My Thoughts On Social Media

August 21, 2008

The bookmarking system on FriendFeed

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Filed under : friendfeed, social bookmarking, social media

The bookmarking system I am referring to is liking something on FriendFeed. Liking an item not only serves as an encouraging vote for the content author, but it also serves as a great bookmarking tool.

In addition, the liking feature performs as a:

Presence system
Bookmarking system
Recognition system

The river of content flows fast and furiously on FriendFeed. Often, I will miss friends’ postings because of this. The like feature has become a necessary bookmarking tool to keep track of everything. The like system on FriendFeed serves the same purpose as a bookmarking service. It allows you to archive and access stored data for consumption at a later point in time. Using the like system as a bookmarker, will considerably help you keep track of your friends’ updates.

For the new people on FriendFeed who don’t quite know their way around. You can access your likes and comment history on the right side of your feed under your selected services.

Your FriendFeed liking history also can be read via rss. At the very bottom of your FriendFeed likes page, you will see an rss icon. Simply copy that link into Google reader and access it anytime.

Your rss feed will look like this: http://friendfeed.com/fruchter/likes?format=atom

Replace fruchter with your user name. If you follow me on FriendFeed, feel free to add my likes feed into your Google Reader. FriendFeed gives you an rss option for just about everything you do on the site. It’s a great way to get the best of your FriendFeed in Google Reader.

The “liking” feature also functions as an indicator of who is online. It is sort of a FriendFeed presence system. This is the best method for me, to gauge who is active at any given time on FriendFeed. In this river, you need to stand out. Consistent liking and contributing will get your name out there. The more I see your name, the more I take notice. Expect me to visit your feed and like bookmark things of interest.

August 19, 2008 -- Getting social with bookmarking on FriendFeed.
September 10, 2008 -- What does your digital fingerprint say about you?
August 28, 2008 -- Fake following in social media: Yay or Nay?
August 8, 2008 -- Viral on FriendFeed
August 6, 2008 -- The last few days on FriendFeed

Viewing 14 Comments

Rahsheen 3 months ago 1 point
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I really enjoyed this post. The Like feature is so simple that a lot of people miss the power of it.

One thing I'd like to add is that, if you'd like to take the Bookmarking nature of Like's a step further, you want the Read Later Greasemonkey script. It lives here: http://ffapps.com/readlater

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19 /people/microrahsheen/ /people/microrahsheen/following/ http://sheenonline.biz 695396782 rahsheen microrahsheen microrahsheen rahsheen

kylelacy 3 months ago 1 point
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Rahsheen: Are you following me? lol Or maybe it is the other way around.
Great thoughts on the like feature! I am going to start using it as more of an organization tool than anything else.

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2 /people/kylelacy/ /people/kylelacy/following/ http://www.kylelacy.com 56200747 in/kylelacy kyleplacy kyleplacy brandswag.portfolio

timhoeck 3 months ago 1 point
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Great idea! Many times I forget to take advantage of the fact that you can access your friends likes. Think I will now go through all of my subscribers likes rss feeds into a Google Reader Group. On the same token, you can easily track your friends comments on FriendFeed in Google Reader as well doing the same thing.

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1 /people/timhoeck/ /people/timhoeck/following/ http://timhoeck.com/ 673798412 pub/7/904/a39 timhoeck timhoeck tim_hoeck

nicefishfilms 3 months ago 1 point
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Geeze what a great tip! Find myself going back to my 'likes' and 'comments' just to find something again. RSS is the way to go, thank you.

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5 /people/nicefishfilms/ /people/nicefishfilms/following/ http://www.nicefishfilms.com/blog nicefishfilms nicefishfilms

kirtok 3 months ago 1 point
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Like feature is great. I wish they had a tag option. This way I'd tag the posts I like, and visit my archives of tags whenever I needed them (similar to delicious).

My main problem with friendfeed is it's addictive and kills my productivity :)

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1 /people/kirtok/ /people/kirtok/following/

jeffisageek 3 months ago 1 point
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hey mike great post on using likes to find content and using rss with it. being a FF Fanatic I will be using this as well.

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14 /people/jeffisageek/ /people/jeffisageek/following/ http://www.jeffisageek.net jeffisageek teknokool teknokool

svartling 3 months ago 1 point
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Yes I use this all the time. You forgot to mention the search feature in friendfeed. It's very easy to search for your bookmarks (Likes) with the built in search.

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6 /people/svartling/ /people/svartling/following/ http://www.svartling.net/ svartling svartling svartling svartling

Yuvi Panda 3 months ago 1 point
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Well, you can view only your last 900 likes....

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6 /people/yuvipanda/ /people/yuvipanda/following/ http://blog.yuvisense.net yuvipanda yuvipanda

felix 3 months ago 1 point
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I use the like feature the same way. :) My problem with it, though, is that it is public. Sometimes, I just want to grab something to investigate for later, or whatever and I don't want to publically like something. I started resharing into a private room for that. But it'd be nice if there was a different feature that would do that. Kind of like the difference between "star"ing and "share"ing in Google Reader.

