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Bret Taylor to Bret's feed, FriendFeed News

FriendFeed API v2: Real-time, OAuth, file attachments, and more - http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009...

July 20, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Laura Norvig, Caira Prox, hewoilsneed and 200 other people liked this

"Today we are launching version 2 of the FriendFeed API for beta testing. We focused on making the API simpler to use, and we added number of compelling new features." Documentation: http://friendfeed.com/api... - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

29 more comments

OAuth? Sweet. Thanks a lot for all the new good stuff in the API: can't wait to use it. - Mark Trapp

very nice. great work! - Alfredo 亜瑠布れっど

Yet another reason to like Bret. :-) - Jesse Stay

Great!!! - YungSang from FriendFoo

nice! - Daniel Rust

good job guys, I bet devs are jumping high right now - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Sweet, congrats! - Ivan Zuzak

nice, good to see OAuth support, this will enable a larger 3rd party ecosphere around FriendFeed, I hope - Jeroen De Miranda

After going through the documentation and playing around with some feeds, I love the fact that you can now see the subscriber lists of people who have their feeds set to private as long as you are subscribed to them and authenticate (mimicking the main site functionality). One thing that's absent is a discussion of Direct Messages. Do they show up in feeds if you authenticate? How do we find just direct messages? - Mark Trapp

Mark: direct messages are accessed using the feed ID "filter/direct". Read more about feed IDs at http://friendfeed.com/api.... Also direct messages appear in the "home" feed. - Benjamin Golub

Benjamin: ahhh, I see it now. I missed it when skimming that list over. Thanks! - Mark Trapp

Can you post the wget version of the command line? - Gabe

Gabe: wget --user=bgolub --password=passwd --post-file=MyPhoto.jpg http://friendfeed-api.com/v2... should work. In theory. Edit: nope. I'm not sure it's possible to do with wget. - Mark Trapp

Thanks God it is New API. - AlpB. from iPod

Nice progress here with this release! - Micah

I love it! - friday night

Why is wget questionable? - Gabe

Gabe: wget doesn't support multipart forms as a design decision. If you post a file, FriendFeed returns a 404, and if you post data, the query is too long for wget to handle. - Mark Trapp

Good work, look forward to seeing what developers can create - Joe Dawson

doublepluslike - Vezquex

curl FTW. - Jeremy Kunz

This is great, FriendFeed team. Good job. - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Woowoo, bgolub's password is “passwd” ;-) - Amit Patel

Amit: I wonder how many people tested that :) - Benjamin Golub

Thanks to bgolub posting his password, I now have all of FriendFeed's secret documents about notorious users, useless metrics, Justin Timberlake's promoting FF on Oprah's show, hiring Colbert as a spokesperson, Ev Williams being just a “distraction”. TechCrunch is going to love this! ;) - Amit Patel

Yes big big thanks to the whole team for all their hard work!! - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ from iPhone

thank you;) waiting for the release :) loving clone - abdellah from FriendFeed API Example

Yay subscribers exposed! - EricaJoy

Finally OAuth, I had a hard time memorizing my remote key. - Hugh Isaacs II

This is indeed very cool, anybody started on a c# version? - Jesper Lind

Paul Buchheit

Google Points At WebFinger. Your Gmail Address Could Soon Be Your ID. - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

August 14, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

birhan yel, cyrusholiday, İlter Kalkancı and 72 other people liked this

"It’s taking something everyone knows on the web (your email address) and making it immensely more valuable as a way to identify yourself and information about you. Exactly what kind of information? Here are some of the ideas from the WebFinger Google Code page: * public profile data * pointer to identity provider (e.g. OpenID server) * a public key * other services used by that email address (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Twitter, Facebook, and usernames for each) * a URL to an avatar * profile data (nickname, full name, etc) * whether the email address is also a JID, or explicitly declare that it’s NOT an email, and ONLY a JID, or any combination to disambiguate all the addresses that look like something@somewhere.com * or even a public declaration that the email address doesn’t have public metadata, but has a pointer to an endpoint that, provided authentication, will tell you some protected metadata, depending on who you authenticate as." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

14 more comments

I don't want my contact information to be my identifier. I shouldn't have to give a website my email address, just like I shouldn't have to give a store my phone number. - Daniel Sims

Daniel, I think it just takes the form of an email address, but does not in fact have to be one (or could be a "throw away" account). - Paul Buchheit

It would be cool if we could get our act together (as an industry) and make this stuff happen. I'd also like to see ENUM deployed to the point that my phone number can be linked to my identity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) - Joe Beda

This is a bad idea in so many ways I can't even begin to list them. - April Russo

If a site wants my email address, it's probably in order to spam me. It's usually a bad sign. If legit sites ask for my email more, it will make it harder to identify the spammers. - Tim Tyler

Do gmail users seriously still have problems with spam? I don't. - Robin Barooah

Personally this sounds great - as long as it really doesn't force you to use your actual gmail address. - Robin Barooah

I loved finger. - j1m

Does this mean I can have a .plan again? - Benjamin Lee

Sounds like the .plan which is (again) accessed via an id in email format and returns different information/metadata about a person depending on who's accessing it. Email id is used to do a DNS lookup in order to discover URL for the XRD file (accessed with a HTTP GET) containing the metadata about the person being, er, WebFinger-ed. - Nenad Nikolic

it is like user authenticating, having two three ids won't hurt ;) well i don't want to be identified, they are going same as gravatar - testbeta

It's so curious to me that people have concerns that WebFinger would lead to more spam, and yet don't like the "format" of URLs for IDs. Personally, as far as OpenID is concerned, I don't care what the identifier looks like as long as people can remember it — typically email seems easier to recall than URLs (for most people in today's world). - Chris Messina

Some users who have an email account with Google, myself included, have oodles of incoming mail both standard and secure so it fits the bill to increase security for both vendors and marketers. - frank burns

I have no problem with the idea, but it seems to me that it won't help the current state of affairs much. The kind of information I'd be interested in sharing via Webfinger (my OpenID, a URL to a FOAF file, etc.) will have no better adoption, so the Webfinger configuration doesn't buy me much. I'll hold out hopes that after a couple tight integrations between Webfinger and OpenID providers (say if Google, Microsoft and/or Yahoo provided and consumed both) things will improve ... here's to hoping :( - J. McConnell

Years ago I experimented with FOAF. I didn't fully understand nor appreciate what I was doing. To serve as a warning, if you take this example, ensure that it is blocked. #Example: I sent a file to Adobe which in turn, was sent to another email account I had at the time. I verified it's sender (ME) and sent it back in the direction of travel. A signed FOAF (API KEY) was then returned... more... - frank burns

Steve Gillmor to Steve's feed, RealTime Network

Gillmor Gang, Live Recording Session at 1pm PT. Participate at http://www.building43.com/realtim...

October 15, 2010 - Comment - Like - Share

Zu from AOD, Ankush Narula, Oguz Serdar and 8 other people liked this

tuning in and tweeting buds! - Kathleen Hassinger

159 more comments

Who's on today? (apart from me) - Kevin Marks

I should be. My Skype just crashed, though. Now waiting for call again. - Robert Scoble

what luck. Awake in Brisbane too early and just in time for this. Never works when I'm home! - Aron Michalski

Heheh. So easy to get you on Jeremy! - Robert Scoble

clive, you still getting an echo? - Robert Scoble

Soz, was my double click - clive boulton

Watch out Chris - Steve is not a fan of Google - Kenny

How long before Steve say's "Google's in trouble" - Kenny

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows... was interesting - Kevin Marks

haha - Kenny

that's certainly true for people who work on the road. - Aron Michalski

We don't have the recipe for Coke either - Stephen Pickering

Stephen - exactly! - Kenny

bingo Chris. - Aron Michalski

Ping is not very social, I'm sure it will be someday but right now it's weak - Kenny

isn't social being used to sell things in Facebook too? - Xenophrenia

it's just not as obvious there - Xenophrenia

future purchases - it's the ads and personal info that's at work there - Xenophrenia

I think twitter has more chance there than facebook - Kevin Marks

That's why FB isn't as obvious ;-) - Xenophrenia

at some point the Google car will take you where it thinks you might like to go ;-) - Xenophrenia

looks like it's #AskEv time again on twitter - Kevin Marks

#fbgroups - Chris Messina

Facebook groups does enable tummeling; makes it easier for the social catalysers to connect people - Kevin Marks

it's appeal is it's ubiquity - which is also it's enmity ;-) .... - Xenophrenia

I like their implementation - Chris Messina

Buzz, though not adopted widely,is very interesting in how it layers in the different entry points (web, phone, Maps, etc) and especially for traveling. Get a sense of location in many countries. Wish there were more users. - Aron Michalski

FT > Party is over for US music downloads....Translates to Apple Ping party over? - clive boulton

but if you quit you can NEVER go back - this is something a danger for legitimate groups - if you change your mind later - you're out of luck - have they changed this? - Xenophrenia

Depends on the group settings. - Chris Messina

You can request to join open groups, I think. - Chris Messina

but there is some segmentation happening here between facebook and twitter - Kevin Marks

along which lines? - Chris Messina

facebook seems to enforce/imply more social interactions than twitter, facebook won't let me lurk easily for example - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

I really don't cross my Twitter Stream and my Facebook stream. Some people are in common but it's two totally different conversations. - Aron Michalski

Facebook, like Buzz, has instability if you follow someone who is very connected, it gets noisy fast. On Twitter this is naturally damped. @zoecello can have 1.3 million followers and still hold a conversation - Kevin Marks

they're not friends at that point, they're an audience. Who has that many friends? - Aron Michalski

...and there are better tools for scaling/broadcasting communications - Chris Messina

Aron: define "friend." - Robert Scoble

Aron: old-school definition: someone who will come and help you move, or sit with you while you're in the hospital. - Robert Scoble

If you define friend that way, you'll only have a handful. - Robert Scoble

that's my point - Zoe can get @ replies from a million without that spamming them, but by default she can talk to a few hundred she follows - Kevin Marks

But if you define friend "the facebook" way, that is anyone who you want in your social graph. - Robert Scoble

If you define friend the new way, then you can have thousands of friends. - Robert Scoble

The definition has changed but so has the concept of conversation. - Aron Michalski

maybe we need a different word for one of these friend types then? - Xenophrenia

Xeno: yes. But I think the human brain is OK with friends on social networks being different than friends who'll be invited over for dinner tonight. - Robert Scoble

I've always wanted to use the word "interest" instead of "friend" - I would then be registering my interest in Robert - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Mike: my intrest in you, though, is one of those people I'd like to have dinner with someday. So, are we friends? Heheh. - Robert Scoble

interest has some different connotations for the female recipient though ;-) ... if I'm your interest it could be uncomfortable in certain situations (just as example) ... - Xenophrenia

I notice that the Facebook download is missing microformats, and external links. Also that the video pages link to the video still on FB. I should do an analysis post. - Kevin Marks

For people outside this community ("social", "online") like my wife, these friends are imaginary and have little to do with "real" life. I don't agree but it shows that this new perception of friends is not universal. - Aron Michalski

Robert: yes, that is the pain with any of the graphs - the outliers who fall into multiple categories. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

My wife used to think that my web friends were imaginary, until she met some of them... - Kevin Marks

Trouble with Groups is, all my Facebook "Friends" are like old High School and College buddies who don't necessarily have the same interest I do now. - Stephen Pickering

Or you might not want to be personal friends with someone that has created a group you want to be part of - Stephen Pickering

You can connect to everyone you've ever known if you like, but you don't have to. And when you create groups, you can be explicit about who to include from that graph. - Chris Messina

Re Seth: http://www.arcticstartup.com/2009... - Chris Messina

Right, collection/grouping should always be from the point of view of the user - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

at some point the vernacular will change just due to usage and societal shifts as this fleshes out - in the meantime ..... - Xenophrenia

These services and clients who offer groups and lists provide you with a tool to segment the levels of interaction/trust/communication but for stream watchers it's like looking in different mailboxes. - Aron Michalski

Chris: watch this company: http://www.kiha.com/ In fact, you should see it before it releases in November. They are awesome for Android phones. Google should buy this company to jumpstart its move into social. - Robert Scoble

Cool, will check it out. - Chris Messina

Chris: this looks like the thing that will make me an Android fan. - Robert Scoble

(I am under NDA, wish I could say more). - Robert Scoble

Also http://kinoma.com/play/ is very interesting as a phone experience infrastructure - Kevin Marks

Track; still important after all these years. - Aron Michalski

should be able to have hashtags that don't take up your 140 characters ;-) - Xenophrenia

just don't give me any hfcs ;-) - Xenophrenia

All the lonely people, where do they all come from? - Kevin Marks

just waiting for life to pass them by - Xenophrenia

they already do. - Aron Michalski

and there's the Beatles reference - Tina Chase Gillmor

is the internet the highway in the sky? ;-) - Xenophrenia

newsgroups had weak identity - Chris Messina

America I think isn't it Kevin? - Xenophrenia

news groups initially had email as identity - email used to be hard to get and fairly strong - Kevin Marks

kevin: agreed - Ankush Narula

right - Chris Messina

This comes back to identity, doesn't it? - Aron Michalski

I remember when 'the internet white pages' was published by scraping emails from newsgroups in 1995 or so - Kevin Marks

i mean that an email (sans webfinger) provides few identity attributes - Chris Messina

i.e. face/name - Chris Messina

The strong social graph is what newsgroups lacked - Ankush Narula

true. WebFinger fixes that well - Kevin Marks

it was an implicit graph - Chris Messina

newsgroups were the social graph - one of affiliation - Kevin Marks

that's why I said Facebook groups were their Eternal September - Kevin Marks

;-) ... two different songs ... as usual ... went off in my own direction - Xenophrenia

ha - Ankush Narula

Newsgroups sucked because anyone could join and that let spammers come in and ruin them. - Robert Scoble

and identity (email) became easy to get - Chris Messina

Plus, all the other problems with hierarchies that Gillmor's talking about. - Robert Scoble

an identity-based economy means identity — valuable identity — should be hard to derive, except over time - Chris Messina

robert: that wasn't always the case... - Ankush Narula

there was definitely a time where newsgroups were extremely useful and not spammed - Ankush Narula

as there always is a time like that when a system is open/decentralized - Chris Messina

without antibodies, every open system is overcome by parasites - Chris Messina

the challenge is making the transition from lonely to conversational without overshooting into noisy - Kevin Marks

oh how many layers of manipulations can we have with this ;-)? ... - Xenophrenia

Actually, originally news groups could rely on 'finger' as the general internet/arpanet infrastructure was much more open (internally) and accessible. That is to say, each users email-like ID was fingerable. - Darren

true - Chris Messina

unmoderated - Xenophrenia

yes, finger was the original profile page. Hence WebFinger - Kevin Marks

Valuable identity="weight"- is so much more visible in the stream. Groups can/will give the less popular/weighty people a way to be seen/heard too, for better and certainly worse. - Aron Michalski

Brad Fitzpatrick implemented a Finger server as part of his webfinger demo - Kevin Marks

so that's moderation... they had those newsgroups too - Ankush Narula

any large gathering of people requires a combination of identity (so you can *know* who the other person is) and curation/gardening - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

yup - Ankush Narula

yes bear, exactly (though I call it tummeling) - Kevin Marks

micromessage in space ... did I hear that right? ... I like that notion - Xenophrenia

and the authenticity of identity will be important for the groups to protect their value. - Aron Michalski

kevin - yes, tummelling is a word that describes it that I learned from you and Heather - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

a group of common interest/like thinkers/"religion" can have influence and weight in a world where an unpopular individual doesn't. - Aron Michalski

is that why Buzz is attached to email? - Xenophrenia

the medium of delivery is so often used (wrongly IMO) when tech folks talk about the message - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Love it. I actually built a PoC IMAP + SMTP Activity Streams / Salmon proxy system for Cliqset. - Darren

Chris: Clever - Ankush Narula

but mail admins would hate you! ;-) - Ankush Narula

Every object has it's own email address? Oh boy, I was just resisting 'things' in addressbooks in VCARD 4 - Kevin Marks

don't think of it as email - Chris Messina

kevin - s/email address/URI/ - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

smtp is just a courier for the message - Chris Messina

yup - Ankush Narula

you could also use PuSH - Chris Messina

the idea was to use the existing infrastructure / protocols to support messaging between systems. - Darren

yes - Chris Messina

the owner of the identity should be able to specify how the message is delivered - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

there are people who print things out and snail mail it to friends ... that just floors me ;-) - Xenophrenia

Buzz: Chris Messina commented on your post - Ankush Narula

Also: most people would never read these emails... - Chris Messina

the inbox would treat these messages as notifications and bundle them up for you... - Chris Messina

or those who send video files around when they could just send you a YouTube link - Tina Chase Gillmor

i already have that for twitter ankushnarula+twitter@mail.com - Ankush Narula

Steve is getting better at pimping chatter - Ross Mayfield

the email view is a fallback for those outside the connected standard - Kevin Marks

email = smtp notifications with pointers to an atom/activitystreams payload - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

@blaine was explaining this to me too - Kevin Marks

interesting... so sender/recipient would be objects in the activitystream? - Ankush Narula

sure - Chris Messina

Chris, I like it, but like Steve believe the primary transit mechanism would be microblogging - Ross Mayfield

everything could emit and receive email notifications - Chris Messina

what's the difference? - Chris Messina

we still need uniqueid @ domain - Chris Messina

SmtpBub - Ankush Narula

heh - Chris Messina

Ross: I was thinking that too! - Robert Scoble

it all falls back to needing a way of managing identity - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

email is most often used as a surrogate for identity - Chris Messina

maybe because of it's heritage - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

thanks - Chris Messina

Chris... now you've got my brain racing - Ankush Narula

sweet! ;) - Chris Messina

interesting conversations ... ;-) - Xenophrenia

Thanks for feeding my brain, everybody. - Aron Michalski

enjoyed it - Chris Messina

thanks for the good talk - Ankush Narula

Cheers, great show - Stephen Pickering

see y'all - Chris Messina

Great show. Thanks everyone. Thanks Robert, Seth, Kevin, Chris. Thanks chat people. You make the show more valuable with your conversation - Tina Chase Gillmor

Paul Buchheit

Steve Gillmor interviews me about FriendFeed and Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch... (partial summary at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...)

