As I ‘ve mentioned many times here, I ‘m a big fan and every day user of Friendfeed. So I ‘m always intersted when I hear about new native iPhone Friendfeed apps “ as I did today via a post by Warner Crocker “ on Friendfeed of course.
The new app I discovered courtesy of Warner ‘s post is FreshFeed. I ‘ve been playing around with it a little today, and comparing it to my current favorite Friendfeed app, which is called BuddyFeed. Hit the jump for some quick first impressions on FreshFeed and some comparisons of the two apps
FreshFeed works well, looks fairly good, and has a decent set of features “ a very similar set of features to BuddyFeed in fact. Here are a few of the basic things that both apps will let you do:
- View your main feed, all items you ‘ve commented on (BuddyFeed calls this Comments, FreshFeed calls it Discussions)
- Refresh the feed and create a new post straight off the top of the main screen
- View your Lists and Groups (BuddyFeed still uses the old name for these, Rooms)
- Search
- View other users ‘ profiles and subscribe and unsubscribe to other users ‘ feeds
- Like a post, and comment on a post
Each of them lets you do lots more as well.
So far I like FreshFeed. In fact, it ‘s the first native Friendfeed app for the iPhone that I ‘ve liked since BuddyFeed “ and I ‘ve tried a few others over recent months.
I think, since the two apps offer very similar feature sets, which one you prefer will likely come down to the finer points, and small differences in functionality and approach between them. Here are some of those that I ‘ve noticed while comparing them a bit today, in no particular order:
BuddyFeed lets you see all your Likes “ FreshFeed does not
FreshFeed lets you drill down quite a bit more in another user ‘s profile “ while BuddyFeed just shows the user ‘s number of subscriptions and little icons for their linked services, FreshFeed lets you dive in and look at those. BuddyFeed is on the left in the screencaps below, FreshFeed on the right.
BuddyFeed lets you customize the buttons in the bottom nav bar “ so for example I can add Search to the bottom bar instead of the ‘Everyone ‘ view, which I never use. FreshFeed does not let you do this.
FreshFeed fits more items into your main ‘Home ‘ view than BuddyFeed does “ again, BuddyFeed is on the left in the screencaps below, FreshFeed on the right:
BuddyFeed lets you filter your searches by Everyone / Friends / Me (yourself) “ whereas FreshFeed lets you filter by numbers of likes and comments.
BuddyFeed ‘s item view (of an individual post) shows the post and all of the likes and comments added to it in a single screen “ FreshFeed shows the number of likes “ but requires a tap to go to a new screen to see who liked the post, and also a tap and separate screen to see comments.
When creating a new post, both apps let you add photos and links. BuddyFeed also lets you select a specific Group to send it to, FreshFeed does not.
Neither app shows the Best of Day feed, which is a big miss.
Both apps are fully capable of registering Robert Scoble ‘s hopeless addiction to the service. Mostly I just added that last screencap because it just feels right to have a gratuitous Scoble mention in a post about Friendfeed apps “ even though I believe he is partial to using Mobile Safari for all his FFing goodness on the iPhone.
Right now, BuddyFeed is still edging it a bit for me. It handles a few of those small things listed above in ways that suit me “ I especially like the ability to post to a selected group, and the way it handles search filters. I also do not like the way FreshFeed place ‘s an item ‘s comments and likes on separate screens.
Having said all that, FreshFeed seems promising enough to keep around and use a bit more. This may end up being like iPhone Twitter apps “ I hope “ where there are two or more apps that are very strong and it ‘s tough to trim down to just one. I ‘ll be very interested to see how these two, and possibly other native Friendfeed apps, develop and improve, and how well they keep up with all of Friendfeed ‘s changes.
You can find FreshFeed and BuddyFeed in the App Store now “ both are priced at $2.99.
If you ‘re a Friendfeeder, I ‘d love to hear your thoughts on either of these apps, or others you have tried.
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TAGS: BuddyFeed, iphone apps, iPhone Friendfeed apps
