I’m getting really fed up with all the FriendFeed evangelists who insist Twitter is on its way out. I can’t go 
one day without reading a blog post, a FriendFeed comment or a tweet (the irony) suggesting that the takeover of FriendFeed is imminent.
Let me tell you what is going on in my FriendFeed right now – lots of tweets, a few posted FF messages and blog posts. Most don’t have comments. I’m following a lot of not-so-well-known techies who are getting no love. It seems that most of this “world-wide talk show” revolves around items shared by Paul Buchheit (a FriendFeed founder) and well-known FriendFeed trumpeters (Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, etc.).
Moving over to Twitter – someone is clearing out their spam folder. A local journalist is @replying back and forth with residents in the area. Robert Scoble is on his way to HP labs. These people are telling the world what they’re doing and what they think is interesting – quickly and concisely. In Twitter, it seems to matter less how popular you are. It doesn’t matter that @problogger has thousands more followers than @floor9. Their tweets are weighed the same – unlike FF, where the popular users gain more comments, which in turn bump their items to the top and bury the rest.
Does Twitter have downtime problems? Absolutely, and I complain a lot, believe me. The truth is, though, that Twitter’s network dwarfs FriendFeed’s. The users are hooked. Think about how many times Twitter has gone down or deactivated key features. The fact that they still have such a strong user base speaks volumes. If anyone thought there was a viable alternative to Twitter, they’d be there. There isn’t. Those who insist that the Twitter exodus has begun or that FriendFeed has somehow “taken over” are being sensationalists. FriendFeed will never kill Twitter. I’ve stated this a few times, but one more won’t hurt – if Twitter is killed by anyone, it’ll be Facebook. And FriendFeed will share the same fate.
I will continue to play in both, because I do believe that each one has value. FriendFeed does a lot of cool things and aggregates social networks better than any other app I’ve seen. But FriendFeed replacing Twitter is nonsense, and I invite anyone who truly believes it to totally delete their Twitter account and put their money where their mouth is.
