The Gillmor Gang — Steve Gillmor, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Facebook's Bret Taylor — on the 6 month developer roadmap. Recorded live Thursday, October 29, 2009. Full transcript below the video, courtesy of Simulscribe.
- Steve Gillmor
If anybody out there is interested in the whole FriendFeed/Facebook thing, this episode is worth a listen.
- Bruce Lewis
Photo hosting and sharing, call for suggestions! Looking for a gather, organize, get stories, comment site/tool that would be easy to use by friends and family to browse and add to. Ideally collaborative tagging and editing
Clearly it must also have some guarantees re: backup and export, so all the work of people adding knowledge and stories to old (and not so old) pictures can't vanish with 30days notice.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
Currently have a flickr account but that is too flat, not easy enough to organise, relate pictures. Webshots is the same, although it does offer backup which is a plus, and has a desktop client, and has existed since 1999 or longer which is interesting (have an account since 2000 which means a credit of 15000 picture hosting). Was considering using 72photos, as that was clean and simple, but it seems to be dying, or at least things are breaking and not being fixed. So looking at new options
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
It takes a lot of time to upload images and organize them to test a site, so hoping for feedback from people who have already done it
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
option 1 - a lot of the "printing" focused companies have album features and family-connecting features. I never tried any but if anyone uses one as a co-site i would be interested to hear. Or if you work for one, do suggest it, no fear :)
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
option 2 - looking at http://www.expono.com/ looks ambitious. Interesting features are the facetagging, geotagging, organization and relationship options, editing of meta information and it claims sophisticated groups and permissions so perhaps I can let a select group change meta information (no backup/re-download newly tagged photos that I could tell). I have not tried it, this is all based on reading their own blurb.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
option 3 - phanphare http://www.phanfare.com/. Interesting features here are the dropbox (so others can add pictures that belong in a collection), backup, desktop client (although i use and like acdsee)
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
option 4 - ipernity http://www.ipernity.com/ they dont describe the features much but just looking at the resulting image blogs it might be quite interesting to organise. It's more like a bloggier flickr, and multi lingual
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
If you prefer self-hosting, Gallery 3 looks like it is going to be a great tool. Gallery 2 suffered the second system effect, but Gallery 3 is the product of a very experienced team loaded with hindsight. The beta 3 has been out last month and it is already very usable. My only gripe against Gallery is that it lacks integration into social networks - but that is nothing that can't be fixed using plugins. http://gallery.menalto.com/gallery...
- Jean-Marc Liotier
I dont need the integration into social networks as much as the building of a small network - I am hoping to build something that makes it easy for people to upload the bits of history they have and perhaps help fill in the blanks for each other
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
Joelle, I created the exception to your rule: "It takes a lot of time to upload images and organize them to test a site." Just use a few hundred images taken with phones or digital cameras and try out OurDoings. They're organized as soon as you upload them. All you do is click calendar icons then "Edit" to add a story to go with a group of pictures. (They're initially grouped by the day they were taken.) You can know in 20 minutes if it's for you: http://ourdoings.com/
- Bruce Lewis
smugmug is very nice but not what i am looking for in this very particular case: a version where you can let a group of others add bits of information - dates, places etc. on old photos
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
"The Internet is not about technology; it's about communication. The Internet connects people who have shared interests, ideas and needs, regardless of geography." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
I like it, but I think it doesn't go far enough. The telephone allows you to communicate. But when you hang up the phone the call is gone. The internet has persistent objects that can be manipulated, so it is also about cooperation and collaboration.
- Neil Kandalgaonkar
Technology sure makes that communication much easier, though. Long live Friendfeed!
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
I always thought the Internet was for porn. At least that's what I learned one year at SXSW.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you still owe us (me and Joge) $5000, btw ;-)
- directeur
I think porn falls under the connecting people with shared interests and needs. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
Hmmm -- I think saying the" internet is not about technology, it's about the communication" is like saying driving is not about the car, it's about the journey. I like John Dupuis' way of putting it -- the communication part was an emergent property -- Michael Neilson has interesting things to say on this topic, too, but I've gotta dash so I'll link later.
- Mickey Schafer
YAY, I love the internet. Couldn't agree more. GLOBAL unfettered communication amongst all peoples, socio-economic class, philosophy, etc. is what it's all about; whereas, the technology is there to support the communication layer. THAT is very important in the DESIGN of Information Systems.
- Susan Beebe
The following (wild) question just dawned on me: If in 1440—the approx. year of Gutenberg's press—a global electronic network had magically emerged instead, A) What purpose would the power structure at the time deem for it, and B) How would it actually be used within the first few decades? Hundred years?
- Micah Wittman
Neil: different communication formats have varying values for similar properties, such as bandwidth, delay, and rate of decay
- Mike Chelen
Neil: Good point about persistence, except that Twitter has objects called tweets that last only about 7 days ;)
- Alex Schleber
Alex: one compensating strength is that posts are publicly web accessible, allowing them to be independently mirrored
- Mike Chelen
High communication: words. Medium communication: pictures. Low communication: grunt, poke.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Internet = TV + Radio + Books + Newspapers + Magazines + Telephone + Soapbox + [add your medium] = Media melting pot
- Ciro
Actually, the Internet may be about the incarnation of cosmic consciousness, and may not be primarily about anthropocentric intraspecies communication. I only half jest -- sometimes species are only vehicles that don't necessarily understand their function in the big picture, or what they are birthing. With the Internet, one senses something trying to pull itself together that is bigger than human.
- Sean McBride
let's say it again: it's. com. mu. ni. ca. tion. :)
- Alberto D'Ottavi
+1 Mike Chelen; to Ciro, Alberto -- conflating function, social value, and technology diminishes the ability to understand what the "internet" is/does/could be, etc. The internet is not portable; certain technological devices are. The infrastructure that supports portability is inconsistent; radio rarely is. It's very difficult to "listen" to books using the internet; the internet is...
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- Mickey Schafer
I agree with you 100% - The connections made here can't be made anywhere else! The transparency and accessibility of people, good people, is prevalent!
- Angels In Action
I didn't read all the comments above, but I don't think it's just communication. It's also about knowledge, data, availability of knowledge and data. creativity, etc... I'm afraid with this situation of lots of social networks people are a bit too preoccupied by the community-factor. Internet is more than that. Please don't forget that.
- Ton Zijp
To Mickey: 1. "The Internet is not portable; certain technological devices are." splitting hair...Give me the Internet without the "technological devices" as you call them. 2. "The infrastructure is inconsistent..." Video is video, audio is audio...otherwise the TV is also inconsistent and so is the radio and books, I digress on this one. 3. " And I believe it is actually important to...
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- Ciro
Ton, I agree! Ciro -- As someone who teaches undergrads who have to use technology and the net, I can't afford to be blithe about "they can if they want to". One of my interests is the relationship between discourse and behavior, so for kicks, I conducted a survey last year to get a feel for how students related to tech developmentally. One overwhelming result was that sometime during...
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- Mickey Schafer
I don't agree. Technology IS COMMUNICATION. Please consider W.J. Ong's Orality & Literacy or Pierre Levy's essays. Our literacy is still evolving and that's possible just because we can write (and communicate) with different technologies. So... Nice quote indeed, but wrong.
- Matteo Balocco
Why is the result of the function application undefined, when the following expression, which I would expect to be equivalent, is defined.
- Bruce Lewis
Ah, the 'return' keyword is not optional in js.
- Bruce Lewis
We're enjoying a beautiful morning, and hope our far-flung Internet friends and relations are too. We made scones for breakfast, and Jessica and I go to Fiddler on the Roof in Boston tonight.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: I took the freedom to download the original of the photograph and hit the auto-levels button and increased the saturation by a notch. Here is the new version: http://ourdoings.com/awalkth... I believe this is what caught your attention. Check your camera settings; I believe you are over-exposing your images.
- Pavan
Yes, that's more like it. I knew it didn't come out like what I saw, and one of the things I did was crank up the brightness, which didn't quite do what I wanted.
- Bruce Lewis
I looked at your other photos; outdoor shots are consistently overexposed. If you look at the skies they are white (255 white). Not sure if it is due to your brightness adjustment or due to your camera over-exposing. I downloaded a couple of your other pictures and tried the same, auto-levels and bump on the saturation; they started looking great.. but I couldn't bring back the skies...
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- Pavan
The red in this and others of your photos -- does it come out of the camera that way, or only after post-processing?
- Bruce Lewis
This red is straight out of the camera. For this photo I don't think I did much than straightening it.
- Pavan
Even for other photos in that gallery the colours are right out of the camera. For a few, I might have increased colour saturation a notch and tilted the white balance towards yellow just a bit.
- Pavan
Irregardless ... much like supposably!
- Rene Wirtz
My English teacher used to whack me around the head whenever I said 'aint' in class. Then he would remind me "there aint no such word as aint!"
- Jim Connolly
If they don't stop adding these silly words soon, dictionaries are going to be ginormous.
- Bruce Lewis
"How may times do I have to tell you, Kirk? One does not 'boldly go'. 100 lines for you, boy, to be on my desk in the morning"
- Andrew Terry
So can you give an example of where you would use the word irregardless instead of regardless?
- Kenton
Wherever you can use the word "regardless" you can use the word "irregardless"
- Alex Scoble
from IM
As in "Irregardless of what you may think, "irregardless" is a perfectly acceptable word belonging to the English language.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I'ma keep capping on it. and YOU CAN'T STOP ME. neener neener. also, PLASMA TV'S RULE. ok just kidding on that last one.
- Sarah is Novembery
My dictionary says "Irregardless is avoided by careful users of English. Use regardless to mean 'without regard or consideration for' or 'nevertheless'"
- LogEx
My current English pet-peeve: It's AROUND the world and ACROSS the country. It's never ACROSS the world. Ever. Haven't you heard? The Earth is a globe, not a flat surface.
- Jason Huebel
It's in my dictionary http://dictionary.reference.com/browse... so irregardless of your opinions of the word and its usage, it will stay as a totally cromulent word in the vernacular and all who pooh pooh it shall be punished severely by being forbidden from saying the word regardless.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Everyone across the world, get ready for a brand new beat!
