FriendFeed is a kind of magic. It’s certainly a wonder to behold and when you begin to understand what it does, it’s wonder ten-fold.
Hi! My name is Stu of Maaateland, and I’m hear to teach you something special.
I’m a travelling minstrel, a wandering troubadour, singing and dancing from place to place. And I’ve got a backpack full of magical items.
The first item is a magic book.
"Very funny," I hear you say. "Everybody knows magic books aren’t real."
That’s true, except for this one. Trust me.
Every single time I open the book the words inside have changed. It doesn’t matter if I turn to the first page or the fifty-first page.
Not only that, but the words are done by different pens, written by different authors. Can you imagine that?
What if I read something really funny and want to mark it with my own special stamp?
The second item is a magic stamp.
Every time I find some words that make me laugh, or think, or even sometimes get grumpy, I use this stamp. 
The stamp never runs out! It never gets old or tired or broken.
The stamp has my mark on it. My image. Me. To the rest of the world, the stamp signifies me.
So I use it. I stamp words so that other people can see that I like the words.
"How can other people see your stamp? It’s your magic book!"
That’s very true, it is my book. But remember, it’s magic. There’s other people with this very same magic book. They all came out of the same publishing house, bound with the same beautiful green leather, gilded with silver and gold enamel.
"But," I hear you interrupt. "Is that all you can do? Stamp your approval on some words in this book?"
No. That’s not all.
The third item is a magic pen.
I use the magic pen to do lots of different things.
When I find words that make me ponder, I take the pen and start writing underneath those words.
The magic pen then adds my own words at the end of the other words! How about that!
The magic pen allows me to have conversations with people through what I read and write in the magic book! Amazing!
But that’s not all.
The magic pen allows me to write my own words.
For example, yesterday a bear chased me up a big oak tree. It took me three hours to sing it to sleep. I might like to write that in my magic book.
Sometimes other people who are reading the magic book, they take out their own magic pens and write something about my words. It might be, "Wow! You sang a bear to sleep!" Or it could be, "That’s nothing. Once I wrestled two wolves and three bears all at once. Plus, I’m awesome." Sometimes even, people will ask for more details, "Tell us how you came down out of the tree without waking the bear!"
And there you have it my friends. With this magic book, you can write any story you want. You can help write other stories. You can make conversation with people on the other side of the world!
Now though, I’m afraid, it’s time to close the book.
Some people, they only read the book a few minutes a day, or even a week. But some other people, they read the book all the time, even when they’re walking along the road!
"But won’t they fall over things as they walk?" You ask.
Very true, but some people don’t care.
"How can you walk and read at the same time?"
That my faithful audience, is a story for another time.
And there you have it. A Simple Guide To FriendFeed.
It’s not a perfect analogy. There’s nothing about how the process of making people your friends.
I came up with so many different analogies in the crafting of this post. The River. Fishing. Roads. Houses. A big funnel with water pouring through. Space. Boat racing.
So I started to doodle in gimp, just letting random images conjure up imagination. And something that looked like a book came into being. So I went with that.
