Friendfeed blinks - follows Facebook following Twitter.

Following Facebook's knock off of Twitter, it was only a matter of time before Friendfeed followed suit. Here's the Blink! memo and the Broadstuff translation in glorious snark-o-vision:

We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to improve FriendFeed. And we’ve been tinkering with those ideas at http://beta.friendfeed.com.

Translation: We still can't work out how those f*ckers at Twitter are doing so well with such a trivial app, but after Facebook volte-farced we new we had to follow suit

Today, we’re opening up that site for you to try it for yourself.

Translation: Have you guys out there got any ideas on what to do?.....

It’s a pretty significant change for us, and we wanted to tell you a little about what’s new, and also, give you some insight into our thinking behind what’s changed.

Translation:.....we really, really hope you have some ideas!

We didn’t start out with the goal of a radical redesign. Our goal was simple. Make it more intuitive, more consistent, and ideally, more elegant. Here are some things that you'll find in the new site:

- A consistent look for entries, no matter where they originated from, to help you focus on what your friends are sharing
- A new and improved share box that can now post entries to multiple feeds
- The ability to send and receive direct messages
- Filters so you don’t miss a post from a certain friend or an entry about a specific topic
- Keyboard shortcuts for the most common commands
- And, one of the most defining features of our redesign — and what we believe will underlie everything about FriendFeed from now on: real-time. There’s no longer a need for refreshing — every view in FriendFeed now updates in real-time.

Translation: We wanted to do some cool, complex, hard stuff but our VC's told us to get the frigging Real Time IM stuff in pronto cas thats what Facebook has!

Once you see how cool the real-time updating is, see it on your own feed at http://beta.friendfeed.com. (You might also want to check out our tour or read our beta FAQ.) And of course, we’re still adding new features and ironing out bugs, so please let us know your thoughts and comments in the FriendFeed Beta feed and report your bugs here.

And, as well as some ideas, can you debug it too

We want to get feedback from all of you before we flip the switch to make this redesign the primary FriendFeed interface. Our goal is to simplify the FriendFeed experience and put greater focus on the things that our users have found to be most valuable. We hope you’ll like it.

Translation: Our goal is to ramp the thing and sell to some dumb Corporation and get the bl**dy
VC's off our case. We pray you'll help sort it!

More evidence, if it was needed, that 3rd generation social nets are rediscovering what 1st generation ones knew - real time chat is the killer app.

Now, for those of you who feel this is all too snarky, we'd humbly agree, and we'd even agree that the Friendfeed guys are damned smart and we hope thay get it sorted - but hey, this is our schtick so why beat us with it? (And besides, with all the fanboi's on Techmeme a Court Jester may be a necessary function )