With the meteoric rise of Twitter and the recent popularization of FriendFeed just to mention the two most popular social media services the sharing of information and ideas spreads like never before. Granted it is only within the limited world of the tech blogosphere but with everyday that goes by these services creep towards the mainstream.
As is the nature of technology though at some point one technology will eclipse some other technology which will either be absorbed or wither away and die as the users gravitate towards the most popular of them. We have seen this happen with Twitter and the near invisibility of its competitors Pownce and Jaiku. Jaiku’s only salvation was that it managed to get bought by Google but Pownce still remains out in the cold now forever in the shadow of Twitter.
However Twitter’s ascendancy to a ubiquitous service could very well be in danger. As noted by Hutch Carpenter on his up and coming blog I’m not actually a geek there is a growing trend among early adopter to move most of their activity to FriendFeed
But, it is so much more. FriendFeed is emerging as the one lifestream platform to rule them all. The ability to see and interact across a range of services is proving addictive. And it may inadvertently disrupt a few other services along the way.
Four recent comments show that a trend is emerging. People are consuming updates from their social apps not directly from the apps themselves, but primarily from FriendFeed. FriendFeed is starting to get the lion’s share of attention and page views, to the detriment of other services.
This astute observation by Hutch in my opinion is pretty well on the money but there is a big problem with this trend.
The important thing to remember about FriendFeed is that it is nothing without the very services it sits on top of. Those services are our Twitter feeds, our blog feeds, our Flickr feed or any number of the other of the 35 services that they hook into in order to provide us with our daily updated information streams. By itself FriendFeed doesn’t exist as other than providing an option to share items - just as any of the other hundreds of services out there do.
As more and more people move to FriendFeed leaving their other services like Twitter to languish unused the inherent value of other Twitter feeds is diminished. What one has to wonder as this process builds up steam is at what point does Twitter as a whole begin to become just another Pownce but now in the shadow of FriendFeed.
However as this happens - especially if this move to switch to FriendFeed as a primary source begins to affect other services FriendFeed will begin to lose the very thing it needs to exist in the first place - your other sources of social activity. Hutch points to this happening in his post when he quotes Robert Scoble:
FriendFeed has replaced much of what made RSS cool to me. I’m still reading Google Reader, but less.
As well there is a quote from Thomas Hawk
I find that I’m going to Flickr’s most recent photos from my contacts much less than I used to and going to friendfeed to view my contacts and imaginary contacts flickr photos much more
The fact is that as FriendFeed becomes more and more popular it could potentially kill off the very things that make it valuable. While the idea of social aggregators is a very good one for letting us consolidate our disparate information flows it could be sowing its own seeds of destruction. Social media might well be all about creating and consuming content but what happens to that social media when it implodes because of our nature of wanting to consolidate everything into manageable chunks there is nothing left to consolidate.
Conversation Tags: social media, social aggregators, Twitter, FriendFeed
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If Google Reader didn't have speed problems, and Twitter didn't have reliability problems, then there would be less of a need for people to move to FriendFeed to share items and short messages.
And, of course, Google Reader and Twitter can continue to innovate and introduce new features, or exploit existing ones. The fact that Google Reader is associated with the leading search engine in the world suggests that Google Reader can at least provide better search capabilities than FriendFeed. And, of course, the underlying services can continue to introduce new things to ensure that they remain in business.
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And one other thought. I've argued before that FriendFeed will make switching social media apps much easier. Don't like Twitter? Switch to Pownce and keep the updates flowing to your existing social network on FriendFeed. Tired of Flickr? Switch to SmugMug - and know that friends will still see your pictures. This is another way FriendFeed can be quite disruptive.
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That's a great angle on this.
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thanks
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I've really tried to climb on the Friendfeed bandwagon but can't do it yet. Rather than trying to find a place to access the growing number of social tools, I've simply focused on fewer tools. So, for example, Twitter has replaced Facebook because I get more value from it.
My prediction is the social aggregation pendulum will eventually swing back as more people tired of following so many different services.
Mark
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OK, anyone who uses something like Flickr is technically a social media user but the majority don't see it that way - they are just looking at a way to share their images. Until the 'concept' of social media becomes ubiquitous web sites will remain isolated services with only a limited subset of users making use of sites like FF
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abandoned I will aggree with you there. But I do think that for some of the
services that FF hooks into could *potentially* find themselves in trouble
as people use FF more and more.
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