Are You Really Using FriendFeed, or are You a Poser?

Friday June 27th • Opinion, Rant Category

Ok, for today’s rant, I’m going to pick on those folks that signed up for FriendFeed, added a few services, and then never logged back in. More specifically, I am going to pick on Steve Gillmor.

Take a look at my headline shot. That’s Steve Gillmor, famous writer and technology news pundit. Talking head on the Gillmor Gang radio show. Insightful, critical, and accomplished.

Also, a poser!

Sorry to pick on Steve here, but when I saw his name in the FriendFeed recommendations it inspired this post.

What is a poser? It’s actually a pretty storied word in BBS and internet circles. It comes from the French word Poseur (link from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary):

Basically, in online culture, a poser is somebody who is a pretender. They act like they know or are something that they are not.

Getting back to Steve and similar, I don’t have a problem with them at all, as people. I don’t even want to bring their credentials into question. But three data points on FriendFeed tell me that they are not only harmless internet tourists, signing up for FriendFriend and then wandering away, never to be seen from again.

The first data point is up there. Steve has only added two services to FriendFeed. One is his blog, the other is Twitter, which he is extremely active on, not that there is anything wrong with that.
The second data point is his activity. On his friendfeed page, it says this:
Comments: none this week, 2 all time
Obviously not a very active user of the service.
Steve is popular enough that FriendFeed thought he would be a good person to follow. And, if you check out how much conversation his tweets generate, it’s true – he’s popular.

Steve and other industry folks who have their toe in FriendFeed but don’t use the service actively earn the badge of FriendFeed Poser. They eschew the service, but have still signed up, added their platform of choice and a headshot of themselves, and then vanish back to their lairs.

They are essentially telling us, yeah well I don’t like FriendFeed, but I’m still going to use it for PR until my primary publicity vehicle stops working (in this case Twitter).

I believe this is wrong.

Why? Take a look again at Steve’s tweets on FriendFeed. Often times, just by having these two services (and, let’s face it, Twitter mostly), he is generating conversation. People find what he has to say interesting and worthy of comment.

But he is not listening. He couldn’t care less.

If you aren’t replying to him or commenting on Twitter (which is down at the time of this writing) or his blog, he doesn’t care how much buzz he’s generating.

So, my advice to you internet pundits, either crap or get off the pot. Why not pull yourself off FriendFeed completely until you want to interact? I’m close to just blocking FriendFeed posers as matter of policy.

FriendFeed Stats • Comments: 61 • Likes: 34 • show

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June 27, 2008 at 11:03 am Brian Daniel Eisenberg

ummm. what qualifies one as a poser?
June 27, 2008 at 11:05 am mike "glemak" dunn

well said - poser comes from surfer lingo btw, for guys that would show up w/ nice boards and "pose" on the beach while the real surfers paddled out - very recognizable on the beach and in social media ;)
June 27, 2008 at 11:05 am J·Phil·Glockner

Not to get angry, Brian, but did you read the article? Please God, let's not turn FriendFeed into Digg.
June 27, 2008 at 11:07 am l0ckergn0me

First!
June 27, 2008 at 11:08 am Bwana McCall

LOL @ the certificate
June 27, 2008 at 11:08 am Thomas Hawk

remember when all those people came out initially and called Twitter a "fad?" Lots of folks hated it. Didn't matter though it still represented innovation and to that end eventually even the haters were brought on board. Same thing will happen with FF. Gillmor is a hater right now. But he'll eventually come around. They always do. Same thing happened with the conversion from film cameras to digital cameras. It just takes some more time than others.
June 27, 2008 at 11:09 am Robert Seidman

your article was boring linkbait. How's that much different from Digg? :-) People should be allowed to use services any way they see fit. You get out what you put in, so what difference does it make? Perhaps Gillmor wants to use FriendFeed merely as a way for Scoble to have an easy way to see his tweets on FriendFeed, so be it!
June 27, 2008 at 11:09 am Delete Me

already on my block list for his dipshit commentary on gillmor gang.
June 27, 2008 at 11:10 am Bwana McCall

Well written article! I also have a problem with these "posers" showing up as recommended users and I also feel FriendFeed is not an application you can look at on paper and dismiss. This happens more often than not.
June 27, 2008 at 11:11 am J·Phil·Glockner

Sweet! My first linkbait! As for the boring part.. we will see how popular it is...
June 27, 2008 at 11:11 am Robert Seidman

