Bindu Reddy › Comments

They probably happy they can have some vacation time :p - Rodfather

I think they had vacation time at FriendFeed. - Cristo

I think so, sometimes it can be better to work for someone. - J. Abdul-Qahhar

Working for other people works when you respect them and are getting along. Otherwise, it turns into hell. - Cristo

I guess they'll be there as long as the contract forces and then they'll spin up a new startup... - Jemm

Piece of mind is nice to have. Startups are stressful. - Rodfather

Acquisitions can be stressful tool. ;) - Cristo

I suppose any job can be stressful. I would imagine those who were put to work on other projects might not be happy. Breaking up a team is tough. - Rodfather

The FF guys and gals are serial entrepreneurs. They enjoy creating and doing things on their own. Guaranteed they will leave FB at some point in the next 3 to 5 years if not sooner. Someone from the originals will leave in the next 6 months. - CW™

I thought Gary Burd already left? - Bindu Reddy

I'm guessing I won't get any FriendFeed likes on this post. - Cristo

@Bindu: Yeah, because he doesn't like telecommuting. - Maxamad (Amazigh)

Sadly, a lot of people were saying the same thing 10 years ago... - Tudor Bosman from Android

Alex, yes human interaction is valuable but the machine has other advantages - scale, distribution and objectivity. Tudor, agree we were saying that 10 years ago but I think the world moves more slowly than most geeks assume it will.. After all recently have everyday people adopted the internet in a big way to publish etc - Bindu Reddy

A machine is only as objective as those who control it. - Alex Scoble

I think the recent bubble bursting will accelerate the downsizing in the name of efficiency and productivity plus phone mail hell has trained consumers that human interaction is not necessary... - WarLord

Phone system hell has trained consumers that poor human interaction isn't necessary. Companies that serve their customers well will continue to be rewarded. - Alex Scoble

the most successful people don't try and do everything themselves they find others who are successful and work with them, like a celebrity who has their own nutritionist, personal trainer, pr person, etc if you try to do everything yourself you won't get as far, it's better to focus on what you are good at, i mean, if you were hungry would you make your own bread or would you buy it from the store, middle men exist for that reason they save us time and money, outsourcing is a booming industry - Loc

The web has eliminated some, but created others. - LogEx

The two most constant trends in the history of business are disintermediation and reintermediation. As soon as we replace travel agents with sites like Travelocity and Expedia, up pop paid services where experienced users get paid to help you find the bargains. - Stephen Mack

@Loc I don't mean to suggest you should do everything yourself...All I am saying would the world be better if consumers dealt with producers directly. I am suggesting that there would be exchanges which would eliminate middle-men. Expedia is a great example of such a thing. Today you ideally don't call a travel agent to book tickets to NYC. You or your personal assistant would use Expedia. - Bindu Reddy

@Stephen yes but the # of middle men did go down right? There were a lot more travel agents before compared to the experienced ppl who found tickets? - Bindu Reddy

Isn't Expedia just another middle man? - Brian Sullivan

Yes but it is one exchange that eliminates the need for 100s of small "exchanges" primarily because it mostly uses machines to connect travellers to airlines. I am not so sure we can eliminate exchanges... - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, yes, but your original post said "eliminate." :) - Stephen Mack from iPhone

So it it just a more efficient centralized middle man? There will always be a need to aggregate information, services and products. The web makes it more efficient in some ways but not fundamentally different. - Brian Sullivan

We'll always have middlemen. What they look like might change, but we'll always have them. And some of them will -always- be lawyers and agents. They represent a class of middlemen that is necessary due to expertise. - Soup

If everyone is somewhere on the circumference of the circle, and none are at the center, then in effect there are no middlemen (or to look at it another way: everyone is a middleman to a degree). Will the network ever decentralize that completely? Don't know. - Micah Wittman

Also, exchanges are not necessarily preferred even if they are more efficient, particularly from the consumer point of view. Exchanges may excel at anti-consumer behaviors such as filtering results to benefit certain organizations, or maximizing pricing (e.g., airlines). - LogEx

