Right now, Mark Zuckerberg is sitting in a dark room, looking at monitors on the screen. A big red button marked "Kill Friendfeed" sits on the armchair to his right. As he giggles menacingly under his breath, his finger hovers ever-so-gently over the button...
- Fleagle
++ Fleagle. "And suddenly, a question pops his head. How come, why not here on my own developed turf? He sips the last of his milk glass, raising the finger off the button, and decided to give them another day." -The book of SocNet, 12:10
- Zu from AOD
Ross and Dan made this video to illustrate the advanced technology we use behind the scenes at FriendFeed. (Ross and Dan, you are amazing - I can't believe how awesome this thing turned out)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
How very creative. This is very fluid and cool.
- Louis Gray
OK, not exactly what I was expecting, but very cool.
- Kevin Arth
Anyone have the video somewhere other than Youtube? it's banned here in Turkey and I can't wait until we get home (next month) to watch it!!
- Chris Myles
Bret, this video should be titled: A Love Song for FriendFeed ! Great vid (and music) !
- Ahsan Ali
This is superb. I just showed it to my 5 year old son who enjoys Lego and has already taken some great photos, including one or two of his toys. So now he has the seed of the idea that, in time, he could take multiple stills and put them together to make moving pictures. Thank you very much for posting it and giving me and him that opportunity. Maybe, he might use FriendFeed one day too!
- John W Lewis
I think they need to make a full stop-motion version of the Matrix in legos. Now THAT would be awesome. I wonder what bullet-time looks like in LEGO?
- Bret Taylor
i'd pay to see the stop animation lego matrix, but not the sequels
- patrick
"Equipment Generously Provided By Casey Muller" - hahaha!! THIS IS AWESOMESAUCE!!! I love the creative energy and vibe in this video... LOTS of work went into that one! Thanks guys!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Genius, how much time did that all take?
- Wayne Hornsey
Chris Myles: if you want ot - DM me an address and I'll mail you a copy.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
"As a devoted FriendFeed user, I have tried to convince all of my friends and family to join the site, but a handful of them never quite got their accounts set up properly. With our new Recommend friends feature, I can fix their FriendFeed experience by recommending subscriptions to them." Try it out at http://friendfeed.com/friends...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
What am I supposed to get when I click the 'recommend friends' link on someone's pop-up? Currently, the popup just goes away and I don't get directed anywhere else.
- FFing Enigma
Fred: yah, unfortunately, you can only recommend people who you are subscribed you and who are also subscribed back to you.
- Bret Taylor
Mark, I didn't submit a bug report since what is supposed to happen wasn't actually spelled out on the blog post or here; this might be the intended functionality... I hope not, but it's possible.
- FFing Enigma
Tina: it is supposed to pop up a dialog. Sorry for the trouble - we will look into it.
- Bret Taylor
At first I did not understand this, but now that I am checking it out, it is brilliant and addresses much of what we have complained about. NOW what will we complain about?
- Liza + = ?
Just to confirm Bret, the first image in the blog post is what the pop up is supposed to look like, right? Because that's nothing like what the ff.com/recommend page looks like....
- FFing Enigma
I notice that new subscriptions are automatically added to one's home feed. I consider that kind of a bug.
- Meryn Stol
Tina: yes, that is correct. The http://friendfeed.com/friends... page is just a list of people that we think could use some friend recommendations since they have few subscriptions. If you click on any of the "Recommend" links on that page, you will see the same, standard "Recommend friends" dialog.
- Bret Taylor
Where would we find recommendations that others suggest to us?
- Fred Yankowski
@Bret, who receive the recommandation see also who is the recommender?
- Roberto
Fred: You will receive an email as well as a notification on the top of your feed.
- Ross Miller
Roberto: yes, they see who recommended
- Bret Taylor
Not getting the pop-over when I click 'recommend' on the friendfeed.com/friends/recommend page either... FFox 3.0.12 if it's relevant.
- FFing Enigma
Bret, if I recommend friends to people who haven't signed in for a long time, will they get email? A lot of my bored friends are not active FF users I think. (quite logical)
- Meryn Stol
and can I see who has accepted my recommendation?
- Roberto
Roberto: You won't be notified if they accept/deny as the recommender.
- Ross Miller
Ross: Ah, it just appeared on my feed. Cool. (And thanks Meryn)
- Fred Yankowski
Meryn: yes, they will get an email with your recommendations
- Bret Taylor
from email
Bret, I accidently just received an email with previous recommendations. I had already viewed them through the web-interface. But indeed, it's there. Email looks good too, as I expected of course. :)
- Meryn Stol
hey Robert Scoble....I have a trade proposal....you send my name to all your friends...i send your name to all of my friends for the rest of my life....
