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ooc - low-level / high-level goodness - http://ooc-lang.org/

October 28 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Alberto Bietti, Shivanand Velmurugan, JMaultasch and 56 other people liked this

Looks promising. C++ is too much of a disaster -- we need a real successor to C. "ooc is a modern, object-oriented, functional-ish, high-level, low-level, sexy programming language. it's translated to pure C with a source-to-source compiler. it strives to be powerful, modular, extensible, portable, yet simple and fast." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

89 more comments

Meh. I dislike post-fix'd declarations, and given that the assignment operator is frequently used, I think C's decision to make it a single character operator is the correct one. Otherwise, it doesn't seem any better than say, Objective C, D, or any of the other languages vying to be the next C. - Piaw Na

Have you looked at the D language? http://www.digitalmars.com/d/ It's been around for years and near the top of language shootouts in performance. - Ray Cromwell

Pointers? Do we really need pointers? - Gabe

Yes, if you're doing a systems language, you need pointers --- for writing device drivers, if nothing else. - Piaw Na

Based on the sample code, it appears to have a very direct interface to C, which I think is important for a systems language. For most things I'd rather just use Python, but for lower-level, perf-critical stuff, we need something else. D looks like too much, but I haven't tried it. - Paul Buchheit

Type inference, yummy - a main reason why Scala has mad traction these days - Christopher Galtenberg

Start by creating a really lightweight and easy to use development environment. I should be able to teach Jay Rosen to program in it. Back in the 80s there was serious compeititon in this area -- from Borland with Turbo Pascal and on the Mac, from Think Technologies with their C and Pascal systems. The languages aren't the issue, at least not for me. I want to program in C again, but the curve is too steep in all the environments. Give me a Turbo environment and some nice libraries, and lets go! :-) - Dave Winer

Dave: http://tryruby.sophrinix.com <- that kind of easy - Christopher Galtenberg

Piaw Na: For ':=' I've just made a homepage edit to make it very clear. := is decl-assign. Regular assign is '=' as in C/Java/etc. RTFM! ;) - 'n ddrylliog

Piaw Na: As for trying to be the next C... well, no =) The next C is probably C itself, since C hackers are way too picky to be satisfied with anyside above C (in high-level/low-level terms) - 'n ddrylliog

Btw, why is everyone thinking of ooc as a systems language? It can be used as such, but it's not really the goal. Do you all think so because it's compiled? - 'n ddrylliog

I'm thinking of it as a systems language because that's what I want. We already have reasonable options for higher-level stuff, but when writing a database or whatever, we're stuck with C or C++. - Paul Buchheit

Paul Buchheit: Hmm. High-performance implementations of current reasonable high-level languages are still pretty much experimental :/ (unladen swallow, shedskin, etc.) Why sacrifice performance? Many compiled languages have shown that expressivity isn't reserved to "interpreted" languages. =) - 'n ddrylliog

Piaw Na: about ooc being better or worse than Objective-C, D, etc. Well, D is really complex. It gives a *lot* of control, but it makes code less readable imho. As much as you may currently dislike it, the ooc syntax is (for some at least) more readable, so more maintainable, in general simpler, etc. (a lot less trickier than C++, for example. And if you don't see what I'm talking about, you haven't done enough C++) - 'n ddrylliog

Ocaml is pretty expressive, it has a REPL, and it's been in the top of the language shootout benchmarks for years. - Ray Cromwell

How does ooc compare to C#? If I had to write something like a compiler, I'd use C#. - Gabe

The missing dots really bother me. - τorƍue

C++ a disaster? I don't think so, its main problem is the lack of high level straightforward frameworks. IMHO generic programming is a deeper paradigm than OOP, but like functional languages has a slow learning curve, look at the matrix implementations/compiler optimizations in Boost! - Sebastian Wain from iPhone

Sebastian: C++ has lots of significant problems. For example, it's actually 3 languages: precompiler (#define), C++, and templates. The template language is so powerful that you can't even tell if the compiler will halt on a given program, let alone understand the error messages it produces. Just the shear size of the language, manual memory management, things like multiple inheritance, and vast overlapping standard libraries make it hard to program in by giving the progammer an overly large cognitive load. - Gabe

My two biggest gripes: Error messages from templates, specially from STL, can be notoriously hard to track down. And secondly, default implicit conversions can lead to hard to track down bugs. When you have a type system so complex you have to mentally "run the compiler" as you code, something's wrong. - Ray Cromwell

I've been doing nothing but C++ lately. It's not bad, but only because everyone subsets it. The compilers are horrible, but I don't think that's because nobody has an incentive to improve g++'s front-end. - Piaw Na

Ouch. decl-assign is terrible. I hate that. I think C's syntax (e.g., int a = 3; ) is much better than decl- assign. If you want to imitate C, at least make the declarations C-like. Personally, I think language design should be performed so that you can hand-code a compiler (i.e., no lex & yacc). Why? Because hand-coded compilers can much more easily produce human readable error... more... - Piaw Na

I've seen it argued that LL(k) compiler-compilers don't have this fault, because they generate recursive decent parsers that look somewhat like what you'd write by hand, JavaCC certainly has this attribute for example. Although I'm quite fond of the parser-combinator approach now. - Ray Cromwell

Gabe: the issue is: when you need performance you must follow the C++ path. Don't forget http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp... - Sebastian Wain

What Ray said. yacc uses an LALR parser, and LALR parsers are kind of notorious for producing inscrutable error messages. LL(k) compiler-compilers can generate much more intuitive error messages, and the code they generate often looks like something a human would write. Both JavaCC and ANTLR are good LL(k) compiler-compilers. I believe LL(k) parsers aren't strictly as powerful as LALR... more... - Laurence Gonsalves

On the topic of ooc: the "object [space] method-call()" syntax is the most jarring thing about the syntax for me. I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be any actual introduction to that syntax on the linked page -- it's just used several times without explanation. Also, I have to say I'm not a fan of conservative garbage collection. - Laurence Gonsalves

Yes, when I hand code parsers, I write them in recursive descent form. The problem with C++ is that it's not easily parseable in that form. And seriously, any language where you can write map<string, string>, but have to write map<string, vector<string> > is seriously messed up. - Piaw Na

+1 to Laurence's comment about conservative GC: that's plain evil. - Piaw Na

Yeah, Piaw only uses progressive GC, and even then he keeps complaining that it's finding ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. - Daniel Dulitz

I believe JavaCC grammar repo has a relatively straightforward C++ grammar implemented, using LL(k) - Ray Cromwell

Piaw Na: You got so much wrong in so few comments that it's actually worrying. Decl-assign is not terrible. It's called type inference, and is used in a lot of modern languages (ML, C#, Scala) to make our lives easier, and limits repeating yourself and it works damn well. Grow up and learn other languages. So no, the goal is not to imitate C. Go use Objective-C/C#/C++/Java/D if you want C-like languages. - 'n ddrylliog

Piaw Na: Second: I have hand-written the ooc 0.3 compiler's parser, and it was a piece of cake, because the syntax is so simple and unambiguous. Having "object[space]field" is a non-issues since declarations are "name: type". And you're mistaken in thinking that the fact you can hand-write a parser for a grammar means that it's simple. It's the other way around. If you can write a LL(K)/LR/PEG grammar, then the syntax is *very* straightforward. And the new ooc compiler (rock) uses a PEG grammar.. - 'n ddrylliog

Conservative Garbage Collector: There are advantages 1) the performance is a lot better than you would expect (and actually faster than plain malloc/free for lots of small objects) 2) there are advantages, e.g. seamless integrations with all the C libs out there. 3) Writing a GC isn't easy, the Boehm has been around for years and is well-tested/optimized, portable, etc. Read the papers please :/ This thread is a showcase of ignorance and arrogance. - 'n ddrylliog

As for "Language blah is better". No, sorry, apples are not better than oranges. That's your personal taste. Well, good for you =) One size doesn't fit all. Why do you even bother? - 'n ddrylliog

why `diagonal := Vector3f new()` instead of `diagonal := new Vector3f()` or even `diagonal := Vector3f()` is this because someone felt he must not be like any other language? - Tzury Bar Yochay

I know several typed inference languages. I dislike them --- again, type inferencing never took off not because the technology was hard, but because programmers preferred the declarations --- it really helps. Not to mention tools like ctags/etags, etc., do a good job for popular programming environments (i.e., vi and emacs), which meant that languages without such support never get widespread use. - Piaw Na

Conservative Garbage Collector: 1) this is more an argument abut gc than conservative gc. I have no problems with gc, I just want accurate gc. 2) That's a fair point, but not enough to make me want to use conservative gc. I'd be happier managing resources from C libraries manually than worrying that hash values are confusing the collector. 3) Yes, writing a gc isn't easy, but I'm sure... more... - Laurence Gonsalves

@Piaw, a type inferenced language just means that the type is concretely there, just it doesn't need to be declared in syntax. Thus, any smart editor or IDE, or other tool could reify or show types on demand if the developer so chose. Ctags are a relatively primitive mechanism for source code indexing, once you have an editor which understands your language's AST/semantics, you don't... more... - Ray Cromwell

Tzury: why 'diagonal := Vector3f new()'? Because new is simply a static method: http://ooc-lang.org/blog... Your definition of "any other language" must be "Java and C++" and both are inconsistent/magical on this issue, as opposed to, yeah, pretty much "any other language" (Smalltalk, Ruby, Io, ...) - 'n ddrylliog

I've never heard of this before. Feel a bit disconnected. - mikepk

Ray: for better or worse, most programmers out there are using Emcas and vi. Why? Because no other tool scales up when you're dealing with large code bases. (That's one reason why even some Java programmers at Google use vi and Emacs) I don't care how primitive the tools are, they have to get things done. - Piaw Na

I agree with Laurence about conservative GC. The big one is memory fragmentation. Once upon a time, when all we ever wrote were desktop apps, memory fragmentation didn't matter. For server side applications, it matters a heck of a lot, and any language that uses conservative gc might as well provide the delete operator. - Piaw Na

C++ can be used quite effectively without STL or complicated templates, but it will never be safe from corruption or memory leaks. - Todd Hoff

I love lamp. - Mark "Godt Nyt Ǻr"

@Laurence 1) Yes and no. The performance gap between good conservative and precise (/accurate/exact) garbage collectors is less significant than one would think. 2) That's a valid point 3) Actually, I've thought of using Steve Dekorte's libgarbagecollector (look on GitHub). These are still plans though, Boehm was clearly the easiest option to start with, and ooc itself isn't bound to... more... - 'n ddrylliog

Easily one of the most fascinating threads on FriendFeed right now. You guys are talking mostly over my head but it reminds me that I need to get my ass out of managed languages one day. - Akiva Moskovitz

@mikepk The language+impl has only been out there for a few months. =) - 'n ddrylliog

@Todd Totally agreed, which explains some design choices in ooc. Memory leaks is a non-issue with a GC, and as for corruption, as long as you stay out of manual memory manipulation, the compiler does most the checking for you, statically. - 'n ddrylliog

@piaw: I think we're mostly in agreement, but I really don't think it's fair to say that "most programmers use Emacs and vi". I use vi a lot, but when it comes to Java/Scala code bases, I still use Eclipse (or IntelliJ, or whatever). Even at Google. I just don't map the *entire* Google Java code base into my workspace at once. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Java developers at... more... - Joel Webber

Joel: sure, you can play tricks like mapping only what you use. But a surprising number of Java users at Google kick up vim/emacs just so they can use the *fast* low-latency search tools when they need to read code outside of what they've mapped. The numbers were really surprising to me. - Piaw Na

I've been using emacs for 2 decades and I still use it when I need to quickly edit something or slice and dice text with macros (or I write sed/perl to do it). But when I'm developing stuff, a switchover point occurs where emacs is no longer sufficient and I desire the IDE. Emacs is great for scripts where you can test for errors via a quick eval, but the cost of a compile is high in... more... - Ray Cromwell

There is, once you get into Google-size (or even Linux-kernel-sized) code bases. But I guess I've living in the Google bubble for so long, the concept of not having mega-libraries doesn't even occur to me. And we've built enough fancy tools at Google that make Emacs way faster than Eclipse/IntelliJ (see http://code.google.com/p...). Latency matters! - Piaw Na

Ultimately, this is a search problem, something that google excels at. I'm not sure why you think Emacs has any innate advantage over Eclipse/IntelliJ for this. If GTags can be built for Emacs, it can be done for those IDEs. (Those IDEs already index all symbols and store them on disk) The issue here is that "find symbol" is necessary, but not sufficient, especially on large code bases.... more... - Ray Cromwell

Heh. I open sourced all the infrastructure, but not the ranking algorithms for code (which are google proprietary) Having seen lots of old Google hands work in Emacs, I think you'll find that they disagree. People have tried adding plugins to gtags for Eclipse/IntelliJ, but none have succeeded --- those IDEs aren't designed to take plugins quite the way Emacs does. Even Vim isn't as... more... - Piaw Na

As a practical example, the Linux kernel core (minus the whole driver universe) is about 500kloc. The GWT compiler, which I work on, is about 500kloc. I have zero complains about my IDE's ability (IntelliJ 9) to deal with this code base. Call it a medium sized code base if you will. Too big IMHO to practically use with Emacs/VI (where I desire refactoring and other navigational... more... - Ray Cromwell

What you'll find is that top engineers everywhere have heavily customized environments, scripts, editors, libraries, even their own programming languages, that make switching hard. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really prove anything, if "old hands" is meant to covey argument by authority. Like I said, I've been personally using Emacs since 1987, I use a bevy of ELisp, Perl, Awk, and other... more... - Ray Cromwell

I think the mindset difference is huge. Codebase too big? The IDE solution is to subset. The EMACS solution is to create a search index held in memory and apply search technology to it. The size of the community hacking away on these tools also matters. - Piaw Na

Piaw, you do realize that the IDE solution (I can't speak for Eclipse), is to build a search index and apply search technology? IntelliJ spiders all your reachable code and files on project setup (now, as a background process since it can take some time) and serves up IDE functions by consulting the index. In fact, it's very much like Google Suggest. I can type symbol lookup requests... more... - Ray Cromwell

Oh yeah, but they do it on disk and so have high latency when the code base scales up. I know, because people switch to Emacs/gtags from those IDEs for that reason. :-) - Piaw Na

Google's code base is large? I mean, I know the data it holds and indexes is very large, but somehow I assumed the code itself was quite small. - Andrew C

Actually, they cache some or all of the indices in memory depending on heap, at least according to the IntelliJ lead, if you increase heap, you lower cache thrashing. I still don't see why you think ETags/CTags/etc is any different in this regard. IntelliJ uses a similar index structure, it just records a bitmask on each tag as to the context (comment, identifier, method, field, etc).... more... - Ray Cromwell

@Andrew: I assume Piaw's talking about the *entire* code base, apps and all. That's a lot of code. - Joel Webber

gtags keeps it all in memory on a server, so there's no disk seek latency. There's nothing fundamental about the IDEs that makes this stuff impossible to do. It's just far easier to do in Emacs when there's just one of you. Once the prototype gets going, it's usefulness allows others to add in more useful functionality. Until recently, things like IntelliJ weren't even open source, so... more... - Piaw Na

Thanks Joel. Yes, I'm talking about the entire codebase. All of it. :-) - Piaw Na

@Piaw, Ray: It's becoming clear to me that we're all essentially saying the same thing. To deal with a large, complex code base, you need good tools. IDEs vs. Emacs isn't really much of a dichotomy if they're both building indices and cross-references of your code base and serving them up to you within the editor. They're both IDEs, n'est-ce pas? - Joel Webber

Yes, I'm just saying, if you need to build something in a hurry, it's far easier to do it in Emacs. But more importantly, ignoring a base of Emacs/Vi users when designing your programming language is ignoring a large percentage of the population. And in some cases, it's a large percentage of a very influential population. - Piaw Na

@Piaw I somehow lost your point between the "omg I don't like type inference" and the "you're ignoring Emacs/Vim users". It's still straight-forward to look for declarations of things, what's your problem? It's precisely why := and = are separate operators - 'n ddrylliog

You'll get no argument from me. I'm a fan of diversity in programming, and I do use emacs daily. IntelliJ/Eclipse would do well to offer a simple in-editor tool for building plugins via any Java scripting engine and support saving those persistently. I guess my point is, I can't live without Etags functionality, and now I can't live without all the other features I've gotten used to:... more... - Ray Cromwell

Even without any support, editing ooc in at text editor (I personally use Vim and Geany for .ooc) is very easy, cause you can search for "whatever:" (notice the ':') and be done with it. Try doing that with a C/C++/Java codebase =) That's the payback of a simple, non-ambiguous consistent syntax - 'n ddrylliog

And AFAIK, most ooc users/contributors/hackers use vim. A few use emacs, too. We have a vim syntax file, and a contributor is looking into writing an emacs mode. =) - 'n ddrylliog

@Piaw, Ray, et al: To finish my previous thought -- There will always be some point at which an IDE (be it Emacs or Eclipse) will fail to scale. The time and space required to deal with the code base eventually grows without bound, and you simply aren't going to load it into a single machine's memory. Even if you could load all of Google's code (or at least its index) into a single... more... - Joel Webber

