Yeah, sorry I couldn't respond to that one before. :-)
- Kevin Fox
well i be darned .... we now can rejoice, since fast paced additions to already good product are surely fastly coming about off the feedpipe ... it'l be a hectic season of finest upgrades ... I'm sure they'l start with keyboard shortcutze. ... I mean Google Reader rules on that. Intelligent to the extreme. ..Google.com, on the other hand - are we sleeping? .. not even "/" ??.. and that...
more...
- pb:
Congrats Ben! Totally agree with Jason. Our latest project wouldn't have become feasible without Ben -- I'm just so glad we managed to get a fraction of his time before he left! :)
- Simon
Congratulations, Ben! You're joining an awesome team.
- Anne Bouey
Congrats, you are now a "big company"! ;))))
- K.D.
That's not my picture! They got the picture wrong! In fact, I didn't get the letter of hire either. :( Oh, Hi there, Ben...if that's your real name. ;)
- Josh Haley
Good luck Ben! With you our preferred service will go more interesting
- Roberto
from fftogo
I think there were a bunch of spam comments made to some 2009-era posts by FF employees. For some reason even after the spam is nuked, the post stays bumped.
- Stephen Mack
Yes, I blocked a spammer that was bumping old posts about FF themes and what not.
- Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart
Well, let's see this as an opportunity to raise a virtual glass to Ben and FriendFeed-that-was!
- Kevin Fox
It probably had something to do with the Tornado 2.2 release. I noticed Ben was the one who posted about the release on HN earlier. Edit: Or it could have just been a spammer. *shrugs*
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
I don't think it had anything to do with the tornado release - a spammer bumped a bunch of Bret's old posts today.
- Ben Darnell
You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ?
- Ahsan Ali
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Friendfeed's Francisco
"Today we are launching version 2 of the FriendFeed API for beta testing. We focused on making the API simpler to use, and we added number of compelling new features." Documentation: http://friendfeed.com/api...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
nice, good to see OAuth support, this will enable a larger 3rd party ecosphere around FriendFeed, I hope
- Jeroen De Miranda
After going through the documentation and playing around with some feeds, I love the fact that you can now see the subscriber lists of people who have their feeds set to private as long as you are subscribed to them and authenticate (mimicking the main site functionality). One thing that's absent is a discussion of Direct Messages. Do they show up in feeds if you authenticate? How do we find just direct messages?
- Mark Trapp
Mark: direct messages are accessed using the feed ID "filter/direct". Read more about feed IDs at http://friendfeed.com/api.... Also direct messages appear in the "home" feed.
- Benjamin Golub
Benjamin: ahhh, I see it now. I missed it when skimming that list over. Thanks!
- Mark Trapp
Can you post the wget version of the command line?
- Gabe
Gabe: wget --user=bgolub --password=passwd --post-file=MyPhoto.jpg http://friendfeed-api.com/v2... should work. In theory. Edit: nope. I'm not sure it's possible to do with wget.
- Mark Trapp
Gabe: wget doesn't support multipart forms as a design decision. If you post a file, FriendFeed returns a 404, and if you post data, the query is too long for wget to handle.
- Mark Trapp
Woowoo, bgolub's password is “passwd” ;-)
- Amit Patel
Amit: I wonder how many people tested that :)
- Benjamin Golub
Thanks to bgolub posting his password, I now have all of FriendFeed's secret documents about notorious users, useless metrics, Justin Timberlake's promoting FF on Oprah's show, hiring Colbert as a spokesperson, Ev Williams being just a “distraction”. TechCrunch is going to love this! ;)
- Amit Patel
Yes big big thanks to the whole team for all their hard work!!
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
from iPhone
This morning we changed the format of FriendFeed subscription email messages to include more information about people who subscribe to you. Please let us know if you see any problems, and keep an eye out for more email improvements in the future.
I'm all for improving the format of notifications, but wonder (aloud) if it is such a smart move to include the Approve/Reject link right at the top (unless it only appears in private feeds to which someone has requested access). Right now we have the option of blocking/ rejecting a subscriber at any time but presumably not at the very outset. This may lead to more of a walled gardens' mentality, already very prevalent at FF.
