The Life Scientists room is one of the biggest rooms, but I recognize that scientists are a niche audience. It's too bad we can't take the success and community of that room and move it somewhere else where our needs won't be sidelined in favor of making things more novice friendly.

I am not sure that's necessary. We've let people know that the loss of room functionality hurts that community. Let's see what happens. Unlike other sites, Friendfeed's betas are real betas, and there have been multiple design changes just today.

In the end it depends on the target audience. My hope is that the success of the Life Scientists makes us one that at least gets a seat at the table

I would really hope that the success of the Life Scientists does afford us some consideration, but doesn't that mean that the Persian Friendfeed community gets a couple seats? ;-)

I get the feeling(with the faces instead of service icons, and the tweetbox) that they've decided they want to be more new user friendly, which is a direction exactly opposed to the needs of existing technically-minded users.

:-) and given what I've head from Paul on the Gillmor Gang in the past, not a surprise about that particular direction.