 |
|
| FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more » |
Amisha › Likes
New Mahalo features: anyone can edit (even if not logged in) and anyone can create a new page (easily) - http://www.calacanis.com/2008...
Gavin, Mitchell Tsai, Loic Le Meur and 44 other people liked this
two new features... let me know what you think!
- Jason Calacanis
from Bookmarklet
is mahalo basically just a for profit wikipedia? Why would someone want to create a page there? What would be the motivation?
- Thomas Hawk
What makes this different from WIkipedia? This seems to make it virtually identical - unless the main feature is that you guys have the paid employees to verify research, and of course, the great Mahalo guide articles.
- Andru Edwards
Thomas: great question. a) we pay folks who are working for us if they want, b) there are folks with a vested interest in certain pages (i.e. you might care about Canon 5D page or the Thomas Hawk page), c) some folks like to contribute, d) Mahalo is creative commons, so some folks like to contribute to free content projects like Mahalo/wikipedia because it makes the world better, e) some folks hate to see error and get good feeling fixing them.
- Jason Calacanis
Andru: excellent question. Mahalo is VERY similar to wikipedia except: a) we have human curated search results with the wikipedia style page, b) we don't do 6,000 word articles we do 200-600 word summaries with fast facts, etc. basically we do scanable wikipedia pages which are more efficient, c) we cover non-encyclopedic information, wikipedia does not (i.e. we both have Paris, but only mahalo has Paris Hotels), d) we fact check our information, wikipedia does not.
- Jason Calacanis
Personally I think it might be better if only registered users could edit (with valid email addresses), to help prevent abuse, etc.
- Vincent X
Vincent X: we've had it setup that way for months now. it creates a massive hurdle for people getting involved so we're trying a more open system now.
- Jason Calacanis
Hey Jason, great answers. I someone didn't "get" the fact that you guys just have the quick summary as opposed to the huge pages that Wikipedia has sometimes. So even though both allow anyone to edit, and both can be research tools, there is a significant difference between the two.
- Andru Edwards
Andru Edwards: exactly... our pages are a) better Google/Yahoo result combined with a b) a better wikipedia page. So, we're taking the two best experiences on the planet (google & wikipedia), and putting them on the same page while making each 2x better. I think it's a compelling page to start your research on. Highly recommend going to the homepage an opening up the first couple of pages, then click on a couple of links in the guide note for each page. you'll see its a really cool experience for research.
- Jason Calacanis
Jason - Are you worried that this might open up Mahalo to being 'gamed' of a sort? I always liked the fact that Mahalo is people-powered, and helps prevent SEO, or 'gaming' of the system. I'm assuming this is the type of thing that eventually the community continues to fix? They will weed out the bad stuff, and leave the good stuff to filter up?
- Adam Hosp
I made a Thomas Hawk page but it feels confusing. http://www.mahalo.com/Thomas_... I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I don't know how to get my last name capitalized or to add more biographical information, etc.
- Thomas Hawk
Thomas Hawk: yes, it is a little confusing, just like making a wikipedia page is. we're trying to make it easier. You've done a great job so far... add some fast facts and a couple of more links and you've got a great start to a page!
- Jason Calacanis
how do I capitalize my last name?
- Thomas Hawk
Here's a great place to test the service. The FriendFeed page can use quite a bit of content additions, especially in the Tools area http://www.mahalo.com/FriendF...
- Mark Krynsky
Thomas: changing the name of a page is something only we can do... at least right now. we will fix it. Also, check out the additions i made to your page... i added a quote, your stated life goal, and put a citation on it with the <ref> tag
- Jason Calacanis
Wait - so I can just go in and create an Andru Edwards page on Mahalo, and that is okay? Unlike how that is against Wikipedia rules?
- Andru Edwards
Adam Hosp: i'm not worried at all because Mahalo has 60 full-time fact checkers.... anyone who tries to game the system will get caught really quickly.
- Jason Calacanis
hmm... ok, added a few more links as well. Can I upload a photo of me for my Thomas Hawk page?
- Thomas Hawk
This is the next step in what I've been saying since day 1 - that Mahalo would have to open up more and more to be able to compete - the question is whether people will actually want to do it. Thomas, once you create your page, it will push up very quickly to the top of google for your name - are you sure you are ok with that?
- Allen Stern
Thomas Hawk: we haven't given users the ability to add photos yet... that's coming.
- Jason Calacanis
Andru: just created it. http://www.mahalo.com/Andru_e... so, yes, anyone can create any page (within reason). and yes, you can edit your own page (but we will check it for bias of course).
