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Space Cowboy › Comments
From Ooga Labs CEO about joining a startup (preserved for posterity)
Don't make my mistake! So you're going to take a cube job with slow Microsoft, bureaucratic Oracle, or with some boring financial company? C'mon! Do you want spend all of your life wearing modest habits of charcoal grey, driving your Volvo on the salty roads of the drab East Coast, paying 50% of your earnings to taxes, and hanging out with narrow minded people, congratulating yourselves on improving a feature of a widget of version 12.1b.4 of some software, or maybe improving the financial return of some rich bald dude in Greenwich, CT by 0.2% above the S&P Index? Has no one taken you aside and said, "Wait! You're about to waste 10 years of your life figuring out the path you chose out of college is crap!" No one did to me either when I went to Princeton, and it took me until I was 31 to get my ass out to San Francisco and do tech start ups. Don't make my mistake. Save yourself now. Even if you don't work for me. I mean it. Out here, you think about the future. Out here, you are...
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- Space Cowboy
Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example - http://www.railstutorial.org/
Best book on ROR (supposedly)
- Space Cowboy
RT @hnivi: It is a challenge to gain knowledge, and a bigger challenge to translate it into business results. See my talk: http://bit.ly/go ...
The URL does not link properly?
- Space Cowboy
Here you go: http://bit.ly/4HtkRp
- Nivi
Google Smart Suggest - http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009...
Itachi, Tony Ruscoe, Jérôme Flipo and 7 other people liked this
I didn't think anyone would notice this, but Google OS did.
- Matt Cutts
from Bookmarklet
I just wish it was this good in Chrome's Omnibox....
- Nathan Snyder
Can anyone point me to publications/papers/research on Google Suggest? Naively, it seems to be like - "SELECT query,count FROM query_logs WHERE query LIKE 'user_query%' ORDER BY count DESC LIMIT 10".
- Space Cowboy
if it makes everyone happy its googlish.
- Mert K.
@Cowboy: I don't know of any public papers, but I'm guessing there's a lot of offline processing to extract common queries and phrases. I seriously doubt it could be this fast coming out of a SQL database :)
- Joel Webber
Thanks Webber. I found a great post here (which also links to a patent): http://www.seobythesea.com/...
- Space Cowboy
Two articles that were probably written when Google Suggest launched - http://www.slate.com/id... and http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004...
- Space Cowboy
If I were Google, I would most definitely buy Twitter....
Kol Tregaskes, rowlikeagirl, Melanie Reed and 3 other people liked this
Why?
- CW™
I wouldn't.
- Johnny Worthington
because google has no social play and the only real-time/social/publishing network that they can afford right now is Twitter.... FB's valuation is prob. too high for Google
- Bindu Reddy
How much would you pay for it?
- Tudor Bosman
Why would they buy Twitter instead of buying something smaller and just add it to their services?
- CW™
I would start negotiating very low but I would actually be willing to pay a lot... Remember I have very very deep pockets :))
- Bindu Reddy
2 reasons. 1) Myspace cost billions... Yahoo paid 3.6 billion for Geocities. 2) Google doesn't need a 'social play', they make coin selling ads from mining the data from 100s of 'social plays'. You own it, you have to fix it
- Johnny Worthington
CW - Twitter has mindshare and a good user base. A smaller service is not worth Google's time....
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, why not just make a app to use WAVE functions but in a twitter like way?
- CW™
Twitter is the pager of the '00s. Anyone still have a pager?
- Johnny Worthington
CW - cause to-date Google has not succeeded in building their own social app....Much easier to buy Twitter and let the Twitter team run the app... Kinda of like YouTube..
- Bindu Reddy
Since the CPM for Twitter has to be quite low and they can buy access to the fire hose, do they really need to buy Twitter?
- Todd Hoff
Google already tried buying something smaller. It was called Jaiku. Next time around they'll just buy Twitter.
- Ken Sheppardson
Todd, Yes, because they get into a whole new area of "push"... People discover things by searching for them or having stuff pushed to them... Twitter is best at discovery based on push. Believe me the ad-model will come :)
- Bindu Reddy
Doubt they will buy twitter.
- CW™
They don't NEED to buy Twitter
- Johnny Worthington
1 Twitter is at its peak of usage. 2. Google is already looking for the next social.. not the current one.
- CW™
Then they can put the proper Beta tag on it. I think you're onto something, Bindu ;)
- Micah Wittman
CW - I think it's more like - Twitter may not be willing to sell....
- Bindu Reddy
I remember a time not so long ago when Google was going to buy Digg... cause it was the hot thing...
- Johnny Worthington
Yeah and digg is now similar to Usenet.
- CW™
Twiiter has more mindshare than Digg ever did
- Bindu Reddy
Mindshare is nice... returning customers willing to 'pay' for a service is a whole other thing...
- Johnny Worthington
So here's the thing... if they already get the tweets [i.e. firehose] now, they're indexing them and can serve ads into the search results, and most tweets are generated from some client other than the twitter.com web site... the twitter site's really just another client for sticking messages onto the bus. What do they *really* get by buying the service?
- Ken Sheppardson
No one is going to pay for twitter. To use or to own.
- CW™
Ken, exactly. The real juice is in cross service clients like Brizzly and Seesmic. Google would sooner buy a client and super size it then purchase one information stream.
- Johnny Worthington
Imagine getting all your social media messages in a side bar or gmail like interface.
- Johnny Worthington
It's always a bar with you Johny :-)
- Todd Hoff
I'm having all my social media messaging routed through eFax and having it send it all to my office fax machine.
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
Always. Frankly Bindu, until I found Brizzly, Twitter meant little to me. I actually spend more time on the Facebook tab. I don't care where it comes from, I only care what it is.
- Johnny Worthington
sıɹɥɔ, classic thermo paper, ami right.
- Micah Wittman
dot matrix
- Johnny Worthington
I don't think Google should buy twitter. There's nothing that twitter is doing that Google Reader can't do. I would rather put the money into giving Reader more than the 3 engineers (if they have that many --- I don't really know) that they already have. Google's problem is that it seems chronically unable to devote engineers to these projects.
- Piaw Na
Nooooo.... Look what they did to Jaiku! ;)
- Space Cowboy
I would rather have them give free wimax/wifi internet service than buying Twitter. Internet >> Twitter.
- ashish
The latest build of Google Chrome for Linux ain't good. I have had more than 10-15 web pages/instances of Chrome going - "Aw, snap!".
Version number - 4.0.266.0 on Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope
- Space Cowboy
I'm reading this page of sushi etiquette: http://www.theworldsbestever.com/2009... I wasn't getting very much of it right. :)
Bill, Courtney Engle, James Leard and 2 other people liked this
Yikes. Only 4 of 11.
- James Leard
from iPhone
as long as you don't rub your chopsticks together when you sit down. You might just get all the old fish in the frig : )
- Cole Jolley
Yikes. I'm feeling like a bogtrotting mucksavage right now.
- Riona MacNamara
from Android
Wish I could eat sushi (in Bangalore) :(
- Space Cowboy
@SpaceCowboy: Isn't there an OK Japanese restaurant on Church Street (parallel to MG Road). IIRC, it is called Dahlia or something like that. Don't know if they have Sushi, though.
- Thaths
I'm guilty of the wasabi in soy sauce.
- Courtney Engle
What's your favorite TED talk? - http://origin.reddit.com/r...
Tracy, ANick, Никита Васильев and 71 other people liked this
Nearly impossible to single one out.
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
Jennifer 8 Lee's talk on General Tso's Chicken was fascinating. It's really hard to pick out just one, though.
- ha3rvey (looking busy)
Dave Eggers, hands down. http://www.ted.com/talks... ... I watch this a lot and love it each time.
- pea
Malcom Gladwell on Spaghetti sauce ... http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Olivier Castets
Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat and Brian Greene on string theory
- Carlos Ayala
Neurologist Dr.Ramachandran's talk on the brain, phantom limb syndrome.
- Kamath (नमः)
I can't believe I forgot Mark Bittman's talk!
- ha3rvey (looking busy)
Bill Gates on Philanthropy.
- Eric Logan
Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.youtube.com/watch...), Seth Godin (http://www.youtube.com/watch...), Hans Roslin (http://www.youtube.com/watch...), Nate Silver (http://www.youtube.com/watch...), Richard Dawkins (http://www.youtube.com/watch...), Barry Schwartz (http://www.youtube.com/watch...)
- Evan Solomon
Also James Howard Kunstler (http://www.youtube.com/watch...)
- Evan Solomon
I just watched http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Paul Buchheit
It's between the stroke one from the neuroanatomist - Jill Barad, I now remember - and the very first one I ever saw, on Seadragon out of MSFT.
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
from iPhone
J.J. Abrams' mystery box http://www.ted.com/talks...
- irem
Sir Ken Robinson's about education was the best ever, IMO.
- Rodrigo Jaroszewski
Agree with Rodrigo. Its here: http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Roberto Bonini
I really liked Brian Cox about LHC: http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Mark Layton
Also the demo of SixthSense from MIT: http://www.ted.com/index...
- Mark Layton
stefan sagmeister's speech on having sabbaticals for 1 year in every 7 years.the power of time off.
- taner tarlakazan
from iPod
Jonathan Haidt - "The real difference between liberals and conservatives" - http://blog.ted.com/2008...
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
I haven't watched many of them - but, I absolutely liked Bill Gates on "mosquitoes, malaria and education" - http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Space Cowboy
+1 for Ken Robinson's talk.