- ianf ⌘
ianf: approve/reject is only for private feeds. Public feeds just have a link to subscribe back :)
- Benjamin Golub
I noticed this one! Such informations about people who subscribe to me on FriendFeed are useful, and makes it easy to quickly get in the conversation. Thanks for the good job!
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
Gmail automatically showed me the images in a subscription email, even though I never told it to (you know how gmail has the 'display images below' option). further, it doesn't give me the option to hide the images. not that I'd want to, but how are you bypassing gmail's security feature to hide the images?
- chrisofspades
Chris, we don't do anything special. I'm not sure how gmail decides what images to show, you'd have to contact them or check the gmail help.
- Casey Muller
Casey, you sure FriendFeed's founders didn't use some of their "we created Gmail" mojo? ;)
- chrisofspades
Chris, the "show images" only applies to external images hosted on other sites. Gmail doesn't show those by default because doing so would allow people to "bug" email. We include the images with the email so that they can be displayed immediately.
- Paul Buchheit
It took me 1.5-years to get RSS after Dave Winer first showed it to me. So, I am getting faster. Took me just a few months to get friendfeed. Glad you kept after me.
- Robert Scoble
So how do I access it? <---I take that back. Didn't realize what I was looking at when I went to the site.
- Mattie Kenny
Josh: it was a seasonal thing last year at this time, so it is no longer possible. We may have to bring it back by popular demand, but for now the entries you see are all from last year.
- Bret Taylor
Bret - bring back those cute little red icons next to the FF posts! easy seasonal "flair" feature!
- Susan Beebe
If you use the FriendFeed Facebook application make sure you've configured it properly. We are switching to a new method of publishing in the not too distant future. If you see this message at http://apps.facebook.com/friendf... just click on the link to provide the proper permissions.
I disabled Friendfeed wallposts a while ago to avoid duplicate aggregate streaming there.
- John Lam
Orpheus' music was so powerful that no one could resist it—not even the fairest maiden. He chose the lovely Eurydice to be his wife. But their joy was brief. As Eurydice walked through a meadow shortly after their wedding, a poisonous snake bit her. She died, leaving Orpheus alone and deeply saddened. Overcome by grief, he decided to travel to the land of the dead to get her.
- Azeem Baloch
FriendFeed is now available in Persian! Thanks again to all of our Persian users — it has been extremely exciting for us to see FriendFeed so widely used around the world. You can set your language preference here: http://friendfeed.com/...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Any way we could auto-translate (or even have a link with the option to?)? It'd be great to really be able to collaborate with the non-English speaking world...
- Chris Reichow
wow, another language... I can't read it, but that is cool! :)
- Susan Beebe
Now if we could only filter out languages other then our own and have the lang:en search filter.
- DarknessFalls
You're welcome! We are excited to better support our Persian users.
- Bret Taylor
This feels so good to be able to view the pages in a way are eyes used to see Persian writings. Thank you so much! We really appreciate your effort! Thanks again ! :)
- انجل
Great Bret! I remember that in the past some persian people wrote here that whould be nice to have FF interface also in persian, probabilly because their language is very different and english isn't so diffused such in Europe. A welcome to persian friends! :)
- Roberto
from fftogo
bretçim herkes google plus'a gidiyor ama ben seni bırakmam ^^
- aynebilim
Aynebilim'e katılıyorum Bret. Bir sürü idiotla paylaşsam da burayı, vazgeçemiyorum işte. - Ben bu yüzden hiç kimseden gidemem gitmemmmm.. la la laaa
- pippi haşmet
bretçim sana dm atamıyorum..bana abone olur musun ^^
- aynebilim
Last friday I taped an iPhone to my head and ran around Paris capturing the most famous sights in a single (somewhat shaky) shot. Here's the video: http://vimeo.com/12906858
At first look I also thought he became gangsta :p
- deerstep
that explain other FF posts, looking for tapes and where can one upload large video files ;-).
- Tzury Bar Yochay
Yeah, I never did get the duct tape though, so I had to use clear packaging tape instead (with a sock stuffed between the iPhone and my hat to get the correctish angle).
- Paul Buchheit
this was perfect, I opened up my Paris map and followed you :)
- ipek aral kişioğlu
I'm surprised you were able to follow. I didn't have a map (my iPhone was taped to my head!) so I made a number of wrong turns, though the high-level route was pretty basic.