- Jason Calacanis
I am not sure about adding a page but wish you'd clean up the front page a bit; Looks like old style. Consider feedly's look for a way to do the featured stories.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Cool, I'm now Thomas Hawk with a capital "H", thanks Jason. If they can add my profile photo this is the one that I like to use: http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Thomas Hawk
LPH: new homepage coming... i agree 100%!!!! thanks for feedback.
- Jason Calacanis
Sure, happy to have a page Allen, what's wrong with having it push to the top of Google? Why would someone not want that?
- Thomas Hawk
Candace Holly: actually, our "stub" pages are NOFOLLOW/NOINDEX on Google/Yahoo until they are really built out (i.e. 200-400 original words). So, yes these *might* be good for whitehat SEO for companies, but not in the short term.. only if they become pages of value... which we decide. We thought about that... good you did too! :-)
- Jason Calacanis
Do these payed people only check facts? Or do they actually help mahalo grow up (by adding new articles and more content on existing articles)?
- Marcos Marado
from fftogo
Question for Jason - After this dialog, what's your impression of FriendFeed?
- Charlie Anzman
Hi :-) Small question: Why are the login and sign up button hidden and require JavaScript to be visible?
- Horst Gutmann
Thomas Hawk: I just added your picture it should show up in a few minutes...
- C. K. Sample III
Thanks C.K. Looks good!
- Thomas Hawk
Horst: looking into it. Candace: we would love to have more people and companies participate and build their pages out in Mahalo. So, yes, it is a great idea for folks to do this (provided they are not hated... then that stuff might get put on your page! :-)
- Jason Calacanis
@Jason thank you :-)
- Horst Gutmann
I've just gotta say, the fact that you can create and edit your own page (or the page of your own business) is fantastic. They have people in place to heck for bias, but other than that, you are free to put yourself and your brand(s) on Mahalo? Nice. I know people who tried to correct misinformation on Wikipedia pages about themselves, only to be banned for doing so.
- Andru Edwards
How unreliable does Twitter have to get before people like me give up on it totally?
Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Craig Thomler, Adam and 46 other people liked this
Really, really, really unreliable.
- Mack D. Male
I have already left for Plurk. I use Feedtweeter to send all my Plurks to twitter.
- Jon
it isn't going to be a unreliable issue, it'll be a 'reliable other thing' (like friendfeed) issue. when you are certain that enough of 'the conversation' has moved away, and we can get away without twitter, we'll leave. i'm willing to wager it's already happening. the question i ponder is: can twitter regain its footing, or have they permanently lost it? i hope the money/team can make enough impact fast enough...
- Jeremy Toeman
Plurk will have problems soon, too. They're already showing.
- Hao Chen
The thing that bugs me is that it took some time to build an audience on Twitter. I don't want to give that up by hopping to another service. Although if everyone I Twittered with came over to FriendFeed, I'd jump. Right now it's about 33%
- Rafe Needleman
I hear you, Rafe. As it is right now, I'm using both FF and Twitter, but if they have another major outage, I think a bunch more people will switch. Still, because FF is promiscuous (it reads my Twitter feed) there's no loss to continue to use Twitter while it remains useful.
- David Sifry
from twhirl
In your case, I'm quite sure your audience will follow you wherever you go
- Bwana ☠
Rafe - same for me. I don't want to move to another app and rebuild my community. So, I guess i'll have to suffer through the Twitter growing pains.
- Jim Turner
FF is a much better place for conversations Rafe. I suspect that someone like you, a prominent tech journalist, would build up an audience here just as large as your audience at Twitter. For what it's worth I haven't been on FF all that long and I've got almost as many people following me here (2,797) as I've got following me at Twitter now (3,177). The audience is growing faster over here than there as well.
- Thomas Hawk
but you are thomas hawk. people follow you,
- excalipoor
Bwana & Thomas are right, it won't be a problem to get audience here, You might like it even more here
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Twitter is no where near dead yet. My personal theory is they didn't expect loads of people choosing to massive amounts of others. In the past week, I've had several people with absurd numbers of follows (one with 60k, one with 90k) - that's insane. Twitter has hired some top talent to address these issues and got new rounds of funding to assist. Personally I still love twitter and find it a different and useful complement to Friendfeed.
- Doug Brooks
I'm on it less than before, but use Twitter as a gateway to more reliable socnets like FriendFeed, where we can have longer discussions. The community on Twitter still merits having an account there. Can we be hopeful that now that they got another round of funding, they'll FINALLY find ways to make it more reliable?
- Cathryn Hrudicka
FriendFeed is certainly a very reliable Twitter client, I'm finding. It's nice to get everything that everybody's doing -- not just what they tweet -- inside a feed as well.
