It's a Twitter world, we just live in it.
Social aggregator FriendFeed unveiled a major redesign Monday with a big focus on real-time feeds much simpler than Facebook and a new design (like Facebook) that bears a striking resemblance to Twitter’s profile pages.
Real-time posting and commenting on all page views also turns FriendFeed into much more of an instant messaging service like AIM or GChat, and this feature "will underlie everything about FriendFeed from now on," says co-founder Bret Taylor.
Friendfeed has always had the option of real-time view, but it is now default on the entire site and includes threaded conversations. And while this is the most noticeable and promoted feature, the physical layout has morphed into a Twitter 3.0.
Subscriptions and menu options have been moved over to the right hand side of the page, Twitter-style. A new submission bar can post to multiple feeds at once, and users can also now send direct messages to followers, which eliminate the need to create a private room.
Updates are marked by a profile photo as opposed to the icon of the various social networking sites used to post the information — again, putting the "who" ahead of the "what" and "where" in true social network style.
Last week Twitter announced that it was closer to adding a search box to user profile pages.
FriendFeed has beat them to the punch and also implemented saved filtered search into the redesign. This (along with a pause button) can help to slow down the constantly updating stream that flows down the page with hordes of followers.
We reached out to Twitter to get their take on the design ... flattery, but have yet to hear back.
Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed have been in something of an arms race to keep up with the latest advancements in social feeds and microblogging. FriendFeed was one of the first to implement filters and aggregate content from third-party services.
But it’s also taken a hint with this redesign from one of Facebook's failures, i.e., the backlash the social network receives whenever it revamps its homepage.
FriendFiend is not asking for trouble by keeping the changes optional while accepting feedback and ironing out all the bugs and anyone can opt to try out the features now at the beta site.
And as FriendFeed power-user Robert Scoble points on on Twitter, users have already created an Anti Friendfeed Beta room to complain as well.
Your move, Twitter.
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