One of the driving forces behind Twitter’s popularity is access to their API. This openness has allowed users to access Twitter via a variety of third-party clients rather than the standard method of accessing a web-based service solely in a browser. A number of clients and services thrive as a result of this rather unorthodox approach to the service. What I find fascinating, and at the same time quite unappealing, is this focused reliance on using a desktop client to access Twitter.
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FriendFeed has been the talk of the town ever since it’s launch, mostly thanks to the founders’ pedigree but also due to the wonderful service FriendFeed turned out to be. After all, the same team who created the simple yet highly effective FriendFeed was also responsible for producing arguably one of the best web-based email services ever created – Gmail.
FriendFeed has found a number of high profile people using the service rather consistently since inception, but even more so in the aftermath of the speed problems Twitter faced mid to late last year. A number of early adopters gravitated to FriendFeed and decided to make the service their second home.
But the early adopter crowd is generally comprised of the uber geeks who will try any service once or twice. It appears FriendFeed is exactly what the geek squad ordered, although the service is seemingly finding it more difficult to attract the less savvy mainstream audience. Why might that be?
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