FriendFeed made a big move yesterday, replacing their standard interface with a beta version which had been publicly incubating for a month. And while that announcement made headlines, what makes the site a must-visit for many active players in social media is the people who use the site, and the content they provide. For the past several months, my tag team partner, Mike Fruchter and I have been highlighting ten well-deserving FriendFeed users who bring consistently interesting items and discussion to the community.

Previous FriendFeed members to follow lists, largely driven by Mike, can be found for the 2008 months of, July, September, November and December. The 2009 lists can be found for January, February and March.

As always, the list is not 100% inclusive, which is why we do these regularly, so if you believe we are missing some key people, please do bring them to our attention!

1) Meryn Stol

Short Bio: A Netherlands-based software developer, currently coding on the Ushahidi platform, aimed to crowdsource crisis information, Meryn helped build the foundation for the Dutch Open Directory Project, and is a strong proponent of leveraging open source and open standards to promote positive environmental and social change.

What they find interesting: Software, social media, global causes

FriendFeed: Subscribe

2) Anna Billstrom

Short Bio: Anna Billstrom is a technical database marketing consultant, who has worked with top brands including Kodak EasyShare Gallery, American Express and the Walt Disney Internet Group, implementing enterprise customer relationship management systems. A graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Anna is an e-mail marketing guru, and a locally-renowned champion of the Scramble game on Facebok, where she is on her way to defeating me for the second straight time handily.

What they find interesting: Marketing, Technology

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

3) Rob Nelson

Short Bio: Rob Nelson is a network engineer and systems architecture guru located in New York. He is an active participant in the Linux and Open Source communities, and proclaims to have built several dialup providers and worked for Flycast Communications, an ad-serving network. In addition to his geek side, Rob is an expert dog trainer, helping to teach dog owners how to better communicate with their pets. He also is a devout musician

What they find interesting: Software, social networking

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

4) AJ Kohn

Short Bio: AJ is the vice president of online marketing at Caring.com, with a long career of managing direct marketing programs for both consumer and enterprise products. In parallel, he is a consultant at a self-owned company called Blind Five Year Old, where teaches clients about search engine marketing, search engine optimization and social media.

What they find interesting: Web analytics, SEO, marketing

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

5) Laura Norvig

Short Bio: Laura is a coordinator at the National Service Resource Center, managing content and metadata for the library's Web site. She is an expert on organizing information, mother to a three year old, and as she says, dabbles in social media.

What they find interesting: Information, Libraries, Non-Profits

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

6) Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Short Bio: Brian Eisenberg is a senior systems engineer at Software AG, helping to support sales reps and systems engineers with customized VMware demonstrations, business process management and human workflow applications. Formerly a senior product manager at webMethods and a program manager at Microsoft, you probably didn't know that Brian has a 250 gallon marine fish tank which requires him to step on his tiptoes just to feed the little creatures. (video here)

What they find interesting: Technology, Microsoft, Landscaping

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

7) Joni Moilanen

Short Bio: Joni, known as "Jemm" on FriendFeed, is an IT consultant at CodeBakers Oy in Finland, working as a software architect, specializing in .NET and SQL server. On his blog, he covers Web, Windows and distributed applications, including coding and architecture. He and his wife Nina live in Espoo, and have two cats.

What they find interesting: Software, Development, Humor

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

8) Johnny Worthington

Short Bio: Johnny Worthington, who lends his Australian accent to the popular "FFundercats" podcast, is the International Trade and Marketing Manager for Australian Agricultural Chemicals, a liquid fertiliser company specialising in turf, agricultural and horticultural nutrition. He has a young daughter and lives in Brisbane.

What they find interesting: Humor, Family, Technology

FriendFeed: Subscribe

9) Jesse Newhart

Short Bio: Jesse Newhart is a multimedia artist and freelance journalist, based in Port St. Lucie, Florida. He has two sons, and is one of the more influential people on Twitter, in terms of gaining attention from his followers. His blog frequently discusses the latest in social networking, discussing reTweets to a potential mass exodus of users from the microblogging service to FriendFeed.