Or you do the work to integrate the external search tool (or whatever) into the IDE. Emacs is designed to make that easy. The other IDEs that are around today, not so much. Code Search introduces a lot of latency. gtags as implemented internal to Google has sub 300ms response times. Whenever it goes down, I get complaints from people, declaring that "it's just too much work to remember where files are." - Piaw Na

I think Piaw's concern with type inference comes from the fact that explicitly stating the type of something acts as documentation. With type inference that documentation goes away. For example, in ooc, suppose I search for "whatever:" and I see "whatever:= foo()". What's the type? Whatever foo() returns. So now I have to look up foo(). Suppose it uses type inference on its return type (assuming that's possible in ooc). Now I have to dig even deeper. - Laurence Gonsalves

I'm guessing the IDE digression related to the fact that a sufficiently smart IDE can add the implicit type information back by doing the same type inference as the compiler. The problem with going down that road is that you're coupling the code editor and the language. Either your editor needs special language support so it can do the type inference, or you have to put up with not having an easy way of knowing something's type. - Laurence Gonsalves

I don't understand how you can do conservative garbage collection without leaking memory. - Gabe

Gabe: In theory, you can't. In practice, Hans Boehm did a lot of studies in the 1990s showing you that the leakage is very tiny. The real problem is memory fragmentation. With accurate GC, you can actually improve the locality of your data structures in memory (e.g., by putting elements of a linked list or array next to each other so a cache fetch brings them all into cache), with conservative GC, you can't do that. - Piaw Na

@Laurence: type inference: For me, the advantages far outweighs the drawback(s) (And, no, no return type inference in ooc). Plus, you don't *have to* use type inference. You can declare type explicitly in your whole codebase if you feel like it. - 'n ddrylliog

For the record: I'm not saying I necessarily agree with Piaw's distaste for type inference. I've thought about the issue in the past, but haven't used languages with type inference enough to have an opinion one way or the other. The lack of return type inference might be a good compromise, as it would tend to limit how far you'd have to search to figure out the type of something, while still eliminating a lot of the "busy work" in languages that require that you specify the type of everything. - Laurence Gonsalves

@Laurence You've come to the exact same reasoning as me =) - 'n ddrylliog

I do still think you should explain the "object[space]method-call" syntax somewhere on that page. Up until the point where you use that syntax ooc looks vaguely similar to C/Pascal/Algol/etc., so seeing this unfamiliar syntax with no explanation is confusing. - Laurence Gonsalves

@Laurence I just edited the homepage. Better now? - 'n ddrylliog

w.r.t. fragmentation and conservative GC: take a look at "Compacting garbage collection with ambiguous roots" by Joel Bartlett. Worked very well when I used it in a home-brew JVM for alphas at Dec/Compaq about twelve years ago. - Sanjay Ghemawat

I really like the way C# handles pointers and GC: All objects are allocated from the GC heap. If you need a pointer to a GC-able object, you only get it by pinning it. Once the pointer goes out of scope the object gets unpinned. And you can only use pointers in code marked "unsafe" so it's obvious to the reader. - Gabe

Gabe - does the fact that C# is not compiled to machine code like C++ make it slower? - Robert Felty

Rob: C# gets compiled to native machine code when you run the code. There's also a program that ships with .Net called ngen which will create a native image without having to run the code. - Gabe

It would be nice if Microsoft open-sourced C#/.net. I know there is Mono, but that seems like it will always be second-class. - Paul Buchheit

What happened to the "Opening .Net Framework's Source Code" project, any ideas? - Ozkan Altuner

I guess Rotor isn't good enough, huh? - Gabe

I was thinking of an actual open/free license. - Paul Buchheit

Paul Graham on object orientation: http://www.paulgraham.com/noop... - Donald C. Lindsay

Robert Scoble

I don’t feel safe with Wordpress, hackers broke in and took things - http://scobleizer.com/2009...

September 5 from Scobleizer - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris, Tyson Key, Susan Beebe and 87 other people liked this

Well, if you have fixed the hole by upgrading; you should feel a lot safer now. I guess strong user adoption does bring the wrong kind of attention. - Anindya Chatterjee

174 more comments

Anindya: we're watching. Looks like they haven't gotten back in since the upgrade and some of the other changes we made. Knock on wood. - Robert Scoble

I'm very tempted to switch to a SixApart install. As a Perl programmer I'd be much more familiar with the backend. - Jesse Stay

Robert, btw, I'm sure between all your users you can find a backup. I have a bunch via Google Reader I could get to Rackspace to import for you. I'm sure others have even older entries than I have. Let us know if you want help restoring the old scobleizer.com! - Jesse Stay

robert - i can tell you this - you need to watch it like a hawk - when i thought i was safe - i wasn't - InsideTransit continues to get hit - and I still believe there is some patches and stuff that RS can do as well - the bigger issue is what's on the server - because that's where they put the shells and then they can do whatever they want. - Allen Stern

Not cool, hopefully things will work out. - Kim Landwehr

Jesse: luckily it was July and August, when I wasn't doing much blogging. No biggie. Thanks. Allen: yes, Rackspace Cloud has a security team now and they are actively looking at ways to make Wordpress safer for our customers. It really sucks getting hacked. Let me know if you find any other ways to protect the systems. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Yea getting hacked sucks. My early days with my blog aboutonlinematters.com I got hacked and luckily my ISP had a backup. Since then I have treated my Wordpress blog like any dev site - with a subversion repository and complete backup. But there are days... like today... when I think strongly about a platform like typepad. - Arthur Coleman

what i have found is locking down the files helps - but you need to ftp into your site and make sure that nothing has been edited or added - in my case, on all my sites, the hackers put files all over that were base64 files - and what they do is include them into WP or they just run them direct - nearly a full shell. i've asked RS to create a way so that i can be notified of any changes to files - they say it's too heavy to run. - Allen Stern

Robert, I just miss the traffic from your "You are SO Unfollowed!" article. (one of the casualties) ;-) - Jesse Stay

There's a lot of great info they deleted - I'm a little ticked they would be completely insensitive like that to prove a security flaw. It affected much more than just you. - Jesse Stay

Jesse: yeah, that's probably the one blog that I miss. It's also the one that got me to notice they deleted a couple of months. - Robert Scoble

Jesse: that still is cached over on Google at http://74.125.155.132/search... - Robert Scoble

No way "You are SO unfollowed" is out? I loved that one! :-( thanks for the cache Robert - Sofia @ SoMaFusion

If you have no time to take care of yuors blog, maybe it's better if you choose the pro offer from wordpress.com ( I think scobleizer.com can have the minimum requirement to stay there). - wolly

here it the VIP hosting http://en.wordpress.com/vip-hos... - wolly

wolly: it's not just about time, attacks come from all directions so you've gotta have a holistic approach to security. How many of you regularly change passwords and make sure they are really good ones? (Twitter got broken into not because of hacks, but because they didn't practice good password security). - Robert Scoble

It saddens me: it is morally reprehensible your hosting company convinced you to switch with the seduction of plugins and customization without emphasizing or handling the increased responsibility of upgrades. Your blog was not unique and not a special target, the worms sweep across millions of blogs indiscriminately and hit whatever is vulnerable. If your host is lax in upgrading, the... more... - Matt Mullenweg

that's true :-) I use password very strange and very verylong that I cannot remember and I use a service like clipperz.com to login. - wolly

wolly, Robert was hosted on WordPress.com for about 4 years -- he was actually the very first VIP. Although there were dozens of security updates to WordPress in that time, his blog never had a problem because it was always up-to-date. He only switched away a few months ago. - Matt Mullenweg

Ciao Matt :-) I didn't know that, so scoble come back to the light side :) - wolly

Matt: yup, that's true. I've learned my lesson. Running your own servers are a lot harder than just having them hosted on Wordpress.com. - Robert Scoble

To be frank, it completely breaks whatever trust I had in Rackspace. - Matt Mullenweg

But Matt, I've been talking with many blog owners, including at TechCrunch, and they say that Wordpress' updates break their custom plugins. That's why they don't upgrade immediately. So, sounds like Wordpress has a mess on its hands that the hosted version of Wordpress didn't have (I couldn't run a lot of plugins and video embeds and other fun things on the hosted version of Wordpress). So, to blame it on my hoster/employer (Rackspace) exclusively isn't really a good attitude either. - Robert Scoble

Robert, It happens. We were hacked too. My observations lead me to believe that this summer was the worst in a long time. Its a war and its going to be a war until the attitude towards hackers changes. Let's stop being fascinated in the least bit by how they do it (this goes towards Kevin Mitnick and his supporters- I don't ever want to pay good money to read about your scams on the... more... - Melanie Reed

Matt's got a point that with greater power (self-hosting) comes greater responsibility (more need to keep an eye on security), but I think to say that Scoble's blog was not a special target is a bit disingenuous. High-profile sites are always a higher-value target. - Rachel Luxemburg

Matt: I think you need to really look at all the damage that's being done to a wide range of sites, many of which are NOT hosted at Rackspace, before throwing more barbs. That's bull. Sorry. But I added a link to this conversation to my blog so people could see your point of view. - Robert Scoble

If a plugin is preventing you from upgrading (did it?) then let's figure out how to fix that plugin. All I can do in WordPress is build in the notices (your blog was asking you to upgrade for months) and the one-click updates for both core and plugins. I agree it's not your (Robert Scoble's) fault because I don't think you made the conscious decision to take on the increased responsibility. - Matt Mullenweg

Matt: the reputation around the Net is that upgrades on Wordpress break things. This wasn't a Rackspace recommendation. It's also a problem with all upgrades. I've gotten hosed by upgrades elsewhere. Look at all the people upgrading to Snow Leopard who are having things break. - Robert Scoble

Matt: TechCrunch hasn't upgraded its blog either and it wasn't hosted on Rackspace (at least not until a couple of days ago). - Robert Scoble

I'm not saying there isn't lots of misinformation around the net, I'm saying "how can I help your blog, please." If it's a plugin preventing you from upgrading, let me know the plugin and we'll fix it even if we didn't write it. That's the beauty of open source. - Matt Mullenweg

Robert -- Avoiding upgrades because they're annoying to deal with isn't a viable longterm strategy. - Rachel Luxemburg

they need to take care of Scoble's blog, well for he is a VIP and the smashing they would have would do a lot of damage to your customer base and otherwise, would they reply to an ordinary guy say like me? i think not,well wordpress/automattic is having their tough moments, hope things get well and they get their repute back - testbeta

Matt - you blaming Rackspace for security vulnerabilities in YOUR software platform is kinda like blaming Dell when a Windows box gets hacked. I think you are being irrational. - Rob La Gesse

Matt: in my case it was the REPUTATION of Wordpress's upgrades that was keeping me from upgrading. I was waiting to see what other people reported broke. I didn't realize the severity of the security problems. But, I am now upgrading automatically. So I'm fixed. But you still have a reputation problem. Lots of people are reporting things break when they upgrade. - Robert Scoble

Rob, I'm not blaming them. I'm saying it's the responsibility of any host, of any software, to stay up to date. If there was a SSH vulnerability on Robert's box I would say the same thing. Software updates are inevitable, there is no such thing as bug-free code, so staying up to date is a must. - Matt Mullenweg

Isn't all this open source code? If it's broken, why not fix it? Doesn't everyone have the responsibility to do that? It's not any one source's fault in that case. - Jesse Stay

Matt - I agree with you. So make Wordpress upgrades SAFE, automatic AND do some internal validation of plugin code to let users know they may be running something that is potentially insecure. - Rob La Gesse

Matt, agreed. Not when its turned out as fast as people are yelling for it. People can't have it both ways. - Melanie Reed

Matt: all Rackspace was providing to me was a Linux host. I was responsible for getting my upgades done on anything I ran on that system. But now we have a team making sure we're following best practices. That is NOT Rackspace's problem, though. That's like blaming Microsoft for a bug in Adobe software. - Robert Scoble

I never listen to the reputation, I always upgrade as a security upgrade is out, and if a plugin doesn't work or I deactivate it or I fix it. Security is much more important than a plugin and Matt knows how many plugins has my blog (when he looked my backend he was very sad ad he said that it was the first time for him to see so many plugin in a blog :-) ) To have a self host blog it's difficult and time expensive. - wolly

There are several very useful plugins specifically addressing security issues; and monitoring WP for suspicious activities (both on file and database level). Here are some articles with tips to harden your blog http://bit.ly/sZgh6 (delicious bookmarks). I only install plugins from authors from whom I know that they implement top level php; no breaking of upgrades on my 3 WP blogs has taken place (2.7-2.8-2.8.4) - Jeroen De Miranda

Yeah, plugin issues are the responsibility of the plugin developer, not Wordpress's. I don't see how this is Wordpress's or Rackspace's fault. - Jesse Stay

By the way, Matt, Sheamus, over on my comments on my blog, says he has the latest upgrades in place and he's still being broken into. You might help him figure out how the hackers are breaking in still. - Robert Scoble

Sorry, I was under the impression Rackspace had recommended you move away from WordPress.com and taken responsibility for the system. I was worried about your blog -- I emailed you about this in August but never heard back. It breaks my heart when someone's WordPress gets compromised. - Matt Mullenweg

I understand the feeling though - if people are still being broken into after being told a fix was made, especially if you're not a developer, that can be a little scary. I'd look to other solutions in that case if it were me, and it's no one's fault. It's just perception and fear, very valid fear. - Jesse Stay

I do believe there is a false sense of securty that WORDPRESS fosters by hosting plugins. I think many assume that because they download the pluging VIA Wordpress, and FROM Wordpress, it is somehow vetted. - Rob La Gesse

Matt: no. I wanted to move to my own install of Wordpress so that I could run many more plugins and start doing stuff other professional bloggers were doing. I am learning very quickly just how much work goes on behind the scenes to make sure my words were protected. - Robert Scoble

Once you've been hacked once if you don't clean up every trace (preferably a systems person does this) it's very likely something is left that allows the spammers to easily break back in, regardless of what version you're on. That's why the trouble with upgrading is worth it, it's much, much less than the trouble of fixing a hacked blog. - Matt Mullenweg

Jesse: yeah, at Microsoft when a box got broken into they wouldn't let you use it anymore. They forced you to reinstall it with all patches loaded. They assumed that it was compromised and that someone stuck a back door in somewhere. That's a lot of work too. - Robert Scoble

install either wp-backup or wp-dbmanager and configure database backup: every day; download to your local pc (or to a system other than your hosting provider); run a check once a month to see whether you can reconstruct the blog in case of calamity, That is my procedure; works fine. - Jeroen De Miranda

if a commoner gets hacked, then he should move to wordpress.com services or what? - testbeta

they should just make it not have any security holes! - Mark

Robert, if you like I'd be happy to host your blog for you (and I'm on Rackspace servers). I can keep it secure as well. I'd only ask some mention of SocialToo somewhere (or payment of some form in order to cover the cost of bandwidth). - Jesse Stay

I would also be able to keep it backed up for you. - Jesse Stay

So the take away messages are: 1) hosting services like Rackspace support the hardware and OS layer and you're are on your own for everything else, 2) maintaining your own website is difficult work, even for experienced IT professionals, 3) social media experts may not really know how to use the social media tools they are recommending, and 4) while hosted applications like Wordpress.com provide less flexibility, they take less effort and can be more reliable for the average small business. - Steve Wilhelm

I'll also install any plugins you're interested in trying - Jesse Stay

Jesse: in my case, I now have a team of the top security guys at Rackspace working on it and making sure my system is up to date and backed up. They also are learning a lot about this and other people who have had problems and are building a list of best practices. - Robert Scoble

This is eventually why I didn't go with Mosso. The service looks good, but you still have to manage your app yourself which opens you up to problems like you've experienced. It would be cool if they offered another layer of management on top so apps could be completely hands free. - Todd Hoff

the alternative (i.e. strong vetting of all plugins) would turn the whole WordPress ecosphere into something such as Ning.... only some 300 addons (as far as I know); little flexibility very intransparent how to get your addin accepted .... Not an attractive model for me.... - Jeroen De Miranda

Robert, excellent - just wanted to make sure the offer was out there. Maybe that could be a tiered service for Rackspace, although I'm not sure it's something Rackspace wants to get into. Bluehost barely makes any money off of that type of service. - Jesse Stay

Steve: I think that's a reasonable set of assumptions. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. When I was on Wordpress.com I was always jealous of blogs that were able to run the latest plugins and use the latest embed codes from various sites. - Robert Scoble

Robert, it's even more fun when you can customize the plugins and themes as a developer. :-) - Jesse Stay

@testbeta wrdpress.com is a very good choice if you don't have time or you don't know how to manage security on yors self hosted blog - wolly

wolly: that takes out the open source fun part ;) well i have nothing much to do on my blogs so i keep mine updated ;) - testbeta

I agree with you :-) but many people love blogging non update theirs blogs :-) - wolly

when my sites were hacked - a wordpress employee reached out to me- i dont remember her name but we sent a few emails - i could write for days about what happened to my 5 sites - my take is simple - i think the issues are a combo of rackspace (my host) and wordpress (my software) - i can tell you this - in 3+ yrs on drupal, i was NEVER hacked. and Matt is right - the real issue is that... more... - Allen Stern

Allen - what version of WP are you running today? - Rob La Gesse

2.8.4 on all of them - Allen Stern

Allen - good :) - Rob La Gesse

If there's a shell script on the same server as you, even if it's not your account, everything on that server is at risk regardless of the software or its version. - Matt Mullenweg

