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Pascal Bouvier › Likes
What companies should have an iPhone app, but don't? I'm thinking Soutwest, MyCokeRewards...?
Martin Seibert, Pascal Bouvier, niccolomagnani and 10 other people liked this
Funny you should say that. My wife and I discussed Southwest's lack of presence on iPhone just this morning. The weather in much of the country right now is perfect for a "Want to Get Away?" iPhone Campaign.
- David J. Hinson
it looks like someone made an iphone app for Southwest, but they had to take it down :(
- Sarah Perez
Friendfeed - but theirs is in the queue apparently :)
- Patrick Jordan
heh, spelled southwest wrong
- Sarah Perez
@Patrick fftogo.com is pretty hot...but I hear a native app is coming, too....can't freakin' wait for that!
- Sarah Perez
How about every fast food restaurant. Order your food before hand and get notified when ready.
- Robert Chute
I tried fftogo a while back and ended up going back to the main FF site - I've also tried the Nambu native app - but I also can't wait to see the genuine FF native app :)
- Patrick Jordan
Definitely Southwest.
- Kevin Bondelli
Starbucks...the iTunes thing doesn't count because it's not available for most of us
- Bwana ☠
my stealth startup
- Pascal Bouvier
the iphone interface for FF seems great to me, what more could an app offer?
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Marshall: subscribe/unsubscribe, block, reshare, realtime
- Mark Trapp
ok, makes sense. and maybe easier media sharing?
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
from IM
I often wonder... When people say "iPhone app" do they really mean "something that works well on my iPhone" or do they really _always_ want to go to the app store and download something?
- Ben Hedrington
Marshall: that, too. I'd like to see more usability improvements, as well. To access specific rooms and lists requires a lot of refreshes of pages. It'd be nice if I could access my rooms and lists using an App tab rather than a link on a web page.
- Mark Trapp
the upcoming app will make use of the camera for faster sharing
- Sarah Perez
can we get back to the question about companies (beside friendfeed!) in need of an iPhone app? I really want to hear your suggestions. =)
- Sarah Perez
I wonder if FF is developing a bookmarklet for mobile safari. Added: Sorry, Sarah. :( Because of the phone's limitations my app space is filled with utility tools. The iPhone interface for mobile safari is sufficient for me... For example, I would never purchase or install the Chipotle app (that disappeared)
- Mona Nomura
LOL, leave it to friendfeeders to turn every discussion into one about friendfeed...ha ha
- Sarah Perez
Sorry Sarah - my bad on FF mention. How 'bout Geico - the iPhone is easy enough for a caveman and all that ...
- Patrick Jordan
Target, Gamestop, Best Buy, Nike, XM Radio/Sirrus, Coca Cola, Soccer.com, Marriott, Expedia.com (and all foreign partner companies), Amazon, Amtrak, Virgin America/Atlantic, Jiffy Lube, Kodak
- Amani
@Patrick no worries! :) Geico, hmmm...yeah...
- Sarah Perez
@Amani Whoa. big list! Except Nike and Amazon have apps already...have to check those other ones though...
- Sarah Perez
@Sarah - you asked! :) Yes, I wasn't sure about all of them, but some of those would be easy IMO. Are you working on a special project? My mind is racing with ideas.
- Amani
The car companies maybe? I remember Jaguar doing something in early iPhone days. They could possibly do something cool with multimedia, letting you try out different colors / add-ons etc. via an iPhone app before having to go in person ...
- Patrick Jordan
A "New Apple Products" app? ;)
- Tyson Key
@Amani No, it's a great list :) thank you! Yes, I'm writing this up.
- Sarah Perez
ING
- Devon Campbell
from NoiseRiver
Newspaper Deathwatch app?
- Tyson Key
@Tysen I love the NYT and AP news apps
- Sarah Perez
Like Jason, I'd vote for some more good newspapers / print publications ...
- Patrick Jordan
thx all, writing it up!
- Sarah Perez
Ben, I wonder the same thing because Southwest has a mobile presence which has served me well the past 4 years. And no, I don't have an iPhone.
- Admiral Anika
Sarah - bit late now obviously, but one more ripe category I think = more fast food chains (Chipotle borught out an app that lets you order on the iPhone last week) - also, I linked to your post, at: http://tinyurl.com/9jlhkz
- Patrick Jordan
more companies don't have iphone apps because apple has made the process onerous and expensive. Even after you jump through all the hoops to make one, you are not able to distribute it because it is "waiting in line" for them to review it. These companies don't have them because they are being fiscally responsible in a down economy. A mobile web interface is a much cheaper and more flexible choice. But since the iphone browser is pretty good with regular websites, there's not so much pressure to do that.
- jacob robbins
I don't see all this 'approval' crap with my Blackberry. I can run pretty much anything that is JRE based. I don't need to ask my provider's permission either.
- Ian May
This approval stuff (or lack of it) is why I like Symbian OS, for what it's worth. At least I know there isn't a Big Gatekeeper(TM) preventing me from installing what I want, where I want and how I want...
- Tyson Key
I would like to know, whiche companies actually have apps already. Can you help me here? - http://ff.im/3746S
- Martin Seibert
Any recommendations for detective series books? I love Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch. I don't like sci-fi. Love forensic science but lost interest in Patricia Cornwell's latter work. tia for any suggestions.
Darren Heydon, Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie), Pascal Bouvier and Steven Perez liked this
Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series, if you're in the mood for something dark. John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey if you want something light.
- Steven Perez
hey thanks! I have read Faye and Jonathan Kellerman - will check the others out. I'm addicted to audio books.
- BEX
I second Kellerman. If you want something soft and fun, the Sue Grafton novels are a kick in the pants. Dan Simmon's Darwin's Blade is awesome. I know you said you don't like sci-fi, but neither did I until I read Asimov's Robot novels with Elijah Bailey. Why did I read them? Looking for a detective series.
- Admiral Anika
MATT!! LOL You got me - I googled it.
- BEX
any novel by henning mankell with kurt wallender as the detective, any novel by sjowall and wahloo with martin beck as the detective.
- Pascal Bouvier
BEX -- I am also a Michael Connelly fan and am reading The Brass Verdict at the moment. If you like Connelly, you might also like Lee Child, Robert Crais, David Baldacci, Dennis Lehane, Jeffery Deaver and Stuart Woods.
- Sean McBride
@ Pascal - I'm addicted to Henning Mankell and Kurt Wallender!
- BEX
Which is your favorite free Wordpress theme and why?
Jack Wilson, K4SAC, Nick Humphries, Kol Tregaskes and 8 other people liked this
check out my blog , i just changed my theme. www.mymailbook.com
- Reinhardt
free themes need to be heavily customized which for some people is rather impractical.
- TrafficBug
There are so many !! I can´t decide ..
- Thomas Bøhm
Freemium´s nice and The Morning After.
- Thomas Bøhm
The one I ported is my favourite. see www.gexiaofei.com
- feir
I changed my theme to Thematic. 13 widget-ready areas made my work quite simpler.
- Çağdaş
Vistered Little is fun... Mandigo as well.
- Lou
"Milk as White" from http://www.plaintxt.org/2006...
- TrafficBug
There are lots of themes I like. I especially love themes that are clean and simple.
- rampantheart
After much searching, discussion, and reading others' opinions I've decided Thesis is the one because they support it and if new versions of WP or common plug-ins or widgets cause problems they'll fix them.
- Internet Strategist
Grid Focus by Derek Punsalan (5thirtyone.com). Great minimalist theme.
- Lyonel Kaufmann
WicketPixie by Chris Pirillo
- Stephen
una by Dina Latoga (dinolatoga.com)
- Yasin Müderrisoğlu
Mike Little's Journalized
- TrafficBug
Using Horacio's GimpStyle theme, because it had a perfect spot to post my boy's picture: www.babyrhodes.net
- Fleagle
anyone use thesis theme ?
- feir
mymailbook.com looks good to me
- TrafficBug
Friendfeed isn't dead yet. Friendfeed is indexable by Google. Facebook's "public" feed is not yet indexable. They are moving toward a public model, though.
Opensource Obscure, Susan Beebe, Matthias Schwenk and 56 other people liked this
That's a HUGE difference between the two services. What I do here is for everyone and all services to index. Over on Facebook only my friends can interact wholly.
- Robert Scoble
With Twitter growth and now Facebook, an uphill battle awaits Robert
- Mrinal Desai
Twitter, facebook and friendfeed are the 3 things Google has to Gobble up anyhow, at any price. By hook or crook.
- Hardeep Singh Dang
Facebook is still - in large part - a walled garden. That creates advantages and disadvantages for them at this point. What we know (because the essential rules rarely change) is that in the long term walled gardens fall.
- Brian Roy
Are "normal people" on FB yet? lol
- David
open wins
- kosmar
As far as I'm concerned FB is to commercialized and too much like AOL and MySpace. Not interested.
- CW™
but Robert, only my geek friends are on FriendFeed. Everybody else is on Facebook, including my geek friends. Facebook is a far more significant service than FF right now. Point taken about google index though
- David Jacobs
Facebook is Sam's Club (members only, watch and do only what they let you). Friendfeed more like is the public library, wikipedia. or the open web.
- LogEx
As I mentioned on Twitter, Friendfeed is a pretty specific set of functions, where FBook spends too much time trying to be a social media operating system. I think FFeeds focus gives it a huge competitive advantage over Facebook. It is way easier for FriendFeed to be an awesome social feed service, where Facebook also has to be awesome at a whole bunch of other things. Facebook is trying to do too much and I think its going to be a disadvantage for them.
- Ross Rader
No Logical Extremes, MySpace is Sam's Club. Facebook is maybe Target. FriendFeed is some smelly Magic the Gathering card room ;)
- David Jacobs
Should we all take bets on whether Robert will be working for Facebook in the near future?
- Brian Sullivan
Actually, I think Twitter growth helps Friendfeed. People are getting accustomed to following a large number of people they'll never meet. Facebook is the service that I'd worry about. It has to stay closed to be useful to consumers, but needs to open up to be relevant in the marketplace. They're boxed in.
- Dennis Best
Are you suggesting that Friendfeed will be dead Robert? Once Facebook has opened completely?
- Nick O'Neill
David, LOL. But Facebook is definitely not Target because I can walk into a Target without being a member and pay cash, and not have my personally-identifiable behavioral data put into a dossier to be sold later.
- LogEx
I've said it before and I'll say it again. It isn't about one taking from the other... it is about growing the market in total. Combine the # of users of Facebook, Twitter and FF and it is a TINY % of the potential market. Anything that brings users into the market is good for all (right now).
- Brian Roy
Nick: this is a significant challenge to friendfeed. It will be interesting to see how friendfeed differentiates itself.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I'm of the belief that FriendFeed has a great opportunity to track topics, content from throughout social media. Facebook will be limited to what your friends are up to. FriendFeed will be our curated, uber informaiton management service.
- Hutch Carpenter
As I always say, I wouldn't have found all of you on Facebook. Facebook is about friends, FriendFeed is about community.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
Lindsey/Brian: He's at a Facebook press conference, that's why he's saying a lot about Facebook.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Facebook's news feed doesn't page. That's boring. Once you've seen it, you've seen it.
- Thomas Hawk
@LindseyDragun: i totally agree with you: no offense to FFers, I know or have met some of you in RL, but I'm more interested in the ideas and shares here, and follow hundreds of cool people I'll never meet. But on FB, 100% of the people I've friended I know, through past schools, work, or social settings. These services fill two completely different purposes for me, and I don't really want to mix them together.
- .LAG liked that
Facebook's pushing a lot of interesting buttons but the UI is still a mess!
- Charlie Anzman
what is Facebook for: http://petronillapaperdoll.tumblr.com/post...
- PaperDoll
Facebook really is excited by FriendFeed.
- Hutch Carpenter
++ Hutch!
- Mona Nomura
robert, i think the three - twitter, friendfeed and facebook are three different aspects of a more realtime web. i think the only entity they threaten is google and whether google likes it or not, it needs to compete with them. i think it is not a competiton between one or the other for now. if i was to bet, google would acquire a FF and get their grove on.
- Om Malik
if you google me, the first thing you get is my FF profile ;)
- Roberto Bonini
Of course Facebook is eating Friendfeed's lunch. Commenting and Liking are the two major features that FF does really well. Indexability is a nice addition but it's not THAT valuable in the grand scheme of things (just like searching on Twitter really isn't that much of a killer app as the early crowd are making out). It comes down to relevance of searches. It is rare to search for a specific comment that someone made, but common to search for an article or information.
- Tadhg Kelly
So that means that Friendfeed in reality is essentially Facebook for those that don't want to be on Facebook and deal with all of the rest of the stuff surrounding it. Which, as it turns out, is a smaller number of people than you may like.
- Tadhg Kelly
I dont have a FaceBook account, and i WONT, till they open to google indexing spiders. Internet must be an open place, only in this way knowlege can be spread, like in twitter and FF XD !
- Rocky
"isn't dead yet" implies that it's dying... is it?
- Pavel Senko
FB will always have much more than FF, and FF will always have much less. And thank god. At some point, a Yahoo vs. Google comparison will be in order.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Nice call (Yahoo vs. Goodle) - I can see that.
- James Hull
Hutch has it right in my opinion. FriendFeed is a data management service that transforms data into information. Part of that happens to involve the collection of personal (aka social) data. Facebook does not have this at its core - instead Facebook is firmly rooted in social interaction among defined people.
- AJ Kohn
in France, my friends didn't heard about Friendfeed, they only sware by Facebook ! that's why FF is not dead, and won't be dead ! it will become a new trend in the next months !! or not ?
- Alice Cordonnier
Facebook is the new AOL (in more ways than one).
- April Russo (app103)
But what I dislike that Facebook is lifting the stuff from FF ..and without acknowledging
- Varun Mahajan
Mark Zuckerberg, not exactly one for acknowledging, is he.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Yes, they pointedly mentioned Twitter yesterday, but (to me) pointedly avoided mentioning FF
- Chris Nuttall
From what I've read, Facebook's "Like" feature lacks FOAF functionality. Maybe it's better that their implementation not be associated with FriendFeed's. I imagine their version of "Hide" must be less useful too.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
@emp dude I'm so not old fashioned...if a man wants a woman to put out, he can't expect to just sit on his butt & wait for it :P
Ontario Emperor, Katie is Frittering, Pascal Bouvier and 6 other people liked this
You are sooooo old fashioned!!!
- RAPatton
Please...a little effort goes a long way
- Jennifer Van Grove
I always thought a little effort was rude....LOL
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
*wink*
- imabonehead
Rahsheen, let me back this up a bit...originally Alex (@emp) said I was old-fashioned for expecting interested men to actually pick up the phone & call me vs. just text. The pre-date phone call can't already be outdated, can it?
- Jennifer Van Grove
Uh..phone call? Why? Don't you have text messaging? :)
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Argh...I guess I am old fashioned :)
- Jennifer Van Grove
I sort of understand you Jennifer, but I am old school myself. ;-)
- Amani
Don't feel bad. I personally know many women who expect a phone call. I think it's more about the effort a guy puts into trying to engage with you than anything else. Hearing someone's voice will always be more personal.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
For me it's about feeling appreciated...I want to be excited about someone, but more importantly I want them to be excited by me...if they really want to pursue me they'll work a little bit harder then just an SMS message (or at least that's my logic)
- Jennifer Van Grove
But Jennifer, that path leads to caring for you as a human being; does that sort of notion really belong in our modern world?!!!
- RAPatton
The Pizza Cone - http://blogofhilarity.com/wp-cont...
 |
vijay, Mark Krynsky, Jeff (the マクダジ of FF) and 50 other people liked this
Take this, edible shooters!
