friendfeed

FriendFeed

What is it?

FriendFeed is a new web 2.0 service that enables you to aggregate all of your, and your friends, online activity and conversations in one place.

How does it work?

It uses RSS feeds to pull in the information from a wide (and growing) number of sources and places them in one feed so you can see everything in one place. RSS means that FriendFeed will be scalable in the future as you don’t need developers and open access APIs to create new content, RSS is the common standard for sharing information across the internet.

Why should I care?

The atomisation of the web means that users have pockets of information fragmented all over the web. Just think about a regular person who watches, favourites and maybe posts a few videos on You Tube, puts their family holiday snaps on Flickr, comments on a blog they read daily, shares links from their Google Reader. Multiply this by a blog you write, the comments on that blog, the links to it, tweets on Twitter, Facebook updates, de.licio.us, digg and stumble upon tags. And then multiply by the number of friends you follow and the fragmentation and amount of this information becomes overwhelming to the point of overload.

FriendFeed helps that by aggregating all that information in one place so you don’t have to traverse 5, 6, 7, 8 + websites to keep in touch with the information. It helps you stay on top of what’s grabbing your friends’ attention and keeps you connected. You also get full control of the people you follow and can un-follow at any time.

And because it’s all RSS enabled, you can distribute that content to where you want it: Google Reader, your personal homepage (iGoogle, MSN Live etc.).

But I’ve only just discovered Facebook!

It’s true that FriendFeed is pretty much used by the early adopters at the moment and true that you would have to again subscribe to/follow friends which is a chore. But the benefits of having everything in one place for those who currently suffer web 2.0 overload are worth it. There’s even a feature called “imaginary friend” where you can pull in a feed of someone who you want to read – a thought leader perhaps – but you aren’t their actual friend. This overcomes the limitations and annoyance of Facebook where you do actually need to know people.

In summary

FriendFeed gives you control over the web 2.0 noise and lets you consume it in a way that is relevant to you.

Add me as a friend

More bedtime reading:

http://friendfeed.com/about/

http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/18/why-friendfeed-wont-go-mainstream/

http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/18/why-friendfeed-will-go-mainstream-part-ii/

In response to a press request via headstream (who I also do digital planning goodness for in my role at LCG), I did this. So I thought I would share it.

UPDATE 03.06.08

My input helped to spawn this article in NMK where I get a quote.

"The atomisation of the web means that users have pockets of information fragmented all over the web. Just think about a regular person who watches, favourites and maybe posts a few videos on YouTube, puts their family holiday snaps on flickr, comments on a blog they read daily, shares links from their Google Reader. Multiply this by a blog you write, the comments on that blog, the links to it, tweets on Twitter, Facebook updates, de.licio.us, digg and stumble upon tags. And then multiply by the number of friends you follow and the fragmentation and amount of this information becomes overwhelming to the point of overload," said Nicholas Gill, planner at headstream PR.

"FriendFeed helps that by aggregating all that information in one place so you don't have to traverse numerous websites to keep in touch with the information. It helps you stay on top of what's grabbing your friends' attention and keeps you connected. You also get full control of the people you follow and can un-follow at any time," continued Gill. "FriendFeed gives you control over the web 2.0 noise and lets you consume it in a way that is relevant to you."

Nicholas Gill

bluurb.wordpress.com

Europe is fastest growing online market!

Online advertising in Europe grows 38% in one year!!! Europe 27 should finish between 11 and 12 Billion € in 2007 closing the gap with US market (tipped at some 11-12 Billion €).
IAB Europe/PWC early findings show average growth rate year on year

The preliminary findings of our AdEx survey the definitive guide to the size and value of the European online industry, shows that the growth of online advertising in Europe continues unabated. Our members are seeing more companies move their advertising online, including sectors that have until now tended to stay loyal to traditional media, such as fast moving consumer goods. As online continues to grab a larger share of advertising budgets year on year, some forms of traditional media are seeing their share eroded.
Brussels 28th May 2008: The Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) has just released the initial findings of its annual advertising expenditure survey for the year ending December 2007. Whilst some analysts are predicting that advertising on traditional media may be impacted by an economic slowdown, online advertising continues to grow apace, experiencing an average growth rate of 38% year-on-year across the three largest European advertising markets – the UK, Germany and France.
The data has been compiled by IAB Europe based on information provided by the regional IAB offices around Europe and then analysed and processed by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The top line results for the UK, Germany and France show that:
These markets were valued at €5.6 billion euros in 2007, up from €4.08 billion in the previous year (for search and display only)
The German market experienced the highest growth rate from 2006 at 41%
Search advertising continues to account for the lions share of spend, at 63.5% compared to 36.5% for display

The report also shows that whilst the top three markets are by far the largest in value, their growth rates are slower compared to some of the other member countries. Spain and Italy have experienced particularly strong growth rates at over 50%.

The full report will include market size and value information for the full membership of the IAB Europe in 2007 including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the UK.

Come and join us in Berlin;-)

email marketing surprises

Email marketing has surprised me of late.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had the fortune to work on and develop some class-leading CRM programmes in my time but I figure that if you want to be the best, you adopt best practices. And for me, double opt-in is the way to go. I remember spending several meetings and design iterations later to re-word and re-art direct positive opt ins for digital communications for Diageo to be ahead of the curve and live best practice, not just tip a hat to it.

So I was somewhat taken aback to read in eROI’s Cradle To Grave report (there’s no direct link, click on quarterly studies and download the report) that only 30.69% of US companies are using double opt-in. That’s tantamount to spamming if you don’t use that method.

And worse, 59.4% of those companies don’t pass an unsubscribe to other parts of their company when they get one. Two yellows equals a red card! So if you’re a consumer, basically a friend could get you signed up, you receive emails, you unsubscribe and you get them from another part of the same organisation. Aaargh. That’s just not joined up thinking and hardly going to endear your consumers to your brand.

Closer to home in the UK, econsultancy report that one in three companies flout spamming laws with only financial services boasting 100% compliance with email rules.

When you consider that European consumers receive over 250 emails per week (35 average per day) is it any wonder that 38% use spam filters, over half of promotion emails get deleted without reading and more people are concerned by clicking on ads in emails than on banners? The top two reasons people unsubscribe are irrelevant content and overly frequent emails.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. We just need to up our game and practise what we preach. Don’t let the standards slip and do it the right way. Because if we get it right, consumers do love email.

Consider this information released by eMarketer today. 67% of US adult internet users prefer companies to contact them by email than any other method. And in 5 years time, 67% will still prefer email to any other communication.

Remember, email is a conversation too.

Nicholas Gill
bluurb.wordpress.com