tasty blog snack

I appreciate your distaste for plurk - I concur

I am on Twitter. I am not on Friendfeed.
There’s your answer.

Justine…. You are so intense.

@Ariel: Yes, plurk is probably the worst website I’ve ever forced myself to use.

FriendFeed only has the hype now because of Twitter’s growing pains. Once Twitter’s problems are ironed out no other service will be able to touch it because of it’s user base!

I’ve met people recently who go to google.com just to type in “yahoo” to get to their webmail. If you ask me, neither Twitter nor FriendFeed have a chance.

haha @sara: Just annoyed at the internet lol

It ain’t about Twitter VS Friendfeed. It’s about Twitter AND Friendfeed. I see them as highly complimentary in nature. Co-opetition is a good thing. No?

Follow the conversation on this topic here: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=twitter+vs+friendfeed

and here: http://summize.com/search?q=twitter+vs+friendfeed

Twitter FTW.

Good points and advice. Mike didn’t note that he’s on some sort of default friendfeed list anyway so I don’t think his results are typical. I get more Twitter followers every few days than I have total on FriendFeed, I think partly because I don’t hang out on FriendFeed, sending people updates, etc. I sure like the way FF pulls in all my content from many sources, but don’t like the idea of trying to spend time there and at Twitter and bloggng and….

twitter

tried friendfeed but, when it comes down to it, i didn’t need all the extra bells and whistles of keeping up with all mine and my friends social network sites

twitter keeps it simple and that’s what i dig, yo

Twitter is pretty. Friendfeed is ugly.
As services, they are very different. There is nothing else like Twitter, just like there is nothing else like Friendfeed. They are all unique. Plurk is also unique.

twitter for life

The only person I know who uses plurk is Tom from Buzz Out Loud.

As for twitter vs friendfeed, I have begun moving to friendfeed because I can track so much more than just twitter, but it’s not a fair comparison.

I will say friendfeed has a crappy layout.

Thank you for bringing up the “mainstream audience” issue. If I were Joe Public, I would likely not use either. Joe Public just isn’t there yet, I think.

I choose Twitter. I’ve been looking at FriendFeed and it hasn’t really appealed to me, it seems like too much (I don’t know if that makes sense or not).

ask someone outside of our little tech bubble what techcrunch is and they’ll probably say it’s a cereal.

HAHAHAHAHA! Oh man, that was a good one. You’re spot on, too.

Um, choice between Twitter or FriendFeed, without being a techie? Honestly, I’d stick to blogging. If I wasn’t a techie, I’m not sure I’d get the appeal of either.

Twitter is the one… Because it’s simple to use for the non geek

nice potty mouth justine.. btw twitter and friendfeed are used for different stuff.. so they can all live in harmony i don’t think there is a war.. i like everything out there hell i still use ICQ after 10 years for christs sake!

Twitter is simple & easy to use. I could even get a few of my non-techie friends (the ‘normals’) to use it. But it’s down too much, so I don’t even bother to convince them. FF would be near-impossible to sell.

Hi Justine,
Very interesting read. In fact I was a bit surprised at what you of all were saying. What I mean was You are a net celeb.You have a .tv media channel which people subscribe. And you are saying that “tech isn’t mainstream unless you attach some iPod headphones to it.” You of all people is saying this disheartening thing. I am surprised. But what you are saying is very true. Tech,new media,social media - most I think is still a very alternate-stream and yet to become main-stream.Most of my friends in old world media think “blogging”is a fad and will quickly get passé. Same true for online tv/ip tv & poscast. As u said nearest my nephew or kid sis will ever think of tech is iPod or iPhone
ciao,
Arjun

FriendFeed is good when Twitter is down but I still think Twitter did it right. Now can they please scale it!!

I personally love Twitter, and wouldn’t really consider switching. However, I also notice that my family and most of my friends have no interest in it (none of them are really tech oriented). My family doesn’t use the web like that, and my friends all rely on Facebook (since we’re all fresh out/still in college).