- Paul Buchheit
Saw the vimeo on your stream and watched a little of it. Great stuff! Cool to see new iphone vid quality. (er 3gs? quality, hmm) Oh yeah, and enjoy Paris!
- Jay
It's actually a 3GS, not an iphone 4.
- Paul Buchheit
I think I might tape a photo of Paul with an iPhone taped to his head to my head because I want to get arrested for being a menace.
- Akiva
Ahhh this explains the "ducktape in Paris" stuff LOL :D (that picture is full of geeky win!)
- Susan Beebe
@Paul just curious how much battery did you have left after you were done recording?
- BRҰANSAҰS
Something like 22%, as I recall. I had put the phone in airplane mode to reduce wireless consumption and also because I'm concerned that an incoming call would stop the video or something.
- Paul Buchheit
Not bad. I guess you could get at least 2 hours of recording on one charge.
- BRҰANSAҰS
from BuddyFeed
Roll call...this can be great if we all participate. Add yourself to this shared map. I created a placemark on the 2 major intersections near where I live.
- Mark Krynsky
Mo, I'm a newb to the shared maps stuff, but I turned on collaboration and allowed anyone to edit the map. There should be an edit button and then you can add a placemark.
- Mark Krynsky
Robert bought me a new house in the northern suburbs.
- Andrew Trinh
@Bec...nice. You are the first brave female on here.
- Mark Krynsky
Cool idea, Mark! I was thinking something like this would be fun the other day. Duly added myself - or at least the nearest big intersection. ;)
- Jandy
Mousing over the usernames shows your Google profile info...cool.
- Mark Krynsky
I marked a bus stop near my house. But not TOO near. :)
- Nine
If you haven't yet...go add FriendFeed to your Google Profile...it will then auto-discover and allow you to add a ton of other profiles you have.
- Mark Krynsky
Thanks for the profile tip - I hadn't updated it since I moved here!
- Jandy
Thanks guys. This is coming along nicely. It's great to have as a resource to see where everyone is from. Hopefully this can become a standard feature on FF one day.
- Mark Krynsky
Canterbury, Melbourne, Victoria added
- Duncan Riley
Current count: 13 US, 11 Europe, 3 Australia, 1 Middle East. Happy to see many others add themselves overnight. Hoping more will continue this.
- Mark Krynsky
I've read the instruction and still don't see the button thing to add myself. I'm feeling pretty stupid right now.
-
@Jill, make sure you are logged into your Google account and then click on the edit button above the list of names already on the map. You will then see the pushpin in the upper left hand side of the map.
- Mark Krynsky
Added. Seems like there are a lot of us in the Bay Area...we must do a get together at some point.
- Neal "thePuck" Jansons
@Neal yea, we really need a FriendFeed meetup. I might be up there for Web 2.0 in March...or we can have one at SXSW if a large number of us are going. Let's plan and get the Upcoming page going.
- Mark Krynsky
@Mark Not gonna make SXSW, but am definitely down for working on an FF get together. March is long enough away to make sure plenty of people have time to plan ahead. I added you on Upcoming so we can start coordinating it. Anyone else interested/want to help set this up?
- Neal "thePuck" Jansons
Maybe we can talk Paul & Bret into letting us invade the FF offices for a meetup in conjunction with Web 2.0? That would be sooooo cool!
- Mark Krynsky
Pinned! sheesh this just cost me 1/2 hour of time as I scrolled thru all the folks :)
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Except for Bret, there are no FriendFeeders on the penninsula between San Jose and San Francisco. So much for Silicon Valley early adopters.
- Ryan Kuder
Cluelessness alert! I'm not seeing how to add my pushpin!
- Hutch Carpenter
For some reason whenever i use google maps in creation-mode, it defaults to some other maps I've used, not the one I'm trying to access - ah, figured it out. Had to de-activate some other collaborative maps
- anna sauce
Added. What a great way to see who's on FF in Austin, TX!