Boring linkbait can be quite effective, J. Phil, I suspect it will be among your more popular articles!
June 27, 2008 at 11:12 am Nathaniel Payne

I agree with Robert. Back when Scoble posted numerous tweets on Twitter, people started arguing with him that he was using Twitter "wrong". His response was great: essentially, there is no "wrong" way to use Twitter. Use it how you like to. FriendFeed is the same way. What if all I want is a lifestreaming service that I can post to my blog sidebar? Does it make me a poser just because I don't particularly want to join and interact with the community that is on the service? I don't think so.
June 27, 2008 at 11:12 am Robert Seidman

Bwana, so the issue is more a product development issue w/FriendFeed continuing to recommend the same people. Do you really have an issue with Gillmor or anyone else not really using the service?
June 27, 2008 at 11:13 am J·Phil·Glockner

Nathanial, if it was anyone but Steve Gillmor, I'd agree with you. He's not doing that though. He's hedging his bets.
June 27, 2008 at 11:14 am Nathaniel Payne

I will preface what I said with an agreement that someone who doesn't necessarily interact with FriendFeed shouldn't appear as a "recommended" user. ;)
June 27, 2008 at 11:14 am Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Yup. I read it. Phil. I gave up trying to pay any attention to Steve after his rude interview with Bret Taylor, who was more than courteous in his replies to Steve's leading questions. Gillmor's snobish and elitist line of questioning with Bret and others who work at Friendfeed is testament to his child like behavior when it comes to FF & Twitter. His is noise I can do without, so I have one simple answer: Block on Twitter, Block on Friendfeed. Problem more or less solved.
June 27, 2008 at 11:15 am Kirk Kittell

So if he signed up for the service, tried it out, then discontinued using it, that makes him a poser? Does not compute.
June 27, 2008 at 11:15 am J·Phil·Glockner

Brian, about the same conclusion I came to, but I thought I'd set off some fireworks first.
June 27, 2008 at 11:17 am Bwana McCall

Whether he tried it or not is irrelevant... he's not using it, so why is he a recommended user?
June 27, 2008 at 11:18 am Dobromir Hadzhiev

don't look at the recommendations, the way they're are generated is questionable maybe even random, besides that the post was LOL, it felt right
June 27, 2008 at 11:19 am Kirk Kittell

@Bwana - That doesn't make him a poser. A poser is trying to get in front of the crowd to be seen by that crowd. Gillmor isn't inserting himself in front of this crowd, his account is being placed there by the service.
June 27, 2008 at 11:22 am felix

I noticed these folks too, I think "using it wrong" is a bit harsh, but all the same, I've begun weeding them out of my subscribe list. I have GReader to pull in feeds, I come to FF for the conversation. But if there's conversation on FF around something posted on an inactive users list, I'm happy to partake of it if it's interesting. Just because one doesn't like the source, doesn't mean the resulting bits around it aren't worthwhile!
June 27, 2008 at 11:24 am Jim Stanger

There's nothing wrong with just setting your feeds up and walking away. That's just one way to use this service. There are other, more social, ways to use it, and that's ok, too. Agree that what's raw is if he still lands in the Recommended list. Plurk does this, also, I believe. Who do they "recommend?" The usual suspects...which can be rather boring. It may give the creators brownie points and blog links, but little ense. I would hope the FF gurus would mix it up more often.
June 27, 2008 at 11:25 am Bwana McCall

Kirk, then why won't he delete the account? Or stop feeding?
June 27, 2008 at 11:28 am Robert Seidman

why should he, Bwana? Not that this is the case w/Gillmor, but let's say he just wanted to aggregate his Internet presence on FriendFeed and give that feed to his friends and family and not participate all. What's wrong with that? That will likely be a fairly common use case if FriendFeed is to scale.
June 27, 2008 at 11:28 am J·Phil·Glockner

Jim.. good point. That's essentially what I was thinking in the article, but I deliberately went for a more rant attitude. I just love how emotionally charged the word 'poser' is.. I didn't realize people had such different interpretations of it, though.
June 27, 2008 at 11:30 am Kirk Kittell

@Bwana - probably the same reason I don't delete my Hi5 or Friendster accounts: it's less work to not delete them. As long as they aren't bothering me with mail, they don't exist to me, and I don't even consider deleting them. I suppose that's the difference I would mention between a poser and non-poser: intent.
June 27, 2008 at 11:30 am Karen Swim