Steve Gillmor interviews me about FriendFeed and Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5VZECd2nc (partial summary at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/22/the-would-be-ffugees-shouldnt-pack-up-and-find-a-new-home-just-yet/)

August 22, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

polymath22, Published-Articles.com, Chuck Kahn and 46 other people liked this

Thanks for your time Paul., sharing what we know may help others achieve their goals and ambitions. - frank burns

This is a really really good interview thank you for sharing - Thomas Power

Paul Buchheit

It's interesting that having my FriendFeed and Twitter set to public is completely unremarkable, but my using the same setting on Facebook seems like a big deal, e.g. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits...

May 5, 2010 - Comment - Like - Share

polymath22, Dave Martin, Glenn Slaven and 85 other people liked this

The first sentence of that article should explain the difference to you. If it doesn't, then I think you need to lay off the Kool-Aid for a bit. It's clouding your mind. - Akiva

291 more comments

Were either Friendfeed, or Twitter, sold as a private place to interact with friends, to begin with? - Gimminy

Akiva, putting those two sentences next to each other does not mean that they are logically connected. I chose to make my settings more public. Why is that an issue? - Paul Buchheit

Doesn't your Facebook profile have things like address and phone number? - Gabe

Yeah, as I mentioned, I don't make phone and email public because I don't want sales calls or whatever. - Paul Buchheit

"We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with." - Mark Zuckerberg 9/8/06 - http://blog.facebook.com/blog... - Carter ♥ JS

That's not the issue, Paul. The issue is that the privacy settings in Facebook can cause people to 'unwittingly expose' information about themselves. My FriendFeed and Twitter accounts are also public but I don't have my home address or phone number or anything linked to those accounts. You, of course, are far more educated about Internet privacy and whatnot than, say, Grandma Indiana... more... - Akiva

The point being that Facebook level-set their users to expect privacy as the DEFAULT. Twitter and Friendfeed never did that. - Carter ♥ JS

Akiva, I'm pretty sure the default for home address and phone number is not "public". I only adjusted my defaults to make them more public, not less. - Paul Buchheit

I think the 'big deal' portion has everything to do with original intent and marketing - Twitter and FF haven't been marketed as private. Facebook very explicitly started that way. In migrating away from their original ideas, the FB team as not been a) open or b) responsive about privacy concerns. I really respect your work, but FB staff dismissing these concerns because they don't... more... - Jennifer Dittrich

A Twitter or FriendFeed profile doesn't list your address, phone number, schools you attended, employer, personal interests, family members, birthdate, etc. If you fill in the blanks on a Facebook profile, all of that is shown. - Rochelle

+1 Rochelle. - Jeff (Team マクダジ )

Paul, you might be right. When I signed up for Facebook, the first thing I did was lock down everything that I wanted locked down. But not everyone is going to understand that. And it doesn't help that you guys are consistently changing (you may say, refining) how privacy is controlled which just adds to everyone's confusion. Combine that with the fact that it seems like your boss is... more... - Akiva

Perhaps you're reading too much into what I said. All I said was that I made my stuff mostly public, and that I've gotten a lot of value out of that. - Paul Buchheit

I think we'll all look back on this transition from "privacy is essential" to "privacy is an obstacle" to be on the biggest bait-and-switches ever executed at scale (400+ million people). - Carter ♥ JS

I locked down everything... And then everytime some new "feature" rolls out, I need to go back and "re-lockdown" stuff... It's annoying - Jeff (Team マクダジ )

I probably have, Paul. I think I just saw your statement in contrast with the article and went with that. - Akiva

+1 Carter re: biggest bait-and-switches ever executed at scale. - Alex Schleber

I'm curious what everyone here is putting on their fb that is so secret? Maybe I'm doing it wrong. There are certainly things that I don't want out there (like my credit card numbers), but I'm not going to put that on my fb profile. - Paul Buchheit

I don't think it's so much the information as it is the principle of the matter. But maybe that's just me. - Derrick

Btw, I agree that there is a legitimate debate with respect to the way in which Facebook updates defaults, but that wasn't the topic we were discussing. - Paul Buchheit

Really Paul? Look, in all likelihood Facebook, Zuck, and you are succeeding at pulling one over on hundreds of millions of people. And you know exactly what you're doing. Fine, you win, but please spare us this "innocent from the country" routine. A certain class of people (read tech geeks) are not fooled for one second. - Alex Schleber

What Derrick said. - Rochelle

Humor me Alex. I'm genuinely curious what people are most fearful about. - Paul Buchheit

Example: I have friends on Capitol Hill in DC who are insanely paranoid about their public image, but still like sharing some fun photos or stories with close friends. That's one use case. There are MANY more. Please don't treat yourself as representative of 400 million people. - Carter ♥ JS

It's simple really: I use Facebook to communicate with my Family and Friends. Those communications are *not public* and they're damn well going to stay that way. FriendFeed/Twitter are not places where I talk to family and friends. - Otto

For example, why does one need to share a real name, or phone number at all? You don't have to do that with FriendFeed, or Twitter. Can you do that on Facebook at all? - Derrick

The problem I have with the Facebook deal is that it was a bait and switch. They got people to sign up with this understanding that your info was in a closed system and seemingly secure unless you didn't want it to be. Then, after they got everyone to input their info, they said, "Hey, we changed our mind; we're going to give it to advertisers anyway. Quit if you want." - rowlikeagirl

Paul: I get value out of having Twitter and FF completely public. Thats not the issue. The issue here is that FB was originally sold as a private service. Another thing. You and I may have seen value out of being completely public, but the only value to anyone about Grandma Indinana being completely public belongs to the knitting accessories advertisers. - Roberto Bonini

Paul, for me, it's not a matter of fear but a matter of ownership. I'm definitely on the more paranoid end of the scale as I'm only marginally comfortable for people to know even what city I live in. On the other end of that spectrum are guys like Robert and Louis who put their cell phone number on the web and welcome people to call. I don't want any of my information going out of my... more... - Akiva

It's simple, Paul. While I agree that I myself never put much of anything into Facebook I might live to regret, the same isn't true for everybody else. Several examples curated over here: http://alexschleber.amplify.com/2010... - Alex Schleber

This "value to advertisers" meme is interesting. It gets repeated a lot by bloggers, but nobody ever explains what any of this has to do with advertising. Ad targetting could be done regardless of privacy settings (just as Google does). - Paul Buchheit

I have no problem talking to the world about things going on in the world. But that is definitely *NOT* what I use Facebook for. I use Facebook to talk to people I know about things going in our daily lives. I use it to communicate with my BBQ team members. I use it to talk to my mom and dad. None of that is useful for anybody else to know. Nothing I post on Facebook is useful in a... more... - Otto

You have a BBQ team? Is that as awesome as it sounds? - Paul Buchheit

Yes. :) http://www.thequesbrothers.com - Otto

Re "value to advertisers": by making more of FB public/open/crawlable, you can increase the volume of traffic/pageviews and ultimately increase impressions/clicks. Money in the bank. - Carter ♥ JS

And for the record I don't have a FB account. In the old days, snail mail mostly guaranteed privacy for your communications by virtue of the fact that your communiques were physically sealed by you. That essentially is the analogue version of FB pre privacy changes, albeit not at scale. In other words, privacy was implicit in the social convention of exchanging snail mails. With FB,... more... - Roberto Bonini

Can anyone show up to those competitions and eat the food, or do you have to be judge or something? I'd seriously consider making the trip. - Paul Buchheit

"Privacy is hard; let's have a BBQ!" :) - Benjamin Golub

Judging is a process that requires certification and a class, sort of thing. However, the WCBCC here in Memphis next week has a "People’s Choice" category. Basically you pay like $4 and get to judge 5 different samples from 5 different teams. Repeat as many times as you want: http://memphisinmay.org/peoples... And then, of course, if you know somebody on the teams, and can talk 'em into it, then it's all you can eat... :) - Otto

You cannot argue with a thread that gets derailed by BBQ. It's against the law. - Akiva

Carter, I doubt it. Fb has a completely ridiculous number of page views already. The bump from searching random status messages or whatever would not be significant. - Paul Buchheit

Speaking of profiles: Benjamin, you need to update yours to say "Facebooker", right? ;) - Carter ♥ JS

Wow, I'm definitely going to have to go to memphisinmay sometime. - Paul Buchheit

Paul, you can NEVER have too much traffic. Come on... anyway, this thread has made me hungry. And it's only 11am PST! :( - Carter ♥ JS

Carter: As far as I know people that work here don't call themselves Facebookers. But I have that exact question listed in my Twitter profile: http://twitter.com/bgolub - Benjamin Golub

Dang, now I want bbq. - Derrick

"I promise Facebook will or will not take over the world with Likes, targeted ads, and evil privacy violat... oh look, there's a shiny BBQ object over here..." :( - Alex Schleber

Paul, the issue is choice. Facebook users used to be more private by the nature of what Facebook was. It's great if some people want to be more public, but in the process of adding those features, Facebook has most definitely removed choices to keep many things private and essentially coerced more public settings, but yet still operates under a model where people's profiles are expected... more... - Tinfoil 2.0 from iPhone

I'm really glad Paul's talking about this - I wish more of the Facebook team would talk about intentions. I hear a lot through personal connections, but nothing makes a bigger difference than the internal team being willing to talk about this stuff with the public. - Jesse Stay

I have no problems with aspects of my profile being public, but IMO the problem is that Facebook tends to go with default opt-in often enough, and in general isn't consistent with how changes are implemented and doesn't necessarily make it easy for users to know exactly what they're doing. - Deepak Singh

+1 Jesse (as another FBer) - Ashwin Bharambe

Here's my opinion: Facebook is in a no-win situation. If they stay private, everyone criticizes them as a "walled garden", and they can't grow as fast either. If they go public (yet keep privacy controls in place), everyone will criticize them for revealing too much information. I think Facebook's making the right move in making things more public so that future new users know without a... more... - Jesse Stay

Jesse, it ultimately doesn't freaking matter what Paul thinks their intentions are (so far he is sounding a tad naive here), only the eventual *outcomes*. Do you trust Mark Zuckerberg? How about Microsoft or anyone else who may one day buy or control Facebook? - Alex Schleber

Then there's this: http://www.eff.org/deeplin... re: the new "connections" formerly known as Interests, etc. ... yeah, Paul, let's see your detailed response to what is said in that piece. Thanks in advance for not veering off into BBQ. - Alex Schleber

FB Privacy concerns now bore me. For anybody interested in continuing BBQ talk: http://friendfeed.com/otto42... :-) - Otto

Alex, ultimately you can't trust any company, can you? - Jesse Stay

Otto, amen - Jesse Stay

FWIW, Facebook does have a process for users to debate these terms - if enough users disagree Facebook will re-evaluate. I believe the last few times there weren't enough objections to change. - Jesse Stay

Also, FWIW, the only information available by default is here: http://www.facebook.com/help... - specifically, "name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages" - Jesse Stay

I don't think it's that big a deal they're sharing that, personally. Heck, I give away my phone number and e-mail address on my blog, both publicly and in a parseable manner in the source code. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, that "process" is totally rigged. The problem is that users are lazy and stick to defaults (even if those default change over time). Asking lazy people to log objections is very cynical. - Carter ♥ JS

Carter, and I don't think most users really care - Jesse Stay

Well, they don't care * incrementally*. It's like the frog in the water that never notices the water is getting hotter until its too late :) - Carter ♥ JS

Ye ye...keep telling yourself that, Jesse. I think TODAY's Facebook IM glitch proves that they still do care to some extent (if they are conscious of the issues at least). do you want all your instant messages to be public? How about your phone SMS and convos? What if the phone/cell co decides that all that really doesn't need to be private anymore, that your privacy is overrated anyway, and people should just get with the "new openness" program... - Alex Schleber

Alex, you guys are way too paranoid. Just don't put anything online you don't want public and you're fine. That goes for Facebook as well. Educate people on that rather than saying "the sky is falling" with Facebook. - Jesse Stay

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."--Google CEO Eric Schmidt - Ashish

Jesse - that is a fine thing to say if people are giving *warning* that what was default private has now become default public *before* it happens. With the changes recently made I now have people who are finding my best friends family members (both girls) because now my likes and wall posts are public. Now I have to stop communicating with them until I figure out all of the myriad ways to hide my FB data and even then the trust has been lost so I doubt I will continue. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Re: Eric Schmidt - search Google for "Eric Schmidt affair", good stuff! http://www.google.com/search... - Carter ♥ JS

i miss friendfeed. - Zee.