Matt - that is NOT true - Rob La Gesse

I would switch to a new server if I were infected at this point. - Jesse Stay

Properly configured, user space can be isolated and these scripts cannot cross-pollinate. - Rob La Gesse

It can be -- but publish a shell login on your server and we'll see. ;) The right answer is to scrub that sort of access. - Matt Mullenweg

Matt - that comment on the "shell script" is silly. What are you actually trying to say? - Robert J Taylor

Some sort of backdoor that allows a remote user to execute code -- it's super common. - Matt Mullenweg

rob/matt - that wsa one of the biggest issues with my RS account - i had all the sites together in one "client" so when they hacked one - they were able to move around with their shell script into all my other sites - now each site is in a sep. "client" so the damage can only hurt me on one site - and believe me it does hurt :( i believe insidetransit and centernetworks are hit in google - Allen Stern

@Scobleizer I'm sticking with @wordpress it doesn't worry me that much, plus I always update and have backups of db and site emailed to me - Justin Yost

Allen - that was within one user space though. So what I stated above still stands true. - Rob La Gesse

Allen and Robert are big enough that if they had a problem they could contact us and we'd help them, though as far as I know neither did, but I worry a lot more about smaller folks who get hit in the same way. The knowledge for how to properly clean up after a hack is more systems than software and not widespread. - Matt Mullenweg

As Allen mentioned above, he did have a conversation with Wordpress. - Rob La Gesse

matt - thanks for putting me in the same category as robert! *blush* - i did reach out to you - and your security guy was helping me big time - it seemed to turn out that the WP Contact Form 7 was the thing that caused it to start - i didn't document it all online because the security guy wanted time to get the plugin developer to fix the upload hole. - btw his name was mark jaquith and he was great - Allen Stern

So why not some scheme where Wordpress vets a plugin and "blesses it" - perhaps a small charge for this service? As long as Wordpress is advertising plugins on the dashboard I think there ample reason to hold Wordpress to some level of accountability for those plugins - Rob La Gesse

rob - that's what i told mark - they should offer that service for a tiny fee - stamp a "certified" stamp on it. - Allen Stern

Just updated all my sites, doesnt look I was hit. - sean percival

sean - no one would hit you - they know you would lala all over them - Allen Stern

sean - happy for you! - Rob La Gesse

I've read almost all of the comments here, not hearing these mentioned once: Robert did not backup, kept the default 'admin' username and failed to update. These are three of the most basic security measures out there. Not blaming it on Robert, because we all fail on this sometimes, but these basics really are important! - Abounding Media

http://twitter.com/markjaq... warning of Mark in April - kept me away from WP contact form 7 - Jeroen De Miranda

Abounding: yup. And the lesson here is don't host your own version of Wordpress unless you have a security team making sure you're doing it right and backing up (something I never did on Wordpress.com, by the way). Oh, and Twitter taught us that even if you do all of that you've gotta make sure you pick great passwords and think through ways that social hacks could be done to get into your accounts. - Robert Scoble

I've written a much longer post on this: http://wordpress.org/develop... - Matt Mullenweg

http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2008... some great tips of Mark Jaquith on writing secure plugins - I use these and other tips when scanning the PHP code of new plugins that I intend to use (before deploying them) - Jeroen De Miranda

Jeroen, thanks for posting that. I've had phishers getting into one of my WP installs recently, but couldn't tell which plugin it was. I deactivated two plugins, including CF7, the other day, and haven't had any more problems. And a shoutout to Ryan Boren on the WP dev team for helping me to de-infect. - John Craft

Robert: Welcome to the world of web development for impatient users and disgruntled hackers - Melanie Reed

http://wordpress.org/develop... great post of Matt Mullenweg about WordPress security! - Jeroen De Miranda

john - the CF7 is what killed me a few months ago - it's because the form allows uploads even if you don't actually have them on - i believe they patched it but i have not gone back there. - Allen Stern

anybody know if a little smily face appearing in the lower right hand corner of ones footer is a sign of a compromise on a self hosted wp blog? - Richard Reeve

John, your are welcome! SQL injects attacks specifically exploit data entry fields used by the plugin; one should at least scan the PHP code of these plugins, and look at what kind of escape functions are used around handling of the data entry. - Jeroen De Miranda

"it's because the form allows uploads even if you don't actually have them on" - wow. That's bad. - John Craft

Richard is wp-stats smily :-) - wolly

"anybody know if a little smily face appearing in the lower right hand corner of ones footer is a sign of a compromise on a self hosted wp blog?" - if you didn't put it there, it probably is. In your admin go to appearance, theme editor, and read the footer.php file. - John Craft

Richard - are you using the WordPress.com Stats plugin? - Andre Natta

some plugins worth considering to install are: wp-exploit-scanner, wordpress file monitor, WP security scan, anti virus - Jeroen De Miranda

I don't understand why people are worried about a plugin breaking when it comes to upgrading WordPress. If a plugin does break, disable it for the time being. I rather have a secure installation of WordPress running and would worry about fixing the plugin afterwards. - Jason Hansen

Hmmmm . . . I run WP Stats, but see no smiley face. - John Craft

ah...thanks folks...stats it is. phew...so I'm not paranoid... - Richard Reeve

There appears to be some a-holes who can break into wordpress blogs very easily. I'm not sure at this point that the new Wordpress Thesis blog that I'm interested in getting is safe either. There is some security issues with Wordpress and their incompetence to fix the problem is growing every year. They keep coming out with new versions to replace the old versions yet they still have a problem. This is serious guys. - Jeunelle Foster

The problem with WordPress is that it forces you to upgrade. Imagine if Microsoft forced everybody to upgrade to Vista/Windows 7 in order to get their security holes plugged. WordPress should release security patches for the current and at least for the previous version. - Nikolay Kolev

They dont force you to upgrade. If you dont want to patch, you can leave it at the current version ( but with a risk ) - Kashif Khan

Where's the patch for the 2.7 version then? - Nikolay Kolev

Their versioning strategy bumps up numbers even for patches . And how many versions behind should they support ? - Kashif Khan

Many of the WordPress security issues are not coming from the WordPress itself, but from the poorly written WordPress plugins. I think it would be nice if Automattic starts an "Automattic Certified" program giving blog owners the peace of mind they need. Every hacker can upload a plugin at WordPress.org, advertise it as something great, bloggers install it, see that it's nothing as advertised, uninstall it, but the WordPress instances are already hacked. - Nikolay Kolev

Plugins are open source and free and nobody (well, with some exceptions) would pay to get their free plugin certified. The only way to do this is by having a community review process, based on some credibility score and voter authority system where 1,000 fake hacker accounts won't, for example, outweigh Matt's or Mark's votes. - Nikolay Kolev

part of the problem is the cry wolf syndrome - if i updated every day wordpress had a security problem i'd want to be salaried on the payroll :D Wordpress needs some sort of alert notification - twitter or something that indicates if there's an update AND the severity and if its severe enough sends it to my phone. - mal

let me play the other side of the coin - i've been using vbulletin for my forums for probably more than 5 years - and it's never once been hacked - why is this - is it because it's paid? is it just more secure? would love to get some input on why wordpress seems to be the attacker's gold. - Allen Stern

@allenstern because it pays back better to have wp hacked - A.T.

Another devil - I have clients using Expression Engine for years (with plugins) and haven't had a problem either. Checking security sites, EE has had very few vs the many with WP and some with Drupal. Matts suggestion that one hosts with him to avoid problems and keep updated just isn't in the cards for business sites. Just too many vulnerabilities with WP over the years for me to recommend it. - PXLated

i can tell you that within 2 days of moving from drupal to wp, my sites were hacked - all of them - and it made me seriously question the move - the reasons i moved were because wp is a bit easier to edit/code than drupal and because the admin panel in wordpress is awesome compared to the crap panel in drupal - i wrote up a whole post about why i moved - i'd like to see matt write a post about their qa and security procedures for their releases - Allen Stern

Alen, once Drupal 7 get released, you may actually go back. :) - Nikolay Kolev

Robert - If I were you I'd move away from Wordpress and fast. Its security record is dire and has been for ages. Other solutions are a lot more stable, whereas Wordpress seems to have security bugs every second week. Why anyone puts up with it is really beyond me. I moved to MovableType and haven't had to worry about caching issues or security problems - Michele Neylon

#somethingpersonal WP calls you "technical evengelist", Robert. When you say «Yes, I didn’t have a backup. I should learn to do backups» I call you a mediawhore. Nothing TECH-NI-CAL, just bulled ego. Learn Security, Performance, Reliability, you ignorant piece. - Рамблер вас закроет

Robert - "the reputation around the Net is that upgrades on Wordpress break things" I'm sorry but that's just not true, I use many many plugins across about 20 sites and I've only ever ONCE had a plugin break during a WP upgrade. - John O'Nolan

Definitely check if Google Reader has your lost posts - as of a few months ago, it didn't handle deletes very well :) - Michael Herf

This recent wave of WordPress incidents shows the negative side of using open source software. Matt says that there are many people looking into WordPress' source code, but the problem is that probably half of those people have malicious reasons for doing so. - Nikolay Kolev

@Matt - why not have a module that adds *automatic* upgrades? The one-click update feature is very nice, but zero clicks is better. With a decent snapshot/rollback system you could update most people securely right away--email them and let them rollback if something breaks. - Michael Herf

@robert: we might be able to help you recover the lost blog posts if you want. Google Reader has an archive of them and we helped another blogger in the past recover her losses. Let me know if we can help. - Edwin Khodabakchian

@matt when do you start to care about poor people unlike robert... who can't afford *VIP* i am willing to pay $25+ per month of course with my adsense ads :} - Imran Jafri

@robert by the way you made one of the worst choice to move away from wordpress.com i think it wasn't price issue rather you wanted to be brand *ambassador* for rackspace which was only possible if you host your blog on their damn servers... if i get enough visitors i would switch to wordpress.com vip without taking 2nd breathe........ - Imran Jafri

I run just a few plugins, and research and vet them first. And upgrade to new WP versions within a week. Look, attacks happen, running self-hosted can get complicated. But this is true with any software or OS - Bob Morris (polizeros) from iPhone

Nikolay, it's always better to have more people looking at the code, because a bug that's been found is better than a bug that hasn't. WordPress used to get almost no security problems and people thought it was because it was coded differently, when in fact it was coded far worse than it is today it just didn't have enough users to make it worthwhile to target. Also where many... more... - Matt Mullenweg

Nikolay: I would also push back against your assumption that using Open Source software equals less security. Microsoft Windows and OS X are both closed source and both have security holes - there is a competition each year to help MS and Apple find them and fix them. Both Apple and Microsoft came away with security holes to fix this year. So just because it's open source doesn't... more... - Tim

that's what you get for the fun of installing and hosting your own installation, instead of using "the cloud". - Ihar Mahaniok

Robert - I recommend WP S3 Backups for backing up your database to off-site storage. Amazon S3 is a great place to host backups of your Wordpress database and is relatively inexpensive. You *always* want backups *off* the server so in case the server is compromised, the backups are still clean. This plugin works like a charm, is automatic and could have saved you. Cheers! - Scott Jarkoff

anybody know of a test that can be done to see if a wp blog has been compromised? Has a few strange user subscriptions about a week ago...but not noticing any thing else...I did upgrade weeks ago, but soon enough? - Richard Reeve

bug exploits keep security IT folks in their day job, sad but true. - Jim Posner

In IT it keeps me busy but the reality is if you update your software on a regular basis you can minimize these from affecting you. - Rob Cairns

Robert, any chance archive.org has some of your old blog posts? Google Cache? - drew olanoff

Matt, another thing to note is that Wordpress.com is often blocked in China (even if you have your own custom URL like scobleizer.com). There are advantages to NOT being hosted by Wordpress.com although your point about increased responsibilty for keeping up with security patches is still valid. - Elliott Ng

Drew: yeah, but what do I do? Just republish them? - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Sure why not. Scoble's best of. Reason why I hate stuff on the net sometimes is good stuff gets lost. - drew olanoff

Give a try to the "WordPress Database Backup" plugin for WordPress and you'll receive regular backups on your email - Francois Lamotte

Robert, You can get all of your lost blog post html out of Google Reader. I'm not exactly sure how to link Disqus back, maybe it's as simple as re-adding the old posts with the same title/date i.e. Url (I don't use it). Yet another reason to use FULL RSS feeds (instead of summary). See RSS isn't dead.. it's now a backup tool too! (http://ff.im/7JrlC) - Chris Myles

Wordpress is a great blogging tool. It is however the largest target now - much like how Windows gets a crap-top more virii because it's the most used system. Someone used Drupal as am example of security... well I'm sure if Drupal was anywhere near the scale of usage Wordpress is you'd see hacks for that too. - Gregory Wild-Smith

Robert: Just repost them with the dates set to the original dates they were posted. Simple, and no-one will ever know ;) - Gregory Wild-Smith

I have always had a bad feeling about Wordpress. YMMV. - Gordon Joly from twhirl

Robert It could be a Rackspace problem and Not a Wordpress Problem. They might to increase there security on the Rackspace!!! You should checck into that!! - Paul

One of the reasons I waited 2 years to switch from MovableType to WordPress was due to the security issues. I felt that the track record improved over the past year and moved 11 sites over. I can say this I employ a very extensive back up scheme but still worry about it. The ability to upgrade with a single click of a button has made it much easier to upgrade, but I always worry which plugins are going to break as I use a lot of plugins. - Todd Cochrane

It's interesting to me to see the number of people who are "afraid" to implement a security update because it might break a plugin. I wonder if these are the same people who don't run system updates on Mac or Windows because it might break SIMBL or some other haxie. Your core = your core... without it you're smoked. Case in point: Scoble. If your plugins aren't working after an update, let the author know and request an update, but BY ALL MEANS don't ignore security upgrades. - Kevin Donahue

hmm... I think that a lot of this conversation is missing something. Most software security updates are usually tested in hosts and thus delayed in their own releases by at the minimum of a week's time usually. This is due to hosting internal testing of patches before rolling it out to all servers. Now, whether or not RS actually performs these types of procedures, I don't know... but I... more... - Ben Hwang

First: I keep my blog up to date. Always. Fuck plugins, I decided that when I made the decision to use WP for my blog that updates would be a priority, only because of all the security issues that I remember from the early early days. Having said that, I have to agree with Robert that the perception with WordPress, despite all the work with auto-updates and in-blog notification is STILL... more... - Christina Warren from iPod

I am spending the day finally making a back-up of my web space, then the upgrade. - Sebastian Keil

you are right to not feel safe: when you are on the dominant platform, holes get taken advantage of really fast. At least it being open source you know it will also get plugged fast - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

"what do I do? Just republish them?" - Robert, you can set the published date to the original July or August date in the "new post" form. Where it says "publish immediately," click "edit". - John Craft

I couldn't disagree more that the reputation is that an upgrade will break a plugin. How many plugins reach into the Wordpress core and screw around with it? Less than 5%? Any examples of plugins that broke w/ 2.8.4? - beersage

Somebody hacked into my WordPress blog earlier this year as well. It was a bummer because I was working on a draft copy of a blog post that was very rough and had not been edited and they published it. I was on vacation shooting in Chicago and didn't figure it out until several hours after they'd already published it. Fortunately they didn't seem to do anything malicious other than... more... - Thomas Hawk

@Robert: "[Rackspace] are learning a lot about this and other people who have had problems and are building a list of best practices." Is it possible this list is something RS might share? - John House

@Matt Mullenweg: I do like WordPress (even though we had a public argument with you and another Automattic employee on TechCrunch a while ago) and I am a passionate supporter of open source software - don't get me wrong. But sometimes open source code makes it a bit easier for hackers! For example, one hacker hears about an exploit and without communicating with others, finds the hole independently by just looking into the source code and starts exploiting it on his own. - Nikolay Kolev

Gregory Wild-Smith Bingo! - Melanie Reed

Social Media Club blogs got hit as well as several of our personal blogs (still sorting it all out). We try to keep up on most upgrades, but every time we do, simple plugins (like the Event calendar) break. Seems silly, but we have hours of work after each upgrade to try and keep everything intact, and sometimes, we end up downgrading until the 'essential' plugins catch up, which... more... - Kristie Wells

I have 2 wordpress blogs. One on my own domain and one at wordpress central. Still can't get my head around their upgrade gymnastics - may just stick with eBlogger after all. - Houseofmax

i don't know what will happen in times to come but from the existing platforms, i love wordpress and i am not going anywhere, but that doesn't matter for wordpress right? ;) - testbeta

Robert, at the end of it is just only your bloody laziness in upgrading that led you here :) Jokes aside, please at least be honest and say you didn't upgradede twice... :p. - Matteo Flora

Nope. I upgraded to 2.8.4 as soon as it was out but the hackers had already broken in. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

The fact that WordPress is currently being exploited doesn't mean that other platforms are immune. For example, the recently discovered XSS issue with Ruby on Rails makes not only blogs, but every unpatched site a target. So, the only issue I'm having is forcing us to upgrade to a new major version without much time to do proper testing (I'm not talking about personal blogs here). I... more... - Nikolay Kolev

So Techdirt was hacked a bit ago. See their reaction: http://www.techdirt.com/article... it is the reality of owning a web site guys - ANY software is hackable if someone really wants in. - Adam Singer

@Robert: as I see it Wordpress is as vulnerable as any other web app. Upgrading does good, but preemptive security does more and better. I know Matt and he knows I'm in awe with him and Automattic but simply spoken I DON'T TRUST WORDPRESS as I don't trust any other software. A little WebApp Security Firewall (or at least a little .htaccess rules for admin and preemptive locking of... more... - Matteo Flora

i find it interesting, and depressing that people are blaming Rackspace, they're blaming Wordpress, they're blaming Robert, but no one, *no one* seems to be willing to blame the only, ONLY people who deserve blame: the evolutionary failures that attacked Robert's blog. - John C. Welch

Thanks to your post, I found backdoor Admin in my own blog (created yesterday apparently). Promptly deleted it, upgraded blog and took other measures, which I blogged about - Adi Rabinovich

@Matt Mullenweg: "so staying up to date is a must. - Matt Mullenweg" You gave the birth to one of the coolest piece of free software on the net, also your community is strong an love-full, you can do some PRs listening to Scoble that is crying, but you couldn't do anything better than you did. Take it easy man, all your competitors still suck. (PS. also a cleaning utility to understand better if everything is ok on our hosts would be cool ;-) - righini riprova

Matt: What does a user need to provide, in order to be considered for a VIP wordpress.com account? - Jim Connolly

caveat operator - Mike Chelen

Take technology out of the picture. Something bad happened by some bad person. Happens every day... it's called crime. If a bad person got into my house because I had a weak lock or left my door unlocked, what do people usually say? "That bad person shouldn't have done that!"? Well, sure, but bad people do bad things... nothing we can do to stop them other than make it harder or... more... - Chris Hearn

I would simply like to reiterate the point that if you're going to put free open source software on a rented web server, you need to either know how to administer it or hire someone to do it for you. Neither Rackspace or Wordpress are to blame here. We discuss this with our clients all the time who view web development as a one off expense, then get upset when their site is hacked because it wasn't maintained. - JP Maxwell

One more point, I think there are way too many false lines drawn over aras of responsibility - "I'm systems, not a PHP programmer. I'm a PHP programmer, not a Javascript person. I'm a designer, not a programmer or a systems person." If you are a WEB developer or responsible for maintaining hosted WEB applications, you need to know a bit about it all. It simply isn't sufficient to demarcate your knowledge sphere and point your finger at the other guy. - JP Maxwell

Wow ! - ★ Soner Gönül

Dave Winer

FriendFeed API v2. http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009...

