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Ari Herzog › Likes
Sci-Fi or Reality? Have you heard of Kiva Systems? Their warehouse is run by robots http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotic...
Ari Herzog liked this
BBC NEWS | Africa | Somali navy chief: World's worst job? - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2...
Arthur Guy, Alex Scoble, Bluesun 2600 and Ari Herzog liked this
"If you think you face an uphill challenge at work today, spare a thought for Farah Ahmed Omar, the man in charge of Somalia's navy. He has neither boats nor equipment and admits he has not been to sea for 23 years."
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
from Bookmarklet
The New York Times takes a look at Twitter's preferred user list http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
Iván Abrego, Barty, Andrey Smirnov and 62 other people liked this
I think this is the single worst thing that Twitter did against its community. But, Twitter has learned it can beat its users up with a variety of tools and we'll never leave. For two years the service was down all the time (famous fail whale making its rounds) and now search is often down, they treat developers inconsistently or poorly at worst, and they decide who will be superstars...
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- Robert Scoble
Funny, on both friendfeed and Facebook I have more followers than TechCrunch does (well, I did until Arrington deleted his account here on friendfeed). By artificially giving TechCrunch hundreds of thousands of followers they have given TechCrunch a very real financial reward. Same to NYT.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble, good to see that you still feel this way after your meetup with @ev. :-)
- Dave Winer
Dave: I got the consolation prize: a shot of Scotch whisky . ;-)
- Robert Scoble
And you get to keep our respect.
- Dave Winer
Dave: I thought it would only be A listers or media types who care about this issue, since we know that 1,000 people can generate a LOT of money. Look at the Demo Conference, for instance. About 1,500 people are in the audience and they each pay $1,500 to be there (or more). Then there's up to 60 companies on stage and they each pay $18,000 to talk to that audience. It's a great model. Arrington has already been gifted half a million followers by Twitter. That's HUGE economic value. But...
- Robert Scoble
I am blocked from following @TechCrunch :O
- Tom Warren
At the recent Twitter conference you should have heard all the regular Twitter users griping about the recommended follower list. They hate it because they know they'll never get on it and even if they were added to it for some reason (some people do win the lottery) they will never catch up to people who've been on it since February, which makes them distrust the system. People are even calling followers you get the hard way "organic."
- Robert Scoble
It's completely off-brand, unless perhaps we all misunderstood the brand to begin with... and the idea that people who get themselves onto their own A list "organically", says it all --- the term is an apt definition: the opposite of "paid" in this emerging digital media platform. Makes you sorta hope FriendFeed kicks their commercial ass. That'll learn 'em to go all Hollywood on us.
- Thom Kennon
I sympathize with arguments against the SUL as being unfair (although I don't really see how an algorithmic approach would not have its own problems), but I don't agree that the economic value is huge. In fact, I'd like to see some honest reckoning of what the economic value might. The truth is, everybody is seeing incredibly lousy clickthrough rates from twitter users (Winer reported 0.5% I think from his) which means chump change from display ads and probably worse for things like your conference pricing.
- Jacob Harris
Two other things to note about the value of being on the SUL: 1) any value from link traffic/actions probably doesn't scale linearly 2) any value for link traffic should be assessed in terms of relative worth (eg, 600K followers might be a bigger deal to a site with no traffic vs. a site with lots). Ultimately, I find myself agreeing with @jeffjarvis that it's a much more meaningless metric to worry about, and that the impact of being on twitter at all pales compared to what the rest of the world is doing.
- Jacob Harris
At the very least, the SUL is distorting to the essential value of Twitter - and its implied brand identity. However, in fairness to ev@ and @biz, I don't think they understood what they were doing when they created the SUL: they thought they were helping new users who didn't know what to do on Twitter, and who were therefore leaving the service after a short period of experimentation.
- Jason Pontin
Robert Scoble: TechCrunch team is more powerful than yours.Sigh.
- Igor Poltavskiy
cmon now - the list has massive value - just look at erick's post today on tc - he barely mentions that he is on the default list - yet look at the traffic they are seeing - in fact, where is Yuvi - let him calculate what that traffic equates to in terms of cash - i bet it equals robin's salary for the year (or any other tc writer) im betting mashable sees even more traffic from the...
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- Allen Stern
"The Amount And Value Of Twitter Traffic" - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ken Sheppardson
"For TechCrunch, Twitter = Traffic (A Statistical Breakdown)" - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ken Sheppardson
(just adding a couple of footnotes)
- Ken Sheppardson
Thanks for the links. Based on the last article, it seems like about 7% of traffic to TC comes from the Techcrunch account and some part of that is due to the SUL. But beyond that, we don't know, especially since TC claimed those new users have not been so useful. We also don't have actual numbers beyond the 120K _monthly_ hits from twitter reported in Feb. Let me try though, 120K * ~$23 CPM = $2760 a month (out of $200K total a month). Or am I totally wrong here?
- Jacob Harris
Addl. References: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008...
- Jacob Harris
Ref for the $200K total: http://www.mahalo.com/techcru...
