FriendFeed is a terrific “lifestreaming” service. It might be one that has limited adoption, but it will perform an exceptionally important role in online discussion, in the way influencers in the blogosphere and world of Web technology synthesize and disseminate ideas.

FriendFeed, for those who don’t know about it, is a site where you can import (from your blog, Twitter account, Flickr account, etc) or post items for discussion among those who “follow” you (monitor your activity). Items can be “liked” (giving an instant rating of the item’s approval), similar to Diggs, reddit votes, etc, and can be commented upon.

The site has enjoyed a boost of activity as a similar (but less interactive) service, Twitter, has been beset with infrastructural issues. Robert Scoble has been an early and prominent fan; Michael Arrington has come around and enjoys the service as well, admiring the depth of interaction.

However, the service might not have tremendous reach beyond those bleeding edge distillers of the information avalanche, at least on a participatory level (which is what makes the service unique). Why? It takes tremendous time to keep up with more than a handful of feeds. And if you follow someone like Louis Gray or Loic Le Meur, prepare to spend a substantial portion of your workday keeping up. And FriendFeed is a difficult service to enjoy the occasional sip from; it tends to function best as a firehose. Larry Dignan asks if this is truly something we all really need to fit into our lives.

Is this a criticism? Not at all. Power users of FriendFeed are being exposed to a tremendous amount of data and commentary, all of which is used to extract insights from the bewildering storm of information that the Internet provides us. But, frankly, I tend to enjoy these insights in a slower, more reflective medium - these power users’ blogs. Participating in FriendFeed gives the Robert Scobles and Louis Grays access to the fodder which makes their blogs such a pleasure to read (and kind of a necessity for those of us who can’t follow everything, all the time)

So, is FriendFeed a Twitter-killer? Possibly. Even despite all the good press it’s been enjoyed at the expense of beleaguered Twitter, it is still pretty small in comparison [Compare.com]. But it’s safe to say that it is a great tool for the thought leaders who use it, and for those brave enough (and who have enough time on their hands) to use it as it’s been intended.

I think its biggest promise is to move beyond just the Web tech conversations that the founders themselves would want to follow. If you have clusters of power users and larger groups of followers for sports, celebrity gossip, even fruit fly genetics, then you might see FriendFeed catch on beyond Silicon Valley. Every topical niche has its thought leaders.