A lot of talk in recent weeks has shifted towards the “noise” on services such as Twitter and FriendFeed. Some users are simply overwhelmed by how much is going on within these services and how much attention is required if you want to take it all in.
The social content conversation service FriendFeed is hoping to alleviate some of those concerns today with a new feature: Rooms. Rooms are sequestered areas of FriendFeed where users can experience the service more intimately. Or, as FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit more dryly puts it, “a room is like a mini-FriendFeed.”
The Rooms area will have its own tab along the top of FriendFeed between the “Friends” and “Me” tabs. Within the Rooms area you will be able to create multiple rooms for a variety of purposes. Rooms can be either set to public or private. You can even choose if you want information placed in rooms to show up in your main FriendFeed stream — this should definitely help reduce some noise if people start using Rooms in meaningful way.
The FriendFeed API has already been updated to support Rooms.
Naturally, Rooms already has a feedback room to talk about how to improve Rooms. If you can follow that and have suggestions for the FriendFeed team, find it here.
update: The FriendFeed blog has more information.
update 2: In the few short hours this feature has been live, I’ve been asked to join three rooms already, all of which already seem useful.
1:06 am
FriendFeeds lanza Rooms said:
[...] servicio de conversación social es la esperanza en FriendFeed, que ha lanzado una nueva funcionalidad para aliviar esa sobrecarga: habitaciones. Éstas son áreas separadas de FriendFeed donde los usuarios pueden [...]
1:02 pm
Facebook triples the number of services you can import into your feed — moving in on FriendFeed? » VentureBeat said:
[...] continues to expand its service as well. Yesterday it rolled out a new “Rooms” feature which allows for more focused conversations on various [...]
12:55 am
The only thing Twitter has to fear, is Twitter itself » VentureBeat said:
[...] FriendFeed is not as simple and continues to grow more complex with the addition of features such as “Rooms.” To use FriendFeed as a Twitter-replacement would not be so straight-forward and would be doing [...]
12:35 pm
Twitter and the firehose are killing me | AccMan said:
[...] Hey noisy FriendFeed users, get a room(s)! [via Zemanta] [...]
12:51 am
FriendFeed takes noisy tracks and makes a best-of collection » VentureBeat said:
[...] few weeks ago FriendFeed launched the “Rooms” feature to try and create a more focused cluster of noise depending on what you were looking for. But now [...]
2:30 pm
Join us tomorrow for WWDC coverage — Here and on FriendFeed » VentureBeat said:
[...] Given how often we write about Apple and FriendFeed it only makes sense to merge the two for this event. Plus, you never know how another instant update service, Twitter, is going to react to such events — though, it claims to be prepared. This also seems like the perfect usage for FriendFeed’s newer “Rooms” feature. [...]
12:00 am
FriendFeed imports more usefulness into rooms » VentureBeat said:
[...] the sites’ new “Rooms” feature, we built a room with several hundred subscribers all interested in learning and talking about what [...]
4:44 pm
Twitter or FriendFeed? There can be more than one. » VentureBeat said:
[...] getting closer with solutions such as “Rooms” (which I’m finding to be possibly the most useful feature of the entire site — [...]
10:28 pm
Spotted: FriendFeed Beta — coming soon » VentureBeat said:
[...] has been relatively quiet in terms of updates the past few weeks after a rush of new feature after new feature for a [...]
6:03 pm
FriendFeed beta rolls out to test noise filtering tools, redesign » VentureBeat said:
[...] service previously attempted to combat this noise with the “Rooms” feature, where users could post about things specific to a topic but perhaps not meant for their main feed. [...]