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So you’ve joined Twitter, you’ve tracked down old school friends at Facebook, you may even pop into MySpace* once in a while, but what about Friendfeed? Have you joined yet? If not, you should.

Friendfeed isn’t new, but for most of it’s existence it’s been home to (strange, geeky types)** the more technically inclined. However, that is changing. Over the last month, the number of new users has increased significantly making the service more lively and diverse. It has even been described as the Next Big Thing now that Twitter has been invaded by celebs and their fans and is no longer considered cool. But, that isn’t why you should join. No, you should join because it’s a goldmine of useful information and a brilliant way to keep up with people you know across a range of networks. Trust me, after a week you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!

Still not convinced? Here are answers to some questions you may have:

What is it?: That’s actually quite hard to explain. The best I can do is to say it’s a bit like a cross between Facebook’s news feed and Twitter, but auto-updating. It’s more sociable than FB because you can interact with people you aren’t following; more informative than Twitter because there isn’t a character limit.

How do I use it?: The idea is you join, add the details of other services you use (Twitter, LastFM etc.) and/or your blog url, then any updates you post automatically appear in your feed. Your friends can find out what you’ve been up to, leave messages and share anything they find interesting.

Adding friends is very easy, you are given the option to find people from your email address book, as well as Facebook and Twitter. You can also add people you see commenting on the same posts as you – that is a good way to find members you share interests with.

If you find yourself following a lot of people, you have the option of sorting them into groups. For example: you could have a group for fellow bloggers, one for family and one for news services.

In addition there are rooms. These are groups of sorts covering a multitude of themes – I’ve joined three covering Liverpool, Social Media and Stephen Fry. Once you subscribe to a room you see updates from other members in the form of on-topic posts related to the theme of the room.

Why should I join?: Because it’s fun! And very informative. A staggering amount of really interesting content is shared there every day. And not just shared, discussed too, usually in a very polite manner. Although Friendfeed has been around for a while it’s been pretty low key and only recently caught the attention of a wider audience, because of this it’s still got that friendly, optimistic feel Twitter had a year or so ago. If you think Twitter is too busy, too spammy or just too hyped, you may well find you prefer Friendfeed.

And that’s pretty much it! Hope to see you there

* Although you probably leave crying ‘my eyes, my eyes’ after having your retinas burnt to a crisp by some of the horrendous profile designs

** That’s not a slur, I should count myself among them

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