FriendFeed: Now I get it

Brian Dillard, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 @ 12:11 pm

I first encounted the social-data aggregation service FriendFeed back when it was in beta. I didn't get it. At the time, I wasn't generating or consuming a lot of attention data. I couldn't really understand the value of a service that sucked up all my photos, blog posts and other ephemera into a single activity stream.

Now, though, the service has matured - and I have entered the fray on a range of social networks, from Flickr to Tumblr. Suddenly, FriendFeed makes sense. It's a single URL to hand out to my friends and a central place to track the activities of those friends.

FriendFeed also has a nascent API. I've been playing with it a lot over the past several weeks, specifically the unauthenticated JavaScript API, which offers client-side develpers quick, down-and-dirty JSONP access to public feeds. Sure, I could embed my own personal FriendFeed stream into my personal homepage with a readymade widget, but it's a lot more fun to build something myself.

My experience with the JavaScript API has been positive, but I find myself frustrated by the differences between the API data and the info that shows up in my actual feed on the FriendFeed site. A FriendFeed item such as "posted an entry on Agile Ajax" turns into a generic "blog" item in the JSON stream. This has inspired me to develop a jQuery plugin to help users hack their own FriendFeed stream and easily customize the data before embedding it into their pages. I plan to release my alpha code as an open source project soon. My hope is that other FriendFeed enthusiasts will pick up the torch and make it into a community effort. Look for an announcement next week.

In the meantime, FriendFeed has entered its hyped-up phase thanks to enthusiastic early adopters who see it as a cross between Twitter and Open Social. If you haven't given it a shot, check out these tips for getting the most out of FriendFeed.

agile ajax

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