TechMiso

Twitter, the highly popular micro-blogging site, is decidedly not a niche service. It has general purpose usability with far reaching appeal. Twitter might as well be considered mainstream – Israel and Hamas have coordinated their propaganda campaigns using Twitter as a centerpiece for broadcasting their views to the world. Contrast that to FriendFeed, a social aggregation facility which has only truly found love from the technologically savvy early adopter crowd. But the question most people find themselves asking is this – should I use Twitter, Friendfeed or both? My time is valuable and both services compete for that time, so which service should I spend it on?

The answer is not so cut-and-dry. Sometimes there are reasons outside our control for using certain web sites – the chief one being our friends are not dying to join this new and exciting service we found, so we must make do and continue using the sites they use – assuming we want to remain friends!

I signed up for Twitter fairly late in the game. It was right around the time Ev and Co. opted to forego Odeo and concentrate solely on Twitter. The service was obvious, useful and fun. Never once did I question what Twitters selling point is – I knew it and loved it.

Then noise of a new service called “FriendFeed” starting making waves around the net. My curiosity was piqued from the get-go.

So when FriendFeed finally burst on to the scene, I immediately joined after fighting for an invite. My main interest stemmed from having started to incubate a similarly focused service which I have since mostly abandoned. I ended up falling in love with FriendFeed after playing with the service for a few days. The simple interface and ability to aggregate my various social interactions from around the net really excited my geek-loving loins at the time.

However, as my use grew, my interest with FriendFeed changed. I realized the value was not in being able to aggregate my social interactions but to view my friends interactions aggregated in to a single view. By signing up I was finally able to see what all my friends are doing, all under one minimalist umbrella. Instead of spending countless hours surfing to a myriad of disparate web sites, I could simply visit FriendFeed and see what my friends were doing. Both voyeurism and simplicity at its best!

But how do you choose which site to spend time on? Do you tweet your 140-character long thoughts on Twitter or post those same thoughts on FriendFeed? Why not import your tweets in to Friendfeed so there’s both? Something else entirely? As I see it, here is the appeal of both sites:

Twitter

• Dead simple interface. If you can not figure out how to use Twitter then you might have trouble figuring out how to flush your toilet. The “what are you doing” posting box is front and center on the page followed by the dead-simple tweet timeline to depict what your friends are tweeting.
• Third-party integration. External application programming interfaces are the main reason for Twitter flourishing like it has – using Twitterific on a Mac was one of the main catalysts for early adoption. It made visiting the web site moot, all while still being able to interact with the service.
• Everyone uses it. Since the site is, for all intents and purposes, mainstream and has huge traction, everyone is using it. More than likely, the majority of your friends use Twitter before any other micro-blogging service. CNN uses it. Israel uses it. Obama uses it. MC Hammer uses it. What more could you ask?

Friendfeed

• Aggregation. The capability to aggregate all your social interactivity in to a single “feed” is a wonderful feature, especially if you use a vast array of social sites. Just tell your friends and family to check your FriendFeed page to see everything you’ve been up to lately. Your blog posts, tweets, pictures and a lot more, all presented within the same view.
• Aggregation. The capability to aggregate all your friends social interactivity in to a single presentation sure as hell makes it a lot easier to stay updated on what everyone is doing. Your friends blog posts, tweets, pictures and a lot more are at your fingertips. What more could any social media whore ask for?
• Conversations. FriendFeed is a conversation facilitator through the ability to comment on individual feed items. Rather than simple, static posts, FriendFeed has a minimal commenting system which allows for comprehensive conversations to take place. Scoble regularly holds huge commenting sprees on FriendFeed, some gaining upwards of 300+ comments! Tell me that is not valuable feedback.

Clearly Friendfeed is doing something right. Facebook somewhat recently launched commenting on news feed items but is now poised to launch a “like” feature ripped straight from FriendFeed. They say copying is the highest form of flattery, right?

If you look at this traffic graph, it is evident that FriendFeed is doing something wrong on a grander scale. Twitter continues to see increased traffic while FriendFeed seems to have plateaued lately. There is no real huge growth spurts unlike most new, highly compelling services which hit that point where traffic just starts flowing in as if the cork on the champagne bottle just burst off. Their traffic issues may be a result of the ideas set forth in many critical yet helpful posts about what FriendFeed needs to do to grow the service’s adoption rate to Twitter-like numbers.

Each service has a redeeming value, but it is up to you to determine which is more important. For me, I find I have to use both – FriendFeed for the conversation and because a lot of cool people post even cooler things solely on FriendFeed, and Twitter for everything else and because my friends are there.

Which service, if any, do you use? Have you tried one, or both, and settled in comfortably somewhere for the time being?