I think that it’s up to us (the community) to help Twitter flit along through its rough times while it continues to grow and evolve, and become the reliable, consistent web app that we all want it to be.

Tweet me @jakressaty

I just went to Friendfeed and the first thing I saw from you was “Wishing I still had a DSLR. :(” This post is a screen down from that. There’s something to be said for linearity.

As far as Plurk goes, the term “peanut gallery” comes to mind.

This is like comparing facebook to myspace. For my purposes, I use Myspace almost strictly for networking purposes. And facebook for everything else. So I guess what I am getting to is the point that its how you plan on using what is given in front of you. Maybe twitter fits your needs better, maybe friend feed does a better job.

You go girl! Go tell ‘em! BTW, I’m not going back to Plurk either, and I only checked it out because someone I’m following in Twitter mentioned it.

You are smart. You look deeper into things… and then you discover things that I never even thought about… but I like twiiter a bit better… then again I just joined friend feed today… so we will see how everything goes…

You brought up a good point I’ve been pondering all weekend, are all us techies just feeding off each other. A blog that makes thousands of dollars per month that really has no compelling content to the mainstream public is useless, isn’t it. The advertisers must hate it.

Until the general public begins to use these services, Twitter has a great chance due to SMS, are we just a Techcestuous community?

I’ve been nom nom nomming on tasty blog snack for a while, but this is the first post i’ve read that really interested me in a good way. You should write more invigorated posts like this one!

Also, twitter ftw.

Wow Justine, you have changed. You went from someone who was fun and constantly friendly to someone completely different and less happy.
Oh well.

Twitter AND FriendFeed work awesome together, I myself would not pit them against each other. FF keeps track of all my social site activities, while twitter fills my quick micro blogging needs, they really are 2 different types of sites imo.

@Andrew … Er… I think Justine is happy… like she said to me a little bit ago if u look at her reply… shes just annoyed… I bet you come off as angry when you are annoyed too… yes?

For one thing, I still don’t understand why everyone keeps trying to compare Twitter and FriendFeed. FriendFeed is a feed aggregator that allows comments. Twitter is a microblogging site. Apple, meet orange.

That aside, a handful of my non-techie friends have taken a liking to Twitter pretty easily, because it’s simple and easy to understand. (”It’s a status message site, but you can reply to messages too” works pretty well for MySpace and Facebook users.) FriendFeed looks about as inviting as a cinder block to non-techies, so I don’t see it going mainstream.

All in all, I agree with you, Justine. Who knows, and who cares?

(Oh, and as for Plurk…I guess that headless dog is a fitting mascot after all!)

For the record, Twitter sucks, FriendFeed rocks. I want to love Twitter, but it keeps kicking me in the balls.

You are 100% correct

TechCrunch the cereal - I like that idea. Real oat cereal with little web 2.0 startup marshmallows.

Perfect. Thank you.

I don’t see what the big deal is between the two. People should choose which one (or both) works best for them and move on. No web wars necessary. Personally, I like twitter because of its simplicity and that it (despite some growing pains) works as designed.

With regard to non-technical people, I have found that they are often confused by the microblogging concept of twitter. Some seem to try it out of curiosity and quickly move back to their safe and predictable myspace / facebook realm. I think it will awhile before things of this nature catch mainstream success.

On another note, I really enjoyed this blog post, Justine. I think you should definitely do similar ones- the “uncensored” format is very fitting in this case

@David Jacobs I would buy that… and eat it every morning.. we should ask justine to make a commercial about TechCrunch cereal… lol. Yumm TechCrunch.. And if she doesnt step up.. I will…

@Andrew: No, I haven’t changed.. I just usually would choose to not voice how I truly feel about most of these topics. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy, just being more honest which should be a good thing

@shawnscript: It definitely will be awhile before it does go mainstream, but with a lot of the really popular youtube people jumping on to twitter.. that’s on step in the right direction for it!

@David: Oh man, a real techcrunch cereal would be amazing! I’d nom on that

So… on a note that could make some of you happy and less annoyed… NEW IPHONE!! Woot. Im excited.