- Ivan Zuzak
Kevin Kelly: "Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Phil Smirnov
What a great list...*bump*
- SAM
Murray Gell-Mann: "Beauty and truth in physics" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Phil Smirnov
Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Nick Martin
Multi-touch interface by Jeff Han (02/2006)
- AJ Batac
Have to do top 3 - Rodney Brooks says robots will invade our lives http://www.ted.com/index... Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation http://www.ted.com/talks... and Joshua Klein on the intelligence of crows http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Andrew Smith
was just watching/listening to one :) helps a lot
- ffcode
Sir Ken Robinson, without doubt...
- Berci Mesko, MD
If you can pick a favorite TED talk, you haven't explored the available TED talks enough.
- ana
+1 ana.
- Alex Schleber
Sagmeister and Ramachandran talks.
- Onur Gündüz
Sir Ken Robinson
- Kevin Borders
Itay Talgam: Lead like the great conductors - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Bertrand Doux
Another +1 for Sir Ken Robinson's talk. http://www.ted.com/talks... It perfectly embodies what TED is really about.
- Chris Lasher
TED talks spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub... via http://sharingdocs.blogspot.com/2009...
- Mona Nomura
Thanks Mona Nomura.
- ashish
Margaret Wertheim on the beautiful math of coral http://blog.ted.com/2009... . My comments at http://ff.im/5Gs6m .
- Daniel Mietchen
William Kamkwamba, the boy who built windmills. http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Andrew Leyden
Itay Talgam: http://www.ted.com/talks...
- SBV
alaindebotton about the most important problem of the last 10-15 years http://www.ted.com/talks...
- Doruk Demirsar
Malcom Gladwell had one I enjoyed more than any other so far.
- Garin Kilpatrick
wish delicious had webhooks so i could do other stuff with my bookmarks. love the fact that ideas i had 4 years ago still unimplemented
Sebastian and Sebastian Wain liked this
er, api != webhooks ?
- Space Cowboy
No, webhooks aren't an API. (Or at least having an API doesn't imply webhooks anyway). http://webhooks.pbworks.com/
- Nick Lothian
C++ FQA Lite: Defective C++ - http://yosefk.com/c++fqa...
Why C++ sucks
- Space Cowboy
@bindureddy Which site are you using to get freelance UX designers?
Would recommend the ones at studio.topcoder.com (Haven't outsourced from them - but I liked the designs from previous competitions)
- Space Cowboy
Universities and Economic Growth - http://philip.greenspun.com/teachin...
Fallacy of education (as it exists today) ...Nice read.
- Space Cowboy
NLP Group Meeting Schedule -- Spring 2009 - http://www.cs.utah.edu/nlp...
Seminal papers in NLP (pre 1990)
- Space Cowboy
"On December 8th - A revolution is coming to on-line advertising ;)" - http://likes.com/
Myrna, Bertrand Doux, Vlad Hrouda and 35 other people liked this
If I hear "revolution" one more time I'm going to scream
- Jesse Stay
Sorry if that's your business - I'm cool with the model. I've just heard that several times in the last week. :-)
- Jesse Stay
http://www.nytimes.com/2009... "ONE new company trying to add transparency to the business is Likes.com of San Francisco, which plans to introduce its ad network in December. The company encourages bloggers and Twitter users to specify their tastes in restaurants, movies, books and other products, and then to publish those recommendations to their blogs and social network pages."
- Gary Burd
Likes.com was started by http://friendfeed.com/bindu and http://friendfeed.com/arvind . They also started http://likaholix.com/ .
- Gary Burd
I'm cool with that - how many revolutions in online advertising can you have though? I just hate the word "revolution". The Kynetx guys were doing that last week too and it was driving me nuts. I still love their technology, but the word drives me nuts.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse - we were just being tongue-in-cheeck :)) Of course it's not a revolution.. we are a small start-up.
- Bindu Reddy
Note the :) at the end of the sentence :).
- Gary Burd
Very cool!
- Cristo
Bindu, how much did it cost to get that excellent domain name? You should also grab retweets.com because Twitter uses the term "retweet" for "like."
- Gary Burd
Maybe likes.com would buy @likes at twitter.
- Lizunlong
Bindu, I know, and I can't wait to see what you're doing. I've just heard that phrase too many times in the last week. That's why it makes me want to scream. :-)
- Jesse Stay
How big will likes.com have to get before they buy like.com also, just to avoid confusion?
- Cristo
The domain name ilike.com only cost Murdoch $20 million :). The name also came with an excellent engineering team and a service with lots of users.
- Gary Burd
The domain name is a whole story to itself... It cost a ton of money and it was complex deal which involves two payments/interesting contract terms etc :))
- Bindu Reddy
How many digits in "ton of money"? :)
- Cristo
Guess :))
- Bindu Reddy
I'm guessing 8
- Jesse Stay
8 what?
- Cristo
8 digits!!? Wow, I don't think we have that much money to spend on a domain name
- Bindu Reddy
Jesse might be talking about Zimbabwe money.
- Cristo
8 digits is not enough to buy a latte in Zimbabwe money.
- Gary Burd
Well if ilike.com sold for 20 million that would be 8 digits
- Jesse Stay
I'm going to guess high 4 figures or (very) low 5 figures.
- Cristo
Jesse, I'm guessing they thought they were buying something besides a domain name.
- Cristo
Cristo , it was 5 figures but it was not low.... and it is a complicated agreement.
- Bindu Reddy
I knew I should have bought all those domains back in '92.
- Cristo
Wow - I can get a domain name like likes.com for 5 figures?
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, yes.. Rupert Murdoch also paid iLike for their user base which was substantial :)
- Bindu Reddy
I just bought likezs.com for $9.99. ;)
- Cristo
Cristo I'll give you $20 million for it
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, you don't live in Nigeria by any chance?
- Cristo
Cristo I think you figured out my secret :-)
- Jesse Stay
Yes, Western Union is required
- Jesse Stay
Cristo - LOL :) One day you can sell likezs.com for $20 M :))
- Bindu Reddy
I own stay.am - wondering what I could sell it for
- Jesse Stay
Bindu, I know. You'll buy it from me because you don't want your traffic going to my porn site. :)
- Cristo
Cristo, who knows, it may be the other way around.. esp if your porn site takes off :)
- Bindu Reddy
A lot more came with iLike than just the iLike domain name, service, user base, and popular facebook app. It also came with garageband.com which was owned by iLike.
- April Russo (app103)
Cristo: If you registered that domain name in 1992, it wouldn't have cost anything. You didn't pay for domains back then.
- Gabe
*whispers* "revolution"
- Josh Haley
Gabe, I'm paying for my domain I registered back then, so I must be doing something wrong.
- Cristo
lets see
- ffcode
Bindu, so you went for the "big bang" launch. Risky, but good luck :)
- Tudor Bosman
Tudor, the launch has not even happened yet... this is the pre-launch. As for the launch itself we will see what kind of a bang it is :).
- Bindu Reddy
Well, you pre-announced, and got a NYTimes writeup (as to how you managed that, I'll buy you the cocoa stout of your choice if you tell me :) ). Good luck!
- Tudor Bosman
Bindu, good luck! :)
- imabonehead
imabonehead, thanks!
- Bindu Reddy
Yay, Congrats!! I *like* your revolution!! :)
- Susan Beebe
from iPhone
This was honestly the most funniest FF thread I have read. @Bindu - After a notification signup, I see this message - "We have received you email address..." Notice the typo? ;)
- Space Cowboy
I just LIKED this thread for free. Now I'm looking for the better than free angle ;)
- Micah Wittman
And Bindu, all the best to you and the team.
- Micah Wittman
@space cowboy, exactly what happens when you try to write code when you are drunk on a friday evening ....
- Bindu Reddy
Michah, Liking stuff for free earns you karma points :)
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, *Shhhhh*, (the key is to not look like you're doing it when your doing it ;)
- Micah Wittman
(Or ... on the flip-side be so shamelessly transparent and self-referential about it that the irony quotient keeps you in good standing.)
- Micah Wittman
YouTube - Fried Fish Eaten Alive! - http://www.youtube.com/verify_...
Paul Buchheit liked this
"Chinese chefs have come up with a way to keep a fish alive while deep frying it! It even keeps trying to breathe while waiting to be eaten and people pick at it!" "In order to keep the carp alive chefs cook its body but wrap its head in a wet cloth to keep it breathing, before covering it in sauce and serving in on a plate."- im not an expert on fish anatomy but it seems like having the bottom 2/3 of your body fried would probably be fatal for the top 1/3 - think its real?
- bob
from Bookmarklet
:( if it's real
- Benjamin Golub
yuck. i hope this is not real.
- Alex Gawley
Cruel :(
- Space Cowboy
F# functional language - http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1...
A very entertaining, enlightening introduction to functional languages
- Space Cowboy
doesnt fit
Nicolas Dufour, Andrew Bowers, Garin Kilpatrick and 31 other people liked this
Dream big.
- Mark Alves
Or die suffocating. :)
- Space Cowboy
Bolinfest Changeblog: 4 years, 2 months, and 1 day - http://blog.bolinfest.com/2009...
One of the many things Google has taught me is that building simple things is often extremely complicated...
- Space Cowboy
New York Marathon Winner Tests Positive For Performance-Enhancing Horse - The Onion - http://www.theonion.com/content...
