 |
|
| FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more » |
Bertrand Doux › Likes
Google Makes A Bid To Control The Internet - http://regulargeek.com/2009...
ffcode, Rick Turoczy, Daniel J. Pritchett and 15 other people liked this
"So, if you own over 70% of the search market, you are planning to release a new language that allows you to build faster and more concurrent servers that all talk this new faster SPDY standard, and you are saying that speed will be a part of your ranking algorithm for search results, you are using the monopoly hammer. "
- Gary Burd
Do you agree with this? I tend to think that moving the Web toward faster load times and faster data transfer between services is a good thing in general, regardless of whether this benefits Google or not.
- Louis Gray
Yes, I agree, especially as per the new programming language mentioned in the article, it will shift the spectrum to their advantage, not overnight but slowly and surely, in large part due to the fact that they own so the most popular domains/real estate out there so if you wanna be a player in the game you'll have to speak the language. And don't forget it's computer operating system coming out shortly.
- sofarsoShawn
The anti-trust question will be whether it benefits Google to the detriment of its competitors, due to Google's market power. But of course the defense is that it's all open-source, so the playing field is level.
- LogEx
I find it disturbing how the genuine interest of Google engineers to make the user experience on the internet better is construed as something that could be interpreted as 'evil'. Now even open sourcing an experimental programming language some interested engineers were toying with is interpreted as hint for evilness.
- Henner Zeller
Henner, It has nothing to do with Google engineers and their genuine interests, it has to do with how Google will pay for said engineers. I've got no problem with faster load times, I'm just not sure it should be tied to page rank. If Google was non-profit we wouldn't be having this discussion!!
- Chris Myles
sometimes technology evolves slowly or stagnates as no player on the market is able to push a change strong enough to do a difference. its quite great to see a example where good engineers propose a logical improvement for all with the power behind it to make it reality.
- Marco Hennings
The idea is not whether Google is pure evil, but people need to start thinking about what they are doing. Creating "faster standards" and changing your search results rankings based on page load times is not a big deal, until you look at their search monopoly. Is it evil or possibly illegal? I am not sure, but they are definitely in a different position than they used to be. If we keep...
more...
- Rob Diana
Competition is always good :-)
- Jesse Stay
Agree with Chris, not sure load time should be factoring in to page rank. That is the only thing in all these new initiatives that is a concern. It is biasing the game in favor of people who can afford the fastest infrastructure, not the people that put out the most interesting content.
- Ed Millard
Why shouldn't page load time be used as one of the signals for ranking page quality? If two pages have the same quality rank not including load time, then I think that I would prefer the page that loads faster.
- Gary Burd
As a user, I would rather see slow quality than fast crap. Good things come to those that wait. As far as 2 pages with the same content, I'd rather see the one with the better reputation, the original source of the content, with all the comments, than a splog that happens to be hosted on the faster blogspot and loads fast because there are no comments.
- April Russo (app103)
We don't like imperialistic governments, but hegemony from Google seems to be A-okay. Funny how nobody looks at the consequences for others, or longterm consequences for all, so long as their own immediate desires are satisfied.
- Dawn
Dawn, then what is this discussion we're having here, right now? is it not exactly what you're saying nobody does?
- Chris Heath
Okay, Chris, fair point. I just get very tired of reading all the "but, but, but's" thrown out for Google's sake. It's like a mother making endless excuses for her bullying brat. If it were Microsoft doing the things that Google has been trying to get away with (like grabbing all book and art "orphan works" for themselves, as just one example), there would be a much, much bigger outcry. The Tech world, including most tech bloggers, blindly protect Google like a favored son, no matter what they do.
- Dawn
GASP! Dawn, do you almost agree with me? Seriously, I feel like the only person complaining about this right now.
- Rob Diana
Henner said it right, they are trying to make things better, and we know that the current internet stack, from back-end languages to browsers, needs a major upgrade. Chris Myles, if Google was non-profit, uh, yeah -- we would def not be having this discussion. And for those who complain that speed should not factor into page-rank, I'm with you.
- Christopher Galtenberg
You Can Go Home Again, Even If It Means Back To Yahoo While Rejecting Google (And Maybe Facebook And Twitter) - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Bertrand Doux liked this
Hard to believe she didn't get the job ;) - http://www.businessinsider.com/my-nigh...
Mark Douglass, Cea, Jimminy and 54 other people liked this
"“I want you to estimate,” Oliver began, “how much money you think Google makes daily from Gmail ads.” Oh. My. GOSH. Was he serious? The answer depended on so many different factors, none of which I had any clue how to guesstimate. “Um, you mean a hard number? Maybe…$70,000?” Oliver’s hearty laugh told me my response was foolish. ... Now I was asked for an exact amount of revenue. “Say each G-mail user opens seven new e-mails a day. They would see 28 ads. If they click on ¼ of those ads, then only seven ads are clicked. If all advertisers are charged $0.05 per clicked ad, then the amount of revenue would be whatever $0.05 x 7 ads x the number of G-mail users is. Does that make any sense at all?” “Kind of.” Oliver sounded confused. “You lost me at the ‘only clicking on ¼ of the ads’ comment. Let’s move on.” "
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Does everyone get those estimation questions? I didn't get anything like that in the interviews I had at Google.
- Benjamin Golub
There's a reason I'm not a Google employee...
- Robert Scoble
Here's a hint: if they ask you to estimate something, don't just make up a random number. Also, don't assume that people click on 1/4 of all ads :)
- Paul Buchheit
@bgolub She was interviewing to be an APM. I imagine those interviews are quite different from Eng interviews. I can't be sure having only done Eng interviews myself.
- EricaJoy
Its unfortunate, because the interviewers need to filter, but some people don't do well when put on the spot under real-time stress, but in a job situation could solve similar problems being left to think about them. The kinds of skills needed to win lightning math competitions or TopCoder, are not necessarily the skills best needed to work on a product.
- Ray Cromwell
The problem I had with my interviews at Google were they were too literal. They were all questions that a recent college grad would be familiar with but anyone with any length of experience in the industry would have forgotten by this point. Going back and studying after I remember the answers now but I felt like I was being interviewed by someone just out of college (which was probably the case).
- Jesse Stay
I've heard of one Eng interview question that could be answered quickly by estimation (but more slowly by just computing it). (I wasn't asked that question myself, nor did I ever ask it.)
- Ruchira S. Datta
Priceless "You lost me at the 'only clicking on ¼ of the ads'" comment is priceless :)
- Micah Wittman
Jesse, I wasn't asked any questions like that, nor did I ask any. I guess the interview process can be very variable.
- Ruchira S. Datta
The "estimate something unknowable" question is something anybody interviewing for an even remotely technical position should expect these days--even though you might not get it--and you should understand the interviewer is asking to hear the process you go through, not the answer. As far as the 1/4 click through rate goes... well... that's classic.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ha-ha, clicking on ¼ of the ads seemed like a ridiculously high estimate to me. I never click on an ad. And now I have ad block pro installed so I can't even see them.
- Laura Norvig
A Google interviewer asked me similarly ridiculous questions. Why ask me about low-level database algorithms when i'm interested in java and web positions?! We danced around one question for 10 minutes while i tried to answer it to his satisfaction. It should have been obvious to him i'm knowledgeable enough about databases and database programming to just move on to the core interview.
- ·[▪_▪]·
Ray, it's not a math problem -- it's a problem solving problem.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, there are different kinds of problem solving as well. To take mathematicians as an example, von Neumann was said to be very quick, whereas Hilbert was rather slow. So Hilbert might not have done well in an interview.
- Ruchira S. Datta
The classic variations I've heard are "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" and "How many hamburgers does McDonalds sell each day?"
- Ken Sheppardson
Wow... how would you answer either of those questions?
- SAM
One of the people I interviewed with didn't speak very good English, and I spent 3/4 of the interview arguing with her how I thought Friend Connect could improve. I was then given 5 minutes at the end of the interview to try and answer her technical question which was about binary trees, something I hadn't studied or played with since college. 5 minutes wasn't enough to recall. The questions I was asked were math problems (and I graduated with a 3.95 GPA in college, A in stats and Algebra).
- Jesse Stay
I could never survive an interview process like that. So I won't even try.
- Laura Norvig
Jesse, sorry to hear that. I would usually ask one 45-minute interview question or two 20-minute ones. I was only asked 45-minute ones. And no non-technical questions till the end.
- Ruchira S. Datta
These are almost the same questions I was asked (which I could answer easily now): http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap... - amazing that Google hires MIT grads, considering MIT has an entire course around "hacking the Google interview".
- Jesse Stay
SAM: You'd just dive in with an estimate of *something* and walk your way through it. E.g. How many people do you know who own pianos? What % of the population do you think owns pianos? How often do they get their pianos tuned? How long does it take to tune a piano? How many people live in Chicago? It doesn't matter so much whether your numbers are right, it's the fact you know how to combine all the component estimates into an overall estimate.
- Ken Sheppardson
Not being able to do the math is fine, thinking that 1/4 of ads are clicked on is not. It's the approach and rough estimates that matter.
- Paul Buchheit
Yeah, the two important pieces of info the interviewer got in this situation are from (1) the initial random guess vs walking through some estimating process and (2) the lack of understanding of click through rates
- Ken Sheppardson
Those problem solving skills are useful when you have to model real-world systems. How many concurrent users to you estimate will we have at peak load? How many expensive vs. cheap queries are they going to perform? It's basically the same process - figure out reasonable estimates for each of the factors, do some basic stats and math and get a ballpark of how many servers you'll need vs. whether your problem is even viable.
- Matt Mastracci
Ruchira my technical questions were all at the end (except for 45 minutes on arguing with someone I could barely understand how Friend Connect could improve). I got the non-technical, easy. Going back and studying I would have gotten the technical too, which is silly considering how fast I was able to find the answers (and understand them). I think that's why non-technical should be...
more...
- Jesse Stay
When I interview, I look for clear, informed thinking. I'm sure that's what Google looks for, too. It's the odd personal interaction that turns an interview into something hasty and pressured. I'm fine giving a person a question, and time to mind-map or outline -- tho I do prefer someone who can do the thinking right there in the moment. Also, it's best to warm a person up to the type...
more...
- Christopher Galtenberg
Jesse, the technical question is supposed to be about problem-solving. You see how someone solves problems by watching them do it. It's not about looking things up.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Ruchira, 5 minutes to show the thought process in figuring out how to tell how many levels are in a binary tree isn't enough to determine if someone can problem solve.
- Jesse Stay
Call me soft, but I don't think she should have been bounced for a bad guess on ad CTR under interview stress. She worked through the appropriate steps and setup the right equation, just one of her assumptions was garbage. If she wasn't under pressure, and was asked to prepare a spreadsheet modeling out ad revenues, would she have really picked 1/4? or would she had thought about it...
more...
