Bob Potter

I've been experiencing that a lot tonight, Louis. The sidebar will say I have 200 items, but the main area gives me what you pictured. I was able to clear it up by signing out of Google and signing back in. Annoying to say the least. - Mark Trapp

Phew. Not just me. I like the Google Reader app and the team, which is why it's in part fun to show this. They do a great job, but that's an amusing bug. - Louis Gray

GReader must not like you guys, I haven't had even the slightest hint of trouble at all today. - Shawn Kirsch

@Shawn: Inside, I am crying. :-( - Louis Gray

and here I am with FeedDemon working flawlessly as usual :) - Steven Hodson

Steven, whatever it takes to make you happy and cranky-free. We are at your service. - Louis Gray

Shawn, have you let GReader get recklessly high in unread items? At one point, I was well over a thousand unread entries, and was chalking up the weirdness to GReader's (not so) silent protest. - Mark Trapp

Scratch that, now it's going goofy on me. And yes Mark, I've had well over 3000 unread items before, and as they kept on coming (really busy news day), it took me about 6 hours to get through them. - Shawn Kirsch

I want more options instead of just like. Such as "dream of seeing this." I considered it a success to have my reader under 100 once this month. - Cyndy

So Cyndy, how does that happen? I check in multiple times throughout the day and bring it to zero. - Louis Gray

Same problem here! - Maryam Ardakani

Dunno, Louis... more feeds? Gah. 300 more in the time I was making a child lunch for school. It's WEDNESDAY people! Stop writing! Wednesday is supposed to be a SLOW catch-up day! - Cyndy

Google Reader has been acting weird all morning. Only now has it's stop giving me error messages. - Paul Grav

I've got the same problem >1000 new items and no unread items? Meh. - Sally Church

yeah, GR has been doing the odd on me today too. Not catching up with the read items properly. - laurence timms via twhirl

very scary - Shey

You've been secretly cut-off dude. Did you buy someone at the reader team a caff instead of a decaf when you were there? - Charlie Anzman

Sounds like something you late nighters faced! :-) Maybe Google did some maintenance overnight thinking you night owls would be in bed. - Hutch Carpenter

I gave up on Google Reader - and all readers - a while ago. Much better to actually go to blog pages than to see a denatured version in a meta-browser. - Edward Vielmetti

I agree with Edward, but then again I don't check 1,000 feeds like Scoble does. Techmeme, reddit, digg and tweets are all the recommends I need. - Justin Gardner via twhirl

I live in the land of the feed reader. I'm right there with Scoble 1000+ feeds to read every day. And I have the scattered across several online feed readers (I like to play around), doesn't stop me from adding more feeds, I don't even flinch. - Shawn Kirsch

As an information junkie, I regularly check out close to 500 feeds: saying just go to the blogs is like telling a heroin addict to just chew gum. - Mark Trapp

Even I was confused with my GReader for sometime. But it got fixed soon - Varun Mahajan

Google Readers been screwy alot reacently- at the moment I can watch new shared items come in from friends, it flashes yellow, and then when I click there's nothing new. Very irritating, but when it works, it's awesome so I don't mind too much, - Fearghas

This just happened to me - I hope "screwiness" means a new feature coming. - Vince DeGeorge

Had the same issue. - Steve Rubel

This was one of the main reasons I switched to a desktop reader. I was sick of being beholden to when Google decided to check for updates. - Tris Hussey via twhirl

I think it is because FriendFeed has a much higher barrier to entry. Tweets can just fly by. All the content on FF begs to be read. It also does not yet have the buzz that twitter did. - Rob Diana

Friendfeed looks, and feels technical. It feels more like a command line interface, and twitter has a pretty face a la OSX. The mainstream won't bother with a CLI, it scares them. The media care about what the mainstream care about, IMO. - Matt Harwood

My first thought is there aren't enough of us here for them to care - Shey

If I recall people created Twitter bots quickly. Placeholders exist http://friendfeed.com/cnn - Steve Rubel

