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50% of US engineering students drop out - Why? - http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_nex...

November 12, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

ashish, Michael R. Bernstein, Zahra HB and 35 other people liked this

I am part of the 50% who don't drop out! - Kevin Mohr

I didn't drop out but here is part of my experience in this post from years ago. It was discouraging to hear the professors talk. Needless to say i don't code. :-) http://www.altamirano.org/marketi... - Antonio Altamirano

Thankfully I'm in the other 50%, but I can see why many would change their major or drop out. I saw it first hand where many 1st and 2nd year Mechanical Engineering students changed their majors to something 'easier'. The most common reason was difficulty with the required advanced Math courses. Calculus being the road block for many. - Jeff P. Henderson

If I were entering college now, I would try to go to Olin. I really like their approach. - Paul Buchheit

nice post, I'm looking for the number of engineers (or per thousand capita ratio) graduating in Greece (or greeks graduating around the world) - George Tziralis

Many of Computer Science professors at Stanford were luminaries in their fields, but weren't very good at engaging students in the subject matter. Brilliant researchers don't always make the best teachers. I think this contributed a lot to the dropout rate. - Jess Lee

How does this compare to drop-out rate for all US college students? And does "drop out" mean "of college entirely" or "take a break then come back" or "and choose another major"? The discussion may be lusty but I really don't like discussions that start on a figure w/ no bother to compare it to anything else, or link to info about how it's calculated. - Wade Dorrell

In CA we have two types of public universities. The UC schools require the professors to do research, where as the State University schools do not. I think the State University schools are much better for undergrad tech education as you get much more attention from your professors. - Jeff P. Henderson

The UC Berkeley College of Engineering started the Center For Entrepreneurship and Technology http://cet.berkeley.edu to address some of the issues Dodge talks about. - Ruchira S. Datta

Engineering is hard and requires above-average intelligence. Think about it this way: Statistics tells us that probably 50% of people will be below-average. Wouldn't you want those 50% of the students to drop out before actually becoming an engineer? MIT just doesn't admit that half of the population in the first place, but most schools don't have that luxury. - Gabe

People have a lot of options for (a) careers (b) money (c) power (d) image (e) attracting mates in the US, compared to China/India. Engineers are not valued very highly in the US compared to businesspeople, doctors, and lawyers. - Mitchell Tsai

@Gabe: You would think that all the people that go to study Computer Sciences or seek other Engineering degrees are above the 50% average to begin with. - Amit Morson

somestimes it's a scoail or maturity thing - was for me. I get by. Wished I finished. - Alan Wilensky from Alert Thingy

It's because of the fact that people with higher standards of living pursue less demanding challenges offering similar ROI (I = investment+involvement). That's why there's so many non-US students (especially from lower income countries) in engineering and why they're much less inclined to fail. - Nenad Nikolic from twhirl

Engineering sucks. I think there's a point where any engineering student realizes that even with a degree they're looking at a pretty mediocre salary working in a really boring job. Add this to the difficult coursework and boring courses, well, engineers are good at math. It adds up to being a raw deal. That being said, if you get into engineering at Stanford or UC Berkley, your ROI would look a lot better then mine. I'm sure a large number of engineering students consider dropping out, even after Calculus. - Will Higgins™

All I can do is nod. For a couple of years, not a day when by when I didn't consider jumping ship, for all the reasons commenters here have mentioned: long hours, heavy workload, fickle job market, salary barely comparable with what I could expect with a business or law degree. But here I am, a month away from (finally!) finishing my EE degree, and I couldn't be happier. - Derrick Burns

Continued from above: Basically, I think so many give up because they were looking to get something out of being an engineer: money, prestige, etc. But it's simply too great a commitment on several levels. You really have to pursue engineering because it's something you want to do, something you care about. - Derrick Burns

I dropped out because Chemical Engineering was not what I was expecting. I wanted more Chemistry, less Math. I switched to IT Management and found it much more interesting. Mind you, I'm Canadian. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I remember having a crisis in my final year of Electrical/Computer Engineering. Dropping out was a non-option, but I did consider completely abandoning 3.5 years of engineering study to switch fields and schools during my senior year. In hindsight, I didn't understand what engineers really did. My vision at the time was closer to industrial or product design than engineering. I had to take it on faith in my first two years that I was on a path to do what I was envisioning. - Kelly Norton

I suspect that more than 50% (even at good schools like GATech, I have friends who have done this) are in the wrong field. Many of my friends went into programming because they enjoyed computers and I've told them they would hate it because they don't like math. They don't listen. :) - mjc

still others go into engineering due to parental expectation, which I find ridiculous, but understandable - mjc

Amit: one of the properties of being in the lower 50% is not knowing that you're in the lower 50%. That means many of the applicants do not know they are unqualified. - Gabe

Extensive aptitude/personality testing could fix this - Aaron Eaton

Engineering is a tough subject. how does that compare to other subjects? - John Cass from twhirl

I actually sit on an advisory board for ASU (arizona state) Poly - I can tell you that what I see is students becoming disillusioned by all the stuff they have to learn before they can go out and create something "cool". The challenge is keeping them engaged through the pre-reqs/early coursework. BTW - IMHO the problem with "drop out and learn X" is that they've intentionally skipped the fundamentals that make good engineers. Just because you can code doesn't mean you can engineer... two different things. - Brian Roy

Is Computer Science part of engineering? Because it didn't take much training in Computer Science for me to start doing cool stuff. I wrote my first game and posted it onto the internet my freshman year (Core Wars). By my Junior year, I had designed a programming language and integrated in it into a MUD. Pengtoh had contributed to Linux by his sophomore year. On the other hand, I always flunked electrical engineering classes, and couldn't stomach math past linear algebra. - Piaw Na

I switch from Engineering to a Computer Science degree. Apart from the fact that I wanted to program, there were two reasons. 1) The load was very high (it was close to 40 contact hours/week in first year). 2) The maths was hard - I'm ok at math, but combined with the high load I found I struggled when I wasn't too interested in it. - Nick Lothian

"the US should staple a Green Card to every foreign student's engineering diploma and encourage them to stay in the USA." - Clare Dibble

Same as Nick here. Dropped out due to difficulty and lack of passion for the field. Went back later to finish a BS in Computer Information Systems. - Bill Sanders

I wonder what percentage of medical school students drop out. Engineering is a hard discipline, if you want to be a web dev or a study IT or "new media" instead. Making engineering "softer" because today's students don't like to work hard and expect results instantly will just create generations of mediocre engineers and will not make the US more of an engineering power. - Kevin Goldsmith from twhirl

engineers are boring and dry, pay is low, classes are full of non-social ppl. (and almost no girls). Why not study finance, or something, girls and pay is much better. - imran

Engineering is fun! The big thing is that school's curriculums are frequently irrelevant. For instance, a lot of CS majors require irrelevant Math or Physics not because it's a requirement to do good software (they aren't), but because those classes serve as weeders. The result is, for instance, we get lots of CS majors who can't communicate or string a sentence together. If we rearranged the CS major so that we didn't impose a stupid requirement, we'd get a bigger diversity of candidates and less dropout. - Piaw Na

Engineering is the best!!!! and for those who says it sucks or that the pay is not good (or that we are boring and dry), its probably because you are in that 50% of retards that dropped out of it. No other profession gets paid as much as an engineer right after graduation, and there is usually more demand for engineers than for anything else. I just think people are too lazy to even try anymore. I dont know why, even graduate school is fun in engineering. Aerospace is the best!!!!! - Mike hawk

life in a conceptual box is the result .. content with that, you will stay with it .. not content, universes open up - Gregory Lent

life in a conceptual box? do you even know what you are saying? universes open up when you quit engineering? If only you were to see the world through the eyes of en engineer, we see everything from several different perspectives, not just that of people like you. If anything, engineering has really opened up the world for me as it really is. Stop making those type of remarks. Instead get back to engineering school so you can see what it feels like. - Mike hawk

I think I know the boxes Gregory is talking about from some of his other comments. Whether you've gone to engineering school is orthogonal to whether you can get outside of them. So it's pretty much irrelevant to this thread. - Ruchira S. Datta

I dropped out the day I learned it had nothing to do with driving a train. Now I'm stuck with this silly hat and overalls :( - Christopher Harley

At least, those 50% tried. - ashish

I bet you the pre-med numbers are similar, but I'm not sure universities necessarily track undergrads who aspire to go to med school. In general, how many freshmen actually stick with the major they pick when they start college? - Victor Ganata

Louis Gray

If You Think RSS is Dead Then That’s Your Loss and It’s a Big One - http://marshallk.com/if-you-...

August 25 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Barak Hachamov, Sasha Kovaliov(.com) and 9 other people liked this

I'm with him on that one... also getting tired of the "bla is dead" line - wish people would find another cliche to bait linking... It's a protocol, it was never alive in the first place, and it wont die either - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

4 more comments

spot on - Symon Muchina Thuo

I don't agree with those who roll RSS out.. it wont and it isn't and it is here to stay for a long time to come. Perhaps it's not as important but it still has its value - Sardar Mohkim Khan

Didn't Atom pretty much kill RSS? - Raphael, Raphael

nope - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

I think it's inappropriate to distinguish RSS and Atom. It's just different standards. Right? - Sasha Kovaliov(.com)

Anna Haro

HIV-Positive Children Shunned From Vietnam School - TIME - http://www.time.com/time...

August 25 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Carlos Ayala, ·[▪_▪]·, Darren Heydon and 10 other people liked this

"When classes opened across Vietnam on August 17, few students were as excited — or as nervous — as a group of 15 HIV-positive children who had finally been given permission to attend school. For the past two years, the Ho Chi Minh City orphanage where they live had been lobbying to enroll them in a public primary school. Now that the day had arrived, the children were so excited that many were up before the sun, already dressed in the new clothes the nuns had bought for the special occasion. The school day, however, ended in tears. In fact, it never really began." - Anna Haro from Bookmarklet

5 more comments

"When the orphans arrived at the gates of An Nhon Dong Elementary School, parents who had been informed ahead of time about the new arrivals grabbed their children and fled. As word spread through the neighborhood, more parents hurried to the school to get their children. As the orphans waited together on the playground to learn if they would be allowed inside, several adults loudly let... more... - Anna Haro

"The younger ones, says Sister Nguyen Thi Bao, who had walked the children ranging from ages 6 to 15 to school, were too little too understand. But the older ones knew all too well the reason for the comments and the stares. "They drove us away," one of the children later said. "They hate us. We got the disease from our parents. It's not our fault." With the school balking and... more... - Anna Haro

In the words of Great Sir Calvin: "I wonder if you can refuse to inherit this world." <hangs head> <walks away> - Parth Awasthi

Would be nice if you _could_ refuse to inherit it ... but then again why not improve what you have inherited :) - Bhowmik Shah

So sad for those kids. - Anne Bouey

Doesn't seem like a good idea to have the Roman Catholic Church running a HIV/ADIS hospice for children. These kids really don't need to learn about "the evil of contraception". - Eivind

Atul Arora

What Michael Birch Did after Selling Bebo and How He Thinks You Should Celebrate Your Birthday - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

August 26 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

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Mihalcea Razvan

UK Proposes Cutting Web Access for File Sharers - http://www.pcmag.com/article...