As anyone who's married knows, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. - Darren

Facebook did what they had to do to compete long term in the ever changing social landscape. - Darren

It was the right decision. - Darren

Darren, even if FB considered it the proper decision (which I really hope they do for all the grief they are getting) it could have been executed in a more tolerant/privacy friendly manner. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

bear, consider the actions of recent Facebook's warning. It's clear Facebook wants to be more public. - Jesse Stay

Darren.. I agree and they did it in a VERY impressive and powerful way. It even uses privacy rules in place since last Nov/Dec, so I don't understand *most* of the recent complaints. - Chris Myles

Chris, agreed - Jesse Stay

Jesse, Chris - that is great that they used existing framework as it did make it easier to check what changed. But what isn't great was the lack of info (and it could be because i'm just now a FB "power user") on the fact that my actions on other's posts/events now cause them to be more visible than *they* want. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Chris/Darren, just because "they did it in a VERY impressive and powerful way" doesn't mean we all have to like it. The same could be said e.g. for the Nazi's taking over Germany. - Alex Schleber

Yeah, what LogEx, Akiva, Roberto, etc all said: FB started off closed. People signed on with a certain set of expectations. FF and Twitter started out open, people signed on to those two with different expectations. It's like why no one (reasonably) complains the bus is public but would complain if their taxi started picking up a bunch of other passengers midway - the rules changed midstream, to the detriment of the existing users. - Andrew C (✓)

Oh wow - now Facebook is being compared to the Nazis? Really??? Except you don't have to be on Facebook. The Germans had no choice. I wish those with problems would just kill their accounts and stop complaining. This is getting ridiculous. - Jesse Stay

BTW, I think most of the Facebook team would take serious offense to that Nazi comment - Jesse Stay

Here is another "everything you ever do with/on the Internet is pretty much public" counter-example: Online Dating. Do you want all of your "dating graph" (any profile you ever checked out, messaged, etc.) made public? Yes, there is no absolute expectation of privacy - e.g. vis-a-vis the state/law/etc., but I doubt too many people would have started using these services if the companies had said: BTW, we will eventually make all of this information public or semi-public. - Alex Schleber

Alex, personally, I don't have a problem with that, but I live a boring life. Again, don't use Facebook or a dating site if you have a problem with it. - Jesse Stay

FWIW, those things get exposed all the time - Jesse Stay

...and yes, I agree that one should think twice about posting/using anything on the Web, but that doesn't mean all privacy questions are a binary decision. Just because someone can get to certain information somehow, is NOT the same as a company shoveling it out the door with all hands on deck... as is now the case with FB "Open" Graph. - Alex Schleber

Jesse - will you please *stop* saying "or a dating site if you have a problem with it"! FB started as a private way to share personal information *by design* and then it changed how it works. If FB would let me delete my account and *my data* then I would have done that the first time they changed how things work. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Bear, why can't you delete your Facebook account? It's quite simple. Do it, so long as you stop complaining. - Jesse Stay

Wow. - Derrick

Alex, have you ever seen the information Google has on you? Google has much more than Facebook right now, and you probably don't even know it. - Jesse Stay

@jesse - i'm not complaining about anything except the pious holier than thou way you keep saying "hey, if you post in public you get what you get" while completely ignoring how the rules got changed under the FB users feet. PLUS you can't DELETE an account - it just gets "deactivated" and all of the data remains. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Bear, no rules were changed since December. Features added, yes, but nothing changed. BTW, I'm pretty sure you can delete your account entirely. If not, they can't do anything with the data after you cancel, at least per the terms (only thing they can do is keep it on your friends' news feeds, which I think makes for a much better experience). - Jesse Stay

@bear: True account deletion is possible: http://www.facebook.com/help... (Note: it takes 2 weeks of deactivation before they actually delete the account). - Otto

Evidently this is a holy war now - Jesse Stay

Expectations are fine but times change, facebook started three years before twitter and the only content they have required to be public is your name, profile photo, gender, list of friends and pages you are a fan of (like). They did it using a very public method that forced *everyone* to review and double check their settings and they told you they were migrating to the more public... more... - Chris Myles

Jesse, I was merely referring to Chris' use of "they did it in a VERY impressive and powerful way", to which you agreed. As in: that alone isn't a freaking criterion for anything. - Alex Schleber

I wonder if Paul regrets making this particular thought public? :P - Carter ♥ JS

Chris, amen - Jesse Stay

Bear, you can either delete or deactivate. Here's the link to delete: https://ssl.facebook.com/help... - Rochelle

Alex, I was giving kudos to Paul.. I'm impressed, it's powerful. I also don't feel my trust has been violated because I kept up with the privacy changes (http://www.eff.org/deeplin...). I'm looking for people who are ready to move forward (http://friendfeed.com/chrismy...).. I remember these exact arguments last year, I'm ready to move on!! - Chris Myles

Jesse: To some people, not using Facebook is like withdrawing from society. - Gabe

Carter, I am glad he did, this needs to be discussed. I just hope he's been working on FB messaging platform, and therefore doesn't have full visibility to what Zuck has cooked up here. The true implications of this likely won't be apparent for another 1-3 years. I really do hope that Paul's/Jesse's et al. best-case-scenario, optimistic view actually comes to pass. But I'm not holding my breath either. - Alex Schleber

exactly Gabe, the "people can just leave" argument is getting pretty naive at this point. See here: http://alexschleber.amplify.com/2010... - Alex Schleber

Gabe, in that case, just be careful what you put online. If you're that paranoid, kill your account. Heck, kill your internet connection. There is no such thing as perfect privacy. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, please stop the "perfect privacy" straw man argument. There is no perfect anything, so does that mean we can't have an opinion? - Alex Schleber

Jesse: Also, I recall from a movie or TV show trailer a few days ago: "You're being paranoid. That's what someone says right before they betray you...". Frankly, it's also a not-so-thinly-veiled insult as well, since you are referring to us per a DSM-IV diagnosable mental disorder criterion. Just saying... - Alex Schleber

Alex, you may have an opinion, but your argument on Facebook doesn't make sense if you think your privacy can never be exposed. Same goes for Google, Gmail, Orkut, Private Twitter accounts, or any other service where privacy is expected. These things are exposed all the time, often without you knowing - that's a fact of life. Don't put it online if you don't want it exposed. All the complaining and opinions in the world won't stop that. - Jesse Stay

Jesse: That's a poor argument. Being exposed by accident or via a bug is different than being exposed by design. I'd prefer to live in a world where private information can be both online and shared and still well-protected by a proper set of controls. You don't need perfection to achieve this goal. However, you do need to stop moving the target around. - Otto

Alex, sorry but to think that nothing will EVER change is also naive.. I think we've all gone a little extreme to make our points. There is nothing wrong with strong opinions and even expectations but there HAS to be a balance. facebook has done a reasonable job considering they have a microscope us their a$$ and not everyone will be happy with their changes. - Chris Myles

CW, come on - so you're offended that your name, gender, city, network, and friends same info are exposed as you browse the web? Nothing else is exposed, unless you opted in. - Jesse Stay

Oh, and the fact that you "liked" it, but that too is opt-in - Jesse Stay

Google has a really good position paper on opt-in vs opt-out http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc.... (if anyone is interested). - Chris Myles

"dont put it online if you dont want it exposed" - that is both fair and unfair. True - the only 100% privacy is if you never share anything but that's hardly useful. I think people are entitled to feel that a breach of some covenant has happened when something that used to be under our control (who gets to see what) gets changed and taken out of our control, and automatically shared... more... - Iphigenie

Maybe it would help if Fb had a feature that showed the list of people who had access to what information and why. That way I could say "If I click 'Like' on this post, who will be able to tell", and decide right then if it was worth clicking. - Gabe

Jesse, that's simply not true. When I went to the settings page I have a screenshot of here: http://alexschleber.posterous.com/this-is... ALL of those options were CHECKED by default. And FB has hidden this most important "what my friends can propagate about me" setting 2 layers deep... - Alex Schleber

First, kudos for Paul & Facebook insiders who *dialog* publicly about the elephant in the room. BUT, bottom line: Privacy as normative bait & switch and opt-out settings. Apple gets lauded for 'Hardware-Software That Just Works'; if a modicum of evidence existed that FB has the ethos of 'Privacy That Just Works', there would be more support from the tech-competent and Facebook-history aware public (a small, but influential slice of the whole). - Micah

CW, they told you about the changes and even forced you to accept LAST NOV/DEC (see link above). Are you a fan of the site governance page (which announces future changes to get voted on)? If you don't feel comfortable what are you doing using the tool? - Chris Myles

Although I agree with Paul that it should not be that big a deal that he chose to make his profile fully public (with tiny exceptions) to people - that has never been the problem for me, and I found the flexibility of sharing to a list only to be mostly a matter of courtesy (dont bore school friend with technical shares, or the wrong language) rather than privacy (I always treated it as... more... - Iphigenie

Alex, Did you take a screen shot last Nov/Dec? both of those settings were available for your review then http://www.cynicsunlimited.com/2009.... - Chris Myles

And, provincial as it may be, I'm looking to Josh's dramatic reading of this thread. (**Special Mention**: GO TEAM BBQ!) #JoshHaley #DramaticReadingBOD - Micah

that's it, i'm off to chop peppers in farmville ;) - Iphigenie

OK so obviously there has been a HUGE uproar about this last year and again now.. I've had messages from friends on facebook warning of the dangers and facebook has publicly stated they are trending toward the public social norm.. I was in the middle of no where for 5.5 years and I knew what was going on with facebook. We can't second guess and protect everyone.. but messages were... more... - Chris Myles

I'm just going to let Chris fight this for me - he's doing a great job. I'm behind you all the way Chris! :-) (and I totally agree) - Jesse Stay

But yeah - even my Mom asked me about the changes last Nov/Dec - Jesse Stay

Sorry Jesse, I'm on my last legs here. Privacy, expectations, trust and comfort are all VERY personal and people have to make their own choice!! Don't like (trust,respect) it.. leave. Worried everything will become public someday.. don't share private things. Double check your settings, ask questions, read every future dialog/message and assume future features will default to public sharing.. that's what I'm doing (and have always done). Facebook and me.. we're good! - Chris Myles

Chris, I am too - none of this uproar makes sense to me, but I'm losing energy to fight it. As Otto said, the privacy uproar is getting boring. - Jesse Stay

and that is why I am so glad you are not on the Facebook team dealing with Privacy - the fact that you find something that others find important as boring and not worth discussing. The issue boils down to what a reasonable/non-guru user of FB can expect in regard to their privacy and the answer is that they can only expect FB to change things without notice and to continue to make things opt-in that used to be off by default. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Bear, it's not that I don't find it boring - I find the fact that we're repeating ourselves over and over again boring and the fact that people like you keep spreading false information like "you can't delete your account" boring. - Jesse Stay

I wasn't spreading false information, I was stating my opinion and it was corrected. At the time I last looked at my FB, which was the last time they changed privacy defaults, I could not fully delete it. Now I find you can - so for the folks who come to me for help with computer stuff I can point them to that page if they want. Me personally, I live in this bleeding-edge world and know how to deal with it. A lot of the points I raise are proxy items from the folks who look to me for help. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

I thought you got to choose what you enter into Facebook. Phone numbers and addresses and which school you went to etc... Most profiles I have set up for people have been set and forget. Either all closed, friends of friends or open. - Johnny from iPhone

Bear, also, since December, Facebook hasn't changed any previous privacy settings. They've added features since, but your privacy hasn't changed. - Jesse Stay from iPhone

Jesse - the impact of what was left as a default value changed. I say that as a casual user because people are finding me via FB that were not finding me previously via my network and city settings. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Bear, and you still have the option to opt out if you think it's a bigger impact. Everyone was notified 6 months ago exactly what was public and what was private. - Jesse Stay from iPhone

The minimal information exposed really isn't that big an impact though, I don't think. - Jesse Stay from iPhone

again, can you read what i'm saying ... I went into the settings 6 months ago and opted out of a lot of things and now I went back into it and items are now appearing with more options to select than were previously available. So the net change may be giving me more choice but some of the default values were tweaked to a more public view than I expected. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Facebook even sent out an email notifying people - Jesse Stay from iPhone

Jesse, do you think the fact that you are in a part a FB developer (through SocialToo, other?) may taint your point of view here a bit? Are all those people worried about aspects of this (Scoble, Om, various Google developers, etc. etc.), are we all "paranoid"? BTW, I haven't said one thing about account deletion. - Alex Schleber

Jesse I think often forgets that as a FB dev he often sees these changes long before others and has an fuller mental skeleton of what the interactions are than the "normal" user (IMO) - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Bear, I deal with the normal user more than I do developer. Most normal users don't care. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, BTW, the settings from 6 months ago (I for one overlooked the "What your friends can share about you through applications and websites" settings, and I am at least semi-savvy on this sort of thing) don't mean much, because ***THEN we didn't know that the entire thing was going to be shared with every possible site out there implementing "Open" Graph with a few copy&pastes.*** If the same stuff was already discoverable through Facebook Connect, then I missed that, ... - Alex Schleber

Jesse - then we inhabit totally different realms of "normal" - by far everyone who I deal with is hating on FB for these changes :) - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Alex, yes, you missed that - Jesse Stay

Bear, are those you deal with primarily in Silicon Valley? ;-) - Jesse Stay

Jesse - actually no - I live on the east coast and in a rurally conservative area. as far away from Silicon Valley as my job allows :) - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

... AND of course a lot fewer sites implemented FBConnect (because it was harder), showing up on a site required login with FBC there instead of it being automatic as it is now. Etc. - Alex Schleber

Alex, actually, name, location, gender, profile pic were all available without login via FB Connect before - Jesse Stay

Yes, but what about Interests, Religious orientation, etc. etc. ?!? - Alex Schleber

Alex, and tens of thousands of sites were implementing FB Connect as that information was available - Jesse Stay

Alex, that info isn't available as public by default right now - Jesse Stay

"right now" - that's the battle we're all fighting - for people that care about these things, we can't promise that it will remain any certain way - Christopher Galtenberg

And don't forget the raising of the 24-Hour limit on keeping data going away. That is a bit of a change, no? - Alex Schleber

FYI From Nov's update "Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without... more... - Chris Myles

The whole 24 hour limit thing is just recognition of the de-facto situation anyway. FB never had any real way to enforce that limit or how people treated the data that was received. - Otto

Christopher, Facebook hasn't made any moves to signify that will be changing any time soon. Not sure what you're getting at. - Jesse Stay

(Christopher G) - Jesse Stay

"any time soon" <- that - Christopher Galtenberg

Christopher, you can say the same about any other company that holds your data - still not sure what you're getting at - Jesse Stay

Yes you do - Christopher Galtenberg

Christopher, no I don't (???) - Jesse Stay

I really hope that Zuckerberg turns out to be a benign dictator... - Alex Schleber

Alex, :) me too! - Chris Myles

Wow - Jesse Stay

Re: benign http://www.businessinsider.com/10-reas... - sorry if I'm trolling, just my friend graph can't stop talking about this - Christopher Galtenberg

Look we can't even talk about what has happened, let alone what might. I trust they will give me notice of future changes and no I'm NOT naive. - Chris Myles

Chris, yeah - they haven't violated my trust, yet. - Jesse Stay

Oh great - now Louis Gray shared this on Twitter. Are we going to have to repeat this again? ;-) - Jesse Stay

Christopher, you should read some of the comments on the original post here http://www.rocket.ly/home.... Personally I have no tolerance for overly sensationalized blog posts, I like to make decisions based on facts!! - Chris Myles

Jesse, because you've essentially said you have no trust. (don't put anything online you don't want broadcast). Most FB users were led to believe they *could* trust FB with personal information. - Tinfoil 2.0 from iPhone

LogEx, I haven't said that either. I feel like I can trust Facebook. - Jesse Stay

I read the comments. I'm saying that my FB graph is abuzz about the article, and my friend count is dropping. The article matches the sentiment about FB perfectly. That's what matters, not that point #9 is invalid (it is). - Christopher Galtenberg

If FB allowed for a permanent "opt-out of public data until I say otherwise" that NEVER had to be revised whenever a new feature came along, some of the privacy complaints would be moot. However, this goes against FB's business interest of trying to have it be a more public system(as is alluded to in this thread). - George S.

Looks like it's me, Jesse and Paul :) - Chris Myles

Regardless, a great deal of data is also shared by various FB apps (e.g. when the user gets the dialog requesting that data is shared). This is a backdoor into their "private" data, so to be truly private you'd have to opt-out of many FB apps as well (unless they changed their policies). - George S.

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*sigh* - this is going in a loop - Jesse Stay

Jesse, you said "Don't put it online if you don't want it exposed" in this thread and similar statements in other forums. It's fine if you personally trust FB with your info, particularly since you don't seem to acknowledge that there are valid reasons for people to want and need privacy in their online interactions. But millions of other users don't feel that way, and have been and... more... - Tinfoil 2.0

The fact that there is so much controversy in this thread (and many others like it) are: (1) people want things from Facebook that Facebook no longer delivers; (2) it's difficult to know (particularly for laypeople who don't follow every little move like we all do) what exactly happens with your data and what may happen in the future. - Tinfoil 2.0

LogEx. Can you totally lock down your account. Is it possible? - Johnny from iPhone

LogEx, that was in response to people paranoid about the existing Facebook privacy preferences. If you have a problem with your name, city, profile picture, and network being exposed, best not to put anything online. Nothing has changed from Facebook. - Jesse Stay

Johnny, NO, it is no longer possible. It used to be. - Tinfoil 2.0

Johnny, your name, city, profile picture, network, and friends will always be visible. Everything else (assuming you don't like anything) can be locked down. - Jesse Stay

LogEx, that's only part of the story - you seem to have an agenda - share what I shared if you want to share the whole story. - Jesse Stay

Before November, the only thing required to be public were your Name and Networks. Friend List, Pages, and "Connections" can be very sensitive. People were brought up in Facebook believing that they had a private place if they wished to interact with friends and family. - Tinfoil 2.0

LogEx, that is correct, and they sent you an e-mail notifying you that was changing. That is the only thing that has changed in years. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, my agenda is, and always has been simple: maximize choice for users so that they can be AS public or AS private as they wish. - Tinfoil 2.0

LogEx, Facebook is *all about* choice. Lock 'er down. The only info exposed is what I listed above. Do you really have a problem with that? - Jesse Stay

Try getting as granular as you can with Facebook on Google or Twitter - you can't. - Jesse Stay

Also note that even Twitter private profiles expose more information than what Facebook does by default. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, part of this issue is trust. FB has a reputation problem, which the "only thing that his changed in years" has a lot to do with. It's a very significant change. Additionally, that "granularity" is both a blessing and a curse. Is there a "One Button" privacy feature? Because some people don't WANT granular. - George S.