- Ray Cromwell
Jesse, agreed. That's why I like the longer interview questions. E.g., I would often find that someone was good at writing code but bad at complexity, or could think of an algorithm but not program.
- Ruchira S. Datta
RE "ridiculous questions", one of the things I try to do when interviewing somebody is ask a question to which the correct answer is "I don't know." That's one reason I might drill down on some sort of low level technical issue outside the candidates field of expertise. If you don't know, say so. Don't sit there and try to pretend you do. Be willing to admit there's something you have to learn. For extra credit, explain how you'd find the answer.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, there's major game theory going on. Does the interviewee think the interviewer wants a best effort attempt or rather an admission of insufficient data/experience.
- Micah Wittman
Another one I realized afterwords he was talking about linked lists, but he never mentioned linked lists. He had just asked how many edges it would take (asking for the exact formula, mind you - it's been 10 years since stats!) before a cycle could be made (or something like that). If he had just mentioned he was talking about linked lists I could have given him an answer much faster.
- Jesse Stay
Micah: Yup. And I want to see how much somebody will thrash before they ask what it is I actually want to know.
- Ken Sheppardson
you got to thin the herd.
- Aron Michalski
The right answer may be both. A good communicator, person who knows how to 'read' the other will put it out all out on the table. Hopefully without being too wordy :)
- Micah Wittman
The interviewer is comparing multiple interviewees. Google gets so many qualified applicants that it's very likely that even though she was OK, compared to others applying for the same job, she didn't do as well.
- Piaw Na
The interview process is designed to have few false positives, but in the classic tradeoff it can therefore have many false negatives. Although Jesse, in your case it sounds like it was just executed badly.
- Ruchira S. Datta
The funny thing is the best answer wasn't always the answer they were looking for. For some reason interviewers never want to see the hash table answer, which is almost always the answer in the real world. (yet they never ask you why a hash table may not always be the best answer)
- Jesse Stay
I always want the hash table answer Jesse. People who use red-black trees or whatever often haven't written real software :)
- Paul Buchheit
Paul I like your style :-) So much time is saved that way.
- Jesse Stay
@Paul: Agreed. I also find a surprising number of people who think they're brilliant for inventing tries, when a hash table would solve the problem faster, and with less code.
- Piaw Na
Not only that but in a search world that can make or break your search speed. We dealt with that in HIPAA transaction matching at UnitedHealth Group while I was there. The hashed digest made matching records so much faster.
- Jesse Stay
I cringe when I find out the developer interviewing me just graduated from college 3 years ago.
- Jesse Stay
I have never been asked for these estimation questions during my interviews but engineering positions need them too. Good estimators are good engineers.
- Burcu Dogan
@Jesse, why does that bother you? I was interviewed at Google by 6 folks, 5 of which were way younger than I was --- one of them so young that I remember him from when I was his TA in grad school. It didn't matter --- the questions weren't particularly hard, and I had fun. I didn't think Google's interview was any tougher than Yahoo's, Microsoft's or any other tech company known for engineering excellence.
- Piaw Na
My quickie solution to the Egg Drop problem is exponential doubling sequence + 2x linear search = 25 drops, best solution is 14. Doh! BTW, I've heard this problem stated before as a Cats with 9 lives (can survive 9 drops).
- Ray Cromwell
Piaw because a recent college grad is only going to ask you what they learned in college
- Jesse Stay
Try to solve my interview puzzle question: http://cromwellian.blogspot.com/2006...
- Ray Cromwell
Ray, that's a cool problem.
- Matt Mastracci
@Jesse So the 3 years in the "real world" mean nothing?
- EricaJoy
@Matt, I specifically constructed it so that it would be impossible for people to search for a pre-existing solution.
- Ray Cromwell
@Jesse: I'd been working in Silicon Valley for 10 years when I interviewed there. I did not feel that my experience disadvantaged me.
- Piaw Na
I just take more of a "get it done" attitude when I write code. I'd rather focus on getting the problem fixed in the fastest manner possible rather than spend all this time on theory. I guess it all depends on the problem at hand as to whether that's the right choice, but a recent college grad is less likely to understand that than someone who's been in the field for awhile. I like the...
more...
- Jesse Stay
BTW, if you're a startup that wants to take on Google that's the way to beat Google. It's why Twitter has grown so fast.
- Jesse Stay
True, if you look at many of the successful Web 2.0 startups, a lot of them didn't solve interesting computer science problems, but executed well in other ways. Implementation speed becomes a priority, as they can always go back and fix stuff later or rewrite, once they reach a certain level. Twitter ran "ok" enough on a Ruby mishmash until they broke down, but they didn't really lose their users because of it.
- Ray Cromwell
Glen, unless the speed isn't as important as getting the product out the door fast.
- Jesse Stay
All of those formulas need a "T" element (time to write the code), along with an "M" (maintainability) element
- Jesse Stay
I think the best way to get a job at Google is to build a business and get bought by them :-)
- Jesse Stay
Its good to be retired... ;) just sayin
- WarLord
@Glen: Are you seriously asserting that insertion into a tree (of any sort) is O( 1 / (n log n))?
- Piaw Na
@Jesse: It does no good to acquire a company whose software wouldn't scale (or whose people can't make them scale) when Google turns the firehose of traffic at them. Some of the due diligence done before a company is acquired (by Google or anyone) is to make sure that everything's technically up to snuff, or the people being acquired are smart enough to get them up to snuff.
- Piaw Na
I don't see anything "nightmarish" about her interviews at all...In fact it seems pretty amazing to me she couldn't figure out the "math" problem in the 2nd interview.
- Bindu Reddy
Well just for grins, here are a myriad of "problem solvers" trying to figure out how many golf balls you can fit on a bus: http://www.acetheinterview.com/questio... My solution to this is tell me how long it will take you to hang my wet clothes on the line without slipping on the downward slope of a ravine on 5 acres of wood...
more...
- Melanie Reed
If the question was really about problem solving then why would you stop at 1/4? That's just a parameter.
- Todd Hoff
You would stop at 1/4 because you've already interviewed 20 other folks, and some of them gave you a much better answer there. You would then go back to hire one of them, or keep interviewing more people because nobody was good enough so far.
- Piaw Na
wow, very insightful but clearly she is not geeky enough for the job!
- Loc
Todd: The interview didn't end when she said 1/4, they just "moved on". The point wasn't to get a specific dollar amount, it was to see her process.
- Ken Sheppardson
It's true that 1/4 is just a parameter, but choosing something out by so much shows a pretty significant lack of knowledge in an area that has _some_ relevance to Google. I'd suspect there would have been candidates who'd been able to have sensible discussions about the likely CTR in Gmail based on known CTRs on other websites and the factors which influence it. Surely that's relevant?
- Nick Lothian
Also, clicking on 1/4 of ads, with 4 ads per email means that people were clicking on an ad every time they read an email. That's pretty clearly wrong.
- Nick Lothian
Yeah, the 1/4 answer shows that the candidate did not apply her own personal experience to the problem solution. That's a negative mark.
- Gary Burd
Nick, then don't say it's about the process, because clearly it's not. The process was correct. If you care about the numbers then ask about the numbers. Ken, "you lost me" is not moving on.
- Todd Hoff
“Kind of.” Oliver sounded confused. “You lost me at the ‘only clicking on ¼ of the ads’ comment. Let’s move on.”
- Ken Sheppardson
How you came up with your estimates is part of the process. Also, the ability to do basic match (1/4 * 4 = 1) is part of the process. "Does that sound high or low to you" is part of the process.
- Nick Lothian
I wish I had learned how to reason probabilistically much earlier than I did. I never even heard about Bayes theorem until after grad/professional school.
- Victor Ganata
"@Matt, I specifically constructed it so that it would be impossible for people to search for a pre-existing solution" Ray, what's the last piece of useful technology you've worked on?
- Bill de hÓra
@Nick "It's true that 1/4 is just a parameter" - well is it or isn't it? is the model wrong or not? "but choosing something out by so much shows a pretty significant lack of knowledge in an area that has _some_ relevance to Google" - You mean like a Web based email client, or an ad serving system?
- Bill de hÓra
"How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?" - Don't care, bought a dump truck instead. These questions are to interviews as rail shooters are to video games.
- Bill de hÓra
@Plaw "It does no good to acquire a company whose software wouldn't scale" - explain Jaiku and while you're at it, explain Chubby.
- Bill de hÓra
you can click on the ads in gmail? learn something every day.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
Paul Buchheit's assumption of a 25 percent clickthrough rate on a Gmail ad is way to high. Most advertisers report an average of 3 clickthroughs per 1000 impressions. That about one one-hundredth of the rate that Paul has entertained. I suggest that he experiment with Google or Facebook advertising before flaunting assumptions that are two orders of magnitude beyond the norm.
- Rich Reader
@Rich Reader that's right you tell Paul not to flaunt his assumptions about Gmail. But maybe read his post and comments first. Oh, and maybe his bio.
- Steve Crossan
@Bill, Google Web Toolkit. Prior to that, http://timefire.com/showcase.
- Ray Cromwell
@Rich Reader: I can't quite discern whether your comment is satirical. Paul wasn't making that assumption, and I'm fairly confident he knows a bit about Gmail, Google advertising, and Facebook. :)
- Simon
http://friendfeed.com/search... Paul I am having deflamatory comments about me with my first and last name used, could you please warn this user or something, it is effecting my business and is illegal, I have told brent TWICE, but he removed my account and placed it on private now which was quite rude to be honest, now I will see a lawyer about deflamation since it effects my views as a writer if she is not removed or given a warning
- dawngordon
The worst things startups do - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Bertrand Doux, Jeff P. Henderson, Sean Kelly and 6 other people liked this
Mark, for any set of N things, you can have subsets that are worst up to size N-1.
- Bruce Lewis
BAHHHHHHHH NEVER!
- Juan Aaron
What are your thoughts on startups and Roadmaps. Should they be religiously adhered to or should there be one at all?
- Sean Kelly
Yahoo has a lot of basketball and beach volleyball courts. I like. http://yfrog.com/2rdcij
 |
Bertrand Doux liked this
You thought male football (soccer) was dirty? Check out this womans match. - http://www.zee.me/blog...
endiaferon, Bertrand Doux, and 2 other people liked this
She should be banned from touching a soccer ball for the rest of her life.
- Maxamad
I remember the first time I saw a teenage girl ice hockey game. *shudders*
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
is that not a mormon college................
- VAL D.
If only they did that naked and in some jello...
-
Wow...I can't even say what I wanna say without violating my "no b-word" rule
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
WTF [referee]
- Marcos
Yanking a player down by her hair alone deserved a red card, never mind the rest of the things she did.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
WTF...
