If your life is anything like mine finding the time to blog regularly is a luxury that just doesn’t exist day in and day out.  With a full-time job at a start-up, a son, two blogs, keeping up a social media presence and a handful of other side projects to keep me busy blogging regularly just doesn’t exist in my life.  But with so much good information being created each and every day and a strong desire to participate and contribute and track I’ve turned to another outlet to meet my content needs: FriendFeed.

Using FriendFeed Rooms to Create Value

I’ve recently created three new FriendFeed rooms to track three subjects that I am passionate about: finance, the job market and online video.  Finance because of my blog on the subject and the job hunt because of my recent side project, and online video because of my day job.  All of these subjects have incredible content being created continuously, and my desire to track it, comment on it and share it led me to create rooms on the subjects in FriendFeed. You can view the rooms here:

• Online video
• Finance
• Job Hunt

I got the idea when Scoble quickly created a room to track the Davos World Economic Forum and while I’m a member to a bunch of rooms already it really sunk in that this was a great way to instantly create value for not only myself but for my friends, followers, co-workers, etc.  I’ve kept the rooms relatively low profile as I try to find the content mix that makes them a representative sample of some of the best information in all three topics.  But now I intend to share them with those that are interested.

Sharing and Building Authority

For the online video room I’ve shared the link with all of my co-workers.  They’re not FriendFeeders yet, but they can still access the information and news flow that comes through that room.  My finance room will be integrated in to my new blog redesign as a way for my readers to get real-time finance news on my blog without me needing to blog every relevant news item in the space.  These are all about sharing.  The third room, “Job Hunt” is a bit different – the “Job Hunt” room is about building authority in the space for my side project, Resume Donkey.

Resume Donkey is a boot-strapped side project between my brother and I to help people get interviews by improving their resumes.  Because of the limited budget of the project I’ve looked to social network tools to get the word out.  A massive opening-day Twitter-bomb, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn ads, and a helping hand from LouisGray.com are really all that we’re using to generate business. We’re now using FriendFeed in that mix.

In order to continue to push the social networking envelope we created the “Job Hunt” room using the Resume Donkey brand (the logo is the picture for the room, the blog is one of the feeds in the room) while pumping in tons of other job-hunting information.  Our goal is to provide so much valuable job-hunting content that people will think of Resume Donkey as experts in the space based on the value we create in our FriendFeed room.  We’re posting everything in there:

• Job listings
• How-to job tips
• Interview information
• Personal development articles
• Resume tips

The idea is that this becomes a valuable resource to job hunters, who then, if interested, check out Resume Donkey or remember us because of this value.

The Premise

The premise of the experiment is simple.  Can being a filter on information be just as (or more) authorative than simply creating content through regular blogging?  I think it can.  There is so much good information out there that people don’t have a chance to find it because they’re being drowned by the firehouse.  The filters therefore are an important part of the internet ecosystem and can create authority by surfacing quality content.  Robert Scoble is a perfect example of someone who creates a ton of value by the resources and items he shares.  This is the model that I hope to replicate in these areas of interest.

Will it work?

I don’t know if it will drive business, but I guess that is only one part of the experiment.  I’m using the room for myself, to track great information that is being created around the web. I’m also creating it for my friends that are looking for work. So even if it doesn’t drive more business to Resume Donkey it will still be a worthwhile venture.

And the best part?  It’s super-easy to set up and provides those that access the information ways to interact, share and catalog the information that is most relevant to them.  Additionally, the ability to update and add/edit services, include all types of information sources means that the content will only go stale if I choose to neglect the rooms. Even that seems unlikely because of how easy FriendFeed makes it to keep up to date.

Brands should consider the power of filtering and authority

This experiment, if it works, could be a real boon for Resume Donkey.  The brand will be associated with quality job-hunting content.  The work will be less intense then trying to blog everyday and the brand will create value for its potential customers, before they have to pay.  More companies should look to these types of value creation opportunities simply by applying a filter to the firehose of information that is being created everyday on the Web.