- Jacob Harris
Jason, agreed that their intentions were benign. I am wondering what algorithms would work instead, if you wanted to keep the editorial judgment out of it and still wanted to give a user accounts to follow that aren't just finding their friends. Some pop to mind, but I wonder about spammers gaming them or other runaway effects that might occur. Interesting to contemplate.
- Jacob Harris
Jacob where do you get the $23/cpm? does that add up ALL of the ads on the page? does that include the fact that TC meta-auto-refreshes their page? etc - I think it's way more than that.
- Allen Stern
Jacob - as I've noted before the current list actually HURTS twitter - why not ask the new user for 2-3 interests and location and offer suggestions based on that? it's not perfect but as i said on the cupcake video, offering someone who is interested in food - mashable/tc/oprah/dooce/sai/shaq/justine is of no worth and probably pushes the user away quick.
- Allen Stern
Allen, you wouldn't even have to ask the user anything to quickly and algorithmically find 20 random users for them to follow. Just 20 random users would be fine -- a lot of the people on the SUL hardly ever update. And the clickthrough rate of a SUL member isn't all that different from my click-through rate. I've tested that too.
- Dave Winer
Allen, I assume that when you asked to be put on the list you were told no?
- Dave Winer
i actually looked at the list yesterday
- Allen Stern
Allen, the first link I posted is about the CPM (although negotiated should be lower). You're right there might be multi ads on a page, but I'm trying to get an actual estimate of worth here, so discussion is fine. I think randomized could lead to pointing to a bunch of dormant accounts or a "Twitter PROMOTES PORN!" snafu pretty quickly, which is why many internet sites manually edit frontpages (the "Mullet strategy"), etc.
- Jacob Harris
The Mullet Strategy: http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzz...
- Jacob Harris
Still thinking about TC reported in Feb. getting about 120K monthly hits from twitter. This is where I think any calculation of impact and arguments of favoritism would have to take into account the total traffic "wealth" of the recipient. 120K hits a month might be a lot for TC; it's not for the NYT. And so I don't think we can say the impact is the same for all recipients (something the article noted as well).
- Jacob Harris
My thoughts here are more societal. Why do we care so much about this list? If Twitter gets lists like Friendfeed has then they will be increasingly less relevant as the reecommendations get smarter.
- Steve Rubel
Robert, I've said this to you on more than one occasion: Folks like you don't need the list, you have many people who follow you to different services and echo your thoughts. Guys like me, who get ignored by the tech media even though we use new and innovative tech methods to help people? The Twitter SUL has helped me save lives (and no, it's not hyperbole here). I would NEVER have had...
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- Brandon Mendelson
Brandon, how did the SUL help you save lives? Are you on it?
- Dave Winer
Dave, yes I am (or was, I don't know if I still am at this point). The short version: I promote the early detection of cancer. The list gave me an opportunity to travel across America, sleep on the couch of folks following me on Twitter, and promote the early detection of cancer at colleges and cities across the country. Based on many emails from folks whom I met on my trip, I...
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- Brandon Mendelson
(and I realize it's hard to tell from just text, but my previous comment to Mr. Scoble is said with the utmost respect.)
- Brandon Mendelson
Thanks for letting me know, it's a good story.
- Dave Winer
I don't mind the intent of the Suggested User List. My gripe is the people who are on it--who create lots of noise. When people join Twitter, don't know what to do, and follow SUL accounts, it's no wonder either they 1) give up quickly; or 2) start emulating them in their own tweets. Or worse, people tweet so-called celebrities, hoping for a response, get disenchanted, and give up.
- Ari Herzog
Brandon: the idea that I only report on what my friends in the valley are doing is absolute bullshit. I'm happy you got on the list. But what I saw is that tons of people who compete with me, but had fewer followers, got put on the list. You're probably the only example of something good that was on the list. Even with you, though, I know TONS of people who are raising money and awareness for various causes. Why aren't THEY on the list?
- Robert Scoble
The list, like most lists, is simply a sham.
- Ken Camp
I'll say here the same thing I said on twitter. It's all smoke and mirrors. Twitter chose the so-called popular kids and should simply own it. They did exactly what happens for any movie star. They gave more to a select few, granted them extra followers and status. Who pays the price for that. People like me who work hard and actually truly engage with those in the network. What makes...
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- Sheryl
I think a lot of the Twitter list are people many don't really think are worth that kind of attention.
- Patricia
Robert, as I said in my DM, I should have clarified, that particular comment was not aimed at you (it was at what I felt was biased coverage, mostly from TechCrunch.) As far as other folks who do many good things not being on the list, I do not know, BUT I do make an effort to spotlight them and connect the people following me every opportunity that I can. I do apologize for not being clear on my previous comment.
- Brandon Mendelson
Also worth noting: I know exactly how those folks feel when they do not get the attention they deserve. We were very frustrated we couldn't get the tech media to even look at what we were doing for those battling cancer and helping the homeless.
- Brandon Mendelson
@Brandon, I'd have to say I agree on that. The ego generation or whatever this group/thing is called kind of suck in that sense. I care about causes, not people's money, connections, etc. A few years ago Fox wouldn't cover a charity event because they felt it was more important to cover Paris Hilton and her DUI stuff. Such a pity.
