Last week I decided to stray from the herd on FriendFeed. My mission was to spend five days getting to know the people that I follow better. For five days I only commented, liked and shared content of individuals in my member circle. For the most part the experiment was a success. My mistake was only doing this for 5 days. In actuality I should of did it for 30 days. This would of exposed me to more members in my circle who are not active on FriendFeed every day. Five days limited me to only those who were on FF at the same time as me. Thirty days would have given me a broader experience.
It was an interesting five days. The first day was the most challenging. I spent the night before loading a fresh new Google reader account. This was filled with 80 rss feeds from members that are subscribed to me. These feeds are from members who I seldom interact or engage with on FriendFeed. The non stop, flowing river on FriendFeed is partly to blame. The rest is due to their low activity on FriendFeed, or activities that simply do not interest me, such as streams of twitter or britekite broadcasts. I figured 80 blogs was enough to supplement my social consumption for 5 days. The problem I often ran into was finding new content. The majority of blogs were not regularly updated for days, even months. I’m partly to blame. I should have clearly stated I was looking for blogs with a higher update frequency. I often had to resort back to my, most recently analyzed trusted Google Reader to fill the void. That was easy because the majority of the content I already share on a daily basis comes from members that are in my member circle such as, Louis Gray, Steve Hodson, Corvida to name just a few.
Within the time frame I established of five days, I allowed myself to steer away from the herd, and roam into uncharted areas. I dug deep into this focus group of blogs. The Discovery phase was the fun part. I often found myself looking through pages and archives to find the gold nuggets I was looking for. The nugget had to shine or at the very least spark some sort of interest, and make a connection with me. I ended up finding and learning some great things about the people I follow, as much as one can through a blog or FriendFeed. Michael Nielsen explained to me, Why the world needs quantum mechanics. Bill Sodeman wrote on how to Fix the DNS security hole with OpenDNS. Andy Brudtkuhl had his Twitter account deleted for no apparent reason. Daynah Introduced me to the creative world of scrap booking. I also learned Mona has an obsession with bacon. These are just a few of the examples that I otherwise would not have discovered, and most likely would have floated by me in the river.
Discovering new blogs and content was one aspect of it. On FriendFeed I actively looked for members in my circles online, and took part in as many conversations as possible. My liking of content was more selective, and I geared it towards the members in my circle that are often overlooked. It’s amazing how much great content is hidden on feeds that are seldom seen on FriendFeed. I tried as much as possible to shine some light on these hidden treasures. Sharing through Google reader and using the FriendFeed Bookmarklet helped shine some light on these feeds. The power of foaf also works in mysterious ways. For the five days I turned off foaf, this slowed the river down for me, allowing me to focus on my member circle with more clarity and less disruption.
Overall for the 5 days it was a success. My level of engagement on FriendFeed was more enlightened and fulfilling. I also have found a few silent members that I need to make sure I follow a little more closely. If anything has come out of this little experiment, it’s the new faces that now appear on my radar. Not just a one time fly by anymore, but they now have become reoccurring blips on my screen.
Five days has given me limited results. I plan on keeping up with this experiment for at least 30 days for a more thorough analysis. Stay tuned.
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I am NOT obsessed with bacon, thank you very much.
Bacon is my air.
ps, thank you, for this. It makes me feel good when you actually take the time to share my blog posts, and I've actually 'found' some more people to subscribe to, because of your sharing
Interesting concept, Mike. But as you indicate, folks like me, who were away during your “test period” are not counted in your group where we might otherwise might have been had you used a longer time frame.
It looks, however, as though you have the basis for a good group discussion, based on your initial test.
I am NOT obsessed with bacon, thank you very much.
Bacon is my air.
ps, thank you, for this. It makes me feel good when you actually take the time to share my blog posts, and I’ve actually ‘found’ some more people to subscribe to, because of your sharing
Interesting concept, Mike. But as you indicate, folks like me, who were away during your “test period” are not counted in your group where we might otherwise might have been had you used a longer time frame.
It looks, however, as though you have the basis for a good group discussion, based on your initial test.
Awesome experiment Mike. Maybe you could switch up different people every 5 days for the next 30 days?
Excellent suggestion Corvida. Expanding this to thirty 30 days will definitely allow me to gain a broader view of more people to focus on.
Awesome experiment Mike. Maybe you could switch up different people every 5 days for the next 30 days?
Excellent suggestion Corvida. Expanding this to thirty 30 days will definitely allow me to gain a broader view of more people to focus on.