The Great Migration

A lot of Tweeters and bloggers have been pointing people towards alternatives like FriendFeed and Identi.ca. I am a user of both sites but I think there are significant differences between all three, and certainly the difference between identi.ca and FriendFeed as a replacement to Twitter.

Twitter does a decent job of keeping track of conversations and allowing groups of people to connect. identi.ca does a good job of allowing users to communicate with each other, but connecting and doing other sorts of control-settings are absent. The things both lack is the inclusion of the rest of your online life... kind of a big deal.

FriendFeed solves this problem and allows rich multimedia to improve the interface and experience. It does not include a terrific tool that lets you block parts of users lives you wish not to keep track of. It also doesn't allow you to block friends of friends that act, and name themselves, like Trolls. It has done a great job of making a social network a microblog and lifestream at the same time.

I have a good sense that the creators of FriendFeed will be more reactive than those of Friendster and Twitter. If they act instantly, listen and see the needs before a quick competitor does, they may well lead Twitter by the end of the year.

I want to pay close attention to all of these statistics over the next few months. I expect that this month will bring in a great migration and unless Twitter responds with major upgrades, they're toast.

If you haven't taken a look at FriendFeed ... do it. Take a look, get active, listen, and see how it can help our brands, our organizations and our continuing education.