- Patricia
@Patricia it's sad but true, and in defense of the tech media, the mainstream media is far worse at covering causes unless there is a side benefit to them.
- Brandon Mendelson
@Brandon, I would disagree. I think they're both bad. I have worked in media biz almost my entire life - how long have you worked in it? Maybe you see something I don't? In my opinion, both blogs and media do it -- and don't do it. It's like anything else. There are the bad and good.
- Patricia
@Patricia. Eight years. We should take this to another thread though.
- Brandon Mendelson
They had to let new folks start *somewhere*. Is this *somewhere* the best? No. But it's better than nothing.
- drew olanoff
sorry disagree drew
- Allen Stern
@brandon, yes!! i'd love that kind of discussion with someone knowledgable on it as you are!
- Patricia
the list is setup to make sure that the celebs are happy, twitter looks huge and the fluffer blogs get paid. that's what i see as the net.
- Allen Stern
@Allen I suspected you would, and this is why the interwebs is great :) I've personally watched hundreds of new Twitter members try to figure out where to start. They get frustrated. Now does Mom and Pop regular Joe want to follow you and me, or do they want to follow Britney Spears and Shaq? Come on.
- drew olanoff
drew: you have a point there, but I think that when you make technology choices that you've gotta think through the consequences of your choices. Why didn't Twitter make a deal with an outside organization like AllTop? That would have been cleaner than doing it by a human inside their organization. It really messed with the reputation of Twitter as a dispassionate platform service.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Twitter can't tap an outside source for that type of thing. They have to remain an independent platform that allows people to build on top of them. Imagine if they picked/integrated Alltop for this, wow people like us would freak. Ya know when Digg is down and they have staff suggested links? Why aren't we complaining about why that isn't democratic?
- drew olanoff
I personally like "Staff picks" on iTunes, and could care less who the staff is. That's how I see this Twitter list. Only reason why people are freaking is because....well it works lol.
- drew olanoff
Drew - i have said all along (and will post about it tomorrow if i feel better) is that having a list is a great thing - but having the right list is crucial - and twitter doesn't have that.
- Allen Stern
what's odd about the list is that NOW it's dominated by celebs except for "Allison" she's been on the list since day 1..Who IS she & why is she on the list?
- David J. Garcia
from twhirl
100% agreed with your points Drew. And I'm happy Twitter did it internally, if it was farmed out to another valley company (just as an example) I feel it would again keep the web's spotlight on the same group of folks and not allow for new voices to get through.
- Brandon Mendelson
@David Allison is a musician. Don't know much else about her but I would qualify her as a celebrity as well.
- Brandon Mendelson
Allen: There is no right list. What's right to you will be super wrong to everyone else. Vice versa apparently.
- drew olanoff
Drew - what I would like to see is a list that matches people to interests and location - the example i keep using is that a new user who is interested in food getting the tc feed is worthless. And interestingly - the people on that list are apparently floating over to the default list here because of the twitter import option. that's a different topic tho :)
- Allen Stern
drew: the reason it sucks is because this list makes it very easy to subscribe to the whole list and totally screws with follower numbers. Twitter picks the stars. The rest of us are second class citizens. Far different from how, say, friendfeed's list works.
- Robert Scoble
drew: the way Twitter did this list is yet more evidence that Twitter takes the lazy road through its engineering decisions. There's a reason why we see so many fail whales. They don't design systems the best way, just the lazy way. The fact that you're defending the lazy way makes me wonder. It doesn't take much to do things an algorithmic way that isn't corruptible and that is a meritocracy, not a reward system for doing things the staff members like.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert, It may be easy, but no one is forced to subscribe to anyone, they make the choice. And @Allen, I believe the Twitter folks have said in the news they would be changing the list soon to be more topical to a user
- Brandon Mendelson
brandon - when i did my cupcake series last week and met with a twitter employee, she said nothing of the like when i brought up my ideas - and robert - im not sure i completely agree with the "lazy" way- i think its more about what benefits twitter.
- Allen Stern
Brandon: you are the beneficiary of a HUGE gift. Your judgment on this topic is in question, sorry. Why YOU? Why not the thousands of other organizations and people who are doing great work? Why not all? And why not make it a meritocracy? Why defend a system where some people get picked to be royalty? That system sucks.
- Robert Scoble
Allen: every time I see Twitter employees speak about the list they are very uncomfortable. They know they took the lazy way through this.
- Robert Scoble
robert - aah... i wish that i had a chance to really interview them about it but all i got was 3 minutes - i had no appointment because i had no idea how to contact them since my customer service inquiries went unanswered
- Allen Stern
@Robert, my judgement shouldn't be in question (and as a reverse of what you said to me, if you've been following me long enough, you know I call things as I see it.) I like the list because it is beneficial to new people coming to Twitter. End of story. Is it perfect? Of course not but the Twitter team has said they will be changing it soon, so my attitude is they will fix it.
- Brandon Mendelson
Brandon: actually, most of the people on the list are NOT new people. Most of the people on the list are either large brands or celebrities. There are only a couple of exceptions, you're one of them. If there were more exceptions I might agree.
