Alex Gibbons - Likes

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Man can't help himself. He sees a divide, his instinct is to heal it http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technol... A natural born mediator, he brings folks together :-)

August 6 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Veetrag, Alex Gibbons, Josette Torres and 3 other people liked this

Did Andrew Keen really get two columns out of our lunch on Monday? I'm impressed! - Robert Scoble

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You were used, Robert. Made into a wide eyed Web revolutionary who has been tamed by reality. - Jay Rosen

Jay: I'm used to being used. And I wasn't even drunk on Monday at lunch. Sigh. - Robert Scoble

Okay dokey.... - Jay Rosen

I thought AP Style guide says to use "OK." So, OK dokey. Heheh. I can still hear my journalism professors yelling at me about this kind of stuff. - Robert Scoble

So let the conversation now begin. - eva

And we sure as hell need it now in more than one arena. - frankiecarl

Yes, good jumping off point for the talks: does the Web threaten to bring down all over American ingenuity, and crash the whole system we have for creating technology progress?... "Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and... more... - Jay Rosen

Silicon Valley insider...pundit...isn't that all we need to know about who's threatened by the participation of the dirty, unwashed, Web2.0 masses? - jeff hammond

Shey, Jamaican of FF

Just finished putting in our first offer on a condo. #fb

July 23 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Emma, Dennis O'Neil, sofarsoShawn and 47 other people liked this

*fist bump* - Derrick

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Nice!!! - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

YEAYYYYYYYYY!!!! - Shevonne

go deh Shey ;) - LANjackal

Thanks all, here's hoping! - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Derrick, that's disgusting. :P - Zee.

Congrats. - Admiral Anika

cool deal. good luck to you guys. :) - edythe

I trust that you get it with the offer you submitted. The best of luck Shey! - James Stratford

Crossing fingers and toes and legs and arms and eyes... man, is it hard to type this way! - Ladybug Heather

lol, thanks Heather, and everyone else. Still waiting... - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Congrats. - Michelle

hey congrats...hope all works out for ya. pics please if you get it :) - (jeff)isageek

good luck! - Anna Lynn M.

:-)) - Anna Haro

unfortunately, it wasn't accepted -- but we're moving on! - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Sorry about that man, best to you - LANjackal from IM

YAY! - Kelli Perez

Yay it wasn't accepted? What a mean mean person Kelli lol (read update) - ThatJimGuy

Sorry 2 hear that Shey, good attitude though - keep looking & trying! :-) - ThatJimGuy

Godd luck Shey ... tricky market (and a few crazy sellers :) - Charlie Anzman

Have you gotten any word on your offer yet Shey or will it be early in the week? - James Stratford

@James They pretty much wanted the full asking price for the unit, which we thought was way overpriced. So no deal - Shey, Jamaican of FF

congrats man - johnpiercy

Leo Laporte

John Dvorak's Second Opinion: Is the party over for behemoth Microsoft? - MarketWatch - http://www.marketwatch.com/m...

July 25 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Igo Tan, Eric @ CSTechcast.com, TheHenry and 23 other people liked this

What's shocking is that the cash cows, specifically the Windows operating system and the Office suite, have managed to finance all these idiotic efforts for so many years. While Microsoft's profits and sales were way down this last quarter, it is only a matter of time before losses begin. Read more about the disappointing earnings. The cash cows are dying of neglect. This company cannot keep its eye on the ball because there are too many shiny objects to distract it. Now comes the latest fiasco: Microsoft wants to open retail stores, all of them next to or near an Apple store. - Leo Laporte

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Copycats! How funny that THAT is all they can come up with. Stores...really. I don't like MS and I bet we could come up with 10 kick butt ideas for them that are better than that! - Tobin Truog

MS never innovated anything. DOS was purchased. Windows was designed at PARC. Their initial networking (NETBUI protocol) was flat without routing and was a pain to integrate with TCP/IP, WordPerfect and Netscape were killed by business practices instead of technology, every web designer has a CSS nightmare with IE and cross-browser compatibility, MS invented the idea that computers need... more... - Keith Barrett

I'd say lack of any true innovation is the cause of this. When you look at it, alot of the companies that are dying in this recession because they weren't really doing anything new for long periods of time. That's just the case here. - Hugh Isaacs II from iPod

This article completely misses the source of Microsoft's fastest growing products in the business sector. MS Dynamics products for business-line applications are one area that Microsoft is really gaining share (lumped in with Office sales if you look at their quarterly reports to hide that Office sales are declining). Also, I believe that Microsoft will start to realize different... more... - Chris Reichow

The bigger problem I think isn't just Microsoft, but really any large company, that is "innovating" by buying startups rather than creating an R&D culture/investment within the organization - Chris Reichow

My question for Dvorak is: What can MS do today to stay true to its core business as a software company? The fact is "software" does not have the growth like a few years ago. MS needs to diversify to keep growing, and yes some of those ideas failed. You can't fault a guy for trying - Andre P. Siregar

I propose that Microsoft needs to stop being a "incremental" company, or a "ever fixing company", and start at least using 20% of their resources to come with their "black stallion", they do need to innovate, just watch Google, they have so many things going because of the use of the 80-20 rule thus, if you have for the foreseeable time covered 80% of your business needs, you certainly... more... - Carlos F. Sam Castillo

First step is for BillG to fire SteveB. Ballmer has presided in one of the largest losses of shareholder equity of all time. If the baord was a responsible governing process it would boot him out. Second, review each business and shut those not making money. A slim, focused MS could then return to the fray and maybe even turn things around. Get back to work Bill ... - Jeff

Say what you want, if you havent tried Windows 7 with the Office 2010 stack you might be little surprised. It positively changed my workflow for the better. I still use linux,xp,vista and by far prefer Win 7. I can't wait for a Windows 7, touch screen, notebook, ion, atom, ssd, OLED and WIMAX. MS still has the largest Library like Video Games by orders of magnitude and there is a huge... more... - Robert Higgins

Windows 7 is a huge step in the right direction but I think Chrome is going to change the game. - Trent Hamm from iPod

funny when i read the earnings report it said that revenues took a hit because PC and server sales dropped. because of something called a "recession," which is apparently something that happened to the economy? news to me. but this must be microsoft's fault, right? this "recession" thing? - Karim

MSFT: 5 years -16.34%. AAPL 5 years: +942.25%. Dunno to which extent this is important. Maybe it is not unreasonable to ask Ballmer to go. Or it is, I am not sure. (I use Macs, an iPhone, two iPods and I also own a Sharp Zaurus.) - http://tr.im/u8Sd - Liviu Barbat

Liviu: http://www30.wolframalpha.com/input... might help you decide whether a percentage rise in stock price is more important than, say, the P/E ratio. - Karim

Thanks, Karim! I'm happy - Liviu Barbat

...I agree with those who say that the lack of true innovation is the real problem, but i'm not sure this is the kind of thing you can just flip a switch and start doing overnight. - .LAG liked that

April Buchheit

5 Years After: Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results: Scientific American - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article...

July 2 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Angus Burton, Andy Ackerman, Carlos Ayala and 18 other people liked this

"In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections. Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank." - April Buchheit from Bookmarklet

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" "Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week. Under the Portuguese plan, penalties for people caught dealing and trafficking drugs are... more... - April Buchheit

I think this is a step in the right direction, but keeping it illegal to sell drugs means that the black market is still there, and all the dangers of it (violence mostly). Plus, if it were legal, the government could get taxes from it, which could pay for the treatment programs. Gee that sounds familiar (tobacco perhaps?) - Robert Felty

YES! This is an awesome case study. Let's legalize pot in CA - they need the tax revenue and I want my tax dollars going toward something better than jailing ppl who smoke weed. - Felicia Yue

Darren Heydon

The things we do for love - http://ventisette.tumblr.com/post...

April 22 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Cristian, Kyle Weller, Bryan R. Adams and 52 other people liked this

That's cute. - Alex Scoble

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NO. - Mona Nomura

lol - Anna Haro

It's walking in the rain and the snow and you've got no where to go - Johnny Worthington

This made me laugh - Darren Heydon

Pretty sure I've done that already. - Alix Whitmire

No matter how much I love a person, I would NEVER sit through Moulin Rouge. EVER. - Mona Nomura

Yep, I'm gonna second Mona on that one - Mo Kargas

Aw Darren you are so romantic BUT I'm def with Mona on MR - BEX

been there, done that - William Harryman

lol Mona, ok I'll make an exception. Weirdest movie EVER - Darren Heydon

@Bex ty :) - Darren Heydon

*sings with johnny* ...and you're feeling like a part of you is dying... - Trish Haley

I will NOT - Dobromir Hadzhiev

I've done this many times with my wife. - Mark Krynsky

My Rachel would do this, but she'd tease me mercilessly about my love for it. - Kevin Fox

Also, what's with the MR hating? Baz is great! What do you Aussies think of his 'Australia'? Rachel and I watched it last night and liked it. - Kevin Fox

No love is strong enough to justify a viewing of Gigli - Morgan Haley

No, not tease you mercilessly for loving the movie Kevin, just laugh hysterically at the movie and then tease you when you get annoyed that I'm laughing at the god awful movie! In short, its not the fact that you like it, its the fact that you won't admit that you like it spite of its god awfulness! As long as you know its god awful, its okay to like it. Cause knowing is half the battle! :D - Rachel Lea Fox

Tim O'Reilly

RT @mattthomas: @timoreilly "Century of the Self" is indeed an amazing doc. It's also available online: http://video.google.com/videopl....

March 22 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Randy Holloway, Phillip Stewart, Helen Sventitsky and 11 other people liked this

It's pretty fascinating series, Tim. I basically watched the entire 4 hours in a row. - Nate DiNiro

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This documentary is a must-see if you want to understand the 20th century. - Sean McBride

@Nate I did exactly the same. I couldn't *not* watch it all once I found it. Fascinating stuff. - Rudolf Olah

Wow, just watching the first two minutes makes me think this is gonna be very good. Good storytelling! - Meryn Stol

Mona Nomura

"The King of Twitter isn't amused" http://urlesque.tumblr.com/post... Finally, something new about celebrities on Twitter that made me LOL.

April 17 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

~C4Chaos, (jeff)isageek, anne-mette and 54 other people liked this

OMG that's hilarious Shaq rocks - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

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This makes me very amused - Tamara

Oprah's already putting people in check "george that's a promo not a tweet" http://twitter.com/Oprah... - Mona Nomura

Within two weeks Oprah will be considered an authority on social media. - Anthony Citrano

Also: yeah, +1 Shaq. - Anthony Citrano

That's because Oprah understands COMMUNITY. I love her. - Mona Nomura

Mona - I saw your other post about Oprah calling out George Stephanopolous. Good stuff. - Hutch Carpenter

FINALLY, 'celebs' with substance. Oprah is bomb. All the others I don't care about LOL - Mona Nomura

god I love shaq - Erin @queenofspain

...that's a slam dunk for @THE_REAL_SHAQ... Oprah, tell me how my *ss taste! .LOLz - .LAG liked that

Referring to anything as "really 21st century" seems so last century. - Dan Hsiao

Oprah just got schooled - April Buchheit

Then Oprah did some schoolin http://beta.friendfeed.com/monasfe... - Mona Nomura from IM

lol I was wondering who George was - nouhad

Thanks, Oprah and Shaq, for filling us in on how the Internet works, that we shouldn't use all caps and what qualifies as a tweet. I was hoping we wouldn't have to experience "Eternal September: Electric Boogaloo", but it's upon us. - Andy Bakun

yes, shaq indeedly rocks - Giovanni De Stefano

@THE_REAL_SHAQ thank you for making me laugh - Alfredo

btw, there's a room for following Shaq's tweets. http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Rodfather

Can anyone believe it's taken 9 years for Oprah to feel like she's in the 21st century? - Andy Bakun

Oprah has her own network, her own community. For her to come to Twitter *is* huge. Don't hate, Andy. :) - Mona Nomura

But user names in all caps is OK? - dthree

I like Shaq. He is original, engaged and as real as it gets. Plus he isn't afraid to ask for help either. A sense of humility. - Amani

Huge for who? Just because someone has their own world doesn't mean they shouldn't exist in the real world, where we've been enjoying the 21st century for almost a decade now. I don't hate, I just think it's way overhyped. I don't hate Oprah, I hate society for being such sheep. - Andy Bakun

Then change it. :) - Mona Nomura from IM

+100 Andy. - Anthony Citrano

-100 Andy. Clearly you know more, so why not change it instead of complaining on the Internet? :) - Mona Nomura from IM

Mona always has the best shiz on FF - Leslie Poston

The Internet is one of the best places to complain. - Andy Bakun

Well that sounds like a personal problem... But then again it's easier to be negative than positive. :) - Mona Nomura from fftogo

It's not a problem, personal or otherwise, at all that the Internet has afforded us this awesome place to waste time. - Andy Bakun

I mean, I'll admit that I watched (a good portion of) the video Kutcher posted of him and his crew watching the follower count go up. And I'll complain about it too, gosh darn it! - Andy Bakun

I didn't watch the video, but complain away, gosh darn it!! - Mona Nomura

lol, +1 Shaq - mutenewt

Mona Nomura

I've kept my mouth shut for 3 days but enough is enough. Don't we have more substance than repeatedly Tweeting about Ashton and Oprah? GEEZ.

April 17 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Rick Cogley, Andy Carroll, Gunny doesn't side-hug™ and 85 other people liked this

I have no substance - Alan Simpson

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Welcome to the new Twitter... - Johnny Worthington

Sigh - nouhad

I am a vapid person. - Mike Nayyar

I <3 Mona. - Alex Scoble

I'm having to hide a lot of crap today. - Alex Scoble

I came to FF and it's the same thing because the NY Times covered it. UGH. - Mona Nomura

i think now people will start unfollowing them. and then get it back up to a million again - Alfredo

Welcome to the club Mona :) - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I don't care, I just want NEWS. Can't we attempt to be a little more interesting than analyzing if Twitter is bla bla bla. UGH - Mona Nomura

Yea, I tend to avoid all that crap. I think that the fact that this is happening is really marking the end of Twitter as we once knew it. And now it will go the way of Myspace. - Mathew™ one of a kind

I've seen more people complaining about them than anything. I was wondering the same thing. Other stuff is going on. - Joe Pierce

Yeah, let's get back to talking about FF. - You.

Why are people so frickin' star struck? Annoying. - Mona Nomura

entropy wins.. enternal september all over again. - Siddharth Mitra from feedalizr

I'm shallow, what can I tell you? :D - Helen Sventitsky

Ya want news? Please come play: http://beta.friendfeed.com/ron-wor... - Chris Baskind

Mona, twitter is so 2008 though. ;-) - Amani

Does this mean I'm not getting a new Pontiac 6? - Mike Lewis

There's definitely something going on. I tried to unfollow @aplusk and it wouldn't let me. I unfollowed someone else just fine. I see this as a publicity stunt, and I've promptly deleted my twitter account. - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

Wow, that is horrible practice. - Mona Nomura

I followed aplusk for like a day when he first got his account and knew within minutes that I wouldn't get anything of value from it, so I unfollowed. Haven't missed a think. I've actually stopped following a lot of more famous twitterers because they haven't had anything engaging to say, or they don't interact with their followers. - Jon, the Beartato of '10

Pics or it didn't happen. - Josh Haley

If I knew you where trouble with this, I would have offered you a pizza for your thoughts:-) I think twitter has become a little dull lately. I didn't take part in this, until it was over...or, is this just the beginning? - Michael Fidler

Oh, I've moved on. I wish Twitter had HIDE. - Mona Nomura from IM

Mona: It does...use tweetdeck or peoplebrowsr and just listen to what you want ;) With peoplebrowsr you can build groups of people that you don't follow too. Then go to tweepular.com (I think) and mass unfollow almost everyone ;) make groups of who you want on the desktop, and only see mobile updates of people you REALLY like....I'm very tempted to do this myself - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I don't use resource hogs. :) - Mona Nomura from IM

I don't either, but I gave the option...peoplebrowsr isn't a resource hog. browser app runs pretty small. (it's what I run most of the time) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob, thanks for the info. I'll check it out :) - Mona Nomura from IM

still in alpha, but way better product than tweetdeck, and really more mature too. beta will be out very soon. still seeing occasional errors, but beats pretty much any alternative I've tried. (You're welcome) :) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

But I think (hope?) with Ashton it's a lot of pity-following; he's the Twitter Special Olympics. Maybe I need to tweet that and see how many hate-tweets I get. - Anthony Citrano

I didn't see any hate tweets for "unfavorable" tweets that I posted last night. The closest I got to a hate tweet was this morning being included in a #followfriday recommendation with @aplusk . I resisted the urge to respond unfavorably to the recommendation. I was proud of myself for my restraint ;) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Couldn't agree more and I've written about why I view the whole thing as Asocial Media: http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/asocial... - AJ Kohn

I stand corrected about Oprah. I hope she puts all the spammy PR/marketing people in check, too. - Mona Nomura

@AJ: great, great blog post on 'asocial media'...hits on all of the essential problems... - .LAG liked that

OPRAH WILL BE THE INTERNET'S SAVIOUR! Finally someone to reign in all the asshattery on the Internet -- unless celebrities become leaders of the asshattery. - Andy Bakun

Throw them in a cage and fight for supremacy. - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

Besides, I contribute much to this Internets. I've been here from the beginning of the Tubes! - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

Mona, here's my content contribution (amidst today's vaccuous c-leb attention) http://beta.friendfeed.com/micahwi... - Micah Wittman

Cool. Thanks Micah. AJ has one too. - Mona Nomura

Do what I do, if it bothers you, put the internet down and go outside :) - Bwana ☠

But the sun is out there, and it burnsss! - Joe Pierce

i agree if your not following them who cares about how many ppl follow them per-sec - eric

TPB FTW!!! - A.T.

