Entries in friendfeed (3)

Wednesday
Jan282009

Facebook: One Social Network to Rule Them All

DateWednesday, January 28, 2009 at 3:04PM

The social media community is constantly talking about what's next. Brian Solis wrote earlier this week about FriendFeed becoming the next great conversation platform. There are countless conversations about twitter as a must-have for marketers and businesses, and as Mashable points out, it has seen massive growth in the past year.

You know who else has seen massive growth? Facebook, which now has two times as many unique visitors as MySpace. At this point, I barely know anyone under the age of 35 not on Facebook, and I am regularly being added by friends' parents and relatives I haven't heard from in years.

Facebook still rules as the top conversation platform, and here's why.

People value their friends on Facebook more than on any other social network. And the reason is because it is more personal. Most Facebook users know every single one of the people they are friends with -- from high school, from college, from working together. And in that time they interacted, they shared enough personal interaction that they trust those friends to be in their network.

Facebook, not twitter, is the biggest microblogging platform in the world. It may not be the most active, but the Facebook news feed, then the brilliant addition of comments on that feed, makes every user a microblogger.

Facebook is more interesting. Most people would rather read and watch what their friends are posting on Facebook than digest a heavier conversation happening elsewhere. It's the same reason I read the Google Shared items from my friends before I read any other feeds. I want to know what my friends are up to before delving into the rest of the noise out there.

Almost everyone you know is on Facebook, and only a few of them are on twitter or FriendFeed. Try posting your twitter name in your Facebook status and invite people to follow you. Your friends that are on twitter are already following you, and the rest haven't figured out the point of twitter.

Conversations on Facebook are real and genuine. And it is because the real people-to-marketer ratio is still appropriately intact. The walls that Facebook has put up to protect their users, although often lamented by advocates for an open web, have gone a long way to protect users from the "look at me" marketers on twitter.

So what does this mean? Facebook may not be as sexy as it used to be and it may not be where the early adopters are playing. But it is where the most active and genuine conversations are occurring with people that the users trust most -- their friends. Marketing with social media is about trust and conversation, and Facebook still has the most of both.

Authoradam stewart | Comment7 Comments |
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Monday
Jun232008

A thought on FriendFeed (posted on FriendFeed)

DateMonday, June 23, 2008 at 11:19AM

I started to write a quick blog post discussing some a few recent posts discussing the future of FriendFeed.  Instead, I decided to post a comment in response to the article on the FriendFeed share.

So, yeah, FriendFeed is hurting blogging.

Authoradam stewart | CommentPost a Comment |
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Monday
Apr072008

Techniques on saving and sharing

DateMonday, April 7, 2008 at 9:02AM

On a daily basis, I'm being fed information from the following sources (listed in order of volume):

  1. Google Reader
  2. Twitter
  3. Inter-office
  4. Facebook
  5. Other: GTalk, Digg, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, personal email

So I've read or received a compelling piece of content and I want to share it. There is no shortage of ways to do this, and I often pause for a second, wondering how best to share, and who I want to read it. Here is the methodology I seem to have fallen into.

Share on Google Reader This is probably one of the most common ways I share information. But I'm also catering to the audience I know is reading my shared feed. I have a few friends who aren't interested in the majority of the social media information I read, but they might care about a cool map, tech review, sports story or music post. I also have a "shared" feed on this blog, so I consider this to be the most public and professional of my sharing options.

Save to Delicious I don't consider delicious to be an especially social tool, so anything I save there falls mostly into the "personal reference" category, like a cool fashion retailer, online tool or list of running trails. Admittedly, my delicious page is a tagging disaster (which is why I can't wait for delicious 2.0) and I use it mostly for information storage.

Digg it I generally Digg current events, such as a recently-published article of interest in the New Yorker, a tabloidy story or something I just generally want to spread the word on to a wide audience.

Share on Twitter If I'm dropping it on Twitter, it's either an immediately breaking story I hadn't seen from anyone else on Twitter yet (which is rare), a new tool/technology that will appeal to my Twitter followers or a video that has been making the rounds.

Share on Facebook Reserved for items I find amusing, timely or relating specifically to friends (i.e. a project they are part of). If I get a viral video or funny story, it's probably making it on here.

Stumble it StumbleUpon is probably the least-utilized of this group -- for me, anyway. I think of StumbleUpon as a receptacle of interesting photos, videos, tools and content, but not necessarily a resource to find information. There is probably a little overlap with delicious here, but there is pretty much zero chance I'm stumbling a really informative blog post or article.

And finally...email You're getting an email from me if you were foolish enough to include me on any group email list and I know you won't come across the content through any of the other methods I share information. And, obviously, since email is the least public means of sharing information, I'm sharing information just for one person, or sending something that may be deemed a bit too inappropriate to be shared to a larger forum.

So, how do you share information?

Authoradam stewart | CommentPost a Comment |
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