- Robert Scoble
As far as other organizations, I don't know. What I do know though is that because I was given the gift, I make every effort to help those who did not. I can't say the same to be true for the tech media outlets (not yourself or Louis gray as I enjoy both of your blogs) but the outlets I identified in this thread.
- Brandon Mendelson
@Robert, that is a very fair point.
- Brandon Mendelson
Robert: Re: Lazy engineering, now thats a discussion worth having. Lazy or not, it was definitely the quick and dirty approach...which isn't always the best approach.
- drew olanoff
I actually would argue that making qualititative assessments about which accounts to follow with quantitative algorithms is not necessarily as simple as one might think. Especially if you want to avoid scenarios where power accrues to the earliest adopters instead. Randomization adds an element of risk ("why is twitter promoting a neonazi account?"). So, it's lazy and opaque to us, but it's internally accountable at least for them, so I can understand why they did it this way.
- Jacob Harris
What I don't understand and what has irritated me from the get-go is how hostility to twitter over the SUL has crossed the line at times to attacks on people and orgs on the list, under the assumption that SUL membership is such a massively valued gift it can't but help corrupt the recipient. And that's when this goes from an academic discussion to open warfare. If you have a problem with twitter, I can respect that. But let's keep out of the dark conspiracy theories where everybody is on the take.
- Jacob Harris
Jacob: when people get things they did NOT earn that calls into question the whole system.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert no, it just leads to this cynical trip through the looking glass where the SUL is not a dumb application of a necessary evil but a sinister tool for control wielded by the dark hand of @ev. Something they did NOT earn? Come on. What did people you link to or podcast about do to earn that versus other? Much as we might not like it, it's twitter's call whom they decide to pick, but that is NOT the fault of people on the SUL.
- Jacob Harris
I don't really have a problem with the SUL, I really do think it will improve over time. What I do have a problem with is Twitter lack of ability to teach new users how to use the service. Suggesting people to follow is a great idea and a great place to start, but that's all it is. If Twitter wants new users to hang around they should really invest their time in educating them about the service. Show them how to @reply, DM, search, find new people to follow, etc. They really suck at that.
- Shawn Hickman
Jacob: cynical? Oprah got put on the list after only doing a few Tweets and only being on Twitter a week. How did the Twitter team know she would be a good Twitterer? Is she really better as a Twitterer than, say, you? Or Leo Laporte? Or anyone else who has put a lot more of their lives into Twitter? The problem is that Twitter wants to be a platform player, which requires building a...
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- Robert Scoble
And, Jacob, how do we know that there weren't some "backrubs" to get on the list? iJustine got on the list (for a while, at least). What did she do for Twitter? She brought them cupcakes. She had fewer followers than Leo, Guy, Jason, me. Yet she got on the list. How about Arrington? He didn't pimp friendfeed. He had fewer followers than Leo, Guy, Jason, and me. Yet he got on the list,...
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- Robert Scoble
Robert, simple. The SUL never meant user X was a better twitterer, it merely meant that twitter thinks he might be interesting to new users. And I'm sorry to say but people like you and me ARE less interesting to new users that Oprah. Yes, it's a flawed system and some cynicism towards twitter is probably due (what's this "you guys?"), but I object to corrosive paranoia where everyone on the SUL is considered ethically suspect by association.
- Jacob Harris
I don't resent those who got on the list, but I do have to wonder why I'm the only person in the top 10 _before_ the SUL who has never made the SUL. I can only think that Twitter has something against me and that kind of bias would be a problem, no? 125,000 thought it worth following me but not Twitter?
- Leo Laporte
Jacob: OK, but a cat made the list. Really? You really are defending this list?
- Robert Scoble
Leo: I had the most followers two years ago on Twitter and I've never been on the list as far as I know. There's someone at Twitter who doesn't like me for some reason, it might even have been a technical problem (I was one of the few who used @replies to see everyone who @replied me, which they say caused their systems lots of problems). But I also talk about friendfeed endlessly. I wouldn't put me on such a list either.
- Robert Scoble
I think they decided against you because you were too noisy. I think they decided against me because I was too critical.
- Leo Laporte
Leo: I think it was because of friendfeed. Funny that I'm #1 here on friendfeed and #1 over on facebook too. Too noisy? They put a freaking cat on the list. What's noisier than that? Geesh. I think it was something else. I pissed someone at Twitter off and that was that.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, my attitude is twitter can pick whom they want and it doesn't affect how I feel about myself as a human being. You can decide whom you want to interview or blog about and it doesn't mean they're better or worse than I am. Google can tweak pagerank to boost or decrement sites and it's their perogative. I am not defending the list, but I think the discussion over it has been too tied up with assumptions of self-worth and too quick to condemn those who find themselves linked for some reason.
- Jacob Harris
I far prefer lists where they are meritocracies and where you can earn your way up the lists by doing great content and getting audiences to engage with you.
- Robert Scoble
Well, last I checked anybody can unfollow like that on twitter too. I guess the real question though is how many followers for SUL accounts are active users or abandons.
- Jacob Harris
Jacob: it has nothing to do with how I feel about myself. Getting on these lists affects my livelihood. Anyone on these lists has been gifted real economic value. I used to work at a magazine with 100,000 subscribers and we made millions in revenue every year.
