Wow that sucks. Hope he doesn't really get in trouble - Kevin LeCureux
um, i'm as much of a libertarian, keep the gov't outta my life as the next guy, but if we allow people to sell their votes doesn't that mean that the person with the most money will always win? Is it really necessary for the US to act like some 3rd World country? - chartreuse
"selling" votes is a violation of democratic principles and is (and has been) illegal. If you're protesting democracy by selling your vote, then you deserve the consequences. Many of the folks working on electronic voting systems for the last 20 years have had to develop mechanisms to prevent vote selling (for example, the lack of receipts) while still ensuring the integrity of the vote. Your protest is stupid, whiny, and laughable. - Glen Campbell
Oh come 'on now, millions of Americans sell their votes every election for the 'entitlement program' or 'moral value' of their choice... this kid is just more direct in saying put the money in my hand. - Scott Bannon via twhirl
Oh this is stupendous. :D I'm with Scott. Nothing new to see here, but I'm very very glad the subject was raised. P.S. The United States isn't a democracy, hate to burst bubbles. :) - Hal Rottenberg via twhirl
Lock him up for a year. When he gets out, tell him it was just a joke. - William Beem
Corruption is the most insidious problem faced by government; it's not a laughing matter. Why can't I just pay the IRS agent a few hundred dollars to ignore my deductions? Let me take the government contractor on a trip to Disneyland right before he approves my bid for the contract. If a vote can be bought and sold, it makes a mockery of democracy. Yes, there's corruption in government, but that's no excuse to permit it, or even encourage it. - Glen Campbell
Good call Hal, everyone forgets that line, "and to The Republic for which it stands..." - Scott Bannon via twhirl
Allen and Steven, two smart guys but neither think to just go to Cyndy's FriendFeed page and see: Tech Royalty: When Is Our Independence Day? - Robert Seidman
Mark - this is completely different. The one you linked to discusses the right panel that's not a default so-to-speak. This analysis today is based on the defaults that FF is providing to 9 people. It's not the same and I don't believe in linkbaiting. - Allen Stern
This is important and should be fixed. The decision was probably made to help entice A-listers to the service, but that's no longer necessary. Thanks, Allen. - Sprague D
The real problem is these services are really lame if you have no friends. This was an attempt to fix that problem. I agree though that FF should only recommend participants on the first few screens. If you aren't participating why would FF want to feature you? - Robert Scoble
Great video -- and yea definitely not the same post. I would see this an expansion into the topic and showing the results of tracking the patterns of a new user signup experience... - Gary Bacon II
i´m just subscribed to robert - for me the other 8 people have no value in their content and i wondered all the time why they are there... but robert should be default ;) - Dieter Schwarz
Robert's point is fair. The defaults shouldn't be a random selection of users, but a few of the most dedicated participants. I look forward to seeing edythe replace Arrington. ;-) - Sprague D
Great post Allen, FF is also VERY susceptible to bots doing mass adding. I haven't really seen any one take advantage of this yet. Then again, its not easy to see a users followers/following stats. - sean percival
i only saw this as a problem if you tend to be a sheep and just subscribe because a service recommends someone vs default which to me implies they auto subscribed you when you start which they did not, i'm only subscribed to a few of these 9 folks, very similar to who i've sub'd to in other services - this seem a bit of a mountain out of a mole hill to me folks - mike "glemak" dunn
Great post. In order for FriendFeed to become mainstream they should watch this video! Otherwise FF will risk being a web 2.0 only social network. I understand why FF is by default adding Scoble and other early adopters though...word of mouth! It's to attract the fast followers.... like us.....creating the herd effect so to speak. I would suggest that FF still have these guys as a default(maybe under the category web 2.0 thought leaders?) but add a default page based on interest areas as well. - Chris Herbert
Great job on researching. I definitely realized that FF was not nearly doing the job Facebook does when looking for friends you may know or recommendations. - Adam Helweh
This isn't cool. In my book, this is kissing up to the big guys so they'll talk about you and get you exposure. Whether they know it or not still doesn't make it okay. - Raoul Pop
@mike, if you want to know why what is presented to the "sheep" is important, check out Chris's reference to "herding". Chris, if they want to become mainstream they need to change the target of their marketing from "fast followers" to common users, who would also like the chance at building an audience. A good way to do that would be by randomly presenting dedicated users. - Sprague D
Maybe I am not getting it but I do not see the appeal in having many strangers follow you just for the sake of following you. I mean, I see Robert Scoble with 20,000+ followers but he could not know 1/10th of them even if he wanted to. Maybe I am missing something. - Paul L. McCord Jr.
