FriendFeed subscription rankings for sale?

Would you pay for FriendFeed subscription rankings?

There is no question that feed services like FriendFeed and twitter have become serious marketing tools for the tech elite out there. I often wonder if guys like Scoble, Arrington, and Kawasaki ever actually read the feeds or just post to them. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy seeing updates from my friends or snapshots of the latest techcrunch and mashable articles without having to check the sites, but I imagine these marketing opportunities are the main reason for the adoption to date (an assumption possibly proven by the fact that if you subscribe to someone, they subscribe right back to you - I can't imagine Andy Kaufman or Guy Kawasaki are really that curious about what I am up to...).

So lets assume this to be true - FriendFeed is often used as a marketing tool. A recent blogger made an interesting observation - there does not appear to be any obvious method to the order in which someone's subscriptions are displayed. One constant though is that Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington, or Fred Wilson seem to appear in almost anyones front page list. Lets be honest, who hasn't spent a little time surfing people subscriptions. I have found plenty of new subscriptions by seeing who my existing subscriptions are subscribed to. But who ever clicks on the whole list and scrolls through them all? I usually only look at those people listed on the main page.

So assuming I am not an anomaly, these "top spots" are actually very valuable for anyone hoping to market themselves and their content. Which lead to the first question: how do you get in this "top" list? Which spurred the question at hand - will FriendFeed be able to charge for this listing spot? Just like Google charges for ranking in search results, why not here? There has definately been a lot of speculation around the monetization of FriendFeed - well this is just one more of those speculations. I am interested in your thoughts.

Orgoo - Total email?

I have recently discovered a cool new service: Orgoo is a new web based application that aggregates all your email accounts into one place. This is something I have been wanting for a long time and I am excited to see how well it works.

I have always loved the functionality of outlook, with the reading panes, the multiple account aggregation, and the ability to create folders and sub-folders. However, it just isn't practical for me to have all my mail stored on one machine - I have a computer at the office, two at home, and sometimes I use someone else's machine. I need to be able to see all my new mail and my stored mail in one place, no matter where I am. Some of the online providers have the ability to organize in folders and access from anywhere, but then I have to check 4 different websites for my various accounts. Forwarding messages helps a little, but then I have to be very careful about which address I am using to reply to a given message.

Orgoo seems to be trying to solve this problem (and honestly I am surprised it has taken this long for someone to do it). They bring in various email accounts, allow organization in folders, and its all web based! For an added bonus, they can also aggregate all my chat clients.

So far the drawbacks are available services. Right now I can't integrate my free Hotmail or Yahoo accounts, only paid ones. I can bring in Gmail and any other POP3 service, as well as AOL and .Mac - but the 2 largest free email services definately need to be added. One other slight irritation is the fact that I need be on their page to use the chat function. It can be popped out, but then you still have to have a seperate browser window open for it to work.

Anyhow, I am looking forward to using the service a little more.

*Disclaimer* These guys are from USC (Fight-on!) and this author did also graduate from that fine university.