So Friendfeed opened yesterday. Naturally, I had to sign in to take a look.
When I got to the point where it wanted me to configure the feeds and services to grab data from, it first asked for my Google Reader shared items. Okay, can do. Then it asked for my Tumblr name, and this is where my eyebrows went down.
So Tumblr allows me to bundle many of my “activities” in one place. Flickr, blog posts, Twitter posts, links etc., you name it. It does so by querying your Flickr account, your blog(s), Twitter, your del.icio.us bookmark dump (to name a few) via their RSS feeds. And I believe many people are using this feature just for that. I know I do. So that’s usually the first (or even second) re-posting of original content.
Now lifestream services like Friendfeed come hopping along and are going to add another level of abstraction, in the form of aggregation of already aggregated content, or an RSS feed for the aggregated lifestream, or yet another social network layer, and/or by adding comments on top of that.
How much more meta can we go? This is some Zen shit, man.
I swear, one of these days someone will put yet another layer on this Crazy Content Cake of Doom and a black hole will open in the middle of the Internet and suck out all intelligence, reason and original content. (Yes, like Digg, just a wee bit worse.)
Also, I am well aware that I, too, run my own version of a lifestream service, and that my post might seem hypocritical, but by the Gods, there’s a reason why I try to keep escaloop simple.
Update: Added some clarifications.
