So, I launched this blog and then haven’t updated it in days. Trust me, I’ve been writing: I’ve seven drafts not including this one—most of which are nearly complete—to prove it. I’m just being hypercritical and, honestly, a little nervous. I feel like there are a lot of eyes on me eye and that puts up a lot of expectation. On FriendFeed, it’s easy to just be goofy and not really worry about it but, now, on this site, I suppose I’m trying to create a brand and, well, that’s fairly nerve-wracking. But is that really what’s making me nervous?
I started this thing right before FriendFeed sold out towas bought by Facebook. Thus, like many of us, I was working under the assumption that I’d have this safety net beneath me at all times. Now that safety net is slowly unravelling. However, as nervous as it makes me (I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to start a blog with a built-in and rather captive audience of 1,200 people?), I’m also beginning to think that this is a good thing. Not a good thing for the community of FriendFeed, of course, but a good thing for the future of social media as a whole.
Welp, It’s Time to Diversify Your Social Networking Portfolio!
A lot of people, myself included, have been on FriendFeed discussing the possibility that the time is right for decentralized social networking and that the Imminent Death of FriendFeed (Deodato-style, yo!) is the lesson we’ve all needed to learn about: y’know, that whole ‘not putting all of your eggs in one basket’ thing.
Louis Gray in particular has pointed out that when FriendFeed goes away, it won’t affect him much. I think that, with a little philosophical shift, it shouldn’t affect the rest of us that much either. A lot of people—myself included—are using FriendFeed as more than just an aggregator with a comments system but as the sole conduit through which our social media lives flow. Sure, we pipe in our tweets, Google Reader likes, Netflix queue adds, and so forth but those are all secondary to posting directly to FriendFeed and participating in a ton of discussions. So, when FriendFeed goes away, it destroys the kernel of our social media lives and leaves a bunch of disconnected detritus with no cohesion.
A lot of people believe that the time has come to deconstruct the monolithic approach toward social networking. Instead of relying on a site like FriendFeed as the hub of one’s online social existence, it’s time to rely on the independence of each site that one uses and then combining them all with a network of little tools. Another way of looking at it is beginning to use UNIX-style piping to chain together an array of tools in order to create a given effect rather than relying on a solution that, sure, may do it all but may not do it all that well. As much of a rabid fan of FriendFeed as I am, I completely identify with its short-comings. How many people have you met who have complained that FriendFeed is too difficult to understand and/or requires too much time investment to get anything worthwhile out of it? I mean, really, have we all been doing the social media equivalent of grinding for MMO levels? It’s totally possible.
The problem with this solution, however, is three-fold:
- Kind of like getting established on FriendFeed, it requires a lot of work up front. Now, you’re having to do everything manually rather than having FriendFeed do it all for you. Gotta get a blog set up, gotta get Disqus or IntenseDebate or BackType going, gotta get Twitter under control, gotta manage a dozen different user accounts, gotta get into Google Friend Connect, and, the most discouraging: you now have to be pro-active in getting yourself out there rather than doing it passively. No more Friend-of-a-Friend [fff] feature doing the work for you which brings me to the second fold:
- That sense of cohesive community is effectively destroyed. You see, as much as FriendFeeders complain about Facebook’s walled garden, FriendFeed had the same problem. A recent post of mine accidentally highlighted the fact that people are very sensitive about what they see as the cliquish nature of FriendFeed. Perhaps those people are just being paranoid. Perhaps I’ve never noticed it because I’ve been there for so long and I’m friends there with a lot of Internet famous people. But there are some people out there who see FriendFeed with its own walled garden: they believe that it’s difficult to ‘break in’ to the perceived in-crowds there. Now everyone’s going to have to kinda/sorta start over.
- The FriendFeed community was self-policing and it was painless to vet a new subscription: how many of your friends are also subscribed to that person? With a decentralized solution, that sense of safety is gone. Anyone can subscribe, anyone can participate, there’s no network protecting you from spammers and full-blown idiots.
But, one might ask, ‘Why are FriendFeeders so scared of leaving FriendFeed? If their community is really as strong as they say it is, wouldn’t they stick together no matter what?’
