Way back in ‘07′, the infancy of micro-blogging, I was not only an early adopter of Twitter but of Pownce. Like Twitter, it allowed users to tell their friends or followers what they were doing with as little prose as possible. I actually preferred the latter because of not only the ability to share links, images, and music, but the ability to create events. Pownce (who was created by Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, and Daniel Burka) was acquired by Six Apart and subsequently shut down two weeks later. I, along with many other former Pownce users, were looking for another place to call home that offered more than Twitter but not as involved as Facebook so we drifted to Friendfeed. I enjoyed the conversational aspect but it didn’t seem to have the sticking ability of Twitter or Facebook, not to mention it was a harbor for early adopters and not much else. Friendfeed’s new push for a simpler interface is a step in the right direction but is it enough?
At first glance it may seem like Friendfeed has taken a page out of Twitter’s design playbook, but actually has more in common with Facebook and my beloved Pownce (R.I.P). The ability to share more than text and expanding your thought to something more robust than 140 characters has always been there but now everything has been streamlined. You will recognize the standard input box and river of messages below from every other micro-blogging site you’ve ever used but it now it is in real time.
Having the feed in real time takes a bit getting used to and if you take your eyes off of the screen for a second you will have lost your place. Friendfeed anticipated the learning curve and implemented a pause button. Pressing the button queues up the backlog of posts the makes you feel like you are sticking your finger in the dam. If you subscribe to a lot of user’s feeds you’ll quickly have a drowning sensation.
You may still be thinking it’s just a faster Twitter, and you’d mostly be correct, but I’m not sure that would be their competition. Facebook and Friendfeed have been trying to “one up” each other for a while now, and there were rumors of an acquisition, and this is just one more chapter. Would a simpler theme and real time updates be enough to turn the tide? I doubt it. In fact it seems like a last ditch effort to stay relevant in the social networking space. Pownce was almost a carbon copy of this new Friendfeed, with even more features, and they barely lasted a year. Sure they may survive in its niche but it’s simply a case of too little too late. That’s not to say I don’t want them to succeed. I actually am surprised that Twitter became the media darling but the simplicity drew the laymen to it. I will continue to use Pownce… I mean Friendfeed, but if you want a mainstream audience, innovation, timing, and luck is your friend. Just ask Kevin Rose.
