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The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What's ...

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The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What's Next

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Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day.

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flowing, multi-person, real-time conversations.

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"The open, realtime discussions that occur on FriendFeed," he says, "are going to become a major new communication medium on the same level as email, IM and blogging." That's a pretty ambitious claim, but Buchheit has the credibility to make it.

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Now Paul Buchheit is investing in new startups and has co-founded one of his own. FriendFeed is a fascinating combination of a.) an aggregation tool bringing information in from all around the web, b.) a big public conversation and c.) a publishing tool for original content. The service pulls in data from all the different social networks you tell it that you participate in, allowing your FriendFeed friends to see and discuss your activities on those networks whether they happen to participate in them or not.

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There's a long list of services that FriendFeed can import data from, from social bookmarking to YouTube favorites, but the majority of what goes on at the site is conversation about Twitter messages.

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The FriendFeed team regularly rolls out new features faster than you can say "cross-platform microblogging aggregation," but those cool features haven't led to widespread adoption of the service yet. As tech blogger Michael Arrington points out, "the fact is that FriendFeed may just be too complicated for the average user to quickly understand... The power users love it. Novices can be overwhelmed." Facebook also regularly implements the innovative features that FriendFeed comes up with and that certainly doesn't help FriendFeed's market share.

If you want to dive deep into the nitty gritty of how FriendFeed works, our podcast interview with Buchheit and co-founder Bret Taylor from more than a year ago remains one of the best ways to do so.

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but those cool features haven't led to widespread adoption of the service yet.

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As tech blogger Michael Arrington points out, "the fact is that FriendFeed may just be too complicated for the average user to quickly understand... The power users love it. Novices can be overwhelmed."

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a real-time flow of information

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The biggest changes were a new look and, most importantly, a real-time flow of information. Using a technology that Buchheit created in October called Long Polling, FriendFeed now streams all the information it finds from your friends down the page, just as soon as it finds it. Update: Many commenters have argued that this is just like IM or IRC. We'd argue that a fundamental difference is that real-time FriendFeed is about conversation tied to particular links or conversation threads.

Highlighted by joel

Many commenters have argued that this is just like IM or IRC. We'd argue that a fundamental difference is that real-time FriendFeed is about conversation tied to particular links or conversation threads

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more engaging and interactive

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Buchheit told us that he believes "the appearance of our new interface is loved by many, and hated by others. Most people are probably somewhere in the middle."

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Many social networking sites are moving towards real time information delivery instead of requiring page advancement or refreshing to find out what's new. A year ago we called the real time nexus of Seesmic and Twhirl a vision of the future of the web. Twitter integrated real time search in February. Facebook made its newsfeed real time last month. Bleeding-edge media sharing network Enjoysthin.gs goes so far as to offer a real time view of activity only to paid members of its site!

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Many social networking sites are moving towards real time information delivery instead of requiring page advancement or refreshing to find out what's new.

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Realtime is often an easier and more efficient way of communicating because an entire conversation can happen in a matter of minutes or seconds

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It's similar to the difference between a phone call and a series of voice mails -- the phone call occurs in realtime so the entire conversation can often be concluded very quickly

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Realtime is often an easier and more efficient way of communicating because an entire conversation can happen in a matter of minutes or seconds. It's similar to the difference between a phone call and a series of voice mails -- the phone call occurs in realtime so the entire conversation can often be concluded very quickly. It's also critical for timely information -- for example, on our internal FriendFeed group I may post a message about running an update on the live system, and it's important that everyone see that message immediately.

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One of the advantages of FriendFeed over other realtime systems such as IM is that it also works non-realtime

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the pause button on the Friend Feed site should help and in time I expect we'll all get used to it

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Enterprise adoption of real time communication in general and FriendFeed in particular are topics that some people are discussing. Sameer Patel has written a lengthy article exploring the potential for using FriendFeed in the enterprise and we've heard of several companies using the service as a lightweight intranet.

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Buchheit says that the company believes aggregation to be less important than real time conversation.

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Things are changing fast at FriendFeed. Buchheit says that the company believes aggregation to be less important than real time conversation. "The open, realtime discussions that occur on FriendFeed are going to become a major new communication medium on the same level as email, IM and blogging. The aggregation component of FriendFeed is a convinient feature and a component of that openness, but not as central as the discussions."

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The aggregation component of FriendFeed is a convinient feature and a component of that openness, but not as central as the discussions.

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People have complained for some time that all the different sources of information and long list of features make the service confusing for new users. Tackling that problem was a key element of the new redesign.

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It's very important that new users can look at the product and immediately understand what's going on and how to use it

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"It's very important that new users can look at the product and immediately understand what's going on and how to use it," Buchheit told us. "The new User Interface is much more straightforward because all they see is a list of messages and comments from friends, and a box for posting new things. Over time, they are able to discover other features (such as groups, saved searches, imported feed, etc), but those things aren't part of the initial experience."

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"Visual design is clearly a very personal thing -- the appearance of our new interface is loved by many, and hated by others (though most people are probably somewhere in the middle). This is why one of the goals of the new design was to accomodate skinning/themes. We don't yet know the exact timing of the release, but we hope to have a version 1 of themes available in a matter of weeks."

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The father of the best web email program on the planet believes that a real-time streaming interface for simplified aggregation of conversation and content from all around the web is going to join the handful of tools we use regularly, like email, IM and blogging.

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So, here's a summary. The father of the best web email program on the planet believes that a real-time streaming interface for simplified aggregation of conversation and content from all around the web is going to join the handful of tools we use regularly, like email, IM and blogging.

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Facebook is still very much a closed world of its own. That's sometimes useful, but other times I want the ability to interact with the outside world and also other systems.

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No sir, real time conversation isn't what's next. Real-time conversation means noise which is why IRC died and evolved into IM.

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I was excited about a service a few years ago called Tangler (http://tangler.com) because it was a nice real-time chat room that allowed for rich conversations (embedding media). It was written about a bit here and there and over time, i stopped using it. But if the emphasis is not nec on aggregation, as suggested in this interview/article, then why not hype tangler or one of the plethora of other real-time chat services out there?

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