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UPDATED: That annoying FriendFeed ‘feature’ people like

By Eric Rice ⋅ April 18, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Update at the end of post. The feature I’m griping about here IS there, but heh, poorly implemented. Sorry guys, it’s an iPhone world we live in. Be like Apple. ;) I’m not going to delete this post. Skip to the end.

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Some software can be palatable with simple toggles: on/off. That’s my solution for the FriendFeed team regarding this ‘feature’. I discovered odd behavior with the aggregator site, where I have around 400 people following me. I used to follow around 200, but only by way of importing my address book. I was too lazy to go on the big ‘add, add, add’ crusade.

Recently, I ditched everyone and started over. To start, I follow only 10 people. What a great way to manage the noise!

run but no hide

I don’t follow Jason Calacanis or Jeremy Hall, but I know people who do.

Then I noticed something weird. I was getting updates from people I do not follow.

Eventually, I figured it out, with the help of some folks on Twitter and Flickr, commenting that this is a feature that a lot of people are apparently happy about. If one of the people you follow (a ‘friend’) makes a comment on someone else’s post (who you don’t follow), you will see the other person’s post in your feed, regardless of whether or not you follow them or not.

This puts me in the position of having to choose whether to friend/follow someone based on who they associate with… hey, that’s neat! “I’d follow you but yeah, not with the company YOU keep!” Social, indeed. I currently follow Louis Gray, a local tech guy here in the Valley. However, because he comments on posts from people I don’t want to follow (Calacanis, for example, sorry J-dawg), I’m faced with ‘do I remove Louis or not?’. Guilt by association. Yay, social!

Apparently, SocialThing is not reported to have this issue.

This kind of thing normally wouldn’t warrant a post from me except: I’m trying to reduce noise. I’ve also unsubscribed from Scoble, someone I like and have known for a lot of years, as a test of the efficiency (or not) of these socially-focused services. I still get Scoble’s datastream in various places, Friendfeed included. My tests are so far proving successful.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, ‘just unsubscribe’.

UPDATE: Louis points out that you CAN do this, but even then it took me a second. Here’s a nice big screenshot and instructions how to do it. Don’t be afraid that ‘hide’ which has no indicator of more options (like a triangle or ellipses) will destroy stuff. It actually will prompt you with this:

you can do it put your blog in to it

You don’t have all the options up front, there’s ‘More Hide Options’ as a link which expands even further. The snag for me, like I mentioned above was non-consistent UI that did not indicate an expandable option. Best example: see the “More” link next to “Hide”.

Two lessons learned (well maybe three, I seriously have been dwelling on this all day, trying to figure out what the problem was first), is 1. Louis is saved from the chopping block :) and 2. UI design is SO critical and 3. Perhaps the rush into all these apps compounds the frustration with them

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