I think your assessment may be a bit harsh. There are many who don't use FF to chat and they are not posers. We are all figuring out how to implement the various social meda tools in our arsenal and Twitter was an easy medium for chatting. I admit I initally thought of FF as an aggregator not a chat vehicle.
June 27, 2008 at 11:31 am Tony

Just because people are getting used to a service - or find new or personally convenient ways to use a service doesn't mean they are "posing." but I didn't read the blog post - so maybe Im missing the point...
June 27, 2008 at 11:31 am Kirk Kittell

Also, I'm not as closely involved in the same industry as the rest of you -- I don't have any back story to the why/why not for Gillmor. He's just a name I recognize from Gillmor Gang, which is something I don't follow...
June 27, 2008 at 11:35 am mike "glemak" dunn

kirk nailed it - there is a backstory here when it comes to steve and ff...
June 27, 2008 at 11:35 am J·Phil·Glockner

Karen - Agreed, actually I tried to say several times in my post that I have no problems with most friendfeed 'tourists'.
June 27, 2008 at 11:40 am Kirk Kittell

Ah. Well. I see. In that case: back to work...
June 27, 2008 at 11:41 am Karen Swim

J. Phil, noted and thanks for saying it again! I :-)
June 27, 2008 at 11:42 am Teeg

I often come to FriendFeed to see what's going on with friends on other sites. It gives me a nice rundown of what they're saying other places and what they find interesting. I don't often come chat or vote up sites, probably because commenting here doesn't show up on blogs, so doesn't make sense to post twice and because Plurk isn't included, so the main place I want to talk isn't available. It doesn't mean I don't use it, I do and often, but I'm pretty sure I don't use it like it's "supposed" to be used.
June 27, 2008 at 11:44 am Lon Harris

If you read the post, J. Phil's just saying that it's kind of rude to feed your blog and Twitter to FriendFeed and then never participate in the ensuing conversations. I think "poser" may be a bit harsh, seeing as most people haven't really thought this behavior through to this extent, but he it's an interesting point to make.
June 27, 2008 at 11:48 am J·Phil·Glockner

Richard, FriendFeed can be viewed as a simple lifestream aggregator, and using it as such as fine. Or whatever, actually I don't really care how anyone uses FriendFeed or NOT using it or whatever. There are three (well, four) reasons I wrote this article, to be honest: 1) I wanted to say 'for shame' to those who depend on services such as twitter and friendfeed to promote their personal brand, and they bash FF and *are using it for advertising anyway*, 2) I wanted to write my first "rant" article (contd')
June 27, 2008 at 11:49 am J·Phil·Glockner

3) I wanted to highlight that friendfeed's suggested people to follow mechanism is sort of busted, and 4) I wanted people to realize that FriendFeed has an amazing amount of potential for community building and opinion and input, and those people who just visit and vanish are basically ignoring all that.
June 27, 2008 at 11:51 am Bwana McCall

All I'm saying is if you're going on record to dismiss a service, why bother feeding it your data or even using it. Case in point, I hate/dismiss Myspace all the time, and I have an account. There's absolutely nothing there. It's solely for squatting. I agree that the "recommended user" part is mostly a FriendFeed issue, but I don't see Gillmor complaining about it either. My $0.02.
June 27, 2008 at 11:51 am David Cook

@Robert Seidman: "Not that this is the case w/Gillmor, but let's say he just wanted to aggregate his Internet presence on FriendFeed and give that feed to his friends and family and not participate all." *Spot on!* If someone just wants a link for people to see what they're up to/have to say, they are not at all a "poser" they are just taking advantage of what the service has to offer. @J. Phil: If this blog was just a way to single out Gillmor, then this would not be a problem at all. However, if you are talking about the gen pop of FF users, I think you're off base with this one.
June 27, 2008 at 11:53 am Bwana McCall

David,I'm quite sure Gillmor has went on record to point people to Twitter for everything. That scenario doesn't apply here. My assumption here is that even though the title is general, it's a poke at Gillmor specifically.
June 27, 2008 at 11:59 am David Cook

Bwana, my point is simply that if he wants to bash someone he doesn't necessarily like, then by all means do it and I'll probably get a laugh out of it. But I just don't feel that all people who don't "use" FF are wrong. If you want a service aggregator and don't actually visit the site to check up on it, doesn't make you a poser.
June 27, 2008 at 12:06 pm J·Phil·Glockner

