Tonight, in a moment of rare form, as I was singing Hakuna Matata on Facebook with Krystyl Baldwin and others (an occasion one must do often) I noticed a new feature pop up before my eyes. Instantly, with no refresh of the page, my News Feed was literally singing with new comments. It appears Facebook has taken its “Recent Items” feed to a new level, introducing a very FriendFeed-like live commenting system, also similar to Facebook’s new Groups and Messages system.
I’ve mentioned frequently here that Facebook, with its FriendFeed co-founder CTO Bret Taylor, and developers such as Benjamin Golub and others from the FriendFeed team, is quickly becoming more and more “FriendFeed-like”, gradually implementing all the features that were cool about the site FriendFeed.com. One of those features was live, real-time commenting, where the comments appeared before your eyes without having to refresh the Page. The live commenting, I’ve found, increases the engagement within the conversation because one isn’t stuck waiting for an email or Facebook notification notifying them to refresh the Page and find the conversation again to continue commenting. The conversation just naturally flows, making conversation much easier.
Facebook seems to have launched this tonight, as I don’t remember seeing it before on the main News Feed. This is a feature that has been already in wide use on Facebook Groups and the new, Facebook Messaging system that launched recently. It seems natural that Facebook would extend this into other areas of the site.
It’s unclear whether this launch is just limited to a select group of users or whether this is widespread, but whatever it is I think it’s pretty cool. I’m pretty excited to not ever have to refresh my News Feed on Facebook again. Now, if we could just get FriendFeed’s search built into Facebook I’d be in Nirvana. No worries!
Stay N' Alive 
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jesse Stay, nasnag. nasnag said: RT @Jesse: New Blog Post: Facebook Quietly Launching Friendfeed-like Live Commenting http://bit.ly/f6nS59 /tip @techmeme […]
I saw this instant updating feature early in the day today. It's fun and may inspire more creative interactions, both silly and productive.
Saw this in Facebook groups and my email last couple days – love it – its like Quoras setup
Considering that FriendFeed's search is broken more often than not, I don't know that its introduction into Facebook will result in a state of Nirvana.
Of course, you and I connect the dots and assume that this new feature was inspired by Taylor's and Golub's former employer, but I wonder if that's truly the case? Remember that Facebook had likes and comments BEFORE the acquisition; I can't remember if Facebook turned on its real-time updates before the acquisition or not. However, perhaps a good case can be made that these new features were inspired by FriendFeed, even if Taylor and Golub weren't directly involved.
In short, FriendFeed is the Apple Lisa of social networking – not very big on its own, but extremely influential for future successes.
[…] Facebook Quietly Launching Friendfeed-like Live Commenting (staynalive.com) […]
About time something like this happens. Way to go FriendFeed!
It's like I don't miss FF anymore, now that FB has gobbled up the goodness, or something.
this is realy
I believe this is already being used on that newest next generation discovery platform, Pocodot (i think http://www.pocodot.com) . Saw on CNN how they are taking the space previously-occupied by FB by storm. Should be interesting to see the competition between the two.
Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!
This is a good addition to Facebook.