FriendFeed Rooms - Making a Better Forum

Posted by Martin Jamieson | May 25, 2008 .

In the past couple of days FriendFeed have added ‘rooms’ to their service. Essentially a room is like a forum, except that you can manage it within your overall lifestream.

FriendFeed, for those who don’t know is a social media aggregator, it allows you to import all your social media feeds (blog RSS, twitter feed, facebook, digg, stumbleupon etc.) and mashes them into the one ‘lifestream’ feed. It also gives you a chance to follow ‘friends’ and stay up to date with their lifestream too (you can see my FriendFeed profile here: MartyJ on FriendFeed)

One of the downsides to FriendFeed is the amount of ‘noise’ - if you subscribe to a lot of people, then you’ve got a lot to keep track of (and it’s not restricted to 140 characters like on Twitter, which makes it harder to scan and jump in and out of conversations). The new ‘Rooms’ feature gives an option to sift through some of the noise by letting you check-in on groups where people can post on a specific topic (yes, much like a forum).

Why FriendFeed Rooms Make Better Forums

One of the big disadvantages that most forums have is that users must remember to visit the forum website and spend a significant amount of time interacting with it. With FriendFeed Rooms, all content gets ‘pushed’ to subscribers. There’s no need to visit individual forums - multiple rooms can be shown in the one place and comments/topics you post are directed where you want them (you choose which room to post new topics via a drop down box).

FriendFeed Rooms (like a forum), let you post or comment to all users in the room, the difference, is because that information gets pushed out to users (instead of waiting for them to refresh their forum pages), the response you get is a lot quicker. It’s kind of like having pre-made networks on Twitter… instead of taking months to build up a few hundred followers that you can regularly poll and interact with, you can just jump into a popular FriendFeed Room and join the conversation immediately.

So, What’s the Problem?

FriendFeed Rooms are still quite new, and they do have their share of teething problems… but they will get better. If you have any suggestions on how they can improve, head over to the Rooms Feedback room and leave a suggestion.

One of my main concerns for now is how they handle spam. Moderators can delete posts and ban users (as with regular forums), but they’ll need to be a lot more vigilant here with the speedier interaction. Currently, only one person can moderate each room and that ownership can’t be transferred, if the owner/moderator loses interest, then the room could suffer (hopefully moderator/ownership changes will be implemented soon).

Which Rooms Should I Follow?

Although rooms have only been available for about 2-3 days, there are already well over 500 already setup (and no easy way to navigate through it all), but you have a few options for finding rooms that interest you.

Andy Beard shows you how to search for FriendFeed Rooms on Google, they are being indexed quite quickly (about 350 listed right now), or you can view this list of 500 FriendFeed rooms.

Some good groups that I’ve subscribed to that you might like to check out are the ProBlogger Room, Social Networking Invites, ReadWriteWeb, and ScobleRoom. If you can’t find any you like… start your own!

Finally, don’t forget to follow me on FriendFeed - I follow nearly everyone back, so once you’ve got your account setup, make sure you click on my link and add me :)

Have you found any FriendFeed Rooms related to blogging that are worth following? Add them to the comments, I’m always looking for more…