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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government," The Declaration of Independence, July 4th 1776

These words are the birthright of the United States of America. Although they were declared 233 years ago they ring truer than ever. What better time to consider these words than Independence Day.

We hold these truths… Truth is unchangeable and undeniable. It can be repressed, outlawed, banned, and forced into hiding but it can never be extinguished.

Self evident… Truth stands alone, it needs no corroboration. Truth is self revealing.

Created Equal, that they are endowed by their Creator… The source of all truth is almighty God. It is only when we recognize that we are all God’s treasured creation that we truly grasp the value of every individual and their right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Life… Every person is a divine creation. From the moment of conception an  individual deserves the right to exist as God created them

Liberty… Freedom to live one’s life as they see fit while not infringing on another’s liberty.

Pursuit of Happiness… The right to dream and the right to pursue that dream.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… Government exists only to preserve these rights and its power is always subject to the people’s permission and consent.

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,… When Government becomes an oppressive or intrusive institution it is the right and even the duty of the people to rise up and take the necessary steps to throw off the shackles of unjust or infringing rule.

So as you celebrate Independence Day take a moment and read the very words that we so often take for granted. May God grant mercy and guidance to our government and to ourselves.

I’ll close with the words of the last paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Want to hear a secret? How would you like a major shortcut to finding information that you are interested in as well as connecting with others that might like to subscribe to within Friendfeed?

Welcome to Friendfeed Groups.

Groups in their simplest form are a feed generated by contributions from multiple users. “Think of it as a mini FriendFeed for a particular subject or group of people. Everyone in the group can share stuff with each other and leave comments that others in the group can see.” (see FriendFeed’s Help Page on Groups).

Groups are commonly formed around a particular topic or common interest so they are a great place for you to begin discovering within FriendFeed. To get started visit the Find Groups page and you’ll find a list of popular groups as well as a search box. Try searching for whatever interests you. Here are a few groups you might consider

• All Things Google – Google news, apps, features, and Easter eggs. Everything related to Google (the company and its products)
• Apps – Share news, reviews, questions & updates about your favorite desktop, phone & web apps.
• The Bloggers Discussions – all about blogging
• Funny Pics and Videos
• iPhone – Got an iPhone? Join, discuss, and share the latest tips, tricks, and news.
• Twitter – Great room to discover apps, discuss features, and catch related news

You can also create your own groups (these used to be called rooms so you will hear both terms, they mean the same thing).  Click the “Create a Group” link in the top right hand corner of the FriendFeed Groups page. Groups can be Private (only the people you invite can view and post), Standard (you post, anyone can comment), or Public (anyone can post or comment). Give your group a name, choose the type, and presto you are now a group admin.

Groups are really flexible so beyond topical rooms here are a couple of ideas to get you thinking:

• Created a Branded Group – Create a group for your website or organization. Then import your RSS feed, Twitter feed, and then share items manually as well. It’s a great way to communicate to a target community
• Created a Vanity/Brand Monitoring Group – Create a group that helps you monitor your brand or name across the internet. Import a Twitter Search RSS feed, setup a Backtype account with an alert and import the alert RSS, setup a Google Alert and import the RSS feed. Voila now you have a single container to monitor mentions across the internet.
• Create a Room for Live Blogging – Are you covering a live event or conference? Rooms work better than multiple blog posts or even Twitter. Create a Group for the Event and then you can embed the Group directly to your blog. This is probably the best live blogging solution I’ve seen and it allows people to interact real time.
• Create a room to accompany your broadcast, podcast, or LiveStream – Create a room so viewers/listeners can ask questions and leave comments. Great for real time interaction as well as comments and info when you are off-air. (Credit Leo Laporte with popularizing this method. Go to live.twit.tv and you’ll find a link to his TWiT Conversations Room)
• Create a “I’m Going to Blog this later” Room – If you are a blogger this is a MUST. Create a private room and when you find something that you are going to write about simply share it to your private room. It works better than bookmarks because you can add images and personal notes as comments. If you collaborate with others this is even more essential because it allows you to discuss upcoming posts and submit ideas and editing remarks.

