That iPad owners will likely consider taking a razor to the plastic SIM cards inside their iPhones, just so they can use the same portable data plan they’re already paying for, should tell you everything you need to know about the wireless data industry. Read More http://www.wired.com/epicent...
- Dan owns Comicsforge.com
But is Apple's device is it not? They make money from the network as well do they not? They chose to get in bed with AT&T presumably since they could make more money? It's all about money and Apple and AT&T are partners by choice.
- Brian Sullivan
Isn't it likely that people will want to move sim cards the other way -- from the iPad to the iPhone? Isn't iPad's plan more attractive from a cost pov? Are there mini to standard sim adaptors?
- Brian Sullivan
They'll likely try. If there's a template to cut out the plastic around the SIM and then snap it into a adapter.
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
Could it be possible that Apple is moving everything to micro, this just being the first? - No, probably not, then there couldn't be a conspiracy to rag on ;-)
- PXLated
Maybe but pissing on Apple and/or AT&T is more fun.
- Brian Sullivan
Was going to be cheeky and say "So this means that they'll be copying FriendFeed's direct message system?" But actually no reason why not, especially integrated with their chat system for real-time response... and easily bringing other contacts in to the conversation. It's sortof what people thought/hoped Wave would be anyway.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Main problem will be Facebook's overall problem... people want to keep Facebook and the real-real world separate (ie, work).
- Christopher Galtenberg
What I really want from Facebook mail is a way to not have Facebook mail. I've got a regular mail account already. Getting all these message from people on Facebook is like yet something else to tend to. Either forward that stuff to me via POP/IMAP or better, let me send an autoresponse that says I'm not home right now on Facebook mail. I'm never home on Facebook mail. Use real mail to reach me.
- dannysullivan
@danny: Facebook lets you "reply to this email to comment" on pretty much everything now. If you really hate it you can set up a GMail canned response to tell people how much you hate FB every time you get an alert.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Facebook has recently implemented "reply to comment by email", something Friendfeed launched loooong time ago. I guess it has to do with the Friendfeed team/spirit and I hope they will expand the system to FB Mail. By the way, I'd love to know to what extent the ex-FF team influence the FB's roadmap.
- Jérôme
This article is ridiculous (like all 100% speculative articles). "If Facebook produces a crappy email system, no one will use it. If Facebook produces an excellent email system, however, it has a huge opportunity here." Let's try substitution: "If Facebook produces a crappy //electric car//, no one will use it. If Facebook produces an excellent //electric car//, however, it has a huge...
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- Stephen Mack
Stephen, it's not quite as ridiculous as you claim. FB already has hundreds of millions of users and a communication system similar to email that most of them use. In fact I've heard that there are already people who don't even use email -- the just use FB. It's not much of a leap to suggest that if they improve their communication system, millions of other users would dump their current email for FB's messaging system.
- Gabe
Gabe, that's a scary thought. Email is about the only virtually universal online communication mechanism out there. I'm concerned that from user perspective, this is just more lock-in (but many people will be short-sighted about it). And given that Facebook is real name only (a problem in itself), if the addresses are valid emails, they will be easily guessable/spammable. I think it's always better to have an email address that is not tied to anything you may want to change in the future.
- Tinfoil 2.0
I agree with Danny that the Facebook messages are an annoyance. Something I have to tend to - the quicker the better. But I'm unsure that's how others feel about it. The new interface Facebook just launched does have a much nicer interface in handling messages. That said, I just can't see how folks will truly use it as an email client. At best it's a asynchronous messaging client. Because - really, are you going to treat real email and mafia war requests the same? It's frightening.
- AJ Kohn
"Wanna"? What is the world coming to. You'd think a company as big as Google could employ people who know how to write.
- Gilbert Harding
Gilbert, I'm sure the Googlers in Oz know how to write proper. I reckon they're just trying to get down with their target audience - i.e. the kool kidz! (Seriously though, do error messages really need to be formal? I like the more relaxed approach...)
- Tony Ruscoe
Thanks for sharing with those of us who waited before jumping in.
- Brenda Young
I wonder how long it will take before people can "like" a wave... If they added it to GReader, it seems like only a matter of time...
- Nathan Chase
Ah, yes, something only a parent would say. Thought it was your mother, initially.