August 26 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

Antonio Altamirano liked this

Kevin Fox

Cultural differences between the US and the UK

May 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Tanath, Anthony Citrano, Daniel Rowley and 343 other people liked this

The Top Paid App in the Singapore store is Airport Mania: First Flight. - Kishore Balakrishnan

40 more comments

Is there a site that lists "top apps" from various/all countries ? - Kishore Balakrishnan

Classic... - Rob Kramer

so telling... - Brian Appleby

That says it all - Darrell Bell

So when are they going to release an app for "Ow! My balls!" - April Buchheit

@April... +100 - Harold from fftogo

+++April - Kamilah Gill

Is the UK bestseller just a re-packaging of CIA world factbook? Or is there more to it? - Hiro Asari

You see, we gotta test for moron's the UK teaches them - Ryan Gerritsen

It's actually the same app, just different marketing. Yes? - Mike Beck

What does "we gotta test for moron's the UK teaches them" mean? - Gabe

Our beer-drinking football-hooligan contingent are still saving up for their iPhones. - Tim Tyler

World Cup Ping Pong here in France, don't know what that means ?! - Benoit Cazenave

"Zoom in / Camera zoom" : the Top Paid App in Switzerland - tomavana

I'd suggest that in *paying* for an app called "The Moron Test" you've already passed it. - thepete

thepete: passed or failed? - Gabe

that was really great kevin :) - Alp

Is there anything else interesting about the rest of the list? - David Chartier from BuddyFeed

Hilarious! - Vera Hannaford

crushingly depressing. ugh. - daisy

as a dual national US/UK, I can safely say I'm glad to live here. - Spotcher from twhirl

World cup ping pong is the top paid app in Italy too. And even top free app. What's the point with that? - ialla

Hehe - WorldofHiglet

Excellent catch! :) - Ozkan Altuner

The engineer in me is irritated by the simple apps make it to the top of the AppStore; the artist in me is delighted :) - Ian

sad, but funny - Rick Cogley

Proud to be an American! LOL - Susan Beebe

That says a lot. - Chuck Adams

Yes, it does say a lot. =) - Zed Darkman

Don't need no stinkin' facts... - Kevin Pedraja

But it's got a red button! - Brian Bufalo

One thing I have noticed is that in any ovie, v show, etc where anything odd happens, the English are always portrayed as standing in place saying something like "This can't be happening" or some stupid thing like that, when it clearly IS happening. Is this some sort of national trait? I like to think that if, say, the dead rise and turn on the living, I would fight back + run to safety FIRST and worry about the ontological implications after. - Neal Jansons

Here Neal, you dropped an "m" and a "t" :) - Richard pancakhaus Walker

well, it's almost a month later but anyway in Canada the top three are currently Sims 3, StoneLoops and StickWars - Richard Akerman

wavesand liked this.... - 拓 | wavesand from email

Laugh, sure. But your pounds sterling end up in a California bank account. ;-) - Chris Baskind

My cousin dl'ed the Moron Test and tried to get me to take it. I told him he'd already failed because he was a moron for buying it in the first place. He was unamused. I wasn't. - tinypants - Hagitha of FF

Lol Amanda - AJ Batac

To be fair, he's kind of a tool, so it's less a reflection of the app and more a reflection of how much I want to throw him off the nearest high-rise. - tinypants - Hagitha of FF

I notice that the U.S. is no longer a nation of morons -- for the last few days, "The Sims 3" is #1, so we're now a nation of replicants. - Stephen Mack

got this after my first intelligent use of ff filtered search. populist USA likes to feign ignorance and UK likes to superficial awareness - Lane Rapp

maggie fox

@iTangelo now I feel pressured to be clever. Warning that my Twitter stream is absurdly trivial. 100% slipshod and trivial, if you must know

March 31 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Antonio Altamirano liked this

Louis Gray

Early Adopters and Finding "The Next Shiny Object" - http://www.louisgray.com/live...

May 17 from louisgray.com - Comment - Like - Share

Jannifer @wordsforliving, Bruce Lewis, Kol Tregaskes and 12 other people liked this

Atul Arora

Get Ready For Real Time Digg, Whatever That Means - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

May 17 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Antonio Altamirano liked this

Dave Winer

FriendFeed is a feed reader. Yes or no?

May 13 - Comment - Like - Share

Mitchell Tsai, Peter Efland, Steve Chou and 111 other people liked this

Yes, with filters, friends, likes and stuff - Charbax

173 more comments

yes, I think that is what it is. - Cat West

No, can't read full text for blog-length items. - Bruce Lewis

Yes. I'd have to say it is a feed aggregator...it pulls in feeds from Google Reader, Twitter, Disqus, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, etc. - Kenneth

But why can't we just import our OPML or sinle RSS feeds somewhere into FriendFeed without having to dump those feeds one by one in groups, that doesn't make sense - Charbax

no. can't simply mark items as read, subscription is not a simple one click operation - James Beake

It is pretty remarkable that after all this time FF still can't import/export subscription lists. - Dave Winer

FriendFeed should somehow automatically group feed items so I don't get bombarded by 100 people all retweeting, liking and commenting the same things.. It should basically create a techmeme of feed items on-the-fly - Charbax

yes - Amber, Random Time Lord

Wow delete much Dave? - Bill Heslin

in a non-rss kind of way it's a feed breeder -- aggregates feeds and conversation and distributes back out also - Adrian Chan

No, because it doesn't read feeds, it just posts headlines. - Louis Gray

No, I need full-text feeds. Headlines don't count. - Alex Scrivener

yes - Wayne Sutton

it is a feed reader and a lot more. its ability to function as a feed reader is probly one of its weakest functions. (so far) one of its strongest functions is to start discussions which are so damn easy and efficient that i can see ppl giving up on blogging and sticking to friendfeed. - Freddie Benjamin

yes. it has a summary of the posts it aggregates. err yeah - Alfredo

No, FriendFeed is not a feed reader - Bill

I prefer Google Reader, because it's easier to privately star stuff in GReader than it is to reshare stuff to a private FriendFeed room. Plus you can mark items as read. I actually view http://friendfeed.com/lastfmf... via Google Reader rather than FriendFeed. - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

Nope. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Can I read feeds in FriendFeed - yes. Does that mean it is a feed reader - no. The question is to fraught with subjectivity in the end. But if you forced me to say what it is - it's a data aggregator and transformation platform. - AJ Kohn

Sure, like a search engine is a feed reader. - Daniel Dulitz

Nope - no way. - Julie

Imaginary Friend makes it so - Bryan R. Adams

Yes, for some types of feeds. I.e. anything not requiring much in the way of item payloads. - Kevin Johnson

FriendFeed is def a feed reader. I prefer it to Google Reader. - Shawn Hickman

FF is Live Feed Reader - Nitin Nanivadekar

It is not now ... but getting dangerously closer ... - Amani

FF is a social network, a chat apparatus, a communication device, AND a feed reader. - Helen Sventitsky

it is for me now. Pushed all my twitter news, rss news to a select room i created. Allows me to see real time info - Fake Elmo

I read feeds on friendfeed - BEX

yes - sean percival

no - Matthew

It depends. FriendFeed is whatever you make of it. If you import RSS feeds, then FriendFeed will be an aspect of a feed reader. - imabonehead

FriendFeed and Twitter - the best tech space. - Igor Poltavskiy

Nope, but it's a Social Feed Reader. You read items sourced and recommended (= posted) by your friends. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Yes - Justin Yost

s/is/can be used as/ -- Yes. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Since you can only read headlines and not full posts, I wouldn't call FF an RSS reader just yet. - Chris Rossini from BuddyFeed

I would call Friend Feed and twitter "feed discovery engines" and "content discussion facilitators" rather than feed readers. I still use Google Reader -- too much in depth content and other things that I can't really get from FF. - Travis B. Hartwell

Yes in some sense - Håkan Dahlström

indeed - americanm

Isn't FriendFeed a feed aggregator? - Chris Heath

It is, if you actually read the feeds. - Vijayendra (V-Mo) Mohanty

yep! - Jay

Just as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are turtles. - Parth Awasthi

Yes, it is. But that's just the beginning. - Mark Evans

No, I would say FF is a feed streamer, not reader. (and a mediocre aggregator) - William Mougayar

So if it's an aggregator of feeds, how is it a feed reader? Just to be clear, my answer to Dave's question is: No, ff is not a feed reader. - Chris Heath

Social Feed Aggregation* - Chris Heath

* see site for details, some restrictions apply - Chris Heath

+1 for no because it doesn't grab content, only headlines. - Brett Kelly

thoughts' reader:) - Igor Poltavskiy

Out of roughly 50 responses: 53% YES, FF is a feed reader, 31% NO, 16% didn't exactly answer the question. - Mark Evans

I've been debating whether Twitter is replacing Google Reader and/or Techmeme. Friendfeed definitely could be one too. - Mario Sundar

Not a feed reader for text posts (blogs). Feed reader for everything else. - Mohamed J

better one than twitter, but NO - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Better than twitter but it's not a full replacement, either - Michael Fidler

Yes. Once FriendFeed decides to turn on something like what Twitter just destroyed (replies) it would be even better - Antonio Altamirano

A feedreader, no! There is no way anyone can read multiple blogs and communicate at the same time in the real-time realm - Joe Dawson

Similar aspects I suppose but RSS is just available, whereas FriendFeed is something like SRSS - Syndicated RSS. Or maybe CRSS - consolidated RSS. - Rick Cogley

No - Chris Nixon from BuddyFeed

No. - Damond Nollan

I used to subscribe to my friends RSS feeds using Google Reader, but quit when FF came about because they were so hard to keep up with and not everything had an RSS feed. I guess that makes it a feed reader, so yes. - Jesse Hattabaugh

Yep, but not as good as Google Reader... yet. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

No. FriendFeed is for Friends. Feeds are not friends. Though, I would love to use FriendFeed for feeds also - if only it was easy to separate people I follow and blogs (non-personalized) I read. - Ihar Mahaniok

No it's not... you cannot read full posts there. - Bhavesh

No. Friendfeed was not intentended to be feed reader. Although I use this room as my second feed reader http://friendfeed.com/mix-room - arjo

No. You have to leave the site to read. It would be nice if Google Reader live updated like FF or the option to view the full post in FF existed. - Peter Warnock

No, it lacks some of the key features needed in a feed reader but has other features that make it a different thing altogether - M F

No, you have to leave FriendFeed to see the article. - Mike Roberts

No, it's a social network. I talk to people on FriendFeed, I don't read blogs. - Larry Hudson

No. - teh Dork Knight aka Kenny

No. - dkb

The answer is either: no, not at all. Or yes, but it is a very limited one that is very unlimited in terms of others' voices. - C. K. Sample III

To a point it is. - Adam Martin

It's a real-time chat room. - William Mougayar

FF is not your father's feed reader. It is a new gen user sweatshop producing metadata for its own search engine and maybe track equivalent. - Mindaugas Dagys

Yes. - Vincent Wright

It certainly depends on how you use readers. FriendFeed isn't going to do everything I use Google Reader for. That being said, FriendFeed would probably work better for many of feeds I actually subscribe to. - Camden

a more customizable feed reader - feed reader to a lifestream - Elizabeth Koh

yepper! - Susan Beebe

it was - Alessandro Lanni

Yes, *but* (and this is a big one), it does not provide enough facility to serve as a non-realtime reader. I cannot pick up where I left off on a feed or know what I read or didn't read. It lacks the controls to be effective in that space which, I think, is a critical feature of a feed reader. - Kevin Kuphal

no - Marcel Janus from twhirl

Read feeds on Friendfeed Don't make Friendfeed a feed reader. - CantorJF

no, I can't track what I've read and what I haven't. - You.

I think its more of a meta-feed reader in a microscale. It picks up on the feeds of others, who in turn are reading the news rss feeds, thus meta. It's also on a microscale because, as mentioned before it's not real time, it's only the headlines with no descriptions and it still connects to the echo chamber as opposed to outside world. - Shane Tilton

Well, compare this http://ff.im/2RXFH to this http://is.gd/zO1f . The question should be, how good is FreindFeed as a Feed Reader? It's bringing more value to the use of RSS feeds; more than just presenting them, regardless of each item being full post or just headline. - zeroinfluencer

Dave, Could FriendFeed be a good email client? - zeroinfluencer

FriendFeed is a task list. Yes or no? - You.

