FriendFeed, my newest and favorite obsession, is pretty much the “people reader” thing that I was just referring to. It is already here, and I didn’t even realize it—it took me nearly 30 seconds after the initial thought to have FriendFeed come to mind. It is easy to forget, but FriendFeed’s impacts are very important to the future of content creators and consumers.

When you consider where we have come from since the beginning of the printing press, it is just astounding that it has taken this long for a change. What change am I talking about? Well, first let’s evaluate what has, for the most part, been happening for the longest of times.

Newspapers / Magazines

Before the internet, there was a majority of print-oriented readership. Most of us were focused on the actual publications instead of the authors. Everyone who has picked up a newspaper has read the articles, but how many of you can name those writers who have contributed to that newspaper? If you have an amazing journalist or editor, you might recall a name or two—you might even remember an article that this person has written—but my money is on the idea that you don’t remember who wrote what. It was just some journalist, right? Same thing with magazine articles. Beyond the occasional well-known contributer, it’s mostly the content and the magazine that gets the recognition.

It might have been a lack of being able to get down to more of a personal level with the author, or it might have been the fact that few readers cared about who actually wrote the content. Regardless, it is interesting to note that book authors have had a very different experience.

Book authors have always had the pleasure of getting most, if not all, of the credit for their works. When they release a top-selling book, the author was and still is usually well rewarded with money and fame. Newspaper and magazine journalists, for the most part, simply earned themselves an opportunity to write for the publication again.

Of course, people will argue the fact that only a single person (or perhaps a few co-authors) writes a book while newspapers are a collection of dozens of journalists, but it doesn’t change the fact that the authors are rarely well recognized.

I do believe that all this is unfair to the author. Put yourself in their shoes. If you wrote an amazing article for the New York Times, wouldn’t you be upset if everyone was praising the New York Times instead of you, the author? Trust me, it happens more than we can imagine.[1. As a side note, this very same thing happens in other industries. The video game industry, for example, rarely has the development studio getting the credit for the hard work. Instead, it is the publishers who get all the glory. All they did was throw the money in for the project. It just makes me feel bad for the developers. Thankfully, some developers have changed this, like Bungie Studios, but it still happens.]

When you consider how the Internet has brought about so much change and so much information, it can be mind boggling how old habits stay the same, but tools and services have been developed that are shifting the focus entirely.

People

It is funny how within only a month or two ago I created two folders in my feed reader, NetNewsWire, labeled “Journalists” and “Bloggers.” Since doing that, I rarely add blogs to my feed reader; instead, I add people to my feed reader. This usually correlates to a person’s personal blog, but you get the point. However, FriendFeed does a better job than NetNewsWire could possibly do at this current point in time, and that is why I believe FriendFeed is so popular with so many people.

While I recently wrote about how people should make sure to maintain their personal blogs, I didn’t place nearly enough emphasis on the fact that tools like FriendFeed could be far more valuable than any personal blog. It changes how we see content and people. We still see these blogs, but we now place greater importance on who wrote the content instead of the actual content itself.

It is almost an everyday occurrence for me to read a great article and find out if I know that author. If I don’t, I will search for more content that the author has created. It is a genuine interest in learning more about the person, and I never fully realized how great it is to want to do something like that.

For me, this change only began happening late last year. I really started paying attention to who I was reading instead of what I was reading. But now, after becoming heavily involved with Twitter and FriendFeed, I feel like this is the way it should have always been.

I believe that FriendFeed is directly contributing to this idea that it is not the publication, the article, nor the site we should be focused on, but instead, it is all about the creator. It encourages conversation on a personal level, and it really gets you in tune with the author.

Louis Gray, author of LouisGray.com, recently opened my eyes to this concept after I constantly saw his name and content mentioned throughout my FriendFeed account. At first, I didn’t have a clue about who he was, but, without even viewing his blog, I began understanding the type of person he was. I ended up becoming much more interested in him as a person, above all else. So, by the time I actually read his blog for the first time, I already knew what to expect, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Nowadays, if I want to learn about Windows, I go to Paul Thurrott. If I’m feeling the Apple, I’ll visit John Gruber. If I want tech journalism, I’ll read some Saul Hansell. If I want to get my game on, I’ll talk to Chris Kohler. If I want to learn photography techniques, I’ll admire Thomas Hawk. And, finally, if blogging has been complicated, Darren Rowse has my cure. The list just goes on and on.

For me, this was not possible around two to three years ago. The change is amazing.

The Shift

I believe that this kind of transition is good for the blogosphere. I also believe that this will help keep the blogosphere healthy. The circulation of great content will continue, and the amount of bloggers who will become well-known should increase. (As most FriendFeed users who read this would probably agree.)

My emphasis has slowly shifted away from focusing on the site or blog itself—it is now about the individuals that I know have things in common with me that I want to be friends with. These are the people who I would want to have discussions with about the topics I care about. These people are who I would prefer to be my audience, no matter where on the web I am writing.

This was—unquestionably—an epiphany. I hope that anyone reading this article realizes how human nature can really evolve with the help of technology. This is one of those moments where I believe technology has really done good for a group of people who rarely got the attention they deserved, and it allows the readership to get involved as well.

If anything, my appreciation for services like Jaiku, Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, and, of course, FriendFeed has increased immensely.

In April of 2008, Twhirl’s developers had aspirations to implement FriendFeed support within the client. Now a Seesmic owned product, Twhirl is currently one of the best FriendFeed clients available today, but it is far from perfect. It’s the small things that are holding the client back from reaching its full potential. However, I will use it as a comparison for the rest of this article.

