I read a post today titled “Proposal to Clean Up the FriendFeed Clutter” by Hutch Carpenter. It clearly outlines some of the noise problems with FriendFeed.
I have seen the need for change to the FriendFeed stream for weeks now. The problem in a nutshell is that the same link appears over and over as it is submitted to multiple services by multiple users. One destination but many entries in my stream.
The stream is noisy. Some may like it noisy but I would like it to be quieter.
I first discussed the multiple link problem in conjunction with what I called ‘The FriendFeed Disjointed Comments Problem.” The same links clog the stream over and over. My point was that many different places for comments existed. Every entry that existed had the potential for comments and conversation. But comments are a different issue. For more on the comments problem see Comments Floating in the Blogosphere.
Mr. Carpenter gives 2 possibilities for how the data could be presented to eliminate noise in the stream.
- Person-centric: if a user has the same feed more than once, the same-link feeds are aggregated together under a common link for the user
- Link-centric: all same-link feeds for all friends appear under a common link
I am in favor of the Link-centric approach. This has already been coined the “techmeme way.” Some including Corvida are against it.
Bret Taylor of FriendFeed has already commented on Mr. Carpenter’s post saying:
“Great ideas… We have been thinking through these issues as well, and it is great to see such detail and mockups.”
I agree Mr. Carpenter’s article certainly gives food for thought.
My point is let the user decide. The data being presented can be displayed in several different ways. How about giving the user several different ways to customize their stream. Person-centric, Link-centric, the current approach, and many other ways could be developed.
It would be great for FriendFeed to implement several and let the user decide how they want to view their stream.