No one can stop talking about FriendFeed. Obviously, that includes me. After all, there are so many ways to interact in FriendFeed and with a never-ending stream of content, the possibilities are almost limitless. This has enabled some users to find innovative ways of using FriendFeed; here I list the five that stand out.
1. Create a private online digital archive with Rooms
Mike Fruchter’s post on this describes how he uses FriendFeed Rooms to archive photos, messages, and other information about his then newborn daughter.
Inspired from Mike’s example, I use a private FriendFeed Room to store info on new post ideas and track discussions on my blog posts and other topics.
2. Have your own personal homepage
Mitchell Tsai, one of FriendFeed’s Conversationalists, has started a homepage for himself that links to many other conversations he’s been having on FriendFeed. It’s an astounding project as it links to other collections of discussions, with some linking back to the homepage.
3. Live blogging
As far as I know, the first use of FriendFeed for live blogging was done by yours truly (before Rooms were introduced) while on a Forrester Web 2.0 Webinar. The more familiar instance was MG Siegler’s VentureBeat WWDC Livestream. (Between me and you, MG’s was much more interesting 
). I also came across Cameron Neylon’s liveblogging of the workshop Data Sharing in the Biosciences.
4. Research
FriendFeed is a valuable source of data and behaviours, just waiting to be transformed into information. There are two main ways to get the data you’re looking for: by asking for it and by searching for it. For a tutorial on FriendFeed searching, I’m taking the easy way out and linking you to Louis Gray’s FriendFeed Advanced Search tutorial; he’ll tell you all you need to know.
Here are examples of how I’ve done research by asking questions on FriendFeed:
- “To do lists / reminders: What do you use?”
- “How much do you consider SEO when writing a blog post?”
- “Where do you store all your great blog post ideas?”
5. Uber-sharing
FriendFeed Rooms are not just being used to reduce noise; they’re being used to share noise as well 
. Mike Fructer’s Share your Google Reader! room and Ontario Emperor’s lastfmfeeds room are great examples of this. They collect the Google Reader shares and the Last.fm recently played tracks of other FriendFeed members for all to enjoy.
It’s great seeing such innovative uses of a great service that really show how creative the users are and how flexible FriendFeed is.
What are some other unique uses you’ve seen?
Tags: Blogging, community, friendfeed, research, Social Media
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