I am constantly questioning if an amazing—dare I say ultimate—FriendFeed client could propel the FriendFeed service to fame. Third-party developers have done this with Twitter, and I believe it could be done again with FriendFeed.

However, if we are to be blessed with such a great FriendFeed client, it will require a few kick-ass features.

The Ultimate Features

Interface

First and foremost, the ultimate FriendFeed client should have a simple and intuitive interface design. Emphasis should be on displaying information that a user wants to see. Having all the bells and whistles is nice, but I want a client that will give me only the relevant information. It has to be, especially when considering how much information FriendFeed can throw around. A cluttered experience—which is exactly what Twhirl can be at times—will not cut it. I am looking at Twhirl right now, and the scroll bar on my FriendFeed account is very small. It is actually difficult to move up and down the Twhirl client at this point. A page or two could have been nice, or perhaps having the client expand to older entries when you reach the end of the content, similar to Google Reader. Of course, I could simply hit the clear button, but then I might miss important information from one of my friends that I have not read yet.

The interface should allow users to properly and intuitively manage, display, and sort comments. This comment functionality is what put FriendFeed in a league of its own.[2. Ironically enough, Jaiku was, from my knowledge, the first service of its kind to provide a comment thread system (a single level, like FriendFeed) for individual entries.] Currently, the methods used to navigate comments are somewhat disappointing. For example, Twhirl displays comments in a reverse chronological order while the FriendFeed site displays them in chronological order—that makes little to no sense whatsoever. However, I do like how Twhirl hides excess comments from the client, which, of course, can be expanded to view the whole picture. Hopefully this would be a feature in the ultimate FriendFeed client.

Navigation

Navigation is also a prevalent problem because of the amount of information users must sort through. Right now, it is a pain in the ass to catch up with what I have missed. Too many clicks, too much scrolling, too many clicks again, and then a lot more scrolling thereafter. It is fairly repetitive and annoying. FriendFeed’s complexity shows its true colors in these regards.[3. At the time of this writing, I am friends with 46 people on Twitter and 22 people on FriendFeed. I have no issues with using Twitter. I must admit that FriendFeed presents me with at least 10 times more information, but it shouldn't require as much of an effort to keep up the the activity.]

Perhaps third-party developers should attempt to integrate more tabs and/or filters within a FriendFeed client. Why not have tabs or filters for each of the following: blogging activity, news activity, social networking activity, multimedia activity, shopping activity, comment activity, and more. With this in place, users could easily find relevant information without having to sort through the vast amounts of activity generated by other actions. These tabs or filters could—optionally—bypass the “hide” functionality so that users could still see activity within the various categories without cluttering up their “friends” tab as well.[1. I do realize that most of the current FriendFeed clients have ways to activate filters by the types of content like blog posts, Twitter posts, etc., but there are too many related issues with most of these clients to point that out as a nice feature. The ability to sort and filter through content is what needs to be focused on.]

Ease of Use

Unfortunately, people, in general, are dumb. Okay, so, everybody isn’t dumb, but for the most part, many people lack common sense.[4. This leads me to believe that most people are—well, what else?—dumb. Thankfully, my readers are brilliant.] They see something like Twitter or FriendFeed and believe it is pointless, without even giving it a chance. Well, for those who thought Twitter was bad enough, those very same people are going to flip once they see FriendFeed taking over. Of course, many of these same people have never bothered with a third-party client made for these types of services, which is where Twitter really shines, but these people can’t be ignored. A company will need to reach out to these people.

I don’t have any particular suggestions for the ease-of-use department, but I would say that a client that has a built-in mini-tutorial would help a lot of users who have never experienced a social networking service like FriendFeed or Twitter before.

Functionality

Most importantly, the ultimate FriendFeed client will need to have some excellent functionality in order to beat the competition.

One of the most useful features of FriendFeed is the “hide” function. With it, users can easily ignore content. Unfortunately, this feature is only accessible on FriendFeed’s web interface. Obviously, that will have to change. The ultimate FriendFeed client can resolve this issue by allowing users to easily hide any type of content created by any person with a single click. Additionally, the ability to modify the settings of the hide function is also, in my opinion, a requirement to make tat functionality truly useful.

Commenting, by far, is one of the best features of the FriendFeed service. With that in mind, the ultimate FriendFeed client needs to put emphasis on easily creating, editing, and reading these comments. This is where some crazy ideas could really make a difference. Simple things like highlighting a friend’s comment is very useful. Again, it is the small things that can make a big difference.

Finally, the person or people who decide to make the ultimate FriendFeed client should find ways to extend FriendFeed’s uses. Honestly now, who knew that Twitter was going to be a popular service to track packages and calculate MPG rates? Who knew that it would turn the everyday person into a reporter? Who knew that it would be one of the most dominant marketing tools today? Who knew that it would change the world? FriendFeed’s third-party developers should apply all this knowledge to their creations.

If a third-party developer could find ways to implement some, if not all, of the aforementioned features, that developer will have fair advantage over the competition. I believe these to be some great ways to improve a user’s experiences with FriendFeed.

If the people who run FriendFeed are smart, they will quickly make even more efforts towards providing third-party developers with all the tools and knowledge they need to create spectacular applications for the service. It would be a smart business move.

A Question of Time

When will we have this ultimate FriendFeed client? Well, for FriendFeed’s sake, I hope it will be soon. During the golden age of internet applications and services, one days something is hot, and the next day it is not. The FriendFeed service has an unlimited growth potential, but if it is going to overtake Twitter’s dominance, third-party developers need to push the limits of the FriendFeed API right now.