Nick Mutton, 2yuz.com, Rick Cogley and 34 other people liked this
""Meb's fellow competitors voiced their doubts about him immediately after the event," NYRR president Mary Wittenberg said. "In addition to his remarkable speed, unusual race-day height, and distinctive 'clip-clop' gait, Keflezighi's frequent nickering caused the other runners to speculate that he may have been using a horse in some fashion." Added Wittenberg, "Also, just before the start, he lifted up his tail and loudly deposited a 9-inch-high pile of steaming fecal matter on the pavement, an unusual occurrence even in the world of long-distance running.""
- Ana
from Bookmarklet
Awesome. But, er, I am reminded of that article I saw on FF just a while ago about how humans are particularly well-suited to long-distance running... </nerd>
- Andrew C
Yes, horses won't win a marathon. They are great sprinters, but can't run for 26 miles.
- Gabe
Er, 9-inch-high pile of fecal matter? Why did they measure the height? :)
- Space Cowboy
I was there and it's all true.
- Nick Uva
ROFL!!!!!!!!!
- rowlikeagirl
I tend to agree with Scoble about the "forum problem", but at the same time I really like seeing comments. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's less of an issue if you keep groups relatively small. re: http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Nicola Greco, Marc Dong, John Serra and 81 other people liked this
I think the current FriendFeed approach is close to optimal. Do you not see it that way?
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
FF has the inherant ability for the user to take control, both of what they see and the comments they allow. If a user is judicious in their lists and/or filters they should see mostly relevent content (IF that's what they actually want to see). The ability for a poster to moderate comments on their own post gives us the ability to avoid trolls/spam and/or steer the conversation (again,...
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- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Scoble and other "super users" have this problem much more than regular people because they have thousands of subscribers. This is also part of the reason that Twitter probably works better for celebrities -- it's more of a broadcast channel.
- Paul Buchheit
They could have a million subscribers and it wouldn't be an issue, Paul: turn off comments on his FF posts and it would be all broadcast all the time. It's the number of people they choose to subscribe TO that is the issue. To be honest, it's like someone walking into a football stadium and then complaining that it's too loud. If one chooses to follow thosuands of people one must surely expect that the amount of 'noise' is going to increase.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
One thing that was tossed around a while back was the ability to disable comments from anyone you're not subscribed to: that'd allow those with a lot of subscribers to have high-signal conversations that their subscribers can still see and gain value from.
- Mark Trapp
Perhaps he'd like a 'hide user' button similar to FB? This would prevent the "brings people into YOUR life that YOU DID NOT INVITE!" effect... of course the conversation could be rather disjointed. Maybe a small 'additional comments hidden' status that would show them when desired... Of course, without the conversations, FF == twitter?
- Eric Borisch
Paul, can you help me test something? :)
- directeur
The features that would make FF optimal would be to let users follow each other's hides and blocks. For most users this would be a nice, small improvement. For users like scobleizer it might make a huge difference. Of course, implementation details matter.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
The problem is that we don't keep groups relatively small. There are always those who are like me who like to connect, for one, but even normal people add tons of people to their groups. It's just natural. I remember I was first to add 1,000 people to my Twitter account and people thought I was weird. Now thousands of people do that.
- Robert Scoble
One thing with Facebook is they capped it at 5,000 friends. Which kept it from being used by super-connectors but also caused it to be seen as a place where you talk with just your real life friends. Now that public pages are coming on strong, we're seeing that change.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: the FriendFeed approach is far from optimal. Many, many people told me they don't like joining a forum and like just lurking instead, which is why they chose Twitter (Tim O'Reilly is not the only one who told me this). Tim Robbins likes that on Twitter he can listen to his heros. He sees it as a learning engine. Those of us here love FriendFeed because it lets us talk. But it definitely turns off lots of people.
- Robert Scoble
Paul: the solution is to let us toggle comments on and off. Give the USER CONTROL. If they just want to listen to their friends, hide all the other noise. But then give us who like commenting ability to turn that back on.
- Robert Scoble
You have the ability to toggle comments on and off: Edit -> Disable Comments.
- Mark Trapp
Robert, comments _are_ content.
- directeur
Mark: that is on a PER ITEM BASIS though. Totally useless for what we're talking about.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: yes, but they are content a LOT of people don't want to see or deal with.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, but then you'll be a megaphone broadcasting "your" views.
- directeur
Robert has the same comments (or the same potential) on his blog as he does on FriendFeed, so I don't think it's the comments themselves. I think it's the fact that FriendFeed makes comments almost on equal level as the original post, instead of burying them way down at the bottom of a page or requiring a click to view. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
- Daniel Sims
Nothing in the API precludes someone from writing a FriendFeed client that hides all the comments so you just see a river of feed items. That's how Twhirl, AlertThingy, and all the native iPhone apps implement FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
I have two arms. I barely use my left one. Please cut it off!
- directeur
Turning comments off entirely would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you could authorize other users to delete comments on your items, you could minimize the forum problem.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
directeur: that's right. That's what most professional publishers want.
- Robert Scoble
I really think the "comments are awesome, why would you ever want to get rid of comments" argument falls on deaf ears at this point. The solution ought to be how to turn off comments if you want to get Scoble (or the people he's saying he represents) back on the FriendFeed train, or to say they're not worth it. I do think if it weren't for the comments, there'd be at least a half dozen other things Scoble or people like him would come up with to not like FriendFeed at this point.
- Mark Trapp
I like the idea of having another options to disable comments for people you're not subscribed to. That way you can allow conversation, but limit it to people you "know" if it makes you more comfortable or limits the noise. I think you should have the ability to set the option as a default for all new posts but be able to override it on a post-by-post basis: 1) public comments 2)...
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- Lindsay is in 20-ten
Her Linday-ness: I want that but it would be hard to design.
- Robert Scoble
Mark, I think you make a valid point but then the question becomes: if there are no comments, is FF still the best medium to use? If so, then the ability to turn off comments on one's entire feed should be easy enough to code and implement. I suspect, though, that all things being equal (meaning: there's no ability to comment on an item) FF would no longer be the best medium for a broadcaster.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Mark: I don't think these people will consider FriendFeed at this point. Too much momentum over on Twitter. Look at the news brands: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... you're not going to get them to switch off of Twitter at this point. Sorry. That game is over.
- Robert Scoble
I think the real game is how does Facebook evolve?
- Robert Scoble
The real game is an open decentralized solution. yes, I'm a dreamer.
- directeur
Which leads everyone to wonder why you're trying to nitpick a feature like this, or base your argument on the lack of the feature. The real reason why you (and others like you) aren't into FriendFeed isn't because of the forum problem or the lack of a feature, it's because you think Twitter is better and that's where everyone is. That's fine: that's a great argument. The rest of it is inconsequential to that argument, and wouldn't invalidate it even if you got your way. So what's the point?
- Mark Trapp
I've been talking with a lot of brands and celebrities and regular people. For public studying they like Twitter better. That has Facebook wondering what it will be in the future.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: sorry, but I spent two years talking to thousands of people about FriendFeed and I'm just passing along why they didn't like it. Take that feedback or leave it. Your choice.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: did you speak at dozens of conferences about FriendFeed and Twitter? Did you show hundreds of tech influentials FriendFeed and listen to their feedback?
- Robert Scoble
But your feedback doesn't correlate to the real reason why you, and the people you say you represent, are saying why you won't ever use FriendFeed. You said there's nothing anyone could do to get people to use FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: if I want to listen to ONLY tech influentials, I can on Twitter. I can't on Facebook. I can't on FriendFeed. http://twitter.com/Scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
Robert, if you're going to pull the "don't you know who I am?" crap, it falls on deaf ears. Let's have a constructive conversation on what you're trying to talk about.
- Mark Trapp
Can't you make lists in FF?
- Andrizzle Gizzle
Sure you can: you can import feeds and lists on FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: times change and at this point it would be hard to get anyone to take FriendFeed seriously. That said, I believe that it IS possible to move people from Facebook to Twitter or Twitter to Facebook, so THAT is the real battlefront.
- Robert Scoble
any comment thread about 20+ without threading and community promotion/demotion becomes difficult to participate in (for me). Though there is a difference between discussing the radiator on a 94 Subaru and the nature of discussion forums.
- Hayes Haugen
Robert: is the problem really comments or the fact that each time an item gets commented, the items pops back at the top of the list? Regarding the noise, I think that the "problem" with friendfeed is that it was much easier for people to plug in automated feeds and that as a result, there was less of an explicit action. I do not know how other people feel about this but I really miss...
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
Mark: OK, show me your public list the way I did on Twitter. You can't do that here, sorry.
- Robert Scoble
Hayes: BING BING BING.
- Robert Scoble
Ok, so it's not about who you read, it's who you can show that you are reading.
- Andrizzle Gizzle
Bing goes the internet! lol
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Sure Twitter has a lot of momentum now, but how quickly the winds change. Frankly, it's a shame that FF is going to be neglected... I wish that someone with as much motivation and insight as Paul and the original team could take it over now that FB has consumed them. There is still SO MUCH potential in this platform that it is depressing to see it squandered. @Robert - I don't think it...
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- Lindsay is in 20-ten
Robert, I don't use public lists: I believe you read my blog post about why I don't. But Hutch Carpenter does, and here's his FriendFeed public list on Innovation Management: http://friendfeed.com/innovat...
- Mark Trapp
Robert, who do you call "influentials"? Do they talk "tech" all the day? Isn't it unhuman? Let's go back to spring/summer 2008, and redefine "smart" for me, please :)
- directeur
Edwin: the problem is on FriendFeed it has the chat problem -- it gets noisy and gets noisy fast.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: influentials are people who influence. I picked them. Shoot me.
