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Amazon vs. EBay: Who's the Online Retail King? - Advertising Age - Digital (EBay really screwed up its reputation with sellers, HUGE mistake). - http://adage.com/digital...

February 8, 2009 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Gökmen Karasu, Jim Bergman, Daniel Rowley and 9 other people liked this

I rarely use eBay, but I use Amazon all the time. However, I buy a lot of books, and a fair number of CDs and DVDs, so I'm somewhat biased. - Seth Greenblatt

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I won't use eBay anymore, it's not enjoyable or profitable to sell things casually there. - Brandon

I use Ebay, when I need to find something unique, or cheap. I buy from Amazon for contemporary items, and a no hassle experience. - john

eBay is completely collapsing. They continue to destroy their reputation with sellers, and more so, with buyers. I am surprised no-one comes up and unseats them still? Anyone up for getting Open Source "eBay killer" project going? - Adi Rabinovich

eBay are alienating sellers by moving away from second-hand auctions which were always their distinctive. BUT is the auction model out of fashion now? Has the action gone to category-specific sites now? For example if you sell vinyl records (which is my area of interest) you can often get more money via gemm.com or discogs.com - but both of those are fixed price, not auction. I wonder if that's mirrored in other product categories? - carl morris

The fixed-end-time auction has always been a compromise. As a seller, you want the auction to keep running until there's nobody out there who is willing to pay more... the old "going going gone" at the end of traditional auction makes sure the seller gets the best price. On the other hand, the buyer just wants the item *now* for as little as possible. That inherent conflict has always been there, and IMHO is what will eventually lead to eBay's downfall.. - Ken Sheppardson

...that is, as a buyer, why am I going to wait two days, make mutliple site visits/bids on some consumer electronics item I can just go buy on Amazon for essentially the same price. The fixed end time pushes the specialty, high ticket price items off eBay on one end, and the delayed gratification/marginal savings drives buyers off on the other. - Ken Sheppardson

Robert Scoble

A friend has a glass company and is struggling. Their Web site sucks. What advice do you give? Any Web designers in Silicon Valley?

September 27, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Simone Lovati, Bruce Lewis, Roberto Bonini and 15 other people liked this

Link? - Evan

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there should be the odd web designer in the valley somewhere. - Zee.

I would recommend that they first think what kind of content they want to have online. Product information is good bet, but what other things they should share to people? What about history of company? Telling stories make people feel more sympathy to company. (And yes, I could have some recommendation for those designers but I have to look from my bookmarks first...) - Daniel Schildt

Given the economy they need to consider only 2 things right now: 1) how do I acquire customers; 2) how do I keep the customers I get (return business/upsell) - That should be the only purpose of the site. HOW they get there is what a good creative can help them with. - Brian Roy

SWOT analysis, strategies evaluation, objectives setting, execution planning. In that same order - delbo

engagement, loyalty, turn customers into sales-people. 'social-ize' your products - MikeAmundsen

Make sure your website is tested on all platforms, loads quickly, gets to the point and is attractive without being gaudy. Showcase your work in the most attractive manner possible, but keep in mind who your key customers are; What kind of glass they make (art?, Practical?, sheets for artists?) will determine how they market. One thing they teach you in an MBA is that you can't just sell a product, you have to market to a customer- the first q they should ask themselves is who do they want as their customer - InPerpetualMotion(Gina k)

Evan: It is: http://www.southbayglassco.com/ - Robert Scoble

My tips? First, think about how people are using Google to find you. Put those search terms in your title tag. Second, put a simple sentence about what you do for customers and how you are different from your competitors. Include those same search terms. Put that at the top of your page. After that, start a blog, make it personal. Add some stories of what you do. Tips for customers who are looking to hire you. That, too, will help you with Google. - Robert Scoble

It doesn't tell me their story. Doesn't give me any reason why I should pick them over any other glass company. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

outsource it to asia for low cost upgrade, get a top notch result, can hook u up - imran

Agree with Alex. I want to know what makes them great, even without saying "we are better than everyone else." Maybe teach us something about glass. People may think a certain way about glass, but if we have a better understanding of what goes into giving us the product, we may gravitate towards them. - Evan

forget the Web site... how's the glass? perhaps that is the problem... - Jon Price

Make sure the fundamentals are covered. Easy to find address, phone number, other corporate info (you'd be amazed how many sites blow this). Make it easy for a customer to get in touch from every page--the moment they find what they want they can get in touch with the company and order it or get more answers. Another bit of advice is one page = one product. Get them into google on each individual item. Sitemaps are also important and good header tags. - Andrew Leyden

Marketing is more imp than product, right hand rule, unless u sell oil/gas - imran

I didn't find them on yelp. Might want to encourage customers to start some entries. I didn't see any customer reviews. There's no tag line. I like to see something about good prices, good work, leave the place clean, on time, that sort of thing. The examples of their work are too big and there are no descriptions of what makes their work good. - Todd Hoff

Better yet, move to Dubai, your friend will be sold out in a month or so - imran

Start a blog and a short video show on YouTube. Write the most basic posts about glass company themes. go to Yahoo Answers and answer every questions related to glass/windows. - Jason Calacanis

Selling your friends isn't very friendly. - Todd Hoff

Follow/learn from Jcal, Arrington, Scoble's marketing lifestyle - imran

I'd volunteer to help your friend - most businesses have fundamental biz development issues - they need to develop referral systems, focus on client education, reactivate dead leads, develop backend email system w/frontend free ebook optin above the fold answering most common client questions, and personalize the website with owner profile. It's cold and not that informative. Position... more... - Vicki Flaugher

Robert- I would be happy to send an complete analysis / recommendation. It sucks watching a good business fail with a bad site. I have some business basics articles I can narrow them in with, I know translating all this "net jargon" is hard for most brick and mortar businesses. - 123socialmedia

Thanks for all the tips, I just forwarded this. - Robert Scoble

they are struggling not because of their web site - this is for sure. They need to focus on their overall integrated sales/marketing strategies: like partnerships with contractors, etc; cross-marketing, referral-based incentives. People in general do not purchase these types of services because of the nice looking web site - period. There are few simple things that could be done to beautify their web site, even they will somehow drive folks to this web site-will not lead to more closed business- more needed - glfceo

more content, should have a unique page for every major glass company out there. a page for every major style of glass/glass doors.Should have a nice section that can be used as a resource by potential customers to draw them in and generate a lead. Also all the META info for the homepage(and i imagine every other page) needs a revamp. - sean percival

Answer three questions before you start: 1. Who am I talking to? 2. What do I want from them? 3. What do they want from me? - Michael Markman

also the mom and pop stuff is always very hard, ive done about 200 ecommerce sites, mostly for small companies like this. their focus is always on the biz first and website last, today it and in some cases it should be the other way around. - sean percival

Scobleizer, I guess it depends on their budget. If they have some budget allocated to improving their website, they should hire a consulting firm specializing in web and graphics design, like Emily Chang. However, if their budget is limited, they can search for students at nearby universities and see if any student designers will take it as a student project, or even have it as a class project competition. - imabonehead

Nothing says personal like some raw videos going up now and then showing some aspect of the business. Be it some cutting taking place and the owner talking about the business somewhat. Once it's genuine and not a "well I saw someone say to do this so let me do this" kind of thing. You would know what I mean, Robert. I think. - Evan

I'd like to see an http://www.englishcut.com style site go up for them and think that could work well. Of course using the web effectively might not translate well into business for a glass company...The other question is how effectively are they exploiting other avenues of advertising. Are they going the extra mile to get and maintain good word of mouth solicitations from current/past customers? Etc. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

selling glass during real estate troubles is interesting way to to target potential customers with sense of humor - Отборнейший бред

also, making search on google maps with string "glass near 63 Washington Street Santa Clara, CA 95050" (remove parethesis before search) and zooming out shows how many glass ships around -- I don't know what they are counting for... - Отборнейший бред

they don't appear on page 1 of google results for "santa clara glass." lot of drilling down to find them using maps, and they have NO reviews. on web site, gotta scroll down to find out "What we do." also, glass product named "Windows 95" does not inspire confidence - Karim

I would say that the bottom line comes down to storytelling. If I can go to their site and learn about them - what is their story? how did they get into the glass business? what makes them great? - I will gain an emotional connection and they've got my (and many others') business. Tell me the story of the process, let me gain the knowledge and make me feel like an insider because I know the terms and processes and don't feel like a fool when I call. That will make me a customer too. - Shawn Kelley

I sent a lengthy e-mail to your fastcompany addy. Please forward to your friend. :) - 123socialmedia

Before the glass company invests a lot of time, effort, and money into upgrading their Web site, they should run a small PPC (Google Adwords is your best bet) campaign to test the waters locally (under product/service related keywords like auto glass, glass windows, etc.). They can direct the Google ads to specialized landing pages that provide a call-to-action for the visitor - a small... more... - Drive Thru

Let's put internet aside for a sec (did I say that?). Seems to me they're lacking focus. Wikipedia tells me that Santa Clara has 100k pop. with median household income 76k$; yet, the showers seem quite expensive. Are they targeting the local market or also neighboring counties? Who are their customers cies or households? Before revamping their website, I think they should review their positioning. The most surprising is that they present themselves as subcontractors, maybe that's where they should start? - Zack Brandit

my company 9 consults projects like this. have him email me and we'll do it pro bono. patricia@whatis9.com. - Patricia

Wow, way to bump up an old FF post! - Tamar Weinberg

Great thread. Good advice here for any company. - Roberto Bonini

Four months ago Alex Scoble and Shawn Kelley talked about this business needing to do more storytelling. That was before FriendFeed added geoRSS support and added some real-time enhancements. Today they could add a FriendFeed widget to their site and send photos of the jobs they do with locations, live reporting like at http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Matthew, I thought the same thing. I'm not sure I like that given my discussion that current FF content is being ignored. - Tamar Weinberg

Not sure a web site can fix a struggling business otherwise we could do a killer design for the auto makers :-) It would be a lot cheaper... - Tom Foremski

Robert Scoble

Reasons why friendfeed's new search features justify my investment in friendfeed, discuss here:

February 3, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Michael Lynton, Andrej Kostresevic, Thomas Hawk and 98 other people liked this

I have spent more than 2,000 hours in friendfeed. I have clicked "like" on 15,822 items. I have commented on 8,048 items. That is a HUGE investment in time (I've been blogging a lot less over the past year). These new search features bring HUGE benefits. I will discuss why here. - Robert Scoble

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Clearly the main reason is to find things that you posted/liked in the last. - David Wilson

First, the new search features are discussed over on friendfeed blog here: http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... - Robert Scoble

1. Now you can search based on number of comments an item got. So, I can search for all items that contain the word "Obama," for instance, but I can tell it to only show me items with 10 likes or more. THIS IS HUGE because it shows which items got HUGE engagement. Here is that search: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Wow, I didn't even notice that. Very useful. - David Wilson

Ability to refine searches for comments is a killer app. - Mike Nayyar

Hmm, does it actually let you search for a user's name/handle in the comments/content of an item, without giving you a load of "$PERSON liked this" results, even when their name/handle don't appear in the content or any attached comments? - Tyson Key

How close are we to being able to hide based on the criteria? - Brian Sullivan

Close... so... close. If we could create that search and have it form a real-time feed... that would do it for me. Historical search with the ability to follow the search in real time. - Brian Roy

2. Now you can search based on numbers of "likes" an item got. For instance, now I can say show me all items with "netbooks" in the title that have 10 or more likes. This is HUGE because it removes all noise and shows only items that got a lot of interest from the community. Here's that search: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Awesome! Makes Friendfeed less noisy to me. I agree some search fine-tuning would be nice. Still, this helps a lot. - Pam Baker

2,000 hours jeez they should pay you - andy brudtkuhl

Brian: yeah, I want real-time views into this data. That is a prerequisite to "track." Also, I need RSS feeds from these searches that I can shove into a room. I can't figure out how to do either of those two things. - Robert Scoble