- Alex Scoble
from IM
So Alex, yours says "Those who use it, including on occasion educated speakers..." If we hear you say it too often we might start to think less of you.
- Kenton
wait... it's in an internet dictionary? That ain't right.
- Jim Hearts FF
Yeah, because heaven forbid that Webster's be put on the web. ;)
- Alex Scoble
Jim, it's the Internet, not the internet!!! ;)
- directeur
Your both wrong...its teh intarwebthingy!
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I use "irregardless" when I want to appear to be less intelligent than I am.
- Dave Roth
the one that gets me 'I could care less' It's COULDN'T folks. Still, I couldn't care less really.
- Ian May
@Alex, irregardless of what you're intelligence is, I'm write! EDIT:fixed some errors
- directeur
My mother-in-law has a habit of saying "de-thaw" as in: "We needed to de-thaw the car this morning" or "We need to de-thaw the freezer." In 14 years I've never corrected her.
- Mark H
Alex you seem all wired up about this. Maybe you should plug-out.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
If irregardless is in the dictionary then I've completely lost respect for the dictionary.
- vicster
Webster's puts a lot of stupid shit in their dictionary every year. It's why I refuse to use Webster's because they're now catering to the lowest common denominator.
- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
As long as you don't confuse "specific" and "pacific", we'll get along just fine...
- Andrew Terry
from iPod
Oh, add "tack" and "tact" to that list, too
- Andrew Terry
from iPod
You probably use an OED edition from 1970, don't you...Guess you can't use Google then.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
@Ian: you are now my new best friend. The "I could care less" phenomenon has been my #1 pet peeve since grade school. It's embarrassing how widely-used it is now.
- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
That's right...I said it...if you can't google for something then you can't use Google!
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Ever noticed the subtitle on Webster's - it includes words in "common usage" - so Alex irregardless of your intelligence - your use of the word just makes you common! ;-p
- Robyn Hawk
Calling me common is about the worst insult I've gotten in a while. ;)
- Alex Scoble
from IM
OK Pavan, I'm going to take out the trash/recycling now. If you haven't done work by the time I get back, I'm going to gloat about my superior work ethic.
- Bruce Lewis
Hmmm...ok, what's a slur on Canadians? I just need that and my caps lock key.
- Bruce Lewis
Well my work doesn't end and FF stream doesn't end.. With no end to either, I figured the easy thing is to let you gloat.. maybe we will get more features on OurDoings.. ;)
- Pavan
Unfortunately the next OurDoings improvement will be boring scaling stuff. But something shiny will show up soon thereafter. :-)
- Bruce Lewis
Scaling is never boring. Well to me anyway :)
- Micah Wittman
I'm the kind of guy who is more interested in invisible updates..
- Pavan
Last night I thought I could postpone the scalability update and do the shiny stuff first. Looks like that was wrong. If I don't leverage s3 better my server will run out of disk again in a few days. Dropbox makes it awfully convenient for many people to upload lots of full-size photos.
- Bruce Lewis
Yikes!! Feel free to scale down my photos and discard the originals if things get tight.
- Pavan
Pavan, just yours wouldn't help much. There are people uploading a lot more than you (non-publicly). I am going to have to leverage s3 in such a way as to make things not get tight. Lots of usage is a good thing.
- Bruce Lewis
You've just made things too easy for us to upload ;) From my iPhoto it's just one shortcut and the enter key and boom..
- Pavan
FriendFeed is my twitter client. The disk resize has been going for 8 minutes; hopefully not much longer.
- Bruce Lewis
I am so failing at using OurDoings for some of my pics. Especially the ones of the chillens
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
Catching up is easy -- assuming your camera is set to the right date.
- Bruce Lewis
This resize is taking a lot longer than the one I did a few months ago. I suppose I might have anticipated that, given that there are a lot more files.
- Bruce Lewis
Half an hour and still resizing. Sorry about this. At least Europe is sleeping through it. :-(
- Bruce Lewis
If animated GIFs I post via Soup here on FF causes you grievous harm, you can hide all entries from my Soup.io account, which is the only service I use to share animated GIFs with my online contacts
I purposely only use one service so the ability to hide GIF's is available in a nice, easy fashion. I had no idea images with more than one frame could cause such distress :)
- Mo Kargas
Quoth Mona: "This wasn't even meant for FriendFeed - it was for people on my Twitter stream who have GIFs as their avatars. Sorry to get ya'll worked up."
- Bruce Lewis
@Bruce I saw that, but this isn't about Mona. It's about people who barely use FF having a whinge without exploring the hide abilities of FF
- Mo Kargas
Even though we're Jewish, we still set up a "holiday tree" because I love the look of Christmas tree. I'm not sure how to do it this year and keep Audrey from pulling the ornaments off. I don't want to buy a baby fence (we have no use for it otherwise). Our tree is 6' tall so putting it on top of a table won't work. Ideas?
put a bunch of presents underneath so she's distracted by those?
- chrisofspades
If you are just worried about the ornaments, you could just decorate the top half of the tree.
- Steve is older than ever
Make paper ornaments or other safe decorations for the bottom half.
- Bruce Lewis
We have always done our tree regardless of the age of our kid and just did our best to keep the little one out. All you really need is to be a diligent watcher and have quick reflexes. ;)
- JA Castillo
I think I'm more concerned with her pulling down the whole tree than pulling individual ornaments off. She's learned to pull up on the couch, coffee table, etc. lately. If she grabs onto a branch of the tree and tries the pull up, the whole thing will tip over on top of her.
- Rochelle
My roommates in college had a Chanukah Shrubbery as they called it (was some box shrub I think they dug up from a garden on campus) because they always wanted a tree but their parents would never buy one.
- Andrew Leyden
Andrew, I've called ours a "Hanukkah hedge" before. :)
- Rochelle
In the past we've attached a string from near the top of the tree to an inconspicuous anchor to reduce the risk of the tree being pulled down.
- Bruce Lewis
Can you weigh down the base so that the tree is more stable?
- Katy S
We did what Bruce did, at the recommendation of our pediatrician. Though we used fishing line, so you couldn't even see it. We tied it at the middle of the trunk and anchored it to our curtain rods. Worked like a charm. And then only put safe ornaments at the bottom of the tree.
- Jen (SquirrelGirl)
3rding Bruce's suggestion. My kids were all in the really grabby toddler stage for Christmas 15 - 18 months. I just gave up on the idea of glass ornaments and went for wooden / metal.
- Heather Solos
I lived in Maryville, MO for my senior year of high school. I took a couple of classes at NWMSU then. Cool to see something interesting happening there.
- Bruce Lewis
[photo] Computer programmers are notoriously grumpy about interruptions. This grumpiness is not entirely without reason. At our best, programmers enter a mental zone in which our selves and our environment are entirely tuned out, with all thought locked into the problem at hand. We must be conscious of what the code we're working on is intended to do, and what might go wrong in the course of getting from A to Z. We commonly write programs as a series of steps, thus: A; B; C; ... Z; If I write A and B, then get interrupted, a stack of cards falls down in my brain. When I get back to my work, I have to ask myself, "Where was I going with this?" It typically takes 15 minutes or so to reconstruct my ideas, even for an interruption that only lasts two minutes. Another programming style, functional programming works from the goal backward, thus: (Z (Y (X ...))) If I write Z and Y, then get interrupted, I don't have to ask myself where I was going. All I have to reconstruct is how to get...
- Bruce Lewis
Quick brain puzzler: Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? Please answer "yes" or "no" or "cannot be determined."
cannot be determined. no one said anything about Ann's marital status
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
Yes. ROT-13 spoiler follows: Vs Naar vf zneevrq, gura Naar (n zneevrq crefba) vf ybbxvat ng Trbetr (hazneevrq). Vs Naar vf abg zneevrq, gura Wnpx (zneevrq) vf ybbxvat ng Naar (hazneevrq). Va rvgure pnfr, jr unir n zneevrq crefba ybbxvat ng na hazneevrq crefba.
- Tudor Bosman
I still have command line shell for #!/usr/bin/tr A-Za-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m -- but I used to have a plug-in that I liked for one-stop in-browser ROT 13 decode/encode (highlight, right-click).
- Stephen Mack
Oh, yes, I get it now. Yay for being able to decode ROT-13 in my head.
- Chieze Okoye
Ok, I get it now, but tudor's encoded explanation was slightly misleading. if Ann is unmarried, Jack is looking at her. If she is married, she is looking at George so I change my answer to yes. Hey, I'm sick so I get two tries.
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
how is that different from what Tudor said?
- Chieze Okoye
it's not I guess. I am reading everything wrong right now. might be time to put the phone down. ugh
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
This came from the following article, which is an excellent read about how "high IQ" and "smart" are two different things: http://www.newscientist.com/article... (ignore the gratuitous but deserved Bush Jr.-bashing in the beginning)
- Stephen Mack
Yes, says "this" Anne who is married to Jack. We just can't figure out who George is.
- Anne Bouey
Well, you're the one looking at him, let us know! :)
- Stephen Mack
"A survey of members of Mensa (the High IQ Society) in Canada in the mid-1980s found that 44 per cent of them believed in astrology, 51 per cent believed in biorhythms and 56 per cent believed in aliens " -- is the implication that these are known to be false?
- Cristo
Mensa members seem to be the type of people to answer provocatively to throw off polls, I think. So anyone read that http://www.newscientist.com/article... article? Maybe I should bookmarklet it separately.
- Stephen Mack
I'm looking at getting another beer. So I beat all y'all. Take that.
- Jim Hearts FF
Stephen, I read it. I got all the questions right. ;) I also think there is a high probability that there is life on other planets, so I guess that makes me intelligent but not rational according to some. Not sure who appointed them the rational czars though.
- Cristo
yes. I was about to go with cannot determine :). I only got 2/3 of the articles questions right :(
- Dario Gomez
Cristo, I think that probably most rational people believe life probably exists on other planets. It's the visiting us on Earth part that's unsupported by evidence or logic.
- Stephen Mack
Cristo, I don't think life on other planets or any of the quoted beliefs in your comment are falsifiable, and I don't think people's non-falsifiable beliefs measure rationality. Just to be clear, I was answering "yes" to the puzzle, not your comment.