DIGG IT!

http://digg.com/tech_news/Twitter_vs_Friendfeed_Dry_your_tears_kids

Justine,
I understand where you are coming from there. It just seems like you are less “peppy” lately. Hope all is well! And yes honesty is good.

maybe you do have rabies, all the rage in that post! i like twitter personally, it’s hard to follow a large amount of people on friendfeed. the extra characters, pictures, etc make my feed too noisy. 140 characters is all i need to read. anymore than that, use a tinyurl and i’ll click on it if i’m interested in reading more or viewing the pic.

@Andrew Hmm… Well I never really noticed it… maybe lack of sleep from all the excitment of the iPhone 3G?

Thank god for twitter SMS updates… its like having a little iJustine where ever i go… now i dont do anything wrong

No worries.. I’m fine Andrew Thanks for your concern I’ll be alot better though with a new iPhone. Maybe I’ll even post on friendfeed from it.

Thanks for the digg, Adam!!

http://digg.com/tech_news/Twitter_vs_Friendfeed_Dry_your_tears_kids

@ijustine You def. have to bring a camera with you when you get your iPhone… will you do that for me?

I would love for Twitter to be the first but I think FF will beat it to mainstream. Mainly because it consolidates so many other sites in one place.

My friend is mocking me for being an internet junkie and knowing about all these sites… I said “I’m reading iJustine’s blog” And she laughed What a meanie. Shes jealous because I have been enlightened by iJustine and she hasnt… maybe I should show her Brooke’s youtube…?

I agree with you Justine. if more nerds acted like they knew *regular* (ie non-geek) people they’d realize all this talk of Twitter/Friendfeed/Pownce/etc/ killers is nonsense. The rest of the world is content with the MySpace’s of the world. If they really wanted to figure out a way to take over the web, they’d find a way to leverage the *regular people* traffic on the web, not just the tech pple/echo chamber.

@Chris I just like having small communities… I had a myspace before it got popular and now it just… it sucks because everyone knows about it… and Youtube was great two years ago… but now its filled with spammers, haters… and just plain idiots… but then when its a website that not many people know about its more welcoming… I dont really know if that makes sense… its late.

@Chris Thomson word: word.

I meant to just say word. once. ha. sorry.

@david Now you really have me thinking about TechCruch cereal… that would be a great video idea… im not creative… im from iowa.. the only thing we gave the world is Tom Arnold who thinks that the town he grew up in (Same town that i live in) only consist of 500 people… what an idiot…

I like it when you do longer posts with more substance.

TP

Ive used Twitter for some time, and just started on FriendFeed. While its good to see everyone blog posts, photos, Tweets, etc, I find FriendFeed difficult to get comfortable with. Its UI needs tweeking and cleaning up. Overall, I still like the twitter and find it a nicer experience. Its strangely more fun.
As for Michael Arrington and TechCrunch, as part of the tech community, ive never seen the site. Dont feel I’m missing much.

Plurk — great example btw — was definitely a “check it out”-only experiment. After checking it out it offered nothing that I was looking for and so I lost interest immediately.

I’m not on Friendfeed, but it’s funny you posted this today: just last night I was talking about Friendfeed with some friends (in person, thankyouverymuch), and I explained why I had no real need for it: I already don’t really check my Flickr contacts stream regularly anymore. Same for Facebook, or even Twitter.

I check a few people’s streams specifically, my closest friends basically, and for the rest, I opt-in and just skim whenever I have time to check whichever service it happens to be. Typically it’s just Twitter, because the compactness and simplicity of Twitter give it that much greater value. Friendfeed combines things that end up being “out of place, out of context” and — to me — out of purpose.

Twitter works because it’s *just* those 140 characters for everyone. Flickr works — whenever I have time for it, anyway — because it’s just photos (and video, nowadays) and whenever it happens to be that I make time for it, just photos is exactly what I’m looking for.

I would lose all interest if my Flickr and Twitter friend streams were combined, because I don’t always have time or interest to sift through my friends’ photos, I just want to see what everyone’s up to in their 140 characters of simplicity.