I thought this might be the way for FriendFeed to gain popularity as well. Get some of the most active internet peeps on Friend Feed, make them feel that their subscribers are coming in droves, and the rest will follow. Yes, no? - Adam Helweh
Paul: I actually agree. Who is following you is not important. Who you are following is VERY important. I'm following about 3,000 people right now on FriendFeed, all hand added (I just added you for making a good point). - Robert Scoble
Raoul: when I joined FriendFeed I wasn't on the list. I moved up the list because I brought a lot of people into FriendFeed from my popular Twitter and blog. Live isn't fair sometimes. You might notice that FriendFeed is at the top of TechMeme right now and that FriendFeed is growing very rapidly. But I'm writing a blot post about the "Participation Premium." If life is unfair, why are 5,000 more people following me than Mike Arrington? After all, his blog is more popular than mine is... - Robert Scoble
But Robert, why are that many people following him at all when until recently he didn't even participate here other than posting his feeds? - Cyndy
Robert: people follow you because you follow them and pass along the conversations so others can enjoy too. Mike A. doesn't include everyone.. - LPH
Sprague: what I would do if I were FF is this: I'd have config options based on interest areas, top FriendFeeders, recommended FriendFeeders, and "randomizer" (as you suggested), and most popular FriedFeeders. - Chris Herbert
It's not the same 9 people everytime. It depends on who you subscribe to. There is a short list of prominent people on FF that get recommended, but in order for them to be recommended they have to be a contact of one of your existing contacts. The list is in alphabetical order by first name. If you don't have any contacts FF won't recommend anyone to you. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas: not true. I just signed up a new account and it recommended users to me. - Robert Scoble
cyndy: ff primarily is a very valid presence aggregater - whether someone then chooses to interact in ff via comment/like is secondary to me - mike "glemak" dunn
Thomas is referring to the "Recommended" link on the friend settings tab; Allen's video is about the sign up process. - Sprague D
It seems to me, with all the social aggregation, FriendFeed should be able to discern your interests and participation among other networks and provide an appropriate set of defaults at signup. TweetStats.com can show who I most actively talk to on Twitter, for instance, and as one element of an algo maybe that data can provide a better cross-section of suggested followers. - Aaron Brazell
You may be interested in a little personal research I've done to find out the social weight of FF users and the number of followers: http://user21.com/2008/07/04/f... - atzmon
I'd call these defaults an excellent marketing campaign from FF's standpoint. Those default FF users pretty much represent the same echo-chamber 'attractors' in the technology/web space. I think it's a little disingenuous when you ask how those people became popular FF users. It's obviously a well calculated way to market to the major technology attractors; or was that comment meant to be tongue in cheek? - Jim McCusker
hmmm Robert, I signed up a new account as well and found that under the "Recommended" link it wouldn't recommend anyone to me unless I first added at least one person as a contact. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas - what I am discussing is the people you are presented with when you create a brand new account - not on the right side - Allen Stern
Thomas, check out Allen's video, it's cool. - Sprague D
@atzmon, your list ranking users by #subscribers shows (for the top 10) almost perfect correlation with the "defaults" presented to new users. If Allen needed any more proof of his thesis, there it is. - Sprague D
So........ why is it a big deal to have so many followers on FF? Is it worth it? Is it beneficial? Why is everyone trying to have so many followers? - ChaCha Fance via Alert Thingy
Why do all the interesting posts seem to happen on Sunday when I've got family things to do?! I appreciate the recommend list because I'm relatively new to all of this. Scoble and Lois Gray are a good "in" to all of the noise (good human filters). - James Hull
@James, I think Allen's original motive for posting was that there are *many* excellent "human filters" available here, but because of a marketing decision by FF, only a certain few are provided as default recommendations when new users sign up. - Sprague D
They're in the process of losing me. Which is why I'm taking considerable time to integrate the ability to categorize and tag my FF likes and comments on my own blog - James Hull
The del.icio.us notes feature got a lot more useful because of Friendfeed. My del.icio.us notes finally have people to read them. So when I tag now, I tend to add commentary about the link for my subscribers here on Friendfeed. Smarter bookmarking. I also have several "conventions" that I use del.icio.us tags for. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
very much so. Yahoo had an early lock on social search. But then they just couldn't put the pieces together. Amazing to me really. - Thomas Hawk
The key seems to be, giving readers the ability to add meta info to a submission and then discuss that info, rather than just the submitter adding info like del.icio.us does. (edited for clarity) - Paul Short