- Bruce Lewis
this married Jack is looking at married Anne and loves what he sees :-) wanna go out to dinner?
- Jack Norris
Heh heh heh -- I sent Anne a DM asking her if this "Jack Norris" guy was bothering her. She was very polite in pointing out that it's her husband.
- Stephen Mack
This sounds like a Google interview question
- Jesse Stay
I don't know, they might be able to go mainstream someday if they just change their goofy name and boring home page. They need a Flash intro or something.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
@Bruce, Flash intro would be nice, right. They have to use the web2.0 stuff, too.
- Ozkan Altuner
This happens every time Scoble switches services.
- Jesse Stay
And we're about due for another service switch in the next 10 days or so.
- Andy Bakun
Yeah. It wouldn't be such an issue if just switched services but he does it quite often. It wouldn't be such an issue if he switched services as often as he does but each time that he does so, he switches with a much fanfare as he can muster, proclaims it the greatest thing that's ever happened to technology, and admonishes everyone who doesn't hop the bandwagon now. As I repeatedly say, I really like Robert but how many times can he cry 'wolf!' and still expect to be taken seriously?
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, to Robert's credit he often does have a point. His intention with being so loud about it is to get your attention, to get people talking about it, and in return they really start to think about it. I admit he's gotten me thinking.
- Jesse Stay
Robert has acted this way about "new technology" he finds as far back as I have known him -- a kind of technology ADD I think - his career is predicated on it -- it is him. He always loudly claims that the technology is going to change his and everybody's life (and occasionally he might even be right).
- Brian Sullivan
Jesse, that may be true but it's the fact that when the particular doesn't work out, he washes his hands of it as if it were diseased.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Brian, for that reason I think he's a great person to follow because he does introduce you to some really cool new technology. He keeps us from feeling comfortable in any one environment. He constantly reminds me to continue looking elsewhere for something better - I think that's a good thing.
- Jesse Stay
Robert has also done some amazing things for entrepreneurs with worthy technology trying to get exposure for that technology. He's really helped the tech community with his style of finding the latest and greatest and best stuff I think.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse -- I follow what he does, I like and respect him as well. I have known him since the late 90's when he and I were Microsoft MVPs. But he certainly does and likes to stir the pot.
- Brian Sullivan
When you say it that way it sounds like a disease. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
Brian, that would be fully true if this wasn't like the second or third time twitter has become the darling technology. It's not always just the "new" technologies.
- Andy Bakun
Some of it may be serious backlash, but some of it is probably just horsing around. Robert can generally take it, and if you do cross the line he'll tell you, so people can mess with him without worrying too much.
- Bruce Lewis
Andy: true but with Twitter and FriendFeed you can take a new approach that dramatically changes their utility. Also, sometimes I catch wind of new features coming. Do you remember a dinner with @ev I had a few months back?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
However, taking a new approach doesn't mean the end of utility of doing things the way you previously did.
- Andy Bakun
Mid-way through my 2nd semester in college, everyone was using an outdated editor in our terminal room. By the end of the semester, 90% of the people there were using my editor instead. How did I get them to switch? By asking them what they wanted and implementing it, and then showing it off next to them.
The SUP validated. I'll post it in a comment with http: changed to p: so autolinking doesn't mess it up.
- Bruce Lewis
{"since_time":"2009-11-04T21:01:03Z","updated_time":"2009-11-04T21:03:13Z","available_periods":{"600":"p://ourdoings.com/sup.json?seconds=600","300":"p://ourdoings.com/sup.json?seconds=300","60":"p://ourdoings.com/sup.json?seconds=60"},"period":120,"updates":[["2ab","1f98"],["2aby","2009-11-04T21:02:58Z"]]}
- Bruce Lewis
I tend to agree with Scoble about the "forum problem", but at the same time I really like seeing comments. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's less of an issue if you keep groups relatively small. re: http://scobleizer.com/2009...
FF has the inherant ability for the user to take control, both of what they see and the comments they allow. If a user is judicious in their lists and/or filters they should see mostly relevent content (IF that's what they actually want to see). The ability for a poster to moderate comments on their own post gives us the ability to avoid trolls/spam and/or steer the conversation (again,...
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- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Scoble and other "super users" have this problem much more than regular people because they have thousands of subscribers. This is also part of the reason that Twitter probably works better for celebrities -- it's more of a broadcast channel.
- Paul Buchheit
They could have a million subscribers and it wouldn't be an issue, Paul: turn off comments on his FF posts and it would be all broadcast all the time. It's the number of people they choose to subscribe TO that is the issue. To be honest, it's like someone walking into a football stadium and then complaining that it's too loud. If one chooses to follow thosuands of people one must surely expect that the amount of 'noise' is going to increase.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
One thing that was tossed around a while back was the ability to disable comments from anyone you're not subscribed to: that'd allow those with a lot of subscribers to have high-signal conversations that their subscribers can still see and gain value from.
- Mark Trapp
Perhaps he'd like a 'hide user' button similar to FB? This would prevent the "brings people into YOUR life that YOU DID NOT INVITE!" effect... of course the conversation could be rather disjointed. Maybe a small 'additional comments hidden' status that would show them when desired... Of course, without the conversations, FF == twitter?
- Eric Borisch
Paul, can you help me test something? :)
- directeur
The features that would make FF optimal would be to let users follow each other's hides and blocks. For most users this would be a nice, small improvement. For users like scobleizer it might make a huge difference. Of course, implementation details matter.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
The problem is that we don't keep groups relatively small. There are always those who are like me who like to connect, for one, but even normal people add tons of people to their groups. It's just natural. I remember I was first to add 1,000 people to my Twitter account and people thought I was weird. Now thousands of people do that.
- Robert Scoble
One thing with Facebook is they capped it at 5,000 friends. Which kept it from being used by super-connectors but also caused it to be seen as a place where you talk with just your real life friends. Now that public pages are coming on strong, we're seeing that change.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: the FriendFeed approach is far from optimal. Many, many people told me they don't like joining a forum and like just lurking instead, which is why they chose Twitter (Tim O'Reilly is not the only one who told me this). Tim Robbins likes that on Twitter he can listen to his heros. He sees it as a learning engine. Those of us here love FriendFeed because it lets us talk. But it definitely turns off lots of people.
- Robert Scoble
Paul: the solution is to let us toggle comments on and off. Give the USER CONTROL. If they just want to listen to their friends, hide all the other noise. But then give us who like commenting ability to turn that back on.
- Robert Scoble
You have the ability to toggle comments on and off: Edit -> Disable Comments.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: that is on a PER ITEM BASIS though. Totally useless for what we're talking about.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: yes, but they are content a LOT of people don't want to see or deal with.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, but then you'll be a megaphone broadcasting "your" views.
- directeur
Robert has the same comments (or the same potential) on his blog as he does on FriendFeed, so I don't think it's the comments themselves. I think it's the fact that FriendFeed makes comments almost on equal level as the original post, instead of burying them way down at the bottom of a page or requiring a click to view. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
- Daniel Sims
Nothing in the API precludes someone from writing a FriendFeed client that hides all the comments so you just see a river of feed items. That's how Twhirl, AlertThingy, and all the native iPhone apps implement FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
I have two arms. I barely use my left one. Please cut it off!
- directeur
Turning comments off entirely would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you could authorize other users to delete comments on your items, you could minimize the forum problem.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
directeur: that's right. That's what most professional publishers want.
- Robert Scoble
I really think the "comments are awesome, why would you ever want to get rid of comments" argument falls on deaf ears at this point. The solution ought to be how to turn off comments if you want to get Scoble (or the people he's saying he represents) back on the FriendFeed train, or to say they're not worth it. I do think if it weren't for the comments, there'd be at least a half dozen other things Scoble or people like him would come up with to not like FriendFeed at this point.
- Mark Trapp
I like the idea of having another options to disable comments for people you're not subscribed to. That way you can allow conversation, but limit it to people you "know" if it makes you more comfortable or limits the noise. I think you should have the ability to set the option as a default for all new posts but be able to override it on a post-by-post basis: 1) public comments 2)...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Her Linday-ness: I want that but it would be hard to design.
- Robert Scoble
Mark, I think you make a valid point but then the question becomes: if there are no comments, is FF still the best medium to use? If so, then the ability to turn off comments on one's entire feed should be easy enough to code and implement. I suspect, though, that all things being equal (meaning: there's no ability to comment on an item) FF would no longer be the best medium for a broadcaster.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Mark: I don't think these people will consider FriendFeed at this point. Too much momentum over on Twitter. Look at the news brands: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... you're not going to get them to switch off of Twitter at this point. Sorry. That game is over.
- Robert Scoble
I think the real game is how does Facebook evolve?
- Robert Scoble
The real game is an open decentralized solution. yes, I'm a dreamer.
- directeur
Which leads everyone to wonder why you're trying to nitpick a feature like this, or base your argument on the lack of the feature. The real reason why you (and others like you) aren't into FriendFeed isn't because of the forum problem or the lack of a feature, it's because you think Twitter is better and that's where everyone is. That's fine: that's a great argument. The rest of it is inconsequential to that argument, and wouldn't invalidate it even if you got your way. So what's the point?
- Mark Trapp
I've been talking with a lot of brands and celebrities and regular people. For public studying they like Twitter better. That has Facebook wondering what it will be in the future.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: sorry, but I spent two years talking to thousands of people about FriendFeed and I'm just passing along why they didn't like it. Take that feedback or leave it. Your choice.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: did you speak at dozens of conferences about FriendFeed and Twitter? Did you show hundreds of tech influentials FriendFeed and listen to their feedback?
- Robert Scoble
But your feedback doesn't correlate to the real reason why you, and the people you say you represent, are saying why you won't ever use FriendFeed. You said there's nothing anyone could do to get people to use FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Robert, if you're going to pull the "don't you know who I am?" crap, it falls on deaf ears. Let's have a constructive conversation on what you're trying to talk about.
- Mark Trapp
Sure you can: you can import feeds and lists on FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: times change and at this point it would be hard to get anyone to take FriendFeed seriously. That said, I believe that it IS possible to move people from Facebook to Twitter or Twitter to Facebook, so THAT is the real battlefront.