- Robert Scoble
The noise is largely proportional to the circles you're in. If you put yourself in a huge room, it will be a loud room.
- Kevin Fox
Robert, do you remember the "MOAR NOISE" phrase? It was THE reason why I built NoiseRiver. Filters, I used to say when you were always saying: MORE NOISE!
- directeur
Kevin: exactly. But on FriendFeed the room gets big VERY QUICKLY because as more people join they drag in their followers with them.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook has the same problem. While we're chatting here, tons of tech news diversity have swooped by.
- Robert Scoble
So Robert, should there be something built in to "warn" others of becoming "chatty". Something that says: "This comment is irrelevant. You may post again when you have something relevant and germane to our discussion"? So WHO makes those distinctions and judgements?
- Melanie Reed
Compare this chat to http://twitter.com/Scoblei... which one brought more information to you? The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time.
- Robert Scoble
Melanie: in a chat room you can't control people that way.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: True, but [big number]*[average number] is far larger than [average number]*[average number]
- Kevin Fox
Hayes you are correct. Slashdot has actually had the best discussion forums for more than ten years because it has threading and community moderation. Its not a trendy social networking site though so no one notices. If you had a social network site where you post topics but with Slashdot like forums it would rock. Only down side is moderators tend to inject bias but /. has good signal after moderation kicks in
- Ed Millard
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :)
- Melanie Reed
(Where you (scoble) are the big number)
- Kevin Fox
Kevin: the problem with FriendFeed is if you and Melanie were having a conversation it would be pretty small, right? But I follow you. The second I touch your conversation it gets big.
- Robert Scoble
If only someone could figure out how to make a room that gets big very quickly appeal to broadcasters...
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
This problem doesn't happen on the private Facebook because you have two-way friending there and a cap of 5,000. But on Facebook Pages? Absolutely. Noise baby noise!
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: broadcasters don't like any of this because there's no way to monetize. Why do you think Arrington really hated this?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :) What I would like is what Tad is implying in his comment. You know you can have "...two opposites that have learned how to blaze together" ;) And excuse me, but is wrong with a big conversation?
- Melanie Reed
"The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time. " If someone doesn't care about it on FF, they can hide it and not see it again. Problem solved.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Chatting is not intended to provide information. It is like planning -- it is the process of chatting that is what is useful not the words that are spoken/written.
- Brian Sullivan
Thank you, Tina! and Brian!
- Melanie Reed
Melanie: I love big conversations. That's why I loved FriendFeed. But most people aren't like me.
- Robert Scoble
Tina: there are so many things going by on my screen in FriendFeed that hiding them all would take all day long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert -- why is it that you think that people are like you and things should be done for your needs?
- Brian Sullivan
FF is too busy!!
- Joe Silence
Brian: again, it's not about me.
- Robert Scoble
Robert one word: APML. I used to yell it back in 2008, no one cared. You want "filters" by personal interest.
- directeur
FreiendFeed sold ME on it two years ago. I've been trying to sell others on it. The feedback I'm giving is from OTHERS.
- Robert Scoble
The Forum Problem is a problem?
- tehKenny, Dork
directeur: APML will never work.
- Robert Scoble
oh dear, don't hate the messenger.
- Joe Silence
Robert: who are these "others" and what are their numbers?
- Melanie Reed
Paul nailed it - Twitter is a broadcast channel. Massive amounts of subscriptions are fine there - it's all about reach. But if you want discovery, if you want to engage, then FriendFeed and FoaF is where it's all. They're NOT the same. One you can subscribe/follow as many as you want, in the other, subscription abuse will cripple your ability to view and interact.
- AJ Kohn
Finally, a thread on this subject that makes sense.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Threading may or may not help... it seemed to hurt with GoogleWave... it was so hard to follow all the tangents... of course without threading a lot of the tangents just get lost anyway. I guess I have given up on trying to catch everything... If it's important and I didn't see it the first time, eventually the concept will bubble up enough times for me to notice. That's one NICE thing about following lots of people and participating in lots of convos.
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
why won't APML, or something like it, work? i missed that memo
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Robert, go say this to Last.fm or the BBC :-) Smart recommendation engines are the future
- directeur
FriendFeed may make some audience/discussion leak out, but also makes audience leak in through seeing what your friends are talking about. Arrington may be mostly concerned about the leak out. Other broadcasters may be looking for the leak in.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Marshall, me neither! :)
- directeur
Also, the meta around the content in FF (likes, comments) is what helps turns random data into information. It's annotated and qualified.
- AJ Kohn
Lindsay: true
- Hayes Haugen
Thank you, AJ, yes. And you can sort that out when you want to on your own time. That's the utility of it.
- Melanie Reed
Perhaps one solution to the 'forum problem' is to allow posters to selectively choose who can participate in the discussion but still be viewable to the public.
- Rodfather
So maybe the real question is, why do some people prefer conversation over broadcasting and vice versa? Is the broadcast-mentality simply a matter of popularity (the inability to reciprocate all the connections, so just broadcast instead) or is the effort it takes to connect with people on a more meaningful basis a major turn-off? Or is it just the tools that people use and what makes it easier for them?
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
Rodfather, this will bring wars. Trust me. I'm not a commercial object. So you want to SHOUT and ask me to close my mouth? :) Moreover, close comments, other threads will be started and the noise you wanted to avoid will be even greater. The Streisand Effect, anyone? :)
- directeur
For example: this discussion has 80+ comments and rolling. I don't mind that at all. I am engaged. I am also updating a web page on our web site as I do it and switching over to grade 30 some PRF's for students on the play Macbeth. I am not having any trouble with the "forum problem" or any "chattiness" I learned the "ropes" of FF when I joined and accepted that it as it was.
- Melanie Reed
To me FF turns data (the river of content out there) into information (the good stuff - explained). The tool set FF provides is superior in this way - but it takes time to dial in the right set of filters to apply to the data set (which changes!) and many simply overwhelm the great filtering system they've provided.
- AJ Kohn
A lot of people don't want to put in the time and effort to make the tool work for them like you, AJ and Melanie. I can empathize with that. I think it also has to serve their base inclination of either broadcasting or conversation, and the tool choice is also influenced by whether they already are part of a community on it or not. Most people won't leave their community even if it us using the less appropriate tool for their inclination.
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
directeur, then those people can make their own thread and allow everyone to comment. I'm thinking of in case there's a roundtable event where certain 'experts' in a field can have a thread to discuss a topic among themselves without worrying about others cluttering the thread.
- Rodfather
AJ, indeed - the task is to build new concepts with and for filters. Filters, not to shut stuff out, but to mix it better to create a constant flow of narratives.
- zeroinfluencer
AJ, is it more that FF provides the platform for the users to turn that data into information? The users are integral to FF. Now with Twitter you can program a week's worth of tweets (I have heard) but I don't wish to do that. Facebook... you could almost do that-although it does have engagement -you could certainly use it without. But FF runs on an engagement engine
- Melanie Reed
Marshall: I don't trust automatic systems to guess what I'm going to be interested in next. Never seen a system yet that works. But we should debate this.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, we should debate it! The robot that makes all my decisions for me says it's quite likely I would enjoy doing that! ;)
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
That's getting into intelligent agents and AI once full blown
- Melanie Reed
if you ask me, and you don't, the problem has always been lack of comment moderation and threading. Too many users isn't a problem if no one sees them. Slashdot was one of the first doing this, using an interface which is actually very similar to FF and it seems to work there.
- Vincent van Wylick
Web tech needs to look outside their dev environments for richer influences in filter design: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- zeroinfluencer
Is the problem that Robert is looking for a single service solution. I see the same 'content' on Twitter and FriendFeed but I scan Twitter for 'raw information' and go to FriendFeed to 'discuss' it with others. I watch the news at home on TV but I talk about it with my friends or work colleagues around the water cooler or coffee shop table. I am comfortable existing in several spaces
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
@Lindsay: I don't know. I'd rather educate people on the power that FF can provide with a little effort. Or, that it actually doesn't take LOTS of subscriptions. Max it at Dunbar's number (which is what I do for my home feed) and you'd be fine.
- AJ Kohn
+++ Johnny Scotty would be proud of you: The right tool for the job
- Melanie Reed
@David: Exactly! My home feed - I tweak it. I use people like Robert and Rob Diana and Michael Fruchter and Anthony Citrano and Thomas Hawk and numerous others to bring a mix of themes and concepts into my feed.
- AJ Kohn
So are we saying that its not the tool itself...but HOW it is or is not used that maxes utility? If so I agree!
- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: Yes, the users are the key. The users are the filters. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/soylent... And the engagement provides a rich annotation and a secondary level of filtering. So yes, users and their engagement absolutely matter.
- AJ Kohn
Sure, yes, how you use it maxes utility. But it also helps if it's suited to how you WANT to use it... if not it's a struggle. And people don't like to struggle, even if it's possible to make something do what you want it to... easier to use another tool if it fits your purpose better. FriendFeed fits my purpose so it's not a struggle for me... but for someone with a more broadcasting mindset than a conversational one, it's going to be tougher.
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
Vincent, most long-time FriendFeeders have spoken strongly against any sort of moderation/rating system for comments. No one wants mobs of people trying to control what other people can see like what happens on Digg. It's why every time the topic of 'Unlike' comes up, people rise up to talk it down because it creates an aura of competition and negativity.
- Akiva Moskovitz
AJ, yes! users are the filters.
- Melanie Reed
Akiva +++
- Melanie Reed
Anybody use Mailchimp here? It is tangential to the discussion. They have a cracker jack built in user educational system that monitors and makes usage suggestions.
