"I think it's part of the evolution of the web. With a greater amount of information, and a static amount of time, not considering that the things we do with the net are increasing (how many of us REALLY watch TV anymore?) we're having to find ways to make the things we want to do fit into the time constraints we have. This is why RSS readers exist, why start pages exist, why we've flocked to devices like iPhones to keep us connected as much as possible. We're taking as much information as we can, and putting it in one place, and adapting the technology to properly filter that information. It's why we use sites like socialthing, friendfeed, etc. to take information from all over the place and bring it into one place. The supply of information is increasing, so this has become our way to condense and filter it. As for early adopters using 'single feature' sites, I think the real question isn't if mass-audience will use them, but how to deliver them. I suspect that, originally, we'll see..." - Adam Posey
"I think, much like legos, you'll get some pre-defined sets for less enthusiastic people who just want to have a good experience. but ultimately, what we're seeing is single feature sites and tools because the enthusiasts have become accustomed to mashing up everything.
So, when we get a new mapping application, we just want it to do that and do it very well so we can use that functionality on another site, and so on and so forth. We're gonna be building our own experiences, or getting sets built for us.
The enthusiastic among us will flock to places that give us more freedom and control to construct exactly experience we want in a way that mirrors our idea of what the web should behave like. I suspect the mass-market will be about pre-assembled packs of applications delivered to you in a well packaged fashion." - Adam Posey
"I hate to draw an analogy of web applications being 'toys' but I think this fits. We're gonna see the same kind of 'innovation' we see in the action figure dept. at wal-mart. Endless cookie-cutter molds of pre-defined experiences and ideas. The end result: less creativity, more copying, more 'add one feature to an existing product and release it'. There are very few remarkable innovations happening in action figures right now, and it turns out that people are having a lot more fun with 'build it yourself' experiences like Lego which is still going strong. So, if I'm gonna predict the web in a few years, I'm thinking of it like lego blocks. Every page, every song, every graphic, every person, will be a block. And we can pull those blocks together to build our own experience. I doubt that the killer web2.0 application is actually going to be a website, I suspect it will be a browser application that's smart enough to put these experiences together and simply change the way we interact..." - Adam Posey
It's disgusting how pumped I am everytime Steve Jobs takes the stage, and I don't even own a Mac! (Only have an iPod) It must be that look of his ;-) - Bartek Gniado
This "new iPhone OS" is kind of misleading. I don't think they'll really overhaul the OS very much (they certainly can't change the underlying structure because of the SDK). It's possible they might make tweaks to the interface but I doubt they'll be much major change. - Brandon Titus
Ha - I havent been touched by Apple - yet. No Mac, no phone, no Ipod - viki saigal
I'm with Brandon, isn't the iPhone already running OS X? The SDK release just finally opens it up to developers. I agree with new MacBook Pros and possible Mac Pros. Isn't Apple due to update their displays? Did they ever release an HD display? What about a blueray option? I would not care much about it, but I bet there are others that do. Since this is a developer's conference, does anyone expect a peak at what Leopard's successor will look like or will all the dev revolve around the iPhone? - Michael Pardee
Akiva, they actually updated it without a formal announcement. They all have the new Penryn chips and the new Touchpad now and aside from putting an aluminum case on the MacBook to match the Pros, I doubt we'll see anything new. - Cyndy
Cyndy, that's good to know. All I had heard was about the new multi-touch Touchpad. I doubt a new case will make a difference to me. - Akiva Moskovitz
iPhone will get a better camera/video camera - Varun Mahajan
An illuminated Apple is all the eye-candy I need to see! - Dr. Mac
My desktop has a 'Powered by Asus' sticker, the laptop that I used to use had a J!NX skull on it. - Timothy Neilen
I don't have any stickers on my laptop. I have a Dell (PRODUCT) RED XPS M1530 laptop and don't want to hide the awesome red color. - Brandon LeBlanc via twhirl
Todd Jordan right on. who would ever do that to a macbook pro - Danish Khan via twhirl