Google knows remarkably little about me, due to the way their services are architected and due to the tools they provide. And, yes, I do have a problem with Facebook steadily removing privacy choices in Nov/Dec and again in April. People are now forced to share more. You can no longer "lock 'er down". - Tinfoil 2.0

George, one privacy change in 3 years is a pretty good reputation. - Jesse Stay

LogEx, I think you're naive in thinking that Google knows little about you - Jesse Stay

I don't think that logic is meaningful, because it's a pretty fundamental policy change - George S.

George, everyone has had the opportunity to delete their Facebook account if they choose. It's not a whole lot of information they exposed. Also, the entire Facebook population was given the opportunity to debate the change, as Facebook allows for any policy change. A very insignificant amount of people did. - Jesse Stay

FWIW, even before the change there was info, such as your profile pic and name that were exposed to the public - that has always been the case. - Jesse Stay

I'm not being at all naive Jesse. I use multiple Google accounts and have never populated any Google profiles with real world information about myself. I won't bore you with other details about how I manage my relationship with Google. - Tinfoil 2.0

LogEx, you are definitely not the normal user then - Jesse Stay

Also, "It's not a whole lot of information they exposed" - shouldn't that really be for each user to decide? Not all half billion users are privileged white males who don't have to worry about nuances of what might get exposed about their interactions with friends and family (and around the web). - Tinfoil 2.0

LogEx, you're on the web, on a social network that gets indexed by search engines - delete your account if you don't like that. I think it's a rather paranoid move if you're really bothered by that, though. Google and Twitter expose default information about you as well. - Jesse Stay

pain = (user-count * new-feature-impact ^ trust-involved). Everyone for or against any certain social network or policy knows that. Another axiom: The fans of the network in question will always act blinkered; the antagonists will still use the network within 60 minutes. - Christopher Galtenberg

Christopher, you are exactly correct - Jesse Stay

I think this argument isn't really about "default" information. Any service where you identify as a "real" person requires you to share this information. Though it is worth noting that Facebook expects you use your real name, while other services (i.e. Twitter) allow for more anonymity if you so choose. - George S.

George, what is this argument about then? I've lost track. - Jesse Stay

Yes, George S. makes an excellent point. Google and Twitter absolutely do not require your real world identity. Facebook collected hoardes of private real world identity info, THEN declared that much of that was being forced public (or coerced through UI). - Tinfoil 2.0

LogEx, you're sidetracking the fact that your name has been public for quite some time now - Jesse Stay

(goes to look up the default information listed in I'm on Facebook--Now What??? back in 2007) - Jesse Stay

This betrayal of trust shows two things: 1) FB is afraid of losing the real-time search content to Twitter and 2) Zuckerberg has learned *nothing* from the Beacon disaster. - Dave Hodson

Dave, what betrayal of trust? - Jesse Stay

Feels like he's repeating himself --> - Jesse Stay

Jesse: betrayal of trust -- users expect their data to be private. Pulling a fast one on them with new "default" settings that remove privacy setting is a betrayal. - Dave Hodson

Understands why Paul has given up on this conversation --> - Jesse Stay

Because you are not listening to the valid concerns of others. - Tinfoil 2.0

Dave, nothing fast has been pulled - read my comments above - Jesse Stay

Jesse: I have a teenage relative. I went through this person's profile and was shocked what the "suggested" defaults now expose to the world. - Dave Hodson

2 of the key privacy concerns on FB are more about 1) change from default-private to default-public, 2) How your other information is used by 3rd parties (e.g. Apps, etc., like when the app asks to share your info). In #2, most people just blindly "Allow". But they don't really know what they might be sharing, or to whom. - George S.

LogEx, I've heard it all - none of it is making sense. No privacy settings were removed this time around. - Jesse Stay

George, there has *always* been information available as public - Jesse Stay

They absolutely were changed in April via Connections. - Tinfoil 2.0

Jesse, I don't think you're grasping what I'm saying. - George S.

In 2007 they made all profiles on Facebook indexable by Google, to the extent of your name and some other small information (I'll look it up when I get home) - Jesse Stay

From another FF conversation: "The best privacy setting of all is yourself." Only give FB what you want to show up on CNN.com. Which for me is pretty much nothing now. - Christopher Galtenberg

LogEx what was changed? - Jesse Stay

Christopher, I agree with that - Jesse Stay

Jesse - perhaps you don't agree with my thoughts, but at least agree that there is negative sentiment out there about this and FB hasn't done a good job of clarifying changes. - Dave Hodson

Dave, your thoughts are 100% incorrect - it's not that I don't agree. It's that they're completely false. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, see: http://www.eff.org/deeplin... & http://www.eff.org/deeplin... & http://www.eff.org/deeplin... - Tinfoil 2.0

Jesse - wow, that is really funny. I don't know that I've ever been 100% incorrect before. Glad you have an open mind on this topic. - Dave Hodson

LogEx, you were given the opportunity to opt out of connections. If you don't like it, kill it. - Jesse Stay

Right, delete large sections of profile because FB no longer allows you to share them privately. That sounds like a great feature. - Tinfoil 2.0

Dave, you're not listening to me - your information has pretty much always been available as public. When did you first create your Facebook account? - Jesse Stay

Name and Networks have historically been the only things public. - Tinfoil 2.0

LogEx, then delete your Facebook profile if you don't like that. You have plenty of choice. Nothing is being taken away from you. - Jesse Stay

LogEx, you are correct. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, that's what you don't get. The point is that FB has been steadily removing choices. - Tinfoil 2.0

Jesse - I'm listening, I'm just 100% incorrect - Dave Hodson

Dave, exactly - Jesse Stay

Delete your profile = choice? - Christopher Galtenberg

Christopher, yup, that's still choice if you're offended by that little information being shared about you. Are you really *that* reliant on Facebook? - Jesse Stay

FB has become so so insistent at removing choices at the privacy end of the spectrum while boosting choices at the publicity end. To deny that people have at least as much need of privacy as they do of publicity is naive and dangerous. - Tinfoil 2.0

These things are tools - if they're not useful any more, don't use them. - Jesse Stay

LogEx, "*so* insistent" - 2 times in the last 3 years? - Jesse Stay

Sorry, my cut-and-paste typo. - Tinfoil 2.0

We know what you're saying, Jesse. Thanks for representing. And actually, am about to find out how dependent I am/was -- interested to see. - Christopher Galtenberg

The more you apologize for what everyone is trying to tell you is wrong, the more guilty you look. Stop apologizing for Facebook, Jesse. People shared who their real friends were, using their real names, and even tagged pictures of their kids, because they were told it would be safe and private. Now that hundreds of millions of people are locked in, Facebook is forcing its "privacy doesn't exist" model on them. It's fucked up and you know it. - Mr. Gunn

I don't have a problem with the changes in privacy settings (and I'm a lot more paranoid about privacy then Paul is). I DO care about the "pre-approved data sharing" though. I don't want CNN to be able to link the stories I read with my real name because I'm concerned about the potential to link me-as-a-real-person to a profile based on news stories I read. - Nick Lothian

One might be quite happy to walk down the beach with a wife or daughter, knowing that a handful of people might be looking at them lasciviously. Having someone collect pictures of them and a lot of private data under the false pretence of privacy and trust and then start sharing them around is a different thing entirely. The word pimp springs to mind. IMHO of course. - Jan Simmonds

+1 Mr. Gunn. Wow, quite the conversation while I was gone. I agree with @Zee much further up: I miss the old Friendfeed conversation days...FF was never the same after the buy-out shock. "Damn you Zuckerberg for siphoning off the FF team to slave away in the FB salt mines"... - Alex Schleber

See also: Facebook’s Paul Buchheit ***justifies*** increasing openness, less privacy http://social.venturebeat.com/2010... - Alex Schleber

Paul, For starters - both FriendFeed and Twitter have not changed their privacy policy as frequently and as ominously as Facebook has. :( And, I DON'T WANT ALL OF MY FRIENDS TO KNOW WHAT I AM DOING ON THE WEB - GOD DAMN IT. :) - Space Cowboy

Alex, you have an incredible talent for spinning context and slicing and dicing a conversation to *amplify* your point of view. Did you read the post you linked to? It says the exact same thing as the one Paul linked to above.. and there was no justification, just Paul's reasons for opening up his settings. I'm sure he's quite comfortable given his friendfeed history, it doesn't mean you or anyone else has to be!! - Chris Myles

I watch "best of day" emails from FriendFeed every day and this is the first one that got me excited about coming into FriendFeed for more than the past month. Is FriendFeed coming back? This thread shows it has the potential to. - Robert Scoble

Robert, While you're here.. what are your thoughts? - Chris Myles

People realizing that FB is basically a public network now should actually consider the best open public sharing network: this one. - Christopher Galtenberg

Christopher, there is *nothing* better than friendfeed (for me). - Chris Myles

Agreed - feels like a secret that people are yet to wake up to - almost everything good you want to do on the web you can do here (share, save, learn, filter, search, group, like, nudge, chat, dialogue) - Christopher Galtenberg

I even use private groups with *great* success! - Chris Myles

The real issue here, is that it's only us geeks that know there's a real facebook privacy issue OR give a shit. Most "normal" people have no idea their "private" info is wide open or that Zuck's constantly changing the rules of the game. That said, no one's forced to use FB. BTW: I'm 99.9% certain Zuck's gonna get away with this bait & switch bullshit. - Jim Connolly

Oh - and Friendfeed is MASSIVELY better than Facebook. - Jim Connolly

Been on-line since 1989, for someone who wants your information, there is no such thing as private information in a community environment. - Justin Hitt

1UP Jim. - Derrick

Chris, 1) of course I read the post I linked to, and apparently VentureBeat came away with a similar impression, that Paul's forays on this stuff have a tinge of "justifying." Look, it's OK, in the end FB can & will do whatever it wants, it's just that this strange "what privacy issues?" sermonizing is giving me the willies. Too much FB kool-aid already. And there seem to be a lot of other people on this thread who have similar feelings. - Alex Schleber

Justin, there's no such thing as an unstealable car either, but that doesn't invalidate the purpose of door locks. - Micah

... 2) I whole-heartedly agree that FF still rules, even though there has been no development in nearly a year, which is shocking if you think about it. I really wish FB hadn't bought these guys out, they could have done much better work here FASTER. Hey, money is money. After the buy-out, things went all emo on here though...so it hadn't been particularly useful for tech discussions. Nothing wrong with how the remaining folks use it, but that had never been my use case. - Alex Schleber

3) I am very happy to see that despite out differences, we can all still agree on Friendfeed being a superior solution. It's a shame that Google hasn't done a better job with Buzz (why is frankly beyond me), they could have done a FF++ and things would have been gravy... - Alex Schleber

4) BTW Scoble seems to be of two minds about it, he knows what FB is up to (and has argued that pretty much nothing can be done about it anymore), but also likes spying on other people's musical tastes on Pandora, etc. :) He gets "great value from that"... - Alex Schleber

Robert Scoble: FriendFeed is growing slowly. It's not a big-audience site like you're looking for, but it's still a place for great discussions. - Bruce Lewis

Bruce, that may be true but Robert's stated time and time again that he prefers tech-oriented discussions over anything else. Once he couldn't successfully get tech people to commit to FriendFeed, he wandered back to Twitter... or was it Buzz? Maybe it was Facebook. I can't remember. - Akiva

Don't you mean: FF is slowly returning to what it used to be. - Roberto Bonini

And honestly, I'm mostly with him on that. I miss the early days of FriendFeed when it was 80% tech and 20% LOLcats. Now it's 80% drama and 20% LOLcats. - Akiva

The only thing I dislike about Facebook's changes is that they made Friends and Pages public information. When they did that, I had to go and remove about 30% of my Friends and almost all of my Pages. It was quite annoying and I found that I used Facebook much less afterwards, since it was no longer a safe place to communicate with people. But if that's what Zuck wants, so be it. I'll just not use it as much. - Otto

Akiva: And 72% statistics that are made up on the spot (18.15573% of which are unnecessarily precise). - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo from iPhone

LOLs @Stephen. In this debate, statistics mean very little. - Roberto Bonini

At the moment, I really only use FB to a) share web links and things with friends, b) promote my own stuff via Pages and subscribers, and c) party/event tracking. I've blocked all the crappy game things long ago, so those don't bother me so much. Realistically, Facebook is only really useful to me as a venue for people to follow my own feeds (via the Like Pages mechanism). I have 400 odd followers that way. Facebook has become a feed-reader. - Otto

Akiva, if you're seeing too much drama, you're too hesitant to click Hide. - Bruce Lewis

Some REAL good points being made here! - Jim Connolly

Bruce, to know which threads need hiding, I have to see them first. - Akiva

There aren't enough drama posts to make anyone's feed 80% drama by virtue of seeing them once. The only way to have an 80% drama experience here is to let them keep popping back up. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Oh. You took my percentages seriously. Probably not a good idea. - Akiva

Joking is fine. I just want to make sure people reading this thread understand that you can get whatever flavor of conversation you want out of FriendFeed, percentage-wise. Absolute quantities are limited, but that can be a good thing. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Bruce, you're being Apple to Akiva's DeGeneres. :) - Micah

Micah, that's cool! Tomorrow Akiva is going to get on his show, apologize, and talk at length about what a fan he is of me and things I make. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Then you both win. - Micah

Can I high-five Akiva now, or do I have to act mad until after the apology? - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Robert, I haven't had to mute a thread in a long time - maybe you're right ;-) - Jesse Stay

I have no clue what you people are talking about any longer. - Akiva

me neither Akiva - i just came to post that "i saved a ton of money by switch my car insurance to Geico" ;) (not really, they stink) - Jeff (Team マクダジ )

Akiva, Micah was saying that I took your joke too seriously the way Apple took a DeGeneres joke too seriously. It was a nice way to ask me to lighten up. I complied by jokingly taking his analogy too far. Of course, explaining all this makes the joke 80% less effective. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Ah. But it makes me 20% less clueless now. - Akiva

Pay attention. We are talking about BBQ. OMGWTFBBQ. - Laura Norvig

You took his what seriously on the *internet*? - Christopher Galtenberg

For all of you self righteous privacy advocates out there, nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use Facebook! In case you all are not aware, you can choose what info to include in your profile, nobody is forcing you to enter your phone #, etc... You can even use a fake name if you'd like. You can choose what people can see what info, the tools are there to setup your account pretty much any way they want to - Brian from FFHound!

"self righteous privacy advocates" - you couldn't be more illuminating, Brian - Christopher Galtenberg

disrepute and shifty ethics: the FF/FB model of selling out & "professionalism"; this can surely be just more lip service "From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn... - sofarsoShawn

Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

Opera on the iPhone is AWESOME if you've always wanted the Web to look butt-ugly.

April 13, 2010 from Ping.fm - Comment - Like - Share

Mr Ghaz, Akiva, Chris Messina and Jeff (Team マクダジ ) liked this

It's Opera 6 all over again! - Akiva

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Cracking Facebook's Dominance: New Cross-Network Commenting - http://digg.com/tech_ne...