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10 /people/felix/ /people/felix/following/ http://comments.deasil.com/ nybble73 nybble73

timhoeck 3 months ago 1 point
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Yuvi, you might be able to view more than 900 if you keep it in Google Reader? ;)

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1 /people/timhoeck/ /people/timhoeck/following/ http://timhoeck.com/ 673798412 pub/7/904/a39 timhoeck timhoeck tim_hoeck

puscic 3 months ago 1 point
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I think you could use this script too, as a bookmarking system: Read Later for FF http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24734

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1 /people/puscic/ /people/puscic/following/ http://randomaccesslife.blogspot.com

rebkin 2 months ago 1 point
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A heartfelt thank you for this post. Like you write «the river of content flows fast and furiously on FriendFeed», and even though I spend a lot of time there I miss a lot too.

I do hope people who are new to FriendFeed will read this post because it's really helpful and I wish I'd had something like this in the beginning :)

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1 /people/rebkin/ /people/rebkin/following/ http://rebkin.com 1183376569 Rebkin Rebkins

Michael Hocter 2 months ago 1 point
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I will occasionally, when I'm in a hurry, use a like as a kind of bookmark to read later, but mostly I use likes to show that I like something or want my subscribers to see it. I don't really trust friendfeed as a more permanent bookmarking system, so anything I want to find later will be posted to Diigo and tagged.

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1 /people/desaturated/ /people/desaturated/following/ http://michaelhocter.com/ in/mhocter mhocter mhocter mhocter desaturated

chrisloft 2 months ago 1 point
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ahh . . . I wondered where I could find all my 'likes' . . . why didn't I think of looking there? Thanks for this info and for pointing out how to make an rss feed of this page.

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1 /people/chrisloft/ /people/chrisloft/following/ http://chrisloft.com

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On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 46 people and commented on 22 times hide

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Liked by

August 21, 2008 at 4:13 am Michael J. Cohen (mjc)

great friggin idea.
August 21, 2008 at 4:24 am Kyle Lacy

this post is amazing. read it. and comment
August 21, 2008 at 4:37 am Hutch Carpenter

Really like the three use cases for Liking: bookmarking, presence, recognition. All true.
August 21, 2008 at 4:39 am Carlos Ayala

Spot on Mike. Good stuff.
August 21, 2008 at 6:33 am sergiooo

clever !
August 21, 2008 at 12:27 pm Mike Fruchter

Thanks Kyle and Carlos.
August 21, 2008 at 12:48 pm Charlie Anzman

Mike - The more of these articles on navigating Friendfeed (especially for new users) the better. Excellent stuff!
August 21, 2008 at 1:15 pm (jeff)isageek

great post mike!
August 21, 2008 at 1:58 pm Mike Fruchter

Thanks Charlie & Jeff :)
August 21, 2008 at 2:07 pm Joselin Mane

Thanks for posting and sharing. I like the way you leverage one tool for multiple things, it's very innovative!
August 21, 2008 at 2:11 pm mike "glemak" dunn

great primer mike
August 21, 2008 at 3:32 pm Mike Fruchter

How do you use likes? solely as a recognition system?
August 21, 2008 at 3:37 pm mike "glemak" dunn

i use it exactly the way you wrote it up - w/ one addition, when a thread title seems questionable i like it but then also add a comment that says "like = bookmark" to imply that i need to read it later & that i am not stating that i "like" it officially yet
August 21, 2008 at 3:43 pm Mike Fruchter

Thanks Mike. For the people that use the likes strictly for bookmarking, do you ever unlike an item once you are finished reading it?
August 21, 2008 at 4:20 pm mike "glemak" dunn

i do unlike after read sometimes but always leave a comment on my take - might even add "dislike" if appropriate...
August 22, 2008 at 12:41 pm Chris Loft

Excellent! Thank you.
August 22, 2008 at 12:43 pm Zee from WeDoCreative

No wonder you've got so many likes here! :)
August 26, 2008 at 9:18 am Roger Kondrat

Hey you can't like your own article you cheeky guy! :) I finally got a chance to read this one and I am glad you wrote it. So many don't know this and I happen to think its a great tactic but did you know there is an FF Greasemonkey script that allows you to 'read later' too? Either way you now need to write a follow up now that the beta is out :)) Cheers - You
August 26, 2008 at 10:19 am ⓃⓄⒶⒽ ⒹⒶⓋⒾⒹ ⓈⒾⓂⓄⓃ

ok great... great... all good... now please make replies possible for other microblogging platforms. identi.ca would be a great start... but why not plurk? are you dudes under contract with twitter? do you have some kind of loyalty to them that you are totally reliant to them?
August 26, 2008 at 12:17 pm Susan Beebe

I *like* this blog and this post! nice one Mike!
August 26, 2008 at 12:55 pm Mike Fruchter

Roger, I became aware of that GM script recently. The whole dynamics change now with the new beta. The follow up is already in the works :)
August 26, 2008 at 12:55 pm Mike Fruchter

Thanks Susan!