- Mike Nayyar
from Bookmarklet
GROSS
- Mona Nomura
my chest started hurting when i looked at that.
- DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE
from fftogo
I want one. Nao!
- Phillip
WANT!
- Jon, the Beartato of '10
Just imagining that thing vs the size of my stomach puts me off it.
- Andrew C
don't want, thank you trying to lose SOME weight.
- InPerpetualMotion(Gina k)
اما وای به روزی که طعم و کیفیتش مطلوب نباشه
- IvI☺hаmmасI
Damn, this looks so good.
- Admiral Anika
that looks delicious
- andy brudtkuhl
Om nom nom
- Simon Wicks
WIN
- Josh Haley
Makes eating a pizza much easier.
- Andrew Trinh
from BuddyFeed
I wasn't aware the pizza-eating experience needed streamlining. =)
- Andrew C
Its so awesome. and yet. my heart!
- *Tiffany Diamond*
hmmmmmmm
- sofarsoShawn
++Tiffany Diamond, oh my... my heart was touched too... of dizziness.
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
Oh it looks so good its dirty.....;))
- John Flynn
Christ!
- david beckwith
I'd eat that.
- Tamar Weinberg
omg this is gross.
- anna sauce
This is my most win thread ever.
- Mike Nayyar
i think this idea was hatched on the steve martin movie, the jerk: cup o' pizza!
- Marie has inbox zero!
am now officially not eating for 20 days, this is gross.
- Pascal Bouvier
Google Responds To ‘Gfail’ Outage With Apps Status Dashboard - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Pascal Bouvier and Lu Tao liked this
Last night I bought into the meme that #'s of followers matter again. I was wrong. Again. Here's why:
Roman Zolotarev, Gordon Saunders, Patricia F. Anderson and 94 other people liked this
1. If you base your ego on something you don't control you'll continually be unsatisfied. Now we REALLY don't control how many followers you'll get. It's like winning the lottery. If you thought that winning the lottery mattered in some way to your life then you'll always be unsatisfied.
- Robert Scoble
2. The list of top Twitterers now has no integrity and everyone knows it, so being on that list no longer matters. It's sort of like the number of results that Google says it has. That number is a joke too and no one pays any attention to it.
- Robert Scoble
3. Who is listening to you has absolutely no impact on your life unless you are selling advertising. Who is TALKING to you DOES have an impact on your life. That's probably why I spend so much more time on friendfeed than on Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
4. Even if the list had some integrity there would always be someone more popular than you. Even Barack Obama will be passed someday.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, there is a saying in business. When somebody doesn't stop talking, it's marketing. When they shut up and listen, its sales.
- Patricia
Was it Twitter's "Suggested Follower" feature that's changed your mind Robert? http://tinyurl.com/cc66ow
- Jim Connolly
5. Talking to masses is fun and I hope everyone gets lots of friends to talk to because there is some value in having lots of people to respond to your questions or bring you the latest news, but I find when I wake up in the morning I head first to my list with only 150 people on it. Why? Intimacy is more important than popularity to humans.
- Robert Scoble
But how else can you tell who wins?
- Glen, Bespectacled Elder
Jim: yeah, that feature pissed me off last night. Why did I get pissed off? Because I bought into the meme that how many followers you have matters. But, it also reminded me that I am not in charge of how many followers I have. It is not based on any objective criteria (at least now, I thought it had at least something to do with objectivity and that you could earn followers by putting good content out. Now I see that you can earn followers by some subjective criteria and that led to this post).
- Robert Scoble
6. Due to http://search.twitter.com and friendfeed's search (and discovery items) you can have conversations with people without having any followers. So, having tons of followers is having less and less value as people go to Twitter search more and more (or use TweetDeck's search features).
- Robert Scoble
The list of top twitters has integrity - we know exactly what is and it's true to that - it's just not the way you would like it...
- yanwoo
@Glen: is twitter a contest?
- .LAG liked that
yanwoo: no, it has no integrity anymore. You have no idea why someone is at the top. You used to know, not anymore. Now if I worked at Twitter I could make someone go to the top of the list just by putting them on the suggested friends list.
- Robert Scoble
.LAG: all lists are contests. That's why they piss off so many people and why they are defended by people who are rewarded by them (me included).
- Robert Scoble
Robert: You will appreciate this then - How I deleted 23500 followers in 5 minutes (AND why I reset my Twitter account to zero.) http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2009...
- Jim Connolly
@LAG Some people obviously think so ;)
- Glen, Bespectacled Elder
Robert, the # of people following a person on twitter is a bit like a black box. Sure, we know all the accounts that are following someone, but we have no idea if those accounts are real people, marketing spammers, casual users, or something else. Until I can point at a users account and say "This is a real person, I know how to tell 100% of the time" then follower numbers are meaningless HS popularity contests. However, I do feel like once a person gets over a critical mass of real followers, the potential
- Daniel Spisak
re: #3... if you are saying good things, and people are listening and being informed or inspired to do good things, then it matters. Maybe not to you, but potentially to others.
- LogEx
...for crowdsourcing becomes possible and this is where Twitter has a lot of benefit to the user.
- Daniel Spisak
Jim: you are a braver man than me. Based on my talks with geeks who are increasingly finding themselves distracted and addicted by Twitter and friendfeed I would expect more people to do that in the future.
- Robert Scoble
Daniel: due to retweeting and Twitter search (and friendfeed) how many followers you have doesn't matter to crowdsourcing (as much).
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Thanks! It was getting stupid - Now, I can enjoy the small amount of time I spend on Twitter and DON'T NEED tweetdeck.
- Jim Connolly
I don't think this new feature of suggested users is any different from the throwback days of twitter when we had 10 highlighted users on the public timeline a year or so ago. why were you not beefin then? People received "extra credit" back then too.
- Liz
Glen, how will you know you've "won?" I judge myself off of how many times I get retweeted. That demonstrates readership, credibility, engagement, interest, etc. Those are attributes I like judging myself by. Not whether I won some popularity contest by figuring out how to get Biz or Ev to put me on some subjective list.
- Robert Scoble
The LA Times was also unhappy: http://bit.ly/Zp61T It doesn't bother me too much. There are plenty of lists online, so I won't get too worked up about Twitter suggesting people to follow. It would be nice if they allowed users to suggest who ends up on that list. But, as Robert points out, numbers don't matter, conversations do.
- Paul Rodriguez
@scoble, @glen —then, godd*mn, I'm getting my *ss kicked on twitter! i should give up. i'm so far behind, i'll never catch up. wonder if there are performance-enhancing drugs i can take to get back into the game. .LOLz
- .LAG liked that
Liz: I don't even remember that. But no one ever looked at the public timeline after Twitter got popular. It also didn't let you add one group with one click.
- Robert Scoble
Jeez, Robert, you just caused me to read that whole thread about Arrington, look at the Find People feature inTwitter, and try out Mr. Tweet. Spent an hour. Did it do me ANY good? I doubt it.
- Francine Hardaway
from twhirl
Paul: @leolaporte was unhappy. People who make their livings off of advertising find this stuff disturbing because Twitter can decide who will have businesses on its system (number of followers could translate into money. @techcrunch says that already 2% of his traffic comes from Twitter). Me? I'll have to earn my money the old fashioned way: good content.
- Robert Scoble
Francine: I think this stuff is all good. It causes us all to think about the tools we're putting so much of our lives into. Hope things are going well for you, can't wait until you're back in Half Moon Bay again. Let's go get a drink, I have lots of things to tell you when you're back.
- Robert Scoble
@scoble: perhaps it's the advertising model that's broken then.
- .LAG liked that
Robert, what are the big drivers of traffic to your money-making content among friendfeed/twitter/facebook/flickr/etc.?
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: my referrer page usually has Twitter #1, friendfeed #2, Google Reader #3. When I'm on Techmeme it usually jumps to #1 or #2 for a day.
- Robert Scoble
.LAG: bing! Bing! Bing! You win the award of the insight of the day award.
- Robert Scoble
Content drives traffic, so it's the quality of the Followers not thew quantity
- paul mooney
Facebook has tons more users than friendfeed. Funny that you don't get lots of traffic from there.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, it's hard for me to believe that you actually "bought into it" last night. You've stated numerous times and times again that followers don't matter and we understand what you are saying. But, if it is so hard to stand by what you preach, then don't preach at all.
- Michael Forian
Michael: I'm human. I fall into traps just as often as anyone else does. I make mistakes just as much as anyone else does.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: facebook does not have the expectation that you'll discuss science or technology or news. The stuff that comes into my news feed is generally pretty fun stuff, but is not that. When I put videos into Facebook, though, it brings me good views and engagement.
- Robert Scoble
@scoble: but otoh, what are the alternatives to advertising? yes great content is critical, but it doesn't guarantee revenue or viability by itself. and then if you're a site with great content, eventually, you too, will probably end up advertising. i think the guys from 37signals have some wonderful ideas about how to survive and thrive using a different model, it starts with not worrying about being so BIG.
- .LAG liked that
I'm yet to see any convincing proof Scoble's human :) No one's online THAT much.
- Jim Connolly
I was a little confused because you at one time were saying the number of followers shouldn't be included in a tweet pagerank (http://scobleizer.com/2008...), so using the number of followers in this context shouldn't make sense either. Or do you see them as different?
- Todd Hoff
.LAG: if I had some answers I would be implementing like mad.
- Robert Scoble
The number of followers does not matter... to a point. However if you are a business, charity or person with a strong message to get out you have to also remember that your message means nothing if people don't hear it. So while the number of followers should not matter to your ego or self-worth, it definitely matters when you are shouting on the rooftops. You need a huge number of followers to have a greater impact. To that end followers are extremely important.
- Patrick Allmond
Todd: I believe that even more today now that the follower popularity rank thing has been messed with by Twitter's fooling with it with a subjective choice.
- Robert Scoble
Patrick: that is true, sort of. I can get my message heard without having any followers. I've seen that proven over and over again lately. How? More and more people are reading http://search.twitter.com or Friendfeed. Let's do a test. You open a friendfeed account. No friends. You post something. You tell me about it. I'll like it. That will put that item into view of all my followers. So, how many followers do you really need? None.
- Robert Scoble
Patrick as right. The hard thing is that # of followers is one of many things that do matter, but that we can't completely control. We have to constantly adapt.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, Patrick is still right. What if Robert Scoble didn't have any followers? Who would you tell about your content then? Somebody has to have followers to make this work.
- Bruce Lewis
attachment = suffering
- William Harryman
"Zen and the Art of Tweeting" by Robert Scoble
- coldbrew
This is a great list and SO true! I still cannot figure out FriendFeed though. Many people who follow me on Twitter are just following to see if I will follow them back and are truely not interested in what I have to share and discuss as topics of interest.
- Hummie
Even if the list was correctly pointing out who is "the best Twitterer", why does it matter. Millions of people post that don't subscribe to anyone but just people they know. You need to not base your selfworth on the Internet and instead on your happiness.
- Jennifer
*in conclusion read the stream of "the REAL Shaq" his twitter diharreaha proves that # of followers doesn't mean the followed is spitting out gems
- sofarsoShawn
Would Scoble care about this if he were on it? I don't think so.
- coldbrew
Jennifer: if you are in the content business you are getting paid via advertising. Advertising is paid by "CPM" or, per 1000 readers/visitors, etc. Let's say you were making $25 CPM. Well, then, having another 10,000 readers is worth $250. If you can get those people to visit every week, that's a pretty nice chunk of change.
- Robert Scoble
coldbrew: I disagree. I am not allowed to accept gifts from the companies I cover. I cover Twitter, so getting this kind of reward isn't acceptable. I also care about the integrity of the communities and tools I use and interact with. I would definitely speak out about this feature and would pull my name out of it to protest that it was using subjective criteria to make people popular.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: I know a lot of people who have lots of followers. I bet I would be able to convince at least one of them to RT my messages. If not, I get traffic from http://search.twitter.com -- just write about something that's trending and you'll get followers from that.
- Robert Scoble
So, basically this boils down to $, like most things. Personal motivation is an interesting topic in itself. Anyone that checks their web analytics daily (pageviews/ uniques, email subs, rss subs, followers, friends, etc.) is simply on a completely different wavelength than myself.
- coldbrew
By that logic, Scoble, you should request FF to remove you from suggestions, as you do not know, specifically, the criteria for getting on such a list.
- coldbrew
coldbrew: yup, when you do this as a business those are the things you care about. My wife, though, isn't doing it as a business and she still is caring about lots of those things on her Facebook account. So, even people who don't do it for money care about things like who is following them. It's a huge trap to fall into and one that isn't very satisfying. Humans are weird, aren't they?
- Robert Scoble
Humans are weird for a lot of reasons, but caring about popularity and influence is not one of those reasons.
- Bruce Lewis
coldbrew: that is absolutely NOT true. I already figured out the algorithm for how friendfeed works. Did you know that I'm NOT on the default list there? Here, try it. Open a friendfeed account with no friends. First of all, it will recommend NO ONE. Huge difference from Twitter. Second, add someone who does NOT follow me. I will NOT be on the recommended list.
- Robert Scoble
coldbrew: friendfeed presents a different list to everyone who comes here. Its algorithm HAS INTEGRITY. It is based on the most popular person OF THE FRIENDS YOU ADD.
- Robert Scoble
Just asked my good buddy and girlfriend about how many friends they had on FB (they' barely know what Twitter is). GF, "200 something" and my buddy, "No idea", so I'm sure you are having an impact.
- coldbrew
coldbrew: on friendfeed no one is getting rewarded who did not earn that recommendation FROM THEIR FRIENDS. This is one reason I really like friendfeed. Friendfeed really engineers things a lot better than Twitter and thinks through the consequences of doing something wrong or removing integrity from the system.
- Robert Scoble
Seems to me it was pretty inevitable as Twitter got bigger that any sense of meritocracy w/ followers would dissipate. I suspect more things will crop up to counter it's importance and offer different views of the best and most interesting Tweeters. Stocktwits is probably an early example of how Twitter may get sliced up. If that is a trend that plays out then #1 tweeter will become a database statistic :-)
- yanwoo
Robert, that's only partial integrity. First, that process has an accelerating effect that makes the most popular even more popular. Second, it's popularity rather than interestingness.
- LogEx
It is still your perception of some method for bestowing authority, rather than concrete knowledge, that is leading you to the conclusion.
- coldbrew
Logical: that is true, but that happens in life anyway. It is based on meritocracy, though. I spent thousands of hours on friendfeed last year when people thought it wasn't important to pay attention to.
- Robert Scoble
I'm speaking facetiously about "winning," of course, though some people seem to think it's a contest. Twitter's a bullhorn; even the # of retweets is a factor of how many followers you have.
- Glen, Bespectacled Elder
I agree with Robert on this one, it is not the number of followers; it never can be the number of followers. What it should be about are people who like you, who you like, who you want to share information with. It should not be a clique, you need to allow new members in and allow for diversity of opinion, yet in the end it will always be about like minds, sharing information that has the ability to change the world, and if not the world, at least the location that you live in.
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
coldbrew: wrong. I've done extensive testing of the http://friendfeed.com/setting... feature and understand how that list was decided on. Plus, you can do your own tests to verify what I say. On Twitter the list is totally random and subjective.
- Robert Scoble
Glen: I disagree with you about RT's. I've seen people get massively RT'd who only had a few followers.
- Robert Scoble
Campbell, most of *us* knew where you were coming from at the outset. Your thoughts on retweeting are spot on.
- coldbrew
Scoble, edge-cases, especially anecdotal stories, aren't the stuff that comprises the guts.
- coldbrew
80/20 rule?
- coldbrew
coldbrew: You've got some good points to make, but it might be easier to move on if you'll first admit Scoble was right about friendfeed's recommendations.