I've always used the notes, partly just for myself, but also because I have pulled a feed from my bookmarks into my websites for a long long time now. I'm having more "fun" thinking about how to use Friendfeed better. - Laura Scott via Alert Thingy
Two questions 1) FriendFeed is basically for the short-term. --- liked a lot (with a little sadness) On the flip-side, should FriendFeed offer an option to categorize and save links and just crush Delicious to bits? 2) "save links / saves" - is that not "share something" ? --- - Kishore Balakrishnan
just another quotient of luck & timing ... & investor patience ... who owns the user-generated meta-data? kinda like who owns fan supplied data on pearl jam's ten.net ... just extended into other forums/granularities of interest (bandwidth) - Scott Moskowitz
I agree w/ Thomas Hawk - Y! couldn't put the pieces together. However, on the flip side, FriendFeed does not really have any pieces -- so will I really use this as my primary bookmarking tool or photo sharing service after I have 4,000+ bookmarks on delicious and 1500+ photos on Flickr? - Rex Hammock
Delicious has survived storms and even when Yahoo is not looking so good in business right now, I will hold my delicious account and of course keep pouring more info on Friendfeed... - TonNet
the one thing Twitter has it is that it was first before FF in that space. And that brings name recognition to the "masses" and a large inertia that you have to overcome before you can become a true replacement, no matter what technical advantages you bring to the table. I have 5 times more followers in Twitter than FF, and sadly a mass migration doesn't seem to be happening for these folks. - Daniel Robitaille
couldn't agree more with you about twitters down time being a superficial issue. - Richard
Your post to a given site takes on more life when it hits the pages of friendfeed. It's almost like you weigh where you want to "release" a post first knowing that it will get "picked up" by friendfeed. - todddoubleu
I do not think Twitter will survive as CMS systems that run into message bus systems are the hardest to scale on ruby on rails nd they do not have the money to fight two fronts ruby on rails scalability and new features to stave off competition. - Fred Grott
good link, allen. some additional default choices would be fantastic. read: better discovery mechanisms. having only members of the echo chamber as default choices makes for a duller feed. no offense to present company. ;) - Wolfsbayne
I think all this FF > Twitter discourse is seriously, seriously underestimating the power of Twitter's unparalleled portability. It's 100% usable through SMS and has an iPod-esque ecosystem of third party tools and add-ons that hook into it. These things brought Twitter to its throne, and now you guys aren't even factoring them into the equation because of a little downtime. - David Chartier
i'll post some thoughts on my blog, but one thing that is still annoying is represented in this post... where your friendfeed shows all aggregated iterations of this post here on ff and it just feels silly as i can choose which iteration to leave a comment on. that's an issue. maybe you should turn comments off on the other instances. except that you cannot because its not a feature. also, check out http://friendfeed.com/frendfee... to see some aggregation bugs. - sull
Jason, that's a brilliant "There Will Be Blood" reference. And so true. I'm afraid that Twitter is just a couple of weeks from being bludgeoned with a bowling pin by FF. - Frank Roche
I think the removal of a character limit would hurt twitter more than help it. Twitter was never meant as a conversation platform. I think keeping it small and simple makes it much easier for people to use. One of it's biggest strengths is that it's a short form messaging service, and to take that away would make it something that isn't twitter. - Austin Brown
Jason, I fully agree with what you say here. - Steve Rubel
I love the fact that there is no premium linked with the number of connections you have. In twitter the greater the number of connections, the higher you appear in the "following" list of your follower. That has become a reason of spam, lowering the quality of the twitter network. Plus, FF works. - Marcello Del Bono
I can see how Twitter is useful for people who post via SMS, but while Im at the computer FF is far more useful and also more fun to use - Jeff Hoard via twhirl
I could offer my agreement here on your entry's content, but I'd rather tell you how much I dug the entry's title. - Donna Mugavero
I'll put it this way, i never used twitter because I'm not part of the technorati community, but I do use Friendfeed because it allows me to bring together all my online content and then share it with the people I want. That alone is enough for FF to beat out Twitter for me. - Alfredo Padilla
I think one of the things we have missed carries forward or plays forward a Robert Scoble post, see : http://scobleizer.com/2008/07/... ..let me put it in non tech terms as it pertains to start-ups. FOUNDERS MUST PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITIES THAT FROM AROUND THEIR PRODUCTS! When I state founders I mean also the ones building the product. - Fred Grott
What it comes down to me is *noise*. FriendFeed is just noisy, what with content from all my social media friends all being dumped into one stream with no organization whatsoever. I look at my FF friends page and I can't make any rhyme or reason to what I'm seeing, even with little favicons to identify which service I'm reading from. Twitter, is clean and organized. - Stephen Lopez