- Carter ♥ HTML5
"Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months. The Waterloo, Ontario high school junior figured that something must make plastic degrade, even if it does take millennia, and that something was probably bacteria. The Record reports that Burd mixed landfill dirt with yeast and tap water, then added ground plastic and let it stew. The plastic indeed decomposed more quickly than it would in nature; after experimenting with different temperatures and configurations, Burd isolated the microbial munchers. One came from the bacterial genus Pseudomonas, and the other from the genus Sphingomonas. Burd says this should be easy on an industrial scale: all that’s needed is a fermenter, a growth medium and plastic, and the bacteria themselves provide most of the energy by producing heat as they eat. The only waste is water and a bit of carbon dioxide."
- April Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
So why is carbon sequestration a good idea when it's all complicated and expensive, but bad when it involves burying plastic bags in landfills?
- Paul Buchheit
I think it's better to sequester carbon as dirt than as bags.
- Gabe
But if it's already in plastic bag form, why not leave it that way instead of turning it into CO2?
- Paul Buchheit
Paul: that's exactly what I've been thinking. Particularly since the City of Seattle no longer allows residents to sequester food based carbon in landfills and instead requires us to burn it into compost.
- Hayes Haugen
Dirt is useful because you can grow stuff in it. Most waste products are not so useful.
- Gabe
Yes, but the choice isn't between dirt and plastic -- it's between plastic and CO2.
- Paul Buchheit
I have to agree with Paul on this one: atmospheric CO2 is much more of a pressing concern at the moment than landfill space. Though I do admire the kid's scientific spirit.
- Louis Simoneau
Concur with Louis and Paul. Here's an interesting Penn & Teller bit about landfills: http://www.youtube.com/watch... (from their Bullshit episode on Recycling myths).
- Stephen Mack
It doesn't say what the process actually produces. They mention the feed material (plastic) and the waste material (water, CO2), but not the real products. I assumed it produced globs of carbon. Am I wrong?
- Gabe
Has nobody considered this for an artificial ecosystem? Compost your scraps for fertile soil, and compost your bags for the CO2 for the plants growing in it. Sure you'll need an airlock on your greenhouse (and an oxy mask whenever you enter it) but you'll have the best damned tomatoes on your street.
- Chris Charabaruk
You don't want to leave it in plastic form as it screws up the ocean large! Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... I hope they can use this to make something that would eat the plastic in the ocean rather than the sea life dying from it.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Since it said that the waste products were CO2 and water, I assumed there were also non-waste products. The good thing about landfills is that they can later be mined for all the great things that were too cheap to recycle.
- Gabe
Yeah, I think landfills have an unjustly bad reputation. When properly managed, they are a great way to deal with garbage that our technology can't yet efficiently recycle. (we're saving for the future!)
- Paul Buchheit
that's great news. now i can really finish my threat to all my damn *invincible* plastic bags! (waves fist)
- ed fry
The two biggest problems with landfill are the leachate seeping into groundwater (or contaminating local soil) and methane (a greenhouse gas). Even if you can mitigate those problems, they're difficult to eliminate entirely, making the land almost useless once it's full.
- Gabe
Gabe, not to minimize the problems, but I live right next to Shoreline Ampitheather in Mountain View, which is built on landfill is proof that the landfill land is hardly useless.
- Stephen Mack
It's not just landfills, though. Take the large floating trash gyre of the Pacific, and its effects in the ecosystem. So the tiny little plastic balls in water are fake food, and animals eat them, and then die in various ways, lowering populations and making species even more fragile. Landfill may be a good way if it's contained and monitored more closely, or CO2, in various areas- such...
more...
- anna sauce
@anna at least he is coming up with a solution rather than just finding more things to complain about
- Chris Johnston
anna's right -- the problem is when the stuff ends up in the ocean. Landfills are a good way to keep the stuff out of the ocean.
- Gabe
Stop speculating and start experimenting!
- Dane Deasy
100% of my tweets today were from sources other than twitter.com ... mostly friendfeed.com
- Don Strickland
And Alex is in Maui without a laptop - that's why there's no response from Twitter - they probably don't know about it.
- Jesse Stay
the @'ed stats look wrong - do they only count those directed at a person, rather than anywhere in the tweet?
- Nick Halstead
Nick, @dacort should know, as it is his app. I am not sure. And Jesse, Twitter's big enough a utility at this point that they shouldn't be down to one guy foolhardy enough to go on vacation without his laptop. Not impressed.