And that’s just two examples. Anyway, that’s why I personally have no real interest in or need for Friendfeed.

my mac book just fell on my face… oww

I just remembered I had a FriendFeed account, after reading this post.

Just saw a funny thing about twitter nerds.

http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/twitter-addicts-1.jpg

I just looked at justines picture or her Guitar Hero on tour.. lets hope she doesnt loose her guitar pick stylus!

Twitter will. It has the marketing poential of big corporations and the social aspect down, as well as mobile. FriendFeed is extremely geeky, 90% of the services you can add I bet nobody outside “the bubble” have heard of.

Twitter will go mainstream first, if either go mainstream.

@John Yea.. i agree.

Fail Whale FTW!

Wow you cussed twice, I’m surprised!! I’m a twitter for life! I also use plurk, I think it’s easier to respond on, but twitter is still close to my heart.

I have a few friends who are not tech savvy at all who use Twitter, because the few of my friends who are tech savvy do. However, I don’t think they would ever use plu** or FF. I don’t even use FF. I think what does make Twitter acceptable to them is that they now know it can update their Fb status message and that makes it ok somehow, not that they use Fb a lot either these days.

No thoughts on identi.ca?

MM yaah, true.

Agreed Plurk is FAIL. FriendFeed is cool but honestly don’t really use it. Twitter is great and in my eyes it’s already gone Mainstream.

Everyone is complaining about twitter because of all the problems. Has anyone thought of why possibly the problems are occurring?

That’s right because believe it or not your non-techie friends are signing up. Already I’ve seen more and more of the non-tech world joining twitter. A lot of my friends have seen me use twitter for a year and recently could not stand it any longer and signed up.

Twitter is getting bigger and bigger and can’t keep up with all these new users and extra tweets. Give it time it will either come back even better or something bigger and better will come along.

The only thing I seen gone mainstream is the Fail Whale.

Plurk has its cult following, as does Jaiku and all the other obscure micro-blogging sites. To each his (her) own. I would think the general consensus is that we really don’t want this form of expression to become mainstream. Like Leo has said before, we know Twitter has come to an end when we see Paris Hilton on there.

iJustine said “shit”?

For the record, I just do what iJustine tells me to do.

twitter works well for people who don’t have full time access to a computer (i.e. sit at a desk with a computer for work purposes). Isn’t friendfeed just like a different type of RSS reader? That’s kinda how it seems to me. An out of timeline order one at that. I fail to see the point of it.

twitter is my number one. i’ve signed up for friendfeed, looked at it or a day, and then gave up. signed up for plurk but i hate it. signed up for pownce but my twitters are sent to it. i don’t go there and post anything.

i’ve told all my non-tech friends about twitter for months now and they still don’t get it. i don’t know why it’s such a hard concept to wrap their head around. i’ve been pushing them to sign up lately since i am going on a cross country road trip and they’re pissed about it so i said sign up and we can quickly communicate without wasting cell phone minutes or texts.

i don’t think it’s going to go mainstream. i think it’s going to be the standard for all internet loving people to have. but once american idol or lost or miley cyrus decides to get a twitter, watch the mainstreamers come flocking in.

oh, and great choice for the picture you used

I agree with you 100%. I am sticking with Twitter and I don’t care how many people tell me to go check out FriendFeed. I don’t even think I am going to go browse at FriendFeed. Twitter gives users the sense of being able to update wherever or whenever. I do also agree with the the other user’s comments about the other sites suck as Plurk and how it is a fail. I guess only time can tell on how Twitter will hold up against competitors, lol.

Well said.

Justine! So expressive and you’re not even on camera! I’m impressed:-) And I agree with you 100 percent. No one outside our geekfest gives a shit or ever will give a shit about Twitter or FriendFeed or which is better than the other. Apparently us geeks are an incestuous bunch and simply CAN NOT live without our shiny new toys. And that’s OK. That’s who we are. But we are a minority and always will be.