- Bruce Lewis
coldbrew: oh, yes, there is an 80/20 rule here in place. Just like most of life.
- Robert Scoble
"admit Scoble was right about friendfeed's recommendations" You mean that they seem to be more equitable than Twitter? Or, something else?
- coldbrew
That one can empirically determine that Scoble isn't automatically on the recommended list. They aren't entirely a black box.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: they aren't a black box at all. You can very easily figure out who and why people are on the friendfeed list. Oh, and the list is infinite and you can't automatically add the entire list, so you've got to click one by one and add people that way. There isn't a huge reward for being on the list the way there is on Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, my only point was that a person with 62,798 followers has a statistically higher probability of getting retweeted than someone with only 281 followers. There's simply more chance of seeing what got tweeted in the first place.
- Glen, Bespectacled Elder
Glen: that's true, but is getting less and less true over time as more and more people use things like Search.Twitter.com. Anyway, I'd rather have 100 active followers who actually talk with me than 1,000 followers who are there just to collect my name on their follower list.
- Robert Scoble
Agreed, But the fact that Twitter's recommendations are a "black box" is not what indicated to me (a long time ago) that # of followers was not something to obsess over. Also note: FF does not make it easy to determine how many followers a given person has.
- coldbrew
coldbrew: true, but ffholic does that.
- Robert Scoble
Search only helps if you're happy to ride an existing trend. If you want to start a new trend it's useless.
- Bruce Lewis
I have 1000+ followers, but less then 100 I really know. So in essense, I have 100 followers
- Lorraine Ball
I don't use ffholic (it is funny that they use ASP.NET :-), but you'll notice FF obscures these numbers (probably based on values they would like to instill).
- coldbrew
When the community is small and relatively homogeneous, a scalar metric like follower count might be a reasonable proxy for influence/popularity. However, as the community gets larger, more diverse, and "multidimensional" a single metric like followers breaks down.
- Ken Sheppardson
It's a bit like eBay feedback: consider two members with a 1000, 100% positive feedback score. You can get that by buying 1000 fifty cent Pokemon cards or by selling a $X million worth of collectibles. The bare number means very little, at least when used to compare members.
- Ken Sheppardson
BIZ Stone's quote from the LA Times: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone acknowledged that offering “suggested users” wasn’t the ideal solution and suggested that the service might evolve to cater to particular users’ interests. “Right now it’s sort of like staff picks at your local bookstore,” he wrote in an e-mail.
- Jim Connolly
Your point is well taken, Sheppardson, that multiple variables should be considered. There was a rumor at some point that Twitter intended to monetize based on this suggestion "engine" which I do not believe had any merit. It is akin to allowing payment for organic SERP placement.
- coldbrew
I think it is ironic that one of the best gadget bloggers of our time, Ryan Block (who used to run Engadget), has 1/10th as many followers as his girlfriend, Veronica has. Veronica will see someday why this system has no integrity. Jim: that quote shows the kind of engineering care that Twitter puts into things. That might explain why I see the fail whale on a regular basis. Well, that just verifies that I made the right choice last year to spend much more time here on friendfeed than on Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I like FF better than Twitter and spend much more time here. You made the best choice in terms of quality. But I'm not convinced you made the best choice for driving traffic to your money-making content. Quality matters, but quantity matters too. It's a tough choice.
- Bruce Lewis
How much of Twitter's power comes from tight SMS integration, and why doesn't some "Twitter clone" just make a play for simple SMS services horizontally (B2B style)?
- coldbrew
Quality versus quantity. And at end of the day it doesn't matter *if* you're contributing good content and simply using the service. The follower number plays to a person's ego ... it is, in my opinion, a real drawback to the service. It encourages the wrong type of behavior. I think FF has intentionally made these stats less obvious for a reason.
- AJ Kohn
Bruce: friendfeed has been growing faster than twitter did in its first year. I'm pretty sure the quantity will show up here too. And, anyway, I do have a few followers on Twitter so I can reach the audience I want to reach.
- Robert Scoble
coldbrew: not much anymore. SMS mattered a lot more two years ago than it does today since the iPhone came along. It will matter even less in the future after more people get smartphones. But, yeah, it does matter a little bit today.
- Robert Scoble
Coldbrew: I think apps like http://www.tatango.com will provide the SMS glue. That's a cool company, I'll have a video of them up this week.
- Robert Scoble
I know about tatango. Funny you should mention that. They seem to be sitting on their hands
- coldbrew
"Intimacy is more important than popularity to humans" -Robert Scoble Or rather it is more important to those who are conscious of the love God puts inside all of us to act upon or not: (Matt.5:3) http://www.biblegateway.com/passage... (Psalm 42:7) http://www.biblegateway.com/passage...; And this brings into perspective what we enjoy as opposed to what we love.
- Melanie Reed
SMS matters a whole bunch b/c it makes the field more open. SMS was built on the pager tech and I can get SMS when I'm out of phone range.
- coldbrew
All these problems will be solved when twitter acquires friendfeed.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Ed, is that an opinion or are you airing fact ?
- atul abraham
from twhirl
Kambiz: I did not delete any comments here. Not sure what you are talking about.
- Robert Scoble
in our personal egoic minds, it should not matter, which is what you point out quite well - as I was expressing yesterday at NV09, I really tweet for myself... some ppl take that to extreme and tweet for themselves to be popular, playing games so they can sit at the cool kids table :( but bigger 'reach' creates more power to make a difference (when used for good). More access to network also means more access to better information (ie, my passport problem) which makes difference in our lives at key moments
- Chris Heuer
Good point re: who is talking to you, vs. listening to you. I've stopped following twitter people with a bad ratio - too many followers to who they read. Exceptions: hodgeman & anamariecox. I just don't like the ego of people who have big followings but don't engage.
- anna sauce
Last week, Mashable featured me as a twitter professor - in the 16th spot down the page http://mashable.com/2009... The first person listed was our friend (who you should be following) Chris Penn - he added 1400 followers in one day and I received just over 700 in same time http://twittercounter.com/chrishe... - http://twittercounter.com/cspenn (mentioned as real data point) IMHO the 'top100' shows the power laws of the A-List challenge in action, more pop u r, more pop u become
- Chris Heuer
Chris sounds like a catch-22
- anna sauce
Featured on mashable? Sounds prestigious...
- coldbrew
One must have amazing insight if featured by mashable, knowing how exclusive that site is about coverage.
- coldbrew
Nobody deleted comments, you just got confused about where you left your comments.
- coldbrew
If Scoble were covered by mashable for his usage of Twitter, he'd gracefully decline b/c it would be a payoff.
- coldbrew
Robert prove that you're not on the FF payroll
- Bob Sonin
Bob: Techcrunch looked into it. Arrington thought I should be getting paid by friendfeed. But I did not give friendfeed anything it didn't earn.
- Robert Scoble
Kambiz, this is the Dr. Jekyll post. You commented on the Hyde one. :)
- jcunwired
Then in the interests of full disclosure/transparency, what 'did' you give them
- Bob Sonin
Bob: links on my blog and tons of praise.
- Robert Scoble
nice work, cool
- Bob Sonin
ANA - perhaps, but not really - my argument is for disclosure so people know when its paid placement versus genuine recommendations - not passing judgment on the act, seeking clarifications and trying to further the conversation --- cant say its bad for everyone and then say I am dong something similar - more nuanced discussion then that, which you can read about in this post I just wrote http://bit.ly/30cKv "Is it ok for companies to pay to be featured users in Social Media sites?" (key is word USERS)
- Chris Heuer
Thanks for stopping by and dropping a link, Heuer. Stay classy man.
- coldbrew
Heuer, quick question: how many comments have you made without leaving a link to one of your own sites? [EDIT: specified type of link]
- coldbrew
@scobleizer, I disagree. Of course it matters. Number of followers matters and being at the top of the list matters. BUT, like the weather there is very little you can do about it, so it's probably not worth a lot of time worrying about it.
- Christian Anderson
coldbrew - generally about 90+% since I so seldom blog - on this page, with this comment 50% - is there a point you are trying to make? BTW - it seems I mistakenly was commenting on the other question (too many comments here and too many tabs open on my browser) - sorry about that --- do you not think that everyone has the right to start their own conversations and questions and then make others aware of that by sharing the link (insofar as it is on topic)
- Chris Heuer
I like your point #2 especially. Also, I have seen a few people who are gaming the system where a few people just retweet each other. Like they have a mob or coordinated thing to up their standing. Also, there are lots of people that are just trying to increase there followers and this is all they care about and you get junk Tweets and it fills the channel up with noise. Just fyi, if you follow lots of people you follow none. The channel will be crowded with junk. Trust me.
- Bill Romanos
Ana - are you asserting that people who have more followers then people they are following all have big egos? that they are not engaged? or are being disrespectful of people who follow them? (re: ur statement above) I couldn't disagree more vehemently with your broad brushed stereotyping - the majority of those with big followers and equal follower/following rations are quite the opposite of ur assumption - they are usually the ones in it for their egos - to be at the top of the list and using you to do so
- Chris Heuer
Ana, more importantly - what are your tips for dealing with the deluge of inbound communications from thousands of people into your SMS account? clearly you need unlimited text plan for $x per month first - then you need to resign yourself to the fact that you are probably going to miss things that are very important because of the decreased signal to noise ratio... This is a complex issue which IMHO requires us all to respect how other ppl choose to communicate, especially when its not causing any harm
- Chris Heuer
This conversation brings up a lot of ideas for me, but I can say simply that, in my gut, quality and not quantity is the way to go in ANY interaction. On-line, off-line, I don't care where. So, numbers without substance isn't going to do you any good on twitter or elsewhere. I guess the only time quantity works is for ad-clicks, because who cares if it is quality if you are just counting ad clicks.
- Martha
Heuer, I will spell out my point this time, though I do not believe it requires an IQ of significance to comprehend. You barely interact here on FF, and when you do, it is usually (>50%) in order to get people to take actions elsewhere (e.g. read your blog post, fill out a survey, etc.).
- coldbrew
Get it? Fairly insulting, imo.
- coldbrew
coldbrew - of course the real reason for putting a bit.ly link to my blog post that reframes this question is because I wanted to get the google juice from Robert - that is clearly what my track record shows to be true. Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that there are limits on the size of comment within FF... btw - with this comment, its over 70% of my comments on this page that dont have a link. wondering why you have a private feed - would be interested to see what you do without registering
- Chris Heuer
coldbrew - ah, so I am not native enough for you in FFand you dont like that I use twitter as my primary communications vehicle? well too bad - thanks for initially trying to thinly veil your insult and criticism and for ultimately feeling comfortable enough to insult me openly - no offence taken here at all because clearly you dont know Jack either...
- Chris Heuer
I realize having a private feed and not pimping myself at every opportunity would confuse you. I'm at a loss to explain it to you other than to say I value information and candid, honest conversation.
- coldbrew
PS - for people who actually care about these issues instead of trying to pass judgments on others, the very simple reason I request others to look at these things is so that we, as a broader community of practitioners, can connect the dots across communities to learn from one another and take collective action outside of any given echo chamber which creates insular feelings like those expressed by my new best friend here - thanks for making the point clear to all - I dont use FF daily, I am elsewhere often
- Chris Heuer
"for people who actually care about these issues "? Are you fucking serious? I have no ulterior motives, and I'm not trying to position myself as a "social media expert"; and, I certainly don't have a site that focuses on "social media" as something one should "leverage." So, before you go on espousing your integrity, take a look at the facts.
- coldbrew
OMG, what a spat! Chris, ignore him.
- Francine Hardaway
Frankly, I'm a bit tired of the sausage festival that is tech blogging. Veronica is a breath of fresh air. She has the power of "it" and "it" rules the world.
- Mattb4rd
@Scobleizer not that you'd worry, but I read what you write because it often gives me something to learn and think about that I would otherwise not find easily somewhere else. And you have a unique way of doing that. The fact that so many people choose to do the same is irrelevant to why I read your material :)
- Valeria Maltoni
Yes. When one is interested in finding some sort of "truth" through discussion, the best choice is to ignore those with differing opinions. Brilliant strategy, Hardaway.
- coldbrew
Hardaway, I realize you only came into this conversation at the last minute, but allow me to explain. There was a perfectly good discussion being had here, when Heuer (someone with whom you are apparently familiar) decided to chime in with a link to a semi-relevant blog post inspired by this very comment thread. He did not make his argument *here* where the discussion was being had, no; what he had to say required many more words than FF makes available.
- coldbrew
So, an entire post was written and Heuer made his weekly FF comment with "appropriate" shameless plug to his post. I suppose I can see how people that only come to FF occasionally don't grok the issue I'm having here, but that won't stop me from making it.
- coldbrew
I come here all the time, and often find a blog post comes out of a discussion I'm having here, or a comment on someone else's blog.
- Francine Hardaway
That is good. I just ask that you don't suggest someone ignore me for expressing my opinion. I'm no expert, but I do try to be informed about the topics in which I participate. I was offended, and I took it up directly with the offender. Please suggest to me what I might do differently in such a situation.
- coldbrew
I would have felt better about Twitter's recommended follows had it been some sanitized Google algorithm but this feels like some whorish self promotion and takes a lot of shine off Twitter.
- Ernie Oporto
from Nambu
i agree with @scobleizer here. the suggested people to follow in twitter has totally screwed with the 'meaning' of the rankings
- Chris Heath
Until WSJ publishes a US$/followers Forex rate I will continue to believe that number of followers is fundamentally worthless
- Jeffrey J Davis
For me, it was kind of strange to see the issues of "how many followers do I have" when I started reading blogs in 2008 for the first time. Seems like people like followers for many reasons (1) good conversations (2) boost to self-esteem (3) improve career prospects (4) share knowledge with others (5) etc... On the $ side, one of my friends with a labor-of-love website created over 7 years, now makes $1,000s/day (not thru advertising, but selling his own products)...
- Mitchell Tsai
Traffic can help connect people with services & products they like. In some cases, sharing pictures, articles, news about kids-friends-relationships, may be our gift to the world community. Sometimes, people are finding new jobs, developing new life paths, getting helpful therapy or support, or simply enjoying themselves. It's sometimes a little annoying for me to hear people criticizing other people who are here for reasons other than their own, but it's "free speech".
- Mitchell Tsai
Even with "trolls", I love the community on FriendFeed (Admittedly, I'm spending more time on Facebook...and unfortunately many people who share pictures there decline my requests to share them on the wider web, so I don't repost Facebook pictures on FF). More power to the people who are having fun accumulating "friends" or "followers".
- Mitchell Tsai
It's even useful to connect with 10-20 very-active-spammy-type-friends/followers. I no longer connect with spammers (unless truly interested in their stuff, which occasionally happens), but my few spam connections help me see if other people accept those spam connections. I suppose if my Facebook limit starts hitting 5,000, it'll be time to delete the spammers (after sending them a note explaining why I'm pruning my Facebook connections). P.S. Scoble, you rock!
- Mitchell Tsai
Good food for thought as I'm developing my conceptual 'follower' definition. I'm returning to value added in our network.
- ka3drr
+1 Ryo
- You.
Ryo: I regularly do things to get them into Google for myself to pull out later. The fact that other people are here doesn't matter.
- Robert Scoble
Ryo: it's funny, though. You don't need any followers to participate here in this conversation. So, why do followers matter? http://search.twitter.com displays your Tweets even if you have no followers. That way you can find other people interested in a topic. I find lots of things on google.com that have no followers either. Not saying that it's not nice if they show up (followers are wonderful) but they certainly are NOT a precondition to participating and having people participate with you online.
