Why I Didn’t Get to See FriendFeed’s Redesign

Last week, while in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo, I was invited to go check out the new version of FriendFeed. Not being from the area, and to be honest, not having time to figure out how far away the office was from the Expo, I didn’t even pull up the address for the meeting from my mobile phone until after the last session of the day, at which time I had just over half an hour to grab a cab.

As it turns out, FriendFeed was inviting me to come out to Mountain View where their offices are. They were not, as many other companies were during the Expo, coming to town themselves. And Mountain View was an hour away. By train.

This fact was terribly upsetting to me since I now only had half an hour to get there. Apparently, in order for me to have made it on time, I would have had to left the conference early…and missed some really good sessions!

The first thing I did was call to see if it was possible to arrive late. I was basically told that the event probably wouldn’t go that late and perhaps I shouldn’t waste my time. I expressed how disappointed I was considering that I don’t live in California and this was quite the opportunity – I was sorry to miss it.

I was then told that perhaps I could come the next day for lunch. I said that would be great – I would try to make arrangements and I would let them know either way. I immediately found a friend willing to give me a ride out there the next day, and promptly called them back. I could be there by 1 PM, I said. Great! No wait…was the answer I received. Apparently 1 PM may not work after all, I was told. (I thought that 1 PM would have counted as “lunch time” but I guess not). I was told they would have to check on that and get back in touch.

Ironically, after I hung up the phone, I logged onto FriendFeed and saw the note from Robert Scoble which read that he was on his way to FriendFeed. “Just now?” I thought…that means he must have been late too – unless he was already halfway there when he posted it. But that’s neither here nor there, I guess.

Sadly, what I thought was going to be the highlight of my whole trip was turning out to be the biggest disappointment.

Anyway, FriendFeed didn’t get back in touch until much later and not via phone, but via email. I was invited to come out at 11:30 AM the next day. Well, as you may or may not know, schedules at the Web 2.0 Expo are pretty jam-packed. I would have had to cancel other appointments and miss a good chunk of the conference to attend. I then asked for an opportunity to do a phone briefing instead since I couldn’t make this one and only time they had open.

I was told that I could do a phone briefing on Sunday, but what with me flying cross-country all day Saturday, I didn’t get to respond to that email until Sunday rolled around, so perhaps, again I was too late. For whatever reason, no call was ever arranged, nor was I added to the beta preview, even though subsequent emails flowed on Sunday when another RWW’er was communicating with my FriendFeed contact regarding the story.

Overall, the whole experience was really upsetting, but in the end, I think I’m OK that I missed it. I mean, Robert Scoble was there, so of course he will have video and everyone will be watching him for the news anyway. I had just wanted, as a FriendFeed enthusiast, to have the opportunity to check it out too. I’m not really sure why it had to be so difficult. Or why they would want me to have to miss parts of the conference to see this.

It’s also interesting to compare the difficulty of this experience with the offer I received from Loic Le Meur. We were chatting about Seesmic Desktop (aka Twhirl) and he invited me to come by his offices. I asked him if there was any particular time that would be good and he said, give him a call and he would make the time. I thought that was really generous, but it also provided an interesting contrast between his offer and this FriendFeed event.

In the end, I felt like FriendFeed may have thought they were doing me a favor to have invited me in the first place. When I couldn’t make it, they just couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) accommodate my schedule – or even arrange a phone briefing – so I could preview their latest. And that’s fine, I suppose. That must mean they are really busy, so good for them.

Or maybe I’m just being a prima donna about the whole thing. That’s possible too.

But now it turns out that I won’t be covering their latest. I’ll leave that up to all the other (exclusively-invited) journalists to do. And even if the redesign is the most radical thing ever and completely blows your mind, I have no business writing about it…I’ll be excitedly checking it out right along with all you folks. And that’s OK, I assure you. There are plenty of other places to get the FriendFeed news today…and I’m sure you can count on two fingers the first two places you’ll turn to.

Still, I have to say: I’m disappointed. Really disappointed. Partly in myself for missing the first appointment and partly in FriendFeed for making it so difficult to connect later on.