- Kathy Ishizuka
yep, my just turned 2yo has her own page on my iphone actually- and her mom's. she can play matching games, listen to music, or draw as much as she wants but she can only watch a few songs on youtube a day.
- metalerik
You thought you could spam the trending topics and get away with it, but Pedantic Man is here to shine the bright light of justice upon you! Shame on you, SXSW panels!
- Daniel J. Pritchett
It was mostly a joke, but gmail was trending at the time and this has nothing to do with it. It's not like you're selling viagra.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
sorry - my interface to friendfeed for this was email, so was a little odd to receive someone accusing me of spamming trending topics - on a strictly text basis, might look bad in the future if I didnt respond thanks for clarifying and very glad you are not a troll, but instead, a live humorous being :)
- Chris Heuer
from email
So its just the web interface thats down?
- BRҰANSAҰS
Yea but I want to check on my latest mail at least before starting to use workarounds!
- Manuel Mas
I do use the GMail task list exclusively, Sofia. I don't do paper very well, so an online list has saved me several times. Louis - what are you using if you don't use G Tasks?
- Victoria Plautia
Ya I couldn't get gmail to work through igoogle but gtalk seems to work.
- BRҰANSAҰS
I've got Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar installed in Thunderbird, I hardly use the web interface.
- Willem (@wim66) ☠
Manuel, it's easy for me, since it's right in my inbox... I don't really need anything too powerful for what I need to keep track of. Definitely parts of it do suck, tho :-). It's not very maniputable.
- Victoria Plautia
Yea it needs more options such as time setting for tasks.
- Manuel Mas
Agreed. I also switched to Friendfeed when Gmail went down. For tasks, I prefer RTM (also accessible through Gmail [when it's up] as a custom gadget).
- Rebeca
I want send my friend a movie, of course FF does not allow such kind attachment.
- 我是真砂!
you can also get your tasks in Google Calendar... just click the "Tasks" link on the left
- Trevor
uhm, me! I need it. My entire work life is stored in our corporate gmail. but, i did take the opportunity to redesign something that's been bugging me. :)
- Jenna Bilotta
Jenna, shouldn't y'all be using something like Wave to give you a bit more collaboration power?
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Not everyone has FriendFeed? And like Gmails grouping and power search. Well, I like FriendFeeds transparency. Oh gosh, I'm just glad they aren't mutually exclusive. To me they serve a different purpose.
- James Kuypers
Does anyone use a web based e-mail? I access my gmail on my desktop in Windows Live Mail, it comes to me, I don't go 'up there' to fetch it....
- Technogran
Why would anyone tie themselves to just one email client or to a single service provider?
- Bernie Goldbach
"Horse Piss Beer on Flickr" an interesting result.
- Dean Clark
Dean: yeah there are some fun results there, huh?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
That's what will suck it everyone moves to facebook as friendfeed's features get integrated, there is pretty much no Google Juice on Facebook. Too many privacy barriers...things might change though.
- Steven (optionshiftk)
Dude you are crazy!! Good point though =)
- frank barry
It is due to PubSubHubbub integration ... ah, Mark, you beat me to the punch!
- Paul Jacobson
I thought that was cool, until FriendFeed started pulling in the shares before I clicked on them. It knew _in advance_ what I would have selected.
- Louis Gray
Louis, that's because FriendFeed *is* Louis Gray
- Jesse Stay
Do I need to update my Google Reader URL in FriendFeed to activate the new change or does it automatically work for everyone who is already importing them?
- Skyler Call
@Skyler Call: It should automatically work.
- Antoniu
i want to do this with a specific folder in my reader. by making the folder public, i'm hoping to automatically push those items as shared to FF when there is something new. do you know if this is possible?
- Jim Halligan @jim
from fftogo
i remember before this it could take 30 min or more for a story to post to FF now its like lightening!
- (jeff)isageek
The question is, how fast do you switch tabs? ;)
- Jemm
Jim, you can have FriendFeed pull in the feed for any tag in google reader.
- Rob Diana
Jemm, honestly it must have been 2 seconds. I clicked my last share (or shift-s actually) and then I clicked the friendfeed tab and it was already there.
- Rob Diana
Wow. I shared your post (and Louis Gray's post) in Google Reader, and they hit FriendFeed nearly instantaneously. Now if only Blogger supported the protocol...
- John E. Bredehoft
from fftogo
10 hours later... had to manually refresh my Reader shares :(
- Dominic Jones
Still not working Dominic? I can help debug maybe? If you tell me when you post.