- Robert Scoble
Even if you *do* think they matter, using a save search in Twhirl can help you find folks to share with... I have 2000+ in Twitter and I'm nothing huge...just a bit strategic. ;)
- Cheryl Allin
The problem with an ego is that sometimes the holder of said ego cannot see over it ... well because it's an ego.
- Joe Breen
LOL, Ryo. So true. I can't tell you how many things I've posted on FF, and I get NO RESPONSE. I'm either painfully boring, or I need more followers so that I have a good chance of someone finding it interesting.
- You.
Just checked, I should be getting my Kindle 2 on Thurs. Should be pretty cool! :-)
Igor Poltavskiy, pastas9, Pascal Bouvier and 2 other people liked this
I am excited to get mine as well. I really am looking forward to reading more.
- Bret Taylor
Yay! Delivery estimate: February 26, 2009
- Tudor Bosman
I'm holding out for one device that does it all (OK, most). I had high hopes for Archos products, would seem a simple function to flip content horizontally for the ereader functionality, but the device (Archos 5 and 7) has too many other problems. Is it too much to ask for a device that can be used to search the web, view video, check email, and read e-books?
- jcunwired
User data ownership on Facebook and why it doesn’t matter - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Xiangzhen, Kevin Murray, Shivanand Velmurugan and 95 other people liked this
I'm glad to see Robert back to long-form, insightful blog posts, rather than getting distracted by twitter and friend feed.
- Steven (optionshiftk)
You do realise that they extend their license to stuff you link to right? They can subicence as steve points out to their hearts content and you lose the value of your own content. I agree with your blogs sarcastic point about serving facebook. I made a similar one myself.
- Anton Mannering
from twhirl
I took a different angle on this too. I'm less worried about the things I know, and more worried about what we do not know. In essence we transfer all control to Facebook, but they are not transparent about what they actually do with our data. We don't know if we are signing up for the next best thing or selling our soul to the devil. Mark is answering the wrong question and we fell for it again: http://bit.ly/19GmYF
- Alexander van Elsas
BTW here is an excellent writeup of Amanda French comparing TOSes of different sites like Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Youtube. Moral of the story? The uproar is justified: http://bit.ly/tJJBK
- Alexander van Elsas
As a person who builds very consumer facing products and features I believe it DOES matter. With power (175 millions users) comes responsibility. FB has an obligation to transparency regardless of whether there service is free, and it's TOU is one piece of that transparency. If you claim one thing and do another, or you claim one thing and then claim another thing because your business is changing, that matters...
- Ryan
Who uses FB to publish original works? Promotion yea. But don't people who have something to protect get their ©, ®, ™ before putting it out there and then just link to it from the various mediums?
- Ryan Stanley
Just read Alexander van Elsas post. We should be discussing this on his FF feed. Great post and insightful analysis. Glad to see someone actually read and posted the TOU.
- Ryan
@Ryan, @Jason, thanks guys! You're welcome to discuss it on my FF feed, it's here: http://friendfeed.com/e... , but here is fine too ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Robert and Alexander, I have to agree with Robert. As I mentioned to you, Alexander, if you go to any institution implementing a GLS or CMS, you pretty much have to play by their rules and (having learned by painful experience) your data is not necessarily treated as if you are an esteemed author who could sue THEM for plagiarism. ;) That's as Robert says, reality. So I agree with his response.
- Melanie Reed
In the early days, I treated my portfolio as a catchall for everything. I went with the bait. But having learned who really has the most "rights" to it and then with their upgrade, having seen all my legacy RSS link and bookmarks destroyed I was forced into the realm of Robert's reality. Facebook, Flickr, etc are going to do what they are going to do. Now, I can adopt a strategy that serves my needs out of that....or not. I'm learning as I go.
- Melanie Reed
@melanie the most important issue is the lack of transparency. We are forced to give up everything while they do not. It is not an equal balance. Saying that that is just the way it is is accepting a bad practice that could easily be replaced by a good one.
- Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander I agree that lack of transparency is the important issue. Now whether I like it or not I have to try to understand the other party here. I can see (but not like) the effectiveness of the ad targeting FB uses. How pivotal is that to FB's revenue? Seriously, would any of us say 'yes' willingly to allowing ANY of our demographic information to be used by Ad customers?
- Melanie Reed
@Ryan, Your copyright is still valid and is not changed by Facebook's TOS. It you read their TOS carefully, you will find that by posting or sharing your content on FB, you are granting them an unlimited license to do whatever they want with your content. You still own the copyright, but it's value might be greatly lessened by allowing FB unimited usage rights.
- Jeff P. Henderson
What if I'm a unsigned and indie band that uses Facebook to promote our music in a group or fan page. Does the TOS give FB the right to "use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute" those works for commercial purpose?
- Matt Albiniak
@Alexander This brings up how business on the Internet is done. How do we want that done? How do we want businesses to conduct their research on target audiences? What should they know before hand in order to market to us? How do you want them to do that? I'm not fighting for their "rights" so much as I am asking that the methodology of what is acceptable marketing practice (that will be effective) is defined. BTW- I have a stake in this as our org has copyrighted material up on FB, too.
- Melanie Reed
@Matt, Based on my interpretation of the TOS, I would say probably yes.
- Jeff P. Henderson
@melanie my simple answer would be to choose a business model that monetizes user value. It would force you to do the right thing, always. Check out smugmug as a very positive example. They do not just have paying customers, they have paying fans!
- Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander If I understand you, that would indeed cause a problem that many are trying to avoid: disenfranchisement in the digital world. Not everyone is capable of paying. So as I understand it, thus the two-tiered system as Flickr does with their pro accounts and the free. So how do we address that?
- Melanie Reed
"Zuckerberg is saying: "We're not evil. Just trust us!" But this has been the mantra of nearly all companies that handle personal information. What company would say: "Yes, we intend to use your data maliciously and in ways you'll abhor"? There are many problems with Facebook's policy of 'trust us'" http://www.concurringopinions.com/archive... Solove, as always, gives an excellent analysis of the pitfalls.
- LogEx
@melanie, you do not have choose a model in which every user has to pay to receive value (although that is the cleanest model there is). freemium is definitely a great model too. Provide a service for free and extra's as a premium. Either way. A user centric model will ensure you give more value to the user than to anything else.
- Alexander van Elsas
@logical extremes, I recall banks and insurance comapnies saying the same things and look where that got us ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander, exactly. Facebook should either drop the pretense, or adjust the TOU to describe exactly what they intend.
- LogEx
Matt, Melanie, etc...I'd definitely suggest you take 5 or 10 minutes, and go read the earlier mentioned comparison by Amanda French http://bit.ly/tJJBK . The differences between what MySpace, for example, asserts as a right over your data, and what Facebook does, are both real and relevant to any creative type. Amanda has ferreted out the relevant sections of the license terms for multiple sites, and compares and contrasts well.
- Ken Kennedy
Scoble's missed the boat, same as Chris Brogan. Facebook (and LinkedIn) has Terms that are NOT the same as everyone else's, and which, unlike MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa and Twitter, do NOT permit you to revoke their license to use your content. I dove into the legal issues here: http://is.gd/jJXy
- Maxwell Kennerly
Article on the new Facebook TOS changes and protecting yourself http://tinyurl.com/d4oeps
- Chris Miller
from twhirl
@Ken, thank you for replying and @Alexander, thank you as well! Ken, I did read Amanda's post. And, with respect to you and others, I still agree with both Robert and Matt. And in regard to MySpace, they are the ones who allowed access to everyone's private data to the search engine Spock. That's why I don't use MySpace or Spock among other reasons.
- Melanie Reed
the point is if you upload it to facebook and decide later you want it deleted, and it's not deleted then....well it's nice to want things. I don't think this justifies the uproar, only that people should (have already been) thinking twice about what they put on those sites. It may, and probably won't, ever really go away once it's out there.
- Richard Lawler
Really good side by side comparison here- http://amandafrench.net/2009...
- Ryan
@Melanie ... no worries! As long as you've got the data, you're more than entitled to make your own decision. If I were you, I'd keep stuff I want to monetize off of FB, though...you really have no control once you've uploaded it there. It's a walled garden that FB can cash in on as they will. (note: I expect this will get restated before too long...this is too big a grab even for FB, but as of now, that's how it works out).
- Ken Kennedy
@Ken, Interesting that you said that just now as there was a Facebook Ad, (company unknown as I didn't clickthru-that's one less cpv they'll have to pay for) that popped up on my right in Profile view that claimed "Monetize User Content" -"Grab content off your site from users and put it on T-shirts." roflol. This does provide some humorous aspect to me especially when you consider, I could get our ministry content out to a greater territory. ;)
- Melanie Reed
GOLDEN Rule: Don't put anything on any site/form/webpage that you may change your mind about. Once it's out there it will never disappear. imho
- walterh
@walterh, I hear what you're saying, and I definitely grok the spew of 'information wants to be free' (FTW!), but that's not really what's critical here. This is "boring" legal stuff...regardless of whether or not the data is available in some cache somewhere (which it is), this is FB asserting the right to use whatever you upload for it's own commercial purposes, forever. That's a whole different issue that "it never gets deleted anyway".
- Ken Kennedy
@ken I am not really trying to argue your points. I was trying to say that all forms like FB will at sometime try to sell your info when they reach a critical mass. A perfect example of this is the phone scam going on right now were people call you telling you that your car warranty will end soon. These people are calling me on my cell phone. I only give my cell to trusted contacts as it is the only real way to get a hold of me in real time. That so-called trusted contact or service has sold my info.
- walterh
@ken .....if you don't put personal info out on FB then when this happens you will not be regretting what you have done or posted.
- walterh
@walterh Just FYI, the car warranty thing isn't a sold data issue...it's just a "brute force" attack on phone #s (ie, they call them all). It's gotten so cheap to make phone calls, even LD, that much like email spam, the minuscule response rate they get pays for it. As for personal data on FB, again, I understand that, but it's not really what we're talking about. Consider a band that wants to share their music, but not intending to let FB monetize it if they get popular. They're out of luck.
- Ken Kennedy
So the expiry clause was in there when I signed up (i.e. if I leave they lose their rights over my content). If they have now changed the terms but I've not agreed to the new terms, then I'm not bound by them, right? Or did I miss a "we can change the terms whenever we feel like it and you're still bound to them" clause?
- Yan
@ken I understand your point. Let me ask you this. Has a case like this gone to court yet. PS the warranty people have never called me at home. Had that number for 20 years. Every other sale company calls me at home. I do see your point that it could be "brute force"
- walterh
The blog post has merit, the headline, not so much.
- jcunwired
I basically agree with Robert that this isn't shocking since Facebook hasn't respected user's much; however, I do think ascerting ownership to data already in the system crosses the line. This is similar to the Google Reader shared feed issue that Steve Gillmor railed on for a while.
- Robert W. Anderson
yeah, he reels em in with the hyperbole
- Josh Haley
hyperbole Josh? yeah that Bill of Rights crap is overrated. BTW Google fixed that problem.
- Steve Gillmor
Beyond the argument over who owns what and who's creating value for whom is a more interesting question, I think. Most people will not give a second thought to their rights to the intellectual property they create on Facebook. They just use it. They upload photos and videos and talk to each other. It strikes me that one thing Facebook is remarkably good at is capturing a user's...
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- David Erickson
hmmmm ... fascinating and important points being made here. However we are at the core talking about the morality and selflessness of corporations. The only way to own your own data completely is keep on your hard drive. Look at the terabytes of data Magnolia unfortunately lost last week. Their intentions were entirely altruistic, yet a technical malfunction intervened. We are in the midst of a radical shift and "ownership" is going to be defined by security, trust, and new elements ...
- Bankwatch
... that have yet to be defined. Do you trust Google? Do you trust your bank? Do you trust gmail Apps Premium? These are fundamental questions and the answer will define internet and our future. Market forces will take care of it, but getting there might be ugly.
- Bankwatch
It is a cheap and risk free business model for the service provider: The user generates all the content, is responsible for all legal consequences (even when the provider reuses the content in an unanticipated way), but the service provider may make all the profit out of it. whereever, forever. This business model was once called Web 2.0...
- Arnd Gronenberg
you're right. facebook should be used as a hub, flickr gives you CC options, it's not hard to set up a wordpress blog for the same, i think youtube are the last in the list. there's plenty of apps on facebook that will update your profile when you upload photos to flickr, or make a new blog post. they're not perfect but they're getting better.
- Terry O'Fee
They changed their mind: http://blog.facebook.com/
- Liron Eizenman
Most people wun care too much. But yes i agree it's creepy.
- Alekkus
Well, then there's the 25 Things you didn't know about in the Facebook TOS: http://bit.ly/25thingsTOS
- Steve Woodruff
To me it clear from Mark Z's post that the lawyers were tasked with drafting a revised TOU and blew it. ROLLBACK!
- Ryan
doesn't say much for their lawyers on the writing and the way the TOS was handled...
- Stuart Evans
from twhirl
This is the new age of transparency. The big CEOs will have publicly available pictures of them from college. Professional images will become humanized. Social media has allowed us to share everything about our lives and so we did. I thought Mark made a great point in his first post regarding the issue when he explained that in order to give the community the services that they want, certain legalities are necessary and must be represented in the TOS. We just have to get used to the new age.
- David Spinks
@David, if Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg too for that matter, are just as transparent as they force you to be then it would be fine. Until that moment it is pretty ridiculous that privacy only works one way. You must disclose everything and they take it all without providing the slightest clue what they actually do with it
- Alexander van Elsas
I wish someone would analyze TOS that bank credit cards, mortgages impose. The funny thing is that while Facebook is having to backtrack - it probably never would have screwed us over - but banks that increase rates from 3.9% to 39% over night - regularly do.
- Anshu Sharma
Good post, Robert. It's always been clear that Facebook has put their own interest in content assets first, but in fairness it's not so different that way than say...Friendfeed. One does pay a certain price for posting in Facebook, but to reach those who are more interested in relationships than in marketing their content, it's a good price oftentimes. I do think that over the next year that more publisher-friendly terms will come to Facebook, they've been lazy and now they'll have to catch up.
- John Blossom
Listen, if FB starts selling our stupid cat videos to the highest bidder, then we can get worried. I just don't think there's a conspiracy.
Amy, India Feeds, Christian Van Der Henst and 26 other people liked this
How about an aspiring bands latest song, video or photo that FB decides to use in an advertisement? Would that be OK?
- Jeff P. Henderson
Jeff, like I said below, I highly, HIGHLY doubt FB will ever do that. This is just to cover their asses. Someone just sent this to me: http://blog.facebook.com/blog...
- Veronica
There are so many companies and sites that have exactly the same kind of TOS.
- Veronica
@Veronica, Agree, but the COULD if they wanted to based on the TOS, correct?
- Jeff P. Henderson
If they have no aspirations of such an act, why modify the TOS?
- Geoff Schultz
The "harsher" parts are probably unconscionable anyway.
- Rubin Sfadj
So what happens when the young guy running it cashes out and it gets passed to another corporation? On what possible basis do you think that it's 'HIGHLY doubt FB will ever do that'?
- Johnny Worthington
I understand the FB needs permission 'licence' from you to move and share your date within the site, but the problem I have is their TOS is way to broad. If all they want, as Zuckerberg states is to be able to store and serve up your data as part of the normal function of the site, then why don't they just say that in the TOS?
- Jeff P. Henderson
Pardon my ignorance, but if you upload a movie that suddenly gets a whole lot of meme attention (which happens on the internet all the time), doesn't the ToS, as written, enable Facebook to do whatever they like to monetize that video, including syndication to other sites, merchandising, etc.? If that's not the right that Facebook is trying to claim via their ToS, can't they do a better job of narrowing their ToS claims?