If Maria Bartaroma joins I want to hang out and have cocktails with her and talk about stocks and stuff. - Thomas Hawk

could it be the "hide" button? - jon bradford

twitter is more of a here's what I'm doing thing. It's selfish. Friendfeed is a community work and takes more effort. The Media doesn't want to participate in the conversation, they just want their message to be seen. - jason burton

becareful what you wish for, I'm sure that now you've planted the seeds for both the leaderboard and the media presence, that both of these things will happen sooner rather than later - Jennifer Van Grove

Friendfeed works like a RSS reader...it consolidates all the social network tools into a river. It is a tool not a phenoneum. - Robin Whitson

I agree with Rob Diana here. I have to spend less time on Twitter because those are short messages, and I find those easy to read. When I have been away for 8 hours sleep, I can still catch up easily. on FriendFeed, I need a lot of time to catch up, a whole lot more. I myself still find FriendFeed a bit cluttered. - Rosana Kooymans

Plus if Maria Bartoroma joins I want to hang out with her at her beach house. - Thomas Hawk

I think that most people just don't "get" FriendFeed yet. Once we hit the tipping point, the media will come. - Eric Florenzano

I want to see Friendfeed add full-text feeds as an option for publishers. - Steve Rubel

@Steve wasn't that the original issue with Shyftr? Do you really want to open that one again? - Rob Diana

@jason burton you're on the money - twitter is (more often than not) one way; the value of FF is the subsequent discussion - not the initial statement - jon bradford

@Rob Diana maybe there should be an option for publishers and a hide feature for subscribers. - Steve Rubel

I want to see that these comments made on FriendFeed get posted on the main website's commenting system. I'm not sure if that's what Steve Rubel above was trying to say? :\ - CannonGod

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the discussions in Shyftr close to the public? - Shey

hahaha, I just subscribed to everyone in this conversation!!!! gotcha! For what it's worth Jennifer Van Grove has the best avatar of everyone that I just added. - Thomas Hawk

Much more original content hits twitter first. It is a "primary" source. - Soulhuntre via twhirl

@Thomas, like that would have been difficult given what some of us look like. - Rob Diana

I would just like to restate Thomas Hawk's comment about Jennifer Van Grove's avatar. - ha3rvey

i third Thomas Hawk's comment - jon bradford

Fourth. :-) Also I think there is a big difference between Twitter and FriendFeed. Twitter can equally be used to get informed or receive attention. While the same is true for FriendFeed, I suppose it skews more towards getting informed than getting attention. Plus, since it is so much more than twitter it has the appearance of being "more work". More work = barrier to acceptance. - Robert Seidman

I think the difference is that here on Friendfeed a) people have to subscribe to you b) if you want an idea to stick around, it has to be talked about and/or liked c) even if you want to comment spam, it can be moderated d) The hide feature is very powerful - Shey

Friendfeed only has substantial value if you're already hyper-connected. Most of the mainstream media don't have a deep enough digital identity to see a need. - Steve Spalding

media cannot cope with conversation. its not their business. - kosmar

A lot of the media are here already - hey, I am :-) as are a substantial number of the UK freelance tech journalists. - Simon Bisson via Alert Thingy

@kosmar - You're completely wrong. Conversation is the very heart of the media - how else could journalists work? - Simon Bisson via Alert Thingy

Good question. Maybe they find communication apps (like Twitter) to be "mission critical," and worth the noise... but maybe there's too much noise on FF. Have there been any journalists blogging/writing about FF? - Steve Lynch via Alert Thingy

simon I disagree. Media has primarily been a one way street for most of it's life. Newspapers, tv, radio, it's not conducive to discussion with the media people. Twitter isn't exactly like that but most media on twitter don't follow others or care about what is being said, they are just concerned with their message. Not everyone of course, but most. - jason burton

They're probably trying to wrap their heads around it - Bwana McCall

I think friendfeed is a bit more complicated than twitter and the media is afraid of being embarrassed of wrong usage, I bet they're learning right now just like all of us - Dobromir Hadzhiev

What's "the media" these days? - jjprojects

Great point... need to spread the word to them too! I especially like "Breaking News" on twitter...need to get them over here el pronto! - Susan Beebe