- Robert Scoble
Jacob: TechCrunch just wrote about the traffic they are getting because they were put on the list. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... Getting on this list is very real economic value. It used to be that we got our audiences organically by earning them. Now we have to give someone at Twitter a backrub to get on the list to earn our audiences.
- Robert Scoble
It could very well be that we both pissed someone off at Twitter. Oh well. Friendfeed is much more interesting anyway. I think we'll both be around a lot longer than either.
- Leo Laporte
Leo: friendfeed is interesting. They don't take engineering shortcuts and I like that about them a lot. Twitter will be around for a long time too, though. In Virginia every radio and TV station was yammering on about Twitter and CNN is giving Twitter lots of free PR even today.
- Robert Scoble
There is a huge difference between 100K active and paying subscribers and 600K possibly checked-out twitter followers (the clickthroughs are horrible). I actually have to go to bed, so you can get the last word on me, but you can scroll up to see my take on the TC numbers. I can see why the SUL might seem a bigger deal to a small startup though, but I think the actual worth is not there. Fair enough though, we should limit it to only celebrities and large media organizations who don't care.
- Jacob Harris
Robert: one last question though. You saw @ev last night. Did you ask him why you're not on the SUL or raise some of your concerns with him?
- Jacob Harris
Jacob: the problem is that Twitter is now a platform and other companies and sites use follower numbers to build lists like this. For instance, on WeFollow if you aren't on the suggested follower list you won't be at the top of most of these lists: http://wefollow.com/ (we follow uses follower numbers to determine order on their lists). I stayed away from talking too much about the SUL....
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- Robert Scoble
Another perspective. Back when Friendfeed had NO profiles, everyone was 'chatting' on a somewhat level playing field. While nobody knows everyone, I found I met some fascinating people because most didn't bother to go over to LinkedIn or Facebook. It was what you wrote that made the difference ... period ... and there were (are) some still-to-be-discovered fascinating, interesting and/or just funny people out there.
- Charlie Anzman
Scoble, the cat has more interesting tweets than you, please get over your jealousy.
- Phillip Stewart
Twitter's "Suggested User List" (SUL) = the quintessential High School popularity contest all over again... augh! Only this time, it's not controlled by the jock and the pretty blonde cheerleader, but some dudes at twitter HQ :-/ Personally, I think the SUL was designed for the primary purpose of getting twitter some notoriety to help make their application go mainstream.
- Susan Beebe
Robert, thanks. Cat allergies aside, it seems the real problem is the relative advantage given to your competitors. So, a principle that would've been good: that anybody who actually is dependent on follower counts for their livelihood should not have been on the SUL. Otherwise, it might tempt them into "backrubs". So, iJustine, individual reporters, small blogs likeTC, etc. should have fought each other fair and square. But Oprah, Sockington, etc. would've been okay. Of course, it's too late now...
- Jacob Harris
HOMEWORK IDEA #1: I'm too busy to do this, but it might be useful to take someone on the SUL (you can pick @aplusk if you want) and programmatically go through the followers. See how many post regularly vs. how many didn't post in the last week vs. how many didn't in the last month. Use that as an approx. of user engagement. Do the same for @scobleizer or @davewiner as a control.
- Jacob Harris
HOMEWORK IDEA #2: Ask Techcrunch the absolute monthly twitter numbers for last month and see if we can get closer to a real worth of being on the SUL for them. Yes, they probably won't share it, but it's good to ask.
- Jacob Harris
@Jacob Perhaps this might be helpful http://www.twitip.com/life-on...
- Brandon Mendelson
Here's a rough study of click-thru -- http://twdsc.us/107...
- Dave Winer
Brandon, you really think if I apply my poor little self I'll catch up to your 631,404 followers someday?
- Dave Winer
jacob -- state your position on the SUL and then let it rest.
- Dave Winer
@Dave, (look at #4) But yeah, I think it's possible. But, I'm always an optimist.
- Brandon Mendelson
Mmmm...I think Twitter shouldn't get complacent. There's always someone nipping at your heels. Look what happened to MySpace.
- debegray
Took a look at the newest list after reading this, and the only one I clicked on was Rania Al Abdullah - since she is doing such great things for women in the region. I feel sorry for the new people coming on Twitter having to choose from that list. I had to dig around for my first following list, but now have alot of interesting creative people from all over the world. Most of them had...
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- Kay Designer
Brendon, you also say we should be satisfied with our little following. Why don't you prove it and delete your account and start over. Be the big man you want the rest of us to be.
- Dave Winer
@Dave, tempting, but it would be disrespectful to those who have decided to follow me (for starters) and more importantly, remember my job is to get the people following me and out to their local shelters this Summer (as mentioned in the article) Since the tech media won't acknowledge anything that I do, it'd be silly to delete my only online channel.
- Brandon Mendelson
That said, I would be a liar if I told you I have not been tempted in the past to do this and I won't rule out doing so after this project has ended.
- Brandon Mendelson
In the meantime your lectures down to us little folk make you look like a (fill in the blank).