School of ALL CAPS is a little loud... ;-) - Mitchell Tsai
I think Center Networks (Allen) has an interesting analysis. I'll be curious to see if the high profile FF users are as interested in commenting on other people's feeds as having their own words commented upon. Twitter just seems like a more democratic forum to me. Personally, I don't care if it is down a couple hours a week. FF only supplements it, it is not an adequate replacement. And I like to write more than 140 characters! Still Twitter is my first choice. - Liz
PS... Because I use the Flock browser, I get all my social media updates right from the Media Bar and People Sidebar, without ever having to open Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Pownce, Digg, etc... Everything I want is right there at the click of an icon. Flock > FF. - Stephen Lopez
I wouldn't underestimate twitter's connection through sms. It makes it the first legit mobile social network, and that is significant for mass adoption and use. Most people don't have internet on their phone to use a web app (iPhone Facebook, Tumblr, etc.) or internet (twitpic, friendfeed, etc.) to send email to update or submit to services. But they are very likely to have sms service, and are used to using it. - Tony
I was going to say something about how that isn't the case for me until someone just did subscribe. - Trevor
For those early adopters on Twitter, it's likely there's a 2:1 ratio of Twitter to FriendFeed. For those of us weighted the other way, it's 2:1 in favor of FriendFeed. - Louis Gray
When I was on Twitter for four months I only had 2,000 followers. In the same time on FriendFeed I've gotten to 15,000 followers. - Robert Scoble
Yeah? Well I have one MILLION followers here. HA! Not only that, but I have 42 *billion* on BrightKite, 18 million on Pownce, 3.14159 million on Plurk, 1.1 million on hoozurdaddy, 321,000 on webtooohhhhfriendme.com......... - Adam Lasnik
Adam: you should meet Tom over on MySpace. He has millions of friends. You guys could start a club! - Robert Scoble
Yes, but he gets more women than I do :P. - Adam Lasnik
True empowerment comes in the culling of those you follow. - Bernie Goldbach
Rabbits like cheese. It's about as interesting at the friendfeed v. twitter debate. Time for new content. - Andy
Steve Gillmor, at breakfast today, said "it's a slow news year." This is just another example of that. :-) - Robert Scoble
Yeah, Andy! Let's talk about Digg, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft instead :D - Adam Lasnik
Mike: it's about time for the Mac vs. Windows meme to come back yet again. :-) - Robert Scoble
Robert, at this point I'll take Mac vs. Windows over FF vs. Twitter. Bring it on! - Mike Doeff
The FriendFeed versus Twitter debate reminds me of those old Miller Lite commercials... Tastes Great! Less Filling! - Mike Doeff
sometimes you have to tell your readers what's interesting so later on they know what's going on. - michael arrington
Sure you do, but count up the number of twitter v. FF posts lately. Between commenting on the amount of downtime, who is better, the founders being the next "bill gates" and a plethora of other commentary - think enoughs, enough. Simple. :D - Andy
Michael, can you tell me why you banned me on TehcCrunch? I was never abusive to you or to your readers on TechCrunch! I know I said some negative things about you on Social Media networks but it was constructive criticism and not an attack on you or TechCrunch! You never said anything about me negatively in public so I am not targeting you! TechCrunch is your blog so you have a right to who you want to post there, but if you want 2 be seen as an open minded person u should allow all type of criticism on TC - Igor The Troll
My FF/Twitter follow ratio is 10/1 for some reason ;) - Paul Buchheit
Paul this might be the first time I've seen you comment about the FF/Twitter notes (but I may just not follow these conversations enough). Everyone loves to compare the two, but for you/ founders, what's the actual vision for FF? It doesn't seem to me to really be a twitter competitor at all, where, as I said before, Twitter is about quick, fleeting messages, while FF fosters permanent discussion centered around your content pulled in from anywhere you exist online. - David Adewumi
That's correct David. I just thought it would be funny to add my more lopsided ratio to the discussion. - Paul Buchheit
more interesting: what percentage of visitors to your blog use IE vs. FireFox? I recently checked analytics on one of my sites and it was 65% FF :-) - Andy Sternberg
it's good to see you have a sense of humor about it, even if everyone else takes it so seriously... - David Adewumi
I don't know, I'm seeing a lot of variation. My FF friends in academics seem to have just a handful of friends in FF and treat it as simple lifestreaming aggregation. Those in the tech industry are much more likely to have conversations here. - Clay Spinuzzi
Is it just a sign of no techie friends that no one I know is on FF or Twitter??? - S. Patrick Kaine
I wouldn't overlook the fact that Twitter broke a lot of new ground. I would bet 90%+ of your FF followers are also on twitter. - Scott Watermasysk
115 on Twitter, 23 on FF for me. Of course I have no idea how I got to 115 on Twitter and only an handful of them actually contribute anything. Of course, I'm also not anywhere close to having as many friends as you do (I don't even think I'm on the 'y-list' when it comes to bloggers). You know, I wonder what the ratio would be with "mutual" friends, ie: people you're subscribed to who have subscribed to you. - Adam C.
