If “joining the conversation” is one goal of your exploration of social media, it’s almost become a requirement that you maintain a presence on FriendFeed. It’s an application that acts as a central aggregation and discussion point for many of your other Internet points of presence. You can add your YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Jaiku, Brightkite, Upcoming.org, Last.fm, and a gazillion other services into it, and then when you create activity on any of those services, other people following your activity stream can form commentary around what you’ve posted.
First, it’s something you might consider joining so that you can aggregate your content into one stream. Second, it will give you a new audience for some of your content, and some different interactions will happen there than on the primary sites it’s reporting on. For instance, if someone posts information to Twitter, and that person has Twitter added to their FriendFeed account, others using the service can comment on that person’s tweets:
Second, I’m finding that FriendFeed finds me interesting information from the larger body of work of people I’m following. So, for example, if I look at Louis Gray‘s FriendFeed stream, I see three Google Reader Shared Items, a blog post, some Disqus comment threads, pictures, and a Google Talk status that led to a conversation unto itself. It’s rich content.
It’s also drinking from the firehose, so not exactly everyone’s cup of tea (to mix metaphors).
Should you try it out? Yes. Is it for everyone? No. If you’re reasonably new to social media and networks, skip it for now, I say. There’s a lot to figure out, so don’t get too wrapped up in this right now.
What’s your take? Are you there? Have you checked it out?
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