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

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Steve Gillmor on FriendFeed 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):

M-W Online: Poseur

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

image 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.

posted June 27th, 2008 in Opinion, Rant | Tags: , , ,

  • 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.
  • 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. ;)
  • 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
  • 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...
  • 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!
  • 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!
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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!
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • "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.
  • I re-read your original comment in the context of applying specifically to that one statement.. it makes more sense now.

    Thanks for your input.
  • I think it's an excellent post and worthy of discussion. People use Pownce, Jaiku, Plaxo Pulse, and other services similar. They set it up and then walk away. I call it parking and creating lifestreams, as you've already stated. And as others have pointed out, there is definitely an issue with porting the activity that happens back into other services. Sure, there are now ways to have comments from blog posts pulled back in with plugins like on Wordpress, but other advances haven't happened yet.

    The thing that makes Twitter work for everyone, whether we're fed up with the way it doesn't always work or not, is that conversation is simple. Especially back-and-forth conversation. Not to say it isn't simple on FriendFeed, if you're using FriendFeed solely, I just think that most people have not trained themselves to use FriendFeed as their main communications tool yet. I set up two things recently to do that. I've added tabs to FriendFeed so that it's my start page and I've also started using feedalizr, which lets me use a few of my other services directly. See my blog post on this for more info.

    Friendfeed is still too early adopter, IMHO, to get everyone there really interacting.
  • Agreed with these points, Lynne. I maybe had too many different goals when I wrote this post, and different people are taking what they want out of it.. and actually, I'm OK with that. But really, I just wanted to foster some discussion, maybe poke the FriendFeed devs a bit for having (as I see it) a flawed 'suggested user' page, and poke some fun at Steve Gillmor, who seems to have taken it that way.

    Then again, maybe I will be roasted alive on his show one day, in which case, we'll be even. Haha.
  • I thought you did a hellva good job with the post - worthy of a "Get your crank on" button :)
  • Excellent! From the mouth of a master, that is high praise indeed! Thanks.
  • Does it really matter? Is your issue that these people ar just using FriendFeed to promote themselves without interacting personally?

    I guess that if the comment fragmentation problem ever gets "solved" then this sort of thing won't happen any more as a comment here will be a comment there.
  • It doesn't really matter, no. I started out wanting to write a rant, and I ended up with what Robert Siedman calls "linkbait" and he's probably correct.

    I have a few issues that I outlined in the comments in Friendfeed, I will quote them here:
    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, 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.

    So, as a rant, this was moderately successful.

    As linkbait, it was really successful.

    As a statement about using FriendFeed wrong, the message was received but not interpreted quite correctly.. I could have been clearer, or directed my rant at Gillmor directly and not be inclusive.

    As an unspoken comment on who people *could* leverage friendfeed for friends, promotion or other reasons, but choose not to, it was not all that successful.
  • I'm getting tired of all the attacks on people. How about uplifting those who ARE doing FriendFeed right?
  • Are you tired of MY attacks on 'people' or on negativity surrounding FriendFeed and Twitter in general? Because if it is the former, let me ask you.. how many articles have I written that are negative about FriendFeed OR Twitter?
  • How about calling them the FriendFeed Deaf instead of Posers, much less critical that way. I have no problem with those who use FF only as a single point of aggregation for their data outputs. They're not really "FriendFeeders" so much as "RSS Producers" at that point. I think that data collection and aggregation part is what FF is all about, it just so happens it has a rich community inside it as well. People continue to compare it to Facebook and Twitter and every other social service, but it is really none of those things. It is its own entity with its own purpose and set of tools, yeah it allows interaction internally, but it's just not the same thing.
  • Three reasons why I didn't:
    1) I wasn't including everyone who has ever signed on to FriendFeed and then never re-visited
    2) I liked the word 'poser' as it makes this article more emotionally charged
    3) I think using friendfeed as a way of simply aggregating what you do on other places on the internets is just fine.
  • Ryo
    Yep. I comment on Friendfeed ususally. If one does not care about the comments there, it's lost. However, that is not my problem :) I don't care about. Read it on friendfeed, or not at all.
  • In a way, this is the same behavior Steve is exhibiting, but in reverse.. he uses Twitter exclusively.

    So let me ask you: do you have a Twitter login that you ignore? If so, you could be described as a "twitter poser"..
  • Ryo
    Yeah, right. Twitter-Poser may be the right words :)
    I use Twitter only to get my stuff out to the poor guys that don't use friendfeed. I send all my friendfeed-stuff to Twitter via twitterfeed.com, but i usually never check anything on Twitter for month.

    So, yeah, you could say that.
  • I am an active member at FriendFeed and Twitter. No posing here!
  • Excellent. Even if you weren't, I wouldn't hold it against you.
  • My two pennies: most of the web 2 addicts HAVE to sign up to various services and NOT use them simply because they have to maintain their online identity (or brand, or microbrand) intact.
    Don't know if you followed the story about how someone pretended to be Loic Le Meur in plurk and posting things that turned insulting for Loic? Now, Loic does not use plurk, but he had to claim back his identity.
    If there is something to be annoyed about, is the friendfeed recommendation. Maybe they need a more clever algorithm.
  • I do remember the Loic issue.

    Hmm.. I will grudgingly accept that you have a good argument for a placeholder. However, as you said, that doesn't mean FriendFeed should put someone like Steve on their recommended list (because by all accounts he is not active).
  • Mike
    Does it really matter enough to waste this much time and energy?
  • Not to ego stroke too much, Mike, but this article for better or worse is now my third-most popular in terms of share and second-most in terms of FriendFeed discussion. It has drawn a lot of eyes to my site and has even gotten Steve Gillmore to take a minute out and comment, which he didn't have to do.

    So you tell me, was it worth it?
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