NO IDEA what that mean, A.T.! - Mona Nomura

Ashton - Jesse Stay

Oprah - Jesse Stay

I'm with you. barf. - TheMacMommy

CNN - Jesse Stay

I'm too busy talking about myself! Ahh, me. - Phil G

It's quiet annoying the whole thing though ashton said some great points - orionstarr

He did? Hmm not really a fan of his stream but I'll check it out. Especially since it's coming from you, orionstarr. You're one of the most cynical people I know!! - Mona Nomura from fftogo

Well it seemed breathtaking - orionstarr

TPB == The Pirate Bay - A.T.

Did you guys see ashton's twitter Interview on twitter? "catching up with Ashton, byte by byte" - orionstarr

Bows to Mona's wisdom. - Janet

Unfortunately probably not. I could care less what Ashton has to say. - Rick Cogley

Mona Nomura

Domino's Pizza is now on Twitter (@dpzinfo) LOL. Official press release about the GROSS video http://www.dominosbiz.com/Biz-Pub...

April 15 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jeff P. Henderson, Andre P. Siregar, edythe and 16 other people liked this

If there are two employees, then it makes you think there are probably more. Ouch! - Shevonne

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Following the #AmazonFail hooplah, this week has been horrible for brands... - Mona Nomura

Outrage mostly emanating from people who've never worked in a restaurant for $3.85 an hour. - Anthony Citrano

But it's still gross. - Mona Nomura

My outrage is at their crappy pizza. - Derrick

have a link to the vid? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Plus there are warrants out for their arrests! - Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕

yes, it's really gross. But is it gross to people because they didn't know it before? Or they knew it, but it's gross because they saw it on video? I mean, everyone knows it happens all the time, right? There's no new data here, only a new visualization. - Anthony Citrano

@ Anthony - huh? How'd you work that out? I've worked in a restaurant (years ago) for super low wages - but I don't care if you're getting paid 10 cents / hour - that doesn't make any of that shite OK. - Patrick Jordan

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Mona Nomura

thanks mona! :) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

It's all about perception, Anthony. Aren't you a marketer? - Mona Nomura

Anthony, I agree with Patrick. It doesn't matter if you make $3 or $30 an hour. You don't do stuff like that. - Rochelle

@Derrick hahaha true! @Anthony You're right. I know there are things that happen at restaurants that I really don't want to know about, but unfortunately when you find out, you are grossed out. Ignorance is bliss. - Shevonne

Rochelle and Patrick - logic FAIL. Wherever did I say it was OK? - Anthony Citrano

Anthony - my bad, thought you implied that by saying only those who had never worked for low wages in a restaurant were outraged. I still disagree though. I have worked for those kinda wages when I was very young - and I still find it outrageous. Not outraged as in 'OMG I am shccked that this sort of stuff ever happens' - just outraged that those two dipshits were so brazen and proud about it ... - Patrick Jordan

Just ordered - orionstarr

Domino's is disgusting anyway. But now is the best time to order, since all the workers are probably being closely monitored. - Mona Nomura

I was kidding I try to avoid that food - orionstarr

@Patrick, I'm specifically delineating the obvious wrong-ness from the "shock", esp. in my second comment. I'm saying this is one more example of Shock & Outrage Nation. Here's something that anyone with half a brain knows happens daily, especially in low end shit places like Domino's. Yet, because it's on YouTube, everyone acts like it's news. My point is - sure, it's outrageous. But we all know it goes on all the time, so why the hysteria?? - Anthony Citrano

People are shocked because their brain tells them they have to be. The only other alternative is the conscious realization that this is not just a rare case, weather it be in a fast food joint or a grocery. To be reminded of that fact every time you eat something that you didn't kill, skin, and cook yourself tends to be overwhelming. - Tony, Paradox of FF

@tony: well said. So I guess (in this case) it's fair to say shock is evidence of ignorance, obliviousness, and/or denial? - Anthony Citrano from BuddyFeed

The Domino video also suggests there are reasons you shouldn't purchase any food from an open trough, like a salad bar in a supermarket. - Bernie Goldbach

@Anthony I'll leave open the possibility of another cause since I don't know everyones mind, but lets say I'd be shocked to learn that those 3 weren't the primary sources. - Tony, Paradox of FF

@Anthony, you're voicing the same reaction I had when i saw the vid. - Edward Zwart

Robert Scoble

In case the fail whale comes tomorrow during Oprah show, click this link and participate live:

April 16 - Comment - Like - Share

Alex Gibbons, John E. Bredehoft, MK35540 and 36 other people liked this

http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... The live link. We'll keep this just in case Oprah takes Twitter down. - Robert Scoble

37 more comments

thanks! $100 bucks says fail whale is a definite! - Susan Beebe

I'm betting it will go down. - Roberto Bonini

Dont like Oprah but this is kinda cool :) - Per

is there any place that us foreigners can watch it live? - Orli Yakuel

It's gonna be a make-or-break day for Twitter. - Ron S. Doyle

While I don't follow Oprah much, if she engages and really uses Twitter, that silly race to 1 million followers is likely to leave Kutcher, CNN and Larry King looking like silly little boys. - Ken Camp

I can imagine the whole crowd at the studio live tweeting Oprah in the future =D That would be absolutely crazy. Sorry, I meant ridiculous =P - | Balu |

Cool - basically creating your own namespace just for this event, eh? Ah, for the days when the backchannel at conferences was on IRC and everyone was in the same "room", so to speak. - Shane Curcuru

Well considering I have been getting Twitter "over capacity" messages on a regular basis since march madness started. I am afraid. Very afraid. - Jame Ervin

Shane: friendfeed will be the defacto backchannel place from now on. The live comments at http://beta.friendfeed.com rock. - Robert Scoble

Can I participate dead? - Matthew DeVries

What's the Vegas odds on Twitter dropping like a rock during Oprah's show? - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Odds? I wouldn't bet against it! - Karma Martell

Does anyone actually log in to Twitter.com at all ever? I haven't been to the site since Tweetdeck was installed. - Matthew DeVries

@Matthew I still login. Most desktop clients suck. - TheHenry

TheHenry - You're doing it wrong then, Tweetdeck rocks, and I hear all these new ones are even better. - Matthew DeVries

I still find Tweetdeck to big (I don't have enough screen real estate) but I may have to switch now that I'm following @scobleizer - phew! Twhirl is my current client; nice and smooth and enough features to get by. Twitter website is only for ensuring your profile hasn't been hacked; nothing else. - Shane Curcuru

Hmmm... Twitter's still up. I suspect Robert negotiated a secret deal last night to boost Twitter's capacity with temporary Rackspace cloud servers - a win-win all around. Vaguely disappointed that the big O's first tweet WAS ALL SHOUTING. - Shane Curcuru

Which Oprah are we talking about? - Matthew DeVries

thanks for the tip Robert. I'll pass. - Jim in Real Time

Robert, since you seem to know a lot of people, I'd like to give a tip. I'm sure you've heard it before, but I think this was all a complete publicity stunt by Twitter using @aplusk, @cnnbrk, and @oprah to bring more people. When I can't unfollow @aplusk but I can unfollow anyone else just fine, something is up. I've just deleted my twitter account. - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

What a silly thing make an impassioned protest about. - Matthew DeVries

It totally was a publicity stunt on the part of Twitter. You could have blocked all those people though Mike. The unfollow button didn't work, but the block sure did. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

@Matthwe yeah probably :P - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

I don't WTF you all are talking about, I don't have any of those people on my follow list, and I can unfollow people just fine. - Matthew DeVries

@Rob N. yeah but with all the crap that's been going on lately with Twitter coupled with the fact that I hardly use it now anyways, it was the tipping point. - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

Mike: Right there with ya. If I didn't have the right tools to filter out the noise I would cancel as well. I believe this is the tipping point for the whole of Twitter, and will turn it into a simple medium for people to broadcast, and will deaden the quantity and quality of interpersonal exchange. So...here we are at FriendFeed :) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

So much for trying to get peeps to understand that Twitter is more than just a popularity contest. It is my understanding that Twitter temporarily disabled the unfollow button on Kutcher's account to keep people from trying to game the system by following and unfollowing to try and be his 1millionth follower. - Sharon McPherson

I guess you all are right. Today was the day that Twitter chose wrong, and broke itself. It defined itself as a popularity contest, thus people who need to do actual work can no longer depend on it as a tool. The King is dead, long live the King. - Matthew DeVries

I don't necessarily agree with the assumption that Twitter can no longer be depended on as a "tool" Mathew. No matter how many millions flock to Twitter because of it's "new found fame", we still have the option of choosing who we follow and who follows us. - Sharon McPherson

Sharon is correct, this is a choose your own adventure game, and as the pie expands it just means the objectives of different entities will need to be clearly defined and well managed. Whether there is 14MM of 140MM individual entities on twitter, you still control the conversation you choose to invest in. - Patrick Boegel

There are 10 kinds of people: those who view Twitter as a tool, and those who view it as the social network they must must must be a part of. Reminds me of intertwingly's "It's just data". It's just a tool. It's all about what you choose to do with it. Like ridiculing Oprah's technology advisers for allowing her to SHOUT OUT ALL OF HER FIRST TWEET. - Shane Curcuru

As of 1:20 pm Pacific time (4:20 pm Eastern) Twitter is up. This is a good stress test for @ev and company. - John E. Bredehoft

I'm choosing to use FF as a tool to make fun of her and her advisors for making her second tweet about ordering lunch LOL! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

You're all so mean! Twitter is perfect for Oprah viewers, because they've never had a thought needing more than ... well, it's sure not 140 characters, I bet. - Stan Scott

Stan, with all due respect to Robert, the unleashing of the Oprah followers on a service is a much more powerful stress test than even the unleashing of the Robert Scoble followers on a service. I'm not sure that Twitter would share it, but it would be fascinating to see the information about Twitter sign-ups and usage over the next few days. - John E. Bredehoft

I don't know. All of this freaking out over who's on twitter and why seems like saying "Duuuuude, Nirvana totally sold out." I don't really care who is on twitter and why. I thought "we" wanted people to have access to information and communication- even if they don't know all of the etiquette yet. I don't want FF to be the record store where the everyone is too cool. - metalerik

+1 Stan....heheh - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Ionut

HOME COOKING IS KILLING THE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

April 17 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Karpuscul, Martin Rix (Mrrix32), Daniel Dulitz and 11 other people liked this

Louis Gray

The Social Web - http://davemorin.tumblr.com/post...

April 17 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Lu Tao, Aad 't Hart, Thomas Power and 2 other people liked this

Excellent arguement why "Social Media" should be called "The Social Web" - Nicholas James

Paul Buchheit

Twitter is at least a dress rehearsal (Scripting News) - http://www.scripting.com/stories...

April 17 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Alex Gibbons, Christian Burns , Nicholas James and 25 other people liked this

"In a way, as a user of Twitter, I have the same business model as the investors in Twitter. I don't know what it is, but I have a feeling there's something here. I look at it this way, if you tried to tell me what we're doing on Twitter has nothing to do with what we'll be doing with networks in the future, I'd be 100 percent sure you were wrong. There's something here. The challenge is to figure out what it is." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

9 more comments

I really like this quote because to me that feeling of "something' is what's most important when evaluating new products. It's painfully vague, but very real and the best indicator that I've found. - Paul Buchheit

in some sense, the vagueness of that "something" also makes it far more interesting. Kind of like opening a surprise without knowing what's inside. - Ashwani Kumar

Interesting. How often do you think early adopters experience false positives with this feeling? - Bruce Lewis

Do you do FriendFeedGeist? - xyz

That's just it, a "network" isn't a business model, it's a commodity. In the 80s, when you first used discussion forums or email, it might have seemed there was something big "there" in Compuserve, QLink, et al. But it turned out email and usenet were commodities. If multicast realtime short messaging is a valuable network, its value may not be at all in one company, but in everyone being a peer on that network, not a client. - Ray Cromwell

What is NOT a commodity is search. This is why friendfeed needs even more metadata! - Robert Scoble

I agree, search and user experience aren't commodities. RSS is distributed/federated, yet there is value in Blogger/Wordpress and blogsearch. I use FriendFeed because it has a great UX, not because I'm 'locked in' because of some subscription data/friend network/accounts. - Ray Cromwell

I think that Twitter's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness -- the 140 character limitation. It acts as a ceiling for what you can actually do with it. - Stan Scott

Stan: you are right. But only because building a great search experience is really tough without metadata. Here, try doing this search: find all tweets done the day the plane crashed into the Hudson but only display Tweets that were done within 50 miles of the crash scene. You can't do that. Why? No metadata. - Robert Scoble

I am gratified to see Robert Scoble's appreciation for the role of metadata in enabling more powerful search. (And he's right if he argues that the current state of hashtagged metadata on Twitter is too weak and primitive. We need better semantic markup.) - Sean McBride

Robert Scoble

Chasing the magical experience - http://scobleizer.com/2009...

April 17 from Scobleizer: Technology,... - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Andrew Terry, Ron R. and 43 other people liked this

I wonder who Scoble will put me with when he's seperated his followers into groups of four. - Nicholas James

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Nicholas: now THAT is an interesting question and one that I'd need to do some homework on. I think that's a more interesting definition of friendship, by the way: can I create a magical experience for you? Not have I met you, etc. - Robert Scoble

Wow. This is great. Very good analysis of what makes for magic moments. I will DM you some info re: a magic moment opportunity. Also, your analysis in your prior post about "regular" businesses is spot on. It is great to hear this because that concept is central to our strategy at my company! Thanks for the great thoughts... - Troy Malone

This is why Francisco Dao created "Francisco's Fun Club - No Business Cards Allowed." Robert the best time I ever spent with you was around a fire pit at the Ritz. I don't think we spoke business once. I remember that I was hoping to get an interview with you for The Business Maker's Radio Show...but the moment wasn't right. It was in a word - Magical. - Erica OGrady from Friend Deck

Erica: I agree, we should do a fire pit meetup again soon. - Robert Scoble

I've known my best friend for over 40 years (since Grade 1). We see each other's families about once a week. We agree far more than we disagree, and we bounce ideas off each other. Our wives laugh at our similarities (including quirks we share in common). Happy is the man or woman who has at least one such friend, because then the magical experience happens more often. - Victor Panlilio

That is a great post. Those moments are something special when they happen. - Jeremy Brooks

So was our interview with Ev and Biz last year a "Magical Experience?" ;-) - Jesse Stay

I realize it's not really the point of the post and that you're going for the number four as a theme, but my experience is that a birth with a midwife instead of doctor an a nurse is definitely more magical. - Tim Trentham

Looking forward to the magic at Building 43! - Brendan Cosgrove

Wow Robert, I love the bit at the end about bringing three guests. You could try and bring three locals to *every* tour you land, regardless of the venue. It would really add to the perspective! - Daniel J. Pritchett

This is going to have a profound effect on my thinking. I have a Twitter account that built a failry large following, but I ended up creating another (closed) account where I only invite and accept close friends for noise-free conversation. Find I'm spending much more time there; my old account mostly just gets stuff I "like" on FriendFeed now. - Mark Traphagen

Does anyone else feel like Robert Scoble is getting boring? Or is it that there is nothing interesting going on in the tech world. Techcrunch/Techmeme all feel the same, mashable and readwriteweb are wordy and not too original, Huffpost is an ok read for someone desperate like me, but i can't believe that there is no revolution going on somewhere...maybe we need a new breed of bloggers that can identify the revolutions ..... am talking about it at http://beta.friendfeed.com/tweetfe... - Tweet Feeds

Tweet Feeds: Robert Scoble has ALWAYS been boring. Hope this helps. - Robert Scoble

Isn't your family about to increase to more than 4. Could be trouble there. ;-) - Brian Sullivan

Nice, especially from someone who is known for his many connections. - Meryn Stol

Robert, maybe we are all stuck in web 2.0 land, is the internet still interesting? I understand that most enterprises still behave like the web just happened, but it didn't, its old and infrastructural, like highways, someone somewhere is inspiring and empowering someone, magical experiences can be able about changing people's lives not feeling the buzz from the brandy or the bong ;) - Tweet Feeds

Magical experiences can occur in mundane, everyday circumstances. When my wife and I get together with another couple (whom we are seeing this very evening), we can sometimes talk for hours, listen to music together, etc. Eric Schmidt in an interview last year said that four things are at the core of human happiness, regardless of political ideology, culture, or religion: (1) freedom from war (2) a healthy family life (3) good education for the kids (4) happy times with friends. That's it. I agree. - Victor Panlilio

When Scoble can write articles like this, that remind us that what we do on the web must never be divorced form our "real life" experience, he will never be boring. - Mark Traphagen

Jesse Stay

I'm starting to have serious sympathy with the architecture issues Twitter is having, except for the fact that they have 30 times my resources

April 15 - Comment - Like - Share

(jeff)isageek, randulo, Alex Gibbons and 35 other people liked this

Perhaps FF can rescue twitter from itself. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

