The latest compete for numbers, for at least me, are scary. FriendFeed has been pushing out new features at a steady rate since the beginning and in the process, have innovated how to do real-time. Yet, for the past few months FriendFeed has experienced near stagnant growth and this month traffic actually lowered. That to me, is unacceptable, especially because of the new features being steadily pushed out. So what can FriendFeed do to succeed?
1. Go Mobile (Officially)
Twitter is a very mobile, and therefore versatile platform. You can update your Twitter status two ways via your mobile phone, SMS or the mobile web version of Twitter compatible across all browser enabled phones. FriendFeed officially supports an iPhone web application, but not a mobile specific interface that works on all fronts. As for updates via text, that is virtually non-existant. Sure you can update your FriendFeed status via text through Twitter but that creates a dependance on Twitter, not FriendFeed, which is needed for re-occurring users.
2. Developer Excitement
Let us get this out in the open, I am not a developer, but I speak to plenty of developers on a recurring basis. I asked them why no one seems to be developing applications for FriendFeed and the answer I got was not due to the amount of visitors, but rather the API and remote key.
Supposedly the Twitter API is easier to work with less restrictions and the remote key represents yet another boundary a potential user of a FriendFeed application must overcome. While I cannot speak for the first part (once again, I am not a developer) I do understand the issues with the remote key. I have stumbled across FriendFeed applications here and there and as a user I hate entering my remote key. I see no point to and I would rather enter my password or at least go the Oauth route which is increasingly popular amongst many Twitter applications.
FriendFeed, it is time you start catering to the developers. They are the driving force behind Twitter, they can be the driving force behind FriendFeed also.
3. Moderation
FriendFeed mobs are an issue. I suppose I understand where Arrington is coming from when he talks about the mobs, because I have been at the center of them, If you remember a while back, Scoble commented on one of my pieces disagreeing (and completely misconstrued) with what I had to say about FriendFeed.
Since Scoble is such a large and very well followed person on FriendFeed (he is the poster boy for FriendFeed) many people began to comment, so many that there was no way I could possibly handle it, or stop it. It sucked and this was just from one prominent person commenting on my piece over at FriendFeed.
Unlike the other two suggestions I had above, moderation features have been discussed and are eventually coming. Thank god.
FriendFeed is a powerful web application with huge amounts of potential, but for how much FriendFeed can do, it is severely limited without the three things I mentioned above. It is time FriendFeed starts thinking about a user base beyond that of the tech world if they wish to compete with… well… anyone.