FF is my magazine for browsing. I'm not catching up on FF posts like I do in Google Reader. I check the front page of FF, drop some comments, and then move on while it stays open in another tab. - Joel Zehring

No, but that doesn't make it inferior. It's a wholly different animal. - Daniel Miessler

(Of 94): Y:16 | N:27 | (?):51 - answers on this thread so far (based on this script: http://wittman.org/project... ) - Micah Wittman

Not necessarily. If all my RSS subscriptions were in Friendfeed, it would move way too fast. RSS is something I can still take at my own pace. Which is why I don't think it's dead, like some people would say. - Robert de Castro from twhirl

Nope, not for me. - Adnan

It's an improved feed reader. - Diego Espinoza V.

No way. Nothing beats a good google reader/postrank/feedly combo. Oh, unless google's servers are not responding like today, in which case friendfeed might be a nice backup. - Mike Elliott

I'd say no, because it's the conversations that seem to have more draw / weight than the content (like a slashdot). It's a fuzzy line though, I could easily see the argument for. - mikepk

No. - Ken Sheppardson

Both. Depends on the user. - David Damore

I tried to use it as FeedReader, but without being able to view full posts, it just didn't work. - James Ostheimer

No. It's way better! - David Cook from fftogo

I'm torn on how to answer this. I've been back and forth with Google Reader and FF. If there was a simple way to import all my GR feeds into FF and de-dup it would help some. Sometimes all I want to do is quickly scan what's new and GR is fast, in fact rather amazingly so on the iPhone. But just reading feeds can be like empty calories. Having real discussions on selected topic has... more... - Tom Parish

Yes. - Steve Rubel

Technically, yes. But it doesn't serve the same function as a dedicated feed reader. - John Federico

I don't really get the "FriendFeed is a feed reader" logic. Is TechMeme a feed reader? I mean, I can't actually *READ* feeds in FriendFeed, I just get links to articles. - Ken Sheppardson

what friendfeed does best is create an environment for people to connect and have conversations. It is more a networking tool than a reading tool. Sometimes you want to go to a bar an network and sometimes you want to go to a library and read. - Edwin Khodabakchian

Ken, yeah you can only read the headlines (or maybe the first sentence or two if the feed is set up to do a first comment type thing here) but past that... you're not reading the story/article/blogpost in friendfeed - you might discuss it within friendfeed (which is awesome, btw) but once again - NO - friendfeed is not a feed reader - Chris Heath

No. It is a social feed aggregator with filters. It's limited in that you can read feeds of existing FriendFeed users, groups, or external feeds by creating "Imaginary Friends". However, Imaginary Friends is a rather cumbersome way to add external feeds. No facility exists for easily adding a list of feeds such as by importing an OPML file. - Derek Mahar

in part yes. - Thomas Hawk

An interactive feed reader, yes - Murat Gök

No - I can't read the articles right on FriendFeed. It also doesn't require RSS to publish. - Jesse Stay

No - to read the blogs and articles I still need Google Reader. - Antoine Bertier

No, because -- in addition to what William Mougayar said -- there's no tagging of articles (just liking). - Kawika Holbrook

No. Feeds are the internet data, tv, radio, cd/dvd/comic book collections and plumbing in the house. But people living in the house is the lead story. - Micah Wittman

I can't answer yes or no : it is a social feed agregator - Stanislas Jourdan

a feed reader, yes, and much more. I use it more and more - Nadine Pestourie

No, because beyond choosing who I follow, I have no choice in what the rest of you put in it. I propose that FriendFeed is a "social media service." - David Chartier from BuddyFeed

No, I still use Google Reader to stay up-to date...to much noise on FriendFeed even with filters. - Rajiv Doshi

It's interesting to see everyone who says it's not a feed reader. It most definitely is. You can subscribe to RSS feeds here. So it is defacto a feed reader. Now, is it a good one? Not if you want more than headlines. If you want full text Google Reader or other readers are much better. - Robert Scoble

@Robert you got a point here. Does this mean it "might" be our future feed reader with a bit of improvement? - giuseppe c. | markgreene

I think Google Reader is moving more toward a FriendFeed model with all of the Share and Comment features they have been adding, but they are fundamentally different because there is no post feature with any RSS reader. - Brandon Hall

As i said elsewhere, Google Reader is my favorite feed reader because i can mark things as read/unread, so i don't miss anything. FF will never get this feature because the goal in FF is to go back to items you liked or commented. On Greader, once you've read it, you don't go back. As a consequence, Greader will remain my favorite feed reader. - Stanislas Jourdan

giuseppe: I haven't used Google Reader much since I've gotten addicted to friendfeed. I always seem to get the most important news here first and when I go to Google Reader it is all old to me. I used to be Google Reader's top user, so this change in my behavior is interesting to me. - Robert Scoble

Sure it is--though I don't is as such - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

With Google Reader shortcuts, i can skip very quickly between many items so I can scan much more information efficiently. However, on Greader you've to make a high selection of good feeds you really want to read fequently. Otherwise, it becomes evil! - Stanislas Jourdan

absolutely! - Sinem Co

Yes, but it's a "newspaper" style feed reader, as opposed to an "inbox" style reader. - Tristan Seligmann

NO - Kristian Salonen

No. - Brandon Mendelson

totally disagree with Tristan - Stanislas Jourdan

Yes - Arda Çetin

For me, yes. At least in part. I recently created a News group and added a few news feeds to it (techmeme etc). I then switched on desktop notifications for this group so I effectively now have a real time feed reader / news ticker. - Jamie

Jamie, I don't think it is worth. With this system you don't enjoy the FF community (i guess nobody "like" your entries or comment them so that you don't see what's important). Moreover you don't have benefit from Greader shortcuts and read/unread status. - Stanislas Jourdan

No, friendfeed is not just a feedreader, feedly do a better job for feeds reading. - David Foucher

BTW in my opinion, the interest of FF is that people select the items they share so that you get the best in your feeds - Stanislas Jourdan

Pretty much yes.though thats not its primart function. - Abhishek

yes, it's true and http://friendfeed.com/technol... doing that things ;-) - Sakib Mahmud

FriendFeed is also a feed that goes to my google reader :-) - David Foucher

O_o ?! - Stanislas Jourdan

Yes, but only one facet of many. It's a poor feed reader if you plan on reading everything. It's a good one if you plan on only reading what is deemed popular by those you follow. - xero

Stanislas - I think you misinterpreted me. I don't add the news feeds to my profile - I subscribe to them as they are already on FF. So for high volume RSS feeds like TechMeme, TechCrunch and so on I just view them as real time notifications. I don't need them piling up as unread items in Google Reader, which I use solely for low volume, high quality feeds where I need to see every item (daring fireball, carnage4life, codinghorror etc) - Jamie

Jamie : Ok I understand. In fact you made a friendlist for News feed more than a News "room" (?) - Stanislas Jourdan

UPDATE: (Of 145): Y:27 | N:43 | (?):75 - answers on this thread so far (based on this script: http://wittman.org/project... ) - Micah Wittman

Definitely Yes. - stark

No, it doesn't show full feeds...only titles. - Alex Scoble

Yes. - Bill Romanos

Clearly there's a whole lot of variation in what people actually expect from a "feed reader". Seems like some people think it means "anything that uses RSS/Atom to generate a list of web pages" - Ken Sheppardson

yes - Danilo Paissan

and now I really want that there would be a feature to "unsubscribe from comments"... I am getting every phrase in my gtalk :) - Ihar Mahaniok

Hence the inclusion of the word "feed". :) - Kelly McAlearney

Yes, a Feed reader of «Friends'» Feeds -- make it «Fellows'» or «Follows'» -- with steroids (conversations). - Jorge Martins Rosa

Ff technically reads feeds but that is not where their value - aggregation -is. It is a discovery platform powered by RSS and API-based clients can potentially fill the perceived expectation gap with current feed readers. - Alberto Saavedra from Nambu

Yes, but with added value, in that we can discuss aggregated content on the fly, including photos, video, music, etc., not just blogs and text posts. - Cathryn Hrudicka

Not yet. It will get there. News outside tech is still scarce on FF - Francine Hardaway from BuddyFeed

No, and yes - Christian Burns

........what if it was?? Leave Friendfeed a-l-o-n-e !!! please !! .. leave it alone , Dave ! .. please : ==== http://gog.is/chris+crocker - Petr Buben

Ihar - the notifications section of your settings lets you choose which friend lists go to IM, email, and the desktop client... in lieu of frienfeed allowing us to unsub from each thread you can use the friend lists to section off the stuff you do and don't want going to your IM client - Chris Heath

FriendFeed functions like a feed reader in that it gets (most of) its content from other sources. I don't believe it stores copies of the results (would it even be authorized to do so??) so I don't see how it could ever provide search capability. Big difference from TW which has its own content DB - David Sanger

Yes. you import feeds, I've done this many times with 'imaginery friends' - Jeremiah Owyang

FriendFeed is definitely a feed reader, since most of the content you'll find is brought in from RSS sources, such as YouTube or a personal blog. - Thomas Ward

I love questions and answers like this -- They prove my thesis that "nobody gets anything," which, of course, is an ironic way of saying, "everyone gets anything in their own way." Of course, FriendFeed is a news reader. And of course it's not. (Me, personally. I like my "readers" to have an export feature, i.e., OPML) - Rex Hammock

I like my readers to have an OPML *import* feature, too! - Derek Mahar

or even an rss import for anything other than my own feeds - Chris Nixon from IM

Chris, you can import one or more RSS feeds by creating an "Imaginary Friend" and adding those feeds. It's better than nothing, but not nearly as convenient as OPML import. - Derek Mahar

Its a bit convoluted. I'll stick with a feed reader for reading feeds. FriendFeed is about my friends feeds. - Chris Nixon from IM

It's the big-ass river of RSS. I like it. - Pete Gilbert

Chris, I agree! Friendfeed is more of social feed aggregator than a reader. Google Reader is a good reader, but unlike Friendfeed, it doesn't (yet) allow you to share a set of feeds by default. You must explicitly share each item. It also doesn't appear to make comments public. - Derek Mahar

Actually, I think I was incorrect when I stated that Google Reader comments are not public. I do see comments that others have posted to friends' shared items, so I guess comments must be public. - Derek Mahar

Yes, FriendFeed qualifies as a feed reader. - Mike Reynolds

If it is a feed reader, it sucks. There's no way to view the content of the RSS feed items. I have to click each and every story to read it. Headlines only? No thanks. I'd say no, because compared to Google Reader, Bloglines, NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, it fails as a feed reader. - Bwana ☠

I'm with Bwana (it also has no import/export subscription function). I have lobbied for an iGoogle like popup in the past so I will put in my .02 here as well. I would like it to be a good feed reader but it just doesn't cut it now. - Brian Sullivan

Yes. FriendFeed is a form of a feed reader ;) - Nicholas James

hoped so, but not yet - Peter Efland

I re-iterate my earlier No vote. A good feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines remembers the items that you've read, but this memory is absent from Friendfeed. - Derek Mahar

Atul Arora

Newspapers Don't Learn From Their Mistakes - http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque...

May 14 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,, Joe Dawson and Antonio Altamirano liked this

Jeremiah Owyang

WSJ has interesting "Rules of social engagement" http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp... some to protect their sources.

May 13 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Antonio Altamirano, Tac Anderson, ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0, and 2 other people liked this

Evan Williams

Reading people's thoughts on the replies issue. We're considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback.