93 more comments

I'm actually very jealous of people with financing and people right now. I just can't move or scale fast enough with Twitter's growth. It would be nice if they could help pass some of their funding on to their developers to help their developers as they grow. - Jesse Stay

It is amazing how such a simple app has so much problems... Inserting updates could be done asynchronously (dunno how it is done now). Caching is a problem due to diversity of data/views, but it could be enabled for most followed users. I'm sure SQL/DB could be optimized heavily, too. - Jemm

Jemm, the biggest issue is tracking and storing the relationships between people. For someone like CNNBrk or BritneySpears there's millions of rows to track. Add to that that each of their near 10 million users has those relationships, it's a massive infrastructure to scale! - Jesse Stay

I have little sympathy for them because of the fact that they have brought this upon themselves by heavily promoting the celebrity accounts. This is why is devaluing the content in twitter, and making so they can't scale the architecture fast enough. They're causing their own demise, either realize it (and are chasing a buyer FAST) or don't and are going to be sorry - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Jemm - Twitter definitely uses a heavy caching middleware - there are a variety of interesting presentations from them about it that I've neglected to bookmark, unfortunately. - Damon Cortesi

Rob: perhaps FF can provide twitter a reason for its future existence by allowing twitter to remain as it is (and will become) while the majority of twitter's data will be read by "skimmer" clients and real people on FF - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I totally understand why twollow went up for sale - it's becoming more and more difficult to write on the platform now because of these huge users we have to deal with. Maybe Facebook's 5,000 friend limit is a good thing. - Jesse Stay

Yes, I would figure that with $55 million to burn they could scale a bit faster. Clearly, there are some design and engineering issues with Twitter - the application fails too often during regular usage. On the other hand - their user count has grown rapidly - and remember the load on their servers is proportional to the square of their user count. Theoretically if every user were to follow every other user on Twitter they would need to track 8 * 8 or 64 trillion connections assuming 8 million users! - Arun

Jesse: charge the whales more. Say "anyone with more than 100,000 followers will need to pay $1,000 a month. So what if you lose them? They aren't going to talk about you much anyway and the people who get a good service from you because you do that will become your promoters. - Robert Scoble

@Jesse: Yeah. People with millions of followers will cause lot's of references. Maybe some sort of horizontal partitioning and materialized views (if their rdbms supports them) would help the DB-side to distribute the loads. - Jemm

Jesse: the ones with 100,000 followers don't talk with the lower classes anymore anyway. I am watching this and both Arrington and Mashable are using their accounts as broadcasters. - Robert Scoble

Arun: Twitter is not run by people who have a good handle on technical issues. @ev's "Blogger" had the same issues and it took Google years to make Blogger run right. Twitter is the same way. It's amazing we put up with it, but @ev does understand human psychology better than anyone I've met. He knows just how much he has to do to keep us all locked in. - Robert Scoble

Robert, yeah - I'm definitely starting to re-think my business model. I'm getting things stable for now and then I'm going to turn off those with higher followers (100k+) until we can figure out a solution for them. (most likely) Ideally I want a good service for them as well though so we'll figure something out here. - Jesse Stay

Maybe that is why Twitter needs Google: Google really knows how to scale applications: when was the last time a Google search failed or came back in more than a tenth of a second? - Arun

http://tinyurl.com/cnndjr - rob friedman

Arun: yeah, but Google doesn't need Twitter. Google will resist Twitter because its engineering sucks and because Twitter won't monetize that easily due to a lack of metadata that search can be built around. The money is in search. - Robert Scoble

Them scaling is one issue, but scaling the community to work well for developers who don't have much money to scale is another. Also, keeping it from becoming another MySpace is an entirely different issue. I'm starting to agree with Facebook on their 5k friend limit now. - Jesse Stay

if you have more than 5k ppl go make your own place on the web for you and them. :) seems fair. - rob friedman

Arun: something like that is the only thing that is going to be able to save twitter as the broadcast medium it's becoming - and if anyone can save the value in the search of twitter it's going to be google I would have to imagine - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Jesse: funny that friendfeed never has had any problems and I have 32,000 followers here now and got there far faster than I did on Twitter. Why can friendfeed make this stuff work when other companies can't? (Twitter had problems from day one, by the way). - Robert Scoble

why? because their guys came from the current scale king. - rob friedman

Robert, I think FriendFeed is definitely in a better position architecturally, but then again, they also don't have thousands of people with 32,000 followers. I think that's the problem Twitter is running into, not that they don't have any excuse to have been ready for this. - Jesse Stay

don't forget they've had lots of $$, people and 2 years to firm up product - I am not impressed. Sad. - Susan Beebe

rob: yeah, I shouldn't ask questions I already know the answer to. Plus the friendfeed guys built their architecture right from the ground up. Friendfeed isn't a "weekend accident" that was how Twitter was born. - Robert Scoble

Robert - its a fundamental difference in the way these guys run their business. While @ev is off in spain and twitter is sucking, I see paul & bret here using their product all the time...sharing things they find, and all that - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Robert: That is the impression I got as well. What is really amazing to me is how simple Twitter as an application is - there are very few bells and whistles on Twitter - so it is certainly not the complexity of the application itself. It is a classic scalability problem - they have to distribute the load and throw a lot more hardware at it from what it looks like from the outside. Anyone have any numbers on how many servers etc they have ? - Arun

My guess to Twitter's problems (in large part) is how unresponsive the Twtiter structure is to feedback, whereas FF gets on suggestions and issues stuff in a timely manner - sofarsoShawn

FriendFeed's Schema-less architecture on MySQL. :) http://www.infoq.com/news... - Damon Cortesi

being first to the party has it's advantages, and being late does too. - rob friedman

Rob: exactly. And they take the time to build stuff right and are building a meritocracy. They also have a much deeper understanding of community that comes from participation. Plus they are, well, just nicer, which goes a LONG way in my book. - Robert Scoble

as I pointed out in paul's thread on the new hose to twitter...it's pretty amazing that an alpha feature on a beta product performs better than the mature service that it's providing access to - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

goes a long way in my book too. It goes a way long way to see them actually care about joining in on what they've created...enjoying it - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Guruvan: that's because architecturally friendfeed was a lot better thought out than anything I've seen done on the web before. I literally refresh this site hundreds of times per day and it always responds fast. - Robert Scoble

@Damon interesting read - sofarsoShawn

It sure was nice of Twitter solidify the idea making it an easy to clone service though. :) - rob friedman

Robert: it does it totally rocks. I've had one or two very few occasional where it has not, and those have been announced ahead of time 90 % of the time - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I wish Twitter would share some of their architecture design techniques like FriendFeed is doing. I'd love to see Facebook do the same. - Jesse Stay

Rob: Yeah it sure is nice to see that the value in the "physical" medium that is twitter will be carried on in the open source world and will continue to provide feeds of valuable data to FriendFeed - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Jesse: engineering teams that don't share are usually embarrassed by their code base and choices. - Robert Scoble

Jesse - there's some interesting stuff from @nkallen on their (Twitter's) write-through cache layer here: http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/ - Damon Cortesi

I saw that inside Microsoft. Even when management wanted to share stuff into open source, or shared source, the engineers wouldn't let it go unless a rewrite was basically approved because often their stuff was so badly thought out they didn't want other people to see it and they didn't want to support it (IE, answer questions forever about what their code did). - Robert Scoble

Robert: quite right there...we all try to hide whatever it is that we aren't proud of don't we? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Robert: Open Source helps prevent embarrassments. :) - rob friedman

Robert: You can find quite a few articles on Twitter's architecture here: http://highscalability.com/scaling... - Damon Cortesi

Not to mention Twitter has released both of their message queue systems (starling/ruby and Kestrel/scala) as open source... - Damon Cortesi

Damon: this is the only part of the architecture I've really heard any public detail about. There's a couple white papers on it too. I think this is the only part that theyve completely reworked and actually thought through - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

guruvan, although there's not really anything new about what they're doing. Master-slave architecture and write-through caching has been around for years now - Jesse Stay

Jesse: To be clear, I would pay more for your service if you jacked up the prices. Others may leave, but I think many will stay if you tell them why you need to raise the price. A one time fee for what you offer should have been a monthly thing. - MarkCarras

Of course, nothing FriendFeed is doing is that new either. It's all re-using well-used and proven methodologies. - Jesse Stay

Jesse: we were using those techniques to serve ads 10 years ago (which is partly why I can't understand the issues that twitter has today!) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Mark, thanks - I'm considering that and other options right now. - Jesse Stay

guruvan, I've done the same at various places I've worked, over 10 years now - Jesse Stay

And of course, as a Perl programmer, MemCached was out for Perl before other languages had libraries for it - Jesse Stay

to be honest I'm just the ops guy that describes to the coders why their code doesn't work in a live environment ;) ...but I do understand how these things get put together quite well. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Well that was fun, I'm gonna go hammer Twitter with 30 requests until I can get the social graph for ashton. ;) - Damon Cortesi

LOL Damon - I'm doing the same for Britney right now - Jesse Stay

oh wow. - Caroline

Hah, Jesse - did you ever think our lives would come to this? :-D Oh, celebs. - Damon Cortesi

well...I gues I won't wait for any tweet for a bit ;) lol! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Damon, LOL - it does make you feel special, although I'm not sure what for - Jesse Stay

scratch that...haven't seen any for 5 mintues haha - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Robert: Re: Microsoft and open source: Wow - did not know that - that is a great insight and may explain why paradoxically free open source code is higher quality than code developed behind closed doors with millions of dollars spent on it ! - Arun

Damon, maybe it's the two of us hitting it at the same time that's causing us to have to run it 30 times ;-) - Jesse Stay

Arun: a big part of it is because it's open people who actually know what they're doing can look at it and make suggestions and corrections...and yes...it's almost invariably better code...it invariably runs better and faster and more reliably than proprietary code - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

um...and seriously you two...no tweets are coming through on my desktop...I have it set for 2 minutes and I'm getting updates every 5 - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

The follow contest is taking its toll on Twitter's servers. - Raphael, Raphael

VezQueX: it has been for some time before this particular race, but now that this race is on, AND we've seen a couple accounts be "acquired" it's REALLY going to take a toll...Now all the people with 20k followers are going to be racing to 100K and so on. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

@guruvan its just so dirty to think about it, like some crazy internet orgy, its an ITD, Internet Transmitted Disease. - rob friedman

Rob: we had that on twitter the past weekend with the mikeyy worm ;) ......but seriously, you're dear right. And FriendFeed could NOT have picked a better time to roll out a massive upgrade. The quality on twitter is going to downgrade at an alarming rate after this. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

The majority of people have about 100 followers and follow about 100, right???? if you're suggesting that this comes down to a handful of people who have very large social graphs, twitter should at least ensure that extra hardware resourfces are provisioned for those people. - Roberto Bonini

But twitter still has great value. Follow the right people and it's as good as ever. I've had a love hate relationship with two years and in all honesty I really like twitter's potential, especially on the move, whilst waiting for mobile devices with better battery life. - Richard A.

Roberto, the issue is, yes, Twitter can afford to make those provisions, but can the developers they're trying to support afford to make those provisions with their growth? - Jesse Stay

Roberto: I haven't seen a new follower in a while that was more than week old who wasn't pushing 2000 follows and nearing that in followers. Jesse has the numbers to correct me, but I think the median is more like 1500 - 2000 follows. (the mean may well be lower) ...And there is some great value in twitter, other wise I would not want to import most of my followers here as invisible users.But that value is increasingly hard to find - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

There are too many comments here, need to break it into a sub-conversation. - Richard A.

+1 guruvan - rob friedman

Thanks :) (and this isnt even a lot of comments yet ;) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Well Rob, if you go by the median, with the featured followers list, it's more like 450,000 or so. The average is more like 75 followers. - Jesse Stay

That's across near 3 million of Twitter's users - Jesse Stay

@guruvan et al. agreed that Twitter is inviting these continuing problems w/ the recent "follower inflation", both as to celebs/suggested users, and in allowing automated "follow-wait-unfollow if no refollow" exploits, where john doe users can rack up 10 - 30k followers in a month or so. If you look at Twitterholic ranks 100 - 1000, you'll see what's been going on. The additional load from this must be staggering (from all of the constantly changing follows/unfollows alone), & Twitter could easily shut.. - Alex Schleber

.. this stuff done from seeing the footprint on their servers. Or even just limit the # of daily follows/unfollows a user can do to e.g. 100 each (would not prevent any1 from getting many more people to follow them on their own accord). May sound like sour grapes (and in truth it can be a bit galling to see these 9,600/9,100/58 updates type profiles), & these tools claim that it's all very targeted & mirrors what people will do naturally anyway. But the real problem is the loads ruining Twitter for every1. - Alex Schleber

On a separate note, while we're talking about the benefits of FriendFeed, it could really use comment threading (collapsible?), and cmt timestamps. (See @Richard A's cmt above). - Alex Schleber

Alex, I'm not sure the solution. In some ways I like the freedom to build an audience and grow relationships with that audience. Yet at the same time the spammers are taking advantage of that audience, and it's becoming a pain in the neck, as a developer, to support such massive audiences. I would like to see Twitter have a stricter Terms of Service for their Developers that outright states what developers can and can't do on the platform though - lay it all out so we're not guessing. - Jesse Stay

Jesse you should start to charge people when they hit 10k followers+ starting from a low price ie. $5-10/month and rising to $1k/month when they hit 100k followers+. You may loose a few users who don't want to pay but most of the users of SocialToo (I am one myself so I know how useful it actually is) will realise that its a useful service and are prepared to pay for it and it would ensure that you can scale the service in-line with Twitters growth. - Nicholas James

Alex: It's not tking some of these people a month to get to 10K or even 30K followers. with tools like buzzom.com they're just sitting there all day and amassing follows, and carefully maintaining their 10% ratios. They only wait several hours or a follow back. Ive seen many people have 2K follows and 1K+ followers on their 2nd day. and 10K w/in 1 week. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob, agreed - getting followers is a piece of cake. Either we're idiots for not doing what they're doing or they're the idiots for thinking that means something. I personally side with the latter, although we do pride ourselves on the traffic our blogs have, or subscribers to our blogs. - Jesse Stay

I'm kind of getting sick of twitter with all these marketers with 10,000+ followers in a week with only 100 updates. - Kevin Whalen

Jesse: I have to admit that last weekend I found myself in a quite a state. I blocked most of the new followers I saw as suspected spammers (for the 2-10k no update issue) and found myself wondering, if I AM being stupid. Should I be doing the same thing? And then after I've talked with several of the people who aggressively follow people, I have to think, no I have it right. But it does mean something to. What exactly, I don't know. But I DO know, that more high traffic accounts are going to change hands. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I e-mailed Twitter's abuse department about several of those "gaming" Twitter. I got no response back, so Twitter doesn't seem to care. I'm still trying to put my arms around all this. - Jesse Stay

I think I may turn off the auto-follow option on socialtoo. I feel like I'm on some list for people to get a return follow to game their #'s. - Kevin Whalen

I've turned off auto-follow. - Mike Reynolds

I agree, with $$, people, time, Twitter should have figured scaling by now. DM most always fail, not to mention fail whale. Their response is v poor and virtual 0 response from @ev, @jack, @biz no matter how busy they may be. If you can't communicate with your community, you've poor business model. FriendFeed is turning out to be most reliable so far. But, yet to be seen. - Moushumi Kabir

I'm getting seriously close to not only turning off the autofollow (thanks for having it tho Jesse!!) and going one step further and protecting updates. I generally don't want people following me if I wouldn't follow them back - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

guruvan, wouldn't that then be Facebook? :-) - Jesse Stay from IM

hah! YES, it would. Which is one reason I haven't done it. Other reason being the reason I did the autofollow in the 1st place -Job hunting I want to be able to be DMed by anyone - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Wayne Sutton

Question: Who are your favorite people on FriendFeed? I'm looking for a few suggested users to add to my stream. Thanks

April 11 - Comment - Like - Share

Tyson Key, Anthony Citrano, Fake Elmo and 81 other people liked this

Here are a few from my Favourites list: Abby - http://beta.friendfeed.com/whynaut Hutch - http://beta.friendfeed.com/bhc3 Mona - http://beta.friendfeed.com/monasfe... Shevonne - http://beta.friendfeed.com/dcfemel... Rob Diana - http://beta.friendfeed.com/robdian... Thomas Hawk - http://beta.friendfeed.com/thomash... Mike Fruchter - http://beta.friendfeed.com/fruchte... Harvey -... more... - Shey, Jamaican of FF

61 more comments

Edythe http://friendfeed.com/furry, Shevonne http://friendfeed.com/dcfemel..., Emma http://friendfeed.com/artymiss, Bibi http://friendfeed.com/bibi, Jandy http://friendfeed.com/faithx5, Akiva http://friendfeed.com/akiva, Rochelle http://friendfeed.com/rochell..., Lindsey is Fierce http://friendfeed.com/eclipse..., Melle http://friendfeed.com/mellemu..., James Ferguson... more... - RAPatton

Well, there's me... :) What are you looking for? - Bec Rowe @d0tski

thanks - Wayne Sutton

Thanks, Wayne. You gave me a few I didn't have already. I would second all of those as I'm subscribed to most (now all)... (edit - wait that was Shey) ;-) Well thanks for starting the thread anyway. - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