March 29, 2010 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

Andrei M. Marinescu and Chris Messina liked this

"Story is about Salmon Protocol, an open source technology developed by John Panzer of Google, that allows comments and messages to flow across websites. Two startups (Status.net, open source Twitter, and CliqSet, like FriendFeed) have interoperable implementations of it, as of today." - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Matt Mullenweg

RT @wordpress: WordPress for iPhone version 2.3 is now live. New geotagging support & over 250,000 users of the app: http://wp.me/pgi3r-9S

March 25, 2010 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Marcel Weiß and Chris Messina liked this

Steve Gillmor to Steve's feed, RealTime Network

Gillmor Gang, Live Recording Session at 12:30PM PT. Participate at http://www.building43.com/realtim...

March 12, 2010 - Comment - Like - Share

Zu from AOD, Chris Messina, Christophe Ducamp and 5 other people liked this

who are the guest's today? - Chris Jackson

67 more comments

Me and Chris Messina and others - Brett Slatkin

Chris Messina talking OpenId?? - Chris Jackson

Has Steve ordered his iPad yet? - Karoli

I;ve ordered 2 - Steve Gillmor

We will be up shortly. - Robert Scoble

Gillmor Gang live recording session now w/ Scoble, Marks, Slatkin and Messina at http://building43.com/realtime - Cliff Gerrish

Fillmore? West or East? - Cliff Gerrish

the latest Foursquare update (3-11) is much better than the prev. Im liking foursquare more and more - Chris Jackson

not that hard. just put a "hide" link on the thing. - Karoli

Only bump stuff when somebody I follow comments. - Ken Sheppardson

Then you need to let me pull in somebody elses app/view into Gmail. - Ken Sheppardson

Buzz just doesn't scale if people actually use it. - Ken Sheppardson

Z listers? - Cliff Gerrish

Wait.... if somebody I follow comments to someone I *don't*, I don't see the item in my stream. Buzz doesn't have friend-of-a-friend... or am I missing something? - Ken Sheppardson

Let us all shout from the mountains: Robert Scoble is insane. - Karoli

Giving power users control over their experience isn't incompatible with making the system more usable to non-power users. It's a strawman. - Ken Sheppardson

Kevin, Cliqset does that. All of that. Cliqset stream filtering gives you much more flexibility than FriendFeed or Buzz. - Darren

Yes, exactly Darren, cliqset does this nicely. - Kevin Marks from Android

Ostatus. - exador23

We need *many* different systems, each optimized for one or another kind of interaction, yet all working together... - Bob Wyman

shouting in foursquare is kinda cool - Chris Jackson

Hey, Kevin: Is anybody from Twitter active in the Activitystreams process? - Ken Sheppardson

No, Ken, twitter us sadly missing from activity streams discussion - Kevin Marks from Android

All services should be sharing the same information but competing based on what they do with the data. - Bob Wyman

Absolutely. It levels the playing field and becomes less about having critical mass. - Darren

Using one versus the other will not mean sacrificing connectivity or conversation with those on other systems. - Darren

Sharing the data means that new and innovative services can launch with a small user base and then grow. Today, a new service is forced to isolate its users from the rest of the conversation. - Bob Wyman

with items like Activity Streams and Salmon Protocol - then sites can compete on how they expose/manage the UI/X experience. This allows users to pick the site based on how it allows them to interact with the stream. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Use the Source! - Bob Wyman

Changing the Topic: Are those iPhone or Nexus One headphones on Chris and Brett? - Alex de Soto

In nature when a channel is that narrow it gets routed around - same will happen with Twitter soon - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Thanks Kevin. Yes, as Chris Messina says, we "up convert" to Activity Streams. :) - Darren

We should all read legacy formats like RSS, but we should only write Atom... - Bob Wyman

Virtually nobody uses rssCloud. Vastly more people use PSHB. Should we implement *all* protocols no matter how good they are or how few people use them? - Bob Wyman

Postels law applied to feeds, Bob? - Kevin Marks from Android

Absolutely, Postel was a smart guy! Read RSS, Write Atom. - Bob Wyman

Ostatus puts it all together http://status.net/2010... http://ostatus.org/ - exador23

Why don't we just move PSHB spec into an IETF working group and then do all the normal patent disclosures? - Bob Wyman

Leo Laporte makes a cameo on the Gillmor Gang. - Cliff Gerrish

Leo :-) - Jamie

Great, first time on Friendfeed in a long time. Slow down is because of changing servers? - Tom Landini

Would Facebook want everyone to use their API? If they really wanted everyone using the same API, wouldn't Facebook be using open standards or putting their API through open review? - Bob Wyman

It's like Brett just mentioned - is Facebook ready internally to allow their use of a protocol to be dictated by an outside agency. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Standards are like sausage... They taste good, but don't ask too many questions about how they are made. - Bob Wyman

Great question, Steve. - r Macdonald

Track! If we standardize on *existing* API's, we'll never be able to implement TRACK! - Bob Wyman

Track MUST come back one day... - Bob Wyman

Bob, yes. it must. - Karoli

Standards are actually a conservative element in the overall progress of the stream. - Cliff Gerrish

status net + identispy when there's one statusnet stream, and one buzz stream and one facebook stream, etc that something like identispy can access brings track back. - exador23

Cliff, standards are "conservative" once adopted. But, often, the process of defining the standard is progressive since folk seek to anticipate and identify future needs. The nature of the standard depends on where you are in its life cycle. - Bob Wyman

Google shouldn't be "releasing APIs" -- Google should be *using* openly defined APIs defined by the community. There should be NO "Buzz API" -- there should only be "APIs that Buzz uses." - Bob Wyman

ostatus piggybacks on Atom, Activity Streams, PubSubHubbub and such. Right now, I can subscribe from identi.ca, or any website running status.net to any Buzz profile, thanks to the magic of Atom, PubSubHubbub, Activity Streams and whathaveyou. Interoperability. It's getting there. Interestingly enough, I can't subscribe to cliqset users. Must be something about their Atom implementation. - Ed F

Bob Wyman makes an excellent point - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

But, we haven't started defining the "track" extensions to these protocols.... That will come soon! - Bob Wyman

or the geo query extension, Bob - Robert Scoble

Errr.. The "geo guery" thing might be hard to do in a "standard" since we've still got a good bit of uncertainty in terms of what people need. But, yes, we've got to work on it. - Bob Wyman

simplegeoinc's http://vicarious.ly example is a good one, bob. documenting the buzz geo api the mobile client uses would be good too - Robert Scoble

Kevin, are you playing the role of Scoble? - Cliff Gerrish

Note: There's geo stuff in HTML5 as well. Much to be considered here. - Bob Wyman

I have scoble's gadgets bag here.... - Robert Scoble

Please compete with Buzz! Please! - Bob Wyman

Great show Steve - thanks! - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Thanks for another good show - r Macdonald

Great show,thanks Steve - Alex

thanks all! - Brett Slatkin

If we had to wait for open community standards based APIs before doing anything, nothing would ever get done. Software is released in months, standards are released in years, and standards not based on field experience are useless anyway. Push forward now. Organize and consolidate later. - Todd Hoff

standards are not released in years: http://ostatus.org/sites... - exador23

Paul Buchheit

The Buzz/Gmail integration is nice. They should open those integration points to other apps, such as FriendFeed.

February 12, 2010 - Comment - Like - Share

Robert Higgins, Krishnamoorthy, Susan Beebe and 73 other people liked this

e.g. the ability to have live updating messages in the inbox. - Paul Buchheit

52 more comments

is buzz a service? - MikeAmundsen

I think that could very well be coming, but in a slightly different form. That is, Gmail proper is a client for email, but Buzz is a client for social activity. Instead of having another tab for FriendFeed, Buzz would simply and seamlessly sync everything, including comments and attribution, with FriendFeed (and Facebook) via WebFinger/Salmon/ActivityStreams/etc. - Mark Trapp

No, I mean other apps, not necessarily just FriendFeed variants. - Paul Buchheit

If the ux is appending elements, then salmon would seem to be the way to do it, though then it needs a permalink to hang off. - Kevin Marks

That could be a nice baby step toward Wave (or Wave-like functionality) within Gmail. Update threads from XMPP, SMS, APIs,... - Tinfoil 2.0

Now you're talking! (I almost typed that in all caps.) - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

Paul, ah, like maybe Farmville? :-P Edit: not Farmville. But totally multiple games of Scrabble. Or even document collaboration. - Mark Trapp

I'd like comments sync'ed between the two but that's a pipedream. - Kol Tregaskes

Paul, are you saying you wan the equivalent of http://friendfeed.com/api... ? - Kevin Marks

I think they should just add header tags and use SMTP standard to do it. If specific header tags are in place, then Gmail adapts. - Jesse Stay

I agree though - I could use this in SocialToo's DM e-mails. - Jesse Stay

No, Kevin I'm talking about the interface integration. I would like to have made FriendFeed do the things that Buzz is doing in Gmail, but of course that kind of integration isn't possible to outside developers. - Paul Buchheit

It could then use salmon to sync comments from whatever service decides to adapt it - Jesse Stay

Salmon has nothing to do with what I'm asking for. - Paul Buchheit

Salmon drenched in butter and onions. Yum. - τorƍue

I'd like to change friendfeed so that the comments aren't too grey to read on my Mac, so it supports microformats, and the faces are bigger, but I can't do that either (well, not without munging with your sample apps: http://friendlierfeed.appspot.com ) - Kevin Marks

I don't see how Salmon couldn't be used for this. Salmon ideally could be used to push comments into the e-mail, couldn't it? Or am I misunderstanding what Salmon does? - Jesse Stay

Jesse, what if I want to change the message content entirely, not just be stuck within the limits of a comment-oriented ui? - Paul Buchheit

Paul, good point - that does limit to just a comment-oriented structure. Maybe they could use the Facebook API code at http://developers.facebook.com/opensou... to implement Canvas pages for e-mail. ;-) An FBML tag could tell it where to put the message body. - Jesse Stay

I'd love that functionality in Facebook, too, btw. I'd just take the ability to delete a message via API in Facebook though at a minimum. - Jesse Stay

The basic idea is that the inbox structure is useful, and as Buzz has demonstrated, it's useful for more than just email, so why not open up the inbox to third-party apps. BTW, we actually prototyped something like this for FriendFeed (open the feed to other apps), but never completed it enough to ship. I think it still has a lot of potential though. - Paul Buchheit

Paul, sounds like an opportunity for competition :-) - Jesse Stay

You didn't have to bugger off to Facebook you could still be developing Friendfeed right now and competing with Buzz. Google clearly thinks you guys were on to something here and there is money left on the table. - Mark

They must think there is lots of money to be made in a Friendfeed clone to put it dead center in the middle of their top service. - Mark

I think Facebook saw that, too :-) - Jesse Stay

Mark, buzz has a bit of a structural advantage over FriendFeed in that it can integrate with Gmail :) - Paul Buchheit

Yeah hehe. The truth is though, right now, Buzz is not as good / polished as Friendfeed. But I imagine they have lots and lots of people (probably more than was on the Friendfeed team) working on things. - Mark

I'll defer to Paul as the expert on this one :-) - Jesse Stay

Let's call a spade a spade. You can't say this but I can. Google stole your idea! lol. - Mark

Google steals all of Paul's ideas ;-) - Jesse Stay

Didn't they pay for some of them Jesse? :-) - Ken Sheppardson

Kevin Marks said on Gillmor Gang today that he was testing Buzz before he left google and that was age ago so they were developing Buzz when Friendfeed was growing and peaking. Suprised they didn't just try and buy Friendfeed. - Mark

And nobody is saying that FriendFeed could integrate in the same way on Facebook's messaging 2.0? - Louis Gray

Whilst we were all coming to Friendfeed, they were salivating over the service. - Mark

Everyone has their Facebooks set to Private though, or the most popular guys have the full 5000 limit so it wouldn't be as effective if they turned on Friendfeed for Facebook :( - Mark

I read recently somewhere on one of the big blogs that the fact so many people have Private accounts is hurting Facebooks in search revenue potential. - Mark

Obviously you can't do cool search things if 3/4 of the things people look for are coming from Private accounts and are blocked out of the search systemm - Mark

Hmm, maybe Buzz is a glimpse of a future Facebook-like app platform in gmail? Google Friend Connect fits in there somewhere. - Daniel Sims

Mark, everyone has their Gmails set to private as well - Jesse Stay

Daniel, I think Google is recreating a social network from the ground up. I think they could have just done it starting with Orkut if they did it right. I'm usually wrong though. - Jesse Stay

What happens if you edit via IMAP an email that is being read in gmail? - Nick Lothian from iPod

Sorta defeats the purpose of a "walled garden" if you open up the app to the competition #justsayin - WarLord

Nice - TrafficBug

Hey Paul, you guys should look into the Kynetx platform. With one platform you can create extensions across multiple browsers that re-organize the viewing experience. So, even without Google allowing you to alter it, you can allow users to alter it with just a simple install of a Facebook extension for their browser. You guys modify the experience, users get comments in their Gmail for FriendFeed/Facebook, and everyone's happy. No need to wait for Google for that. - Jesse Stay

If you guys don't create it I will so let me know :-) - Jesse Stay

Of course they do :) - Xavier Vespa

Yahoo! Mail supports adding OpenSocial apps. Would be nice to have the same in GMail. http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/apps - David Recordon

David, I'd love to see you guys do a Kynetx app. It could be your first entry into the Information/Action card space. :-) - Jesse Stay

BTW, I *love* some of the API stuff Yahoo is doing. Their APIs right now are really useful (and work with Facebook Connect)! - Jesse Stay

This is definitely a good idea. In the near term you could get most of the same benefit by making a friendfeed igoogle gadget. I don't know how many people check their email through igoogle rather than gmail, but I'd be willing to be that it's significant. - Ryan Moulton

They should probably build integration into their own properties first. Where's Buzz in Google maps? Where's the Buzz iGoogle gadget? - Julian Bond

@David Recordon -- see http://blog.opensocial.org/2009.... Doesn't come close to covering every use case discussed here, but does, I think, do exactly what you're asking about. - David Glazer

even the ff team don't care about their services, how do you want it from google? may be google knows the truth that ff team wont develope ff anymore. when will facebook shut down the ff service? - Ibrahim Ozturkcan from iPhone

Bret Taylor

Web Sockets in Tornado - Bret Taylor's blog - http://bret.appspot.com/entry...

December 31, 2009 from Facebook - Comment - Like - Share

ЕП, Sinan Duman, Emre M. and 23 other people liked this

Is there any way to use Web Sockets on Google App Engine (Python)? - Michael R. Bernstein

7 more comments

What Gary said. Specifically, systems like AppEngine are meant to be scalable by strongly encouraging (well, requiring, for all intents and purposes) a stateless server model. A long-lived socket connection, by contrast, is meant to do the precise opposite. I suspect the AppEngine team is thinking about this sort of thing w.r.t. XMPP and WebSockets, but I'm not sure how they'll resolve this dichotomy. - Joel Webber

I agree, Gary, you definitely have to deal with dropped connections on both sides to make apps work correctly. On the server side, the code looks almost identical to the long-polling code, except you "send a message" rather than finish the HTTP response, but I don't think you can get rid of the concept of cursors and connection restarts without losing messages on dropped connections. - Bret Taylor

What are "cursors" in this context? Seems like the logical thing would be to have a message queue fabric that uses WebSockets and/or other transports to send, receive, and acknowledge messages, with stateless handlers that are invoked for incoming messages, can access storage resources, and can enqueue new outgoing messages (not necessarily to the same client). (I don't know anything about GAE's plans.) - ⓞnor

Right, thanks. The message fabric would need to have message queues which can be indexed with the cursors. So state is kept in the message queues ("above") and the storage layer ("below"), but message handlers (app logic) can be stateless. This model might not be very efficient if you have to keep loading and saving a lot of state for every message, but you have that problem with HTTP servers too, and the same solutions (memory based cacheservers, sticky-but-unreliable session objects, etc) apply. - ⓞnor

No question that sockets *can* be used in an essentially stateless manner, as long as both sides are resilient to dropped connections. One assumes the servlet/handler/whatever would need to be terminated automatically when resources are needed. But the server would need to be very carefully constructed such that it could always recover lost state when this happens. - Joel Webber

Agreed, Gary. But for something like AppEngine, we're talking about the need to be resilient to the equivalent of a server restart with very little notice, more frequently than would happen naturally. I believe this would mean being essentially stateless, even though you're keeping a socket connection open to a client, which is certainly possible, but not a necessity one would expect... more... - Joel Webber

Bret, I love this web socket daemon feature, hope all the web clients/servers implement this API soon. - Orlando Pozo

1000% easier, huh! - Emre M.