- TrafficBug
The referee on Chelsea x ManU today wasn't that better...
- Marcos
Pressure on Google over blocked calls (Kim Hart/The Hill) - http://www.techmeme.com/091107...
Bertrand Doux liked this
Twitter Revenue Model Leaked – OMFG - http://www.tribbleagency.com/...
Helen Sventitsky and Bertrand Doux liked this
Interesting. How would this work for all the mobile and web/desktop twitter clients? I'm not sure what the percentage is, but I bet a fairly high proportion of twittering is done via these routes.
- Keith Bennett
Seems odd. How would you target links?
- Todd Hoff
Keith, I'm guessing any link that you send to Twitter - even an already-shorted link - via a client will be shortened by Twitter..?
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
our post on Eric Schmidt's predictions for the web in 5 years is featured on google news, now nearing 110k views! http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Bertrand Doux liked this
The Buzz on 'V's' Morena Baccarin - Yahoo! TV Blog - http://tv.yahoo.com/blog...
Brook White, Bertrand Doux, Amber, Random Time Lord and 2 other people liked this
"What you can believe is this: The actress is scoring out-of-this-world searches on the Web. Lookups on the rising star soared up an astronomical 4,580% in one-day searches on Yahoo!, making the "V" headliner one of the top five searches on the Web. The buzz is paying off: A whopping 13.9 million viewers tuned in, making it one of the highest-rated new shows this season."
- Glen Campbell, B.A.
from Bookmarklet
She's no Diana
- Jason
She was definitely the highlight of the premiere. I love her as Anna.
- Jason Huebel
from Android
Is this the place to make to make "I'll be in my bunk" jokes?
- Alex Scrivener
Happy Birthday to Paul Buchheit!
Jason Huebel, Fedor Karpelevitch, Shakeel Mahate and 83 other people liked this
Nice.
- Maxamad
Happy Birthday, Paul! And thank you for FF. It's being a great help to me just now.
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
Happy birthday!
- Becca
Got the image here: http://www.labnol.org/interne...
- AJ Batac
Writing "Don't be evil" 500 times..penance for selling out to Zuckerberg? :) Happy birthday, Paul!
- Alex Schleber
Happy Birthday!
- Shevonne
;) so many birthdays this week. Happy B-day Paul!
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
I just opened the link and I'm kind of astounded. I had no idea what a deep influence Paul had over at Google. Created GMail? I am in awe. That plus Friendfeed and many other accomplishments. Happy birthday, Paul. I know we get fussy here sometimes about you, but that's only because we love so much what you helped create, and we're terrified at the thought of it vanishing.
- Kamilah Gill
Happy Birthday, Paul!
- Anne Bouey
Happy Birthday, Paul!
- Kevin Fox
Huge happy b-day PB
- Christopher Galtenberg
Happy Birthday Paul
- Helen Sventitsky
Happy birthday, Paul!
- Tödd Nëmët
Google CEO: We Won't Repeat the Mistakes of Microsoft http://gigaom.com/2009... from @gigaom
Joel Webber and Bertrand Doux liked this
[A gadget that only tweets] In a world where smartphones are vying to become your all-purpose mobile computing multitool, Twitter believes there’s a market for more specialized devices — a gadget, for instance, able to do nothing but send and receive tweets. In June, Twitter took that vision to Peek, a company that makes a simple dedicated e-mail... - http://transnets.tumblr.com/post...
Bertrand Doux liked this
Failure is NOT an option Why this can be a bad strategy - http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_nex...
Bertrand Doux liked this
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...
Marc Dong, John Serra, Bertrand Doux and 80 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,...
more...
- 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)...
more...
- Her Lindsay-ness
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...
more...
- 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...
more...
- Her Lindsay-ness
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
Does it really have to be one or the other Robert?
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
(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 is not dead
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?
- teh Dork Knight
directeur: APML will never work.
- Robert Scoble
oh dear, don't hate the messenger.
- Joe Silence is not dead
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.
- Her Lindsay-ness
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?
- Her Lindsay-ness
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.
- Her Lindsay-ness
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.
- David Bausola
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...
- David Bausola
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.
- Her Lindsay-ness
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...
more...
- 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.
- Her Lindsay-ness
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? ;)
- Her Lindsay-ness
IRC or a phpBB messageboard!
- Joe Silence is not dead
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.
- David Bausola
@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...
more...
- 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.
- David Bausola
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-...
more...
- 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
- Her Lindsay-ness
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...
more...
- David Hall
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...
more...
- 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...
more...
- David Bausola
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?
- David Bausola
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?
- David Bausola
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.
- David Hall
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.
- David Bausola
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...
- David Bausola
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...
more...
- 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...
more...
- David Hall
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....
more...
- 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....
more...
- 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...
more...
- 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.
- David Hall
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...
more...
- 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
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
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...
more...
- 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...
more...
- 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...
more...
- 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...
more...
- 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
Drop of water at 2000 fps (very cool) - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
  |
Eren Emre Kanal, Dan Hsiao, durbin and 74 other people liked this
This is pretty cool.
- Bastian
I didn't see this segment, but I was watching this special in my hotel room when I was at the society of rheology conference. It made me think that I need a high speed camera. For science, of course ;)
- Clare Dibble
This is very cool. I'd like to see it with other liquids, and water with different this mixed in. Like soap for instance, which messes with the surface tension...what happens then?
- Bill Scherer
hi
- soso
Are there any liquids that don't have surface tension?
- Gabe
My husband and I are addicted to the show Time Warp: random things done in front of high speed cameras. The oldies but goodies like popping a water balloon are stil my favorite...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
That's amazing, which is why science rocks! :)
- imabonehead
Love it! I want to have 2000 fps water drops as my screensaver.
- EricaJoy
Very cool!
- Garin Kilpatrick
Amazing. What else would be interesting to visualize at 2000 fps?
- Philippe
True beauty
- Инк Лонгтан
from iPhone
There is only as much beauty in nature as you can appreciate and not a grain more. thoreau
- Robert Higgins
+Bill I wanna see Quicksilver or Mercury at 2000 FPS
- Robert Higgins
Я предпологал!!!! :) Теперь я знаю!!!!
- atner
Where has my FriendFeed gone? The picture says it all. By the way, this is the "best of day" right now. Sad.
Ankush Narula, Luca Sofri, scott willeke and 65 other people liked this
Compare these two. FriendFeed has great pictures, but content that is, well, not interesting. Twitter, on right, has 6,000x better content but doesn't look as nice due to no pictures. Will Brizzly come to rescue?
- Robert Scoble
I hope somebody comes up with a fabulous client to maximize content and serve up more media
- Susan Beebe
And people wonder why I don't come here much anymore. Sigh.
- Robert Scoble
FriendFeed used to be very heavy in tech discussions. Now it's rare I see a tech discussion on the "best of day" feed.
- Robert Scoble
The cap on the left is infinitely preferable to the right. I can't tell you how glad I am not to be inundated with tech stuff all day long. One man's trash...
- Jim Hearts FF
Time to adjust your subscriptions.
- Bruce Lewis
try PowerTwitter ...also, which service has 6000x more users? doesn't that affect content choices?
- .LAG liked that
I keep looking for the comments link on Brizzly.
- Tom Landini
PowerTwitter is a great add to the twitter website (Firefox add-on)
- Susan Beebe
There's more to talk about than just "tech", seriously...
- Rob H.
Robert - Do you have any general news, world news Twitter lists/groups? I tried scrolling through you lists, but they all seem pretty tech-slanted. If Twitter is to replace Friendfeed and Google Reader, then we need to be able to get real news and information out of the thing.
- Matthew DeVries
The left is a best of day from your 28000 subscriptions. The right is a heavily curated list focused on something you are interested in. Try "best of" on a curated list (there is a link at the bottom of every list feed to best of for that feed).
- Benjamin Golub
agree totally with you Scoble, Bruce: adjusting wouldn't make a difference now
- ffcode
Ben - great advise!
- Susan Beebe
I know twitter is occupied with infrastructure and list improvements, but you would think they could be building brizzly-esque features pretty easily.
- Sean Montgomery
Sean - right. Twitter has to stablize their platform, then focus on UIX
- Susan Beebe
Matthew: I'm a geek. Other people are doing news lists. I might start one, though. You are the second person to ask for one.
- Robert Scoble
and there aren't tech discussions here one of the prime reasons are Scoble left and he is usually followed by around 10k folks everywhere, and his predictions affect all, weak or strong minded
- ffcode
I find it a fascinating observation: Twitter is better than FriendFeed because there's more tech discussions in my feed. Is that the criteria you use for judging other social media sites? Because, IMHO, social media is about connecting people, not about tech discussions.
- Glen Campbell, B.A.
ffcode: sorry, I'm tracking the geek participation here and sorry, the really geeky stuff has definitely gone down.
- Robert Scoble
always wondered how your feed would look like but it is clear you are no different ;)
- ffcode
Robert - I come to you because you're the best list builder and analyzer of signal to noise.
- Matthew DeVries
Glen: sorry, where the geeks go generally the general public follows. Generally. And, anyway, compare this stuff to Facebook. Even there it's a loser, sorry. I watch my wife's feed all the time and compare it to FriendFeed and FriendFeed loses. She said "ew" when she saw my page here.
- Robert Scoble
only 2 likes on a celebrity picture(demi moore)? I guess people really did run away!
- PJ Edwards
Glen: by the way, I can make such a screen shot for a bunch of different genre's, not just tech. Twitter has far more diversity and has far more flow of all kinds. http://listorious.com 's huge first weekend demonstrates that.
- Robert Scoble
Jim: if you don't want just tech, check out http://listorious.com -- what list would you like? In one weekend Twitter got more diversity thanks to lists than FriendFeed did in 18 months. And no "ew" pictures.
- Robert Scoble
You still have to come here. It's mandatory
- Charlie Anzman
sad one of the best place is going down like this and it is going the way every other social network is "just for fun"....:(
- ffcode
Charlie: I do, but now you know why I don't show off FriendFeed at conferences anymore.
- Robert Scoble
FriendFeed's still here. Unfortunately when Scoble, FriendFeed's top user goes, so go the users.
- Jesse Stay
number of places on the twitter display where you could see an inline discussion: zero.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
I follow Scoble, but I'm not going anywhere, Jesse.
- Jim Hearts FF
Either that, or this just means FriendFeed has gone mainstream, and is no longer just tech users any more ;-)
- Jesse Stay
Jesse - Robert left Twitter for quite a while (well, not left, but just had it parroting his FF) and it didn't seem to hurt Twitter any. Robert can't make or break a service all by himself.