No matter how much Scoble or Rubel or that hot blonde chick that does funny videos (oh wait, that’s you!) hype things like Twitter or FriendFeed, they will never reach the mainstream public. And that’s a very good thing. Can you imagine if all the @aol.com or @hotmail types decided to hop on Twitter? We wouldn’t be bitching at outages. We’d be watching CNN cover the gigantic explosion that occurred in San Francisco’s South Park after Twitter servers screamed, “Fuck it! We’re outta here,” and committed simultaneous suicide.

And why are Twitter and FriendFeed here in the first place? In Twitter’s case, maybe Evan Williams was just bored and needed something to amuse himself after Blogger and Odeo. The two services are capitalizing on the OMG Social Media trendlet with, it seems, no plan at all for monetizing their operations. Exactly how long can that go on before investors say, “Fuck it! We’re outta here,” and start drooling over the next insanely great widget.

That said, I love Twitter. I like being connected to fellow geeks but Twitter is just a fancy newsgroup or forum. Same thing with more bells are whistles. FriendFeed, in comparison to Twitter, is like the experience that little girl in Dove’s Onslaught commercial goes through getting incessantly pummeled by commercials for things she doesn’t need or want.

And Michael Arrington’s gloating? No shit, indeed. Justine, if you told us AOL was re-introducing its dial up, walled garden digital playground, there’s no doubt half of us shiny-new-object obsessed geeks would hit eBay in search of modem.

I’ve had both for awhile. I prefer Twitter but like a few others have mentioned there’s no reason that the two can’t co-exist because they have some pretty big differences. It’s like comparing apples to an entire fruit salad.

As for them going mainstream, I dunno. I don’t know that Twitter ever will because non-tech people just don’t seem to “get it” but of the two I think it stands more of a chance. For them to understand FF, they’d have to understand all the nifty little web apps that go along with it. Mention Vimeo, Brightkite, tumblr, etc to any non-techies and they’ll look at you with a blank stare. I just don’t see it happening.

The farthest I got with Plurk was entering it in my browser, saw the main page and was disgusted. I didn’t have any plans to use it, but wanted to check it out since it was the latest thing that everyone was talking about. But as long as Twitter is around, I won’t be switching to another service to ‘replace’ it.

As for any of my friends or family, they don’t use either Twitter or FriendFeed and thankfully, not Plurk. They use things like MySpace, Hi5, those services that create some page for you that you can customize to your heart’s desire. =\

Wow, 80 comments in less then 24 hours. You seem to have struck a nerve and everyone has an opinion. I now opine mine. NUTS!

ijustine you catty little diva you!!!!

I use both. I always thought of FF as a Twitter aggregate. Either way, they’re all just new sites to stalk you with. Just kidding.. no really..

Hey Justine! Loved this post.

Honestly, I don’t think the mainstream will go on twitter unless a select few join. It happened with Facebook at my school, 5 of the trend setting kids joined, now everyone’s on. Twitter? I’m the only one on from my school. The people I told said “LOL DATS STUPID!!ZZZ!1oneone11!@! I LYK FACBUK BETTA LOLZOLZOLZOLZ!@!$#AAZZzONEONeone”, and until more people that are trendsetters jump on the twitter bandwagon, I don’t think the public will join.

And even worse, one of the people I showed was like “I don’t understand this!”. How stupid are people?

I agree with Plurk, I signed up, but I have not logged on since my initial sign up. FriendFeed is ok, but Twitter is still king! Once they solve their scaling issues, they will be golden!

I would also like to see Twitter Pictures intergrated!

Love the article. You said it best.

@alisha I just went to plurk yesterday… I saw the main page… I didnt really like it but I figured I’d check it out anyways… so I typed something into the word box thing and hit enter… look at the page with disgust that I would even go to a website so… er… how do I say this nicely…. Terrible? I really enjoy Twitter… its a nice site to introduce my friends to and its great because even if they arent near a computer they can know what Im doing via SMS. But then again if they really wanted to know they could just text and ask me… but its still nice to be able to embed that little box on myspace or something and everyone can just see what Im doing whether or not they have a cel phone.

YOU GOT GUITAR HERO ON TOUR?!?!?! uhhhh LUCCKKKYY!!!

