Tom Sheppard - Comments

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I use Handbrake to convert a file, load it in iTunes and it plays fine. But, it won't sync to the Apple TV because it says it won't play. OK, encoding is over the 5 Mbps limit, so I reencode to Handbrake's default setting of 59% (low quality IMHO). Still won't sync even though Get Info clearly shows data rate is fine. Delete entry, add back, …

September 9 - Comment - Like - Share

… syncs fine. I truly hate iLooneyTunes and the Attila TV. I'll never buy an ATV again. Next time, I spring for the extra bucks and get a Mac Mini. - Tom Sheppard

Tom Sheppard

FutureShop customer support is great. Returned LG Blu-ray player that wouldn't play Dollhouse. Endemic problem with BD370-N even with latest software. BD300 is OK, so are Sony and Samsung players. LG tech support no help. FutureShop has 30 day return policy. Returned after 50 days. Not only did they let me return the LG, but I bought a Sony …

August 11 - Comment - Like - Share

… replacement, BDP-S360 and they threw in a 3-disc promo set. They could have told me to take a hike but went the extra mile instead. Now THAT'S how you treat a customer. - Tom Sheppard

Robert Scoble

New blog post: you are SO unfollowed! http://scobleizer.com/2009... I'll follow on FriendFeed anyone who comments here:

August 5 - Comments disabled - Like - Share

Ozer Wrzl (EN), Jens Christian Freund, Harold Cabezas and 157 other people liked this

Follow me! - TheHenry

427 more comments

TheHenry: I already am! :-) - Robert Scoble

Please don't unfollow me!! :) - Carlo Nasuti

oh yeah! I forgot! lol! #fail - TheHenry

Very interesting approach Robert. If it is working for you that is awesome though. Hope all is well. Give Roc a big hug for me. - C.C. Chapman

Yo... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Not too much unfollowing please. - Tim

i'm in - Tai Hsia

Can you follow me? - Giorgio

ok I'll allow you - Derry O Donnell

What's going on here? - Andru Edwards

I think you're already following me Robert. - Andrew Leahey

well ok ) - Denverken

Lead, follow, or get out of the way. - Robert Kenney

* - Michael J. Carrasquillo

[comments here] - Nick Humphries

I will comment here! :) - John Ptacek

Great blog appreciate all of your "likes" that I would not have noticed before. Thanks for all the time you spend educating us. - Gary Prechtel

auto-follow always seemed like a bad idea. people can always msg you but your stream will get totally cluttered if you dont do a little bit of housekeeping. - William Kapes

"baby I'm a star" -Prince (off purple rain) - Michael J. Carrasquillo

novel approach, seems sound - Danny Ayers

Consider me available for following. :-) - Eric D. Wilson

Okay, I'll bite.. - Tanya

Bring it Scobleizer. - Todd Pringle

I agree, Twitter is much better this way. - Ryan W

I appreciate your work, and your passion for social media. - Evan Travers

sounds simple... - Mateo Yadarola

Scoble follow me baby - Jadito

Oh you are getting quite a response here!!!! I'm commenting so you'll follow me but the thing is you're going to LIKE following me because you'll learn all about Sedona through tons of videos and you'll love it so much you'll want to pack your camera and head out here! =) - SedonaTV

Thanks for the mentions, Robert (and you know I'm not commenting just for the follow - I just like to follow you, which is what counts!) - Jesse Stay

Guess I might as well delete that overpriced twitter app I bought last week. - Shea from iPhone

Actually Robert, now I've seen you've tidied up your twitter, I'll probably follow you there again too. :-) - Tim

hey follow me scoble - Andy Jenks

Meh, who cares really, not like you read everyone you followed. Plus unfollowed you anyways, not like you have to say that's interestined except friendfeed spam. - Steve

joining the crowd - good move Robert. - Adam

follow me - Tai Hsia

welcome to Boulder - Andrew Hyde

@scobleizer just created the most important tech follow list on Twitter. - Christian Anderson

aww shucks, and here I was thinking it was just me who you unfollowed. - Jess Sloss

I underwent the same situation, Robert - I unfollowed almost everybody on Twitter who duplicated their accounts here on FrF. I got a tempest of fury for this action. web3 is too personal still )) - massagin

Scoble in Boulder = Trouble. - Jim Halligan @jim

I feel fortunate that you're still subbed to me on FF. I haven't even noticed whether you unfollowed me on Twitter. But you following me, still hasn't gotten me the chicks. :P Always fun seeing your posts, long as you don't block me, it doesn't matter if you follow me or not. :) - Arlan Koizumi

I did the same thing some weeks ago after avoiding twitter because it got too noisy. It was instantly better. But in the mean time I started to use FF more and I like it better here so I hardly go near twitter now. - Murray Barton

You already follow me here on ff, which i use more than twitter. - dthree

What's up? - Kevin Whalen from iPhone

Hey Robert, so for following >1,600 is it that right way taken by Philtro and Filttr? - Martin Adamek

I'm glad you mentioned Loic, he caught a lot of flack for doing this earlier. - Steven Cains

Hey Robert - fight the tweetspam ! - Michael Neale

Don't think you are following me on Twitter anymore..please do and best regards - Karma Martell

I'm still trying to figure out the following... so I'm watching how you do it scoble. - Matthew Schrock

Good plan. I'm looking forward to your results. I'm trying to figure out all these social media elements. I would appreciate your Twitter follow. - David Stanley

hope this new approach works for you! - timepilot

Oh, so now you are only easy on FF. - James Watters

Odd internal response, I don't follow everyone who follows me cuz of the very noise you talk about. And, there's no good reason for you to follow me since I'm unlikely to deliver news of interest to you. And yet, here I am, posting on FriendFeed so you have the OPTION of following me, a stranger who is not the same kind of SMART as you. Who'd have thought... - Della Mauler

Interesting statement about original content value of FF independent of twitter. Twitter is where you keep your noise level down... - James Watters

This seems like asking for trouble to me, Scoble. But, it's your time and bandwith to do with what you will. Since only a handful of people (by that I think I mean just one) follow me on Twitter, it's pretty easy for me to weed out the bots. The people I follow are my internet nerds (mostly the Rev 3 crew) so I know their interests are in line with mine. Hit me up for some edifying conversations about Lost and video games, Robert. - Jeremiah Green

Here you go Robert! [also via twitter: @Scobleizer Therefore: only approx. 1.7 million "active" human @Twitter users contribute 50%+ of all activity, right? #engagement] Regards, @AAinslie - Alexander Ainslie

The green avatar is so disturbing mate. :) - Jordan Windebank

I'll lead, you follow. So where are we going? - Tom Sheppard

I was sad to see you unfollowed me, but now you may follow me again, so all will be well in the world. - Jodi

following the leader... - John Munro

You're still following me - does that mean I'm a smart feller? ;) - Brett Kelly

so glad I mail Robert a business card every month :) - Christian Anderson

Della: the thing is here I can follow you and put you into a list and watch you less frequently than some of my other people. So everyone wins. But only here on FriendFeed. :-) - Robert Scoble

Some of us have been doing this from our start. Kind of cool, eh? But our numbers don't grow quickly so we were tagged as "slow." Nice to see you catch up with us! Also, this may shock you, there sre folks who follow and communicate with only 3 folks on twitter and they are HAPPY! Imagine.... - lynda spangler

Yay. Now he will follow a librarian. - Joe

Follow this dot!!! . - Bwana ☠

I've long thought the entire Twitter "etiquette" of always following who follows you to be a bit of a folly. I'm following 114 at the moment, and the stream still moves too fast for me to keep up with. - Darren Landrum

Comment! - anna sauce

ok - Vasu Srinivasan

Good test, count me in... I don't follow tons of people, I follow a few prolific Scoble-types and the rest are more focused in areas I'm interested in. - David Ziembicki

I'm not following tons of people, just a select few. More to follow on FB when facebook has completely integrated Friendfeed-funcionality. ;-) - Wolfgang G. Wettach

I only follow people I know or have something interesting to say, did you really have 160000 people that said something worthwhile??? - Gerard van Schip

Well I commented via your Blog so instead of repeating myself I'll link to comment http://disq.us/1ms9 - Keith - @tsudo

Gerard: everyone says something worthwhile once in a while. The trick is to see it when it happens. Here on FriendFeed, by the way, you have a better shot because good stuff usually gets liked and commented on, so it pulls up higher into my view. - Robert Scoble

come join us here folks http://ff.im/6dUHN xxx - Mark

Okay. But will you read and comment on my stuff? - Mellissa

Robert, I posted this after Loic's decision and it looks like it will need another update. http://www.knowthenetwork.com/blog... I think there is value in stating your follow policy. - Keith - @tsudo

cool - Zach Cheatham

Hello? - Vicky

following all the discussion of you unfollowing everyone on twitter has made me think about doing the same thing and starting fresh. - (jeff)isageek

not unless we beat you in the Ashes - Mark

Nice post Robert, and no surprise it's an improvement. ;o) I have seen it for me too. - Rob Sellen :o)

1 thing I find Robert still worth following @Scobleizer when I am not on friendfeed & on my Hootsuite or PeopleBrowsr. therefore not much affected, not much 2 bother me, ego not gone at all. luv your post Robert it is a frank posting - polou/indigo_bow

Follow me Robert, I promise I'm not annoying. :) @cluteman - Greg Clute from iPhone

You've piqued my curiosity. - Kathy

Robert, thank you! I follow you and enjoy your "likes" and your energetic takes. I also enjoy your Building43 interviews! I am a constant FriendFeed user now. Thank you! - Tobin Truog

This made me realise I must be more active on FF and comment/post more :-). - Mats Pettersson

I think I'll give FriendFeed a go! Never tried it, but looks easy and I need to understand the interwebs better. @CodeSamurai_Com - CodeSamurai

butt-kissing is not a prerequisite for being followed, he will follow you anyways :D - Mark

Count me in! (Please??) - Ricky Maveety

lol @mark. ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

You can follow me, but since you follow a lot of people, you probably can't pay attention to the stream of tweets. - Alex Knight

Alex..that's the WHOLE point he did this... ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

IMHO 1,647 is still way too many people to follow. - Alex Knight

I will NOT get baited into ... ah CRAP. I follow very few people on twitter, mainly only to find info from Android developers (my topic of choice). If you mention anything about the food you are currently eating, etc.. you will probably not be followed. If you post 80,000 times a day, you will not be followed, since Twitters interface sucks (not so for FF). Also, no offense to other social users, but if you resend your FF/FB/<insert other social site here> entries to twitter, I probably won't follow. - Tim Hoeck

http://socialspark.com/blogs... Chris Pirillo is Scum. - Mark

good move IMO - Joanna Nicol

Love the post, love the response. - Chris Rogers from BuddyFeed

nice hanging out at with beach w/ you last week! follow moi!!! - Raina Lee

I always feel like scoble's following me - Rodney J Woodruff from iPhone

Don't forget your Dunbar number, Scoble! There are only so many people you can have meaningfully connect with online. - Steve Lynch from twhirl

Mark is right. No butt kissing. Ew. - Robert Scoble

"I always feel like, somebody's watching me..." - Wizetux

Comment!!!! Ohh wait but you already follow me... - Amit Nangare

Follow me, if you aren't already....please. Thanks, - Steve de Mena

here is my comment ZOL - Shane Gibson

Comment? What kind of coomment, Robert? :-) - Mitch Featherston

Whoop there it is! On Twitter @jimgoldstein - Jim Goldstein from iPhone

Oh..Oh... Mr. Kotter...Mr Kotter..follow me! - Scott Booher

Glad to see you're writing more than 140 characters on that blog. Doesn't that feel liberating? Maybe we should be allowed character# based on your metric for powerful/smart/newsmaker - Noah Bloom

You already follow me here on FF, for which I thank you. So, I'll just say thanks for the phone call the other day. :) - Jeff Harbert

I'll take a follow! - Jeff Weber

@shaunhess - Shaun Hess

Ok, so follow me again and I will follow you back. Thanks! - Audrey

Robert - I fail on most of your criteria so I'm not expecting you to follow me. The thing is I don't care if you follow me back - this is social media and everyone has their own choice. I choose to follow you because you entertain and inform me. The relationship is 100% one way and I am more than happy with that! - Pon

Robert - Last night at GDGT Party the person at the Blackberry booth said: 1) She had 'heard of Twitter, never friend feed' uses neither 2) Is SCOBLE is coming tonight 3) Wow, your Blackberry is really "archaic" and find out when contract lets you upgrade. F-D UP? Booth babes need primers. - Liza

Interesting theory... people who comment more apt to contribute? - Mark Philpot

I know someone else who tried this strategy last year, with similar results. I've been debating it. Once I got over 3K followers on Twitter life just got weird. Started to spend X amount of time every day blocking porn spam. - Patricia F. Anderson

Liza: yeah, sorry for not coming to the party. I went and saw Obama's CTO instead. - Robert Scoble

Steve Lynch: my Dunbar number is higher than yours is. :-) - Robert Scoble

Nice summary Robert on the whole Unfollow thing, but would it be too repetitive if I re-post on my FF? - Keith Rowland

What is the best friend feed aggregation strategy of non-friend streams (eg RSS, twitter, etc)? Imaginary friend per service, then add to lists? Multiple services per imaginary friend or 1 to 1? Or add the services to a group? What are the considerations? - John Brown

Keith: you can repost anywhere you like, thanks! - Robert Scoble

I'm in! - Craig Shipp

still wondering how you are able to handle such a big load of subscribers here and e.g. so many followers with twitter o_0. I am already (sometimes) lost with the few i got till now. Lately with one sweep almost 40 to 50 contacts in twitter disappeard and i have no clue why ... boah, how are you handling the noise? Hell, with so many ppl in, you might have a terrific noise? Or you wear just good headphones ;)? - Ronald

I very much agree that being choosy is the key to Twitter. I'm not nearly on the scale that you are, but in my experience, freely following people (whetther they follow me or not) and then mercilessly cutting back on them over and over again results in a kind of darwinianly better and better signal to noise ratio. - Tim Maly

Touche! - Steve Lynch from twhirl

Count me in - Johnny

Hi Robert - Randy Allen Bishop

Liked the blog post and totally agree. I've been meaning to do something similar. What I do is occasionally prune and then add some "better" replacements, so my total is always 2000 follows. - Bora Zivkovic

I don't see how anyone can manage so many users without groups. Then again, with groups you could just make an "ignore" group. - Oscar M. Cantu from iPhone

Great blog post. I totally agree on the noise level. I figure I have blocked a few hundred accounts on Twitter, and my noise level has dropped dramatically. Thanks for the follow! - Tony "Frosty" Welch

Hello Hello! - Sam Goldfield

Robert - I figured you were in DC from FF, but she had NO IDEA what a CTO is. Point is, she was eager to give you a Blackberry, but not me, and I wish I had a Scoble costume to pretend for 5 minutes. - Liza

@Robert I think you are starting another mass follow again. - Steve Chou from fftogo

Steve: that's not the problem. As long as spam doesn't enter the system I can deal. Keep in mind here I can choose how I follow. I can put you all in a folder that I never look at, if I wanted to. - Robert Scoble

my feelings were hurt that you unsubscribed to me on twitter, but i agree with your methods - Brian Appleby

I'm in! - Chris Rossini

Brian, yeah, but I follow you here. So there. - Robert Scoble

really doesn't matter as long as i can follow you, that's the beauty of these services - Brian Appleby

How did you come to follow so many to begin with? I get annoyed with ppl and unfollowing is easier than sifting through their garbage constantly. - R1CC1

Autofollow was a horrible idea to begin with. - David Chieng

I kind of tired to keep an eye on who follows me now,the ones I'm following is much more important.:-) - Steve Chou from fftogo