- Dave Winer
I don't think that is a far assesment to make. I did that post to be helpful and what I said there is no different than what I said when I had 1,000 folks following me. Also, I don't think I would count yourself or Mr. Scoble as little folk. If Robert, as an example, deleted his Twitter account, he would still be who he is and have many well deserved fans. Me on the other hand? *poof*
- Brandon Mendelson
Then I wouldn't be able to help anyone. And to be honest? That's why I'm on Twitter in the first place.
- Brandon Mendelson
Dave, my position is that while the SUL is stupid, it's twitter's site and they can do what they want with it. I don't feel like they owe me anything or presence on the SUL is a measure of value. My particular bugbear is the hypothesizing that twitter is using the SUL as a form of control over the tech press, especially since we now know there isn't that much intelligence to it. I also am skeptical of attaching arbitrary values to links, especially when used to support the paranoid control theory.
- Jacob Harris
For what it's worth, I think the new Replies behavior and blocking have been far worse to twitter actually, because it makes it much harder for me to see the conversation. But that's a different thread.
- Jacob Harris
Dave, thank you for the clickthrough notes. I was curious how active an audience the SUL followers are, given that they are new to twitter. That's why I thought it would be good to see their tweeting activity as a proxy for that.
- Jacob Harris
RT @jaybaer: WTF? Even corps (Circle K) can't do punctuation any more? Is it that hard? http://yfrog.com/5jl1egj (That's a great one!)
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Ari Herzog liked this
One thing I'm going to start doing over my weekends is I want to begin creating Facebook Pages for my ancestors.
Andre P. Siregar, Nicholas James, Alix Whitmire and 7 other people liked this
I see huge benefit to that - for instance, I could collaborate with other family members on facts surrounding their history
- Jesse Stay
All family members can post Fan photos of the Ancestor
- Jesse Stay
I can create a master Family Page, and associate "favorite Pages" to the family Page with the Ancestors we're studying
- Jesse Stay
I can only imagine the Facebook apps I could create to support this...
- Jesse Stay
MyFamily.com might be a better fit. Especially v2.5 which is a complete rewrite currently in community preview: Facebook-like in interaction but in a more collaborative, private setting.
- [ s . m . m ]
smm, when I think of MyFamily.com I think of things I have to pay for. Genealogy and family history should be free. Facebook also has a *much* bigger network of living people than MyFamily.com.
- Jesse Stay
Try geni.com; I have pictures & biographies of great-great-great grandparents on there.
- Mistletoe Glen
Glen, but Facebook Pages do just as well. These sites are all trying to get you off of Facebook so they're not going to work to try and keep you using the tools Facebook already has. IMO you could do some pretty cool stuff just using the tools that are all already there, no app to install necessary.
- Jesse Stay
MyFamily.com has both free and paid. I guess it depends how you want to organize the data and if you want it to be out in the public. Facebook's model won't let you easily organize your conversations about family history from other topics. With MF you can contain that within a group.
- [ s . m . m ]
Then there's Footnote.com's "I Remember" pages -- also free.
- Dean Richardson
smm, I think I could write a few apps that would make that really easy without the annoying app invites other Genealogy apps on Facebook are doing. I'd also like to work with Facebook to integrate as much of that possible as they can - My guess is they just haven't thought of it. It would really fit a specific category of Facebook Page for Ancestors well.
- Jesse Stay
But to be really useful long term, you'd also have to build in the ability to link the pages according to family relationships. I agree, though, I'd like to see an app that did that without the faux-viral spam.
- Dean Richardson
Dean, I think I could do that with a simple Facebook App.
- Jesse Stay
Nothing against the FamilyLink folks, but it shouldn't be that hard to improve on We're Related, for example
- Dean Richardson
Sounds good, Jesse, I'd be interested. MyFamily.com is free until you start adding content and then you need more space and end up paying. Facebook wanted to map relationships over the whole world, so why not ancestors, too?
- Trish Haley
You can link up current family members now on Facebook but it would be cool to expand and integrate ancestors too!
- Nicholas James
Facebook (or any of the various "we're related-type apps") doesn't handle familial relationships. Specifically, it doesn't handle double-first cousins, which occur with disturbing frequency in my family's heritage. It certainly doesn't handle relationships between an individual and a Page.
- Mistletoe Glen
Really, this is just another example of the MyISAM vs. InnoDB issue. You just want some data you can play with; I'm insisting on keeping the validity of the relationships intact.
- Mistletoe Glen
Glen you could create it outside Facebook - and fix the problems with current "we're related apps" and offer Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed etc integration via an API and obviously a Facebook App ;)
- Nicholas James
New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets. http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs...
Thomas Power, Sheryl, Ari Herzog and 2 other people liked this
Did you look through the comments? One of them is by "twitter backgrounds"
- Ari Herzog
How to Write Posts That Set StumbleUpon, Digg and Twitter on Fire | SEO Services - http://www.seosocialbookmarking.com/seo...
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Ari Herzog liked this
Glowing Monkeys Make More Glowing Monkeys the Old-Fashioned Way | Wired Science | Wired.com - http://www.wired.com/wiredsc...
