Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

FriendFeed Etiquette

July 8, 2008 | Social Media

A post by Chris Pirillo got me thinking about this subject. On FriendFeed, he said:

Removing my Twitter stream from my FriendFeed stream. Why? Ping.fm supports posting directly to FriendFeed now. :) Social networks, untied.

The general reaction on FriendFeed was positive to this. Bwana, for example, says:

My name is Bwana, and I approve this message

Now, it may be that FriendFeed is currently blocking input directly from Ping.FM. Some have reported that it isn’t working. PingFM is working on it. However, the sites that Ping.FM posts to easily are all supported at FriendFeed.

Don’t Pipe Duplicate Content Into FriendFeed

Picture 1 I have Ping.FM set to post to Twitter, Plurk and Identica. This means the same message is sent to all three services. If I had all three services piped into my FriendFeed account, it means everybody following me would see the same thing 3 times. (unless they’re using a Friendfeed client which filters out duplicates).

That’s bad etiquette. Pirillo gets that. So does Duncan Riley, who I saw mentioned this same point in this article Tips on Handling FriendFeed.

In my case, I untied Plurk from my FriendFeed account. Just no need, and I noticed that I was seeing duplicate posts in my own feed. Interestingly, I also have Identica tied to my FriendFeed account along with Twitter, yet I do not see duplicates. Perhaps FriendFeed has some built in duplicate detection when they see incoming microblog entries from Ping.FM? If so, very cool of them and it shows they are listening to their users.

Proper etiquette on FriendFeed is making your feed valuable to subscribers. Part of this is not only sharing interesting links, but also making sure you’re not adding to the noise by subjecting them to the same post multiple times when you use aggregate posting services like Ping.FM.

Don’t Beg For Followers

Kevin Rose, anybody? It seems cheesy to use FriendFeed to beg for FriendFeed followers. There are more than enough ways to get followers onboard without doing that.

It’s fine to use your blog to ask people to follow you. I’ve done it. I also know Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte had a little contest going on Twitter to see who could get the most followers.

I don’t know, though. Maybe I’m the only one who sees begging for followers only for the sake of big numbers is a little twitter whore like. Plus, the people who already follow you see it as noise.

Social media is, by nature, noisy. Let’s not add to the problem unnecessarily.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

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  3. Top 10: Signs You’re Addicted to Twitter and/or FriendFeed
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  5. Twirl Versus Alert Thingy

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  • Andymurd - That's a great idea! Thanks.
  • The hide feature is great for removing unwanted streams but it is definitely best not to duplicate. If you must import absolutely everything, split the duplicates out into several themed rooms. That way, people can still choose to subscribe.
  • I agree, it's good to make smart choices about these things. I cast microposts from Ping.fm to Twitter, Plurk, and Identi.ca, but only pull my Twitters, Diggs, and Stumbles into FriendFeed. FriendFeed is the best place to have conversations, btw. No microblog character limit.
  • Recently, I've argued that Friendfeed's filtering capabilities puts the power or removing duplicate content in the hands of the followers. However, I am starting to come back to making an editorial decision to withhold some feeds from Friendfeed based on a slightly different criterion: I think I should promote those services that I actually *use*. To that end, I can reasonably justify removing secondary, duplicate feeds.

    As for point two, what has worked well for me is just following a lot of people that look interesting. A lot of people will automatically follow you back, and when they like or comment on one of your entries, their friends see it. Organic growth.
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