- Jared Smith
Twitter peaked during the early primaries, it was an incredible learning and connecting tool. It's not doing anything for me anymore. So have I moved on? Not exactly, because nothing has come along to replace it. FF is very different, and most of the people I connected with on Twitter aren't here. I've always said it's about the people. Nothing else.
- Dave Winer
Compared to mobile carriers and cable companies, Twitter does quite well. It's free and works most of the time. I'm sure things will get better given all the $$$ they've raised recently.
- Mike Reynolds
As long as it takes for FriendFeed to handle SMS posting.
- Rubin Sfadj
I am getting there.
- Steve Rubel
unreliable? I would say unpopular ;) I would leave twitter If I could follow ALL my friends and MORE interesting people in other place :)
- Lora Lufark
still on twitter. Not sure when I will move out.
- Thejesh GN
Excellent, a Twhinge (Twitter + whinge) thread! In all seriousness... I posted about this situation at Broadcasting Brain today. I am feeling fed up and having the Reply function on the Twitter Web app disabled doesn't help at all.
- Mark Dykeman
Until Plurk gets more users I'm sticking with Twitter.
- Oli from the-iBlog
from fftogo
excalipoor, but he is Rafe Needleman, an influential and popular online tech journalist. People will follow him wherever he goes as well.
- Thomas Hawk
Have you given it up? Me neither. That's 'cause we forget how much it sux when its working right.
- shelisrael1
There have been plenty of opportunities for people to move off Twitter to clones. Since it hasn't happened yet, primarily because it is hard to bring your community with you, I don't expect it to happen ever.
- Bob Ngu
Give up? I only just started
- Phil Whelan
How expensive does gas have to get before people like me give up driving cars totally? :-)
- Bassam Islam
from twhirl
Twitter indeed has its limitations. It is NOT a replacement for the fluidity of IRC, it is not viable as a live conference tool, at so many junctures it introduces latency, this is all before we touch upon its infrastructure, reliability, and ability to scale. Perhaps Bezos' infusion of cash will see to thoee last points
- David Blumenstein
from twhirl
For me the thing the twitter offers is the ability to sms info quickly to a bunch of people. Events like Siggraph twitting about the next events or the results of events as they happen to people at the shows. Imagine if the SF Giants twittered player info at their games or things like that. I do agree that it's horrible for conversation, but one-way info is a perfect use for it.
- Doug Brooks
i will never give up on you rafe
- Allen Stern
Fortunately it's not too hard for me to move over here. Most of my (and yours, I'd argue) followers on Twitter are ghosts (long gone) or following for reasons other than shear interest. Twitter is still useful for ephemeral exchanges and generally telling the world how undercaffeinated I am. But for interesting links/thoughts and level of conversation this is where I'm now planting my flag.
- Jim Stanger
totally agree with Jim Stanger
- Giovanni De Stefano
I like FriendFeed more every day. But I miss Twitter.
- Rafe Needleman
I don't rely on it for communication. To me it's like graffiti on a wall. I'll keep reading it, but if they repaint the wall, c'est la vie.
- Patrick Beard
As long as there is a backup, like FriendFeed, I think Twitter can go out regularly... for me, this works. For all the good Twitter-based projects or business models, Twitter is running out of charm....
- shanebe
5 days continuous ... maybe. People have built huge followings. They're not abandoning them.
- Charlie Anzman
New money and new people coming in to Twitter. Users have been through all of this and stayed so far...they will wait it out. Twitter will and must fix the architecture once and for all and conclude on a viable business model and be off to the races. I'm as sick of the flying whale as anyone else but inexplicably I haven't left...and I don't think I will.
- Paul Marshall
Once the A-listers leave Twitter, it's over.
- Dossy Shiobara
We're all getting tired of the hit/miss feature set and repeated, unplanned downtimes. Twitter management of their app is beyond weak, it's moved over to an untenable business and is completely unreliable at this point. I do think they are taking active steps to rectify the instability of their current app / db environments, but it may be too little, too late.
- Susan Beebe
you lot have very short memories - ebay, amazon, google, world of Warcraft all had issues when they hit viral explosive growth - icq,hotmail - I could go on and on. The fact that there is this much heat about it shows that it will get through the hurdles and move on.
- Ed Dale
a full week downtime 24/7
- Chris Harris
It's unreliable? Seems to break down often enough to be broken down reliably.
- Jim Turner
how unreliable is unreliable is the real question
- Loic Le Meur
Having been around the internet block a number of times...crap happens to the best of them at the worst of times
- Renee Hendricks
Other ways to read this feed:
