@Robert: Good interview and getting the air cleared. @Kevin: Comments like yours are why I want to be able to "like" individual comments. :-) Too funny. - Joanmarie
I think this is the origin of story!! March 26 was when I added the bot to my gTalk..!! - Jigar Mehta
I like having each service as an individual contact. Much easier. Can we see the same for Pownce? - Chris Nixon
Well, IMified has taken bot to a next level.. I even created a customized option to check my google calendar appointments for today (a quick schedule for today) by interacting with bot! Not sure, if they have one for Pownce.. - Jigar Mehta via bTT
"The idea that journalists only convey statements from politicians rather than "create debates" is the classic Stenographic Model of "Journalism" -- "we just write down what people say. It's not our job to do anything else." Real reporting is about uncovering facts that the political elite try to conceal, not ones they willingly broadcast. It's about investigating and exposing -- not mindlessly amplifying -- the falsehoods and deceit of government claims. But our modern "journalists" (with some noble exceptions) don't do that not only because they can't do it, but also because they don't think it's their job. That's because, by definition, they're not journalists." - Brad Farris via Mento
"The idea that journalists only convey statements from politicians rather than "create debates" is the classic Stenographic Model of "Journalism" -- "we just write down what people say. It's not our job to do anything else." Real reporting is about uncove - Brad Farris
"The idea that journalists only convey statements from politicians rather than "create debates" is the classic Stenographic Model of "Journalism" -- "we just write down what people say. It's not our job to do anything else." Real reporting is about uncove - Brad Farris
"Stopped in for lunch and had the Double Cheeseburger and Fries. The burger was delicious, well prepared and well dressed, with tomato, onion, and lettuce. Smallish. Now that I know that, I'll just…" - Brad Farris
From the article:
"What can the party do to reverse course?
Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it." Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it's not an American message. It doesn't fly. People aren't going to buy that, because that's not the way we are as a people. That's not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it's just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for." - Brad Farris via Mento
leo - it is people like you (and Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington, just to name a few) that give twitter most its content, in my opinion anyway - acedanger
What's "large" ... if this baby's gonna scale... you'll eventually have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers... if it can't scale now what about the future? - paul terry walhus via Alert Thingy
@ev - Remember, if Leo, Scoble and Arrington get off of twitter, then twitter would lose some important value!! Thus I disagree. - Susan Beebe
BTW, when did you get over your brand name objections? Do you have a post on how your resolved the Twitter vs. TWiT issue? - Michael Markman
I disagree that the big players give twitter most of its "content". I mean it totally depends what you use twitter for. If you use it as a news aggregator from technology evangelists, then you might be right. In my thinking I use it for much more then just seeing what Scoble or techncrunch has to say. What do you think? - Akshay Dodeja
I like the blend of "following" (& maybe conversing) with people I don't know yet, and connecting with people I do know. That's why I also like Spock. You can "friend" people that you know, and also "follow" the newsfeeds of others that you don't know (i.e. Politicians, movie stars, famous authors, sports stars). --- P.S. Spock just changed their interface to mimic FriendFeed. - Mitchell Tsai
It's about time for those jerks to get off of Twitter anyway! :-) - Robert Scoble
From the article: "What can the party do to reverse course? Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, - Brad Farris
From the article: "What can the party do to reverse course? Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, - Brad Farris
Fantastic list, Bwana, and the "Technical Support" gave me the idea for the Question Room: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/qu... With the knowledgeable group here, we can probably answer questions faster than a Google. If we could get some people involved, there's not a question that couldn't be answered! - Vince DeGeorge
But doesn't that create the wrong incentives? ;) (edit: I'm just kidding, in case the ;) didn't make that clear -- I have a lot of sympathy for their situation. People don't understand how difficult it can be to operate these large scale services) - Paul Buchheit
It's like giving your kid $50 for bringing home all F's. I just don't get it. - Bwana McCall
