There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Twitter and Facebook these days, thanks in part to the groundswell created by celebrities such as @Oprah and @aplusk. I use both services and love them, but I thought it might be worthwhile mentioning a lesser known one that I also love and have been using for a long time—FriendFeed.

FriendFeed is a social media feed aggregator, otherwise known as a mashup, which allows you to have the RSS feeds from all the other services you use in one place, creating what some call a “lifestream”.

Here are 3 reasons why this is useful:

1. Easy Sharing

If you’re the type who likes to share the media you’re consuming, whether it’s blogs, news, jokes, videos or whatever, this is a simple way to do it without cluttering up your friends’ inboxes. If your friends are subscribed to you in FriendFeed, all they have to do is login to see all the things you bookmark with Delicious, tweet on Twitter, fav on Flickr or YouTube, and so on.

Conversely, you have the opportunity to see what all your friends are looking at as well. In a lot of ways, this has become one of my main destinations to find out what’s new and hot during the day. It’s faster than scanning the news or Digg because it’s all being shared in real time, as others come across it.

2. Easy Discussion
When you share a link in Twitter, a discussion might ensue, but keeping the context intact when you’re limited to 140 characters can be a challenge, particularly if there are several parties involved. FriendFeed gives you the opportunity to have discussions associated with a particular entry. You can also create groups to assemble people who share common interests.

You can do many of the same things in Facebook as well, but it’s not designed as an automatic feed aggregator, so unless there’s an application associated with the service containing the resource you want to share, you have to post it by hand. Facebook is also meant to be a more intimate environment, with privacy options that allow you to control who sees what in your profile. FriendFeed is designed to be more open, like a big party, much like Twitter.

3. Easy Tweet Fodder

FriendFeed gives you the option of tweeting posts from services you use. This makes it easy to tweet something just by bookmarking it on Delicious, digging it on Digg, fav’ing it on Flickr or just “liking” it on FriendFeed itself. What’s even better is the URL provided to Twitter points to the entry in FriendFeed, not the ultimate destination, which encourages discussion, since your followers make a stop there along the way.

FriendFeed is easy to set up and provides unique opportunities for connecting people around common interests and doing real-time research. Its simplicity, flexibility and ease of use makes it a perfect complement to services like Twitter.

See also:
HOW TO: Get the Most Out of FriendFeed
10 Ways to Get More Out of Friendfeed
Mike Arrington and I disagree on the future
FriendFeed Is In Danger Of Becoming The Coolest App No One Uses
FriendFeed: What If Twitter Worked?