oddly, I've never been a big Delicious user until I started using FF, so now I use it as a way to share things I find. It has undoubtedly though been damaged by Yahoo, where it has stagnated as others have innovated. The bigger question though: will Flickr share the same fate? - Duncan Riley
without question, never had a chance even if FriendFeed never was - Lou Paglia
They aren't the same thing and don't serve the same purpose IMHO. I love the two. - directeur via NoiseRiver
friendfeed is for explicit sharing, delicious is for myself, others can lookup if they are interested - Murali
seems like ff adds strong motivation to take action in services where you would not have in the past.. in order to bring the content back here. like every button in other social sites is now a ff share button - Travis Parsons
Murali - I agree, that's how I use ff and del.icio.us. I wonder if that's how most others do too...? - Sonciary Honnoll
Delicious is much more about explicit action. Take for instance their resistance to auto suggesting tags in the beginning. Where FriendFeed is more about capturing the actions you take about the web and consolidating them without any extra ongoing effort on the part of the user. - Caleb Elston
the "social" aspect of delicious is greatly enhanced through the use of friendfeed (or in my case in addition to another site like diggo as well). as is, delicious has a big barrier in trying to make those "connections" between users personal in any way. - Cee Bee
@Travis: That's a good point. I've found myself trying to keep a balance of services, so I use more than I usually would. And the good thing is that everything you do on those services comes back to FF - you share wherever you are. - Cyvros/fyc
Off topic, but picking up from Duncan Riley's comment re Flickr. Just in case Flickr dies a slow death, are there any real alternatives to it? - Paul Rees
friendfeed is very different from del.icio.us, here there are no tags and even if it did I would compare it to stumbleupon. Yet I don't use SU for bookmarking but rather for sharing so they're not in the same league - Dobromir Hadzhiev
funny stuff ... but I wanted to get off at FF as well ... identi.ca is a station half-built :) or else at least let me off at Kwippy since I just wrote about LOL - Steven Hodson
well you have to pull the cord or something to get off Steven! - Allen Stern
Very creative dialogue. I think I'll just continue a mad hop between the various stations. - possible248
I would not have a fail whale. Maybe a sexy blonde who would say "I'm sorry." - Robert Scoble
I would get Louis Gray to either love it or hate it. - Robert Scoble
I would (will) make it so simple, obvious, really distributed that you'll hate yourself for not being the first to have that idea! :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
get a few politicians, a few business leaders, a few fashion leaders, sports stars, etc - create a net of interest... - james svenson
I would get Dennis Howlett to proclaim that there's no way that Enterprises would use it. - Robert Scoble
I would make sure it was designed to stay up and running even as it became increasingly popular. - Abby Martin
I would use Microsoft strategy of "embrace and extend." I would make sure it worked exactly like Twitter with one difference: all the features would work. - Robert Scoble
I would make a deal with MySpace to hold secret concerts for people who were on it. - Robert Scoble
I would make sure Facebook blocked it. - Robert Scoble
I would make it a message bus instead of CMS - Fred Grott
Robert, you're clearly having fun. What if I wrote about a company that's already introducing a way to make money off a Twitter-like service by charging to receive messages? - Louis Gray
We could do much better than clone, though. The thing is - they're THERE - no one uses them. Use your superpowers and have Google open up Jaiku and pay people to join! It has the IM feature you adore, right? - Vince DeGeorge
Louis: that sounds like a porn service. - Robert Scoble
I would have to seriously question my own sanity. - Ken Sheppardson
I would focus on two-way data sync with all existing services (oh, yeah, and hire my platform architects and operations team very, very carefully) - John McCrea
I would hire John's team away from Comcast. :-) - Robert Scoble
When Google (finally) unleashes Jaiku Next Gen running on AppEngine, this space will get REALLY interesting. - ron k jeffries
I wouldn't. Too many things like Twitter are out there already. It's time for someone to develop something even better so we can all be addicted to that. - Candace Holly
I would seed the service with 100 valuable users - politicians, entertainers, scientists, or whoever else. Content really is King - build the content and the user base will come. - JMaultasch
Louis: seriously, pay to receive messages? So you can send as many messages as you want for free, but you gotta pay to receive them? That sounds very lame. - Robert Scoble
Andru: cloning might be unoriginal but it often is profitable.Especially if you add some killer new things that the original doesn't have. - Robert Scoble