- Bob DeMarco
I would like that deal, too, Scoble. I like this a lot.
- Ben Hanten
Bob: I charge $1 per friend. :-) just kidding, but the UI makes it so hard to send you to more than a few people.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Bret: You guys rock! This is so much better than FollowFriday, which I recommended just a while back. Now, I'm waiting for some recommendation emails! :)
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
If there’s something about friends and family not having their account set up properly, I’d prefer a way to recommend them the streams they forgot to add. For example, I could tell them “You forgot to add your Digg stream and your fourth and eight blog. Here’s the link.” Then he could just click the recommendation and had it set up easily.
- Natsuki Seika
As I have lots of subscriptions the pop-up window is *really* slow and always has been since the new UI (same thing for amending friends lists). :-( I like the feature though, so I could make a new friends list of my most recommended users and use that each time for each user?
- Kol Tregaskes
"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
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
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
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
This morning we changed the format of FriendFeed subscription email messages to include more information about people who subscribe to you. Please let us know if you see any problems, and keep an eye out for more email improvements in the future.
I'm all for improving the format of notifications, but wonder (aloud) if it is such a smart move to include the Approve/Reject link right at the top (unless it only appears in private feeds to which someone has requested access). Right now we have the option of blocking/ rejecting a subscriber at any time but presumably not at the very outset. This may lead to more of a walled gardens' mentality, already very prevalent at FF.
- ianf ⌘
ianf: approve/reject is only for private feeds. Public feeds just have a link to subscribe back :)
- Benjamin Golub
I noticed this one! Such informations about people who subscribe to me on FriendFeed are useful, and makes it easy to quickly get in the conversation. Thanks for the good job!
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
Gmail automatically showed me the images in a subscription email, even though I never told it to (you know how gmail has the 'display images below' option). further, it doesn't give me the option to hide the images. not that I'd want to, but how are you bypassing gmail's security feature to hide the images?
- chrisofspades
Chris, we don't do anything special. I'm not sure how gmail decides what images to show, you'd have to contact them or check the gmail help.
- Casey Muller
Casey, you sure FriendFeed's founders didn't use some of their "we created Gmail" mojo? ;)
- chrisofspades
Chris, the "show images" only applies to external images hosted on other sites. Gmail doesn't show those by default because doing so would allow people to "bug" email. We include the images with the email so that they can be displayed immediately.
- Paul Buchheit
Yay! The graphic has officially been flipped! No need for nostalgia.
- Louis Gray
Kenndy actually makes a good point here... :)
- Roberto Bonini
Merry Eggnog! ... and jeez, what's with the rude comments? It's the holidays. #relax
- Mona Nomura
I think everyone knew exactly what you meant jeremy :)
- Roberto Bonini
Jeremy, perhaps there's a misunderstanding. As a rule, FriendFeeders celebrate Festivus - maybe someone mistook this thread for the Airing of the Grievences ceremony. In any event, I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!
- John Craft
Overly-asynchronous web sites drive me nuts.
- Tinfoil 2.0
The biggest problem is the fact that browsers still don't really handle asynchronous loads consistently. Whenever I visit a Twitter page, I can never tell if the AJAX load failed or if it's simply still loading. Sometimes I have to wait a full minute or longer after the header loads before the body of the page loads in (and, since the browser thinks the page is done loading, I have no way of watching the progress - short of opening the developer tools)
- Fried Curdys
Agreed, and Twitter is one of the worst at this. The site is so flaky anyway, it's hard to know at any given time what the problem is.
- Tinfoil 2.0
Last friday I taped an iPhone to my head and ran around Paris capturing the most famous sights in a single (somewhat shaky) shot. Here's the video: http://vimeo.com/12906858
At first look I also thought he became gangsta :p
- deerstep
that explain other FF posts, looking for tapes and where can one upload large video files ;-).
- Tzury Bar Yochay
Yeah, I never did get the duct tape though, so I had to use clear packaging tape instead (with a sock stuffed between the iPhone and my hat to get the correctish angle).
- Paul Buchheit
this was perfect, I opened up my Paris map and followed you :)
- ipek aral kişioğlu
I'm surprised you were able to follow. I didn't have a map (my iPhone was taped to my head!) so I made a number of wrong turns, though the high-level route was pretty basic.
- Paul Buchheit
Saw the vimeo on your stream and watched a little of it. Great stuff! Cool to see new iphone vid quality. (er 3gs? quality, hmm) Oh yeah, and enjoy Paris!