- Kevin Fox
I understand the concern, but Facebook would be in an unbelievable shitstorm if they tried that. Just look at how people are reacting now, and they haven't even done anything yet other than change the TOS! It's good to be wary, but it's also good to stay grounded with this kind of thing.
- Veronica
@ Kevin, based on their wording, that would be my understanding. I agree they should narrow the definition to what they really 'need' to run the site.
- Jeff P. Henderson
I get what Zuckerberg is saying, but why can't the TOS say something like "you grant us the license to share your personal items with those people you have accepted as friends and given permission to view them but not to use such items in ANY OTHER WAY, especially commercially"? If I share a silly photo with a few friends, I don't have an unreasonable expectation of privacy (if it's online, I figure the chances it'll get found are high), but I do expect that Facebook would ask me before they put it in an ad
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
I tend to take the same view Veronica. Market forces, media attention will curb their worst excesses. Or they will find themselves losing members rapidly.
- Hutch Carpenter
@ Veronica, what is their incentive to *not* narrow the ToS in this fashion? The argument 'they wouldn't screw the user because if they did they'd screw themselves' falls apart when you're talking about scenarios after the company has failed and the digital assets are all they have left to sell or sublicense. I wouldn't sign a contract that allowed Disney to bulldoze my house just because of the bad press they'd get if they actually did it.
- Kevin Fox
Kevin, you have a good argument, but FB is a company that is trying to defend their business from lawsuits. I'm not usually on the side of a big company like this, but I think they have a right to do that. We opt in to using Facebook, and these are their terms.
- Veronica
Facebook's TOU should say exactly what they intend to do, and assert no more rights beyond that. Users have a right to be upset when Facebook asserts unreasonable rights, even if they haven't (yet) acted on them. Facebook is struggling for profitability and valuation. They are continually pushing the bounds of what will be acceptable to users, and users shouldn't just roll over and take it.
- LogEx
We can argue about it all we want, but the fact remains that you are uploading it to a public site that never has given us the right to put our own licenses on our content. Them's the breaks.
- Veronica
@Hutch, why give them the opportunity to do the wrong thing in the first place? The TOS ought to reflect actual intentions and needs. We shouldn't have to hope or assume they won't do something undesirable with our IP just because they will get crap for it.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Kevin - if IP is that important to a person, sounds like their best stuff should stay on their own blog/personal site. Use Facebook to raise awareness for it. 99% of what's there is probably of no commercial value.
- Hutch Carpenter
@Veronica, I understand. Facebook has to find a balance between protecting themselves from lawsuits and protecting the digital rights of their users, but thus far it doesn't appear that they're making any effort to do so. Facebook is a content company, and the appearance of not trying for a content land-grab should be important to them. Of course users can choose not to use Facebook...
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- Kevin Fox
Veronica makes a good point also. We do choose to use FB on their terms, no one is forcing us to use it. The problem is that many well intending customers do not read the TOS at all or incompletely. (I know, that's not a valid excuse, but it is reality) On the other hand there are many laws in place to protect consumers from predatory companies. There needs to be a balance here that meets the needs of both the corporation and the user.
- Jeff P. Henderson
I hope FF don't get a TOS like that, because there a lot of good points in this discussion.
- Fee501st
@Hutch, there are a ton of businesses, such as bands and movie producers that use Facebook and Myspace to promote their busines and connect with their customers. This practice is increasing. I agree that a significant amount of the content on FB is of little commercial value, but there is plenty of IP that has significant value to its creators and possibly to FB as a marketing tool for instance.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Hutch: Sure, if you know in advance what your best content is, but I doubt that was the case with Numma Numma or Star Wars Kid. And when the next generation's Madonna (or Obama) posted 500 photos throughout their adolescence, and 20 worthless videos of themselves singing into the webcam at age 15, is it okay for whatever future company that bought Facebook's assets to sell them to...
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- Kevin Fox
Side note: I assume the ToS is retroactive. Did existing users receive a notification of the ToS revisions, or was it a silent expansion of claimed rights under the 'this ToS may change in the future' clause when they signed up?
- Kevin Fox
Jeff - in principle, I agree about their IP land grab. In practice, I'm not that concerned about it. Sure, if they pull some stunt like monetizing and syndicating content uploaded by members, they should be flogged mercilessly. I'm not ascribing such sinister motives to them. That said, I'd keep my most valuable content separate if I had any.
- Hutch Carpenter
Kevin, yes, you are spot on about the multiple copies issue. If Facebook can't or won't do that, it's either poor technical architecture or poor business practice.
- LogEx
Interestingly, Flickr is an example of the best and the worst in the industry. They allow more user control over licensing (creative commons variants and copyright) than all but a few content sites, yet their ToS clearly states that they can delete all your content and close your account for whatever reason they want, even if you're a paid member. Worse, it appears that they don't physically have the tools to undo that deletion if they find they made a mistake.
- Kevin Fox
Good points Kevin, especially about content today of future celebs. Question that you might know the answer to. How is that different from Google's cache?
- Hutch Carpenter
I'm pretty certain Google doesn't reserve the right to monetize the data that appears in their cache, and Google provides tools for removing items from their cache, if you didn't already have the proper meta tags or robots.txt files to stop them from caching in the first place. http://www.google.com/support... I'm not talking so much about making sure...
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- Kevin Fox
Veronica: I'm not going to rehash/restate what others have done above, and I'm not going to pile on, as I actually do respect those like you, who have a high profile yet still engage your audience one on one. That has to take a lot out you guys. But I just want to state I think you're on the wrong side of this, for reasons others have already stated. (but like I said, I'm not piling on, so don't reply to me, just regard me as a "vote")
- Matthew DeVries
fine, sure, pile on away. conversation is good.
- Veronica
If I had a fresh new take on the issue, that I thought would clarify or progress the conversation, I'd add it. But something I think happens too much on forums, people post the same thing that everyone else has in the very same thread. I think line of impass is already well defined, and I have nothing to add that can move it or shrink the size of it, just saying which side of it I'm on.
- Matthew DeVries
Facebook is a company so consider that before uploading anything that has real value to you. ToS change and especially for user based services the user data is 99% of what they are about. So if you don't agree with the conditions a company has don't use their services. You consider that in RL why not also on the Internet ? And: most of ToS is vague legal stuff that doesn't reflect (in most cases) the real intent behind the scenes, you have to see what their next move is to build up a complete picture.
- Johannes W.
There's a business model in there somewhere - pay us $5 to take down that embarrassing photo of you at last night's party - otherwise we sell it to the highest bidder.
- ian kennedy
My new Facebook group: "Facebook TOS Haters: Get over yourselves." http://www.facebook.com/group...
- Ryan Steele
Jeff Bezos - "What's dangerous is not to evolve" - http://www.fastcompany.tv/video...
Jeff Sandquist, Marcus McCurdy, Daniel Rowley and 8 other people liked this
very good interview i must say. fascinating how bezos develops the twin theme of 1) listening to customers and 2) anticipate customer needs via innovation. really fascinating. this guy is quite something.
- Pascal Bouvier
Is this a teaser of a much larger interview? It left me wanting to hear more!
- MarkCarras
Loneliness Affects Brain | Psych Central News - http://psychcentral.com/news...
Mark Shoemaker and Pascal Bouvier liked this
"A new study finds that social isolation affects not only how people behave, but also how their brains operate."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
Microsoft Recite: Voice Record and Voice Search - ReadWriteWeb - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Daniel Rowley, Andrew Smith, Pascal Bouvier and Jordan Hofker liked this
"An early 'Technology Preview' of Microsoft Recite, a voice recording/search application was released today, 24 hours before its scheduled official debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Recite lets you record short voice clips of 'remembrances' and then search for specific words, again by using your voice; essentially it's an audio recorder with audio search capability. Currently it's limited to Windows Mobile devices."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
This is really cool, actually. I look forward to putting it to solid use, but if you use WinMo, this is definitely worth the install.
- Jordan Hofker
Seems I can record messages but I can't hear them when they play back. My phone wasn't one of the ones supported but so close to working.
- Andrew Smith
Apple Owns 51% of Mobile Web… And Growing! - http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009...
Лучше не знать, Африки, David Finch and 7 other people liked this
"Worldwide requests from Apple devices grew 28% month over month to 1.2 billion in January. Building on its strong December, iPod Touch growth outpaced iPhone growth in top markets. The iPod Touch now represents 40% of Apple requests, up from 20% in September."
- David Bisset (sn)
from Bookmarklet
Easily edit Google Spreadsheets on the iPhone - http://9to5mac.com/google-...
Mark Dodson, vijay, TheHenry and 6 other people liked this
Google updated their mobile spreadsheets this weekend to allow some pretty simple creating and editing capabilities on the iPhone.
- David Bisset (sn)
from Bookmarklet
Hacking Twitter (Wired.com) - http://blog.wired.com/busines...
Moses Kpetigo, Deborah Micek, Jesper Lind and 41 other people liked this
Just amazing what can be done with 140 characters.
- David Bisset (sn)
With my luck my washing machine would get more followers than me.
- Keith Beucler
me too Keith :-/
- David Wynn
cool. i want my xbox 360 to tweet
- David
@David - http://duncanmackenzie.net/blog...
- Andrew Terry
I would like to tie in a GPS tracker w/ twitter - many uses right there.
- David Bisset (sn)
Bisset, The Brightkite iPhone app can do that with the 3G.
- coldbrew
Twitter to begin charging brands for commercial use - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic - http://www.brandrepublic.com/News...
Brad Arsenault, Muge Cerman, Justin Thorp and 24 other people liked this
Co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing: 'We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.' He would not be drawn on the level of charges.
- Leo Laporte
How do they decide who pays? Clearly a company like CNN would, but what about TWiT and other small companies?
- Richard Smith
from twhirl
*That's* the business model they're landing on? Twitter has made series of bad decisions and apparently they show no signs of stopping.
- Gregory Pittman
from twhirl
Yes I agree that this is terrible. There needs to be an a-la-carte checkout for "Pro" type features in the settings. Put ads in the feeds and on the site (majority of people post from the site), institute certain limits, and etc... and then let people "buy" a certificate that removes the limit restriction.
- Daniel Zarick
@Richard I would guess they'd have a premium account with additional features geared toward corporate use
- David Knight
@Richard may be a model based on a limit, just like google apps being free for a certain amount of account (getting smaller and smaller) and a pro mode if you need more than X accounts
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
from twhirl
i think freemium model and different tiers of corporate membership/service level is in order
- Pascal Bouvier
It'll never work. They started out free. If they try to charge now, even to just companies, they will flee. It would also be problematic to decide who qualifies as a company.
- Joe "The Anvil" Pierce
I think qualifying an account as corporate or personal will be too hard. Probably what they're talking about is more along the lines of what YouTube does.
- Paul Reynolds
I think the key thing is "We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable ...." Assuming Biz and Co has come up with the right features, businesses will pay for it. I would assume that they would still have the option for having a free account without those features
- Sean Reiser
Why wouldn't it work? the whole issue of identity management is important, and it *has* a cost and value - I suspect it can fly. After all, people pay for co-validated SSL certificates, they might pay for a corporate set of twitter accounts which required verification (and cost something) and would a)give people trust it is really the company it says it is b)make sure other people cannot pretend.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
Maybe include group functionality so that @comcastcares is also seen by @comcastjim without having to employ TweetDeck-like clients.
- Dave Ferrick
It made me think some more: ways twitter could charge corporates and others: http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
Google: Our Energy Efficiency is Improving « Data Center Knowledge - http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archive...
Anne Bouey, Pascal Bouvier, Richard pancakhaus Walker and 4 other people liked this
"When Google disclosed in October that its data centers had an average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.21, some people in the data center industry were impressed and others were skeptical. On Tuesday the company said its data center energy efficiency got even better, improving to 1.16 percent in the fourth quarter and 1.19 percent for the trailing 12-month period. Google said the data reflects all Google-designed data centers with an IT load of at least 5 megawatts that have been operating for six months or more. Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle discussed the company’s PUE improvement on the Google blog, noting the impact of free cooling, which incorporates fresh air into data center cooling."
- Susan Beebe
from Bookmarklet
Impressive reduction in power consumption
- Susan Beebe
Magnolia Effect – Should We Trust The Clouds? - http://www.cloudave.com/link...
Pascal Bouvier and bcultral liked this
Does Bill Gates read friendfeed? He just told me thanks for the nice comments I made about his annual letter there.
Dobromir Hadzhiev, Eric @ CSTechcast.com, Gavin and 156 other people liked this
ooh.. Bill is around us =) watch out
- Qbat
Will we see a comment from Bill?
- paul mooney
Yeah! well, i think he's got plenty of time now
- Constantine
It'd be awesome if we do see a comment from him.
- Chris, Without Direction
i think he needs to do it to stay connected and to see what's going on.
- Sascha Pallenberg
well why not? would you expect him not to? or anyway, someone that briefs him
- sofiagk
we won't see his comment, because anybody seems to know his account; that clearly means he's not going to use FF as a main [and public] tool of communication. Why should he burn his hidden identity here - if he really have one? -- Anyway I just think his press office has done a good job, telling him what Robert wrote here.
- Markingegno - Donato
Markingegno: knowing Bill I seriously doubt it was the press office. The dude does use all social networks.
- Robert Scoble
Ironically, Bill Gates could pop in here and say "Hi, I'm Bill Gates" and no-one would believe it now...
- Warren
*waves at Bill* There are few people who could change this from ScobleFeed, and he's one of 'em. Heaven help me if Jobs has a covert FF account, I'd be using the hide button like a mad woman.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Maybe he's stalking you, Robert. Or maybe he has a mancrush ;)
- Ron's Home And Hardware
But is he on Twitter? ...Sorry, had to drop that in here. :)
- phil baumann
@Robert - I believe you about his attitude towards social networks, but still think he doesn't want to pop in. I'd be glad to discover I'm wrong ;)
- Markingegno - Donato
Markingegno: he won't participate because he gets too many requests. He was on Facebook for a while and deleted his account.
- Robert Scoble
Hi Bill! i think your a kool guy. (now call me and say thanks) lol - @robert whats his twitter?
- Chris Clayton
He probably reads it for the same reason many of us to to stay up to date and in touch
- Rob Cairns
If he does, his personal stock just went way up in my book!
- Aaron Strout
HE is watching us :-|
- ◄ani625Ξ
I hope so, he owes me a computer!
- Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct
Which reinforces the point that the readers/lurkers are often more important than the participants (or more precisely shouldn't be discounted and can surprise you considerably)
- Shannon Clark
Hi Bill. If you're reading this. Please come back to Microsoft. We miss you
- Marcus Beagley
If you're reading this Bill, I'm writing you from Nigeria and need help getting my money...
- Kevin Leroux
Everyone listens in on your conversations Robert; have you heard from the pope? : )
- Mark Harai
what happened was that Bill did a Live search for entries/critiques/analysis of the report and nothing came up...then he ran the same search on Google. First hit = FriendFeed..
- Carlos Ayala
ok, now I can tell you, my real name is Bill: http://is.gd/hO6f :)
- Markingegno - Donato
Maybe somebody who knows him uses FF and told him about the comments.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
awesome!
- Davide D'Incau
that's eerie yet cool...
- Anthony Farrior
Hey Bill. Loved you in Stargate!
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
That is cool, Robert. And I thought the annual letter was interesting and very well written. I'd love to work for the Gates Foundation.
- asiriusgeek
Would Bill even use his real name?? ( apologies in advance to Bill if he does read this)???
- Roberto Bonini
Like it or not, a message like that is EXACTLY why Scoble is such an influencer on here and other places. How many people could say that Bill Gates had personally thanked them for a comment they made about him while arsing about on social networks and you know straight away that it's true.