- Melanie Reed
Is lunchtime finally over yet?
- Hayes Haugen
I'd love to peek in on the recommendation engine discussions. I'm in the 'they don't work camp' myself but I'm open to being convinced and perhaps technology has approached a point where it could work but ... from working in eCommerce I've seen it fail time and time again. Random factors, contextual issues etc.
- AJ Kohn
@Melanie: Know of Mailchimp but don't use. The 'monitor and makes usage suggestions' sounds interesting though.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, that's because the devs didn't pay attention when their instructors (ahem) were teaching it to them. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Another point I'd like to make is that no one is forcing anyone to read the comments here. If people want a broadcast-only medium, it's fairly easy not to click on the 'x more comments' link. Unfortunately, Robert makes a painful observation: he played FriendFeed cheerleader for two years and the people who needed to take the bait didn't or did but then cut loose. That pretty much means...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
Johnny: I am comfortable with all of these too, but it's not about me. But, anyway, the business battle now is between Facebook and Twitter and it'll be interesting to see the choices that Paul's team makes and how those compare with the team NK over at Twitter is making. Then the market will choose which one is best.
- Robert Scoble
Akiva: If I were at Facebook and knew that they could turn into the next MySpace I'd put every single engineering minute onto Facebook. Wouldn't you?
- Robert Scoble
Like I said before, there is still SO MUCH potential here... and it's a shame to see it squandered. I think there are a lot of ways it could be taken to the next level. For sure it could be a contender to Twitter with a few enhancements, but fat chance of that now that there is no longer a dev team, and that it's "parent" is a competitor.
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
Robert, here's a good example: You want to debate intelligent recommendation agents? Allright, I know that you know Chris Saad. Chris is a very cool guy in fact! But do you know Deniz Oktar? Deniz, who is not as popular as Chris, is a SMART Turkish guy too and works on the same subject. If you limit your view to "popular" people, you'll definitely miss him. And debating such a subject without alternative ideas likes Deniz's or humbly mine, won't be perfect :)
- directeur
Not sure, Robert. Is turning into the next MySpace a good thing for you or a bad thing? For me, it'd be bad.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, go take a look at (and experience) mailchimp's monitor and make usage suggestion system. It's adaptable for a number of scenarios
- Melanie Reed
I think the business battle (other than the marketing to consumers end of it) will be occupied and won by Wave. Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed are mere toys in that world.
- Brian Sullivan
Melanie, I'm not complaining about a solution that MailChimp could provide. I'm fine with FriendFeed as it is (for the most part).
- Akiva Moskovitz
directeur: most people choose news brands to curate and find new people that will have something valuable to say. See http://twitter.com/Scoblei... for instance. That already is TOO MUCH so telling people to get more people or more things into their lives just isn't going to cut it for most people.
- Robert Scoble
Allowing public panels where only the influential can talk certainly would have a useful role, Its just like panels at conferences. A lot of people would no doubt like to just follow the influential in these forums. On the down side it would make the already influential more so and it would probably lose some audience if it was done a lot because there is no democratic engagement. The people who don't spend all their time cultivating their fame and networks do say interesting things too.
- Ed Millard
directeur: and, anyway. if he's in Turkey and not in San Francisco he's far less likely to influence tech in a major way. So I disagree.
- Robert Scoble
(FYI - look at this conversation and tell me where else anything like this could take place.)
- AJ Kohn
No, we're completely boring and worthless, Ed. We're not worth paying attention to. I mean, who wants to see a picture of our kids? ;)
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
IRC or a phpBB messageboard!
- Joe Silence
Akiva, I meant for those who might struggle "getting" FF but would enjoy and benefit from it once they do. There's an "on ramp" to FF that rivals North Corridor Dallas coming out of an apt complex on to 50mph+ 4 lane traffic. Some of us are better at that than others, but you still see a lot of cars on the road. :)
- Melanie Reed
There has also been a lack of creative uses using the FF tool sets. Good uses of the tools inspires participation + it's easy to criticize -- harder to create.
- zeroinfluencer
@Robert: Whoa, whoa. Weren't you arguing that adding 8K new people from Twitter Lists was a good thing? Is more better, or worse?
- AJ Kohn
+++David
- Melanie Reed
@David: Good point, no real developer platform. That's been a big boon for both Facebook and Twitter.
- AJ Kohn
Robert, yet he DOES. You just aren't into that speciality :) If you think that every "tech" thing must happen in SF you really miss A LOT.
- directeur
Woah, Robert, so you are saying anyone who doesn't live in SF doesn't count in a tech discussion? That's a little self centered isn't it?
- Ed Millard
I understand it but I really dislike any discussions where the topic seems to be "how can we turn this thing that the people who use it like into something that people who don't use it and would only use it for selfish reasons like?" Screw them. If something's not as "techy" as Slashdot and it's more chaotic because the comments aren't threaded like Slashdot and there's no moderation...
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- Mark H
Lindsay, I want to see a picture of your kids. I only wish I had some to show back. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Ed: you are NOT a careful reader.
- Robert Scoble
Robert's not saying that those ideas can't happen, or that a true revelation can't come from elsewhere, but that ... the likelihood that someone outside of SF to influence tech is less. The Capital of the Internet is SF. I'd agree with that. But that doesn't mean it'll always stay that way, nor does it mean that tech from other areas can't be influential. (least that's how I read it.)
- AJ Kohn
OK I just read it, you still said if you don't live in SF there is very little chance you will have any influence on tech. If you have no influence then you either have nothing to say on the subject, or even if you do have something to say it wont matter.
- Ed Millard
Hrm, I think the whole thing is overblown. My personal FF landing page still has as much utility as my first day (if not more). Bleh, whatever.
- Chieze Okoye
@AJ The FF API is beautiful, I don't think dev communities saw the richness that you can create with the aggregation of FF streams. A few valley PR oriented bloggers pushed 'conversation' as FF's 'killer app' - whereas, the realtime aggregation streams and republishing of content is radical and unique.
- zeroinfluencer
Well I'm pretty sure all the people in Seattle, Toronto, Paris, London, Moscow,Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangalore, Boulder, etc. probably disagree
- Ed Millard
@David: I'll take your word on the API and wouldn't doubt it given the FF team's chops. But fostering usage, that community - that's where things may have gotten shaky. Too few people leveraging it. It could still resolve back to an inability to really grasp what FF can do for them.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, I think you're on to something. Back in the day, usability (including general user and disabled) use to be a well-known topic. Universities made it a part of the curriculum. Everything before and including e-commerce got the once over. But it occurs that the latest generation (including GLS and SM) have outpaced the community standards for usability. It's really the wild west again-...
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- Melanie Reed
Akiva: I suspect the noise problem Robert's describing from others isn't that comment threads get too long. It's that items keep popping to the top as new comments show up, when they don't want to see the new comments. I don't see any way around that except a separate client. It would take too much away from the FriendFeed experience for the default interface not to work this way.
- Bruce Lewis
Mark, I didn't mean to suggest /. is the only solution to the forum problem. If you have really big forum discussions /. is time tested way to control noise and raise the signal level. On the other hand it would probably be a horrible solution for intimate and friendly discussions among friends. Someone earlier Lindsey? kind of had a good suggestion. When you make a post have a row of option buttons and let the poster set the kind of forum for that thread, broadcast, panel, open, modded, thredded, not..
- Ed Millard
Ed: I specifically said "far less likely." I didn't say there is very little chance. But, seriously, this is an argument for another thread. Lots of people think they have influence but actually don't have as much. For instance, I love to think I have influence on Facebook but I'm far less likely to influence that then Paul Buchheit is. Facts are facts.
- Robert Scoble
Chieze glad you like FriendFeed. Me too. It's awesome. But that doesn't mean much to the rest of the world.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, how often do you use "Add This"? It's germane :)
- Melanie Reed
OK we will agree to disagree on that one and drop it. I've lived in the bay off and on, I think there are pluses and minuses to being there.
- Ed Millard
Melanie: "Add This" being the "Add Photos" at top of FriendFeed? Not as much as I should.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: No this service: http://www.addthis.com/ This is fast becoming the SM share button for many websites. Ours uses it. And FF is on it. Take a look at the entire list
- Melanie Reed
FriendFeed's feature set will mean a lot to the rest of the world when it's fully integrated into Facebook in 2011.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: I don't think it'll take that long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you may be right, in which case FriendFeed is a relevant thing to look at. Maybe it isn't actually too far ahead of its time.
- Bruce Lewis
Just like Lisp can make you a better programmer in other languages, FriendFeed can make you a better thinker when writing about other social networks. Popularity isn't everything, even for a blogger.
- Bruce Lewis
You mean, it's not all about attention? :D
- Lindsay is in 20-ten
Who really knows why Twitter got all the traction? Does Scoble? I very much doubt it. I think there's a great effort going into finding a logical explanation for Twitter massive success and FriendFeeds more modest gains. My own best guess is that it has more to do with the madness of crowds than it does with any limitation in FriendFeed. Twitter had a decent enough foothold already by...
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- JSLeFanu
from FreshFeed
Twitter got the traction because Twitter's easy. It requires very little effort to get into and it requires even less to participate. It's the same reason why YouTube comments are the cesspool of the Internet and MetaFilter's comments are not: anyone can sit around and watch videos all day and then trash talk them but you make people pay to comment and you'll weed out the chaff almost...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
David: I was there from early days on Twitter and studied how it grew. I know more than you might think. Remember, I was the first person to follow 1,000 people there and I was the 13,800ish user to join.