- Jay
It's actually a 3GS, not an iphone 4.
- Paul Buchheit
I think I might tape a photo of Paul with an iPhone taped to his head to my head because I want to get arrested for being a menace.
- Akiva
Ahhh this explains the "ducktape in Paris" stuff LOL :D (that picture is full of geeky win!)
- Susan Beebe
@Paul just curious how much battery did you have left after you were done recording?
- BRҰANSAҰS
Something like 22%, as I recall. I had put the phone in airplane mode to reduce wireless consumption and also because I'm concerned that an incoming call would stop the video or something.
- Paul Buchheit
Not bad. I guess you could get at least 2 hours of recording on one charge.
- BRҰANSAҰS
from BuddyFeed
That was the first time. The second offense (to the bridge of the nose) has brought an iPad ban.
- Louis Gray
Ruffians! Ruffians, I tell you! [shakes fist]
- Akiva
I think it should probably be a tablet ban, otherwise she'll just grab one of your Android tablets. :P
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
If I ever upgrade my iPad or just stop using it, I'm probably going to give mine to Audrey. I'm sure she misses playing Find Waldo and doing fingerpainting.
- Akiva
This is clearly not my cat. If this was my cat he's have one arm shoved down into the printer trying to tear up all the internal whirling bits with his bare claws.
- Soup in a TARDIS
Too Funny! Reminds me of the San Mateo Cat Shelter where one of the cats loves to sleep on top of the laster printer where the paper comes out...
- Greg Lato
1600+ to beat the FFundercats live chat thread. I think with this real time now on all threads we're going to see some truly epic comment numbers.
- Simon Wicks
Ivan, no the picture speaks for itself. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Petr, I have no idea what you mean, but thank you. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
@Kol .. :] that, partially, might have been the purpose.... I don't know it exactly either. :] .. was I reflecting on a cat under the fax, and that it is hard to fax that way ... /?:] ... "underfaxing at its worst" ..
- pb:
there ya have me ! :] .... see, to be honest with you, i saw this pic couple days ago, but i let it go, without posting it ..... what does that make me? :]
- pb:
even a flat cat... faxes just can't handle the hair. You'd have to shave the cat first, else the hair will burn and stick to the drum... a mess! (I am extrapolating from transparencies, mind, i don't have access to a cat to test)
- Iphigenie
Hehe, Joelle. This is now tied for the 'likes' top stop. One more then, hehe. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Hehe, Greg. Blimey! Erm, is that not far from 500 likes now? ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Bloody marvelous, Kol. Wish I could like it again... too cute (and help u to 500 likes).
- Roberto Bonini
I couldn't believe it when I logged on from the morning over posting it and saw it was at something 200 likes! You all have a strange fetish with cats and fax machines, hehe. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Am I the only one who saw this and their first thought was - My goodness did someone break that cats neck? It still freaks me out a little
- SteVe "Glory Juice" C
Steve, it does look a little out of place, but cats are pretty bendy. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
So we can put this post to rest now. :-) 505 likes final count, wow! :-D Good night all!
- Kol Tregaskes
did 3 people really un-like this? now at 506. wtf (edit: uh, oh, yeah, me and 2 + 506 others makes 509. dammit, jim, i'm an artist, not a mathematician)
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
One of the best funny cat pictures I've seen! :-)
- John Collis
Kristian, it appears to be. Hehe, John.
- Kol Tregaskes
ای بابا این پیشول بی خیال نمی شود، بابا پاشو برو دنبال یه بازی دیگه ، از هفته پیش تا حالا تو فکس ولو شدی حوصله ات سر نرفته، پاشو اقلا بپر رو کیبوردی چیزی
- Maryaminaa
It's really only social convention which regards it as inappropriate, same with Xeroxing it, like one does with their b__tocks. Wait are we still talking about cats cats here or...
- sofarsoShawn <right here>
OMGosh 700+ likes now!! LOL. Thank you all 702 of you. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Seriously folks, I think we've found a great new service. I hope you all at least give it a fair chance (when you get your invite of course). It's very slick, it's very FriendFeed-friendly (very similar to our beloved FF) and has users, lots of them and they are all interacting with each other and posting on all sorts of topics.
- Kol Tregaskes
Yeah, but all I see is the same useless noise (crap) wrapped in a new candy wrapper. Slightly better features is fine, but unless it exponentially improves what has been said, it's just pixie dust on a dog turd
- Johnny
I was impressed how well the hanging out feature worked.
- Mike Nencetti
Waiting for Google to honour the invite i was sent.... grrrr
- Roberto Bonini
I'm waiting for importing and exporting. And for the folks with a terrible combination of ADHD and OCD to get sick of it and leave, or to calm the hell down.