July 20 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Devon Govett, Thomas Amberg, Timothy Federwitz and 50 other people liked this

Thanks for posting this link, don't know how I missed it - Mark

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Mark, you haven't subscribed to http://friendfeed.com/friendf... or http://friendfeed.com/bret - Jérôme Flipo

I WAS subscribed to Bret, but he went to a private feed? Either that or be blocked me for some reason. Edit, yep, blocked me. Don't know why, don't think I ever even commented on any of his posts :/ - Mark

It looks like Bret's feed is now private. At least, that's what a quick test on his feed thru the API says (error 405 : Not Allowed) - Zackatoustra from IM

Zack: 405 means method not allowed (IE you used a GET when you should have used a POST or vice-versa) - Benjamin Golub

One important thing FriendFeed API doesn't seem to have on a very cursory fast read: location, location, location! Really it's too bad. - Robert Scoble

Robert: geo is included in the output (http://friendfeed.com/api...), and you can tag new entries with the geo arg on input as well - Bret Taylor

bgolub Oh, ok. Thanks! I've done this too quickly... - Zackatoustra from IM

You can create entries with "geo" information now: http://friendfeed.com/api... - Benjamin Golub

Benjamin, I take that back, very cool, thank you! - Robert Scoble

Thanks Dave checking it out. Great work Benjamin & team. Now to figure out how to use this to save many hours coding up similar stuff for my selfish project. - Mark Essel

Geo location features sound awesome :) - Susan Beebe

I hope Atebits will do a FriendFeed client for the iPhone now! - Ralf Rottmann

Agree with Ralf. We *need* a killer FriendFeed app for the iPhone!! Please? - Timothy Federwitz

Why are posts from weeks ago coming up now? - Mark

Probably me discovering older posts and liking? Nope it wasn't me :) - Mark Essel from iPhone

Chris Messina

Being Peter Kim: Why Web 2.0 still matters - http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2009...

January 21, 2009 from Mento - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Zarick, Sam Harrelson, Özgür D. Cyric and 4 other people liked this

"If anything, Web 2.0 can't be "dead." We haven't even gotten there yet." - Chris Messina from Mento

8 more comments

Kara Swisher says we are in Web 3.0 - Mark

We are entering the age of the 2010 Web. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Everybody is just trying to get their name on a buzzword. And Robert, I like the ideas and philosophy around the 2010 web, but what's next? - Daniel Zarick from iPhone

2011 web, of course - Mark

Nah the 2010 web will take eight years to be adopted just like web 2.0 was. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Haha very true, of course. But then why call it the 2010 web if it will be outdated in 18 months? Why not the Now Web? - Daniel Zarick from iPhone

Yeah Rob, the name with the date in kind of sucks. Imagine the powerpoint presentations in 5 years time: "How can we be more involved with the 2010 Web" - Mark

Using the "2010web" in 2013 will be like using Windows 95 in 1998. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Mark and Sam. Haha! very good. - Daniel Zarick

Neville Hobson to Neville's feed, FIR

Marketers are 'emailing in the dark' - Brand Republic - http://www.brandrepublic.com/News...

July 26 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris liked this

"A report from email marketing specialists Return Path found that most marketers fail to appreciate that improving deliverability was in their own power, with 38 per cent saying that reaching the inbox was the sole responsibility of email service providers (ESPs). The survey found two in five respondents thought that an email that is sent, or that doesn't bounce, counts as being successfully delivered. What's more, a significant number of respondents were unaware of the impact of spam filters, with 15 per cent stating that it did not matter if emails reach the inbox or not. [...]" - Neville Hobson from Bookmarklet

Robert Scoble

I wonder how many people and companies are changing their passwords and policies this morning because of #twittergate and http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... ? I know I am, I was doing a few of the stupid practices that caught Twitter.

July 19 - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris, Robin Whitson, siggimus and 77 other people liked this

Does anyone have a good blog post for how to come up with strong password names and policies? - Robert Scoble

71 more comments

yep, https://www.grc.com/passwor... - Mark

taht's great, I am also willing to change my password. - Madhav Tripathi

1Password on the Mac... - Holger Eilhard

not for corp use but for personal use 1Password is perfect - Mike Bracco

Holger: beat me to it :) - Mike Bracco

Mike: Sometimes I'm faster. Rarely, but happens :-) - Holger Eilhard

I will write a blog post about it. - Madhav Tripathi

Robert on the network side of things there are programs that generate strong passwords. But you can develop a "feel" for it. I have to create them all the time. Just don't use "memory aids" they lead to social hacks - Melanie Reed

You're okay if you don't use 3rd party apps to login to Twitter, right? - Steven E. Streight

I like this one. http://www.pctools.com/guides... - Logan Lindquist

Sorry, should have linked to the TechCrunch article about how the hacker broke into Twitter: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... - Robert Scoble

Steven: this isn't about your Twitter account's security. It's about your security on the Web. - Robert Scoble

Here's some password policies you might find interesting: http://www.nersc.gov/nusers... , http://www.comptechdoc.org/indepen... , http://www.sans.org/resourc... - imabonehead

I have no need because my passwords have always been 12+ characters, include caps, random characters, and numbers. I'm sure most people that use FF are the same way. The engineers I work with bitch about my choice of passwords all the time. - coldbrew

The sad reality is any password can be hacked. It's just a matter of time as in attrition. But you can make it harder for them with strong passwords - Melanie Reed

Yeah, we've always tried to make sure our hosting customers understand how important it is create good passwords, but many still use bad passwords, hopefully all of this recent press will scare them into using better passwords. Most people don't care about their password until something bad happens to them. It's similar to people who ignore making backups and then find out the hard way. - Scott Beale

I use Lastpass.com to generate and save passwords. - mrshl

Just pick a couple good ones that you can use for different things. Practice typing them so you can remember the keystrokes easier. The more you use them the easier it will be to remember. Use keepass or FFox to keep track of them. - Logan Lindquist

1Password hands down for ease of use and strong password creation on OSX and iPhone - Jerry Schuman

I wrote this regarding Twitter, security & the cloud: Here's my thoughts http://www.thetechnewsblog.com/2009... #twittergate - Jim Connolly

Melanie: it's the social hacks that will catch the most people. Not the strength of the passwords. Notice that he didn't need to guess the passwords, he just needed to use the ecosystem against itself. - Robert Scoble

http://esciencenews.com/article... - imabonehead

I agree 100% about 1Password, one of the best Mac apps out there: http://agilewebsolutions.com/product... - Scott Beale

Roboform on Windows. Otherwise 1Password. - Herb Hernandez

Very few. People and companies generally don't make policy changes until they're bitten themselves. - Darren

Good point about social engineering, Scoble. - coldbrew

I ended up writing this http://blog.siliconverse.com/2009... - Ruchit Garg

Robert: yes. its the easiest hack to employ - Melanie Reed

Or there's a business requirement . e.g. Customers inquire about policies based on what they've read in the news and impose requirements on their partners. - Darren

If you need cross-platform then I'd look at http://www.keepassx.org - Jerry Schuman

1 - Mark

Unfortunately most companies don't change passwords until they have too, the IT department doesn't want to deal with the calls when someone can't remember there password. - Kim Landwehr

my 14 character alphanumeric pass for my gmail account was hacked about 2mo ago. After fixing, Ive gone and changed all passes; & none of them are of the same ilk. my twitter account is the simplest; cause i care less if its hacked. - clarke thomas

The best thing to happen to corporate security was the public insecurity of Microsoft software int the late part of the 90s and earlier in the decade. - Darren

I use Roboform Password Manager to navigate and automatically login to websites using complex passwords: http://www.eenmanierom.nl/wachtwo... (Dutch post but Google Translate is nearby). - Patrick Mackaaij

a lot, I hope..... - Alex Griffiths

FTR, I use Keepass (hosted on sourceforge). - coldbrew

I had to this week my XBL account was hacked. - Dylan Richardson

I had to change everything and cancel 2 cards. - Dylan Richardson

I use GRC to gen and never use anything less than 20 chars unless the site doesn't support that length. Sometimes I use the first 20 in a 64 bit key, sometimes I use the last 20, sometimes I pick the middle 20. Sometimes I use 21, 22, 23, 19 char length. I also lie on all reminder questions. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

I use a hosted version of clipperz (http://clipperz.com/), totally random passwords, web accessible from anywhere and hosted on my own server. - Justin Yost

same here, Justin. I use lastpass which generates random passwords, and has one master password, which is a very secure one. - Tim Hoeck

A couple of months ago, my gmail was hacked. They then quickly went and changed my Itunes account over to another email and started buying iphone apps. In the about an hour and a half, that they had control over my email they spent almost $1000. Luckily they made the mistake of changing the name and language on my account. I don't use the email much anymore but g reader so I spotted it.... more... - Rasmus Lauridsen

for years, private corporate systems have had security measures like password strength policies for a domain, password age policies, secure connection requirements, logon policies that deny multiple logons, locking out user accounts after multiple password failures, etc. etc. etc. this incident with Twitter is a huge wake-up call. - Karim

What first caught my eye was this article was written by Nik Cubrilovic. I had wondered what had happened to him, and hoped everything was well with him. - Lloyd Budd

Yeah, Nik was in the TechCrunch office when I was there the other day. I figured a big story was underway cause Arrington told me to stop wasting Nik's time and to go bug the interns. :-) - Robert Scoble

Making an awesomely strong password wouldn't have prevented this attack. It was using the same awesomely strong password that made the attack possible. And who hasn't done that? There's just too many apps that require passwords out there. - marziah

I typically use KeePass to generate as strong a password as I can. I try to keep passwords to a minimum of 20 characters and use letters, numbers and symbols...some sites allow this some do not. If there is a password character max I will use that max (within reason). The problem I have is with some of the accounts I want to be able to access from my Blackberry. Having a 50 character... more... - Sean Brady

I use RoboForm to create all my passwords. I have them backed up and honestly couldn't type one out if I tried, they all are 14-16 chars long - George Handlin

+1 George. A good pw generator like RoboForm or 1password can save you a lot of grief later on. - Bill Sodeman

interesting experiment, make accounts at free websites and have really awful passwords and see how long it takes to get hacked! - Mark

I agree with Sean Brady, makes it tough entering on the blackberry. Especially how sometimes it will cap the first character and when it's masked, makes it even tougher. Wish there was something I could host on my own server that would work with all my machines (Win/Mac) and my phones. I don't like the idea of storing on some hosted service. Thinking of trying RoboForms hosted service since they are trusted and I've gained personal trust for the application. - George Handlin

It makes me anxious not knowing my password is for a particular site... so I've always been wary of things like 1password or roboform. I also need something that I can pull up from any computer, which rules out 1password. I've heard good things about supergenpass - Mark Philpot

Take a look at Clipperz then, if you can get to the internet you can get to Clipperz (http://www.clipperz.com/) - Justin Yost

Justin - @jtyost2 - I just checked out www.clipperz.com for the password mgmt, looks promising, but wish there were better integration w/ Firefox somehow. It's pretty cumbersome to get started. - Alex Schleber

Yeah that is a drawback. - Justin Yost

thanks 4 reminder should do it now arrgh!! as we speak!! - polou/indigo_bow

Robert due to all the virus issues we went to a more secured password format 3 months ago. We use a minimum of 8 characters numbers letter and mixed case password plus you can not use your name. We force our users to change their passwords every 3 months. - Rob Cairns

I think for a security policy to be effective it has to be secret... - Alexandros Georgiadis

KeePass (Win) and KeePassX (cross platform) is excellennt! Strong public encryption and publicly available source code. I would love to go with LastPass, they have a beautiful cross platform syncing solution, but since they are closed source (for now) I'm holding off switching to their product. - Daniel Chow

I stopped using the same password years ago. To help me keep up with the various passwords, I have been using KeePass on Windows, Windows Mobile and OS X for several years; I'm waiting for iKeePass to become available. - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

http://www.yubico.com/home... for hardware PW protection, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US... FireFox addon LastPass is for software app, https://www.grc.com/passwor... for GRC's ultra High Security (put it on a usb flash and copy paste), http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008... geeks know everything! - Rich Weaver

Yep the 'ecosystem' is undoubtedly insecure. I believe this type of hacking also has elements of social engineering to it. I dislike the "secret questions" as today when most people's personal information is transparent online what purpose do those questions serve, except to weaken security? Can we please opt out of dumb security questions... someone start a petition or something! - ASKJDOG

Great Post, I learned more about improving my security in 15 minutes than I would have at a 2 day seminar. :) - Robert Higgins

I hope the lasting legacy of twittergate is better security thanks to articles like this one. - Stephen Mack

I use http://passwordmaker.org/ for most of my password, it means I only need to remember a single password and it generates a unique password for each site I use (by hashing my password with the url). For the remaining sites, I use http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ and dropbox to sync my password database across machines. - Wilka Hudson

I see many people using/recommending password generator sites. I also recommend these, but one day I thought - what if the password generators are hacked? --> http://robotterror.com/site... - Robert J Taylor

Password Maker (the first link) isn't just a password generator site - I use it as a FireFox plugin. It's also open source, so if you're really unsure about the safety of it you can have a look at the code yourself. I realise that's not a very good answer for an non-coders, but it does mean that if it was hacked *somebody* would notice and it would be all over blogs like Bruce Schneier http://www.schneier.com/blog/ - Wilka Hudson

Also, for you those of using Firefox - you should look at this: http://cubicledenizen.blogspot.com/2008... - Wilka Hudson

I think unless we develop somethig better than passwords we will never fix the problem. Using different strong passwords is good but it's no better than locking a cycle up outside a store, they just ensure that only dedicated people hack your acount/steal your cycle, which in general are the worst people to hack your account. - Darren Rollett

Some people on here have informed the world what their password policy is and what tool they use to generate passwords. If this had been a conversation down the pub then probably not a problem but if I want information on high value passwords FriendFeed would probably be the place to go due to the people who use the system. - Darren Rollett

Nobody has mentioned https://mashedlife.com - it uses a bookmarklet to log you into your sites. That way you can use anything for the password. Cliperz looks like a similar system. - Daniel Siva

Robert Scoble

Yo @techcrunch: Alex Van Elsas' with his new family service (cool UI): - http://ourdoings.com/roberts...

