I find that TechMeme has become a Google News killer. All I see on it is big media companies (including me, who works at Fast Company).

I miss the individual voices and I think that’s really why FriendFeed has gotten my attention.

Well, that and the fact that Google Reader has just been getting more and more unusable lately. This morning I couldn’t even get it to open up. It’s so freaking slow.

Now, at SXSW I met the guy who runs the Google Reader team and he promises major speed improvements “soon.” But right now it’s totally frustrating and FriendFeed is just totally thrilling.

On top of FriendFeed right now are people I don’t know. No A-listers. I’m not there.

That’s thrilling. Why? Because I’m hearing new voices, discovering new blogs, and seeing early adopter behavior in a more pure state. A more “live” state.

It’s exactly what used to thrill me about TechMeme, but then TechMeme needed to move up the stack to try to get a mass-market audience.

Google Reader is being killed by its addition of a social network (which was implemented poorly and is falling apart for someone like me, who likes following hundreds of people).

How about you? Are you changing your reading behavior because of FriendFeed?