May 12 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Peter Efland, Marko Saric, Guillaume Foutry and 165 other people liked this

We would be happy to provide feedback in advance next time. - Louis Gray

93 more comments

IMHO you wouldn't stir such a tempest if you'd do a better job explaining things (or requesting feedback in advance—you could use Friendfeed for that and get lots of comments). - Mistletoe Glen

Thank goodness you responded when you did - the frothy mob outside was about finished building the gallows! - Brett Kelly

at the rate that #fixreplies tweets are coming down the pipe they'd be nuts to not re-think their decision and/or explanation - Chris Heath

Nice to know you're listening! - Michael Fidler

You should ask for people's thoughts first. - Michael McKean

I reckon removing the feature was a good things. Has left holes though, that probably shoulda been filled first. - Tim

Louis: sorry, until Twitter fixes how it treats early adopters I'm not giving Twitter free consulting. Only suckers would do that. We helped build Twitter and then it stabs us in the back. That's not making me willing to provide free consulting. Don't know why you'd do that. - Robert Scoble

I volunteer to be your community manager for a month free. If I'm effective at communicating ahead of swarms like this, you can hire me and pay me retroactively. Because seriously? You really need someone to communicate with your users in real time. - Karoli

I hope "considering alternatives" is a euphemism for "we'll have it back right stat, sorry!" - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

@scobleizer; "stabs us in the back" A bit over the top perhaps? - Jordan Brock

Jordon: it absolutely is NOT over the top. When they recommend someone who has only been on Twitter a week or two as a recommended follower they are stabbing users who put a lot more time into the service directly in the back. I have about 1,000 days on Twitter and have put thousands of hours into the service. The way Twitter treats its users is deplorable. - Robert Scoble

Jordan, Mr. Scoble has a propensity for the dramatic. :) - Brett Kelly

Well since it was just a "small setting update" the simplest alternative should be to just undo the change, right? - Ken Sheppardson

Brett: when you put thousands of hours into something and you get stabbed in the back by the owners of that thing you see how it feels. - Robert Scoble

In the meantime, Twitter can get the celebrities to help out with its community problems. I'm not working for free and anyone who does for a company that stabs its users in the back is a sucker. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I can offer my services for free all day to Twitter. I know they won't take me up on it as they aren't interested in what I have to say and their track record proves that. - Louis Gray

I'm really curious to know what kind of stats that were tracked to make this decision. Both @al3x and @dougw are hinting that there wasn't a significant number of people "using this feature", which I am extremely skeptical of. Would tracking the number of times I click out to a profile that I'm not following be enough? It is impossible for them to track whether I personally received value from a tweet even if I didn't click through, right? - Lee Adkins

"The way Twitter treats its users is deplorable" What other instances justify this statement? - Angus Burton

@ev Don't you have more important things to focus on? ie., affiliate marketers who don't disclose what they're doing, follow bots, and all of the spam and manipulation that's ruining twitter?. - Michael Fidler

Louis, I think @ev is listening to you and other Internet celebs, but not nobodies like me. - Vinko

Vinko, I'm no Internet celebrity, and I don't believe I've been addressed by him ever, so he has an odd way of "listening". - Louis Gray

It's an echo chamber - dedlam

You can't go asking your customers about every checkbox and option. Knowing which is what makes a good decision maker. - Ryan Stanley

Sure you can, when it's a feature change that enough users expect to have. It's not disabling a checkbox, it's disabling community discovery. - Karoli

Karoli, here here!! - Vinko

Twitter is clearly listening, and responding quickly and in public. Now, they need to roll back the change - Bob Morris (polizeros)

Twitter knows all the geeks moved to FF. I doubt Oprah considers it a feature change. - Ryan Stanley

wow what a conversation. - Dustin

+1 to dedlam :) - Jordan Brock

Twitter will "consider alternatives" until #fixreplies starts trending back down, which will happen over the next 24 hrs or so. Then they'll look to see if there's any dip in the user number or sign-up rates. There won't be, as nobody's actually willing to leave Twitter over this and new users who've accepted the default setting don't know this option was there, so this will be the last word on the subject you'll see from ev. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, that's true today and not true in the future. Twitter's continued decision to ignore user feedback and input and make arbitrary decisions will ultimately result in someone creating the next shiny thing. It happened with other services/sites and it will again. - Karoli

Karoli: That'll happen either way. - Ken Sheppardson

There must be a strategy around this, right? They wouldn't just arbitrarily do this. What would be the next feature they implement to make this redundant? - Gregg Scott

Hmm. So, Ev is "Reading people's thoughts." wouldn't it be better if he talked and listened. - Michael Markman

Michael: Thought reading must be something they're testing internally. Probably part of Twitter Pro. - Ken Sheppardson

Could be the move that pushes more people over the FF wall. I've not considered this move until now, but now..... - Debi Jones

@scobleizer, i thought the point of using twitter was because you want to not because you want fame and a pat on the back from evan for "helping". shame on you, that's the biggest douchery i've heard in quite some time. - Snipergirl

Leather is an astute reader! :-) - Robert Scoble

Snipergirl: that's BS. If you are in the media business the size of your audience allows you to build a business. Before the recommended follower list Mashable, GigaOm, and TechCrunch had smaller audiences than I did on Twitter. Now they have far bigger ones and people who don't do many tweets at all are rewarded while the rest of us suckers are left in the back of the bus. If I just... more... - Robert Scoble

The simple alternative is to make is a user preference. Even better would be groups, and then to apply said preference to groups. - Barney Craggs

@scobleizer if it's a business to you then vote with your feet and go to a different service and stop whining about evan not paying you enough attention! - Snipergirl

Snipergirl: that's exactly what I've done. But, sorry, I've put thousands of hours in and 904 days into Twitter. When a service treats someone who has put far less work into it better than me, I deserve to whine a little bit and anyone who says I don't isn't worth listening to. Let's put it this way. I see on LinkedIn that you are a hospital worker. What if you put in the time, do a... more... - Robert Scoble

Not entirely sure I agree with Robert, but I'll say this: it is incredibly frustrating when sites you use as intensely as Facebook and Twitter ignore the intelligent users. I won't say intelligent = early adopters, and I won't even say that it precludes the celebrities, but it is extremely tiring offering "feedback" when you're treated as just one voice. Clearly, CEO's are out of touch and don't understand us; yet, running a [sufficiently large] site by total democracy trends towards the stupid. #fixreplies - tollie williams

Matt: I get what you're trying to say, but, here's another way to look at it. Twitter has signaled to the world that there's no way you'll ever been seen as a "top tier" person. Take me out of it. No matter how many hours you spend, no matter how popular you'll get, you won't be treated the same way as one of their personal friends and/or celebrities that they want to feature. To me that sucks. It is not a meritocracy. It's a closed society and that's everything I work against. - Robert Scoble

The real problem is like this: Twitter was made for broadcasting and was never meant to be a convesational platform. Even friendfeed does the comments half baked. There are no comments for comments. - Nitin Nanivadekar

The only feedback users contribute (that matters) is what they buy or use. If you don't like Twitter, leave. - Jason Nunnelley

@Gattoo seriously, wouldn't this conversation be a LOT easier with threading and a respond feature? - Jason Nunnelley

I don't know about meritocracies or closed societies, but i do know that the main way I find new people to follow on twitter is by seeing who the people I already follow are talking to...and if they say something of interest to me in a reply to them, I want to check that person out. If all I see are replies to people I already follow, I won't find anyone knew unless I pay much closer... more... - Shawna Benson

Gattoo: I disagree with that at least in part. The thing that always excited me about this media is that it's two way. You talk, I respond. But Twitter has biased its business toward the serving of celebrities who mostly use Twitter to broadcast and less to those who try to use it to have conversations with people. That's their right. It's my right to whine about it, though. :-) - Robert Scoble

Shawna: yup. I think Twitter wants to push people like you to use search instead of the "@ replies" tab. - Robert Scoble

Robert: that's a problem -- why would I search on something I don't even know to search for unless someone mentions it? Let's say person A tells person B something about daffodils and I find that interesting enough to go check out person B and start following them based on who they are, who they talk to, etc. Now, 'daffodils' aren't normally something I go randomly searching for info... more... - Shawna Benson

@scobleizer It's possible you give them far too much credit. I doubt they've any plan beyond limiting feed size. - Jason Nunnelley

Shawna: I mean you can search for someone who uses your name. I do that on Seesmic Desktop and here on friendfeed and it regularly catches people who both use @scobleizer as well as people who just say "scoble" etc. Then I can go off and check them out, just the same as if I used the @mentions page. - Robert Scoble

Jason: you're right. Twitter's team sure seems like they don't think things out and take the easy road most times. The recommended follower list is just one example of that. They could have done something really magical, but instead they did something half assed. They should have just hired Guy Kawasaki to do an AllTop page for it. That would have been better than what we got. - Robert Scoble

"we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow [...] [h]owever, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable" so despite what we apparently learned that people want we've decided to scrap it anyway. Interesting use of the word "learned" there. - Mark H

Twitter made a mistake by removing this option whatsoever and they have to revert back. We have brains to decide what we do when we have an option! - Jacque from twhirl

The simple way of looking at it for me seems to be- when they say it's what most people are telling them to do, it's actually them telling most people what to do. - Iain Baker

Scoble: You deserve a couple hundred thousand followers, for sure. I joined Twitter bc I read a post you wrote in '07. I hadn't looked at your follower count in a while; figured for sure you had at least been rotated in Suggest Users by now. That just makes me dislike the Suggested Users crap even more. ... The question here, I guess, is: did you do something so bad that Twitter/Ev/Jack/Biz can not forgive you? - john erik metcalf

Scoble: Actually, even if you did, it would still be bullshit. What is this, Texas politics? Good ol' boy system. They need to figure out a better way, obviously things are getting very unequal. - john erik metcalf

I don't know, Scoble, I'm going to take a different angle. Did Ev ever ask you to spend "thousands of hours" and 900+ days on Twitter? If so, then I'd say you've got a gripe. Otherwise, you did it voluntarily for your benefit, and frankly, Ev doesn't owe you anything; he provided a service for free, you used the hell out of it (profiting along the way, I don't doubt). It sounds like... more... - Bob M. Montgomery

I already miss what my followees are saying to other people. I've been using Tweetree for awhile now, because it would display the tweet to which my followee is replying (unless it was a protected tweet). With the new change, that aspect doesn't work, and Tweetree's entire platform is practically destroyed... - Qrystal MqKenzie

If there's one good thing about this, it's that I can probably follow more people: I used to not follow someone if all they do is reply to people without giving context of what they're talking about. Maybe they'll make it so the visibility of @replies to people I'm not following is set on a per-user basis... which would be great, because some of my followees were SO GOOD at giving context, it's a major loss to no longer be able to see their @replies to people I don't follow! - Qrystal MqKenzie

Qrystal: I feel the same way, except now it's a huge hassle for me to actually find all the people I should be following. - Guan Yang

Bryan, this is about a setting being removed that was not the default setting. If you had changed the default setting to this setting you would see every tweet by the people you were following (the default was and still is to hide the @'s to people you're not following). The change is now there is no choice that setting has been removed and anyone who set that setting is now back to the default (which it seems you've always been on). - Chris Heath

I don't want to have to follow a bunch of people just so I can follow a topic to it's close. Am hoping this was more about saving downtime. This is how Plurk etc will find it's market. Maybe this will clear the chaff and all the real people can take the reins again! - Elia Penn from Nambu

@scobleizer please clarify: are you saying that "stab in the back" = "not being on the recommended list"? - Michael Markman

I'm still trying to figure out why Scoble is so upset. While it's noble for him to have helped pioneer the service and offer input on making it better, I don't see how that equates to Twitter somehow owing him any type of allegiance. Also, people seem to have forgotten that Twitter is an independent entity, responsible only to its investors (ultimately) and, as such, they are free to... more... - Brett Kelly

@Brett your suggestion that people go elsewhere to find a similar Twitter service is what makes the free market so interesting and exciting. While Twitter cannot be everything to everyone, every decision Twitter makes affects their future success. Look at what happened to MySpace and the rise of Facebook or Ford compared to Honda. If Twitter leaves enough room, someone else will come... more... - Damond Nollan from email

