If anyone can draw thousands of users to a new web service, it’s a guy like Kevin Rose. Universally (and occasionally begrudgingly) liked, followed on a myriad of services, and an influential name in the business, Kevin’s vote counts for a metric ton. As you can probably guess, if Kevin joins a service, a crowd follows.
That’s exactly what happened on FriendFeed this weekend as some big web celebrity names started up accounts on the service. Mr. Rose, lifestreaming idol Justine Ezarik, and microformats pioneer Tantek Çelik all hopped on board the ship, providing the already-healthy service with another healthy dose of new user registrations.
Although this may very well be a turning point for FriendFeed at least as far as users are concerned, I’ve got to wonder whether or not this is beneficial for the service overall.
Good news?
The impending onslaught of new FriendFeed members is certainly an advantage in itself. With more members comes more content, all able to be indexed and perused via FriendFeed’s master-crafted search engine. And with more content comes more conversation, too, one of the defining characteristics– and blessings– of Web 2.0. I’d love it if this new user influx introduced me to new people with similar interests and valuable viewpoints.
The bad
Unfortunately, I don’t foresee this as highly likely. When big-name individuals participate within a service, they often draw an unproportionally large number of comments, reactions, and opinions due to their pre-existing status. Followers range from respectful to admiring to sycophantic, but regardless of opinion, these web celebrities are always on the map. (And no, Robert Scoble, participation may make a difference, but its impact is not quite as large as you surmise.)
I’m concerned that these individuals may draw attention away from the less glamorous but equally interesting individuals within my own community, or other well-known and well-deserving folks within the community already, such as Mr. Scoble, Louis Gray, and one of my favorite bloggers as of late, Duncan Riley.
The problem
“So,” you might say, “can’t you just ignore these individuals while focusing on the people that are interesting to you?”
Not really. The way FriendFeed works, the “Friends You May Find Interesting” recommendation engine is quickly overwhelmed when new users like Rose appear (and some big names are already pre-loaded into the system, in fact). This means that adding friends recommended by FriendFeed merely increases the noise for me rather than the signal, especially when chances of getting my own friends on the service are small, as the sets of “friend” and “early adopter” rarely seem to intersect.
Thoughts?
This extra publicity for FriendFeed, good or bad? What do you think?
For the moment, my thought is that perhaps Rose and cohort should spend more time focusing on the ailments of their own microblogging site before putting their support behind others.
Enjoy this post? Consider getting RSS updates of andydesoto.com. Also take a look at two of my other articles about FriendFeed, “Friend conversion ratios and opt-in aggregators” and “FriendFeed not worth the time (or the hype).” And, in case you were wondering, I’m at friendfeed.com/kadesoto.