- Matthew DeVries
I guess I just don't get it. My Facebook connects me with friends I haven't seen in years and relatives I contact rarely. With Facebook, I can keep in touch far better than I ever have in my life. I learn about my cousin in the ICU with pneumonia, and my good friend in Indiana who just had a grandson. The whole format is not compatible with tech discussions; the length restrictions...
more...
- Glen Campbell, B.A.
Code junkies best of week: http://friendfeed.com/code-ju...
- Bruce Lewis
@Cristo: +3000. @Robert: Change your subscriptions. You just haven't curated your worldview here as much lately. Things change, so must your prism.
- AJ Kohn
as usual, Robert's death of FF posts shoot up the charts. get it?
- Steve Gillmor
Matthew, see my second comment. I think some of it is that FriendFeed's userbase has changed as well. It's not the tech early adopters any more. I expect with Facebook's acquisition it will become more so that case.
- Jesse Stay
My point being this comparison doesn't mean much
- Jesse Stay
What is "geek" to you Robert? Because I've been seeing plenty of "geek" posts in the subscriptions and rooms I follow here on FriendFeed.
- Maxamad
Mehmet: geek is someone talking about technology or talking about building something or excited about using such. Do you see any geek in the friendfeed screen shot? I don't.
- Robert Scoble
Agree with Jesse here.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Bruce: is that the best example you got? All those items have no discussion!
- Robert Scoble
And like Tom's comment [keep looking for comments link on Brizzly] LOL!
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
o.O Louis is pretty geeky. His kids already have Macbooks.
- Matthew DeVries
The most active discussions I've seen on FriendFeed lately are only when someone proclaims or laments its decline. Sad but true.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Or when Jason holds a live chat.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Robert, twitter=no conversation. I'll deal with the 'ew' pictures by simply using the 'hide' button, that's why it's there. You go your way, I'll go mine. It's all good.
- Jim Hearts FF
do anybody no why Scoble can't just leave us alone. Friendfeed is dying according to him, no need to make it a self fulfilling prophecy. The more you "high profile" users criticize FF the faster folks will leave it.
- Tendonitis' Bitch
Coding geeks communicate best with code. Neither twitter nor FriendFeed let you indent. So there's going to be more sharing and less conversation for coders.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert ,the best of the day are comments and likes on a post ,not content. all the contents from Twitter,blogs,Rss etc are here and its better to get them here or in public groups or in private , I am not sure that on Twitter ppl are acting ,they are just reading same as here
- Johni Fisher
agree with Steve Gillmor, users are here but they are doing things way different now than they used to when Scoble was around
- ffcode
agree more than 100% that "those" tech talks are just gone
- ffcode
You're comparing a hand crafted twitter list to friendfeed's user-generated best-of-day?
- Andy Bakun
Gunny, give the guy a break. He feels forced to be on twitter and misses the conversations on FriendFeed. Did you look at the right-hand picture from twitter? No conversation happening there at all. Zero. I can't imagine hanging out there all day.
- Bruce Lewis
I skip all the tech anyway. Who says it's "better"?
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
Cristo: try seeing feed around those times when there when acquisition talks
- ffcode
Why can't there be a friendly friend feed and a tech friend feed? Is there no other use for the internet than to talk about the internet?
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
Tech and coding news is primarily what I look for in FriendFeed, and I find it. Conversation happens, as well as users bumping things up with likes. Subscriptions (friends and rooms) help filter tech content that I want to see. A like is sometimes as good as a comment.
- Maxamad
and Andy: you are yourself stating what Scoble has been saying all the way twitter is place where you can get your taste now not here anymore
- ffcode
Robert- regarding your early early comment- I find it refreshing that FF isn't about tech
- anna sauce
+anna, +Glen, and even +cristo
- Kamilah Gill
Does Plurk get this much attention about its inevitable death? Now there's a service that could really use the wake-up call.
- Mark Trapp
Robert never got infatuated with Plurk, Mark.
- Maxamad
Robert most of the change is in the place that you decided to open a subject and to post ,I remember 3 months ago your posts here were with tooons of comments and interest and from the day that you are posting your Twitter FAV here, there is not much action ,just think on that ,I like to read your Twitter FAV but I would better have them in a group and get yr posts like in the past
- Johni Fisher
Yeah, you're pretty geeky there when you have to search how to make screenshots
- KapitanObvious
agree Johni
- ffcode
thx ff
- Johni Fisher
To be honest, any social network with content governed by who you're subscribed to, and having image media in a feed is going to come up with something you don't like. This is because no one is on topic all the time, especially on Twitter. If you want sanitized feeds from *only* tech experts, geeks and what have you, these sort of services aren't going to cut it for you....
more...
- Mo Kargas
I sure like the interaction here, comments, community...this post shot over to Twitter, but there is nothing going on there about it.
- Eric Matas
@Eric Yes exactly, to me it looks like a glorified RSS stream from different sources, fundamentally a list of content and that's it. The topics Robert is after may not be present on FF, but the conversation is far more intuitive.
- Mo Kargas
"glorified RSS stream"...pretty much sums it up.
- Maxamad
Hey GUISE, we're forgetting that the list on the right will fail-whale often as twitter never seems to remember how to run their servers. As to the content on the left not being interesting, well...at least I know it's real people who aren't trying to get me to buy into some new brand or some interchangeable tech company that will just be bought by facebook one day and disappear. :)
- Jon, the Beartato of FF
I just can't wait for the day that Scoble ditches Twitter for the junk it is. Should give me a good laugh.
- Maxamad
Twitter has no "ew" pictures because it has no pictures. You can use the fftogo option that turns off media if you want no pictures.
- Bruce Lewis
For conversations, friendfeed wins. For tons of blabbers and links, twitter wins. But agreed, activity has gone down heavily on friendfeed. Twitter mania has caught everyone.
- Amit
Interesting tech discussions from http://friendfeed.com/paul... are "Think big. Code small" and the ooc one.
- Bruce Lewis
One anecdote deserves another. I've posted on FF regularly for 1.5 years. I comment frequently on others' tech posts, but most of my own posts are not strictly tech-angled. This week I asked "FriendFeeders : NEED ADVISE: Best all-around value Netbook today - which one?" and it got 16 LIKES and 20 COMMENTS. The last time one of my posts hit/surpassed that threshold was early August http://friendfeed.com/search...
- Micah Wittman
One thing I noticed is no conversations. Just straight links to other sites. Kind of boring.
- Todd Hoff
BTW is it possible to stop getting the twitter updates from others on Friendfeed? Slowly I am seeing my friendfeed aggregating only the twitter updates.
- Amit
Yeah, you can Amit. Just click "hide" on a tweet you see in FF, and then choose to "hide other items like this one"...and go from there.
- Maxamad
Robert is just being Robert, always stirring things up! LOL, I really do ♥ you for it though.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Wait, you were all like ' I LOVE FF ' this summer. Singing your praises on the TWiT network and all that jazz. You're even more of a fair weather fan than Minnesotans with our sports teams.
- Clark Baumgartner 蔵明 馬武刀
No hatin' on the Vikings here, they try hard :p
- Maxamad
Twins? Timberwolves? Wilds? Take your pick if the Vikings don't do it for yeh.
- Clark Baumgartner 蔵明 馬武刀
You know what makes me laugh... People who use FriendFeed in other languages probably don't see this or any of the stuff Robert is interested in...
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
+Johnny W.
- Kamilah Gill
BTW... Heaven forbid we actually have fun on a Sunday... Your lawn's that way
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
You're really going to show me Wall Street Journal on your Twitter feed and compare that to Friendfeed's personal interaction? You know better, Robert.
- Eric @ CS Techcast
from iPhone
KapitanObvious++ for the burn.
- Andrew C
One of the nice things about Friendfeed is the way you can hide a post like this and not see it ever again. It would be nice to have a way to filter posts from specific people if they contained certain words such as twitter, lists, dead, or friendfeed. :)
- SuezanneC Baskerville
Robert GFY dude, seriously.
- LANjackal
""glorified RSS stream" - yeah, except my RSS feeds have been culled down to sources that add their own insightful commentary so it's not an endless stream of retweets of _all the same damn links repeated over and over_. That Twitter screenshot looks really information-light once the repeats are filtered out...
- Andrew C
FRIEND Feed.
- Internet's Tad
And this coming from a man who posted this online: http://valleywag.com/assets... :P
- Jan Ole Peek
The Friendfeed screenshot shows 222 total interactions in the first three entries. The twitter one shows 14 (and I'm counting the one at the bottom that is cut off). Oh wait, those aren't interactions, those are links to other places.
- Andy Bakun
I think Robert is just confusing the point of the site. The name is FRIEND Feed, not interesting feed, useful feed, news feed, etc. This is where I hang out with my friends.
- Internet's Tad
Robert, you're cool and everything, but sometimes the things you post make me think of you as an arrogant asshole. The beauty in friendfeed is that there are so many different flavors to sample from. There are plenty of sites to go to that are tech heavy if that is what you are looking for. Why bother here if it's not what you want? Move on and shut the fuck up about it. Jesus.
- DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE
Amen.
- Internet's Tad
For someone who doesn't like Friendfeed or thinks Friendfeed doesn't offer as much value as twitter, he sure does post here a lot.
- Andy Bakun
This is exactly the kind of post I don't want in my feed. Adjusting my subscriptions now. Sorry Robert, but I gotta block you on Friendfeed. See you on Twitter.
- Rodfather
Robert. You are stating the obvious: of course friendfeed is going to decline: there is no more engineering or innovation power behind it! The key question is: "is a friendfeed++ going to reborn as part of facebook and have a much more profound impact?". The jury is still out but knowing the quality of the team I would not bet against it.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
I think this post is very rude to the posters in your screenshot, especially the second two. They are sharing themselves and their lives with us. If that doesn't interest you, unsubscribe or hide but to call them out and mock them as 'sad' is, well, sad. FriendFeed is full of people that I enjoy discussing all kinds of topics with, including technology, but they are more than just early...
more...
- joey
Thank you Joey. I find the screen shot to be particularly offensive considering the tenor of the post. Stop being a jerk Robert.
- DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE
Holden: I have removed my Twitter favorites from FriendFeed because of your post and my Twitter account too.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Scoble, you need to clean your Twitter DM's like stat.
-
@Robert - Just because FriendFeed isn't 90% tech and personal branding posts doesn't mean it doesn't have value. You used to be such a big proponent of lists here and molding your subscriptions so they were full of info but not noise... now that you've neglected your pruning efforts and gone over to Twitter then your feed is full of more noise (to you) than info. It's not FriendFeed's...
more...
- Her Lindsay-ness
Her Lindsay-ness: sorry, so many geeks have left and there are just more interesting information (FOR ME), more interesting conversations (FOR ME), and I'm learning a lot more over on Twitter (ABOUT WHAT I WANT TO LEARN). FriendFeed HAS changed and that's OK! For you. Not for me. And, sorry, I looked at rejiggering my accounts here, but the info just isn't coming here and Twitter is...
more...