Whoa lots of comments I'm following you longtime lol - Edgar Rodríguez from iPhone

Robert: we need more intelligent spam-follower-filtering on Twitter! We need to fix this. - Steve Lynch from twhirl

@David +1 I think auto follow is such a bad idea to begin with,and people like Robert now even need to pay to unfollow these people. - Steve Chou from IM

How much did SocialToo charge for running the unfollow script? - Shane

I'm in! - rich brant from iPhone

I heard its 25 dollars. - Steve Chou from IM

I've always been very picky in who I follow on twitter. I follow 40 people, and I can't guarantee that I see every single tweet. I don't scroll back usually, unless it's my "Real Life" column in Tweetdeck that couldn't fit on my screen. - Tom Ribbens

My birthday is also January 18th, therefore you must follow me Robert! ;) - Chris Luckhardt from BuddyFeed

Thanks Steve! $25 is pretty reasonable. Wonder if anyone else will be jumping on the bandwagon - Shane

Haha....I also threw the devil horns for Scobleizer...that should count for something. ;) http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Chris Luckhardt from BuddyFeed

OK, let's try it! And what about Twitter? - Alexei Zheglov

Thanks for your post. Last time I checked you follow me here on FriendFeed. OK not to follow me on Twitter. - Pilgrim Five

Smart way to clean house. - Jeremy Chone

u have already subscribing me although i am just a-staying-at-home mum =)). thanx scoble. u are really a nice geek. haha! - zʍıɔ

Let's do it. - Kate

this is like an awesome commentfest - Edgar Rodríguez

You can follow me, but I never say anything. Oh.. wait.... - James Macgill

follow me! - Tate DA FF MVP from BuddyFeed

Sometimes the tortoise beats the hare after all... building organically based on getting to know people and interactions tends to avoid the ghastly spammers, seo peeps and bots - Sally Church

Tap, tap... is this thing on? - Yanik Falardeau

This is the best place to follow you. On twitter you only see post headlines, but friendfeed is where the conversation takes place. - Michael Fidler

Ah crap. You're already following me :) - Jason Nunnelley

I'm outside your sphere, but bootstrapping is bootstrapping right? - Travis Bedard

Tuesday night for the first time in 2 months I UNfollowed everyone on Twitter who wasn't following me. Since you had UNfollowed me, yup I unfollowed you. My Twitter account is so /FUBARed! It only goes to page 506 to show who I'm following and after that it is BLANK! I don't even know if they show in my Home stream. So Robert, I value what you say. Know I can tweet profusely - but it's as @replies to others with the occasional micro-blog thrown in. Question, what DID I do to cause you to UNfollow me? - Arleen Boyd

I hope you'll follow me... - Shane Tilton

Follow me, eh? - Joey Gibson

Trying to fill out those dropped Twitter follows? - Jamie Elgie

Scoble: Have you convinced Guy Kawasaki against his "follow everyone that follows you" mentality? - Kevin Pruett

please do what you must to have the most effecient feed mr scoble, the random will still creep through the cracks, ;) - chaz2b

I still haven't really adopted FriendFeed, but I will get interesting here in time if you follow me. - Lance M. Brown

How are your cleanup efforts coming along? - Jennifer Ruggiero

Oops - I also meant to ask, Robert: how are you managing to follow the couple thousand that you are now re-following on Twitter? You must be using groups, I guess...any other methods? I find ~500 people to be a near max in terms of how many folks I can fully read. - Lance M. Brown

Following your inspiration, I unfollowed almost 100 people last night and blocked about 1000 spammers, cam girls, MLM marketers, and the like. Twitter is more like it was a year ago, its almost like I gave my Twitter account an enema and it worked. Thanks for the original idea. - Mark Edwards

Excellent! - Don Strickland

Robert, I started out only following those I know and those I am genuinely interested in. I've only followed back a few of the people who've followed me. I have a second account that I decided to experiment with. I followed about 700 people on there. It has had about double the followers of my main account consistently. I am about to try some new tricks there with an auto-follow script I'm writing but I think I will stay the course with my main account. - Paul The Raven

Robert, I tried the "follow everyone" (almost) method for a short time - then I'd unfollow about once-a-week. Now I try to schedule a "follow new" once a week. TweetDeck's group feature makes following lots of folks bearable. So does FF, but you've been saying that for-ever! - Kathy E Gill

I am just taking it slow. - Rick Cogley from iPhone

Hey. - Kreg Steppe

I will follow you if you follow me (Genesis) - Keith Barrett

I may not be smart, but I'm smart enough to follow you! - John Pfaff

It occurred to me (and surely to someone before me), that different definitions of "following" might be a big factor here. If I'm following someone, it means I'm following along with their updates. But others might see themselves more as becoming part of a person's "following". Not that they are necessarily reading the person's stuff, but they are willing to be considered part of that person's inflated Twitter posse, as part of the influence-trading aspect of Twitter. - Lance M. Brown

Robert, I think that the biggest thing that changed is not that you were "wrong" (to follow everyone) before but that the Twitter population has changed so much. A year ago, pretty much everyone on Twitter was real, and interesting - now there's so much automated gaming the system going on that the signal to noise ratio has gotten unbearable. So I think anyone who cares about more than... more... - Matthew Blaisdell

I can't imagine how it would happen technologically, but it would be great if there was a way to ditch followers who weren't actually reading your tweets. - Lance M. Brown

Enjoyed recent posts and look forward to more from you! Keep it up. - One Degree Connected

I don't want to be left out please!! - Jannifer @wordsforliving

All right, I'll bite :) - although I'll say that I did the mass-unfollow-thing months ago - long before it was cool. - Justin from Nambu

Your most active followers are on FF. No loss.If you really wanted to make a bold statement you ought to have blocked all of your followers and started from scratch. - Benjamin Taylor

Been a while since I put you and Shel On the record...Online - Eric Schwartzman

blah. - imabonehead

Good article Robert. I honestly enjoyed the perspective. I found the same to be true, but on a much lower scale, of course ;-) - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

i'm in! - Criz

I don't get it - so now you are using Twitter kinda like a normal person, and its some kind of miracle that it works better? - Nick Lothian

I'm impressed you can keep up with 1600 people. I have trouble enough with the little amount I have. I did find that making FriendFeed imaginary friends and putting them in groups for those I'd like to read occasionally (but not on a regular basis) has helped a lot - Tamara

Follow....how about some promotion! - Bob DeMarco

i'm in - Joshua Smith from twhirl

9/11 Was an Inside Job - bill giltner

Stop it, or I will have to get a restraining order. - Sriks7

Hey, Robert! - tomit from iPhone

In my mind I'm important enough to follow ;-) - Jonathan Callahan

Hello Robert....Whatever your favorite genre is...http://listen.grooveshark.com/#... - Michele Lorito-Chase

Looks like you have a lot of work to do following everybody. - Corbett Barr

now i'll have to write something interesting... - Robert Littlejohn

me! i offer nothing but the warm feeling of having accepted a ff reject. - Marco

ok. so how will you filter the noise now - Kfir Pravda

Ooo, I've won the lottery. You'll follow me now. Wheeee! (how do you have the time to go through all of the names by hand? VA assistance?) - Peggy Dolane

Great :) - Baard @ Pixum

Interesting trend on twitter - I always wondered what sense it made to follow tens of thousands of people, too much noise. I'm finding it hard enough to follow 2900 (looking to cull even that down as I mostly tweet about 30 people!) - Tia Singh, Life Coach

211th comment: WTF - Geer

Good :) - ★ Soner Gönül

I like your ability to influence so many people. I'm following you (mostly here - on FriendFeed) because it's one of the ways to learn how you do it (but, please, do not follow me if you do not see anything you could learn from me :-). - Hanna Wiszniewska

I would come up w/ a better vetting process. - Joe

why would you do that? - james

got to get a pic up so i can fit the criteria, I only follow 45 people and some of them are on thin ice ( Im lookin at you Scoble) - James Hunter

"Where in The Net is Robert San Diego?" (cit.) :-) - Luca Perugini from iPhone

I'm not kissing your arse,but i do learn a lot listening to you. - Paul Downing

@scobleizer why would you randomly follow people who comment in this post when you just got done knocking FFollo and having to unfollow a gazillion people on Twitter? - Bryan Zirkel

Bryan: because I'm following people one by one and putting them into lists on my screen. Autofollowing means you aren't doing ANY of that thinking. Also, autofollowing will get you spammers, if they ever show up (and they will). - Robert Scoble

@Robert: Read your blogpost and that's indeed what I look at to follow people too. No autofollow and even close friends have to tell something interesting for me to (keep) following. Friends who are new to Twitter (no tweets yet) get the benefit of doubt. - Patrick Mackaaij

If you follow me, great, but if you don't I'll understand. :) And I ought to do some pruning myself... - Grant Bierman

Let's give it a try. :0) - Toma Kazakov

I still don't understand how you want to follow someone who just writes a comment over here. Well, this is not the first time. I did not understand why and how you followed 100k people. I find it hard to properly follow 100 people. - Sumanth Kolar

Sumanth: obviously there are degrees of "following." When you read the New York Times, do you read the entire paper word for word? I don't. Same when I'm following. I only get random slices of some of my lists. Others, which have 500 people on them, get 100% read. - Robert Scoble

I'm still here . . . although tired after teaching all day. Louis Gray came to my PR class at SFSU and WOWED the 50 students [except for one who thinks we are making too much of social media] We won't be following him. - Shari Weiss

I like cheese! - Paul Puri

really? - clockwise from iPhone

Shari: Louis wows me too. Glad to see the class is getting into it. - Robert Scoble

He he :) - Richard Holas

I still like the "stranger stream" of Twitter vs "friend feed" of other applications. I don't feel the need to read all tweets from everybody - and tools let me check my fave tweeples. I think mass unfollowing destroys some of the social contract - Robert you are lucky because you are well liked and can do some risky things but companies for example (not Brands of One) would be in... more... - Laurel Papworth

As @charleneli predicted back in January, 2009 will be the year of de-friending on social networks. It's here. - Mark Evans

Laurel: yeah, you have to navigate these waters carefully if you are representing a brand, that's for sure! - Robert Scoble

you can put me on your boring list... - Charles Tanton

i will not get followed back: not powerful, don't have a brand, not a news maker... but i kinda understand the reasons - Dani Martínez

I still think it all goes into how you use twitter. If your using it as a communication tool it depends on if you are looking for broadcast or 2 way. Its interesting to watch as some of the bigger names turn back from the broadcast and go back to the 2 way. - Luke Kilpatrick

@Robert so when you're taking in information from FF do you have a feed of several dozen/hundred "key" people and then categorize the rest, or are you mainly searching? Do you utilize groups at all or mainly just rely on what comes across your feeds? I guess I'm curious as to how you're using FF to collect information. - Bryan Zirkel

I have found Twitter becomes noise rather than a conversation once the following/follower thing gets over a certain mark. I think this is the dirty little secret of Twitter - if it just turns into white noise, rather than a filter, then it becomes less than useful. - Michael Liss

I'm interested in how we'll all feel over the next few years as social networks continue to change and more people and organizations get on them. Obviously, many of us are getting fed up with spammers and are unfollowing them on Twitter and Facebook. I am also having a hard time keeping up with new subscribers on FriendFeed because I know less about them from their profiles and have to... more... - Cathryn Hrudicka

BTW, I feel like I'm finding lots of interesting new people to follow from these discussions that Robert and others are holding on FF. Cool! - Cathryn Hrudicka

Am I too late to comment and get followed? - Hichame Assi

I'm definitely around :) - KyNam Doan

Aren't you following me already? If not, you should be! LoL - Thomas Ward

I'm definitely late to be followed. :D - Faraz Mullick

I don't get it but ok :) - Parvez Halim

LOL! I follow those I find interesting and which can give me useful information. And hope someone follows me for the same reasons. - Flavio

Very interesting post - I've always thought that you guys who follow loads of people must get completely swamped by noise! Like you, I've found it useful to follow companies I use that have interesting products like Zoho and Evernote as a way of keeping up to date with their latest innovations. Excellent idea spelling out your "follow criteria" - it needs to become standard etiquette for social networks so that people don't get offended when they aren't followed back :) . - David Meredith

aren't you doing the same thing here, that you did in Twitter? Choose carefully who you follow, filling your brain with pollution doesn't make you smarter - Allison

Just finished reading the Mashable post on your unfollow exercise. It's attracting attention from all the other big names now. - George Hall (Australia)

Very interesting indeed, I only to unfollow a few, cause I just never had auto follow on.. So now I just unfollow the ones I'm bored of.. - Jaap Willem

Seems like a good idea. Although Louis Gray also has a few valid points on his latest blog post why it might be a mistake http://bit.ly/19UKxk - Silver Hage

I've never understood the auto-follow procedure on any social network. Even on Facebook, where it is obligatory, one can still lower the noise by simply hiding the updates of those who want to follow you, but perhaps also have little personal connection and therefore can be hidden. - Noah Gray

It seems like the unfollowing was the easy part. Choosing who to follow again must have been a chore. I think it is crucial in twitter (and FriendFeed for that matter) to have a clear out every six months or so otherwise you get bogged down in an information feed you don't really care about. - Chris Nixon

I can totally understand why you had to do this. I'm following 2700-ish folks on Twitter and I need 3 groups to manage it (using TweetDeck). I feel I am keeping up with most of my local community and the general tech community at large though I'm sure I'm still missing quite a bit of stuff from people who are not in the 3 groups. I also wonder how much more I can actually handle. - Ken Seto

Um... well, I made something of myself, but then I didn't like what I made, so now I'm doing it all over again. Not sure how that fits with your criteria! Plus, I really don't have a brand or any influence to speak of. I do look great in boxers, however. - Mark "Mr Bolivious" J

OK, OK, changed my picture. Instead of a green clock (a clock is my personal brand) I put a picture of myself. A lot of people told me to do that.... - Bora Zivkovic

I am still looking for info on holographic technology being used for news delivery. Perhaps it's a technology that hasn't even been invented yet or is sitting on a shelf somewhere. What say you? http://specialdee.wordpress.com/2009... - Denise

Hoping your new look account has had the desired effect. No need to follow me, I'm not the interesting type, I'll just be glad if your insights, links & content continues. Congrats & good luck - JanLawrence

Here's what's interesting, Robert, I've noticed an uptick in followers even if you reply or RT or like someone's tweet, not just if you follow that person. Then again, perhaps that's the intent - if you like or RT someone's idea, that's a kind of stamp of approval. - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Hej hej! - Peter

The Scoble Pendulum.. How long till we go back to FOLLOW!! FOLLOW!!! FOLLOW!!!! ? :) - Adrian Scicluna

I did a purge on Facebook for the same reasons a few months ago. It's under 300 and it's people I actually care about. I've come "this close" to running a purge on Twitter but haven't yet. Maybe this will spark me to do it. I've kept FF tight from the beginning. - Rob Williams

moving from FB to FF ... fewer, longer, more meaningful threads. welcoming your follow. cheers - marc calamia

ok, you´re following me already :-) - Torsten Eckert

alright - follow me... - thx in advance Robert Scoble... - Nilesh

All that commenting in the past counts for nothing? - Kevin Gamble

Hey Robert... Great post... On FriendFeed, I increasingly put people without meaningful and valuable content on a separate feed that I rarely check... Its a more "sensible" way to unfollow, i think... I only unsubscribe if I get pissed at someone etc. I wish, FF gave users the option to only unsubscribe from comments and likes (but keep the main feed). This would be a good tool to control the noise... - Onur Kabadayi

