FriendFeed the social aggregator and now real-time sharing and commenting application has upgraded to its new Front-End interface. Up until yesterday, users could opt to use the application in beta mode, which got mixed reviews. Some of the power users such as the ubiquitous Scoble were quite positive about it. It will be interesting to see how it is viewed by the wider audience.

Initial feedback is that if you have a large amount of friends, that the real-time update is just too much and far too much noise for the regular users. I am big fan of FriendFeed, I really like the fact that you can follow people and see their aggregated footprint, providing that they are posting interesteng and sharing relevant content. I use the FriendFeed notification application that displays updates in the corner of my screen. So I tend not to use the actual friendfeed interface. The diference that I see with FriendFeed to Twitter, is that you do get exposed to more information from users in FriendFeed, depending on what services they have decided to share – for instance, GoogleReader shares, Blogs, Feeds, video and photo sites etc…but providing people are sharing and posting interesting content, one gets to see and read a lot of good, wide and varied content. This of course can be construed as a massive noise wall by users who do not want exposure to this level of detail.

But the main point, I think for FriendFeed, is that it is still a tool for users who are very technically engaged, as opposed to new users of social applications. It will be interesting to see will it become a Twitter like tool in terms of popularity. I think possibly not, as the options and levels of perceived complexity may switch people off.

That said, it’s a great application and one that will be very interesting to watch. The guys who set it up are also Google veterans who know what they are doing. Also, saw a very interesting video with their chief interactive designer with Scoble on Kyte.tv. Worth checking out to get an insight into the new changes and what is coming down the tracks.

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FriendFeed, RealTime, twitter Aggregator, FriendFeed, Real-time computing, twitter