Bear's Log

Scoble has been all over the web with reasons and twitter posts about how FriendFeed is dead and why he has now found a better way, which interestingly is Twitter (who he left for FriendFeed if I recall) but yes, this is Twitter w/Lists.

shrug

Scoble is an early adopter so he always is looking for that next thing that will help him massage and trim his information flow - the rest of it is the usual noise and bluster that accompanies most of the prolific bloggers who are not a specific niche blogger.

But he mentioned one thing that just made me sit up and say out loud “wrong sir":

But the more public they make Facebook the more connections each user will

have, and the more noise each of those connections will bring.

At first this looks like a positive thing, right? Over on FriendFeed people

are telling me “we have more conversations.” That’s true, but the more conversations I got involved in the less I found I was learning.

This came full circle tonight when I checked in my “best of day” feed on

FriendFeed, picture of that experience here.

I didn’t see any geeks. I didn’t see any tech. I didn’t see anything that

was teaching me anything. I had stopped getting much value out of FriendFeed.

What he discusses as being the “chat room/forum problem” indeed has been around since computer programs started allowing folks to assemble and congregate - and I use that phrase on purpose because the problem is not with the software but with the people and the size of the group of people. This issue happens in church groups, political realms, social groups - in fact anywhere folks exceed a certain value.

Some folks have tried to measure that number, which is known as The Dunbar Number and while that may or may not ever be confirmed, I can just say from over 30 years of dealing with groups of people in many sizes that there is a certain sad tipping point where a group will turn on itself or just “go turtle” unless there are a couple strong wills around to keep things on track.

So, back to the point I was trying to make. Scoble is lumping his view of the “best of day” feed on FriendFeed and it’s shortage of “experts” with his thoughts on “chat room/forum problem” but it’s a straw man argument. The reason the “best of day” view is devoid of information is because Scoble has stopped maintaining his list of folks and the ones that have remained in his lists are either gone (they followed him to the next-big-thing) or they are silent. Not because it’s too crowded or full of spammy trolls.

FriendFeed actually has one of the best ways I’ve ever seen to deal with spam/troll folks and it’s implemented in a nice three-part recipe: you can at first hide entries from appearing in your feed and FriendFeed will learn that and keep it from appearing again, and then, if it continues to spread or get worse, you can unsubscribe from the source. If you find yourself still seeing the spam/troll content because others are liking or commenting on it then you can block the source and it will never appear again.

That’s not to say that FriendFeed isn’t going to suffer from it not receiving new/fresh influx of folks - but if the communities that have already discovered it (or the folks who have discovered new friends via it) keep right on using it and making great conversations, then it will exist and be useful as long as Facebook allows it.

So Scoble, please, point out the issue with FriendFeed, point out the issues with Facebook and Twitter Lists - but stop using one site’s set of problems as non causa pro causa reason that the other site(s) are failing. The internets are large enough to have disparate islands with distinct personalities.

And the Scoble haters, please realize that he is early adopter tech/geek folk and as such, will always view things thru the experience of that echo chamber - what keeps me listening/reading him is that occasionally he does break out of that chamber and makes me pause and think.