I agree with Robert (duh!). I very briefly made the effort of checking out the new follows and deciding whether to follow back. I think once I hit a thousand I shifted to a model of occasionally saying, "If you want me to follow you, talk to me." Hit two thousand and quit saying anything or checking followers. I don't care if they follow me as long as they either say useful things like real people or don't talk at all. I've never autofollowed back. This strategy works for me. - Patricia F. Anderson

I have a large difference between people I follow (around 2000) and people who follow me (around 1800) - I choose people who are important sources of information. People choose me if they think I am an important source of information to them. I never thought it would have to be a one-to-one relationship as to who is useful to whom: some are informative, others are good listeners and learners. I learn from people I follow and I hope my followers learn from me. - Bora Zivkovic

I also think that those of us who follow larger numbers of people don't use the stream in the same way. It is more dipping in and out of the stream, trusting that the important stuff will be repeated enough to float to the top, engaging with conversations of the moment. I wrote a blogpost on this earlier this year: http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2009... - Patricia F. Anderson

Someone told me twitter can be separated into two types. (id say at least two) - Kay Proskin

Scoble, I am beginning to think you are a cult leader :). Look at all these comments! I am using FF more and more these days... Useful for eGuiders.com that's for sure. - Marc Ostrick

I'm not sure your following me. - Amit Morson

Hey Scobie :D Follow me ! - paniaguai

I like Robert. He was one of the first people I followed on Twitter and brought me to FF. But I don't understand why people are desperate to have him follow them. Status? Some kind of virtual autograph? - Tech Introvert

What the heck. Follow me if you like. I'll be as entertaining & informative as I can. - Aaron Schaub from iPod

Been considering doing the same. Your post just might be the flame that lights a fire you-know-where to get it done. - @katebuckjr

I only follow a few people and keep losing track so lord only knows how you managed to even begin to keep track of a conversation before friendfeed came along - Iain from BuddyFeed

Well done! Who need followers that aren't reading your tweets anyway. - Sean Rasmussen

I just want a toaster! - ZuDfunck

I'm considering doing same once I'm more confident in my use of FriendFeed. I RT'd this and it resonated with at least one of my followers. - Tony Hollingsworth

'Hand-crafted personal network' is the meme of the moment, and whilst I can see the workmanship, where's the value going to be for you, Robert, in following this rag-tag (no offence people :) ) of folks from a gazillion different verticals. (OK, so they're mostly life scientists). - Andrew Spong

I use to want to be Bob Dylan. Now I am not so sure. - ZuDfunck

um..... - Spencer

My take: you can't be an authentic, credible voice to your community if you let 'sex & dollars' spammers hang on to your coattails. Spam followers matter.... in a bad way. Allowing them to be associated with you diminishes your potential value to genuine followers. It's a pain. It takes time. It's worth doing. More on this, if interested: http://tr.im/vJwb - Andrew Spong

I'll have mine to go. - ZuDfunck

Hope to see more "old fashioned blogging", like it better than tweets. Tweets are bound to disappear into oblivion the moment they're posted. - Willem (@wim66) ☠

"Spam followers matter.... in a bad way." - I certainly agree with this. I block pornbots just as quickly as they follow me. I'm less vigilant about the commercial follows, but usually they go away by themselves after a while. - John Craft

You're already following me here (don't care about twitter tough), so i just hope you don't un-follow, even though you probably don't understand what i'm talking about most of the time, since it's in portuguese. - Diego Sana

So what happened to the advantages to following so many people you always talked about? - Bas

Thanks for connecting here, still learning all the advantages of FF - carece

@Andrew Regarding spam followers and the idea that allowing them to follow you somehow dilutes your credibility, I just have to disagree. To me that places the burden on the wrong person. I don't have time to waste pruning those who follow me, unless they are overtly annoying.My stream is public, they can follow me anyway. What matters to me is that the spammers leave me alone. If they don't, I block them. If they keep quiet, I don't care. - Patricia F. Anderson

What is important is not who follows me, but who *I* follow. - Patricia F. Anderson

Follow me if you want, but I gotta warn ya, it's scintillating stuff! - Pierce Presley

Funny my twitter feed is much noisier but I have been very selective on who I follow. I have tried to make the feed relevant and actionable. At times I post things that seem out of the norm on my twitter feed but that is mainly for the few people who follow me that don't get it but I am trying to keep up their interest level. I also control who follows me, yes this breaks the model but I think the follow everyone model was broken and reckless - Richard Gallo

Am I interesting? Dunno. I'm often controversial, tho. ;) BTW, we met in person at a Pittsburgh Blogfest, but I really don't expect you to remember that. - Eric Williams

Enjoyed the post. I just started Twitter a few days ago to get away from Facebook. I like friendfeed the best - can't wait until it becomes more mainstream. - Robby Parker

Awesome move. Consider that my comment please :) - Charlotte Barker

friendfeed is definitively more evolved that Twitter. Conversely, user bases of Twitter is still its real (and unique) point of strenght... - Marco Castellani

Don't want you to follow me (unless you find my stream of interest) but it's quite interesting the number of people that comment to get you to follow! - Ben Drury

Hey Robert! So, I would like to talk to you about a social media company I'm working with right now. They launched a few months ago and their trajectory and momentum is pretty amazing. Oh, and I started unfollowing the noise in my Twitter after I commented on your blog post. - Gregg Le Blanc

Great ideas. I've been selective (though it fluctuates) about following people/accounts on Twitter since I joined about 2 years ago. I can't take too much noise. - Joe Lance from twhirl

I'm asking the same thing Bas asked... what about your video on the benefits of following so many people? I took a stab at that method of madness by starting to follow all kinds of people, and following anyone that followed me... but I always felt like I was missing good content from good people because of all the "spam". I started to use TweetDeck to create groups/columns for... more... - Timothy Federwitz

@Patricia - reminds me that I should probably review all my twitter followers and thin things down. :) - JA Castillo

thanks - Keith

I like conversing with interesting people. Sometimes that means commenting to get followed, @cogiva. ;) - Eric Williams

Hi Scoble! - Pete Gilbert

I did almost the same thing - unfollowed about 1000 from my 1500, no attention is way better - Maarten den Braber

Couldn't agree more. It's about time we all grew up. BTW Don't follow me. :-) - Gee Ranasinha

Robert what's the deal with Twitter? - stockmanmarc

Your post makes good sense. I didn't auto-follow & still find folks to unfollow because their noise gets too loud. - Debra Ellis

Very clever. I imagine the signal to noise is sooooo much better. - Chris Brogan

I've been thinking about unfollowing a bunch twitter folks as well. I'll look at SocialToo again. My initial experience with SocialToo wasn't good. However, it was during their infancy. - Ron Hudson

I don't blame you at all. Leo was all over that yesterday. - Daniel B. Honigman

why would simply leaving a comment prompt you to follow me? - David Wescott

You're not going to change your mind and mass unfollow us are you? - walidmREALTOR

Sup! :-) - Jon Winters

I suspect it identifies you as a real person interested in dialog, David. - Eric Williams

Followers are currency and you have plenty to spend - Lee Odden

Bob, did you do anything on Twitter recently ? Did you massively refollow people ? Seems like you screwed up Twitter : down for a while... ;-) - Enikao

Follow me! @carloscomputers - carloscomputers

very cool timing with just before twitter goes down hard! well done Robert! @crbrowning - Colin

@davidorban - David Orban

I've followed you and have really enjoyed your posts. I think I would miss that - Tom

Good to hear that your experiment has stopped the spam @lindsaydavies - Lindsay Davies

ciao Robert! - alex

Your ego is amazing. You make it seem like it is a special deal to be followed by you. I'm glad there are many very bright, talented people here who follow others, regardless of class, education, social status and not based on some snobbish criteria. - RuthNH

DON'T follow me! I write in Italian :-) - Lorenzo Strambi

Here I be - Robert

Wow, this is a lot of comments. And kudos for following Followable people who have something interesting to contribute to your day. I'm glad you did it, because that means you'll find AND share more interesting things. This, in turn, makes you more followable too. Thanks for seeing the light, so to speak. - ax0n

You killed twitter. - Melissa Pierce

and now with twitter down, many will flock to here! - Mark V. Fusco

I love rob - Mark from iPhone

Did this take down Twitter this morning Robert? - frank barry

That must of taken a long time :-) I've always been a fan of twitter, but I must say they have struggled in the last few weeks. We are working with their API on a project and their seems to be an issue every other day that causes problems. Do they have what it takes? - Chris Nadeau

I follow under 200 people and it's great. I can't imagine 1k+ . I add about three or four a month. - Mike Janicke

I unfollow people when I find I ignore their tweets/updates. After reading your blog, I think we ALL need to be more judicious. - Janet Barker-Evans

Is this why Twitter is down? LOL! Can't check to see if you unfollowed me. Hope not. You, Shel Israel, and Jeremiah Owyang were some of the very first people I followed way back before Twitter even had 100,000 people on the service. -- It's been a fun ride but, of course, the spammers always show up to make things difficult. - Brenda Young

How do you really know if you should be following someone until you follow them for a while? Sometimes I don't start talking to someone until I see a common interest, then I tweet back and we start talking, but that could be months later. I don't follow everyone back, but I follow back those that interact. I will unfollow once I see that won't happen, or I don't like their tweets. - Nadine Gilden

Twitter is victime of it own success, they have to re learn how to scal better, but more important they have to learn to share better. - abdellah

looks like you'll need to follow at least 343 people LOL - Shari Weiss

Friendfeed takes over for twitter finally? - Thomas Resing

@Patricia I don't want potential followers to be put off by who is following me. I wouldn't want them to think I care more about have n+1 followers than I do about what they're going to see if they review who I've allowed to follow me. Not to cull spammers suggests I care more about my experience than theirs. To a great extent, the quality of their experience will determine the quality... more... - Andrew Spong

1600 ... isn't that a big number too? It could be you'll think again before you follow every one here :) - Mario Gastaldi

Hi... do I get a follow? - Jason Mayoff

If you are already following me. Will you double follow me? :) - Brady

Hi Robert!! :) - Zaneology from Nambu

Still waiting for my Building 43 t-shirt. Not that I'm bitter or anything. ;-) - Donna Tuttle

Be sure to come by Dallas when you swing through Texas! - Zaneology from Nambu

Respect your opinion Robert but we'll have to agree to disagree. Yes I despise all the FakePornSpamBots who follow me. I block as many as I can, but can't keep up. Our views differ regarding what is important to SEE! I treasure home Home stream! I read it, refresh, read, refresh and in minutes I have the pulse of the world... at least MY world! EVERYONE has something of value to share at some point. If I UNfollow tens of thousands, I will miss so much worthy of consideration. - Arleen Boyd

Just another reason why it's good to diversify, I can still read your posts here. :) - Luis Sandoval

Cheers! - Jeff Wiant

Funny. I was catching up on news on Friendfeed for some odd reason. Great post; plenty for new and long-time users alike to consider there. - Alex Howard

I'm still waiting for the ultimate tool to manage my followings - I can only manage to keep up with about 1/3 of those following me. I'd love to see something that can tell me what friends of mine also follow those that I am or those that are following me. Maybe it's out there and I missed it? - TheDiva Rockin

Anyone interested in assessing the quality of their followers should check http://tweetblocker.com. It's pretty chastening. I aim to improve on my C rating. http://www.buzzom.com is a fun, fast way of decoupling yourself from non-reciprocal followers. You can select individuals to purge, or flush 50 random non-reciprocal followers at a time. - Andrew Spong

Robert, your timing could not be better. ;-) - Dave Martin

Great post, with perfect timing! Dang it, Dave Martin just took it off my lips. - Vadim Lavrusik

I hereby rename this comment thread neoTwitter <waves at followers> - Andrew Spong

/me waves - Kevin Johnson from iPhone

Awww, you gotta admit, saturation, the level of influence that you have, because of your high follower, count, is a tool of mass destruction. Seriously, did you think if you recommend an online service that people would not try it out? Was this an asassination attempt - Peter Murphy

I'm glad i'm not the only one who misses /me actions from IRC, Kevin. ;) - Eric Williams

With today's Twitter outage your timing is pretty stinking good, Robert. :) - Chris Cree

Now to get the rest of the world to follow that same logic when it comes to follow/unfollow! I only started being more selective as Twitter (and everyone else) started getting aggressive with spammers or anyone that even remotely did a single spammy tweet. Now if only there were the same contact management tools available for the other social networks as with Twitter. No matter what though, I'll continue updating my status when I eat a peanut butter sandwich! (With Fluff of course!). - Paul Monaco

Twitter couldn't handle the mass unfollow load, blew up... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I've been followed by Robert Scoble :-) - David Finch

Follow iPolitics - Jacob Kobi Gamliel

Now I think that it is time to think about a way to make money using Twitter. - abdellah

@Mark, +1. When in doubt, the default delegation of blame goes to Robert. - Dave Martin

what is critical mass for twitter? Too few and nobody interacts, Too many and spam bots overwhelm, Is it 1K or 2K needed to get a real experience? - WarLord

Hmm can you unsubscribe from "comment notification via e-mail" in FF on a *specific* topic? This one :-) - Patrick Mackaaij

Of course I thonk it is a different experience if you hand follow reading each bio from the beginning then these mass purges are unnecessary - WarLord

I thought you already followed me. lol - Duane-PreppyDude

Not sure if you do, but here I am... - Aron Michalski

I am intrigued how RT addict will RT now?!! (ps: FF please don't post this to my twitter) - abdellah

I have been keeping my twitter account private a majority of the time lately b/c I am going through a divorce, but I really kinda like it. Have been reducing followers as well as the number I follow. - Jackson Miller

You should follow me here in FF and on Twitter too! - Karthi

hopefully most of us have proven our worth beyond commenting on this single thread - andy brudtkuhl

I like the way you operate, Scoble. Thanks in advance for the follow! - Dr. Frank Ramblings, Ph.D

Nice way of doing it... - Charles

No need to follow me unless you are actually going to engage in conversation with me. - Jeff Hurt

If you're already following and we comment, will you unfollow? *wink Hoping all is well your way! - Dayngr

4&5 are my favorite! Those are big reasons I decide to follow someone too. - Kelly Mitton

I'm lucky. Have never had Twitter spam. But then again I'm no Scoble either :) - Lori Reed

I am the peanut butter eating bot - Benjamin Spector

If you are already following me on ff does that mean I get a cookie or something? ;-) - Tomy Thomson

I'll add my name to the list. I came back to FF after the Twitter DoS outage. Maybe Scoble broke Twitter by all his unfollowing. He was the "glue" holding Twitter together. :-) - Tom Newman

Robert: Here's the bit you missed off the end of your title here: .... and put them in that group I don't read :-) - Jim Connolly

Hi Robert, greetings from germany. - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

add me for your social media and the practice of law news! - Rex Gradeless

Great post. I'm sure that some people might say that this kind of mass unfollowing will hurt Twitter, but I think it's just the opposite. Users who are following people they have no interest in just to pad their own numbers are diminishing the meaning of "following." - Mark Denton

@Ulrichmargarita - Ulrichmargarita

To stave off being unfollowed we need to comment here ya say? - Jason

you are already following me here... perhaps you'll consider re-following me on twitter too - t i n y m

I don't know how you ever did it the other way. I am not in the tech world near as much as I used to be, which wasn't a whole lot. I just followed some random people I saw on SMugMug-related people on here when I started. You were one of them. I had no idea who you were (and still don't :-), but you talked about Twitter a lot too, which got me on there as well. Both services have really... more... - James Schipper

Follow away! - Ferdinand Perez

ok 400 jackpot - abdellah

Quality over quantity in all things, including (perhaps especially) Twitter. Loved your friending methodology -- those are the same rules I've applied since being on Twitter. Posted them onto Posterous to share the love with credit to you: http://lorilaurentsmith.posterous.com/ - Lori Laurent Smith

it's not about unfollowing, it's about filtering... - Barak Hachamov

I started out following everyone on Twitter.Then I got wise. When someone's stream becomes more noise than signal, that's when I consider unfollowing. I realize that threshhold is different for everyone, but I'll take "what I had for lunch" over a dozen bogus "marketing tips" any day. - Julie Barrett from twhirl