FF Enigma (Tina), Mark D. VandenBerg, Anthony Citrano, Steven Perez, Mark Wilson, Chris White, Tad and Lindsay. - Alex Scoble

Questions like this are too hard for me, which is why I'm glad I'm subscribed to people who have no problem throwing a few names out there. LOL. It's usually the usual suspects :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Oh yeah, I forgot Rahsheen. - Alex Scoble

Yolanda and Pea too. - Alex Scoble

Rahsheen, why not just report the friends listed in your stats (those 10 "people you find interesting")? http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Jérôme Flipo

I'd tell you my stats, but I can't get to them. - Alex Scoble

Justin Korn, Eric @ CS Techcast too. - Alex Scoble

Glen Campbell and RAPatton too (even if RAP isn't subscribed to me :() - Alex Scoble

Mike Nayyar. - Alex Scoble

Snap...forgot Derrick too. - Alex Scoble

Anna Haro, nicerobot, Joe Pierce, Josh Haley...there are others. Many others. - Alex Scoble

Yup, Anna's in the Fav list too - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Robert Scoble, (Damn You) Steven Perez, Louis Gray, Kol Tregaskes... - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Some of my faves: MWM: http://beta.friendfeed.com/joffi Trish R: http://beta.friendfeed.com/trishro... -Cee Bee: http://beta.friendfeed.com/ceeff - Helen Sventitsky: http://beta.friendfeed.com/bigstar... - Nathan Chase: http://beta.friendfeed.com/nathanc... - Victor Ganata - http://beta.friendfeed.com/aswang - Michelle Martinez

You can check out my stats over on Flickr for my top people: http://www.flickr.com/photos... -- However, there are a ton more -- Johnny Worthington, Alex Scoble, Anika Malone, Jeremy Brooks, just to name a few - Justin Korn

I might also mention: http://beta.friendfeed.com/ajbatac, http://beta.friendfeed.com/live4so..., http://beta.friendfeed.com/isthiss... (mentioned but not linked), http://beta.friendfeed.com/tsudohn..., http://beta.friendfeed.com/dffrnt (Vijay), and http://beta.friendfeed.com/mortonf... - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

my favorite, Kol Tregaskes http://beta.friendfeed.com/koltreg..., Ionut http://beta.friendfeed.com/onu, Mahdi Ebrahimi http://beta.friendfeed.com/mahdieb..., Cee Bee http://friendfeed.com/ceeff, Mona http://beta.friendfeed.com/monasfe..., Louis Gray http://beta.friendfeed.com/louisgr..., Steve Rubel http://beta.friendfeed.com/steveru... Roger Chen http://beta.friendfeed.com/imrchen, Zee. http://beta.friendfeed.com/zee - Lu Tao

and rooms, http://beta.friendfeed.com/ad-gall..., http://beta.friendfeed.com/persian..., http://beta.friendfeed.com/welovea..., http://beta.friendfeed.com/rooms..., http://beta.friendfeed.com/rooms..., http://beta.friendfeed.com/rooms... - Lu Tao

I love everyone mentioned so far but can't pick a favorite. - Robert Scoble

http://beta.friendfeed.com/bgolub - Eric Florenzano

Who do I have to *(&&% to make a list....LOL - jamar78

Wayne - It's a good list. Kol picked up on a suggestion I made last week and starting today ... You (and anyone) can post these here ... We'll see if it works http://beta.friendfeed.com/ff-subs... - Charlie Anzman

LOL @ Joel. Do what I do, and keep on moving, I tend to ignore these lists, as it's always the same 10 - 12 people suggested. I just glance a few spot up...Actually, it's funnier to me considering who Wayne Sutton is, some of these suggestions are cute in their naivete. - Admiral Anika

@Alex Haha, very funny, I wub you too. I got in trouble for a thread like this a little while ago, so just go back to that to know what I think =] - Mike Nayyar

jamar78, Clearly I'm not helping ;) - Michelle Martinez

Woops - Corrected Link for Subscribe Sunday http://beta.friendfeed.com/ff-subs... Some great suggestions above ... really. - Charlie Anzman

Love the subscribe sunday room idea. I'll post mine tomorrow (after I got to sleep and wake up). - Ted Roden

wow i these are all great.... wish i could read those links better - my eyes are crossed now, thanks! :P - Susan Beebe

Wayne, I'll tell you but only if you go here: http://beta.friendfeed.com/ff-subs... ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

BTW, thanks for the mention here guys, gosh! :-) - Kol Tregaskes

#SubscribeSunday - Josh Haley

There's my favorite right there! Josh HALEY! - vijay

'sup, Vijay! Make sure you all sub to Vijay too, if you know what's good for you. - Josh Haley

http://friendfeed.com/public <- they are all great - Jemm

so true jemm :D - Tatty Gibson

A few: rapatton, derrick, anna haro, michael w. May, anika Malone, cecily, Jason toney, bibi, abby martin, lindsey is fierce, alix whitmire, parth awasthi, yolanda, karim, mark trapp, michelle jones, nia, akiva moskowitz, rochelle, shey, rahsheen, cee bee, tad and lindsay, mark Wilson, live4soccer, nice robot, Ginger makela, James ferguson... - edythe

I suggest myself http://beta.friendfeed.com/alpb - Alp

Mellemusic, pea, jandy, vijay, michael j. Cohen, ja castillo, Morton fox, Mahdi ebrahimi, heather sventitsky, victor ganata, mona, kevin d. White, mark Forman, chris baskind, hoplit,rodfather, har3vey, alex scoble, kamilah gill, kol tregaskes, felicia, shevonne, voyager, FFing enigma tina... And more who I am forgetting. - edythe

Earl E Morningwood is good value. http://beta.friendfeed.com/eemorni... - Bec Rowe @d0tski

It's hard to pick favorites. I really enjoy everyone (all 140 of them) I subscribe to for lots of reasons. You definitely should check out the folks mentioned already though. And I would say that even if Alex and edythe hadn't been sweet enough to mention me. :) (Thanks guys! <3 ) - ♥patricia♥

What Pea said. And thank you Michelle Martinez and edythe. - Helen Sventitsky

It's always interesting to see who makes these types of lists - Steven Hodson

There's definitely what seems to be a group of about 500 or so folks who are here almost every day, and for the most part we all know of each other and enjoy each other's company. The "most active" list on FFholic includes almost all of these people. These folks are what keep me coming back to FriendFeed. Community is everything! - Nathan Chase

Well said, Nathan. - Alex Scoble

I like that Outsanity guy. He has funny yet weird stuff to say - Outsanity

My list of People I find interesting: Steven Perez, Pea, Live4Soccer, Kol Tregaskes, Cee Bee, Derrick, FFing Enigma (aka Tina), Tad, Between Jobs, Leather Donut, Mark Wilson. - CW™

Other great people: Morton Fox, Rodfather, The Ghost of Penguin Past, Lindsey is Fierce!, Alex Scoble, ~C4Chaos, and Mark D. VandenBerg. - CW™

Thanks, just found a boatload of people to subscribe to through this! - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

WOW: this is a great list! And right on point Nathan! - sofarsoShawn

Seems we all have similar "favorites" lists. - Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)

Wow, thanks everyone - Wayne Sutton

Ok, I've been working on a project, did this question get blogged about or something in the last 12 hrs? Or is this just the power of FriendFeed? - Wayne Sutton

I don't know if it got blogged but this is definitely FF at its best. We're a wordy bunch. - ♥patricia♥

awesome list to sub to, after that bit of ennui which passed quickly thankfully I sort of lost track of who's who, - sofarsoShawn

Oh, lord. I put heather sventitsky instead of Helen! It was the iPhone autocorrect, Helen!! (no, really it was.) :| - edythe

Wow, thank you Mohomed :-) - Majento

whoah. Thanks, Wayne! I was trying to figure out the influx of subscribers. - ha3rvey (wants confit)

no problem, the power of friendfeed. I haven't' had a chance to look at the the suggestions yet but thanks everyone. - Wayne Sutton

Joey Gibson

Should I be worried that 9 times out of 10 when I comment on a FF thread, there are no further comments? Am I that offensive? Or am I just that late to the party? :-)

February 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Iván Abrego, Kevin Whalen, Anton and 75 other people liked this

It happens a lot to me, too. - Nine

495 more comments

Thread killer!! *points and throws LOLcats* - Yolanda

We are a rare breed. We say things that just can't be followed for some reason. Thread killers unite! - Josh Haley

Are you the Ted McGinley of friendfeed perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Alex Scoble

Joey, I thought it was my breath or something. Glad to find I am not alone. Tic Tac anyone? - Janet

Oh, Alex. That's just downright mean! - Nine

No! I'm the thread killer! - Christopher Harley

There are no further comments bacause your comment was so perfect no one could bear to top it. - m9m, Crone of FriendFeed

We are the thread killers. Kill 1k more, and we'll let you in the room =D - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Do you ever use the word dookie in your posts? - Oldengrey (Jay)

I notice the same phenomenon when I join a queue, 20 km long and no one seems to come behind me, obviously I was born to be last and I suspect this is the end of this thread. - M F

Should I have ended it with "Just sayin'!"? - Alex Scoble

exactly the same here :( - ♥ Stephiepooos ♥

The Thread Reaper(TM)? ;) - Tyson Key

Joey, please comment so we can close this one out. ;-) - Sprague D

No biggie, go with m9m's theory and don't judge on comments or likes, you did your part throwing it out there. Everyone else can do with it as they wish. Additionally if a girl dumps you assume she is a lesbian. - Steve C

Test would be is to comment on this post and see what happens.. - CW™

lol i am often a thread killer as well - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Steve C is correct. - Christopher Harley

Sorry you guys, I'm the OG Threadkiller. In fact that name, is on my profile in several places. Because it's true. :) - Admiral Anika

If I do it, it's usually on a day when I forget my deodorant. - Katie is Frittering

Married With Children, AKA the guy who gets shows canceled. - Alex Scoble

No, Brian, you have failed at killing this thread. - Alex Scoble

Hey, I didn't say that he's actually killed every show that he's been on, but that's what they call him. - Alex Scoble

Just pay people to respond to your comments. If you respond to my comments I will give you a DOLLAR! LOL - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

$1 please, Igor. - Alex Scoble

Alex, send the bill to my accountant at the end of the month! ;-) I hope I do not declare Social Media bankruptcy by that time. LOL - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Another $1 please Igor. - Alex Scoble

Seven killed MWC (and I don't meant that abomination, 7/9). - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

Seven killed what? - Alex Scoble

But who ate one too? - Alex Scoble

I specialize in killing threads. :) - Morton Fox

Isn't it ironic that none of you have killed this thread and yet you are all supposed to be skilled at it? - Alex Scoble

Now I'm curious to see who's going to kill this thread - Manuela

Or maybe the kid on Married was named Six... - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

I don't think this thread is killable. - Alex Scoble

I mean the only non-frungible rule on friendfeed is that the residents here do the opposite of what the poster expects. - Alex Scoble

Whaaaa? - Holger Eilhard

You're not the only one, Josh. And I wouldn't be shocked if I kill this one. *watching and waiting* - Carmen - Happy 2010!

You got to do better than that! - Alex Scoble

Dammit Brian and Alex! This one is MINE! - Carmen - Happy 2010!

Not even close! - Alex Scoble

Damn, I think I killed the thread! - Alex Scoble

... - WorldofHiglet

Hah, you keep dreaming. - Alex Scoble

Just passing through again. Nothing to see, people. Move along. - Carmen - Happy 2010!

Peanut butter jelly time? http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Alex Scoble

Late? - Shevonne

No, it's peanut butter kitteh time! http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Carmen - Happy 2010!

Never. - Alex Scoble

Not too. - Todd Hoff

You're never gonna get it...not this time. - Alex Scoble

Thanks for all the comments, folks. Let's now see if my record of thread carnage stands. :-) - Joey Gibson

Same thing happens to me. Watch this one die. :) - jcunwired

This is going to be the longest thread of Friendfeed's history - Manuela

oops - M F

I'm good at thread-killing. Let me give it a try. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Damn it, Brian! :) - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

You are all amateurs at killing threads as evidenced by this thread. - Alex Scoble

Who will be the last one with the hot potato? - Shawn Farner

I'm a comment killer too. We should form a club. - ♥patricia♥

Nice try Chris, but you can't kill this thread either. - Alex Scoble

@pea ♥ fierce as a woozle Done: http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Rui Pereira

Yeah, I gotta say something...something. - Alex Scoble

Yes, I have to say something else... - Alex Scoble

Something else. - Alex Scoble

So if a room was started upon my suggestion and the room never takes off, does that mean that I then become the official room killer? Cuz that might make things kind of not fun for me. :D - ♥patricia♥

after all that, you think it - Glen, Bespectacled Elder

Thumbganglings! - Alex Scoble

Anything? - Tyson Key

Happens to me ALL the time. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Not yet. - Alex Scoble

First! - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Don't even start with me, Mark...I'm feeling stabbity after dealing with Leather Donut. - Alex Scoble

Gee, now I have to create a room for FF room killers ... sheshh ... :) - Rui Pereira

Stabbity! - Alex Scoble

I just created a Thread Killa' t-shirt for all of us on Zazzle but I don't feel like creating a marketplace or whatever the hell it is to show it to everyone - just close your eyes and picture a shirt that says Thread Killa' in an edgy font - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

http://friendfeed.com/e... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

@Alex, I've liked "stabbity" since the other day when Tad used/coined it. :-) - Joey Gibson

Not in this lifetime, Brian. :) I wonder what thread in friendfeed has had the most comments...I'm sensing that this one will beat it - Alex Scoble

yea so how does this work when the thread is stacked with people who all claim to kill threads with their comments? this has the potential to become the longest running thread in history - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

I've trained for this my whole life. - Todd Hoff

No, my brother is never rude to me. - Alex Scoble

I seem to be the death of discussion, too, so hopefully this won't end at #113 - Joe

I have no idea, Brian...but I'm thinking we are going to find out - Alex Scoble

I do it all the time, Chris! - Alex Scoble

who is your brother alex? - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Just some guy with a blog...and a HUGE melon. - Alex Scoble

I shut down threads all the time. I'm the thread stopper. - Give 'Em DBizness

So I'm guessing you blocked him then? - Alex Scoble

I think the point of this thread is to keep it going so that no one gets to be the ultimate thread blocker. - Alex Scoble

I am the ultimate thread killer. Posting now to stop the madness. - Alan Simpson

True, but Ben, however, doesn't blog...although his bar does have a myspace page http://www.myspace.com/bennyst... Which by the way owns Google if you search for Benny's Tavern. - Alex Scoble

I am Thor, Killer of Threads, Despeaker of the Saxons, Soverign of ALL England! - Joey Gibson

alex this guy is your brother? http://melongrowinghelp.blogspot.com/ - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

No, you are just Joey. - Alex Scoble

You confused the metaphorical large melon of Robert's brain pan, with an actual melon that can be grown in the garden. - Alex Scoble

+1 Alex - Tyson Key

Great googly moogly! - Alex Scoble

OHHHHH my bad - glad you pointed that out because the photo or website accompanying my next guess would have been much weirder - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

I know some FriendFeeders who comments and the thread stops. But I don't think it's you or them. - AJ Batac

It isn't AJ either. - Alex Scoble

Kudos to you Joey, for coming up with the most awesome method ever to generate comments. - Alex Scoble

or you alex - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Nope. It's not Alex either. Hmmm... - AJ Batac

You mean yet. - Alex Scoble

this is why FF rules over Twitter in my book - you could never do this to the same effect with Retweets - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Indeed, Marco, Indeed! - Alex Scoble

You guys will have to try killing this thread without me for a while. Time for me to head out for dinner - Alex Scoble

Glad I'm not the only one who feels that way sometimes. :-) -

Without proof, who would know? - Alex Scoble

It would just make me start my own similar thread. - Alex Scoble

is this conversation over? - Noah David Simon

It should stop right here - AJ Batac

@Alex, thanks. I never expected this many comments. @Marco, maybe this thread can serve as an example of FF's superiority over Twitter for generations to come. ;-) - Joey Gibson

This is the thread that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends . . . - B. Hatin

@Chris, delete the thread? Are you kidding? This thread is my ticket to becoming an FF GOD!!! I fully expect an invitation to next week's FFUndercats because of it (and my)) awesomeness. ;-) - Joey Gibson

Really? - AJ Batac

@Chris, No way, baby. Because of this thread, I'm Da Man, Dawg. - Joey Gibson

I've never been a very good negotiator. OK, let's try this again. How much you wanna pay me? - Joey Gibson

u know it just occurred to me that we are looking at this all wrong - the glass half full approach would lead us to believe that many of our comments are crafted so beautifully that no one else could add anything else no matter how badly they wanted - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

*burp* - Bec Rowe @d0tski

(_|_) - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Are those boobs, Bec? - Joey Gibson

Bored now. Hide. - m9m, Crone of FriendFeed

Joey: Nah, it's a bum :D - Bec Rowe @d0tski

No. No it isn't. - WorldofHiglet

My goodness... This should be the end of it. ;) - AJ Batac

Not quite, AJ. :-) - Kevykev

almost - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Oh look, I already killed one thread tonight. Let's make this #2. I prefer even numbers, anyway. - Carmen - Happy 2010!

I thought it was this: (_(_) (_|_) (_)_) - Carmen - Happy 2010!