- Robert Scoble
any comment thread about 20+ without threading and community promotion/demotion becomes difficult to participate in (for me). Though there is a difference between discussing the radiator on a 94 Subaru and the nature of discussion forums.
- Hayes Haugen
Robert: is the problem really comments or the fact that each time an item gets commented, the items pops back at the top of the list? Regarding the noise, I think that the "problem" with friendfeed is that it was much easier for people to plug in automated feeds and that as a result, there was less of an explicit action. I do not know how other people feel about this but I really miss...
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
Mark: OK, show me your public list the way I did on Twitter. You can't do that here, sorry.
- Robert Scoble
Sure Twitter has a lot of momentum now, but how quickly the winds change. Frankly, it's a shame that FF is going to be neglected... I wish that someone with as much motivation and insight as Paul and the original team could take it over now that FB has consumed them. There is still SO MUCH potential in this platform that it is depressing to see it squandered. @Robert - I don't think it...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, I don't use public lists: I believe you read my blog post about why I don't. But Hutch Carpenter does, and here's his FriendFeed public list on Innovation Management: http://friendfeed.com/innovat...
- Mark Trapp
Robert, who do you call "influentials"? Do they talk "tech" all the day? Isn't it unhuman? Let's go back to spring/summer 2008, and redefine "smart" for me, please :)
- directeur
Edwin: the problem is on FriendFeed it has the chat problem -- it gets noisy and gets noisy fast.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: influentials are people who influence. I picked them. Shoot me.
- Robert Scoble
The noise is largely proportional to the circles you're in. If you put yourself in a huge room, it will be a loud room.
- Kevin Fox
Robert, do you remember the "MOAR NOISE" phrase? It was THE reason why I built NoiseRiver. Filters, I used to say when you were always saying: MORE NOISE!
- directeur
Kevin: exactly. But on FriendFeed the room gets big VERY QUICKLY because as more people join they drag in their followers with them.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook has the same problem. While we're chatting here, tons of tech news diversity have swooped by.
- Robert Scoble
So Robert, should there be something built in to "warn" others of becoming "chatty". Something that says: "This comment is irrelevant. You may post again when you have something relevant and germane to our discussion"? So WHO makes those distinctions and judgements?
- Melanie Reed
Compare this chat to http://twitter.com/Scoblei... which one brought more information to you? The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time.
- Robert Scoble
Melanie: in a chat room you can't control people that way.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: True, but [big number]*[average number] is far larger than [average number]*[average number]
- Kevin Fox
Hayes you are correct. Slashdot has actually had the best discussion forums for more than ten years because it has threading and community moderation. Its not a trendy social networking site though so no one notices. If you had a social network site where you post topics but with Slashdot like forums it would rock. Only down side is moderators tend to inject bias but /. has good signal after moderation kicks in
- Ed Millard
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :)
- Melanie Reed
(Where you (scoble) are the big number)
- Kevin Fox
Kevin: the problem with FriendFeed is if you and Melanie were having a conversation it would be pretty small, right? But I follow you. The second I touch your conversation it gets big.
- Robert Scoble
If only someone could figure out how to make a room that gets big very quickly appeal to broadcasters...
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
This problem doesn't happen on the private Facebook because you have two-way friending there and a cap of 5,000. But on Facebook Pages? Absolutely. Noise baby noise!
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: broadcasters don't like any of this because there's no way to monetize. Why do you think Arrington really hated this?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :) What I would like is what Tad is implying in his comment. You know you can have "...two opposites that have learned how to blaze together" ;) And excuse me, but is wrong with a big conversation?
- Melanie Reed
"The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time. " If someone doesn't care about it on FF, they can hide it and not see it again. Problem solved.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Chatting is not intended to provide information. It is like planning -- it is the process of chatting that is what is useful not the words that are spoken/written.
- Brian Sullivan
Robert: who are these "others" and what are their numbers?
- Melanie Reed
Paul nailed it - Twitter is a broadcast channel. Massive amounts of subscriptions are fine there - it's all about reach. But if you want discovery, if you want to engage, then FriendFeed and FoaF is where it's all. They're NOT the same. One you can subscribe/follow as many as you want, in the other, subscription abuse will cripple your ability to view and interact.
- AJ Kohn
Finally, a thread on this subject that makes sense.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Threading may or may not help... it seemed to hurt with GoogleWave... it was so hard to follow all the tangents... of course without threading a lot of the tangents just get lost anyway. I guess I have given up on trying to catch everything... If it's important and I didn't see it the first time, eventually the concept will bubble up enough times for me to notice. That's one NICE thing about following lots of people and participating in lots of convos.
- Her Lindsay-ness
why won't APML, or something like it, work? i missed that memo
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Robert, go say this to Last.fm or the BBC :-) Smart recommendation engines are the future
- directeur
FriendFeed may make some audience/discussion leak out, but also makes audience leak in through seeing what your friends are talking about. Arrington may be mostly concerned about the leak out. Other broadcasters may be looking for the leak in.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Thank you, AJ, yes. And you can sort that out when you want to on your own time. That's the utility of it.
- Melanie Reed
Perhaps one solution to the 'forum problem' is to allow posters to selectively choose who can participate in the discussion but still be viewable to the public.
- Rodfather
I love the noise but I don't subscribe to thousands of user.
- ashish
from iPhone
So maybe the real question is, why do some people prefer conversation over broadcasting and vice versa? Is the broadcast-mentality simply a matter of popularity (the inability to reciprocate all the connections, so just broadcast instead) or is the effort it takes to connect with people on a more meaningful basis a major turn-off? Or is it just the tools that people use and what makes it easier for them?
- Her Lindsay-ness
Rodfather, this will bring wars. Trust me. I'm not a commercial object. So you want to SHOUT and ask me to close my mouth? :) Moreover, close comments, other threads will be started and the noise you wanted to avoid will be even greater. The Streisand Effect, anyone? :)
- directeur
For example: this discussion has 80+ comments and rolling. I don't mind that at all. I am engaged. I am also updating a web page on our web site as I do it and switching over to grade 30 some PRF's for students on the play Macbeth. I am not having any trouble with the "forum problem" or any "chattiness" I learned the "ropes" of FF when I joined and accepted that it as it was.
- Melanie Reed
To me FF turns data (the river of content out there) into information (the good stuff - explained). The tool set FF provides is superior in this way - but it takes time to dial in the right set of filters to apply to the data set (which changes!) and many simply overwhelm the great filtering system they've provided.
- AJ Kohn
A lot of people don't want to put in the time and effort to make the tool work for them like you, AJ and Melanie. I can empathize with that. I think it also has to serve their base inclination of either broadcasting or conversation, and the tool choice is also influenced by whether they already are part of a community on it or not. Most people won't leave their community even if it us using the less appropriate tool for their inclination.
- Her Lindsay-ness
directeur, then those people can make their own thread and allow everyone to comment. I'm thinking of in case there's a roundtable event where certain 'experts' in a field can have a thread to discuss a topic among themselves without worrying about others cluttering the thread.
- Rodfather
AJ, indeed - the task is to build new concepts with and for filters. Filters, not to shut stuff out, but to mix it better to create a constant flow of narratives.
- David Bausola
AJ, is it more that FF provides the platform for the users to turn that data into information? The users are integral to FF. Now with Twitter you can program a week's worth of tweets (I have heard) but I don't wish to do that. Facebook... you could almost do that-although it does have engagement -you could certainly use it without. But FF runs on an engagement engine
- Melanie Reed
Marshall: I don't trust automatic systems to guess what I'm going to be interested in next. Never seen a system yet that works. But we should debate this.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, we should debate it! The robot that makes all my decisions for me says it's quite likely I would enjoy doing that! ;)
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
That's getting into intelligent agents and AI once full blown
- Melanie Reed
if you ask me, and you don't, the problem has always been lack of comment moderation and threading. Too many users isn't a problem if no one sees them. Slashdot was one of the first doing this, using an interface which is actually very similar to FF and it seems to work there.
- Vincent van Wylick
Is the problem that Robert is looking for a single service solution. I see the same 'content' on Twitter and FriendFeed but I scan Twitter for 'raw information' and go to FriendFeed to 'discuss' it with others. I watch the news at home on TV but I talk about it with my friends or work colleagues around the water cooler or coffee shop table. I am comfortable existing in several spaces
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
@Lindsay: I don't know. I'd rather educate people on the power that FF can provide with a little effort. Or, that it actually doesn't take LOTS of subscriptions. Max it at Dunbar's number (which is what I do for my home feed) and you'd be fine.
- AJ Kohn
+++ Johnny Scotty would be proud of you: The right tool for the job
- Melanie Reed
@David: Exactly! My home feed - I tweak it. I use people like Robert and Rob Diana and Michael Fruchter and Anthony Citrano and Thomas Hawk and numerous others to bring a mix of themes and concepts into my feed.
- AJ Kohn
So are we saying that its not the tool itself...but HOW it is or is not used that maxes utility? If so I agree!
- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: Yes, the users are the key. The users are the filters. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/soylent... And the engagement provides a rich annotation and a secondary level of filtering. So yes, users and their engagement absolutely matter.
- AJ Kohn
Sure, yes, how you use it maxes utility. But it also helps if it's suited to how you WANT to use it... if not it's a struggle. And people don't like to struggle, even if it's possible to make something do what you want it to... easier to use another tool if it fits your purpose better. FriendFeed fits my purpose so it's not a struggle for me... but for someone with a more broadcasting mindset than a conversational one, it's going to be tougher.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Vincent, most long-time FriendFeeders have spoken strongly against any sort of moderation/rating system for comments. No one wants mobs of people trying to control what other people can see like what happens on Digg. It's why every time the topic of 'Unlike' comes up, people rise up to talk it down because it creates an aura of competition and negativity.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Anybody use Mailchimp here? It is tangential to the discussion. They have a cracker jack built in user educational system that monitors and makes usage suggestions.
- Melanie Reed
I'd love to peek in on the recommendation engine discussions. I'm in the 'they don't work camp' myself but I'm open to being convinced and perhaps technology has approached a point where it could work but ... from working in eCommerce I've seen it fail time and time again. Random factors, contextual issues etc.
- AJ Kohn
@Melanie: Know of Mailchimp but don't use. The 'monitor and makes usage suggestions' sounds interesting though.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, that's because the devs didn't pay attention when their instructors (ahem) were teaching it to them. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Another point I'd like to make is that no one is forcing anyone to read the comments here. If people want a broadcast-only medium, it's fairly easy not to click on the 'x more comments' link. Unfortunately, Robert makes a painful observation: he played FriendFeed cheerleader for two years and the people who needed to take the bait didn't or did but then cut loose. That pretty much means...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
Johnny: I am comfortable with all of these too, but it's not about me. But, anyway, the business battle now is between Facebook and Twitter and it'll be interesting to see the choices that Paul's team makes and how those compare with the team NK over at Twitter is making. Then the market will choose which one is best.
- Robert Scoble
Akiva: If I were at Facebook and knew that they could turn into the next MySpace I'd put every single engineering minute onto Facebook. Wouldn't you?
- Robert Scoble
Like I said before, there is still SO MUCH potential here... and it's a shame to see it squandered. I think there are a lot of ways it could be taken to the next level. For sure it could be a contender to Twitter with a few enhancements, but fat chance of that now that there is no longer a dev team, and that it's "parent" is a competitor.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, here's a good example: You want to debate intelligent recommendation agents? Allright, I know that you know Chris Saad. Chris is a very cool guy in fact! But do you know Deniz Oktar? Deniz, who is not as popular as Chris, is a SMART Turkish guy too and works on the same subject. If you limit your view to "popular" people, you'll definitely miss him. And debating such a subject without alternative ideas likes Deniz's or humbly mine, won't be perfect :)
- directeur
Not sure, Robert. Is turning into the next MySpace a good thing for you or a bad thing? For me, it'd be bad.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, go take a look at (and experience) mailchimp's monitor and make usage suggestion system. It's adaptable for a number of scenarios
- Melanie Reed
I think the business battle (other than the marketing to consumers end of it) will be occupied and won by Wave. Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed are mere toys in that world.
- Brian Sullivan
Melanie, I'm not complaining about a solution that MailChimp could provide. I'm fine with FriendFeed as it is (for the most part).
- Akiva Moskovitz
directeur: most people choose news brands to curate and find new people that will have something valuable to say. See http://twitter.com/Scoblei... for instance. That already is TOO MUCH so telling people to get more people or more things into their lives just isn't going to cut it for most people.
- Robert Scoble
Allowing public panels where only the influential can talk certainly would have a useful role, Its just like panels at conferences. A lot of people would no doubt like to just follow the influential in these forums. On the down side it would make the already influential more so and it would probably lose some audience if it was done a lot because there is no democratic engagement. The people who don't spend all their time cultivating their fame and networks do say interesting things too.
- Ed Millard
directeur: and, anyway. if he's in Turkey and not in San Francisco he's far less likely to influence tech in a major way. So I disagree.
- Robert Scoble
(FYI - look at this conversation and tell me where else anything like this could take place.)
- AJ Kohn
No, we're completely boring and worthless, Ed. We're not worth paying attention to. I mean, who wants to see a picture of our kids? ;)
- Her Lindsay-ness
Akiva, I meant for those who might struggle "getting" FF but would enjoy and benefit from it once they do. There's an "on ramp" to FF that rivals North Corridor Dallas coming out of an apt complex on to 50mph+ 4 lane traffic. Some of us are better at that than others, but you still see a lot of cars on the road. :)
- Melanie Reed
There has also been a lack of creative uses using the FF tool sets. Good uses of the tools inspires participation + it's easy to criticize -- harder to create.
- David Bausola
@Robert: Whoa, whoa. Weren't you arguing that adding 8K new people from Twitter Lists was a good thing? Is more better, or worse?
- AJ Kohn
@David: Good point, no real developer platform. That's been a big boon for both Facebook and Twitter.
- AJ Kohn
Robert, yet he DOES. You just aren't into that speciality :) If you think that every "tech" thing must happen in SF you really miss A LOT.
- directeur
Woah, Robert, so you are saying anyone who doesn't live in SF doesn't count in a tech discussion? That's a little self centered isn't it?
- Ed Millard
I understand it but I really dislike any discussions where the topic seems to be "how can we turn this thing that the people who use it like into something that people who don't use it and would only use it for selfish reasons like?" Screw them. If something's not as "techy" as Slashdot and it's more chaotic because the comments aren't threaded like Slashdot and there's no moderation...
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- Mark H
Lindsay, I want to see a picture of your kids. I only wish I had some to show back. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Robert's not saying that those ideas can't happen, or that a true revelation can't come from elsewhere, but that ... the likelihood that someone outside of SF to influence tech is less. The Capital of the Internet is SF. I'd agree with that. But that doesn't mean it'll always stay that way, nor does it mean that tech from other areas can't be influential. (least that's how I read it.)
- AJ Kohn
OK I just read it, you still said if you don't live in SF there is very little chance you will have any influence on tech. If you have no influence then you either have nothing to say on the subject, or even if you do have something to say it wont matter.
- Ed Millard
Hrm, I think the whole thing is overblown. My personal FF landing page still has as much utility as my first day (if not more). Bleh, whatever.
- Chieze Okoye
@AJ The FF API is beautiful, I don't think dev communities saw the richness that you can create with the aggregation of FF streams. A few valley PR oriented bloggers pushed 'conversation' as FF's 'killer app' - whereas, the realtime aggregation streams and republishing of content is radical and unique.
- David Bausola
Well I'm pretty sure all the people in Seattle, Toronto, Paris, London, Moscow,Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangalore, Boulder, etc. probably disagree
- Ed Millard
@David: I'll take your word on the API and wouldn't doubt it given the FF team's chops. But fostering usage, that community - that's where things may have gotten shaky. Too few people leveraging it. It could still resolve back to an inability to really grasp what FF can do for them.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, I think you're on to something. Back in the day, usability (including general user and disabled) use to be a well-known topic. Universities made it a part of the curriculum. Everything before and including e-commerce got the once over. But it occurs that the latest generation (including GLS and SM) have outpaced the community standards for usability. It's really the wild west again-...
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- Melanie Reed
Akiva: I suspect the noise problem Robert's describing from others isn't that comment threads get too long. It's that items keep popping to the top as new comments show up, when they don't want to see the new comments. I don't see any way around that except a separate client. It would take too much away from the FriendFeed experience for the default interface not to work this way.
- Bruce Lewis
Mark, I didn't mean to suggest /. is the only solution to the forum problem. If you have really big forum discussions /. is time tested way to control noise and raise the signal level. On the other hand it would probably be a horrible solution for intimate and friendly discussions among friends. Someone earlier Lindsey? kind of had a good suggestion. When you make a post have a row of option buttons and let the poster set the kind of forum for that thread, broadcast, panel, open, modded, thredded, not..
- Ed Millard
Ed: I specifically said "far less likely." I didn't say there is very little chance. But, seriously, this is an argument for another thread. Lots of people think they have influence but actually don't have as much. For instance, I love to think I have influence on Facebook but I'm far less likely to influence that then Paul Buchheit is. Facts are facts.
- Robert Scoble
Chieze glad you like FriendFeed. Me too. It's awesome. But that doesn't mean much to the rest of the world.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, how often do you use "Add This"? It's germane :)
- Melanie Reed
OK we will agree to disagree on that one and drop it. I've lived in the bay off and on, I think there are pluses and minuses to being there.
- Ed Millard
Melanie: "Add This" being the "Add Photos" at top of FriendFeed? Not as much as I should.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: No this service: http://www.addthis.com/ This is fast becoming the SM share button for many websites. Ours uses it. And FF is on it. Take a look at the entire list
- Melanie Reed
FriendFeed's feature set will mean a lot to the rest of the world when it's fully integrated into Facebook in 2011.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: I don't think it'll take that long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you may be right, in which case FriendFeed is a relevant thing to look at. Maybe it isn't actually too far ahead of its time.
- Bruce Lewis
Just like Lisp can make you a better programmer in other languages, FriendFeed can make you a better thinker when writing about other social networks. Popularity isn't everything, even for a blogger.
- Bruce Lewis
Who really knows why Twitter got all the traction? Does Scoble? I very much doubt it. I think there's a great effort going into finding a logical explanation for Twitter massive success and FriendFeeds more modest gains. My own best guess is that it has more to do with the madness of crowds than it does with any limitation in FriendFeed. Twitter had a decent enough foothold already by...
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- David Hall
from FreshFeed
Twitter got the traction because Twitter's easy. It requires very little effort to get into and it requires even less to participate. It's the same reason why YouTube comments are the cesspool of the Internet and MetaFilter's comments are not: anyone can sit around and watch videos all day and then trash talk them but you make people pay to comment and you'll weed out the chaff almost...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
David: I was there from early days on Twitter and studied how it grew. I know more than you might think. Remember, I was the first person to follow 1,000 people there and I was the 13,800ish user to join.
- Robert Scoble
This link is the most illuminating one on FF traction at the time of the buyout. It indicates FF was just starting to regain traction after it had stalled out for a while and it suggests if maybe FF had stuck it out a while longer things might have changed. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ed Millard
Twitter got hot in the early days because of Leo Laporte and because of SXSW and because it was goofy fun way for tech influencers to talk to their friends. It just kept growing from there. Another factor in addition to simplicity (Akiva's right there) is the API. Tons of clients and tools and services are built on top of it. FriendFeed got nearly none in comparison.
- Robert Scoble
The difference may be luck of the draw ( a la Gladwell)
- Brian Sullivan
People had to build tons of clients, tools and services for Twitter because the default web UI is so bad.
- Ed Millard
Ed: what that graph doesn't show you is what we now know. Google Wave sucked a lot of attention of geek influentials away (IE Hype) and Facebook's Connect is running away with another game. I went into FriendFeed the week they decided to sell and asked them because I knew Twitter had new features coming that would make FriendFeed less interesting. I think the FriendFeed team looked at the competition and decided to fold.
- Robert Scoble
How could I have ignored the API? It's like Firefox's plug-ins: it's the only thing that makes Twitter usable for many users. Without it, they wouldn't touch it. Heck, if it weren't for Tweetie 2, I wouldn't touch it either.
- Akiva Moskovitz
And Facebook's Connect platform is getting incorporated everywhere. I think FriendFeed was hoping to become part of the general web, like what we did over on http://building43.com and that just wasn't going to happen because Facebook's Connect platform is rocking and rolling now. In fact, I made a fundamental blunder by not going with Facebook on Building43. If I had, our traffic would have been much higher than it is now.
- Robert Scoble
You can be sure that once CNN and other assorted media outlets started plugging Twitter it was game over. Once the band wagon was rolling every "personality" was going to hop on. It is a little disturbing that Miley Cyrus has now joined the "everyone should delete their Twitter accounts" camp.
- Ed Millard
David Hall +1 Steven Berlin Johnson would be a good reference - the persistence of babble is incredible valuable in phatic communications. FF, through the web interface hides a lot of that. Instead, the babble was more bookmark centric and less about 'having a sandwich'. That's why you have, on the whole, better conversation threads on FF, and ending up having to duck out of the way of...
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- David Bausola
Disturbing REALLY????? My word, Miley is absolutely right <sarcasm/>
- Roberto Bonini
To paraphrase Louis Gray's wife, "nerds in startups are fickle". I speculate they had a lot of self doubt when they stalled out prior to that up tick, and decided to sell just about the time FF was starting to take off again. Someone waves $50 million at you during a period of self questioning that is a potent motivator, I think Zuckerberg saw that and he did nip a potential competitor in the bud.
- Ed Millard
But all the above comments is about public sharing. I use FF a lot for project planning and development - it's fast - you can discuss items with good archive search, and you can post media. I wonder how many people use FF in this way, and ignore the public babble?
- David Bausola
Having read most of this thread (and Robert, comments are VERY valueble) the"forum problem" is NP-complete. Comments are valuable becuase seeing people reason is often just as enlightening, if not more so, than the original information.
- Roberto Bonini
Ed - mind you, there's only a few ways you can get to the helm of the FB API design and product development. :) Who's to say this isn't all going according to plan?
- David Bausola
Roberto: me and you agree on that. In my research most people do not. They see these things as noise. But, if you make the comments toggle on and off we BOTH win! Plus, comments REALLY help search!
- Robert Scoble
Robert you keep talking about "your research". Is this anything more than anecdotal conversations?
- Brian Sullivan
David, Well maybe Paul and Co. are doing a trojan horse on FB but what I've read about Zuckerberg he doesn't seem likely to relinquish control of anything he cares about and I am skeptical you are going to turn FB in to FF with their entrenched user base.
- Ed Millard
@Scoble you're arguing from authority again. I think on a broadcast platform like Twitter that's an easier one to pull off. On Twitter it's a big "so what" if you've posted a load of BS because most people will simply miss any challenge to your "content." Post the same on FriendFeed and you get tackled and you get tackled in public. Reasonable enough grounds to explain your current stance and certainly as good as any reason I've heard you put forward yourself.
- David Hall
Robert, I stand corrected, and it is corrected, this editing your posts thing is one of FF's scarier features.
- Ed Millard
OPEN QUESTION: Is FF gaining or losing users? I see very little here now - but I'm told user numbers are going through the roof.
- Jim Connolly
Ed: tell me one thing. What's the biggest difference between FF and FB? There's already not as much difference as you'd might think. The one thing I miss over there? Real time search.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter got big because it's about ego. Look at me, Me, ME! Twitter flourished because people like to talk about themselves. (FF is not, which is why it hasn't gained nearly as much traction.) It was developed as an update service. It has evolved into ... something else. As for comments, they are invaluable.
- AJ Kohn
and the ability to edit comments, moderate comments, import all my feeds, bumping up of older posts
- Holden Page
from IM
Jim: user numbers are not going through the roof here. I don't know anyone credible who has said that. The registered numbers are going up, but the active numbers are going down.
- Robert Scoble
AJ: FriendFeed is just as much about ego as Twitter is. If not more so.
- Robert Scoble
Ed, the goal is to design influentially for the web. Paul B does seem to give that ethos in his startup camp talks and general interviews. I would think FB would warm to that ideology.
- David Bausola
@Robert: How? Seriously, I'd like to hear your opinion.
- AJ Kohn
Robert: In other words, as people like yourself, Arrington and even those little guys like myself with a couple of thousand subscribers leave - we're being replaced by less active users. Makes sense. I used to check in on and off all day. Now, 2/3 times a week,
- Jim Connolly
Jim: not true. I don't see a lot of people joining in here and I'm watching it closely. Sorry. More people are leaving the back door than are coming in the front.
- Robert Scoble
To me the two big ones are 1) perception that it more walled garden networks and not as open though certainly it has avenues which are more open like FF 2) its home to massive quantities of apps, games, spam from people trying to get rich that hold no interest to me, though obviously many others like them. FF is probably just overlooked by that crowd, if it were bigger it would be infected with all that crap too. FF seems to mostly just be good people from my limited time here.
- Ed Millard
On Twitter the default is to show number you follow, number of followers, number of Tweets. That's all playing on ego and popularity. Nearly everything (even lists) is geared to stimulate a innate need to acquire more of something as a way to ... validate contribution or perceived influence or authority. FF does not show this in the default mode.
- AJ Kohn
Companies and brands are the most aggressive form of ego there is, and they usually are direct reflections of the ego of the company's CEO.
- Ed Millard
Alright Robert. In order to reduce the signal to noise ratio, we can do one of two things, we can use "Likes" to filter the comment stream. If I Like more posts from Robert than i do from LG, Roberts comments appear but not LG's. We can use semantics to (somehow) sort the thread and show comments relevant to the original post. (simply dumping noise isin't a solution - not all noise is noise all the time. Likewise, increasing signal in an echo chamber is fruitless)
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: Oh, I think Twitter is a great business tool! It's a marketers paradise. But I'm not sure that's what most people believe it to be. People still think they're going to get some sort of social dialog there. I think it's why Twitter churn is so high. People get it thinking it'll be one thing and quickly find out it's another.
- AJ Kohn
+1 AJ, there are some people that use Twitter in awesome, constructive, useful, ways like Tim O'Reilly and Jay Rosen but a lot of people its pure self promotion. As for news outlets using twitter they are going to go wherever the eyeballs are, and they will go to multiple networks not just Twitter. Those are pure broadcast, no engagement, they aren't really a ringing endorsement of why Twitter is great.
- Ed Millard
I'd bet FF *would* take off (but be worse for it) if it listed how many times the content I fed got liked and commented on, and that (along with subscribers etc.) were all listed right there at the top of my home feed. And that upon signing up, I'd get suggested users based on subscriptions but also who got the most likes and comments. Yet, I don't think that's conducive to what FF really excels at.
- AJ Kohn
@Robert, biggest difference between Facebook and Friendfeed - reciprocal connections. Without a doubt. The apps, the ads, other stuff, is true, but for me the central difference, and the thing that betrays a fundamental difference of worldview between the two apps is whether or not you can follow someone's content without them having to follow you back. You can only do that on Facebook...
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- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
@Ed: I realized a long time ago that Twitter was a big Internet megaphone. And if you could get a lot of people to 'listen' to that megaphone well, that's powerful stuff. It's about Reach. Twitter gives your message reach. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't see it as ... transforming.
- AJ Kohn
Those who study the art of propaganda consider reach to be everything, because following reach is influence, and following influence is control. TV is losing its reach in the Internet era so most of those "brands" and "personalites" are rushing to find a way to regain it, enter Twitter and FB. They are better because they are bidirectional.
- Ed Millard
@Ed: I'd be interested to see more on how reach leads to influence. It often does but ... not always. Plenty of multi-million dollar ad campaigns in the graveyard as examples. Reach + ? = influence.
- AJ Kohn
Ed I think you're right. I caught that TC piece at the time too. Seems to me that the FriendFeed guys had a bit of a crisis of confidence and grabbed lunch while it was on offer. In any case I always figured FriendFeed as a place to graduate to once you'd rammed up against Twitters limitations. And, as I'm sure you know, that doesn't take long. That's how I got here. I was actually on...
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- David Hall
You don't have influence until you have reach so its the prerequisite. Then it a matter of how effectively you craft the message and push the buttons in your target audience. Some people are good at that part, some aren't, some fail, some succeed.
- Ed Millard
Robert, I just wonder. Isn't twitter more about consuming the information and FF more about sharing and discussing? Look at http://twitter.com/Scoblei.... What can anyone add to that or comment on that? I agree it is getting a lot noisy in here (exhibit, this post). But not all posts will be this noisy I think.
- Amit
+1 Jandy, she answered Robert's challenge to me better than I did.
- Ed Millard
@Ed: I'm not sure. New memes start with someone small sometimes. Say ... keyboard cat ... and someone who has reach communicates that message and it goes big. So who has the influence? The creator of keyboard cat or the person to has the reach to make it go big? I find it very interesting.
- AJ Kohn
Jandy: +100. You just nailed for me why I like Twitter and FriendFeed better than Facebook. Agreed.
- Robert Scoble
Robertt, maybe this post and the scads of comments prove your point, but maybe your point is limited to your own experience due to your unique position in tech. You speak, noise follows. But that does not make Friendfeed irrelevant or useless for the average or even just left or right of average user. You have a unique experience that is going to color any forum you put your time into....
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- Martha
I think the forum problem is not as big in smaller more intimate groups. Recently I've been very active in the DMU group here that includes a lot of folks who've migrated here from Flickr. The relevancy is much more higher in these venues than in the main feed because it's a smaller controlled experience. I do wish though that groups were more full featured like the rest of FF though....
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- Thomas Hawk
oh of course and photo voting pools for groups would by awesome too. ;)
- Thomas Hawk
Lists are not enough. Twitter, FF and other social networks need tagging by default, then filter on list + tag. That's the element that would kill the noise and turn them into interest networks.
- howard shippin
from BuddyFeed
Martha: you might have a point if we were just talking about me. But we're not. So, try again. Again, I've talked with thousands of people about these things. They tell me they don't like the noise that public forums bring. I've been doing this for 25 years and this isn't the first time I've heard this pushback. Facebook, by the way, on its iPhone app, handles it perfectly: it hides all...
