FriendFeed and how I peruse the Internet

I’m definitely addicted to Twitter (you can find me at twitter.com/jasonheath).  I use it all the time and have been doing so daily for the past year.  There’s something about the simplicity of it (140 characters, that’s all you get) that appeals to me, forcing be to be pithy and focused, which is a good thing for me!

I follow a lot of people on Twitter, and I actually find a ton of interesting stories through it.  The ability to insert links is very cool, and I have found myself both sharing a lot of cool stuff I find online through this and clicking on links from people that I regularly follow.

Recently, however, I have started using FriendFeed, and I am completely smitten.  What a cool service!  FriendFeed allows you to add all the various services you use and put out a feed that compiles everything you’re doing online, including blogging, podcasting. Twitter, Flickr, Netflix, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Google Reader (shared stories), and dozens of other services.  You can also follow other people’s feeds, and they provide a list of interesting people you might want to follow to get started.  This is a dynamite way to find cool stuff online, and it’s a great way to keep current with what your friends are doing.

You can check out my FriendFeed at friendfeed.com/jasonheath, or you can subscribe via RSS to my FriendFeed and follow along with all of my links, posts, and activities in your reader of choice.  They also have a very cool Facebook application that allows you to sync up with your friends and have their feeds automatically added when they join FriendFeed.

There’s also a feature called ‘imaginary friends’ which initially seems goofy but is actually quite cool.  You can add feeds from blogs you follow and build them into your overall FriendFeed experience, so you can follow people even if they haven’t set up an account on FriendFeed.

Mashable Conversations recently did an interview with FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor.  Check it out here, and check out parent website mashable.com for more great coverage on social media.

By the way, if you use Twitter and really want to geek out, check out the Twitter Fan Wiki, where you can find cool services like:

• serendipiTwitterous – find links, movies and educational resources related to posts appearing on your friends timeline.
• Flitter: Flickr stream generated by the Twitter public timeline using this yahoo!pipe and rendered in vvvv.
• GeoTwitter – This mashup uses Google Maps API and Twitter API. The most recent updates are fetched from the public timeline and mapped once every minute.
• LOL Feeds – Mashing up LOL Cats and Twitter, etc.

…..and much more!