It's no secret that I was somewhat early on the scene as a user of Friendfeed, and like many others. including Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Susan Beebe, Mike Fruchter, and Mike Reynolds (and many, many others), I have been a strong advocate of using the tools in the cutting edge web community. My stream continues to appear, as always, to the lower right on this blog (and others that I write or participate in).
In recent weeks, I have been concerned about newcomers to the service being 'confused on arrival', simply because of the exponential growth of Friendfeed.
Who do I follow? What room should I join? Should I block someone? What is re-share?
Where once there was a small community and literally no learning curve, there is now a lot of new people rapidly discovering what many of us have.
It is the only service of it's kind that gives you complete control with little if any need for moderators.
Over the past week, while on the road exploring my own personal 'next big thing', I spoke with many in the 'social networking' crowd that said straight out, "I haven't had time to learn it yet", confirming my concerns.
The 'intimidation factor' had arrived, despite the fact that the Friendfeed crew has continuously added numerous new features to separate comment streams, discover others' conversations, and engage new people in a way that very simply, no other community does.
There's an unrivaled sense of community at Friendfeed that, in my opinion, can only be compared to meeting people face to face. That sentiment was echoed by other existing users in my recent travels as well.
Earlier today, the Friendfeed team, which has already proposed new standards for importing and retrieving RSS feeds and more, added yet another standard dubbed 'long polling' The timing was GREAT as Friendfeed typically heats up, just after a Presidential debate.
The new feature, described by Casey a short time ago on the Friendfeed blog, addresses a concern expressed by many Friendfeed users .... wearing out their F5 key or, hitting 'refresh' every few minutes, to see the latest comments.
The new live stream, or 'Friendfeed real-time' test is here.
How was it during the debate? Like it always is when politics come up. Crazy! ... but interesting and thought provoking.
I've said it before. It's all about the dialog, as the Internet (and the world's economy) continue to move into unchartered territory.
Friendfeed makes it easy (sometimes too easy :) to comment, but unlike other services, you can delete a previous comment... should you wake up the next day and think "Maybe I shouldn't have reacted like that".
I've made more important contacts and people on Friendfeed than any other service since arriving on the Internet scene in it's very early stages on 1995. Many of those friendships turned to 'true' friendships as well as business relationships. It just works.
If you haven't already, I urge you to join the conversation.
Log in. Sign up.
If you're lost or have any questions, simply post them.
My guess is the active Friendfeed community will answer them quickly in a matter of minutes, or now, in real-time ! :)
Kudos to the Friendfeed crew once again.
Charlie