Anant Shiva › Likes

yea, very misleading, must be counting those page hits. - Rodzilla

Wait a second - I didn't say *ANYTHING* about downloading it, nor did I say anything about a release. - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

You also didn't go out of your way to make it obvious that it WASN'T those things. - Shawn Farner

My god, it's not like I titled the post: "Cow Gives Birth to Human" or something. THAT would have been misleading. - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

It's coming together nicely: http://groups.google.com/group... - Dimitri Glazkov

Not really. Dude. Why is the address bar font 48pt? ;) - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

You gettin' one of these for me for my birthday, Derrick? - Tinfoil 2.0

Yummy yummy - Håkan Dahlström

*shakes piggy bank* Unlikely, Logical. But you know I would if I could, bud. - Derrick

Who in the world brings a 28mm on safari!??? - Kevin Fox

I miss the retro 35mm film knob :) - Markus Merz

HOT - Mona Nomura

Does anyone else vaguely remember the weird proprietary Kodak "Disk" analogue cameras and films? - Tyson Key

Thanks Kate - Russellreno

Kate, nice idea! I'll give that a try. - Richard Crocker

Richard, if that doesn't work for you, set up a FeedBurner feed of your FF feeds you want in Evernote, set them up for email subscription and subscribe with your Evernote email address. That's what I do. Works pretty well. - Lindsay

Brilliant Lindsay, thanks! - Richard Crocker

works great, but is there any way to get my FF Likes to go into a special Notebook set up for itself? - Anant Shiva

Unfortunately there's not much control over mail postings, Anant. I tag mine, so I set up a saved search to show me all the posts that don't have tags on them (usually mail because I tag everything I put in EN manually). Then it's just a quick process to select them and drag the tags I want on them or right click and add tags from the context menu. You could just drag them in a notebook. - Lindsay

Thanks for the tip. Trying it out now. :-) - Mathew A. Koeneker

How do you define a search for items not tagged? - Mathew A. Koeneker

Enter -tag:* in the search box. - Kate O'Neill

totally the best cupcake ever!!!!! - Morgan

That cupcake looks awesome! But I have a suspicion that the fur is made from coconut, which means I no can has :( - Joe "The Enforcer" Pierce

I. WANT. COOOOOKKEEEYYS! - Andrew Trinh

romp chomp chomp chomp! - Morgan

YES! That's awesome! - Carmen

Well done - Bob Gannon

That's really, really cool. - Christian (Simply X)

A "Cookie Monster"' is a sometimes food. - Joe "The Enforcer" Pierce

Wow that's creative and so cute! - BEX

i couldnt eat it.... I'd display it in a glass box. :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Too funny :D - Neya

Awesome!! very cute idea!! yummy - Susan Beebe

That's awesome-nom-nom - imabonehead

I love the keyboard purse! - Sunny

I get a download, but im on a Mac :) - Simon Wicks

Try it again, Ian - especially the FriendFeed search one. It's just for Windows 7 users. Should work fine. - Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ

sweet for windows users, but I am on mac. :) - TheHenry

Most overnight successes take an Alaskan winter. - Akiva

Great post, Paul. One of the running themes of a lot of the posts yesterday seemed to come from "well, it's been a year: FriendFeed should be in a much different place," but great things take time to do. - Mark Trapp

Scott Berkun wrote a really fine book entitled "the myths of innovaiton" (http://www.amazon.com/Myths-I...). He points out that perhaps the greatest myth of innovation is that the innovation arrives in it's entirety in a single moment in time. Essentially that the innovation was a single flash of insight and execution. The reality is it comes piecemeal over time. - Brian Roy

Nice Paul, there are a whole boatload of startup / project myths I wish we could bust. The "overnight success" is one of the worst. - mikepk

Brain, exactly, and the myth there is the "one idea" that precipitates success drives me crazy too. I wrote a post (and reposted it a few months ago) about this one. http://mikepk.com/2008... - mikepk

Amen!! Peeps tend to see "web celebs," for example, once they're up there ... but no one sees the *years* of hard work prior! I like to say I'm an overnight success 10 years in the making!! :) - Mari Smith

Another interesting effect is that the VC cycle is predicated on hyper growth and 2 to 5 year return on investment. That helps push some ideas to failure even though, if given a more natural growth curve, they might have succeeded. - mikepk