Ari Herzog, Benjamin Tseng, Alexey and 2 other people liked this
"The first genetically modified primates that can pass their modifications to their offpsring have been created by Japanese scientists. The marmosets, pictured above, express a green fluorescent protein in their skin. The gene for producing the glow was delivered to the first marmoset embryos via a modified virus. But now that modification method could become unnecessary. One male marmoset, number 666, fathered a child (pictured at right) that also contained the transgenes."
- Anthony Phan
from Bookmarklet
Interesting, marmoset 666, "Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number..."
- zephyrlily
These guys aren't going to be able to hide from predators :(
- Benjamin Tseng
In the end, whether Ev, Biz, Jack, Bijan and Fred like it or not, Twitter is going to belong to the people, not the celebs.
Brian Ellefritz, Michael Metz, Mike Elliott and 11 other people liked this
And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make -Beatles
- dstamand
I think they need celebs to get more people. Google's products were also super actively placed in movies and on TV in early 2000's - it's the only way to get lots of users
- Kirill Bolgarov
Wouldn't it be great to have a checkbox for Wolf Blitzer, that you could uncheck, and he would go away, forever! Design your own network.
Ari Herzog and Karoli liked this
I can think of all kinds of TV personalities I'd like to do that with. And Radio. :-)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Breaking news: Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Ari Herzog, Chuck Baggett, Will Higgins™ and 2 other people liked this
Google recently made it possible to share individual feeds and folders from Google Reader (they're called Bundles). Share your favorite bundles here:
Kathleen Capps, Daniel Rowley, Molly and 111 other people liked this
This is how you find them: http://thenextweb.com/2009... and this is 150 of the most influential Tech Blogs & sites http://www.google.com/reader...
- Zee.
not all at once now :P
- Zee.
Nice Bundle Zee
- Nicholas James
sounds almost naughty when you say it like that... :)
- Zee.
does anyone else get the same?
- Zee.
Works fine for me Zee: ""150 of the Most Influential Tech News and Blogs" bundle created by Zee Description: Spent ages collecting these and here they for everything to enjoy. A bundle is a collection of blogs and websites hand-selected by your friend on a particular topic or interest. You can keep up to date with them all in one place by subscribing in Google Reader. There are 175 feeds included in this bundle"
- Nicholas James
clearly a lot of people like the idea of this but not the sharing part
- Zee.
This actually is a smart move from Google. This "bundles" feature now makes it much easier for new users to get started with lots of sources in Google Reader. Now even people that aren't ahead-of-the-curve-social-media-experts can enjoy the wonderful benefits of having too much to read.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
Apple Code: Mac & iPhone Development: http://www.google.com/reader...
- Jason Wehmhoener
Data Design: Datavis, Charts, Graphs: http://www.google.com/reader...
- Jason Wehmhoener
Hallelujah! I could kiss Jason. I've never had so many like but not share.
- Zee.
Experience Design: UX, UE, Interaction Design: http://www.google.com/reader...
- Jason Wehmhoener
Visual: Design, Art, Typography, Etc: http://www.google.com/reader...
- Jason Wehmhoener
you the man Lou
- Zee.
and LOLfeeds http://ff.im/-3bKUC. Thanks, Zee
- LouCypher
I'm loving this thread. I went and grabbed the newsier bundles from this thread and pulled them into a room. I'll keep adding to that too. guruvy-headlines: http://friendfeed.com/guruvy-...
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
seriously, you guys suck! :P 64 likes and only 3 people have shared their bundles...
- Zee.
Zee: no one believes me when I say that very few people are using Google Reader. I have more than 40x more people reading me here than on Google Reader and I was the #1 user of Google Reader for quite a while (according to the Google Reader team). That's just one small reason why I've shifted over to where the readers are: Facebook, Twitter, and friendfeed.
- Robert Scoble
Hey, it would be interesting to ask how many people still use Google Reader. See, i think loads and loads do, but few bother sharing or socializing via it.
- Zee.
Zee: according to my blog's referer log you're wrong. Measurement tells all. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Boy, this sounds interesting! I gotta try it..
- Raj Rikhy
Omg this is so great!
- Marika Dye
@Robert but don't you share your full content via RSS?
- Zee.
I don't always visit reader because it can simply be overwhelming. Friendfeed and Twitter are more amenable to "partial attention" whereas Reader pretty much requires total focus for an extended period if I'm going to get use out of it. I only have that kind of time once every week or so, whereas I can keep Tweetie running most of the time without feeling too distracted by it.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason -- the key to using Google Reader effectively (for me) is to focus on a few carefully defined folders, and feel under no pressure whatever to "catch up" with all your unread items. Just skim off the cream.
- Sean McBride
some WordPress feeds: https://www.google.com/reader...
- Jeroen De Miranda
I love my Google Reader but MAN I wish organization were easier.
- Mona Nomura
Mona -- ever try dragging and dropping a GR folder from one location to another when you have a long list of folders? :) It's surrealistic.
