I tend to use FriendFeed very heavily – I pull my Facebook, Twitter and blog posts in there and I do a lot of “native commenting” as well – comments that originate in the FriendFeed (FF) interface and aren’t just pulled from somewhere else. I also tend to keep FF open most of the day so that I can at least passively watch the conversation. One thing that I’ve noticed about FF that doesn’t seem to be *as true* as with other sites – Facebook included – is that it is very, very social. There are lots of rooms dedicated to social TV watching (the Hoarders room on Monday nights is a blast – makes the show just that much better…), social bitching and social bonding in general.
With all that going on, though, there are a lot of “FF is dying” posts going around on a pretty regular basis. Search in FF is spotty – sometimes it works, sometimes (most of the time?) it doesn’t and there are other glitches that seem to bother people on a regular basis. For the most part, they don’t bother me much (unless the site goes down completely for an extended – longer than 15 minutes, maybe? – period of time – then I get jittery). FF has done something that I don’t think any of the other sites have – it’s transcended it’s technology to bring together a group of folks who, if FF were to go away permanently, would find each other on the next big social network and reconnect very quickly.
The community on FF is stronger than the tech, which is why I don’t really concern myself with whether or not it is going away – as long as the next service that comes up includes ways to divide off into groups, or rooms, and a way to find the folks I’m specifically looking for, it will be all good.