In a guest post on Read/Write Web, Muhammad Saleem interviews SocialThing! CEO Matt Galligan and we get some interesting insights into the differences, as Matt sees it, between FriendFeed and SocialThing!:

Recently people have been comparing lifestreaming services FriendFeed and Socialthing!, trying to determine which one will win or whether they even compete. For example, see ReadWriteWeb’s post FriendFeed vs SocialThing!. I signed up for FriendFeed when it first came out and more recently I was lucky enough to get a private beta invite for Socialthing! as well. I sat down with Socialthing! founder and CEO Matt Galligan, to get a little insight into the differences and similarities between the two products. Source: Interview: Socialthing! Founder Matt Galligan – ReadWriteWeb

While Matt acknowledges the similarities between SocialThing! and FriendFeed, he points out how it just works to pull things together.  When I added Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter to my account on SocialThing! all the friends I had in those places, became a part of my feed.  No need to “add friends” … I really liked that.

Of course FriendFeed does have its place.  Extending the conversation into other areas (which I’m not convinced is a good thing).  Though from a comment on my post, it might seem that the folks at CoComment are looking at a solution to the problem.

Regardless of where you stand on these new social aggregators, this is a great interview.

And yes, I have one, just one, invite to SocialThing!.

Post from: EveryJoe

SocialThing!’s secret sauce isn’t friending, it’s finding

So while this is undoubtedly cool, I think people with say a few hundred friends on Facebook similar numbers on other social networks, will find that they are drowning in a sea of information. Source: From Google to FriendFeed:One Feed to Unite Your Friends | A View from the Isle

In the past week or so it has exploded (back?) onto the scene, and I hooked back into it (had to remember my dern password it had been so long).  The question is, while folks are all atwitter over it, is this the next great thing for aggregating information, the next shiny thing, or just an information fire hose?

My vote is fire hose.

I’ve held off on a post about FriendFeed because I wanted to give it a shot.  I subscribed/followed a bunch of people (100+ right now), subscribed to the RSS feed, and started to interact with the service.  I wanted to give this a longer try than I did the last time.

Here’s the problem, and Muhammad Saleem expressed this as well, that the essential part of the information, the conversation, is now not only on the source article but on FriendFeed as well.

This disconnect doesn’t solve the information overload problem, it just exacerbates it.

Yes, I agree, it’s nice to see all my friends’ stuff in one place.  Yes, this might be a good way to catch up on things.  However, even with just 100 people, the RSS feed becomes such an info dump that I just have to hit mark all read and move on.  I don’t have time to filter through all this stuff.

I haven’t tried SocialThing yet (need an invite, if anyone has one to spare)–Muhammad likes it for the conversation in context aspect of it–so I don’t have a comparison point yet.

This all makes you wonder if all the media we’re creating is hurting or helping us connect with each other?

FriendFeed discussion (my picks of the good stuff):

• FriendFeed Is This Years Twitter, But Why?
• FriendFeed vs SocialThing! – ReadWriteWeb
• Andy Beard–FriendFeed wrong kind of attention
• Louis Gray–on Duncan Riley’s comments
• FriendFeed = More Hyped Yawn
• What’s the Caramilk Secret? | Mark Evans
• FriendFeed Appeals to the A-List and the Entire Alphabet-List– bub.blicio.us
• Mathew Ingram on Duncan Riley
• Andy Beard: Claiming your FriendFeed feed on Technorati
• Aidan Henry on FriendFeed

Let’s see where this all goes…

Post from: EveryJoe

FriendFeed explodes onto the scene, but it is still an information fire hose