
You can now share files on FriendFeed - zeedotme
http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/06/you-can-now-share-files-on-friendfeed.html
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pxlpshr
A cool feature poorly communicated. Perhaps one of the reasons FriendFeed has
struggled to get over the early-adopter hump is because their mar-com has a
few holes.

Not to discredit any hard work but I think FF should consider how this file
sharing implementation is any better and/or more efficient than email, and
call out those benefits to the end user. I love new technology but this blog
post does not get me the least bit excited. What attracts me about FF's
offering is the ease of which it is to share files across a (very wide) social
graph.

But to the average user, the screenshot they include on their blog looks like
your run of the mill email client. And to make matters worse, the two privacy
locks by either name suggests anything but social.

[http://images.colinanawaty.com/screenshots/a1c3721e8310e9e80...](http://images.colinanawaty.com/screenshots/a1c3721e8310e9e803963eab3609bfc0.png)

My 2cents.

~~~
thwarted
You can't win, it seems. "Service X will never take off, it's confusing
because it doesn't look like anything else anyone knows or understands" or
"Service X will never take off, it looks exactly like a service people already
use and understand and doesn't look like it offers anything new".

As for how this is better/different than email, I don't know any of the email
addresses of the people I follow/communicate with on FriendFeed, nor do I want
to know. Getting their email addresses is just another hoop to jump through
before I can send these kinds of files to them.

I'm sure someone can write a plugin for <insert your favorite email client
here> that sends to your whole address book and limits your message to 140
characters. Then we don't need to use twitter either.

It is a cool feature though, and those who can make use of it will, and those
who can't won't. Is this going to make anyone switch to using friendfeed? Not
necessarily. Will this make using Friendfeed more meaningful for people who
are already using Friendfeed for some of their communication? Definitely. Does
this distinction matter for every feature deployment? Not really -- at some
point in your growth, you can start deploying features that cater to the long
tail. Friendfeed's deployment history is to get something out there, see what
about it sticks and iterate. Sometimes simple, organic feature announcement,
rather than massive fanfares, is a better method (FF has done both).
Especially if you're deploying features all the time, not all of them can be
epic.

~~~
pxlpshr
I think you missed the point of my comment.

I know why this is a cool feature and I have a FF account. But if your average
user looked at the blog post, about 95% of the people that use
Facebook/MySpace have no idea how it's vastly different from email. The best
editorial that showcases the new feature is on TechCrunch (not their own
blog), but again, ~95+% of the people using social apps don't read TC. And per
your comment, the screenshot demonstrates using FriendFeed as an internal
office communication tool to me — which email / chat both handily dominate.

That's all I was saying really. FriendFeed has a lot of great things going for
it, but I fear the general internet population will never hear about them
anytime soon. Make no mistake about it, lots of amazing tech has died because
it was poorly marketed.

~~~
thwarted
Average users are not going to visit a blog to determine if they should use a
service or not, or if they should use some random feature of a service or not.
FF's blog, or any company's blog, is not their main marketing channel, mainly
because the blog is not the reason people know of the site/company or visit
the site. So while you're correct that 95% of the people have no idea how it
is vastly different than email, the quality of the blog post as marketing
material wouldn't serve to inform them anyway. If FF is serious about
"marketing" this, if a new feature of this simplicity (removing the
restriction on post attachments from just allowing images) even requires
marketing, this most definitely isn't, and I agree, shouldn't be it.

Fact is, FF provides structure to content streams that generic email and chat
don't (gmail comes close to providing some structure, but it is still in the
email paradigm). It's one-to-many, many-to-many, one-to-one, real-time-based
and archived, and encourages succinctness in a way that neither email nor chat
can be.

~~~
pxlpshr
A blog is one of the best tools for organic search, so I disagree with you
about it's importance. But I do agree that it's not the end-all marketing
strategy by any means. Speaking of, what is FF marketing strategy? Aside from
TechCrunch/Mashable posts and Scoble the cheerleader, about 99.5% of my IRL
friends have no idea what FF is.

I also agree with you regarding FF providing structure and communication
across content streams, but I disagree that's its the best solution. Fact is,
Facebook is commoditizing just about every feature of FF, Flickr, Vimeo,
Twitter, etc. and generally doing a better job with the user experience and
outreach. :(

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MicahWedemeyer
Heh, not to fawn all over a YC alum, but I use Dropbox for all my friend-file-
sharing. Just pop it into the public folder, get the url, pass that out via
whatever.

Maybe FF's is easier, but Dropbox has made it simple enough that it's not
worth it for me to play with other solutions.

~~~
zimbabwe
Dropbox is one of those products that's _so_ good it doesn't get nearly enough
hype. I can't think of any service I've ever used that was any better or more
flexible. It's my all-time favorite app.

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paul
Here's the TechCrunch story: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/friendfeed-
adds-file-sh...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/friendfeed-adds-file-
sharing-no-movies-but-mp3s-are-fine/)

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seejay
Has anyone seen the Maximum file size or any other limitations anywhere on the
FrienFeed site? Or is that something not important enough to mention???

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scottieh
Agreed: this could be pitched in a similar fashion that Basecamp Journal /
PBWorks (wiki?) / and even Yammer are -- more streamlined communication and
possibly the value of ambient informational awareness.

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PStamatiou
reminds me a lot of pownce's files implementation. anyone else feel the same
way?