Finally, Groups are a great way to find people. When you find a room start subscribing to people who shared interesting content and if you want to find more just click the “# subscribers” link in the top right hand corner.

Groups really take FriendFeed to the next level so get involved by joining and creating your own Groups.

In my attempt to introduce Friendfeed and provide some tips for becoming a power user this tip may be the most crucial to maximizing and enjoying your Friendfeed Stream.

Group your friends into Lists

Friendfeed improves drastically as your community grows but you’ll soon find having over 400 people in your Home feed just isn’t manageable. The content and conversations stream so quickly that they become overwhelming and your signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is decreasing.

One of the best methods for maintaining the value and SNR of Friendfeed is to liberally use Friendfeed Lists. Lists let you organize the people you subscribe to into manageable streams. There are probably as many methods for creating lists as there are users but to demonstrate their worth I’ll share how I use lists to manage my feed.

1. Front Page (High Signal) – These users share content that I consistently find to be valuable and interesting. This list also includes my very close friends. Our relationship adds value to their content. Examples include: Louis Gray, Steven Hodson, Ken Stewart, Hutch Carpenter
2. Alpha (High Signal, High Traffic) – These are people whom I consider their content valuable but due to the large amount of traffic or activity they generate I must segment them into a single list so they don’t drown the rest of my community Examples include: Robert Scoble, Duncan Riley, Leo Laporte
3. Bravo (Mid Signal) – These users are also people I find interesting but their content doesn’t always interest me. Often includes very popular community members but their stream is more personality than content. Great place to find fun conversations
4. Local – These are local social media users. This room helps me to build relationships with people in my local social media/blogging scene. Their geographic location and real world connection adds interest to their content.
5. Home (default)– Everyone else. I like having a somewhat full Home Room (sounds like 5th grade) because it stays active and I can always expect something different.

You can create lists to match any goal imaginable. To create or edit lists click the “Browse/edit friends” link in the sidebar to edit multiple users or you can hover over any username and click edit.

In short, Lists are great, use them. For another great take on using lists check out “Did You Make the List? How I Use Lists to Organize My Life-Stream” by Ken Stewart of Changeforge.com

As promised here is the video from my talk last night. You can follow along by viewing the slidedeck here.

I would like to say a big Thank you to my friend Rob Mcbryde. We had some technical difficulties with projects and such and Rob came through in a pinch. Thanks to him I can share my talk with you. If you want to say Thanks please subscribe to Rob Mcbryde on Friendfeed and @ROBMcbryde on Twitter.

Enjoy!

It’s no secret that I love Friendfeed so naturally I’ve become a bit of a Friendfeed evangelist. Friendfeed is powerful tool but its value is not always readily apparent to new users and the stream of information can be a bit overwhelming to someone uninformed about how to manage Friendfeed. Therefore, I’ve always wanted to create a resource that showcases the features and tools that make Friendfeed such a compelling network.

The catalyst to finally creating this guide to Friendfeed was a gracious opportunity to give a presentation about Friendfeed to a local peer group of web professionals. I could not be more grateful to Refresh Central Arkansas for extending an invitation to speak to some people much brighter than I about a service that I really enjoy. So allow me to welcome you to the centerpiece presentation.

Friendfeed.com – community, content, & conversation

Instead of trying to summarize or reproduce all the information that I’ve collected from other Friendfeed fans I decided the best way was to simply link to these articles. This is the most complete collection of tutorials, guides, videos, and conversations that I’ve ever assembled concerning how and why you should be using Friendfeed, and what better way than to embed them via this Friendfeed post.

I’m just getting started so please stay tuned for more in depth posts on Friendfeed Lists, Friendfeed Groups, and using Friendfeed in unexpected ways.

Thanks for reading.

In my Friendfeed presentation I used 2 demonstration videos and I thought I would post them here to make them easier to find.