I must be a dummy. I can't find how to do that on the site. However, I did read on the blog that it exists. How do I get to it? - Francine Hardaway

This can really cut down the noise in a search. For example, here's a search for items that mention the Steelers and only contain comments with the word towel. And you could also do the reverse. Cool. http://friendfeed.com/search... - Tom Landini

Andy: I'm pretty sure it is actually a lot more than 2,000 hours. I'm on friendfeed almost every minute I'm awake and not doing something else. - Robert Scoble

I didn't see it anywhere... sadly. I'm also looking to see if these advanced searches are supported by the API... if they are it is a boon for applications that swarm to subjects/topics. - Brian Roy

OK, I'm totally liking the new search features...Now I can finally see who's shouted out to me in posts without getting a lot of "Robert Scoble" noise in the results. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Aah, to answer my own question, the intitle: attribute seems to do the trick, cool. - Tyson Key

i still dont like "likes", but its an interesting idea to search what you want.. - Terry O'Fee

3. You can search for times a specific person has written something. For instance, I can now see how many times Bret Taylor has written the word "bacon" in one of his titles: http://friendfeed.com/search... By doing this I learned that Bret wrote the word "sex" twice as often as he wrote "bacon." :-) http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Francine - just hit search with nothing in the box... that takes you to advanced search. - Brian Roy

robert - just don't type "mona" and "bacon" - the search will take days,,, - Terry O'Fee

The other day I was trying to search for your video on how to use ff. I wanted to share it with someone who is new here. But, I couldn't find it. I had to go to your site to find it. When I saw the title of your post, I realized why my search might have missed it. I don't know if these changes would have made a difference, but any improvement is welcomed in my book! I'm going to try it again and see if the changes help. - Michael Fidler

You get to the advanced search here: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Terry: Here's a search for "bacon" but from Mona's feed with two or more likes: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

I love it, you can search just specific services, too. Like JUST TWITTER!! Check this out, these are all my tweets that have 20 or more likes: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

very cool thanks for sharing Robert... Also of note you can grab the RSS feed from the search results (via Firefox addr bar only so far) - this is cool for those of you like me who use search subscriptions for research - andy brudtkuhl

and FF is so well indexed in google. yesterday I talked about backtype in italian and after few hours was already the 5th result searching "backtype" in that language - ezekiel

Terry: likes are metadata that you can use to improve your searches. Now you can see why people who are noisy on "liking" things are only hurting themselves. - Robert Scoble

Michael F makes a good point. I struggle with finding stuff I have liked or commented on before. I hope the new search function helps with that. - Amani

On a search for SEO if this was useful, I would end up with a list of posts similar to the Semmys finalists (though those are still personal preference). However I get http://friendfeed.com/search... which isn't exactly useful unless I wanted every conversation on FF that included the acronym - probably worse results than a potential Scobleizer post about lawnmowers ending up ranking in Google - Andy Beard

Here's a cool search. It shows you ALL items from EVERYONE that has gotten five likes and two comments (or more): http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Robert: to get an RSS feed, append &format=atom to the end of the url after doing a search - Daniel Sims

Andy, to search for a term in only the entry title, use "intitle:", e.g. – http://friendfeed.com/search... - Dan Hsiao

Dan - so that means the API works too... hmmm wonder if that URL is rate limited. - Brian Roy

frienfeed is the next (social) search engine and these new features are a new big step to the right direction... - Simone Lovati

robert - ive noticed that the people who get "likes" are usually the ones who mass spam likes to everyone else... - Terry O'Fee

It worked! I can see what your talking about Robert. You have a lot of content here, but I found the post of yours I was looking for with relative ease:-) http://is.gd/ihXV - Michael Fidler

Terry: if you use a combination of "likes" and "comments" you can dramatically filter out a lot of noise. - Robert Scoble

you have a lot more people though, robert.... - Terry O'Fee

My first comment ever on FriendFeed. I cannot figure this place out yet. I'm sure it is wonderful though. - Hummie

Stick with it Hummie! - andy brudtkuhl

Once you can create a feed from the search results and make an imaginary friend for that feed then search will become useful for me. Of if you could search on a certain criteria and get the results sent to gtalk in realtime (aka track) will it be useful for me. Right now it is helpful but not of great use for me. - J Allen

Wow, I have more comments made than you? Wouldn't have guessed that. Yes, it is indeed an investment and this is very good news, Robert. - Josh Haley

"Also, I need RSS feeds from these searches that I can shove into a room." This would be a huge feature. It would really up the ante in creating useful rooms. - Doug Hudiburg

To get an RSS feed of any FriendFeed search result, just append "&format=atom" (without the quotes) to the end of the URL. Violå! :-) - Josh Bancroft

wow ! @Josh Bancroft, youre the man !!! just what i need !! it works !! - Rocky

@Josh thank you! - Alfredo 亜瑠布れっど

This is just so cool. FF rocked before, now it's just plain awesome :) - Nicola Quinn

I thought of you when I read FF blog yesterday: that's what you were asking when we met in Barcelona! - Jordi Soler

Mona Nomura

. - http://pya.cc/pyaimg...

July 28, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

amir adib, Amir Homaiy, Vahid۹Online and 66 other people liked this

hahahhahahahhahahahhaha!! - Mona Nomura

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I CAN BEATZ UR SCORE? - Mona Nomura

So *THIS* is rodentb0y27 - he kicked my ass on Xbox Live last week. - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

Ha! - Mitchell Tsai

Give me it now! - Jaithas

ok. that is cute. - edythe

thats hilarious! - Josue Salazar

the title is like "just 10 years ago...", as far as my poor Japanese allows to understand. - 9000

translation: "You're ten years too early", an expression in Japanese. The closest English translation: "You are still a grasshopper" - Mona Nomura

too cute! - videopixil from twhirl

جووووووووووووووووووووونم :) - mhmazidi

so super ultra cute : ) - Mona Nomura

this is ridiculously cute - Chieze Okoye

Louis Gray

Cuil shows us how not to launch a search engine - http://news.cnet.com/cuil-sh...

July 28, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Igor Poltavskiy, Jemm, AJ Kohn and 41 other people liked this

Performance is...well, laughable - http://is.gd/16yX - Stephen Pierzchala

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yeah you can tell why these guys aren't at google anymore - Chris Harris

Their system setups is interesting. How they index only Sports data on select databases and so on. Also why do they display results in 2/3 columns? It's so hard to follow that - Bartek Ciszkowski

What amazes me is that we, bloggers, started to hype the search engine based on what the company was willing to share - without even taking it a test run. And now many will have to admit they were too positive when it was not deserved. - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

for real - Sarah Perez

Svetlana: all it took is for me to do a single search on it for me to see that it just wasn't going to stand up to a deep analysis. I'm very glad I am getting off of the PR treadmill of "keep up with Mashable and Techcrunch and write about everything based on press releases." Why is this on CNN and NPR already? They have a good PR team, that's why. Played! - Robert Scoble

Not ready for prime time. Great press kills a bad product faster. Apologies to Bill Bernbach. - Dave Martin

In this day and age, is there really room for a new search engine? I'm all for innovation but the likelihood of someone making a sizeable dent in Google's market share or even challenging Live Search is quite low, no? - Dave Stevens

Lesson: Don't go for big press until you're ready. One of my VC friends advises people only to go for ~5,000 users in the beginning (so many beginners want traffic, traffic, traffic). Then you can test your product, change the interface, etc... before you get into a "New Coke" and "old Coke" situation. 5,000 is enough to give your product/website a good testing, and avoids this Cuil failure. - Mitchell Tsai

trying searching Cuil for itself. http://www.cuil.com/search... :) - Jeff (Team マクダジ )

I'm unimpressed by Cuil. It's not how big their index is, it's about how accurate their results are. From my early experiments, I don't get what I'm searching for -- isn't that what a search engine is supposed to do? - wrecks

I also think that it is early for Cuil to launch, but it is good that some people are trying to create alternatives to Google’s tyranny in search. Without any competition in their core business, Google will eventually become the next Microsoft - Kerem Ozkan

mmmm... I wonder why so much hype around of _utility_ ? search has been utility for years, yet everyone and his dog into PR for yet-another-search... was it GOOG price on IPO which makes you blind repeaters? try to remember how many startups you've seen recently in major continent-wide utility business, like electricity or water supply? yes, none... oh, yeah, law & rules are not written for bloggers... they can even refuse math and other natural science ;) - Отборнейший бред

Not impressed. While the layout for results is pretty, it doesn't give me any information. Ran a search on my own site - Dad info - and it got the bloody thumbnail wrong :( Dig a little deeper on a search where you know the net landscape well (eg vanity search) and the results are often bizarre - the photos acommpanying the SERPS are irrelevant/random/wierd. Can't help thinking that the next generation of search will be people centric rather than page centric - I can find more interesting stuff on FF. - Tom Beardshaw

i saw an insert on BBC news today on this, went over to do vanity search just to test, back came some old articles of comments i left last year on tech blogs, now it's unavailable, plus the dark background is awful ;( FAIL! - Mario Olckers

I got 2 searches in last night - disappointed with results - and then it crashed and 'went down for maintenance' - yeah, not overwhelmingly impressed. - Lucretia Pruitt

Harsh but somewhat fair criticism. That said no service has ever been perfect when rushed *glares at twitter* - Mo Kargas

may be - accexine

Despite other criticism: I like the relaxed feel of the 3-column presentation in Cuil. Cuil, Viewzi, and identi.ca have relaxing and comforting front pages (nice color scheme). - Mitchell Tsai

@Mitchell - There's something wrong if the best thing 'bout a website is the color scheme - Yuvi

@Robert: They obviously have a great PR team - making everyone repeat their claims of how great the product is. And I am glad I have decided to wait until it is live and do a search before hyping it myself - I would have felt it was unfair to our readers otherwise. - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

Svetlana: This is what happens when the marketing dept moves faster than the tech dept. Often it's the reverse. Hard to coordinate the two. - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell: True but I feel it is not really lack of coordination and instead it is a deliberate move to get all the positive coverage they can and hope no one will see the problems. After all, as a marketing person myself I don't think they are unable to notice the irrelevant results themselves. - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

Svetlana: Since the "glamor self-search" results work well for university professors and some famous people, I think it's a miscalculation from having too small a test group (since they've been concerned with a stealth launch). They probably didn't test enough middle-level people (e.g. me with only 47,000 pages on Google) to see the problems. - Mitchell Tsai

Rather than a stealth launch, It seems that in this case a better process would have been (1) alpha-launch, generate buzz by selectively letting in tech bloggers, test their stuff, make bloggers feel good by being in on something early, about 200-500 people (2) private beta-launch, quiet, limited to 5,000 people (3) New York Times launch. - I think their team was too cocky (e.g. we're smarter), not realizing they would shoot themselves in the foot. - Mitchell Tsai

I went to work this afternoon to get away from the Crewl Cuil conversation. What were the teachers talking about ? Cuil. *sigh* - LPH™ and his dog P™

Mitchell: Very true, when I read they decided they were ready for everyone on day 1 and decided not to add beta to the logo, I was very excited - finally someone dares to launch a working product from the beginning. And after actually trying it out I could not understand why they chose not to go with private beta the way you describe. It could have potential but it definitely is not ready for prime time yet. - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

Anthony Citrano

'I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.' - Diane Ackerman

July 26, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Zulema ❧ spicy cocoa tart, Brandon, felicious and Vincent X liked this

Mona Nomura

Dear Facebook, please don’t turn into a bigger mess than you already are. - http://pixelbits.wordpress.com/2008...