- Victor Ganata
from iPhone
Johnny, I see no noise. I use Google+'s circles (which are just FriendFeed-like friends lists).
- Kol Tregaskes
Victor, I can't see that happening. It's all native and I think Google will stick to that. Possibly a good thing as it avoids everything simply importing their tweets, leaving and not using the service. You actually have to be active on Google+.
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol. I have lists/circles set up too. I just see the same stuff there that I do here. And I'm not going to do all the work for no real benefit. And they better do something about import cause if it's just Google native, i don't want it. It has to be a central hub, not a closed garden
- Johnny
from iPhone
I can't wait to get an invite! It's about time someone else gave Facebook a run for their money, they have become complacent and arrogant and have had no competition up until now.
- Technogran
You know, perhaps you guys are right and should just stay over here( please). Victor, make sure you give your customary block when you there. Jesus.
- Joe
from YouFeed
The feature missing is the ability to import from any random site (using either custom importers or RSS/Atom). Without that, it's just another gated-garden (not quite a walled-garden, but G+ wants you to create your content on G+ it seems). I create content all over the internet, not just one one site.
- Andy Bakun
FF's import feature is nice but when I look back on the best conversations I've had at FF, they're the ones that started on FF (or the bookmarklet), not the ones imported from Twitter/Tumblr/Flickr/Reader/etc. The imported items seem to generate less interesting conversations.
- Amit Patel
One major flaw is that not even Google Reader (which is a major source of interesting conversations for me) imports into Google+, which just seems absurd. I don't see the benefit of moving from Facebook to Google+ if it's going to be more of a silo than Facebook is.
- Victor Ganata
But they'll definitely import from Buzz some time, no? And Buzz does import from whatever else..
- Ruchira S. Datta
I hope so. The potential for Google to tightly integrate all its products seems like it would be a huge selling point, but the beta certainly isn't there yet. Google+ doesn't even have search!
- Victor Ganata
Honestly, it feels like a real beta. Not a Google beta where they just leave the label on, but a real, not-ready-for-prime-time beta.
- Alex Scrivener
+1 Alex... they're actively seeking feedback and releasing changes as they code them
- Jorge Escobar
Very much agree Victor. Google reader is a big source of interesting conversations. I'm much less likely to read something in GR and then manually go to G+ and post a link. The browser note facility isn't perfect, but it's simple and immediate.
- Todd Hoff
I have a feeling Google+ is going to have search. Intersecting search with circles may be tricky and has to be done perfectly...
- Ruchira S. Datta
I think it's too early to say "it doesn't have this and that and therefore it's of no interest." The question is are they committed enough to G+ to improve it and add some of these requested features (which they didn't do with Buzz). The things they've done so far they've done quite well, which is promising. A better share mechanism from GReader and other sites would be great (could be...
more...
- Jandy
Oh, Google+ is certainly compelling. But is it going to make me abandon Facebook/Twitter/Friendfeed given its current feature set? Most definitely no. The devs seem to be way more responsive to suggestions compared to Buzz, but I honestly can't remember a major Google product that wasn't almost completely perfect out-of-the-box. I supposed I've been spoiled because of their previous misuse of the term "beta" :)
- Victor Ganata
G+ is very good, but I still find myself comparing it to FF. And while dev here has stalled for the last year. It just goes to show you how strong they were before that both FB & G+ are emulating large portions of FF's environment.
- Bluesun 2600
FF (like Soylent Green) is actually made of people. Just add your FF into an FF circle and pretend it's the new beta. Re: Twitter, NOVWL.
- Goran Zec
I still find FF's UI (Helvetica theme w/ adblocked banner) superior to anything. And the real time stream is crazy impressive years later. And it seems bug free and the search works these last few months. But material up to 2009. no longer seems accessible through search, there is no archive, animated gifs should work from anyplace and not just soup.io and new social services are not being added. It's decaying gracefully thanks to good engineering, but it's dead nonetheless.
- Goran Zec
3 is the best. 2. looks a bit too i-made-him-an-offer-he-couldn't-refuse and 1 is all sign-up-for-my-newsletter-for-tip-on-gaming-the-google
- Rahsheen the Dream
While I am thinking of it: why I really like Paul Buchheit? He has given the world some amazing, innovative and elegant software, much of which I have used with great pleasure. Thanks, Paul!
- Sean McBride
#3 - didn't look at comments before I answered, but I was tempted! Never met you in person but either #1or #3 seem the most like the person I *think* you are.
- Liza + = ?
