Most people who know me understand that my heart is in Twitterville, but I still find FriendFeed compelling and useful. Unlike Twitter, the overwhelming share of people I subscribe to on FF are people I actually know and/or admire. I plan to keep it that way. I use FriendFeed when I'm in a hurry and just want to see what certain people had to say, quickly. In Twitter, I tend to just hang on the street corner when I have some time to spare.
FreindFeed, like several other sites, did a redesign last week, and I find myself really liking it. It makes FF much more usable and slightly more functional. But there is one feature that nags at me. It shouldn't because I don't have to use it. But I do see it every time I go there. FF allows you to create folders for friend category. This can be useful, if you want to track what your friends have to say on any given topic. But it displays three folders, when you are on your homepage: "Favorites," "Professional" and "Personal."
Why does it bother me so much? Because I am such a believer in blurring the line between business and personal relationships. I believe that we should be transparent, credible, generous in both categories. I believe social media culture contributes to eliminating the differences in language, topics of conversation, apparel and so on. I just hating having to figure out which box to put anyone in so I avoid using any boxes at all friend.
I know this is a minor point, and in no way will it diminish my use of FF. In fact, when working on projects, FF is makes it much easier for me to organize content than does Twitter (where I often ask people to use email so I can manage the content). But I really wish they would move those folder names so that I don't have to think of the nature of my relationship every time I talk to someone.