- Brett Slatkin
Brett, I have to commend you and the reader team for their customer service as well. This is one of the few times I have seen googlers openly reacting to issues and not just fixing things.
- Rob Diana
I need serious help with FF. For an idiot like me this isn't so intuitive really. Help section is nice but I need someone to hold my hand ..bleeech. Don't get me wrong I am sorry I was reluctant to try FF before
- cheapsuits
I blame Scoble. It's always his fault :-)
- Keith Barrett
but how am I going to tell the world I need a cup of tea???? nooooooo
- Rachel Clarke
Giorgio - I'm seeing some activity through the Twitter API, too (that's what TweetDeck uses, I believe); not a lot, but some
- Robert J Taylor
I thought it was just my connection. ;-) I'm also having problems with Facebook today.
- Timothy Federwitz
yeah, it seems the web interface is down but the api is working..
- Giorgio
I think the social media experts are going to spend the next hour talking about Twitter being down
- Keith Barrett
Scoble's followers where the glue keeping Twitter together! now that he's 'pulled the pin' and released them all, Twitter has fallen down and can't get up.
- MikeAmundsen
I'm so lost this morning without my cup-o-Twitter
- frank barry
They'll comment on it, much like I just did.
- Marlin Forbes
Yiorgas: read a book for a change? I do that anyway, but only about 10/month. need more twitter time to balance it out
- Rachel Clarke
Facebook is copying twitter too closely...even to going down at the same time
- Robert Littlejohn
Does Twitter have what it takes to be a big player? We've been working with their API on a project and every time there is something out of whack. Anyone else have the same issues?
- Chris Nadeau
twitter is really down, I think twitter itself should have a site that tweets when it's down :)
- Ata İsmet Özçelik
They will use FF to inform their friend that twitter is down
- Didier Girard
They will all sit in their chair and stare at their monitor!
- Gabe Diaz
@Dani, who knows... the might merge or something... explain the strange twitter is pulling fb down 2..
- Sebastiaan van den Akker
Did Scoble bring Twitter and FB down as he unfollowed everyone ? winks -)
- Del_
This is very interesting that it is impacting more than one social network ... can't even speculate what the cause is yet. Not getting much work done today I'm afraid, going to be following these conversations..
- Joe Magennis
I haven't been on twitter for days. I guess I picked the wrong morning to jump back in.
- Jeff Stannard
Robert: The most important question>> How many new sign-ups for FF today?
- K.N. Ajit Narayan
GUILTY ! I have had a FF account for awhile just never used it--
- cheapsuits
What the celebrities like you do. Talk about it on Twitter.
- Tad Chef
This actually made me laugh out loud, because I was thinking the same thing!
- Dan
Could this mean that CNBC was right??? Nooooooooooo!
- travispuk
I was planning to unfollow a bunch of followers due to Twitter's follow limit rule kicking in at the ~#2000 user level. I have to wait with that then... ;)
- Martin Lindeskog
I feel like we are all stranded on a tropical Island together
- Jeff Wiant
was afraid for a moment that out IT blocked all social networks or something horrible like that. Thank god FF came back up quickly. This might have gotten me to use FF more. I often neglect it.
- Ryan Cummins
Wondered why tweetdeck wasn't loading anything. actually got some programming work done. lol
- Justin Long
twits will move, but only until twitter is back online, then there will be a mass exodus. Remember during all of the 2007/2008 fail whales users still flocked back to it regardless.
- travispuk
Twitter, Facebook, now Posterous... 4chan organize an attack or something?
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
took inordinate amount of time to get into ff today as well
- A Zmaj
Hmmm DoS attack...someone wanting a ransom from Twitter?
- Mike Gargano
Guess they'll have to either pick up the phone or do some work :)
- Graham Bunting
Can someone with 94k followers really mock the the celebs and experts devoid of Twitter?
- Augie Ray
Hey, no bogus follow messages in my inbox for a while! ;-)
- Julie Barrett
from twhirl
This is teaching us something about the framework of the current Internet traffic patterns. We're watching cascade scale problems from one major Internet program going down.
- Melanie Reed
Facebook is giving up the ol', "Transport error (#1001) while retrieving data from endpoint `/ajax/inline_comments.php': A network error occurred. Check that you are connected to the internet" message now.
