FriendFeed Lets You Privately Share Things

Last night the big news in the blogosphere was that FriendFeed added rooms. I have to admit that I rarely use FriendFeed even though I have an account. I just don’t see enough reason to use it yet. Even though I don’t use it, I can understand how FriendFeed can be used as a valuable tool. What I don’t understand is why is there so much discussion about being able to privately share things.

Can’t you already do that on a wiki? How about a whiteboard in basecamp? How many ways can you cut a pie? While I don’t consider the stuff that I write about everyday of the utmost importance and typically have fun while writing it, when we see much ado about nothing it occasionally frustrates me. Our over obsession with efficiency tends to drive the web industry to come up with more efficient organizational systems when they really should be focusing on getting real work accomplished.

I sometimes fall victim to obsessiveness over organization but the reality is that sometimes it’s better just to keep on trucking with the work. How often do we talk about more efficient delegation and management practices that help us to reduce our workload? I can already bookmark something on del.icio.us and save it for one of my friends. I can also email a blog post directly from my Google reader to an internal company list.

Is it wrong to think that sometimes the applications just aren’t solving real problems? Am I just becoming a pessimist and a cynic?

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.