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Early adopter. Thought leader. Silicon Valley tech geek blogger.

10 Suggestions To Improve FriendFeed's BetaToday

On Monday, FriendFeed previewed a new user interface, in beta, aimed to make the site easier to read, and also, to help people get updates from their "favorite" friends, through the deployment of lists that show a subset of your friends' updates, or through a new ability to remove individuals' updates from your home feed. The update also included a few new features, including photo posting from the main feed, a new UI that shows rooms and service details on all pages, and the ability to browse FriendFeed through the eyes of another user by seeing their home feed.

While the updates were welcome, and visible at beta.friendfeed.com, I feel the team missed an opportunity to make some critical updates which I hope are on the near-term roadmap. Here are some of the big ones.

1. There Are Still No User Profiles

In December, when I posted 10 Suggestions for FriendFeed, my number one request was for an option to add a small biography or profile to each user's page. While it's true that a person's collective Tweets or blog p

My Google Reader Leaderboard: August 2008Today

Last month, I shared with you the top 40 sources for my Google Reader shared items link blog. See:

Roll Your Own Blog Leaderboard With Google Reader Trends. As a month has passed and it's the 26th of the month, as promised, here is the list updated for the last 30 days of activity.

First, the dataset:

According to Google Reader, from my 368 subscriptions, over the last 30 days I read 15,566 items and shared 765 items. Month over month, despite adding 32 new subscriptions, they contributed 820 fewer items, and I shared 154 fewer items than in July.

Second: The leaders for August of 2008:

Unlike last month, where items from my own blog held the #2 position, this month, thanks to some strong content from guest bloggers, it held the #1 position with 45 total shares. As mentioned last month, I don't want to manipulate the statistics, so I'm leaving the data here. Close behind in the #2 position for August was Duncan Riley's The Inquisitr, up from #3, and Robert Scoble's Shared Link Blog, which rose from the #14 po

Netvouz – A Quality One Man Bookmarking ShowYesterday

By Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Brain (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Despite recent predictions of the death of social bookmarking, the fact remains that there are still a number of excellent Web based tools out there that allow you to save and tag links to webpages in a public forum. Delicious and Magnolia are often regarded as the market leaders in this space, with funding and bodies to get the job done.

However, as the two leaders deal with interface and development model changes, there’s a pretty powerful bookmarking tool that’s been building up its own fanbase for a number of years. It’s practically a one man show and a labor of love. Let’s give Netvouz some of the attention that it deserves.

The Following/Listening Ratio - Are Your Followers Actually Listening?Yesterday

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

Let's face it. One of the main reasons you and I, and almost anyone, are on social services is that you want to interact with new people and expand your current network of connections. There's no doubt about it that there's power in this concept - as you grow your network with quality people, you will meet others that could potentially help grow your brand, share your product, or build your audience. A large audience is valuable.

In the early days of Socia

If You Look Hard Enough, Conflicts of Interest Are EverywhereAugust 25

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, contributing editor at The Industry Standard and professional guest poster in a number of Web sites, including this blog and Duncan Riley's The Inquisitr, has a great discussion starter this evening on bloggers and their conflicts of interest. The piece, titled Out of the Navels and Into the Mirrors, asks specifically if bloggers should talk about companies where they have a financial investment, any kind of part-time or full-time role, or if they should become friends with those they cover. Though broad, her questions likely resonate with many of us involved in blogging and reporting in general, and it's very likely you'll find a wide array of answers, depending who is polled. But each of us comes in with specific likes and dislikes, or personal history, which impacts everything we do, and displays our underlying bias, financial or not.

First, she asks, "Should bloggers cover companies they invest in?"

I almost immediately want to say no. But in actuality, investors in a company usually know it very well, especially if it's an early-stage situation, where they will know it better than the genera