“Liking,” the hot social trend, continues with Likaholix

“Liking,” the hot social trend, continues with Likaholix

“Liking” an item on a social network is all the rage right now. You can do it on FriendFeed, you can do it on Twitter (though it’s technically called “favoriting” a tweet) and you can even do it on Facebook now. It works because the… Continue Reading

Facebook gives FriendFeed’s “like” button a thumbs-up

Facebook gives FriendFeed’s “like” button a thumbs-up

Facebook has been watching “lifestreaming” site FriendFeed closely, and today the larger company’s attention has resulted in a new FriendFeed-like feature in its news feeds. It’s a button called “like,” and it’s a one-click way to show your friends that you liked a link to… Continue Reading

Facebook and Twitter: There’s blood everywhere, but no one’s dying

Facebook and Twitter: There’s blood everywhere, but no one’s dying

Here we go again. Over the course of the last several months, we’ve heard that FriendFeed was going to kill Twitter. Then Twitter was going to kill FriendFeed. Then Facebook was going to kill FriendFeed. Now Facebook is going to kill Twitter. But something odd… Continue Reading

Roundup: Google sees results in Washington, sex offenders out of MySpace, Motorola’s big loss and more

Roundup: Google sees results in Washington, sex offenders out of MySpace, Motorola’s big loss and more

Here’s the latest action:

Google is making friends in Washington — After Microsoft and AT&T’s lobbying power killed its Yahoo search deal, Google has proven to be the quick study in politics and now seems to have friends in high places…the highest places, the White House. The… Continue Reading

Radar gets an iPhone app to better share media amongst friends

Radar gets an iPhone app to better share media amongst friends

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of websites and applications right now that let you share things with other people. Twitter does it, FriendFeed does it and Facebook does it, among many others. But while those are increasingly about sharing with as many people as… Continue Reading

With Twitter friend imports, FriendFeed again devalues Twitter’s actual website

With Twitter friend imports, FriendFeed again devalues Twitter’s actual website

There’s much ado about Twitter’s site traffic today — is it bigger than Digg’s or isn’t it? But the reality remains that Twitter.com’s traffic doesn’t matter that much because there are so many services out there that can (and do) pipe in and use Twitter’s… Continue Reading

Twingly launches microblog search — Twitter search with a sprinkle of Jaiku and a dash of Identi.ca

Twingly launches microblog search — Twitter search with a sprinkle of Jaiku and a dash of Identi.ca

Blog search tool Twingly’s new microblog search, as a concept, makes a lot of sense. You enter a keyword in one search box and get results from services like Twitter, Jaiku and Identi.ca. But in practice there’s a problem — and it’s not Twingly’s problem… Continue Reading

Facebook clearly likes FriendFeed’s “Like” feature

Facebook clearly likes FriendFeed’s “Like” feature

A sharp-eyed reader of the blog AllFacebook noticed something very interesting in a video that Facebook recently published — a “Like” link underneath a feed item. Sound familiar? It probably does if you’ve ever used the social content aggregation service FriendFeed.

This functionality doesn’t appear to… Continue Reading

Join us for some live Macworld Keynote coverage

Tomorrow at 9AM PST, Apple will hold its keynote address at the Macworld Expo. Myself and Dean Takahashi will be on hand to bring you any announcements from the keynote as they unfold live.

As usual, we’ll have a page on VentureBeat set up with a… Continue Reading

FriendFeed says ‘SUP to some new services

FriendFeed says ‘SUP to some new services

We first wrote about FriendFeed working a new Really Simple Syndication (RSS) supplement that it was calling Simple Update Protocol (SUP) earlier this year. The idea was to speed up the way new content is pulled into the social aggregator. Today, FriendFeed has announced several… Continue Reading

FreundFeed? FriendFeed launches in six new languages

FreundFeed? FriendFeed launches in six new languages

FriendFeed as a concept makes sense. You take your social data from all around the web and gather it in one place so as to facilitate conversations around your content. And so if a concept makes sense in English, it makes sense in other languages… Continue Reading

Google Profiles add another social layer: Pictures!

Google Profiles add another social layer: Pictures!

Recently, I wrote about the ability to search Google Profiles, single pages with Google user information similar to a social network profile. I also noted that with things like a voting widget and maps, the profiles were getting a bit more robust, despite Google never… Continue Reading

“Major failure” takes FriendFeed down

“Major failure” takes FriendFeed down

The social aggregation site FriendFeed is currently down as I write this. [Update: It's back up, more on that below.]

“We had a major failure with one of our backends. We are in the process of restoring. We hope to have it back very soon,” co-founder… Continue Reading

FriendFeed goes where Twitter can’t: IM

FriendFeed goes where Twitter can’t: IM

Back in the day before people like Al Gore were using Twitter, users used to enjoy getting updates by way of instant messages. It was useful to get updates in real time through an application (some IM service) that you probably already had open. Unfortunately,… Continue Reading

FriendFeed puts location in a bit more context by auto-adding maps to the stream

FriendFeed puts location in a bit more context by auto-adding maps to the stream

FriendFeed quietly rolled out a pretty cool new feature tonight. Now, when you update a service that has location information included in it, such as Brightkite, a Google Map image of your location will be placed below the update.

When I inquired about this new feature,… Continue Reading

FriendFeed lessens the ‘Post to Twitter’ echo by promoting the source

FriendFeed lessens the ‘Post to Twitter’ echo by promoting the source

I made it pretty clear the other day that I wasn’t a big fan of FriendFeed’s new ability to push user updates to Twitter. As a few examples showed, too much of the same content was being repeated and it made the moderate-to-heavy FriendFeed users… Continue Reading

Publish FriendFeed updates to Twitter — a snake that eats its own tail?

Publish FriendFeed updates to Twitter — a snake that eats its own tail?

One of the reasons that I really like FriendFeed is that it provides a single place to see and have conversations about updates from multiple services. The service that seems to be the most popular (based on my and other users’ statistics) in terms of… Continue Reading

Work be damned. FriendFeed now has an area that updates in real-time

Work be damned. FriendFeed now has an area that updates in real-time

The social content conversation site FriendFeed is a huge time suck for a lot of people. This includes me. I sit on the site throughout the day and constantly hit the refresh button to send me new information from my contacts. Now I no longer… Continue Reading

Roundup: Brin’s blog, O’Reilly gets serious, Joost’s browser version goes live and more

Roundup: Brin’s blog, O’Reilly gets serious, Joost’s browser version goes live and more

Here’s the latest action:

Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin starts his own blog — Dubbed “too“, Brin starts off by detailing his fears of getting Parkinson’s disease since it runs in his family. Compelling stuff. Too bad it’s nearly impossible to read with his choice of light blue… Continue Reading

After months in hibernation, Twitter redesign finally goes live

After months in hibernation, Twitter redesign finally goes live

We first caught a glimpse of the Twitter redesign in mid-July, when apparently an overzealous employee of the micro-messaging service jumped the gun on the roll out. Seeing its shadow, the redesign went back into hibernation for another couple months. Now it’s ready, and looking… Continue Reading