Citeulike, Friendfeed and me: BFF?

I'll start off by saying that I'm new to the whole Friendfeed thing, and I've also only recently started using Citeulike in a more comprehensive way. I started out on the former through the recommendation of Frank over at peanutbutter, and it's one of the best things I've done recently with respect to my working life (subscribe to my friendfeed). Citeulike also began via a recommendation from Frank, but it has really been useful to me as I start to slowly gather references that a) interest me in general, and/or b) will be useful when I start writing up my PhD thesis (my citeulike library).

Just today it really twigged in me how useful these two tools, in combination, can be. I credit Frank with two nice things he said about this grouping of two apps in a chat we had today: 1) "don't need to do pubmed searches anymore", and 2) "organise, share and discover" (update: Frank would like to say he wasn't the originator of the quote, which is very good of him. Of course, it still holds true that you said it in our chat ;) ). Certainly the joining of these two apps facilitates the latter, and my pubmed searching, while still extant, is now nicely supplemented by what my friends are reading.

I shall illustrate my point with some examples. (Please note that all the people mentioned in the following images have their friendfeeds set to public, and therefore I will not be compromising anyone's privacy by using these examples.)

It all started this morning, when Simon added this paper into his citeulike library:

Citeulike and Friendfeed: 1

Then, I liked the look of it - having seen it in my friendfeed - and added it to my library with just two clicks:

Citeulike and Friendfeed: 2

Next, via friendfeed's comment mechanism,  I received plaudits for adding to my very new citeulike library:

Citeulike and Friendfeed: 3

Then, others noticed Simon's or my additions, and added it themselves. First, it was Dan:

Citeulike and Friendfeed: 4

And then it was Frank. However, before I show Frank's feed, I should mention that earlier in the day, Duncan had posted a review from Nature for a book we had been discussing:

Citeulike and Friendfeed: 5

And I decided I also liked this review:

Citeulike and Friendfeed: 6

So, when Frank had a look at Friendfeed, he found two things he liked, and it was reported by Friendfeed as so:

Citeulike and Friendfeed: 7

I'm sure others have experienced this already, but it's new to me, and just shows me how using social apps like Friendfeed in a work context can really increase my knowledge in an efficient and fun way. It's fantastic, even it if is a little circular and self-referencing. After all, this post about Friendfeed will shortly appear on my Friendfeed. But then, Friendfeed is a great forum for discussing things, and getting ideas to blog about. Neil and others have already done this. Thanks to everyone whose feeds I read ;)