Perhaps we’re more fragile than we’d like to believe. Personally, I think I’m going to maintain a lot of strong relationships with people I’ve come to care about and admire. I think at least some of the friendships will transcend a common URL. I’d be shocked, for instance, if lost touch with Josh Haley, Johnny Worthington, Derrick, Louis Gray, and Alex Scoble (oh, and even his lesser-known brother Robert Scoble) just to name a few (and after Gnomedex next week, I’m certain that there will be many new friendships). Sure, things may lose their intimacy and, even though we’ve may be losing what brought us all together, it doesn’t mean that the connections we’ve made can’t outlast the service that helped forge them.
I may be misanthropic but I’m not without at least some optimism.
Conspiracy Duck Wonders: Why Did FriendFeed Really Get Sold?
Now, Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed was definitely a pure talent grab but most people are assuming that, for the FriendFeed crew, it was a pure money grab. I’m not so certain. All of us angry and disappointed FriendFeeders assumed the worst based on what little knowledge we have and, for the Internet, that’s a fairly common thing to do. I’m wondering, though, if the FriendFeed gang know about something that’s coming up against which they didn’t feel FriendFeed could compete so perhaps—just perhaps—they decided to sell now while the selling’s good.
First question is, of course, what could be so big that it would threaten FriendFeed off the playground? I can only think of one company big enough and influential enough so that pretty much nearly everything that they do is embraced almost immediately by the majority of the people who use FriendFeed anyway. Yep, that’s right: Google. And many of the people who work at FriendFeed used to work at Google so you can only assume that they still have connections there and would have a far better idea about what’s coming than we do. Nearly everyone uses Google for searches and Gmail for e-mail; Google just updated Google Reader with some social networking additions; and, Google Wave is just around the corner. With all of this staring your non-monetized start-up down the throat, wouldn’t that make you nervous about your future, too? Think about it, all Google needs to do is to tie all of this stuff together and then open the API to everyone so any site can be integrated.
Keep in mind, too, that the FriendFeed guys said that the Facebook deal ‘ramped up quickly’ and was an ‘11th hour’ sort of deal which tells me that there was some time restraint. Now, this could just as easily have been a deadline put down by Facebook but that doesn’t make much sense unless Facebook had other alternatives they were looking into; but what could those be? Twitter? I doubt it. Twitter may be far more popular than FriendFeed but FriendFeed is far more in line with Facebook’s style. In fact, Twitter has nothing to offer Facebook except its huge user base and all of the problems that user base brings with them. I wouldn’t want Twitter either. But FriendFeed? Lots of talent and Facebook’s been ripping FriendFeed off all of this time anyway. So, yeah, I don’t think it was Facebook putting the screws to FriendFeed. So, could it be what Google has brewing? What did the FriendFeed guys see in their crystal ball? Whatever it was, it sent them scurrying toward the first reasonable opportunity.
Okay, So What Now?
My plan is to follow Louis Gray’s sage advice and decentralize myself. FriendFeed is still at the center of my universe and, yes, I’ll continue to mostly dedicate my second monitor to a split-screen SSB of it (yeah, I’m that obsessed). In fact, I began that process unknowingly before the acquisition was even announced by establishing this blog and throwing Disqus on there, by moving from NewsFire (still my personal favorite client-based solution for reading feeds) to NetNewsWire so I can sync with Google Reader, by moving from a privately held mail server solution (the wonderful and unparalleled Tuffmail) for Gmail, and, well, trying to make a bit of a name for myself outside of FriendFeed.
As one friend noted, ‘What the hell. Is Akiva all FriendFeed famous or what?’ For someone with only a thousand or so subscribers rather than 10,000 or 20,000, I think I’m doing all right. Sure, I’m nervous about the future but I was wrong not to have been nervous in the first place. But, like a lot of us, the thought of FriendFeed going away never even entered my mind. To me, it was like the invention of the web itself: something that surely isn’t going to go away. Although, admittedly, when the web first came around, I was incredibly skeptical: why would I need that when I already have newsgroups and gopher servers?
I mean, really. More than 640k? Get the hell outta town with that nonsense!