- Louis Gray
Indeed ! that's was very nice! Have you done anything special about this Bret? (Like twitter's folks)
- directeur
very nice. anyone could guess Friendfeed would make it.
- SolidSmack
from twhirl
We did move a few things around, but nothing temporary - the event inspired us to optimize a few things we had been meaning to optimize anyway.
- Bret Taylor
"I believe that we will look back at this decade as the beginning of an economic revolution as important as the scientific revolution in 16th century and the industrial revolution in 18th century. We’re standing at the beginning of the entrepreneurial revolution." - http://steveblank.com/2010...
"The barriers to entrepreneurship are not just being removed. In each case they’re being replaced by innovations that are speeding up each step, some by a factor of ten. For example, Internet commerce startups the time needed to get the first product to market has been cut by a factor of ten, the dollars needed to get the first product to market cut by a factor of ten, the number of sources of initial capital for entrepreneurs has increased by a factor of ten, etc."
- Paul Buchheit
I certainly see in the web app world things move really fast. There are also some physical products like t-shirts, EyeFi, Square, FitBit where the web made it easy to customize/market/sell the product. However I don't have a good sense of how much change there's been for entrepreneurs working in other markets — beer, automobiles, plywood, packaged food, air conditioners, etc.
- Amit Patel
It is definitely a pleasant dream in which the country and the whole world suddenly behaves like Bay Area does. I have my doubts though. Happy Thanksgiving!
- ✔ ǝuǝƃnǝ
Beer has all kinds of new viral marketing strategies now. Automobiles: look at Local Motors for manufacturing, zipcar for auto transportation. The Information Age can affect existing industries as radically as the Industrial Age affected agriculture.
- Bruce Lewis
"We're delighted to announce that Y Combinator is getting two new partners, the first we've added since we started YC in 2005. In case anyone doesn't already know who he is, Paul Buchheit was responsible for three of the best things Google has done: he wrote GMail, built the original prototype of AdSense, and came up with the phrase "Don't be evil." After leaving Google he started FriendFeed, which last year became Facebook's largest acquisition to date. He's a good friend as well as one of the world's best hackers; for years we've considered him an honorary YC partner. We hired Harj Taggar earlier this year to work advising startups alongside me. He wasn't technically a partner, but we quickly realized that he was one de facto—that among us his opinion carried as much weight as any of ours—and that it would be mean of us to delay recognizing this officially. Harj's arrival significantly improved how well YC operated. He's a large part of the reason we were able to fund 36 startups in the summer 2010 cycle."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Would love if you guys devised a new concept: 2nd-shift startup. Many of us are working jobs we need and/or love, but are trying to build a new thing in the background. Having a bit of money, support, and networking would make all the difference. We're completely alone until we make the big leap. And many with families and bills can't think about leaping into Paul G's YC experience.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Congrats Paul. Are you going to do that *and* stay at Facebook? And have time for the family?
- Joe Beda
You have to stay at Facebook at least long enough to get that damn search fixed!
- Gabe
No, I'll be leaving Facebook to join YC.
- Paul Buchheit
Also, I made some search changes a few days ago so it should be working a little better now.
- Paul Buchheit
Congrats and best of luck to you at YC. Sorry to hear you won't be able to make further FF tweaks in the future, though!
- Stephen Mack
Paul, was one of the changes preventing people who aren't logged in from searching? I can't believe that would have as much of an effect on search as it may have been.
- Akiva
It's interesting. I remember seeing you shortly after you sold FriendFeed and hearing you advise a startup on what they should do. I thought you were great at that, and I guess that is a real passion. YCombinator is an amazing organization, can't wait to see what you do there.
- Robert Scoble
Congratulations on following your heart!
- Kevin Fox
I'm also wondering if this has any impact on FriendFeed. Certainly there's one fewer voice inside FriendFeed protecting the service. I wonder if Paul can tell the community now what he expects to happen to the service. Already a good chunk of the FriendFeed team has left.
- Robert Scoble
Paul: I doubt you can answer this one, either, but I'd love to know what it is about Facebook that is already pushing away entrepreneurial types. It looks like it's becoming a big company, with all the politics and such. I was expecting you to make a much bigger impact there long term than it looks like you've been able to make. Want to come on camera to explain why things didn't work out?