Actually, I think my earlier comment misses the mark so I am deleting it. What I really want to say: 1) There used to be a culture here in the Valley where you didn't mock someone else's outage or even call attention to it. Because they happen to everyone. *Everyone.* 2) I admire all of these armchair fauxcoders who think they have it all figured out and that somehow the Twitter engineers just smoke blunts and play GTA 4 all day 3) Twitter is changing the way we all communicate and doing so with... - Sacca
... some tools that were never intended to be used this way or at this scale. Clearly what they have built is pretty fascinating to a large number of people because it is growing not like a weed, but like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors (though, I have yet to see Twitter eat anyone) 4) Even if I were to agree with you that somehow Twitter engineers were due some blame for "failing" (fucking absurd notion) these are the guys who are busting their asses trying to fix it all so that each of you... - Sacca
Bah. Deleting my comments since they seem silly without the contents of Sacca's. - Kevin Fox
Good Christ people, aim your vitriol at something worthy of it, like the Bush Administration for bringing torture and shame to our country. - Jason Shellen
... and the millions more like you that I expect to join in the next three months, can continue to use, exploit, grow, and improve what is quickly becoming the largest and most open device and network agnostic communications platform we have seen created in the last 10 years. - Sacca
And to be clear, the Twitter engineers either smoke blunts *or* play GTA 4 all day. Never both. At least not on Fridays. - Sacca
I don't have the means to send something like that over there. I don't really even use Twitter but as a fellow start up person I send my moral support to the Twitter folks. We all need it sometimes. - Geoff Longman
Bwana, you are the same one who wrote the $50 for all F's comment, sounds like hating to me. Also, there has been plenty of focus on the negative things that have been happening at Twitter over the past 3 or 4 days to realize that you are not the only one. - Jason Shellen
I'm not blaming anyone and agree that things are supposed to go wrong...but count me out on the pity party. I don't feel bad for the group that has $15M+ to fix a scaling problem and figure out a business model. 99 out of 100 startups should be so lucky. Send the pizza and masseuses to some startup that deserves some love but ain't getting it. - Jonathan
Jason, well it's the truth. Doesn't mean I'm hating Twitter. I expressed I don't understand rewarding in this situation. And if you follow me, you know that I am on Twitter's side and am making efforts to help the situation. If something is bad, I say it's bad. If it's good, I say it's good. In this case, we have both. That's just me. Sorry if it's coming across as hating Twitter, because it's just the opposite. No one wants to hear the truth. - Bwana McCall
I still think that providing them with a keg wasn't a good idea. At least a massage is supposed to make you MORE productive. - Ontario Emperor
@Sacca you had me up until "the largest and most open device and network agnostic communications platform we have seen created in the last 10 years." Great line for VCs, but users just want the stuff to work. I don't care about marketing/business speak and hype, and don't use a product because it's "innovative" or "the future". Just fill a need expertly. - Jason Kaneshiro
@jason But what makes Twitter "work"? What makes it so worthwhile to all of us? Because it is wide open and does not preordain any specific use case. Last time Biz mentioned a public number he noted that, when compared to Twitter's web traffic, 23x more comes through the Twitter API. That is f'ing bananas. - Sacca
@Sacca I think you're missing my point. I don't use Twitter because it's "open," has impressive stats, or is innovative. I used it because it was easy and fun. But it worth diminishes substantially each time it goes down - all reasons are forgotten when I can't access it - I hope the engineers can solve their uptime issues becauseFriendFeed proves itself a more than ample replacement. That may sound harsh, but that's the SV startup world for ya - a new service is always right around the corner. - Jason Kaneshiro
@Jason I think you, and others, use it expressly because its open and innovative and the impressive stats are proof of that. Do I think users care about definitions of openness and network agnosticism? No. But, they clearly appreciate the breadth of clients and sites that connect to Twitter, and the relentlessly intriguing uses of Twitter that emerge every day. Do we all wish it would be up more? Sure. That said, I think it is pretty lame to go back and expand your prior comments without calling that out. - Sacca
Now that Twitter is down, again, does that mean I can show up at their offices expecting an empty massage chair? - Jonathan