July 24, 2008 from Pixel Bits - Comment - Like - Share

siavash, costis, imabonehead and 16 other people liked this

You're just mad that I bought you as a pet. =P - Louie

15 more comments

I am still of the mindset that FB has become more of a clusterfsck than MySpace. Sure, somebody's profile might be pimped to the point of nausea on MySpace, but at least I'm not getting 5-million app install requests directly to my "inbox." The apps are geared to cause the average person to spam the hell out of everyone they know. Ridiculous. - Rahsheen the Dream

Louie: HA! and YOU'RE just mad i didn't buy yo ass back! @Bjorn: agreed.. my blog is so ugly right now LOL - Mona Nomura

Scrabulous. - Bob Kingsley

@Rahsheen: SO agreed. In my mind, FB = link'd in for personal use. I'd much rather see blinging graphics than all these things I need to click, hide, remove from feed, remove from mini-feed, remove from notifying, etc... it's SO confusing! - Mona Nomura

poke - Andrew Smith

Facebook should have created a class of Apps = "least likely to alienate a friend" - the whole Facebook App is so annoying that I am afraid to log into my page. - Wayne Schulz

chuck norris' andrew smith - Mona Nomura

@Wayne: exactly. And I've actually had people remove me from their Facebook friend's list because i was posting links and updating too much LOL. They said I was "too active" (real life friends) - Mona Nomura

You guys have some annoying friends. I don't get spammed by these app requests. It's probably beause I actually know all of the people on my friends list there, and I'm very vocal about hating on people with a bajillion apps. I am _SO_ happy that those apps are hidden away in a separate tab now. - Louie

Thank you Mona. Facebook apps are completely useless. - Jonathon

Louie: What, you broadcasted on Twitter?? ;) I can't stand the overhaul. I reverted back to the original one. @Jonathon: POINTLESS! ;) - Mona Nomura

Dear Facebook, you're sooooo 2007. - iTad

I broadcasted on twitter? - Louie

@TD: SOOOOOOOO agreed. @Louie: sure - Mona Nomura

*confused* - Louie

Crappy MS pages can at least be cleaned up thanks to some Greasemonkey love, but FB's structure makes that indefinitely harder... That said, I really appreciate mixi in all its simpleness these days and just hope it stays that way! - Michael Leuker

Robert Scoble

5 Desktop Wallpapers that will increase your productivity - http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r...

July 24, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Allison Kipta, Yusuf Ibili, Goktug Okan Oguz and 43 other people liked this

Google Calendar + Remember the Milk + ActiveDesktop = geektastic awesomeness - Derrick Burns

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great ideas I never thought of doing that before might be cool to mix and match a pretty picture and one of these other alternitives - Charles Rice from twhirl

I'll stick with your nightime shot of the Whitehouse (currently parked on the big design display) and the Ester Dyson shot (on the MBPro). Thanks btw for open sourcing your photos! :) - Gerald Buckley

Great find... just got started on the GTD path, so this + your last WorkTV segment were very timely. THX again - Jericho

Great idea! - Ronald

I'm not a fan of wallpapers. I generally have black or some cool nasa image, currently of a hurricane from the space station. I do like to use an app called sideslide on the pc, for most of the same reason people put icons on their desktop. - Shawn McCollum

Finally proper use of the desktop! yeah...cool idea - Susan Beebe

Leo Laporte

@marcoamorales @techcrunch is so adamant about Google buying Digg I am starting to believe. Asked @kevinrose to be on TWiT Sun just in case.

July 23, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Lise, Eric Geller, Zach Underwood and 9 other people liked this

did he say he would? - Lise

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He's in Chicago - I haven't heard yet. - Leo Laporte

Leo, Jay Adelson may be a good guy to have on also - shruti

Has Fox News heard yet? Murdoch might sweeten the rumor! lol! - Jeff Garlick

If Kevin Rose is driving a Tesla or Audi R8, I think we'll know the rumors are true. - Andrew Leyden

WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!! - Jes Tu

Jes Tu: GOOGLE. MAY. BUY. DIGG. ;-) - Brent Newhall

Why? Would Google actually incorporate Digg into search results or keep it as totally separate from search? I can't wait to listen to TWiT to hear what Google gains. - Mark

would @kevinrose bundle pownce too with digg, or would google be more interested in @ev's twitter or other microblogging platforms (coming with it's own with identi.ca-like solutions?) - Pajama Domain from twhirl

@Leo, good to hear you're part of the Jacobs Media Summit in Austin. - Dave Martin

hope u can get him on, it'll be an interesting session. - shen heng

So when Microsoft buys Yahoo and gets Buzz, and Google buys Digg and gets...well, Digg --- are we gonna have a war? :-) - Eric Geller

Robert Scoble

Mark Zuckerberg and I talked about FriendFeed today. He says he likes the search engine here. Explained that Facebook's scale is slowing them down. Says that 90 million users make things go slow.

July 23, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Susan Beebe, Brett G, Amir Gharaat and 39 other people liked this

for the two people who don't know Zuckerberg is Facebook's founder/CEO. - Robert Scoble

38 more comments

Facebook is so slow compared to FriendFeed - Hutch Carpenter

Yes, and Google's billions of users make Google search reaaaaallllllyyyy slow as well ;-) - Duncan Riley

That's obvious and rather understandable. After all, we've seen how slowly the latest layout updates propagated to all the users. - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

He was talking about developing new features. - Robert Scoble

Definitely new features are hard to build when they should be scalable for 90 million of users from the beginning - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

Sverlana: that is totally NOT true. If companies had to build services that way none would ever get built. - Robert Scoble

that s precisely what i mentionned in a previous frienfeed post of your. FriendFeed will always be ahead of Facebook in terms of speed of execution - Ouriel Ohayon

wow.. 90 million users! - Daynah

I think Friend Feed right now only seems to attract us geeks, but they will come. - MedicalQuack from twhirl

Dawn: I just found out today that someone I know who is 32 needs a bone marrow transplant or will die soon. I wish I could do more. Will try to help. - Robert Scoble

@Dawn... Hahahaha (it is Spam right?) hahahahahah (god I hope so or Im a bastard) hahahahah....Idiot - Roger Kondrat

Robert: When you say "90 million users make things go slow" are you referring to speed to implement new features (development) or speed to search for something or speed to display the basic UI, etc. You mentioned in response above "he was talking about developing new features." How does that relate to the search engine here? Also, coming from a relatively new developer, how does development change when you are developing for 100 users or 1 million users? - Justin Korn

"Says that 90 million users make things go slow" Sure, if all were actual "users." I early on found FB too superficial & frivolous to be useful, and now the only reason I even know what's going on there is FF. Maybe it's Zuckerberg's college junior concept that's really slowing things up. As Duncan Riley observes, all those "users" hasn't slowed Google search too much, huh? - Dean Barnett

Dawn is not a spammer, unfortunately, even though she did take this thread off topic. - Robert Scoble

Thank you, Robert! I'll pray for your friend. - Dawn

Dawn you should have started a new thread here. - Robert Scoble

Duncan, that's a completely disingenuous example. Search is a static problem and has very little (if any) user context. Anything involving a social graph, especially one where the graph includes 90 million people, is MUCH MUCH harder. Search is essentially a constant time operation, whereas a social graph operation could be O(n^2), where n is 90 million. - Jason Carreira

Robert, what Svetlana said is 100% true. If FB introduces services that don't scale and bring down the site, you and the rest of the bloggers will be all over them. - Jason Carreira

Wow, this thread took a turn while I was typing...sorry to hear about your son. I would suggest posting a post asking if anyone knows anyone. Since Robert knows you, have him endorse it in a separate post. - Justin Korn

Good luck Dawn! (Another argument for DM in FriendFeed). About the 90 million makes stuff slow - I like the Google comparison. How much computation does Facebook do compared to Google? Really? Sounds like poor knowledge of real-world scaling issues. - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell: I absolutely despise DM's. Please don't ask for such a thing. They are far, far worse than email. - Robert Scoble

Sorry...I've only posted a few times on FF. I've never started a post. - Dawn

Mitchell: people tell me Facebook does a lot compared to Google. - Robert Scoble

Dawn: anytime you are going to switch topics to something not being discussed you should start a new thread. I still wish you would. I can't link people to your plea here. - Robert Scoble

I apologize. Nevermind. I think I'll just going to fly down there and see what I can do myself. Thanks anyway. - Dawn

Hope Dawn finds some help - MedicalQuack from twhirl

Jason, we're too big is a rubbish excuse. It doesn't stop Google, and it's not as though FB is lacking in the funds to create something. How much money does a company need to create something? $488.2 million is how much FB has for the problem (ref: http://qbase.tradevibes.com/company...) - Duncan Riley

Robert: I understand that DM is a mess & that you've got x,000 unreplied DMs. How would you suggest people contact you on FriendFeed rather than "hijacking" a thread? If I find someone on FF who doesn't have Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, I'm hard pressed to do anything other than hijack a thread if I want to leave a note. - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell: You could call him. His number's on his blog. Just a suggestion. :-) Or send him an email. Just sayin'. - Lisa L. Seifert | FHG™

Facebook is computing 90 million personal news feeds, which is quite a chore. I heard some stuff at the Data Mining conference at Stanford, but I'd love to hear really get-down-dirty numbers to see if Facebook is really tackling new scaling issues, of whether the Google team is just better at building server farms & handling distributed computation hw/sw issues than the Facebook team. - Mitchell Tsai

90m users plus their privacy settings make things slow. - David Vasileff

Duncan, I'm not saying they shouldn't be able to handle it, but don't compare apples and oranges. The problems Google search faces are very different, and have to do with the sheer number of hits, but each hit does a lot less computing to generate the result, because it can all be pre-computed. Also, don't overestimate the amount of money FB has... they just had to borrow a bunch to buy thousands of new servers. - Jason Carreira

Overall, it's another example of the death of the relational database for large-scale apps. Google doesn't use a relational database for this very reason. - Jason Carreira

The baby stuff you learn in school is different from real-world big systems with parallel, distributed, failure, etc... problems. I love hearing "oh. my system is scalable" from new tech teams at startups. What I'd like to hear is that X users producing Y load on Z servers will give A failure rate, consume B power, and have C down-time. We backup using strategy D. Our querying/prefetch/pre-computation method E & F will run into problems when G, H, or I happen. Our distribution method J has limitation K. - Mitchell Tsai

imagine Twitter with 90 million uses! - Michael McGimpsey from twhirl

Do you REALLY believe FB has 90 Million Real Live Single Profiled People as members? - Scot Duke

@Scot, yes. Theres about 15m in the UK alone. - Jamie

Zuckerberg and Bret Taylor may each evolve into the next Steve Jobs type CEO.Each is brilliant, and great with the consumer (e.g. UI, parallelling Apple's obsession with UI/design) - Alex Hammer

Has FB performance been an issue for most users (excluding any third party apps)? Has the pace of introducing new features been a major problem for FB so far? - Amir Gharaat

Robert Scoble

I think it is funny to read people who are whining about losing Twitter followers. It does NOT matter. Who you follow matters. Not who follows you.

July 23, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

A Mitchell, Roy Montero, Mitchell Tsai and 30 other people liked this

True, but THAT number went straight to hell too! - Steve Isaacs

42 more comments

I agree to get the most out of twitter you have to follow the right people - Wayne Sutton

Isn't this a temporary issue? Temporary being a couple days maybe. - Rob H.