What they find interesting: Social networking, Technology, Media

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

10) Jason Toney

Short Bio: Jason Toney is the senior producer of online creative services at Walt Disney's Internet Group. An Emmy-award winning Web site producer, project manager and content producer, Jason has worked with networks including MTV, NBC and Fox, and has a deep knowledge for Web media development. He is based in Los Angeles.

What they find interesting: Pop culture, Media, Music

FriendFeed: Subscribe | Blog: Subscribe

Zee of TheNextWeb relayed a hacker's posting of screenshots ostensibly taken from Twitter's administration interface, available only to select employees within the company. The handful of screenshots display some interesting details in terms of Twitter's internally set limits, the controversial "featured users" lists, and yes, details from some celebrity accounts, including who is blocking who.

The screenshots, which can all be found in the article, Screenshots of Twitter’s Admin. Take a look a look behind the scenes, reveal what user accounts look like from an administration perspective, including a log of dates passwords were changed, when accounts were opened, last used IP, and yes, details on updates, API limits, followers, and direct messages.

Looking at the data shows limits beyond the much-reported 1,000 new users to follow per day, including:

• A 126 update per day limit
• A 250 direct messages per day limit
• A 1,000 favorites per day limit

I question the update per day limit, as I would guess some people do run into that number, but it was consistently labeled across accounts, including those from @britneyspears and @aplusk.

The leaked screenshots also reveal there are, as of the time of publishing, 187 featured users of Twitter, that not only includes celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal and MC Hammer, bloggers Pete Cashmore and Michael Arrington, but Twitter employees, and "Jason Scott's Cat", who can be found at @sockington, with 424,000 subscribers.

Really. A cat has 424,000 subscribers, but you can't follow more than 2,000 if fewer than 1,800 or so are following you. Got it.

On the individual level, the leak shows that the @BarackObama account is blocking nearly 100 users, while Lily Allen and Ashton Kutcher both block Perez Hilton. In contrast, Britney Spears doesn't block anyone, but is blocked by 3,855 Twitter users. Amusing.

Go check out the article at The NextWeb to see all the screen captures.

There Is No Information Overload: Finding a Signal In the Noise

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At 4:25 today in San Francisco, I will be presenting at the Inbound Marketing Summit on tackling the perception of information overload. How can those of us in Marketing, tasked at discovering and participating in microcommunities where our prospects, partners and customers, reside, get a handle on all the data, and find the most relevant bits?

With only 20 minutes, we'll see what we can do. There's no time limit for you to flip through these slides, of course. Go to it.

Many aggregation services take your personal content from the wide variety of social services where you are active, and put them all on their Web site - such as Socialmedian, FriendFeed and most recently, Facebook. Nombray, taking a different approach, looks to take all your data from those sites, and aggregate them on yours, essentially combining your blog, your resume, your LinkedIn, Twitter and other services in one location. And if you don't already have a Web site, they let you buy a new domain and get started. The result is a one-stop destination that features your content in tabs.

Upon signing up for Nombray, you are asked to import data from the major social Web sites. The service comes pre-loaded with Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, for starters. And should you want to highlight a different site, just enter the URL, such as that to your blog, your Delicious bookmarks, your FriendFeed profile, etc. and it too can be added.


Adding different services through Nombray
The service is very flexible. Though I am not sure I want to replace my louisgray.com brand with something "Powered by Nombray", I liked the fact I could point these new tabs to the RSS feed from the service, or to the public page itself, offering visitors a clean look. And yes, you can of course select one of the many themes that are provided, to give your Nombray page a personal spin.


My Nombray Page - In the Blog Tab

My Nombray Page - In the FriendFeed Tab

My Nombray Page - In the Flickr Tab
Upon visiting the new Nombray site, you can navigate the different profile pages by clicking each tab, and Nombray promises the new site is extremely tailored for strong search engine optimization (SEO), helping you raise your presence in Google and other engines with the details you would like to show.

You can find my personal Nombray here: http://www.nombray.com/users/305