5 Ways to Game FriendFeed for Pageviews

One of the most interesting parts about the “real time Web” is just how much we all miss when we step away. I mean I know today I missed Jenny telling me about her manicure mixup, Bob telling me about how much he loves his new iPhone 3gS and I may have missed Louis’ kids racing. So how do you make sure that your item appears inside the feed as often as possible so the maximum number of users see the item and can visit or act upon it?

The following tips are provided for educational purposes only. My hope is that the Friendfeed team can close a bunch of the holes so that the environment remains pure and doesn’t become a spammer’s paradise like Twitter is apparently moving towards.

Tactic #1 – the comment

Once your item is injected into your feed, it’s gone from the stream in minutes. One way to get it back to the top is to leave a comment. You can’t “like” your own items so the only option is to comment. The key is to make sure you comment at the right time. This means you shouldn’t comment immediately…instead give it some time and then leave a comment – blamo the item is back to the top of your feed and can be seen by a new group of followers who may have missed it the first time around.

Tactic #2 – the social share

This one is another great way to get your item back to the top. Make sure before you attempt this strategy that you have added your social sites into your Friendfeed account. This includes Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. Once you are ready, head over to Digg or Stumbleupon and vote/like your story. This will immediately send a hit to Friendfeed which will once again push a new entry at the top of your feed for your content. You could actually use this tactic multiple times.

Tactic #3 – the offsite comment

On my feed, Fred Wilson is a great example of this tactic. I know Fred isn’t doing it for gaming purposes and he might not even know it’s happening. Basically what happens here is that every time that Fred replies to a comment on his blog (not on FF) it sends a hit to Friendfeed which pushes his story back up top on my feed. Fred does a great job of replying to comments on his blog so there are times that nearly my whole feed is Fred’s comments! Apparently this is due to the way Disqus (the commenting service Fred uses on his blog) sends info to Friendfeed.

Tactic #4 – the multiple blogger

This one doesn’t work for a blog like CN because I am the only writer. But on the larger blogs that have multiple writers, it can work really well. I am not going to name any specific blogs or bloggers who use this tactic. Here’s how this tactic works — all bloggers on a specific blog post the full RSS feed to Friendfeed. Then each time a new blog post is written by anyone on that blog, the link is fed into their feed and is viewable by all. I know many bloggers at multiple-author blogs actually only post their stories into their feed which is awesome but some use the full feed for maximimum opportunity. 

Tactic #5 – the Twitter tweet

This one is simple but effective. If you have your RSS feed tied into Friendfeed, then you will get a hit for each piece of content you post. But your followers on Twitter won’t see it because it’s on FF. So you post a link on Twitter to your piece of content – some big blogs only use their Twitter account for these type of links – and you get some hits from the link. But what’s really great about this Twitter posting is that it also posts to FF and gives you yet another top hit to your feed.

Again, these tactics are only provided for educational purposes and shouldn’t be used in real life. I am hoping that there might be ways to slow or completely remove these tactics before they get more widely adopted. If you have other gaming tactics, leave them in the comments so FF staff can have a look.