...said all the people on friendfeed. /snorts ... i didn't realize my list went down, everyone was talking about it, but yeah, about half. I'm about 100 off now - Eric Rice

Yeah I lost both! So I guess I can whine now:) - MedicalQuack from twhirl

People love the attention. - Mathew™ aka Youngblood

I think that is true even in the general context Robert. Couldn't agree more. - Parth Awasthi

And if they're not whining about followers, they're bashing the FailWhale or complaining that it's down again. People, Twitter is FREE - Mona Nomura

Well, if you use your account as a promotion tool this is a problem. Loosing who you follow is in my opinion a smaller problem, since you'll probably remember if they were posting anything of importance. - Marcin Grodzicki

Boy I feel so much better now that I took the time to whine:) - MedicalQuack from twhirl

I think it's not only missing followers but also a matter of us having a new unexpected glitch in Twitter - and that after many of us spend quite a lot of time building our communities here and claiming we are not leaving because all the people we want to talk to are here. (Posted my thoughts at http://www.profy.com/2008... actually.) - Svetlana Gladkova from twhirl

Robert, I don't think you're right. Following is the bigger part of the game, but it's a lot easier to engage in the conversation when there are people listening, too. - Dan Kaplan

I had all mine saved in my Attensa RSS Feeds so all those folks will probably get another notice that I am following them again, a Twitter stalker:) - MedicalQuack from twhirl

I like what you were trying to say, and to be honest I don't care how it is on Twitter, but at least on FF we are all part of the conversation, regardless of subscriber or subscribee. That is what makes FF such a great idea. You yourself have carried on the conversation with other subscribers in the comments innumerable times, for which you should be commended. - Aaron Krug

Svetlana: You are so right - the issue of 'Twitter being first to the market' was probably just solved :) I bet competition is really happy. - Marcin Grodzicki

Twitter needs a back up system we can save a re-load, a simple OPML would be just grand if it could work and upload for when things like this happen. - MedicalQuack from twhirl

There's always the competition Identi.ca, but nobody's over there - MedicalQuack from twhirl

Yes, Robert, it's shouldn't be a popularity contest about followers. But the people that use twitter for some actual networking, would be annoyed by losing track of some of the contacts they've made in the last few weeks because of this event. Both following and followers that were added in recent weeks are missing. - Louie

Dan: if you follow the right people you will get smarter and will have interesting things to say yourself and THAT WILL bring followers. Plus, smart people look at their responses tab so if you are conversational you will always have someone listening. - Robert Scoble

Checkpoints, rollbacks, audit trails, transaction logs, backups, restores - Database 101 for the Twitter guys. I'm glad the FriendFeed team has Google experience. :-) - Mitchell Tsai

Bingo! - Jonathon

Rob, that's true, except it's a GLITCH in Twitter that's making people lose followers and people that they follow. That's what the whining's from. - Dave Moyer

Robert - People new to blogging etc. want (need?) to be followed on any platform they can. You can learn from the people you follow. You (if it's what you want) promote and engage by the people following you .... but heck, Mona's right (again??). It is free :) - Charlie Anzman

If it's 'actual' networking, shouldn't contact information be exchanged? And Twitter is FREE. Everyone knows it's still unstable at times. (read: FailWhale hoopla) Why rely solely on Twitter? BAFFLING - Mona Nomura

That is the main problem, Robert, is that Twitter has now put a cap on number of people many of us can follow. When I got to about 2554 that I was following, I abruptly got a message saying I cannot follow any more people, including following back anyone who has added me since a few days ago. Therefore, I am no longer able to follow people I just met or send direct messages to them. I care more about that than how many people are following me. - Cathryn Hrudicka

Cathryn: oh, I didn't know about that. Interesting. That sucks. I hate caps on numbers of friends. - Robert Scoble

Robert it depends on whether you are using twitter as an informational or social tool, no? If the latter, losing followers is much more significant. - jeremy ettinghausen

jeremy: you mean conversational or marketing tool. I wonder if any real followers went away anyway? - Robert Scoble

Yes, actually, I got a "sorry, you've reached your quota of followers" a few days before Twitter cut any of the people following me. Both happened without any prior warning. If they were cutting only spammers, that would be one thing, but they abruptly cut about 1000 followers that included friends and colleagues. I'm intermittently still getting the "quota" message when I try to follow anyone new or re-follow someone they cut without my permission. Hope they get this sorted out and get rid of quotas ASAP. - Cathryn Hrudicka

Mona, if you went out to events, you would see that exchanging twitter IDs is the de facto method of exchanging "contact information" for many people in the SV. Business cards get lost and it's an instant confirmation when both parties follow each other on twitter, on the spot. If people's gmail accounts suddenly lost a month's worth of activity, would it be okay just because it's free as well? - Louie

do we know if they'll restore the friends and followers to a more recent db/backup copy? - Christian Anderson

I like Louie's point about " Business cards get lost", but I routinely photograph 'em with my phone and then sync to Evernote. Gives me a local and Web-based copy. And the paper version goes into my Moleskine. - Dean Barnett

Louie: that is the EXACT reason why I do not participate in Tweet-ups or whatever they're called. My communication method is solely not dependent on Twitter and I personally do not want my Tweets to be a on parade of location blasting and broadcasting to the world, I HAVE A LIFE - Mona Nomura

Umm, you're missing the point. If I've lost followers, it's safe to say that I've lost some of the people I follow. So now I have to go back and find out which ones. - Ian Betteridge

its not the people that follow me it was people that i follow that was bothering me but ok now..at least for me - Uway

Ian: I was addressing Louie's comment to me.... but to address the point I'm missing, it's no secret the Failwhale ate followers and followees. There's a great blog post about how to auto-follow people who subscribe to you. http://bit.ly/38hPFS I mean what's done is done and complaining is not really going to solve anything. just saying - Mona Nomura

Hm, interesting perspective, Robert. But aren''t your followers part of your outreach? The people you influence? The peeps who *want* to hear from you? - Mari Smith

that sounds counter-intuitive; Robert, please explain - Mindaugas Dagys

In the case of friendfeed, if someone follows you, then other people that are subscribed directly to that someone will see your posts. Makes it more valuable. I wasn't following you Scoble, until i started reading your posts through Leo Laporte (I was subscribe to him, not you, yet i was able to see your posts because he was subscribed to you). Does that make sense? - Justin

Mindaugus: yes. I'm trying to give you an insight. Let's say followers ARE important (if you read between the lines of my writing I do find them important for many of the reasons listed here above). Well, how do you get great followers? Well, I've learned that if I listen to jerks, I become a jerk myself. If I listen to brilliant people, I become more brilliant. If I listen to romantics, I'll become more romantic. If I listen to artists, I'll become more artistic. Since I want to have conversations with... - Robert Scoble

...smart people, isn't it more important for me to worry about subscribing to smart people than worrying about who follows me? After all, if I respond to a smart person, they'll see that response in their responses tab in Twitter (or under their clusters here in FriendFeed). If they find me interesting enough they'll also follow me. So, by worrying only about who I'm following, I'll probably gain the kinds of followers I want (add in a few blocks here and there to get jerks out of my life). - Robert Scoble

The problem with all of this is Twitter is really screwed up. I thought it was just messing up the counts. A few months back it screwed up the counts for people who had 10s of thousands of following and followed. It sounds like this time they rolled back the database and actually lost data. And people wonder why I've moved most of my life over to FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble

twitter's continual mis-management of their product which is now resulting in corrupt data of my Following / Follower "count" is extremely troubling. twitter has shot itself in the proverbial foot! They've destroyed credibility and trust in their product and their making themselves appear like total dim-whits! I care about both stats because I use it as a 2 way conversational tool with my network, which has been compromised. - Susan Beebe

but my e-penis is smaller now :( - Chris Harris

Paul Miller

Java homebrew devkit for the PS3 emerges, nobody cares - http://feeds.engadget.com/~r...

July 23, 2008 from Engadget - Comment - Like - Share

Brandon liked this

newsjunk.com

[Fox]: Jindal Says He's Not Interested in No. 2 Spot With McCain - http://x.techwheat.com/17F

July 23, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Brandon and Dave Winer liked this

"Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he does not want to be considered as vice president on the GOP ticket, making him among a growing number of those pulling themselves out of the race." - newsjunk.com

newsjunk.com

[MSNBC]: First thoughts: Obama's tricky day - http://x.techwheat.com/17E

July 23, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Brandon and Dave Winer liked this

"It is a fine line Obama walks with skeptical Israelis and -- more important politically -- Jewish voters in the US." - newsjunk.com

tech.newsjunk.com

[jkOnTheRun]: First look at the Live Mesh client on Mac OS X - http://x.techwheat.com/15I

July 21, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Dennis E. Hamilton, jakebf, Bassam Islam and 4 other people liked this

"With the client on my Intel-based MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5.4, I was able to add my Mac as a device to my Mesh and all of my files and folders within the Matrix my Mesh are in sync. Files and folders on my Vista-based UMPC are appearing on my Mac and vice versa." - tech.newsjunk.com

EricaJoy

The preacher on my block who likes using speakers and amps so everyone within a .5 mile radius can hear him just said "Jesus can heal AIDS. Jesus can heal cancer." *sigh*

July 20, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Shelly Weiss, The Pageman, James Andrews and 5 other people liked this

Jesus may well be able to do so. When said preacher produces Jesus maybe we can get some curing going. - iTad

28 more comments

Indeed he can. Faith can move mountains. - Alex Sauceda from fftogo

wondering where all these moving mountains are --> - Roger Benningfield

I guess you won't find them if you aren't looking. - Alex Sauceda from fftogo

Ignorance is bliss. - Carlos Ayala

Jesus bought me an iPhone. - Robert Scoble

Being a Christian, I hate to hear about the ignorant people who try to smash religion into the faces of others. Up until now, though, I've been able to avoid the religion-bashing thing here on FriendFeed. Oh well. Guess it was bound to happen sooner than later. - Brad @ The Next Web

Sadly, Christ's worst detractors are often Christians. - Dawn

Absolutely agreed. You'd think that, after 2000+ years of failed attempts, some of them would learn that there's better ways of going about it than shoving it down someone's throat. - Brad @ The Next Web

Most folks I know who are "religion bashers" are usually responding to stupidity by large church organizations or individuals. Christianity by itself isn't very funny or mock-worthy. I can't find much in the Bible that Jesus said that I as a Buddhist don't wholeheartedly agree with. It's when crazies get ahold of the bible and use it as a tool to justify violence against others that I get tempted to start bashing. Same goes for most all religions - there are even fundamentalists buddhists... - iTad

Wow...Fundamentalist Buddhists? Really? That's a rather mind-bending idea...lol. I actually really respect the Buddhist religion. It is, at its core, an amazing belief and lifestyle system. Just finished reading Sit Down & Shut Up a few days ago, and gained an even greater respect for it. - Brad @ The Next Web

@Bradley I, too, am a Christian. However I detest the sales pitchy preachers who claim that Jesus will fix all your problems because they have a terrible understanding of Christianity and religion as a whole. They cause more harm than good IMO. - EricaJoy

I'm a big fan of my Church's leadership primarily because they NEVER promise an easy way out. If anything, living life as a Christian will never make anything easy. My best friend is an Athiest. The way I explained my belief to her is this - If I'm wrong, then at the very worst, I've found a rewarding way to live my life. If I'm right, however, then the possibilities are endless. - Brad @ The Next Web

True Bradley. You can say the exact same thing about Mormonism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, etc etc... If you follow the basic tenets of most religions you're directed to be kind, patient, friendly, charitable, etc etc. Most religions are just fine. It's the organized aspects of many of them that I find objectionable. - iTad

Bradley: you forget the opportunity cost of spending time in church. I spent seven hours a week, or more, in church when I was a believer. That is a HUGE investment if you are wrong. By the way. My idea of hell is being forced to spend eternity sitting next to a believer. If I am going to hell... - Robert Scoble

whats with " opportunity cost of spending time in church" ? thats so wacky !! spending time in prayers and/or church is an investment in yourself ..one can't be wrong if it brings about the feeling of 'goodnes' in oneself. All religions and their tenets are basically the same. BTW, Robert please define what do you mean " opportunity cost of spending time in church" ! - Peter Dawson

Hahah, I suppose that's where we have to agree to disagree, Robert. For me, that few hours each week is one of the few times that I force my life to slow down, and I relish every moment of it. I won't shove my beliefs down anyone's gullet. My beliefs are just that - mine. I'm eager to share them with those interested, but otherwise, it's a personal matter. - Brad @ The Next Web from fftogo

