FriendFeed is hard to explain – it’s like a cross between a forum. twitter and facebook. But it’s better than that: FriendFeed draws in all your content from all the other places you hang out including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, your own blog (via RSS) and presents it in one place. People can then comment on those posts and you can follow other people’s content.

I admit that it has a bit of a geeky leaning (mostly IT losers like myself and photographers) but the cool thing is that you can get to see content the friends-of-friends like too, exposing you to whole new range of people. It’s fun!

Why you should use FriendFeed if you use:

Facebook:

Do you share stuff (links, notes) on Facebook? FF is a damn easier to do that with (they have a funky sharing bookmark tool). Oh and that commenting / liking thing Facebook has? Where do you think they nicked it from. There’s even a FF app for Facebook so you can share your FF stream with FB.

Twitter:

Not only is the FF / Twitter integration instant, but FF makes a much better Twitter client. FF is also real time, so you see posts scrolling past as they happen. FF also unpicks shortened URLs and embeds twtitpics automatically so you see it all in one place. FF can also “Tweetcast” your FF posts/comments/likes so you can still reach out to your Twitter followers.

Google Reader:

I know reader has some social networking features, but they’re pretty late to the party. Why not post your reading matter into FF for all to see rather than have people guess at obfuscated URLs? Now that reader and FF use PubSubHubbub, your shares and likes in reader show up instantly in FF.

You don’t even need to create an account if you use Twitter, Facebook or Google – just sign in with the account you already have. What’s to lose?!

Lastly, I’ve found the team behind FriendFeed to be the most receptive and responsive bunch of developers I’ve ever come across. New features come out regularly (like groups and friend lists recently). There’s a neat new API for people who like to tinker (my mini blog on the left there is driven using the v1 API).

Oh, and there are never any spammers or trolls :)

If you do signup, be sure to follow me and I can point you in the direction of some good people to follow too (another new feature: suggested friends!): http://friendfeed.com/alexlomas