You’ve seen Twitter’s election feature that showed a select kind of tweet in real time. A few minutes ago FriendFeed released a real-time-web feature that lets you watch FriendFeed in real time. This is fun to watch! Especially on nights where everyone will be giving you their opinions on politics. More about this on FriendFeed’s blog. Of course we’re talking about this on FriendFeed too and on cofounder Bret Taylor’s feed.
Unlike Twitter’s page, which only shows Tweets, FriendFeed’s “real time web” shows you everything that people are doing on the Web including, but not limited to, videos, photos, blogs, event calendar items, tweets, and other things.
This is wild. It’s like the web has been turned into a chat room.
What do you think? Keep in mind that unlike a chat room each item you are seeing here has its own URL, its own RSS feed, and its own place on the Web. Also, unlike a chat room each item here can be commented on live, or you can like it, which will push it to the top of the old fashioned FriendFeed page.
This is also functionality that Facebook or MySpace does not have.
UPDATE: you can also see other people’s views of FriendFeed this way. Here, you can view my feed (which only includes about 3,500 people): http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/friends/realtime
You can also view rooms this way. For instance, if you want to watch just the political room tonight as the debates go on, visit here: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/2008-debates/realtime
First bit of feedback after watching for a few minutes. Now we REALLY need to be able to talk to the database! I’d love to be able to say “show me all items that have the word ‘obama’ in them, but also that have two or more likes.” Imagine if you could do that. Wow.
Analysis: I still like the old style of reading FriendFeed better. Why? Because each comment cluster is threaded together so you get the context. Things aren’t moving so reading is easier too.
Compare the real time pages above to these:
http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer (my FriendFeed account, which shows everything I’ve put into the system).
http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/discussion (the page that shows everything I’ve liked and commented on).
