The thin line between Friend and Feed

Dave Winer has a post up, looking for something to fill the gap between simple messaging systems with limited length (eg Twitter) and the far more complex systes such as Friendfeed. We're not certain there is such a gap, as shown in the diagram:



Sez Dave:

Twitter is to FriendFeed (in 2008) what MS-DOS was to the Mac (in 1984). Have we come full circle? Amazingly I think we have.

In the 80s, MS-DOS users argued whether or not we needed a graphic operating system. "Need" was the big idea. They said they could do everything you could do with a Mac on the PC, and they were more than right about that -- they could do more on the PC than you could do on a Mac because there was more software for it. In 1984 the Mac had a lousy spreadsheet and a cheap word processor, and whole categories completely missing like databases. This is analogous to the correct argument that Twitter has more people to connect with, and of course that's the whole point of both products -- connecting with people. Twitter wins that one, hands-down, nolo contendere. And FriendFeed, even in its name, admits that this is the game, after all it's called FriendFeed, not CoolFeaturesFeed, although of course, that's why I like it.

Problem is, most people are voting the other way with their digital feet, and I humbly submit the reason is as I charted above. The total population who have the time to deal with complex messaging of lots of stuff is small.

Not only that, the simple systems are being used in ever more sophisticated emergent ways, so they increasingly become "Good Enoughs", squeezing that gap a bit more.

As we have noted throughout this year, most people want their content Filtered, not Firehosed. And from time immemorial in New Tech, people will vote for the simpler thing.