Prettying up your Facebook

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A few newspapers mentioned it, far fewer TV channels. Facebook, (teeny bopper waste of time / absolutely necessary lifeline, depending on which side of thirty you're on J), just ate up FriendFeed, an obscure networking site even your young nephew in school wouldn't have heard of.

So what? Well, once upon a time, the four guys behind Friend Feed, were top stars at Google. Gmail, GMaps and Google Adsense, that advertising program that earns money for Google 24/7--they made them all. Fifty million dollars (that's what Facebook forked out) is small change, for that sort of brain power.

But the plot thickens. Twitter's set the world aflutter, with short, crisp messages that let's friends know what you're upto. Till recently, Facebook couldn't match Twitter's fast, uncomplicated style. And Google couldn't search people's Tweets fast enough - often necessary to keep track of what's buzzing online these days. Big chink in both companies armour!

Enter FriendFeed - think of it like a jack of all trades. Step back for a second and think. How many "networking sites" are you signed up to? I use Orkut to track my old school mates, Facebook, for friends from the last ten years, Twitter, to evesdrop on India's best techies and journalists, YouTube, for home videos from relatives in Kerala and abroad, Flickr for photos, Delicious to share links to the cool sites I visit. Plus, there's Linked in and Ryze, where I've put up my resume for employers to see. And Google Reader, for articles and blogs from my favourite people. And I write a blog. What a mess!

With so many sites, come that many passwords to remember. I can't be regular on any site - because I also hold down a job that makes me travel four hours every day. Finally, my friends have to click open all those separate sites - to see where life's been taking me. Not cool!

What Friend Feed does, is take my hopelessly spread out online life - and put it in one bucket. My buddies just subscribe to my "Friend Feed" - and get an instant update on everything that I've done on any of these sites. And now - Facebook's gone and bought FriendFeed.

So - what does that for you? A lot! Just don't expect to see any of it immediately - both the companies are still figuring out ways to mesh their people and software together. But based on what Friend Feed already does - I'm going to hazard a few guesses.

• A cleaner, neater Facebook page. Those ex-Googler's must be aching to give you a simple, clutter free homepage.
• A one-stop shop for online networking. Think about it - when everything you and your friends do, shows up immediately on Facebook, why would you ever log in to any other site?
• Ten times more powerful search. You'll be able to search for a specific word in any of your hundreds of friend's status updates. Or search in just one friends posts. Search just for photos, or just for blogs. Or Tweets. That's something neither Facebook nor Google do perfectly.
• Right now, you can either block all strangers from your Facebook page. Or let everyone see what you have been upto. Soon, you could create separate 'virtual' rooms for different people. Relatives and family in one room. The boss and colleagues in another. College pals and drinking buddies in another. Then, you could happily post your drunk party photos in one room, without worrying if the boss will see it the next day. Oh Boy!



For those of you raring to check out Friend Feed yourself, (it'll stay up for a few more weeks without change), here's a statutory warning. It does all that I've listed above. But it's quite painful getting used to. Facebook's challenge will be to adapt it's neat, efficient software, without hopelessly changing my and your user experience.

And where does that leave Google and Twitter? Well, the big G actually offered to buy Twitter a few months back - and was told to take a walk! With Facebook's latest move threatening them both, maybe they'll talk things over again. What will Google + Twitter be called if they decide to marry? Goo-ter anyone?