FriendFeed – Page 3 – A Blog by Franklin Pettit

Linked 2008-06-10

Pownce Needs To Pownce!

Twitter is on the ropes: Pownce should Pownce. The early adopter crowd has NOT jumped overboard and left Twitter. I am unsure why. Pownce appears to be a superior product. I am not debating its merits versus Twitter. Pownce has stability on it’s side. Pownce may have a smaller user base but at least the site stays up.

But for the last few weeks the focus is all about how to fix Twitter. Twitter is really only known to the early adopters and is very simple in concept. The concept for the application is not difficult. Why don’t the users jump ship?

This is a tremendous opportunity for others in this space. Pownce and FriendFeed are positioned to take advantage.

Pownce should definitely well you know Pownce! The time is now. Pownce should step in the ring with press release after press release and knock Twitter around. They should be wowing with features and make people wonder why they ever stuck with Twitter in the first place.

In the last couple of days many things have been written about the new startup Plurk that is just another Twitter clone. Pownce shares files, it has a good established API, and is an established application with an existing user base. The time for Pownce is now.

What would it really take for the users to bolt? Would all it take is for Scoble and several other A list bloggers to band together and choose a replacement.

Let me reiterate that Twitter is very simple. I could see potential in FriendFeed implementing direct messaging and crushing Twitter. That does not appear to be FriendFeed’s goal.

Well someone let me know please why has Pownce not Pownced!

Linked June 1-3 2008

Steven Hodson of WinExtra posts what he calls the “From the Pipeline” of the best links of the day. That is a nice concept. It will be great to look back on a year from now as a history of what took place. These are my links for June 1-3. Not all brand new content but on my radar. Heard from the noise.

garfield minus garfield – Funny stuff.
Windows Live Writer CTP Released – LiveSide – News blog – A description and review of Windows Live Writer CTP
FriendFeed Blog: Simple sharing directly from FriendFeed – This is old post from February but still a good one. This shows you how to easily use the Share Something box in FriendFeed.
Lightbox 2 – This is an interesting javascript library for displaying pictures on your webpages.
Lightbox 2.0 for WordPress– The wordpress plugin for Lightbox.
A $10 Mosquito Net Is Making Charity Cool – NYTimes.com– 10 dollars can still make a difference.
World of Slippy: What’s Missing from Friendfeed?– FriendFeed has enthusiastic users. That can go a long way for a product.
Post Links and Messages on FriendFeed Directly From Google Talk– This is awesome with Twitter’s recent flakiness.
FriendFeed ‘Likes’ Compatibility Index « I’m Not Actually a Geek– FriendFeed statistics are geeky and cool.
SezWho: How it Compares to Disqus & Intense Debate – ReadWriteWeb– I still like Disqus but competition leads to innovation and the end user benefits.
How-To: Create a WordPress Theme in 5 minutes– I am still playing with wordpress theme development.

Who is in your FriendFeed Zone?

Who is in your friendfeed zone? Check out this link. Your friendfeed zone is:

“This little app grabs all the subscribers of the person you enter and also all their subscribers – so it defines your zone as everyone up to two steps away from you. It then simply tabulates how many people are following everyone in the zone and presents the top 100 influencers in that zone and a graph of the top 25.”

The blogpost introducing FriendFeed Zone is here.

Is An IFrame Integration?

What constitutes real integration and what is just silly? Integration to provide additional functionality is great. But my question is that really being done. The following are 3 examples using 3 different methods of so called integration all using iframes.

	Readburner recently released an update that combines Google Reader into the ReadBurner site. It is being called Google Reader integration. It is actually no more than a tab with an iframe for the google reader site.
	As I said before I am using FFapps.com to expand the FriendFeed functionality. One of the Greasemonkey scripts they have released is called FF Tabs. It adds a tab to FriendFeed called Techmeme and when clicked on simply embeds Techmeme into FriendFeed as an IFrame.
	The third is a bookmarklet I read about today on Louis Gray’s blog that combines Google Reader into friendfeed via simple bookmarklet. When FriendFeed is open you click the bookmarklet and Google Reader is pulled in.

Readburner coded this iframe as functionality into their site, the second is a user created Greasemonkey script, and the third example is a user generated bookmarklet all created to add functionality via IFrame.

We all use tabbed browsers correct? What are we really gaining? I always have multiple tabs opens that include Google Reader and FriendFeed. Are these IFrames true functionality? I would say NO. They are nice but not really that helpful.

I am all for true innovation and integration this just is not it.

Scoble’s FriendFeed Party Video with Louis Gray

The following is a video from Robert Scoble at a FriendFeed Party at FriendFeed headquarters. The video is taken by Scoble with Louis Gray identifying the people around the room. It is entertaining. Check it out.