Stalking Chris Sacca (Formerly of Google) via FriendFeed

by Joanna Pineda Posted on February 4, 2009

friendfeed Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a keynote session by Chris Sacca, former Head of Special Initiatives at Google, during the ASAE Technology Conference.  Boy was it fun to hear about what it’s like to work at Google, Google’s core values, the perks, and the future of search.  I was so inspired by Chris’ words that I decided to follow him on FriendFeedI’m relatively new to FriendFeed, but it feels like I’m stalking Chris Sacca. I can now follow this guy’s tracks as he views, posts, comments, and bookmarks across the Web.  Do I really want all this information about one person?  Even for me, this is starting to feel like TMI (too much information).

But first, let me tell you about Chris’ speech, which was terrific.  Among the things he talked about:

Okay, so back to stalking Chris.  I had read about FriendFeed (FF) a few months ago and decided to give it a try.  FriendFeed users can see what their friends are reading, listening to or viewing on the Web as a continuous stream of updates.  You can view the updates on a Web page, in your Google personalized page, via IM, or Facebook.  In a New York Times article, one of the founders, Bret Taylor, calls it a “blog that writes itself.”

None of my friends seem to be on FF, so I’m following just a couple of Web celebrities.  Chris Sacca provided his FF address so I started following him.  FF is like a firehose of information about the people you’re following. I follow 180 people on Twitter and love the updates and the diversity and randomness of the links posted.  I have 101 friends on Facebook and can easily scan the status updates and links.   I’m only following 3 people on FF, but every day, I get pages and pages of updates. I get tweets, blog posts, comments, links, favorite photos and videos, and comments from their friends.  I feel like I’m stalking Chris Sacca because I practically know where he is and what’s he’s reading and watching.  Do I really need this much information on one guy? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch said last year that FF is better than Twitter, but I’m overwhelmed. I think this is going to take some getting used to.

Anybody out there on FF?  How are you using it and what tools do you use to wade through the data?  Is it cool or just TMI?

2 replies on “Stalking Chris Sacca (Formerly of Google) via FriendFeed”

I’m can’t decide whether my craziness about this subject comes from being older (oh no!) or being time challenged or just envying missing out on “what’s happening now.” I recently read comforting words that validated my difficulty in relating to people who spend more and more time communicating digitally/electronically.

Jeanne McManus, in The Washington Post on Tuesday, in “The Tedium is the Message”.
She begins, “Stop me. Please. If I can’t stand reading about the banalities of my own daily life, why would anyone else want to? And yet the air is filled with blogging, social-network chitchat and, even worse, Twittering….”
http://tinyurl.com/McManus2-03

Kathleen Parker, in The Washington Post, 12/3/08, in “Rise of the Twitterati”.
An excerpt… ” For those who still commune by glance and gesture, “to twitter” roughly means to express an abbreviated thought or observation in real time to a live, self-selecting audience of brain voyeurs. People who want to know your every cogitation and sign up for the privilege.”
http://tinyurl.com/Parker12-08

Notice, however, I am not totally clueless. I discovered and now use tinyurl.com to convert those enormous URLs into brief, customized links. My little contribution to your continuing work in On-Line Advanced Studies!

Thanks for your awesome comment and links. At first, I didn’t get Twitter but I was determined to give it a shot. Then it started to click. I agree that there is a lot of tedium on Twitter, but there are also gems. I have read some thoughtful tweets, found out about great sites, and actually keep up with quite a few friends through their tweets and status updates on Facebook.

FriendFeed is a shock to my system; there is too much information and right now, it’s TMI. Perhaps I haven’t figured out how to filter properly.

I can also see how these sites can be a total time suck. I tweet throughout the day but it takes seconds. I cruise Twitter and FB early in the morning and at night when I have more time. I had a meeting with a client the other day who wonders if he can retire before he’s required to start tweeting.

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