Well I guess I needed to fill up some spare space on my hard drive. Downloaded Google Apps Engine API, Python, and the FF API. Brain will be further fried shortly.

I’ve recently begun using FriendFeed after seeing a post from Robert Scoble.    The application has been easy to use and has enabled me to follow feeds from very influential bloggers like Scoble and Stowe Boyd (and get introduced to some other brilliant minds).   In FriendFeed’s settings area, I kept on the option to have the FriendFeed delivered via email.  It’s not entirely clear why I would do that considering the prodigious amount of inbox, but hey, the more the merrier, right?

Due to my scattered existence FriendFeed’s digests have landed in my junk mail box, and I have yet to add to safe senders–but because a quick human scan of junk mail happens, I caught 1/2/09 feed in which Mr. Boyd responds to a post concerning the survival of FriendFeed.

From: Stow Boyd’s Louis Gray on Why FriendFeed Will Fail

These [twitter & friendfeed] are not direct competitors in that they don’t have exactly the same feature sets, but they are for all intents and purposes. Very few people participate actively in both.

Competition does not come to mind when thinking of these two services–but with the competition in context, it would seem that twitter would win out due to its ease of use and its basic mission, i.e., “what are you doing right now”.  But twitter doesn’t come near ff as far as real substantive utility goes.  I’m not a Silicon Valley geek (more of a Music City USA geek in eternal training), yet the interface was fairly easy to use.  Soon enough people will be more aware of what the social bookmarking tags are all about, and they will grab accounts on every Web 2 site they can find–it’s electronic vanity press to the max.  This transformation will come about.

One bias in terms of  active use is that an FF user by virtue of their own twitter activity will feed that much activity–or at least perceived activity–to their FF account.  By its nature as well, FF is designed to automatically capture activity from elsewhere.  Does that comprise activity on FF itself?  In my mind it does–but I’m not sure what it would mean as it relates to its competitive ranking.  FF’s own native activity is only a part of the picture.  Does that mean it’s a goner?  It all depends on what your criteria for success are.  The native dialogues are fine for me–I can observe who’s coming up with solid responses, and I can conveniently comment.  It’s simple.  It’s a plus.  And it’s brilliant.

If failure means financial failure relative to twitter, then twitter wins.  In terms of depth of utility, however, in my view there’s no comparison.  FF is utilizing twitter and I don’t see that happening just yet vice versa.  FF harnesses the web and makes me an ubercitizen.  I have no problem with that, and I do not see a steep learning curve at all.  FF competes and succeeds here.  No failure in sight.

The picture here may show a slaughter by twitter, but a look at the permalink showed over 4000% growth for FF in the last year. If that yearly pace is kept anywhere nearly as well over a decent amount of time, guess who wins? FF hasn’t hit the tipping point yet. All it needs is more mavens to put the good word in and to keep using it.

The learning curve is this:  get the public in on the paradigm of Web 2 and the programmable web, the meaning of these icons, the nature of rss based social context overall.  Yes the interface could be better, yes a lite version may help–but people will catch on if that marketing takes place.  It may take a while and many factors affect adoption, but I see FF as a winner all the way.  It’s a keeper in my book.