Wha?? Damn, I just stumbled in here to grab a beer. How did all you people get in my room? - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

Thread killer, checking in. Will this be the last comment? - Mike Doeff

Nope - Carmen - Happy 2010!

Mike, that's just begging for a No. - ♥patricia♥

No, I hardly ever get a comment either - Ginger Kenney

This thread is obviously not dead yet *hits it over the head with a cudgel* - Alex Scoble

Good. Went to Applebee's and had the quesadilla burger...was good. - Alex Scoble

Just ain't dying huh? - Katie is Frittering

I've fallen! And I can't get back up! - imabonehead

Downtown is too much of a pain in the ass, Chris...plus a lot more expensive. - Alex Scoble

you are not offensive enough. trust me - Noah David Simon

First I was afraid. I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side. But I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong. I grew strong. I learned how to carry on... - Anthony K. Valley ©

I am the ultimate thread killer - George Smith

I'm pretty sure this isn't the random lyrics room, Anthony, hehe. - Alex Scoble

Nope. It just means you are succinct. - Steven Perez

I just wanted a burger, Chris. :) - Alex Scoble

Isn't there some Mom n' Pop near there? I always find those have some combo of better food/lower price, often both. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Alex: Sorry... this thread reminded me of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive". It's a resilient little booger. - Anthony K. Valley ©

Obviously Chris, dollar cost averaging has worked better for you than for me. :) No, Mark, I haven't seen any Mom n' Pops out here. - Alex Scoble

Low blow, Brian, bringing up a burger that I cannot have in this area. - Alex Scoble

lol - Geoff Schultz

LOL. So we are so not going to let this die, right? - DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE from fftogo

My dad's getting a DVR, sweet! - Alex Scoble

I'm watching Flashpoint right now. Amy Jo Johnson is still cute after all these years since her Power Ranger days. - imabonehead

DirecTV DVR...she was on Power Rangers? Yeah, she's pretty cute and that's a good show. - Alex Scoble

Cuz this is thread killer, thread killer night....wooo yeah! - Alex Scoble

Woo yeah! Shamon! - Alex Scoble

Yeah, she was a former pink Power Ranger. http://www.imdb.com/name... - imabonehead

Give me the $100! - Alex Scoble

Hehe, no, I just wanted the $100. - Alex Scoble

Hi! I almost read all the comments but can't remember what was the issue or the purpose of the thread LOL :) - George The Writer

*gets out the eucalyptus leaves* - Alex Scoble

What do koalas eat? Eucalyptus leaves. - Alex Scoble

Not even, Steven? Damn you Steven Perez! - Alex Scoble

*twiddles thumbs and toes* - imabonehead

Well, I gotta go to bed now, but just know that I will not let this thread die tomorrow when I wake up. - Alex Scoble

wow still going? - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Then it doesn't count. English FTW! - Alex Scoble

Flashpoint is now over. Now watching Numb3rs. - imabonehead

Temp is dropping! 6c in thirty minutes! woot! - Bec Rowe @d0tski

*clears throat* - Bec Rowe @d0tski

EVERYTIME I have commented EVER the thread has stopped dead. This could be the first when it hasnt! (It would not be funny if you now all agreed to stop posting) - laprensa66

Actually, I have just checked that. Not quite accurate, but it was certainly like that at the beginning. - laprensa66

</thread> - Alan Cheslow

<thread> - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Depends on who you're following. timezones and such... maybe - Richard A.

Dead - Nicola Quinn

This thread can't die. - B. Hatin

I thought I was the thread killer. The temperature has cooled down to a nice cool 24 degrees C. here in up town Adelaide. - Chris Loft

Can I join in? ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Sure, Kol :-) - Carmen - Happy 2010!

Wouldn't it be nice if FF timestamped each comment in a thread? Then I could see how long ago Carmen welcomed Kol to the party. - Joey Gibson

Joey, hover your cursor over each quote bubble. Tells you how long ago each comment was. - Carmen - Happy 2010!

Thanks Mohomed and Carmen. I did not know that. Now, it would also be nice if FF put the Comment and Like links at both the top AND bottom of long threads... - Joey Gibson

This is still going? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

It will probably be the thread that never ends. Or has that been said 10 times already? - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

Probably said more than 10 times. - Katie is Frittering

At least. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Pfffttt...as if. - Alex Scoble

will anyone ever get the last post? - MicahBear78

no - Dan Glass

There's always the possibility that you are so profound that nobody can top you, and they don't even try. - Louis Gray

wow still going - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

LOL, it totally happens to me, too! I can shut a conversation down with a comment. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

How do you mean, Micah? Will the last post be the punchline? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

the irony of the original post. - MicahBear78

We certainly can't let Mark get the last post. He already drives a 7 series BMW. - Alex Scoble

I shot a thread in Reno, just to watch it die. - Josh Haley

alex are you implying the final poster gets a car? Genius my boy, Genius - this thread will go on for years now - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

No, I'm implying that Mark doesn't need to own this bright shiny thread. - Alex Scoble

Wait, wait, wait... Hold on... Back up the bus.... Alex doesn't own the thread; why is he making the rules? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

fight!fight!fight! Tell him how to use FriendFeed! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

http://friendfeed.com/e... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

this thread has a hell of a lot of comments. - Thomas Hawk

Nothing gets by you, Thomas ;) - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

one more LOL - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Who says I don't own this thread? - Alex Scoble

Oh, my, god. 269 more comments??? How on earth did this happen?? I guess you guys are trying to break the record... Do the search by # of comments and you'll see if you've won. - Kamilah Gill

Alex 1 $ please! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

mark said alex - and he makes the rules, have you seen his scowl? - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Gosh this thread is still running - Manuela

happens to me most of the time too.. you do wonder if the internet is on at times ;) - alphaxion

o hai, morning folks! :) - imabonehead

OHAI! - Alex Scoble

Can this thread make 300 comments? Yes or No? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Yes - George Smith

I don't think so. - Glen, Bespectacled Elder

I mean with the 3 showing + 284 + this one = that's not too many needed. I'd say it will pick up straggling comments. - George Smith

The more you interact htte better - Roberto Bonini

Agreed, Roberto, indeed. - Alex Scoble

so, this thing is still going strong, eh? ;) - Holger Eilhard

No, it is indeed dead. We are just awaiting the results of the autopsy to see who killed it. - Alex Scoble

ping - Todd Hoff

Pong! - Alex Scoble

What does it say about the person that comments last? Are they the true comment thread killer? (Now I'm nervous it might be me....that would be an interesting plot twist. You never expect that you're the killer) - George Smith

In this thread? It probably says they are suffering from severe OCD. - Alex Scoble

Am not. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Wow...did I finally kill it? - Alex Scoble

No - it was the dramatic pause like in horror movies. Everyone thinks it's dead and relax for a moment, only to have the killer come back to life.... - George Smith

and comment 300 FTW - George Smith

um no.... - kartik vaithyanathan

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND! - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Hehe no one wants to not comment on this thread. - Roberto Bonini

Everybody (including me) wants to have the last word. - Brian Sullivan

Word. - Alex Scoble

BTW http://friendfeed.com/e... seems to be the post with the most comments. - Brian Sullivan

We're not going to take it, NO! We ain't going to take it. We're not going to take it...anymooooooore! - Alex Scoble

But this one is in the top 10. - Brian Sullivan

It's like hacky-sack. Don't let it drop. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Knee kick to Mark! - Alex Scoble

You kneed Mark in the hacky-sack? Ouchy.... - WorldofHiglet

On my tombstone: Made the final post on the longest thread in the history of the world. Most satisfying. - Todd Hoff

Oooooooo FIGHT - Roberto Bonini

Toe-tap, toe-tap, left-knee, left-knee, right-knee, toe-tap high, head-butt to Roberto. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

up up down down left right left right B A - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Fireball! Fireball! Dragon Punch! Fireball! Fireball! - Alex Scoble

"309 more comments".. do I read them all to make sure I don't repeat something, or damn the cannons and comment anyway? The latter! - Phil G

+1! - Alex Scoble

I killed it! - Alex Scoble

Thought you all should know I have returned from lunch. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Good grief. I can't believe this is still going... - Joey Gibson

A (figured it was time to resurrect a FriendFeed classic http://friendfeed.com/e...) - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

If you are in North Dakota during the winter, don't wear a kilt. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Cobblersauce! - Alex Scoble

I've killed it again! - Alex Scoble

or so you wish - kartik vaithyanathan

Nope you didn't - AJ Batac

Haha. This is one of those epic threads Robert does, but without Robert. This has gotta be a first, then. - Roberto Bonini

I'm sure he hid this thread a long time ago...it probably fits his definition of noise 100% - Alex Scoble

ok - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Strangely enough most of the high comment threads do not involve Robert -- in fact most of them are not even in English. - Brian Sullivan

go - Alex Scoble

Everything I say is a lie. I'm lying. - Alan Cheslow

We believe you, Alan. - Alex Scoble

Once again, I've killed this thread! - Alex Scoble

Hehe. No. This is turning into a general thread for everything. - Roberto Bonini

So who read the Famous Five as kids???!! - Roberto Bonini

Who here has read The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy? - Alex Scoble

I'm killing this thread with my inanity, yay! - Alex Scoble

I ♥ bananas - AJ Batac

You are bananas for posting to this thread still! What does that say about me, though? - Alex Scoble

Who reads Tom Clancy??? - Roberto Bonini

Alex, stop Spamming Friend Feed! UR Fixated with this thread! LMAO - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

I used to read Tom Clancy until he stopped spell/grammar checking his works. Now he's just weaksauce. And Igor...NO! - Alex Scoble

What's the FF record for longest comment thread ever??? - Roberto Bonini

Anyone interested in placing bets on a number of comments this thread gets? There is always a way to hijack the thread and kill it! LMAO - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

555 last I looked -- a long way to go - Brian Sullivan

9 times out of 10 I post something and nothing happens...lol - jamar78

Joey, we just want to make sure you do not feel lonely anymore. Next time someone does not comment after you, just remember this thread! LOL - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Give up already? - Todd Hoff

the ultimate thread killer! - dave

And the beast lives on.... - Katie is Frittering

Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and then the baby looked at me. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Took me 5mins to scroll down to the bottom of this thread, let's get it to 500 comments. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

What? - Rochelle

556 if you want the record - Brian Sullivan

Is there a limit to the number of comments on one FF entry? - Morton Fox

LOL um...the same thing happens to me all the time. Kinda makes it less likely that I'll comment on something for fear of killing the conversation... - Phoenix

I can't believe this is still going on! - Michelle Martinez

Maybe you just said all that needs to be said. Summed it up in one post. - Paula W

363+ posts and I still don't know the answer to the original post! :) Ps: hate to be the party spoiler, but, how much CO2 has these comments produced? - Rui Pereira from fftogo

More like how much methane has been produced as a result of this thread. - Alex Scoble

And I've officially killed this thread, once again. Yay me! - Alex Scoble

I just finished watching two episodes of House MD back-to-back. - imabonehead

same here ima - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

So it's looking like I'm the anti-thread killer then? - Alex Scoble

Yes, it's definitely you, Alex. - WorldofHiglet

Nope, it's gotta be me. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

bump - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

I have buttermilk chocolate and beer. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

You're not dieing on me yet, Thread. Breath damn you, breath! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Resurrection! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

It's obvious which of us friendfeeders are either a) competitive, b) OCD or c) just plain crazy. - Alex Scoble

I've killed it once more! Let's hope I remembered to use the right implement this time. Can't remember if it requires A) a wooden stake through the heart B) a silver bullet C) sunlight D) cutting off the head E) dropping in to a pool of molten metal or F) all of the above. - Alex Scoble

Drop it in to a vat of boiling acid? - Alex Scoble

Hardly stalling. Just waiting to pounce... - Todd Hoff

This is like an eBay auction with an hour left to go. - Alex Scoble

More like: exit(-1) - Todd Hoff

More like: exit(-n) - Alex Scoble

Love this really long thread... the longest one yet on Friendfeed? - Susan Beebe

OH HAI! - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Good morning, FF! Watching Globe Trekker now. - imabonehead

ERROR, INVALID COMMAND - Alex Scoble

error: out of memory. rebooting... - imabonehead

REBOOT HALTED, INVALID COMMAND IN QUEUE - Alex Scoble

ERROR, INVALID COMMAND - Alex Scoble

Professor Green, with the pipe, in the study! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Sundays are for watching cool shows on PBS-HD - imabonehead

I love doing my taxes! - Alex Scoble

And you still haven't killed the thread, Brian. - Alex Scoble

We are now up to 402 comments (including this one)! - Alex Scoble

I'm gonna have to dollar cost average it and call it at 410. - Alex Scoble

Don't stop, I said to 500 comments. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Logout and check the thread, I suppose? I have no clue...oh what about ffholic.com? - Alex Scoble

Up to 422 according to ffholic. And it's uber lame that it's not on most commented entries for last 24 hours. - Alex Scoble

Back atcha, Chris. :) - Alex Scoble

All I wanna do is zoom a zoom zoom zoom around the room room... YO SHAKE YA RUMP! - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Comment Orgy! LOL - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

I was going to kill this thread, but then I got high. - Alex Scoble

And by high, I, of course mean, got drunk...not going to jeopardize my job and my CISSP standing for a little doobage. - Alex Scoble

And now I need a new xbox. - Alex Scoble

Cool...Microsoft is sending me a box. I think I'm going to get an arcade model from either Target or Best Buy tomorrow though. - Alex Scoble

@Chris Give me yours and I'll stop posting on this thread. :) I could always use two. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

I still feel a pulse...better hit it over the head with the cudgel again *whack* *whack* - Alex Scoble

I think it's feeling better. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

*whack* *whack* *whack* - Alex Scoble

It's not quite dead! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Clear as glass, Chris. - Alex Scoble

This isn't even the most commented thread in the last 30 days yet according to ffholic...My brother's post on how to get followers in Twitter and friendfeed is #1...we still have 20 comments to go. And yes, I'm only counting English posts, since I don't speak another language...interesting that we only have visibility in to last 30 days. We have no idea what the most commented entry EVER is. - Alex Scoble

I don't think you'd like him, Chris. He doesn't believe in dollar cost averaging. - Alex Scoble

ping - Todd Hoff

No, Todd...use Nike clubs. - Alex Scoble

i hate haters - AJ Batac

I hate haters who hate haters. - Alex Scoble

I thought what we needed was glove. - Alex Scoble

The glove didn't fit anyway. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

So we must a quit! - Alex Scoble

But only if it's Odwalla. - Alex Scoble

I'm o'Cato to have some OJ, too, thanks. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

That's no good, Chris. - Alex Scoble

Yeah, I used to get that stuff from Costco and it was pretty good. That's lame that they changed it. Wonder why. - Alex Scoble

I have a complete lack of fruit trees in my yard. Just trees that dump leaves everywhere. - Alex Scoble

I don't rake the leaves. I prefer to leave them so that they create a nice mulch. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

LOL, Jason. If you did that in my yard you would come back in 10 years to leaves piled 30 feet high on top of 20 feet of fresh dirt. - Alex Scoble

Yeah, I feel you Chris, but you still aren't going to be last on this thread. - Alex Scoble

I can't even remember the last time I had a shamrock shake. - Alex Scoble

Woo this is now the most commented English thread of the last 30 days. - Alex Scoble

Damn, Chris...that would be whack! - Alex Scoble

Hehe - Alex Scoble

Only one there can be - Yoda the Highlander - Todd Hoff

What if there are two that post simultaneously? - Alex Scoble

I try to get out, but they keep bringing me back in. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Yeah, Chris, but not for you. - Alex Scoble

for whom does the bell toll? - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Such nice threads. - Alex Scoble

Speech! Speech! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Sorry, but no joy on Chris winning this thread. I clearly had a comment after Chris's. - Alex Scoble

Encore! Encore! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Still not dead. - Alex Scoble

Somebody will have to keep it going. I'm about ready to eat dinner and watch the rest of season 3 of the office (and maybe start season 4) so don't let me down! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

OK, we won't. - Alex Scoble

Come on people, at this rate this thing will never be #1. - Alex Scoble

Wheeze. - Alex Scoble

Wooo...we finally passed 500 comments. - Alex Scoble

Are you part of the thread, or is the thread part of you? - Alex Scoble

I officially declare this thread dead. Dead, I tell you! - Alex Scoble

Damn you, Chris! - Alex Scoble

ping - Todd Hoff

My gin and bitter lemon consumption is quite high of late. - Alex Scoble

I'm on pace to drink a bottle of gin every 2 weeks. Ironic that my wine fridge is full of wine. - Alex Scoble

sweet alex won! oh wait... - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Ho ho ho, now I have a machine gun! - Alex Scoble

Did I ever get in on this? - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Don't you have something better to do besides torment me? - Alex Scoble

wayyyyy too many other things - that's what makes tormenting you enjoyable ; ) - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Stabbity! - Alex Scoble

what no machine gun? shouldnt it be stabity-abity-abiity-abbity-abbity? - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

DAMN YOU TIM GEITHNER! - Alex Scoble

I win! - Alex Scoble

didnt ,, I win - johnpiercy

Nope, I did the post where I said I won...so I win. - Alex Scoble

Don't you have some property tax to pay, Chris? - Alex Scoble

I think you missed some. - Alex Scoble

What's the solution? - Alex Scoble

Well he obviously couldn't kill this one. - Alex Scoble

Yeah, it still wouldn't count, because although I wouldn't see the comments they'd still be there. Chris is definitely an evil, evil man. :) - Alex Scoble

