I’ve been pretty active on FriendFeed for the past couple of weeks and it has definitely become one of my new top spots on the web. In many ways FriendFeed simply replaces a lot of other sites where I was spending time in the past. It has completely replaced Twitter for me for instance and has also taken my chunk of time that I used to spend focusing on my Flickr contact’s photos (I now see all of these photos on FriendFeed instead of Flickr directly itself).
As I’ve gotten into the FriendFeed experience I’ve noticed a few heavy users that consistently provide valuable insight into my FriendFeed experience. This list of 10 is by no means exhaustive. In fact it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. There are so many little one off conversations floating around FriendFeed. These are just some of the people that I personally find especially interesting.
You can click on the names to get their FriendFeed and add them.
1. Louis Gray. Louis is perhaps the biggest FriendFeed evangelist and one of its earliest advocates. Louis understands social media and knows FriendFeed better than just about anyone else out there. He consistently is blogging about FriendFeed. He has a great post here on five ways to use the hide feature (one of FriendFeed’s most valuable features). Louis is always helping out new members and assisting them with navigating the site.
2. Robert Scoble. Robert’s more than just an internet contact for me of course. He’s a good personal friend that I work on a video show with. Robert also though is one of the top bloggers on the internet and the king of social media. Robert is the early adopter’s early adopter. In general my rule is that I don’t try out a new Web 2.0 site until Robert has blessed it and written about it 10 times or so. Robert is extremely active on FriendFeed and one of it’s biggest conversation participants.
3. Michael Gartenberg. Michael Gartenberg is fairly new to FriendFeed. He just started actively posting yesterday really, but I think he is going to be a great addition to the site. Micheal’s a very active Twitter member and he is also one of the foremost experts in digital media and digital media products today. He’s an analyst for Jupiterresearch and it was great getting some of his insights directly on the new Netflix Roku box yesterday on FriendFeed.
4. Steve Rubel. Steve is one of the top PR bloggers out there. Another very active Twitterer who recently has begun posting more on FriendFeed. I particularly enjoy watching what Steve Rubel is posting via his Google Reader account on FriendFeed. Steve consistently comes up with great posts there worth checking out.
5. Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit. Bret and Paul are two of the Founders of FriendFeed. Not only will you get great insights into FriendFeed from following them but they post on all kinds of other interesting stuff too.
6. All of your Twitter contacts. Did I just say add *all* of your Twitter contacts into your FriendFeed? Yep. There’s a great tool to do just that right here. Why follow these people on Twitter alone when you can get all their great Twitter messages plus all their great Flickr photos, blog posts, etc. etc.
7. Random FriendFeeds from people who are active in conversations that you are interested in. One of my favorite things to do on FriendFeed is to look at a conversation that I’m active in. Recently there was a great conversation on FriendFeed about what was a better file format to shoot photography in JPG or RAW. It was a great debate with lots of people involved who are clearly interested in photography.
So what did I do? I went through that thread and subscribed to everyone who took part in that conversation. Why? Because these people are clearly interested in photography like me and I want to make sure that I see other photography related posts or conversations that they are involved in in the future. From that conversation I picked up some great new contacts people like Ian Betteridge and Benjamin Golub and ha3rvey.
Remember, you can always hide parts of someone’s FriendFeed if it doesn’t provide value to you. But you can also discover new and interesting people by subscribing to people who are interested in the same sort of things that you are.
8. All of your favorite Flickr/Zooomr contacts even if they are not on FriendFeed. Say what? How do you subscribe to someone on FriendFeed who is not even on FriendFeed? Easy. By creating an imaginary friend. FriendFeed allows you to set up imaginary friends and you can then get all of their great photography. I’ve set up a hundred or so of my favorite people on Flickr/Zooomr and now regularly see their photos in FriendFeed. I like seeing their photos in FriendFeed better than on Flickr or Zooomr because Flickr and Zooomr limit you to only being able to see your contact’s last 5 photos where FriendFeed shows me all of their photos they upload.
And as good, FriendFeed also shows me all of the photos that my favorite people on Flickr are faving. This is a brand new way to enjoy Flickr. Seeing new photos through the eyes of my favorite photographers as their favorites brings the Flickr experience to a whole new level.
9. All of your FriendFeed followers. A lot of people talk about the noise on FriendFeed. Mostly I think these people just don’t understand how to effectively use the hide feature on the site. Me personally? I love the noise. I love the firehose approach and find that the more people that I subscribe to that the more likely I am to see fast breaking news and interesting insights. Now certainly there are followers of yours that are not going to provide high value insight. For instance, I generally hide all of the twits that I see on FriendFeed that are in languages that I can’t read.
However, the great thing about FriendFeed is that even if you hide someone’s twits you still can interact with them. Let’s say a contact of mine twits in Arabic and I can’t read any of it. Well, I’ll hide their twits, but I still get to see their Flickr and Zooomr photos. Since photography knows no language barrier, even non-English speaking people on my FriendFeed list still provide great value visually.
Try subscribing to all of the people that subscribe to you. It is a richer way to enjoy FriendFeed. You’ll be surprised at all the new stuff you find and you can always hide things that provide low value to you.
You can see who is subscribing to you on FriendFeed here.
10. There are so many other great people participating in conversations on FriendFeed. I especially love the photography related conversations. I hesitate to list more names simply because there are too many and I *know* that I’m forgetting some. But here’s a quick list of some way more than 10 people worth checking out. Susan Beebe, Andrew Dobrow, Lindsey Donaghe, Ontario Emperor, Matt Hardwood, Russellreno, kosmar, susan mernit, Bearded_Dave, trancemist, chrisnixon, Morton Fox, Andrew Dobrow, Bwana McCall, edythe and Shey.
Are you on FriendFeed? Let me know if you are or if you sign up by leaving your FriendFeed link in a comment on this post and I’ll subscribe to you as well.
Oh yeah, and if you want to add Thomas Hawk, you can find him here 🙂
