Monday, June 09, 2008

FriendFeed for live-blogging

WWDC attendee MG Siegler is saying that FriendFeed is the best way to blog live events.

I created the room last night and started posting some questions such as, “What do you think is the more important feature, 3G or GPS?” The room filled up rather quickly with both FriendFeed power users and bystanders alike. By the time Steve Jobs’ keynote kicked off today at 10 am, we had over 500 members in the room interacting with us. (Remember, that is just members who joined to interact with us. It’s like a giant chat room minus all the nonsense usually associated with chat room.)

And that is really the key here, the interaction. Unlike if we were to do a constantly updated live blog post where users would have to do the usual routine of posting comments, which is both relatively slow and are unlikely to get answered, FriendFeed allowed us to have a conversation with those who weren’t at the event.

I haven’t had a chance to use FF’s new rooms feature, but it seems like it is a great addition to the service. However, I wonder how long the service can be “like a giant chat room minus all the nonsense.” Presumably, the nonsense is kept at a minimum by the fact that the number of obnoxious users is low. As the number goes up (it should correlate with the site becoming more popular), the nonsense level is likely to rise. This will lead us right back to a blog-type situation, where it is necessary to moderate comments, thus keeping them from appearing in a timely manner.

via Steve Rubel

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