Facebook opened up commenting functionality to their minifeed section a while ago, but I guess it’s not catching on well.
Let’s face it. There are two types of people who comment on your friendfeed:
1. your close friends who are early adopters just like yourself
2. all others who want attention–that is, who just want to be friends with you or at least acquire new friends through you
When it comes to facebook,
1. The category 1 people do not use the feature because they’re already using friendfeed for the same purpose.
2. The entry barrier for the category 2 is higher: you first need to be added as as her/his friend to do that sort of stuff to the minifeed, while friendfeed doesn’t require it.
I think most of the conversations occuring on friendfeed now is very much leaned towards the category 2 type, and while it does spawn many useful instant conversations, is in fact not actual “friend”feed, because the real value in “friend”feeding is supposed to be in feeding your actual friends, instead of just another guy who’s trying to get some attention juice by sticking around other influential people online.
If the action you’re making is of the type 1, it really doesn’t matter because what you want to do is just let the guy know that you are responding. However if the action is of the type 2, you must optimize it so that YOU can leverage that other guy to become a little bit more famous.
Conclusion: the facebook approach is more ideal than friendfeed’s–in that it actually lets you comment on your mutual friends’ feeds, but it lacks traction because the people who are most likely to actively make comments are not your friends in your facebook account. They’re two different products. facebook minifeed commenting lets you comment on your friend’s lifestream while friendfeed lets you comment on everyone’s lifestream, increasing the participation rate but decreasing the actual intimacy and meaningfulness that exists in the former case.