+1 Mikepk - VC funding creates a hyper-focus on geometric growth instead of creating a sustainable company... Those two are NOT the same thing. - Brian Roy

Hyper-growth is dangerous because it forces a lot of short term moves, such as hiring the wrong people because you need them _now_. I suspect that better companies come out of busts than booms because they are able to grow at a reasonable pace. - Paul Buchheit

Epitome of why I love, trust, and believe in FriendFeed. Classy, Paul and thank you for sharing with the community. - Mona Nomura

Tell me about it. I got the arrows in my back to prove it. :-) - Dave Winer

Nice summary, Paul. As I mentioned in a comment on the post, it's clear you understand we care, and that we didn't intend to open the door for those clamoring for you to fail - but it was a natural result. - Louis Gray

"Once we launched, the response was surprisingly positive, except from the people who hated it for a variety of reasons. " - Clare Dibble

@Paul - "Yes, technically you're doing my work for me, but it's mutually beneficial because we'll do our best to create a product that you like". Was this supposed to be an indirect response to Dave W asking you to pay him consulting for his ideas? - kartik vaithyanathan

Paul Buchheit +1 - Duncan Riley

So true. People think that from registering a domain to becoming a millonaire takes 1 idea and a couple of months. It took our company 10-years to do something "successful". - Martin Añazco

Been around this block a few times myself Paul. There is a pheneomenon out there around second ventures after the first was a winner. Let's have a talk about this over a beer after the outcome of FF is known. And also, I wouldn't necessarily count on the experience of selling a "product" inside a juggernaut like Google as being the same thing as making something work in the blogosphere or where ever it is FF is supposed to be planted. - Dave Winer

One more thing -- you're a very good writer -- but there's something else that isn't in your post. The odds against all startups are overwhelmingly against them. Ask Ev about Odeo someday. Your post is remarkably like the things he was writing about that product. And like the stuff I was saying after my company's IPO and was starting my second company. Unfortunately this was before blogs, so you'll have to take my word for it. I didn't really consider the possibility of failure. And of course we did fail. - Dave Winer

at least 24 hrs... ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Great post Paul. Too many companies (see Webvan and slew of others) thought rapid growth was enough. But good businesses grow slowly, even on the Internet. - AJ Kohn

Nice post and great perspective. Nice position to be able to compare your own gmail experience to your FF experience. - Vernonkell

Here's Joel Spolsky talking about the same thing: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/article... - Piaw Na

The comments on your blog are awesome, e.g. "Gmail would be a lot better if it allowed registration of usernames < 6 characters wide." Proposed reply, "Oh, you can, but every single one has already been taken" - j1m

I commented in the post, but I saw a comment in FriendFeed that noted how another well-known service had a well-executed marketing introduction, followed by rapid growth, followed by severe technical failures. Not to imply that one growth model is always right and another one is always wrong (plus, that company solved its technical issues). - Ontario Emperor from fftogo

Paul, keep up the good fight to properly manage FF for optimal growth, scalability and integration of features. Rushed products typically fail. However, a healthy burn rate is good too. Release timely updates in response to user demand. There are some important UIX features that should be released soon as users are clamoring for ease of use features and FF could risk losing more users if these basic UI features are not implemented within a reasonable amount of time. Good Luck! :) - Susan Beebe

I commented over at the post. Really nice entry, with great perspective. - Martha

Paul: I've read this post three times and it's a work of art. Thank you and thank you for creating a service that has addicted me for almost a year now. - Robert Scoble

Not to one up Scoble, but it's the service itself that is the work of art. - Jim the Blatant

i appreciate this blended perspective. today i am dealing with the often elusive "balancing" objective, i.e., what is an acceptable pace towards those "goals posts", while honoring the organic nature of the quest! - Gregg

+2 Paul - Varun Mahajan

Paul, FriendFeed just rocks... It's already great today... - Aad 't Hart

Nice stuff.... some great comments etc.. thanks to mona for pointing me to it. :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Paul's piece got reprinted at All Things D. Nice exposure: http://voices.allthingsd.com/2009010... - Louis Gray

Paul, I think FriendFeed is the best thing that I saw in 2008 on the web. It is still rough and needs to figure out how to best reel in the casual user, but there is so much promise in this service. The core of it is so powerful really and you guys are months if not years ahead of anyone else working in this area right now. Good luck to you and your team! - Thomas Hawk