3 ms·

I think you missed the point of my comment. I know why this is a cool feature and I have a FF account. But if your average user looked at the blog post, about

by pxlpshr 17y ago

I think you missed the point of my comment. I know why this is a cool feature and I have a FF account. But if your average user looked at the blog post, about 95% of the people that use Facebook/MySpace have no idea how it's vastly different from email. The best editorial that showcases the new feature is on TechCrunch (not their own blog), but again, ~95+% of the people using social apps don't read TC. And per your comment, the screenshot demonstrates using FriendFeed as an internal office communication tool to me — which email / chat both handily dominate. That's all I was saying really. FriendFeed has a lot of great things going for it, but I fear the general internet population will never hear about them anytime soon. Make no mistake about it, lots of amazing tech has died because it was poorly marketed.

thwarted 17y ago
Average users are not going to visit a blog to determine if they should use a service or not, or if they should use some random feature of a service or not. FF's blog, or any company's blog, is not their main marketing channel, mainly because the blog is not the reason people know of the site/company or visit the site. So while you're correct that 95% of the people have no idea how it is vastly different than email, the quality of the blog post as marketing material wouldn't serve to inform them anyway. If FF is serious about "marketing" this, if a new feature of this simplicity (removing the restriction on post attachments from just allowing images) even requires marketing, this most definitely isn't, and I agree, shouldn't be it. Fact is, FF provides structure to content streams that generic email and chat don't (gmail comes close to providing some structure, but it is still in the email paradigm). It's one-to-many, many-to-many, one-to-one, real-time-based and archived, and encourages succinctness in a way that neither email nor chat can be.
- pxlpshr 17y ago
  A blog is one of the best tools for organic search, so I disagree with you about it's importance. But I do agree that it's not the end-all marketing strategy by any means. Speaking of, what is FF marketing strategy? Aside from TechCrunch/Mashable posts and Scoble the cheerleader, about 99.5% of my IRL friends have no idea what FF is. I also agree with you regarding FF providing structure and communication across content streams, but I disagree that's its the best solution. Fact is, Facebook is commoditizing just about every feature of FF, Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. and generally doing a better job with the user experience and outreach. :(

by pxlpshr 17y ago

thwarted 17y ago

Average users are not going to visit a blog to determine if they should use a service or not, or if they should use some random feature of a service or not. FF's blog, or any company's blog, is not their main marketing channel, mainly because the blog is not the reason people know of the site/company or visit the site. So while you're correct that 95% of the people have no idea how it is vastly different than email, the quality of the blog post as marketing material wouldn't serve to inform them anyway. If FF is serious about "marketing" this, if a new feature of this simplicity (removing the restriction on post attachments from just allowing images) even requires marketing, this most definitely isn't, and I agree, shouldn't be it. Fact is, FF provides structure to content streams that generic email and chat don't (gmail comes close to providing some structure, but it is still in the email paradigm). It's one-to-many, many-to-many, one-to-one, real-time-based and archived, and encourages succinctness in a way that neither email nor chat can be.

pxlpshr 17y ago
A blog is one of the best tools for organic search, so I disagree with you about it's importance. But I do agree that it's not the end-all marketing strategy by any means. Speaking of, what is FF marketing strategy? Aside from TechCrunch/Mashable posts and Scoble the cheerleader, about 99.5% of my IRL friends have no idea what FF is. I also agree with you regarding FF providing structure and communication across content streams, but I disagree that's its the best solution. Fact is, Facebook is commoditizing just about every feature of FF, Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter, etc. and generally doing a better job with the user experience and outreach. :(