When consumers talk to producers (or those paid on commission) the consumer needs to know as much as they can about the product or risk being grossly oversold. In the case of things like houses, it is almost never a good idea to only look into it yourself. Hell, most people don't even know why granite is the "in" thing. Going to a middle-man gets you years of experience and knowledge on your side. - Heather

Stephen Mack - sure...I guess I ought to append that :) - Bindu Reddy

Heather, I agree that the consumer needs to know a lot of things before making a decision. The exchange technically is supposed to give that kind of information. take real estate for example - Red Fin gives you data like - how many days in the market, average cost of price sold in your area etc. In many cases the "experienced agents' are looking up the same kind of information from similar sources. That said I am not discounting all experience in every industry. - Bindu Reddy

if you are subject matter expert why have a middle man. if you only know enough to get your self in trouble a middle man will save you from some unknown *risks*. The worst things is when I educate someone *Middle man*, and than they decide they don`t need me because know they Know. - Robert Higgins

ha ha... Yes it stuck me that this is one of the few places on the web one can have such discussions... Other group/forums tend to be topic specific (e.g. politics vs. tech etc). - Bindu Reddy

Or have a serious, substantive discussion and LOLcats in adjacent threads. :-) - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

Yup :) When are bogged down with all the serious stuff...glance over to the next post and it will make you smile :) - Bindu Reddy

Not sure, but I could speculate. Some of the clients can sell ads. Some of them can be sold as services. Some of them are created just because creative people wonder if they can and then they do... The really great ones I guess end up getting funded from somewhere.... kind of like Twitter itself, maybe? - Holly Rae, FFer

You could also charge for premium versions or the iPhone version. Tweetie is $2.99 on the iPhone and well worth it. - Louis Gray

Chris looking for free beer and chips. - Rodfather

No, margaritas and ceviche. :) - Cristo

So where's this party at? - Rodfather

In San francisco at this club called Bimbos... - Bindu Reddy

Bimbo's 365 in North Beach. Tainted Love plays there I think. [Oh, actually I was thinking of the Red Devil Lounge, although I have been to 80s night at Bimbo's before] - Cristo

Yes that is the one... - Bindu Reddy

Cool have fun if you go :) - Rodfather

I Adore Beer!!! so Poo on you !!!!! - SCS Watching the Sun

Depends on the beer. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

MVB only drinks the Best!!! Bud Light ..... - SCS Watching the Sun

I actually HATE beer. Never liked it. - directeur

ha ha..me too :)) - Bindu Reddy

You need to than unfollow those users...:)) Twitter is a lot more about broadcasting and getting followers is like a drug.. the more you broadcast the more followers you get :) - Bindu Reddy

Are you getting high right now? :) - Cristo

Getting followers doesn't really mean anything: 390 of the 400 followers I have on Twitter never act or do anything with what I say on it. Getting them to convert is the meaningful part of the marketing proposition, and conversations, I've found, are far more effective at that. - Mark Trapp

Mark is right. - Robert Scoble

So, what's the FAQ for interaction on Twitter? I had a post that got 100+ comments the other day here on Friendfeed but no response on Twitter. I must be doing something wrong over there. - Eric @ CS Techcast

twitter seems to be great for people who are lazy and not really savvy about marketing. it's sort of like shouting into the void, and you might get a few people to respond, but do you really get people to act? - Bren, Photophobe

@Mark, I agree with you.. However to a lot of people having a follower number like 10K/20K, which seems like a relatively easily thing to do on Twitter, is not only just a high but it is also a good way to keep in touch with your audience without spending too much time... Here keeping in touch with your audience is way more time consuming - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, but keeping in touch doesn't mean anything if they're not listening. You can have a million followers, but if you're not getting any of them to act on what you're saying, it doesn't mean much. Getting conversations going with people, who may or may not be followers, which Twitter is pretty bad at, are more effective at getting people to convert. I just had a relatively popular... more... - Mark Trapp

Bindu, I'm following you (FF) and I just commented too :) - Micah Wittman

@Mark, Curious how did you get them to go to your website? - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, if I knew that I'd have it made. Near as I can tell, people were doing Twitter and Google searches for "twitter list," and then started retweeting it and sharing it from there. - Mark Trapp