- 3Cinteractive®, L.L.C.
from twhirl
I think this is bigger than Twitter and FB... I think it's some interweb routes or something. I had a VoIP call going with a party local to me and two across the country and I lost the two across the country, but maintained the local party. And others are commenting on other sites showing signs of outages.
- Timothy Federwitz
from Alert Thingy
The real bummer for me is, now I actually have to listen to the radio to get the word of the day!
- Travis Owen
is twitter connected with FB or Friendfeed? I am having page errors with both, Ajax issues with FB intermittently , I am no tech geek so I have no clue whats up and come here to learn
- lisa coultrup
Maybe Ev's interview on the BBC last night didn't go down well with the Iranians!
- Andrew
from iPod
Ev coming onto the BBC last night and saying that they were asked by the US Goverment to keep Twitter up and running during the Iranian protests cannot have gone down well in Tehran!
- Andrew
from iPod
DoS on large portions of the internet. Is this 4Chan... Chinese... N. Korea... durkadurkastan...
- Ryan Cummins
now having trouble getting to Friendfeed
- Justin Long
look, few days ago Clinton back home with two imprisoned american journalists from North Korea and today Korea is attacking twitter? it is revenge)))
- obolonskyi
maybe Robert's great unFollowing crashed the servers... no loss! Go FF
- Jay Shapiro
from BuddyFeed
As I said, I predict a baby-boom in 9 months... wait and see!
- Jordi Soler
SEO Experts can analyze their charts, celebrities and wannabe's can entertain us with video (maybe some cool Twitter Whore like stuff) , and social media experts can quickly become Fail Whale Experts.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
@Lee Provost don't you thing you're going to be a little apocaliptic ? :-)
- Filippo Ronco
Twitter downing has to be a lesson for all of us. if sometimes gmail or even google will be down. what we all are going to do in that situation???
- obolonskyi
@Filippo i've been suprised many times that reality is often more wacked up than the conspiracy theories of geeks :-p
- Lee Provoost
I'm hoping the social media experts go away and do something useful.
- Parvez Halim
@Jordi LOL, considering that there are a vast amount of single male computer geeks out there in the twitter community, baby boom effect might be negligible :-D
- Lee Provoost
what is bad here? here doesnt exist reply button =(
- obolonskyi
@Lee single male computer geeks - LOL))
- obolonskyi
Read post on 100k unfollow - I love how people are commenting and blaming Twitter being down on that! lol
- Helene
AAANND.. it's back. At least for a moment I guess..
- Alex Schleber
AAANND it's GONE! ..Again. At least I managed to send out a quick FriendFeed SOS, as in: "Still think you shouldn't have all of your favorite tweeps in a "backup system" on FriendFeed? Join here: www.friendfeed.com/alexschleber "
- Alex Schleber
Either collapse or back to use their phones in voice only mode, do some shopping, get eye to eye contact ... Blame god, and then. Give a serious try on FF ;p
- Marco ILLESCAS
from iPhone
They will still be able to Tweet to themselves - not sure if they will realize it is down until it comes back up.
- Phil Harrison
What will the blackhat SEO experts, the SM spammers, and the social media experts do during a widespread outage? The answer is obvious: While sitting out the crisis they're fine-tuning their methodology. Seriously, your question offends me. There's a gazillion of SEO experts out there who do not abuse social media.
- Sebastian
Sebastian there can't be a gazillion SEO experts! What's 10,000 keywords times 20?? (and that's being generous!)
- Arleen Boyd
Would a social media expert consider it to be a crisis? If they rely so heavily on just one or two tools that it's enough to throw them into a tizzy, their expert status would seem to me to be ... questionable, at best.
- Gord McLeod
Arleen, 10,000 keyword phrases times 20 is a tiny fraction of the search terms that are worth optimizing for. Think of the long tail. Also, consider lots of webmasters and even publishers / site owners / bloggers / Web developers ... SEO experts who are able to optimize their stuff quite successfully but don't sell or publish their expertise. Many of them, and even many SEO consultants, do make sensible use of social media, as plain users.
- Sebastian
Gord, in a social media spammer's book 2 hours of outage, IOW 2 hours w/o sales from sneakily distributed links to questionable sales pitches, can sum up to way more than a good day's beer money. ;) However, "crisis" might be a term too strong for this potential loss.