- Philip Tomlinson
I'm sure he has a "listening strategy" like a google alert on his own name - or maybe he creates specific alerts for his name plus a keyword for a specific event/topic.
- Laura Norvig
YAY!! I hope Bill does check out and participate in FriendFeed. Perhaps he saw it on your blog. You mention FF quite a bit there too
- Susan Beebe
Gates=authority
- Wallace
OMG! Wait, and you're sure you didn't post those comments anywhere else but here? Nice!
- Sarah Perez
Bill is a nerd, why wouldn't he read and do all the other stuff other nerds do? That and in between meeting with heads of state and playing WoW on a real set :-)
- Todd Hoff
Wouldn't a system like Twitter, FriendFeed be better for someone like Gates? Even if 1,000,000 people follow him, he's not obligated to follow back, and people wouldn't be offended by this, there would be respect of his privacy. Whereas on Facebook, he would be inundated with requests for various apps...
- Mike Nayyar
Now I have to say more nice things about Microsoft. :)
- Paul Buchheit
It would be cool if Bill Gates was a lurker here, but all I can say is that he better get along with Derrick. Otherwise there will be all kinds of drama! :-) and just in case...Mr. Gates, longtime customer, first time commenter. Just keep on doing what you feel you should be doing. It's worked for you thus far. You is, be da man. So if no broke, no fixin.... nuff sed
- Morgan Haley
Paul, I'll give you one: Microsoft is all about innovation. When it comes to innovative software companies, nobody's bought more of them than Microsoft.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
moive: Dead Man on Campus - "Bill Gates wants my brain" --- i just had too, one movie quote i always think about when i hear his name!
- shayne catrett
Bill wants his annual letter ritual to eventually rise to Warren Buffett level, so guess it's not surprising he's blowing kisses your way Robert. Or he just plain misses you.
- mark ivey
Full on lurker or might he have an alias account?
- AJ Kohn
Wouldn't Bill Gates employ someone to manage his social networking accounts? Or is the risk of mis-communication too great?
- Bill Romanos
If Bill went on Twitter I am sure he would get a gazillion followers... Though Jobs would probably get a gazillion+1
- Peter Efland
BIG microsoft fan...Until I gotta macintosh that is.
- Zee.
i'm sure someone e-mails him a daily ego-blast of all such things said throughout the Web.
- Andy Sternberg
He has people read it for him, of course.
- Monica Bower
Why do people assume he has people looking at Friendfeed and Twitter for him? Bill might like to read Twitter and FriendFeed feeds.
- Nicholas James
first even before google: omniscient/omnipresent would be the Gates himself ~ he's watching....
- sofarsoShawn
Maybe this is really Bill: http://friendfeed.com/bob
- April Russo (app103)
I bet he's pleased as punch about all the positive feedback on Win7, and should be. It's the best OS since Win95 came out.
- Haggis (Sean Loyless)
Bill needs to grab this username quick@ http://friendfeed.com/billgat... ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Time to out myself, I'm actually Bill Gates. I've been watching you all.
- jjprojects
jjprojects - LOL ... so Bill is running earthhour now too?! :)
- Susan Beebe
tell him the credit check passed & yes, he can borrow some money, just wanted to make sure, you know financial crisis & alll...
- sofarsoShawn
Wouldn't it be funny if Steve Jobs was here with an outrageous avatar?
- Phil Boiarski
There could be a private room for tech CEO's, except Jerry Yang, of course
- Roberto Bonini
@Jason, You have a camera on his office?
- Phil Boiarski
لایک برای بیل عزیز. به فارسی نوشتم که نفهمین. هه هه
- مرتضی
I just gave a talk to about 30 top executives around the world (non tech) and almost none knew about Twitter, Qik, Kyte.
Adarsh, ClubEddy - clubeddy.com, myron and 91 other people liked this
Can you name some of them?
- Chetan Bhawani
This does not surprise me at all.
- Suki Fuller
I'm guessing they do now!
- Simon May
this does not surprise me. i have spent a lot of time in industrial companies and email is the most advanced tech that has traction. can't even get secure sharepoint sites to get traction with execs!
- Jeff DiStanlo
Spread the twitter-awareness :)
- Sasha Kovaliov
welcome to the analogue world ;)
- Sascha Pallenberg
Were you surprised? It amazes me how few people (in general) know about these....especially Twitter.
- Vinny
I am not surprised. The day these and other such folks get onto social media, social media will be passe ;)
- A. Prem Kumar
People don't know about Twitter?! What!
- frank barry
Ya i suspect by end of 2009 it will have hit mainstream consciousness, but still obscure now.
- Brian Carter
not surprised. even some of my friends in tech doesn't know twitter
- AJ Batac
I just can't believe it. Do these people live under a rock?
- Happy
It would have been a surprise if they had. Good job Robert is on hand to spread the word.
- WorldofHiglet
There was a seminar on social media and communications in Toronto last night and a few people had never heard of Twitter, either. Is it really surprising or are we just to immersed in it?
- Bonnie Dean
It took me years to get around to wanting to use Twitter. I read about it regularly at Coding Horror (ex: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog...) for at least a year but I just didn't see the point. I finally registered because I wanted to reply to a friend's tweet. I think for a lot of people it's more of a reticence to join social networks than plain technophobia.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
that says something doesnt it?
- Richard Binhammer
This is not surprising. Recall that John McCain does not even use email. And I am sure most, if not all, of these "top" executives are part of McCain's generation.
- Joe Lima
I haven't touched Qik/Seesmic/Kyte because I can't work out the difference. Not surprised most won't have heard of them or Twitter
- Luke
Robert, send them an invoice for innovation consulting! ;-)
- masa media - Martin
Make a list of top execs who do know about social media.
- stefan hyttfors
Not Surprising, I'd consider myself fairly Tech savvy and although i've been registered for ages i only just started Tweeting. Although given the publicity it's had in the last few weeks i'm slightly surprised.
- Jamie Vidamour
but i guess they know about Facebook ? well, i think twitter is more for more tech people
- Junal Rahman
Do you think their assistants know about those technologies? My understanding of CEO responsibility is that they have to think on a super broad and strategic level. Many of those technologies are about integrating tiny pieces of information into something bigger. Since that's not really their job, I would think those services would be off the CEO's radar until they have an impact at that high level. Right?
- David Wynn
from fftogo
Our CMO @BestBuyCMO relayed a similar experience at a CMO dinner he was one or two of 10+ who knew about the tools and he certainly was the top user of them.
- Ben Hedrington
It's not surprising, if you think about it, but it's still unfortunate. Top executives are hardly "the mainstream" and if they're not in tech or marketing, those types of communication are not foremost in their minds. I know one chief exec. of a Fortune 1000 company who still has his "important" emails (as determined by his assistant) printed out and put on his desk every day.
- Robert Clockedile
from twhirl
This does not surprise me in the least. Yes, awareness is growing but anyone who assumes that our social media world has "made it' to mainstream is unclear on the concept.
- Cathy Brooks
from twhirl
I've never expected top executives to have a clue about anything. They're just a figure head for the company. They pay others around them to do the grunt work.
- Chris Luckhardt
What a surprise!! Here in Brazil I've asked to my friends and coworkers and nobody knew about Twitter. Well, some of my friends don't even check e-mails account daily...
- Flavio Knopp
it goes to show that twitter, kyte, friendfeed, etc... haven't really hit the mainstream yet... user adoption will always be a problem no matter what platform or software is out there.
- Dejim Juang
Most of them can't even use email....
- Stuart Murray Walton
What is the point of Twitter, Kyte etc when hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs and we are in global economic crisis? Don't these top execs have bigger issues at hand? Are we drinking too much social media coolade in these times?
- Andy Oliver
Dejim: I would not consider 30 executives not knowing about Twitter to equate to these services not being in the mainstream. It you ever worked with "top" executives, you'd be amazed by how much "mainstream" knowledge they really lack.
- Joe Lima
I'm doing a Social Media 101 seminar in a few weeks for entrepreneurs who haven't touched linkedin.com, facebook, or twitter. Seminar is full. We'll likely do 2 or 3 more. I'm not surprised at your group's ignorance.
- Shelley Cadamy
I'm a publisher in medical technology market data and I continue to be stunned at how much behind the tech curve my audience of medtech companies is. Their rate of adoption of social media, like their adoption of new information technologies, lags at the same rate as physicians, who are traditionally slow to adopt any new technologies other than medical technologies.
- Patrick Driscoll
Top *executives*? No surprise there, unless they're *tech* executives. Gates or Dell not knowing would be worrying, but should a boss at Exxon or Rolls-Royce (the aero engine company) know or care any more than we'd know or care about distillate refining or FADEC aero engine controllers?
- James
I don't think we are drunk on social media when we say that in spite of the downturn and maybe because of it, we need to look at the enormous possibilities of social media at the very least as a brand loyalty mechanism(ie I am more apt to subscribe to products from companies/ people that I have a more intimate relationship with).
- Phillip
The other issue with non tech executives not tuned in is their reluctance to accept ideas that don't have a direct and obvious connection to ROI. I have to admit (and I'm not blowing my horn) that during the pre-internet heydey, I felt like Tom Hanks in "Big" raising my hand to say, "I don't get it". Then, I couldn't understand why website traffic mattered more than revenue.
- Patrick Driscoll
Recently, I spoke with a colleague of mine, a university professor of linguistics known as geek. I asked if someone is studying tweets' peculiar language and style from a scientific point of view. "Twitter?" he said, "Microblogging? never heard before". A geek, they say. Well...
- PaperDoll
not surprised at all. You may try to ask if they know Firefox
- ClubEddy - clubeddy.com
There's a whole tendency in social media toward rapidly accepting what's at the front edge of development, while at the back end, product managers, sales/marketing and other grunts are just struggling to hit their numbers. They don't live and breathe the latest info tool -- they live and breathe their own product.
- Patrick Driscoll
OK, I'm hogging the airwaves, but one last point. When I look at new medical technologies emerging in the market, I have to bring in two very important perspectives: the opinion-leading early adopters (docs at universities or highly visible MD-consultants to industry) and the regular practicing physician working in the trenches of daily care. Social media evangelists would have me pay much more attention (I'm simplifying a bit) to the opinion-leaders.
- Patrick Driscoll
I can understand that they don't know about Qik or Kyte, even I don't and I spend a lot of time on Twitter and FriendFeed...
- Odi Kosmatos
You should get a hat!
- Freida Wolden
from twhirl
I don't think that social media is so important that everyone MUST take part in it. If I had more of a life (was a busy doctor or exec.), twitter and friendfeed would be the last thing that I would do in my spare time -especially twitter.
- BEX
Ok, twitter might be something they need to know, but Kyte? Qik? Far too early for both of them to be at executive level of a non-tech company.
- Steven Cains
Carol Bartz doesn't use Flickr and she's Yahoo's CEO. Her daughter does use facebook to post photos though.
- Thomas Hawk
Our organzation is doing well w/Facebook with more plans for expansion after receiving demographics that show a high number of professional level participants and 30 and up crowd. I always considered FB for kids.
- R. Ferguson
I can belive Qik and Kyte. But Twitter. That is tough. Of course my CEO doesn't know what SEO is.
- John Flynn
Robert, that does seem strange. But then I see smaller co's. and non-profits jumping into Twitter, FB,etc. faster. My theory is because start-ups and NP's are open to the pool of university student volunteer workers, interns, and beginners out there who are more saavy in this area.
- Melanie Reed
Maybe it's the name...? Maybe they would prefer using something called The TwitCorp Group
- Catherine Ventura
robert - did you talk to them about zoho, zocdoc, gomobo, freshbooks, etc ?
- Allen Stern
not surprised.
- anna sauce
They must not have any kids... or watch CNN <grin> Nice one, Catherine - love The TwitCorp Group
- Cheryl Allin
from twhirl
OMG there's a world OUTSIDE of Twitter and Soc Nets?! :P
- Mona Nomura
cmon mona you should know by now that in the valley there are only a few products that can be talked about outside the valley by those inside the valley - scoble just doing his job :) ha!
- Allen Stern
And to think, we just had an amazing tweetup in the Raleigh area last night of more than 200 tweeps. Triangle Tweetup was awesome.
- Angela
Mona - LOL - say it ain't so!!!!
- Susan Beebe
Yes, I agree with Freida, you should get a hat :)
- Michael Forian
Non-tech CEOs is not surprising. However, depending on the kind of executive not knowing at least 1 like Twitteer may be troubling. For example if they are media companies or telecom companies then that is a more troubling thought than say the executive for a manufacturing company. Ultimately the lack of knowledge is a reflection of the type of talent they recruit and how that impacts their corporate culture now and in the future.
- Altan Khendup
Did those same guys also show ignorance about Facebook- then we will know that we live on different planets - google,facebook,twitter are all helping to re-shape the way we communicate with each other- rgds- hiro bachani- http://www.merlin-me.com -Merlin Magical Gadgets
- hiro
Amazing how a generational gap can preclude users from a given technology. I bet none of their friends are on Twitter either
- Jameel
Unsurprising to me. I think the only interesting item might be how a company without a revenue model continues to raise money! In *this* economy, that is a story.
- AJ Kohn
The elementary school I work at has started to hear about Twitter. It is going mainstream very quickly.
- MarkCarras
Their on FriendFeed now are they?
- paul mooney
My fiancée has heard of Twitter and she does her damnedest to avoid all this high-fallutin' technology.
- Chris, Without Direction
Not a good mood if you want to build up goodwill and awareness of your brand. I mean, unless you're McDonald's or something.
- Mike Nayyar
very small % of top exective in japan knows twitter either.
- Yasuyuki Goto
Do they need to know? Is twitter going to get them out of their problems? Maybe their marketing managers do know?
- santiromero
Why would they know or care about Twitter, Qik or Kyte? What's the business case?
- Francine Hardaway
did they know about facebook - for global mainstream business leaders that at least should be known?
- mike "glemak" dunn
Using our difficult economic circumstances to dismiss the tools of Web 2.0, be it Twitter, Facebook, or something else is to embrace the status quo. And if you hadn't noticed, the status quo isn't working. Web 2.0 offers a unique opportunity to reach out to customers, be they current or would-be customers, and engage them in a way previously not possible. As for me, I work for a...
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- Lee Allgood
did they know about computers? how about the internet? ebay? facebook? trying to quantify the time lag between reality and executives.
- Dino
not surprising....met an IT guy at Panera on Monday who never heard of twitter or microblogging...now that's scary
- Brian Appleby
does that say something? twitter and all these things are not the most essential parts of businesses. these things are fun but there's lots of people i know who have no idea about twitter. people who invest so much time and effort in these things have to realise this.
- Terry O'Fee
when things get really really tough these "social media experts" in the businesses will be the first to get the axe, sadly.
- Terry O'Fee
what is more significant/startling... that some do not know about twitter et al, or that some know and do not understand the value either personal or business wise? and believe me i know plenty people who know about twitter et al and just do not get the value. nor the point. which tells me social media is in its infancy still - we all know that of course. then again it took me 2-3 years to figure out email way back when ;)
- Pascal Bouvier
the value of twitter? i know lots of successful businesses who would never even look at this kind of stuff. it's not as important as a lot of you people think.
- Terry O'Fee
You people? Who you calling 'YOU people'.
- Chris Saad
Thats the problem. You NEED to look at it before you understand its value, both for personal use and as a corporate tool.
- jcunwired
you people = the people who think the world would end if twitter shut down tomorrow...
- Terry O'Fee
This post is a complete and utter déjà vu for me. Robert, did this happen another time upon which you posted a very similar statement. For a second there, I thought FriendFeed glitched and reissued an old entry. Maybe I'm just tired.
- Micah Wittman
seems that twitter will have 30 more users.
- pala
Um. I work under people who thinks blogging is new and uncharted territory. I'm in marketing.