Well, I am trying to use FriendFeed more after watching Scoble's video on all those monitors he had up. I'm not a big consumer of information and don't own a TV but this online social stuff has been a perfect fit into my life because I can connect with people who are fountains of knowledge on a specific subject or are "human mashups". I like both! - Adria Richards

Why !? - Bertrand Soulier from iPhone

I've been reading al of this unfollow bits, and this point of yours: - Donna

Hey, I think that today you might make your point about FriendFeed being more interesting than Twitter. Hope you are well. Talked with @fransteps this morning and she is excited to work with you at Rackspace. - Kami Huyse

hi - George Desmyter

I would appreciate the follow, thanks! - Jeff Reisdorfer

I've been reading all of this un-follow posts lately, and this point of yours in WHY you unfollowed: "#2 Because I personally care about everyone I am following their noise level is a LOT lower. ." Is exactly what I do. And now I am starting to understand Friendfeed more. and using posterous to do aggregate posts. So is this overload making more people sit up and think first? I think so. At least the intelligent ones. - Donna

I love you Scoble! ;) - Carol Levesque

with all due sycophantism :) - jeff hammond

This is a great move, Robert. It's also a lot more human...I was almost convinced that you were the only person who could actually drink from the fire hose without choking. - Steffan Antonas

That sounds fair. After this morning, I've renewed my love for FriendFeed and Tweetworks. Until the next DDos attacks, of course. I will miss the fake porn stars, but I did when I moved from L.A. - Scott Pierce

Steffan; I agree...there is no way anyone else could do what Robert S. does. It's good to see him become human. - Robert Jones

This has been my problem for about the past six months. I routinely go in and unfollow, get the noise level down to where I want it, and then end up following back a bunch of new people, some of whom I'm incredibly grateful to get to know. When I had track, it was a whole lot easier to manage the stream, but I suspect even that tool would now be out of hand. I have a set of rules for... more... - Karoli

hee hee. i am commenting not so much to beg your follow but what a clever pitch:) - Tresha Thorsen

Robert - I have not read all 416 comments so if this was asked and you answered forgive me. What was the all of a sudden revelation that caused you to reverse stance on Twitter Followers? - Jeff Vreeland

It's difficult to maintain and filter a list on all the social networking sites. I cannot even imagine maintaining the kinds of lists you must deal with, Robert. - Jeremy Brooks

Dude, you broke Twitter! When you unfollowed all of your 100,000 the other day you pulled the rug right out from under it, so it fell down and now it can't reach its beer. :-) - Robert Morrison

Actually I felt rather sad being fav'ed by you on FriendFeed then dumped.. But again. I get more from you from FriendFeed, so oh well, stop talking about Following and Get on more with Tech! :P - Du Senyao Peter

Me Me! lol! - Bill McGehee

i like the idea of importing favorite tweets into friendfeed. i haven't used that favorite feature much because i haven't seen any real use in it. thanks! - Jonathan Blundell

When twitter is down I always wish I could tweet: checkout friendfeed. Nevertheless, how will following folk that leave a message here really improve the quality of your input? While I don't want to judge many of the fine folk on this thread, are they all that interesting? In other words, isn't this the start of the same problem you had on Twitter... - Jon Mountjoy

what like here? this is a comment :) - michelle harris

Barak - isn't filtering just unfollowing while pretending you're still following? ;) - Matthew Blaisdell

Well to bounce back on your Twitter is down comment I think it is time to watch this video again http://www.youtube.com/watch... Hilarious! - 77Agency

Robert, I'm glad you decided to stop auto-follow (finally). :) - Veronica Sopher

I'm in - Jeroen Sangers from Nambu

works for mw - Brendan Jackson from twhirl

Robert, but why clutter your FriendFeed stream? This comment is not to get you to courtesy follow me on FriendFeed, think you've established you've changed your thinking. :) - L.P. NEENZ FALEAFINE

OK, I have enough people to follow so I will close the comments on this thread. Thank you everyone, I will try to get to everyone today. - Robert Scoble

Tom Sheppard

Thinly disguised rate increase at 1and1.com. Current Home package for $5/mo gives 120 GB storage & 1.2 TB transfer. New price will be $7 for "more" storage and unlimited transfer. "By listening to our customers, we’ve made this important change to allow us to offer the worry-free hosting environment that your site needs."

July 20 - Comment - Like - Share

Seriously, how many home users use anywhere close to the current limits and want to pay $2/mo more for stuff they'll never use? Just be honest, 1and1, and just say you're raising your rates. I hate this deceptive crapola. - Tom Sheppard

Tom Sheppard

After far too many weird problems on my MacBook, I'm going to do an archive and install. I'll document the whole process on FF to avoid cluttering Twitter. To save time, I'm hoping that only an OS reinstall is necessary and not a reinstall of all the apps and user settings (fingers, toes, and eyes crossed).

July 3 - Comment - Like - Share

15:33 > I expect some apps that have stuff in /Library may need a reinstall though. First close down all applications. I can't even force quit the two copies of Retrospect running (that's another reason I'm doing a reinstall). Wait for Time Machine to complete its backup in progress. - Tom Sheppard

63 more comments

15:35 > This is going to be a long process so make sure my iPod is synced with latest podcasts to while away the time. - Tom Sheppard

15:40 > Trying to sync iPod Touch. Hung. Try to eject 2G Shuffle. Hung. Good ol' iTunes. These are the kind of problems that may not be fixed by an OS reinstall. Force quit iTunes. Visions of Windows keep flashing through my head like a migraine. - Tom Sheppard

15:43 > Time Machine backup completed. Try to use menu bar icon to launch prefs to turn it off. Just the spinning beachball of death. Try to launch System Prefs from Apple menu. Hung. Clearly I need to reboot, then complete backups. What a great start. - Tom Sheppard

15:44 > Restarting computer from Apple Menu. Get the confirmation window and then — nothing. Time for the 6-second power button salute! - Tom Sheppard

Managed to force quit some apps, others absolute refuse to quit. Uh, Apple, what good is a force quit if it doesn't work? Trying to restart from Apple Menu again. Just showing desktop background now. Waiting … waiting … - Tom Sheppard

15:50 > No go. Had to use 6-second power button salute. Restarting now. Can't restart with Shift key down to disable extensions because I need Retrospect Client extension to do backup from server. - Tom Sheppard

15:56 > MacBook rebooted. Try syncing iPods again. Turn off Time Machine. - Tom Sheppard

15:56 > Damn! Time Machine started another backup before I could turn it off. Why? It's been less than an hour. Grrr. - Tom Sheppard

15:59 > iPod syncs complete. I feel so — so — lucky. Waiting for Time Machine to finish. I don't want to risk stopping it prematurely. - Tom Sheppard

16:01 > Now where is that iPod Touch clear plastic stand? Hunting … - Tom Sheppard

16:05 > Still waiting for Time Machine to finish. Watching one of my favourite podcasts, The Apple Byte, with one of my favourite hosts, Brian Tong. Ironically, it's the episode about Snow Leopard. - Tom Sheppard

16:17 > Time Machine finally exited Preparing… state. Watching BOL video podcast episode 1009 where Tom Merritt says Canada Day is on July 2nd. FAIL! It's July 1st. Not to worry. Americans know next to nothing about Canada so only being one day off ain't too bad. - Tom Sheppard

16:23 > Finally! Time Machine has finished. Turn it off and start a Retrospect backup from the server. - Tom Sheppard

16:27 > Start Immediate Backup in Retrospect. Fails immediately saying it can't talk to the MacBook. Ah yes, the famous bug in the Retrospect Client where it turns itself off after a reboot and needs to be manually turned on. Has the latest version of Retrospect fixed that? I'll never know as I'm too cheap to give EMC any more money after they abandoned Retrospect for so long and have ridiculous upgrade fees. OK, so Client is turned on now. - Tom Sheppard

16:28 > Retrospect is scanning the MacBook. The backup server is a dual 2.3 GHz G5 with 4 GB memory talking to the August 2008 MacBook (why doesn't Apple give us easier naming conventions to help identify the model?) over switched gigabit Ethernet. - Tom Sheppard

16:37 > Scanning completed, 219 k folders, 972 k files. Yoiks! - Tom Sheppard

16:45 > Retrospect decided it only needs to backup 697 files (took 8 minutes and how many trillion CPU instructions to figure that out). - Tom Sheppard

16:48 > Backup completed, compressing catalog. - Tom Sheppard

16:54 > Catalog compression completed — finally. Now to figure out what I told Retrospect to ignore during a normal backup and what I may want to keep in case of disaster, like video files, etc. - Tom Sheppard

16:57 > Previewing those files prior to backing them up and may filter out non-essential stuff. This requires another full scan of the almost 1 million files because Retrospect has no memory between backups. - Tom Sheppard

16:59 > Oops, had to stop scan as I forgot to point to a new backup for these non-critical files. Try again. - Tom Sheppard

17:02 > Only have 66 GB free. Hope that's enough. If not, then I'll have to hope nothing goes wrong on reinstall that trashes the non-critical files. - Tom Sheppard

17:24 > 1788 files, 63.7 GB of non-critical files to backup. This will take awhile. - Tom Sheppard

17:38 > Backing up at an average 1150 MB/min. Not too shabby. - Tom Sheppard

18:35 > 71 minutes to finish the backup. Now I should be able to start the install on the MacBook with my butt covered by Retrospect and Time Machine. - Tom Sheppard

18:41 > Booted off the 10.5.0 retail disc. Selected Archive and Install with the option to preserve Users and Network Settings. Hope that fixes most of the problems. Click Customize and deselect the Printer Drivers, Additional Fonts, Language Translations, and X11. - Tom Sheppard

18:45 > Skipped the check of the installation disc since I've used this before on a different computer without problems. The installer is calculating the time remaining. Apple's installers are notorious for giving totally bogus numbers. Let's see how it fares this time. - Tom Sheppard

18:50 > It took the installer about 5 minutes to calculate (guess?) that it will take 1:35 for the install. Oh wait, in the time it took to type that it changed it to 0:56. Maybe it should have taken 6 minutes to do the calculation. - Tom Sheppard

18:56 > 6 minutes later and the time should be 0:50 remaining but now forecasted as 0:15. About as accurate as the 7-day weather forecast. - Tom Sheppard

18:59 > Oops! Forgot to tell Time Machine on the server to not backup that 63 GB Retrospect file of non-critical MacBook files, so TM failed. Turned it off for now. Will turn it back on when I delete the temporary Retrospect file. - Tom Sheppard

19:09 > How many minutes has it been saying, "About a minute"? - Tom Sheppard

19:14 > Install completed, requesting Restart. Boy, that was a long minute. - Tom Sheppard

19:15 > The installer originally said 1:35 but really took 0:30. It's better to be conservative, I guess. Restart completed. Waiting for me to log in. - Tom Sheppard

19:19 > The Conflict Resolver for iCal popped up complaining about 5 sync conflicts. Weird, no calendar changes were made. Probably due to the flaky Plaxo service I'm using to sync multiple Macs. - Tom Sheppard

19:22 > Running Software Update to let Apple decide, not me, what updates to apply. It reports AirPort Utility 5.3.2, Remote Desktop Client Update 3.2.2, AirPort Utility Software Update 5.4.2, QuickTime 7.6.2, iTunes 8.2.0, Mac OS Update Combined 10.5.7. But, I don't like using the OS updater, I prefer to use the Combo updater. Will let it update everything but the OS and will do that manually with the Combo updater. - Tom Sheppard

19:30 > Restarting. - Tom Sheppard

19:33 > Pausing for supper. - Tom Sheppard

20:18 > Back from dinner. Now to install the 10.5.7 combo update. - Tom Sheppard

20:23 > Open a new Finder window so I can click on the server's icon in the Shared tab. Oh, the server doesn't appear, just like I had I started this reinstall. OK, I'll cut Apple some slack since 10.5.7 has to be installed yet (the server is already on 10.5.7). Why is OS X networking so much flakier than OS 9? Mounted the server volume successfully using Finder's Go > Network menu. - Tom Sheppard

20:26 > Installer was forecasting 8 minutes about a minute ago. Not that I believe any time estimates Apple installers give. - Tom Sheppard

20:30 Only took 5 minutes, not 8 to install. Restarting. - Tom Sheppard

20:36 > Adding Previous Systems to Time Machine's Do Not Backup list. Also marking the folder so that Retrospect does not back it up. Now that everything is updated from first Software Update, running a second pass. - Tom Sheppard

20:40 > Software Update wants to update to iLife Support 9.0.3, Front Row Update 2.1.7, Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 2.6, Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 1.0, Safari 4.0.1. - Tom Sheppard

20:49 > Third Software Update check shows that everything is fully up to date. So does the server show up in the Finder window side-bar Sharing area now? No. FAIL! Leopard's networking — just — plain — sucks. - Tom Sheppard

20:53 > I see a 10.3.9 laptop, a Win2K PC, and a PC server with my ID of tom. Where is that? It's on the server. Yes, you've got that right. Instead of Leopard showing me the Apple file sharing on the server, it's showing me the PC SMB-type server. This is pathetic no matter which way you look at it. This is why I've been beating the drum about how horrible Leopard's networking is. Well, let's try turning File Sharing off and on to see if that fixes it. - Tom Sheppard

20:58 > Yup, that fixed it. I had to cycle File Sharing on the server. Now it appears properly on the MacBook. But, my wife and daughter's laptops now show up too. So Leopard on my server (not OS X Server) was somehow screwing up the network so that the MacBook couldn't see other computers. [Shakes head in disgust.] - Tom Sheppard

21:01 > The Logitech Control Center can't see my Logitech mouse. Reinstalling the LCC. - Tom Sheppard

21:05 > Had 2.6 installed. Downloaded and installed 2.7. Restarting. Have to remember to reinstall Little Snitch too. - Tom Sheppard

21:09 > The OS has been complaining since the first startup after the OS reinstall that the permissions for Timbuktu Pro (ancient version) and RetroClient needed to be fixed. Letting it do that and need to restart. - Tom Sheppard

21:11 > That fixed RetroClient as Retrospect tried to do a backup. I'm still fixing up odds and ends so I deferred it for an hour. Installed Little Snitch and this requires yet another restart. Don't let anyone try to get you to believe that an OS archive and install is a simple one hour job. It's far from it as this posting attests. - Tom Sheppard

21:16 > Tried to launch Parallels. Won't even launch. Have to reinstall. This is expected as some applications get their fingers into the OS. That's why an OS reinstall is something to be approached with some trepidation and a lot of time on your hands. You do keep track of all your installers and serial numbers, right? - Tom Sheppard

21:18 > Oh great. The MacBook can't see the server again in the side-bar. Stopping File Sharing on the server again (isn't this what you like to do a lot to a file server, turn it off and on several times?) and it reports it will be stopped in less than a minute. That was over a minute ago. - Tom Sheppard

21:20 > Clicked the File Sharing checkbox and it came back online even though it theoretically never went offline. Click again, now it's offline. Click. Back online and MacBook can now see the server and other laptops again. There is clearly something very wrong with Leopard's networking if the MacBook can screw up the server which screws up the MacBook. I'd like to see the design specification for that beauty. - Tom Sheppard

21:32 > Parallels reinstalled successfully. Started up the PC and it's installing new Parallels tools. Now the PC image is restarting. See how simple these OS X archive and installs are? - Tom Sheppard

21:37 > Retrospect wants to back up the PC image, so I'll let that go ahead. - Tom Sheppard

21:43 > Retrospect on the MacBook lost track of the subvolumes for some reason. Have to reset the subvolumes and rebuild the backup scripts. Great fun. - Tom Sheppard

21:45 > I think Retrospect keeps some of its prefs in /Library/Preferences. These are lost on an archive and install. I wonder what else I'll find missing. - Tom Sheppard

21:49 > Mail seems to be OK. iTunes complains that it can't connect to my iPod Touch because it's locked with a passcode. I click Try Again and it works. - Tom Sheppard

21:53 > iPod Touch and 2G Shuffle sync OK, best I can tell. - Tom Sheppard

22:15 > I think I'm going to wrap it up for the evening. I'll have to watch for missing bits and pieces as I use my apps over time. - Tom Sheppard

~ Day 2 10:50 > Some nagging problems so far. NetAuthAgent nags before mounting volumes; Mails asks to use keychain.An OS X archive & install has left some nagging problems so far. NetAuthAgent nags before mounting volumes; Mails asks to use keychain. - Tom Sheppard

~ D2 11:50 > In the course of restarting file sharing on server, Leopard took it upon itself to disable FTP and SMB sharing and not restoring. Bad kitty. - Tom Sheppard

D2 15:55 > Dreamweaver reports it requires a reinstallation. Not unexpected with some apps. - Tom Sheppard

D2 15:58 > Dreamweaver needs to be uninstalled first as the updater fails. Cute. - Tom Sheppard

Veronica

@UNIQUE_GIRL8 lolwut?