I would make it work only on iPhone and Android. - Robert Scoble
I would make it location & device aware / sensitive. - Dean Terry
I would only allow fictional characters to join, such as Batman or Darth Vader. And maybe Chuck Norris. - Mack D. Male
I would charge a reasonable monthly fee if you follow more than 500 people. - Mike Doeff
I would match it feature-for-feature with Twitter, clone the UI shamelessly, allow users to import their Twitter messages, and use a flatfile or CouchDB-based storage infrastructure (not SQL-based). - Eric Florenzano
@Robert, I'll write about it soon, and you'll see why this company thinks they're on to something. - Louis Gray
why would you want to clone Twitter? Clone is the WRONG word. Twitter competitor, different kettle of fish. Now that's something I could heart - Duncan Riley
I'd learn from Twitter's mistakes and hire a community evangelist *early* on. Make sure that I didn't plan service outages for peak usage times, make it simple, but make sure that @replies were easily trackable, that blocking was fully functional, that we had more servers and bandwidth than we needed right off that bat and scaled ahead of the need. Oh sheesh, I could go on... - Lucretia Pruitt
I wouldn't bother. It's a niche to begin with, and either Twitter will manage to rebuild and revive itself, or "the conversation" will move to FriendFeed, Facebook, or other place that already has a massive user base. - Jeremy Toeman
If I were to do a micro-blogging / status update service like twitter I would demand that it connected to mobile phones through SMS. That one feature takes twitter from micro blog to mobile social network - and also provides the engine for IM. - Tony
I would poll the @twitter user base and add as much of what they suggest as possible ;) - highcenter via twhirl
I would hire hackers to make Twitter go down...and stay down...and by hackers I mean 8 year olds with calculators. - Mark Krynsky
@Robert, @Louis, I know a company that's doing a Twitter clone that has an even better business model, and already making money off it (and they aren't doing pay-per-tweet - hint, it's a b2b model). They don't want me writing about them yet because they're applying for the TechCrunch 50 but expect to hear about them soon. - Jesse Stay
Now, back to the fun - I would have a kettle with frying fish for my error message. (thanks for the inspiration @duncan) - Jesse Stay
That's what I've been trying to say (not that it's anyone's fault though) -- that TM is what it is, and its strong point is not speed. It might never catch identi.ca as a top story, but if it got acquired by Microsoft or Google or TechCrunch, it would zoom right to the top and stay there. It's the nature of news, it starts out small and as it grows it settles on a few stories and repeats them over and over until something new starts, and we start over again. - Dave Winer
That's why I started TechJunk after doing the same thing for political news. Not to strangle the market (which is what TM/TC does, again no one's fault) but to act as a pied piper. As with blogging the way to get around group think is with individual judgment. Pretty soon the flaming will start, btw. :-) - Dave Winer
This is what I mean when I say that TechMeme has changed. Gabe is chasing Google News with TechMeme now, not covering what regular people care about. Although the YouTube story that's on top right now is pretty important for us to know about and care about too. I think this is why I look at FriendFeed AND Techmeme. If you do that you get a good view of all stories. - Robert Scoble
Why do you need to write about Identi.ca on Twitter and not the other way around? - paul mooney
i didnt see it hit my google reader feed at all, only on friendfeed. @scobleizer "regular people" don't care about it at all. - Jeremy Toeman
Dave's comment on speed and TM seems spot on -- I just looked at TM for the first time in week -- all the top stories are old (to the extent that they have been talked about on FF and maybe Twitter if it were ever running for hours and sometimes days) - Brian Sullivan
Scoble, maybe its conscious on Gabe's part or maybe the algorithm now does what all human beings do when put in the same position. It happened in the 90s when the computer press only reported three stories: Apple is dead, Microsoft is evil and Java is the future. If you tried to say blogging is the future and Windows is dead, and there is new Mac software, and Java makes lousy UIs and will be used server-side only, and check out Flash, no one would have written it up. - Dave Winer
You can fill in the blanks on what the big stories are in the late part of this decade (oy it's already the late part of the decade). When you look back ten years from now, it will be clear (probably) that Google has already peaked, and what was Viacom again? Scoble will be the new Master of the Universe, and TechCrunch will be about as interesting as News.com and Wired are today. - Dave Winer
