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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)
WOW this is the best post and comments I've seen on Posterous yet; not surprising it's on Steve's posterous - how fitting!I am a huge fan of Friendfeed and now Posterous. I joined Posterous last year, but didn't use it much until they adding the uber-simple auto-posting features...wow, so awesome! So really, Friendfeed is a massive aggregator and Posterous is a massive blaster (broadcaster) of information - feeds other feeds, interesting to say the least.I've been tempted to do what Steve has done, i.e. abandon my self-hosted WP blog, and use only Posterous, but I think it's lacking the ability to tie in other services I'd like to use. So I would be loosing some cool blog features / functionality, but gaining tons of ease and simpification of blog admin (plus, posterous is free - for now, anyway). A provactive argument here.I think Posterous is disruptive and highly valuable as the layman can easily understand and quickly make use of it's features vs. complicated blog admin.
Better yet, check out Twitter vs. CNN and then think social media future: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=cnn.com%2C+twitter.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
I'm still a dedicated user of FriendFeed as well as Twitter. It's still obvious that FF's the best at what it does; I've tried other services (Streamy, Social Median), but they still don't compare. I think Posterous is the perfect complement.As for blogging, when I started with Posterous, I thought it might end up replacing my main blog (http://thespacehelmetshow.blogspot.com). But it now occupies a niche of its own among my blogs: It now complements my main blog; it's for the shorter entries I write (I post my longer entries on my main blog now), and it's easy to share articles, pictures, music, and videos using the bookmarklet. So my Posterous blog has found its place in my Internet presence. And yes, for me it's mainly a blog platform intermediate between Twitter and Blogger.
I forgot to mention how much I love the ability to post to my Posterous blog via email. Even so, I can do that with my Blogger blogs as well, even though I don't.
Posterous is great, and I've been using it to autopost to my old blog (www.sumolabs.com).I find that posterous has made blogging fun again. A true "lifestream" if you want to use Steve's terminology :)
Good points made by all, the issue is still up for grabs, as Robert already mentioned a little while back with his "curation" post on here. FriendFeed had massive potential, but I agree that it was mostly still too much work/too cumbersome to get it to work for meaningful use cases. It's like their team somehow forgot about deciding what FF was really supposed to for...FF Search is very powerful and has pointed in the right direction for all to follow (missing mainly only time-based search operators), and even now is still the best way to archive your and your core "Following" (i.e. those that got onto FF and/or you hand imported) Twitter stream, the only fly in the ointment is the idea that it could all be turned off someday (let's hope that never happens).
Yeah ff is seeing decline but it's a great thing and should be used well. i don't think posterous can replace ff, though posterous is a great service in itself...ff search is good but they need to implement advanced search features and filters, and it would be good if we have streams of best of day,week,month too, friendfeed is great but mostly people now days are using it to integrate their stuff only, miss the real time conversation on ff, hope facebook doesn't let it just disappear, most of the people at ff have their twitter accounts integrated so instead of conversation/posts at ff, most of the things are the ones imported from twitter, and @ replies doesn't make sense sometimes till you trace them back...love ff and posterous...
What killed FriendFeed for me was too many people with too much time trying to gain too much attention, and not enough smart people looking for an interesting discussion. I'd have to trawl through the crap to get to the good stuff. Now I mainly use FF to view photographs.
I get life streaming and aggregation but think them a bit like fruit cocktail: no distinct fruit flavor, just a syrupy taste. We all have our art and sometimes that art doesn’t translate across media. You might think me funny on Twitter, but a pedant on my marketing blog. Were I to post artless videos and pictures or fill my space with where I’m drinking coffee, my stream (sorry urologists) wouldn’t compel. Fruit cocktail. But if you like my wit, follow me on Twitter. If you think my marketing musings not 3/4s bad, tune in to the blog. Social media should remain “separate but compelling.”
Friendfeed still entices me to pop by at least once per day--sometimes I peek in via Facebook. And if "Posterous Catches Friendfeed", well for me, Friendfeed Caches Posterous. Really, a Posterous Friendfeed marriage could create more of a lifestream reality.And the trouble with Friendfeed: not enough Scobles. The earlier adopters are cliquey, basically ruining the essence of Friendfeed while perpetrating that their contributions are making Freindfeed great. I've done a lot of listening, though, and only a pioneering few like @Robert will actually engage and truly network. Others are just publicly acting like middle schoolers. Which is like so last decade.
Eric, that is so true. I subscribe to a ton of folks on FF - my "best of Friendfeed" email that I get.... it's all Scoble. Robert Scoble rules, but you are right - FF needs more people like him
I guess for full disclosure I should mention that I'm a documented Scoble fan: http://bit.ly/HuiGB -- but I'm not some pal of his who toots is horn, I admire his web presence and consider him a thought leader. And, bottom line, he responds when so many others ignore.
If you are looking for a true 'hub and spoke' service that integrates Tumblr and Posterous seamlessly for lifestreaming, please consider checking out: http://flavors.me
FF is still there and still operates the same. I guess I don't get why people are using it less. Sour grapes to FB? Still no real substitute for FF functionality.
Steve, solid, succinct. Agreed. Further, between Posterous' auto post feature to Tumblr and Seesmic/Tweetdecks search column for "tumblarity" It's reallllllly easy to form grass roots content syndicates.So @Dan Perlman, No Need for FF.@scobelizer, i'd say its only a matter of time before Posterous/Tumblr fully replace FF... the content producers LIKE YOURSELF are migrating.
Very cool, I have been using Posterous for a while. The main functionality is there and works great but they are still lacking some features that would add a lot.
I think we're missing the real story a bit here: Facebook has no intention of growing FriendFeed. Facebook is building an email client to integrate with the rest of the site and they wanted Paul Bucheit, who built Gmail.
Friendfeed was better before the redesign and before the acquisition. The platform was terrific for some things (still is) but fails in other ways. Easiest platform for monitoring, searching and participating in open conversations.
I never used Friendfeed so cannot comment on that but do believe that Posterous and Tumblr are filling a gap, I have to say though that Tumblr feels a little noisy and based upon people linking to each others stuff a little too much and not enough original content, Posterous still has time to grow into a 'lifestream' - I believe worth sticking with.
clicking on those tumblr and twitter links tells the whole story. you guys are talking about the wrong two services. but i'm biased.
curation, curation, curation - mentioned several times already, but ability for easy lifestream/activity stream curation is the only way for me to be the information filter in my topics of expertise. In this way I am still able to have random ramblings on the services I use and not worry they'll be out of place in my public/business activity stream vs. my personal/private activity stream. For example, I have 3 different Posterous blogs but creating, mapping & managing the streams of content into different homes for different purposes is time consuming and, while I do it, I'm a geek and by no means representative of the average user who needs this!
Somehow, this makes my forgetful neglect of FriendFeed "rooms" feel a bit more justified. Like others, I tend to use FriendFeed as a news aggregator rather than an active posting venue. Posterous, on the other hand, does fit a neat middle ground between full-blown blog and Twitter. No surprise the stats are on such a steep upward curve.
Steve, Robert, Rebecca, and all - very interesting conversation. For me Posterous has become my blogging tool because it gives me the ability to focus on content without spending abundant cycles to produce the information. I find it also provides the clean look and high quality images I desire. Boutin of The NYTimes just wrote, "Sharing Online With More Than 140 Characters, which speaks of the growth of Tumblr and Posterous. http://nyti.ms/auMJEXPersonally, I do not see these services as substitutes for say a twitter but more ways to share, engage and blog concurrently.I totally agree with you all about FriendFeed and that makes me sad. Let's hope that others learn from such a take over.