Does anyone use FriendFeed for any purpose other than discussing FriendFeed? At least Twitter conversations are about life. - William Beem
At some point the comment count within FriendFeed will surpass blog comment counts. - Ben Parr
It's not surprising that everyone's FF network is growing faster than their Twitter network did. When building your twitter network, you had to have some way for people to find you. When building your FF network, all you had to do was Tweet about it. Robert, how many FF followers do you get each time you Tweet, "I'm using FriendFeed a lot more now."? My guess is that most FF networks are a subset of twitter networks because that's how it's easiest for us to find each other. - Ryan Kuder
One data point does not make a trend. - Glen Campbell
Why is this always so difficult to understand? It's a non-Adobe site using their trademark. If they don't defend it and lose their trademark, we call them stupid. If they do defend it, we call them heavy-handed and "backwards. - Cyndy
Exactly, Cyndy. Just because this site happens to be mostly harmless to the trademark doesn't change trademark law. If another site comes up and harms the AIR trademark, they can use as precedent Adobe's inaction towards freshairapps.com to show that Adobe abandoned the trademark. - Mark Trapp
Companies are legally obligated to defend their trademarks or they lose them. It is not a matter of them being a bad guy. They have to actively defend it, they cannot allow anyone to use the name or else others will do it too and Adobe will lose the trademark/name.
This discussion happens over and over again. And I imagine it will continue, although it is a specious attempt at link baiting or just ignorance on part of the author.
You cannot use another trademark and then try the "I'm the undedog defense." - Bjorn Tipling
From what I read.. " Adobe AIR " is trademarked not " AIR " - Gary Bacon II
It's a vague bookmark/like type action for me as well. BTW, I misuse "Hide" and it's become my "mark as read" button. I try to follow a "FriendFeed Zero" philosophy. :-) I wish that "Like" flagged items would pop back up for me whenever anyone commented on them, even after I've read/hidden them. - Ken Sheppardson
Ken, I don't think you're misuing "hide". I often use it as a pseudo-"mark as read" too. - Harvey Simmons
Steve , if FF has a feature that permits users to define tags and use them. IT will be very powerful. I am think along the lines of Labels /Tags similar to Gmail .. - Peter Dawson
I use it to say I like it, but sometimes I use it to bookmark something I want to have easy access to later on. - David Cook
Is there a way to see things you've liked as a list? - Bjorn Tipling
Bjorn, you can click on "likes" on the right side of your FF home page and see the list. - Trish Robinson
actually for some reason i never noticed the hide or more buttons. I also use like as an indication that I liked something, or sometimes as a bookmark. Ken when others comment on things I have commented on they do pop back up on my list. or else I am dreaming... - Ruth Ferguson
There's also a greasemonkey script that allows you to mark something as "later". It's really useful, if you don't have time to read something now. You get a later tab to go back and check it out. Plus it adds a "like" to the post as well. - Jason Toney
I use Twitter to show what I think is interesting and it shows up here. yes FF has the following activities: creator, critic, collector, joiner, spectator. - Jeremiah Owyang
I'd just like to point out that you can't see past your last 300 likes. Make sure that that bug doesn't bite you :) - Yuvi
in persian FF we are using the like as a form of "link recommandation". - mhmazidi
I use "FriendFeed Read Later" (greasemonkey script) for that - Sarah Perez
@Sarah I haven't seen that one, linkage? - Aaron Myers
@ Steve Rubel: I did this too and later found another way: First I opened a private room. Now if I want to "save" something, I click on "More" (on the same line with "Like" and "Hide") and "Reshare this entry" to put the content into my private room. I write a small comment with tags. - Yves Oesch
I created my own private room to which I save links, either from inside FriendFeed or from the web at large. Generally links that I want to return to for blogging purposes. - Hutch Carpenter
very very interesting I'm thinking this the last week on a far deeper level - Matt Kaufman