- Robert Scoble
Then go away. What the fuck. Why keep coming back here to make posts about how horrible it is. It just makes you look like more of an asshole than you intend to be I'm sure. Seriously. If you think there is no value in it, then it's kinda counter-productive to keep posting here, right? You act like the guy that graduated high school but keeps coming back hanging out at lunch and during pep rallies. It's a little bit creepy. What is it that you hope to gain by that?
- DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE
I agree with Gunny. YOU caused the mass exedus from Friend Feed Robert, by announcing its demise. Let's see what would happen if instead of moaning about its lack of techy feeds, you began promoting it instead. Look on it as an FF experiment.
- Sandra Large
I like reading your stuff Rob but yeah --- if you're only going to come here to diss FF, perhaps you should just exit FF completely. Also, it's a FACT that Twitter is inferior to FriendFeed based on communication alone because look...here I am, discussing this topic and others can follow along w/o having to search through random comments and pages [they can even comment easily also! *gasp*!]. FF probably will die eventually, but Twitter was freakin' stillborn. Just a glorified RSS service...
- Scott Carmichael
Its all becoming a Robert Scoble 'self fullfilling prophecy' lately on here. You can't have a conversation on Twitter like this, twitter is a newsreel of headline news, that's all its good for, Friend Feed is as its name implies, a feed for friends to discuss anything under the sun, and not just about technical stuff.
- Sandra Large
I don't agree that a person who's become dissatisfied with a service should leave. I've often heard change should come from within. With that said, I'm not sure Robert is pushing for positive change. Can it occur? With Zuckerberg calling the shots, maybe not. Maybe he owns every idea that the FFounders will ever have for the next few yrs, keeping those changes for Zuck's baby. Maybe FF will improve, & maybe the techies who were drowned out on Twitter will find they can be seen & heard here. Who knows?
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
My post is up: http://scobleizer.com/2009...
- Robert Scoble
Gone mainstream?
- Amit Morson
it gone mainstream alright
- Fajar Nurdiansyah
You can't blame Robert for the fact that the FF guys sold out AND left the ship more or less rudderless. If they had bothered to figure out even a tiny bit of a PR strategy around the take-over, then things might not have gone downhill so fast, or at all. And, yes, you can filter out all of the emo stuff (nothing wrong with it BTW, but that can be had from your IRL friends on Facebook)...
more...
- Alex Schleber
Robert: accepting the accuracy of observations about the amount of interesting conversations from your perspective, there still remains a question regarding what could be the cause? while one theory may be a decline in friendfeed activity, another possibility is the decline in your own activity. what evidence can support one hypothesis over the other?
- Mike Chelen
methinks a service can go on without an ego? personally i pop back here every now and again for the occasional conversation. i'd prefer more intelligent discussions on here, not just tech related, maybe i'm not following enough people? eh.
- Terry O'Fee
+1,000 joey. "emo stuff" that can be "found on Facebook"? LOTS of arrogance on display here from several directions. Alex, I know that you're tempering your statement by saying that there's nothing wrong with "emo stuff", but that's still awfully dismissive. FF is more like a number of simple blogs because the whole world can access the posts. FB is a walled garden, and tends to be way more dumbed-down (except for when I look at the FF people I'm subscribed to in FB).
- Kamilah Gill
Hey, guys? Don't feed the troll.
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
now you tell us.
- Jim Hearts FF
Friendfeed never gone..!
- ★ Soner Gönül
Congratulations, you score high on the douche-o-meter!
- Mark Wilson
Well if FriendFeed has nothing else going for it, I can at least read a deep exchange of ideas here as to why it's toast. Perhaps thats why I'm sticking. Btw, slightly off topic, but am I the only one finding Twitter list creation a complete chore compared to doing the same on FriendFeed?
- David Hall
I don't see the problem. My pecs dominate your feed. Who can complain about that?
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
LOL @Rasheen™
- Glen Campbell, B.A.
Rahsheen, it's ok to let the one's own fun part of life intersect one's social media sphere http://friendfeed.com/tad... , but not when it's someone else and it can be used in the wrong context to misappropriate a point.
- Micah Wittman
It amazes me how people will continue to use a service just to complain about it. Just STFU and GTFO.
- Steve Lowe
Micah, I don't follow what you're saying...
- Kamilah Gill
Robert - Just make Twitter fix the 140 character limit thing already!
- Matthew DeVries
then it would be a blog or what a tumble log?
- ffcode
strange people resist so much even when they know this is it
- ffcode
Robert, setting aside your point, your methodology here is insulting. Why? My response is here: http://friendfeed.com/zeigen...
- Stephen Mack
Kamilah, fair point. I'll explain without sarcasm. Robert's shower photo was a bit of fun that is fine and doesn't represent the whole of his on- or off-line contribution. Andy's photoshopped photo of Rahsheen doesn't represent the whole of Andy's contribution (which is very much technical, btw) or by extension the community's many contributions through the friendfeed medium. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
- Micah Wittman
friend feed is totally awesome!
- Bishal Adhikary
great one man...
- Bishal Adhikary
COMMENT 1) "There's a lot more than me here. http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo.... shows lots of things that are getting engagement. - Robert Scoble" http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo... ... COMMENT 2) "You are not following the right people. This is always the problem if FriendFeed isn't working for you. - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF" http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo...
- Micah Wittman
I just looked, and http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo... still is getting a lot of engagement and there's is stuff to learn there.
- Micah Wittman
Robert, I am considered a "geek" by a number of people, but I don't need or want to talk about technology 24/7. I have other interests and I like to see where they connect. I want to see coalescence. I can't get disparate connections always watching or listening to the same track. Even Richard Feynman believed that...as do many others in other "geek" fields. When I was little I happened...
more...
- Melanie Reed
Robert, are you reading the tech related groups? If you read Best of you are going to get all sorts of stuff as you know. I have lists and saved searches for specific topics and browse them for the likes of tech. Best of it not the best place for tech only (well any single topic).
- Kol Tregaskes
I've come to the conclusion that all of Robert's posts must be read with one fact kept in mind. Even when he doesn't say it, his posts are based on the assumption that many/most people want and like what he wants.
- Eoghann Irving
Robert, why do you constantly feel the need to shake the death rattle? We are well aware that FF is dying and even more aware that you see it coming. If you really did care about the service you would try to reverse the trend instead of speeding it up.
- Jason Williams
from iPhone
Robert I joined FF when I saw you singing praises of it on Twitter and have been loving it ever since, you seem to have a lot of interesting stuff to say, and a lot of people follow you. But, you seriously need to stop coming to FriendFeed and doing everything in your considerable power to kill it, and then complain because you are successful in doing that. Twitter is for people who like shouting through megaphones in a crowd of people shouting through megaphones, FF is for people who like conversations.
- Ed Millard
@edmillard ..said the man who only imports one thing into FF, his Twitter account.. seriously though. Scoble can't kill FF because it's already dead, it just doesn't know it yet. And yes, I am still using it for a bit because it makes such a handy searchable archiving/surfacing tool, and for some aspects of the community. But the reality is that FF founder's sold out b/c they were lacking confidence that they could change FF sufficiently/quickly enough to sustain any real growth.
- Alex Schleber
So FriendFeed founders gave up and sold out to Zuckerberg more or less for the liquidation value, i.e. for their IP and continued highly-skilled/paid labor for FB. It's that simple. Thinking about it any other way is a fantasy. 5 Stages of Grief... And yes, it pains me to say it. Had high hopes for this platform. I wish they would have found a way to evolve FF where it would have continued to grow, I don't think they were very far off. It's like the gold-miners who gave up 10 ft from the mother lode.
- Alex Schleber
Alex you are mistaken, most of my recent posts are from FF and sometimes cross posted to Twitter if they are short and not FF specific. I didn't know the FF etiquette that twitter posts are shunned when I started. Most of my limited time here is spent in comments anyway, since I prefer the conversations to the megaphone.
- Ed Millard
@Ed "Twitter is for people who like shouting through megaphones in a crowd of people shouting through megaphones, FF is for people who like conversations." You basically summed up my blog post about this whole thing (http://friendfeed.com/bluecoc...)...
- Her Lindsay-ness
Lindsey, same concept, yours was thorough, mine was short. I think part of being a geek is we opt for the superior tech, not the popular tech. FB and Twitter are popular but inferior for conversation. I had no interest in them until I found FF recently. Its a problem we geeks are letting Zuckerberg kill the superior tech here with his checkbook. I'm thinking we should launch an open friend feed like directeur is talking about, free of business conflicts. It is the geek thing to do but it would be hard.
- Ed Millard
One bad day does not mean it is bad for the whole year :)
- ashish
don't you ever get tired of hitting refresh every other minute?
- Giancarlo Caparo
LOL, let's see you sort though hundreds of reply of Twitter, shoot a video of that...
- Robert Higgins
*yawns*
- T. Brent, technopeasant
Sadly, FF has largely become a photo sharing, jokes and food pics sharing site - tech community is gone.
- Susan Beebe
Yes, Twitter really has raised the bar in that arena.
- Glen Campbell, B.A.
Glen LOL
- Susan Beebe
ZING! I shared a lame joke a few minutes ago, Susan! http://ff.im/aTQG6 I don't feel really bad about it. That's true, many people know me as a developer, but I'm not only that. I'm a jazz/anime/languages... LOVER :)
- directeur
If only someone would have told Robert that his feed is his own creation and if he is unhappy there is only one place to look fir the reason. Oh, wait...
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
seriously, talk about mis-matched comparisons. This general list is less focused than that built-for-a-purpose list? Well, no offense, but no shit, Sherlock.
- Chieze Okoye
RT @alleyinsider: How To Save The Internet by @JohnBorthwick http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-...
Bertrand Doux liked this
Its just me and the twins today, my wife and daughter are visiting Grandma. Expect Lord of the Flies by noon.
Bertrand Doux, PENGUIN: MAJOR CAPS LOCK, Josh Haley and 11 other people liked this
So far, so good. First nap successfully initiated.
- DGentry
Nap completed successfully and without casualties. Preparing for walkies.
- DGentry
Sounds familiar. My wife hasn't gotten up yet. (She has a cold) Just put the twins down at 11.
- Louis Gray
I thought it would be fun to liveblog a day of baby care. So far, so good. We're heading out for a walk.
- DGentry
Walk completed with a tolerable level of property damage. It was followed by a diaper change of epic proportions. Next up: lunch.
- DGentry
Whoops: second, unscheduled diaper change. Currently talking to the boys about the importance of time management.
- DGentry
So... lunch. They ate, so Mission Accomplished and all that. Currently looking for a way to blame the carpet disaster on the cats.