- myron
nonsurprising.. some of my teammates don't know about twitter. none of them know about qik. and i never heard of kyte!
- Ihar Mahaniok
Head of Greenpeace on global warming - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
  |
Earth Hour 2009, Micah Wittman, Daniel Rowley and 35 other people liked this
I am a member of Greenpeace. What a fantastic group of people!
- Adriana
He's a former client scientist too. Interesting guy and this is going to be THE problem of the next few decades for us to solve.
- Robert Scoble
Many very well respected scientists come to very different conclusions on--what was called Global Warming, now called Climate Change. Every argument he made has been refuted. IPCC scientists are dissenting, the new computer models he refers to show we should be warming, but we are cooling, and he pulls the old trick of trying to marginalize viewpoints that contradict his own. The ED of Greenpeace should make more convincing arguments. I think you should stick to tech interviews Robert.
- Ryan Petty
Ryan: I ask the questions. He says you are wrong. So does Al Gore. So do many other respected scientists here at Davos.
- Robert Scoble
Ryan: I just looked at your bio. What makes you such an authority on who is right or wrong? And you are a dickhead for telling me to stick to tech. Why don't you stick to being a dickhead?
- Robert Scoble
"why don't you stick to being a dickhead" - That Sir Robert is a fantastic line!
- Toby Graham
I agree, Ryan don't be a dickhead. Denial isn't becoming of intelligent men. There is no debate about this among smart people.
- Dominic Jones
Ryan, its both global warming and climate change, fast, fierce and furious - time to get off our dicks.
- ernie yacub
Robert, ad hominem attacks never add to the credibility of your argument. I find it interesting how quickly you resorted to a personal attack. Your questions were not the issue, passing on propaganda is what I took exception to. I would have hoped to see at least one tough question. You are far more thorough when reporting on tech--that is what I meant. Do you really mean to use Al Gore as evidence?
- Ryan Petty
Just blocked my first FF user. Fucking mind pollution, people like that.
- Dominic Jones
@Dominic/IRWebReport another example of a liberal (just check his profile) unable to tolerate arguments that don't fit inside the "worldview". It's easier to bury your head in the sand and "block" viewpoints you don't agree with. Really pathetic.
- Ryan Petty
We've been lied to by the media and our government many times before. It's reasonable to believe that this may also be a lie.
- Mattb4rd
Hmmm.. http://epw.senate.gov/public...
- alphaxion
You'll find most intelligent people understand that the climate changes naturally, that we don't even understand 10% of the big climate picture. Strangely they all agree on one thing - humans living unsustainably and in way too many numbers is the REAL problem that is too horriffic to come to terms with a solution. So it's easy to gun for CO2 instead even though average concentrations are historically low when you look at the average over 300 million years (2000 PPM for those that want to know).
- alphaxion
To be honest I don't trust any American opinion on Global Warming, especially not NASA.
- Toby Graham
Imo the people that are trying to get this on the agenda are pretty lousy marketeers and communicators. Global warming sounds like "nice temperatures on the beach". Carbon Dioxide? No one understands. How about Global Boiling, sounds a lot scarier already? We have some serious issues to resolve here. Better use effective terminology to get people moving!
- Alexander van Elsas
and if you don't believe me, research a guy called Robert Giegengack. He's the guy that gave me that 300million year figure.
- alphaxion
Global Boiling - i like it!
- Toby Graham
@Toby not sure if "like" is the right keyword here ;-) but thks
- Alexander van Elsas
We're overdue a super huge earthquake, a super volcano going off and a super meteorite hitting earth. And if you ask me at least one of these before 2013. There I said it.
- Toby Graham
I am sitting next to a scientist and he said "I don't care anymore about this argument." He says it is time to invest in finding energy sources that don't put CO2 into the atmosphere. "We spend more on ringtones than on fusion research."
- Robert Scoble
@Toby, I don't see the confusion as a marketing failure. First, it was called "Global Warming", until the data showed the climate is cooling. Now it's called "Climate Change". The fact, as I understand it, is we don't know why the climate changes, we can't accurately measure the human impact on climate, but it seems clear that CO2 is not the greenhouse gas it has been reported to be.
- Ryan Petty
@Robert, doesn't it concern you when a scientist says that he doesn't care about an argument anymore? Isn't that tantamount to saying, I no longer care about collecting data nor testing my hypothesis--which might lead to the truth? When I hear the head of a radical environmental group assert that CO2 is causing global warming, after so much evidence to the contrary--it makes me curious about their agenda.
- Ryan Petty
@Robert couldn't agree more. But if you want to get these kinds of investments you need ' the people" mobilized. Not investing this heavily means the lobby simply has performed poorly. The people that wanted more oil and other garbage have won so far by denial and massive amounts of lobby money spend. Obama rules now in the US, he has the right team, now we need the right lobby to get masses to force their governments to take actions. That is why I think Global Boiling is a better term ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
I think the one point that everyone needs to understand is that we don't need to be sure to justify action. We need to take action in face of the uncertainties. Climate scientists are pretty sure about their predictions (with uncertainty ranges of course), but these are still predictions. Right now, the prediction is that "we'll crash if we don't steer back". I don't know why anyone would gamble with that.
- Meryn Stol
it shouldn't be "invest in things that don't pump CO2 in to the air" and should be "invest in technology that is renewable and doesn't cause wider environmental issues". People are promoting geothermal, yet they aren't looking into what issues exist when you tap into the internal heat of the planet on an industrial scale. What would happen if we transferred a large portion of the inner heat and released it into the atmosphere? Would it impact on plate tectonics?
- alphaxion
BTW I think I've read about a thousand articles on climate change, covering all sides of the debate. See http://delicious.com/meryn... . Most bookmarks are filed under the last name of the expert mentioned though. My "climatechange" tag does not cover all info atm.
- Meryn Stol
@Meryn hear hear !
- Alexander van Elsas
Anyone remember the movie "the Day After Tomorrow"?
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
@meryn, yet there are many extremely respected scientists that are pointing out how flawed those models are. The issue of nearly 7billion humans existing is the grreatest threat to life on the planet, not the natural changing of climate.
- alphaxion
I think at the end of the day we're all wanting the same thing, to reduce the human impact on the Earth so that we don't exhaust it. I just think the arguments over CO2 are pointless - you can cut emissions to zero and the real problem will still be there.. Us and our abuse of resources.
- alphaxion
Alphaxian, after all my reading (and you can see for yourself that I read lots, and from both sides of the debate), I don't agree with this statement. "there are many extremely respected scientists that are pointing out how flawed those models are. " Do you have any references for this claim?
- Meryn Stol
for a start http://epw.senate.gov/public... and checkup on Robert Giegengack.. when I get time I'll pull out a few more
- alphaxion
I too think it's THE biggest issue humans are facing right now, bigger than the current economic crisis. This is why I've committed to working with the Earth Hour global team this year to try and help do something about it. As well as scientists, listen to what economists are saying about what we should do, Lord Stern for example: http://au.youtube.com/watch... N.B. technology IS involved - low carbon, clean technology.
- jjprojects
Alphaxian, I agree we should lower our resource consumption in general. Water scarcity is a problem as well. Other resources could certainly become scarce in the future. Earth is not infinite. :)
- Meryn Stol
I just don't follow the "we spend more on ringtones than fusion" argument. It looks like the global ringtone market was about USD$4 billion in 2007. It looks like fusion research was about USD$1.5 billion. But what consumers spend on ringtones has no bearing or impact on what is spent on fusion research--or any scientific endeavor. Sounds like sour grapes from a scientist that didn't get his research funded. I'm willing to donate the money I would spend on ringtones for the next year to fusion research
- Ryan Petty
"I'm willing to donate the money I would spend on ringtones for the next year to fusion research" Ryan, start a movement. :) If all people in the west would make the same pledge, we would have fusion much sooner!
- Meryn Stol
Talking about who is right and who is wrong is a simple distraction mechanism that prevents us taking action. Pointless. There are a gazillion smaller and bigger things we can do to make this world a better place. Go stand behind the tailpipe of a DIESEL truck for 10 mins and then tell me if you still think it is a great idea to have this sh*t floating around.
- Alexander van Elsas
@Meryn et al. any ideas on how to do this? @Robert, are you still with that scientist? How could we donate?
- Ryan Petty
Hands down the best 3 minute synopsis of "human induced" climate change. Excellent interview, Robert! The Greenpeace ultimate goal is to ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity. That has to include global warming research...for a solution.
- Laurel Phelps LaFlamme
@alexander something that I always wonder about, why haven't we picked up the use of mixed pedal/electricity powered light cars? exercise and easy transit of small goods (such as the supermarket trip). For when it's too heavy to move with pedal alone, electricity can step in and provide the grunt, you can pedal at the same time to help generate power for it.
- alphaxion
@alphaxion, we have found a better solution for that in here in Holland, it's called a bicycle ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
@alex the problem there is if you have to move something hefty or bulky (but light). I know you can get little tow truck attachments for them. Then there's also the issue of many people like how the car keeps them from the horrors of the weather while travelling... There should be room for both bikes and hybrid bike/electrical car-like vehicles.
- alphaxion
Thought: if those climate scientists who believe that global warming is for real are right, and that global warming presents an imminent threat to human civilization, those who propagandized against dealing with CO2 emissions are going to be viewed as the worst, the most destructive, and the most ignorant villains of all time. Just a scenario to contemplate. (One can't help but notice that George W. Bush was the hero of most of the anti-global warming activists.)
- Sean McBride
Sean: are you suggesting we radically alter our lifestyles and risk further economic turmoil on a hunch? There isn't even consensus that we can do anything to reverse the damage. GWB may be a "hero" for those skeptical of global warming, but it's just as telling that Al Gore is a hero for those advocating climate change alarmism.
- Ryan Petty
I notice that people who advocate this human global warming theory are the same ones who ignore all the recent data showing that GW is being blown way out of proportion. They also fail to mention how politicized even scientists have become which effectively voids their work. And to counter an argument by saying "Al Gore" says so is just funny at the least. He is the biggest profiteer in the scam.
- Spencer
sean: interesting how you try to tar dissenting voices with "if you don't believe that CO2 is killing the world then you're a Bush sympathyser!". Please be aware that I'm not denying that the climate is changing - I'm saying that it does this without any input from us and that focusing on CO2 is a total diversion (something a few people are making a lot of money from) to the real issue which is unsustainable human consumption and expansion.
- alphaxion
I have said time and time again, you can cut CO2 to zero and still be left with the biggest problem of all. Why on earth do so many people think that the climate we have experienced for such a short period of time represents the level it should be at? The earth is constantly changing, species die out and new ones take their place. Life is change, what is wrong is how we are destroying all of these eco-systems in our rampant hunger for resources and it's that which poses the largest threat to life ever.
- alphaxion
The big problem here is that perhaps the biggest single obstacle to environmental progress today is his own group! We have several possible avenues for reliable, clean power: clean coal, fission, fusion - but his lot is actively fighting against two of them and at best neglecting the third! I would love to see us embark on a major investment program building a new generation of fission reactors to replace the current coal and gas power plants - but first, we need Greenpeace and co out of the way.
- James
alphaxion -- your thinking strikes me as so skewed. illogical and bizarre on the subject of global warming that I don't even know where to begin to straighten it out. Seriously. You make so little sense that it is impossible to argue with you.
- Sean McBride
Sean: I think almost anyone can follow alphaxion's assertions.
- Ryan Petty
@ James. My brother-in-law is a geologist who worked for coal for 20 years. He says, they laugh at the oxymoron "clean coal" in their posh offices. The mining, the burning and then the waste from this solid carbon material is never, ever going to be clean. It is just a hoax. People born after Three Mile Island forget the crap that can happen. Homer Simpson is not so funny when...
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- Phil Boiarski
People who point to the few climate scientists who posit alternate explanations for climate change to the concensus view as if that somehow "proves" the concensus is wrong don't understand how science works. Scientific theories thrive on challenges, because they are always provisional: a better truth is just around the corner. But one thing is certain: Conducting an uncontrolled long-term experiment in dumping multiple gases into the only atmosphere we have is unwise at best, idiotic at worst.
- Ian Betteridge
@Phil: Not an "oxymoron", just an exaggeration: it's cleanER than the alternatives - and that's the problem. Rather than back realistic improvements, Greenpeace just have a kneejerk objection to everything. 3MI? You do know the WORST exposure of any member of the public was one third of annual background levels, I hope?
- James
And I'll say that again, in case somone missed it. We are conducting an uncontrolled, long-term experiment in changing the composition of the atmosphere by burning pretty-much all the world's trapped fossil carbon in the course of a century or two. Do you think that conducting this experiment when we don't need to do it anymore is a good idea?
- Ian Betteridge
@Phil, clean coal isn't "a joke" in that carbon capture is a reasonable idea. The problem is that it adds considerably to the cost of coal (which means coal ends up as close to the price of renewables), and that the tech to do it is unproven and costly. The issue with Greenpeace's stance is that they don't want to build the pilot plants which would let us find out if it's viable tech or not - they believe that renewables + energy conservation is enough.
- Ian Betteridge
@alphaxion: "The earth is constantly changing, species die out and new ones take their place." Yes. But do you want your species to die out? I thought not.
- Ian Betteridge
Ian: It's hard to say with any certainty--that is the issue. Several times in history CO2 levels have been much higher than they are today.
- Ryan Petty
@ian there is no concensus either way - there are still plenty challenging both sides (which is good)... Current CO2 PPM is about 384 after 200 years of slashign and burning. Over the past 300 million years the average is 2000! CO2 just seems like such a distraction from the real damage, which as I have said and you have said is the destruction and pollution. It doesn't matter how much CO2 you pump into the air if you are going around destroying the eco-systems that allow all life to continue!
- alphaxion
Finally: Whether you believe in man-made climate change or not, the political and economic case is against continuing to burn up fossil fuels. If you want energy independance, if you want more security, if you don't want to owe the Saudis and Russians, start weaning yourself off the petro-economy.
- Ian Betteridge
@ian I agree there - we should be looking at ways of generating our energy in a sustainable way. But the harsh reality is that we cannot live sustainably with 7billion people. A reduction of our numbers on this planet is going to happen, either voluntarily (space colonisation) or forced upon us (natural disasters, humans killing humans). Which is prolly why everyone obsesses over CO2 when it's our numbers that is the hardest and most expensive to solve.
- alphaxion
So I take it Mattb4rd and Ryan are not to be convinced. Has anyone moved a nanometer in their opinions on this topic? Has anyone experienced a willingness to un-form opinion or scale it back at all? Is this something we can expect the average person to deal with and learn about? At least this thread was (mostly) civil.
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
Ian Betteridge -- thanks for your sane comments in this thread. Some of the folks here, who are regurgitating ExxonMobil, Rush Limbaugh and hate radio talking points, strike me as mad as hatters. They make so little sense that one can't find purchase to argue sensibly with them.
- Sean McBride
How is it insane to point out that CO2 levels are irrellevent compared to the damage that 7billion people are doing on a daily basis? That we could move to a zero CO2 way of living but still be destroying eco-systems and ravaging the world? CO2 is such a small component in this whole thing that it should be an after thought. I want clean energy not because of the CO2 but because it means less toxic chemicals and envirnomental destruction to obtain the raw materials.
- alphaxion
alphaxion -- do you have any idea how warped and irrational your logic is on this issue? Does the fact that overpopulation is an enormous problem mean that we shouldn't take care with regard to how we dispose of, say, toxic waste from nuclear power plants? Should we dump it in your backyard? Can you walk and chew gum at the same time?