The first is how using Friendfeed increases your visibility within Google search results

The second is how to use the “hide” function to manage your Friendfeed stream

(This week you’ll see several articles concerning Friendfeed.com. I’m giving a presentation about Friendfeed this Tuesday (around 6:05P CST, watch Twitter for live broadcast links). In addition to the actual presentation I hope to use these posts to provide a comprehensive look at the usage and benefits of this excellent social network.)

You took the plunge and signed up for a Friendfeed account. Welcome. But now you’re thinking, um ok… now what?

Here is a quick start guide to Friendfeed to ease your immigration into this new world.

Find Yourself

It is vital to take a few moments to fill out your profile and import your services into Friendfeed. This not only initializes your personal stream but by adding a picture and a short description or bio you will greatly increase the likelihood that people will follow you back. Just click the “settings” link under you username on the homepage (top right-hand side bar). After you add a picture and short bio go ahead an import your content. (Blog, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, Friendfeed supports 58 services and custom RSS so import however much you want to share). Once your user profile is filled out and your content is imported it’s time to build your Friendfeed community.

Find your Friends

Since social networks only work when you connect with other people the next order of business is to begin building your friend list. Friendfeed provides a simple process for finding your existing friends from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. The Find your friends page should be your first stop. Follow the simple instructions to import friends from any or all the services.

**PowerUser Tip: Import your friends into a couple of separate lists, (Twitter, Facebook, List1, etc…). This is especially critical if you have a large number of contacts. Most likely you’ll sort these friends into logical lists later but if you import all your friends into the default Home feed it will quickly get crowded. (We will cover lists in depth in a later post, just take my word for now.)

The Find your Friends page also suggests some popular users that you may want to follow and the recommendations are actually quite good fair. However, it’s wise to sort some of these users into a separate list so their content doesn’t overwhelm your stream.

Another great place to find people comes courtesy of a fine chap named Louis Gray. He has a monthly feature called “10 People to Follow on Friendfeed” where he recommends different people you should consider following. He gives a short bio of the Friendfeeder, a few of their interests, and a link to their Friendfeed profile. His recommendations are top notch and I look for this post every month. Check out his past recommendations here

Find some Groups

Friendfeed Groups (used to be called Rooms so you’ll find these terms used interchangeably) are a great way to find people and topics of interest to you. Start by visiting the Find public groups page where you can search for topics and see some of the popular groups. You’ll find groups centered around everything from parenting to Wordpress. Just click the group name to see the public page.

Here are a couple of tips for evaluating a group:

• Check out the number of subscribers in the top right hand corner. This will give you an idea of the popularity of the group.
• Mouse over the icons underneath the group description and see what sites or types of content are automatically posted to the group.
• Scroll through the group page and look for signs of life. Look for the date/timestamp of posted content as well as user participation. You want to ensure the group is still active and that it isn’t a dumping ground for someone’s personal agenda.

To subscribe to the group just click the blue link that says “Subscribe to Groupname”. Friendfeed will then give you an additional option to import the group content into your feed. Again, its a good idea to consider segmenting this group into a list other than your Homefeed, you can create a list specifically for this group or you can create a list that you can use for all your groups. (Yes I know I sound like a broken record on using lists for management of your stream but it’s an invaluable tool to managing Friendfeed)

You can also use groups to discover some more people, just click the subscribers link to see other members of the group. This is an easy way to find people with similar interests.

Interact

This should be obvious but Friendfeed doesn’t reward lurking it is all about participation. Jump in and -

• Start commenting and liking different posts
• Keep track of your conversations via the “My Discussions” link in the sidebar
• Subscribe to people that leave insightful or witty comments

Soon you’ll be making friends and enjoying the most interesting and vibrant community on the internet. I hope this helps ease your entry into Friendfeed and don’t forget to follow me, friendfeed.com/tsudohnimh. Thanks for reading.

**UPDATE**

This page sparked a lively discussion on the Friendfeed suggested friends list. Many of the comments highlight the fact that some of these Friendfeed users are popular only due to their Twitter followers and they don’t really add value to Friendfeed. I agree so I wanted to update the post to include a Louis Gray suggestion to check out FFholic’s list of most active users.