Louis Gray

According to my e-mail archive, louisgray.com launched Dec. 31, 1999, or 10 years ago today, just in time for Y2K.

Screen shot 2009-12-31 at 11.52.51 AM.jpg

December 31, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

chaz2b, Benin Brown, Thierry R. Andriamirado and 24 other people liked this

And this is another good reason I keep all my e-mail (or almost all of it)... - Louis Gray

12 more comments

Of course, at the time, it was a flat site and not a blog. But boy, wouldn't that have been something if I had posts going back that far. - Louis Gray

Pretty: http://web.archive.org/web... - Darren

And that pic also reminds me of a time when the @home service was thriving! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Judging by the color scheme you were a fan of Google. - Darren

Darren, your assumption is correct. I pretty much scraped this page: http://www.google.com/intl... The funny thing is, at the time, Google wasn't so visible that everybody would recognize it. :) - Louis Gray

ZuDfunck, according to Google Calculator, I was 10 years younger than I am now. - Louis Gray

This 2001 screenshot shows my linking to when XP launched. Good times. :) http://web.archive.org/web... - Louis Gray

The 2000-era "About Page" http://web.archive.org/web... - Louis Gray

Happy 10th birthday Louis! - Jim Connolly

WOW, that is really cool! I started using Blogger in 2003 (smbeebe account)... Wish I hadn't deleted all my old blog posts...aarggg - Susan Beebe

You were on @Home ten years ago? Me too. I lived in the neighborhood in Fremont which was wired for the LANCity modems. - DGentry

Yes, DGentry, I was on @Home, while in Belmont. Prior to that, I was on Earthlink. Prior to that, I was on the UC Berkeley student system. Prior to that, AOL. Prior to that, Prodigy. - Louis Gray

Prior to that, morse code ! - Mo Kargas

Paul Buchheit

If we can't catch a Nigerian with explosives in feminine underpants, whose father alerted the U.S. embassy, whose ticket was bought in cash, who didn’t check bags, whose visa was denied by the UK, who studied in Yemen, whose name was on a watch list, who can we catch? - http://origin.reddit.com/r...

December 30, 2009 from Reddit - Comment - Like - Share

Neşe, mustufa, Jens Holze and 79 other people liked this

Damn... - Rahsheen?

34 more comments

:| - AJ Batac

If only he'd been using OpenID with the new 'terrorist' attribute. - Cliff Gerrish

Cliff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... ? :) - Tudor Bosman

wow - .LAG liked that

Maybe we're not trying to catch terrorists? Maybe we're trying to manufacture excuses to more tightly control US citizens, and terrorism is just the rationalization du jour? - Mr. Gunn

I second .LAG's "wow" - Jan Ole Peek

We need better spam filters to stop the Nigerians before they ever get through, they're all trouble. - Gimminy

Maybe they're thinking if they let one underpants bomber get through, then they have justification to go to war on all underpants. - Morton Fox

What does the 'studied in Yemen' part mean? - Andrew C (✓) from Android

Next, only masculine underpants will be allowed on flights. - Ruchira S. Datta

They're waiting until they fileshare. Once these guys fileshare, they're toast. - Spidra Webster

exactly! ... this was, again, inside operation - the guy was just let go /aided even/ to board that plane. ..the good thing is, that unlike 9/11, inside job was set up so that no fatalities occur - bomb did not explode. i like that ... http://krunchd.com/inside , http://WorldNewsRecord.wordpress.com , http://Twitter.com/911news , http://Friendfeed.com/911news - pb:

I read this week that the two most important changes to airline security since 9/11 are re-enforced cockpit doors and that now passengers know to fight back. Who knows how many plans have been thwarted by the first, and between 1 and 3 have been thwarted by the second (depending how you count it: Flight 93, the shoe bomber, and the underwear bomber). - Kevin Fox

I'm with you Cristo....heavy on the incompetence. - Bonnie Foster

http://www.wired.com/threatl... - Ryan Kaisoglus

Never attribute to conspiracy that which can adequately be explained by incompetence. - Joel Webber from BuddyFeed

wow - ★ Soner Gönül

sublata causa tollitur morbus - A. T.

Please translate from Latin(?) for us dumb folk, thanks - LANjackal from IM

*remove the cause - sickness will go away itself* - old medical proverb (yes, in Latin) - A. T.

if people can crash a White House party and it goes on and on - VALZ/TEAM TRAVIS

I'm not convinced this can adequately be explained by incompetence. I don't know that there was a conspiracy, but I can't dismiss the possibility given the depth of incompetence required. Assuming conspiracies never happen is as mindless as assuming everything is conspiracy. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

It *is* pretty interesting that people bitch about too much airport security until there's a thwarted bombing, then they say there's never been enough. - Kevin Fox

Ummm I think you're confused, Kevin. The *general public* complains about there being too much security. The only people who complain about there being too little are politicians trying to win votes via FUD & scaremongering - LANjackal from IM

Anyone know the names of the companies who are making whole body scanners? I think I need to buy some stock. - Victor Ganata

Victor: http://www.cyberware.com/ - Rochelle

Kevin - There's a reason for the "no getting up last hour" rule, and it's not to prevent a terrorist from going to the bathroom. It's to prevent innocent people with headscarves from being tackled by well-meaning but jittery passengers. - Mr. Gunn

Moot point, that rule was silly and has since been repealed - LANjackal from IM

In other words, the TSA strategy = FAIL. - Victor Ganata

Seriously. An amazingly _expensive_ FAIL. All that time, people-power, money spent, so we can hear platitudes about why it did not work or that there are things that can be improved. - Rick Cogley

Three hours delay at Paris CDG for this the following day on-route to Detroit. Most of this spent in the queue at the departure gate as they had only one male and one female officer to carry out an intensive search of 300 pax and their carry-ons. Explanations from Air France were very sparse, fortunately I'd caught all the details on Sky News at Manchester. - Nick B.

@Chris..No, I do not think there is one big conspiracy, and that all is conspiracy. Let's please stick to FACTS and lets debate that. ok? (1). Detroit bomber was on a Britain 'no-entry' radical Islamist list. IF THIS will not hint CIA FBI DHS TSA to not only not to allow this guy in the US, BUT ALSO to search him down while boarding, then I DO NOT believe it was complete imbecile fail... more... - pb:

@Chris.. further, please understand, that nanothermite high military explosive was found on the site of 9/11 WTC controlled demolition inside operation pretext for wars, just as pools of molten steel. please understand that buildings were PULVERIZED with the speed close to free fall, 11 floors per second .... NoT possible other than masterpiece controlled demolition, per irrefutable scientific evidence .... i mean, have you seen the video footage? http://ae911truth.org - pb:

HOW do you colonize countries in the age of airplanes as suicide weapons, of people willing to die in a suicide and terror act to resist occupations, in the age of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons? ....these wars are a big mistake .. http://krunchd.com/911 pretext for wars - pb:

This adds new dimensions to "Liar, liar, pants on fire." - Barbara Langham

Bret Taylor

Happy holidays from the FriendFeed crew! - http://blog.friendfeed.com/2008...

December 23, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

cyrusholiday, urdumania1, berkay sözbilir. and 268 other people liked this

Thanks to Kevin for another great logo... - Bret Taylor

37 more comments

YAY! Snowmens! - Yolanda

Cool logo! :) - AJ Batac

I think they need scarves. They look cold. - Yolanda

Great logo! Simple and fun. - Brandon Titus

great :) çok sevdim bu logoyu :) - Burak Budak

Cool :D - Pedram

Kevin - that is an awesome logo!!!!! - Susan Beebe

+102 for Bill Waterson references in picture Kevin or words Sinterclas - SteVe C

cute but what happened to festivus this year? - Laura Norvig

Merry Christmas to the FriendFeed team. You guys rock! FriendFeed reacts quickly and you're adding wonderful features all the time (Thanks soooo much for the "edit" feature.) - Mitchell Tsai

Happy Festivus! - ◄ani625Ξ ಠ_ಠ

Happy festive season to you all as well :) - Niki Costantini

Happy Holidays!!! - David Cook

love it~ - Sunny

Love!!! - Bee

Glad you like it! (And glad people picked up on the Waterson influence :-) - Kevin Fox

Merry Christmas! :D - Ron

Happy Holidays FF crue -- you've made this an excellent and memorable year for many of us. Facebook couldn't have done it without you! :) - Christopher Galtenberg

w00t you gave me the best online year in 15 years!!! ;p Thanks a lot, everyone, for what you've done here XD - Zu from AOD

Merry Christmas to all - Craig Eddy

Merry Christmas! - Svein Håvard Djupvik

Haha! I love horrified snowmen. Merry Christmas to FriendFeed! - Chris Lasher

Joyeux Noel a tout le monde! - Mathieu Ayel

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! - Anne Bouey

Feliz navidad a ti! - JA Castillo

Thanks! Happy Holidarys! Merry Christmas! - Bill Romanos

happy christmas, chanukah and kwanzaa. - Deniz Eda Goze

happy chrismas and a happy new year!!! - ethan meccage

Awwwww sniff - Kevin Fox

Happy holidays! Take good care of yourselves and... enjoy those days off! <o> \o, - Zu from AOD

Merry Christmas! - Ian May

Tks and love you all !!! - @Renchin@

ahh, the good ol' days. - MikeAmundsen

Happy Holidays FriendFeers! <superbump /> - AJ Batac

cool!! - Ferzvladimir

*bump* - imabonehead

Sigh. Sometimes it is the little touches, like seasonal logos or easter eggs, that mark a site as a living project, and that you really miss when the developers have all moved on to something else. - Michael R. Bernstein

ای جان چقدر خوبه این - WALL.E

Ken Sheppardson

Fox News Makes the Best Pie Chart. Ever. | FlowingData - http://flowingdata.com/2009...

November 26, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Chris Messina, Dave Winer, Neşe and 6 other people liked this

oh damn - Richard Lawler

Their support reaches into other dimensions!! - iTad

LOLz. - Jason Toney

Bret Taylor

International growth has started to completely dominate on FriendFeed since August. Below is an unlabeled graph of page views on FriendFeed this month, broken down by country. Guess which country is the largest green slice below? (Hint: it is not English-speaking)

November 23, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

atner, Gimminy, Adrian and 194 other people liked this

Iran! - Marshall Kirkpatrick

83 more comments

Turkey?? - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

We are still blocked in Iran - Bret Taylor

Turkey - Cliff Gerrish

Me - Johnny

Brazil? - Marshall Kirkpatrick

turkey, imho. - 1Co

Oh and good to see you bret. - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

Turkey is in fact the green slice. Orange is also not English speaking. Guess which country :) - Bret Taylor

france - WoH: Professor MOTHRA

Hmm.. Turkey is the biggest international... I am not surprised (: - Ozgur Demir

i totally don't know my FF :( - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Orange - Russia? :) - постигать занавески

FF is rising fast in Turkey I guess. And will probably continue to rise for some time. Celebrities are joining too (: - Hakan Deryal

I am guessing the orange is Canada :P - Johnny

COUNTRY OR CONTINENT?UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.... - Pam Gwenzi

@Brent. is USA one of these countries ? or does chart only show internationals ? - Ozgur Demir

USA is blue. About 23% of our page views now. - Bret Taylor

Does Australia get a slice? - Johnny

@Bret, Can we get more info about Turkey in FF? - Hakan Deryal

India - Hayes Haugen

The orange slice is actually Italy, believe it or not. Turkey and Italy have been growing like gangbusters the past few months. - Bret Taylor

@Bret. yes, your guess is correct (about gangs) (: - Ozgur Demir

I believe it - RAPatton from iPhone

Turkey. hehe :) - Oguz Serdar from Android

Gray is "other" - Bret Taylor

where other is proxied users from Iran. ;) - EricaJoy

If we were not blocked , we would win a big slice for iran :( - Milad.p from FreshFeed

Both China and Iran would have been in there if they were not both blocked currently - Bret Taylor

That's where Australia is, in the grey :) - Glenn Slaven

OMG. Friendfeed is going the way of Orkut ;) Btw, is Norway/Scandinavia even visible in all this ? Just curious. - ɯɥøq sɐɯoɥʇ

@thomas. even though Orkut is Turkish (the guy), it is (site) not big in Turkey. - Ozgur Demir

i'm sure finland is forbidden long time ago from this list ;) - Neya from fftogo

Just look at the public feed for 2 secs or 2 hours - yep, definitely. - Micah from iPhone

Facebook has a very similar story as far as I know.. we are a communicative nation:) - Neşe

Who's Gray? It's Gray, Louis of course :) - Micah

Thank you for sharing this graph, Bret. - Micah

Interesting - though for the sake of data visualization, pie charts are the worst of all.... :) - See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

See-ming, a-hem, take a look at your avatar ;) - Micah

@Bret, what is the exact number of Turkish people on FF? - Özkan Altuner

Ozkan, I'd be curious to know too, but I have a feeling there's an internal policy about not releasing absolute numbers, hence the percentages. But it never hurts to ask :) - Micah

@Micah, it's the page view, however, not the number of users :) - Özkan Altuner

Good point, Ozkan. But I can't remember Visitor or View counts ever publicly reported before. But today could be the first time! :) - Micah

Iran :-) - Nimaa

Everyone knows teh fuckin answer Bret. It's Turkey. Mahir loves you http://www.ikissyou.org - AlpB. from iPod

I'm not surprised that Turkey is the green portion. I've seen more and more Turkish posts in my home feed. I thought it was just a biased sample, but perhaps not. - John (bird whisperer)

Iran - Assal

Turkey - Shey

Intense competition between Iran and Turkey occurred :D - Nimaa

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...MOZAMBIQUE luminous orange l guess - Pam Gwenzi

the desire to push the boundaries of internet of the turkish is troubling. the possesive tendecies of the turkish can be observed in the currently popular ''ff bu deYil'' (this is not ff) comment. turks are crowding ff, westerners are in panic! - feraye

international growth dominates FF and yet the USA dominates the world. Not always in good ways either. What is the link? I don't think there is one. All I can say is that I love the USA and I love FriendFeed. What does it all mean? More free, cold beer is needed to find the answers. - Morgan

.. because, Turkish Facebook users are 10-20 years old. FF is very good alternative for older users. (and in addition Twitter is non-useful) - Emre M.

Bret would that mean that FF has around 200K Turkish users? http://siteanalytics.compete.com/friendf... - Cem ARGUN

Murat Tatar. So you've seen that Turkish Facebook users demographics ? even though it's unpublished. - Ozgur Demir

Actually, I wonder when Bret is gonna post something like "FF bu degil!".. - Ozgur Demir

Bret start learning Turkish. You should have guessed from the reactions the days a.) you changed the design, b.) announced the FB deal. :) - Cem ARGUN

I've noticed it on my feed. It's all good. - Eric - seven eleven

I've noticed a huge increase in Iran, peaking at about 7-8am Eastern - Hollywood Amanda

Just curious, what's happening with total page views? (I don't trust alexa, compete, etc.) - Bruce Lewis

@Bret, 1- Turkey, 2- USA, 3- Italy, 4- India, 5- Japan, 6- Germany, 7- UK & Russia 8 - Pakistan 9- Iran 10- Canada.. Is it True? - Kemalettin Bulamacı

italian power! yeah! ;) - Dario Salvelli

Anyone worth their weight in tweets knows that it's turkey. - Richard A.

Turkey? - ★ Soner Gönül

If that is so, can we get some way of filtering by language? I want to follow more international people but be able to ignore them or their friends when they post in what I cannot read :) - Iphigenie

Turkiye :) - Mustafa Çamaltı

italy rules!! :-) - batta

Turkey - Melih Bahadır Varol

My bet's on India - Rod Nicolson

Country dominating FriendFeed? My guess...Brazil (have to bet on the homeland) - Victoria Harres

Btw, FriendFeed is blocked in Turkish Schools :( - batuhan from iPhone

Italy? - Matte

You may have to develop "hide by language" feature very soon. - Bahadır Yağan

Afghanistan - Pam Gwenzi

go italy! - Alessandro

How much does the UK get? - Kol Tregaskes

Turkey is the winner btw. - Kol Tregaskes

YEAH TURKEY ! - Çağatay " SKYLAB " Şama

different kind of widgets? I don't like with blue line. years fighting with it :) and option to change fonts. please :) - Okeane

#Turkey of course ;) - Volkan Özçelik

IRAN :) - امیروفسکی

:) - Susan Beebe

Is there any place to get a full breakdown, including the smaller slices, by country with percentages? Thanks. - Michael Toler

@bret, what is the number of friendfeed users in total? - elodeon

Marshall Kirkpatrick

How's this for an explanation of Pubsubhubbub?