- Robert Scoble
This link is the most illuminating one on FF traction at the time of the buyout. It indicates FF was just starting to regain traction after it had stalled out for a while and it suggests if maybe FF had stuck it out a while longer things might have changed. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ed Millard
Twitter got hot in the early days because of Leo Laporte and because of SXSW and because it was goofy fun way for tech influencers to talk to their friends. It just kept growing from there. Another factor in addition to simplicity (Akiva's right there) is the API. Tons of clients and tools and services are built on top of it. FriendFeed got nearly none in comparison.
- Robert Scoble
The difference may be luck of the draw ( a la Gladwell)
- Brian Sullivan
People had to build tons of clients, tools and services for Twitter because the default web UI is so bad.
- Ed Millard
Ed: what that graph doesn't show you is what we now know. Google Wave sucked a lot of attention of geek influentials away (IE Hype) and Facebook's Connect is running away with another game. I went into FriendFeed the week they decided to sell and asked them because I knew Twitter had new features coming that would make FriendFeed less interesting. I think the FriendFeed team looked at the competition and decided to fold.
- Robert Scoble
How could I have ignored the API? It's like Firefox's plug-ins: it's the only thing that makes Twitter usable for many users. Without it, they wouldn't touch it. Heck, if it weren't for Tweetie 2, I wouldn't touch it either.
- Akiva Moskovitz
And Facebook's Connect platform is getting incorporated everywhere. I think FriendFeed was hoping to become part of the general web, like what we did over on http://building43.com and that just wasn't going to happen because Facebook's Connect platform is rocking and rolling now. In fact, I made a fundamental blunder by not going with Facebook on Building43. If I had, our traffic would have been much higher than it is now.
- Robert Scoble
You can be sure that once CNN and other assorted media outlets started plugging Twitter it was game over. Once the band wagon was rolling every "personality" was going to hop on. It is a little disturbing that Miley Cyrus has now joined the "everyone should delete their Twitter accounts" camp.
- Ed Millard
David Hall +1 Steven Berlin Johnson would be a good reference - the persistence of babble is incredible valuable in phatic communications. FF, through the web interface hides a lot of that. Instead, the babble was more bookmark centric and less about 'having a sandwich'. That's why you have, on the whole, better conversation threads on FF, and ending up having to duck out of the way of...
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- zeroinfluencer
Disturbing REALLY????? My word, Miley is absolutely right <sarcasm/>
- Roberto Bonini
To paraphrase Louis Gray's wife, "nerds in startups are fickle". I speculate they had a lot of self doubt when they stalled out prior to that up tick, and decided to sell just about the time FF was starting to take off again. Someone waves $50 million at you during a period of self questioning that is a potent motivator, I think Zuckerberg saw that and he did nip a potential competitor in the bud.
- Ed Millard
But all the above comments is about public sharing. I use FF a lot for project planning and development - it's fast - you can discuss items with good archive search, and you can post media. I wonder how many people use FF in this way, and ignore the public babble?
- zeroinfluencer
Having read most of this thread (and Robert, comments are VERY valueble) the"forum problem" is NP-complete. Comments are valuable becuase seeing people reason is often just as enlightening, if not more so, than the original information.
- Roberto Bonini
Ed - mind you, there's only a few ways you can get to the helm of the FB API design and product development. :) Who's to say this isn't all going according to plan?
- zeroinfluencer
Roberto: me and you agree on that. In my research most people do not. They see these things as noise. But, if you make the comments toggle on and off we BOTH win! Plus, comments REALLY help search!
- Robert Scoble
Ed: correction, it was $50 million.
- Robert Scoble
Robert you keep talking about "your research". Is this anything more than anecdotal conversations?
- Brian Sullivan
David, Well maybe Paul and Co. are doing a trojan horse on FB but what I've read about Zuckerberg he doesn't seem likely to relinquish control of anything he cares about and I am skeptical you are going to turn FB in to FF with their entrenched user base.
- Ed Millard
@Scoble you're arguing from authority again. I think on a broadcast platform like Twitter that's an easier one to pull off. On Twitter it's a big "so what" if you've posted a load of BS because most people will simply miss any challenge to your "content." Post the same on FriendFeed and you get tackled and you get tackled in public. Reasonable enough grounds to explain your current stance and certainly as good as any reason I've heard you put forward yourself.
- JSLeFanu
Robert, I stand corrected, and it is corrected, this editing your posts thing is one of FF's scarier features.
- Ed Millard
OPEN QUESTION: Is FF gaining or losing users? I see very little here now - but I'm told user numbers are going through the roof.
- Jim Connolly
Ed: tell me one thing. What's the biggest difference between FF and FB? There's already not as much difference as you'd might think. The one thing I miss over there? Real time search.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter got big because it's about ego. Look at me, Me, ME! Twitter flourished because people like to talk about themselves. (FF is not, which is why it hasn't gained nearly as much traction.) It was developed as an update service. It has evolved into ... something else. As for comments, they are invaluable.
- AJ Kohn
Jim: user numbers are not going through the roof here. I don't know anyone credible who has said that. The registered numbers are going up, but the active numbers are going down.
- Robert Scoble
AJ: FriendFeed is just as much about ego as Twitter is. If not more so.
- Robert Scoble
Ed, the goal is to design influentially for the web. Paul B does seem to give that ethos in his startup camp talks and general interviews. I would think FB would warm to that ideology.
- zeroinfluencer
Very true. Robert.
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: How? Seriously, I'd like to hear your opinion.
- AJ Kohn
Robert: In other words, as people like yourself, Arrington and even those little guys like myself with a couple of thousand subscribers leave - we're being replaced by less active users. Makes sense. I used to check in on and off all day. Now, 2/3 times a week,
- Jim Connolly
Jim: not true. I don't see a lot of people joining in here and I'm watching it closely. Sorry. More people are leaving the back door than are coming in the front.
- Robert Scoble
To me the two big ones are 1) perception that it more walled garden networks and not as open though certainly it has avenues which are more open like FF 2) its home to massive quantities of apps, games, spam from people trying to get rich that hold no interest to me, though obviously many others like them. FF is probably just overlooked by that crowd, if it were bigger it would be infected with all that crap too. FF seems to mostly just be good people from my limited time here.
- Ed Millard
All User Centric Design is modeled around the ego. Good software design keeps that in mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- zeroinfluencer
AJ: Twitter is, for many people, about business now. Not ego at all. News brands: http://twitter.com/#... no ego. Tech companies: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... No ego. But here? It's ALL about ego!
- Robert Scoble
David is right.
- Robert Scoble
On Twitter the default is to show number you follow, number of followers, number of Tweets. That's all playing on ego and popularity. Nearly everything (even lists) is geared to stimulate a innate need to acquire more of something as a way to ... validate contribution or perceived influence or authority. FF does not show this in the default mode.
- AJ Kohn
Companies and brands are the most aggressive form of ego there is, and they usually are direct reflections of the ego of the company's CEO.
- Ed Millard
Alright Robert. In order to reduce the signal to noise ratio, we can do one of two things, we can use "Likes" to filter the comment stream. If I Like more posts from Robert than i do from LG, Roberts comments appear but not LG's. We can use semantics to (somehow) sort the thread and show comments relevant to the original post. (simply dumping noise isin't a solution - not all noise is noise all the time. Likewise, increasing signal in an echo chamber is fruitless)
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: Oh, I think Twitter is a great business tool! It's a marketers paradise. But I'm not sure that's what most people believe it to be. People still think they're going to get some sort of social dialog there. I think it's why Twitter churn is so high. People get it thinking it'll be one thing and quickly find out it's another.
- AJ Kohn
+1 AJ, there are some people that use Twitter in awesome, constructive, useful, ways like Tim O'Reilly and Jay Rosen but a lot of people its pure self promotion. As for news outlets using twitter they are going to go wherever the eyeballs are, and they will go to multiple networks not just Twitter. Those are pure broadcast, no engagement, they aren't really a ringing endorsement of why Twitter is great.
- Ed Millard
I'd bet FF *would* take off (but be worse for it) if it listed how many times the content I fed got liked and commented on, and that (along with subscribers etc.) were all listed right there at the top of my home feed. And that upon signing up, I'd get suggested users based on subscriptions but also who got the most likes and comments. Yet, I don't think that's conducive to what FF really excels at.
- AJ Kohn
@Robert, biggest difference between Facebook and Friendfeed - reciprocal connections. Without a doubt. The apps, the ads, other stuff, is true, but for me the central difference, and the thing that betrays a fundamental difference of worldview between the two apps is whether or not you can follow someone's content without them having to follow you back. You can only do that on Facebook...
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- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
@Ed: I realized a long time ago that Twitter was a big Internet megaphone. And if you could get a lot of people to 'listen' to that megaphone well, that's powerful stuff. It's about Reach. Twitter gives your message reach. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't see it as ... transforming.
- AJ Kohn
Those who study the art of propaganda consider reach to be everything, because following reach is influence, and following influence is control. TV is losing its reach in the Internet era so most of those "brands" and "personalites" are rushing to find a way to regain it, enter Twitter and FB. They are better because they are bidirectional.
- Ed Millard
*Noise* :)
- ashish
@Ed: I'd be interested to see more on how reach leads to influence. It often does but ... not always. Plenty of multi-million dollar ad campaigns in the graveyard as examples. Reach + ? = influence.