Michael: no. He's said in the past that he would asked to be removed if he was placed on the list. Thought I can see Scoble's frustration, I agree with Brett on this one. - Angus Burton

I haven't read this thread in its entirety, so I apologize in advance if I repeat anyone else's position. Two thoughts: 1) If the powers that be at Twitter were simply concerned with reducing the noise in our streams, why not simply change the default setting of the @ replies to not show all, while keeping the option available? Instead, they change the default behavior and remove the... more... - Phil Essing

I wonder if Ev has made it over to friendfeed to read this. I can see Robert's points. It would have been cool if more 'meritorious' tweeps were added to the recommendeds. But when the average non-techie person signs up to Twitter they probably find it more attractive to follow P-Diddy and Ellen than to follow someone they've never heard of, regardless of how much valuable content they've added to the service. That being said, Twitter needs to adjust they're listening ears. - Jesse Newhart

Phil: that was the setting. It used to be an option to turn on all replies from friends, now there are not at reply options at all. If you had made the settings change, you're back to the default. - Chris Heath

Jesse: I have to suggest that the average person would probably prefer to follow someone that actually shares their interests, and beliefs, likes and dislikes. Thus the whole recommended users list on any site is bullshit, and completely worthless. In the absence of a personally worthwhile recommendation, the average non-tech would probably prefer to follow typical pop stars (Brittney,... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Phil: The network I've built since 2007 was largely built exactly with the optional feature that they just removed. I don't mean to sound hysterical or overly dramatic, but the change eliminated something that was fundamental to how I used twitter. It is a free service, they can do as they see fit, it's just a less useful free service to me than it once was. - motownmutt

All the discussion here on FF is neat... but should it be over here too/instead? http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter... (personally, I won't be asking for the 'replies' to come back but... to each their own) - Jay Cuthrell

Jay: I find that Getsatisfaction.com never lives up to its name. I can't think of an issue I've posted or looked into where the company in question posted something. I've found several companies who reirect all their support questions to there, apparently as a convenient black hole. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Brett: Twitter being a free service and held by private investors do not make it immune to the desires of its user base which are the source of its (theoretical) future earnings potential. The less it chooses to work with its user base, and the more it makes decisions that alienate them, the more likely it it that they bail (as HUGE numbers already do withing 30,60,90days of account... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: There are 11 members of Twitter on GetSatisfaction and < 60,000 customers in the system. So, not perfect but it is a trending area and support does read things there. As a side note, that area has over 10,000 support topics... imagine the insanity of a phone support IVR menu that would take 12 hours to delineate all those "issues" :-) - Jay Cuthrell

Jay: No one from twitter support supports a damn thing, unless you're oprah, or brittney or aplusk. Not on getsatisfaction and not anywhere. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Jay: I have never seen anyone from any company answer any question about anything on getsatisfaction.com. This includes WAY more companies that I've looked into than twitter. I never expected anyone from twitter to answer, but I've sure as hell expected someone from ping.fm to answer when that's where their support link took me, - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Update from Twitter - "...we're making a change such that any updates beginning with @username (that are not explicitly created by clicking on the reply icon) will be seen by everyone following that account. This will bring back some serendipity and discovery and we can do this very soon" And they've started designing a new feature which will "give folks far more control over what they... more... - Sharon McPherson

Rob: I'm not trying to change your mind... just to give you an idea of the scope of what "support" would entail. Of the 11 Twitter employees on GetSatisfaction they have collectively produced 1045 responses as of the count today on their staff page. - Jay Cuthrell

When I last looked their last response had been over three months prior to the date i was looking. I would welcome my mind being changed, but you're trying to change it on two subjects I don't have much faith in a) twitter support in general, and b) getsatisfaction's overall effectiveness. Links may change my mind. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Chris Heath: It seems I wrongly assumed that the @ replies were set to all by default, likely because I chose that setting a long time ago. Thanks. However, that truly begs the question as to why the folks at Twitter decided to remove the option. - Phil Essing

motownmutt: Like I said, I do understand the frustration caused by this feature removal, a frustration which I share. That being said, I'm not going to lose any sleep as a result. - Phil Essing

i'm going to say this fully knowing the fan boy charges i will open myself up to - u can see how concerned i am about that possibility (yawn) - from my perspective scoble has a valid point (Louis is also welcome to offer help to a service he values btw) - about this time last year a myriad of similar conversations were taking place here as twitter crashed MULTIPLE times a day - i cant... more... - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

I am actually fine with the change because one can always go the persons page to find who he/she has replied to and it makes your page less cluttered. There is always some trade off but i am fine. I am waiting for more options from twitter in the future. - ashish

Funny take on this - http://cli.gs/dumb - Brian Kelley

I love the twitter product, but am growing more disgusted by the twitter management team. There is zero user input solicitation and this latest event #fixreplies is a classic mistake of product mgrs who fail to engage their customer base to get valuable feedback on the design prior to go live; instead, twitter mgmt is releasing features that are not vetting by their user base - huge... more... - Susan Beebe

waves at Evan Williams. Hey Ev! - Thomas Hawk

Evan, perhaps with the next major functional change you might consider inviting ideas of your users; a good example of how this can work is presented by SalesForce.com: 'Idea Exchange' http://ideas.salesforce.com/ (no suprise SalesForce.com is good in gathering and using feedback from their customers; being a CRM company ;-) ) - Jeroen De Miranda

Scoble, you are a follow-blocker, and as such, you laid the groundwork for the devs putting in this nerf. There are quite a few thin-skinned A-listers who hate seeing back-talk in the @ tabs. this accommodated their wailing. It's wrong and should be put back. People who are vain enough to want to broadcast to followers have to accept that they will hear from the public, and often critically. Otherwise, go on a private AIM or FB chat. - Prokofy Neva

Prokofy: bullshit. If you are a jerk you don't deserve to mess up my experience. You can keep commenting on your own place and I'll still see it anyway. Everyone I know searches on their last name. But I absolutely won't back down from your bullying and change my opinions. I will keep blocking people who are jerks and who are spammers. That's the only way we can keep our community from destroying itself over time. You are NOT entitled to get in my face, sorry. - Robert Scoble

well, this whole conversation could never have happened on Twitter. I do appreciate the attention and awareness of the entire Friendfeed team, but for me the essential feature is the threaded comments. - Peter Efland

Steve Gillmor

Going with the flow: whither enterprise RSS? :: Blog :: Headshift - http://www.headshift.com/blog...

May 11 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

William Mougayar, Nicholas James, Victor Panlilio and 16 other people liked this

a nice quote from this post: "One of the most annoying habits of self-appointed technology gurus, sheikhs, czars or experts is that they take their own behaviour as the basis for extrapolation to predict how the rest of the world will/could/should use tools. A side effect of this is an inability to empathise or understand the needs and culture of non-geek workers in non-technology companies" - arjo

10 more comments

Ah, comment moderation. We'll see if mine appears. - Jay Cuthrell

I do take my own behavior as indicative of what is happening, and I'm usually right. We're all self-appointed, by the way. Empathy is not the preserve of the non-geek or the geek, but anyone who feels a kinship. And I am not predicting, but rather stating the world as I see it. - Steve Gillmor

Maybe that is the problem with a lot of "web 2.0" / social media / internet experts. Instead of using solid RESEARCH to predict / indicate what is going to happen they use their own behaviour / feelings - arjo

Please define solid research. I'd love to buy some of that stuff. - Jay Cuthrell

That's exactly my problem: I can't find a lot of reliable sources ( solid research based on more than 1 simple / easy to manipulate poll) & still there are lots of "experts" who claim they know what is dead & what is alive.... - arjo

Another good question might be what does it take to be an "expert" or a "guru"? I tend to like the opinions of people that have been accurate in the past, or who have at least been in general agreement with my opinions in the past. - Donald Forth

As far as the RSS thing goes. I use RSS all the time, but the average person has no idea what it is? That does not mean its dead, just that its an enabling technology that will be kept away from most users. Its interesting to see RSS compared to social networks, I don't personally view them as being similar at all. I don't understand "t's time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter." Twitter is a different animal than RSS, with a different purpose. - Donald Forth

Favorite line - "ambient knowledge sharing". I'm dealing with this right now myself. Been using RSS for a long time and want to use it for notifying end users of new order information. Biggest hurdle is how do they use that feed? They've never used an aggregator ever. - Michael Turner

accuracy in the past - yup. - Steve Gillmor

This would have been a great article had it just started half way through at the "Thinking about Enterprise RSS" header. - Nick in Manila

Stop calling it Enterprise RSS, and stop using RSS at the beginning of a sentence. The first one is meaningless, the second one is a means to an end. Let's talk knowledge dashboards, business intelligence, people-feeds, personal streams, etc... If these arrive via RSS or whatever other means, who cares? - William Mougayar

Ian May

Entrepreneur 101: Words of advice to a future Entrepreneur - http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archive...

May 12 - Comment - Like - Share

Antonio Altamirano liked this

Just because you want to become an Entrepreneur doesn’t mean that it is something that can just happen overnight. - Ian May

Mashable

Twitter Spam Invades Trending Topics - http://mashable.com/2009...

May 11 from Mashable! - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Daniel Rowley, Cesar XKR and 16 other people liked this

It will be interesting to see how, or indeed if, Twitter can put a lid on this. As one who has never visited a trending topic I've not been affected. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and it's almost certain a good percentage of Twitter users are not even aware of trends. Can someone explain just how effective this spam is though? - Gilbert Harding

15 more comments

Datasmog - Thats like saying as someone whose never clicked on a viagra email, I've never been affected by spam..... - James Ketchell

James it's not really. Spam email for most people ends up in their inbox on their PC if they don't have an ISP that operates effective filters. Twitter spam rarely reaches the desktop. It's easy to avoid, you just don't look. Email spam is still a far bigger problem that needs solving than the relatively minor irritation of Twitter trend spam. I'm still interested to know if anyone has any ideas as to how Twitter can stop it. Stopping email spam is easy, but no-one seems to want to do that. - Gilbert Harding

I've just decided that I hate Twitter. - Big K

Gilbert true if your purely a reader. If on the other hand you think that real-time search has potential to change the industry, then spamming results is an issue that will effect a lot of people. - James Ketchell

Gillmor said that the "swarming" behavior around tags makes them vulnerable to spam - Brian Hendrickson

James many people are just readers and don't see the spam in Twitter. Real time search anywhere will always be susceptable to spam unless the spammers are stopped. Too much time, money and resources are being spent fighting spam instead of looking at ways to kill it. - Gilbert Harding

Found it interesting that Mark Zuckerberg was under major fire today on Twitter and his name or facebook didn't get on the trending list once...now we know why. - Steffan Antonas

I think trending topics on Twitter should be human monitored for protection against spammers, otherwise they will be abused as they are currently. - Garin Kilpatrick

Just like Gmail has "Report Spam" button, Twitter should have one for search results. - Atul Arora

Gilbert, how would one kill spam? - Laura Norvig

Gilbert that's an admirable goal. However being that the causes of spam are greed and laziness, I think you and I will be both be long gone, before anything changes. I think treatment is still necessary in conjunction with prevention. Treatment is more likely to bear fruit in our lifetime. - James Ketchell

Garin I'm not sure human moderation is really practical for a site which is growing at its current pace. I dont think the spamming algorithm is that hard to create. First off they might want to try validating sign up email addresses. The next logical step would be to create an influencer hierarchy based on peoples re-tweets etc. Then simply apply more weighting to trends that contained references from more reliable sources. Its basically a realtime version of page rank and inbound links. - James Ketchell

James you are probably right in the timeline. But you needn't be. The best form of defence is offence. With all spam there is financial gain. Somewhere down the line someone is peddling something for money. There is a money trail that can be followed back to the source. It's not necessarily the spammer though, but the person or persons buying the spammers services. Shut down a spammer... more... - Gilbert Harding

Gilbert i know were on the same side on this one, its just I'm less optimistic about what can be done in even the medium term. Equate it to another market, such as the "war on drugs". Again massive resources and massive funding has been thrown into it. I know its demand driven to a larger extent that spam, but at the end of the day spam wouldnt be sent if people didnt respond to the... more... - James Ketchell

James I agree. But the drugs trade is largely cash based at the end user point. With spam the peddlers are hiding behind an on-line payments system. Credit cards, PayPal or similar. That money ends up in the banking system somewhere. That's the money trail that leads to the real culprits. Where they are is largely irrelevant, the banking system is worldwide, always talking and at this... more... - Gilbert Harding

Gilbert, I get what your saying about the money trail. I think following the money will work to an extent on the large corporates which are using this method of marketing by creating armies of unaccountable affiliates. Unfortunately there are thousands of knock off versions to take their place. The result is a pretty well un manageable pipeline of prosecution. I dont think there is any... more... - James Ketchell

Anthony Citrano

Murdoch: ‘The Internet will soon be over’ | The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media...

