The True Test for FriendFeed: Facebook Comments
Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 15th, 2008 10:01 AMLast month Facebook released the first version of mini-feed comments. I claimed that it was another step for Facebook toward FriendFeed functionality. Apparently not enough people were commenting though because Facebook has since made a slight change as MG Siegler pointed out yesterday. Rather than displaying a plus sign which potentially didn’t signify “comments” for some users, so Facebook has decided to go ahead and spell it out.
Ultimately this is an extremely small change but if Facebook users aren’t commenting on mini-feed stories, perhaps the concept of FriendFeed is just a bunch of Silicon Valley hype. Personally, I think it’s a little hype combined with great functionality. I think what Facebook is instead missing is comments from their main feed. Most users don’t spend a lot of time navigating their friends mini-feeds (as far as I know).
Conversely when a user first logs into Facebook the first thing they see is newsfeed items. Rather than going to a user’s profile and posting on their wall about a news story, it would be easier simply to comment directly from within a news item. Even with good design, it may be that users simply don’t want to comment on each others’ news stories. If that’s the case, FriendFeed is officially a bunch of hype and will remain limited to an extremely small group of users.
I don’t think that’s the case though. Do you think FriendFeed is more hype then actually being useful? Are you a regular FriendFeed user? Do you comment on peoples’ mini-feeds in Facebook?
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I think there are a couple reasons why the commenting hasn't taken off yet:
1)Like you said, it is restricted to individual mini-feeds that most people aren't looking at. It also may seem a little creepy to be commenting on someone's mini-feed, it has a stalker-like feel to it. It would help big-time if the integrated it into newsfeed.
2)It is hard to have a conversation with it because as far as I know there is no way to tell if someone else has commented on the item you commented on without going back and checking.
3)This is where spelling out comment might help. A lot of people I know had no idea that this function existed. They will probably realize it now though.
I think that Facebook would need to make it a news feed feature and dramatically alter the way news feed works in order to get a Friendfeed-like functionality. Until then, I don't think it will really take off.
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Moreover there should be a "Comments" area where we will be able to visit and see all comments made to our comments or our friends. Otherwise commented news will be lost in a few hours as the news feed is moving.
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Facebook requires you to navigate to each friend's Mini-Feed to add comments; NOT convenient and NOT easy.
Adding comments to the main News Feed will help, as long as they also include any comments from friends to my news item in the same feed AND they include any items that I have chosen to comment on in the same feed.
I want one-stop-shopping for all of this back and forth commentary.
I also agree with Manogr on having a comments area that enables you to access historical commentary (ie. comments no longer visible in main feed).
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