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"The biggest danger to Facebook is, oddly, irrelevance. Once you get your info up there, there's not much incentive to return on a daily basis. Many of the people you want to Facebook-stalk now have Twitter feeds that are lighter, more personal and more portable with all the numerous apps out there, desktop and mobile alike. Contacting people you already know is much easier with email than over Facebook's Web UI, so Facebook messages very quickly jump from Facebook's site to private email accounts. In short, there are fewer and fewer reasons to come back to Facebook except to look people up; it's becoming the phone book of our age."

Chris Dannen's post on FastCompany nails it for me. Friendfeed's UI is the simplest social network interface I've seen on the consumer web. But while its understated simplicity impresses, there's a few other things it's done really well.

Something I'm pretty close to because of my work at Telligent is the notion of "Groups". And I'd argue Friendfeed's simple implementation of "Groups" is a big reason for its addictive nature. It brings collaboration to a very visible level, sparking like-minded swarmers to easily interact and share with a click or two.

Traversing Friendfeed's groups and cross-pollinating content across those groups is a very powerful thing, most of which can be attributed to well thought out navigation and simple controls.

Additionally, Friendfeed's aggregation and publishing capabilities are things Facebook sorely needs. If Facebook can take an aesthetic page out of Friendfeed's book and let users create their own social portal, I think you'd see different usage models emerge. Today, it's too hard in Facebook to add sites and figure out the best mix of pushing and puling content. I think part of the reason you see so many trivialities in Facebook's platform (pokes, meaningless quizzes, etc) is that most people don't know how do much else.

By contrast, what Friendfeed lacks in numbers, it makes up in actual conversation and collaboration. The kind of easy collaboration that actually entices you to return to the site. As it stands, I'll admit it, I'm a pusher (of content) when it comes to Facebook. It just doesn't have the charisma that Friendfeed has when I feel like sharing and communicating.

Of course, the people I subscribe to in Friendfeed could be largely described as my business filters. Facebook, as so many have famously pointed out, is more like high school. But that's another post.

Related articles

• Facebook to acquire Friendfeed (venturebeat.com)
• Facebook acquires FriendFeed (news.cnet.com)
• Facebook Buys FriendFeed For War Against Twitter (huffingtonpost.com)