iFriendFeed With BuddyFeed (And So Should You)

It looks as if Nambu and Weebfeedr have some serious competition on their hands now that CodeWalrus has launched BuddyFeed, an iPhone app for FriendFeed fanatics.

What I love about this app is its ability to combine the simplicity of FriendFeed without sacrificing on functionality (the latter which I felt the FriendFeed Web App did).

While this app is far from perfect (as you will note by the bugs reported below), it does have a few features that make BuddyFeed shine against it’s rivals.

The Good

What made me fall in love with BuddyFeed was the ability to post pictures from the app straight to FriendFeed.

This feature does have a few bugs in it (as highlighted below later on), although it’s inclusion alone should convince FriendFeed fans to dump the web app and replace it with BuddyFeed instead.

I also fell in love with BuddyFeed’s layout, which displays your friends icons instead of a simple hyperlinked name (which can be hard to see on the iPhone).

Users can also easily see rooms that they are subscribed to, as well as view their comment and “likes” history.

Last but not least users can easily subscribe to, comment upon or “like” upon various entries–not to mention search the entire FriendFeed universe as well.

The Bad

Update (1/26): BuddyFeed’s latest update fixes all of these problems below.

While image posting with BuddyFeed is it’s greatest asset, it’s also BuddyFeed’s Achilles heal.

Regardless of whether you take a snapshot or choose an image from your library, BuddyFeed has a strange habit of rotating your image up 90 degrees.

Also whenever you insert a mini entry alongside an image post a+strange+plus+coding+error+appears (which can be very annoying).

Last but not least, whenever you post an image through BuddyFeed, your entry is often delayed up to 10 minuets (sometimes more) which can be disappointing (at least if you are a whiny iPhone user like me).

Fortunately BuddyFeed has released an update to Apple that will hopefully fix all of these errors (and if so I will update this post below).

Aspiring Rivals

BuddyFeed’s biggest rivals appear to be Nambu and WebFeedr, although the latter may pose a greater threat once they update their app with a few more features (including image uploading).

BuddyFeed currently on sale for a $1, although they will hopefully keep their app inexpensive (as their main rivals are not charging more than $2 in the app store).

Conclusion

BuddyFeed is an impressive app that is well worth forking over $1 for.

I think the only way it could be better is if BuddyFeed found a way to reply to Twitter when commenting on Tweet entries within the app (a feature I would pay extra money for).