Watching the service mature, change, experiment and react to suggestions by users has been not only fascinating ..... but I've always felt just a preview of the 'next big thing'.
While I'm the first to admit I've never taken the time to truly leverage Friendfeed's capabilities like Robert Scoble, Louis Gray and others have (particularly lists), those of us that have watched Friendfeed evolve and participated as possible, easily saw the potential of what these ex-Googlers were doing.
The one thing Friendfeed still lacks is a guide of sorts for new users. The feature set is not yet obvious despite numerous changes. (I have been asked by lots of people why I'm so loyal to Friendfeed. The reason they ask is that if you just stumble across it, you can engage, learn, even have some fun .... but you won't really realize what it can do).
Factually, in the past year, some of my best (and profitable) business contacts have been made on Friendfeed.
Earlier in the week, Friendfeed added a few themes. It had to be a teaser, although I like the Helvetica theme a lot:
This morning, Friendfeed which is already real time with no limits on followers, unleashed Friendfeed Real Time search.
This is more than gravy. This is back to ' Friedfeed month one'. It's a whole new ball game.
Example (hat-tip Louis Gray):
This is my current Friendfeed:
If you're currently logged in to Friendfeed, you can literally access it right from here. There's no denying it. This is HUGE (and updating in Real-Time!).
Get lost? Type in a couple of letters to Friendfeed's new search box and locate your groups, follows and more .... in seconds.
Then came a suggestion by Googler Matt Cutts:
It was implemented in less than a couple of hours (and yes, you can embed someone's else's stuff in your blog too .... :)
The reality (that Scoble, Gray, more recently Leo Laporte and others) have been trying to drive home is that if you take the time to set up Friendfeed to your own taste (including over 50 online services, most with import and export) you can have discussions, get serious, have some fun, or network the way networking should be.
Do yourself a favor and head over to the newly-updated (again!) Friendfeed.
Join in ..... or just find out more on the 'FriendBlog' here.
Just try not to get addicted ... like I did all over again tonight :)