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- Robert Scoble
You all keep referring to this as either chat or comments when actually its a discussion. I think that the ability to discuss anything on Friend Feed or anywhere else for that matter IS where you learn the most. I'm not techy like most of you, I'm just an ordinary 'average' user, but I see twitter more as a 'newsreel' of info, shallow but instant, whereas Friend Feed is more a 'thrashing out of ideas and opnions, and is therefore all the richer for it.
- Sandra Large
Sandra: chat/discussion/forum/comments are all pretty much the same thing. Yes, the two are different. There CAN be lots of learning here, it's just that this is a lot noiser than other online things in some ways.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, about noise: when you or other tech influencers introduce FriendFeed, you show the things you're excited about, which tend to be big and noisy, right? And if you're the first person someone follows on FF, they're going to get a noisy first impression. The slower growth that doesn't come through tech influencers may have less of a back door.
- Bruce Lewis
And about the 25+-year-old forum problem: Moderated Usenet was great until moderators slacked off. Decentralized moderation fixes that, at least for small discussions. Larger discussions can lead to whack-a-mole (though I notice this one hasn't), but with one of the suggestions I made earlier in this conversation the number of whackers could scale with the number of moles.
- Bruce Lewis
Moderation = censorship. Censorship sucks. Give the users control to hide and block. The less censorship the better.
- Thomas Hawk
@Paul - what about a view to only see the user's posts/content ie no comments of others and no likes => then it becomes twitter like
- Kishore Balakrishnan
Come on, it's hardly messier than Facebook, since the default view only includes the first and last comment. Basically the gist I'm getting is that people who think they're important don't want to listen to people who they don't think are important. Such is the human race, I suppose.
- Victor Ganata
Robert said "FB iPhone app ... hides all comments with an arrow that you can then use to expand the comments. That is so much better than this mess here that it isn't funny". Robert, I must be missing your point because FF also hides most comments until you expand them because you want to read them... Don't want to read FF comments, don't expand them, problem solved. Or are you saying FF is a "mess" because it shows first and last comment?
- Ed Millard
235 comments! I really don't want to expand *that* on FF! Is this a pain-point for anyone else?
- Space Cowboy
Not for me. If I'm interested enough in the topic or dialog I'll click the time stamp and open the post page to read everything. The text amount is comparable to a medium length blog post: if I have the time to read that I have the time to read this if it interests me.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
A typical blog post? Dragging & copying the comments only (which took about a min. of scrolling) produced 9200 words and 23 pages of text. Blog posts also tend to have a more easily read narrative.
- Vincent van Wylick
The problem is for big conversations like this one you need threading and maybe moderation, but for more normal conversations that are smaller flat is better. Allowing a switch between the two adds complexity. For big conversations FF lacks the button to reply to a specific poster so the viewer can thread, at least as an option. Much of the noise level in this conversation is due to people having to manually try to fake threading.
- Ed Millard
The threading vs. flat conversation is interesting to me - we've tried multiple times to put Disqus or Intense Debate on a film blog I write for, and every time we meet huge resistance to threading ESPECIALLY on long threads. People say they have a lot of difficulty finding the new comments when they aren't all at the top or bottom.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Why can't there be a summary fly-out with timestamps based on response rate to single comments and a "last comment made" link as well as "thread count" links and lastly, "participants in this thread" link? Collapse everything else except the initial post. The initial interface looking like this one, should always be available for those who want to "sort through". You want the...
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- Melanie Reed
Jandy, you kind of have to let the user flip between threading and flat to solve the chronology problem. Slashdot has a popup menu at the top that lets you view in "Threaded, Nested, Flat, No Comments". The down side is the UI gets progressively more complex both to implement and use unless you are going to force everyone to lowest common denominator UI.
- Ed Millard
But Ed, that's what I have against the traditional "threaded" approach: all the fork like structure. It does get complicated real fast. What's needed is somewhere a "summary" for those jumping in late to "catch up" but also the "single comment" link to democratize the discussion. Threads have all the indentation problems of trying to follow that way IF I am picturing what you mean by thread.
- Melanie Reed
My other observation is this: everyone creates a "story" about the ideas and information they are taking in and immediately starts associating connections in their mind creating a mental picture whether they realize it or not when they are perceiving that information. Our user interfaces don't yet lend themselves to that especially where it come to dialogue and forums. We've accepted a...
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- Melanie Reed
Here's why you don't need indented/tangential threading: FF discussions tend to be small enough to fit in the "RAM" in one's mind. It curtails many threads that might ramble; the exception (like Paul's thread here) comes when the power of the topic/zeitgeist and vibe of a live chat going strong overrides that usual point of decay. Predictablly, one or several commenters here will start a new thread or escalate it to a blog post and summarize their thoughts based on what transpired on this stream.
- Micah Wittman
Melanie, have you used Slashdot, they did forums earlier and better than anyone. The forum starts out flat, and then starts threading. Random community moderators start modding up the insightful posts, and burying the trolls, crap, etc. Once the moderation kicks in the "summary" is all the posts that were modded up to 5 which are shown expanded. All the lower moderated stuff is there but you have to clck to see. Slashdot would suck like YouTube comments if they hadn't solved the forum problem.
- Ed Millard
It's organic, not hierarchical. As other have stated, there is as much to learn from watching the process unfold as there is to gain from end result.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, no, I haven't used Slashdot but I'm willing to give it a try. I'm pretty adaptable. But when I see a problem and it becomes "the picture" for me, in this case a circle then I know its time for the leap out of the present "prison of one idea". ;)
- Melanie Reed
Micah, its true threads are bad for small friendly forums. Some of this discussion is about what happens when the forums on "celebrity" social expert's threads get so big they overflow readers brains and they turn in to *noise*. One noise problem is organization, the other is some post and some posters are better than others in the mind of the celeb and the reader.
- Ed Millard
Slashdot dealt with most of the forum problems ten years ago, they had to to survive the trolls. The problem is their UI needs to be complex to be flexible and keep everyone happy. Their audience is also mostly geek power user. When you get to social networks the other UI school is demanding the UI be dirt simple so the unwashed masses can cope, but dirt simple mean its inflexible and it ticks off nearly everyone, especially power users. Hard problem to solve... making everyone happy.
- Ed Millard
Ed, conferences have break-out groups. The same idea should be employed.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, yes, you offered a little explication for others of what happens when you lost the ability to categorize your"story" into a mental picture that is associated with previous "stories" you have stored in the brain. That end result is "noise". Some of us are better at doing that than others, that's true. But there come a point of over flow for all of us. What our UI needs to do is to amplify and assist in that "story" constructing process.
- Melanie Reed
Break out groups is a nice idea, but it seems a bit cumbersome. You need to make a new post, post a link here and get some critical mass from the first forum to move. If you do it five times you would splinter the first forum and lose critical mass, especially in a "real-time" forum where people will only watch one forum at a time. Chances are most people will cling to the first forum if its interesting.
- Ed Millard
Ed and Micah, what I hear both of you saying, and Robert as well, is that at some point in the "story" constructing process, the dialog from the forum needs to end in the narrative of a blog. Up till now, the blog component has been a random, unattached part of the discussion. AM I hearing that you think that in some way it should become part of the UI? So that the discussion gets...
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- Melanie Reed
Not sure I follow, blog is kind of a one voice, one direction thing, only way a forum morphs to blog is when once person splits off the forum to make a more in depth point and posts the blog link to the forum. I'm mostly just talking about the various methods for restoring order in a big forum, and improving signal to noise ratio. Most entail putting more options and more UI in and around the forum and making the UI more complex which many think is bad on a social network.
- Ed Millard
Ed, as I was writing this, it occurs to me that what I'm suggesting is what I may have just figured out (finally) that Google Wave is trying to get us to do. But if so, I beleive FF could actually do it better. the "noise" problem that was created by the various forms of SM, inside and outside of the platforms, was the inability to "connect the dots". We didn't have a framework for how...
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- Melanie Reed
One of the problems that we haven't solved is the usefulness of digression and random access of connective tissue in the "story" process. That's the wild card that often comes up as "noise"
- Melanie Reed
I can't speak for Robert. Some of his issue "seems" to be he only wants to see the Silicon Valley/SF movers and shakers in his feed talking about tech and social networks, and he doesn't much want anyone but that same group to be posting on forums under his auspices. Friend Feeds openness is bad for that. The same is true for all the Twitter celeberati. They don't want peons anywhere near their online presence to tarnish it.
- Ed Millard
Only way I can see to maintain FF openness for those who want it, and celeb broadcast only mode for the celebs who demand it, in one social network is you have to have an option when you make a post on your feed to control the forum methodology (i.e. broadcast only peons can only look on, panel mode where only my social elite are allowed to speak & peons can watch, private where only my circle can speak and see (FB mode), or completely OPEN(FF mode).
- Ed Millard
There also seems to be an issue where someone you follow, through the "like" process, can inject pictures of kittens, babies and man titteh in to your feed. Of course that is kind of the original point of social networks, seeing what your network sees. I think some just want hard core tech news and talk and twitter lists probably do allow an uber though somewhat lifeless feed like that.
- Ed Millard
Ed, well, that is the territory of the heart when it comes into contact with the machine. And oddly (or maybe not so oddly) there is a post on my feed that addresses that theme: http://friendfeed.com/faithx5... ;) Digression and Random access at work. lol And I find that refreshing. I'm always excited about how some new idea may be generated because I allowed what...
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- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: I fully believe in non-linear learning. The ability to take input from diverse thematic content and synthesize something ... to apply something from one world to the other. That's where I think we're heading. I think of it a little bit like a digital version of Burroughs' Cut Up technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- AJ Kohn
Such a simple and obvious solution: provide an optional *LIST* view for Friendfeed items. Open the comments only on items that look really interesting. Am I missing something obvious? Then Friendfeed could easily emulate Twitter on all essentials (and surpass it in many other areas).
- Sean McBride
Sean, I think the obvious thing you are missing is there are no FF developers any more so FF probably isn't getting anything it doesn't already have. And there are camps here that don't really like the alternatives that FB and Twitter offer which is why this is such a hot button issue. I wish there was one social network that had lists, open forums, walled gardens, and broadcast mode based on the wishes of the person running a feed so everyone could be happy in one network.