- AJ Kohn
Ed I think you're right. I caught that TC piece at the time too. Seems to me that the FriendFeed guys had a bit of a crisis of confidence and grabbed lunch while it was on offer. In any case I always figured FriendFeed as a place to graduate to once you'd rammed up against Twitters limitations. And, as I'm sure you know, that doesn't take long. That's how I got here. I was actually on...
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- JSLeFanu
You don't have influence until you have reach so its the prerequisite. Then it a matter of how effectively you craft the message and push the buttons in your target audience. Some people are good at that part, some aren't, some fail, some succeed.
- Ed Millard
Robert, I just wonder. Isn't twitter more about consuming the information and FF more about sharing and discussing? Look at http://twitter.com/Scoblei.... What can anyone add to that or comment on that? I agree it is getting a lot noisy in here (exhibit, this post). But not all posts will be this noisy I think.
- Amit
+1 Jandy, she answered Robert's challenge to me better than I did.
- Ed Millard
@Ed: I'm not sure. New memes start with someone small sometimes. Say ... keyboard cat ... and someone who has reach communicates that message and it goes big. So who has the influence? The creator of keyboard cat or the person to has the reach to make it go big? I find it very interesting.
- AJ Kohn
Jandy: +100. You just nailed for me why I like Twitter and FriendFeed better than Facebook. Agreed.
- Robert Scoble
Robertt, maybe this post and the scads of comments prove your point, but maybe your point is limited to your own experience due to your unique position in tech. You speak, noise follows. But that does not make Friendfeed irrelevant or useless for the average or even just left or right of average user. You have a unique experience that is going to color any forum you put your time into....
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- Martha
+++Jandy
- Melanie Reed
Well put, Jandy.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I think the forum problem is not as big in smaller more intimate groups. Recently I've been very active in the DMU group here that includes a lot of folks who've migrated here from Flickr. The relevancy is much more higher in these venues than in the main feed because it's a smaller controlled experience. I do wish though that groups were more full featured like the rest of FF though....
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- Thomas Hawk
oh of course and photo voting pools for groups would by awesome too. ;)
- Thomas Hawk
Lists are not enough. Twitter, FF and other social networks need tagging by default, then filter on list + tag. That's the element that would kill the noise and turn them into interest networks.
- howard shippin
from BuddyFeed
Martha: you might have a point if we were just talking about me. But we're not. So, try again. Again, I've talked with thousands of people about these things. They tell me they don't like the noise that public forums bring. I've been doing this for 25 years and this isn't the first time I've heard this pushback. Facebook, by the way, on its iPhone app, handles it perfectly: it hides all...
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- Robert Scoble
You all keep referring to this as either chat or comments when actually its a discussion. I think that the ability to discuss anything on Friend Feed or anywhere else for that matter IS where you learn the most. I'm not techy like most of you, I'm just an ordinary 'average' user, but I see twitter more as a 'newsreel' of info, shallow but instant, whereas Friend Feed is more a 'thrashing out of ideas and opnions, and is therefore all the richer for it.
- Sandra Large
Sandra: chat/discussion/forum/comments are all pretty much the same thing. Yes, the two are different. There CAN be lots of learning here, it's just that this is a lot noiser than other online things in some ways.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, about noise: when you or other tech influencers introduce FriendFeed, you show the things you're excited about, which tend to be big and noisy, right? And if you're the first person someone follows on FF, they're going to get a noisy first impression. The slower growth that doesn't come through tech influencers may have less of a back door.
- Bruce Lewis
And about the 25+-year-old forum problem: Moderated Usenet was great until moderators slacked off. Decentralized moderation fixes that, at least for small discussions. Larger discussions can lead to whack-a-mole (though I notice this one hasn't), but with one of the suggestions I made earlier in this conversation the number of whackers could scale with the number of moles.
- Bruce Lewis
Moderation = censorship. Censorship sucks. Give the users control to hide and block. The less censorship the better.
- Thomas Hawk
@Paul - what about a view to only see the user's posts/content ie no comments of others and no likes => then it becomes twitter like
- Kishore Balakrishnan
Come on, it's hardly messier than Facebook, since the default view only includes the first and last comment. Basically the gist I'm getting is that people who think they're important don't want to listen to people who they don't think are important. Such is the human race, I suppose.
- Victor Ganata
+++Victor hammer meets nail.
- JSLeFanu
Robert said "FB iPhone app ... hides all comments with an arrow that you can then use to expand the comments. That is so much better than this mess here that it isn't funny". Robert, I must be missing your point because FF also hides most comments until you expand them because you want to read them... Don't want to read FF comments, don't expand them, problem solved. Or are you saying FF is a "mess" because it shows first and last comment?
- Ed Millard
235 comments! I really don't want to expand *that* on FF! Is this a pain-point for anyone else?
- Space Cowboy
Not for me. If I'm interested enough in the topic or dialog I'll click the time stamp and open the post page to read everything. The text amount is comparable to a medium length blog post: if I have the time to read that I have the time to read this if it interests me.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
A typical blog post? Dragging & copying the comments only (which took about a min. of scrolling) produced 9200 words and 23 pages of text. Blog posts also tend to have a more easily read narrative.
- Vincent van Wylick
The problem is for big conversations like this one you need threading and maybe moderation, but for more normal conversations that are smaller flat is better. Allowing a switch between the two adds complexity. For big conversations FF lacks the button to reply to a specific poster so the viewer can thread, at least as an option. Much of the noise level in this conversation is due to people having to manually try to fake threading.
- Ed Millard
The threading vs. flat conversation is interesting to me - we've tried multiple times to put Disqus or Intense Debate on a film blog I write for, and every time we meet huge resistance to threading ESPECIALLY on long threads. People say they have a lot of difficulty finding the new comments when they aren't all at the top or bottom.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Why can't there be a summary fly-out with timestamps based on response rate to single comments and a "last comment made" link as well as "thread count" links and lastly, "participants in this thread" link? Collapse everything else except the initial post. The initial interface looking like this one, should always be available for those who want to "sort through". You want the...
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- Melanie Reed
Jandy, you kind of have to let the user flip between threading and flat to solve the chronology problem. Slashdot has a popup menu at the top that lets you view in "Threaded, Nested, Flat, No Comments". The down side is the UI gets progressively more complex both to implement and use unless you are going to force everyone to lowest common denominator UI.
- Ed Millard
But Ed, that's what I have against the traditional "threaded" approach: all the fork like structure. It does get complicated real fast. What's needed is somewhere a "summary" for those jumping in late to "catch up" but also the "single comment" link to democratize the discussion. Threads have all the indentation problems of trying to follow that way IF I am picturing what you mean by thread.
- Melanie Reed
+1 Ed
- Francisco
My other observation is this: everyone creates a "story" about the ideas and information they are taking in and immediately starts associating connections in their mind creating a mental picture whether they realize it or not when they are perceiving that information. Our user interfaces don't yet lend themselves to that especially where it come to dialogue and forums. We've accepted a...
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- Melanie Reed
Here's why you don't need indented/tangential threading: FF discussions tend to be small enough to fit in the "RAM" in one's mind. It curtails many threads that might ramble; the exception (like Paul's thread here) comes when the power of the topic/zeitgeist and vibe of a live chat going strong overrides that usual point of decay. Predictablly, one or several commenters here will start a new thread or escalate it to a blog post and summarize their thoughts based on what transpired on this stream.
- Micah Wittman
Melanie, have you used Slashdot, they did forums earlier and better than anyone. The forum starts out flat, and then starts threading. Random community moderators start modding up the insightful posts, and burying the trolls, crap, etc. Once the moderation kicks in the "summary" is all the posts that were modded up to 5 which are shown expanded. All the lower moderated stuff is there but you have to clck to see. Slashdot would suck like YouTube comments if they hadn't solved the forum problem.
- Ed Millard
It's organic, not hierarchical. As other have stated, there is as much to learn from watching the process unfold as there is to gain from end result.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, no, I haven't used Slashdot but I'm willing to give it a try. I'm pretty adaptable. But when I see a problem and it becomes "the picture" for me, in this case a circle then I know its time for the leap out of the present "prison of one idea". ;)
- Melanie Reed
Micah, its true threads are bad for small friendly forums. Some of this discussion is about what happens when the forums on "celebrity" social expert's threads get so big they overflow readers brains and they turn in to *noise*. One noise problem is organization, the other is some post and some posters are better than others in the mind of the celeb and the reader.
- Ed Millard
Slashdot dealt with most of the forum problems ten years ago, they had to to survive the trolls. The problem is their UI needs to be complex to be flexible and keep everyone happy. Their audience is also mostly geek power user. When you get to social networks the other UI school is demanding the UI be dirt simple so the unwashed masses can cope, but dirt simple mean its inflexible and it ticks off nearly everyone, especially power users. Hard problem to solve... making everyone happy.
- Ed Millard
Ed, conferences have break-out groups. The same idea should be employed.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, yes, you offered a little explication for others of what happens when you lost the ability to categorize your"story" into a mental picture that is associated with previous "stories" you have stored in the brain. That end result is "noise". Some of us are better at doing that than others, that's true. But there come a point of over flow for all of us. What our UI needs to do is to amplify and assist in that "story" constructing process.
- Melanie Reed
Break out groups is a nice idea, but it seems a bit cumbersome. You need to make a new post, post a link here and get some critical mass from the first forum to move. If you do it five times you would splinter the first forum and lose critical mass, especially in a "real-time" forum where people will only watch one forum at a time. Chances are most people will cling to the first forum if its interesting.