June 25 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Hasitha, yost wade, Jared Mehle and 10 other people liked this

also this is why i like FF better - Fee501st

76 more comments

I can't even... I'm trying really hard to figure out what this means. - Veronica

Gee I WANDA WHY ONY ONE PERSINS IZ FOLLWIN HER - Dave Friedel

Honestly... have ANY of us done any actual work in the last 3 hours?! - Veronica

i got off work 3 hours ago. :) - Fee501st

Trying. Not doing, but trying... - Thomas

Crap it's getting dark out. Work? DOH. - Dave Friedel

Yoda would be sooo displeased... - Thomas

I'm sure she will understand my reply as little as I understood her comment. - Veronica

Look like it says "Veronica you don't reply because you are scared" - Fee501st

I showed her! - Veronica

Now she has 2 followers. - Dave Friedel

Crap! - Veronica

She's gaining on you... - Thomas

How wonderful that her name is Unique Girl...8 - aldenoneil

Yea, you on a roll today! - Fee501st

She's different, like everyone else... - Thomas

YOU AIN /T NOTHUN BERONICA, I'Z HAV TOO FOLLAHS. - Dave Friedel

Dave, you traitor! LOL! - Veronica

I hope she tweets, Pogue saying, "U WUNT USE WINDOZ 7 CAUSE YOU AFAIRD YOU LEAVE MAC" - Fee501st

FEE U WUNTZ LEEF COMMNTS HERE CUZ U SKERD! - Veronica

OH MAH MAYYBES DIZ IS THE STAT OF A NEW MEMES YALL! - Dave Friedel

omg I just lol'd uproariously in the office at that - Veronica

Hillbilly Lolcats... :) - Thomas

I ANT SKERD CUS I FIGHT ALIENS AND IZ COOL - Fee501st

YUZ THINKS DIS IS FUNY?!?! SHEET, YUZ JUS SKERRED. - Dave Friedel

lol - imabonehead

What the hell does 'ME WAT UP DOE CUZINT' translate as? *goes off to try google translate* - Amy

It's really sad for me, since it's 7:40 here and I'm laughing with the cleaning people looking at me. - Dave Friedel

YUZ JUS SKERD CUS ALLZ UR BAZ BEELON TOO UHZ - Thomas

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jbc... - Dave Friedel

all your base and lolcat meme into one? you sir are tampering where no mortal should. - Anthony Kam

Translated into Swedish Chef: YOOo NO DET EINT YOOo DOE REPLIES NONE COoZ U SCERED - Veronica

YU JUS SKERRED! - Dave Friedel

Let's see if we can achieve critical meme mass... - Thomas

Is that au jus? - Veronica

LOL. - Dave Friedel

That's my new answer to my business contracts. YU JUS SKERRED! - Dave Friedel

Sounds like a new email sig to me... :) - Thomas

If i get a Google Voice account, i going to make that my Voicemail message, "LEAF A MASSAGE IF U ANT SKERRD" - Fee501st

I LEVE YU MASSEGE. I AINT SKERRED BOY! - Dave Friedel

ME TWO, I ANT SKKERT OFF YU FEE - Amy

Up to 4 followers. IZ UR SKERRED NOW? - Thomas

OHNOES IZ SKERD!!!!11! - Veronica

Make that 5 :) - Thomas

She'll be on the SUL any minute now... - Thomas

YUZ SKERD 11? DAT LOTS SKERED. - Dave Friedel

We're missing a "first"! - Jason Wong

FIRZT - Thomas

Flickr won't allow all uppercase. WHUT UP WIZ DAT? - Dave Friedel

Flickr is SKERED - Fee501st

YEZ THEY SKERED OF ME SHOWTIN! - Dave Friedel

YO MOFU YA CAPZ LUCK KEE IZT STUKT - Tom Sheppard

NO IT AINT. YUR JUS SKERD! - Dave Friedel

IZNT SKERD CAPZ KEE IZT SKERD GAWN FIX WIT HAMR - Tom Sheppard

YU LOLCAT. - Dave Friedel

OHNOES - Thomas

I JUZ RED DIS THRED. SHIT B FUNY MONANG READIN. - Mauricio

DIS OW I SOUND WEN MY DOES IS STUFFED UP! - Veronica

I THOT DAT OW U SOUND WEN UR SKERD! :) - Thomas

DAT2!! - Veronica

BRAWN COW, AW SHIT, YU JUST SKERED! AINT NUTHIN. - Dave Friedel

OK, to be fair to Unique Girl, "scared" is one of the words she actually spelled correctly. - aldenoneil

WHO DAT? UR JUS SKERED AN GETTIN AWL PROPACASE ON UZ! - Dave Friedel

I AIN'T NEVER SKERD. YOU BE SKERD. AN KABOBS BE SKEWERED. - Mauricio

KRAZY KAT LADY AINT SKERED NEITHER. SHE JUS KRAZY. - Dave Friedel

lol @ "propacase." - aldenoneil

Dave, is this you?? https://twitter.com/I_AINT_... - Veronica

yea they are following me also! - Fee501st

I cannot confirm nor deny this. I think the cat is too evil looking. - Dave Friedel

V is all knowing and all seeing! - Fee501st

Meme the kitty. Maybe. - Dave Friedel

lol - DIS GOODER TWEETS DEN YOUZ - sean percival

Uh oh, @I_AINT_SKERED is going after @Sockington. - Dave Friedel

and Ashton... oh god. - Dave Friedel

lol - Thomas

wait until they meet @mrlittlejeans - Fee501st

So far he's only been skerred of shaq. http://twitter.com/I_AINT_... - Dave Friedel

Molly

... and it's a brick until I get home and restore with the machine that has a backup. Good times.

June 17 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

I can't wait for the next BOL Molly Rant. - Tom Sheppard

Tom Sheppard

Do ya think Apple was ready for the iPod Touch 3.0 OS distribution? Nope. Failed 3 times so far, the latest error says, "You have already purchased the iPhone 2.0 Software Update for iPod touch." But, I was attempting to purchase 3.0, Apple. Get your act together.

June 17 - Comment - Like - Share

Cancelled out of that. Start over. Ooh, this time I see a Download link. It must have registered the purchase after all. Click Download. Returns to iPod Touch settings screen with no indication that anything is happening, let alone a download. Oh wait, there's a dialog that pops up after a couple of minutes saying it will verify with Apple. Click OK and the download starts. Wow, this is really intuitive. This is the new Apple user friendliness. - Tom Sheppard

Leo Laporte

Question for you all. I have a trademark for TWiT® - first used in May 2005, trademark applied for May 2006 and registered March 2007. The trademark is in "Entertainment in the nature of visual and audio performances, and musical, variety, news and comedy shows." http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin...

May 25 - Comment - Like - Share

Dobromir Hadzhiev, Richard Thomson, Dakota O'Neill and 186 other people liked this

Up until now there's been no conflict with Twitter itself because the brands were in different arenas. (We have, however, sent out cease and desist letters to companies using "twit" in their name and doing audio or video). But now Twitter is doing a TV show. The confusion between TWiT and Twitter is mounting. What do I do? Defend my mark? Or let my brand be swallowed by the big guy (even though we were first by several years)? I need your advice. What does the community think? - Leo Laporte

267 more comments

Defend your trademark, 99% of people will totally understand, you have to do it, or you'll loose it! - Chris Lloyd

Defend it. People that watch Twit Tv will also defend it. - Jason Rundell

Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Does TWIT still stand up as an accurate brand for all the new stuff you are doing with TWIT Live? Might be time to find a new visual/brand identity. - BryanSchuetz

At the SF MusicTech conference a lawyer called "tweets" "twits" repeatedly. Let's just say I think you should defend your mark and let TV chew up and spit out twitter. - Richard pancakhaus Walker

I don't see how the brand of Twitter infringes on your trademark. Plus trademarks are an outdated ideal. You need to market and promote your brand and the people will come. - Bob Blunk

Bryan: The TWiT name carries alot of weight in tech circles, it will take alot of money/time/effort to make a completely new name for something that will probably outlast twitter anyway - Chris Lloyd

Incidentally, Twitter just got their trademark approved May 11, 2009 in the following "Telecommunication services, namely, providing online and telecommunication facilities for real-time interaction between and among users of computers, mobile and handheld computers, and wired and wireless communication devices; enabling individuals to send and receive messages via email, instant... more... - Leo Laporte

There is nothing ideal about any aspect of IP law. - Richard pancakhaus Walker

Chris: I think Leo's name carries more weight than TWIT and (for me at least) he IS TWIT so I don't see it as quite such a big deal. - BryanSchuetz

Of course, there's a larger long-term problem because of the way that Twitter has weakened _your_ brand. It might be less expensive (and a better use of your time) to rebrand TWiT into something that strengthens your brand and moves it away from Twitter; avoiding any future problems (and there will be future problems). You can't fight Oprah. - Professor Messer

I guess Leo started a shit-storm here...The question goes far beyond the argument of Twitter vs. TWIT. It begs the question of how do Brands defend their government protected trademarks in a time when trademarks are failing to adequately describe what a company does. Do we need a trademark to know that Leo creates awesome podcasts and streams realtime shows via the internet? Plus, how could a trademark impart this knowledge to newcomers? - Bob Blunk

Leo - your brand, as most evidenced by your show and content is awesome - for a small group of peeps who have had a chance to discover it and enjoy. I'd use the overlap in marques to leverage Twitter in some type of promotional / service partnership, whilst still retaining your brand and the equity you've built. Don't fight em, join em, at least tactically. - Thom Kennon

Never give in to the big guy! - Brian Harper

I'm with the majority, defend your trademark and your legacy. - jcunwired

Defend it Leo. You built the brand and they need to honor that. - Robert

I always thought calling the network the same name as a show on the network was wierd. But it's a recognized brand, and I wouldn't give in. Send some mails to all the twitvid.io's out there. - Anton Tanderup

Is the BIG guy really that Big? Plus, with the way busines is changing one thing seems to remain the same...protectionism, let's sue someone it's easier. I'm suggesting your desicion is easy here Leo but in light of the landscape changing do you really have a chance? The other question to ponder is this, Twitter is the hot thing now but will it be 5 years from now and will it be true... more... - Owen Greaves

speaking from a british point of view a twit is someone who is a little silly or stupid. I think your podcast can stand up against the everising onslaught of twitter. Why not rise above all this discussion and say what you are This week in technology, a fantastic poscast full of wit and essential information for gadget freaks such as myself. Let the owners of twitter gabble on, in my book baby creatures twitter and you are certainly no TWIT. - Chris Jennings

@ Professor Messer 'You can't fight Oprah' is not totally correct. You can FIGHT her, can you win? Maybe. I think, offline, Leo VS Oprah would go several rounds. Tweetfight says otherwise. - Jason Rundell

Defend it Leo. What's the use in having a trademark if others can infringe upon it. - TechListReport

Sorry to say, my girlfriend recently yelled at my for watching 'Twitter' when I was really watching TWiT live. Confusion does exist for people who don't fully understand what each service is. - Wo

The good thing about trademark law is that it's well established and legally documented. The problem with trademark law is that it's well established and legally documented. You need a brand to create awareness, and you need the trademark to protect your established brand. This one is sticky because TWiT is well established but it's going to be an expensive brand to protect. Twitter's... more... - Professor Messer

@Jason Rundell, don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a cage match between Leo and Oprah (who wouldn't?). But it'll cost a lot of time and money. Sometimes it's better to be smarter than the legal system. - Professor Messer

I'm not sure I fully understand where the perceived trademark issue is. The names are similar, but clearly different. I don't know that Twitter is making any efforts or attempts to infringe on the TWiT brand, particularly in the area specified ""Entertainment in the nature of visual and audio performances, and musical, variety, news and comedy shows." I agree and understand the brand... more... - Ken Camp

The fact is, the brand that really matters here is not TWiT, but Leo Laporte. I came to TWiT because of you, Leo, not because of the name. That being said, I'll stand behind whatever decision you make. - Darren Landrum

Oh, and I think this is just the opportunity we need to resubscribe our iTunes and take over the top 10 lists. :) - Professor Messer

Can I ask - did TWiT exist before Twitter? Or did Twitter exist first? And - is your name TWiT based on Twitter, at all? - Chris Loft

Chris Loft: TWiT predates Twitter and comes from This week in tech... - Chris Lloyd

I think it's only right to defend your trademark Leo. You were there way before Twitter and just because they have gained significantly increased attention and media coverage, doesn't mean you have to lay down and submit to Twitter. I would defend your mark vigorously if I were you. You've worked hard to build your brand. - Marty McPadden

Chris Loft proves that there is confusion between the two. - Anton Tanderup

Leo - TWit is an incredible brand and network of invaluable podcasts - you simply have to defend it - Robert Davies

Fight for it. When they try to get additional financing make your move. Asserting your trademark will cause them to settle or buy you out when they go public. - Alan Morris

I think that once you see the Twitter television show, you'll probably want to distance yourself as far away as possible. - Professor Messer

Defend your trademark. I get more intellectual engagement from the TWiT network of shows than I do from most of my Twitter community. - Eric Geller

Use whatever legal tools you have available to defend your brand, especially if Twitter is talking about crossing into audio/video. You have a strong product, and Twitter is creating brand confusion in the market. A hard line needs to be drawn between your product and theirs, and it's clear that they are not going to keep a respectful distance with TWiT. - Jason Miller

You have to rise above the emotion and make a business decision. How much will it cost you to defend versus how much will you gain? Simple cost/benefit. My guess is that this fight will cause you to lose focus on your work, be a financial hardship as you go up against a company with VC backing, and all for the "possibility" that you will win and maybe get some compensation from Twitter.... more... - Tom Sheppard

I thought twitvid.com was the new video netcasts Leo has been talking about, boy was I surprised! - Daniel Rinaman

It has to be defended.Giving up and letting another company take your brand, no matter how big the company or personal feelings toward the owner, can not be an option. You built your brand and should defend it. - David Z

Defend it Leo! - Gunny doesn't side-hug™

Don't think you have much choice do you. You either protect it or lose it. If you don't at some point they will try the other way. - nef 919 from Nambu

You need to defend it Leo. You had the trademark first. - imperator3733

How about a name like LeoCast... No confusion there. - Rustic Thoughts

Agree don't let the big dog scare you..you have the law on your side - Randy Pollock

It's YOUR mark Leo and you have worked hard to make it as well-known as it is. Defend what's yours!! - Jim Connolly

Twitter will be virtually gone like Classmates and MySpace in a few years... Keep the name! - Rick Harvey

Leo: As others have said, you can initiate legal action, but I doubt you'd win. TWiT is based upon an acronym (This Week in Tech). Twitter is not an acronym, it's a word unto itself. Twitter doesn't use the term "twit" by itself; the word is always used fully (though some people snidely call Twitter users "twits"). Until you launched a microblogging area on your site, TWiT and Twitter... more... - Dwight Silverman

yes defend your trademark - Alfonso alatorre

Add to all this another twist. While TWiT is trademarked, twit is a common language word which can't be trademarked. That adds a dash of ambiguity to the whole issue. - Ken Camp

Twit came before Twitter I think you should defend it. it is dumb anyways Twit and Twitter is not even the same word, it would be like CocaCola suing Coconut because of COC - URLREVIEWS

Twitter is going to be a realty show based on stalking celebrities. It wont last more than one season. - Rustic Thoughts

I say let it roll. Your a 'big guy' in your own field, but Twitter is bigger. Play off of them. You could be bigger. Look at all the petty stuff that Microsoft did..and where did it get them? Bad Press. - Gene

To keep your trademark you must defend it if it's being violated. - CT Raider

I think Twitter has the brand and you don't right now. Maybe Twitter should buy it from you or you should collaborate with twitter to monetize and add your TWiT to twitter - Amit 'zyaada' Mittal

I certainly think you should defend your trademark, isn't that why you registered? - dcale1965

I checked Twitter's own site and it looks like Twitter launched March 1, 2006. TWiT was around well before then. Being in tech, I find it hard to believe they hadn't heard of him. It was a big podcast even then. I knew of TWiT well before Twitter. This may seem like a dumb issue to some, but a lot of people I recommended the podcast to now ask me if "it's a Twitter thing." - JeffreyVC

Ev told me that when they were considering names for Twitter they knew about TWiT and decided it didn't matter. In their defense, they had no idea what or how big Twitter was to become. We talked about trademark early on and both agreed there was no conflict _as long as we were in different spaces_. And therein lies the rub. - Leo Laporte

Apple Computer and Apple records recently went through this -- what was the outcome there? - Brian Sullivan

I thought it wasn't clear infringement when Twitter came out but now that there is Twit video the infringement is very clear. I would defend. - Robert Scoble

Lawyers are expensive. Legal fights are draining. You could spend the rest of your professional life fighting this battle. I don't know what's been going on in the back channel, and you probably shouldn't say publicly, but if you haven't tried approaching the Twitter board members privately, you might want to. Lay out the facts carefully, and if you're open to a settlement, say roughly... more... - Dave Winer

Legally, if you do not actively defend your trademark in every infringement then you will have difficulty *EVER* defending it. This isn't an anti-Twitter thing, just a simple business practice, Leo. - Kevin Donahue

"Clear Infringement". How exactly? It's a lose/lose for Twitter if they choose to encroach or even litigate. - Adi

Yeah but Leo added video later. And now Twitter is adding video. The real issue is that there is no clear separation between a radio/video network and a social microblogging site these days. And our trademarking system is so ridiculous that these kinds of conflicts go completely unnoticed all the time. - JeffreyVC

I'd say it's time to either re-brand TWiT or defend it. Deferring the decision and just living with the confusion and ambiguity is no longer an option. - Ken Sheppardson

Defend your trademark - Lars Clausen

Defend your brand Leo.The World Wide Fund for Nature took on the WWF and made them change their name to WWE. If they can do it, so can you. - Bryan Lee

The big problem with defending it... beyond the unfortunate fact that it's a drain on resources that could be better spent elsewhere... is it's not clear how you'd win. They're not going to change their name. They'll forever be Twitter. Is it sufficient to somehow "ban" them from ever doing anything in video? Enforcing that in perpetuity's would only raise your blood pressure. - Ken Sheppardson

I would take the emotion out of the equation -- find out what it would cost to defend and determine what it is worth to have exclusive/non-exclusive use (maybe some subjectivity here) and make the decision using that information. - Brian Sullivan

I say defend it but only so much as to bring more media attention to your brand... once you have the media's attention you can use that to change the brand identity if you so choose. Your followers myself included will stay fans no matter what you call your brand, but I think you have an opportunity to expand and use twitter as a means of gaining media attention! - Nathan McClain

If you don't do this you wont have a leg to stand on in the future when you need to really protect it. I can piss all over your trademark if you do not defend it. - David Lloyd

Leo: in a trademark fight what is the ROI? I am sure it will be very expensive and not sure you will get much in return but if you forced Twitter to change its name I am sure they would quickly settle with you. - Robert Scoble

I still think Twitter will be as irrelevant as MySpace in 2 years, but it's your brand to protect. - Mike Lewis

Ideal Outcome: A $$$ settlement sufficient to comfortably fund the rebranding of TWiT. - Ken Sheppardson

Robert makes a very good point. This could get messy and expensive, although it seems like those guys are VERY hard to work/interact with. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

while bryan lee makes a good point, their battles took a long time to resolve. but, don't let this deter you. i would suggest you defend it. if anything, i see you have a strong case and whatever happens can be in your favour. it's possible twitter can concede in infringing in your trademark and may be even consider licensing through the course of the battle. but be very, very patient for any outcome to happen. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Dave: wrong. Leo is who got me on Twitter. His marks were more popular and predated Twitter's. - Robert Scoble

Leo got me into twitter too! - Jim Connolly

I think Leo has a good chance at wining his case since he did register the copyright first. Twitter is still not a money making business. They are living off of VC money. They will probably not have the funds to mount a case since their money will be tied up with keeping twitter afloat. Am I right? - Bryan Lee

Leo also got me on Twitter shortly after they went public. - Mike Bracco

regarding AMF, Inc. v. Sleekcraft Boats, 599 F.2d 341 (9th Cir. 1979) the battle was very different. one of the things found was that the company had an 'infinity' of other brands to choose. it's a very different situation in detail, although it looks comparable at face value. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Or just have them become a premium sponsor. There used to be so much twitter talk before, I think they really should be owing you some gratitude for the traffic. - Adi

As part of any settlement, you should demand Ev and Biz concede that individual Twitter entries are "Tweets", as embarrassed as they seem to be by that. They're net "twits" or "twitters"... they're "tweets". - Ken Sheppardson

i'm sure something can be negotiated with twitter. a lawsuit in this case would show you're just defending your trademark because they are encroaching in your territory. you're not taking them on what they are known to do, their core competency. rather, it's stepping into your own grounds. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

not doing anything on purpose may weaken your trademark. many court cases also end up not going through the entire ordeal. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Yep, I agree the day has come where it's either fight or flight. And I don't mean that quite the way it sounds. :-/ - Ken Sheppardson

Defend!!!! - Mark Williamson from BuddyFeed

I don't think you have much choice. Either you defend it or you lose it. - Pascal Sijen

dave johnson: true, there's always a degree of uncertainty; but that doesn't mean giving up in defending one's investment in a trademark. it can be argued pragmatically and it's to the point where leo must defend his territory upon which twitter is encroaching. aye. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

I'm not sure you can win, are we aren't even sure what they're going to call it yet. If it ends up being Twitter.TV you have no chance to beat them. - DarknessFalls

There is even a shortening service called: http://twitpwr.com/ - The brand must be defended. - David Z

Leo: You must defend it or lose it. They need to know you also have the muscle behind you. I have the attorney that did all the trademark work for Terminator 1-4, Rambo, old timer who knows every angle. I have him on retainer and would love to join your cause. I can arrange a chat with him at no cost, then you can decide to move ahead, or if the cost seems to steep, I would be interested in partnering with you on the trademark. Fight on Leo! Let me know if you want to chat Thx Chad - Chad Harris

Reading this I'm also thinking, if you move forward as some here suggest, be ready to go after Twitpic.com and every other Twit* variation to aggressively defend everywhere or lose steam on all fronts. Is that a good identity move? This is not a simple question to consider when everything is taken into account. - Ken Camp

I'm of the opinion that twitter's initial success back in 2006 and 2007 was in part due to piggybacking on the brand name recognition that Leo had built over the years prior. - Chris Heath

I think defending it is what you must do, but perhaps take a different look at it all together and suggest some kind of mutual PR blitz leading into a partnership or new brand identity for TWiT. Just don't call it SyFy! - Aaron T. Harvey

The question here is would a "Reasonable person" confuse the two? I would like to think I am a reasonable person (even though I can't spell) and I would not be confused in the least. I love the Twit network and watch several hours a week, but I don't see the issue. - Rob

I agree that since Leo has been a twitter evangelist all these years, they should be able to strike an accord somehow. Maybe even partnering up on the whole Twitter TV Show since Leo has the video presence online. - Bryan Lee

You have to defend now, or 5 years from now you'll have a weaker case against the twitty podcast network. - Robert Hafer

Rob, the question isn't whether or not you or I would confuse the two, but do the people who watch Oprah and maybe catch Leo on The Tech Guy confuse them...and they do. - Aaron T. Harvey

Aaron...Do you really think they would. Am I that out of touch with the "Normal People"? If that is the case then I guess I would have to conseed that to be an issue. But I am still not quite convenced. - Rob

Funny - I would enjoy the extra publicity - You have a loyal set of listeners - and none of us are confused. If people end up on your site -cause they are looking for twitter, maybe they will take a listen. People who are looking for podcasts on technology though i doubt will find twitter in a search. - Laurence Gold

Rob, I've seen it happen, even with people "in the know". People think that TWiT is somehow connected with Twitter because of the name. It's a mistake that, while not happening with everyone--and maybe not even the majority--can end up costing Leo and co. money. - Aaron T. Harvey

Protect what you worked hard to build - Shawn Hickman

Had Apple been named "TWiT," you can be assured there would be no talk of a TwitterTV... - Christopher A Carr

Of course you should perfect TWIT for media and tech. You have the prior art, use. It's an obvious move for Twitter to exploit their 'brand' into media. You must pursue Leo. You have been a crusader for fair-use, but there are times (like this example) where fairness requires accountability. - michael sean wright

The commenter who noted that if you do not enforce your rights they may be weakened is generally correct. I suggest seeking an agreement that is mutually beneficial and recognizes your rights in the TWiT(R) trademark. - erik pelton

The problem with defending your trademark is the public backlash it can generate. Think O'Reilly and Web 2.0 or Apple and Profit Pod. But in this case, if you are indeed convinced that there is some infringement of TWiT by Twitter, I think you'd be doing us all a favor if you could somehow head off their plans for a celebrity-stalking TV show. - Dave

The problem is not really twitter, or a twitter video show, but all the people who says they just sent a twit. Also all the small companies with twit in their name, who are in the video/audio area. Twit radio, twitvid.io etc etc. I see no problem in protecting the brand. However it ends out you'll get a lot of publicity. - Anton Tanderup

Leo, this could be an opportunity for you to come out ahead. Yes it's an awkward situation and yes you could fight this on legal grounds, but there's no win for you there. Here's a way for you to win. Today your brand is a split brand--split between "Leo LaPorte" and "TWIT." You can win by focusing more on building the Leo LaPorte part of the brand. "Leo LaPorte" doesn't equal TWIT, yr... more... - Michael Metz

man you gotta defend your name and trademark,whats next a twitter podcast network? - cliff whitefoot

I think Ken Sheppardson sums it up nicely. I don't think you even need to retain a lawyer to start with the cease and desist letters, then see if they are amenable to a settlement, partnership or other remedy. It doesn't have to, and hopefully won't ever, come to a legal battle. However, it's clear enough that unless Leo hands them his mark and re-brands on his own dime, he must defend... more... - Richard pancakhaus Walker

Its funny... in a way you helped make twitter the juggernaut it is today.... all the free advertisement that you have given them over the years....LOL.. Maybe they should return the favor - Nathan McClain

Hasn't Leo said he wants to add a second host to the network? Wouldn't it also confuse viewers if they were watching the Leo Laporte Network and the show was hosted by someone not named Leo? - Norm Corriveau

Leo, some other people have made good points, if you're going after Twitter your also going to have to go after the other sites with Twit in the name: Twitpic, Twitpwr and Twiteverything or your case will be thrown out. - DarknessFalls

DarknessFalls: he'd only have to do that if they all launched TV shows too. - Martin Bryant

darknessfalls, you're not getting the scope. it's about leo's twit trademark on video and what twitter plans to do that's associated with it. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

If you haven't done so already, explore the Apple case, both the legal and business issues that Apple Corps encountered. And if you DON'T defend your trademark, what's Plan B? Remember that Twitter (or its future owners) may someday sue YOU. - John E. Bredehoft from fftogo

Leo, take your mark and make them all change names. Is this Ustream show even official Twitter? it looks pretty lame, like they just used the word, visual branding like twitter.com. http://www.ustream.tv/channel... - rob friedman

Don't sue unless you can find a business case and a lawyer to take the case on contingency with enough potential gain that it all wouldn't have been a big waste of time for a couple hundred dollars. But I am not a lawyer (IANAL). In fact, the grown up thing for twitter to do would be to link to you with an explanation that they aren't you and visa versa. - Eric Standlee

Defend yourself, Leo. - Devin Baines

Defend your trademark. Why else would you have filed it in the first place? - phil baumann

The best solution would be for Leo to produce the official Twitter show as part of the TWiT network. - Martin Bryant

The brand is big because of Leo yes, but having the TWiT brand is important. There are shows on the network in which Leo is not in. - Anton Tanderup

Whats the question? TWiT is yours Leo, you need to protect it, the TWiT Army is not only at your back but with 60% of new Twitter accounts not coming back, all you have to do is hold out and wait on it to fold anyways. - Bush Williams

Anton, the band is TWiT - twit.tv? - TWiT netcast network... that is the brand... - Chris Heath

It is totally unfair, but I want to see all of your focus and money going towards content, not legal actions. You will be endlessly sending out C&Ds or worse as long as Twitter is popular. That said, I do think you should squeeze some money out of Ev in order to cede the brand. - invariant - farewell FF

Twitter offers more value to me than TWiT ever could. Sorry Leo, but this just seems like sour grapes. - Shannon

Leo: You should do a This Week in Law on this btw. - Anton Tanderup

Shannon - how much value you get from either brand is not what is at question here. - Chris Heath

I'm not sure if this was already mentioned in the nearly 150 comments here, but Leo's link doesn't work. Here's a better link that I hope stays active: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin... - Eric Geller

+1 to chris' comment. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

You have a "defend or lose" obligation under trademark law. The TWiT brand has significant value, both from a revenue perspective and and the potential cost of re-branding al your sites, moving twit.tv etc., if you lose it. Protect the mark that secures your brand. Oh yeah, on that whole "big guy" theme: Because of your stable business model vs Twitter's Twitter's evolving one, an... more... - David Lounsbury

Shannon, the post asks for advice on how to be the best caretaker of a network and its trademark - your assignment of personal value should guide your own choices, but is irrelevant to the question at hand. How can it be sour grapes if failing to act now _could_ result in losing the standing of a trademark/brand which preceded those of other players who _may_ be crossing the line to the point of infringement. - Micah Wittman

TWiT offers more value to me than Twitter ever could. Sorry Shannon, but this just seems like sour grapes. - invariant - farewell FF

What a conundrum. I can't speak much to any legal considerations. But, on an emotional level, I would imagine that not defending and potentially losing the name must feel like smiling politely as an immigration official pins you with a random Anglicized name because your real, "ethnic" name is confusing to the masses in the new world, and making a fuss is to gamble the welfare of your... more... - Micah Wittman