- Ed Millard
The GE Advantium has treated us very well. Microwave, convection, and speed-cooking (refrigerator biscuits cooked in a total of 12 minutes w/ no pre-heating needed, for example).
- Craig Eddy
Looks like there are different Advantium models running from $700 into the thousands. Are they really that much better than the $200 models?
- Bruce Lewis
Considering that it's a microwave, I doubt it, Bruce. :)
- Alex Scoble
We have a cheap LG and it works well enough. Looking at reviews it seems nobody really likes their microwave so we just went cheap and basic.
- Todd Hoff
My question about s3fs went unanswered on this page: http://code.google.com/p... Does anybody here know about s3fs and directories? E.g. if I create bucket/dir in s3fs with public-read is there any way an unauthorized user could list the dir contents? I can't proceed without being reasonably sure the answer is no.
We disable listing for all of our S3 dirs by disabling the public read ACL on the bucket and setting it on the files themselves. You can fetch from the buckets, but not list them (ditto for the equivalent cloudfront URLs)
- Matt Mastracci
Cool. Just to be clear, that includes subdirs that you create via s3fs...it's not just the buckets themselves that are unlistable?
- Bruce Lewis
The dirs in S3 are virtual. They don't really exist - the are inferred from the slashes in the S3 filenames. IIRC, s3fs and other programs use a placeholder file to indicate an empty directory.
- Matt Mastracci
That's what it looked like to me, but of course that means that for s3fs to list directory contents it needs to query all objects in the bucket matching a pattern. I considered the possibility they might store the directory contents as metadata on that placeholder object. Now that I've learned that said metadata would be in the HTTP headers (which I've checked) I'm satisfied.
- Bruce Lewis
I really wanted to be sure, because if I was wrong, thousands of non-public photos would become public.
- Bruce Lewis
Yeah, I just confirmed that the S3 browser for Firefox creates virtual directories with the suffix "_$folder$". Listing virtual directory content in S3 is in fact a prefix-search through the bucket.
- Matt Mastracci
"Do you think it can be done without video? To many, the words "upload photos" imply additional work. Is the slogan "Don't think; just upload" a good one?"
- Bruce Lewis
The suggestion given by the person on ycombinator looks good: "You send the pictures, we make the albums". "Don't think; just upload" will not go well with photographers; at least I don't agree with it. I always advice people to edit their photos before upload, at least remove the 'not so good ones'; and perhaps just click on the enhance button..
- Pavan
Like a picture speaks a thousand words.. a good video bringing out the core concept can speak a million.. A bad video can do damage.. so if you go with a video, it better be good.
- Pavan
Pavan, your first comment hits upon the marketing dilemma I'm faced with. Initially I created the site with busy parents in mind, for whom even going through photos to remove the not-so-good ones was too much work. I figured serious photographers were well served by existing sites, and OurDoings would serve a different need. Problem is, the busy people I initially built for aren't going to look at different sites themselves; they're going to ask a serious photographer friend. So I have to please both.
- Bruce Lewis
I agree that usually busy people will upload all photos they take without editing.. but then that is true if they use Flickr or Photobucket or whatever.. then, how does the slogan 'Don't think; just upload' set you apart -- they are already doing that :)).. What sets your service apart is that given a whole bunch of photos, your service will facilitate arranging and organizing them into albums automatically.
- Pavan
Google keywords is another important tool to use. You'll have to put money carefully on keywords so that people who are looking for such a solution will immediately find your service. For instance, if I search for "Photos blog arrange", your site should show up in google's sponsored links.. I remember a time when I searched around the web for something like that and didn't find anything.. I actually thought of writing my own scripts for doing just that..
- Pavan
Let me be frank here. After I first visited your site though one of Robert Scoble's photos, it took me quite a while to understand what it was all about.. But something registered in my mind that I really need to check this out.. I visited a couple of times after that and then I got it... Okay.. there I exposed myself.. I'm dumb.. but then you would want the message of your site to be glaringly clear to whoever visits your main page..
- Pavan
Another distinction is that you can do the choosing after uploading. Or some other interested party can (e.g. grandparents). This is less useful for serious photographers. Making what the site's about concisely clear is not easy. Automatic scrapbook might be the right description.
- Bruce Lewis
I shant comment on another RS post...I loves my FF peeps...We rock
- Bill Heslin
MVB: seems that everyone here wants this, so this is what I'm going to post. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I have no problem with you not liking FriendFeed as a service or not getting anything out of it anymore. You had valid points about forums. What bothered me was the language and the tone of your initial post and screenshot that singled out and attacked the people of FriendFeed. You don't have to like the service or find it interesting but there are more respectful ways to communicate that...ways that don't personally offend the rest of the users and cause them to get defensive and angry.
- joey
joey: you're right. I was wrong. But I'm not getting fed here anymore and I didn't communicate that well.
- Robert Scoble
Sorry Robert, ever read the story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" ? Check it out.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
I guess it's like falling in love with a four-star Thai restaurant that slowly switches to some other kind of food.
- Robert Scoble
The worst part is that my "best of day" is dominated by people posting all the different reasons your post was wrong.
- Bruce Lewis
Mehmet: I've read it many times. So you're right. Fine. FriendFeed is awesome. Now what?
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: we're even thanks to that man-boob liking photo.
- Robert Scoble
Anyway, what kind of tech stuff are you looking for?
- Bruce Lewis
Josh: nah, yesterday's posts were bait. This is just me saying hi.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: I've already found it, you don't need to find it for me.
- Robert Scoble
I still like you, Robert. We've had good conversations. Just... Perhaps you could have handled it a little differently, is all. Best of luck in whatever is next and I'll see you around the net.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
Bill: you are welcome to block me. Then you'll be alone without me.
- Robert Scoble
I was just answering Josh. I'm not baiting anybody myself.
- Bruce Lewis
The food's the same here, you just made a serious mistake by stiffing the wait staff. Face it Robert, you're a fast food kind of guy.
- jcunwired
jcunwired: I enjoy fast food as much as anyone but I do try to temper it with veggies.
- Robert Scoble
Not that there's anything wrong with that. If you need tech "news" you don't want to hang out on a site that's exactly the same kind of awesome it was two months ago.
- Bruce Lewis
Oh good lord, a blanket apology/explanation is plenty sufficient. He doesn't need to come to each of our houses and prostrate himself before us and beg our humblest forgiveness. We need to learn more from that Baboon that Benson played in the Lion King.
- Matthew DeVries
Bruce: I'm not going to fall for your bait. FriendFeed is awesome!
- Robert Scoble
Why is Scoble trying to kill Friendfeed?
- Cliff Gerrish
Cliff: why would I try to kill something so awesome?
- Robert Scoble
My "more wrong" blog post was (in tone) bait. My comments here are real.
- Bruce Lewis
I swear Robert you like to toy with people because they are so predictable : )
- Owen Greaves
Because he has the delusion that he can.
- jcunwired
Is this what it is going to come to? People ripping each other apart until there is no one left alive when the lights are turned off?
- Mathew™ one of a kind
jcunwired: I couldn't "make" FriendFeed despite pissing off thousands of people over on Twitter by constantly talking it up. I guess everyone forgets that. Same over on my blog. And I've shown FF to thousands of people during speaking engagements. But, no, all that work didn't help make FriendFeed hyper popular so, no, I don't live under any delusion that I can, then, get anyone to leave. FriendFeed is awesome and nothing I say can change that.
- Robert Scoble
At the Boston FriendFeed meetup I was the only one who found Robert Scoble through FriendFeed. Everybody else found FriendFeed through Robert Scoble.
- Bruce Lewis
I found you through FriendFeed and I'm grateful for that!
- Robert Scoble
you could say that that it's a sad sack of going nowhere, now that the team was acquired and told Steve Gillmor like 8 times in the last Gang that a bunch of the best features here were too much for the 300 million nuffnuffs that use Facebook.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
if you wanted to say something about FF not being awesome, that is.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Marshall: oh, you were listening to the latest Gang. There was a LOT of news in that Gang and Steve and I were wondering if anyone would notice.
- Robert Scoble
it was hard to notice with the thick fog of PR bs. mostly seemed like bad news and non-news. would love to know what I missed :)
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
i don't mean to be un-understanding, FB is a huge org with hundreds of millionso f users, billions of $ at stake. i'm sure i'd speak cautiously too
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Marshall: yeah, if I were FriendFeed execs I would speak carefully as well. The transcript comes tomorrow, we'll dig through it and highlight anything really useful in the Gillmor Gang. There were a few things that clarified where they are going a bit.
- Robert Scoble
Transcript? FriendFeed execs? Did an interview happen with Bret, Jim, Paul, Sanjeev?
- Bruce Lewis
AJ: I don't have to do those tricks anymore. Look at all the comments!
- Robert Scoble
Never satisfied. Tell me how much you love FF every waking hour.
- Jason Hill
And, anyway, I understand everyone here knows at least 60 reasons why FriendFeed is awesome, no need to iterate through that list again.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert: I miss it though! You're welcome any time. In other news, the world of the Internet is a fascinating place. I wouldn't be anywhere else.
- AJ Kohn
Always here. Like every time I long-on. Robert is infinitely connected. Is it happiness? ... a disease? ... or both?? :)
- Charlie Anzman
So confused... but don't care anymore. Can't we just go back to how it was before? Everyone posts/likes/doesn't do whatever they want.
- Jan Ole Peek
Louis, Robert probably already has a real picture like that somewhere.
- Jesse Stay
Josh, I want the transcript to your video
- Jesse Stay
I enjoy friendfeed sooo much!! I hope it doesn't go anywhere but gets optimized! Great site to make great connections and meet a bunch of awesome people!
- John Tastad
His assertion is "Why an <img> element? Quite simply, because Marc Andreessen shipped one, and shipping code wins." At least in this case.
- Hayes Haugen
But he does allow that: "[Shipping] Code is necessary but not sufficient for success."
- LogEx
I saw the WWW before the IMG element. It didn't look promising. I wonder what would have happened if it had taken longer for graphics to be embeddable in HTML.
- Bruce Lewis