November 22, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Régis Gaidot, Alexander Ainslie, Gimminy and 8 other people liked this

<h2>How Hubbub Works</h2> There are three parties in the Pubsubhubbub model. There's a Publisher (FeedBurner, for example), and a Subscriber (perhaps Netvibes) and the communication is facilitated through a Hub (Google's AppSpot Hub is the demo and most popular Hub so far). The publisher knows that every time new content is published it's going to notify the Hub - the Hub that gets notified will be declared at the top of the publisher's document, just like an RSS feed URL. So the Publisher delivers new content to the Hub and then the Hub will deliver that message immediately to all the Subscribers who have subscribed to recieve updates from that particular publisher. This is very different from the traditional model of a subscriber polling a publisher directly every 5 to 30 minutes (or less) to check and see if there's new content. There usually isn't and so that model is inefficient and slow. Hubbub is nearly immediate and only takes action when something important occurrs. It's... more... - Marshall Kirkpatrick

11 more comments

That's good! - Julien

awesome, thanks. - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Great, although Brad's kid in the backseat analogy rules. - Darren

yes, incorporating that explanation as well, thanks - Marshall Kirkpatrick

very clear explanation. spot on. - Josh Fraser

Awesome. Thanks, Marshall! - Amber Case

Pretty good. For context, I think it's important to point out that the hub in PuSH is acting as a relay. The relay is necessary largely for scaling purposes — that is, it plays a very important role, but the technology underlying the hub is extremely simple. - Chris Messina

A better example publisher would be ReadWriteWeb, rather than FeedBurner (which would likely turn into a hub itself). Let's say RWW posts a new blog post; the blogging software then pings any number of hubs with a message: "Hey, new content here". The hub says, "Great thanks," grabs the content, and then *pushes* the content to everyone on its "subscriber" list. - Chris Messina

RWW could send out those notifications itself, but it would be highly inefficient. It's better to have a hub handle and route all those notifications since that's *all* it would be doing. - Chris Messina

And, it's also not unlike SMTP ("simple mail transport protocol"). The difference is that it works over Port 80 using HTTP ("hypertext transport"), which means that you can effectively "send message to URLs" — not just email accounts! Thus, http:// status.net/chrismessina could send a message to http://twitter.com/marshallk. - Chris Messina

Chris, you're making it sound even more interesting than I was aware of. - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall, I agree with you on this. Chris is indeed opening our "third-eye" on the range of use cases for this. It is a powerful "atomizing" protocol delivered with very simple underlying technology. I've been looking at XMPP, AMQP & a Comet-derivative for an application that may now be accomplished quite simply via PubSubHub / PuSH. It would also be great if Chris could also get Jyri to comment over here with his views. - http://twitter.com/AAinslie - Alexander Ainslie

Marshall Kirkpatrick

My 1st draft explanation of Activity Streams:

November 20, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

beersage, Chris Messina, Lora Lufark and 10 other people liked this

Everybody talks about filtering the real-time stream of information online but the Activity Streams community is the place where those conversations go on between leading engineers at the world's biggest and smallest social networks, with the goal of replacing the "walled garden" model of social networking with an open, interoperable communication marketplace. If Activity Streams succeeds, you will be able to subscribe to and filter the activities of your friends across multiple different networks, without having to sign-up for or even ever have heard of those other networks. This is almost the equivelent of AT&T phones being able to make calls to Verizon phones. Of rail-transport companies being able to ship goods across the country over different railroad networks - because the rails for the trains to run on are the same size. It's different though, because of the granular filtering by type of activity. Applications built on top of Activity Streams will allow the equivilent of a... more... - Marshall Kirkpatrick

15 more comments

Can't wait. And no redundancies, please. - Laura Norvig

Will be interesting to see how much granularity over permissions the content creators will have. Will I have to just choose "yes" or "no" that anyone who is connected to me anywhere will be allowed to see my stuff? How could greater control work - seems complicated. - Laura Norvig

Seems a fair point Laura. - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Here's a fractal I use that may be useful as a template for Activity Streams... 1) interest-generating opener 2) background on current threats/tension to resolve 3) opportunity or vision of a better state 4) strategy w/steps to get there 5) issues to solve before accepting strategy 6) next steps by stakeholders - Mark Frazier

This is awesome Marshall. I'm wondering whether we broaden the concept beyond messaging to decentralize the social graph itself, so app developers can leverage existing relationships without having to build on top of a facebook or a twitter...(or perhaps that is implied here?) - Tony Zito

Marshall ... thanks for the initial explanation... I've been intrigued by all the references to Activity Streams and http://activitystrea.ms/ by people I know and trust - I just haven't had the time to join another mailing list. Just yesterday I was on the site trying to understand more and reading Chris Messina's almost-year-old post: http://factoryjoe.com/blog... - Dan York

Will this "first draft" evolve into a RWW post? - Dan York

Dan, it's for our forthcoming research report on the real-time web and its future. Preorders avail at http://www.readwriteweb.com/reports... - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Do you have a pointer to an example activity stream feed? - Dave Winer

there's an example at the bottom of http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index... - Marshall Kirkpatrick

I should find a better example than that, a live one to include in article. - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Interesting. I've been unplugged from the feed / activity space for a while now. Makes me want to read up more on Activity Streams. - mikepk

That would be the first thing a developer would look for, something live they could build an app on. - Dave Winer

Tom's activity feed URL at MySpace is http://api.myspace.com/v1... but MySpace API authentication is required - looking for a live and publicly accessible one - Marshall Kirkpatrick

aha! cliqset doesn't require authentication to see theirs, http://cliqset.com/feed... - Marshall Kirkpatrick

I wish more specifications came with live, official, reference implementations. - mikepk

Bret Taylor

Play framework - the first reasonable Java web framework I have personally seen. - http://www.playframework.org/documen...

October 23, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

enes guler., Ashwin Bharambe, Wojciech Polak and 15 other people liked this

"However Play is a very unique Java framework. It does not really rely on the so-called Java Enterprise standards. It uses Java but tries to push all the good things from the frameworks based on scripting languages like Ruby On Rails, Django, ... etc. to the Java world. We really tried to get the best of the Java platform without getting the pain of traditional Java web development: slow development cycle, too much abstraction, too much configuration..." - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

And Bret is probably the first reasonable evaluator of existing Java web frameworks I see. Because 95% of those are in fact unreasonable. Bret! I will appreciate if you also try to find some reasons in HybridJava - http://www.hybridserverpages.com/ Alex - Alex Serov

Paul Buchheit

There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage -- if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge :)

October 19, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

WoH: Professor MOTHRA, BRҰANSAҰS, Jeff (Team マクダジ ) and 221 other people liked this

What is transforming... FriendFeed, or the idea of FriendFeed? - Christopher Galtenberg

102 more comments

Thanks for the update, Paul! - Anne Bouey

THANK YOU! - tehKenny

Fabulous News :) - Susan Beebe

Noticed the "leaked" Facebook UI screenshots and the groups blog post today, and both seem FriendFeed inspired: nice to see Facebook trying to bring the stuff we like about FriendFeed to a larger audience. - Mark Trapp

To Robert Scoble: I told you so ;-) - Jesse Stay

Sounds like they're adding some of FF's features to FaceBook. yay - iTad from fftogo

Mark - got link? - Susan Beebe

Thanks Paul :) - Ashish

Paul, FriendFeed rocks as Gmail does ;) - Orlando Pozo

Devil is in the details: "couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world" == Facebook projects with FriendFeed-like elements == no work on FriendFeed itself. - EricaJoy

Thanks for the update, the more you communicate, the less we have to speculate. - Peter Hoffmann

The fact that these improvements are coming to Facebook and not friendfeed will not sway those who like friendfeed but dislike Facebook. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Thank you Paul for bringing "FriendFeed goodness to the larger world" -- THAT sounds awesome!! - Susan Beebe

integration with facebook? - Rocco Galluzzo

Susan: http://blog.facebook.com/blog... and http://mashable.com/2009... - Mark Trapp

I hope out of the chrysalis emerges an infested Kerrigan. That'd be awesome http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki... - Ivan Kirigin

Thanks Mark, much appreciated... I'll check those out - Susan Beebe

+1 Ivan :) - Benjamin Golub

But we knew this was the deal the moment the full details of the purchase of friendfeed by Facebook became public. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Yeah, I don't give a crap about Facebook. I want to know about FriendFeed. - Rochelle

sadly, no one with any power seems to care about FF anymore. - Hieronymous Boosh

And there's your answer, Rochelle. friendwho? friendwhat now? Oh, you mean Facebook! (No I mean friendfeed) friendwho? (rinse, lather, repeat) - Scoble, Alex Scoble

there are some ui differences (and i tend to prefer friendfeed in those cases) but i have friended quite a few FF people in FB and the experience is remarkably similar in many ways. - Jason Wehmhoener

yep - Jason Wehmhoener

Thanks for the transparency on the Friendfeed "ghost town" matter Paul. Much appreciated. - Alex Knight

Thanks Paul... bring the special sauce to Facebook: http://blogs.zdnet.com/weblife... - Andrew

I like the "chrysalis stage" analogy - sounds cool.... goes an looks for FF goodness butterfly! - Susan Beebe

Good to know that FriendFeed still has some fight left; hope that translates into a viable and sustainable platform/utility for the masses (though I quite enjoy the close-knit, uber-geek community that it's become). - Christian

I don't like the chrysalis analogy. The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis and buggers off leaving the shell. Of course, it might then also get eaten by a bird. Tweet, tweet. - Mark H

Mark LOL nice, ... haha - Susan Beebe

Note that he didn't say that FriendFeed.com was going away, only that they're diverted to bringing it to a much larger audience - Jesse Stay

The problem is Scoble (Robert) and MG both just sent half of FriendFeed away so most of those that would benefit from this announcement won't even see it. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, I didn't get that from Paul's comment. I read that some of the friendfeed ideas will be going into FB. I like that idea, but I still prefer FF to FB because of the different conversations here that I don't have with friends and family. - travispuk from iPhone

Yeah, Paul's statement won't help friendfeed. This will just either give people more reason to go to Facebook or find another service entirely. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

What Alex and Rochelle said. This sounds like a "we're bringing FF to Facebook" announcement, and I don't give a damn about Facebook. I want to know what's happening HERE. And Cristo, both, but more the interface. I care about the friends I've made here, and I'm connected with many of them now on Facebook as well, but I prefer to interact with them here, because I like it better. - Jandy

Travis, he didn't say that - you read that, but he didn't say that. I'm willing to bet FriendFeed.com will not go away. - Jesse Stay

As much as I agree about Scoble and MG driving people away, they have also effectively flush out some comment from the FF team. - travispuk from iPhone

Travis, there are better ways of getting the FF team to comment - Jesse Stay

:( I quite liked the caterpillar. - Nick Lothian

Oh I don't think FF will go away, and damn will hope it doesn't either! - travispuk from iPhone

What I do see is more Facebook integrated into the FriendFeed environment - I think that's a good thing - Jesse Stay

The critical difference between Facebook and FriendFeed is the social model. With Facebook as it is today, you need to be mutual friends to see each others content. There is a "fan page" model but it is oriented toward "publishing/celebrity" rather than information sharing. FriendFeed has an asymmetric model like Twitter, where you can easily discover someone's content without any "friend" gesture whatsoever, and you can follow without friending. This makes the converation more discoverable, and useful.. - Adina Levin

Agree Adina. - travispuk from iPhone

If the integration is bringing public/asymmetric to Facebook, then it will be very useful indeed. If the integration is to add FriendFeed-style service integration into the symmetric/private Facebook model, it will be much less useful - it's more of the same - I'll be able to more easily share updates from youtube or last.fm or delicious to my friend network, but be unable to discover new people and infomation. - Adina Levin

@Jesse - I can't see any sign that they are working on FriendFeed at all. All the indications are that the FF team is now working on Facebook, and only Facebook. That's great for Facebook, and I'm sure they will do wonderful work there. But don't delude yourself that FriendFeed is going to get anything more than critical fixes, and maybe the occasional thing done in someone's spare time. - Nick Lothian

Butterflies look totally different than caterpillars and they also fly away - Melanie Reed

Crickets chirping... is this site alive?? :) - Christopher Galtenberg

+100 Adina. The things I like best about FriendFeed (easy content/people discovery, FoaF, asymmetrical following and being followed) are completely opposite to Facebook's core model. That's why as much as people keep talking about Facebook adding FF-like features, I don't see the REAL FF core features making it over, because the mindset is different. - Jandy

I don't see this announcement as anything new, or as reassuring. We knew from the time of the acquisition that there would be would be some movement of FF capabilities into FB. The real question is whether this means absorption of FF into FB or attracting the FB user base into FF. The comment about "bring[ing] FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world" still leaves that question open. - John (bird whisperer)

+1 everything Alex Scoble has said. Friendwhat? What's a feed? Who uses RSS anymore? We've got PubSubWTFOMGBBQ now! - Mr. Gunn

Agree with Jandy on +100 Adina. - Amy℠

Also, I agree with Jandy and Adina's comments. - John (bird whisperer)

Nick, Paul just said they're working on other projects right now. That still doesn't mean FriendFeed is going away. I'm not deluding myself at all. I'm telling everyone else they're deluding themselves by assuming it's going away. All the FriendFeed team is still using FriendFeed, and Paul just tried to give us comfort not to worry. For some reason we all don't want to believe him. It's actually kind of amusing. - Jesse Stay

I wonder what the powers that be mean by "FriendFeedy goodness"? Is it understood what WE like about it vs. FB? - Amy℠

Paul - Wishing you all the best as you tend your new butterfly garden :) I'll be here to enjoy them! - Susan Beebe

This is not the news that Friendfeed fans were looking for. - Vezquex

The issue isn't belief that they are going to do something. The question is what they are going to do, and whether that will continue the core value of FriendFeed, which is not just information aggregation but discoverability. - Adina Levin

I know more about the "Last Days" and heaven than I know about what's going to happen to FriendFeed as we have come to know it than was given in your rather cryptic answer, Paul. :) And while that may not be a fair comparison (God actually gave details and signs), there is something definitely not forthcoming about your response. A person usually withholds details that affect another... more... - Melanie Reed

Hopefully this helps to quiet all of the "friendfeed is dying" talk. Because this thread proves ff is alive and well. - Garin Kilpatrick

@Jesse - I read it differently to you. To me, Paul is saying "We are taking what we were working towards on FriendFeed, and trying to bring that goodness to a bigger audience". No one is claiming they are going to shut down FF. - Nick Lothian

@Jesse - Want to make a bet on the number of new features added to FF before the end of the year? - Nick Lothian

You read my mind. Having seen a few acquisitions, I am wondering if FF staff was told to put the site in bugfix mode. - EricaJoy from IM

Cristo, to deliver some straightforward talk is not about giving away company details. If you have a product that is original and stands on its own, you don't need to refer to it as a "butterfly". Many companies even promote something new and upcoming especially to their loyal user base. It gives a signal. A proper one. It tells your users and future users enough so that they can make an informed decision about what they want to do instead of keeping them on tenderhooks - Melanie Reed

"the chrysalis stage in most butterflies is one in which there is little movement" (via wikipedia) So if you follow that metaphor then eventually FriendFeed will go through a metamorphosis -- that means it's not dead... really how hard can it be to get what he's saying? - Chris Heath

Its pretty hard :) The burning question is if they are putting FF goodness in to the walled gardens that are Facebook or are they bringing FF openness to FB too. I think the people here want the open forums that are FF not the closed ones that are FB. If FB is going hybrid with both walled gardens and open forums that would be OK too. People on FF want open forums... like Twitter and FF... without the crude interface that is Twitter and without the uncertainty that is FF now. - Ed Millard

Facebook is gonna have to rip off much of the privacy to maximize their product in the real-time web world. I am going to assume FF goodness is going to be applied to FB :) *crosses fingers* - Susan Beebe

Just a thought... why does "longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world" JUST mean facebook.com? What I get from this is that they are working on a range of things, maybe bringing the FriendFeed sauce to a range of sites, powered by the Facebook back end. Who knows what that means. A FriendFeed service powered by FacebookConnect? Also to...... more... - Johnny

LMFAO. Johnny++ - Rahsheen?