Following is such a low-risk endeavor that people don't put thought into it: they'll follow anyone and everyone. You even have people thinking it's common decency to automatically follow people if they follow you without even thinking about if their content is interesting. Following is the 21st century equivalent of receiving a phone book or the yellow pages: you do it just in case you need to contact or get ahold of someone in the future, but nobody ever realistically does. - Mark Trapp

Yep, it's like collecting business cards that get neatly filed into a big binder. It's about the self-satisfaction of the collection - you feel more connected / networked / important and avoid doing the hard work of cold calling or meeting with people and building something or whatever. - Micah Wittman

I agree with following being a low-risk effort... However I have also heard of ppl gaining value from Twitter without much effort. Take for example this coffeshop I am a big fan of - sightglass coffee. They get a lot of customers from Twitter. It takes them relatively little time to tweet and they get customers. It would be very hard to achieve the same on FF. - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, I get lots of conversation on Twitter, too. One of the reasons I am there more than here is because people with common interest in my political obsessions are there, but not here. - Karoli

Karoli - Yes, the Twitterverse is way more diverse than the FFverse. Curious do you get more comments/conversations per post on Twitter as compared to FF or is it that you you post more stuff because time spent per post is lower on Twitter - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, I get very little response to political conversations/comments on FF - a couple of folks follow here but a very small percentage compared to twitter. I tried to pull people over here, but they didn't understand why they should leave tweetdeck and their twitter setup for new territory. - Karoli

Geeks (+ early adopters, influential folks, the elite ...) are on FriendFeed and the proletariat on Twitter? Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat? Calls for action work best when the audience actually cares, so prolly that's all about choosing the right medium for the targeted punters? - Sebastian

Sebastian... yes agree the geeks and tech bloggers are on FF... However if you are marketing say a fashion or beauty blog. You won't get much interest here. twitter is the place for you :) - Bindu Reddy

I disagree with that statement, Bindu. There's a LOT of non-tech getting traction on FriendFeed. So much so that it's the number one reason Scoble no longer enjoys being here: he says he doesn't see enough tech for his liking. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Just butting in here to mention that there are tons of uses for both twitter and friendfeed that have nothing whatsoever to do with marketing. In fact, once could make the argument that social networks such as these were designed to get away from marketing. Unlike radio, TV, or even a web search, you choose who you'll be receiving information from. If you're looking to exchange... more... - Mr. Gunn

Marketing, schmarketing. - Christopher A Carr

Bindu, what I'm sick of is marketers broadcasting their sales pitches to all social media outlets out there, regardless whether the audience might fit or not. Anyways, i'ts possible to attract a few somewhat intelligent responses to geeky topics at Twitter, at least when xmas and independence day share the same date. Most probably I wouldn't try to sell wonder bras at FF, though. - Sebastian

@Tina ... umm I have not been an avid user of FF lately so maybe it has become pretty diverse. Are you saying there are a lot of people on here with specific interests such as politics, beauty etc? - Bindu Reddy

Sebastian - LOL.. agree :) - Bindu Reddy

Bindu: Ning is a better place to go if you have very specific topics you want to talk about. They are growing a FriendFeed every 12 days (they are getting a million new users that often and have just passed 38 million registered). FriendFeed is fun if you aren't sure what you want to chat about and you're cool with seeing lots of family pictures and goofy stuff. Tina is right that the hard-core geeks are mostly on Twitter or Facebook now, I keep watching here, though. - Robert Scoble

Karoli I get all kinds of action here on political topics. I have more followers on Twitter but rarely get a response there. Here I got 80+ comments yesterday. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF) from iPod

MVB, Karoli is a prolific voice on twitter. Twitter seems quite effective for political advocacy/activism even though longer form convos have to break out somewhere else. Also, just like friendfeed, volume / steady presence can make all the difference. Your tweet count is ~2K; Karoli's over 63K. - Micah Wittman

My presence here is similar to Kaoli's on Twitter, then. So, presence is a mitigating factor. But, Micah, as you so deftly point out, for a long conversation there needs to be a move to another venue. That's where here works better, since it can stay right here. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF) from iPod