Come to think of it, I do have a "Linux Inside" sticker on my ThinkCentre. - Chris Baskind
I have a Nelnet Corp IBM Lenovo Z61m - NO stickers! hmm could try that out though... HR might frown on that... dang it! - Susan Beebe
I have a Mac and have a ton of Stickers on it. My son says that putting Stickers on his Mac is "heresy." But, then, he's an Apple Fanboy. - Robert Scoble
I'm a sticker junky too. I have Ubuntu and Jinx stickers on my Thinkpad - Bwana McCall
yeah I have a couple stickers...what more though - Joshua Smith
Anyone who's serious about social media should be sending Scoble stickers. He puts them on his laptop and cell phone and tripod. It's great free advertising. - Thomas Hawk
ok looks like we need a ROOM for laptop stickers! ha, ha!! Ok go here ==> http://friendfeed.com/rooms/la... if YOU have Stickers then go post information about how the sticker addicts can get their fix with MORE stickers! - Susan Beebe
I picture people sitting in boring meetings, looking across at scoble's laptop and checking out all the various sites, etc represented there. Awesome. - Brad McCrorey
since I don't have a laptop <sigh> any stickers I get sent go up on my t-shirt wall - that being the all in my office where I hang t-shirt schwag that I get - Steven Hodson
they have sooo many other avenues to produce income. why that? they need to be more creative. - Josh via twhirl
I wonder how they put them on iGoogle. Honestly, though, a couple half banners surrounding the logo wouldn't really bother me. Everyone's got the right to earn a few billion more. :) - felix
Scoble - don't you hate it when a site gets loaded down with ads? Even after the person said they wouldn't run them? - Dave Hodson
If the display ads from google are every bit as intelligent as the link ads, they'll be fine. I'm disappointed by how this will likely effect the page load times on Google (which are the primary reason I use Google over Yahoo or MSN anyway) - Adam Posey
lets see how this *pushing envelope* ends up... I guess this is classical case of big company taken over by mediocrity step by step, described so many times that it should be recognized without effort - silpol
I guess it was only a matter of time... As long as it's unobtrusive in terms of pageload &&,|| client-side processing I'm fine with it. Could probably add rule(s) to ipfw... - RandaL Hicks
the display ads might be put on Google image search which is all about images anyway, not main .com text homepage - Kevin Gough
If Google manages to get advertisers to clean up their act and create ads that don't slow down/break web pages, then everyone wins. If they let the same ads run on Google that run everywhere else, then Google loses bigtime. - Jason Wehmhoener
Personally, I think the article is trying to stir up unfounded attention. It talks about display ads in general raking in cash for Google, but then the quote from the Google rep talks about ads in image search only. If that's the case, what is the big deal? - Jason Dettbarn
Agree w @Jason and add that people had the same sort of reaction when text ads were introduced. It's not like you're going to wake up one day and it's going to look like the old TW Pathfinder site. - Erik Dafforn
I'm not sure how I feel about this...I mean, if Google can display ads that are in fact relevant to me, then I might be interested. I also think that while this idea does suck - it is important to remember what Google is...a public company that has to make profit. Sometimes I have a hard time understanding where all their money comes from....(i.e. who clicks on all those ads anyway?) - Elliott
I also agree with @Jason. The reference to Google.com is like saying "Google.com properties" - (i.e. Image Search). - Elliott
Is Google trying to be the next Yahoo!? Do not like. - darnell
Clearly I, sir, am no Kevin Fox: 6,919; 6/24/04. - matt shobe
4/15/04, 41,024. But I have to admit I use gmail simply as a handy web backup... I've always preferred the Outlook interface (yes, this causes Bret much anguish :) - Shannon Jiménez
Ugh, Outlook. I would think it would cause Kevin, Paul, & Sanjeev more anguish. But hey, I use Apple Mail. You could switch to MapQuest, which I'm sure would make Bret happy. - Chris White
Is it fair to compare us commoners to people who created gmail? ;) 6/8/04, 12,700. - Dan Hsiao
Can I use my still-existing tudor@google.com email account instead? :) 320,640 conversations. - Tudor Bosman
6/19/04 (Mentioning # of messages is irrelevant... I deleted a ton of lists and search results recently) - Louis Gray
Gah, I don't have access to my original gmail account but this one I've been using since 5/25/06 apparently. Originally I managed to get into the beta pretty early on. Man.. wish I could remember the pass for that account now. - Adam Posey