I really dislike the sales pitch some Christian ministers use to gather more followers to the flock. For me, as a back-slidin, back again Christian, this belittles Christianity (or whichever religion is being promoted in such a manner) for it comes off a some kind of band-aid.Becoming religious, non-religious, - Dave "Freedom 35"

Do you know how to use Google? Do a search on opportunity cost. You could use those hours on something else that would bring the world value. Write a book. Feed the poor. Work on your career. Etc. Every hour in your life has opportunity cost. - Robert Scoble

Religion aside, that sort of thinking is what makes people have mental breakdowns. The idea that if you must doing something "productive" every hour of your day is a poor one. - EricaJoy

Bradley: there are lots of ways to slow down. Glad you found one. I think it is an indictment of our society and explains why so few have been to our national parks. - Robert Scoble

I suppose the preacher has a certain logic on his side: if Jesus has a "plan for your life", then it follows that he's the one who created AIDS and cancer. Makes it easier to cure, I suppose. - Dean Barnett

Jesus created AIDS and cancer? What the hell are you talking about? - Dave "Freedom 35"

I am going to jump in and politely disagree with Robert and his "opportunity cost". As a Muslim, I look at the 2 hours a week I spend each Friday at the Mosque as a time to reflect, recharge, and say thank you to the creator who given me the "opportunity" each week to do whatever I do. Having the "opportunity" to slow down from time to time is a blessing. Prayer or any other time invested in your spirit should never be an empty exercise, which for some it can be. - Adam Helweh

Erica: who said you have to be productive? Opportunity cost means giving up one thing for another. For instance, this morning I had a fun breakfast with a friend. - Robert Scoble

For the record, I have little use for bashing spirituality... to paraphrase Sinatra, I'm cool with whatever helps you get through a rough night. So when I *am* bashing something, it's usually someone's dogma or goofy assumptions. - Roger Benningfield

Keep enjoying your sunday and God bless you brothers. - Alex Sauceda from fftogo

I attended Mass this morning, and after the celebration I talked to the parish secretary about the church's website content, which I take care of. Productive and time well-spent on both ends of the human experience spectrum. :-) - Dave "Freedom 35"

he can also predict the next superbowl winner, but he hasn't helped me out in that department. - Don Martelli from twhirl

Opportunity cost: In the time it took to read Scoble's comments, I could have been reading the back of a box of Honey Smacks. - Steve Weis

Leo Laporte

OK if you're doing a Podcast it's probAbl y not a good idea to have your mom in studio unless you give her a mic.

July 19, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Dillon K. Hoops, Margaret Kerr, JA Castillo and 6 other people liked this

But it IS a good idea to get her her own podcast. - Eric Geller

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I like the whole omniscient unmiked mom conceit. - Oldengrey (Jay)

I enjoyed it a lot, I'm sure you can find a way to incorporate everything. - Mike Lewis

She's putting on the pressure to do a podcast. Ay yi yi. - Leo Laporte

Are you the line extension or is she? She was charming. - Oldengrey (Jay)

Looked more like "Lunch with Leo". A new feature on TWIT - Dave Rutter

She was wonderful, I enjoyed listening to her thinking. A breath of fresh air! :D - Shawna Bergen

@leolaporte - Your mom was great. Really enjoyed her being there in studio and speaking up. I do think she should have her own podcast... dump her brain so that we can all hear it. :-) - C.B.

You and your Mom would be a great podcast and it would draw more attention to the TWiT network from a different demographic as well, which will lend itself nicely to raising your viewership, donations and whatnot. Besides, it'd be a great way for you to be able to share her knowledge with your grandchildren when your kids are older and she's not able to do so herself. - Margaret Kerr from twhirl

Scott Monty

Is it just me or does anyone else have the new JibJab song stuck in their head? http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Is it just me or does anyone else have the new JibJab song stuck in their head? http://tinyurl.com/6jpt7s

July 19, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Steven Perez, Brandon, Jason Kintzler and 2 other people liked this

Seriously! It's incredibly catchy! This and the Dr. Horrible songs have been haunting my mind! - Mark Philpot

Scott Beale

The Eclectic Instruments of Electric Western - http://feeds.laughingsquid.com/~r...

July 19, 2008 from Laughing Squid - Comment - Like - Share

Brandon liked this

Robert Scoble

@mojosd danny Sullivan invited us to breakfast tomorrow too. This will be fun!

July 19, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Brandon and LPH™ and his dog P™ liked this

newsjunk.com

[RealClearPoliti]: Democrats Wave Goodbye to Lieberman - http://x.newsjunk.com/0UJ

July 13, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Alexander Carlill, Ricky Engelberg, bill giltner and 6 other people liked this

"Sen. Joseph Lieberman next year will be kicked out of the party's caucus and lose his Senate chairmanship if he addresses the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., as planned." - newsjunk.com

30 more comments

Keep in mind that Joseph Lieberman is still in bed with the worst extremists on the far right -- John Hagee and his friends at CUFI (Christians United for Israel), Christian Zionists who are agitating for Armageddon and the destruction of the world, using the Mideast as a tinderbox. Lieberman is so far from being a Democrat OR Republican that it ain't funny -- he is completely off the mainstream American political map. Any Democrat who has supported Lieberman should be purged from the party. - Sean McBride

I can't find it now, but I read some stuff a while back about how some of the CUFI guys were sponsoring a cattle breeder who wants to breed a perfect red heifer so that they can build a new temple in Jerusalem. My google-fu fails me today. - Ha3rvey (heavy duty)

These guys make it difficult to be a Christian. sheesh. - Ha3rvey (heavy duty)

The Armageddonists are obsessed with red heifers and other bizarre topics -- what you read is true. It boggles the mind that any Democrat (or any traditional Republican) would be associated with them. They couldn't care less about protecting the pragmatic best interests of the United States. - Sean McBride

What really bothers me is the fringe Republicans who try to paint all Democrats as heathens. It really freaks them out when I tell them I have no beef with people who aren't "just like me". - Ha3rvey (heavy duty)

This shouldn't be conditional. He's already earned his ouster. - Michael Markman

He was your party's choice for VP -- The Commissar Vanishes: http://tinyurl.com/mphu2 - Oldengrey (Jay)

Harvey: No Red Heifer, no beef. ;) - Oldengrey (Jay)

Sean they're not agitating for destruction of the world - just the glorius return of Jesus! ;) What's sick for me is all the Jews on board with CUFI; I mean, guys: you realize they think you're going to hell, right? - Anthony Citrano

You've really got to think about this: Christian Zionists are deliberately trying to inflict horrendous suffering on the human race (including Americans) under the insane belief that a small group of cultists will be miraculously raptured and spared all the pain associated with Armageddon. Joseph Lieberman is a close ally of these people. Bush apparently is a member of the cult, and has... more... - Sean McBride

Anthony - massive global destruction is a necessary precursor for the return of Jesus Christ in the minds of these lunatics. John Hagee, for instance, is orgasmic over the prospect of the United States being attacked and devastated by nuclear terrorism. It's all part of the divine plan, don't you know. - Sean McBride

Part of me would like to lock John Hagee in a room with a Bible until he actually reads it. - Ha3rvey (heavy duty)

Absofuckinlutely. I was raised in the Pentecostal Church, so for me this is an especially interesting line of geopolitical thought. - Anthony Citrano

And by the way, Jews: they don't just think you're going to hell, they're trying to hurry it up! - Anthony Citrano

Anthony: I'm going in this cool hand basket I found! FYI for Sean it's somehow always about the Jews. :( - Oldengrey (Jay)

Jay, is it wicker? It doesn't count if it isn't wicker. :) - Ha3rvey (heavy duty)

Harv: You bet. Red wicker, to match the heifer. - Oldengrey (Jay)

Purge Lieberman! Like now! Showing a lot of discipline, fellow Americans who are Democrats. - Oldengrey (Jay)

Actually, Jay, most Jews do not support Joseph Lieberman, Christian Zionists or neoconservatives. Some Jews (like Richard Perle or Douglas Feith) who drag "the Jews" into critical discussions about any of the above often turn out to be in that camp, however. Generally I am suspicious of anyone who puts the definite article before the name of any ethnic group. Either they are pro- or... more... - Sean McBride

dead on, sean. (that rhymed!) - Anthony Citrano

I just finished reading the latest Lee Child Jack Reacher novel, Nothing To Lose. (STOP READING HERE IF YOU PLAN TO READ THE BOOK!! PLOT SPOILER!!) Turns out that the villains are Christian Armageddonists who are plotting a false flag op to blame Iran for exploding a terrorist dirty bomb in a major American city! Objective: ignite Armageddon. Child even mentions their obsession with red heifers. The chief villian is quite reminiscent of John Hagee or Pat Robertson in terms of physical and personality type. - Sean McBride

I agree with you, Sean. Purge Lieberman! And thanks for speaking for most Jews! - Oldengrey (Jay)

Note well: no one here has tried to confuse criticism of John Hagee, Pat Robertson or George W. Bush with animosity towards "the Anglo-Saxons" or "the WASPs" or whatever, with that heavy-handed, weird definite article. Nor have Hagee, Robertson or Bush ever tried to hide behind such nonsense. Usually it's a good idea to keep grand (and grandiose) mystical ethnic collectivities out of political debates and focus on specific policy disputes among particular individuals and particular political factions. - Sean McBride

Jay, I repeatedly find myself in strong agreement with most Jews on many issues, and I often find Jews to be the most articulate spokespersons for my views! Jews tend to loom large in all human (and political) activities, for good and ill, because their culture encourages literacy, learning, discipline, commitment, activism and all those good things (including having the guts to take contrarian positions and speak truth to power). - Sean McBride

Chip: Thanks for the insight! We are often too articulate for our own good. - Oldengrey (Jay)

On the issue of being too articulate, too talented, too skilled at organizing, etc. -- the social dynamic. People who are not as well-informed about the overall play of politics as they should be sometimes, I think, notice a particular group of Jews in the opposition that is a dominating force in policy debates (on the left or right) and weirdly project their frustration with those... more... - Sean McBride

Thanks, Chip! - Oldengrey (Jay)

You're welcome, Chip! :) Do you have any thoughts on that particular piece of analysis? - Sean McBride

http://tinyurl.com/5akcjg - Oldengrey (Jay)

Jay - do you have any particular point you are trying to make? - Sean McBride

Good riddance. - Alexander Carlill

tech.newsjunk.com

[MacRumors]: MobileMe's Push Services Detailed, No Mac to Mobile Me 'Push' - http://x.techwheat.com/3O

July 13, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Guilty Party, Brandon, mjc and Dave Winer liked this

"Apple's MobileMe services are working for most, though there are still sporadic reports of misbehavior. One point of contention, however, has been the exact behavior of their advertised "Push" services. " - tech.newsjunk.com

2 more comments

I only have push from cloud to iPod touch and back working but nothing on my computers. - Zach Flauaus

no push to my desktop. it takes 15 to update.. - muzo

I got instant email to my iphone from my .me account. Looks like it will work great with yahoo too, but no gmail :( - Robyn Miller from NoiseRiver

Robert Scoble

I just received Jason Calacanis' first email "blog." I'm very saddened that he decided to go back to email for a whole number of reasons. Let's talk about them.