June 22 from Robert Scoble - Comment - Like - Share

Stephen Pickering, Bertrand Doux, Marcus Schuler and 9 other people liked this

Alex is CEO of http://www.glubble.com which is a great family service (think about Twitter and Flickr and more just for your family). On Thursday they will announce and ship a new photo sharing service that is very cool. Tech Crunch and Louis Gray should check this out. Alex is on FriendFeed at http://www.friendfeed.com/vanelsa... - Robert Scoble

8 more comments

The UI on his photo sharing service is very cool. Mashable or Techcrunch should check this out. I think there's a trend here. Where Jammer was Twitter for business Glubble (awful name) is Twitter (and more) for families. - Robert Scoble

I have traded e-mail with Alex several times. We just haven't linked up in person. - Louis Gray

glubble looks pretty sweet - Brian Hendrickson

Brian: and the new stuff isn't on until Thursday. - Robert Scoble

Glubble looks cool. Must check out the new stuff coming out on Thursday. - Dilip Dand

Looks very interesting. Going to sign up with my family and try it out. - Kenton

Robert, thanks for having me over for lunch. really enjoyed it. Glad you liked the service ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

@Louis, I'll call you today to hook up, ok? - Alexander van Elsas

I've had a chance to beta test the new service being announced on Thursday and yes it is pretty cool stuff. - Steven Hodson

Robert Scoble to Robert's feed, building43

The HP announcement is using Twitter in a unique way. #hpreveal More here:

June 22 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Adam, Michela Cimnaghi /cimny and 13 other people liked this

http://current.com/hp-reveal/ has a Twitter site redisplaying Tweets from around the web. - Robert Scoble

41 more comments

I think press conferences continue to shift and morph due to real time web. They should have opened a friendfeed room. But this is the trend that Building43 is trying to push and explain to other businesses, so it's important that HP is using it. - Robert Scoble

he just through his phone. Lol - Ron Hudson

Ron: I'm sitting in the front row, you might see me on TV! :-) - Robert Scoble

This all feels like "NO NO NO you still need to print stuff we PROMISE!!" YOU NEED THIS!! - Ron Hudson

Ron: there are plenty of things I still need to print out. Airplane tickets. Legal documents. Etc. - Robert Scoble

Twitter has a huge advantage over FriendFeed. If you have a huge ego, you can get onto the HP Reveal screen with Twitter, but not with FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble

Its BS. They're only showing empty praise for the product. Its not an honest representation. - Martin Johnson

Martin: that's why I'd rather just have a friendfeed room. - Robert Scoble

Ok, but do you want to learn to navigate that little screen? I'd rather have a standard wireless api that all my cell apps could talk to. - Ron Hudson

Airplane Tickets can and should be digital. - Jason E. Rist

I don't even remember the time when I had a printed airplane ticket. - eszpee

I already know how to use a PC, or any number of apps on my phone ie Google maps/pageonce. I just want to click "send to printer" and be done. I don't want a touch screen, I just want it to print. - Ron Hudson

haha, they do show some "negative" comments in red. - Ron Hudson

Paper is static, its a snapshot, its not LIVE. Once I print something it doesn't change, I'm stuck with old info. Bringing the web to paper is just backwards. - Martin Johnson

Martin: there are lots of things we want snapshots of. Photos, maps, legal documents, coupons, tickets. - Robert Scoble

We do not even have a printer at our house. - Ron Hudson

I needed to print temp car registration today. Saved pdf and emailed to work. Can you imagine trying to navigate Penndot website on that little screen? - Ron Hudson

I haven't printed a map in years. Anyone notice the explosion of GPS nav devices in cars and phones? A printed map can't re-route you around construction or traffic. I haven't printed a ticket of any kind in years, kiosks at the theater/airport handle that using my id/credit card. Photos? I can share those instantly with my entire family via the web. Printed photos fade. I guess you have a point on legal documents, though I'm guessing if I'm printing out a contract I can be troubled to boot my laptop. - Martin Johnson

Haven't owned a printer for 7 years - the 2-3 times a year I need a print I simply stop by the library. - PXLated

The few documents that we "need" to print are from companies that would never do integration with this. - Ron Hudson

I have a printer, because Apple offered me one via their Education program. But I don't use it, I don't print stuff anymore. In two years, they'll pay me to own a printer :) - Jérôme Flipo

PXLated: that's interesting. I've only used a printer a few times a year lately. Even when I want photo prints I usually just have those delivered instead of finding the time to print them out. - Robert Scoble

Wouldn't mind having a little, portable usb photo printer but that's about it. - PXLated

That would be for proofing in the field or prints to give models, not for finals though - PXLated

They should be announcing a RedBox type business model. Put simple wireless printer kiosk everywhere. Let me email and print when I get there. Let me print that google map at McDonalds from my mobile gmaps app. - Ron Hudson

they just put my tweet up! lol - Ron Hudson

A web connected printer? Whoopdeedoo... - Bill Kinney

So the answer is "No" but you could code that app if you like Scoble. - Ron Hudson

Ron: yeah, that's interesting that they didn't think about making it order its own ink. - Robert Scoble

Ron: I am lazy. :-) - Robert Scoble

haha I'm sure all the iPone devs are going to flock to this thing and they'll code it for us ;) - Ron Hudson

Ask him what is the incentive for developers to write apps for this thing since they can't sell them. - Ron Hudson

LOL I love you Scoble! - Ron Hudson

Ron: I asked your question. Like that? :-) - Robert Scoble

Yeah! I needed so much to print all #IranElection tweets. From TweetDeck iPhone, in real-time :D - Jérôme Flipo

ya! I just watched it! Seems like they hemhawed around a bit - Ron Hudson

Ron: yeah, but I can see their point. - Robert Scoble

The point is that companies will employ developers to do apps. They are not going to attract freelance developers with this. The market is too small. - Ron Hudson

They implied that it was going to generate an exciting developer community like other open api, but thats not realistic. Sorry to be such a downer on this product. - Ron Hudson

I like that you intoduced the q as "Question from FriendFeed: Ron Hudson asks...". Why should twitter get all the brand recognition? - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Robert Scoble, if you prefer FriendFeed to Twitter. You should have a look at plurk.com a social site gem that is way under the radar. You need about 20 friends to start out to give it a real trial. - Brent R Jones

Hey Robert, thx for coming today! I agree that the whole new "connected printer" idea is useful in different ways.. it just depends on the user and what makes them comfortable. For example, I never print directions, but I know a lot of people who do. This also seems like a good option for less tech-savvy folks who benefit from simplicity. I like the idea of customizing your experience on ANY platform, printers or otherwise. - Sarah Lane

Louis Gray

I suggest that this list violates the unofficial #followfriday guidelines of highlighting way too many folks.

June 19 - Comment - Like - Share

David Young, Sheryl, Jeremy Schultz and 52 other people liked this

That's hilarious. - τorƍue

36 more comments

I completely agree. - Chris Foley

I'm seeing the same this morning - spammers? - Jesse Stay

But at least you got a mention :) - Simon Wicks

Right, Simon. Or I would never have seen it. :) - Louis Gray

I unfollow #ff timeline flooders. Give me one name and some context as to why they are worth my attention. - Gregg Scott

Gregg: agree, don't understand names with no context.... why should I follow these people? at least, what do they tweet about? - Alistair (alpinefolk)

I like to wrap my friday follows around a theme, that I state. It just makes it more ... legitimate? unspammy? fun and/or gives a reason for people to follow instead of just "increase your #s" (which always reminds me of those ads in the back of teeniebopper magazines, "increase your bust", but anyways.) - anna sauce

follow friday must die - Tyler Gillies

follow friday has turned into back-patting. I want to know why a person is recommended. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Lists like that are designed, so that the sender shows up on the feed of ALL the people they recommend. It's a spammy ploy, used to gain followers. The list itself is meaningless. - Jim Connolly

Haha, yea... That's some serious #FollowFriday overkill going on right there! Geesh! - Susan Beebe

I got #followfriday from somebody who doesn't even follow me. I want to write back and be like "Dude, practice what you preach." - Jared Smith

I get this from a few followers, too. You go to their profiles and there are these huge blocks of pointless #followfriday recommendations, which must amount to almost their entire network. I've yet to follow anybody who has been recommending through #followfriday as part of a group of usernames. The personal touch is what it's all about. #followfriday has long, long jumped whatever shark it might have once had. - Shéa Bennett

Jared, he might be 'following' you unofficially, via a group in Seesmic Desktop, or similar. - Shéa Bennett

My follow Fridays are always one person + a reason. - Eric Florenzano

I can't be sure about his but I don't remember anyone with less than 200 followers getting upset about a #followfriday mention. I understand the point. #followfriday is about sincere recommendations, but we have all had moments in life where enthusiasm overcame judgment. "Getting Social Media" can feel like being 16 again, if someone stumbles and falls let's lift them up, however if they never want to get up, then fair enough call them for violating the #FollowFriday culture. - Deano @ Byron New Media

How many people have you ever started following after a #followfriday "recommendation"? Me: 0. - Zackatoustra

Follow certain guidelines for #followfriday, tis is anonymous spam list - Michael_techie

Another example - check this guy's current page of tweets: http://twitter.com/BobWarren - Hutch Carpenter

Dos muchos. - Derrick

I figure if I wanted to follow your entire list of followed people, I could, I don't know, look at your list of followed people. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

#followfriday @* - Matt Soreco

I've unfollowed at least three people for stuff like this. Follow Friday is a nice idea, but I'll never leaf through those long-ass lists. I'm even unlikely to look at five -- one or two good recommendations are so much more effective. - Jennifer Dittrich

#followfriday has mapped some of the network for new people but it's use[fulness] for them will fade... So you could say #followfriday is the blogroll of Twitter - carl morris

Jesse: No, not spammers. Topfollowfriday.com competitors. Weaksauce. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I may be the contrarian here but to me it depends on how it is done. I send out lists of the very best Twitter users in specific niches. Each Tweet specifies what those individuals specialize in so anyone reading them instantly knows whether they would be interested or not. I do regularly follow those recommended by #followfriday and have found some really great Tweeters by doing so. I... more... - Internet Strategist

Follow Friday is pretty lame, no explanations about these wonderful people we should be following. - Spirit 2.0

As someone who has been honored to be listed in a few Follow Friday lists, I do have to (more politely) echo Spirit's thought here; I think the lists would be so much more valuable if they included a bit of context. Hmm, okay, so there's no room for that on Twitter, but a tweet posted from FF with context in the comments... that'd be pure gold :-). - Adam Lasnik

I don't know the #FF guidelines, but as a rule of thumb, I usually just do top 5-7 FF at end of week, not all my twitter buddies. In other words, I just use common sense, not the guidelines. - Acevedo Oscar

I think that the twitter community should limit the # of FF tweets that we each send on Friday.. if someone sends over the limit then that should be frowned upon... what if everyone was only limited to 10 FF tweets each Friday? That would really change things. - Jason Pollock

I usually provide context around why I recommend following, even if it is a humorous reason #ff should be who you actually follow - Danny Keith

I also group my #ff so that i provide a snapshot of the tweeps. i don't have time to research every follow friday, but when one comes through grouped or reason given i am more inclined to follow. - Danny Keith

Hey guys... what about a Top 10? **The best of the best.** Would this provide incentive for er'body to step up their overall game? - Kim Sherrell

It would be nice for FollowFriday to just be real good solid recommendations. But I see so many mention everyone they can in the hopes of being mentioned back (thus gaming themselves to the tops of lists) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

And BTW: HI KIM! :) Glad you made it over here! (sorry I missed you last week) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I just want to know who this "scoboliezer" guy is. I want to follow him. ;) - Jeremy Schultz

@Jason If Twitter limited folks to 10 FF Tweets each Friday I suspect most would only recommend the high profile folks and some great lesser Tweeters would never get recommended. There are different kinds of people who use Twitter. Those who operate exclusively in one niche might only have a handful of sincere recommendations. Those of us who operate across many niches know of the best in many areas. That is what makes following us valuable: the ability to find the best people in overlapping areas. - Internet Strategist

Neville Hobson to Neville's feed, FIR

Iran's Twitter Revolution? Maybe Not Yet - BusinessWeek - http://www.businessweek.com/technol...

June 17 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris, Brendan and Gregory B. liked this

"Some Iranian election protesters used Twitter to get people on the streets, but most of the organizing happened the old-fashioned way" - Neville Hobson from Bookmarklet

Jay Rosen

Okay FriendFeed friends: a little url shortener mystery for you. I'm finding that the "number who clicked" figures that I got on http://bit.ly/go when http://jay.40twits.com/ (which uses http://tr.im) was down is... 3-4 times higher for some reason. Got any theories?

June 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Kawika Holbrook, Daniel Rowley, Jennifer Berk and 17 other people liked this

The first five bit.ly items I Tweeted today would rank 2, 2, 3, 3 and 3 on http://jay.40twits.com/ Now either they all took off like a shot, consecutively, one Wednesday morning, or there is something I am not getting, or....or what? - Jay Rosen

96 more comments

And now that http://jay.40twits.com is back up again, I just Tweeted a typical @jayrosen_nyu link and the normal numbers for tr.im are seen, about 3 x lower than the bit.ly rate for number who clicked on it. - Jay Rosen

Okay, some numbers, this latest link http://twitter.com/jayrose... is at no. 30 on the top 40 chart, with 137 clicks on the tr.im system. This is normal for an item like that on http://jay.40twits.com/. A comparable item like http://twitter.com/jayrose... is now at 587 clicks on bit.ly, which would rank no. 2 on the chart. See what I'm saying? - Jay Rosen

I would suggest you put Google analytics on the target page and find out the REAL metrics - Ric Johnson

Bit.ly also counts other shortlink versions of the same URL. Perhaps people are re-tweeting you link, but only after they visit the page, and using another url shortener? Google analyticsmay help sort this all out, but you're still not going to know the origin of the traffic since most twitter traffic comes from third party clients. - Mr. Gunn

Bit.ly separates the clicks off my link from the total clicks off that url from bit.ly users. At least it says it does. - Jay Rosen

I'm with Ric. Real metrics answers your question authoritatively, and that's good info to have. But, I'm not sure I see the whole picture clearly. It doesn't sound like apples and apples. Doing a blind test is difficult if you're relying on a single source. Doing multisourced links is only meaningful if you can provide impression stats. I'm pretty sure you can't do that with Twitter (unless you know someone or something I don't). - Jason Nunnelley

Have you checked the referrer stats via bit.ly to see what it looks like? Maybe some site is picking up your bit.ly tweets. - Jeremy Felt

I don't get how Google analytics helps me. I must be missing what you are saying. I am not trying to find out how many people came to a given page, I am trying to track how many people USED (clicked) the link that I selected an sent out to them. Because of Re-Tweeting and switched url shorteners, this is not exact, but both tr.im and bit.ly claim to measure the number who clicked the unique URL created for me and my Twitter feed, and if that url was Re-tweeted, those clicks are counted too. - Jay Rosen

I'd agree with the other folks on here...it's probably somehow not an apples to apples comparison. The other option (oh, I see Jeremy just mentioned a form of this) is that bit.ly links are being "watched" more closely by some site/service/tool. - Ken Kennedy

In this example http://twitter.com/jayrose... the unique url is http://tr.im/o2in which is currently no. 24 at http://jay.40twits.com/. I guarantee you, if I used bit.ky it would tell me that three times as many clicked on MY link. And what I am asking you is: why? You're answer seems to be: apples to oranges. I say: it's apples to apples for the user. Both services claim to do the same thing. I think... - Jay Rosen

I'd say that their claims, while sounding identical, are probably somehow not, Jay. One could be stripping out multiple clicks per IP address w/in a short timeframe or something, for example. (intended to prevent double click counts, but would also hide multiple users behind a NAT, for example). - Ken Kennedy

Ken is almost certainly right. tr.im isn't counting some traffic that bit.ly is counting. I'd bet on tr.im's number being the better reflection of actual interest in the link, based on other data I'm seeing, like hit counts on blog posts linked to from my twitter feed, or flickr pics. their counters usually pretty closely track tr.im's. - Dave Winer

BTW, this is great stuff. I wanted Jay to lead a technical investigation to give him an idea how we do it in developer land. I expect this will be discussed on a future Rebooting The News podcast. - Dave Winer

Hmmmm. Okay, so when you say apples to oranges the referent for that statement is the counting mechanism several layers underneath what the site says to users? As a user, "apples to oranges" means: "Jay, you're reading the claims of the two services wrong....." But I say I'm not. It's only apples to oranges for the coders, right? - Jay Rosen

Good data, Dave. That'd be a decent way to check...choose two links that you can see the backend data on (ie, flickr photos where you can see how many times it was viewed, or two blogposts at PressThink, where you can see the server logs.) Then tweet one w/ a tr.im link, and the other with a bit.ly link. Then compare what your server logs say, hit-wise, to what tr.im and bit.ly say. The difference in magnitude of these numbers (3x-ish) should make the "correct" data fall out pretty easily. - Ken Kennedy

Yes, Jay...the "apples to oranges" comparison was in reference to the claim that the claims are identical, if you see what I'm saying. I'm saying I bet they aren't. They're counting different things, but the difference is subtle enough (technically) that when they reword their claims into "non-techie", they say statements that sound identical. Did that make more sense, or was it still unclear? - Ken Kennedy

Funny observation. I (with barely any followers) posted one Trim link and one Bitly link seconds apart to the same URL with the same description. Trim climbed to 12 hits immediately, bitly stayed at 4. I think Ken/Dave are right. Jay needs to post a url through both services to something where the real data can be watched. Either lots of Jay's followers dislike Trim and refuse to click links, or something is being piped out or counted multiple times somewhere. - Jeremy Felt

IN-teresting, Jeremy. Interesting. - Ken Kennedy

Aha, so I do have a mystery of my hands, eh? Ken: I get the oranges now. Thanks. - Jay Rosen

I'm just a "dumber" user; I don't know how any of these things work inside. But I can't post a link to the same Joe Klein post at Swampland, through two different urls; the first one uses up many of the people who would click on the second! A second pass through the same people isn't a valid measure. Followers don't want the same thing twice. So I don't get why that would help. - Jay Rosen

