My FriendFeed Wishlist Mark Two

Back in May, having only been on the service a short time on my second attempt, I posted a FriendFeed wishlist of things I’d like to see on the service. The FriendFeed team has continued to innovate, introducing a new beta service this week that offers a range of extra functionality that makes the service better. And yet still I find myself wanting more, I guess that’s the downside of being passionate about a service, you always want more from it so it can be its best.

Here’s my new FriendFeed wishlist, broken down into old, new and possibles.

New items

Image importing

Sometimes a picture speaks louder on FriendFeed than the post itself, and yet if you’re automatically importing a feed into FriendFeed, it doesn’t automatically include the picture (although it does on my Posterous blog for some reason). It would be great to see pictures imported with posts to add to the experience, be that as an option per feed for example.

Improved image hosting

FriendFeed now supports image uploads, but it’s a half way step to proper image hosting. Why not go the next step and allow images, or even videos to be embeddable via an option within FriendFeed itself. The current setup leads to duplication where as FriendFeed could become a Photobucket of sorts. An easy value add that will also create a pile of link juice for FriendFeed.

FriendVenn features

The new FriendFeed beta allows for easy adding of followers, a welcome addition, but it still doesn’t offer a chart like the excellent (but currently not working) FriendVenn. Embracing the social side and improving the tool set is an obvious development path for FriendFeed.

Improved two way responses

You can post back to Twitter from FriendFeed, but not to any other service that I’m aware of. It’s not a technical issue, services like Identi.ca even offer the Twitter API for two way interaction. I’d love to be able to use FriendFeed as my main platform for microblogging services.

Official WordPress plugin

Glenn Slaven’s WordPress plugin is the bomb, but it still lacks some features that would be best served by FriendFeed itself. Imagine a WordPress plugin where you got to pick what images where included in the post to FriendFeed, where FriendFeed comments were automatically included inline with comments on the page (it can be done now, but not as easily as it could be). Much of the appeal of FriendFeed for bloggers is that two way interaction, and improving this will encourage more people to use the service.

Egalitarian user recommendations

If there’s one area that FriendFeed has continued down the path to EPIC FAIL on, it’s the continued insistence on recommending a select few users, some who don’t even use FriendFeed regularly, to new users signing up. The community is passionate about this being changed, and two of the people recommended (Louis Gray + Robert Scoble) even want out! If FriendFeed is seriously determined to maintain a false A-list, add it as a tab option on signup. Start with a list of randomly generated users, then offer people a list of most active or popular like Mona N, then maybe offer a list of recommended by FriendFeed. This should have been done yesterday.

Custom Visuals

Something similar to Better FriendFeed, with the ability to customize the look of the site. Basic stuff, and although FriendFeed is functional today it still lags in the pretty stakes. Let users pick their colors, add the ability to highlight users or yourself, and if they’re really keen, allow for wallpaper as well ?

Old items

FriendFeed/ Disqus integration

Last I heard this was still being discussed. Hopefully it will be coming soon.

Custom Tabs

The new FriendFeed beta offers grouping via a sidebar so we are some way there, but I’d still like to see custom tabs and possible third party site support (as offered via our FriendFeed Greasemonkey scripts).

IM/ Twitter etc, see the point above about two way interaction. I believe that there may still be grounds for some Twitter killing, but it probably won’t happen now.

Possibles

FriendFeed user profiles

It’s already looking like a social network, why not go the next step and improve the profile features, offering a full social networking experience. Facebook is peaking, Hi5 is coming up behind, and LinkedIn remains big for business, but there’s still ground there for more. It would also go some way towards mainstreaming the site.

FriendFeed email

Lots of people have more than one email address and FriendFeed is in the aggregation business, why not marry the two, with FriendFeed offering a unified email service, fully searchable by FriendFeed itself (privately of course).

What would you like to see on FriendFeed