FriendFeed is in Private Beta

This is Bret Taylor and Jim Norris' product after months of healthy incubation at Benchmark Capital. It is Facebook Newsfeed but open to the world. The simplicity of a Google with the characteristics of a Facebook. Upon some initial usage, I think it'll be sticky. They made it drop dead simple to use, and I imagine this to only be the start. You can already see the characteristics of the distributor model. I am at http://www.friendfeed.com/min.

Bret Taylor and Jim Norris were the guys who paved out Google Maps (try it full screen!). Bret interviewed me for a position at Google a while back, and I remember our interview well. His blog post about Google resonated with me. I will write a post soon about this, as this issue strikes a chord.

And welcome, readers from Stanford's Blog Directory! source

My life has expedited since I joined Loopt. One of my newly found joys? Posting to the Loopt Blog :) Nice and fun release out today about Loopt's collaboration with Our City Forest. wo0t!

p.s. See NYT article about friendfeed (and yes, I am full of links today.. notice how jim norris' wearing a white shirt completely skewed the contrast of the photo.. oh no! :)

add, 4:21am: why is this product so important? from a sv perspective, this is a product released by renowned googlers who are no longer a part of google. you will see this trend continuing in the valley. precursor to my next post.. saturation.