I am a huge fan of Alexander van Elsas’s thoughts on new media and technologies pertaining to social behavior. It is always a pleasure to read his views on how social media plays a role in the day to day communication between people. Recently he wrote a post entitled: The Idiocy of Social Media Conversations. We will dive into that in a second.
I have been playing around with the idea of writing a post about the content creation from members and the value it has to the FriendFeed audience. There has been a lot of talk lately about the content being generated on Friendfeed and how some of it is not “desirable” to a few people. Robert Scoble recently wrote a post about the idiotic comments on some of the FriendFeed conversations surrounding the economic crisis. In the post he states:
The downside of this new media world is that you’ll hear a lot of opinions. Which one is right? I’m not always right. In fact, I’m often wrong. But I’ve counted on YOU, the audience, to help me correct that when I’m off in the deep end. Now, though, I’ve seen so much idiocy that I’m not even sure of my audience anymore. That’s how deep our loss of confidence in each other has come.
It is bewildering for me to believe that Scoble is blasting the entire development of content in Friendfeed based around the opinons of a certain crisis. Isn’t it all relative?
Alexander responded to Robert by saying:
Secondly he complains about the idiocy within the discussions on Friendfeed and the loss of confidence in his audience there. For some reason Robert assumes there are experts hanging out on Friendfeed that are engaging in thorough, deep discussions.
I am on Alexander’s side. It is hard for me to connect good content and in-depth conversations with FriendFeed. I know that most of the early adopters use FriendFeed and great content is SHARED but it isn’t necessarily STRIPPED. A good content site has the sharing aspect intact but also the stripping aspect where meaning dialoug is shared amount the users.
I love FriendFeed. I love the photo memes, when Mike Fruchter shares blog posts, when democrats become pissed off at Republicans (or vice versa), I love the random things posted by Mona and I love the conversations.
If you are looking for a place to share ideas and collaborate in a knowledge capital heavy environment, I wouldn’t recommend FriendFeed.
If you are wanting a wide variety of content and personality, FriendFeed is the place to be.
Mona N.
A-men Kyle. I just wish people will stop trying to cater FriendFeed to their needs NOT by influencing those utilizing the site but by comprehending WHAT FriendFeed is about and HOW to work with the features FriendFeed offers.
Great post. And I’m with you 220%
m. 🙂
Mona N.
people would* stop trying to cater FriendFeed to fit* their needs
Jeez, you need an edit option for people like me who often make grammatical errors! Oh and tahnks for the mention. You know I luuuuh you too, Kyle! 🙂
Mona N.
Crap, I didn’t read it thoroughly and now I’m spamming your comments. The one part I disagree with is this: “If you are looking for a place to share ideas and collaborate in a knowledge capital heavy environment, I wouldn’t recommend FriendFeed.”
Since FriendFeed has a constant stream of activity, mountains of information, and people from all walks of life with an abundance of interests sharing, the meaningful or in-depth, knowledge capital dialogue you’re looking for is hidden. You just have to know where to look. 😉
pjatloop
I’m with you here and I’m with Mona. Something that also troubles me is Scoble’s use of the word ‘audience’ … he isn’t a one man broadcaster.
The whole idea of social media is that it breaks down those boundaries between broadcaster and audience. I was looking at lots of feeds regarding the economic crisis and believe me, I didn’t regard what Scoble was saying as anything other that ‘his view’ and at times, to be honest, his view was a little facile himself. At one point he said, “they voted against the bail out, what should WE do” …
Lorraine Ball
Good assessment of the current state of friend feed. I definitely agree with Mona, there are some terrific information resources if you ask the right questions.
Trying to control the content of FriendFeed is like trying t control the conversation at a cocktail party the more interesting the people, the more diverse the conversation, and the later in the evening, the funnier we all think we are.
Rahsheen
Lorraine hits the nail on the head here. Nobody is in a position to control the content on FriendFeed. It’s silly to assume you should find only a certain type of discussion there. It’s like assuming Google Search is only going to return the most useful and truthful results. You, as the user, will always have to know exactly which bits are useful to you specifically.
Robert seems to think we are his audience/information filters. Some in the community are good at that, but most of us have no interest in separating one type of information from any other. I will not be categorized or put into a box.
Mark Krynsky
FriendFeed is an amazing eco-system and trying to pigeonhole the content created there or its users is a waste of time. Furthermore trying to dictate or complain about it is even worse.
It’s the diverse nature of the community that has made it my favorite online networking destination. If I want to feel silly and blow off steam, I can do it there with others.
If I want to find amazingly fresh tech content or share it with others, I can do that too.
If I want to converse with users in a way almost impossible elsewhere, yep…it happens there too.
There are great tools on the site to help fine tune your experience, so complaining about it seems pretty pointless to me.
FriendFeed come one, come all and have a great time.