- Ed Millard
Ed and Micah, what I hear both of you saying, and Robert as well, is that at some point in the "story" constructing process, the dialog from the forum needs to end in the narrative of a blog. Up till now, the blog component has been a random, unattached part of the discussion. AM I hearing that you think that in some way it should become part of the UI? So that the discussion gets...
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- Melanie Reed
Not sure I follow, blog is kind of a one voice, one direction thing, only way a forum morphs to blog is when once person splits off the forum to make a more in depth point and posts the blog link to the forum. I'm mostly just talking about the various methods for restoring order in a big forum, and improving signal to noise ratio. Most entail putting more options and more UI in and around the forum and making the UI more complex which many think is bad on a social network.
- Ed Millard
Ed, as I was writing this, it occurs to me that what I'm suggesting is what I may have just figured out (finally) that Google Wave is trying to get us to do. But if so, I beleive FF could actually do it better. the "noise" problem that was created by the various forms of SM, inside and outside of the platforms, was the inability to "connect the dots". We didn't have a framework for how...
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- Melanie Reed
One of the problems that we haven't solved is the usefulness of digression and random access of connective tissue in the "story" process. That's the wild card that often comes up as "noise"
- Melanie Reed
I can't speak for Robert. Some of his issue "seems" to be he only wants to see the Silicon Valley/SF movers and shakers in his feed talking about tech and social networks, and he doesn't much want anyone but that same group to be posting on forums under his auspices. Friend Feeds openness is bad for that. The same is true for all the Twitter celeberati. They don't want peons anywhere near their online presence to tarnish it.
- Ed Millard
Only way I can see to maintain FF openness for those who want it, and celeb broadcast only mode for the celebs who demand it, in one social network is you have to have an option when you make a post on your feed to control the forum methodology (i.e. broadcast only peons can only look on, panel mode where only my social elite are allowed to speak & peons can watch, private where only my circle can speak and see (FB mode), or completely OPEN(FF mode).
- Ed Millard
There also seems to be an issue where someone you follow, through the "like" process, can inject pictures of kittens, babies and man titteh in to your feed. Of course that is kind of the original point of social networks, seeing what your network sees. I think some just want hard core tech news and talk and twitter lists probably do allow an uber though somewhat lifeless feed like that.
- Ed Millard
Ed, well, that is the territory of the heart when it comes into contact with the machine. And oddly (or maybe not so oddly) there is a post on my feed that addresses that theme: http://friendfeed.com/faithx5... ;) Digression and Random access at work. lol And I find that refreshing. I'm always excited about how some new idea may be generated because I allowed what...
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- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: I fully believe in non-linear learning. The ability to take input from diverse thematic content and synthesize something ... to apply something from one world to the other. That's where I think we're heading. I think of it a little bit like a digital version of Burroughs' Cut Up technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- AJ Kohn
I can't believe I read the whole thing
- Michael Slattery
Such a simple and obvious solution: provide an optional *LIST* view for Friendfeed items. Open the comments only on items that look really interesting. Am I missing something obvious? Then Friendfeed could easily emulate Twitter on all essentials (and surpass it in many other areas).
- Sean McBride
Sean, I think the obvious thing you are missing is there are no FF developers any more so FF probably isn't getting anything it doesn't already have. And there are camps here that don't really like the alternatives that FB and Twitter offer which is why this is such a hot button issue. I wish there was one social network that had lists, open forums, walled gardens, and broadcast mode based on the wishes of the person running a feed so everyone could be happy in one network.
- Ed Millard
FriendFeed is being much more reliable than Facebook today.
Jenny Morman, Gaith, Tudor Bosman and 11 other people liked this
Always is.
- Jordi Soler
FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, Google, Aviary, and Pandora is the way to roll.
- Harsh SIngh
And much more neat
- Amit
Er, isn't the scale *different*?
- Space Cowboy
Today? Friendfeed is much more reliable than FB *every*day.
- April Buchheit
Well, another way to put it was that FB was being particularly *unreliable* yesterday.
- Ruchira S. Datta
cs838 spring 2007 - http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~jerryz...
This is *THE* course for NLP - covering advanced topics in simple detail.
- Space Cowboy
Test Your News IQ - Pew Research Center - http://pewresearch.org/politic...
Ted Gilchrist, Dan Hsiao, Tzury Bar Yochay and 9 other people liked this
A short collection of pretty easy questions -- I got 12/12 -- but 1/3 of the public did no better or worse than random guessing.
- Peter Norvig
from Bookmarklet
It seems as though Americans have higher News IQs than other folks :-(
- Tim Tyler
Most of those questions are related to american politics/legislature/etc - and after random(intelligent?) guessing, I got 8/12 correct (7% of the public). :)
- Space Cowboy
Fun.
- j1m
After viewing source of some of the net's biggest sites, Craigslist is a breath of fresh air.
Daniel Rowley, Bruce Lewis, Anthony Citrano and 5 other people liked this
Gotta love the code of those CWRU alumni ;)
- Clare Dibble
Oh, I try never to view source unless I have to. You're brave!
- joey
I'm actually not a fan of CL. I find the lack of structure hugely aggravating when trying to find something. I also have found conversations in the forums to be frustrating / unpleasant / fruitless. It's likely just a "not for me" kinda thing, rather than CL being "bad."
- Adam Lasnik
Love the simplicity of CL (with the exception of the forums).
- Spidra Webster
I didn't know that, Clare. GO CWRU!!
- Becca
nice! what about CL's source in particular? and what were some of the other sites in your comparison? just curious.
- .LAG liked that
They still use tables for layout? No CSS! Not sure, why anyone would like that!
- Space Cowboy
How are you viewing source for the net's biggest sites? You mean browser source?
- Cristo
Yay Spartans!
- Eric Borisch
Victoria's Secret introduces a new bra every few months. How can bra technology advance so quickly?
Sebastian liked this
What they're protecting and providing comfort for deserves nothing but the best.
- Andrew Trinh
from iPhone
It does explain why manned space travel has kinda stagnated.
- Andrew C
They might be following Ubuntu's release model. Or perhaps they also - "Release early. Release often." :)
- Space Cowboy
"Have you tried out the new Victoria's Secret 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope?"
- Jim Norris
Is it possible the new releases are driven by fashion instead of technology? (though now that you mention it, I wonder if Nike's Flywire would be a good idea in bras.)
- Andrew C
I agree with Andrew; Victoria's Secret is primarily a fashion company, with models and a runway show, even though it doesn't really make sense for a product that primarily stays out of view to have fashions.
- Melinda Owens
A special audience can be as important as a big audience.
- Andrew C
i want to start company to disorganize world's info & make it universally unaccessible & useless. just to keep google busy
Michael Leggett, Bronson Harrington, Carlo Maglinao and 38 other people liked this
I think we have a new nemesis. :)
- Matt Cutts
from iPhone
Does your proposed company have a motto?
- Tim Tyler
Evil twin.
- Manas Tungare
This is the wittiest comment I read here on Friendfeed - ever.
- Space Cowboy
Apparently, the company has already been started. I had several replies saying that governments in general seem to make things disorganized and unaccessible :)
- dannysullivan
Suggestions for the name of the company: Spammers
- Shakeel Mahate
Hilarious Danny!
- Greg Bogdan
How about Elsevier?
- Ruchira S. Datta
ARGs generate new information but intentionally make it obscure and difficult to access.
- Chris Bentzel
Clojure powers my blog http://gary.burd.info/entry...
Seth, nadim, Benjamin Golub and 11 other people liked this
Because how else could you possibly want to post a soda bottle launcher video than with home grown lispy goodness like that.
- Matt Armstrong
Thank you, for hosting the code up on github. I have wanted to always look at Clojure code that were written by inspiring coders like you.
- Space Cowboy
Want to know what it was like to work on the FriendFeed code base? http://www.tornadoweb.org/
Francisco, Cristo, Kaan Şengül and 6 other people liked this
And I thought what you brilliant guys were doing building a web-app!
- Space Cowboy
Wondering how Chrome is doing after one year? I just collected all the latest market share data: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog...
Amarnath Prabhakar, Marco Willemse, Cumhur Kızıları aka Zeus and 26 other people liked this
The blog post has more details, but three major vendors estimate Chrome's market share as 2.84%, 3.59%, and 4.004%. What do the browser stats look like for your site?
- Matt Cutts
Not bad.
- Paul Buchheit
Tech early adopters def. like Chrome. It is around 3% on my own blog. I'm starting to use it a lot more because it's so light.
- beersage
Chromium daily build on my Linux box rocks! They deserve more marketshare.
- Fernando Parra
I believe, share would increase once stable version is available on Mac and Linux.
- siva s
I love Chrome. Though it seems so HUGELY inspired by Opera. :)
- Space Cowboy
Quick check on my Google Analytics shows about 20% Chrome on both my "geeky startups", around 10% on all others - mostly corporate IT sites. PS: All sites except one are in russian language.
- Phil Smirnov
love chrome, firefox, opera
- testbeta
I would like to see those google analitics on a page like OMG! Yahoo!..
- sebastian☆rocket brother
55% Firefox, 9% Chrome, but it's a site for developers.
- Amit Patel
it is good i haven't got to worry about markets, i love google çhrome and firefox is my old companion and fast too so can't leave it ;)
- testbeta
Sign #712 that the Apocalypse is near: Google has feelings. And a sense of humor.
Space Cowboy liked this
Strangely, the above spelling correction does not happen now. And, surprisingly there are very few research papers, etc. published related to Google's spelling corrector - except of course that small tutorial by Peter Norvig.
- Space Cowboy
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