Now will Twitter be the main pillar of the new Internet, or will something like Apache be that? People like me believe it's the Apache model that's likely to galvanize this. Twitter needs to fade into the background the same way Apache did and the same way blogging software did. But Twitter is doing everything they can to be sure they are front and center, which creates this conflict. In March they *were* starting to fade into the background, and great new things were happening there, esp in politics. - Dave Winer
Maybe it is because it is so slow and this morning I can't log in. - Warner Crocker
Early yesterday I was getting a downloadable file rather than the site and couldn't register until later in the afternoon. I couldn't even go to profiles without being asked to download a file. Very strange. This morning I stopped using it because the site was too slow. - LPH
identica.ca seems to be a direct clone of twitter - even down to the preformance issues... - Tom Quinn
There is no doubt that a new site like identi.ca will suffer growing pains and performance problems. The big question in my mind is whether or not the community will contribute something to this open source project and try to make it better or just piss and moan about it. - Mike Doeff
They have a weird bug - their page redirects to a sub domain of their company, where the Identi.ca-code, but the links go back to Identi.ca, but form data isn't sent back to the company-sub-domain when they redirect you back. If you change the form-actions with Firebug, everything works. - sebmos
Techmeme should start linking FF discussion threads as "official" links on stories. They are frequently more interesting than what the other bloggers have to say about the same story. Not sure exactly how to do this but Gabe's pretty smart and I'm sure could figure out a way to do it. - Thomas Hawk
@Thomas...ahhhhhhhhh..brilliant idea !! Thats extacly what techmeme s/do and not only with FF butt other forum driven sites too - Peter Dawson
because techmeme are facists.. only a little though - Tyler
thats a great idea thomas - take away more from the people who create the content - love it! - Allen Stern
Oh my Godwin! I've been waiting nearly three years for someone to make such a comparison. Thank you Tyler! - Gabe Rivera
who is godwin, i dont see his or her comment? - Allen Stern
We all create the content Allen. Techmeme already links digg submissions to stories sometimes. I find the conversations at FF more interesting and mature frequently than the conversations at digg. It would seem a good fit to me. I'm sure Gabe could figure it out if he thought it added value. - Thomas Hawk
Ok Thomas thanks for your clarification. I am just hoping I get a lead sometime this week. - Allen Stern
Thomas: agreed FF threads tend to be be better than corresponding digg threads. But the problem with FF is the commentary around a post is typically scattered over multiple threads and often tricky to associate by machine (note Duncan's tweet above lacks a link). It's a partially solvable problem, but probably not worth it just to get FF comments right now. - Gabe Rivera
I never figured out what identi.ca was (Twitter clone? something else?) - but I made an account. :) - Don MacAskill
Funny.I got info about Identi.ca from Techmeme.You? - Igor Poltavskiy
Even I'VE never referred to Techmeme as "fascists." @Allen, I'm assuming Seth Godwin? may have been on his blog. - Cyndy
cyndy isnt that seth godin? im confused now - Allen Stern
Cyndy, read what Gabe wrote again. Gabe is talking to Tyler, who compared Techmeme to fascism. - Dan Kaplan
That's what I meant, Allen. Never mind. I'm confusing myself just replying. :) - Cyndy
Oh how I love FriendFeed! I've really really enjoyed reading this thread. I will now post a summary of what we've seen so far. - Gabe Rivera
SYNOPSIS: identi.ca, which almost topped Techmeme, should have topped Techmeme, because it's open source and therefore not just another buggy Twitter clone. This illustrates the problem with Techmeme, which TechJunk will help fix, and site owner Dave Winer should know because he knew 10 years ago what would be true and important today in tech. "Regular people" don't care about what's on Techmeme, but do, and should. (That last point was argued by the same person.) Techmeme may or may not be analogous to the Third Reich. Mike Godwin may or may not be Seth Godin. - Gabe Rivera
If it didn't sting so much that Synopsis would be hilarious - Nathan Eckenrode
Identi.ca is cool - but the GPL 3.0 license dramatically limits its usefulness as a base for other services to build from. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
this thread should've ended with the synopsis. nothing else will possibly add further value. including this comment. - Jeremy Toeman
@gaberivera's synopsis just gave me my first actual belly laugh of the day; and still giggling a little. Thanks, Gabe. - Merredith Branscombe
Gabe, I love the synopsis. So, you were comparing Seth Godin to the Third Reich right? ;) - Jackson Miller
Jackson, no -- not a fair comparison because people are still allowed to *comment* on the Third Reich. - Merredith Branscombe