This is all getting very exciting. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Yeah, this thread fizzled compared to the other one. I guess it was the competitive nature of the other one vs this one which has already proved the initial premise wrong. - Alex Scoble

611 vs 555. - Alex Scoble

No, you can't kill this thread either. Brian is just too sneaky. - Alex Scoble

It is now 11:22 AM PST. If no one comments on this thread by 11:30 AM PST (you have 8 minutes) I declare myself the winner of this thread. - Alex Scoble

It is now 11:31 AM PST. You did not post anything. I did. So I win. Thanks for playing. This contest is now over! - Alex Scoble

Suck it Alex - Josh Haley

Thanks for playing! Game is over. - Alex Scoble

Only way to end it is for the thread to be deleted - Josh Haley

Do what? I can't delete someone else's thread - Josh Haley

Go home...I won. You guys didn't comment for like 30 minutes. - Alex Scoble

I instituted it and declared myself the winner. This junta has now been completed. You are on foreign soil ruled by me...so bugger off! - Alex Scoble

you're not the boss of me now - Josh Haley

No, but I am the boss of the thread! Take a hike, ya hoser! - Alex Scoble

I got yer hose right here - Josh Haley

That's not a hose, that's a little straw you got off your can of air. - Alex Scoble

brian: doesn't that involve a large trout? - Jason Shultz from twhirl

I'm sure the fish doesn't care as it's already dead. - Alex Scoble

Can of air, like the fire extinguisher? Maybe. - Josh Haley

Yes! We have no, bananas. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Can't touch this! - Alex Scoble

2 legit! 2 legit to quit! - Alex Scoble

We're the monkees! - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Still mine! - Alex Scoble

congrats Alex! oops - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

No, mine. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

*steals the internet* - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Here comes the hammer! - Alex Scoble

hey you're the last comment again alex yayyyyyy!!!! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

We say what we wanna say, do what we wanna do, the Addams Fa-mi-ly! Go! - Alex Scoble

yeah - Josh Haley

Pumps and a bump, pumps and a bump! (at least I think that's what he says and I'm too lazy to check) - Alex Scoble

Beep-beep! - Tyson Key

Turn this mutha out! - Alex Scoble

w00t - Josh Haley

Citizens Against Alex Owning This Thread - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Hammer!!!! - Alex Scoble

:p - Josh Haley

Time! - Mo Kargas

Looks like I'm late to the party. - LogEx

SNIPE - Mike Nayyar

You don't have to go home but you can't sleep here - Johnny Worthington

DAMN YOU WORTHINGTON - Mike Nayyar

This is the part where we dance. - Alex Scoble

hey look everyone Alex is last on the thread again! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Woot! - Alex Scoble

nice work alex - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Fin! Finito! Ende! - Alex Scoble

You aren't gonna get it, Chris. - Alex Scoble

. - LogEx

Still not. - Alex Scoble

boogers - Josh Haley

What's interesting is that ffholic is no longer properly counting the number of comments in this thread. - Alex Scoble

yeaaaa Alex is last again! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Marcooooooooooooo! - Alex Scoble

Alex wins again!!!!! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

OY VEY! - Alex Scoble

thread killa'! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

OU812 - Marco(aureliusmaximus) from fftogo

OIC - Josh Haley

Still mine. - Alex Scoble

never - Josh Haley

Wow this thing is still going? - Katie is Frittering

Unfortunately, yes. - Alex Scoble

Nice try Chris. - Alex Scoble

hey look Alex has the last comment again! - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

And again. - Alex Scoble

HA - Richard Lawler

Nice try, Richard. You still won't win the grand prize of CoD 5. - Alex Scoble

*yawn* - Josh Haley

Josh! - Alex Scoble

Go eat a burger, Chris... - Alex Scoble

620. - Alex Scoble

meh - Josh Haley

Meh indeed, Josh, meh indeed. - Alex Scoble

*cough* - Josh Haley

Gesundheit. - Alex Scoble

LOL - Alex Scoble

Wow was expecting to see Alex's name here - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

uh, no - Josh Haley

I WILL END THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL - Mike Nayyar

wtf? HALEY! - vijay

last! - Josh Haley

Eff you, Haley. - Mike Nayyar

Woo hoo! My thread LIVES!!! - Joey Gibson

Yay! - Tyson Key

@Joey - Don't worry, I have the same effect too, sometimes. ;) - Tyson Key

Funny, I was actually worrying about the same thing. Oh yeah, sorry in advance for killing the thread. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

no prob - Josh Haley

Segmentation fault - Tyson Key

Are we there yet? - Tyson Key

nope - WorldofHiglet

nope - Josh Haley

Ping! - Tyson Key

Wow, 600+ comments. - Kevin Whalen

Trundle, trundle wheel... La la la... Still... not... dead... La la la... - Tyson Key

I hear dogs - Tyson Key

/me throws a Zune and sees if anyone catches it - Tyson Key

woohoo - Josh Haley

Matt Cutts

RT @joshu: "my promised URL shortener rant: http://joshua.schachter.org/2009..."

April 3 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Sebastian, Jorg Jansen, Alex Gibbons and 14 other people liked this

How does Google view URL shortening? - Pat Hawks

7 more comments

Joshua is the inventor who did del.icio.us - Robert Scoble

del.icio.us! Every commentator worth his salt knows how to spell that! ;) - Meryn Stol

Did ya' all catch this in the feed: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Micah Wittman

My brain was destroyed by tequila. I fixed that. - Robert Scoble

@pat, it depends on the url shortener severice. In general it views the larger url, but there a few where it doesn't. THese are from the more lesser known services. check out this article for more information: http://searchengineland.com/analysi... very interesting information - Jaap Willem

Sorry, the correct spelling of del.icio.us is just a very sensitive spot for me. I couldn't imagine having lived my life the past years without it. - Meryn Stol

What about HTTP's Content-Location header? Does Google view that as a 301? - Pat Hawks

@pat, I don't know, I suppose it takes all the information from the original page, but maybe someone else could help you with that.. - Jaap Willem

Louis Gray

Stop Telling Me How to Use Your Products - http://www.louisgray.com/live...

April 3 from louisgray.com - Comment - Like - Share

Rui Pereira, Brome, Dobromir Hadzhiev and 40 other people liked this

Facebook came across pushy to me from the start, when it demanded my real birthday. I gave an approximate one. - Bruce Lewis

97 more comments

thank you mr. gray for reminding people and Co's what drives the internet, the people themselves! - chaz2b

If Twitter users only did what the developers wanted, everybody would just be saying things like "I'm taking out the trash" and "I just ate half a pizza." Twitter should be thanking their lucky stars - and thanking their users! - that people did their own thing and didn't listen to how it's "supposed" to work. - Dawn

Dawn, I agree with you, I've been saying the same for months by now. - Richard A.

Agree, Dawn. it's astounding how they seem to limit their own potential. - Louis Gray

I don't see it that way at all Louis. Have you tried putting yourself in their shoes? They're not a little startup anymore. Who was it that wrote the article about a year ago on early adopters promoting and helping a new startup in their early phase, but eventually turning against the service when they outgrew the need for that person's opinion? I desperately want to find that article and bookmark the hell out of it. - Mitch

And that's why I'm moving away from twitter as a primary communication mode. Twitter is far less engaging than it was. - Richard A.

Also, stop listening to people telling you how to use their products. Screw 'em. - Mitch

Mitch: good one! :-) - Robert Scoble

Thanks, now get me FriendFeed beta! Stop telling me to wait for Monday, FriendFeed! J/K I love you FF. - Mitch

I think I'm doing something smart with Taskerrific. If all goes according to plan, it'll work best for GTD types, but still be a great task list manager for everyone else. I will not force David Allen on you (unless that's what you want, but his wife might have something to say about that). - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Leather: OK. See ya Monday. To me it's a payoff for doing videos and helping the industry. Right now I'm editing the friendfeed videos so you'll have a good experience on Monday morning. Look at my gloating as a little karmic paycheck that I'm collecting for doing that. - Robert Scoble

Leather, I like your sentiment, but you can't find one post from me where I go on about the preview. I mentioned in a single tweet that I was at the briefing, and that's it. How can you interpret my comments on Biz telling users how to act (or how not to) and make a direct line toward this? - Louis Gray

I think this all stems from developers not understanding human behavior and not designing apps more purposefully from the get-go. Twitter's success was a fluke. It was like spaghetti they tossed on the wall to see if it would stick. *Of course*, the users should be able to put their own sauce on it. But if it were a carefully created recipe by a "Top Chef" then pouring ketchup over it... more... - Dawn

Dawn is on a roll. - Louis Gray

Louis: yeah, it's the first thing I've agreed with Dawn on in a while. Keep it up Dawn! - Robert Scoble

I hope it has butter! ;) - Dawn

LOL Just keep talk away from politics and we'll be okay, Robert. ;) - Dawn

If all anybody gets from this post is that Dawn is a great lady to subscribe to, then I will have accomplished something. Agreeing all the time is not required. :) - Louis Gray

Facebook changed the game by using force. They have a service that works - just look how they treat their employees. The people up top have a goal and they'll do whatever it takes to make their visions a reality. Twitter, on the other hand is a fluke LOL - Mona Nomura from fftogo

What a nice thing to say, Louis. Thank you very much. - Dawn

Yeah Dawn that was a pretty killer metaphor. - Mitch

Thank, Mitch. Mona, so what's Zuckerberg's "goal" and "visions" besides trying to make a profit? Don't get me started on Facebook. I'll fall off the roll real quick. ;) - Dawn

Dawn: Zuckerberg tells me he wants to have the world's best social graph. IE, rolodex. - Robert Scoble

Ha! Four new subscribers in just a few minutes and at this late hour. You're powerful, Louis! ;) - Dawn

Dawn: when Louis tells me to subscribe, I do! :-) - Robert Scoble

@Dawn, Europe is waking up though, and some of us Europeans use FF :-) - Richard A.

Robert: And that's why Facebook is going to fail. It's not HIS social graph. It's yours and mine and Louis' and Mitch's and Mona's.... - Dawn

Facebook is going to fail just like the mobile phone did ;-) - Richard A.

Dawn: stop being so cynical. It keeps us from having a decent conversation. Of course it's all of ours. When I said that, I mean he wants to be like the best Yellow Pages around. Best font. Best layout. Best grouping. Etc etc etc. - Robert Scoble

There is ZERO reason for people to stay loyal to Facebook beyong "all my friends are there." So what? All your friends can be somewhere else in three minutes flat. - Dawn

Dawn - Superb comment, btw. Not sure if I mentioned it ;) As for the Zuck - as much as I hate to admit it, the man is a visionary. He successfully broke a lot of barriers and enabled people to become more transparent. He also familiarized the mainstream with Soc Nets. Twitter's success has a lot to do with Facebook, too. As for his ultimate goal: Google Dreamforce and see if the conf. slides are online. I saw the literature and they have big things planned. - Mona Nomura from fftogo

Mark my words: Facebook is going to be less than half it's current size within two or three years. - Dawn

Dawn: now we're disagreeing again. That didn't take long. - Robert Scoble

Dawn, MySpace hasn't even done that - perhaps, if it were to happen, you would see less activity, but people just don't delete accounts these days. - Jesse Stay

Dawn: even Myspace, which has sucked for more than a year hasn't gone down in size that much. It's just that Facebook outgrew it. Momentum on these things does not change that quickly. Facebook is going to be bigger in two or three years than it is today. Even if they screw up over and over and over they will be bigger. Just like Microsoft is bigger today than it was eight years ago (and it's screwed up over and over and over). Momentum is NOT something you can explain away easily. - Robert Scoble

Right now Facebook is growing a Twitter every 15 days or so. Just passed 200 million users. - Robert Scoble

LOL No surprise there. The thing is, Robert, you understand technology. I understand anthropology. Anthropology trumps technology in the long run. And Facebook has a lot of problems. - Dawn

I highly doubt it. I'm willing to put money on it. What other service can: treat their employees like crap, treat third party developers like crap, the worst UX ever, use their customers (users) as guinea pigs while monetizing and STILL keep growing? - Mona Nomura from fftogo

Dawn: I understand a lot more about anthropology than you know. Facebook has a lot of problems, but it has people seriously addicted. You need to travel the world more and hear from everyday people about why and how. - Robert Scoble

Mona: A service without a true competitor. But the day is coming. - Dawn

Okay, Robert. We'll see what it's like in a few years. :) In the meantime, I'm going to bed. Good night! - Dawn

Dawn: even if there were a good competitor people are locked into Facebook with a million hooks. Like Velcro. They won't leave easily. Twitter has only one hook and even it survived far superior technologies. This is NOT about technologies. It's about how these sites hook you in. Facebook has everyone hooked in so well that they can't leave even when unhappy. - Robert Scoble

Just last night, my wife was talking to me about how she was going to leave Facebook. She didn't. Many others I bet also wonder why they invest time in it. But they are "hooked". - Louis Gray

That's what people said about Mixi - the Japanese Facebook, but they are bigger and stronger than ever. Mark Twain said: "History doesnt repeat itself, but it does rhyme." If you factor in everything, we (the US) is where Japan was, several years ago. Think about it: from mobile phones, social networking, to enterprise, periodicals, to even commerce, things keep changing and becoming interdependent. Facebook exploded at the right time. No other service will take its place. - Mona Nomura from fftogo

Dawn: I've been doing online communities since 1984 and Facebook is going to be the one for a long time. I also get to see six months into the future due to entrepreneurs showing me what they are working on and nothing is coming soon to challenge it. New friendfeed coming on Monday will get friendfeed to grow to next level but won't slow down Facebook at all and friendfeed is the only real mindshare competitor out there for Facebook. All the others except Twitterare dying as Facebook is gaining marketshare. - Robert Scoble

Um, I just wanted to remind everyone that this here Internet was originally created for the sole purpose of U.S. defense research. So stop all these cute baby pictures....Seriously, when users get to choose how a tool is used, innovation often ensues, even if - especially if - the tool is used in the wrong way. - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

Mona, Twitter - Jesse Stay

Mona is right. - Robert Scoble

Jesse Twitter is something different from Facebook. The two are NOT competitors even though some users think they are. My wife is NOT going to get into Twitter. She likes the privateness and is hooked deeply into the velcro of Facebook. - Robert Scoble

Okay, one last comment... You can say the same thing about people in bad marriages. Right now, divorce is falling big time because people can't afford to split. But the recession isn't going to last forever. And neither will Facebook's claim to the market. When the time is right, people are going to jump in droves. - Dawn

Robert, I agree - I was just answering her question, "What other service can: treat their employees like crap, treat third party developers like crap, the worst UX ever, use their customers (users) as guinea pigs while monetizing and STILL keep growing?" The answer is Twitter. - Jesse Stay

That perfectly sums it up Mr Bredehoft. It sums up the evolution of practically all human development through technology, actually. - Mitch

Dawn: such an event will take years to happen. Even MySpace is dying slowly and it really sucks when compared to Facebook and has for years. - Robert Scoble

Jesse - Twitter is a fluke. It's like AOL's IM. Corporations, teenagers, to adults use it. A great supplementary communication tool, but otherwise useless. Twitter has NOTHING on Facebook. The big difference is monetization. - Mona Nomura from fftogo

Examples of things used in the wrong way: missiles used to put astronauts in space, the Usenet alt.* hierarchy, MS-DOS on Compaq and other non-IBM computers, Twitter @replies, the lastfmfeeds FriendFeed room...others? - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

Everytime I've tried to predict the death of something I was both right and wrong. Almost every company dies if you wait long enough. Facebook probably will die if you look at a 100 to 500 year horizon. But in two years? Give me a break. No way, no how. For that to happen you have to have a dramatically better idea in development right now and I can tell you there is NOT one in development right now. - Robert Scoble

Mona, I agree - I was just answering your question, ""What other service can: treat their employees like crap, treat third party developers like crap, the worst UX ever, use their customers (users) as guinea pigs while monetizing and STILL keep growing?" The answer is Twitter. :-) - Jesse Stay

Jesse: momentum is not an easy thing to turn around even when you try. :-) - Robert Scoble

Monetization, Jesse. Facebook is generating some sort of revenue while Twitter selling an ad gets headlines LOL - Mona Nomura from fftogo

Robert: But there is one on the drawing board. - Dawn

Even MySpace has its hooks. I know of a long-time MySpace user who recently joined Facebook (not me, someone else). The new user's first question - "How do you change the backgrounds?" Now everyone except CADIE knows that changing the backgrounds in Facebook is "wrong" - but try telling that to users. - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

Mona, I have no doubt Twitter will monetize though - I don't see that as a difference. The difference is in simplicity and openness. Twitter could technically be a part of Facebook - they're not the same, I agree. I was just saying what you were saying mostly applies to Twitter as well. I agree the two services aren't the same. - Jesse Stay

Dawn: give me a break. Having an idea on a drawing board is irrelevant. If you have something dramatically better after it's coded, let me know. Then let me know how you're going to afford the hosting to keep the sucker running if it really is going to be as popular as you think. Hint: you'll need millions of dollars. To get that kind of funding right now you'll need to have two things: adoption and a great team. Those are NOT easy to get done. Ideas are cheap. Great teams and execution is NOT. - Robert Scoble