May 10 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Marko Saric, Bill Romanos, Bill Heslin and 32 other people liked this

Hmm.. the Internet, or News Corp.. who will I bet on? ;-p - Anthony Citrano

34 more comments

o.O - Matthew DeVries

There's a reason the WSJ can charge a subscription. It's readers financially survive off of the information it supplies. ...DumbDick Murdoch. - Brad Williamson

Yeah right, and there will be world peace - Paul Roberts

If anyone was more the real life Montgomery Burns, its this man. - CW™

you did you think groening based the character on? his own boss. - Matthew DeVries

I'll take the internet for a win unless civilization fails. - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

What he says is " the current days", and this is referring to the free for everyone model. He is correct in that the free part is shutting down. Funding is running out for all the servers and people who run them at companies that don't have revenue. End of this year, early next. Soon, you won't be able to read those AP or NYT reprints without paying for it in one way or another. They are already in talks to add charges onto your ISP monthly rates. Like cable. :) So, somewhat accurate. - Cole Jolley

Cole, I don't know you, so my apologies if you're in a position to know, but it seems to me that if you're going to make a bold statement like that, you should probably support it somehow. - Mr. Gunn

Gunn - Welcome to the Internet, are you new here? Blindingly insane speculation is what they do here. - Matthew DeVries

sorry, I'll just go back to the life scientists room. Pretend I never said anything. ;-) - Mr. Gunn

I've never been known to shy away from a chance to speculate, so here's another: either Cole's speculation will turn out wrong, or AP and NYT will go completely out of business. You decide. - Anthony Citrano from BuddyFeed

I have sugar-free Jell-O. Your argument is invalid. - Mistletoe Glen

The internet is ad supported. - Ryan Dadey

Anthony, the two main unknowns in how that will turn out are to what degree ad spending on the internet rises when paper diminishes, and to what degree publishers can realize savings in distribution by going all-digital. A bigger piece of a smaller pie is certainly better than going hungry, and some may disagree, also better than acquiring your pastry by force/lawsuit/goverment fiat. - Mr. Gunn

Yeah... he's the guy that bought Myspace, right?... - Johnny Worthington

There is a typo in the title. The article says "The free internet will soon be over" - Mel Buckpitt

If they're going to make it possible for site to charge people via their cable bill, hopefully antitrust legislation will make that a level playing field open to all websites otherwise the internet will indeed have been taken over by a cartel. That said, it's obvious that people are willing to pay for content - even news as long as the quality is high enough. The question to me is does News corp really produce that quality, or does it just control distribution channels to reduce competition? - Robin Barooah

Murdoch himself will be over long before the Internet as we know it is over. I agree, he's a real life Montgomery Burns. - Rob McNair-Huff

Less speculation than informed opinion :) Examples: Time experiments with charging for online properties: http://bit.ly/vvJJn, Networks in talks to charge cable operators for online access per subscriber: http://bit.ly/oHN6y Time Warner adds tier pricing for usage: http://bit.ly/16oGd4, Businessweek model must change: http://bit.ly/3w4vrk Mark Cuban discussing NYT charging cable... more... - Cole Jolley

Let him put up paywalls. The more the traditional media companies try to save their obsolete model, the more people will choose the free, open, and transparent new media models. This means every bleat like this from people like Murdock is crowing over the very ideas that hasten their demise. - Neal Jansons

Absolutely, Neal. I am reminded of the record company approach to online music. - Anthony Citrano

I'm with Cole on this one. Someone has to pay for journalism and the ad-supported model doesn't work now the bottom's fallen out of the ad market. Freemium (like Flickr) and subscription packages are the way the wind is blowing. If you don't like it there's always Ariana Huffington's fund to support investigative journalism but that's probably a bit ahead of its time for the whole market and isn't really suitable for profit-led companies like News Corp. - Martin Bryant

I know what Cuban and the media moguls want, but I don't think they're necessarily going to get their way, because they don't really hold the reins anymore. I can't believe they actually think price-fixing industry-wide is the solution to their woes. At any rate, NPR is still doing a fine job. - Mr. Gunn

Isn't a major problem with the newspapers the very fact that they were ad-supported? Paying directly for journalism seems like a great way to get quality journalism. - Robin Barooah

To expand on what I said above, I reckon Murdoch will go down a route of: 'read the article and see the 3 minute video for free, watch the full 30 minute interview if you pay a dollar'. Make the micropayments easy and the content good enough and people will pay. - Martin Bryant

"Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a "malfunctioning" business model." I may watch too much Democracy Now, but it seems to me that the only thing malfunctioning right now is capitalism. Color me hippie, but might it be that our current capitalist system simply isn't perfect? Perhaps we should... more... - thepete

I gotta agree with thepete here - while I don't think capitalism is broken I think a lot of capitalists are, and the system is malfunctioning. The idea that businesspeople can force outdated business models on the market - and ignore fundamental realities - is absurd. Simply put, people are (for the most part) not going to pay for most of this content. A few will. Most won't. It's just... more... - Anthony Citrano

This seems like an obviously convenient belief to hold if you are Murdoch. I hope the US becomes the ultimate example of capitalism, and that 'real' democratic communist states are also allowed to thrive. The idea of perfection is a human conceived notion; there is no such thing as perfect, so nothing ever will be perfect. - coldbrew

I read that they aren't offering the WSJ on the new Kindle. Isn't this exactly what they need? I don't get their strategy. - Cristo

@Chris: I know I already said this, but yeah, it's like watching the record labels deal with the online music scene.. it's just so self-destructive that it's stunning. - Anthony Citrano

He tends to change his mind on this every few years. Doesn't really matter though. While some will pay, this will just open up opportunities for the others who skip Murdoch sites. - Mike Reynolds

apropos: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque... - Robin Barooah from IM

Yes, we all expect to pay for online, as soon as the hard copies no longer sell. But not while we put up with popover and stayover ads. - pazzer1

And another link: Ireland about to extend TV license fee payments to cover internet devices: http://www.samknows.com/broadba... - Cole Jolley

I swear, it's like they have a moral imperative to find a way to screw people. These are the types who see a public park full of playing children and start scheming about building an arcade and fast food place across the street. Sickening. - Neal Jansons from IM

Harry McCracken

FriendFeed, I still don't completely understand you, nor do you speak to me in a way Twitter does, but I have 782 subscribers here. So I'm going to try.

May 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Brent - Loving Life, Nicholas James, Jack and 77 other people liked this

You'll come to love it, Harry. - Leo Laporte

43 more comments

782 subscribers can't be wrong! :) - Violet Mae Lim

Don't worry I don't get it either. I just feed all my social stuff into it. - Keith Hobin

Participation is key - start speaking back and the value will come to you. - jcunwired

Harry - if you are new to FriendFeed, think of 'likes' as retweets and comments as '@replies'. So it is quite similar to Twitter. - Atul Arora

Hello there! - Derrick

And if you @troynt's excellent greasemonkey script for twitter (http://userscripts.org/scripts...) , you will see that FriendFeed is not much different from Twitter. - Atul Arora

If you're looking for FriendFeed tips, the FFundercats have a weekly podcast to keep you covered on what posts are hot on FriendFeed and new features being brought to the site. http://ffundercats.podomatic.com - LonelyBob

You will need to learn to filter content, this room will help. Its one worth subscribing to http://friendfeed.com/ffss - jcunwired

Yeah! - Robert Scoble

Harry: if you spent more time here you really should have more than that. You are one of my favorite tech journalists and I have 36,000. - Robert Scoble

Robert... Mr McCracken only has one comment... (cue southern accent)... there's your sign - Chris Heath

Chris: exactly. You won't get it until you participate. - Robert Scoble

Just try it out...c'mon...my name's Harry as well, and I don't know about you but I don't know many other Harry's. =) - Harry Wolff

It took me a long time to understand FriendFeed... It's worth figuring out. - Bob Morris (polizeros)

Harry, we should sit down some time. I'll walk you through it, and you can be taught. - Louis Gray

For those who don't know Harry he was editor of PCWorld and does some of the best tech blogging out there. - Robert Scoble

Harry, do people ever ask you if your name is a pseudonym? I used to wonder every once in a while when reading one of your articles. - Chris Heath

783 - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Rob, you actually made it 796... but still, yeah... - Chris Heath

;-) - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Thanks, all--well, almost all. I cheerfully admit to enjoying playing the role of the dense person who doesn't quite get FriendFeed. But I do understand that it isn't worth anything unless you dive in and participate. Part of my problem is that I'm more of a serial social networker than a parallel one, and I'm not ready to scale back on Twitter yet. But I do promise to spend more time in here - Harry McCracken

see, that wasn't so hard. ;-) - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Welcome to FriendFeed Harry... 797 - Mitchell Tsai

welcome to friendfeed Harry - (jeff)isageek

Friendfeed rocks, and yes it's different to Twitter. In fact, I get tired of the direct comparisons. I use both. - Ian May

Harry: glad to have you join us. The comments everyone has made about participation are dead on: no one will know you're here unless you start commenting/liking other people's material. Once you get engaged on other people's items, they start to care what you think and say. POOF: interaction. Oh, and it might be a good idea to fill out your profile: you'd probably have a boatload more followers if people here could tell at a glance that you were an editor of PCWorld... - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Welcome to FriendFeed! - Barry Biddlecomb from twhirl

Harry, I feel the same way. I think I get FriendFeed, just not sure that real-time feedback (vs momentarily delayed) is as big a deal as so many folks make it, particularly to folks without large followings. But I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt as well. - Tom Gimpel

Watchin' and learnin'....watchin' and learnin'. - Sharon Tappan

I'm new to both sites but am thoroughly enjoying learning from them both! - NXT Nutritionals. inc.

Harry: you'll get there. More and more of my Twitter network is here every day and the conversations are both deeper and more useful than the ones I'm seeing happen over on Twitter. You gotta make a choice of where do you invest for the future, I understand, but I've never regretted spending more time here. - Robert Scoble

Robert: I have found more relevant & meaningful conversation on friendfeed. It seems more social media & business ppl are here than twitter. - NXT Nutritionals. inc.

Harry -- it's about letting your online activity stream communicate for you. Also, it's about how threaded conversations actually allow you to say something. :) Glad you're here. P.S., going to JavaOne this year? - Steve Lynch from twhirl

I've found its not as obvious as Twitter but I get the feeling there's all this power under friendfeed I'm not seeing yet. - William

Harry: you should watch when I show friendfeed to Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia: http://www.ustream.tv/recorde... -- that might help you discover some of the power. - Robert Scoble

I don't get why Twitter still has not added comments and groups. I don't like going to two different sites. - Donald Forth

Donald: Twitter's leadership is religious about keeping the service as simple as possible. - Robert Scoble

Donald: too religious, in my view. - Robert Scoble

I know why Harry doesn't understand Friendfeed: he doesn't participate in its own discussion :( - Jérôme Flipo

You are not alone! I have been on FF time to time but did not figure out how it works..:confused - Jacque

http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... Like FF, like a whole lot more if I didn't have to spend time figuring out how to filter content, then I discovered your comment (http://www.ustream.tv/recorde...) - Julie Williams

you got one more Mr. Technologizer - Buford Koechig

Yes yes yo. Me either. I guess it's still worthwhile to stay... just hang on. - Jack

The more you use it,the better it gets. - ashish

Robert Scoble

Interesting thoughts from Eric Woodward, who runs the popular Nambu iPhone client about his consideration toward friendfeed. Why isn't friendfeed seeing more mobile apps? Here's some feedback for the team. - http://ejw.com/website...