July 13, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

peter huesken, David HC Soul, Alex Barbara and 39 other people liked this

Push model of communication vs. conversation? - Sprague D

95 more comments

Maybe you could start listing the reasons you know - Brian Sullivan

Email seems so closed off - it prohibits growth. At least, that's how I see it... - George Smith

I just received Calacanis' first email newsletter. Which is really his replacement for not blogging anymore. He makes several great points. 1. That commenters have destroyed blogging. 2. That Nick Denton's style of paying for page views instead of smart ideas has destroyed blogging. 3. That he seeks out a more intimate conversation. 4. That email is it. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Please forward them to post@posterous.com. Heheh. : ) - Erhan Erdoğan

I am saddened because all of this is true. Except by going back to email he's taken us back to the 1990s where I can't share his ideas with others (he only will accept 1,000 subscribers, he says). He also is cluttering my email stream which is cluttered beyond breaking. Imagine if everyone did email newsletters... - Robert Scoble

I don't know about you folks, but I just don't need any more email. I can't keep up with what I already have. I've started replying to my co-worker's emails with Office Communicator, in an attempt to ease the deluge. You'd think IT folks would know that it's not always necessary to hit "Reply All." - a runcible MiniMage from NoiseRiver

I think it harkens back to the glory days of yesteryear when there were email lists like the lockergnome. Maybe it's just nostalgia. I don't have a problem with commentors on my blog, but then, I don't have the numbers that Calacanis or Scoble have either. He says he has a problem and that an email list will alleviate those problems. We'll just have to see what happens and see if his experiment does work. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Here it is: http://robert_zrxrc.posterous.com/ -- he already has 1,100 subscribers. - Robert Scoble

FF is the answer, possible a FF' room. Once FF becomes mainstream as a sharing and communication tool bogging activity will decrease significantly: if not FF will become the de-facto “bogging” platform. - Joao

"I'm very saddened" ? what makes you sad and why ? - Peter Dawson

that's one looong e-mail - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Robert - Jason hasn't taken anybody to the 90's except maybe himself. The whole thing smacks of ego anyway. I think better just to ignore Jason (I mostly did that before as well so not much change for me). - Brian Sullivan

Peter: because what Jason says is true. It's why I've slowed down blogging lately. Blogging used to be about discussing ideas. Lately it's been about getting on Techmeme. I share the blame in that part of things. But even while that's been going on I've tried to read many times more stuff than what I write. It's why I still read hundreds of RSS feeds and participate here on FF (I like many, many, many times more items than what I start). But I hate his choice of media. Email is just the worst place. - Robert Scoble

The remark on commenters is disingenuous -- he regularly turned off commenting on his blog when he didn't want to deal with blowback, unlike Robert who rarely disengages. For a guy who made $25 million off blogging, turning his back on the medium seems like bad faith, to me. - Sprague D

I think the cap on subscriptions is interesting. Pushing the scarcity button ("Act now -- supplies are limited!") is considered a fairly low Jedi Mind Trick. [waves hand] Wasn't the cap 500 at first? Then 750? Now it's 1,000? Because you can only have an "intimate conversation" with 1,000 people? hahahahahahah... - Karim

Brian: I agree with that. I subscribed, but with my luck the newsletter will get thrown into my spam folder. Interesting that many bloggers started out with newsletters (Chris Pirillo and Dave Winer both had famous email newsletters before they moved to blogs). - Robert Scoble

I don't like it , if you limit the communicatin to just who gets your email. Then it's a monologue not a conversation - Kim Landwehr

Another place Jason is right? The need to have one-to-one smart conversations. If I didn't have those every day and just did my blog I'd be one sad puppy. It's the smart conversations that matter. Most of which I don't have an audience for while I'm having them. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Will you go on forwarding these on posterous? : ) I subscribe your posterous. ; ) Thanks for sharing. - Erhan Erdoğan

@robert , "Blogging used to be about discussing ideas. Lately it's been about getting on Techmeme." Agreed, but you can't solve a problem with the same mindset that created the problem and that goes to all the A-listers too.. They have always fought / jostled , manipulated the SM streams to get to their way to for google juice, page views/hits. etc Now all of a sudden, its like wait.. whatever happened to the original idea of exchanging ideas ? Whatever happened to passion and integrity ? - Peter Dawson

Erhan: I'll forward them when he has something smart to say. (and I remember to do it). :-) - Robert Scoble

Peter now you know why I've focused so much of my energy on FriendFeed. I'm having a lot smarter conversations here than other places. - Robert Scoble

I'll take the contrarian view: This email was the most relaxed, best, most enjoyable, insightful writing I've seen from Jason in a while. I'm an old school McLuhanite wrt the medium being the message. But sometimes, the message is the message. Sometimes the author is the message. Gotta let an author choose the medium. If this change boosts the quality of Jason's output, I'm glad he did it. - Michael Markman

Scoble: I think you're wrong about blogging being all "about getting on Techmeme." As a blogger in a niche community, I can tell you that the VAST majority of bloggers out there don't care about or plan to get on techmeme. This particular problem (and all of the problems that you mention) lies in a very small subset of the blogging community--the "A-list", as it's put. - Eric Florenzano

Robert: Calacanis's new official blog: http://robert_zrxrc.posterous.com/ : ))) You may change its name to "calacanissbug.posterous.com" : ))) - Erhan Erdoğan

Robert, BUT BEWARE - the same thing is happening on FF too , the platform has changed, however the attitude is the same. http://friendfeed.com/e... - Peter Dawson

Robert, the one thing e-mail is severely lacking is the ability to thread a conversation so late comers don't jump in and ask the same questions that were already asked - or make the same points that were already made. Sure Jason has some points, but I'm not sure the direction he took is the road to travel... It does indeed sound like he wants to 'recapture' something that was lost, but I can't help hearing you (Robert) start ringing the innovation bell rather than what equates to throwing in the towel. - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

I blog, comment and email. I have a large target audience - non-tech, non-connected biz owners, who prefer the email format. Of course I invite conversation, and try to direct people back to my blog, but the large percentage of my readers are passive - so email works. - Lorraine Ball

I have to say I agree with Michael Markman on this one. I'm rather enjoying the tone of Jason's writing in these posts. It's brings me back to earlier writing of his that I enjoyed. - Cathy Brooks

Peter Dawson, really great point. My aim is to find, create, join, or otherwise be part of mindshare... I want to expand my horizons and learn things. I like that I don't agree with everything out there - it gives me room to make a difference or move on. However, I would submit that I fear the Internet is finally starting to mirror the real world... but this is not a cause to despair but a reason to fight harder! - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

it seems that the A-list bloggers are exposed to a lot of "A-List Envy/Angst" and a lot of what comes out comes out as vitriol at not being as successful. It's a very negative energy and I could see how it would start to get annoying. I can't blame Jason for being annoyed by it anymore than I can blame you (Scoble) for blocking people who are always dumping negativity on you. That said, I agree with Ted Leonsis that Jason is pulling a Brett Favre, but I do believe the toll the negativity takes is real. - Robert Seidman

Well, it was only a matter of time before this whole transparency, aggregation, data portability thing started to freak people out. Walled garden, anyone? - Karim

I prefer this to: “I'm streaming live right now, come chat! - Oldengrey (Jay)

I always thought of a blog as a catalyst to cathartic discussion. While I love reading Jason's work, the mailing list is just a one-way distribution list. I have to use friendfeed, twitter, or another blog to discuss the content. If you're tired of clueless commentators, then moderate the comments. Wait a second. . . .isn't THIS a blog in a way? - Peter Ghosh

Sorry, but while I understand his reasoning, I utterly disagree w/ his solution. We don't need to 'go back to listserve' to have a conversation. In fact, I've been saying for a while now that the reason microblogging sites have done so well is that they really DO facilitate conversation. Blogging is more like lecturing w/ a Q&A session in the comments. Twitter, FF, and other sites have lead us into actual organic conversations. Jason's email is back to lecturing. I won't be subscribing. - Lucretia Pruitt

Peter: I'm still very passionate about having smart conversations and furthering our understanding of the technology that we all use every day. - Robert Scoble

Maybe it's all one big joke. I've learned that Jason and I have different senses of humor. - shelisrael1

I can't believe people actually believe any of this is serious. Calcanis is not retiring from blogging to do email lists. See the truth, see the evidence! - Ben Parr

Instead of talking about it, let's just ignore it. Don't subscribe. We have to make it as clear as possible that we've moved beyond these one-way conversations. - Shawn Farner

Maybe he wants more control over his own conversations? - Omar Vasquez Lima

It was a brilliant move. People who've never heard of Calacanis now do. He is going to be talked about by everyone. Even news organazations are picking up on this. It doesn't matter what you say anymore... it matters how you say it to get in the spotlight. He is a brilliant man in that regards. Can't everyone figure that out. It is all about being in the spotlight. I got that the moment I even saw the first headline. - James Mowery from twhirl

BTW, my aforementioned statements does not conclude that I appreciate such ways of getting in the spotlight. I'm disgusted with it, but it makes the Calacanis brand more widely known. Everyone else is the sucker for constantly talking about it. It doesn't matter if it is true or not. Calacanis already won because we are all talking about him. That is brilliant marketing folks. Think about it. - James Mowery from twhirl

@Karim I have it on good authority (i.e. I made it up) that he kept subscriptions open until 1095 because that's when Scoble signed up. I know, I know, you would have thought he would have done it sooner, but popular opinion is that he wanted to make Jason sweat. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

I think the fact that this move has created as much buzz as it has shows that it is working. How many more eyes will see this now that it will only be delivered to a select few? - Zach Chisholm

Jason, ha! :-D Somehow I'm sure he'll always manage to squeeze in another subscription or two for the "right" people ;-) I'd have more respect for these caps if they were given as powers of two (512, 1024) -- that way I'd just assume there was some technical basis. lol - Karim

I think Jason has a point. Techmeme and Valleywag have turned an idea culture into a celebrity culture. Trust me, I started to get sucked into the anger and negativity this week, and I didn't like what I was seeing in myself. But honestly? If he wants to push messages and have conversations back and forth without dodging trolls and negativity and egotism, he's got the right idea. If Leonsis is right, I'll be pretty sad. Speaking of Leonsis, LETS GO CAPS!!! STANLEY CUP 2009!!! - Andrew Feinberg

I don't see how you can get involved in 'drama' if you just stay the hell away from valleywag and techmeme - mjc

Zach, re "select few," I shouldn't be telling you this, but the Force can have a strong effect on the weak-minded. [waves hand] And please don't tell anyone I told you that, keep it just between the two of us. [waves hand] - Karim

Your going about it wrong... he didn't go "back to email", he decided to use a "distributed push blogging platform". Your so 1.0 with your blog on your server it's laughable ;-). - Robert Accettura

Email blog? *sigh* - Czar

I'm a "single inbox" advocate, and have all my RSS feeds fed to email, so Jason's really just saving me a step. I really wish FF could feed individual comments and posts to email, so I wouldn't have to come here. All these distinctions between blogs, FF, IM, SMS, twitter, email... I look forward to the day when it's all transparent, you simply subscribe to the content rather than the medium, and you choose whichever delivery mechanism you prefer. - Ken Sheppardson

Jason makes some valid points. I don't have anywhere near the audience of many of you, but comments are seriously problematic. On one hand they make writing pretty thankless, because often the only people who comment are ones who want to criticize or attack. On the other, you crave them because you're trying to start conversations. But having said that, I have made a considerable chunk of my living doing PR and I know buzz-building when I see it. That's not a criticism, it's just an observation. - Anthony Citrano

M. Cohen: that's the point. he's (at least trying to) remove himself a step or two from that medium. To be honest, I take more time reading and digesting an email than I do a blog post, because when you send mail to a list, you know who your initial audience is. Another thing? Mailing lists and Usenet (before outlook destroyed threading) had great conversations, better than many blog comments. FriendFeed actually reminds me of a Usenet-Listserv mashup in that way. (continued) - Andrew Feinberg

Most high-traffic blogs have way too many trolls, sock puppets, and other crap to make conversations useful anymore. Does anyone remember Slashdot in the early days? I do (my UID is 4 digits) and I never go there anymore. Why? Sock puppets, trolls, very few good conversations. The medium did not scale well. In many ways, Jason has been out sailing and has spied a FailWhale off his port bow. He's altering course to avoid, but the destination remains the same. Let's hope he gets there. - Andrew Feinberg