Now you tell me Techcrunch isn’t a cereal. I’ve been looking everywhere for it!

Btw, I like your annoyed blog entries best.

Bottom line, there would be no FriendFeed without Twitter first. A few months ago, I believe 75% of FriendFeed WAS Twitter messages. However, FriendFeed has been agile and you can’t deny that there’s some stickiness there. The fact that people are checking it out and hanging around says something. Unlike plurk and identi.ca, FriendFeed doesn’t feel like a clone. It feels like something else.

I think I’m more shocked by how many comments your getting saying that you cuss… like thats shocking or something…

Well, if any, the first to go mainstream will be Twitter. I have a FriendFeed account and I never used the thing since I registered. The thing is simply not appealing and it essentially is a copy of Jaiku (or the other way around) which I like better. The point is, you don’t see anything else like Twitter that has the same userbase and that is as user-friendly. Twitter wins, even with all of its current problems.

i think you’re totally right about the “mainstream” people vs. “techie” people. I would consider myself more of the “techie” type while all of my friends would be considered more of the “mainstream” type. So, when i joined twitter, i told all my friends to join. Yes, they liked it for a little bit, but after a week, they just stopped using it. I’m the only one out those friends who still uses it everyday. I think that kind of shows the difference between the two types, or maybe it’s just a coincidence? Do any of your “mainstream” friends that joined twitter still use it?

Twitter is the one that would go mainstream first… but honestly, what geek wants to be on a mainstream site?

I love how FriendFeed is just our little geek community! I like it better than Twitter because it leads to better conversation.

Also, I agree. Plurk sucks big hairy things.

I just started a new website called http://www.chirpchirp.com and it’s sister site http://www.hoothoot.com... they are gonna blow both of these away.

haha @RF-1 I just went to see if those sites were real… LOL

I….love….you. lol

I’m so tired of hearing shit about what is better. In reality, I think Twitter is just what it is, people say how much they hate it, but they still use it.

P.S. I live in Maryland, and I’ve mentioned Twitter to friends and they only scratched their heads. It took a lot of effort to get just a selected few to get them to sign up.

Twitter will always be the best and that’s just how it will always be. I do use FriendFeed and the only thing I like is how it consolidates all these websites on to one page. Which is good for catching up on what on what been going on, and that’s just what I use it for, nothing else. Twitter will always be my #1!

Twitter… it got me. Made sense to me… Simple…. I hope it can scale better but dammit there are just too many sites and social experiments to join out there for me…..and Plurk… yuk. Didn’t like it.

Do you even understand…Two Guys Drinking At A Bar - The Series?
(youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xiItvprGpk
(itunes) http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=255620610

yes, ChirpChirp.com is for all you little birdies out there.. and HootHoot.com is for all you growling owls out there. Throw your wings up! Holla!

These comments are so entertaining! Justine write more negative sided posts in the future! It brings out the best comments!!!!!!

@Steve Hall: RE: AOL was re-introducing its dial up — Really funny but true in the sense that when there are ‘new’ things people are blogging about, we’re all up on checking it out. That’s the nature of the game

@iellie: Thanks

@Rick Gundzik: Definitely agree with you on the SMS with Twitter — that’s the one thing that that’s key.. plus the simplicity. It’s hard to beat.

@Outsanity: identi.ca? I thought that was just a joke.. oops.

Well what you say it’s true. But let’s say you recommend some site, like you did yesterday with friendfeed (even if it was unconscious). I will join friend feed and then i will try it and if it’s good and will stay. I agree i’m definitely not using plurk anymore, unless all the other sites dissapear. But i think that although friendfeed looks great twitter looks cuter or sexier so i would have joined twitter first. But, of course i would have joined friendfeed later and because it aggregates all services i’ll be using that one mainly.

Truth is not one of the 2 or the 10 existing services has gone mainstream now. They will go mainstream as people see the advantage of following people. For example, following an artist (let’s say Anne Hathaway’s diary on friend feed) or something like that. Also if maybe bands or shows will advertise their new released episodes on friendfeed or autograph signings.