We agree, and can agreed at length right here, folks :) - Micah Wittman

So link your twitter to your friendfeed. Get followers and comments. The best of both worlds. - Hareesh Nagarajan

Does it make any difference here whether the original post was to Twitter and reposted here automatically or the original post was directly here? In other words, does the FF community prefer to comment on direct posts rather than Twitter reposts? - Jimmy Walker

Jimmy: it honestly depends on who you interact with on FriendFeed. There are people who get irate about people only posting to Twitter and openly advocate using FriendFeed directly, and yet, there are interesting people who always get a conversation going around their tweets. One thing that sometimes helps is coming back to FriendFeed and elaborating on your tweet, or to do more than... more... - Mark Trapp

LOL - CW™

I hate recruiters - Ivan Kirigin

Recruiters, gotta love em. Well, actually you don't. - Eric @ CS Techcast

Haahah. That's a good one. - Micah Wittman

You should reply and say, "Man if only you'd called me a couple of days ago I would have been able to do something with you. Now? Well, sorry, you just missed your chance." - Kenton

wtf? - kosmar

what fb deal??? - Gustaf

ha ha.. are they looking to give you a job or get you to hire them on behalf of FF. - Bindu Reddy

Presumably they are offering their services to recruit staff for friendfeed. You're just an entry in a mail merge database, as far as they're concerned. - DGentry

HAHAHAH That is epic!! tooooo funny :D - Susan Beebe

LOL! - Kol Tregaskes

Tell them you'd like a job at Facebook. - Andrew C

All is well Paul....What's happening in FB... - Symon Muchina Thuo

Mona, u are back on FF :) IMO, Yes doing something you are passionate about is definitely the most important thing. Yet, I think there are people who are probably not that passionate about anything... it seems they more or less just want to make money. I find it a little hard to believe that Goldman Sachs bankers are doing smthg they are really passionate abt... esp if most of their jobs involves betting so that they can make money - Bindu Reddy

...because most people believe that more money and/or more fame will buy them more control and more freedom. - .LAG liked that

Well from here there is a pretty solid infrastructure using a bus train combination to travel to San Francisco, bring a bike along and your set. :) - Raymond Marr aka Knatchwa

*poker face* - Micah Wittman

It would be very tempting, but it would be very tough for me. I moved away from the PNW once and it didn't work out very well. - Joe Pierce

Every conservative I've met lately is little more than a parrot, perfectly trained in the Rupert Murdock school: by Professors BillO, Hannity, Beck, some variation of Faux Noise, They rarely display any knowledge of history, making up or cherry-picking facts, They get very angry very quickly if you just don't buy into their traitorous rants, you must be a socialist. I find little, one might say microscopic, intellect. - Phil Boiarski

"But questioning the IQ of opponents is a specialty of liberals. " - Ah, AEI. I'm only surprised it took till the third paragraph for me to read something ridiculous. - Andrew C

Who cares which side you're on. Concentrate on the issues. - Mona Nomura

Fnord. - Internet's Tad

Troll - Glen Campbell

Yeah, Mona - Jack DeWitt Smith

"To reiterate, people who subscribe to non-traditional ideas probably have above-average intellects, but that does not mean other smart people will like those ideas.... Japan, for example, has no tradition of monotheistic religion, but the few Japanese Christians tend to be much more educated than non-Christians in Japan." - Alex Scrivener

generalizations are no good. - rei yano

just read it and it was a pretty good article actually. - rei yano

Agreed, rei yano. The read was interesting. I found it amusing that Buckley was quoted, given that he is one of the finest examples of intelligent conservatism in the past century. *chuckle* Too bad we don't have more like him around. As for IQ...I'd be curious about a combination correlational study - that not only hits on political and religious activism, but about those who are... more... - ProsePetals (aka Denise)

fairly strategic to eliminate the smart ones first. cut off the head. - rei yano

...and Bingo was his name-o. ;-) - ProsePetals (aka Denise)

duh ;) - mike "glemak" dunn

alan you are to quick & bindu </kidding> - mike "glemak" dunn

OK now can anyone name names :)) - Bindu Reddy

Probably never. I bet he is the first to try! - Louis Gray

the usual suspects - i like most of them anyway (not rush though - can't stand that charlatan) - mike "glemak" dunn

that depends on the split of people on the internet. Are most of the techies left-wing types? Are most of the internet sites dominated by left-wing folks? If yes, he won't be popular. - Vipul Rawat