This is a personal decision for me and I realize that intelligent folks will disagree with my decision... however, I can tell you that after a couple of emails to the ~1,000 folks on the list I've a) learned more, b) gotten much more response (50-150 really well thought emails each time I send an email so far), and c) there has been no drama/haters. When you reach critical mass in blogging it implodes as the majority of feedback you get is from the haters and the mentally unstable (sometimes both). - Jason Calacanis

Jason: Agreed for the most part, but others on the list can't see the replies that people send to you :( I'd love to learn what you're learning. - Eric Florenzano

Robert - I think it's all a matter of perspective, when it comes to the benefit versus harm of doing exclusively email. I've shared some specific thoughts with Jason, but the overall point I'll make here. For you, it's hard because you're flooded already. For me, it's a chance to break away from what's going on during a day and read some thoughts that are shared to a very small and specific audience. I like what Jason's doing. I just, as I stated to him, hope that he's not cutting off his nose... - Brad @ The Next Web

Eric: the responses from the email list to me are 1-to-1 and that is providing me with so much more value than public comments, which i've found tend to be for a) the promotion of the individual, b) the chance to lash out/behave badly, c) some combination of a&b. I'm getting much more considered response because people understand it's one to one... this means i'm more likely to email more--it's a virtuous cycle so far. i wonder what will happen with email 100 or 1,000. will it continue or go away? who knows - Jason Calacanis

I think at some point one wants to blog or write more intimately. Instead of e-mail, I think Ning.com would have been a much better solution. It also puts a face behind the names and they can share too. - Janette Toral

Email may be the worst place, but maybe Jason has something new brewing in email land? - drew olanoff

Jason - I read your email via Robert's posterous. I really enjoyed that post. I'm someone fairly new to this world of the Web. To be honest, my only impression of you is as The Mahalo Guy who tweets about his bulldogs. Didn't realize there was so much more there, especially your trailblazing in the genre. With a closed-off email list, you'll miss a lot of new people. As for Google juice, Techmeme, etc, look to Marc Andreessen as an example. Blogs only on his own time as he tends to his start-up. - Hutch Carpenter

I thought you posted the email message, someone Twittered about that. I think it's about exclusivity, or the perception of exclusivity and accountability, ability to quantify. I think if SAR was still around it would be the only (5 maybe?) email lists i would need to subscribe to, so that was the '90's. As far as the focus on Techmeme, you got to just ignore it. Why do people need to know which 50 stories discuss the same issue? I'm glad it's successful for him. There are haters, always have been. - angela penny

I feel lucky to be on Jason's email list. - Owen O'Malley

Jason, if the responses are 1:1, you could end up answering the same question 1,000 times... and like Eric said, some questions don't get asked repeatedly when everyone can see them. - Karim

Who is parsing Jason's comments? - Anne Haynes

an email list is not a conversation, it is a one way street, Email lists are old fashioned, old school tech Most people have already been there, done that and are trying out all the new ways to communicate.We have moved on to Blogs, FriendFeed, Twitter, etc with new things showing up every day. Who else besides Jason wants to go backwards to the old list days? Negativity is always a problem, but does that mean we stop talking because of it? - Francine

Email is a follow-up medium IMO. It's what you might use once you find someone who you find worth having a more intimate conversation. I don't think most bloggers get an over abundance of these gems, but Jason achieved an order of magnitude that yielded a large cadre of intelligent folks. I get it. However, I'd blog simultaneously and see if other gems emerge that could be added to the email dialog. - AJ Kohn

I don't have any stats to back this up, but I suspect that despite all the twitterati/friendfeeders/bloggers hopes and dreams to the contrary, 90%+ of the non-navelgazing, productive activity on the internet is probably still conducted via email. - Ken Sheppardson

good for little jason. email rules - Big Jason Henderson

I can see (and have empathy for) a lot of the reasons why Jason (or anyone else) would decide to take a deep breath and opt out of the fray; a large part of the stakes in keeping blogging alive in the next - say - five years depends on a delicate balance between "taking" and "giving back" ideas from a communal place - when the former replaces the latter, things start getting less and less fun and interesting. Also,thislaptopspacebarisdyingonme. - dario

As for the Techmeme and page view stuff. I suppose if you're doing this for a living that might be a concern. Even then, it's still about content and ideas. I still believe that if you have the former, the latter will come to a large degree. Should you really be interested in traffic you might be better off doing SEO. - AJ Kohn

Annie, I tried to parse what Jason meant by the implication that answering the same question repeatedly had a greater value than not doing so :-) but I couldn't... I can see that it would *possibly* lower the amount of self-aggrandizing or hateful messages, because of the lack of a public platform, but it seems like the price is replying the same thing over and over, to potentially hundreds of people. Why even bother with replies, why not just make it a newsletter? Or a blog with no comments. - Karim

I applaud the move. Though I think it is a technological step backward, it seems to me, it is from a desire to move forward with, to me, what makes life valuable: relationships. And although disagreement is important to growth, detractors are less valuable than a reduction in disagreement. - ·[▪_▪]·

It won't last. - Jim Kukral

I was on Jason's old Silicon Alley email list years ago. There was something cool & useful about that list that was different from the blogging experience. - Paul Rodriguez

A few months ago I had a rather relaxed (blame tuscan red wines!) and interesting conversation with De Kerchove - a scholar who knows a thing or two about media - about the existence of collective intelligence and the concept of 'smart mobs' - the central point being 'are we starting to see something larger than the sum of its parts?'- the answer - more or less - is yes, but as any form of evolution, it takes lots of time and course correction along the way. - dario

My responses to the four points that Robert summarized above: "1. That commenters have destroyed blogging." - this is not new and many bloggers at many levels deal with hecklers. "2. That Nick Denton's style of paying for page views instead of smart ideas has destroyed blogging." - might be an issue for those bloggers who actually earn income from blogging. "3. That he seeks out a more intimate conversation." - less likely to happen if every E-Mail is posted somewhere. cont'd... - Mark Dykeman

"4. That email is it." - it could be a personal preference, but he could easily achieve the same thing with a public forum requiring a password-protected user account. All this would actually do is to prevent people from publicly criticizing him because there's no forum to do so within the E-Mail list. Unfortunately, there will be lots of other places to do that. More power to him if this is his true intent, but long term I don't think it will work. - Mark Dykeman

Why haven't bloggers incorporated "slashdot-like" rating into their comment systems in order to get rid of the noise. What am I missing? Let the community protect its own resource if they value it. - Derek Tutschulte

TechCrunch also wrote about this, but the comments here are a lot more interesting and smarter: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008... - Robert Scoble

Oh, and Jason, I agree that 1:1 conversations are the best. That's why I put my phone number on my blog. +1-425-205-1921 -- a troll of mine even called last night (seriously, she did) and I got to hang up on her. It was most satisfying. - Robert Scoble

Derek: Slashdot's comments don't work to get rid of the noise. - Robert Scoble

Scoble: You're right, it's embarassing for TechCrunch, really. In a way, it's validation of his move. - Eric Florenzano

Email is broken - paul mooney

Still fuzzy on why being able to weed out comments rated belowa "4" (5 being the highest) wouldn't filter out useless comments. Deputize your allies among your audience as editors that can rate comments and they clean up the mess. Forgive me, but why wouldn't that work? - Derek Tutschulte from twhirl

Kudos to you Scoble for keeping the conversation going. While I agree with Jason's sentiments, that the blogosphere needs to grow up a bit and stop focusing on views/clicks/getting on techmeme, etc - that's the responsibility of the blogger. You can have a blog WITHOUT being distracted by those things. Just... write the emails in a blog. That's why blogs are revolutionary. Email is for suckers. No way around it. Techcrunch publishing the email = fail. Is that really news? - David Cohn

SezWho has a plugin for WordPress. http://www.sezwho.com/ this can help a bit with commenters. - Ryan Lane

"This was a triumph. I'm making a note here, huge success. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction..." -GLaDOS - Eric Rice

I wonder. Considering my first comment (up two comments) and your blog post @RobertScoble - if the course of action is to just ignore it all. I mean - we are feeding the ego-flames here and I think Jason wants/knows it. Robert - considering it's just an "email" newsletter, why not drop Jason's new form of communication from your inbox? Especially if it's a cheap ploy. Would be a bold statement from you. - David Cohn

Like everything in life, Jason decision probably has pros and cons, but my personal feeling is that his going backward with this one, kinda like Facebook before they joined Dataportability... (conversations remains hidden inside) - Orli Yakuel

You can follow his emails on http://www.calacanismail.com - Frans

Is not Jason stil bloggin ? hmmmmm.. I mean micro bloggin when participating in convo /Sharing on FF :)- - Peter Dawson

Here's how it went down: Mrs. Calacanis: "Hunny, you're on the computer too much." ... Jason: "OK babe... I'll quit blogging" - Jimmy Gleason

Jason is still twittering, so isn't that essentially blogging? - Green Screen Cinema

No, that's microblogging and/or lifestreaming. :) - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Full Disclosure: I work for an email marketing team, I like email. That said, I don't think email is dead, but not the best channel for two way, one-to-many dialog when you have volume involved. If you limit your distribution and allow reply to, then email can spark some very intimate or insightful conversations between the sender and sendee(s). If you become a high-volume mailer, then... more... - Melinda

Robert Scoble

How do you know someone is smart? I've been thinking about that this morning and looking back at all the conversations I've had and one common theme is smart people talk to you about ideas, not about celebrities.

July 13, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

John Serra, Roy Montero, LPH™ and his dog P™ and 82 other people liked this

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would certainly agree! - iTad

76 more comments

What about people who share stupid ideas? Like Free Enegery, most conspiracy theories, many political statements, etc etc... - iTad

Robert, I like this and totally agree :) - directeur from NoiseRiver

Tad: even those people are still smarter than people who tell you about what Britney Spears did last night. - Robert Scoble

You could replace "celebrities" in that sentence with "names of people". In other words, it's ideas and concepts that are important, not egos. Even "nobodies" can have egos. Narcissism shuts out the world beyond the self, we can't learn if we are always holding up a mirror, never looking beyond it. - Jason Wehmhoener

My dad once told me that even the dumbest person in the world can teach you something because he probably knows something you don't. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Smart people listen more than they talk. - Randy Hall

To me the smart people are those that make a well-reasoned argument for and idea and then do two things. 1. Have the guts to put it out there to the world and 2. Have the guts to change their mind if they're wrong (or hold their ground when they know they're right) - Morgan

I think it all depends on the topic you're discussing. I'd say someone is smart if she can engage with you on the discussion and make you think about it from a different angle. - Bruno Pedro

Jason: it's one thing if I tell you "Doug Engelbart had dinner at the Ritz last night." It's a whole nother thing if I tell you "Doug Engelbart told me that xxxx idea is interesting and he's working on making that better." - Robert Scoble

I absolutely agree, Randy. - Jack&Cleo

Duncan for example is a smart guy, but still talks about celebrities, so it's possible to do both and still be smart - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Which reminds me I need to talk to you about an 'idea' at blogher. ok. not really...more about which cam to get for the conventions. lol - Erin @queenofspain

I agree... This is especially obvious here in LA... although sometimes the celeb mention is the nature of the business -- or at least mention of -- as Calacanis would say -- "webebrities." - Andy Sternberg

Jason: that's true. I have yet to meet someone who is able to communicate (I have a friend with a mentally retarded son who isn't able to communicate, so we'll leave him out of this) who I couldn't learn something from. Randy: exactly. When I fail as an interviewer it isn't because I'm listening, it's probably cause I'm talking. - Robert Scoble

Andy: when you talk to the smartest people in Hollywood they talk to you about ideas. Trends. People's work. They don't talk about "I saw Tom Cruise at dinner last night" or "did you see what they said about Oprah in the tabloids?" - Robert Scoble

