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Paying it forward on FriendFeed

30th July
2008
written by Mike Fruchter

This idea was inspired from this post by J. Phil of scribkin.com. The idea is simple, and I think will be very rewarding.

When I first joined FreindFeed in February, it was easy to maintain a normal balance of my friends and their activities. This was easy because my number of subscriptions was low. Five months later, over 330+ people are subscribed to me, and I have reciprocated back to about the same number. The core group of people I follow are great. They provide tremendous value to me with the content and conversations they create, contribute and participate in. I often find myself on FriendFeed sticking to and staying close to the herd I follow. While there is nothing wrong with this, it’s coming at an expense which is isolation.

I feel like I have isolated myself and a lot of subscribers by sticking to the herd. I very often will visit the blogs, like content, comment or share the content of people who are newly subscribed to me. This has become a nearly impossible task, to keep up with over 330+subscriptions. Google reader helped tremendously in this task when my member circle and rss feed count was lower. I currently have about 300+ feeds in Google reader & Toluu alone. In some respect it has become what I feared the most, quantity and not quality. The time has come for me to broaden my horizons on FriendFeed and stray from the pack.

This will last for 5 days beginning midnight tonight 7/29.

The Objective: To participate only in my circle of 330 friends. Sorry foafs. This entails only liking and commenting on content from members that are subscribed to me. Now the noticeable change will be in the content I share via Google reader, and the content I post via bookmarking using Diigo and the Friendfeed bookmarklet. The content I share must come from a members blog that is subscribed to me on Friendfeed. The usual content from the trusted sources such as Duncan Riley, Louis Gray, Hutch Carpenter, Steve Hodson and Sarah Parez will still be shared on my feed for the next 5 days. Not only because I like their writing, but more importantly because they are subscribed to me on Friendfeed and part of my member circle. Begining tommorow and lasting 5 days, I will actively share content from a majority of members blogs I have never seen, much less visited. I will have the same level of engagement with my conversations, comments and liking.

I have set up a new Google Reader account for this purpose. This account is only for member blogs that are subscribed to me. Going through 330+ members profile is not feasible, so I started this thread on FriendFeed asking members in my circle to post their blogs. If you subscribe to me and publish a blog, please list it in this thread.

The Goal: To broaden my horizons and to truly get to know the people that follow me better. I hope after 5 days, my level of engagement on FriendFeed will be more enriched and fufilling. I will post a follow up once the 5 days are over.

