How Did I Not Know About The FriendFeed Toolbar?

Many people have made arguments for the productive uses of FriendFeed, noting its liveblogging rooms, potential for blog fodder, community building aspects, etc. Those are all great reasons to love the site, but at the end of the day, I still see FriendFeed as a timesuck. A huge, glorious, fabulous, incredible timesuck.

I’ve been spending more time in FriendFeed lately. Where before I wasn’t even a daily visitor, now I’m in and out throughout the day. I’m not much one for getting involved too deeply in the discussions on site, but I enjoy reading through them. And I’m also completely addicted to Mona’s feed. It is, as she would say, so. much. awesome.

Given my recent addiction enjoyment of the site, you would think I would have known about the FriendFeed toolbar. I mean, really! The toolbar isn’t an official offering from FriendFeed itself, but rather a Firefox add-on provided by the third-party FriendFeed tracker, ffholic. With the toolbar, you can search users and entries or search ffholic itself. There are, of course, quick links to various pages on ffholic (“most liked,” “most commented,” etc.), but it’s the “Latest Buzz” drop-down box that I’m really enjoying.

This button offers up a slew of links to the hottest stuff being shared on FriendFeed and clicking on those links takes you directly to the source. If the source is a FriendFeed post, then you’re taken to FriendFeed, but if it’s a blog post, flickr photo, video, etc., you’re taken to the original content, not the FriendFeed web site.

There’s also a “Share on FriendFeed” button and an optional timer for you to track your time on site. I’ve just installed this toolbar and already I’ve managed to waste over 40 minutes today. Excellent.

I’d love to see even more buttons on this toolbar which would link to “best of” pages, but for now, it works for me.

Seriously, how did I not know about this?