- DGentry
Next up: its just us three menfolk here, so we're going to do something manly. We're going to the Hardware Store!
- DGentry
Did you know that power tools are not age-appropriate for a 9 month old? Me neither. Anyway, the hardware store trip went well. They even sold me some bungie cords to lash the double stroller to the top of the car, as I couldn't figure out how to fold the thing up again.
- DGentry
Did you schedule in a session for pointer arimethics in c programming yet? It's definitely manly in geeky proportions. :)
- imabonehead
from Android
No pointer arithmetic yet, though they're getting pretty good at dumping core.
- DGentry
Next up: nap #2.
- DGentry
Nap #2 experienced some turbulence, but is now in flight.
- DGentry
:)
- winckel
LOL@not being able to close the stroller... :D
- Trish Haley
LOL @ core dump
- Spidra Webster
Watch out for those memory leaks.
- imabonehead
from Android
This concludes our flight on Nap #2, please be sure all crib rails are in their full upright and locked position. Next up: dinner #1.
- DGentry
We went out for dinner. The boys didn't seem to want to share my jalapeno burger so they had butternut squash bisque, chicken puree, and pears. Actually that sounds pretty good, I wish I'd had butternut squash bisque. Dinner was accomplished with minimal mess, and only one young couple left the restaurant when they saw twin babies. Overall, a success. Next step: bath.
- DGentry
Ok, I took a bath. No, strike that: the twins took a bath. Me getting soaked was just a side-effect. Next step: dinner #2.
- DGentry
YTMND.
- Maxamad
Operation stuff-little-tummies-before-bed now complete. Next: quiet play for 20 minutes before heading up to the bedtime routine.
- DGentry
YTMND? New one on me.
- DGentry
I hope everybody who grows tired of baby care snippets simply hides this thread.
- DGentry
YTMND=You're the man now, dog ;) ( take it as a compliment )
- Maxamad
Perhaps "quiet" was too strong a word. They are babies after all, they do nothing quietly.
- DGentry
...and thats it. All kids are in bed and asleep. I'm going to go collapse now.
- DGentry
Best comment of my day: "Walk completed with a tolerable level of property damage. It was followed by a diaper change of epic proportions. Next up: lunch."
- Josh Haley
Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model « abovethecrowd.com - http://abovethecrowd.com/2009...
eighty, Joff, Jess Lee and 36 other people liked this
"While it is obvious that this maneuver creates a problem for the multi-billion dollar GPS market, it also poses real challenges for the leading smart phone players – RIM’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone. Without access to their own mapping data, these vendors now face an interesting dilemma. Do you risk flying naked without free navigation or do you suck it up and swallow the above average royalty fee for each and every handset? Neither option is stellar. This problem isn’t nearly as daunting as the one now faced by the Windows Mobile and Symbian teams. As software providers, they are lucky to get a per unit royalty equal to that extracted by the GPS data guys. If they are now forced to integrate this data merely to keep their product competitive, their gross margin just went negative. Ouch!"
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
I would love to be a fly on the wall in Redmond
- Ray Cromwell
I'm psyched to get Google maps powered navigation. they provide much better directions than tom tom ever could... and if they calculate live traffic as well thats good. but i'm curious as to why Verizon doesn't seem to mind since their nav package is normally $15/month.
- Matt Ellsworth
My experience with Google has been completely different. They were notably subpar when they stopped licensing the leader in map data a year or two ago, and their directions now are as bad or worse than MapQuest. I split the difference now between them and a GPS unit when I need to, but generally prefer to use an actual map for most accurate directions.
- Cole Jolley
I think this is likely to change in a big way once they fully leverage their Street View database. Still, I can't argue with free when the errors are few IMHO.
- Ray Cromwell
Is this an example of "open" systems putting people out of business? (of course, it's not personal, it's just business..."
- Cliff Gerrish
Does Google actually make any money from their maps? How many Google behaviors are enabled by their huge search revenues and how many of those can continue as their dominance wanes? Also as the article mentions Nokia owns Navteq so the "Symbian" problem is a non issue (unless you think there is a viable Symbian outside of a Nokia context).
- Hayes Haugen
Now the droid initiative on verizon finally makes sense to me. I watched the demos as they showed off feature after feature that verizon likes to charge extra for thinking no way is this not going to be expensive. But with google paying verizon on search ad revenue, verizon doesn't have to nickel and dime their customers for every added feature.
- dthree
"I would love to be a fly on the wall in Redmond" - things may be just as interesting in Cupertino.
- John Craft
Google's move is similar to MSFT's free browser play.
- Cliff Gerrish
I'm wondering how Apple's purchase of PlaceBace is going to play out. Are they going to ditch Google Maps on the iPhone?
- Matt Mastracci
I also have issue with the "less than free" thing as a new disruptive thing. Pay-to-play on a platform or a device is not new (e.g. anti-virus software).
- Hayes Haugen
@hayes yes, you're darn rite about Navteq thingie...
- A.T.
See-ming Lee 李思明 SML to See-ming's feed, SML Photography, SML Universe, Photo Gallery, Photography as Art, Fine Art Photography, Photographing, Fotograf, Funny Pics and Videos, Funny Funny, Photography United, Really Gay Room
Super Hero Photography by Agan Harahap #smllove #geek #photography #funny #wtf #art - http://www.rxfresh.com/rxfresh...
 |
Ertuğrul Erkan, cool_ni_ikou, Charlotte Mazeyrat and 5 other people liked this
I hate Facebook so much, I just deactivated my account.
Jason Huebel, Michelle Marie Miller, Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF and 54 other people liked this
Why?
- Jesse Stay
but did you delete it?
- LogEx
They bought Akiva's precious FF ;)
- Roberto Bonini
I did it a few years ago , it was gone for good not sure why I came back. You must hate FB as much as I do. jp
- johnpiercy
from iPhone
Jesse, it's the UI, mainly. I truly appreciate what Buchheit and the Gang are doing over there but the UI just makes me want to claw my eyes out. And I can't stand the never-ending stream of pokes, games, invites, et al. It's truly a spammer's paradise because it encourages your friends to just send crap to EVERYONE on their list with no discrimination. And, finally, it serves no...
more...
- Akiva Moskovitz
Does deactivating accomplish something beyond just never visiting the site? I mean I basically never go there and don't use it, but is there some additional benefit to deactivating?
- Ken Sheppardson
No more e-mail from it, at least. And, sure, I could go there and turn off e-mail notifications but why have the account there at all then? I'm still squatting on the name so no one can take it...
- Akiva Moskovitz
Deactivating also removes you from the search and, to your friends, it looks like you vanished since your photo/profile no longer appears in their friends' list.
- Rochelle
AGAIN????
- WorldofHiglet
I deactivated it once for a couple of months and then returned with everything intact. Did you remove it completely?
- Faraz Mullick
To be perfectly honest I can't stand FB either but I have an account there that just sits idle and collects dusts. But as Rochelle mentions deleting it only makes it harder for people to find & get in touch with you. Mine is essentially just there as a placeholder because a lot of times when people go to search for somebody they (for whatever reason) start with Facebook.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
Akiva, you should block more apps then - you can't do that on Twitter or FriendFeed. Have you tried the new Live feed? It's very similar to FriendFeeds. Also, have you tried the friend lists on Facebook? It's a much better experience once you start utilizing all that. I wouldn't necessarily blame the UI - I'd blame the community of 300 million+ people. That has its advantages as well.
- Jesse Stay
Nicholas, maybe he doesn't want to be found? :)
- Rochelle
Hard to blame you, dude.
- Josh Haley
Jesse, the issue I have with apps on Facebook is that it's like play whack-a-mole. I hide a dozen and then the next day, there are a dozen more. I want a button that says "hide all apps, forever and always".
- Rochelle
Yep, I just lost one of my friends. :(
- Christopher Harley
+1 Rochelle, I want a button like that too!
- Iain Baker
Jesse, what Rochelle said. If I could use it like I use FriendFeed and Twitter, I would. Also, the UI just seems claustrophobic to me.
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
I would agree. I avoided using Facebook all this time until a couple of months ago; around the time FF announced they were moving to Facebook. I don't particularly like the interface of Facebook either, nor do I quite understand anything that's going on. It seems so cluttered and confusing. I much prefer FriendFeed, however, let's be honest, FF probably isn't going to be growing anymore and the future seems to be on the side of Facebook.
- Kittyburgers
I can't stand FB either... the only reason I keep the account is that occasionally people find me that wouldn't have otherwise that I would like to get in touch with again. But I'm terrible about all my friend requests piling up. About once every couple of months or so I venture in and add as many as I can stand before being overwhelmed by the clunkiness of it and having to leave.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Everyone, note that I had typed 'deactivated' and not 'deleted'.
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
Facebook feels like an awkward pair of orthopaedic shoes.
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
well you and Scoble are the two extremes now :))
- ffcode
Rochelle, you have to admit it's still better than Twitter - you can't even hide the apps in Twitter
- Jesse Stay
FriendFeed would have gotten to the same point if it got to be the size of Twitter
- Jesse Stay
and Twitter will only get worse the closer to Facebook's size that it gets
- Jesse Stay
is it true that you can't really delete the accounts just put them on ice?
- metalerik
metalerik, no, that's not true
- Jesse Stay
That is an interesting point. It was been a major issue here in Canada with the privacy commission. That fact that accounts were "put on ice" and not actually deleted was causing a problem for Facebook in this country. Apparently, this issue has been resolved, but it a problem with many social networking sites (dating sites, especially).
- Kittyburgers
from IM
There are apps IN Twitter? I thought there were just apps that used Twitter... I've never felt overwhelmed going to the Twitter website and looking at my account...
- Her Lindsay-ness
http://lite.facebook.com Also the selective hide they've added in helps tons. Finally I can hide Farm Town without hiding my friends or blocking the app.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Lindsay, what's the difference? I still see their updates in my feed, and on Twitter I can do nothing about it.
- Jesse Stay
Daniel, thanks - I was going to suggest that as well.
- Jesse Stay
*You have a de-activated people on facebook invitation. [Join DAPOF] [Ignore]*
- Micah Wittman
DANNNNNG. The only reason I keep my FB account is because it's a nice way of keep in touch with my students and alums through work. That and my ever changing quippy, and witty status updates.
- Derrick
Fortunately. You have a choice. I cancel mine, I don't get to talk to anyone anymore.
- Clark Baumgartner 蔵明 馬武刀
from iPhone
Akiva, I'm with you and Lindsay on the mind numbing UI. Thus far the overall experience when I'm there is just stultifying, and not for any one reason. Can't wait to see the Akiva FB time capsule unboxing 50 years in the future. Oh look at these game invites - somebody somewhere is still waiting with baited breath for my response, how quaint.