FB needs to leave the privacy for the walled garden and the inner circle. Their current user base likes that. They just need a second feed that is an open forum and you can talk there without it bleeding in to your inner circle feed. - Ed Millard

Yes, but blocking doesn't work so well since you can just use Chrome's Incognito mode to get around it. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Translation: if you haven't switche to Facebook yet, you better do it now so you can get a good vanity URL. - David Chartier from iPhone

I don't know what all the fuss is about. But could we have the long answer too, please? - Laura Norvig

Although I'm interested, FB != FF. I don't see how the two mix in a way that makes me feel otherwise. Mixing audiences is not a good thing for me (with a few exceptions) and I know others share the same thought. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Paul, will FF be here in 1 year, 5 years? - Robert Higgins

Thanks for the update Paul.. - Chris Myles

Cristo I am funking nobody, I would like Paul to quantify his post. Simple. Will FF be here in 1 year? Will FF be here in 5 years? - Robert Higgins

IMO friendfeed shoud attract more general audience... Facebook and twitter are having more general users. Most of the FF users are tech bloggers or those who needs aggregation services... I dont know it's just my feeling or not . but this is my impression on FF. but it's great service.. the features are too good... but we will roam were we meet our friends... thats most of the people are into twitter and FB. - Sarath

Ohhhh a perrrttty butterfly, I'm moist with anticipation. - sofarsoShawn

Glad to hear it, Paul. - WoH: Professor MOTHRA

Cristo: i almost made the same observation an hour or two ago when i first read through this posting and its comments. I was skimming and kept seeing alex, alex, alex... and thinking to myself... where's Robert!?! - Chris Heath

Great news. Thanks! friendfeed team. :D - Franc, a rememberer

@Sarath - I have a lot more in common with the people I've met here on FriendFeed than FB or Twitter. Twitter is too hard to search, and FB (and Twitter to a good extent) is driven by the people you know in RL (and unfortunately I don't have nearly as much in common in RL with my family, co-workers and acquaintences as I do with people scattered all over the world who I have met on FF).... more... - Lindsay

I think that in his cryptic statement he means, and a lot of people here agree with me, that more Facebook's going to get more FriendFeedy. Which doesn't mean that FF still isn't dead or doomed. After all, he works for Facebook now. FriendFeed=open forum, Facebook=walled garden, totally opposite master metaphors; but I don't think Zuckerberg gets it, and FF belongs to Zuckerberg now. So this is really about FB; FF's still in limbo. Still, some FF people friended me at FB, and I put them in a special list. - Dennis Jernberg

@FF-team keep on rocking :). BTW I also think it's really cool you guys open-sourced tornado. - alfred westerveld

+1 what alfred said, and good to hear words like "longer-term" & "beautiful" coming straight from The Walrus - keep that vision strong. Hope all goes well for FF team doing some good re-inventing the Octopus Garden of FB - seems you've got your work cut out for you there! It would be so nice if any way to keep a "simple & pure" form of FriendFeed alive (maintained and developed - more open source?) for us to enjoy, but no worries .... you've simultaneously raised the bar and paved the way for the rest! - Dan Freeman

Good luck with the development Paul! Hopefully Zuck has some positive insight. - Garin Kilpatrick

I like butterflies. - Harold Cabezas

Paul: If someone offered me a bag of money to do what you guys did, I would have done exactly the same (probably a lot faster too). However, it would be nice if you spent an hour answering some of the questions here. It might also give people like me a little more faith, in what used to be your primary project; Friendfeed. You made the best platform on the planet - why not use it to let us know what the heck's going on? - Jim Connolly

I'm assuming that Facebook wants to keep their roadmap quiet. I respect that but leaving you community in the dark for a brand that the applications stand for community building is rather ironic. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

SUPER!! I don't Blame ya 1 Darn bit fer Dumpin' FacePOOP Paul!! ;PPP Wait FacePOOP is the Maggot Stage!! ;)) - Billy Warhol

If I can still have all my friends that I have here on friendfeed and share things with them the exact same way, I don't care what "www" address I have to type in to get it. I just hope i don't have to give up any of FF's awesome features! Thanks for the update Paul! - David Cook

The problem is I don't know whether to wrote an app on your API or not because i'm not sure whether it will all be dropped in the "transformation". Imagine speding late nights and weekends coding something up only for it to be dropped suddenly. Need a decent long term picture. Looking at Cliqset. - Steven Livingstone-Pérez

Good point Steven - and one of the reasons many of us are spending so little time developing our networks here. - Jim Connolly

ffcode: Good luck with that ;-) - Jim Connolly

So the changes are at Facebook not FriendFeed, Paul? - Kol Tregaskes

And good luck to all of your team - Özkan Altuner from iPhone

yemezler - MobilAdam

I do care about what happens next, but this is the best news of the day nonetheless ! thanks for giving us updates at last ! and I do hope FF will awaken again ! such a great tool, but letdown since the announcement of the buyback by FB - laetSgo

will I see this post in my "best of week" email from FF? - Kirill Bolgarov

If Facebook is going to get fixed, please remember that it needs fixing politically, not just technically. It needs to give people the option to open their data to Google - for instance. A walled garden where the walls are fixed in place sucks. - Tim Tyler

@Paul, or perhaps an Alien will erupt forth from its stomach? (kidding, kidding!) - j1m

bump! - Jesse Stay

Why? edit: so... 18 months later i'm still wondering what exactly this post was all about - Chris Heath

Bret Taylor

Facebook Just Made It Super Easy To Put Connect On Your Site - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

September 30, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

April Buchheit, Mike Chelen, Chris Messina and 50 other people liked this

it is like google friend connect's method - onur özen from iPod

11 more comments

Will give it a bash! - Sean Kelly

Hmmm, Just tried this, but keep getting an error on Step 2 when I "Test Setup"... I'd better get Googling.. - Andrew Terry

The process doesn't really work on wordpress. - Jason Williams from iPhone

I see no reason that it wouldn't work on WordPress. I integrated FB Connect into my theme a while back, and it's easy enough to do. This would just take the "create a FB App" out of the process. - Otto

I don't know how to do the upload file part. Would be better to have a way to do this via WordPress. - Thomas Hawk

Google Friend Connect had this process for a while, now they improved over FC again by eliminating the file-upload part. No uploads needed now. - Ray Cromwell

The whole file upload thing is necessary for allowing FB to set cookies on your site (cross-domain). It's not hard, just upload the file to your web host in the normal manner, like FTP or what have you. I mean, you had to upload WordPress to the site the first time, right? Google gets around it by not storing cookies on your domain, they just call back to their servers on every hit instead. - Otto

actually Otto somebody else uploaded WordPress to my site for the first time. I'm not sure how to upload files to my domain. It would be nice if they had a WP widget that you could just install that did all of this for you. - Thomas Hawk

Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way, Thomas. WordPress doesn't really have the same kind of control over your website that you do, in many cases. And if you don't have the ability to put files on and off your site, then it's really questionable as to whether it's "your" site at all. I'd highly recommend getting that level of control, ASAP. - Otto

I'm sure I have the ability. I just don't have the know how. - Thomas Hawk

That's why we have documentation: http://codex.wordpress.org/FTP_Cli... - Otto

Depending on your host Thomas... they might have a flash based ftp client. I know Godaddy does. - Jason Williams

Paul Buchheit

YouTube - Cappuccino X Tornado - http://www.youtube.com/watch...

October 2, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Evgeny Tataurov, Hugo Romano, Devon Govett and 7 other people liked this

Bret Taylor

I made a Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages...) and Twitter account (http://twitter.com/tornadoweb) for Tornado. Follow to get updates on development!

September 30, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

April Buchheit, Tzury Bar Yochay, Anton and 9 other people liked this

Existing FriendFeed Group as well: http://friendfeed.com/tornado... - Bret Taylor

Kevin Marks

» @pubsubhubbub: Brett Slatkin, @daveman692 @kevinmarks and @scobleizer discuss PuSH w/ the Gillmor Gang http://www.building43.com/realtim... «

September 28, 2009 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Chris Messina liked this

Jeremiah Owyang

The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras - http://www.web-strategist.com/blog...

April 27, 2009 from Web Strategy by Jeremiah - Comment - Like - Share

Rajif Krobat, Baytech, Björn Klose and 106 other people liked this

Interesting stuff...thanks for sharing - Hugo Guzman

17 more comments

Great info! I agree fish where the fish are :) - Peter du Toit (S.Africa)

Agree on the whole. I always find these categories a little artificial: Really "Forrester-speak". :) I think the recommendations are the most interesting. I'd make a separate post out of that. - Meryn Stol

You say it yourself: "What’s interesting isn’t this vision for the future, but what it holds in store for brands, " . I'd like these recommendations to be fleshed out with concrete first steps to take. Doesn't have to be more than links to relevant resources. - Meryn Stol

Meryn The recommendations are fleshed out in the actual reports. Our clients (brands) have access to see them. - Jeremiah Owyang

Hmm ok... Then I'll need to get the details elsewhere I guess. :) - Meryn Stol

There will be a give and take between communities and brands. The thing is, Facebook doesn't have a competitive alternative that users could go to. In my report, we suggest that active communities could define specs for products, and bid MULTIPLE companies to build it. - Jeremiah Owyang

good stuff Jeremiah, enjoyed and some good thought provokers there for the future - Richard Binhammer

Nice paper but really expensive for young people. $750 means $41 for page. - Alp

Great information, understanding the future's potential is more important than ever on the social web. - Maria Reyes-McDavis

Interesting, but very general and hard to apply. I see companies more as å provide of tools/stage for conversation, aka the gold rush mining vs selling tools - Anders Dahlberg

Alp, Many of Forrester's clients are large brands who have a subscription. We're still sharing a great deal on this blog, and have given the report to bloggers to cover, so there's value to be had there. - Jeremiah Owyang

Jeremiah (and the team), a great piece of work and, I imagine, a labour of both love and loathing at times! I have been very interested in this area as I have looked at the shift in skills to deliver social media activity changes from one of basic coding knowledge to much more human, interactive skills. - Paul Fabretti

Fantastic article! I found it SO intriguing that I've even printed it out! - J. D. Ebberly

"How Brands Should Prepare" is a great bit of information. Jeremiah, it would be nice (i'd be reading) if you expanded in future blog posts about the "How Brands Should Prepare". - frank barry

That's likely to be a research report I'm thinking about writing Frank - Jeremiah Owyang

Probably correct in assuming that most online social networks will neither spawn nor solidify to the point of being considered ‘affinity groups’ with the level of cohesion, unified budgetary authority or organized implementation capability of NGOs, churches, or employee aggregations. Even in the era of social commerce. I hope I’m wrong. - A Mitchell

Great post, understanding the future's potential is more important than ever on the social web. - Vlad Hrouda

Just found this... great stuff! - Gerd Leonhard

Tornado: arjo

Fwd: Benchmarking Tornado vs. Twisted Web vs. Tornado on Twisted vs. Unicorn - http://antoniocangiano.com/2009... (via http://friendfeed.com/arjo...)

Fwd: Benchmarking Tornado vs. Twisted Web vs. Tornado on Twisted vs. Unicorn - http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/09/13/benchmarking-tornado-vs-twisted-web-vs-tornado-on-twisted-vs-unicorn/ (via http://ff.im/82Rjj)

September 13, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Chris Messina and NaHi liked this

Paul Buchheit

Evaluating risk and opportunity (as a human) - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009...

September 12, 2009 from Paul Buchheit - Comment - Like - Share

Mark Edmondson, pastas9, Jérôme and 29 other people liked this

Nice piece. I enjoyed your rationale for 0.01% as a rational cutoff. Signal to noise. At some point, it's just not worth worrying about. - Eric Borisch

Thanks Eric! - Paul Buchheit

Jason Wehmhoener to OpenFF, Feed Tech

Fwd: Tornado Web Server - http://www.tornadoweb.org/ (via http://friendfeed.com/f-oss-f...)

Fwd: Tornado Web Server - http://www.tornadoweb.org/ (via http://ff.im/7Uc0K)

September 10, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes, April Russo, Jigar Shah and 17 other people liked this

"Tornado is an open source version of the scalable, non-blocking web server and and tools that power FriendFeed. The FriendFeed application is written using a web framework that looks a bit like web.py or Google's webapp, but with additional tools and optimizations to take advantage of the underlying non-blocking infrastructure. The framework is distinct from most mainstream web server frameworks (and certainly most Python frameworks) because it is non-blocking and reasonably fast. Because it is non-blocking and uses epoll, it can handle thousands of simultaneous standing connections, which means it is ideal for real-time web services. We built the web server specifically to handle FriendFeed's real-time features — every active user of FriendFeed maintains an open connection to the FriendFeed servers. (For more information on scaling servers to support thousands of clients, see The C10K problem.) See the Tornado documentation for a detailed walkthrough of the framework." - Jason Wehmhoener

9 more comments

I was hoping the OpenFF folks would find this :) - Benjamin Golub

man - just when I thought I was going to have a "no new project to review" weekend... - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

I was just thinking of posting this. I'm pleasantly surprised to see parts of FriendFeed being Open-Sourced. Could it be of use for the OpenFF endeavour? - Tyson Key

I think some kind of non-blocking server is a necessity if real-time is on the roadmap. - Jason Wehmhoener

How similar is it to FriendFeedServer? (Assuming that it is the "real" FriendFeedServer code, and not a "Made for Open Source" rewrite that is being released). - Tyson Key

Tyson: it is nearly identical. We pulled Tornado out of the FriendFeed server and cleaned things up to make it not dependent on any FriendFeed specific code - Benjamin Golub

Thanks for the clarification. - Tyson Key

Does anyone want to try and weld it to the Facebook Open Platform stuff, using some sort of PHP-Python bridge module (in the same vain as mod_php in Apache)? ;) - Tyson Key

Some of the UI and translation stuff sounds interesting, for what it's worth. - Tyson Key

like like like! - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Joe Hewitt

Apple limits us to 100 beta testers - you find a lot more bugs when a few million people use the app then when 100 people use it.

August 27, 2009 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Joe D'Andrea, erikvisser, Robert Scoble and 17 other people liked this

joe, speaking of bugs... loaded up fine... browsed the news feed, and commented once... then went to homescreen and tapped on friends... hung up and crashed... opened up and tapped friends again... crashed... then wouldn't open up again just crashed on open... deleted and re-synched and all is good... just fyi - Chris Heath

2 more comments

Maybe Apple never heard the one about a billion eyeballs and shallow bugs or whatever. ;) - Chris Messina

totally with you...btw, great job on the Facebook app. we've experienced similar situation with our app and we're only just under 2 million downloads... - Scott Magdalein

I agree. The UDID limit makes pre-release beta testing an ineffective way to find bugs. - Scott Ludwig from iPhone

Joe Hewitt

Facebook for iPhone 3.0: approved and available. Thanks, everyone, for your patience.

August 27, 2009 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Pete D, Joe D'Andrea, Johan Bakken and 14 other people liked this

Augh! Not available just yet! - Kevin Fox

6 more comments

Still showing 2.5 for me. :( - Otto

"All Apps Are Up to Date" Dangnabit! - c.a.j.

Still 2.5 here too. - Jérôme

This app store debacle has ceased to be amusing. I think all free app developers should release their stuff on Cydia as well, in protest. Thus, those of us who jailbreak can be ahead of the crowd. Sorta like Google's beta. ;) - Otto

Got it! Okay, *delete* the current app on your iPhone, then go to the App store and download it again. It says it'll be 2.5, but you'll get 3.0. - Kevin Fox

Wow. Notifications are *awesome*. Someone liked an entry while I was using the application and it popped up at the bottom. - Benjamin Golub

Yep, removing and redownloading did the trick. - Otto

Chris Messina › Likes