FriendFeed vs SocialThing!
In the past year there has been an explosion in social media. Where once we had only to worry about managing our Facebook or MySpace networks, we're now each creating a seemingly infinite number of feeds. The burden of this data is a lot to manage …
Context & Ripple Effects
FriendFeed had already been framed as part of a push toward feed-based social aggregation, while SocialThing's simpler interface was positioned as a direct challenge. The contest matters because users are accumulating activity across more services rather than managing a single Facebook or MySpace network.
Facebook is also planning to place third-party network activity in its own News Feed, giving a major destination site a built-in route to solve the same aggregation problem.
First-order effects
- FriendFeed and SocialThing compete for users who want one place to follow fragmented social activity, making usability a decisive point of comparison.
- Facebook's planned third-party activity integration puts its News Feed in competition with standalone aggregators for the user's attention hub.
Second-order effects
- Standalone aggregators must distinguish their interface and feed experience as Facebook can distribute aggregation through an existing social graph.
- MySpace's developer-platform rollout gives outside applications another distribution surface, increasing the value of services that can connect activity across networks.
Third-order effects
- If major networks absorb outside activity into their own feeds, social aggregation may shift from a standalone destination to a feature controlled by the platforms that own the audience and social graph.
The trend: Social media is moving from separate network silos toward aggregated activity streams, with platform-owned feeds and independent aggregators competing to become the default interface.