Robert: I agree. The point I was trying to make is that we can learn something from almost everybody, even those who we may think know less then us. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

I think one can be smart and still talk about "Weird Al" Yankovic, because he's smart. - a runcible MiniMage from NoiseRiver

Dobromir: Duncan's best work is when he talks about ideas. That's why I love Duncan, cause he tells me who has the most interesting ideas, and he's very willing to debate ideas (I've debated a few with him). - Robert Scoble

I think people can be both highly intelligent and pretty stupid at the same time. Robert Anton Wilson said it better than I can, "When dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases." And that doesn't apply to just religious dogma - any kind including political, scientific, cultural, etc. - iTad

Robert Anton Wilson++ - Jason Wehmhoener

this is a cool thread! we need a lightbulb "intelligence meter" on FF - users vote on how smart you are based on your posts... bulb gets brighter with more votes! - Susan Beebe

Susan: fantastic idea! Now that's smart. - Bruno Pedro

I have a theory that being smart is simply a matter of the attention that you give somthing. Granted, Nobel Prize winning physicists dont grow on trees. - Roberto Bonini

smart to me is someone who knows what they know but more importantly knows what they don't know - too many intelligent people who never make it to smart because they are too busy broadcasting what they know - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

That would give credence to the old saying “if smarts was electricity that boy couldn’t light up a 10 watt bulb. “ - Tony C (Unrated)

Social media is about inclusion, don't alienate too much with your labels and boxes - Michael W. May from twhirl

I've found smart people treat being smart like fight club: rule number one is you don't talk about being smart. Rule number two is you don't talk about being smart. To Jason Wehmhoener's point, smart people don't spend their time making a point of how they're wrapped up in smart things or "look what a good person I am for talking to x or doing y." - Mark Trapp

Smart people usually start talking by conditioning everything - and the first condition is for them to say they are not an expert ... - LPH™ and his dog P™

How do you know that someone isn't smart? - mjc from twhirl

Smart folks understand questions are important, they are not afraid to admit ignorance and appreciate that learning is a process not an event. - Dave Martin

LPH: hmmm, the ultra smart like Douglas Engelbart (who really is the true visionary I've spent time with) just paint pictures in your mind of how the world will be someday. He never said he was expert at something, just talked about how this new world would work. I could listen to that guy for hours. At 82 he's easily the smartest person I've met. - Robert Scoble

Michael: that's an interesting question. The biggest way I've found? The only skill not smart people have is in ripping down other people's ideas, or, worse, trying to rip down other people altogether. - Robert Scoble

Robert, put it another way: smart people talk about the world that could be, not that the world that is? - Mark Dykeman

"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar." - Donald Foster - Roberto Bonini

Smart people simply can get the job done faster and pay attention to the hidden details that others would miss. I still don't know how to best test for it, though. - Ben Parr

smart people are visionaries, humble and most likely pious too. Take a look at the peoples who are deemed as being smart. These are some of the comman attributes of these type of people.! - Peter Dawson

I think it can go both ways-Charlie Rose talks about both-ideas are great, but what is with the people behind those ideas - that's very interesting! I also think its a natural human instinct to talk about others - it depends on the context. "I saw Tom Cruise last night" is the lowest common denominator. Inquiring about the dynamic of Shell's latest barrage of public vitriol and the work ethic of others in the Valley are spurned from natural human curiosity that we all share, whether we ask it or not. - j sven

Robert: ”Smart” here as different from ”Intelligent” – I have one story that will help us out here to identify a smart person. I had a friend at high school that knew he was not that intelligent, but he was smart: - he used to research old exams to see what the previous year tests would possibly cover on the upcoming exams. He used to collect all class notes from the top “dedicated”... more... - Joao

@susanbeebe: I dunno, I'd feel pretty hurt when the system took away my lightbult entirely. - a runcible MiniMage from NoiseRiver

@regila: all this for a "bob"? ;-) - directeur from NoiseRiver

I remember my dad once telling me what Eleanor Roosevelt said... "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." - Brian Sloane

the first sign that someone is really smart... they will tell you they're not but they will show you they are. - Scott Lockhart

I'm not saying I'm particularly smart, but I truly find celeb gossip one of the most uninteresting things I can think of. - Ian May

I think that smart people are the people that get things done. Imagine two people that have never heard or met each other and both of them come up with the exact same brilliant idea. One person brings the brilliant idea to a reality, while the other person doesn't. Which person is smarter? - Rishabh Mishra (p248) from NoiseRiver

Plug for the "highfalutin" room: http://friendfeed.com/rooms... if you want to talk about things with depth - Nicķ

maybe true...but everyone is smart in their own right. you might be a social media whiz but not know anything about putting in kitchen cabinets. I'm a firm believer that everyone has their sweet spots in terms of knowledge. The really smart ones, just take the time to expand that sweet spot so it's more than just a spot and more like an area. - Don Martelli

I think a smart person can talk about both. That way he/she can converse with all people and not make anyone feel less smart than them. - Adrienne Van Houten

Adrienne: I agree with that. But smart people never start out that way. - Robert Scoble

What an awful generalization. That's how I know when someone is smart. When he doesn't make an implied generalization like "stupid people talk about celebrities". - Jay Cruz

smart people think through questions and give full answers. who talks to you about angelina jolie? i agree anybody asking scoble about that is "not as intelligent," but probably nice people...unless they have no idea who you are....maybe they ask you these questions: "is veronica belmont really cute in person? or is kevin rose really a ladies man?" however, smart people are not always smart in all aspects of their lives... - Pokai

"Smart people talk about ideas. Common people talk about things. Mediocre people talk about people." -Jules Romains - Joe Lencioni

@Jay: You spelled know wrong. - Daniel Smith

For the record, that was a joke ;) - Daniel Smith

Thank's @Daniel Smith - Jay Cruz

You know when someone is smart when they know what they're talking about and they have a good understanding. "Smart" people grasp things better and/or have ideas. - Kevin Porter from twhirl

Smart is not about opinions ("Stupid ideas"). You can be smart and have different beliefs. I'm wondering if they are "smart" conversations or just engaging conversations. I'm much more interested in sharing ideas than sports scores, gossip, or transitory circumstances. - Barb Gonzalez

Ugh. Most of these comments seem to prescribe behavior to those who are "smart" - one of the only commonalities I've ever seen of truly smart people is that they make their own rules. To say they only talk about X not Y or they listen more than they talk or any other behavioral observation misses the mark with me. Smart people don't subscribe to other peoples' ideas of what they should be. - Lucretia Pruitt

Smart people realize how little they know but have no need to try and convince others that they know a lot. - Dossy Shiobara

Scoble, no one is "smart" or an "expert." It doesn't really matter at all. The only thing that matters is how people preceive someone to be. My blog, http://onlyjames.com/ is constantly growing, so I believe people to think I am smart. Then again, I might be a complete nutcase. :D - James Mowery from twhirl

I think you can define smart a few different ways as well. I think the question you're really asking is "How to determine if someone is INTELLIGENT?" - David Andrzejewski

I have noticed that they seem less likely to urinate in their pants than the general population - Seth Shapiro

I wish I understood this. - Michael Markman

Takes a long time of knowing someone and seeing how they react under differents sets of circumstances. People are smart in some ways, but not in others. - Francine Hardaway from twhirl

When I hear the word "celebrity" I now think of Sarah Austin's Pop17 which come to think of it Robert, you have never acknowledged that I know of. Her site is about a new kind of celebrity. For her, and for me, the interesting celebrities are people who become famous because of their outstanding work. And she does not attempt to ask about shallow tips or favorite colors, but rather about their work. The people she tends to interview are micro-celebrities small in size, but important. - Andrew Baron

I enjoy people who talk about other change-makers in the world. People who point me towards amazing & influential musicians, dancers, physicists, politicians, chefs, etc... Sometimes the geek-world is a little heavy on ideas. I enjoy hearing about the life history & paths of unusual chemists, religious leaders, and environmentalists. Just as some of my friends have more "aesthetic sense" than others, some are unusually attuned to remarkable people, and some to innovative ideas. - Mitchell Tsai

smart people just know - Pokai

@ Scoble, once again you've hit a collective nerve with this thread. it goes back to what makes us human? "i'm not human without you"- Desmond Tutu re: Umuntu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... communities like friendfeed should be a place where we explore these types of questions, there is enough pablum out in this world already, thanks for pursuing this line of questioning. - michael sean wright

I have an idea in that I'd love to get Britney Spears on Twitter - I think that would do wonders for her career. ;) - Jesse Stay

Is smart a measurement of intelligence or emotional quotient? One's intelligence is measured and quantified, like it or not, whether intelligence is synonmous with smart, that maybe another question. One can have emotional quotient as well i.e. street smarts and it too is measurable. Intelligence is not dribble. Intelligence, for me, is the generation of ideas with vision followed by implementation. Intelligence has many forms as well albeit plasticity or crystallized. Good nature versus nurture question. - ka3drr

I'll answer with this: the people's intelligence that I most desire and respect are the ones who are able to bring reality to the "out of the box" ideas they have. Plenty of people can speculate, but very few have the competence to bring a good idea to the rest of us. - Tony

depressingly true... - Stephen Roberts

I still have no clue who these A-listers are that people talk about but I'm interested in ideas both from other people and also sharing ones I come across. Celebrities? Phooey, give me an original thinker any day. - Sally Church

Hmmm, how about... Methinks "smart people" think about having conversations with people (aka "intellectual celebrities") with whom they can talk about ideas and... Sigh... It still goes back to Howard Bloom: http://users.ucom.net/~vegan... —I'm a Zen Buddhist, but I still do think "God" is fair... As in, I can brainstorm pretty well, yes, but I'd die in the Aussie outback if you put me there. :P - asepsotic

Thats a great observation. If only we could make those ideas a reality :) You are a fun guy to talk about ideas with. - Christian Burns

Is this where we talk about Paris Hilton ? - Eric Berlin

Eric: my niece says Sean Faris is hot. I don't even know who that is. Off to the Google for me! :-) - Robert Scoble

Funny you should mention him, Robert. I'm working with a website, and he's one of our celebs on it. The odd part, for me, is that we have all of these B+ list celebs, and I don't know any of them. - Brad @ The Next Web

Scott Beale

FriendFeed Comments on Laughing Squid - http://feeds.laughingsquid.com/~r...

June 24, 2008 from Laughing Squid - Comment - Like - Share

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big thanks to Glenn Slaven for all of his help with this - Scott Beale

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Thought I'd mention Pat Hawks' rework of Glenn's plugin that works with Blogger, Tumblr & FeedFlare: http://www.pathawks.com/2008... - CannonGod

Nice! I just implemented this on tinyscreenfuls.com. Very slick! - Josh Bancroft

Wow, very slick! Well done. - Steve Isaacs

Yes well done, I think we will see that on a lot of blogs in the near future. - Stéphane Guérin

This is very slick. Love the WP integration. - Hillary Hartley from twhirl

the revolution will be integrated. - Eddie Codel

Very nice! - Jordan Hofker

I agreee Eddie, especially if the integration is revolutionized - Scott Beale

Thanks Scott. By the way, the plugin refreshes every hour or if someone posts a FrienfFeed comment from your site. I was trying to be a good API consumer by not killing their server, but now that some more heavily commented sites are using the plugin I'm thinking of making it 1/2 an hour - Glenn Slaven

Glenn, thanks for solving that mystery, at first I though it was my WP Super Cache plugin - Scott Beale

Wow. - Gustav Holmström

Very cool indeed. - Barbara K. Baker

Scott Beale

My Photography Workflow - http://thomashawk.com/2008...

June 24, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

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Scott Beale

Please Help Todd Blair by Donating Now - http://www.formandreform.com/wordpre...

June 24, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

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