For now i like the simplicity of twitter and although i will not leave twitter i will also start to use friendfeed because it put’s everything into one service.

Now i must confess i will love to see twitter and pownce come together i feel they can solve each others problems and maybe make it a more interesting offer. What do you think of that?

Regarding tech, yeah we are not mainstream, we need to make it useful for every one….like the ipod……for it to be mainstream. So what do you think will twitter evolve or die before that? I think it will evolve, the guys on twitter are on the right track!

I’m not a FriendFeed user. I have been using Twitter for a short while.
1) Twitter logo looks like a bad 70’s porn font.
2) I’m tired of ‘new follower’ emails, which more often than not allow spammers to vie for my attention (a-la clickaudit.com)
3) Is anyone else with me on number 2?
4) Twitter needs to fix their growing pains quick. This whole “site is busy” bull with the picture of a flock of birdies hefting a balloon doesn’t cut it with me. I would expect that from an alpha version program.
5) Number 4 will be fixed when Google buys them.

Steve Hall: RE: AOL was re-introducing its dial up — Really funny but true in the sense that when there are ‘new’ things people are blogging about, we’re all up on checking it out. That’s the nature of the game

I think the idea of twitter (or any other similar service) going mainstream is pretty much out of the question in its current state. The majority of the population would probably consider it something along the lines of “an exercise in ego”, if I may reuse the phrase, and would consider it a waste of time to check a website to find out what their friends are up to. Now, build a Twitter app with the iPhone SDK and release it through the itunes app store, and you may have something.

Out of curiosity, do you think there’s a chance of you guys dropping by again?

I like Justine best when she says “shit”. Hahaha.

The problem with FriendFeed is that it’s not “simplified” enough to go mainstream. Personally I think FriendFeed is to Twitter what TechCrunch is to Engadget (sans redundancy issues).

As far as Plurk is concerned, when you’re “forced” to do something it doesn’t come out all that great. I’ve decided to stay away from that site.

Finally, what makes people think Twitter hasn’t gone mainstream already? I believe it’s gotten enough feedback (both good and bad) to consider itself a mainstream product.

On a side note Justine, I’m making the switch soon (to Mac).

FriendFeed all the way!! Twitter sucks. Plurk sucks. Nuff said.

How could you diss Plurk like that???

You invited 199 people to Plurk, and I bet 100 of them login at least once a week to check it.

I am basically just urging you to login and Plurk again.

FF is perfect, but I have no reason to login.

I actually deleted my twitter account and moved to plurk….. I really enjoy the conversations we have over there.

I’m on Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Identi.ca and a bunch of other sites like them, but the only one I use on a regular basis is Jaiku, and I’m guessing it will be for some time.. Twitter might have a bigger crowd, but there’s a bunch of really cool people on Jaiku too, and the conversation feels so much more natural on there than on Twitter.. If Jaiku were to close down tomorrow, I’d probably try and see if identi.ca couldn’t replace it..

If you Twitter had even just the Plurk mobile interface (www.plurk.com/m), it would be ten times more awesome. The ability to see all replies to a Tweet or Plurk is great. The only reason I stay on Twitter is because of the people on it.

I all depends on where your friends are. A huge group of my friends (and more every day) are using Facebook. It’s pretty clunky, but if they are there, so am I. Twitter only seems to feed the techpopular and geeky. I follow, but why should I post? No one will read it. Then I turned on two local friends to Plurk and if it never gets popular, I don’t care. We will gladly plurk to each other. And yes, I FriendFeed, too. Why not? I also have a GoogleReader. Different tools for different uses.

I find myself using Twitter less everyday; Plurk seems to be far superior. Perhaps it may not be best for those who have more than 20 Friends, but there is a certain beauty in that. Just the ability to view pictures and videos without having to open up a new Tab is a godsend.

