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FriendFeed Turns on the Twitter Firehose (Again)

by Jesse Stay — published on December 23rd, 2009
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friendfeed-logo.jpgIt seems that some time today, the FriendFeed team has just re-enabled their live Twitter stream (using Twitter’s “Birddog” API) for real-time updates from Twitter.  I noticed the update when posting a cool bookmarklet by Kynetx, and re-tested it again – sure enough the update to Twitter hit FriendFeed almost immediately after I posted it to Twitter.  Looking over FriendFeed, I learned that Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed’s founders now working for Facebook, confirmed this earlier today.

Long before many were embracing Twitter’s real-time stream, FriendFeed was one of the first Real-time Twitter stream consumers to take advantage of the platform.  Shortly after the Facebook acquisition the FriendFeed team turned off the real-time updates, others speculating that it was the beginning of the end for FriendFeed.  FriendFeed’s Paul Buchheit assured users that the FriendFeed team was simply working out details with the Facebook lawyers to ensure the real-time stream met up with Facebook’s stringent legal policies.  Others remained skeptical.

Tonight it appears they’ve turned that live stream on for good, and boy is it fast!  FriendFeed continues to remain one of the most powerful Twitter clients and Social Management tools out there.  I think this continues to prove that FriendFeed will continue to improve even after the Facebook acquisition.

If you’re not yet, you can follow me on FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/jessestay.

Posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 4:40 am. Filed under FriendFeed, Technology, social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Ha, fantastic news. It's a two way real time portal again. Awesome, thanks for the heads up Jesse!
  • I'd love for Friendfeed to add in many more social media account platforms to the options, sync my lists there with Facebook friend lists and Twitter lists. And - possibly a like/unlike plus a mood (like Social Median). Hopefully we see some innovations soon. :)
  • Steven Jones
    You state that FriendFeed turned off the stream. What evidence do you have that it was FriendFeed and not Twitter?

    Realtime updates stopped a day or two before the Bing & Google announcements.
  • Steven, Paul Buchheit said the reason it was off was due to working out
    issues with Facebook's lawyers. FriendFeed confirmed it was on their end.
    I'll have to look up the conversation.
  • Steven Jones
    I believe those comments were in reference to deploying the new bird dog API. The comments do not explain who was responsible for shutting off the firehose.
  • Steven you may be right - I don't know.
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