If you don’t know about the new look and functionality that is being scrutinized by the FriendFeed beta users as of today, then you probably aren’t reading this (unless you’re a family member). There’s a lot of talk going on about whether or not the real-time feature should be the default, whether the color scheme is tragic, or even how much it might resemble a certain other popular social media service. Lindsay D., well-known FFer, suggested that we FFans (well, the graphically-oriented ones, anyway) draft a comp with how we want our FF to work. Never mind what I’ve been doing with my new Dell Mini 9, my little brain decided this was a blogging opportunity I couldn’t miss.
The above screenshot shows roughly what I see in the FriendFeed beta now. Compare/contrast with the below:
As you can see, my mock-up does away with the grey that seems to offend so many and replaces it with a lovely aqua. Sadly, I’m not graphically-oriented, so the uneven coloring is due to the edits I was doing with the grey background before I re-colored. More important than the color, though, is the ability (optional, of course) to have a preview of a subscription area before I click. How many times have I seen (under the current live UI) that there was an update to a room an hour ago, but I go to that room to find I’ve already read the latest news? If I could see the last two or three entries of certain rooms or contributors on my sidebar, I could determine beforehand if it might be worth a click-through; a plus would be that I could absorb more information without having to leave the main page (or, as I often do, open another tab or page) at all. Sure, this stuff all scrolls through the main feed, but sometimes it flies right past my face before I know it; that’s what happens to those of us who want to know it all.
These couple of features aren’t all I want out of FriendFeed, but this is something I wanted to get out there. Maybe I’ll have more later, but if you read this blog, you know how likely that really is!
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