- Sean McBride
Though I use my reader you see my preference in the fact I went and aggregated these bundles here. I only use it as quick storage of feed addresses and to make sure I don't miss important items from my favorite writers that might have been missed in the noise. But now I'm starting to use the same client I use for most of my twitter and friendfeed to get my rss, PeopleBrowsr :)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
from f2p
Though I use my reader you see my preference in the fact I went and aggregated these bundles here. I only use it as quick storage of feed addresses and to make sure I don't miss important items from my favorite writers that might have been missed in the noise. But now I'm starting to use the same client I use for most of my twitter and friendfeed to get my rss, PeopleBrowsr :)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
from f2p
thats very interesting. Thanks for the hard work Zee. And I think you're right in your comment that many people still use Greader, though they might not use it as a sharing tool.
- Peter Efland
我的海派文化：http://www.google.com/reader...
- qian
Sean, it sounds nice, and it works for a while, but I seem to collect feeds faster than our floor collects fur from our two dogs and two cats. I've found that I get more out of it if I don't "skim" but actually devote a solid chunk of time to it (just not very regularly).
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason -- by "skim off the cream" I meant to pay very close attention to the small set of GR items that really matter, and to use folders to corral those items. (Skim off, not skim.)
- Sean McBride
That "small set" just isn't very small for me. Got lotsa folders.
- Jason Wehmhoener
@Jason which "small set"?
- Zee.
Sean is talking about a way of narrowing down Google Reader content, paying attention to "small set of GR items that really matter" but I'm saying that the items that really matter to me actually make up a somewhat large set.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I've got over 1,000 GR feeds and over 100 GR folders, but I tend to gravitate towards and focus on a few folders in which the most interesting stuff clusters most strongly.
- Sean McBride
Omg I just put on false lashes myself for the first time!!!!
Ari Herzog, MicahBear78, Nurse Katie and Kevin Murray liked this
The Porn Catcher - http://caughtyouwatching.com/catch...
Wazza T, Felicia Yue, Кофе без сахара and 99 other people liked this
"Send your friends to your blog or page where you put the widget. Their porn history will be captured in the widget... This widget works by taking advantage of an information leak introduced by CSS. Your web browser turns the colors of links that you visit a different color than links you have not visited. By loading up a pre-set list of links (in this case links to hundreds of different adult sites) in an iframe, we can detect which are visited and which have not been visited based on the color of the link."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Kind of scary that this works. The CSS color trick has been much discussed, but this is the first thing I have seen that uses it that would creep out a lot of people.
- Bret Taylor
In case you're wondering it has use when you lookup related links like competitors and social networks. I'm sure that jquery can also parse these and through Ajax store them in a db too. Scary stuff!
- Phill Price
We use this CSS trick on Polyvore to determine whether the user has visited Twitter, in which case we show them a promo about linking their Twitter account to Polyvore.
- Jess Lee
Wait, there are non-porn sites on the internet????
- Morgan Haley
You'll never catch me.
- Heather
it even detects what you watch in "incognito" mode in Chrome lol
- David Gross
And if the widget takes too long to load... you may have a problem.
- Louis Gray
"In fact, it looks like you have not visited any porn sites recently (at least not the ones in our list!)" Ooh, I'd better get to work! Or they'd better update their list? :D
- Penguin It's Cold Outside
I really dont *want* to know what porn my friends are looking at. Some things are better left unknown.
- Haggis (Sean Loyless)
I just like the picture
- Mark Bockenstedt
Sigh, the old getComputedStyle boo-boo. This is why you need Caja: http://code.google.com/p....
- Ihab Awad
Just so I'm clear... this damn thing only tells people what their computer already knows right?....
- teh Dork Knight aka Kenny
This widget is not meant to be used with some other medications. If the widget runs for longer than four hours, or you experience a lot of typos after visiting this widget, consult your doctor.
- David Chartier
from BuddyFeed
Like it's 1st time :D
- Sasha Kovaliov(.com)
But with all these Porn modes available - will it still work?
- Sasha Kovaliov(.com)
It's an interesting idea but I agree with Haggis
- Hassan
the internet is for...http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- John Fu
Phill Price, Jess Lee: I never even though about sending the information back to a server ... I just had no idea you could read this information from the browser using javascript. Apart from the moral/privacy implications, it's fun to see people freaking out about this ;)
- Rui Pires
why should I need someone else's porn history? I am fully satisfied with my own
- orie
Nice glasses make cute girls cuter. Just sayin'.
Kelly, Ari Herzog, Haggis (Sean Loyless) and 10 other people liked this
+++
- Joe Pierce
Personally, I think it's a shame when girls go for contacts or laser corrective surgery. Glasses girls = TEH SEXY.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Tina Fey fan club?
- John E. Bredehoft
from fftogo
Is there one? I might join.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
from IM
I'm just lucky to know lots of cute girls in glasses. If I didn't know so many, I'd be a sadder person.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
from IM
Know what else makes girls cuter than they already are? When they're librarians or teachers.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
from IM
Young librarian with glasses? You'd need to tie me down to keep me away!
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
from IM
"Shhhhhh!"
- John E. Bredehoft
from fftogo
I'm a cute guy with glasses... if you know any cute girls with glasses to send my way...
- Ari Herzog
What are the people of the NY Times saying on Twitter? http://nyt.100twt.com/
esragunel, Ari Herzog, Thomas Hawk and 3 other people liked this
interesting.
- Thomas Hawk
It seems like @nytimes employees are talking more than replying or retweeting. No customer service?
- Ari Herzog
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