FriendFeed Launches API, Can They Take on Facebook?
Posted by Nick O'Neill on March 25th, 2008 9:59 PM
FriendFeed is on a tear. Tonight they announced the release of the FriendFeed API, opening up all the features and enabling developers to also publish to, not just read from FriendFeed. Want to let people know that a FriendFeed user posted a comment on your blog? Now you can post it as an activity on FriendFeed. Over the past month I have been highly critical of FriendFeed, arguing that the value is in the filtering but ultimately, at least you can track an infinite number of online activities now.
This is a direct strike at Facebook’s Beacon service which provides your friends with notifications of your online activities outside of Facebook. Rumors have previously surfaced that Facebook will be opening their newsfeed to activities outside of Facebook but as for now, the change hasn’t taken place yet. I have been complaining about FriendFeed for a long time now but they have been rolling out new features on a weekly basis recently.
Just yesterday I asked the readers if social networks would continue to exist 5 years from now. The readers said yes, while Charlene Li suggests they won’t and for the most part I agree with Charlene. While we still need a center for conversation that center is rapidly becoming Twitter for me. Also, FriendFeed fulfills all my stalking needs so what else could I possibly need?
I have to admit, if FriendFeed added filtering, there would theoretically be no need for Facebook or MySpace. That seems like a dangerous statement given that I am probably one of the largest Facebook evangelists but FriendFeed has accomplished something incredible in an extremely short period of time. Let’s see how Facebook responds to this. Do you think this could be the downfall of social networks as they exist today? Can FriendFeed take on Facebook?
March 25th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Very cool! My only concern with a FriendFeed API is double posting. If I publish an update for my site SnapFoo to FriendFeed and also to Twitter, and the user has both publishing to FriendFeed than there will be a double post.
Either way I’ll be sure to integrate it and let my users decide!
March 25th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
This is definitely something to watch as it grows. If FriendFeed introduces a usable friend-list and messaging service, then it will be able to attract a large market. If they then theoretically tie in with Orkut or somehow get a photo application running, it will be an open version of Facebook. Instead of applications, people will just create websites based on the FriendFeed API.
Still a long way to go, but FF is moving at such a rapid pace that everyone should keep an eye open for them.
March 26th, 2008 at 12:19 am
I highly doubt FriendFeed did this as a direct strike to Facebook since both services serve different purposes.
Facebook could learn quite a bit from FriendFeed, but I just don’t see them as direct competitors, even with similar features. The PURPOSES are different.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Ugh… too often it’s pitting one thing against the other when I don’t think they’re the same animal.
One BIG aspect of FB is that gives users a face to the world. There is a whole industry around MySpace profile’s because it’s seen as self expression.
Nick, there are plenty of folks who aren’t as Web savvy as you. Their FB or MySpace profile may be their only representation to the rest of the world. This is something twitter or friendfeed doesn’t do at all.
March 27th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Let me get this straight Facebook has how many users and FriendFeed has how many users? The average high school and college student uses how many social services?
We are not the general social user. We are the blogger early adopter bleeding edgers TechCrunchers….we’re the only ones with feed overload…
about 300 - 500K of us…. you can not scale a business on this audience size.
Do a survey on Facebook and ask how many of the users have even heard of FriendFeed or SocialThing or even Twitter… you will be amazed!