oh if there is reference to Godwins law - then who are the Nazi's and who is Hitler on this thread ?? :)- - Peter Dawson
I think in this case TechMeme = Fascists = Nazis, which would make Gabe Hitler. (Disclaimer: This comment in no way, shape or form refelcts the opinion of the commenter and is simply a point of clarification.) - Ken Sheppardson
Why is this supposedly a big story? Someone whips together a PHP app backed by a database and open sources it... woo hoo... How many people commenting on this or claiming it's a big deal have contributed to an open soure project? How many have run one that's gotten any traction? I've done and continue to do both. I think you all wet yourselves over the term without understanding when it is and isn't valuable. Tell me what value open source has in a web service? None. Gimme a break... this is rightly a non-story. - Jason Carreira via twhirl
This FF made me laugh. I'm glad I advertised on TechMeme. Everyone is looking at TechMeme to try to figure out the algorithm and whether or not Gabe is evil. :-) - Robert Scoble
I'm really out of the loop here. I'm expecting to see "Yankee Doodle Dandy" or "1776" on the list? I'd even be ok with Mel Gibson's "The Patriot". - Kevin Shannon
I sure would like to see that John Adams movie that played on cable - Noah David Simon
Kevin S: ooh, Yankee Doodle Dandy! Excellent idea and also excellent movie!! :) - edythe
Yankee doodle dandy is great; James Cagney was a great song and dance man; love the 4 cohens! - RAPatton
"my father thanks you, my my mother thanks you, my sisterthanks you and I thank you" - RAPatton
I am adding this list to my list of "13 Internet Lists You Thought Were Amazingly Stupid Based on the Headline But Actually Turned Out to be Mildly Interesting and Thought-Provoking" - Karim
i have that list, too. it's not as long as yours and nowhere near as long as my list of Most Despised Scenes in Movies and TV Where Characters Eat Ridiculously (with or without chopsticks) - edythe
sounds good. but so far all i've got is that spaghetti scene in "Lady and the Tramp" - Karim
animation not allowed! (top prize may go to anabella sciorra and wesley snipes in jungle fever in the architecture office... arrgggghhh!) - edythe
and people still think boycotting the AP is a good idea? - David Weiner
@Jon: a death of an industry hastened by recession? @Sean: that's 150 dedicated writers that just lost their means of writing for a living. Say what you will about the obsolescence of dead-tree media, it's still a sad thing to watch. - Dan Kaplan
Traditional news papers are in bad straits because readers are moving to electronic media, not because of a *Rescission* - Mark Nassal via twhirl
Dan: I don't mean to be callous about the situations of those affected. But the decline in the quality of the mainstream/corporate media has been so precipitous in recent years that its dissolution seems like a healthy development for America as a whole. It's been quite a while since we've enjoyed the skeptical, inquiring and dissident voice of an authentic fourth estate, one that speaks truth to power. - Sean McBride
@dan: Tis a sad thing to watch indeed - Jon Dillon
Sean: "It's been quite a while since we've enjoyed the skeptical, inquiring and dissident voice of an authentic fourth estate, one that speaks truth to power." I can't really argue with that - Dan Kaplan
newspapers need to break news stories and not just reprint the AP news, investigate stories and not so much fluff stories. - Carroll Sturm
But let's not move this towards an anti-mainstream media meme. Without the AP and resources of all news gathering operations, the 'authenticity' argument would be far greater. - David Weiner
... not to mention the quality and accuracy of the content, broad reach ... - David Weiner
With all their resources, the mainstream media were unable to ask a single meaningful question about the Bush/Cheney rationale for the Iraq War -- in fact, the MSM, which are owned and controlled by fewer than a dozen billionaires and oligarchs (most of them neoconservatives, like Rupert Murdoch) served as cheerleaders and crude propagandists for the war. Many important questions about the war, including supporting investigative research, were pursued on the Internet, outside the control of the MSM. - Sean McBride
@Carroll: The problem is with the continued downsizing, newspapers don't have enough reporters and have no choice but to run mostly AP... The downsizing virus will keep perpetuating until it's eaten everything away... - Chris Reed
not really a sign of recession which we've been in for a while now, but further decline of MSM. - Joe Buhler
all newspapers across the country are getting hit hard. the recession spread a while ago though this is just a byproduct - Cee Bee
Now I know what it must have been like to watch the typewriter industry fade away. Keep in mind, though, that it used to be a joke to us in the L.A. journalism biz how vast the Times staff was, where some reporters might go the whole year with just one byline. Even with these layoffs, the Times newsroom staff numbers around 700. That might be half of what it used to be, but my old paper has downsized so far that its newsroom staff now numbers around 40. - Chris Reed