John - the demographic and purpose is shifting. Myspace caters to the music crowd. Though that is slowly changing, since Facebook enabled pages to have similar functions as profiles. - Mona Nomura

Robert: Believe me, I know all that, and then some. - Dawn

Dawn: well, even if you did have a great team, and adoption, and a great idea, then I'd still have a lot of visibility into what you're up to and so would Zuckerberg. He's already proven he's willing to copy good ideas developed elsewhere (like at friendfeed) so now you not only have to do all the above AND you also have to have a defendable idea. Ain't gonna happen. Would love to be proven wrong, though. It'll be one for the business books. - Robert Scoble

Mobile web - Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter have the market. Facebook has the platform to scale and revolutionalize. No other service does. Facebook isn't going anywhere. - Mona Nomura

Dawn - while there is a new service on the drawing board that will blow Facebook away, it will take that service at least 3 years to get 1/10th of Facebook's numbers. And even then Facebook won't die. My parents still use AOL, and I still use the occasional Yahoo service (not just the new ones; there are three Yahoo groups that are very important to me professionally). - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

That's the whole idea of a 'platform' - a place to give you control to do as you will. Spending the time and money to create a platform is destroyed by someone telling you how to use it. It's about the freedom to use. - Mo Kargas

John: and if such a service does get 1/10th of Facebook's numbers Facebook will either clone it or buy it. Just like they are doing with friendfeed and twitter. Which will frustrate the team trying to get from 1/10th Facebook's size to something bigger. This is the kind of thinking that kept Microsoft out of search. This is why Dawn won't be believed by VC's. She hasn't done it before. If Steve Jobs told me he was going to do it I might believe him. Dawn? Sorry, no. - Robert Scoble

Robert: There are existing resources that can be leveraged...MAJOR resources...and that's what I'm trying to do. Nobody else is doing anything like it. But you're quite right, this is a very tough environment. Which reminds me of a great line from The Office the other night. Michael tells one of his staff that he's opening a new paper company. The guy asks "In this climate?!" and Michael says, "In all climates. We'll be all over the globe." LOL - Dawn

Competing with Facebook is like competing with Google - it's much easier to take a few pieces and perfect them than to try and kill the entire site. That's how Facebook has suddenly become a threat to Google. They've iterated small steps at a time without an original purpose of competing with Google. - Jesse Stay

Dawn: well, I wish you luck. I know a hosting team that can help you keep up as your business grows. They hosted YouTube until YouTube got sold to Google. :-) - Robert Scoble

The thing that is so sneaky but clever of Facebook is they 'steal' - but I call it appropriating. Somewhere along the way, Facebook took the lead of the Japanese way, by identifying what works from other services and owning it. They ignore all the talk and criticism, and keep chugging along. They are SMART and will be very successful because of that. - Mona Nomura

Robert: You have no idea what my business plan is. There is no way Facebook could clone it. - Dawn

Robert - Zuckerberg has a weakness, and Louis exposed it - do the "wrong" things, and Facebook won't compete with you, at least at first. Create a service with tons of content that allows you to have an alias, self-designed backgrounds, and an unlimited number of friends - Facebook doesn't have all of these, although I grant that if Facebook were threatened, they'd probably drop their rule against aliases and spinning backgrounds real quickly. - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

Mona: Microsoft stole from Apple. Apple stole from Xerox. Google stole from Alta Vista. Etc Etc. I've seen this cycle over and over again. One of my first questions I asked Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) was how to get another Apple built. He told me that one of the necessary preconditions is that the existing business elite must ignore your new idea for a while. - Robert Scoble

John: Zuckerberg told me that they are changing the rules (two weeks ago). Soon I'll be able to have unlimited friends. Also soon I'll be able to have aliases and businesses will be able to be a full partner on the social graph. That's one reason that Zuckerberg won't be stopped. He might not be doing things perfectly but he's doing them "well enough." - Robert Scoble

And it works, Robert ;) @John E Bredehoft: I highly disagree. Facebook forcing the public to be 'real' is one of its greatest strengths. Facebook's methods changed social networking forever. - Mona Nomura

Robert, that's one of the things that scares me to death about transparency. Startups can't be 100% transparent these days to avoid getting eaten alive. - Jesse Stay

Mona: agreed, but now that Zuckerberg has a good "white pages" with everyone using their real names he now feels comfortable enough to letting businesses join up (and people with fake names, who'll be listed in the "Yellow pages." - Robert Scoble

But at this point, why even waste time? Sure new users may pop up, but a lot of people will be weary of fake accounts, brushing it off as "Oh man, not another Myspacer heading out this way." Smartest decision Zuckerberg ever made - doing it backwards. - Mona Nomura

Jesse: that's the rub. You've gotta be transparent to get anything done. You'll need hosting partners. Investment partners. PR partners. Etc etc. That requires telling people what you're up to. This is where luck comes in. Remember, Wozniak offered his personal computer to HP and Atari and they turned him down. They didn't think it was important enough of a market. - Robert Scoble

@Robert: Definitely one of the single biggest mistakes Atari made. - Mo Kargas

Mo: yeah, or what about Xerox? They invented this whole industry and didn't see the importance of what they had done. They had TOTAL transparency into what was going on and STILL couldn't "get it." - Robert Scoble

One thing that Twitter and FriendFeed have done somewhat right is to create an API, although the implementation of Twitter's services to third parties has driven Jesse mad at times. I have participated in this conversation via fftogo, which is there because FriendFeed was willing to let someone else handle the GUI for 8 bit rotary mobile phones. There are many other examples of... more... - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

One company that woke up: Nintendo. John - Facebook and Myspace have native apps targeted for mobile users. As for desktop - did you miss Facebook's announcement of opening up their API? Xoopit, Twhirl? TweetDeck? one of those, and a few others jumped on it (with limited functionality). - Mona Nomura

Facebook and myspace both have mobile versions but they like to handle everything themselves. - Richard A.

John, Facebook has a superior third-party interface, much more extensive than Twitter's, as does MySpace. I wrote the book on it. :-) - Jesse Stay

The book you were plugging on the dev forum. I LOVED THAT PLUG HAHA - Mona Nomura

@Robert Agreed, it's amazing what a concrete understanding (and a bit of foresight) into the industry can reap. Plenty of missed opportunities, but not in FB's case, they're onto it. - Mo Kargas

Mona, I'm still debating wether to make a fuss out of that. Facebook is giving preference to one author over another, allowing them to promote to all developers without allowing other authors the opportunity. I want to be able to do a guest post about my book to their entire list of developers. :-) - Jesse Stay

Jesse - they do that with their app developers, too. It's horrible. - Mona Nomura

Mona, it's things like this that really make me wish I lived in the Valley. I think I could really be building relationships with these folks by attending their parties, press conferences, going to lunch/dinner, etc. Not something I could be doing virtually. - Jesse Stay

I think you belong there too, Jesse. Why don't you move next door to Robert? LOL - Mona Nomura

Mona, I'd love to - I just can't afford it right now and I can't expect to achieve funding in this economy. Robert's neighborhood would be a perfect location for my family (except the schools, so I hear). - Jesse Stay

Mona, Jesse, I stand corrected re Facebook's API. I should read more. :) - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

Any company has the right to develop and control their product they way they want, (its their product), but just because they have the right doesn't mean its the right thing to do. - Kim Landwehr

Robert Scoble

Twitter Explains Their Selections for Default Suggested Users - http://www.centernetworks.com/twitter...

March 25 from Backtype - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Jay Neff, Mark Andrew Catton and 47 other people liked this

"I made a bit of a stink but anyone who whines looks like a jerk." - Robert Scoble

74 more comments

Liked for Robert's comment. I lost a lot of respect for Guy Kawasaki after he made a stink about the suggested user's list in one of his presentations. - Brandon Mendelson

Just out of curiosity Brandon, why did you lose respect for him? - Leo Laporte

Of course it's totally within their rights. But I think it was in their interest to do something more useful. Whole Foods? Really? Would they have 302,000 followers based on merit? ev is being disingenuous I think. This was really about a demonstration of a monetization strategy. (See what we can do for Whole Foods? Imagine what we can do for your brand!) If they wanted really useful suggestions they should have used Mr. Tweet. - Leo Laporte

But, of course, it sounds like whining for me to say anything about it at all. So I won't. I'll just think it. - Leo Laporte

Dave makes a really good point! Doing what serves the best interest of users is great but more importantly serving customers best interest is even more important. In this case, are these suggested user slots being paid for? Should they be? Just curious in the thoughts out there? I know its been mentioned but, what do you think? - Jason Cronkhite

@Leo Can I be really honest? I felt, and I know this is an opinion formed solely from reading comments and websites and not knowing the specific individuals, that the Silicon Valley club didn't make the list and they had a fit about it. That's a gross generalization, and I do apologize for it, but the sniping comments about the list just come off as bitter. I'm a believer in the number of followers not mattering, so I guess I just don't understand the attitude. - Brandon Mendelson

And one other point: I am not a business. I am not even close to being a celebrity. I'm just a guy fighting cancer and helping the homeless. I made the list. So the whole thing about businesses and celebrities only making the list? It's not totally true. - Brandon Mendelson

I completely understand that Brandon. It's an awkward position for people like me and Scoble and Dave Winer to be in. I think we have legitimate reasons to criticize the process, but when we do so it looks like sour grapes. Follower counts matter not as some arbitrary competition, but because (until Feb 6) it was a measure of influence. Now they're meaningless to those in the know, but newspapers will still quote them. But, seriously, I'm long over it. - Leo Laporte

@Leo I believe you and I respect your opinion. Thank you for the conversation. I've been meaning to share that for a while now. - Brandon Mendelson

Leo: have you checked out Whole Foods' tweets? They actually engage with their followers quite a bit. People like that. I also noticed you and Scoble both use Friendfeed to post to your twitter accounts quite a bit. Perhaps that's getting you caught by their filters. Just a thought. - Nathan Johns

Absolutely, Dave. I would never want to be on the suggested list. The followers I have, found me and followed me due to actual interest. I value them far more than the hundreds of thousands of automatic follows the suggested list would generate. Frankly if it weren't for them I'd have abandoned Twitter long ago. - Leo Laporte

OMG Leo you wrote a short novel! I for one found their silence on issues of purpose and profit suspect... and finally the other shoe drops. I suppose it's better than vague promises broken, but not really by much. I can get a lot out of twitter's community (or is it MY sub-graph?), but I could also do that on another service, with other users. Hey! Like FriendFeed! - Richard pancakhaus Walker

Most of after I said I was done talking about it, too! - Leo Laporte

I liked the part about how if you fill out your profile more completely you might be one of the 20 suggested users as well. Good point. I'll get right on that. - Thomas Hawk

@Leo and @Robert I appreciate you candour over this issue. I ca see why Twitter are doing it however I suspect because it is human selected compared to a ranking algorithm like Google's it generates a suspicion as to motive and/or judgement. - John Collis

Actually, it would be more useful if their "chief scientist" looked at localised content. To most of you, that list is localised content. But what about me, sitting in Malaysia? If I want to know where to get the best tofu steak in town, I'd likely get an answer from fellow Malaysians. The suggested users feature should think of locality too, not just celeb-status - Colin Charles from twhirl

The thing this taught me is that some entrepreneurs love you when you bring them users, but turn on you after they don't need you anymore. I've been told that Twitter's followers don't like me, which is why they removed me from the list. I'm cool with not being invited over to @biz's house for dinner. Twitter doesn't need early adopters anymore, is another thing I've heard. I'm cool with that too. - Robert Scoble

Colin: that's a great way for such a list to work. Friendfeed's list, by the way, works pretty closely to that. It shows you the most popular ones of the friends you've already added. So if you only add friends in Malaysia chances are it'll suggest other Malaysian friends. This is why you never see Iranian's recommended to you on friendfeed (but if you add only Iranians, Iranians are all you'll see). - Robert Scoble

Robert - I think there's a common thread here with your recent observations RE Facebook: Don't give your users too much power. That is, don't let them design your service by committee and don't let users with strong opinions about your service that may be counter to your own have too loud a voice on your service. In Twitter's case it extends to their developer community, e.g the 20K/hr API limits. You're welcome to build a client to send them traffic, but don't try to extract too much value from the system. - Ken Sheppardson

Colin: friendfeed's list is here: http://friendfeed.com/setting... -- it has several differences from Twitter's list. For one, it includes a lot more than just 50 people. For two, it is different for every user and is based on who you follow. If you follow no one, this list will suggest no one. Follow one person, and you'll get the most popular people that one person follows. And so on. - Robert Scoble

Ken: if that were true they wouldn't have put Mike Arrington on the suggested followers list. They know he has too much power over their PR, so they needed to include him on the list. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Yup, you're right. And that's how Twitter's list should work - more "automated". All this localised stuff is in tune with what you mention with regards to Facebook as well. The way I see it, is that as long as I'm in any locality where I have friends on twitter or facebook or friendfeed, I should be able to get localised information, anywhere, with ease. Like when I'm in San... more... - Colin Charles from twhirl

I didn't play footsie with Twitter (or as one blogger put it tonight, bring them cupcakes) and I kept recommending friendfeed, so they didn't want their new users to see that. Techcrunch doesn't do that, he just links to himself. :-) - Robert Scoble

Colin: celebrities are why Twitter is getting so much hype. If I were them I'd be feeding the celebrity monster too. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Does Mike do anything more than push TC's RSS feed there? - Ken Sheppardson

It's all cool, I now have a job that doesn't require me to have any followers, or rely on a page-view advertising model, like many journalists require, so now I get to have fun on Twitter again. :-) - Robert Scoble

I really liked Sarah Lane's quote RE celebrities on Twitter from TWiT the other day: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Ken Sheppardson

"I guess the early adopters who helped build Twitter now realize their work was to get Twitter to this point - the big'uns got it from here."... yeah, cause, that's worked so well in the past. - Johnny Worthington

Ken: no. Which is why TechCrunch had fewer followers than me, Guy, or Leo before Twitter added TechCrunch to the suggested follower list. - Robert Scoble

Johnny: this weekend I got more traffic from friendfeed than from Twitter. You're onto something. It's not how many followers you have, it's how many will engage with you. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Yeah, I'd say TC's "power" is as a celebrity content provider. TC/Arrington aren't active users, nor have they been particularly critical of Twitter...other than piling on RE downtime. Recommending them isn't contrary to any sort of "don't let your users get too much power" philosophy. [Yeah, I know... I'm stretching the point.] - Ken Sheppardson

Robert: But most of the celebrities are people I don't care about. But then again, I'm not the average person, and Twitter's recommended users aren't exactly designed for me. I always thought Twitter was getting more popular because of it being more "mainstream" - being mentioned on TV like CNN and so forth (everytime I see a mention, in my limited TV watching time, I do get quite excited) - Colin Charles from twhirl

BTW, anybody monitoring Allen's blood pressure, as most of the discussion generated by his post is attached to a Backtype-cross-posted comment by Robert to FriendFeed? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: you have a good point there. It's funny that Arrington himself warned me about investing so much time into Twitter. I'm not bitter, though. I have a great set of people I'm following that show me stuff before most other people see the patterns. And friendfeed is growing faster than Twitter did at this age in its life. - Robert Scoble

And also, have we thought about the 'parents' factor. Any fad, and Twitter is a fad if you like it or not, is instantly killed when your parents start using it. I wonder how many people will actually use it once it stops becoming hip to do so. Anything that gets super big gets super lame shortly afterwards. Myspace anyone? - Johnny Worthington

But it's the parents who are using Twitter already, Johnny: "Twitterers (a.k.a. Tweeters) are not primarily teens or college students as you might expect. In fact, in February the largest age group on Twitter was 35-49" -- http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsen... - Ken Sheppardson

Johnny: Myspace got lame because its design wasn't nearly as nice as Facebook's. I don't think having your parents on something makes it lame. After all, that didn't make the web lame for me. Or you. - Robert Scoble

Ken: I did find that funny that it's a small comment that started this whole conversation. Hopefully Allen will relax and enjoy that we all visited his blog today. Colin: you're not normal. Neither am I. Most people love celebrities. This is why there's so many magazines about them. - Robert Scoble

You mean all those people who signed up after hearing about it on Ellen or CNN? Cross reference those with users who have logged in more than twice or has more than 5 updates and lets look at the numbers again. - Johnny Worthington

Johnny: shhhh, don't poke sticks at the normal people. They might start showing up here. :-) - Robert Scoble

That's true Robert, but in the real world, the idea of having some 16-28 yr old's every thought monitored by their parents is a intimidating factor. Oh and my Myspace comment was poorly made. Once Myspace got huge, the next 'cool' group was those people who hated on Myspace. So far we have only heard postive noises about Twitter from celebs because they don't want to seem lame. The second that trend bucks, welcome to lame town (I'm talking here about the 18-25 year olds here). - Johnny Worthington

Johnny: believe me, the 15 year olds know how to share their lives out of view of the parents. Even on Facebook or Twitter. - Robert Scoble

So do 28 year old bearded guys from Australia :P I have just spent the last couple of weeks thinking about social media from outside the bubble we tend to live in. I have spoken to people about Twitter, like my parents, my work friends, people who never use social media outside of Facebook. Being frank, Twitter gets a big 'meh'. I think there may be some over-hype here. Selling it for more than it is right now. Celeb power will only work some of the way, rich content filled interaction with friends has... - Johnny Worthington

to be the mortar. Facebook has it already and not one of my friends feels like changing. - Johnny Worthington

Twitter is wrong, terribly, awfully wrong, the first thing it should do is "see which of your facebook friends are on twitter", "which of your real life friends are on twitter". Why would following strangers encourage twitter use? - Richard A.