@Ken Camp: Isn't twitter also a common english word which can't be trademarked? EDIT: Or Windows, for that matter? - invariant - farewell FF

invariant -- you mean like Apple? - Brian Sullivan

word, err, I mean Microsoft Word - Micah Wittman

I think your best brand is "Leo Leporte". TWiT is just where Leos at. - Matthew Snape

So I think we've established that common English words can be trademarked. So what's the criteria? Has to be a noun? - invariant - farewell FF

of related note, i realise that twitter is indirectly facilitating twit offshoots upon registration. this is how: registering anything with 'twitter' in the username is *banned*. so, for a user already having their heart set on using twitter as part of their 'brand' might think of using 'twit' instead. this opens up a new can of worms figuring out who is using the twit name and doing video. like how they are doing now with 'twiter', they can stop it at registration to avoid further confusion. - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

I say defend it. If they are doing a TV show, they're definitely stepping on your toes. Nevermind that I can't imagine their show would be any good, but that's a different story... :) - Jan Ole Peek

What about TwiTips? If that isn't entertainment then what is? But seriously I own several trademarks myself and I know if you don't take action then you could lose the Tmark. You have a conundrum because Twitter is so popular. So I would recommend seeking a compromise so that you won't lose your mark and appear like the bad guy with the public. Perhaps a clearer definition of the terms... more... - BLOGBloke

Other than I think he needs to see a surgeon to fix that lean to the left he has,... I love the guy and have been listening to him for about 15...16...dang probabaly close to 18 years about tech news I love the guy. And to top it off! He knows what he is talking about!! Leo makes am radio worth a listen on the weekends! - John Apostoli

TWiT is a network providing audio and video broadcast covering issues related to the tech field. Twitter is a social network used to connect people using the basic SMS tools. While people *may* confuse the issue by referring to Twitter messages as "twits, there is no evidence that Twitter has used or endorsed the term. Unless & until Twitter (as a company) starts using the term "Twit"... more... - David J. Garcia

I've said this privately, but I guess I will say it publicly.Defend your mark. It is your livelihood. There WILL be confusion if it gets to TV, where people are not tech savvy and have no idea who you are - Francine Hardaway

Yes, it may be expensive, and yes, these fights are draining, Dave, but until the laws are changed (an entirely different question), Leo could lose part of his livelihood through the confusion, especially since he has advertisers who would probably want him to defend. Everything in the universe doesn't happen in Silicon Valley:-) - Francine Hardaway

David - until now that has been the case, but Twitter is planning on doing a TV show (which would definitely be infringement), which is why this debate is happening. - imperator3733

I would certainly want you to defend it but i don't think its gonna be possible for two reasons. First Twitter is a bigger, more powerful and certainly more loved brand with more money. and you were first to infringe the unofficial agreement by hosting Twit Army. in that perspective you might not be able to defend it legally.besides the audience you've built ain't gonna be affected by what twitter does.So consult a legal advisor & take best course of action. Best of Luck - Abhishek

I think if you approach it in good faith--initially without lawyers--you have a very good chance to work something out. Ev seems to be a very reasonable guy. Perhaps it's best to draft a strategy with counsel before any discussions though. What's really in your favor(perhaps legally, perhaps not) is that Twitter can't deny how your support and promotion for it was incendiary to the... more... - Gregg Scott

http://www.googlefight.net/... - ouch - Nate

What's the point of a googlefight here Nate? - Chris Heath

Sorry but the Google fight site is loaded with pop-ups that even show through popup blocker. - Usman Bashir

Usman, I didn't get any popups (using chrome on winxp) but still it's a hideous site - Chris Heath

Twitter has a lot of investment, but I'm not sure all of that is liquid money. You may be even in the money spent defending your Trademark. I say go for it. Do it now though if you do. - Jesse Stay

Leo must Defend! - Jim Mahon

If it was me, I'd defend it. While Twitter is still worth something! Talk to a lawyer first and see if you have a valid case. - John Frazer

You must defend. - Will Bostwick

I can't believe how long this thread has gotten! - Bryan Lee

Seems like you are getting a lot of FREE promotion as a result of twitter. My bigger concern would be not having the twit.com URL to go with your brand name. That's a big issue! - Craig Shipp

@Craig, twit.com was registered in 1997, and it's parked. - rob friedman

Twit is your trademark for the company you have built up. It seems rather unfair that they would brand their idea so similar. I would defend it and all the hard work you have done. - Matthew Davis

Defend it Leo. Things may get ugly, but sometimes they just gotta. - David Chartier from BuddyFeed

Fight for you trademark! Especially since they knew of your prior use and now they are doing a TV show which they should know is stepping on your trademark. - russellcoleman

Defend, owning Twitter may not be useful for you yourself, but you could make a profit off of it if you were to sell it. Go for it Leo! - Zachary TG

If you decide to fight this I'll up my monthly donation. - KyleHase from twhirl

What Kyle said!! - jcunwired

Leo, FriendFeed community, let's get practical here - Twitter has more resources and probably a decent case defending against what you could file. It would be a blow to your image, to TWiT's image, and be bad press overall. You have a far greater chance of losing credibility than gaining trademark protection. You need to look into other strategies. - Ben Parr

There is no such thing as bad Press - Jesse Stay from email

I would thin kthat the thing to do is to gently but firmly convince them that they are infringing on your brand, that litigation would be damaging to both of you, losing community goodwill over the fight, and that it would be simpler, faster, and cheaper for both entities if they were to pay for your rebranding effort. Be prepared to present them with the estimated costs of litigation,... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Defend your Trademark. It's the responsible thing to do as a buisness. - Donald Forth

Defend your trademark - Russ Jackson

what Kyle & guruvan said. Does anyone else think we need threaded comments for conversations like this right here? - Richard pancakhaus Walker

I'd defend the TWiT trademark. - Jonathan Bloom

I'm not as thunk as you drink I am - David Lloyd

Also there is this guy who has a "beef" with twitter http://twitter.co.uk/ - rob friedman

@rob friedman - That guy says Twitter doesn't require you to validate your email address. Wow, that's ripe for abuse! - invariant - farewell FF

Defend. - Tony Meyer

Talk to a lawyer. - Zian Choy

More than a hundred comments, the community is twitting even on friendfeed. A legal action would be very difficult. You should first define your objective in doing so. Do you really want to protect your brand or settle for a lucrative compensation? Even if you get some sort of legal protection limiting Twitter to use or endorse the word "twit" to some extent, people will still be... more... - Cem ARGUN

Cem: I'm afraid I don't understand that first sentence of yours. Can you explain? - Christopher A Carr

It's only infringement if trademark string parser is case insensitive TWiT® != Twit® - KyleHase

Prior art (and obligatory MP reference) http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Jay Cuthrell

Maybe a dead issue? At least as far as the potential fight w/ Twitter, Inc. Mashable says Twitter responds no official Twitter TV show http://mashable.com/2009... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

And now for something completely different... watch the meetup room if interested in seeing Spamalot in SF as a group... - Richard pancakhaus Walker

I would say defend it. Of course, I'm just a Twit.tv fan and not a lawyer. - Joey Gibson

You lose so much credibility with all this nonsense. - PC Easy from twhirl

'all this nonsense'?? wtf is that supposed to mean? - Chris Heath

Just leave it alone until they manage to make some real money off it, then litigate. That's how it's done you know. - Will Higgins™

Yeah this is nonsense. If you think you really have a case, then don't make a big stink about it on Friendfeed. Just go take them to court. - PC Easy from twhirl

Leo, I am a long time fan and constant listener to all of you work. You are a more than fair and wholly honorable man. You have had TWIT long before I ever heard of a twitter. Go with your heart Leo. I am behind you. I understand you would impede progress of any positive kind. But a cease and desist letter. Seems harsh. I think you have a winner. Let them buy the TM. Power to the people. Go Leo, you deserve it. You do only good. You are one of a kind! RodneO - RODNEY OLIVER

PC Easy: I don't think Leo's making a big stink. The idea that twitter would get into the tv/video business would be a big thing since they have a verbal agreement with Leo not to get into that business. This may be all for nothing, since the mashable article guruvan linked above states that twitter will not be doing a show. Leo was doing the best first step (imho) in asking the community for guidance in the event that the original reporting was correct (which it does not appear to be now). So moot point - Chris Heath

I think if I was you Leo I would try to license rights to them and get some mula out of it. Remember "Leo Laporte" goes a lot farther than TWIT does and most importantly ever will. - Eric VM

there's a current backlash on twitter trending topics right now w/ hashtag #notwittertv. the examiner has an unfavorable article here: http://www.examiner.com/x-264-C... even alyssa milano is against it: http://twitter.com/Alyssa_... - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Its going to suck and bomb... guaranteed. - Rustic Thoughts

Maybe just sell it to them Leo for a gazillion dollars and retire. Keep the leaches out of it..meaning the lawyers. What the heck, Leo you are great at trend setting, you practically put twitter on the map. They owe you something.for all the pub you have given them since their inception. - John Apostoli

Defend. There's really no reasonable alternative. - Jason Clarke

You gotta defend it Leo. What's the point of trademarking in the first place. - Joel Lovato

You have to defend what is legally yours. - Michael Hansel

Twitter Responds: There is No Official Twitter TV Show- Mashable (May 25th, 2009 | by Pete Cashmore) -- http://mashable.com/2009... -- There is no official Twitter TV show—although if there were it would be fun to cast! In dealing with networks and production companies we sometimes have simple agreements. Regarding the Reveille and Brillstein project reported today,... more... - Chris Loft

Leo, suggest you go "open source co-branding" on this. Monetize your "twit" brand through creative brand licensing with emerging entertainment and multimedia microblogging companies that want to ride the "twitter" bandwagon. I can see creative corporate and individual co-brands like, TwitSounds, TwitFilms, TwitMedia, TwitCats, TwitBitch, TwitMechanic, etc... - Mike Schmidt

If I hear the word "monetize" one more time, my eardrums will begin bleeding. That is all. - wyclif

I don't want to over simplify this but if Twitter do branch into video and even streaming TV, surely the content would have to be substantially different to what TWiT already provides, otherwise they are at risk of spoiling their brand identity. Stay strong and true to the Tech news content and let Twitter, well do what ever they may do. Personally, I think it would be a mistake for them to go down this road. Time may be better spent further improving the existing service. - Kevin J Hatton

the mashable news is taken directly from the twitter blog: http://blog.twitter.com - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Maybe it's a good time to Re-Brand. Twit has unfortunate connotations in some areas of the English speaking world. On this side of the pond a twit is an idiot. Until I became aware of Leo I gave TWiT a very wide berth. Branded simply as This Week in Tech it would have got my positive attention a whole lot sooner. Time to move onward and upward. - Gilbert Harding

This was copied and pasted but sums it up so well : Of course, there's a larger long-term problem because of the way that Twitter has weakened _your_ brand. It might be less expensive (and a better use of your time) to rebrand TWiT into something that strengthens your brand and moves it away from Twitter; avoiding any future problems (and there will be future problems). You can't fight Oprah. - Professor Messer - Fragtastic

A very worthy point - "I think that once you see the Twitter television show, you'll probably want to distance yourself as far away as possible. - Professor Messer" - Fragtastic

I'll admit to being a little slow on the uptake to both TWiT and twitter and it took me some time to figure out that they were different things. I was listening to TWiT before I found twitter, and at first I wondered if I was mixing the names up in my head. I think there is real potential for confusion between the two names. Good luck in whatever you decide to do, Leo. - Rick Reynolds

You could ride the wave of popularity Twitter is experiencing by allowing that confusion to blossom. Perhaps more people could start listening and watching your netcasts *because* of that confusion? - David Hepworth

You need to defend your brand, however since you know the guys at Twitter maybe you can come to some sort of agreement that is the best interest of both TWiT and Twitter. - Jim Lavin

I say defend the brand. I fully believe Leo and TWiT will outlive Twitter. It would be a shame to surrender the brand only to see it disappear in 1-2 years. - Martin Johnson

I think you should definitely defend it. Whatever it will be called, Twitter-TV will make a big splash and Twit, being less mainstream than Oprah, won't even make a dent. And if they want your trademark, they should pay for it. - Vincent van Wylick

I say defend it, if you don't the that opens the door to other infringements. - Hunter

since you clearly took your name from This Week in Baseball, which deputed in 1977, should MLB defend their trademark with you? - glenn simmons

Defend it! definitely, the trademark is rightfully yours and you need to hold on to it...I like twitter, but I like TWiT even more... - Raymond

Glenn, you are wrong. There are many registered trademarks that contain "this week in" - russellcoleman

See what you have started Leo? Twitter TV is not a patch on what you do. Now if it was professionally done, with great audio then maybe, - Kevin J Hatton

Dealing with a similar issue (though not as big as dealing with Twitter). I say throw out a warning shot to protect your brand. Worst case they ignore you and you have to spend gobs of money to defend it. Best case they make you a $$ offer. - Brian Niles from Nambu

russellcoleman, exactly so why is Leo crying about twitter - glenn simmons

Glenn, because "Twit" is Leo's trademark in the area of entertainment in the nature of visual and audio performances, and musical, variety, news and comedy shows. - russellcoleman

Defend it! - Kiran Patchigolla

Sorry Leo, does that mean I can't call people Twitts? Does it mean no one in a television or audio show can use the word twitt? I mean Twitter...TWIT...they have 3 more letters and their brand is based on communication not entertainment. Give up the ghost against Twitter by now dude. IF they were doing what you were doing MAYBE but what you are saying is noone can use the letters T W I or T .... don't become the next Monster. - Sidney

Defend. No retreat. No surrender. - Barry Biddlecomb from twhirl

Sidney, it means they can't use twit as part of their brand if they go into the areas Leo's trademark covers. We are talking about branding here. - russellcoleman

Again, Twitter is a communication company looking to capitalize on providing television content the ability to have immediate interactive component...Nothing that TWIT does...so no infringement. Leo has always had the axe to grind with Twitter...if he was going to do something he should have done it immediately... - Sidney

My understanding is that Twitter is going to have a TV show and that may infringe. My point above was to the suggestion that no one could say the word twit. - russellcoleman

@Christopher Carr, I meant that twitting has become a generic expression going far beyond Twitter. Here on friendfeed we are twitting, an these lines are in fact twits... :) - Cem ARGUN

As an anecdote, until now I thought TWiT was something twitter related, and I basically ignored it for that reason. I have learned over time that I'm often not a good representative of anything, but there was certainly brand confusion in my case. - Robin Barooah

Robin: You're not alone. I thought TWiT was Twitter-related too :( - Tech Introvert

At first, yep, I thought Twit spawned Twitter. But in a few nanoseconds, I knew otherwise. But in the mind of 'ordinary' (horrible term, sorry) user coming at Twit from Twitter surely they'll get the idea. But Twitter is SO pervasive, I'm glad that you've decided to take advice. I know nothing, but I feel you should protect your brand. Don't change your name. Change the game. On another tack, you checked out http://audioboo.fm ? - John C Wesley Barker

"Again, Twitter is a communication company looking to capitalize on providing television content the ability to have immediate interactive component." - Sidney That is exactly what Leo's doing - Anton Tanderup

news of twitter tv just hit the local abc news. they mentioned there's already direct opposition by celebrities ashton & demi who (according to their tweets) will quit twitter if this reality show sees the light of day (paraphrasing). this could mean -as they say & putting it lightly- 'my enemy's enemy is my friend?' odd yet amusing opposition from the hollywood. however, no mentions of twit and leo. :-\ - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Twitter can look to capitalize on providing television content the ability to have immediate interactive component all they want. But I don't think they should do it in a way that can cause any confusion between them and Leo's network. - russellcoleman

