Interesting factoid while awaiting Track’s return to Twitter and debut on FriendFeed. This evening I’ve been perusing the FriendFeed message base, an increasingly enjoyable and dare I say it valuable experience. In the process I replied to a few comments from several days ago, including one from a Phil Glockner:
I just noticed Steve seems to be actively using FriendFeed, at least moderately. Therefore, I say welcome, and sorry I called him names a few months ago. :)
A few minutes later, TwitterSpy, a Track replacement service, reported the following in a GChat XMPP window:
twitterspy: stevegillmor: luckily I didn’t see them. re: http://ff.im/5UDi
Note the re: which expands to the full conversation. What’s happening is that I’ve turned on forwarding to Twitter in FriendFeed, which not only is smart enough to handle posts from Twitter by suppressing circular loops but to promote the context of a comment thread to the Twitter audience. FriendFeed’s attention to detail and nuance is a welcome development in the not necessarily ready for primetime micromessaging community.
In fact, I’ve been one of the worst actors in the drama, and deserve every bit of the hostility that some in the FriendFeed community have exhibited. FriendFeed has come a long way, and its steady innovation in the realtime space and a surprising move to open its outbound architecture bit by bit are adding up to a fast follower strategy that just may prove decisive for the growth of micromessaging. As Christopher Harley said a few minutes later in the same thread:
I always thought Steve would like FF. What am I saying? No I didn’t.
Me neither. It’s nice to be wrong every once in a while.