- Micah Wittman
I want to block all the GD causes ... i just ignore it all
- johnpiercy
@Jesse - I have no app updates on my Twitter feed... is that something you have to subscribe to? In Facebook it's total spam but I don't see anything like that on Twitter. I'm not understanding your comparison.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Wow Lindsay you haven't gotten any Mafia invites, or "so and so unfollowed you" @mentions, or "thanks for following me" DMs? If you haven't yet, you will. The bigger Twitter gets the more that stuff will appear.
- Jesse Stay
So I should just hold off on Friending you Akiva? :D
- CW™
@Jesse - I get @replies sometimes... but I don't follow a lot of people and not really obsessed with growing my followers on Twitter so I guess I don't see the "thanks" replies. I have no idea what Mafia invites are. I think Twitter is all about who you follow.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Jesse - you can't block apps on friendfeed, but you certainly can set your custom searches to ignore things. I have blocked every damn app there is, but there isn't a way to block all "which pair of Edward Cullen's pants" surveys, because they don't come from an app, each one is a new app all it's own.
- Matthew DeVries
Lindsay, you're missing out on why I hate Twitter then. If you bring the same people on Facebook over to Twitter, you'll see Mafia invites. That will happen eventually if Twitter continues to grow. The problem with Twitter is you can't opt out of those.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, you make a fair point about being able to hide individual apps on Facebook when you can't on Twitter but that's still not enough of a sell over the rest of Facebook's endless annoyances.
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
Jesse - if you're using vanilla twitter, you're right on all of that, but nobody uses vanilla twitter. All of the Twitter apps have custom searches that you can tune exactly how you want them, and with the grouping feature rolling out within the month, that becomes even more powerful. Just like on Friendfeed, you're not supposed to stick your face into the main firehose. That's in the background.
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew, and FriendFeed is owned by Facebook now - guess who owns that technology? Not Twitter. :-)
- Jesse Stay
Matthew, you can block Mafia dms in TweetDeck or Seesmic? (outside of using SocialToo to do that for you)
- Jesse Stay
You don't look at your DM's. You look at a filtered list of your DM's.
- Matthew DeVries
The other problem is Twitter doesn't separate apps from non-app data. I can't filter by only status update (you can do that in Facebook - just go over to the left, click "more", and "status updates")
- Jesse Stay
Matthew, I can do that with Facebook in TweetDeck/Seesmic as well. I think we're talking about native sites here.
- Jesse Stay
I don't think anyone talks about native when it comes to Twitter. Twitter is Twitter apps, and mobile devices. Scoble has said 95% of his twitter activity (sending, sorting, reading, processing) is on his iPhone.
- Matthew DeVries
The only thing that bugs me about Twitter is the silliness of the 140 character limit.
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew, so is Facebook. The advantage Facebook has is its native UI is much more rich than Twitter's native UI so people actually use it.
- Jesse Stay
I don't know anyone who uses apps to view facebook. I don't even know what facebook app would do. I know what apps on facebook are, but a facebook viewing app?
- Matthew DeVries
I do like Facebook's iPhone client. If there were a similar desktop app, I might be more forgiving. But Facebook's web UI is as horrible as Twitter's but for each their own reasons.
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
@akiva the lite.facebook.com is like the iphone app look and feel
- Jorge Escobar
I hate myspce more.
- Patrick
Matthew, both TweetDeck and Seesmic let you view Facebook. You can set up filters there just like you can for Twitter. I think any lack of filtering in that case is the app's fault.
- Jesse Stay
Akiva, be sure to take advantage of the facebook lists - remember you can also drag any list to the top and it becomes your default news feed. Also, as I said to Matthew, there are several Facebook desktop clients, some of them which also support Twitter.
- Jesse Stay
Akiva, also, what Jorge and Daniel said. http://lite.facebook.com is much more like the iPhone app.
- Jesse Stay
Actually yeah, Lite blocks all apps and annoying nonsense. It's a cleaner looking version of the Facebook I joined when I was in high school. You'll miss chat and instant notifications, but perhaps those things don't mean much to you.
- Clark Baumgartner 蔵明 馬武刀
Wow, Lite is amazing! That is fan freakin tastic. I will never be asked again which NFC quarterback's jock would make the best emperor of a small caribean country
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew, that's the power of Facebook - you have choice :-)
- Jesse Stay
Seriously though - try that "Status Updates" filter I mentioned above. It filters by just status update. Drag it and drop it to the top of the lists and it's now your default in Facebook.
- Jesse Stay
I'll keep all of these things in mind if I ever do decide to reactivate my account. None of it, however, answers the fact that Facebook offers me nothing that I can't already get somewhere else.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I am pretty sure I read that most Twitter users use the Twitter.com site. I'll share the link if I can find it.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
from iPhone
Annoyingly, they have a hidden trick, too - it'll seem that your account is "inactive", but the very moment you log in, even just to change a setting, without intent to use the service fully, they end up reactivating the account silently.
- Tyson Key
RE Twitter, http://tweetstats.com/twitter... says "web" only accounts for 32.6% of... well... of something.
- Ken Sheppardson
good for you, Akiva. I'm not sure why I'm still there.
- Jim Hearts FF
Totally didn't expect the explosion of comments on this!
- Akiva Moskovitz
32.6% of today's tweets. I believe I saw another chart that showed that most tweets come from a hardcore subset of users. Consider that the majority of Tweeters didn't tweet at all yesterday, and then wonder which client they use. Oh hey, here's the study I was talking about earlier: http://friendfeed.com/ricmac...
- Daniel J. Pritchett
If I want FB to replace FF somehow--I hate it too. If I approach it as a different thing, it sucks less. YMMV.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
Daniel: Heh. So among people who don't actually use Twitter, the web is the most popular client, eh? ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Exactly. The majority of twitter's userbase did not tweet yesterday. http://www.twitstat.com/churn... I believe if Scoble tweets 100 times in a week from Tweetie and I tweet once in a week from Web then we are counted equally in the twitstat Churn chart.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
I sorta think the "last 4 tweets" methodology in the study you link is pretty flawed. That includes all users who signed up, posted via the web, then abandoned, no? (I guess I should probably read the whole study). Would the day-to-day client stats vary wildly for some reason? If only 32.6% of the tweets yesterday came in via the web, wouldn't that be true for any arbitrary day and in aggregate?
- Ken Sheppardson
Ah, but that's per tweet vs per user... but so is the Rapleaf study. Hm.
- Ken Sheppardson
I'd guess that client choice correlates with tweet volume and follow count. If you're only following 5 people and you tweet twice a year you've got little motivation to branch out, no?
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Yup. BTW, I checked out of this thread earlier and only jumped back in when I noticed your comment re "most twitter users use the twitter.com site" and now that I actually *read* that comment... :-) Yeah, that makes perfect sense, and isn't inconsistent with only ~33% of *tweets* coming in via the web.
- Ken Sheppardson
To each his or her own. I use FB to keep in touch with grad school friends and people I meet at academic conferences. Well, that and to chat with my niece online. Her mom and dad control her online access and FB is one of the few places permitted (and even then the adults have password access to her account). And of course, I have a few scrabble games going on there. However, if I had those things elsewhere, I'd probably leave.
- Katy S
Katy, I think you bring up a good point: Facebook, for a lot of people, is a site they use by necessity. You're on Facebook because you have people with whom you want to communicate where you can't elsewhere either because they're not there (your niece) or because the convenience factor isn't there (your grad school friends). I think a lot of people feel like you do, too: they'd quit...
more...
- Akiva Moskovitz
+2 Akiva. I've also had the network effect bite me, as far as encouraging people to switch from Windows Live Messenger to Google Talk, or encouraging people to contact me on FriendFeed or Twitter. I'm no fan of Facebook, either.
- Tyson Key
Heh, I don't use a client for Twitter (other than, occasionally, my cellphone)*and* I stick my face in the FF firehose. I like to be unique??
- PENGUIN: MAJOR CAPS LOCK
from fftogo
Akiva - your last comment sums it up perfectly for me! I only keep a FB account since it seems to be the "default" for so many people I want to communicate with. For some of my friends (the real kind, not just the online virtual sort), FB is the only contact info I have.
- Eric Heinzman
Best quote from this thread: Facebook feels like an awkward pair of orthopaedic shoes. - Akiva Moskovitz lol!!!
- Carmen
Facebook is a time killer i think..!
- ★ Soner Gönül
If so many people, myself included, hate all these crappy little mafia war type requests, then why doesn't facebook just let you click a button and have them all go away forever? Is it that they make too much money off these things? Is it that they don't want to piss off all the developers of this spam? I'd think empowering the user to have a better experience should be higher up on facebooks priority list.
- Thomas Hawk
from iPhone
TH, I think because only the techies hate the games and other crappy apps. The majority of the 300mill users are non-techies and actually they love those things. I just need to look at the friends and family I have. Only the techies do not regularly spam me with app invites and status updates about their effing farm or mafia crap.
- Travis Koger
Opting out of apps forever is a bit of a scorched earth policy and I doubt the FB folks are ready to give up on apps. Maybe FB could offer more granular control of apps - only show me business related apps from this particular friends list; auto-block any games from my high school classmates. This would require some moderation and filing of the apps into categories though.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
So did i because it takes my time more than i can imagine. Facebooks sucks.
- Mehmet Ali Akyol
Damn.
- © b e e n s w a n k
I actually *want* to like Facebook, since that's where most of my family and closest friends hang out, but the UI is like a Lovecraftian nightmare, only less warm and cuddly. The funny thing is, I've pretty much dropped my Friendfeed participation to zero in spite of the superior UI and community, simply because I'm spending all my socnet time on my phone, and BuddyFeed is really pretty awful when compared to Tweetie and the Facebook app.
- Roger Benningfield
Roger, I hear ya. The iphone Facebook app makes Facebook mildly more tolerable than the web UI and I'm hard at work on a new project to bring Tweetie's goodness to FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/akiva.... If you have any requests, comments, demands, daydreams, etc., please let me know in that thread.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, you mean Tweetie 2 right, because Tweetie 1 was just like all the rest =P.
- Travis Koger
I got tweetie 2 yesterday. I tell you. its awesome.
- Roberto Bonini
@roberto: Tweetie 2 is indeed awesome. In fact, I'd call if perfect if they'd just steal a couple features from Twittelator.
- Roger Benningfield
Travis, yep, yep, Tweetie 2. My /b/.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Coooool, as your Friendfeed iPhone Post comment says, Tweetie Goodness. Drop-drag refresh is one of my favourite little funcs on that app, but agree about replication.
- Travis Koger
It's becoming trendy to say you hate facebook. Everyone said FB was the greatest thing since sliced bread when it was just them and myspace. I promise you would see the same kind of backlash toward FF if it ever got even half as big as FB. Just beacause you choose to have a minority opinion about something doesn't make you cool, it just makes you elitist.
