FriendFeed Adds File Sharing Support

FriendFeed now allows its users to share (almost) any file directly through the site itself.  You can easily share pictures, PDF’s, text files, and even audio files.  Features like these aren’t all that new, we saw them in the past with Pownce (remember them?  The Twitter killer), but, the addition of file sharing to the already existing FriendFeed features I’m sure will be welcomed by many. 

What makes this feature really nice is that you can easily transfer files to certain individuals, or groups of people at the same time. “You can attach (almost) any file to your FriendFeed posts via the web interface or by emailing file attachments to share@friendfeed.com,” FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor says.

As stated you can attach almost any file and currently almost any file means no video, but who knows that may change in the future.  In addition to no video you can only upload 3 MP3 files a day.  The MP3 upload limit would seem to be FriendFeed’s attempt to prevent piracy from running rampant on the site because we all know how well that can turn out.  As of right now you can only play MP3 files on FriendFeed, but Taylor notes that he hopes to add M4A (AAC) files soon, so that iPhone voice memos are supported.

More from Taylor:

We have a rolling 24-hour upload limit, so if you upload a number of big files, you will eventually hit it.

We have stricter limit on audio file uploads (3 per day per user now, but it could change in the future). Regarding copyrighted materials, our policy is to respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable intellectual property law (including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. You can see details of our policy here: http://friendfeed.com/about/dmca.

Our target users for this launch are the people using FriendFeed groups for collaboration, so we optimized the feature for sharing smaller documents, not just media files.