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  • July 30, 2008 at 1:46 am Robert Scoble
    Interesting idea. I've thought about starting an anonymous account where no one will know it's me, just to keep it down to 50 people, or so, to see how that experience is different from following 3,000.
  • July 30, 2008 at 1:48 am Mark Trapp
    This is a great idea: I'm interested to see what you find out. I've been playing around with my own programme: but I think it's limited by the presentation of the FF UI. I've been trying to find things from whom I'm following that nobody has liked or commented on, particularly the blog service, and reading what's there (and commenting/liking when appropriate). There's a bunch of really interesting people out there who haven't crossed the popular threshold in Friendfeed yet.
  • July 30, 2008 at 1:48 am Louis Gray
    I'd argue that maybe FriendFeed will offer a tiering, which will let you keep the big #, and also have a smaller feed. Ana referred to "good friends" in a recent note. http://friendfeed.com/e/ef06051c-038f-45cd-8a41-725037bc057b/Good-friends-on-FriendFeed-is-really-just-a-proxy/
  • July 30, 2008 at 1:51 am Todd Jordan
    Great idea!
  • July 30, 2008 at 1:56 am Bill Sodeman
    It should be a fun experiment!
  • July 30, 2008 at 2:45 am Carrie
    Cool idea. I look forward to hearing your results.
  • July 30, 2008 at 2:46 am Mike Fruchter
    Robert, I often view friendfeed with my wife on her account. The scenery is drastically different ,as she follows under 20 people. It's an interesting take on the world, other then tech and social media.
  • July 30, 2008 at 2:48 am Mike Fruchter
    @Louis, some sort of grouping or tiering system would be an excellent solution. GM scripts are some what touching on this, but simply don't cut it. I'm referring to a GM script I use currently that groups my friends, most interesting friends etc.
  • July 30, 2008 at 2:54 am Jay Martin
    I don't read all the content that comes in, but I do check FF regularly. I read the 1 Day Summary and the first page in my stream. The cream seems to rise to the top and I don't get bogged down.
  • July 30, 2008 at 4:41 am Gregory Lent
    don't follow people, even if they follow you. follow your intuition, your interests, or your trusted sources. there is simply too much stuff otherwise, and only because you did the "politically correct" thing of reciprocation. by doing that you diluted your own experience, and nobody wants you to do that.
  • July 30, 2008 at 4:42 am Tim Hoeck
    this is an awesome idea! I'll be monitoring your shared content closely the next couple days :)
  • July 30, 2008 at 5:41 am Adam Loving
    I am impressed by your dedication to your followers, and the thoughtfulness you give to this short-attention-span medium!
  • July 30, 2008 at 5:47 am Dan V
    What I always hated about social networks is that they finally end, as you said in the article, to be more about quantity than quality. And I have to recognize I went for quantity lately and less quality. The more time I spend reading what others say, the less time I spend experssing my own ideas.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:15 am Mitchell Tsai
    Robert: Check out RAPatton http://friendfeed.com/pattonroberta He's one of the most active on FriendFeed (17,000+ comments/likes), yet only follows 34 people (used to be 19 people). Give the alias account a try & see what it's like. Personally I'm using the "friends" tab less & less. I'm especially curious what the "Best of" pages look-like without the "noisy" people.
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:37 am Justin Korn
    good luck!
  • July 30, 2008 at 7:43 am Jason Lovett
    how about only talking to people on the street
  • July 30, 2008 at 9:02 am Charlie Anzman
    Mike - Your best piece yet! I've found that going 'outside my circle' keeps things fresh. Not sure if I would take your approach but you can easily get (new word?) 'micro-focused' by staying with the same group. For me, it can cloud my objectivity and positively keeps me from writing 'fresh stuff'. Robert was 100% right in his earlier piece. My best days are when I publish something original that makes sense. BTW - I also enlist my wife's list when doing research.
  • July 30, 2008 at 9:10 am Jeremiah Owyang
    I don't follow so many folks here in FF as I do in other social sites. Since Friend of a Friend posts will display, I don't miss much. Since there's far more content here (multiple life streams) cuttting way back makes sense. @scoble should pay attention to this.
  • July 30, 2008 at 9:15 am Charlie Anzman
    Jeremiah - That's interesting. I did the opposite. Turned off 'friends of friends' a while back and added more people. Eclectic mix is great!
  • July 30, 2008 at 10:22 am Ernie Oporto
    Having just a few friends is nice. I can see all the FFs in just a couple of pages, then it's back to the beginning again.
  • July 30, 2008 at 12:29 pm Mike Fruchter
    Charlie thanks, the quality has been missing for me. I hope to bring away from this a more enriched and fulling experience on FF. This should be interesting, I am very excited about the out come.
  • July 30, 2008 at 1:02 pm Rebkin
    A very admireable project :)
  • July 30, 2008 at 3:53 pm Mike Fruchter
    Rebkin, thank you. Few hours in and it's already become very enlighting :-)
  • July 30, 2008 at 4:50 pm Phil (scribkin)
    Commented on the blog, going through the best of the day and I wanted to bump this. First official bump from me, so don't think I do this all the time ;)
  • July 30, 2008 at 5:38 pm Susan Beebe
    Mike: wow, this is neat! I love that BLOG roll you created over here --> http://friendfeed.com/e/9b32e861-3cb5-4115-b26f-a1e85fa29afa/If-you-are-subscribed-too-me-and-publish-a-blog/
  • July 30, 2008 at 5:51 pm Mike Fruchter
    Suan, that blog roll became MASSIVE, OMG!
  • July 30, 2008 at 5:58 pm Alexander van Elsas
    Mike. I understand where this is coming from. It is an interesting experiment and might work out great. The hesitation I feel comes from a gut feeling that you are hitting on a core problem with aggregators like Friendfeed. Everyone loves the interaction, but it is impossible to maintain a decent level of it once the # of subscribers passes 100 or so. I think another way of dealing with this is not to decrease the # but instead see FF as a river of content that passes by. You dive in every once in a while.
  • July 30, 2008 at 5:59 pm Alexander van Elsas
    and then use it at that point the way it was intended. The benefit of that approach might be that you can broaden horizons (although this is difficult here in the early adopter scene). Will be interesting to see what your experiences are. Good luck ;-)
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:01 pm Susan Beebe
    Mike - YEA it did huh?! awesome list!! I am gonna chomp thru that list tomorrow - day 1 of vacation! woo hoo! om nom nom nom!!
  • July 30, 2008 at 6:30 pm Chris Baskind
    Good luck with the project. We'll be watching to see how happy you are with the results.
  • July 30, 2008 at 7:43 pm Mitchell Tsai
    This points out the need for user-created-GROUPS-of-friends again. Robert shouldn't have to set up a whole new account just to try this. It'd be easier for Robert to define a new group-of-50 people and call it "Test Group". (1) Maybe "Test Group" could show up in a tab? (2) Or it could show up in the "friends" tab, and you switch groups with a pull-down menu (to your preassigned groups). --- Then you could opt between various "firehoses" and more "sedate" groups. Make science, photo, tech, humor groups.
  • July 30, 2008 at 7:52 pm Mike Fruchter
    Mitchell. well said. I use GM scripts for this now, it helps but is not a final solution. This needs to be implemented on FF.Louis mentioned a tiering solution, were you could still keep your high #'s and still maintain a small feed.
  • July 30, 2008 at 9:12 pm Robert Seidman
    Mitchell Tsai: let's say you're the head of product development at FriendFeed, would you focus on developing to satisfy those extremely enamored with social media, or would you prioritize development for people who really will just use the service to follow their real friends?
  • August 7, 2008 at 4:26 am Charlie Anzman
    The likeys look like a whos who of Friendfeed early adopters :)
  • August 7, 2008 at 6:33 am Hayk Hakobyan
    i have something of similar experience. i m co-moderating english language boards for the biggest youth portal and as such mods are supposed to be unbiased. But many discussion - on topics like peace, human rights, etc. - were getting very one sided and biased. So i created myself an alter ego account with which i still do post. The objective of that account is to bring balance to discussions and to challenge where noon expects, so to induce an interesting debate.