Richard: if you give good advice like that you should charge for it. I used to give away advice like that and they never listened. In fact they hate me for it. But, seriously, you're right. Johnny: Twitter is getting hype because Celebrities can be public (like CNN, newspaper brands, etc) while on Facebook it's hard to be public (try to get more than 5,000 friends). That all is changing on Facebook and Facebook is also becoming nicer and more open as it ages while Twitter still is giving me error messages. - Robert Scoble

Cause they have jumped the shark now. It's more about 'who famous is on Twitter' than a rich experience for their users. When your selling point goes from 'You' to 'Them'... *sigh* - Johnny Worthington

And that's going to destroy twitter, how many people do you know still being conversation on twitter anymore? I deleted my account to try to find the genuine people, Turns out it was around 55 of my old followers. They actively tried to find me again :-) - Richard A.

I don't get all of the complaining about the celebrity invasion on Twitter. Six months ago Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose were having silly contests to see who could accumulate the most followers. And people were obsessed with the top 100 on Twitterholic 2 years ago when there were *no* celebrities on Twitter http://www.centernetworks.com/twitter... I'm sorry, but this just sounds like sour grapes to me. If you don't like the celeb's just don't follow them. - Mike Doeff

@RichardAzia: you make some good points about finding the genuine people out of a mass of Twitter followers. If you found 55 real people—not bots or Guy Kawasaki's ghost tweeters—how many followers did you have? I find it's about 20%. I feel Twitter's invaluable for professional/work-related social media interaction. I'm looking for new ideas and interesting people in my fields of interest to follow. I don't necessarily want to be their "friends," not initially, but am happy to interact and share ideas... - .LAG liked that

Mike: it is sour grapes. But go beyond that and there is something there. - Robert Scoble

For me, my real-life friends and family, whom I keep sequestered on FB, don't provide that kind of potential intellectual depth for me. I think both TT and FB serve distinct and useful purposes, and I'm more than happy to keep them separated. For me, a Twitter button that said 'find your FB friends' would be the last thing I'd want. Gotta keep the worlds separated. Just one opinion. - .LAG liked that

.LAG: when I brought my Twitter friends into friendfeed I DID keep them separate. I put them into their own "list" (er, folder) here on friendfeed. Funny enough they provide me with far less value than the average friendfeed original poster. - Robert Scoble

Robert, that's because they're active participants, rather than rss style users. - Richard A.

that is the great thing about twitter, you can be somewhat anonymous, leading to more honest responses. - andyb

Mike: if that's true, most users aren't using that control. They are going with the defaults. I can prove that by watching the numbers. - Robert Scoble

andyb: that's total bullshit. - Robert Scoble

Mike, if I laid down the foundation, built the walls and constructed the roof to your house then Joe Bloggs came along, screwed on the front door and put up a sign said 'Built By Joe Bloggs' I'd be pissed too... But more than that, know the saying 'don't forget your friends when you make it big'? - Johnny Worthington

@Scoble: well your Twitter "value proposition" -- for lack of a better term -- is consistent with my experience. Only about 20% of the people I follow on TT deliver value for me. So my approach is to periodically clean my list and follow more. I have no problem doing that, because most, if not all, are not RL friends. I'd be hard pressed to do that on FB. I have a real social commitment to the folks I've connected with there. - .LAG liked that

LAG: I get where you're coming from. But what's a real life friend? Please define. - Robert Scoble

...and yes, my FF value percentage is much higher closer to 50% or more, because it's generally a more thoughtful community—perhaps the nature of the application requires it—and I think most of the people here are, in fact, people and not TweetLater autobots. - .LAG liked that

LAG: that's because they aren't anonymous for the most part. - Robert Scoble

...but back to the original premise of this thread, I do understand why some would be up in arms over the suggested users list. with so many new users coming into the service, being on that list has a lot of upside, and certainly profitmaking potential. for most of us, though, it does appear to be inside baseball. so be it. - .LAG liked that

LAG: life is inside baseball to those who don't get it. - Robert Scoble

Dave: early adopters invested thousands of hours of their lives in Twitter trying to build new businesses. Then the management comes along and says "we're going to make someone instantly above you in every list out there" and it is far beyond emotion. That's an attack on business prospects. Oh, and if you don't think that companies aren't making millions on Twitter, think again. I know a couple of businesses who are already making millions with their Twitter accounts. - Robert Scoble

When money is involved, emotions run high. - Robert Scoble

I just deleted my twitter account and feel liberated! You get much better thorough information following an OPML; Twtiter seems best utilized to subscribe to celebrity feeds: at least you get a good LOL - sofarsoShawn

Two words (a name, actually) and you'll understand why I stopped scrolling through the suggested users list: Tony Robbins. . . Tony frakkin' Robbins! Sheesh. If anybody on that list wants me to follow them, I'll find them myself, or they can find me. - Steve Lowe

people it's simple - if you read my post you will see - just bring them cupcakes and make a video - fluff them a lot in posts, or help them appear like important or be a founder or investor :) the truth is, they have forgotten all the people who made twitter -- i think this is the really interesting point to debate - Allen Stern

Dave: it's amazing how many people are pissed off about this decision by Twitter but who will never say anything in public, too. I think that's even funnier because bloggers are supposed to be transparent about what they are thinking and feeling. I've learned that with stuff like this it's probably better to just stay quiet than to write what you really think. But that still doesn't stop me. :-) - Robert Scoble

Allen: bing! - Robert Scoble

Dave: never underestimate the reach of a blogger or someone on friendfeed. :-) The CEO of Like.com told me he got on MSNBC because I wrote about him. So, do I have one reader or am I a gatekeeper for MSNBC? Hmmm. Or, when I quit Microsoft I told 15 people and in three days Waggener Edstrom estimated that I got 15 million media impressions. Word-of-mouth can have HUGE reach, even if you only think you have 15 readers. There's a LOT of journalists reading here on friendfeed with a LOT of reach. - Robert Scoble

@Scoble: This thread is long dead, I went to sleep shortly after my last post last night, but my definition of "real life friend" -- in an online context -- is someone I've actually met offline, face to face, and not just shook hands with, but spent enough time with that we'd recognize each other instantly next time we met, if not friends, at least friendly. one day, we'll meet. ;-) - .LAG liked that

LAG: some people I've spent a lot of time with and I still have trouble remembering them, other people I've met for only a couple of minutes and I will always remember them. It's funny, though, everyone defines friends differently. By the way, I remember certain people, have had dinner with them, but I can assure you that they are not friends just because we recognize each other instantly. In fact, there are people I'd recognize instantly but who I'd see as enemies. Your definition falls apart there. - Robert Scoble

...LOLz! true on recognizing some people instantly as enemies. we used to call those "negative friends." I'll amend my admittedly flaky definition to this: "...recognize instantly AND WARMLY!" - .LAG liked that

Robert Scoble

RT @reprintsdesk: A related post I read re:twitter becoming THE socialCRM vs. just a CRM app http://www.web-strategist.com/blog...

March 22 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jill Howard Allen, embee and Alex Gibbons liked this

I think Twitter + Get Satisfaction make great CRM team. - KyleHase from twhirl

Louis Gray

How To Cleanly Separate Personal and Work Social Media Personalities - http://www.reddit.com/r...

March 22 from Reddit - Comment - Like - Share

John Serra, Kol Tregaskes, John and 4 other people liked this

time to write -- How To Sanely Separate Personal and Work Social Media Personalities :) - A.T.

Louis Gray

Newspapers Demand Google Welfare - http://valleywag.gawker.com/5179967...

March 22 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Alex Gibbons and Atul Arora liked this

GigaOm

Skype Now Means Business, Friends The SIP World - http://gigaom.com/2009...

March 22 from GigaOM - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Alex Gibbons, Daniel Brusilovsky and 4 other people liked this

Jeremiah Owyang

@dsearls, Scoble asking for brands to meet his product needs is an early example of a VRM System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

March 22 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Alex Gibbons, Daniel Brusilovsky and 3 other people liked this

Paul Buchheit

Goodbye Google | stopdesign (Douglas Bowman) - http://stopdesign.com/archive...

March 20 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Mike Chelen, Nimaa, Kyle Weller and 116 other people liked this

"When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions. Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

42 more comments

Also, I was the first "real" engineer at Google ;) (not really, of course) - Paul Buchheit

Has the decision making process been proven or is it simply an unquestioned assumption? - Todd Hoff

Wow, interesting read - that would suck, no wonder he left. - Susan Beebe

It sounds like a challenging environment for a designer, and it doesn't sound like it suited him, but don't those little details get magnified into significant effects when you are at Google's scale? Having said that, I don't love many of their designs anymore so perhaps there is something wrong. - Robin Barooah

Would it be trollish for me to say that FriendFeed seems to have this design-skeptical culture as well? Thanks for the link, btw. - Ethan Herdrick

great insight, enjoyed his website, IMO: Google's consistency across products increases usability over Yahoo, MSN....though ASK and Mahalo are very engaging now - shayne catrett

I've always found that grouping designers, usability people and coder together is sort of like playing rock paper scissors. - Dean Clark

Huge loss. I can feel his pain. - Andrew Smith

Not sure where the _debate_ comes from if they have the data and the culture of following it. Just put 3,4,5 pixel versions out and look for the one that works best. Strange. - xekc

I understand the frustration, but am also fascinated by the minute details analyzed by google. - RicardoSilva

Chris: There were several interaction and UI designers at Google prior to Doug's arrival, but he was the first person hired specifically to be a 'Visual Designer', with a focus on visual layout and style rather than the broader job of visual and interaction design. Lots of visual design was done before Doug's arrival, and continues to be done by the interaction designers, but Doug was... more... - Kevin Fox

"I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case."... Been there, still cringe at the thought. Nightmarish. - dario

Yikes. Those endless philosophic discussions...I could only hang in for a little bit and keep a straight face. Fun to come up with the stories, but once I realized people took it seriously, it just got creepy. Guess I knew it going in, but had to check it out. But, RE Google: I've always appreciated the simple, utilitarian approach that appeared to be focused on function as a central design feature. Thematic consistency across products would be nice, too. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

I read somewhere that he's gone to Twitter. Given that FF already has a great UX/Visual designer from Google, I guess Twitter was the next logical choice. - Bill Strathearn

Interesting juxtaposition of the above article with this http://friendfeed.com/e... - Shakeel Mahate

If the 3,4 or 5 pixel line discussion is for a line on the Google home page. I would think it is justified. Small changes make a significant change to traffic/revenue. Also, data and experiments are the most reliable thing to go by if there are many different valid subjective views on a particular topic - Bindu Reddy

Agreed, Bindu. And from an artist's perspective, 3 or 5 pixels can make a real difference. Though I can understand that it's frustrating when the decision is someone else's and their rationale is from another perspective. But doesn't that go with the territory of design? At least Google has a process, not just going by moods. - Rebecca

There are so many projects at Google with really loose and creative design methodologies. Many of them would have been happy to have him on-board. I don't think Doug is being honest with us or himself when claiming that this was his only reason for moving to Twitter. - Bill Strathearn

Similar, but more lucid: http://adamhowell.org/2009... - j1m

I've been reading Donald Norman's "Emotional Design", and in it, he notes that where his previous book championed exhaustive usability testing and essentially design-by-committee (and he still stands by that), that is best for what he calls 'behavioral design'. By contrast, both 'visceral design' and 'reflective design' need something more in the line of a single designer with a vision. ... Also, thanks for that link, j1m. - Andrew C

I love these Google "inside baseball' discussions on friendfeed. - Zaki Manian

Obviously, there are crucial systems where every cycle counts, and very important pages where every shade of blue counts. What I'm saying is that engineering usually gets the autonomy to balance what needs to be measured and what just needs to get done. UI designers are always second-guessed, leading to frustration. Plus, UI design has a much higher emotional component, so everyone, managers included, think they understand it just because they feel strongly about it. And people revolt on Facebook. - Joey Liaw

Not everybody is Apple ! which excel on technology and Design Both. - KARR 4.0

Apple = Design Dictatorship, Google = Design Democracy, MySpace = Design Anarchy? - Lasse Johnsen

Apple is a dictatorship because, as far as i know, the one who always has the final word on design is Steve. Google is a democracy because they seem to base most of of their design decisions on user testing, so indirectly the users are choosing the design in a sort of democratic way. - Lasse Johnsen

Interesting input Chris, so its not as radical as i thought :) - Lasse Johnsen

My teams run these kinds of experiments (link color, etc.) and with all respect to Doug, data is just a description of reality. He implies data is a "crutch" used by people who "can't make decisions." No, data describes the effects of your decisions. The constraints of reality make good designers great. - Daniel Dulitz

This is sort of like watching McCoy argue with Spock. :-) If you guys are not familiar with Gerd Gigerenzer, I highly recommend the book "Gut Feelings." (http://www.amazon.com/Gut-Fee...) Malcolm Gladwell used some of Gigerenzer's research in the book "Blink." The gist of his research shows that two core beliefs held by our culture, and by... more... - Karim

Experts often make "gut decisions." The outfielder catching a pop fly does not solve a set of differential equations describing the trajectory of the ball. (Unless he works at Google?) The outfielder doesn't think much about it all. His brain *unconsciously* runs a simple heuristic (described in Gigerenzer's book) that allows him to be where the ball is going to land. If you asked the... more... - Karim

Data is a crutch in that if you're NOT an expert, you need to justify the decision; you have no idea which color to use. Depending on where you are on the autism scale (like Spock, or a lot of programmers), you might not be able to imagine what color OTHER people would like, so you depend on data even more. You end up making things that look like Android and saying "but it tested well... more... - Karim

The problem with experts is that 99% of them aren't any good. This is such a strange argument though that I don't know where to begin -- it's all straw-men. For one, I'm pretty sure there's no data showing that the Android interface is anything other than confusing :) - Paul Buchheit

Maybe the Android interface is a result of trying to minimize the risk of being sued by Apple. :) - Ray Cromwell

I hope I wasn't implying that there is something magical about the word "expert" -- experts can over-rely on data, too. Gigerenzer made that point by describing a contest in which the performance of stock portfolios picked by "experts" using massive amounts of data and complex criteria woefully underperformed a portfolio picked by a random hundred pedestrians in Berlin. The point is not... more... - Karim

There are day traders who rely on intuition and they end up losing big too. A better example might be Poker. :) - Ray Cromwell

Yeah, strange argument. Data is but a small influence on any but the most well-used interfaces; it's an optimization method, not an imagination method. I guess the real point is that Doug didn't feel that his imagination was valued or useful at Google, and that's sad. @Karim, the point of data is that it describes what other people like in ways that no intuition can determine, expert or no. It's like perspective in art. Good designers use the data they have or can easily get. - Daniel Dulitz

Daniel, I don't think it's a question of "using the data" so much as whether the data has *primacy.* With technocrats, the data always has primacy -- even if the data is wrong, misleading, applicable to novice users but not expert users, inaccurate, imprecise, incomplete, or statistically insignificant. And I'm not sure how Douglas was supposed to feel "valued or useful at Google" by... more... - Karim

I just wanted to point out that Android was designed by these people: http://www.tat.se/site... Notice that they're designers not engineers. - Adewale Oshineye

TAT came out of the Scandinavian "demo" scene. While it can be argued that demos involve at least as much as engineering (coding) as they do design, or that demo skills don't translate into interactive design skills, the point is not to criticize TAT. The point is to criticize the use of *data* (qualitative research) as the sole criterion on design decisions. Ignoring a chief designer's... more... - Karim

Karim, Doug never said _he_ was testing 41 shades of blue. I think primacy is a great way to look at it, and Doug's post takes aim at data's supporting role. Also, where did the "novices vs. expert" meme come from? Experts don't like it when their gut feelings end up being testable? The question is which gut feelings to test and which not to. - Daniel Dulitz

Daniel, I didn't mean to imply that Douglas was upset because *he* was the one who had to do the testing. The "novices vs. expert" thing was my way of describing expertly mastered skills, or automaticity. When you are really good at something, you can do it quickly, with a low error rate, and without *thinking* about it. When you are learning to drive a car, you burn a lot of CPU... more... - Karim

I agree that "the question is which gut feelings to test and which not to." Douglas' complaint made it sound as if *too many* gut feelings were being tested ("each decision," "every decision"), and I can see how that could suck the fun out of things. - Karim

I had a lot more to say than would fit in this comment box: http://fury.com/2009... - Kevin Fox

there is an interesting example in the case of recently announced picasa face recognition http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2009... in comparing google's computational method for photo metdata with something like facebook where shared user entered data is the primary source - Mike Chelen

Louis Gray

Apparently, You're Only Allowed To Comment On Failed Business Models If You Believe In Them - http://techdirt.com/article...

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Time for entrepreneurship | An idea whose time has come | The Economist - http://www.economist.com/special...

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Nice to see New Zealand is 2nd easiest country to do business in - Alistair (alpinefolk)

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finally!!! I'm happy - Marco

now I look forward to see all these 3rd party apps stopping to request my password - Jean-Charles VERDIE

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