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Seesmic Pulls a FriendFeed; Launches Defaults; Community Goes Bonkers
Last week we wrote about the default strategy that FriendFeed currently employs. Today we are back with a video message board Seesmic testing a new default strategy.
Earlier today, Seesmic community blogger Jeremy Vaught announced that when new users signup to Seesmic, they will automatically receive a set of followers which are considered defaults. The policy would allow Seesmic to setup all new users with the top 30 Seesmic users, as well as the Seesmic staff automatically. The "top 30" would be created by number of videos posted.
Within minutes of the blog post going live, the Seesmic community reacted and reacted in a strong manner. Users responded both in text on the blog post along with videos on Seesmic. User Deek (video below) says he doesn’t want anyone to follow him unless they want to. Deek’s video is perfect – maybe other startups should watch it and see why defaults are such a bad idea.
CEO Loic LeMeur (a FriendFeed default) has turned off the default feature based on the community feedback. His video is also embedded below. It’s good to see him switch course based on feedback from the community. I can’t tell if the default strategy actually went into place and then removed or if it was just discussed as “coming soon”.
Here’s Deek’s video.
Here’s Loic’s responses – there’s no way to link to the thread but you can watch the thread in the video.
Hi Allen, thanks for your interest and posting my answers but you got some facts wrong if I may:
“CEO Loic LeMeur (a FriendFeed default) has turned off the default feature based on the community feedback.”
-I am not running Friendfeed but would like to say I am not followed by default on Friendfeed, just “offered” to be followed by default that is very different
-I did not “turn off” the feature as we NEVER pushed it, just a blog post announcing it was coming so we just reacted immediately.
Loic – in the terms that I used the word Default in the FF article, you are a default. And in case, you have a greater chance of receiving followers on FriendFeed than I do. Is that fair? What do you say about that? Except for Scoble, none of the "elite 9" have said a word. And why should you right? It just drives more traffic to your startup or in some cases, a blog. So you should thank Paul and the team.
I noted that I wasn’t sure if you turned the feature on and then off or if it never went live. Your blog post makes it look like it was already live. It doesn’t say coming soon anywhere.