Harnessing the Power of FriendFeed Private Groups

When I first signed up for FriendFeed, I wasn’t quite sure how to utilize it. When I logged on, I felt like I was seeing all the same stuff from my other social networks.

Was FriendFeed worth it? Was it able to produce anything “new” in the social stratosphere? Or was it simply a regurgitation of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.?

I was ready to write FriendFeed off, but then I found the private groups feature. And then I was hooked.

One of the primary ways I utilize the FriendFeed private groups feature is to act as a depository for things I want to write about on this blog. I created a privated group called “blog fodder”:

I created it using the following steps:

1. Create the Group

First you need to go to the “Groups” section on FriendFeed and create a group. The button you want looks like this:

Click on “Create a group” and then give it a name, click “private group” (this way only the people you invite can view and post to the feed), and then click “create feed”.

2. Add Feeds

This is when things get really fun. This is where you get to add the feeds from around the interwebs that you want to be a part of your private group. For my giddy-up, I’ve got three feeds that I pull info from:

1. My Evernote public folder
2. The label “Blog Fodder” from my public Google Reader
3. My Delicious “blogfodder” tag

Whenever I dump something into one of those feeds, my private group pulls into into one central location, ready for me to read. Ready for me to post on!

The best part is, you can utilize multiple different feeds, email addresses, and social media services to make up your private group. If you can think it up, FriendFeed will give you a way to do it.

3. Utilize

Once you’ve done the hard work of setting up the group with your various feeds, FriendFeed allows you to aggregate all of that wondrous info in one of two ways: RSS Feed or Facebook feed.

You can pull the info for this group right into Facebook, say for a private group or a fan page. Or you can utilize the RSS feed of your private group (my preferred method) and feed it into Google Reader for fresh content.

This is one way to utilize the private group feature for FriendFeed. It is extremely:

• Useful
• Customizable
• Practical
• Helpful

If you’ve figured out a different way to use FriendFeed groups, private or otherwise, feel free to share in the comments below!