Two different posts, not one. What you're comparing isn't tr.im to bit.ly, you're comparing tr.im to a known value (the server logs) and bit.ly to another known value (the server logs for a different post). One is probably very close to the log values, and one isn't. - Ken Kennedy

There do appear to be differences in bit.ly and tr.im if "a user is not logged in" (which I take to mean if a shortened url is generated by an non-logged in user, not if it's clicked on by one). tr.im says they generate unique tr.im urls for EVERY person who creates one; two different non-logged in users generating a tr.im of the same url get different tr.ims. Bit.ly apparently generates the same bit.ly url for all non-logged in users. Let me try something... - Ken Kennedy

I am accessing tr.im through Dave's app. http://jay.40twits.com/ in m toolbar. But I am logged into bit.ly. So I am supposed to be logged in all the time to tr.im? It's generating a unique url for me, Jay Rosen, it says, and Dave turns that into http://jay.40twits.com/ Maybe I have to stay logged in to tr-im all the time... - Jay Rosen

OK...I take your bit.ly example url from the tweet you mention above (tweet: http://twitter.com/jayrose... - bit.ly url: http://bit.ly/vYfRX ). Clicking on that link takes me to the Friendman article http://www.marketwatch.com/story... So far, so good... - Ken Kennedy

When you use my bookmarklet you are logged into tr.im. My app is logged in on your behalf. You do not have to be logged into tr.im. - Dave Winer

I open Chrome (separate browser, separate cookies, etc.) and go to bit.ly; not logged in (I don't even think I have an account). It gives me an url: http://bit.ly/DjpLP That's good, it's different than yours. It DOES give me a way non-zero click number, though...730 at time I created it (2 minutes ago). What number do you see in bit.ly for that Friedman link right now? - Ken Kennedy

OK, fascinating. If I read the bit.ly site right (http://bit.ly/info/DjpLP), there are (currently) 743 "aggregate clicks" to the destination URL (at marketwatch) that have gone through bit.ly in total. Your specific version of that link accounts for 643 of them (http://bit.ly/info/vYfRX). So there does appear to be a difference between the "not logged in" and "logged in" accounting. - Ken Kennedy

back to apples to apples then because I WAS logged in at bit.ly and Dave says I AM logged in on tr.im What I said earlier was: since I am using Dave's app in the toolbar I didn't know for sure whether I was logged in at tr.im, but I know I was logged at the bit.ly site. - Jay Rosen

But it only shows 10 clicks in the past hour-ish (there's a couple of time errors, but I think they're just typos; it says 12:51am, and means 12:51pm, and it's EDT, not EST. I don't think either of them are any problem.) You posted that link around 4 hours ago, right, Jay? That indicates something HUGE happened very early on. I wish we could see detail click info further back than the "Now" tab shows in the info screen...I wonder if there's an API way to go back further. - Ken Kennedy

re: apples to apples. Not necessarily. *grin* There are lots of apples to apples going on here. We just got rid of one; the logged in issue. That's good! But if tr.im is not counting individually counting multiple clicks from same IP address w/in a short time, for example, then you've got an issue. Welcome to bug squashing, tech style. *grin* - Ken Kennedy

Funny you say that: because I notice that the "immediate" rush from bit.ly was much huger. But it takes 5 mins or so for the first readings to show at http://jay.40twits.com/ so I don't know....I have not been using bit.ly since 40twits came back online, so it would not show much now. Besides: which count is right? what I really want to know is: is this a quality bug or some garden variety thing? - Jay Rosen

Ok, I poked the bit.ly API (which is kind of cool) with a stick. According to it, your current data is as follows (I'm cleaning up a a bit, but I'll be happy to send you how I got this: userClicks: 646, userHash: "vYfRX", userReferrers: { direct: 591, friendfeed.com: {"/": 1}, partners.bit.ly: { /sd: 3, /td: 15}, powertwitter.me: {"/": 2}, twitter.com: {"/": 24, "/home": 3, "jayrosen_nyu": 4, /jayrosen_nyu/status/2103086825": 1}, "www.google.ca": {"/reader/view/": 1}, "www.netvibes.com": {"/": 1} } - Ken Kennedy

The important point there is that of 646 clicks, 591 of them are "direct". What is direct, I'm wondering? That link isn't on http://jay.40twits.com/ , correct? - Ken Kennedy

From the FAQ: What does the "Direct" traffic in Traffic Sources mean? Direct Traffic includes people clicking a bit.ly link from: * Desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Apple mail * AIR applications like Tweetdeck or Twirhl * Mobile apps like Twitterific or Blackberry Mail * Chat apps like AIM * SMS/MMS messages * It also includes people who typed a bit.ly link directly into their browser - Ken Kennedy

Yeah, that one was a bit.ly only link I sent out to my Twitter feed from Marketwatch. bit.ly tells me 632 out of 722 people total were mine. - Jay Rosen

That's what I thought. - Ken Kennedy

I don't know what that means, in the larger sense; the assertion appears to be that they're all real clicks, though. With the number being so much higher than tr.im, the next thing I'd think to look at is whether or not tr.im is not counting links somehow, or aggregating things up in some subtle way. - Ken Kennedy

On second thought, I wonder if it's possible that some mobile/AIR apps (like Twirl) try to do some sort of resolution against the URL that is incorrectly "counted" as a click. You have 21,000ish followers...it doesn't seem unlikely that a certain number in the low hundreds could be online at any particular time, using Twirl or other AIR clients. That might explain a bunch of fast "clicks" as the link flowed through. (Note: this is a complete hypothetical, though I'd think it's possible to test.) - Ken Kennedy

OK, I think we're onto something. I just pushed a non-shortened url from my blog (about 10 hits/day normally. LOL) into my FF stream (which pushes to Twitter) while watching my logs...a FF hit, and a GoogleBot hit right away, but that's pretty much it. Then I bit.ly'd another url, and pushed it in, and an immediate stream of hits to my server log; already 30 in about 5 minutes.... more... - Ken Kennedy

It was the "immediate rush" that surprised me, Ken. But then maybe it's really a delayed rush from tr.im that should not be there. - Jay Rosen

bit.ly appears to be lagging a bit, but it's numbers for that shortened url (bit.ly/MXEMo) currently show 6, all "direct". Still rising. Will watch. Setting up tr.im url now. - Ken Kennedy

There was something recently about bit.ly admitting that their stats are whacked. think they're working on a fix. - Andy Bold

Zoom! tr.im going strong as well. Very interesting. I note that trim stats do try to guess what's a bot, but that's pretty iffy. They count 30 visits in last couple of minutes (hm...very similar to bit.ly number), but then break that into 17 humans and 13 bots. That being said, I'd be VERY surprised if 17 people have already looked at that. - Ken Kennedy

Oops...the 30 I mentioned is NOT similar to bit.ly number, but is close to actual server log hits. - Ken Kennedy

Jay (or Dave...whomever tr.im account it is)...login to tr.im and check the stats directly for one of the top40 tr.ims (this link will work if you're logged in... http://tr.im/statistics/nK3P). How does the number at top40 site compare to the stats #s. Is it the "human" number, or the "total visits" number? - Ken Kennedy

One question, one note: 1) Has anyone asked bit.ly about this? http://twitter.com/bitly would be one easy way. 2) Twitter switched to bit.ly for default URL shortening recently -- I imagine that caused in increase in bot traffic to index bit.ly links, although I don't have a better explanation than that. - Ryan Sholin

Asking bit.ly is good, certainly...but nothing wrong w/ having raw data to inform discussion. I don't think there's any sense that they're doing anything "wrong"...it's just the metrics seem to be different. - Ken Kennedy

I'm out for a bit, but I'll bundle up the data I've gotten for a bit later. - Ken Kennedy

Ken - the tr.im api that dave is using returns total visits. I haven't found a way to split out the bot numbers in the response. - Jeremy Felt

Interesting! I wouldn't have guessed that. - Ken Kennedy

Okay, someone is going to summarise and blog this for us, right? Bit.ly went kapluey (a tech term) y'day for a while but I always find that the numbers are about 3 to 5x higher than visitor numbers measured through google analytics or elsewhere. - WorldofHiglet

Ken: I'm logged into tr.im but the only data I can access at the web portal is old urls I created by hand through the web interface. And the link you gave me above gives me an error message when I click it. - Jay Rosen

Jay: I'm guessing this means that Dave is having you use a separate login for Tr.im through his application than the one you used to use. - Jeremy Felt

I'm guessing the URLs are being generated by a different account then, Jay. - Ken Kennedy

Gotcha, Eric...thanks! This is interesting stuff. Yep, wrt bit.ly we're looking (at least right now) at userClicks for a specific hash. - Ken Kennedy

Okay I have an account Dave created for me with a different log-in and I guess I have been logged into that. Clicking on the link Ken gave me, I find 885 total. Humans: 402. Bots: 283. - Jay Rosen

That's probably it, Jay. - Ken Kennedy

Eric - Does tr.im group clicks by IP in a certain time frame at all or does it report only raw click numbers? - Jeremy Felt

To confirm, I did create a separate account for the bookmarklet. Jay was the second user after me, so I did it by hand. Later in the process the tr.im folk gave me access to an internal API for creating accounts so it's automated. I sent Jay the credentials for his account via email. - Dave Winer

Eric/tr.im folk (I like that)...so the way I'm reading the statistics page, I should "expect" (I realize these numbers aren't perfect) the "total visits" metric for a given link to be potentially higher than the actual hits in my server log. Your guess for the "bots" number are those services you know only want to unpack the url, etc. The "human" number should be closer to the "correct" value. Is that a fair (albeit jumbled *grin*) statement? - Ken Kennedy

Ah, HEAD requests...good point! Anyone know if bit.ly counts HEAD requests? (that's the very definition of an apple/orange technical comparison, Jay. I would hope they wouldn't, but if they did, there's no comparison). - Ken Kennedy

Correct, Bit.ly says they stopped reporting HEAD requests back in March. http://blog.bit.ly/post... - Jeremy Felt

Gotcha. - Ken Kennedy

I have a real jayrosen_nyu post ready to Tweet, should I do a bit.ly url? - Jay Rosen

Just update on my tr.im hits (which have died off, unsurprisingly): 37 total visits, 21 marked human, 16 marked bot. I have 25 actual hits in my server logs on that page since I posted the link. - Ken Kennedy

Sure! - Ken Kennedy

Okay its.... Coral Reef journalism: to a "sunken" structure tiny facts attach. The wikipedia stub: got an equivalent in news? Listen: http://bit.ly/sJiBz Tweeted: http://twitter.com/jayrose... - Jay Rosen

Okay the bit.ly "initial surge" count is 168 clicks, that's about three times more than an item would debut at at 40twits (tr.im) Typical debut count is 60 to 70. Initial count of 100 indicates an exceptionally fast link at http://jay.40twits.com/. - Jay Rosen

You can see the "surge" at the info page. http://bit.ly/info/sJiBz - Ken Kennedy

Good link for example, too...b/c according to the API, you currently have all the clicks for it ("clicks": 341, "userClicks": 341, "userHash": "sJiBz"). So the "total" clicks equal your userClicks...there's no other bit.ly url for this that's been clicked on. (yet). Of 341, direct is 331, FF 1, partners.bit.ly 4, powertwitter.me 1, twitter.com 4. - Ken Kennedy

Minute by minute hits, first few minutes (this'll fall off the graph at bit.ly eventually): 1, 62, 81, 65 55, 35, 24, 18, 3, 4, 5, 7, 2. I don't think that's people, you know? - Ken Kennedy

Oh, I hear what you're saying, Eric. And really, that ratio doesn't even matter for purposes of what Jay's trying to determine...why the bit.ly numbers and the tr.im ones are so different. But your comment about people processing urls is a good point: it may be that some tools looking at twitter are only processing some shortener namespaces, but not others. That would explain a lot. - Ken Kennedy

Okay, so what do we know as a result of these investigations? - Jay Rosen

For click data, unless you have your own service and can see the whole picture, use 1 tool to gauge the popularity of clicks on a pure trends basis alone, not by numbers. - Jeremy Felt

Gotcha, anything else? - Jay Rosen

I'd say that it's interesting to note that the "initial surge" should probably be completely discounted in terms of interest...I assert that in the vast majority of cases, it's basically all automated stuff. That being said, good stories still "rise to the top"...the clicks over time add up. Having two services with different "initial surges" makes comparison difficult (impossible, really), as Jeremy noted. - Ken Kennedy

My gut also tells me that we've learned that there are tiers of shorteners...I think some get more attention paid to them by the automated tools than others. bit.ly's initial surge is larger because it (like Twitter in the "what are you doing" space) gets more attention from the people making tools to analyze the data. Not a super surprising piece of info, but worth thinking about. - Ken Kennedy

And also, those numbers have only a tenuous relationship to actual web hits to the page. At this point, my story I pushed through bit.ly has 9 bit.ly hits (though I know I did a couple of those myself accidentally), and 18 page hits (since I pushed out the link). My tr.im url has 37 total visits, 21 of which are deemed to be "human" by tr.im. The page has 25 hits (since I pushed out the link). - Ken Kennedy

And of the 25 page hits on the story linked to by tr.im, I can tell several of them are bots by the user agent (Googlebot, TweetmeBot, etc.) Has ANYONE actually read that story? I'll try to determine that (based on other GETs in logs around the hits), but I'd honestly be surprised. - Ken Kennedy

Okay, so... it seems the little url shortener mystery was isolated to some kind of auto-counting by services that have targeted some url shorteners but not others, and that the critical piece of evidence is the "rush" in the first few moments, and so the "number clicked" meter is only good for trends over time. This is all based on what we can know without further digging or information from the firms. Best practice: adopt one shortener; stick with it, watch for updates on the issue. Does that capture? - Jay Rosen

Sounds right to me. Trends, not numbers. :) - Jeremy Felt

Exit question: why did 12 people tag this as one of their likes on FF? - Jay Rosen

1) contains useful information, 2) a fascinating example of the worth of social networking - Bora Zivkovic

Does Bit.ly subtract bots automagically? - Kathy E Gill

Yep, sounds right to me, Jay. As for liking it, my interest is obvious, but I totally agree w/ Bora; in general, it has useful info ("liking" is often like bookmarking for me...I can search and easily find it again with that hint), and it was also a great discussion/example of why FF is so interesting. - Ken Kennedy

continuing Bora and Ken's answers to exit question: 3) to make it easier to find in future (search by likes) 4) to publish it to likes page (like retweeting except by reference instead of by value/copying) 5) to send Jay some love/goodwill - carl morris

Well, I should definitely add: thanks, everyone, particularly Ken and Jeremy and Eric for stopping in. Thanks for your kind assistance. - Jay Rosen

I read the whole thread and "liked" it because 1) it was started by someone with a sound reputation and a history of investigation, 2) the interaction of journalist and geek was interesting, and 3) the issue of what data can we trust in Twitter-land is important (especially with the growth of URL shorteners). Thanks to all who contributed. - Chip Roberson

I read the whole thread and "liked" it because I have clients who are starting to ask for some ROI with their Twitter usage. The see numbers and want them bigger. I want to be able to give them perspective. - Kawika Holbrook

Some of my clients like the tr.im stats page because it's easy, fast, and separates humans from bots. Others like bit.ly stats page because it includes comments from the page itself as well as Twitter and Friendfeed comments. What they really want is one tool to see at a glance what's popular, where the conversations are happening, and who/what carries the most Google juice. - Kawika Holbrook

My clients wouldn't care about this discussion, but I do because it helps me make a recommendation based on facts, not guesses. I would hope Twitter's use of bit.ly as the default shortener doesn't ultimately swamp all others, if only to ensure continued innovation. - Kawika Holbrook

I actually noticed this problem a few months back when rolling up aggregate statistics for the @nytimes account. I contacted Bitly to ask them (kinda surprised nobody else has, pretty easy to do). Upshot is bitly counts expansions of the URL, not clickthroughs. So, my twitter client autoexpands bitly links and that counts for a hit, even if I don't click it. They filter out bots and such, but plugins like that are still hits. - Jacob Harris

Of course, any redirection service that counted only hits could still encounter situations where the redirect is not followed (and they don't really have any way to know that), so there will always be some overcounting. And of course, most web analytics is based on Javascript on the page which might not be executed, so there might also be some undercounting. But bitly was giving me spikes of 4-5x my web analytics totals from WebTrends. - Jacob Harris

Here is the last message I received from Bitly asking when I noticed a decline in the numbers: - Jacob Harris

Bit.ly is still counting decodes and not necessarily only actual human clickthroughs. We are not counting: - decodes that we identify as bots based on their user-agent strings, and we are working on more advanced techniques for bot identification. - HTTP HEAD requests, which some third-party tools use to get meta-information (such as the destination link) without fetching the entire... more... - Jacob Harris

It seems like the general problem is there are 2 ways you can expand a link via bitly. One of which is to do a GET request and get the redirect (that is what a user would do and should be counted for them, but it's a problem when bots do it). Apps should be using the separate expansion API that doesn't count that as a hit, but the problem seems to be that many programs and plugins are still doing a GET on the short URL to expand (and being counted). - Jacob Harris

Essentially, ALL URL shorteners have this problem, but Bitly is probably exaggerated because it is so prominent in usage compared to the rest. I apologize for not blogging about this (I did tweet about it at a few points), but bitly support (that contact link on the bottom) has been very helpful in explaining the issue. - Jacob Harris

Robert Scoble

My favorite real-time search: "crap" http://friendfeed.com/search... More crappy searches here:

May 14 - Comment - Like - Share

Sardar Mohkim Khan, guruvan (Rob Nelson), John Field and 2 other people liked this

Crap that someone has "liked:" http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

14 more comments

Crap that someone has commented on: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

I'll check that in minute. I have to go take a crap first. - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Times Tim Oreilly has started a post that someone said "crap" in http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

I like searching for Twitpics (although the results can sometimes be scary!) http://friendfeed.com/search... - Costa Walcott

People who say they are in a "crappy mood": http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Some of my other favorite searches? Awesome. Sucks. Always find fun stuff that way. - Robert Scoble

Crap that no one cares about: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Daniel J. Pritchett

Confused -- what is real time about this? - Brian Sullivan

this post makes me want to be able to mark one "favorite" FriendFeed entry per day. This is it. hahaha. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Brian: add a new post about "crap" and you'll see your post shows up in the search instantly. Yes, the display is not yet real time, but that's coming "soon." - Robert Scoble

OK -- was thinking about real time display. - Brian Sullivan

Yeah!!! It is finally there... That is pretty nearly the wholly grail of real time social media aggregation and display. Nice job FriendFeed. - Brian Roy

translated XLHit for "crap" on FF: http://ff.xlhit.com/s... - Charles Ying

Be sure to also checkout http://twistori.com - you can following tweets in real-time that include love, hate, think, believe, wish, etc. - Scott Loftesness

Woohoo perfectly named crapchat for the scoblescope! (www.crapchat.com/blog) it's a goof webchat blog capturing nonsense for future generations - Mark Essel

Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Did Twitter Just Kill #followfriday? | Stay N' Alive - http://staynalive.com/article...