I'm wondering if people don't undervalue what's so great about del.icio.us. Better than anyone else, the site (and Firefox add-on) still function beautifully as a personal, extremely useful map of the Web. I wonder if we tend to overvalue social media and undervalue the important work of information collection and fast personal reference. It's worth asking the question: could FriendFeed do what Del.icio.us does? My answer is no. - mrshl
oddly, I've never been a big Delicious user until I started using FF, so now I use it as a way to share things I find. It has undoubtedly though been damaged by Yahoo, where it has stagnated as others have innovated. The bigger question though: will Flickr share the same fate? - Duncan Riley
without question, never had a chance even if FriendFeed never was - Lou Paglia
They aren't the same thing and don't serve the same purpose IMHO. I love the two. - directeur via NoiseRiver
friendfeed is for explicit sharing, delicious is for myself, others can lookup if they are interested - Murali
seems like ff adds strong motivation to take action in services where you would not have in the past.. in order to bring the content back here. like every button in other social sites is now a ff share button - Travis Parsons
Murali - I agree, that's how I use ff and del.icio.us. I wonder if that's how most others do too...? - Sonciary Honnoll
Delicious is much more about explicit action. Take for instance their resistance to auto suggesting tags in the beginning. Where FriendFeed is more about capturing the actions you take about the web and consolidating them without any extra ongoing effort on the part of the user. - Caleb Elston
the "social" aspect of delicious is greatly enhanced through the use of friendfeed (or in my case in addition to another site like diggo as well). as is, delicious has a big barrier in trying to make those "connections" between users personal in any way. - Cee Bee
@Travis: That's a good point. I've found myself trying to keep a balance of services, so I use more than I usually would. And the good thing is that everything you do on those services comes back to FF - you share wherever you are. - Cyvros/fyc
Off topic, but picking up from Duncan Riley's comment re Flickr. Just in case Flickr dies a slow death, are there any real alternatives to it? - Paul Rees
friendfeed is very different from del.icio.us, here there are no tags and even if it did I would compare it to stumbleupon. Yet I don't use SU for bookmarking but rather for sharing so they're not in the same league - Dobromir Hadzhiev
ok Dugg, commented, dugg comments and made it a favorite, hope that helps. The recommendation engine looks cool I'm gonna have to spend a little time on Digg again - David Knight
Stories can still make it after 24 hours. The chances are very low though but it can happen. - Corvida
Dugg that this morning cuz it was so dang cool!! :-) - Susan Beebe
Oh man, I've managed to go all this time without having a digg account. Done. I guess it's for a good cause :) - Todd McKinney
Dugg, and I sent a shout to all the folks on Digg as well. - J. Phil
I was number 262. TweetDeck is getting rave reviews. - James
all i know is this, if we get him on digg, his server better handle it - otherwise im sending him the largest fail whale ever - Allen Stern
“does anyone know where the post from fred wilson is where he discusses startups getting acquired and basically become stagnant after that? i cant find it! thx”
Thanks Robert - I think it's newer than that. - Allen Stern
Bjorn you don't think that Youtube and Flickr have become stagnant after being acquired? Esp. flickr. - Allen Stern
Nah, they (Flickr) added video, and their photo management tools are great. They have decent desktop tools, and a great API. A lot of this happened after being acquired I imagine. - Bjorn Tipling
Youtube is constantly improving their viewer, and their api is pretty awesome also. - Bjorn Tipling
Allen, I read Fred religously and that's the only one I could come up with. From the post: "Except I am also a user of these services. I see what happens when a company gets purchased. The service languishes. The team leaves. It stops getting better. And often gets worse. And so even though I am happy to take the money, I am left wondering, frankly wishing, if there is a better way." - Robert Seidman
dangit - i need that link for a post im about to post - oh well - i will add it as soon as i find it or someone shoots it over - crap :) - Allen Stern
YouTube seems to be a classic example.. suddenly it looks dead. - Muthu Ramadoss
ok robert, i will use that link but im not sure its it but maybe it is it - thanks - Allen Stern
