FriendFeed cofounder Paul Bucheit was recently asked what it was like to be the R&D department for Facebook. His response was appropriately humble, but you can’t help but wonder how long it will be before Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed all start to look pretty much identical as the services simply copy the best features from their competitors.
One thing is for sure, though: FriendFeed moves the fastest. They were the first to add comments to status updates, the first to bring in third party feeds and the first to realize the value of search. They also experimented with real time streams way before the others. So much of what they’ve done first has been copied by others – even Google has dipped into the well.
Now FriendFeed is taking the next step in its evolution with a complete redesign and lots of new features. We were able to see a demo of the new site last week and have been testing it over the weekend. Our opinion: the new FriendFeed, which launches into beta today, is simpler, faster and better than the old FriendFeed. In fact, it may be a little too fast.
