FriendFeed is generating quite a buzz around the blogosphere, but is it the best choice for live-blogging from a business and advertising perspective?
Although the concept is great, there is one big reason I won’t be using FriendFeed: It puts nofollow on all of your external links.
So I’m going to skip FriendFeed and recommend that anyone employed in writing for websites, or marketing, or anything online – should immediately check out and sign up forLifestream.fm. While you’re there, consider for a moment how much such a platform can help you with: search engine optimization and social marketing and just keeping track of the day’s dozens of tasks and conversations.
(While you’re there, throw me an invite because I’m new to this social internet thing and I need some e-friends interested in blogging, business, politics, and the economy!)
Now, LifeStream just went public (in early September), so it still has some issues.
Technical Problems:
- RSS feeds don’t properly deal with the & character – so for the moment I’m getting errors on any links to my PHPBB3 and EzineArticle feeds.
- Google indexes the pages in German – but the cached copy still used English for the anchor text of the links.
- Where is everyone? Mostly at SixGroups.com in the Friendfeed group. Unfortunately again, there’s a language barrier and the language of choice seems to be German.
Lifestream will definitely benefit from people building up third party networking sites and groups. We might even be able to build a network of internet marketers just by posting about it on our blogs and organically expanding a clique of interconnected profiles. I imagine places like Sphinn, Digitalpoint, Sitepoint, and some other established webmaster communities could be excellent staging grounds during the initial adoption phase since Lifestream hasn’t fully incorporated groups of their own just yet.
So no, I’m not avoiding FriendFeed for the same reasons Mark Rizzin is, I just think there’s something better in a holistic marketing/SEO sense. Liveblogging isn’t going away, and I don’t think anyone interested in keeping up to date with online marketing can ignore it. Of course, Mark is in a particularly tough situation here as someone genuinely interested in politics. Take it from me, a poli-sci major, this is one of the topics that quickly makes people lose their temper: especially when you challenge conventional and popular opinions. (And if you’re not challenging peoples’ opinions, what exactly is the point?)
Yeah, it can be frustrating to deal with the hecklers and trolls.
Yeah, it can be emotional when e-friends have arguments and disagree – but this is all part of the social aspect of the new internet.
Some people will be jerks, and some will be civil. The ones who can keep a cool head will get the followers and friends that fit them – and the others will probably learn to leverage all of the sensation and drama for their own benefit and publicity.
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