What’s in your FriendFeed Fave 5?
June 19, 2009 6 Comments
When FriendFeed recently introduced limited bios for members, they included the option to display 5 different services on your profile page. If you don’t select 5, they’ll assign 5 of your feeds to the page (assuming you have at least 5 feeds).
I hadn’t yet updated my five on FriendFeed, until today. I’ve got 14 different services piped into my FriendFeed account, so I had to decide which of them to display. My FriendFeed Fave 5 are shown in the graphic to the right.
It occurred to me that this is a lot like posting badges on a site, or stickers on your laptop. You’re telling the world what’s important to you. You’re making something of a statement.
Here are why I picked my Fave 5:
- LinkedIn: Professional network, quick read on my work and education
- Twitter: I’m active there, it’s where my Enterprise 2.0 and Innovation peeps are
- Blog: This is where it all springs from, I’m quite proud of this little blog
- Diigo: I bookmark fairly regularly, and I like Diigo’s features
- SlideShare: I have all of 4 documents up on SlideShare, but each of them took a lot of effort. One has over 3,000 views.
While I really enjoy my other feeds as well, I figured these were the 5 that best represented me. Out of curiosity, I checked several other folks on FriendFeed to see what was in their FriendFeed Fave 5. Here’s what I found:
Mark’s Fave 5 are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, his blog and his Tumblr.
Anika’s Fave 5 are Twitter, her blog, Flickr, Goodreads and Last.fm
Steve’s Fave 5 are Facebook, Twitter, his blog, Flickr and Google Reader.
Mona likes turtles…her Fave 5 are Twitter, her blog, her ffffound account, Identi.ca and Brightkite.
Daniel’s Fave 5 are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, his blog and his Twitter favorites.
Tina’s Fave 5 are her drop.io blog, her blog, her Tumblr, her Google Reader and her Google Talk.
Thomas Hawk’s Fave 5 are Twitter, his blog, Zooomr, Flickr and Netflix.
A Couple Observations
Observation #1: There’s a lot of commonality in this group, including me. We like Twitter and our blogs. Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Reader also make appearances.
Observation #2: There’s something about the 5th position feed that really distinguishes each person. My 5th position feed is SlideShare. Thomas Hawk’s is Netflix. Tina’s is Google Talk. Daniel’s is his Twitter favorites. Mona’s is Brightkite. Steve is his Google Reader shares. Anika’s is Last.fm. Mark’s is his Tumblr account.
Perhaps we should pay attention to that 5th item to really understand a person.
About Hutch Carpenter
I'm Not Actually a Geek 
Interesting observations, Hutch. It’d be cool if they exposed a person’s fave 5 via the API so people could do some reporting and visualization with that information, especially if they told you the order in which they appear.
I think a person’s blog and a person’s Twitter account are the two common outposts people had before using FriendFeed, so it’s an easy way to recognize someone’s established identity. For me, I chose Facebook and LinkedIn in addition because they also serve the purpose of establishing who I am.
It is interesting what people chose as their fifth service, and I wonder if they had the same thought process I did, which was that none of the other services met the same goal as the first four (which, for me, was to establish my identity), so I picked the one that I update the most frequently.
I’ve got to agree with Mark here – the fave 5 for me are a quick way to answer the question “Who is this guy?” when someone mouses over my name on Friendfeed. That’s the way I use it whenever I’m trying to get a feel for a commenter’s background.
It frustrates me when an interesting FF comment is posted by a stranger whose feed includes nothing more than Last.FM and Flickr entries. Maybe I’m too focused on jobs, but I always want to know “what’s your day job” when trying to get a handle on someone’s perspective.
I had not yet noticed the “fave 5” buried deep down on the bottom of the services list – so thanks for mentioning that configuration item.
I wanted to have my identi.ca microblogging entries in Frienfeed, but since I import my Friendfeed into Facebook and crosspost from Ping.fm to both Facebook and Identi.ca, this would result in Facebook displaying duplicate entries. I raised the issue with Friendfeed staff, suggesting better duplicates handling. I obtained an answer offering some hope of soon being possible to display on the profile services that are not included in the feed. So maybe I’ll some day have Identi.ca among my “fave 5” after all…
Pingback: Around The Intewebs with (jeff)isageek – June 19th | (jeff)isageek.net
I’ve hoped to see this feature for a while, thanks for rooting it out!
That was a bit of a tough choice, I might have to change it occasionally. I went with Twitter, blog, Twitter favorites, LinkedIn, and delicious. Google Reader was a close 6th, but I’ve never used the “connect with friends” features in Google Reader.
I’d agree with Daniel; the top 5 gives me a little control and direction for those wondering “who is this guy?” In the end, it’s the content I share and contribute that matters, anyway.
I only have 2, Fb and Twitter. I get everything I want in just one site: friendfeed.