May 10 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Michael Koby, Charles Ying, Lora Lufark and 19 other people liked this

http://ejw.com/website... - Robert Scoble from Bookmarklet

9 more comments

Not very encouraging... - Jim Braux-Zin

I don't understand how he is being "publicly shamed." His service didn't work, he should comment that they're having some scalability issues and move on. It's not like Paul even said anything negative about tr.im, just pointed out that having a middle man dealing with links creates other problems (quite a general statement, not even directed solely at tr.im). His reaction worries me. - Brandon Titus

I think his point about Facebook and other services being more popular is the key reason there are not more mobile apps. The market for a FriendFeed application is simply not as great as Facebook, Twitter, or any number of other networks. - Brandon Titus

It'd still be nice to have a decent iPhone app for Friendfeed. The two or three I've tried are not exactly stable, crashing at least once per use. - George Hall (Australia)

I certainly didn't mean to "publicly shame" anyone in my post (I didn't even mention tr.im). The problem with url shorteners is more fundamental -- they introduce an extra layer of unreliability. Louis Gray pointed this out on Friday when a power outage brought down FriendFeed and therefore ff.im: http://www.louisgray.com/live.... Several people have suggested using Amazon to "solve" this problem, but we've had more S3 outages than datacenter outages. - Paul Buchheit

I concur with Mark ("Connection Failed") - Micah Wittman

FF mobile site & FFtogo are so good. Not much interested in a mobile app. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Twitter apps are crucial to compensate for lame UI. FF had no such dilemma. Edit: Same w/ FaceBook. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

If you subscribe to ejw.com in Google reader, you can read it. It seems a lot like sour grapes, "don't you know how important we are" type stuff. Bringing up Paul's post about URL shorteners didn't really tie into his overall point (that apparently nobody cares about FriendFeed, but Nambu is going to support it anyway). After reading it, I was left wondering what I'm supposed to take... more... - Mark Trapp

I think I've bought about 5 Twitter iPhone clients. I'd buy a decent FriendFeed iPhone client... - Ewan MacLeod

Jeff P. Henderson

Sony CEO Howard Stringer on music: "If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple" - http://www.engadget.com/2009...

May 11 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Antonio Altamirano liked this

Internet Strategist

Wise use of Twitter can greatly increase blog traffic. GrowMap up 104% with Twitter traffic up 160% mo to mo - graph http://siteanalytics.compete.com/growmap...

May 10 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Chris Frost, Sardar Mohkim Khan, Antonio Altamirano and Louis Gray liked this

mashable

Re: Facebook’s Tolerance of Holocaust Denial Cannot Last - http://mashable.com/2009...

May 11 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

Antonio Altamirano, Johannan Edelman, Iván Abrego and ursi liked this

"I actually spent a good few hours looking into these groups and they're not merely "holocaust denial" but rather filled with insults directed at Jewish people. As I said in the piece, even if you defend the right for people to express unpopular and unfounded opinions (and it's Facebook's decision whether they do or not - it's not a free speech issue and they can remove content if they see fit), the pages are still in violation of their own Terms of Use. If they let them stay up, they're not properly implementing those terms." - mashable

Got no problem with Holocaust denial myself. Let people decide for themselves what did or did not happen and when or to whom. That question just a matter of fact, which is not a very provocative or interesting question to me. But people do need to not hate. Just saying. - Will Conley

Louis Gray

The Orgins of Facebook - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...

May 10 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

Mona Nomura, Thomas Power, Antonio Altamirano and 4 other people liked this

MG Siegler

CubeTree Launches As A Facebook + FriendFeed + Twitter For Enterprise http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

May 10 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Benoit Cazenave, coffee and 2 other people liked this

Robert Scoble

I wish friendfeed had its own version of "@" -- instead if I want to send you to Doc Searls I have to paste his URL in: http://friendfeed.com/dsearls -- he has a house in Santa Barbara and is doing some great coverage of the fires there.

May 7 - Comment - Like - Share

Alistair (alpinefolk), Holly Rae, Mike Reynolds and 61 other people liked this

I also wish that friendfeed would take the "@" character and point it at the same person's friendfeed account, if one exists. That's a tough problem to do, though. - Robert Scoble

74 more comments

Since FF is suppose to be more conversational, one would think an @user or similar would be a given. - Brian

Do you mean for it to cc: that person's twitter account? - Jason from BuddyFeed

They could make it so that clicking on an @name would get you a popup menu with a variety of choices. It could know that I am "davew" on Friendfeed and "davewiner" on Twitter and "dave" on identi.ca and "scriptingnews" on Flickr. - Dave Winer

Problem with doing that is people will mistakenly @ the display name rather than the username (what's in the URL). Honestly, I couldn't tell you the actual username for a lot of people I interact with on FF. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Brian: one reason I think friendfeed is resisting doing that is because they don't want to piss off Twitter (Twitter gives them a real time firehose feed and if it gets cut off friendfeed will dramatically change). Another reason? They are very heavy on ex-Google superstars and they know that by putting URLs (and forcing the same) they help the Google page rank of the whole system. Already I'm seeing some of my friendfeed items show up higher on Google than similar Tweets. - Robert Scoble

I know if you click,drag and drop from a person's name (anywhere) to the comment box you get their FF url dropped. Not sure if that helps or not in this situation? - Brian Sullivan

However it can be done it would be nice to have the ability to 'reply' to a user. Then those 'replies' could be on a separate page and we wouldn't need these not-so-perfect vanity searches maybe? :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Brian: that's cool, I didn't know you could do that. - Robert Scoble

Brian, I didn't know that. Very cool! :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Robert: interesting, good points. Didn't think about that. Maybe FF will come up with an easy way to autocomplete our friend/subscriber list in a "To: user" box, and shorten the link. - Brian

the URL referencing a user looks strange, I'd think they could hyperlink the user's name so it looks better - Mark Bockenstedt

Brian http://friendfeed.com/briansu...: nice find! That is a good solution for now. - Brian

Hmm and you are able to search by URL too, very interesting. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Mark: yes, that is what I would like to see as well. - Brian

As there is no 140 character limit to posts here a drag'n'drop url solution that is only slightly worse that the hyperlink solution, could be the ff.im/username format instead. - René Clausen Nielsen

that seems to be a firefox thing, it's not working in IE8 for me. - Ben Reierson

If FF could tidy up the user URLs in some way to make it a little more presentable then that's a pretty good solution. - Kol Tregaskes

René, yes definitely. - Kol Tregaskes

Ben - I am using Chrome. - Brian Sullivan

It works in Chrome. - Kol Tregaskes

Working a bit in FF3.1 - Roberto Bonini

Robert, surely the best way of doing this is just to use the FF share function from the post in question? FF will then put the links in for you. I do agree with Dave though about some form of display on the username. - Keith Bennett from Nambu

Another thing -- we really do need one place -- each of us -- where we want to be seen and contacted at. I have a single address in the physical world. I have a bunch of email addresses, but one "main" one. Twitter is becoming that, unfortunately -- because who wants a company to own us. I don't. And I think eventually that has to blow apart. I dread the day. It would be great to have a... more... - Dave Winer

I agree, I think it's necessary to allow people to easily refer to their or other user accounts - Jan Ole Peek

I agree something like that is needed... I always cringe when @ is overused though...seems so Twitterish - Bwana ☠

I 27th that movement. - Malcolm Bastien

make it so - andy brudtkuhl

That would be really helpful, I have been wondering how to track and continue friendfeed conversations off-site and that would make life a little easier. - Abhimanyu Chirimar

I 28th it. - Varun Mahajan

I like René's idea that it should use the ff.im but the display text should be the user's name to make it look tidy. So you drag the user's username into the comment, it links to your profile page and displays as your name (e.g. "Kol Tregaskes" instead of "koltregaskes"). #betakoltag-sg-postscomments - Kol Tregaskes

Actually I'd just might prefer ff.im/shevy over a hyperlinked René Clausen Nielsen. A hyperlinked René Clausen Nielsen should preferably point to my home (ie. my personal blog). THAT is me. ff.im/shevy is my ff home. Just as @shevy is my Twitter home. I like the easily distinguishable pointers. - René Clausen Nielsen

I'd say it should definitely link to your FF user page. - Kol Tregaskes

Dave: for most people Facebook is that place. I have been spending more time over there and it has more things that will keep pulling you back in. For many people it is their rolodex now. It's amazing the quality of people over there and what they put into their profiles. - Robert Scoble

why not take back the "!" that Pownce has now given up? - clarke thomas

Robert - Didn't one of the more known tech names, may have been Loic, or someone post a friendfeed thread last month telling people to stop using @ and # on Twitter, because it wasn't needed any more for some reason? - Matthew DeVries

Whatever the ff version of @ will be; yes it should definitely point to the ff user page. No doubt. I'm just saying that in the great big web pond I'd like a hyperlinked my name to point to my web home as often as possible. And I like it when every service has it's own self-referencing standard. - René Clausen Nielsen

Matthew: I said that about the # sign, but there are some use cases for that, even if technically we don't need it anymore to group things together. The @ sign, though? Nope, I didn't see someone say that. - Robert Scoble

Matthew, yep Robert mentioned the # symbol only. - Kol Tregaskes

Ok, well, this (for me anyway) came after that thread where I saw it, the # is nice for me, because I have a facebook app that hooks off the # fb hashtag and puts that post on facebook for me. I like that a lot, but I'm pretty sure that didn't exist at the time that thread happened. - Matthew DeVries

this is my fundamental problem with FF - the lack of @ means within one conversation tracking who is responding to me requires me to scan the whole lot - that frankly sucks. - Nick Halstead

Nick, yep. We rely on everyone using our names or usernames so we can track 'replies' with our vanity searches but it's wholly unreliable of course. - Kol Tregaskes

Nick: agreed. We are all self interested and need much better alerting when someone talks about us. We already have that in "Direct messages." I hope they rethink this for something like "Discussions about me." - Robert Scoble

Kol: and it sucks that I can't join vanity searches for my name on friendfeed with those that I do outside of friendfeed too. That's pretty lame. - Robert Scoble

If FF added anchors to comments and perhaps a DM/CC for comments that might be interesting, though perhaps complicated and untidy? - Kol Tregaskes

I see this as a matter of infancy, not of policy, I don't think it something Paul et al are keeping from us by design, it's just something they haven't gotten to yet. - Matthew DeVries

Robert, also, vanity searches only really work well if you have a unique-ish name (thank you Mum! ;-)). - Kol Tregaskes

Matthew: I agree. Can't wait to see how they add new features. Kol: true, but I can see a world where you could filter based on your friends. "Find items written by Joe Smith, but only display those about the Joe Smith who is friends with Louis Gray and Robert Scoble." - Robert Scoble

Man that would be sweet. - Drew Lucas

Robert, yep. - Kol Tregaskes

Why not add the person you're mentioning in the "To" field? Pings the person just like an @ mention and it adds a link to the person you're talking about so we can all check out the person, too. - Mark Trapp

Mark - that's fine for posts, but they're talkng about in threads. - Matthew DeVries

Dear Friendfeed, please copy the @replize feature as implemented by SocialMedian last year: http://mashable.com/2008... XOXO, Daniel - Daniel J. Pritchett

