Some reliability problems with the site today

We experienced a number of simultaneous problems today with the servers that run FriendFeed's web site. Since this morning's failure, our site has had intermittent problems, and we are in the process of diagnosing their root causes. We are working to alleviate the problems, and we apologize in advance if you experience any additional issues this evening as we finish deploying the fixes.

We really appreciate your patience, and we will keep you posted as we add safeguards to prevent these types of issues from happening in the future.

Instant FriendFeed - Notifications and Posting over IM

The great thing about IM is that it’s instant. You know right away when someone wants to reach you. To give users the option of having that same immediacy when it comes to FriendFeed, we’re now offering FriendFeed over IM:

Now you can get notified whenever someone comments on one of your posts or when there are new posts in your feed. FriendFeed will send you an IM—and you can even talk back. Post to your feed and comment on entries directly from your IM window, using a simple set of commands.

FriendFeed over IM will work with any Google Talk or Jabber account. You can also easily configure the types of IMs notifications you will receive:

After we launched our real-time interface, we heard from so many of you that you loved being able to instantly see the new things in your feed. We also love FriendFeed for the quick and easy communication it offers with our friends. So we're hoping this new way of using FriendFeed will be something that combines both, in a way that already feels fun and familiar. Let us know what you think—chat with us about it in the FriendFeed Feedback room.

Fixes and (smaller) feats on Halloween

To cap off a very busy October, we had a "fix-it day" at the FriendFeed office, where we take a break from our big projects to make time for bug fixes and small features. Here are some of the things we worked on:

• Improved Real-time feed
• You can expand entries in the real-time feed by clicking the chat bubble. The expanded entry shows you the entire conversation so you can see the comment or entry in context
  
• Private entries are marked with a lock icon so they are more easily identifiable
• Improved FriendFeed Bookmarklet
• When you share from Comedy Central, CollegeHumor, the Onion, and Metacafe, your entry will now have an embedded video
• We now automatically pick up thumbnails and videos from pages that have the appropriate <link> tags. Visit our FAQ page for details on supported tags
• Our Atom/RSS feeds now look correct in Google Reader
• You can now send your comments as Twitter @replies in our iPhone interface

Found a bug? Let us know with our Report a bug tool. Got feedback? Share it in everyone's favorite FriendFeed Feedback room.