Lists of Friends and Lists of Feeds

Today I went on an undertaking bigger than Poverty, more important than World Hunger, and will achieve more than exploring outer space: Organizing my Friendfeed Account.

If any of you gave listened to Robert Scobles 20 ways to being a bigger friendfeed monster than Guy Kawasaki, you’ll realize that Friendfeed is a very power tool. You can easily share things with others, sort people into lists, join rooms….

Wait, what was that? Organize People into rooms? Man that feature is cool. I can basically make an entire new list of entries from the people I choose that is very customizable. I take any room or friend, and put them into my list. Then I can either choose just to have it limited to the people I choose, or make it more like a home feed where I see what those people liked. Very good stuff.

Today I did a giant clean-up of both of my accounts, Twitter and Friendfeed. I went to every single user, looked at their feed, assed what they put in it, and immediately stereotyped them. They were either: A Newsmaker, A Lifestreamer, A Photographer, A Drone, or A Mix. Now, some of that might not exactly mean what you think, but lets get into them.

A Newsmaker

The first list I made was the Newsmakers. These are the people who primarily blog, read entries from other blogs and share them, and bookmark articles. If you look at their feed, you are going to find that 50% – 75% of their input data is news/blog oriented. Louis Gray is a perfect example of this. Currently looking at his feed he has a ton of Google Reader entries, stuff from his own blog, and delicious entries. Not to say that Newsmakers don’t have Personal items, Louis is well know for his twins, but most of his feed is news.

A Lifestreamer

The next list is the people who are all about their own life. Using social media to spread their world, with the world. (Jeff)isageek is one of these people. His feed has generally a lot of personal items like broadcasts of his Brightkite account of where he is right now, and pictures of where he is currently and his family.

A Photographer

Have you ever had those people that constantly are putting Flickr posts into a feed with pictures that are really cool, but you annoyingly have to press the button to see more? These are them. Perfect for looking for a picture for a blog article, or looking at on a Sunday morning when you really have no ideas for blog posts.

A Drone

Now this one doesn’t go into a list, but I wanted to point them out. There are people that will just piped stuff into Friendfeed and never come back. These people are drones. They pump out information and nothing that develops in their comments ever gets replied to. Alex Albrecht is a good example of this. Not a like or comment since November 24th

A Mix

Now these are the tricky people to categorize, and often you put them in multiple categories. The people that basically do everything go here. And I mean a LOT of everything. Robert Scoble is a very good example of this. He photographs, blogs, and talks about trips he is on.

 

So, now that I have labeled everyone, there are 3 more very important lists:

 

Real Life Friends

If you are lucky enough to have friends, and better yet have ones that social network, they go here. Its important that you can know what people are talking about around you in your location quickly. Also, being able to converse with them just creates a better relationship.

The Best 500

This one will probably never be reached for a lot of people, and its find if you scratch the last 0 off of 500 and make it 50. This i a broad range of the top people on Friendfeed that interest you. When starting it, I suggest just throwing in people that remotely interest you, and later changing people out. But it is important to have a feed that you know gives you the broad majority of interesting stuff.

The Best 200

This one I got directly from Robert Scoble. The Best 200 people on Friendfeed which gives you a very narrowed focus point of items that you know you want to read. Because it is very important to be able to hone in on interesting things when you don’t have much time, or you are tired and don’t want to be bothered going through a lot. I’d suggest building this list out of the people from the Best 500 listen.

So there you have it, my way of organizing the massive amount of data that is Friendfeed. Currently this is my longest post. And unlike TV stations who want to make things shorter, I’m not going to cut to black in the middle of a sente….