JeffBlais.com

The internet continues to grow and evolve.  It seems like not to long ago we were going crazy over RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and “Web 2.0″.  Well as far as I know we are still in “Web 2.0″ but instead of having to pull information that we are interested in we are able to have that information pushed directly to us in real-time and I have become addicted.

It all started when I was introduced to Twitter.  I was late to the game but since I am always trying to find out about new, interesting, cutting edge things I jumped on board right away without even knowing what I was getting into.  I didn’t have any friends on Twitter at that time so I started by following some well know technology people.  It was great to have updates about what was going on around the technology industry and after I hesitantly setup my cellphone to work with Twitter it became an instant real-time information portal for all the things I was interested in.  It was even more addicting once they allowed search results to be pushed to us.  As Twitter began to grow it became more apparent that it wasn’t going to be able to handle the load that was required to supply all this information to so many people at one time so Twitter had to shut down the instant push search results and messages which hurt them but also helped the whole real-time internet expand and grow.

Since Twitter turned into more of a pull service, like RSS, Twitter clones started showing up everywhere.  Plurk and identi.ca gained a little traction but I didn’t really see it grow like Twitter.  One service that did start to gain traction was Friendfeed.  Friendfeed started out as a simple way for users to share there own personal information via RSS feeds but has evolved into a service that allows instant, real-time access to the information you want via the website, instant messages or their own desktop application.  Friendfeed is kind of a crazy place at first but once you get a hold of how to use all of it’s functions it can be very helpful in finding anything and everything you are interested in.

There are many ways that you can get access to what you are interested in on Friendfeed.  One way is to subscribe to people, groups and websites that you are interested in that are already sharing on the site.  Once you do that the column, aka the stream, in the middle of your home screen will started to scroll along as more updates come in.  If you subscribe to a lot of different things your stream will scroll by fast and you may miss some information.  To stop the scrolling you can hit the pause button at the top or move your mouse over the stream and that will cause it to pause.  Another option is to group your subscriptions into separate lists.  This will allow you to organize your information into there own little streams so you won’t go crazy.  But my most favorite feature is the real-time searches that can be saved.

Friendfeed’s real-time search is one of the best things to happen to the internet.  It’s really easy to use and has many different uses.  You can use it to keep up on breaking news, reviews, coupons etc.  The possibilities are endless.  I use it to find free iPhone applications and beta invite codes to new sites and services so that I can try them as soon as the come out.

Friendfeed is still going strong but it did get acquired by Facebook.  Some people are worried about this acquisition.  Friendfeed said they are going to stay the way the are for awhile but it seems like all the functions that are in Friendfeed will eventually be merged into Facebook to help it evolve.  Most people don’t know this but Facebook already has real-time updates of your friends status and other sites are starting to show up with real-time information that you are interested in thanks to a new service called PubSubHubBub.

PubSubHubBub turns RSS into a push service instead of a pull service.  So as more services (WordPress) and sites (Lazyfeed) start integrating it you will have instant access to everything you are interested in pushed right to you instantly.

Yes, I am addicted to real-time information.  I don’t see that as a problem.  I see that as being well informed.