@Sacca re "There used to be a culture here in the Valley where you didn't mock someone else's outage or even call attention to it. Because they happen to everyone. *Everyone.*" While that may be admirable from a technical basis, it's not admirable from a business basis. Not the mocking part, but from a business perspective, things are supposed to run. Twitter knows this. Repeated outages can't be excused because they happen to everyone. Repeated outages are a failure that must be corrected - I think we all agree there. - Ontario Emperor
@OE, I don't think anyone's arguing that the outages don't need to be fixed. I think people are arguing with the "these outages need to be fixed. You have thirty seconds. Go." attitude that I've seen distressingly often this week. - Chris Anthony
Chris, my personal beef, which wasn't really addressed until this week, was that Twitter was slow in communicating. There was at least one instance in which one weekend comment elicited two comments from Twitter, one occurring several hours later, the other occurring several days later. This week they are doing MUCH better in communicating to their users more rapidly. (Not that I'd buy them a keg of beer in gratitude; I want them to be sharp!) - Ontario Emperor
Same with me Ontario. I was very encouraged to see the communication. I'm willing to put up with a LOT if you communicate with me. I'm still with Dreamhost. Nuff said. :) - Bwana McCall
@Sacca, well, I think it's *extremely* lame that Twitter is down so often I forget why I even used it. I think we can all agree on that. - Jason Kaneshiro
@Chris they've had well more than thirty freaking seconds. These outages have been constant for *months*. In the past week alone, it's been four times. *any* other service - even ones I pay for - I expect much more and practically any other service, I would have closed my account already. If my cable TV or broad band went out four times in a week I would have canceled. I feel I've given Twitter the benefit of the doubt and ample time to get their act together for *months*. - Jason Kaneshiro
Oh, and if anyone is thinking - "Twitter is free, so stop complaining" - FriendFeed is free, and it doesn't go down as often! - Jason Kaneshiro
I think it's great that you did that. Ya'll are getting hammered, and there's work to do on your end, but keep truckin'. - Clay Newton
Jason, I don't think you can truthfully talk about these outages being "constant for months" unless you're willing to count every time you've received a "there is something technically wrong" message. Most people talking about this are talking about the last few weeks; the outages before that were isolated incidents. Either way, you're overreacting and dogpiling, and it doesn't become /anyone/ to do either. - Chris Anthony
@ Chris Consider me an example of a once passionate Twitter user, greatly disappointed to see a really interesting service go down the tubes. The overreaction cuts both ways - I promoted the service on its way up, and will be more than passoinate to point out their failings on their way down. - Jason Kaneshiro
Jason, I'll gladly consider you that way. I don't agree that Twitter is going down the tubes, but you're entitled to your opinion. I do, however, think that you would do well to consider whether your frustration and upset at their failings is coloring your commentary, and whether you want it to be. - Chris Anthony
"I admire all of these armchair fauxcoders who think they have it all figured out and that somehow the Twitter engineers just smoke blunts and play GTA 4 all day" -- LOL. No, clearly they also make time for free pizza and massages. [rimshot] I kid, I kid! Plus, faux is not the easiest language to debug. Though I am looking forward to faux.NET and Faux on Rails. - Karim
Technically, I'm pretty sure Al Qaeda in Iraq was weaker before Bush's hamhanded handling of the Iraq War facilitated its creation. - Brad Farris via Mento
Pretty remarkable that a mainstream media outlet seems to have finally taken notice of the profoundly anti-American values that John McCain's "spiritual adviser" has been spewing. It's particularly remarkable given the wall-to-wall coverage afforded to Barack Obama's former pastor. Let's see how long it takes McCain to throw this intolerant pr*ck under the bus. - Brad Farris via Mento
Pretty remarkable that a mainstream media outlet seems to have finally taken notice of the profoundly anti-American values that John McCain's "spiritual adviser" has been spewing. It's particularly remarkable given the wall-to-wall coverage afforded to Ba - Brad Farris
Megan McArdle makes a point which is arguable at best, and the result is a lot of interesting argument. By all means, be sure to read the comment thread for some good back-and-forth on conservatism and liberalism. - Brad Farris via Mento
Megan McArdle makes a point which is arguable at best, and the result is a lot of interesting argument. By all means, be sure to read the comment thread for some good back-and-forth on conservatism and liberalism. - Brad Farris