David, as I said in my article (and here to Karen) my intent is not to say that most people who use friendfeed (even as a tourist) are posers.
June 27, 2008 at 12:09 pm Bwana McCall

@David If FriendFeed were a pure aggregator (like Profilactic), I'd agree with that, but it's really not if you ask me. There's much more to it. But I digress. I have other concerns about Gillmor that are outside the scope of this article. I'll agree to disagree simply because inserting Gillmor into this situation brings along a lot of baggage.
June 27, 2008 at 12:14 pm David Cook

Bwana, I see your point and I agree with you in the sense that FF *should* be more than just an aggregator. I, myself don't use it that way at all. I love getting involved, reading posts, comments, and making comments myself. It's just that when J. Phil said: "So, my advice to you internet pundits, either crap or get off the pot. Why not pull yourself off FriendFeed completely until you want to interact? I’m close to just blocking FriendFeed posers as matter of policy."
June 27, 2008 at 12:14 pm J·Phil·Glockner

Bwana - I agree with you here, but as I stated in the article, I picked on Gillmor (though I deliberately did not use his name in the title) because he was the first person in the suggested people to be a clear non-user of the service. I admit that using his name would heat up the discussion a bit, which is good for an opinion piece.
June 27, 2008 at 12:23 pm Sprague D

This is the limit. I need a way to filter posts that have the word "FriendFeed" in them.
June 27, 2008 at 12:27 pm David Cook

J. Phil, "David, as I said in my article (and here to Karen) my intent is not to say that most people who use friendfeed (even as a tourist) are posers." I read what you said to Karen *after* my post went through. But the quote I posted to Bwana is what made me say all that.
June 27, 2008 at 12:29 pm J·Phil·Glockner

Sprague - LOL sorry for have annoyed you with my post. Feel free to hide or block as needed. ;)
June 27, 2008 at 12:45 pm Shey

You're on to something Phil, but I'm not with you 100%.
June 27, 2008 at 12:45 pm Hutch Carpenter

J. Phil: Stir it up!
June 27, 2008 at 12:48 pm J·Phil·Glockner

Thanks, David. No offense taken, or meant.
June 27, 2008 at 12:50 pm J·Phil·Glockner

Shey - That's OK. Remember my about page. My goal is to increase my writing portfolio. This was an opinion piece, a 'rant'. While I of course will take personal responsibility, I wrote it mostly to see if I could write it, as much of a tautology as that sounds.
June 27, 2008 at 12:55 pm AJ Kohn

It's social (media) Darwinism to a certain extent. Those who use, explore and excel using FriendFeed will benefit the most. Should Gillmor or anyone else decide to not do so is only really harming themselves - if you believe FF is here to stay (which I think it is.) So others will be late to the party, some too late, but others will have enough social capital to join when the tipping point becomes obvious.
June 27, 2008 at 1:29 pm Slippy Lane

more to the point, and given your own realisations on writing that article, does posing that question place you further into the realms of poser? lol, j/k obviously
June 27, 2008 at 1:41 pm J·Phil·Glockner

Slippy - I wouldn't consider myself a poser on FriendFeed by my own definition. Now, you look at me on Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc.. HELL YES.
June 27, 2008 at 1:57 pm Hutch Carpenter

I like a point you made in your post. Gillmor is not at all active inside FriendFeed (his activity comes from Twitter). Yet he shows up as a recommendation. Perhaps there is a better way to do recommendations.
June 27, 2008 at 2:14 pm Shey

@Hutch, yup, I agree. A lot of people don't like how the recommendations currently work.
June 27, 2008 at 7:05 pm possible248

As long as the server or other FriendFeed users are not being hurt, I don't get what's wrong with people using FriendFeed how they want to.
June 28, 2008 at 4:56 am Tyler Gillies

im a pouser!!!!!!!!!!!
June 28, 2008 at 4:41 pm J·Phil·Glockner

Tyler - Are you? Your user icon is Ed Norton, and you go by Tyler.. which would make you.. a big fan of Fight Club perhaps?

Viewing 33 Comments

Jake (aka Jawee) 5 months ago 3 points
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I have a few friends that I convinced to sign up fror FriendFeed, only for them to leave again within a day or two. However, whenever they tweet, stumble, or Digg (or any other services), I can still like their posts and comment on them and the good ones may travel through the network. Posers can be just as valuable to FriendFeed as active users in many cases as long as they have people that subscribe to them. There is nothing wrong with simply joining and adding your services and leaving. It enriches the experience for those who stay.

