Friendfeed Needs Real-Time Trends

Image by joedawson via Flickr

The real-time web has been a frequent topic of discussion lately, this reflects how the Internet is changing with the requirement for breaking news and a steady stream of updates. Friendfeed recently released real-time enhancements to their already popular lifestreaming service that have since seen increased activity on the site. According to Michael Arrington - Friendfeed is in danger of becoming the coolest app that no one uses but currently no other service has managed to provide such a rich experience.

Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed all have a vision for the real-time web but it's Twitter that has been getting the majority of the press. With sources referring to Twitter as a search engine and indicating that Google were in talks to acquire the microblogging service.

All three social sites have a learn involved although I find Twitter provides the most user friendly experience. To get the benefits from Facebook and Friendfeed you have to manage the noise with filters but Twitter organises the volume through hashtags and trends. Increasingly I have found that I'm checking the latest trending topics on Twitter before anything else to find out what is happening on the Internet.

Largely due to Tweetie becoming my iPhone app of choice!

Although Friendfeed has a Best-of-day feature they should introduce real-time trends as the primary feature. The lifestreaming service has significant leverage as it amalgamates many different social media services including Twitter giving it an advantage. That and can anyone remember a Friendfeed outage? What are your thoughts?

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