This is rather not new but I’m still surprised that only a few people actually use it. I just find it extremely interesting. Friendfeed is not only a feed aggregator but also a feed reader. Let me explain how it works. Let’s say that you’re a blogger (and therefore often use RSS feeds) and you’re a big fan of delicious (I can totally understand as it enables you to bookmark and tag everything you like and it’s accessible 24/7 online)! Anyway, delicious sends feeds as well. Now you probably like posting your pictures online to flikr or even to picassa. if you don’t, I highly encourage you to so as it would save up some space from your hard disk…
I haven’t even mentioned twitter and its service of micro blogging, or facebook where millions of people in the world are speaking about themselves, posting pictures and links and playing with applications. Feeling tired? Me too. Hard to keep up with all that? Hell yeah!
The web is growing everyday with theese cool tools. I have to say it’s pretty hard for everybody to keep up with feeds coming from all your friends although you would like to. This is why friendfeed is a hit. All you have to do is:
- open an account
- select the feeds that you want to aggregate into one page
- press ok
This is what you get:
gathering all my feeds!
Like in any other web 2.0 tool, you can of course search for your friends and add them in your buddy list, comment their feeds etc. Last but not least, there are quite a few widgets in different format that you can insert into your blog/ website.
Now the question is: how can we use it for business? There are various ways to do it but here are some hints:
- Identify your target: you cannot target any kind of companies. Especially in France (where I live & work), where only a small minority of people actually use these kinds of tools. But they all have something in common: they’re usually young and live in urban areas. So if your target audience has similar characteristics, you may want to think about feeds and friendfeed.
- Use many formats: Google nowadays uses almost any kind of format in its Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) with so-called universal search. You would therefore have a huge advantage in using pictures, videos, blogs … For all those formats, some optimisations are necessary (I will review it in another post). One good way would therefore be to use social media and rich media as much as you can in order to get closer to your audience and speak about your brand & your company values.
- Branding: the more you speak out online, the more visible you are. So don’t hesitate to hire somebody in charge of your online communication or go for an agency.
- Be coherent: now you spread all the info online in many formats, make it accessible and coherent for your target audience because they’re just like you, they only have little time. So embed your feeds into an “about us” page.
- Buzz around: yes that what web 2.0 is all about. Internet users can visit your website and use your widget in their website too!
To conclude, the concept of gathering feeds in one page and a widget is really something that can help everybody save time and be coherent. The fight in gaining supremacy in gathering feeds is not yet over. Some already failed but new stuff keeps coming, therefore I’m confident there will be some fierce competition in this area. Although I have to say that friendfeed is now leading the way!
Filed under: online marketing, seo, social media Tagged: | feeds, optimisation, promotion, richformat, seo, web2.0, widget