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Phil Glockner 5 months ago 2 points
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I've heard variations of this argument from folks on the FriendFeed thread (above). My answer has been that I don't have a problem with how 'users' use FF. My problem is with a much more narrow subset. However, I do appreciate the comment:
It enriches the experience for those who stay.
You are right about that. And those who don't like it can hide or block those users that they have a problem with.. so, congrats. You win. ;)

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stevegillmor 5 months ago 3 points
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I enjoyed this post, which came up in my Google vanity feed. As your first commenter pointed out, when FF has some way of surfacing content back on Twitter, I will be more interested in joining the conversation inside the FF silo. Actually, your usage stats don't reveal how much I use the service, just how I choose to input comments, which I do through Twitter. Now that you know how to reach me, keep in touch.

Steve

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glemak 5 months ago 2 points
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if you use http://twitterfeed.com/ steve and input your friendfeed atom feed it'll post your ff entries into twitter - i use this along w/ some other things dave slusher took the time to research and point out to use friendfeed fulltime but still interact w/ my non-friendfeed followers who are back on twitter - best of both worlds but able to focus more on friendfeed where the conversation is much richer imho...

http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/wordpress/2...

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Phil Glockner 5 months ago 1 point
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Wow, I completely forgot about twitterfeed. I set up a twitterfeed for myself just now, for my FF entries to be reposted on Twitter. Thanks!

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Phil Glockner 5 months ago 2 points
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You are correct that all I could do is take an educated guess at your FriendFeed usage, by what FriendFeed itself chooses to reveal. I'm glad to know that you take an interest, however hands-off, on the goings-on over there, since (as I've said in other comments), there's good conversation there that I think are worth at least following.

That said, thanks for visiting and taking time out to leave a comment, and for taking my article in the humorous spirit I intended when I wrote it! And I will take you up in keeping in touch, I appreciate the offer!

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chris peoples 5 months ago 2 points
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Somewhat unrelated, but as I was formulating a response to this post something else occurred to me: FriendFeed should forgo its commenting system and just implement Disqus. In fact, everyone should just use Disqus for comments. Maybe I should Twitter this. Or FriendFeed it. Or tumblr it. Heh.

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Phil Glockner 5 months ago 1 point
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I generally feel that using friendfeed to comment is easier than using Disqus.. not by much.. but yeah, using Disqus for friendfeed comments would introduce a level of complexity and load on an additional system.

However, there are rumors that Disqus is working with FriendFeed to bring the two services together in some way.. perhaps allowing two-way publishing on syndicated articles.

Now that would be very cool.

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chris peoples 5 months ago 1 point
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That would be cool. Disqus just empowers my laziness. Whenever I leave a comment somewhere - which is rare - I always forget to check back for replies. I even forget where I've commented at. Disqus takes care of these things for me.

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Phil Glockner 5 months ago 1 point
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If you are saying what I think, which is that FriendFeed should notify you somehow of new replies on old conversations, I'm right there with you!

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GeekMommy 5 months ago 2 points
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Um. Okay, I understand the annoyance... but honestly? There's no "right way" to use a service. By this logic, those who are using Twitter to do anything other than alert the world to "what they are doing" are poseurs.

Seriously... I see people using FF different ways. There's no rule that says "and if you don't participate fully over here, then you can't have your feeds here for others to see."

Can we get rid of the "right way" judgment call? It's accurate to say that someone uses the service in a a way that you find frustrating - but there's nothing that requires someone to act in any certain way on the service.

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Phil Glockner 5 months ago 1 point
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Where in my article did I say there is a right way to use FriendFeed? All I said is that I think that, in my example, influential people (whom I picked on one in particular) who just use FriendFeed as a vehicle to increase their personal brand without having any interest in the service for the community, are not right.

And, Steve himself posted and said although he does not contribute, he does pay attention to FriendFeed, so he's no longer a really good example.

That leaves my final argument -- that FriendFeed should not be suggesting people who are not contributing to new FriendFeed users as examples as really the only one standing.

Thanks for your comment.

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GeekMommy 5 months ago 1 point
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"They are essentially telling us, yeah well I don’t like FriendFeed, but I’m still going to use it for PR until my primary publicity vehicle stops working (in this case Twitter).

I believe this is wrong."

That last part? That's the opposite of right. I read what you wrote. I disagree with your judgment call.

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Are You Really Using FriendFeed, or are You a Poser?

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