- Robert Scoble
I second that, I'd like it if he could talk. \o,
- Zu from AOD
Congrats! But who will be looking after the Friendfeed servers now? *sorry to be so selfish*
- Eric
Robert, it has less to do with Facebook and more to do with me. I'm just more excited about helping new entrepreneurs create the next Facebook or Google. I'd be glad to chat sometime.
- Paul Buchheit
Great news on one hand since you could do so much to help others but, sad news on the other since I felt you were a very positive force in Facebook's continuing development.
- AJ Kohn
This seems like the perfect job for you - have fun! (and thanks for fixing the search ... I thought that might have been Ben G. ... make sure he knows how to do it mmmkay??)
- Laura Norvig
Paul, congratulations! The excitement is palpable - we're happy for you that your desire and opportunity can be so well matched.
- Micah
from FFHound(roid)!
Not sure LAN, that was my first worry. It's a Facebook property though, so I don't know if Paul can do anything with it now. Not sure.
- Eric
from iPhone
Paul, now I need to share with you my next world-changing idea (seriously). Congrats! (is this the butterfly? ;-) )
- Jesse Stay
Congrats Paul! Right move. You are going to the right place.
- vivekian
"It’s taking something everyone knows on the web (your email address) and making it immensely more valuable as a way to identify yourself and information about you. Exactly what kind of information? Here are some of the ideas from the WebFinger Google Code page: * public profile data * pointer to identity provider (e.g. OpenID server) * a public key * other services used by that email address (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Twitter, Facebook, and usernames for each) * a URL to an avatar * profile data (nickname, full name, etc) * whether the email address is also a JID, or explicitly declare that it’s NOT an email, and ONLY a JID, or any combination to disambiguate all the addresses that look like something@somewhere.com * or even a public declaration that the email address doesn’t have public metadata, but has a pointer to an endpoint that, provided authentication, will tell you some protected metadata, depending on who you authenticate as."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
I don't want my contact information to be my identifier. I shouldn't have to give a website my email address, just like I shouldn't have to give a store my phone number.
- Daniel Sims
Daniel, I think it just takes the form of an email address, but does not in fact have to be one (or could be a "throw away" account).
- Paul Buchheit
It would be cool if we could get our act together (as an industry) and make this stuff happen. I'd also like to see ENUM deployed to the point that my phone number can be linked to my identity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...)
- Joe Beda
This is a bad idea in so many ways I can't even begin to list them.
- April
If a site wants my email address, it's probably in order to spam me. It's usually a bad sign. If legit sites ask for my email more, it will make it harder to identify the spammers.
- Tim Tyler
Do gmail users seriously still have problems with spam? I don't.
- Robin Barooah
Personally this sounds great - as long as it really doesn't force you to use your actual gmail address.
- Robin Barooah
Does this mean I can have a .plan again?
- Benjamin Lee
Sounds like the .plan which is (again) accessed via an id in email format and returns different information/metadata about a person depending on who's accessing it. Email id is used to do a DNS lookup in order to discover URL for the XRD file (accessed with a HTTP GET) containing the metadata about the person being, er, WebFinger-ed.
- Nenad Nikolic
it is like user authenticating, having two three ids won't hurt ;) well i don't want to be identified, they are going same as gravatar
- testbeta
It's so curious to me that people have concerns that WebFinger would lead to more spam, and yet don't like the "format" of URLs for IDs. Personally, as far as OpenID is concerned, I don't care what the identifier looks like as long as people can remember it — typically email seems easier to recall than URLs (for most people in today's world).
- Chris Messina
Some users who have an email account with Google, myself included, have oodles of incoming mail both standard and secure so it fits the bill to increase security for both vendors and marketers.