I used to buy and read at least five newspapers a day, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor. I haven't bought or looked at a newspaper since the mid-nineties -- I've been getting a much superior news flow, much more conveniently, on the Internet. I've been predicting the death of the newspaper for over a decade. People in the newspaper business tend to be slow-witted -- ripe to take down. - Sean McBride
Technically, you're not in recession. Recession is negative overall economic growth (the economy shrinking). The US economy grew by an average of 1% over the first quarter of the year. - Ian Betteridge
It's sad, but this has been expected for *years* now. It's like the titanic sinking in slow motion. I would think any newspaper employee would have checked out alternate careers or jobs by now? - Jason Kaneshiro
We may not be in a recession, but it sure feels like it. President Palmer said that in an Allstate commercial the other night... - Chris Reed
@Jason: I have a tendency to sail on Titanics. I was part of an online sports site, and shortly after I left it went under in the dot-com bust.... I left newspapers a couple of years ago, and look what's happening. My current company better hang on to me as long as they can... (Though unlike past workplaces, it doesn't feel like a sinking ship at all... just the opposite) - Chris Reed
the more media people use the word "recession" when there ISN'T one happening, the more likely one will happen. - Jeremy Toeman
Did anyone else quickly pull up Chris' LinkedIn profile to refresh memory at what industry he's in now? ;) - Cyndy
@Cyndy: Let me just save everyone the trouble by saying I am now a trainer of Lipizzaner stallions. - Chris Reed
Mass Media is going to blame you for taking away their jobs! LMAO - Igor The Troll
More and more cuts mean there is constantly more problems in traditional media companies. They need to adapt to chance since thing will get more distributed and one company just can't do everything alone. - Daniel Schildt
have you guys thought of ditching twitter and developing the micro blogging side of FriendFeed... but seriously good that it monitors the api - but it would be great to have some sort of warning that your close to exceeding the api calls or something. And I think it is crap that we have to get clients that take into account a services inability to scale and be of use to it's users. My patience is growing thin especially since they just had a shit load of cash thrown at them! Keep up the good work with twhirl :) I use it mainly for FF now. - Dave Gray
Good job improving Twhirl's ability to monitor the Twitter API. Much needed. - Justin Coleman via twhirl
I think the FF UI on Twhirl is brutally hard to use. Way too much information and formatting Love the tweet UI, tho! - Clay Newton
thank god. back to twhirl for me. No more using that darn website. - mike via twhirl
have you fixed the UI so you no longer have to hit "cancel" to close the preferences window? just a little "x" will do... - Jeremy Toeman
thanks all. Clay, thanks for your feedback, how would you enhance the FF Twhirl UI? Jeremy let me check this one. - Loic Le Meur
i have multiple twitter accts (open simultaneously in twhirl) and I thought last release would fix limit exceed problem...has that been resolved? also, why does twhirl always load very old direct messages first? - Pokai
Hate? That's a bit strong. Most of my friends still use it. What do you hate about it? - Stephen Mack
There are so many things wrong with Evite!! I don't hate it, but I get pissed off numerous times if I'm setting up an event. I wish I could sit down with them or some new company and explain where the failings are, cause they don't seem to get it - at least many of them have not been fixed over several years. - Rachel L Fisher
Hate probably is too strong, but there's still something about it that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's having to publicly commit to something or it could be the missing human factor. As much as I love then internet when I get together with friends, it tends to be offline. I understand the need for it with large groups, but just haven't really ever been a fan. - Davis Freeberg
dont like evite, but havent found anything better so far... dont like any of the "2.0" solutions at all... - Jeremy Toeman
directeur, even if it does fail, the code and decentralized service may live on. Any one can grab that code now and host their own service...and they'll all talk to one another. It's liberation day for Microblogging. - Duncan Riley
Duncan: I'm sorry but I don't think so. I haven't studied their code really yet. But do they provide any kind of synchronization betweentwo copies of Laconias. I think their Xmpp is just for talking to one instance of laconia (I think) I mean, I don't think it's that "easy". I may be wrong of course, that was a prediction. I'll study the code :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
@directeur.. you can reshare this thread to room #identica - Naor