- Jason Williams
from iPhone
I've never liked Facebook, Jason, and I've never even had a MySpace account. I was very reticent to get in on the whole social networking thing. I signed on to Facebook and was unimpressed. Twitter was okay. I liked SocialThing a lot but it was FriendFeed that really got the ball rolling for me. Nice try, though, Jason.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Facebook hate has been trendy here on FF for as long as FF has existed, Jason. There are legitimate reasons to rebel against social media's version of Microsoft.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
You either love it or hate it but you can't do without it once you get entangled.
- Bill Masson
With respect to all the opinions, and as much as I resisted creating a Facebook account myself, can one really deny the fact that Facebook, with all it's faults, is really where most of "the action" is these days?
- Kittyburgers
from IM
@Kittyburgers (love that name, by the way). If you're younger, it's almost, unequivocally, where all the action is. More specifically, those of us that have grown up with it as our primary social network from the start. It's really hard to move all 200 people from high school and 150 people from college to a different network, when they themselves have people that won't move. Where else would they go anyway?
- Clark Baumgartner 蔵明 馬武刀
Facebooks STOP THE MADNESS!!!!! http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Thomas Hawk
Thomas: Thank goodness I'm not that popular... :)
- Holger Eilhard
Deleted mine a couple of months ago
- Michelle Marie Miller
Perfectly demonstrated, Thomas.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Seriously? Wow. But how will you play Mafia Wars? Or build your L'il Green Patch or know which character you are in a TV series that you never watch?
- Kevin Pedraja
Thomas, I think you just nailed it.
- Ha3rvey (not Akiva)
Every day I go to Facebook and there is more crap. Today? No, I don't want to "become a fan" of Mafia Hot Models. No I don't want to Vote for Cathy to be the next Panasonic LiHD Insider! No, I don't want to become a fan of "Six Degrees Of Separation - The Experiment". I don't want the "yacht game invitation" or the "zynga poker gift request," etc. I shouldn't have to continuously clear all this spam crap off my page. I should be able to push a single button and have all of it disappear forever.
- Thomas Hawk
I've gotten into the habit of blocking everything. Probably hundreds of things by now, and it starts to be come manageable. There are only so many "applications" my friends can use. Some of the other stuff is strictly ads, like "Become a fan of X because Y and Z did," which can't be avoided unless you're using an adblocker (which may or may not block those...,).
- Clark Baumgartner 蔵明 馬武刀
I did that once. Ultimately I re-activated it but set everything so that basically people can send me messages, and nothing else. Every so often someone from the past pops up & it's worth it, I guess.
- Friday Lo is Friday!
Account Temporarily Unavailable. Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes. Uh oh. I hope someone at Facebook isn't pissed at me.
- Thomas Hawk
The other thing Facebook should let you block is all friend suggestions from either Facebook or other users. These are a pain too.
- Thomas Hawk
the other thing is you should be allowed to block all events out of your immediate area or at least out of California. It's really hard to tell where some of the events that you get invited to are and I can already tell you I'm not going to the social networkers anonymous black tie masquerade party in Miami Florida next month. Why should I even be forced to look at these. Couldn't facebook simply filter out all non California events at my request?
- Thomas Hawk
I wasn't speaking about you specifically Akiva so it's wasn't a "try". You have your own reasons to dislike Facebook and some of them may be valid. My point is that, like music or tv, if you don't like a specific band or show you just don't watch/listen. That is not the case here. Instead of just not using Facebook you found it necessary to announce it. Why is that? I'm sure it's a...
more...
- Jason Williams
Well, Jason, I'm not going to play patty-cake with you when it appears that you're not really here to do anything other than to make assumptions about my motives that would be insulting if any of them were near to true. And, if you know how to change the radio station, then you know how to ignore my feed, too. Take your own advice.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Bravo Akiva!
- Jorge Escobar
from IM
Jason, I think lot of us "announce" things here all the time. Sometimes it's what we ate for breakfast or a good movie that we saw or that the clerk at the DMV was a jerk or whatever. Why assign negative motivations to Akivas post? Do you think it's hip and cool to be an anti-anti-facebooker? If you don't like his post, why not simply hide it? Why the need to announce that you don't...
more...
- Thomas Hawk
from iPhone
HATE ON ME, HATERZ. *eyeroll*
- Derrick
I could never hate on _you_ Derrick.
- Sparky, a big deal
Why is every single person with that name a deaux schnozzle? One guy with that name, an arrogant loaf of a point guard, the other blew his limozine driver's head off with a shot gun and got away with it.
- Matthew DeVries
Ehn, I think there were some nuggets in Jason's post but nothing I support wholeheartedly - especially when he's wrong about it being different from Music or TV. You should see indie band elitists or people that are too cool to watch TV. Akiva can do what he wants and Jason can hide it...,
- Clark Baumgartner 蔵明 馬武刀
Akiva, I did make assumptions about your motives which you never confirmed or denied and so be it. You are entitled to your opinion and if you dislike Facebook and want to announce it fine. I'm not subscribed to your feed nor did I go searching for it but this was on "best of the day" at the time. My beef, besides the whole hate Facebook bandwagon is that it seems unwarranted. The...
more...
- Jason Williams
Thomas, I get the whole announcing part but I still stand by my interpretation of his motives. I respect you but I would think you could say something more constructive than throwing my words back in my face. He had an opinion and I had an opinion about his opinion. Isn't that how discussion works or is that only if you agree with the mass?
- Jason Williams
Clark, thanks but I think I was unclear or you misread me (or maybe I'm misreading you lol). I was trying to say it was no different than Music or TV. What I meant was that some people here were treating it like it was different.
- Jason Williams
Jason, first, sorry if I was a bit short with you. My daughter was in surgery at the time an my stress levels were through the roof. At any rate, if I was unable to defend my initial statement, then yeah, I'd probably be ripe for the accusation of just bandwagoneering but I feel like I explained and then defended my reasons for disliking Facebook in my comments. And I posted this mainly...
more...
- Akiva Moskovitz
Looks like Facebook's listening to us: http://www.pheedcontent.com/click...
- Akiva Moskovitz
The new Facebook feed really rocks and shows mostly items that your friends are engaging on. This changes Facebook fundamentally.
Beau Liening, Matt Ellsworth, Sean Rasmussen and 30 other people liked this
better or worse than Friendfeed??
- Roberto Bonini
It still stinks at memory/intuitive usage though. Here is what I mean as an example. A relatively new user goes to upload a picture. They figure it out, and then sign off. Two days later they want to upload another picture. They can't remember exactly how they did it, and are stuck trying to figure out the process all over again like they had never done it before. It's too busy. Two...
more...
- Robert Campbell
:-)
- Jesse Stay
Roberto: in some ways it's better but I'm still getting used to it. I miss the real time comments, though that pop up here.
- Robert Scoble
While I like it, it's not intuitive. Example: friend asked me what the difference is between the "News" feed and "Live" feed. I explained it to her, and she asked how it was better then "highlights". I preferred "highlights" for displaying highly engaged items, myself, but I see the value to the two new systems. Time will tell. Knowing Facebook, they likely won't roll back the feature, and keep powering forward.
- Mike Nayyar
If they fix the comments and likes to push things back up to the top, highlights won't be necessary because the more active items are still seen (regarding the live feed, which is all that matters) :-)
- Jesse Stay
it is better, but hope it doesn't usher in the untimely death of friendfeed
- Stuart
Stuart: no, that won't happen until next year but you can see the trend. Twitter and Facebook are getting new features (and Facebook has 200 people working on its engineering team). FriendFeed has almost no one working on it anymore. So, next year you'll see Facebook and Twitter both pass FriendFeed's feature set. Until then we're happy here!
- Robert Scoble
Only thing I do on Facebook is play Farkle. Gotta be really bored for that too.
- MicahBear78
When you log in, you get the same News Feed as before. When you click Live Feed you see EVERYTHING in your feed - and comments and likes seem to push things to the top. But my latest update failed to show in the News Feed: it only appeared in the Live Feed.
- Michael Slattery
I like the new facebook features, very freindfeed´ish but i also miss the highlights section. I would like to have both, but maybe that´s only me
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
I wonder how the system used to choose what to show you in the highlights section. And is it using some algorithm to SELECT what it shows in Live Feed? (Instead of EVERYTHING as I thought above.)
- Michael Slattery
Michael, I think Live feed shows you everything, except those you've hidden. That's the difference from when they had the live feed before. Before you couldn't choose to hide people in your live feed. Also, be sure to use the filters on the left - make some friend lists and filter your live feed by friend list.
- Jesse Stay
So when are they going to allow asymmetrical friending and FoaF?THAT'S what's going to change Facebook fundamentally.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
from iPhone
FB live is really awesome - but buggy!!
- Susan Beebe
I like the direction the new features are heading, but it still needs better hide and filter customization.
- Tony, Paradox of FF
Agreed. The new Facebook live feed is great and a huge step forward.
- Alex Knight
Oh, I agree so much with this post. So many people are not loving it but it really rocks. Fast and vast amounts of information, quickly being able to see what friends, family, contact, networks are up to. While updating live! I love it.
- Travis Tasset
This is circulating on FB: "If you dont like the new FB here is how you can change it back to the old. Look to the top left menu and click on MORE. Then drag STATUS UPDATES to the top. After dragging to top, click on it. That becomes your default and it is like before."
- Michael Slattery
Except it's not the same: "Status" only gives you updates, without links, photos or notes.
- Michael Slattery
RT @TechCrunch Yahoo Mail And IM Users Update Their Status 800 Million Times A Month http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Bertrand Doux, Burcu Dogan, Bruce Lewis and 3 other people liked this
What does this mean? “Flickr delivers more photos in a week via the inbox than those that get uploaded to Facebook in one month.” What is "deliver via the inbox"?
- Paul Buchheit
I assume they are referring to when you add flickr photos and your contacts see them appear in Yahoo Mail. Strange that they would compare viewing/sharing with uploading.
- Daniel Sims
Yeah, odd statistic
- Jesse Stay
I like that Yahoo is starting to connect all their various properties. Something Google really hasn't done at all.
- Daniel Sims
Yahoo Search Adds Google Results To Search Filters - http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-s...
Bertrand Doux liked this
Live Blogging Yahoo Investor Day 2009 http://searchengineland.com/live-bl... tip @techmeme
Bertrand Doux liked this
dannysullivan: @yahoo: "We deliver more photos via mail in a week than get posted on Facebook in a month" http://bit.ly/33hB53 - http://twitter.com/dannysu...
Bertrand Doux liked this
Time Spent On Yahoo Homepage Up 20 Percent Since Redesign - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Bertrand Doux liked this
Other ways to read this feed:
