FriendFeed | Mark Evans

New Features Twitter Needs to Compete

March 18th, 2008 | 10 Comments | Posted in Web 2.0

Is Twitter getting alarmingly stale?

For all the excitement about its effectiveness as a streamlined communications tool, Twitter is showing troubling signs of falling behind in the arm’s race given what FriendFeed is doing (social aggregation and, now, search) and what much-neglected Pownce has within its arsenal.

Twitter, meanwhile, continues to struggle with infrastructure issues while providing little or no indication that its feature set will be expanded any time soon. As a Twitter fan, here’s some things I’d like to see Twitter do:

1. Improved people search, including a recommendation engine (a la Friendfeed) of who I might be interested in following.

2. Tagging

3. The ability to send files using P2P (copy the Pownce model by providing a free service for files under a certain size, and charge a premium for larger files)

4. Email notifications alerting you about activity by a particular user or about a specific topic.

5. Easier ways to send private messages. Unless you know something Twitter ID, using the drop-down menu to go through your followers is far from user-friendly.

6. The ability to have private or semi-private group conversations.

7. A business model (advertising, premium services, etc.) so Twitter can find way(s) to make money so it can hire developers to launch more features, and harden its infrastructure.

8. A native desktop application to compete/complement products such as Thwirl. Nothing like a little competition to boost the eco-system.

9. More support for third-party developers to create plugins to expand Twitter’s functionality.

10. Buy Pownce to jump-start its feature roadmap.

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Tags: FriendFeed, Pownce, Twitter

What’s the Caramilk Secret?

March 14th, 2008 | 5 Comments | Posted in Web 2.0

Something that I find fascinating about the Web 2.0 landscape is the endless number of interesting - and, sadly, not so interesting - services/applications that are launched each and every day.

This online onslaught is a godsend for sites such as TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb that have an insatiable editorial appetite for new startups. But it can be overwhelming for people who are interested bystanders and who may sometimes jump into the fray when something looks particularly interesting.

One of the analogies that comes to mind is that all these new services are like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. There’s an awful lot of spaghetti being thrown so how do you explain how once in awhile some of it actually sticks?

Take FriendFeed for example. An interesting social aggregation tool that officially launched with some fanfare a couple of weeks ago, it now appears to have jumped to the next level with many influencers (aka popular bloggers) embracing it - much like they embraced Facebook and Twitter.

So, what’s FriendFeed’s secret? How did it pull off what thousands of other online services dream about? Is FriendFeed simply a solid service in the right place at the right time? Are its executives particularly tech savvy or connected enough to get key people to try FriendFeed? Did it hire a kick-ass PR firm?

Another thesis is FriendFeed was lucky to have found a real evangelist. Perhaps the key piece in this puzzle is Louis Gray, a blogger based in Silicon Valley, who quickly fell in love with FriendFeed, and created a hailstorm of attention yesterday with a post on how popular FriendFeed has become popular many “elite bloggers”.

While not to suggest Louis is the reason FriendFeed could become the next Twitter, his enthusiasm and stature as a tech blogger attracting more amount attention within the community - and on Techmeme (the community virtual “clubhouse”) - could have been the little shove that got FriendFeed over the ledge.

Maybe having a real-life user running around telling all of their friends about something new and wonderful they’ve discovered is the Caramilk Secret to successful in the competitive Web 2.0 world (especially if they live in Silicon Valley!)
Now, how do I get Louis Gray do the same thing for PlanetEye?