Socialtext/'s Signals app has a type-ahead find in its @reply feature. They use an AIR client though. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

I think FriendFeed should implement something far more intelligent than simple @-username. It could scan for the mention of a name of a person you are subscribed to anywhere in a message, then make a hyperlink of it. I think I'd rather type someone's name in full than be forever stuk with @username. Also, I think name resolution within comments should be local to the conversation. In... more... - Meryn Stol

Meryn: good idea but what about if someone mentions Martin Bryant, the infamous 1996 Australian mass murderer? It'd link to my profile! - Martin Bryant

Martin, good point. I had not thought about that. Indeed there are situations when people want to talk other people with the same name as a person they are subscribed too. Maybe very hard to make a good UI for this. Local name resolution within comment threads is more realistic: You just make a hard rule that when someone mentions a first name, he is assumed to be referencing a previous participant in the conversation. - Meryn Stol

I really like Kol's idea: "it should use the ff.im but the display text should be the user's name to make it look tidy. So you drag the user's username into the comment, it links to your profile page and displays as your name (e.g. "Kol Tregaskes" instead of "koltregaskes")." so http://friendfeed.com/meryn would be replaced by "Meryn Stol", linking to my profile. This combined with a fast way to look up these urls ("find as you type") would greatly improve over the current situation. - Meryn Stol

OTOH, @meryn could be replaced with "Meryn Stol" as well. I just don't like seeing these @'s displayed. - Meryn Stol

Nick makes a good point that it's irritating that you don't know when anyone mentions your name inside conversations you participated in. I wish I'd be notified if anyone use my first name inside a thread that I have commented on earlier. - Meryn Stol

this is a time for the tricky higher ascii characters. ƒ (mac, option-f) is one possible way... &fnof; ƒ ƒ are other ways to write the character, according to this page of glyphs http://www.ebyte.it/library... (1st under Symbols and Greek letters). So I guess the proper use for it would be ƒsusankitchens or ƒscobleizer - Susan A. Kitchens

Susan - those things are IMPOSSIBLE to type with a notebook, cause you need a number pad to pull them off. Was most infuriating when WoW people use them. - Matthew DeVries

Meryn, it was really taking from René's point but yes sounds good. Once you drag and drop the username into the comment, it changes to a hyperlink displaying the user's name. Not sure how technically possible that is though? - Kol Tregaskes

Meryn, yep I don't like @s either, name of the user (not the username) please. :-) I know user's by their names not their usernames. - Kol Tregaskes

Isn't this just the classic namespace problem? Kol et.al. have it right - FF should simply be it's own namespace, and figure a simple way to refer to users. Then display the user's display name with an href to their FF page. No need to point to whatever your *real* homepage is, cause why wouldn't FF want to continue capturing stuff? 8-) But better linking to FF users would be key, as would threaded comments. (Heck, I'd rather have threaded comments and let some client-side apps do the live streaming...) - Shane Curcuru

I would be very happy if there was some common, linked way of identifying my FriendFeed identity in a conversation. Ideally, it would happen automatically somehow, but this is certainly problematic. One way might be to pick a special character (easily typed) and have FF drop down a list of commenters in the thread. Then it would be easy to identify even in the case of multiple Robs... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

but the click and drag thing is cool. I think it should come up with my hyperlinked display name (not my URL) I find that I can drag another person's name from another conversation into the coments from another post as well. If that just caused me to be notified of a mention it would be cool (BUT training ALL of the FF users to do this might be a challenge) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Since @ is more appropriate for location than person, I'm glad they don't use it. - Cristo

Agreed. @ = "at". That's always driven me crazy about Twitter. Makes some sense with email if you think of a domain as a physical location, but you're not talking "at" someone - you're talking "to" them or "about" them. I always thought ">Mike" would work better as a way of expressing that a message was directed at me. Maybe ":Mike" or "~Mike" if someone was just referring to me... - Mike Hartman

But don't you like the slang "yo, at me later - I'll be online" lol! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I had to read that a couple times before my brain could parse it into a thought. - Mike Hartman

how about using another character rather then @ could that work? - (jeff)isageek

me too - that would be really useful - Sharon Hurley Hall

I'm pretty sure the @ functionality needs to just to be standardized across the web at this point - Zaki Manian

friendfeed should just copy socialmedian's @reply feature. go for it. take it. seriously. you need it. we'd all love it. - Jason Goldberg

Mona Nomura

Why do Twitter only people respond to Tweets via DM? I don't get it; help me understand. I've said from day one: I converse on FriendFeed.

May 7 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Alistair (alpinefolk), Christian (Simply X), Lu Liu and 17 other people liked this

Anyone? - Mona Nomura

18 more comments

Fools. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

privacy? - .LAG liked that

Maybe because they don't want other people to see their response - Bindu Reddy

Ya, but why? Twitter *is* megaphoning. - Mona Nomura

I don't get it either. And it forces an extra step on me to respond because I prefer do so, usually, in a normal @tweet, not DM. - Nick in Manila

Maybe they don't want to fill their tweet-stream with cryptic @replies. - Paul Buchheit

I think that is party the beauty of Twitter. You can megaphone whenever you want to and DM if you want privacy. Also, agree with Paul. You can never make sense of some of the @ replies. - Bindu Reddy

Ya, I learned the hard way jumping into a conversation. Bits and pieces of the convo were picked up and some things were taken out of context. Which makes me question: what is the real point of Twitter? To hold a one person show? - Mona Nomura

we use our twitter account as a customer support account. Some responses are relevant to all users in which case we use @ but some are not (and would generate too much noise) in which case we use DM. - Edwin Khodabakchian

...TT is 'megaphoning' to the people who choose to follow you. you don't choose them, but perhaps you do want to speak with a few of them with less than a megaphone, occasionally. - .LAG liked that

It's just like when you text someone and they call you back. If I wanted to actually talk on the phone, I would have called you in the first place. Some things on Twitter may be private, but a lot of times it's just people DM'ing for the fsck of it. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I can only think of 2 reasons: a) because someone told them it was rude to have a conversation on twitter, filling up tweetstreams (I've seen this over and over) and b) because they're trying to stay quiet and not call attention to themselves for the moment and still wanted to reply (i.e. hiding out lurking) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

And I'm guessing not everyone is comfortable (yet) with extreme levels of transparency (i.e. exposure), even if it's actually in their best interest. This is all relatively new, actually. - Nick in Manila

I will sometimes reply to mentions using DM because I don't want to clutter my feed with @replies. - Louis Gray

Eric: That's just what I'm talking about. What you said makes absolutely no sense to me. Twitter was designed to work in conjunction with SMS. What do people use text messaging for anyhow?Conversation. IMO: If you think it's clutter, you obviously need a better client. Or you need to form some proper groups in the Tweetdeck & Seesmic Desktop that you're using. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Time & place for everything: No? ie FF public: Mona is great! vs DM: psssst...your zipper is undone... - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Clutter your stream? I never thought of my Twitter stream in that way. Twitter sucks for following conversation, but I DO like people to know who I'm talking to. It's like FoaF. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

it may not be great for following conversation, but if a couple people burst a bunch of tweets to each other over short periods, it works just fine. It's not good at asynchronous conversations like we have here. That doesn't mean it wasn't designed for it. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

For me, Twitter DMs mostly substitute e-mail messages. - Gladstone

Robert Scoble

Finally close to moving my blog over to @mosso (wordpress install). What Widgets/Plugins should I include?

May 7 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Wayne Sutton, (jeff)isageek, Guy Vander Heyden and 10 other people liked this

I'd like to see your twitter stats on your blog, so some sort of widget like the TweetMeme counter - Bwana ☠

12 more comments

Also, I've become a fan of Backtype connect - Bwana ☠

Go with BuddyPress.org Yes, start the Scoble-Social-Network. The SSN if you will... Ok, all kidding aside, go with Askimet (for spam comments), go with a multi-media plugin so you can insert video and pictures with ease, and also check to see if there's a Twitter/facebook/FriendFeed/OpenID plugin to allow external users greater ease of access to comment on your blog. - Harry Wolff

My list: RT tweetmeme button, wp-superchace plugin, fb connect, intensedebate, FF widget, skribd. I support Harry Wolf (http://friendfeed.com/hswolff). A network of early adopters only. - Antonio Altamirano

Try MediaRSS to make wordpress recognize images in your posts and put enclosures around them, so they automatically port into friendfeed if you want to do that with your blog. - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

This post (and comments) will give you plenty of options to consider: http://freelancefolder.com/essenti... - Michelle McGinnis

@Disqus, DekoBoko w/ Recaptcha (contact page), feedburner feedsmith, flickr photo album, ft signature manager, google xml sitemaps, mybloglog recent readers, outbrain, @retaggr - very cool app, addtoany & subscribe, vipervideoquicktags, wp super-edit, wp-page-navi, fresh from friendfeed and twitter, friendfeed feedflare (for feedburner flare), widgets: friendfeed, http://twittercounter.com/pages..., maybe blogcatalog, and if @guykawasaki gets you a nifty alltop badge. - Courtney Engle

i'm heading to #wordcampmidatl next weekend - looking to learn even more crazy stuff there. @technosailor coordinating it. anyone else going? - Courtney Engle

be careful with any contact forms or upload functions - just ask Rob and the others to tell you about my story :) - Allen Stern

dekoboko has worked well for me. forces a captcha field, haven't gotten spam messages there. but - must remember to put in email address its going to. what happened to you allen? - Courtney Engle

I was using Disqus for awhile, but I've noticed that the commenting system for wordpress actually kind of nice, and using akismet with it seems to keep the spam at bay. I've deactivated Disqus on my site to see how it works. Right now, all I can say is I'm digging the original comment system a wee bit more. - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

ah, i like Disqus for the Friendfeed tie-in, and tracking my comments across any place I put them. - Courtney Engle

Disqus - phil baumann

Please minimize the amount of 3rd party JS (Disqus, ID, ugh); just use Backtype. The WP-SUP plugin to get your stuff to FF ASAP would also be good. No offense to people that like their massively crowded pages. - coldbrew

Louis Gray

Twitter Plans to Squash Google’s Spider? - http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009...

May 7 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Rob Diana, Bradley Goetsch and 4 other people liked this

Who wouldn't. I think that's short of impossible. Its more about Google News than Google search engine. That I could believe. - Antonio Altamirano

This is twitters robots.txt #Google Search Engine Robot User-agent: Googlebot # Crawl-delay: 10 -- Googlebot ignores crawl-delay ftl Disallow: /*? Disallow: /*/with_friends #Yahoo! Search Engine Robot User-Agent: Slurp Crawl-delay: 1 Disallow: /*? Disallow: /*/with_friends #Microsoft Search Engine Robot User-Agent: msnbot Crawl-delay: 10 Disallow: /*? Disallow: /*/with_friends # Every bot that might possibly read and respect this file. User-agent: * Disallow: /*? Disallow: /*/with_friends - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

They would have to do more than they are doing now, but interesting concept all the same, what if you wanted google to simply stay out? Twitter has the momentum to not need google right now. - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Jonathan Kong to The Apple Room, Designers Who Design Things

The Ultimate Mac Setup for Web Designers (60 Apps) - http://mac.appstorm.net/roundup... (via http://friendfeed.com/fabrika...)

The Ultimate Mac Setup for Web Designers (60 Apps) - http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/web-dev/the-ultimate-mac-setup-for-web-designers-60-apps/ (via http://ff.im/2Fgls)

May 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Interactive Boat, Edmund Tay, Darren Heydon and 14 other people liked this

even though I like it a lot, for some reason I tend to forget about Coda. I seem to just end up doing everything in Aptana Studio. - Jeremy Wiles

mark silva

RT @mariosga: "YouTube reportedly uses as much bandwidth as the entire internet took up in 2000" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science...)

May 5 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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