6/14/04 - I delete a lot of stuff I don't need to archive though. - Beau Liening
4/23/04 - Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know. (# is inaccurate, through annual purging but currently @ 15,783 - tagami
26,204 4/4/04 - but that doesn't count the month or two as a tester before it came out. - Rachel L Fisher
6/16/04 and 25209 messages - had to bribe a friend with a T-Shirt to get the invite... - Frederic
06/08/04 and 42496 although I recently deleted like 20k in order to be able to get a fetch via pop working. of course bcon stuff etc, not really mail. - Nicole Simon
4/1/04 - Anything earlier had to be imported, Kevin :) - Paul Buchheit
importing is cheating! only true messages count. *g* - Nicole Simon
Paul's 4/1/04 is wonderful. ; ) I changed my user name, but first one is ~01/05 - Erhan Erdogan
4/14/04 4454. Apparently, I deleted a lot at the beginning because my second surviving message is from 5/4/04 and third is from 6/22/04. - Clare Dibble
Your very first message should say something like, "Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know", assuming they still do that. Who can guess what the id of the VERY FIRST Gmail account is? (hint, it's not my name) - Paul Buchheit
09/05/04; 17074 conversations; in the first conversation found I thanked somebody for the invitation. :) the first Gmail account? if I'd be one of the Google-chiefs I would make it "sergey@gmail.com" or so. more realistically though it's probably some test-account. ;) - sebmos
14682 conversations starting from 10/4/04 - Benjamin Golub
60782 conversations(? I think just emails) from 6/15/4 - felix
I had no plans on switching to Gmail because it didn't have IMAP in the beginning and I didn't understand the beauty of the web interface back then. Then one day the CWRU mail servers went down just hours before the Observer (school paper) needed to be ready for printing. Needless to say everyone was panicked because some articles were still floating in limbo. So we all switched to Gmail that night and forwarded our mails to it :) - Benjamin Golub
I'm a late-starter. 12,632 conversations going back to Dec 4, 2005 (an e-mail to the Ceefax.tv team... for some reason). Mind you, I've cheated by importing my old e-mail via IMAP. Seems my very first *Gmail* message was Apr 2, 2006, though. - Cyvros/fyc
18759 conversations. Oldest email 1998... But then again, I imported my old mailbox. While checking this I noticed (and read through) a bunch of emails from Athena from when we first started dating (January 1998)! - Cyrus Lendvay
Joined on 9/1/04.. Count at 11138,though I have deleted as well.... First gmail received beyond the intro was from a friend with a link to a great political archive site still active: http://livingroomcandidate.mov... ... it has just about every presidential race tv ad ever made. Yes, you can watch swift boat, Willie Horton, Daisy and I like Ike again.... - Chris Reed
38052, 4/2/04. i guess i missed signing up on 4/1 :) - Neha Narula
This is so true, I find that I am checking friendfeed before google reader now. - Adam Posey
I stopped subscribing in gReader to folks who are in FriendFeed, but that hasn't made a huge impact on my reading yet. It will be interesting to see how it affects stats...since it appears that FeedBurner reports FriendFeed as a bot, so only counts if the item is loaded in browser, not as a subscription, right? - Judi Sohn
Do you use the imaginary feature to pull feed into FF that aren't already there? Also, I just discovered the power behind the "Like" link. It's like staring or sharing something in Google Reader! Sweet! - Ward Seward
FriendFeed has become primary to me but I still read plenty of feeds as well. Can't imagine putting tech blogs or whatever in my FF stream. - Akiva Moskovitz
I still use google reader as I find it looks a lot better when reading at work - Ryan via Alert Thingy
I'm still reading GR, too, but skim it ever most quickly. - Mike Reynolds
my google reader has seen a lot less of me lately since friendfeed + twhirl - Morgan via twhirl
I read friendfeed in gReader. Best of both worlds. FF aggregates well, gReader keeps track of what is unread and presents in chronological order. - James Polley
FF cannot replace my google reader. Gredr allows to pull in my feeds into neatly organised folder - each with relevant tags like GTD or Internet or Markets etc .... so I dive into whichever folder fancies my mood and then skim thru pretty quickly. So I guess the ability to customise my data structure appeals to me the most - viki saigal
google reader still is the main source of information, because FF has only the early adopters - Florin Grozea
I'm contemplating turning FriendFeed off in Twhirl and placing it in gReader. - Shawn Farner via twhirl