Vipul, actually I am not talking about politics... I am just talking about ppl making controversial statements just to get attn :) - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, sorry for being a bit off. I'm not sure about the FF 'cos I'ven't come across a case like that. However, in Rush's case it's a mix of things. He does get attention, but he has to offer value as well to maintain viewership. The same will apply to FF. - Vipul Rawat

I'd say it happens on a daily basis, Bindu. - Soup

Bindu, there's a typo in your post. You misspelled "I'm quite certain that" as "Wondering how". - Bruce Lewis

Haha, happens every new post on almost any big tech blog. And look at last night with FF :) - Holden Page

Bruce LOL :)) - Bindu Reddy

Holden seems like I missed the action last night... can you point me to the relevant post(s)? - Bindu Reddy

N. of the 40th parallel, he makes none AT ALL, that is to say outside of his incendiary statmenents in the US he's non-existent geo-politically - sofarsoShawn

Bindu, you missed it? I thought this is what you were referring to: http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... - Bruce Lewis

that is what I was referring to - Holden Page

Oh yes, I can understand that and I am happy to discount that... - Bindu Reddy

This would hold true for pretty much any mobile phone or laptop, too. Another tip: If you're sitting next to someone on a bus or plane and they start reading a book or magazine, they're also not interested in talking. - Mr. Gunn

Yes you can.. I do have parallels as well but I guess I am regarding that as "too much trouble" right now :) - Bindu Reddy

I have too much trouble, I understand. :) - Holly Rae, FFer

I've only read negative reviews. We should swap! - Soup

ha ha... really? for some reason I keep bumping into Windows 7 likes on LIkaholix which is what made me think that people are raving about it... - Bindu Reddy

7 is what Vista should have been. I guess after Vista anything is better :) - Daryl Hunt on FF

they coulda made the list icon apparent on the feed of users, you see them scoll by, and you could just list them on the spot without have to click through pages, but its a nice feature, i'm not complaining at all, :) - chaz2b

There's first time for everything, eh? ;) - Jemm

Specifically I really like how you can set lists to be public, how you can see which lists you are part off and the way you can follow lists. - Bindu Reddy

Me too. So tired. - Katie: Witch Of The West

It's been a very busy day for us. I thought I'd get a respite when the spouse went to pick up the other kid. Unfortunately, the little one had a tantrum and was left at home. I just need an hour or two and then I can get back to work. - Anika

Work just never stops. I feel compelled to burst into tears. - Derrick

Of course we don't need more and we need to strive towards decreasing it... But it is also not the case that - "The world is an extremely dangerous place now" as some reporters/media anchors make it out to be. It was probably way more dangerous 100 - 200 years ago. - Bindu Reddy

Any amount is too much, but you're right that one might expect even more than we have already. - Stephen Mack

violence against even a single person out of 6B+ is still Violence... today people have much easier access to much more info & resources to abuse & manipulate compared to 100-200 years ago. We have grown smarter but more dangerous also. - Roshan Ramachandran

It's a great point to remember Bindu. We have made huge strides in so many areas because humans have consciously chosen to be more humane. It's not all bad. - Todd Hoff

No doubt, Any amount is too much... The flip side is also true that today we get to hear a lot more about any violence that happens anywhere in the world because we are so much more connected. That said I am not advocating we turn a blind eye towards violence but I think it helps to remember that at some point world population was decreasing because ppl were killing each other off! - Bindu Reddy

I have watched a few episodes... Not bad but not great - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, you're absolutely right. I think it's a cut above most police procedurals, but mainly due to Nathan's charming presence. Co-star Stana Katic is growing on me. I think this most recent episode was actually their best to date -- funny banter and a decent mystery, plus this hilarious Firefly opening. (Plus they managed to squeeze in references to both Underworld and Buffy.) - Stephen Mack