Twitter does have some uses: I’ll follow ‘Net Celebs’ on there whereas it is rather bothersome to follow them on Plurk. I’ve only recently re-added Tom Merritt (Acedtect) because I figured out how to disable notifications. While I enjoy some of his musings and links, I don’t need to hear every time somebody comments on it.

iJustine, Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, et al. should realize that when they use a Social Networking service, they’ll have hundreds of followers rather quickly. Their experiences are going to be far different than what us ‘normal’ users will have.

Twitter wins because twitter and Flock play nice together. Pownce loses because adding friends blows. Facebook updates is an even bigger winner through Flock.

In fact, Facebook and MySpace are the mainstream twitters… If they made the apps that push updates to SMS more widespread, then they will liekly put everyone else outta business.

FYI, I dislike Facebook and MySpace, but I’m just being realistic.

I’m a big Twitter fan, but I can’t really weigh in bc I don’t use friendfeed. Should I? It seems like the reverse of ping.fm– correct? (Or am I a total social networking neanderthal?)

I actually really like Plurk (though Twitter is still my favorite– downtime and all) so I’m sort of sad you don’t like it, but it absolutely makes sense. I don’t think that Plurk would really work well for web celebrities bc there would simply be a feedback overload. I have about 100 plurkfriends and that’s enough for some really great community and also really great response time. Your plurks from a month ago STILL show up bc people are commenting on them bc you’re a web celeb and they think you rock (I do too, but I try to plurk in the present). I guess different social networks work for different people using them for different things.

I agree with the sentiment that neither of these social platforms will take off. However — Friendfeed does demonstrate the future of the open API and the integration of many platforms that is possible.

Google’s OpenSocial is still in the early stages—as soon as this is commonly dubbed web 3.0, I’m throwing up.

http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

My 2 cents - FriendFeed is toast once Facebook launches all the same features (and more) with about 100x the userbase. What’s the point?

Twitter needs to get their shit together, regardless of FriendFeed. They basically serve status msg updates and they can’t even do that.

Things are getting better now, but it might be too little too late.

I would say most mainstream people would use Twitter because it is simple and easy to use. However I am starting to switch from twitter to friendfeed…

Friendfeed is spreading through in the colleges, so that’s what they need. College buzz goes down to the High School level and then things takeoff. Break.com blew up, because of the college buzz. Marketing is the biggest thing and there’s no sure fire way to market anything, for it to be successful.

Twitter doesn’t even compare to a MySpace type site, because it’s too easy to replicate. Somebody will take it over and I never saw the buzz for Plurk(or whatever its called) at my college, or any place.

Microsoft has a supposed “twitter on steroids” coming so, so that’ll be interesting to watch, because Twitter is still new, so people can still break it.

The biggest thing Twitter has now is, simplicity. I’ve also read, that they want to ditch Ruby, so that’ll be interesting to watch also. All of you read tech blogs too much, because if you didn’t, you’d know that Freindfeed has a different type of buzz, that Plurk never had.

I, actually, use both. I beleve they are both different. Twitter is for life updates. Freindfeed is like an RSS. I use it to see when there are new blog posts, new pictures, new videos, etc. But, of course, I’m not OBSESSED with friendfeed. I am obsessed with Twitter, though :]

@John Barker, I’ve noticed when people do that. Like, I’ve pointed out to people what the address bar was. They just googled everything to get to a website. I find it to be one of the most annoying things ever.

i like that lately you’ve become a little more honest & opinionated. the bubbly, peppy personality you have is very contagious & fun to watch, but people can’t really think that you don’t have another side to you, can they? how exhausting to be a “celeb” and always be expected to “perform” a certain way

loved this post. and i prefer twitter. i just wish they’d get those kinks ironed out!

@Kalen: I agree 100% on that, because we need to see these types of rants sometimes. It opens up great discussions and this got a ton of comments, because there’s nothing better, than a strong opinionated woman. Everybody won’t agree, but they’ll respect it.

Great post Justine, I am impressed.

my chating ID is beloved_dejah01

neither.

if this is a question of breaking into the mainstream — then the answer is Facebook — neither Twitter or Friendfeed will succeed.

But FB works on a different social graph — and therefore encourages different social behaviors..

We continue to live in the social Internet playground…

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