May 12 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris, Mathew A. Koeneker, Amie Gillingham and 42 other people liked this

"In a very vague statement today that I guess Twitter doesn’t expect us to understand, Twitter removed, without warning or feedback from users it would seem, any and all Tweets in your stream that include @replies to people you are not following." - Chris, Taskerrific Guy from Bookmarklet

116 more comments

Twitter may have just killed the relevancy of twitter. This is a stupid move - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Just one more in a series of them, Rob. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy from IM

++Rob - Amber, Random Time Lord

long live identi'ca! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

This will make it difficult to find new people to follow. There will be no hint of their existence. I guess we're all supposed to follow Oprah, Ashton, and Shaq. - DGentry

I just can't get over how stupid this is...the relevance for twitter is the noisiness and the publicness of the thing...without that, twitter is nothing - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Think about it... Doesn't this also mean the possible death of retweets? After all, if Twitter hides a link tweet because the retweeter mentioned the original poster... - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

I'm thinking that it only hides replies that begin with @. I'm seeing retweets just fine. If so, then #followfriday should work just the same. - Michael McKean

of course the RT is what's killing followfriday in the first place. No, I think Jesse is probably correct - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Even if that's the case, it's still a bad decision to make this change. Give us an option, that's okay, but just hiding them straight-up is bullshit. I've actually found decent people I never would have known about, because someone I knew replied to them. Now that ability is gone because Biz and Ev decided without even considering the effects on users. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

me too, Chris. I monitor the conversations of people I admire or am interested in and I'll take a peek if they are conversing with someone I don't know. - Laura Norvig

Apparently Ev and Biz have decided that we should all only follow people we already know and never find anyone new on Twitter to follow. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

no, they think we should do that and follow famous people too. like oprah. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Jandy: Ah, that same stupid decision that Zuckerberg made some time ago? - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

I've never understood why some updates show up in my timeline and some don't. I've had direct replies never show up on my page. when I follow someone, I want to see all their updates. - Richard Lawler

Chris, I agree. Taking away the option is stupid. I guess they want us to use Twitter as THEY see fit. - Michael McKean

I suggested the other day, it's a shame when people's dreams stand in the way of others truly realizing and utilizing the full potential of the dreamer's creations. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

And of course we are all just too stupid to decide four ourselves whether we want to see naked @'s or not. - Kevin D. White

Biz and Ev need to learn that when you release a social tool, it's not yours any more. It belongs to your users. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Not feeling this at all. What's the point? - Derrick

This increases the importance of tools like FF - Kevin D. White

two notes questions - 1. why wouldn't you want to see *ANY* mention of your user name in the "mentions" tab? 2. could this be something coming from the celebs? no idea just throwing it out there. - Allen Stern

Is this just a lame excuse to lighten the load on their servers? - Michael McKean

Michael: This wouldn't lighten the load much if at all. They now have to filter out these messages for _everyone_, not just those who had the appropriate option on. Slightly simpler code, more server load. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

That makes no sense whatsoever. I have met some great tweeps as a result of a follow up to a hashtag or @comment I posted. I agree with Michael- why wouldn't you want to see/monitor your name mentions. Maybe Chris is correct. - Karma Martell

I just can't figure out the logic behind this. Perhaps because there isn't any. - Michael McKean

Karma, Allen: You'll still see mentions of yourself. You won't see tweets which only reference users you don't follow. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Agreed, Twitter suddenly makes a really bad move. Cuts out lots of relevant conversation. - Mike Reynolds

If @A follows @B but not @C, @A won't see posts from @B replying to @C unless @A is mentioned in them somewhere. That kinda thing. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

This seems fine at first, but when you count the number of times where you've made a good connection with @C when you're @A, it becomes insanely stupid. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

I think what they're trying to say is, "We think you're too stupid to figure out this feature, therefore we are removing it completely." - Michael McKean

Chris, thks for clarifying, but still a shame. Seeing the threads is part of the allure. - Karma Martell

Without being able to see the networking others are doing... and adding to that a ranking/googlish/logarithm type search... I might as well try finding my weak ties on Google ;-) - Holly Rae

It is a real shame. Because depending on how Twitter does the filtering, this could kill off #followfriday. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

exactly- insanely stupid - Karma Martell

really it is killing crowdsourcing - Karma Martell

Of course, I really want to trust the...folks who created... Twitter. Are we missing something? - Holly Rae

Holly: After all their screw-ups and downtime, and FSM knows what else, you want to trust them? They lost my trust long, long ago. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Karma: Exactly Holly: the folky who created twitter are the ones making the bad decisions because they don't use their creation - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Yes, Twitter just killed #followfriday and any time a person uses @USERNAME in a way other than meaning a REPLY to that person. - Mike Reynolds

I think this excerpt from Download Squad article http://u.nu/97e5 nails it: "Perhaps the recent popularity of Twitter as a way to contact celebrities -- we're post-Oprah here, people -- made users a little sick of seeing the people they followed replying to celebrities they didn't follow or care about. There's a fairly simple solution to that, though: change the @reply settings... more... - Sharon McPherson

Mike, make them stop. Thank you. - Derrick

I think it also mean that "If I said some thing like I was talking to @Jesse today" and you don't follow @ Jesse, you won't know that I did that. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: Exactly right. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris and Rob, thank you... well said - Holly Rae

This is stupid, this is preventing me from seeing tweets that I might want to see. Stupid. FriendFeed and identi.ca FTW!!!!! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

What's weird is that I'm still seeing @ replies sent to people I'm not following - but - only if the tweet is sent from a Twitter app. - Sharon McPherson

So in order to see all of the updates of folks you follow, sounds like you have to use search, RSS, or some other filtering tool - Holly Rae

It's possible that the filter change itself hasn't gone live yet; it's simple to pull a checkbox out of an HTML form, but a bit more complicated to change the underlying code. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Sharon, heh. If it only filters out web replies, maybe it's not such a big issue? I don't know anyone who doesn't use a client. (I'm lying - I still think it's a big issue.) - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

AJ Kohn relayed a thought in a separate thread that Twitter is essentially killing the protocol for RETWEETS. - Mike Reynolds

I just asked one of the client developers what this was going to mean for their application. I'm waiting to hear back on this - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

the API clients may be able to work around the issue in other ways too. the web users are screwed tho (but they need to get off the lousy web site anyhow) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I notice I can't see @replies to those I'm not following but I still see mentions ... wonder if this is the filter, things seem a bit quieter at /home - Holly Rae

The only method I could see working is pull individual users' RSS feeds, and no doubt there'd be some limit on that. This could end in violence between Twitter and client developers. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Wow. That's heavy. - Holly Rae

Even then, if Twitter stops putting tweets starting with @ in the feeds, then we're pretty much screwed to see them. Total fail. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

depends on what the API is actually pulling...I'm not an expert on that, but yes, RSS feeds would would fine - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Twitter updated the post, so it's just tweets starting with a @reply (mentions elsewhere are okay). Still, it's a bad call. There's a lot to be found by following someone's replies. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

It sill kills the inadvertent tweet " @soandso said to me yesterday that Twitter, Inc. was elitist" when you're not following @soandso - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Chris Charabaruk: I agree! As I said in another thread, Twitter is about to get very boring. - Sharon McPherson

I generally try to phrase those differently so it's not a @reply kind of tweet, but yeah, a lot of people don't bother doing that. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Sharon: Charabaruk. Only one C. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

So a one character difference seperates relevant from irrelevant. Thanks for the help. Twit. - Kevin D. White

What a horrible ridiculous #FAIL on Twitter's part. I hope they see the error of their ways within the next 48 hours or they're going to be missing a lot of users really soon. - Jillian York

Chris Charabaruk: My apologies, edited. - Sharon McPherson

Thank you. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Jillian: It's rare for Twitter to back down from a stupid decision. It's happened before, I think, but I doubt they will over this. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

what is the way to tell them? and, what is the hashtag to use to discuss this so it trends to the top and gets their attention? - Bora Zivkovic

There's no good way to tell them, except perhaps in person. I don't think they watch their own replies, or read email. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Bora: The hashtag is #fixreplies - Sharon McPherson

If a ton of people started tweet-boming @twitter @ev and @biz they would hear it - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Start your replies with #fixreplies. - Vlad Bobleanta from fftogo

OK, I see people are using #fixreplies - Bora Zivkovic

They don't watch their own @replies? Well, no wonder they have no idea how people are using their service! - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Jandy: I'm not certain that they don't read 'em, but if they don't, that certainly explains A LOT. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Excerpt from ReadWrite Web article: "This isn't a small change at all, it's big and it's bad. The new setting eliminates serendipitous social discovery." http://u.nu/89e5 - Sharon McPherson

yeah! - @baratunde

Um, I think #twitterfail is already hitting pretty hard enough. It'll catch bigger media attention than #fixreplies. - Jillian York

@jillian, you can't stop a hashtag. train has left! - @baratunde

Doesn't hurt to use both, if you can squeeze 'em in. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris Charabaruk: I led the team that got LinkedIn to back down on blocking Syrian users. I have faith. - Jillian York

@baratunde #twitterfail already took off ;) - Jillian York

I just sent a handfullt of tweets "#fixreplies @twitter @ev @biz blah blah blah" - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Jandy: I've made that point to @ev and @biz on several occasions, and I made it again tonight. How can you make decisions like this whan NO ONE at twitter uses Twitter? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

@jillian, according to http://hashtags.org/ #fixreplies is on the top list. no sign of #twitterfail. i'm using both to be safe - @baratunde

OMG I got great number of retweets on my barrage! wo0t! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

puls a ton of retweets of Jesse's original blog post about killing Followfriday lol! - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I've been noticing that twitter search results stopped updating like 40 minutes ago or so...anyone else seeing that? I've tried #twitterfail, #fixreplies, moodle and a random lot of other terms. - Holly Rae

@baratunde shit, now that's just a testament to how fast twitter works. i'm sticking with both too though. and summize is mad backed up as always. - Jillian York

holly have you tried twitter searches via an API client? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I just tried Twemes and Twazzup, same situation. BTW Twemes is looking spammy tonight. - Holly Rae

Tweetdeck returns same results. Frozen in time. - Holly Rae

TweetDeck is actually working fine for me, it seems. I can use it as I used to. - Jillian York

It's only the search that's weird... it works, it's just that the last results are an hour old. - Holly Rae

Hilariously, #followfriday is a popular tag right now based on the fact that people are retweeting this and other similar posts! - Jillian York

One of the API app developers that I'm in contact with suggested that his app will not be affected by such a change...this leads to me think that the way that API calls get the data, it's up to the app developer how to interpret it. This is something that will primarily affect twitter.com web users. (and who would want to do that anyhow?) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Sorry to bother you with my tangent on the search. All seems to be working now... - Holly Rae

Has it come out yet why Twitter did this? I mean, are they going to replace it with something new and vibrant like they did with the other stuff they took away? LOL. - Marie Carnes

Heres one: RT @ev Reading people's thoughts on the replies issue. We're considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback. 14 minutes ago from web - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

It would appear that tweetbombing @ev and @ biz DOES have an effect ;-) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob, NICE! We did trend pretty quickly with #fixreplies. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

I definitely think a good amount of people sent that directly to ev and biz, so they had to notice. hehehe. I love it when a plan comes together - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

@Marie. awesome - @baratunde

baratunde, glad you liked it :) - Marie Carnes

I *can* see replies from people I dont know in Tweetdeck, checking for Seesmic. - Jacque

I still don't know what follow friday is. I could use a search engine to find out, but that would be cheating. - Chuck Baggett

Here is info on #followfriday http://tinyurl.com/dz4xl7 - David

lol! Snark alert! haha - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Ev and Biz- what are you guys smoking? #fixreplies - Siddharth Deb

From my understanding (and correct me if i'm wrong) Twitter basically is "privatizing" the whole experience..? - Aline Ohannessian

That would seem counter to the direction of the rest of the web, and the entirety of twitter, so no, I don't think that's correct Aline. I think, given @biz's bs this morning about the engineering team reminding him this is a technical necessity, that twitter is grasping at straws trying to cut interprocess messaging traffic down in order to stay afloat. While I'm not an expert in the... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I hope so. #followfriday with it's laundry lists of users in 140 characters is SPAM. It's of no value to me at all. Tell me one or two people you recommend and why. I never click on lists of people and summarily unfollow all the people I followed who insisted on this means of promoting others. Think about it. We don't refer or recommend anything in multiples--movies, restaurants etc. Twitter should be no different. - Gregg Scott

Gregg: you're missing the fundamental purpose of followfriday as it exists today: Get to the Top of the TopFollowFriday list. It's no longer about recommending your followers, but getting enough of them to reciprocate so that you can make it to the top 100 users on the topfollowfriday.com (and similar) lists. Once you make it onto that list, the odds of getting retweeted go up... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Thank you for setting me straight! - Gregg Scott

Agree on FollowFriday - I hate it. No context to the recommendations (unlike seeing all @replies) - Jamie

I do participate occasionally in recommending people on FollowFriday, but I do it as Gregg suggests is the proper way. I put at most 3 people in a tweet, but only because they are all related to the reason I gave for recommending them. But, I only send out a handful of recommendations. And sometimes I recommend application providers, or even bots. There's a few bots I really like. Oh, and I try to remember to recommend @followmenot he hates being followed. heh. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

FriendFeed Feedback: Laserone

My friendfeed no longer differentiates between flickr photos I POSTED and flickr photos I FAVORITED, so people I know are assuming that I TOOK the photos that I only FAVORITED! Why is friendfeed TAKING AWAY good features???

May 3 - Comment - Like - Share

FFing Enigma (aka Tina), carl morris and Kol Tregaskes liked this

The are identified as Flickr and Flickr favorites if you look closely. - Brian Sullivan

Photos you took say "from Flickr" and photos you favorited say "from Flickr Favorites". - Andy Kruger

I blame swine flu. - tehNewYear

Loic Le Meur

Flickr is in troubles too according to @om maybe I should start backing up my years of photos http://gigaom.com/2009...

