What is Fraidycat?
Add-on stats
Ranking
Add-on summary
Fraidycat is a browser extension for following folks on a variety of platforms. But rather than showing you a traditional 'inbox' or 'feed' view of all the incoming posts - Fraidycat braces itself against this unbridled firehose! - you are shown an overview of who is active and a brief summary of their activity.
Fraidycat attempts to dissolve the barriers between networks - each with their own seeming 'network effects' - and forms a personal network for you, a personal surveillance network, if you will, of the people you want to monitor. (It's as if the Web itself is now your network - imagine that.)
There are no fancy algorithms behind Fraidycat - everything is organized by recency. (Although, you can sort follows into tags and priority - "do I want to track this person in real-time? Is this a band that I am only interested in checking in on once a year?") For once, the point isn't for the tool to discern your intent from your behavior; the point is for you to wield the tool, as if you are a rather capable kind of human being.
User reviews
- Great way to keep track of friends, colleagues, and favorite actors/musicians across multiple platforms in one feed.
- Helpful in following specific people and places without the clutter of traditional aggregators.
- Nice organization features and user interface.
- Encourages purposeful content checking and deeper engagement with the web.
- Could potentially replace other feed services like Feedly.
- User data and settings are handled online rather than locally, which may cause privacy concerns.
- Performance issues, as mentioned by the author on the support page.
- Some users report functionality stopping without clear reasons.
- Online service integration vs local offline functionality
- User-friendly organization of feeds
- Encourages purposeful browsing
- Potential to replace other feed aggregators
Recent reviews
Add-on safety
Risk impact
Fraidycat requires a lot of sensitive permissions. Exercise caution before installing.
Risk likelihood
Fraidycat has earned a fairly good reputation and likely can be trusted.