Last week wasn't my favorite time in social media.

Twitter had momentarily lost its gloss, what with DDoS problems, spammers and the usual problems of scaling.  Friendfeed, one of the best social media services, had been sold to Facebook.

It ended up being my quietest week, not just for Twitter, but also for any of my blogging.

On the other hand, like a few Friendfeed users, I spent the time looking at replacements for FF in the eventuality it was one day shuttered.

What I discovered were a batch of new tools which have made for a productive couple of days, even if they don't quite fulfil Friendfeed's esteemed role.

Google Reader is providing a whole heap of news items I can post to Twitter or Friendfeed.  Storytlr gives me a way to aggregate my whole social media lifestream. Streamy gives me some extra news items and a small amount of aggregation.  Finally, the up-and-coming Tumbler brings up a whole new set of options.  It's all got me doing something different from my tweets on Identica. And blogging is back on track with this being my second post in as many days.

So what seemed a bad week became a new opportunity to explore and find something of benefit.

I've noted that a few friends over on Friendfeed have been making similar discoveries.  Google Reader is attracting a few fans amongst the Friendfeeders.

Most of us are still hoping Friendfeed remains in some form or another, because it's still light-years ahead in a lot of ways.  We're prepared if it's not, but it's not like many are suddenly giving up on FF.  It's that good a service that it still provides some great features we're loathe to give up on.

However, only time will tell.

This week brought the news that Facebook had acquired the Friendfeed founders and their expertise, though it raised the possibility that FF itself would eventually be shuttered.

It's kind of sad, because Friendfeed as a service is a vast improvement on Twitter, done better, scalable and primed for growth.

On the other hand, it may make for some interesting improvments to Facebook itself.

Friendfeed users have been looking at alternatives, though in real terms Friendfeed has been light-years ahead of the rest.

Is Google Reader an alternative?  Well, you can add a lot of your Twitter feeds into it, those of your followers or those you youself follow, as well as any news feed.  On the other hand, it's not as if it comes with a readymade, strong network of friends.

It is still very good for aggregating what you want, then sending items to all your social media services.  It allows for custom "send to" links and even "save to PDF."  It doesn't really seem that good at building a network of friends and followers like Twitter and Friendfeed can.

Look to Google Reader mainly as a way of piping interesting news items to your other social media, but not for an easy way of networking.

Then there's Streamy.

This service was "blessed" early in the week as an alternative to Friendfeed, resulting in a major increase and load on its infrastructure.  The service was caught a bit by surprise with this.

It enables you to have a tabbed look at your various social media, as well as news items it has categorized.  Again, however, you have to bring a readymade network to it.

I consider it as having potential, but I can see it also having a few minor drawbacks as well.  I'd consider it still a stage or two away from being a true Friendfeed replacement.

In the past few hours I've heard of Storytlr, which is a nice little aggregator and lifestreaming service.  As yet I can't see how friends, followers or networks are made in it, but I do see it as enabling the archiving of your Twitter stream.

Stories in Storytlr are what I'm looking at and experimenting with at the moment.  My only complaint with the Story mode is that it burdens the user with an extra click and page, although it enables you to put together a series of tweets or other updates from elsewhere in a titled theme.  In addition, it still allows for standard posts, links, images, audio and video.

It's themable, too.

I'd have preferred Friendfeed being sold to someone who'd kept the site and its features intact, because it still works fantastically in its current form.  While these alternatives cover some of the features of FF, they don't really do all the things at once.

We'll have to see what happens over the next few months.  By then we'll also have a better idea of how these other alternatives rise to the challenge.

I'd still like to see Facebook keeping Friendfeed running, though I won't hold my breath on that.