FriendFeed 2.0 is coming and it's like if the Beatles made Twitter
Posted at 17:55 by Alex Watson with 14 comments
I'm a bit of a fan of Twitter, but while I like the fact it keeps me in contact with friends and contacts and throws up useful links, I'm conscious of the fact that a lot of people find it ridiculous, boring or pointless. Their reasons are often pretty sound, too, and discussions with these sceptics keeps me aware of the service's problems and drawbacks.
Overall, I'm not really an evangelist for Twitter, and use it mostly because I'm just curious, and this is true of my approach to technology in general. It's important to temper enthusiasm for what's new and shiny with a degree of cynicism.
For that reason, I found TechCrunch's post about a new version of FriendFeed - a competitor to Twitter - absolutely incredible. It's a shining example of someone falling for PR hype (both for the product and for the general area of technology it operates in), which is a real danger for any technology journalist. As such I felt it needed a little commentary, and it's reproduced below for your enjoyment:
“On Friday the FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit debuted a radical redesign of the product for about 15 journalists, technologists, and Robert Scoble.”
There’s a new FriendFeed coming. Last Friday, a few tech journalists were invited to see it. I’m not sure how many people were there, as I can’t count accurately above 10. Also, I have no idea how to define what Scoble is.
“We were asked not to discuss the details until Monday morning at 9AM Pacific.”
People have heard of FriendFeed, and TechCrunch isn’t important enough to be able to just ignore them like all the other fledgling Web 3.0 companies we deal with. But usually, screw em.
“I’ve been playing with the beta for the last few hours and have already come to several conclusions about what this means for the social media community and by extension enterprise computing.”
This matters people. This isn’t about just another website with a name missing some vowels. What is about? Well you just wait. I’m going to tell you.
Overall, I'm not really an evangelist for Twitter, and use it mostly because I'm just curious, and this is true of my approach to technology in general. It's important to temper enthusiasm for what's new and shiny with a degree of cynicism.
For that reason, I found TechCrunch's post about a new version of FriendFeed - a competitor to Twitter - absolutely incredible. It's a shining example of someone falling for PR hype (both for the product and for the general area of technology it operates in), which is a real danger for any technology journalist. As such I felt it needed a little commentary, and it's reproduced below for your enjoyment:
“On Friday the FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit debuted a radical redesign of the product for about 15 journalists, technologists, and Robert Scoble.”
There’s a new FriendFeed coming. Last Friday, a few tech journalists were invited to see it. I’m not sure how many people were there, as I can’t count accurately above 10. Also, I have no idea how to define what Scoble is.
“We were asked not to discuss the details until Monday morning at 9AM Pacific.”
People have heard of FriendFeed, and TechCrunch isn’t important enough to be able to just ignore them like all the other fledgling Web 3.0 companies we deal with. But usually, screw em.
“I’ve been playing with the beta for the last few hours and have already come to several conclusions about what this means for the social media community and by extension enterprise computing.”
This matters people. This isn’t about just another website with a name missing some vowels. What is about? Well you just wait. I’m going to tell you.