Now looking at comments - this is a very cool game! We draw so many conclusions when looking at a photo!
- Liza + = ?
"Here’s how you know this is European: if this had been made by An American, all of those dancers would be super hot. And young." [...] "To an American sensibility, sensuality out of proportion to physical attractiveness is jarring, odd. If you see two unattractive people acting sexy in America, you’re watching a comedy."
- Tudor Bosman
from Bookmarklet
I guess the dancing scene in the 3rd or 4th iteration of Empire is an exception.
- Anika
Alex is just balancing his brother. BY BEING A HATER WITH HIS HATER PANTS
- Mike Nayyar
I hope the g+ talk dies down on g+. Right now it just feels like a giant tech blog on how to g+
- Tamara
Where do you expect people to talk about Google+?
- Rochelle
I thought that the first rule of Google+ was...
- Julian
Honestly, I think that's what G+ needs during its Field Test. Once they have a bookmarklet, conversations will turn away from trying to sneak people in.
- caj
I remember when Friendfeed used to launch new features, all people would talk about were the new features. happens with everything.
- chrisofspades
I'm not hating on Google+, heh...I'm just making an observation.
- Scoble, Alex Scoble
Just wait til the honeymoon phase is over.
- imabonehead
I'm talking more about other stuff than I am about G+ over there.
- Fried Curdys
I find that I'm talking about Google+ in this comment. But over on Google+, I posted a picture of my puppeh.
- Glen, on vacation
It just depends on your friends, but yes the biggest buzz seems to be about Google+. Had to put someone out of circles and block since he was just self promoting and touting google+ with a developer on every post. It's about everyone and not just about the "me" so to speak.
- James Stratford
Hey now! We were talking about stuff.
- Joe
from YouFeed
I posted a picture of my bike. So there.
- Joe
from YouFeed
*back from G+* All the talking about Google+ there is starting to die down, at least relatively. Still, it's been only a few days and we're still figuring out what to do. Most of my G+ talk is in the comments on other people's posts. And people are talking about FF there too...
- Dennis Jernberg
Err, really think I am a fake account, Joe? I was live in a G+ hangout, so that must count for something.
- Liza + = ?
So you say. As I am using the mobile app. for + I cannot confirm nor refute your claim Liza.
- Joe
from YouFeed
Further proof is needed I think.
- Joe
from YouFeed
LMAO Joe, she's a real girl, she was commenting on my headboard earlier.
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
o' why did you have this conversation at google+? theres so many comments i want to plus in this thread
- chaz2b
anybody got invites for Google+ "createdoe"
- ffcode
No, I can see lots of different topics being discussed on Google+ now.
- Kol Tregaskes
But remember all we talked about on FF at first was FF
- Leo Laporte
As cools as G+ is or could be I still think FF is better for conversations. You see a lot more conversation per screen area on FF. G+ has a lot of white space and space used for comments and meta data.
- Todd Hoff
Leo is right we talk a lot about friendfeed on friendfeed
- ffcode
Headboard Jim? What are you two doing in bed together.......?
- Joe
from YouFeed
I saw someone mention that Google+ is the return of Friendfeed. Which is funny, since it never went anywhere. (I get the sentiment but it's still inaccurate.)
- caj
and here I thought you were knocking boots Jim. (Disappointed)
- Joe
from YouFeed
Not cousins. Henson himself admitted that they were based on some gay friends of his, although obviously not overtly given the audience.
- Sparky, lurking
I should check snopes first next time. "Bert and Ernie, who've been on Sesame Street for 25 years, do not portray a gay couple, and there are no plans for them to do so in the future. They are puppets, not humans. Like all the Muppets created for Sesame Street, they were designed to help educate preschoolers. Bert and Ernie are characters who help demonstrate to children that despite their differences, they can be good friends. " - Sesame Workshop's consumer response prepared statement, 1993.
- Sparky, lurking
You say that, but I'll never forget that day. Bert and I had been together for a year when he sat me down and said "I'm sorry, Slippy, but there's someone else. His name's Ernie, and he supports me in everything I do." I still miss his little yellow head.
- Slippy Lane
I took a series of photos of Emma the Cat rolling - nay, wallowing - on the tablecloth I had just unfurled for Christmas dinner. I don't think I've ever seen a happier kitteh.
- Stephanie•CogSciLibrarian
I didn't gst any pictures of the chapel, but it is worth a few million by itself. Of course, upkeep on that place is $600,000 a year.
- Alex Scrivener
from Android
The old fashioned film media comes to mind here, complete with it's own unique smell and a smooth texture, except where it's kinked. :) Thinking way back. ditto Jack and Cleo
- James Stratford