How Google Buzz Validates but Marginalizes FriendFeed

When FriendFeed debuted on the scene in late 2007, it was one of the simplest ways to aggregate all of my updates from the social outposts I have all over the Web, see friends' updates and have a discussion around their shared items. Now part of Facebook, the product continues to have an extremely loyal, albeit relatively small, community, who embraced the technology and made it a platform for social interaction. The site, which was among the pioneers of real-time streams and the surfacing of popular items, has seen its technology mimicked and imitated by many, but its complexity helped to reduce its total impact, contrasted with single-purpose sites like Twitter. Today's Buzz announcement from Google brings many of the things that made FriendFeed great to a new, more mainstream, audience.

At the beginning of 2009, I wrote a provocative list of things I hoped FriendFeed could do to grow and keep new users. Chief among these hopes was the first point: "FriendFeed Must Have a Lite Version for New Users". While FriendFeed's support of fifty-plus social services was great for a power user like me, the sheer noise on the service, exacerbated by constant updates from likes and comments, could be a serious challenge. At the time, I suggested this "Lite" version should feature "blog postings, Flickr photos, and native FriendFeed entries", with additional services being opt-in, not opt out. It didn't happen.

Fast forward a year, and you see Google launching Buzz, in combination with Gmail and other services, with integrated support for a few services, namely: Flickr, Picasa, Twitter and Google Reader. You can share YouTube videos and direct links as well, but gone is the wide array of one-off services. And the immediacy of sharing in Buzz couldn't be more simple, with integrated high quality photos and video in line. Buzz, in effect, is what I hoped FriendFeed Lite would have been to a large degree, even if it means using that service will require my rebuilding the social network in a new place.

In this new world, as I mentioned when I talked about how aggregation sites are not becoming the traffic leaders, contrasted with single-use social networks, the need for a dedicated aggregation site, like a FriendFeed, Cliqset or Arktan, is largely being eroded by the adoption of similar functionality by companies including Facebook and Google.

While I may have turned to a site like FriendFeed previously to aggregate all my data in one place, and find updates from others, Google Buzz brings the same benefits to a centralized location where people are already engaging - their GMail, on Google.com, and in their mobile handsets.

As I was more than happy to share frequently through this blog and on other networks, FriendFeed made sense to me and continues to be among the most polished and versatile networks on the Web. I have even said I would use the site if I were the last one to do so. But I believe people are looking to consolidate the number of properties in which they engage online with friends, and they may flock to Google Buzz in the same way they have flocked to other sites like Facebook and Twitter.

If FriendFeed were to debut in a world where Google Buzz and Facebook already existed in their current incarnations, there would not have been much hope or need. FriendFeed, alongside other products, helped pioneer many of the features that you see today in Buzz, including the aggregation of content from social sites, and integrated likes and comments. There is no question the Google team had a high level of respect for what FriendFeed was doing, and Google employees, current and former, were among the most visible, active, users. Now, they have brought the best elements of FriendFeed into Google, validating the promise of what FriendFeed was and could be, but further reducing the need for a site like FriendFeed.com.

In April of 2009, MG Siegler of TechCrunch said that you would be using FriendFeed in the future, only it might be called Facebook. Now, in 2010, it again is true. You could be using FriendFeed in the future, but it will be called Buzz.

Like Convergence, Aggregation Is Better In Theory

There always seems to be a tug of war in technology between those who want a converged, multi-purpose device that does everything, or those who want a dedicated device that does one thing (or just a few things) extremely well. For every successful hulking converged printer/copier/scanner/fax machine device, there are utilities like toasters or microwaves that just do one specific function. The truth is that when differing technologies converge, it usually leads to a single unsatisfying experience where none of the functions are high quality. More common is the practice of product diversification, where one device turns into a family of devices, with differing features for differing price points.

On the Internet, many of us are creating a ton of content in a ton of different places, and in most cases, this content differs by the site. I may use Flickr or Smugmug for photos, and use Twitter or Identica for microupdates. I may use last.fm or Pandora for music streaming, and Blogger or Wordpress for more lengthy pieces. The solution, which I've long championed, has been the development of an aggregator, which takes all this disparate activity and presents it in a single place. This aggregation is what is at the heart of sites like FriendFeed, and more recently, Cliqset, Arktan and, increasingly, Facebook. In parallel, there has been this development of personal lifestreams, which can capture all our content in one place, and be hosted on our site or on a third party URL.

It sounds great. But despite my excitement and evangelism around such tools, for the most part, they have not flourished. It seems that, instead, people want to enjoy the content in its native environment, or keep things simple. I look at the developments behind Arktan and Cliqset, and wonder, does the world need to develop a perfect aggregator, again?

It's possible that the disappointing answer is no. It's possible that while an aggregator is among the fastest ways to get caught up on individuals' activity from around the Web in once place, that getting the downstream data at the aggregator instead of at the source somehow reduces the quality or impact of that message, in the same way that the iPhone isn't the best cell phone on the planet, or the best Web browser, thanks to it being a converged device and not a specialized device.

Hardware specialization enables products to be refined and refined until they cannot be completely virtualized or emulated by software. A good example of this is the DVD player. The DVD player on your computer, and its associated software, is good, but it's not as good as the dedicated device in your entertainment center. And that convergence of your media player and your TV hasn't really been a success either. The VCR/TV combos were never a good idea, and WebTV wasn't exactly considered the quality leader. Convergence always sounds wonderful, but ends up coming up short.

For the past two years plus, I have been among the loudest proponents of aggregation. For me, an odd person at one end of a data consumption curve, it solves a need that I have to concentrate my activity and discover my friends' updates from around the Web. But for the more common user, they just want a few things to work well. They have chosen Facebook as their social network. They have chosen Twitter as their micromessaging platform. They have chosen LinkedIn for their business platform. Even those who have chosen all three aren't crawling the Web looking for a single site solution the way some of us early adopters have.

In his 2009 wrap-up post, Lifestreaming advocate Mark Krynsky confirmed that he "didn’t see many things this year that took Lifestreaming to the next level," adding "Lifestreaming was pretty stagnant." 2007 and 2008 saw a lot of new services come to the fore, and 2008 was the year that FriendFeed looked like it could change the game, threatening sites like Twitter and Facebook. But as polished and professional as the site was, it just wasn't capable of converting those away from the original, refined, source of the data.

I have to believe that aggregation tools are interesting, and useful to a small minority of people. Lifestreaming tools are fun for individuals to highlight their activity. Sites are out there that do a good job, and more are coming, but I am thinking that "aggregation" is the new "convergence". It looks great on paper, and some people will carry a Swiss Army Knife with them everywhere, but most won't.