While it launched amid much controversy, easily one of the best features of Facebook is the 'News Feed'. By gathering all of my friends' updates and aggregating them into a single list, it saves me countless time from having to go through each of their profiles to see what is different - which I just flat out wouldn't do anyway - so in an odd way this list helps me keep up with my friends better. A new service, FriendFeed, looks to do the same type of thing, but outside of the Facebook walled-garden.

Seeing as many of us now have accounts on multiple Internet properties, both social and not, it can be hard for any one person to keep up with another. Maybe I updated my Twitter today, or maybe I updated my Pownce, or maybe I just went right for a Facebook status update - you'll have to check them all to find out, which is becoming increasingly tiresome.

Most services now have Facebook apps which can make it so people can simply get all your updates on Facebook, but for some of us that use a lot of different services, installing an app for each one would bloat a profile to an obscene level. Even services like Tumblr and Jaiku, while they can do similar things as FriendFeed, often feel weighed down if too many services are added. FriendFeed steps in with a sleek and simple way to aggregate your various service updates; it doesn't try to do too much, and that is its strength.

Right now on my FriendFeed I have my blog and my del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Google Reader, Google Shared Stuff, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Pownce, Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter profiles all piped in to give updates (there are more options as well). You may think this would lead to a stream completely dominated by me, but FriendFeed does a good job of collecting multiple updates around the same time within the same service and batching them together to keep things clean.

In fact, the only thing you'll see on FriendFeed besides the updates are embedded pictures (for Flickr), embedded screen-grabs and on-click on those, embedded players (for YouTube), and embeded movie posters (for Netflix). Below each feed item you will also see a time notation and a link to 'comment'. This is another feature that is great because of its simplicity. If you want to remark on something someone has posted, rather than having to go to that particular service, sign-in and leave a comment, you can simply put one right under the feed item in FriendFeed. Clicking on the comment link opens a single white text box below and after you type and hit 'Post', a gray, italicized comment will appear below that item with you name (linked to your feed stream).

One thing that I would definitely like to see from FriendFeed is the ability to pipe in a custom feed. I could use something like this as I run multiple sites, but there is only one spot available to put in blog information. This of course would also solve the issue with some services that FriendFeed simply hasn't included yet - things like Propeller, BallHype, Newsvine - there are quite a few (maybe they just don't have their custom icons ready yet?).

Also noticeably absent is the ability to pipe in your Facebook feed. But as is evident on their 'About' page, FriendFeed clearly wants you to install their Facebook app and use it within Facebook. I've actually found this to be one of the most useful apps out there simply because it eliminates the need for at least a half dozen other apps I had previously installed. Still, I'd like the option to have your actual Facebook data (status updates, profile changes, etc) brought in to your FriendFeed if you don't plan on using it within Facebook.

Even in private beta following just 19 people I can see the potential of this service. As time management and brevity keep becoming higher priorities in my life - and with more and more services aiming to take up some of my time - I need a service like this that can give me information I want without having to log-in to 20 different place to see it. It could very well do for my online social networking exactly what a traditional feed reader did for my ability to follow news more efficiently - which is no doubt the idea behind this project.

While the obvious comparison is to Facebook's 'News Feed', FriendFeed actually has more much more potential because it doesn't require a walled environment like Facebook to be useful (though as I mentioned it can be used within Facebook as well). Whether it can live up to that potential remains to be seen, but it certainly seems to have the right pedigree as the team behind it all came from Google where they had worked on such projects as Google Maps, Gmail, and Google Groups. So far they're right on the money in keeping it simple.

FriendFeed is currently in closed beta, but you can sign up for the waiting list here. If you're currently a beta tester you can find my feed here.