Sorry the only confusion people have had is what Leo has brought to the table himself. He should have stepped up long ago if he felt Twitter was going to create confusion and admittably it has and TWIT and Twitter don't even cross streams. I know for one if Leo wastes his money on litigation I for will be disappointed and believe it will harm the TWIT brand. - Sidney

i know this thread is too long to read for many. re-quoting what leo said here for those who keep saying he should have stepped up long ago: "Ev told me that when they were considering names for Twitter they knew about TWiT and decided it didn't matter. In their defense, they had no idea what or how big Twitter was to become. We talked about trademark early on and both agreed there was no conflict _as long as we were in different spaces_. And therein lies the rub. - Leo Laporte" - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

Very tough choice. I think these comments provide you with a fairly good sample of public opinion from people in tech, but it would be interesting to get input from the rest of the world on Twitter who have never heard of TWiT. It certainly won't cost much to send in a warning shot so they take notice and to demonstrate defense of your TM, but I would follow that up with a request to... more... - Phil Ashman

Give it up Leo ... You may win the battle ,, but you wont win the War IMHO ,, Unless you have deeper pockets than Twitter ... is your time/money worth fighting over it ? Only *you* can answer that! - johnpiercy

This twitter thing is just a flash in the pan, you can wait them out ;-) - Wolfman-K

If he fights and loses, at least he defended it, which is required to keep it. If Leo does nothing, he could lose it. - Bwana ☠

How do people feel about Monster Cable suing companies that use the word Monster in their name? I feel the same here...except that Twitter just happens to have the same four LETTERS as Twit, as the beginning. They arent using Twit as a standalone word. C'mon. - Andru Edwards

The only justification I can see in Leo going after Twitter is so that he can at least show he is defending his TM so he doesn't lose it as Bwana said...otherwise I think it is a losing game that will be a waste of resources that TWIT could utilize in other productive pursuits. - Sidney

The Monster Cable example doesn't really work. They were suing companies that were in different spaces. Now with Twitter doing a TV show, that is in the same space as TWIT and Leo has the trademark for it. - Mike Child

Everyone should read this: http://blog.twitter.com/2009... It has been linked a few times in this discussion up above, but bears linking again based on recent comments - From what I can tell, it doesn't look like twitter will have a tv show - so this whole point is moot - leo may have to defend his trademark against these 'other' shows if they use the word twit in their name, but i don't think they will - Chris Heath

Leo -This is a battle that will be HELL. Yet, it is critical you fight it. I had a couple situations very much like it in telecommunications late '80s early '90s. I should have fought. Give them a run for their money. It will cost you $$ and resources. But, with Twitter's new direction - man - you're a journalist at heart... You already know - you've got to fight for your right! - Arleen Boyd

Man this is a tough position to be in. Honestly, I can't see TWiT or Twitter changing brands/names. However, Leo, you were first and you have the trademark to back it up. I say defend it! - Doug Jones

Biz responds to the Twitter TV show on the blog: http://blog.twitter.com/2009... - Doug Jones

not reading the thread befire i comment... but seems to me that TWITTER does not equal TWIT. what else is their to know? - sull

Leo, I think the law is very clear, if you don't defend your trademark you may lose it. - David Angel from twhirl

Leo a firestorm is brewing over twitter tv http://www.nydailynews.com/tech_gu... - dday

Make them pay you a million in cold hard cash for the TWIT name and change your name to TWIG - This Week In Goodness :-) - Richard Bitting

When you see such services as "TwitThat" (http://twitthat.com/), with that spelling of "tweet", there is an incredible amount of confusion waiting to happen ! - arnaudt

arnaudt, good point. and again... TWiT does NOT = twitter - so leo has no case. twitter themselves dont use 'twit' in any way. they barely if at all use 'tweet' in any way. they began as 'twtr' in like 2006. twitter is NOT an abbreviation for anything as TWiT is. twitter is not solely behind producing an entertainment property.. they are granting rights to others to do so and in some... more... - sull

sull, TWIT does NOT have to = twitter for Leo to have a case. People just have to be confused enough to adversely impact, or even potentially impact, Leo's business. - Chris Gardner

Chris, i think it does for him to have a 'good' case. You cannot prevent Twitter from letting media entities use twitter as part or their 'shows', even if twitter as some levell of partnership. In the end, it will cost Leo money to lose a trademark case. Proving, for example, that an MTV show tentatively named 'what you're watching' that uses twitter and facebook etc as fundemental components for audience interaction has any negative effect to the TWiT podcast. - sull

sull, there just needs to be a likelihood of confusion. The Court there announced eight specific elements to measure likelihood of confusion: Strength of the mark - Proximity of the goods - Similarity of the marks - Evidence of actual confusion - Marketing channels used - Type of goods and the degree of care likely to be exercised by the purchaser - Defendant's intent in selecting the mark - Likelihood of expansion of the product lines - Chris Gardner

Oh, and TWiT is not just a podcast. It is a live streaming net video network. There are on and off talks to take to cable also. - Chris Gardner

Chris, thanks for pointing those elements of liklihood. Still, i think that even for the case to have a leg to stand on, twitter would need to have a 'show' specifically named in a way that may cause confusion. That has not happened. Trying to prevent the word 'twitter' from being used at all in marketing and branding via "visual and audio performances" because of the TWiT trademark seems a stretch and will prob result in negative publicity for Leo. Anyway, maybe we'll see. Interesting. - sull

sull, agreed interesting. Also, this will probably not go anywhere near the courts. Ev Williams and Leo know each other and get along (not many in the industry that Leo does not get along with). They will work things out. - Chris Gardner

For those who are unaware, people have to take action to protect their brands otherwise they lose their trademark. My suggestions and observations: 1. Look for win-win 2. It all seems moot anyway http://blog.twitter.com/2009... tho this is a fascinating thread 3. If twitter did ever go ahead with this it would be a fairly simple compromise for them to... more... - Isha (Marysia)

You need to defend it. I don't know that you'll stop twitter from launching their show but you have to fight it to keep your trademark valid. You for sure need to go after twitvid.com and twitvideo.com! - The Griff

Defend the trademark. It could make the difference on winning a future trademark case with another company. - David Ebaugh

Defend it. It was your long before Twitter was even around. Like someone else said what is the point of calling your network that if as soon as a bigger fish comes along you cave. Don't give in to the man Leo! - Mr. Thomas

Leo. I am not a lawyer and don't play one on the Internet. It sounds like you have no real case against Twitter, but the producers of the rumored tv show are a different story. Even then, it depends on what they are doing with the subject matter. Is it *about* Twitter, or simply about people who use Twitter? Will they ever use the term, "twit" in the show? It certainly couldn't hurt to... more... - Jake Overton

While this is getting a lot of buzz now, it didn't even occur to me till it was posted. I think both have built their brands, both have similar sounding names but are different. Isn't TWiT an acronym? I would be more concerned with TWiB (This week in Baseball) going after Leo if he goes on TV as his show title is clearly a play on theirs, and not Leo being concerned about Twitter... ;) Either way Leo, you got some free publicity for your program/site out of this. - mike wood

Let's not forget that use of anything in an editorial context is considered fair use. - Ryan Brodkin

I also feel that you have an opportunity for even more publicity if you can work the TWiT shows into the TV show, joining them rather than fighting them. You will get publicity either way, but there seems to be a high road and a low road (or perception thereof). Good luck and keep up the great shows. - Jake Overton

Leo fight them. - johnny

we neec to fight for TWIT - Richard Thomson

So far I don't think there is a conflict with Twitter, unless there is a Twitter TV show. Although you should fight sites like http://twitvid.io . Plus if you win, you could have an awesome domain for video downloads when you want to offer them. - Mister IQ

Apparently there's a popular twitter client app in Japan called "Twit" http://wakoopa.com/softwar... It's the first "twit" result on Google Japan and Yahoo Japan. - KyleHase

Ryan Block

Pre on June 6th for $200: love the price, can't say I love the proximity to WWDC. But for most people that won't matter.

May 19 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

John Wang, Andrew, Jim Braux-Zin and Roberto Bonini liked this

wasn't that the point though? - Jeremy Lewis

5 more comments

It will be crushed. IMO - Drew Lucas

Crushed by what? The iPhone's been out for a while, and Android is just gradually growing. Pre's a pretty big deal with it's new OS. There *are* other phones other than the iPhone ;) - Andrew VanderVeen

I thought it was $299? - Jamie

If Palm is setting their release date according to Apple's schedule, well, that doesn't bode well for their success. They should be operating on their own timeline. - Tom Sheppard

It is $299 and then a $100 mail in rebate. So this is the net of $100 with a 2 year contract and $69.99 minimum plan. - Tyler Ham

Can we please get over these mail-in-rebates? Has it not been established this is just a way of ripping the consumer off. - Josh Wilkins

Tom Sheppard

Re: Twitter Enables Two-Way SMS for Rogers and Fido Customers in Canada - http://mashable.com/2009...

May 5 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Rogers is permitting Twitter to send SMS messages, no doubt by charging them a good deal of money, and they are also now going to charge recipients without a text plan 15 cents for each message. Rogers is now going to make a ton of money for something that costs them next to nothing. I'm now waiting for Rogers to start charging fees to compose and read messages on top of the delivery charge. Don't expect government regulators to step in. The feds and the provinces collect taxes on each message charged for as well. "The first rule of any scam is to pay off the government."" - Tom Sheppard

Robert Scoble

I just signed into Plaxo for first time in a long time. The integration with Facebook works very well.

April 28 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Nicholas James, Frode Stenstrøm and 10 other people liked this

What does Plaxo offer you that you don't get from Facebook or Friendfeed? - Kevin Kuphal

6 more comments

Yeah, don't really see any value that plaxo adds to my life that makes me want to make it yet another place to be online. - Tony

Well at least it is an easy way to tie another profile in. - Patrick Boegel

The only thing i use plaxo for is syncing contact between addressbook entourage and gmail - Jamie Vidamour

I'm finding the new Blackberry app for Facebook does this nicely. Links my Blackberry contacts to my Facebook friends including numbers and profile pics. This is nicely synced to my Outlook from the BES. - Kevin Kuphal

I use Plaxo to sync calendars and contacts between five Macs using iCal and Address Book. Not perfect, but close. Allows anyone to modify the events and contacts, which is what I need for the family. This is something Apple should have had years ago. Now X is too flaky and expensive. Plaxo does not sync to-dos though. - Tom Sheppard

I'm thinking the same as Kevin and Tony. However, I did notice that Plaxo can sync with Google (address info and calenders I presume), add that to the FaceBook integration and I beginning to think that there may be some value to signing up. Unless I have already and forgotten. - Chris Marshall

Thanks, Robert. We're making progress toward an interoperable and open Social Web. (For those who don't know, I head up marketing at Plaxo.) Looks like everything that we've worked toward over the past two years is going to be possible. :) - John McCrea

Mashable

The 17 year-old founder of StalkDaily has claimed responsibility for today's Twitter exploit: http://www.bnonews.com/news...

April 11 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

This kid really doesn't realize he's going to jail, does he? - Eric Florenzano

18 more comments

Like this guy (3 years in jail for the MySpace worm) http://namb.la/popular/ - Eric Florenzano

Sadly Eric, I think he has no clue. Poor kid. At 17, he's a few years younger than Paris Hilton when she was in a sex video. - Cait

Twitter should hire him ... that's all I'm saying. - Brandon

What will they pay him with? Followers? - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

No, they will pay him cold hard cash for his insight into how he reverse-engineers Twitter. -- So they can help prevent such things from happening again. - Brandon

Perhaps....after he gets out of jail.... - Bora Zivkovic

For some reason, I'm not understanding how this was all that slick of a trick. He exploited a gaping hole. "Hrm, I wonder what happens if I put random crap in my bio....OOOOH! Looky Here! Looky Here!" - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

He won't go to jail, he'll get press, he'll start consulting Twitter and other services. - Brandon

Does that mean he gets to collect $200? - Jim Norris

He should go to jail: he totally failed at crashing twitter - sofarsoShawn

And THAT is exactly why I do NOT like teenagers! I am so glad I don't have them anymore. I think they all need supervision because they have no real Life experience AND they all have poor impulse control! I agree with the comment thread...they have no clue! Do not feel sorry for the 17 year old. Let him learn that it is not amusing to tinker with our lives. - Laurel Phelps LaFlamme

Actually, this guy reminds me of another teenage script kiddy we had during the Victorian bushfires who hijacked the #bushfires feed to a private group this s.k. took credit for originating/inventing. I'm not particularly wanting to reward such twit kids for doing some really dumb things. The kid could have pointed out security flaws to Twitter without all that stuff today. - George Hall (Australia)

A great idea to get twitter off their ass, bad follow through. Instead of possibly getting a college education, this kid will get barred from computers till he's 25 or so, and come out even more pissed off at the world. - rob friedman

It would also seem this kid has a history of this type of actions with website applications. http://stickydrama.com/2009... http://stickydrama.com/wp-cont... - rob friedman

Twitter really has become a cesspool. How many rounds of funding does it take for them to prevent stuff like this from happening? - Kevin Whalen

While the kid is completely responsible for exploiting the hole, no different than someone breaking and entering by walking through an unlocked door to your home, the question arises as to why Twitter's door wasn't locked in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on the planet — the Internet. How many decades will it take before programmers learn to fully validate all user input? We're at over 2 decades and counting already. - Tom Sheppard

well, the difference is the malicious intent and use of the computer to effect a greater population. B&E usually is just one home, or a string of home, not hundreds of thousands of people, and the machines they touch, which numbers more than the humans i"m sure. Twitter should have tested their site better. I never saw the hacker tested badge on their site like I see on shopping sites... more... - rob friedman from twhirl

Wake up Brandon-anyone who hires a vandal like this is as irresponsible as he is. Twitter SHOULDN'T need a spotty oik to point out their security flaws, anyway (whole different discussion!). He needs to spend some time behind bars, and a message sent to other kids. If he had spotted the flaw and disclosed it to Twitter and worked with them to plug it, THEN I would advocate hiring him. - Bob Walder

Bob, that is a brilliantly stated point. The different between a criminal and a brilliant mind is how they view opportunity. - Peggy Dolane

Tom Sheppard

Re: Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime addresses OnLive, iPhone competition and used games - http://venturebeat.com/2009...

March 31 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"So Reggie doesn't believe that used games are good for consumers. I'm sure he also doesn't believe in the recession. We need people like Reggie to drive the economy as he buys a new Lamborghini, a new Gulfstream V, a new yacht, a new mansion, … Say Reggie, when you get some time, do ya think you could solve the Wii console shortage? It's only been two and a half years. Oh, right, that's not good for consumers either." - Tom Sheppard

Tom Sheppard

Re: tumbléo - http://leo.tumblr.com/post...

March 23 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Please don't let Steve Jobs see this. He's in frail health and the sight of all those knobs and sliders and buttons would just kill him." - Tom Sheppard

Tom Sheppard

Re: Tired of Twitter Talk? - http://leoville.com/2009...

March 16 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Having worked at Nortel in the group that brought TCP/IP to the huge DMS switches back in the late '80s, we constantly struggled for funding because that "Internet thing" was just for universities. Our group was told that TCP/IP was dying and soon to be replaced by OSI. The group broke up and people went on to other things. Meanwhile, Nortel lost a huge lead in Internet technology an scrambled to catch up. Did you know that Nortel was once thinking about, and in a position to acquire Cisco? Where is Nortel now? A product achieves critical mass because visionaries talk about it in spite of the naysayers. They use the product, they try new ways of using it, they get their friends and family to use it. I'm not saying that Twitter will be as big as the Internet or even Facebook. But it is a big story because it's on the way up. How can a tech journalist or broadcaster NOT talk about one of the biggest tech stories out there?" - Tom Sheppard

Tom Sheppard › Comments