problem with using FriendFeed. I wasn't too keen on the fluid streaming when it switched but I'd not want to go back to a static one anymore.I really like Posterous, as although I have self hosted blogs, it's just so easy to forward emails I get to it, and then get them to autopost forward to my own blogs too. OK, it's a lazy way to blog, but so what? It saves time too, and I can always edit before or after posting.I don't use FriendFeed as much as I used to lately, but that's as much as being busier lately, and having less time, than anything else.
Twitter started me on the road to blogging, now 140 characters isn't enough. Posterous is amazing. Embedding video, sizing photos. cool design. Crazy easy to use. What's not to love. I read Armano used it as a collaboration tool when he was in Australia. I may try it on my next project instead of basecamp.
friendfeed is lists of opinions and comments, not really communication ..so far, a true holistic communication service has not been invented
Besides the fact that I agree with the notion that there is a gap between something like Twitter and something like a Wordpress blog (which is why I initially started using Posterous) there is the added feature of being able to interact (1) mobile and/or (2) via email-only. This interests me specifically with regard to "Government 2.0" because many government agencies block URLs like Twitter.com, Facebook.com, and so forth. Here's a way that in theory people could produce online content in near-real-time from their official emails and MS Outlook (which is typically what's used). No doubt this is applicable to Edelman clients and many other large companies.