- frank burns
I have no problem with the idea, but it seems to me that it won't help the current state of affairs much. The kind of information I'd be interested in sharing via Webfinger (my OpenID, a URL to a FOAF file, etc.) will have no better adoption, so the Webfinger configuration doesn't buy me much. I'll hold out hopes that after a couple tight integrations between Webfinger and OpenID providers (say if Google, Microsoft and/or Yahoo provided and consumed both) things will improve ... here's to hoping :(
- J. McConnell
Years ago I experimented with FOAF. I didn't fully understand nor appreciate what I was doing. To serve as a warning, if you take this example, ensure that it is blocked. #Example: I sent a file to Adobe which in turn, was sent to another email account I had at the time. I verified it's sender (ME) and sent it back in the direction of travel. A signed FOAF (API KEY) was then returned...
more...
- frank burns
Their Serious Business PR is still rock solid Especially because they are slow to open up for privacy invasions running amok among other more "popular"social sites.
- Bill Whetstone
I know many people who segregate LinkedIn off from Facebook or Friendfeed--different groups of friends for different social networks. Is there still a place for pure business connections who don't want to know what you had for breakfast or your score in Scrabble? I think so.
- Andrew Leyden
That's pretty interesting. I use the Wordpress app on LinkedIn, but was wondering what others are available. Om links to a page where you can see all 10 (count 'em) apps. I can understand their worry about apps allowing mining of their data - with limited possibilities for interaction, the data is about all they've got.
- Michael Slattery
monthly visit numbers have nearly doubled in the last 12 months...hard to think the platform would be dead...maybe just not the hellbent for leather place that we've grown to expect? http://siteanalytics.compete.com/linkedi...
- jeff hammond
I still haven't met a FF application I could stand to use for more than a few minutes.
- Craig Eddy
I saw an early alpha of the iPhone app. Looked good. I also saw an early alpha of Seesmic web and the way it advanced between the alpha and launch was dramatic - so I expect the iPhone client will track the same way.
- Steve Rubel
from email
Robert that's really great. I definitely will consider switching back when the Seesmic iPhone app arrives.
- Vinko
Will get me,too, switched back to using Seesmic ;) Looking forward to hear from Loic soon
- Ali BULUT
This might just tempt me away from Tweetdeck...
- Andrew Terry
If they add friendfeed to the web app, I'll maybe use it instead of PeopleBrowsr. But then again, peoplebrowsr has implemented friendfeed in a very good way already.
- Svartling
You gotta keep an eye on Yahoo homepage. They have FB integration and someday may integrate Twitter (they have the 'what are you doing now'). Seesmic is way ahead, but Yahoo has mainstream adoption
- Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremiah, I agree. The new Yahoo homepage is impressive.
- Steve Rubel
from email
Im not sure it's impressive, as it's evolutionary, not revolutionary. When Wave comes out, it could dash the shine that Yahoo has.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Where do I sign up! I'm praying your web app will make my life of FF, FB, Twitter ETC more manageable!!!!! W/out crashing my puters AND still let me see my Home feeds!
- Arleen Boyd
I'm thinking that this is the type of post that would be good reason for FriendFeed to have a "Love" click option next to the "Like" click option so that we can register better levels of our emotion towards news we read in others' streams!
- Chris Aldrich
Is that the latest from Google Labs?? Babies delivered by email? Great no more morning sickness, and mood swings! I'm sure it's still in beta...
- Daan
If you had gotten lost looking for the landmark British Bankers Club she probably would have been disappointed...despite the directions. Maybe it should have been a tougher test:)
- Rick Bucich
I wasn't starstricken (if there is such a term), but there was definitely something about the boy. ;)
- April Buchheit
from iPhone
I meant Ravenswood, but somehow Railroad got stuck in my brain (I had driven to this place before and was going only by memory when I emailed Paul the directions) because I had driven over the train tracks to get there.
- April Buchheit
Well indeed, there was a time using hotmail was something normal people do. No wonder, short time later, some one come up with the idea of creating gmail, ("You know, I just want my email app to show maps on the screen when my April's trying to explain me how to get to romantic spots")
- Tzury Bar Yochay
April as a 400lb blonde in a purple mumu! Bwahahahaha! This needs to be the starring attraction of a costume party. :-)
- Ruchira S. Datta
from Android
I never did get a free hug. I wonder what happens when two 'free hugs' people see each other. Do they rush and hug each other, or do they eschew each other?
- Kevin Fox
I'm thinkin' buy the $2 hug and take the free hug too. Average cost per hug = $1.
- Cyrus Lendvay