FriendFeed replaced Google Reader for the popular stuff, in other words: It replaced Techmeme. I'm still using Google Reader for all the stuff that doesn't come through here, but not Techmeme any more. - sebmos
Delicious already has a major social component in your personal network, and ability to send items "for" another person. But it's clunky, and quite hidden. Still rules for me though - it can repost links lists easily to my blog as daily summary posts. - Ian Betteridge via Alert Thingy
FriendFeed is awesome for social media. I still use RSS and Google Reader for pure info research. It isn't as functional for following the social side. - Michael VanDervort
FF is cool, but I don't want to ONLY rely on others to filter my news - too much bias / echo chamber danger. Read WIDE - Soulhuntre via twhirl
FF is nice and social, but Google Reader is still more efficient at browsing lots of info at the same time I think. - Elliott Ng
I might be the only one, but I have my FF summary e-mailed to me so it doesn't get lost in my RSS feeds and allows me to catch up if I don't have time to monitor twhirl. Although i'm spending more time in FF, I need to find a balance. I've certainly become more interactive, but not sure if I've become more efficient. - Phil Ashman
didn't think it would happen to me, but friendfeed is slowly taking over my google reader time - Murali
FriendFeed's website needs some serious work though. It's hideous and a pain in the butt to use. still prefer Google Reader personally. - xxdesmus via twhirl
googlereader + miranda(3 diff IM accounts) and now Alert thingy... this is gettin too much - Siddharth Mitra via Alert Thingy
"I don't think so Fraser. Mostly because music, etc. is becoming so fragmented into countless niches that you'd probably have greater success being seen as 'obscure', 'on the edge', etc. People would feel like they've discovered something special before anyone else, and would probably become fervent fans for it (the kind that do things like spend $350 on tickets to your shows)." - Adam Posey
"I have to disagree, Alex. Actually, when it comes to smartlinks I don't think either is valuable enough. The absolute standing shows popularity, but as any good hard look at the iTunes top 10 list will tell you, popularity and quality do not necessarily go hand in hand.
However, I think that showing 'momentum' in a way that provokes interaction with the smartlink would let me find the quality in it." - Adam Posey
"As an interesting experiment, I'd like to see what happens if we strip away the absolutes and leave only the trends. Hiding the hard data but saying "This is clearly becoming more (or less) popular than it's competitors". How would the mechanics of marketing music change if top 10 lists were to be replaced with the "Top 10 movers" or "fastest risers". Would this change how people view the data? I'd like to say that I think it would change how people look for the data. I think they would start at the bottom of the list and work their way up. Rather than starting at the top hits and working their way down. People could feel like they helped 'discover' music by pushing it to the top. To directly relate it to your product. What would happen if I hovered over a smartlink and instead of seeing an emphasized hard number about it's popularity I simply saw that the link was becoming increasingly popular. What If instead of seeing that no one had clicked the link, I was made to feel that I..." - Adam Posey
"Plaxo, its great that you're using Disqus for this. Now, all you need is a way to let developers add support for their site to Plaxo automatically. Perhaps a Stream-format is necessary now, with all these aggregators etc. around?" - Adam Posey
I think that Share and Tweet should be the same form and then decide what to do ...via AlertThingy - Hernan Garcia
twhirl needs to fix the window positioning bug and the fonts are screwy other that that it's awesome ...via AlertThingy - Bryan Thatcher
Totally agree on the enhancements Alert Thingy should look to do. ...via AlertThingy - Carmen
i like alertthingy! thanks michael. ...via AlertThingy - Pokai
1.2 is a nice addition - I hope they roll out with more themes, or allow a custom color chooser. Still not switched over from the web, but it's much more convincing now. I wish this comment box would grow as I type a lot. ...via AlertThingy - felix
AlertThingy needs more colour coding for each service IMHO, SocialThing.com still outdoes the rest. FriendFeed is mildly better than Twhirl, tho it does do multiple accounts ...via AlertThingy - Justin Fleming
just downloaded alertthingy...pretty slick ...via AlertThingy - champhuet
@justin fleming - I hadn't really remarked that, but you're right - it would be nice if the services had