- Sean McBride
or is it insane to consider that our sheer numbers isn't an issue and can be easily ignored? Tell that to our rapidly emptying oceans, not because of acidity levels but because we are trawling the contents to feed 7billion mouths without a care as to how the next generation of fish will come along for us to eat. The destruction of insects because we deem them to be pests, yet without them entire recycling systems will stop.
- alphaxion
sean: I am talking about the toxicity of our waste.. I'm just pointing out that the obsession with CO2 needs to stop. You're the one linking it to me saying every bit of cleanup needs to stop, I'm advocating we deal with all of our output and our voracious consumption of resources. But our continued expansion will wipe out any effort we make as everyone feels they have the right to consume with impunity.
- alphaxion
alphaxion - most smart people I know are capable of thinking about more than one problem at a time. Some of them can think about dozens or hundreds of problems. You're mired down in a false dichotomy. Try to shake your mind free.
- Sean McBride
Maybe I'm just not getting this across well enough hence your confusion.
- alphaxion
Richard: Why are we the ones in need of convincing? Several folks have posted links to evidence that the case for anthropogenic climate change is far from conclusive. I don't suppose, anyone who thought the case was open and shut, is reconsidering their position?
- Ryan Petty
I am not in the least bit confused. I have been concerned about overpopulation and pollution for a long time. I am also concerned about the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere and our planet. I am concerned about many things. This is not an either/or domain. We need to manage many problems simultaneously.
- Sean McBride
So you think we can continue to grow our numbers and it won't be an issue? you've not answered this at all. Look at the scale of what I'm talking about - I'm referencing our swallowing up of natural growth for arable farming and the mess of fertilisers and wars against species that eat through our crops, the abuse of the sea, the destruction involved in powering our day to day lives. We are fucking up every single system our planet needs to keep recycling resources. Yet everyone obsesses over CO2.
- alphaxion
Oops, I though y'all were done... guess not, my bad, carry on!
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
sean: I'm just looking at things and trying to see a prioirty of situations, CO2 output is such a small priority yet it consumes everyones time. CO2 has been much much higher than this. And the irony of the situation is that if we simply concentrated on sorting out the other dispirate and more pressing issues, the CO2 problem will then correct itself. Since we'll have cleaner technologies that don't emmit CO2, that don't require environmental destruction to keep running.
- alphaxion
Robert: careful trying to stifle conversation around here. You are likely to be called some awful things :).
- Ryan Petty
alphaxion -- I don't know how many times I have to say that I think overpopulation is an immense problem. We need to reduce population, reduce CO2 emissions, and handle many other problems as well. But I honestly think the human race as a whole is too dense to protect its own interests. Nature will have no problem in taking care of business for us, especially on the population front.
- Sean McBride
These arguments will go on and on. The fact is those who are making money hand over fist don't want to give up their franchises. They want to lull the public with PR about how they care, and how they are investing in alternatives and experimenting with carbon capture, but then they want to keep doing what they do. I lost several relatives to "black lung," so I understand the fact that corporations hold the sacredness of profits higher than the sanctity of life.
- Phil Boiarski
Phil -- an eloquent summation of the core problem: short-sighted human greed.
- Sean McBride
Phil: and what of Mr. Gore's commercial interests? Others? Following the money works both ways.
- Ryan Petty
Traits/positions often closely associated with global warming denial: Ann Coulter+ Christian fundamentalists+ creationism+ Dick Cheney+ Fox News+ George W. Bush+ Iran War+ Iraq War+ Islamophobia+ Likud+ neoconservatives+ pro-Israel militancy+ Rush Limbaugh+ torture+. Not always, of course. But enough to be noticeable. The track record on getting things right from this know-nothing political sector has not been impressive.
- Sean McBride
@Ryan You can't compare sitting on the board of Apple and Current TV to knocking the tops off of mountains and turning the rivers orange for a few tons of dirty coal. Look at the forrest, man. Acid rain is falling and whole ecosystems are dying. Pull your head out of your rectum.
- Phil Boiarski
Or out of Rush Limbaugh's rectum. :) Now there is a towering intellect and leading climate scientist, exceeded in brilliance only by Ann Coulter.
- Sean McBride
that's just it tho, I'm not denying climate change - I understand that it happens naturally. I also agree that we are having some effect on it, sadly we don't understand the system enough to tell just what that effect is. But I can see we are shitting in our own bed, and I even mentioned further up in this thread that it was because of greed. We both want the same thing, I just don't think the current mantra of "it's the CO2, stupid" is correct. Yet I'm attacked when I try to say that it's our wider actions
- alphaxion
this is why I love Friendfeed. Quality content and interesting discussion.
- Zee.
Phil: How about personally profiting from carbon credit scams? Mr. Gore uses CurrentTV (and a willing media) as a platform to spread his message to directly increase his wealth. Sean: Why do you insist on personal attacks. I don't suppose you care that many renowned scientists question anthropogenic climate change. Surprising no. Sad, yes.
- Ryan Petty
Phil, a suggestion: I don't think you are bringing abortion into this argument, so I would suggest words other than "sacredness" and "sanctity of life". Just trying to avoid the holy land mines :-)
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
Ryan -- the last I checked, the climate science community was overwhelmingly concerned about human-caused climate change, and about CO2 emissions in particular. Tell us: are you in fact a Rush Limbaugh fan? Have you listened to his show much?
- Sean McBride
@alphaxion, many of these comments were not attacks. Ryan Petty got most of the heat because he seemed to just parrot guano. As for profiting from a carbon swap, first companies will only change for profit. Second, we all profit if we can breathe. @ Richard. One man's sacred is another's profane. When anti-abortionists start fighting against Capital Punishment, I will respect that. I...
more...
- Phil Boiarski
Sean: I do listen to Rush's show on occasion. It is on during the time I work, so it is difficult to catch it regularly. I agree most climate scientists appear to be concerned about climate change and human impacts on global climate. However, there are a growing number of skeptics and compelling arguments against. Couple that with the profiteering on the part of the extremists/alarmists and I believe there is more than enough evidence for reasonable doubt.
- Ryan Petty
Ryan -- I give you credit for composing a civil and relatively reasonable reply. I agree that the science of climate change needs to be vigorously debated and reality-checked day by day. For the time being, it seems reasonable to play the odds and pay close attention to the consensus view within the climate science community.
- Sean McBride
Sean the problem is there is less and less consensus within the scientific community on a daily basis. Reasonable doubt on this subject is a reasonable stance.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
@phil some of them were attacks, such as seans out of order "can you chew gum and walk at the same time". Dispite the fact that I have talked to some people about this subject (I've had an email convo with Robert Giegengack for example) and it's far from a concensus beyond "the climate is changing". No agreement that we are the cause. I hope you can see that I am advocating change because we are damaging the world massively, I just don't agree with the reasoning people give as the main cause (CO2).
- alphaxion
Mark -- one may have reasonable doubt about an issue, but if the issue represents a sufficiently high threat level, one takes reasonable precautions, just in case. When many leading scientists report that current levels of CO2 emissions could lead to the collapse of human civilization as we know it, perhaps we shouldn't just wait around passively to see what happens.
- Sean McBride
Sean -- thank you, I know we don't often agree politically. I jumped into this thread simply because I didn't want everyone to blindly accept there is an open and shut case--that was my initial objection. I should have ended my first post differently so to make that point more clear.
- Ryan Petty
Ryan -- I believe in strongly intellectually challenging everything, so if you want to go after the Gore camp with strong science from reputable scientists, go for it. Let the best science win.
- Sean McBride
Sean -- there was a great link already posted epw.senate.gov. If you are interested, I would start by reading the materials therein.
- Ryan Petty
Wow, phil, you leaped over that gaping rabbit hole with remarkable grace!
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
Update: After apologizing to Robert (offline) for suggesting that he stick to tech interviews, he refuses to change his view of me :). As a blogger who relies on building and maintaining an audience he should know better than to insult them with foul language.
- Ryan Petty
Robert's refusal to recognize the significant debate within the scientific community over anthropogenic climate change, should give anyone pause about the opinions he puts out. He may be comfortable propagandizing for the radical environmental movement, I'll call it being a tool.
- Ryan Petty
Oh big deal get a life buckwheat, green peace should be put on a terrorist list, and im sure in the near future it will be, as for earth hour what a crock of acclamation crap, hope you all line up first for population reduction which is the end result again in the not to distant future
- yeah right
Ryan, please, you are wasting your time here. Unreasonable minds will never reach a reasonable conclusion, unless, of course, by pure, unlikely accident or chance.
- Boverdine
How the heck did I get on Forbes's list of 25 web celebs? :-) http://www.forbes.com/2009...
Daniel Rowley, Nicholas James, AJ Batac and 39 other people liked this
Who the fuck is Perez Hilton?
- Matthew DeVries
Is it just me or is the Forbes.com site the worst thing on the Web? Congrats Dave!
- Denise Howell
Congrats to you, Dave. Yeah, that was way not fun to navigate through. And besides, those bastiches have me on deck with Gary V, like... waiting for next year or something. : )
- Chris Brogan
How the hell did I get on there with Dave?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, they actually put you *above* Dave. Must be due to Valleywag. ;-)
- Bruce Lewis
Congrats to Dave and Robert, then... I guess... maybe
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
i wish forbes would employ a UI person, its so hard to get to the top 25 and then click to/and-or-read the ancillary information. forbes has such legacy adsales/editorial churchnstate driven design
- ben barren
Leo leport made 25 good for him
- Andrew Dawson
from fftogo
Well done Dave and Robert - Forbes is still a horrible site to use though.
- Jim Connolly
Agrred, you don't really belong there, but that I AM NINJA YouTube guy certainly does. He's awesome. I look forward to twittering you soon!!
- Will Higgins™
cos' you are The Winer ... enjoy your 15 minutes
- Thomas Power
it's good to see that they got the photo attributions right this year. :)
- Thomas Hawk
Hmm, missed the cut this year (again) ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Seriously, how can a guy be #1 and I have never ever heard those syllables ever in my life?
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew: I just goes to show there is *way* more to the web than tech. Perez Hilton has parlayed his blogging notoriety into many television appearances, a syndicated radio show, and a book. Check this out: http://google.com/trends...
- John Zipp
Or this (an ego kill!): http://google.com/trends...
- John Zipp
Forbes's only knows how to create link bate and they sure know who will bite
- paul mooney
Awww Paul -- you can smile -- it's okay. Your face won't break. :-)
- Dave Winer
without you Friendfeed wouldn't exist (no RSS to grab), celebs and media would have no way of feeding Twitter automatically...
- Gaby K. Slezák
...therefore nobody on that list would have become "famous" :-) enjoy!
- Gaby K. Slezák
Dave - you created RSS and you love twitter - 'nuf said! :)
- Susan Beebe
Awesome advice on how to potentially avoid a layoff - http://www.e2ecoaching.com/2009...
Arnaud Fischer, Matt Kruse, Pascal Bouvier and Mike Boudreaux liked this
From my former colleague and coach... "1) Make a list of your bosses (6-8), peers (12-14), subordinates and clients. 2) For bosses, ask yourself: “What do these people think of me, and what should they think of me?” What is the single message (8 words max) you want people to know this quarter? Look for opportunities to convey that message. 3) For peers, ask yourself:” What is my relationship with each of these people and what should it be?” What can you do (coffee, lunch, phone call) with each?"
- Steve Rubel
from Bookmarklet
The Big Question: Is there a technological solution to the problem of global warming? - The Independent - http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...
Bill Romanos and Pascal Bouvier liked this
"Why are we asking this now? For two reasons. A German research ship, the Polarstern, is steaming towards a region off the coast of Argentina in the South Atlantic, where it intends to release six tonnes of iron sulphate over an area of 115 square miles. The aim is to study the impact of this "iron fertilisation" on the blooms of plankton that absorb carbon dioxide from the sea and, ultimately, the atmosphere. Some scientists believe this could offer a way of boosting a natural carbon "sink", where carbon is stored or sequestered for a long time. The second reason is a study published yesterday in the journal Nature which backs up this idea of a geo-engineered solution to global warming with hard, scientific observations."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
Cows with names produce more milk, scientists say - Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth...
Gordon Saunders, Pascal Bouvier, Will Higgins™ and 4 other people liked this
"Cows with names produce more milk than those animals who are not named, scientists have found."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
Betsy is a cow's name. So is Daisy.
- Will Higgins™
This Self-confessed 'Crap App' Developer Has Some Very Smart Thoughts on the App Store marketplace: http://www.appleinsider.com/article...
Christian Burns , Ryan, Daniel Rowley and 6 other people liked this
"A software engineer who wrote what he calls a "terrible" and "crap" app in less time than it typically takes to eat lunch has since watched it shoot to the top of Apple's App Store, where it's now generating over $200 an hour despite being a free download."
- Patrick Jordan
It it really great that more and more developers are providing us with specific numbers around different revenue models. I hadn't realized that an app could make 5k a day in ad revenue. And this presumably is from people just checking out the app and not from daily use.
- David Clements
I think the whole subject of App Store price models and success strategies is pretty fascinating (I may be a bit of a sad bastard as it goes) - have you checked out the Mobile Orchard site? Very good analysis on these sort of subjects: http://www.mobileorchard.com/
- Patrick Jordan
Yeah mobile orchards stuff is great.... I haven't checked out that PDF yet but intend to. I really want someone to do an analysis of how many apps are still in active development. Currently we have 15k apps on the store but how many are abandoned by developers that realized that Gold rush was over.
- David Clements
@ David - you feel like momentum is slowing down then?
- Patrick Jordan
I think there is definitely opportunity but it appears that some form of external marketing is becoming more and more necessary. At the beginning it looked like if I cranked out enough, decent apps then I could sustain myself simply by continuing to update my applications. My data is showing a downward trend on this approach. And as such you are either going viral or you are going to converge down to zero. All that being said I am still learning and experimenting.
- David Clements
@ David - are you an iPhone dev yourself then?
- Patrick Jordan
crapware can only be a flash in the pan, not sustainable. having said that, given th install base, and based on basic laws of numbers, one can make a lot of money in a very short period of time tapping the right demographic. definitely a biz opportunity for advertisers wanting to get a message across in the form of short lived apps or apps with content.
- Pascal Bouvier
@ Pascal - I'm not sure whether crapware will be just a flash in the pan. I thought one of the comparisons that the young developer High Gloss made in the link above was a valid one - comparing the App Store to the pop music charts. IMO, there is tons of shite music that hits the top of the charts and makes serious money ...
- Patrick Jordan
@Patrick Yeah I am a developer. Both trying the indie thing and contracting for others.
- David Clements
@ David - excellent. Any apps you are able to name in here?
- Patrick Jordan
I think I saw on twitter he peaked at $200 an hour, and dropped down to $50 an hour. Still pretty good for 20 mins work. ;-) Read the reviews though - it's blowing up people's speakers.
- Tim
@Patrick Lots of apps. Chatterbox a paper fortune teller, WristPop Coin Toss, Origami Crane and XMas Tree, SUZU Alarm Clock and Meditation Timer, Thumb Piano and please don't excommunicate me for this one..... IBurp on Your Fart Ahhhhh....
- David Clements
@ David - cool - need to have a look at some of those ...
- Patrick Jordan
Yeah please do... Shoot me an email at promo at gidigo dot com and I'll hook you up with whatever you want to check out.
- David Clements
Just mailed you David ...
- Patrick Jordan
Just sent them to you.... How do you respond so quickly from FF. Is there an email notification?
- David Clements
@ David - thank you - I just check back on the Me > Comments + Likes area relatively often if I know I'm in a conversation that might get updated frequently ...
- Patrick Jordan
Reading: How to use TweetDeck - http://www.yourbloghelper.com/2009...
Andrey Stefanenko, David Potts, Pascal Bouvier and Lenny Lew liked this
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