- Sebastian
You must be dying of laughter now Robert!
- Arleen Boyd
Arleen: yes, reading this is fun. Sebastien SEO types are so easy to wind up. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Gotta love it... @RobCairns says "come to Friend Feed? Not" and then his page shows ONE POST from Twitter in the past 18 hours! And that one talks about how Twitter seems to be slowing down again! (Sorry Rob, but that's just too good to let pass!)
- Mark J
Robert, admit it, you broke Twitter by massively unfollowing people. The DDoS attack reports have just been a ruse to cover up the fact that you were the backbone of Twitter all this time.
- Louis Trapani
Keep running into the wall a few times then find alternate outlets such as ff, linkedIn, etc...
- Kirsten Mitchell
from iPhone
Looks like the devious plan to move everyone to FF is working well. LOL :)
- Geer
Ha! The whole Facebook Twitter slowdown may have been just people clicking on spam (not a DDoS botnet). How funny! Manual DDoS. See Bill Woodcock's theory at CNet, AP, SF Gate, and The Register http://ff.im/6gLmO
- Mitchell Tsai
There you go again implying the only ones that use twitter is SEO experts, the celebrities, the spammers, the bots, and the social media experts - This is definitely SPIN. Perhaps you should join CNN also LOL
- RetiredTeacherD
Ironic, given your status as a celebrity social media expert who constantly spams about bots... :-P
- David Kettler
Now they'll have time to shower and do their laundry!
- momonalona
"So too do I see it better that 100 spammers fill my feed than I lose access to the innocents who remain. I am not so self-centered as to believe I know the full set of people who I can learn from and derive value. So don't look for me to start shaking my numbers down on any of the networks - even if it is getting more popular. " love this part of the post, however I want just to notice...
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- abdellah
Riaz, Scoble and I get along great. I wouldn't call him self-centered.
- Louis Gray
I shared this in GR as soon as I read it. Congrats on a great post, Louis! All I can say is finally someone has said it. This trend of unfollowing is rather disturbing imho and shows how self-centered some people are, how desperate for attention others are, and how they all are rather clueless at creating valuable networks on these social tools they so much love to love.
- Vlad Bobleanta
true, but people who don't appreciate following others shouldn't do it and shld unfollow..keeps tweeting young and influential. also, the only way to get rid of spam is to unfollow/block each such perp
- Amit 'zyaada' Mittal
Louis: you will come to dislike your choice here. I used to say the same thing, but as you get more and more people who you aren't interested in you'll realize you just aren't getting anything out of the home page on Twitter anymore and, worse, you are getting spammed both on it and via DMs. That might not be a big problem for you with 12,000 friends, but as your numbers move up (and they will) you'll hit the same problems I did.
- Robert Scoble
Why is Louis' followers number growing very very slowly relative to his popularity on the net
- Mark
Robert, I never did get anything out of the homepage of Twitter anyway. :)
- Louis Gray
I think unfollowing makes sense on Twitter. On Friendfeed Lists are your friends.
- Paul Kinlan
Mark, I would say it has to do with not being put on any kind of suggested list. :)
- Louis Gray
I don't find that the Twitter website does a good job of making Twitter usable. The applications are what make it usable for me.
- Michael Owens
Unfollowing kinda makes sense. Have you ever played an RPG the second time through... you know what to do in the beginning, you aren't lost, and you know what your end goal is? Yeah. That's pretty much what we are talking about here.
- Evan Travers
Yeah, the real thing here is we both are heavy users of FriendFeed. That's why I didn't care that my Twitter feed was getting worse and worse. Over the past year I've done almost all my Twitter reading here on FriendFeed. Now that I've restarted it, though, damn is it 100x more useful! And, yes, there are lots of people who are on Twitter who aren't on FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
I could barely handle following 600 or so people, even with appropriate tweetdeck filters. There were too many people who just weren't adding value. I made a particular point to unfollow anyone who regarded themselves as an "SEO" or "Internet Marketing" expert.. I had made the mistake of following back anyone who followed me and slowly began to realize that they were just playing the numbers game.
- Neeraj Kumar Agrawal
abdellah: I am starting to agree with "filter before you follow", which I also believe is what Robert Scoble is doing now as he starts to follow people. Louis Gray: I don't think it is a movement to unfollow everyone, at least, not for me. I think Scoble had to start from scratch because of the number he had... for me, having a very small number in comparison, I will start unfollowing...
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- Timothy Federwitz
I've been curious as to the counter argument to this trend. Scoble's reaction albeit extreme is one I can empathize with, but unnecessarily severe. I appreciate the alternate perspective and grounded reasoning to your approach. While I have far fewer followers the numbers have crossed the line of unmanageable with out an automation service. Thanks for the great post and food for thought.
- Jim Goldstein
Scoble has this big 7 point list of criteria for following you on twitter, but on Friendfeed he will follow anyone who asks!
- Mark
Mark: that's because on FriendFeed I can have lists. So I can use a variety of different following strategies here. On twitter I can only follow or not.
- Robert Scoble
I think I am in the middle on this. I am not about to wholesale unfollow everyone, but the noise from news bots etc in my twitter feed is getting insane. I am still nowhere close to "getting" FF so I am still struggling a bit here too.. In fact, I have fallen right back into the trap I was in a few months ago. I think it's time for another social medai diet
- Andy Glover
Robert, you can certainly use tools like tweet deck to create groups, but . . .whatever. To me, it's just not an issue, either way. I like it when folks that I find interesting (and Robert is certainly among them!) follow me back, but it's not essential. I don't need to follow the Roberts of the world on Twitter in order to check in on what they're up to, from time to time. Unless someone has a private feed, it seems to be a non-issue.
- Kathy Fitch
Andy: on FriendFeed whenever things go nutty, just open up a new friend list and move your high quality follows into that. Leave all the other people in the old list, so you can check in once in a while.
- Robert Scoble
I don't see how anyone could follow as many people as Robert w/o losing control. Twitter would become marginalized by sheer un-manageability. Even with groups etc. there's only so much real estate on a monitor. I have groups on FriendFeed as well but honestly I spend most of my time on the home feed.
- Rick Bucich
That said, when I'm launching a new twitter presence (as I just have for an organization), it's *really, really great* when people and organizations with similar interests follow back. If nobody did, that would just be sad. Still, I'm mostly interested in the feed aspect of things, so even then, it's not really crucial to have followers.
- Kathy Fitch
What I don't get, and what has never been explained to me despite asking, is why have low "quality follows" in the first place? I know you follow me, and given that there is seldom interaction its quite apparent I'm not on the high quality follows list. If its not for ego, what's the point? Mass unfollow, filter, etc. that's entirely your decision, but why follow to the point that mass unfollow is necessary?
- JCunwired
I've always had the policy of being quick to follow and even quicker to unfollow. As soon as someone begins to bore or annoy me I just unfollow them. But on the other hand I'm glad to follow people on a whim. You never know.
- Leo Laporte
Rick--so true. In some ways, the conversations that these folks with massive followings are having around the follow/unfollow issue just is utterly irrelevant to those of us with more moderate goals and purposes.
- Kathy Fitch
Nice to see Leo Laporte being more involved on Friendfeed
- Mark
Right Leo - follow to see what's interesting, unfollow when you find out there's no value. The alternative, if I may say so, is misleading and unfair to the end user.
- JCunwired
Value in this instance is pretty subjective, and that's the point, really. What is your subject position? I'm in SMB mode, so what I'm after is quite unlike what a twit guru would be after. For me, the following/follower # some are cutting down to would be massive. If I hit those numbers, then I'd probably want to trim it back down. Robert is still about 500 over anything I'd be interested in.
- Kathy Fitch
One of the first people I looked through was Leo Laporte's following page. He has some great people who he is following.
- Robert Scoble
Why limit yourself? Someone asks to follow me, I check out their profile and tweets. If the words SEO,check out my webcam, or Arrington are there, I don't follow, If I do follow, I give them a month and then unfollow if any major douchbaggery makes its way to mine eyes.
- Paul Puri
Ah, somewhere there's an SEO person who is offering useful tweets about how beginners can use the basic Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to help them create better, more useful sites for users and potential users. That person could be good for some folks to follow.
- Kathy Fitch
On the "low quality followers/follows" point, I really needed some of those at first to help me get a feel for the ebb and flow. The trajectory of any given twitter user's account, if it's public, probably follows that basic pattern of "whoo hooo, followers!" to "what the heck?" to "now that I get how it works, how would I like it to work for me?" Seems pretty common sense. It's okay that answers to the final question vary. All as it should be.
- Kathy Fitch
I'm just generalizing, of course, but most of the people who try to follow me that have SEO in their bio have 10 tweets and they are link bait.
- Paul Puri
I shared w/ Robert and will share with you, YES I spend too much time trying to block all the FakePornSpamBot accounts. And I miss blocking many. BUT, my HOME Stream is the most amazing view of the world! With a few refreshes I can get the pulse of what's going on! Besides, even if someone is often a voyeur, there are those times they pop up and share the most insightful things! I believe I can learn from everyone! So if you're real and follow me - I'll follow you!
- Arleen Boyd
In parallel to this, I do manage a corporate account for one of the companies I consult for. Every follow and unfollow there is measured. But I learned a long time ago, that at least for me, people just want to be connected, on any network they prefer, so I try not to get in their way.
- Louis Gray
Louis: there's another aspect to this too: every follow you make signals to the world what kind of person you are. Look at my following list. You'll see geeks, VCs, journalists, entrepreneurs. Who isn't there? Not many celebrities. Not many plumbers or quilters, if any at all. That signals to the world the kind of people I want to have in my life and the kinds of information I want to hear. If you are autofollowing that opportunity to signal to the world is totally lost.
- Robert Scoble
Oh, Paul, point well taken, of course. I'm just pointing out that they've no doubt ruined it for a handful of smart and useful SEO folks. Arleen was actually one of the first folks to follow me back, and just watching her from a distance (I guess that makes me a voyeur? <grin>) helped give me a good feel for how someone at her level of #'s worked with the system. Very educational!
- Kathy Fitch
The "signal to the world" bit makes much more sense to me on the corporate accounts I'm working with. For the Catholic parish, for instance, who to follow gets really important. I can't afford to have anything with even a whiff of inappropriateness about it in the stream. That's going to be a very small list!
- Kathy Fitch
I just think the only way you can do this wrong is if you don't continually revise your thinking and your approach. Right on to all of you for exploring this topic.
- hollyrae
Leo, I can usually tell by the last 4 to 5 tweets whether I should follow back. But, everyone is annoying or boring sometimes (including myself) so I don't unfollow very often unless someone's stream becomes overly promotional or full of gimmicks.
- Rick Bucich
What's the benefit of following thousands of people? if you say its because you have to in order for them to DM you, how can you possibly respond to potentially thousands of DM's consistently? Once, I tried following everyone that followed me and it made my follower count jump quickly, but it made twitter less fun because I had random automated DM's from people I didn't know, and a useless stream of info from people I followed for no reason.
- Dusty Edenfield
Robert/Kathy: I think who I follow making a statement of who I am and what I'm about is less important to me since I am using it for a personal experience and my likes are wide and deep. If I was using my Twitter account as an outward facing presence for my business/organization, then it would matter much more to me... but I'm just having fun with it and like the idea of seeing lots of...
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- Timothy Federwitz
The DM thing. Sigh. Here on FF, it's totally useful. I've never had a single pointless DM. On Twitter, it's a thing to scan very occassionally, and ignore the rest of the time, seems like.
- Kathy Fitch
The thing that is being overlooked is this: The real issue is the auto-follow, NOT the total number of "following". It is what removes the vetting process. Once vetted, I'd say the more the merrier, b/c there is real value in your "with friends/following" stream, precisely b/c it is way different to search/filter it vs. regular Twitter Search. It is a huge omission/mistake that this is...
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- Alex Schleber
Since I mass unfollowed I've had SIGNIFICANTLY better interactions with the people I genuinely want to communicate with. A good % of the social media gurus who just follow in the hopes that you'll follow back unfollowed and it's seriously been like a weight lifted off my shoulders.
- Ryan Stephens
(cont'd) For this reason, I will openly admit to trying to get as many of my Twitter peeps registered into FriendFeed as possible, & I won't even care if they sub to me there or not (not required for conversation on FF anyway). It's to get them into the stream that I can then search over, and further add people into separate Friend Lists from there. Currently I'm at about 1k of 3k...
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- Alex Schleber
Also see "My comment on: 'Why You Should Start Over On Twitter With A BRAND NEW Account - Twitip' Hint: I disagree" http://post.ly/1owO This about sums it up: "..the solution to overwhelm by technology is better technology, not retrenchment..".
- Alex Schleber
Louis, I only read part of your post, but I agree as far as the types of people that are following others. Twitter has become a place more for business than meaningful conversations. Best thing to do is look at who is following you and purging those who just seem to market links to " Ways To Generate Massive Cash " through whatever they might be involved in hawking.
- Lew Newmark
@Lew funny you call this "business". I call it "racket"
- Jorge Escobar
Somewhat parenthetically, like the 19th century theoretical "corporate shield" that was supposed to shield individuals from liability, artificial demarcations between "my personal site" and "my business site" are increasingly obsolete. We are all complex, intertwined, interdependent, human-computer, systemic hybrid participants in an increasingly systematized hybrid world. The old silos...
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- michael silverton
@Louis - I think you are right. Doing something because it's a "trend" is dumb. Can you tell me what the metric is you use to measure when something breaks through to "trend" status? When "unfollow" hits Trending Topics, maybe? I didn't reboot my following list to join a trend. I did it because I really like following the people I follow...and they were getting drowned out by the people...
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- Rex Hammock
I'm going to mass unfollow everyone who ignores me :)
- JCunwired
Lets be honest, this unfollowing thing by "certain" people is nothing but a PR stunt
- Spencer
Spencer--well, of course this thing does have PR implications. After all, the big wigs are all talking about it non-stop, and then those on the next few tiers down from there are talking about the talking. Still, having PR implications and being a stunt aren't exactly the same thing. Many of these big name folks *are* established brands, which isn't something most of us can claim....
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- Kathy Fitch
@Spencer - I know my unfollowing thing was nothing but a PR stunt. As is my commenting here.
- Rex Hammock
Twitter was a figment of our imagination ;)
- Valeria Maltoni
Yeah -- I haven't seen a fail whale in a while. And i just noticed that Penthouse Magazine commented on your post, Jeremiah.
- Daniel B. Honigman
Does Facebook or Friendfeed pick up the real time web slack when Twitter goes down? What is your first instinct on where to turn?
- Joe Magennis
from iPhone
Oh, look at all the fresh updates here! (Including mine) Is this the social media equivalent of a booty call?
- Justin Whitaker
and the funniest part is when your first reaction is to tweet and find out what is going on. oops. Nothing on the blog, I checked.
- nan braun
Can't access Twitter in NL either. Over to Friendfeed!
- Samuel Driessen
I'm having login issues with Facebook as well (and so are a number of my friends in different parts of the countries). FriendFeed FTW
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
@Sydney I rather like FriendFeed, there's just more people on Twitter for me, it drives WAY more traffic, and it's RARE good discussions evolve here from anyone other than POWER users.
- Ryan Stephens
love how we all pop over here when twitter is down ;)
- Kate
Johnny: I have more discussions b/c my friends engage more there...of course harder to follow and usually include only 2-4 people. I LOVE the threaded comments here, provided a group of intelligent people were chatting, but how often does that happen? Sometimes with people like Scoble, Owyang and Louis Gray? (that's been my experience anyway.)
- Ryan Stephens
I was not fully awake trying to bring up the Twitter page. Good to know it wasn't just me.
- RuthNH
Sam .. They are like alternate universes. Didn't expect anything in my Facebook feed, but knew it would be hopping here. Love this! This is going to be a Trending Topic I suspect ....
- Joe Magennis
from iPhone
@johnny I'd love to see that list, I'm going to sit down with friendfeed this weekend and figure it out
- Sydney Owen
Well, you mean in general or just the current outage? ;)
- Mads Kristiansen
.. Scoble must have run his script again, I guess.. ;)
- Mads Kristiansen
Johnny: That's completely fair. I've lurked a lot & have read a lot of Louis Gray's, Scoble's and Valeria Maltoni's insights with respect to FriendFeed. You're right, maybe I'm not following the right people. And I didn't necessarily mean to imply there was a lack of intelligent conversation. It's just rare that I've seen these discussions develop from anyone's comments aside from a few power users. I'd be grateful for a list of users.
- Ryan Stephens
I'm blaming Jeff Elder for breaking the Twitterz in the Charlotte area, because he wrote a column about how it was good for listening for businesses. http://bit.ly/ospIC
- Andria Krewson
from iPhone
Johnny: But how often does it start from someone's message that's not a 'power user' ? How often does someone following 100, have a 100 followers end up with conversations like this off of one of there comments?
- Ryan Stephens