April 29 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Demetrios the Traveller, Bill Romanos, carl morris and 48 other people liked this

Interesting. Backing up photos sounds like a good idea either way. What is the best way to back up Flickr photos? - Adam

20 more comments

There's an interesting paid service idea, archive repository. Just API in and grab the photos etc? - David Eedle

don't tell me you don't already have a backup of your photos :-) the real problem is the social value of flickr. that's is inestimable - Lawrence Oluyede

i thought people UPLOADED photos to Flickr, meaning that the originals are on some other computer. that's been my M.O. backup what? my local HDD? already done. - .LAG liked that

But how about people like Robert Scoble who uses Flickr as the repository for his blog's photos? It sounds like a lot of work to go in and relink all the images to a different location. - Edmund Tay

Hmm. I have almost 4000 photos on Flickr and many more on local storage. Where to next? - Victor Panlilio

Use picasa to sync ALL your library online. I just dragged my albums into folders and BLAMO everything is backed up AND synced online :) - Jaime

I use Flickr as my backup... :-( - Benoit Cazenave

@Edmund: that's his fault entirely. It seems kinda dumb to me anyway - Lawrence Oluyede

i keep all photos on flickr. yikes. - drew olanoff

Lawrence: There are pros and cons to hosting your images on Flickr and linking to it. Pros would be "unlimited" storage and bandwidth and being able to link to that same image from multiple locations. Cons is of course being reliant on the existence of Flickr and also those funky filenames that get generated when you upload to Flickr. That makes migrating image links pretty difficult since your original image filename won't match with that on Fllickr. - Edmund Tay

...interesting. it never occurred to me that some folks would look at Flickr as permanent storage solution. I've always just seen is as an efficient way to share a selection of my photos with people i know, through time and space. - .LAG liked that

Flickr Backup for mac? http://sourceforge.net/project... - drew olanoff

Interesting info, guess I'll have to find some other place for my externalized backups... - Benoit Cazenave

I was just looking for the best way to sync my iPhoto lib and a service like Flickr or Smugmug. Not bad to have a service like Flickr to backup 20GB of images for less that 25$/year - Frédéric Sidler

May be Yahoo will sell Flickr as eBay is wanting to do with Skype. May be SmugMug can purchase Flickr from Yahoo and make it the free/social version of SmugMug? - Vinko

Ok, Flickr are laying off people but there isn't anything to substantiate that they are in trouble - David McDonald

Meh, time to look for a tool to migrate nearly 200 photos from Flickr? - Tyson Key

Yah, but what do you do when you have 20,953 photos on flickr? And all those comments and tags? The thing you want to save is all that social networking, organizing and tagging, you already have a high-res copy somewhere on your hard drive at home... - Paula W

Hmm, but what if you don't, out of interest? For what it's worth, I've used Flickr (and Picasa) as a "final destination" for images after I've taken them, and tend to delete or otherwise archive image files after I've uploaded them. I'm sure there are a few others who do that, too. - Tyson Key

I used to be able to BackUp my Flickr Crap using Website Downloader which was Super cuz it also Backed Up all my Flickr Comments + those from Flickr Friendz - I gotta look into it again cuz they have some Restrictions on me + I don't like it 1 damn bit!! ;)) - Billy Warhol

Jay Rosen

In the ideology of fluff "outrageous irony" plays a huge role in making the fluff look like news. But here fluff goes poof. http://is.gd/o6X9

March 21 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Phillip Stewart, carl morris, Helen Sventitsky and 14 other people liked this

In the ideology of fluff, political thought follows the Holden Caulfield maxim: find the phony. You isolate the "outrageous irony," as Michael Scherer put it. Another way to boil it down: "Oh, the hypocrisy!" And if you're a journalist working in this style, the frothing irony is more important than the underling issue. Which enrages the people who care about the issue. The rage is then used to prove how independent the ironist is, taking the heat and telling the truth. Every practitioner of fluff reporting draws strong reactions because events have to be trimmed, sliced or just plain distorted so the account seems more ironical rather than ideological-- i.e. biased. This trimming and fiddling with the facts doesn't matter to people who don't care about the issue being trivialized, and it's to the benefit of those on the "other" side of whomever was taken down a notch by it. (See http://is.gd/ok8B) So they don't squeal. That leaves the fluffster and (in the fluffster's mind) partisans upset by a tweaking. - Jay Rosen

24 more comments

Another element in the dynamic is captured in an earlier Tweet of mine: Journalists don't own a petard, they don't know from petards, so they have to hoist you on yours. Meaning: they're not allowed to defend, or articulate the political standard against which they wish to judge, say, the Obama Administration. So they have to take Obama's own statements and use those because that's ideologically innocent enough. "Hoisted on his own petard." What can be better? - Jay Rosen

Thus, Andrew Malcom's recent fluff entry, "Obama White House bars press from press award ceremony," relies on all these methods: Look at how it starts "... Barack Obama was elected commander in chief promising to run the most transparent presidential administration in American history." http://is.gd/oaoO That's the tip off. We know what's coming: Outrageous irony! Holden Calufield: What a phony! Oh, the hypocrisy! Hoisted on his own petard! Hah! - Jay Rosen

Then you look a little closer: Obama barred the press? Not really. He gave an exclusive on-the-record interview to the black press. http://is.gd/ofAI Ohhhhh. (That's the distortion.) Therefore he barred the press only in the sense that Andrew Malcolm was barred from the "are you a socialist?" interview the New York Times recently did with Obama. That's what an exclusive interview does: it excludes. Is Andrew Maclolm against THAT? Of course not. But he has his fluff item and he's going with it. - Jay Rosen

This is from Jake Tapper on Twitter: "Preparing for day of hypocrisy: conservs who would normally defend the SpecOlymp joke acting offended, liberals saying lighten up. Sigh." http://is.gd/ohQ3 And who is the brave independent truthteller battling the phonies everywhere? Holden Tapper! And by the way, the sigh is a lie. Tapper isn't aggrieved by all the hypocrisy, and if he does feel a little pain the Drudge effect soothes it. - Jay Rosen

So by fluff here you just mean trivial irony used to make an interesting story? Is it central to your thinking here that this results in "criticism from both sides" (in particular, criticism from the people whose issue has been trivialized)? - j1m

Central to it is this: the fluff method builds in the reactions as fortification for the method. The people whose issue has been trivialized sqawk immediately. The people whose side has been advantaged by the fluff narrative scream at the hypocrisy (see the comment thread: http://is.gd/ok8B) so right off you got a nice little "partisans on both sides" screaming match, which almost ALL journalists want to wash their hands of, leaving the fluffster free for the next round of "... oh the hypocrisy!" - Jay Rosen

Jake Tapper right now on Twitter explains to me why he's so down on the comments at his ABCNews.com site. jaketapper: @jayrosen_nyu @jayackroyd hate from L and R - shouting and personal attacks, mostly at each other, no dialogue/opp for me 2 hear fr viewers ... Jake would like intelligent feedback, but the "partisans on both sides" won't permit it. So he'll keep doing what he's doing.... more... - Jay Rosen

Another thing: Many in medialand have taken flaming from both sides about the SAME STORY as a kind of validation of their essential truthiness, no, er... truthfulness, because if you're getting it from both sides that means you favored neither and slew their sacred cows equally, cow for cow. But if you get the ideology of fluff: one side loves the Caulfielding but rages at you for being fluffy, not cutting deeper, only tweaking. Other side complains about the (very real) distortions. Both mad. Same story. - Jay Rosen

Do you think that journalists buy into this ideology more than their readers/viewers? It seems like more people want cheap feel-good entertainment than actual news; hence "special olympics" becomes a huge story while containing exactly zero content. - Jim Norris

Do I think that journalists buy into this ideology more than their readers/viewers? Yes.You gotta watch one thing: your evidence that it was a huge story with users cannot be that it was a huge story with journalists, can it? - Jay Rosen

Good point. How about the AIG bailout story: news or fluff? Pushed by journalists or pulled by the public? - Jim Norris

Not fluff. For this reason among many http://is.gd/o69t - Jay Rosen

Don't forget Josh Marshall's comments to the "eat your spinach crowd" http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archive... - JJW

The roots of fluff: http://is.gd/oTeu @anamariecox "Orszag conference call very detailed and hard to follow; full of substance. Please stop: I am a political reporter and not used to this." Ha, ha. So funny, isn't it? She's just joking, of course. Poking fun at her peer group....amused? - Jay Rosen

More on fluff from Dan Froomkin, though he does not use the word: http://blog.niemanwatchdog.org/... Then there's http://is.gd/qafT - Jay Rosen

This looks like a PressThink blog post in the making... ;-) - Bora Zivkovic

Definitely. From danieldoyle: @jayrosen_nyu seems this meets some qualifications for ideology of fluff. http://bit.ly/3BPSAe "Is President Obama trying to muzzle his press corps?" On what grounds: The British press got to ask four questions and the US press only three. - Jay Rosen

Also relevant is this column from CNN's Ed Henry http://is.gd/oX6z To wit: Invariably, my Democratic friends tweaked along the lines of "how'd you like the smackdown" because they were pleased the president pushed back. But my Republican friends hailed me by saying essentially, "Thanks for doing your job -- he never answered the question." So the exchange was a great political Rorschach: Each party saw their own talking points in the reflection of the back-and-forth. - Jay Rosen

Not the ideology of fluff but an example of fluff. "Mr. Obama spent his first few days in office rolling out an orchestrated series of executive orders intended to signal that he would take the nation in a very different direction from his predecessor, George W. Bush. Yet he wrestled with fresh challenges at every turn, found some principles hard to consistently apply and showed himself willing to be pragmatic — at the risk of irking some supporters who had their hearts set on idealism." http://is.gd/hanU - Jay Rosen

I don't say things like OMG, but if I did... http://is.gd/r3z9 "What we can say for certain is that Tapper isn’t afraid to go against the grain of the liberal consensus in pursuit of a story. Whether he was pointing out that Barack Obama was a one-man gaffe machine, factchecking Obama on the surge, or chiding him for blaming any and all mistakes on his staff, no mainstream journalist... more... - Jay Rosen

Tapper is somewhat taken aback by the idea he’s rooting for the Right. “It’s always nice to be complimented — if that’s what that was,” he tells National Review Online. “Believe me, I don’t doubt there will come a day when Mr. Limbaugh and National Review consider me once again to be part of the ‘MSM,’ either too tough on Republicans or insufficiently tough on Democrats.” National Review http://is.gd/r3z9 - Jay Rosen

This one is almost too good. The ideology of fluff in some its purest form: http://tr.im/j9bg Dana Milbank reads his comments and guess what he discovers? "On Tuesday, I learned that I am a right-wing hack. I am not a journalist. I am typical of the right wing. I am why newspapers are going broke. I write garbage. I am angry with Barack Obama. I misquote Obama. I am bitter. I am a certified idiot. I am lame. I am a Republican flack." You know it's coming, right? - Jay Rosen

Right... and here it comes... "On Thursday, I realized that I am a media pimp with my lips on Obama's butt. I am a bleeding-heart liberal who wants nothing more than for the right to fall on its face. I am part of the ObamaMedia. I am pimping for the left. I am carrying water for Obama. Lord, am I an idiot.... I discovered all this from the helpful feedback provided to me in the 'reader comments' section at the end of my past four columns on washingtonpost.com" - Jay Rosen

Another piece of data: http://dyn.politico.com/printst... "...[AP] is scrapping the stonefaced approach to journalism that accepts politicians’ statements at face value and offers equal treatment to all sides of an argument. Instead, reporters are encouraged to throw away the weasel words and call it like they see it when they think public officials have revealed themselves as phonies or flip-floppers." See Holden Caulfield: the phonies! The flip floppers! - Jay Rosen

http://tr.im/jvpw More from Dana Milbank "The House Judiciary Committee called a hearing yesterday to study the decline of the newspaper business, but it quickly deteriorated into a press-bashing session. Ideologues of the left and right made no effort to conceal their yearning for a day without journalists, when public officials would no longer be scrutinized." - Jay Rosen

Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

We always talk about how SM is nothing but talk and navel-gazing. So, someone finally does something pretty powerful and everyone hates.

April 18 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris, Ho John Lee, (jeff)isageek and 12 other people liked this

That's because they didn't do it first and they didn't offer up anything useful. No, they all stroke each other dicks and offer you a sticker for the privilege to watch. - Admiral Anika

49 more comments

<whisper>I thought it was cool</whisper> - Bec Rowe @d0tski

I think everyone is STILL missing the point and it really bothers me for some reason. #backlashton? Seriously? LOL - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I don't see the problem. What I see is 1: He's using his celebrity/cewebrity to shine a spotlight on a very important, yet underfunded cause, and 2: He's helping to popularise SM- where *we* decide what we want to see/read/hear, rather than the traditional media deciding for us. I smell sour grapes, and celebrity bashing for the sake of it. JMHO. - - Bec Rowe @d0tski

For anyone who actually watched any of his videos or saw him talk on Oprah, he actually knows more about Social Media than many social media bloggers...just sayin. I think it's definitely bashing for the sake of it and I don't understand how people aren't seeing the downside of that. It's like ripping out your eye to spite your face. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Black Ashton?.... Oh wait... - tehNewYear

I'm fine with this all if we call it what it should be called. Marketing. 1,000,000 followers isn't social media. There's not social relationship or meaningful dialog going on. It's marketing. It's business. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/asocial... Some do it well, others not so much. But the idea that it's 'conversational' is bunk. - AJ Kohn

Let's review. We're talking about followers, here. We're not talk about followING. every person on the entire planet could follow me on Twitter, that does not mean I have to engage each individual in actual direct discussion in order to make change in the world. All that's required is to engage with a few and for the rest to at least listen to the message. Asocial? I don't think so. Marketing? Yes. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Really? You use SM to look at ships? ;-) - Ladybug Heather

Fixed :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

@Rah: Asocial Media = Marketing in my book so ... semantics but we're on the same page for the most part I think. - AJ Kohn

So, are we to never request anyone to follow us? No matter what scale it's on, it's marketing...therefore asocial, correct? Even that little "follow me on Twitter" badge is marketing. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

When did marketing become a dirty word? - Bec Rowe @d0tski

@Rah: Why do you want 'followers' and again, think about that term. Nearly all of it is marketing - because you want to get your message out. So the badge, marketing for sure. I mean, if they're your 'real' friends they might follow you on Twitter but you're likely not soliciting them to do it. You're IMing them anyway, you actually have conversations. That's social. Twitter ... it's marketing. - AJ Kohn

Bec++. I agree with you as well, Abby. The thing is that there was no avoiding that level of publicity given the players involved. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

@Bec: It's not in my book. I'm a marketer and I think marketing is fantastic. I'll crow about the most hated of marketing - SEO. Marketing is good. But I'm tired of people trying to make Twitter into something that isn't marketing ... it's 'social media, not marketing' they say. 'It's conversations, not marketing' they shout. And I'm saying loud and clear, social media (Twitter in particular) is marketing. Call it what it is and don't pretend otherwise. - AJ Kohn

Everything in life is some level of marketing and some level of sales. Ask a girl out on a date, you're trying to sell her. You get spiffied up for an interview, that's marketing. Right now, my dog is giving me "the eyes" because she wants a treat. She's trying to sell me. Every exchange ends with someone getting sold. I'm not sure why it matters whether we acknowledge SM as marketing or not. The end result is the same. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I'm arguing that calling it social media is code for people who don't like marketing to ... actually do marketing. That makes my stomach queasy. Be proud of using a new technology to forward your marketing instead of hiding behind some new buzzword and cling to the cluetrain manifesto. - AJ Kohn

@Rah: I'm irked at the hypocritical nature of people who say it isn't marketing. That it's some new paradigm. It's just not IMO. Just like the folks who blog and then say SEO is bunk and evil. Great, if you think so, then do me a favor and put a big ol' 'NOINDEX' tag on your blog. - AJ Kohn

[am I making any sense here or do I need another cup of coffee] - AJ Kohn

Also, in my marketing efforts here on FF and on Twitter, I have made thousands of connections. Many of which have become friends. I think we are on the same page, though, AJ. It is marketing, but I think it's more than just marketing and to label it as simple marketing will give potential new users the wrong idea. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

@Rah: True, there's actually a bit of real 'social' that gets done amid the marketing. FF ... it's a different beast for me. I view it as a data hub ... part of that data is social and that's fine. Certainly marketing going on too - heck ... I dropped a link to my blog in this very thread! :) Always enjoy your perspective Rah. - AJ Kohn

Okay, so @aplusk has done something noteworthy with Twitter. Wat is his goal? Bragging rights? Fame? Is there a way to monetize what he has done? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

I think we're all on the same page AJ, we're just arguing semantics. My definition of Social Media is similar to the definition over on Wikipedia: "Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies." - Bec Rowe @d0tski

MDVB, I'd like to think his goals are noble, and that he isn't looking for personal gain. I've been wrong before, tho. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Let's say it was all a scheme to promote CNN and Ashton Kutcher. Ashton still donated 100,000 to Malaria No More and the CEO of Twitter was still sitting next to Oprah on TV. Millions of people still saw the message that an average person can build a huge following in social media and challenge old media giants. (sure, it was easier for Ashton than any of us, but not impossible) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

My point is that he has entered a long race, done a few laps and is currently in front, but, what is his finish line? Having a large following on Twitter is a means, not an end. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Yup. Seeing what happens next will be very interesting. I'm optimistic, I have high hopes. - Bec Rowe @d0tski

@Mark: Don't know what his goals are. Probably a mix of things. That's kind of immaterial to me. In terms of monetization ... sure. He could send out a message to contribute to his mosquito net cause. There's a link. x% of people click link. x% contribute. Oprah can do the same with her newest book club selection. Followers are just a type of customer list (think email). They're just signing up for a personal brand. - AJ Kohn

Marketing and the common good and/or philanthropy are not mutually exclusive. I worked 8+ years doing fund raising (aka marketing) for education. [edit] And I try to work for places that have some positive cause (Alibris.com = books/literacy and Caring.com = eldercare) - AJ Kohn

AJ, did you read my post on that subject? Please don't equate Twitter with mailing lists. We don't want these old-school or even the newb marketers using the wrong techniques (auto-responders, etc.) LOL :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

@Rah: I have not, but I shall! Unfortunately, I think that's already happening. But again, there's a good way and a bad way to do that. Bad email marketers and great email marketers. I feel you though, the get rich quick fellas and squidoo pimpers are out in force already. - AJ Kohn

With you here Rahsheen. No hate on my part. Saw some people tweeting about the problems with that mosquito net charity. I wait for the perfect charitable org to emerge. Meantime, just get things going. - Hutch Carpenter

From what I've seen of him on this subject, it seems his main goal is to call attention to emerging technologies that help people communicate. But if he can boost himself a little in the process, no harm in that. Given the risk of total backlash its a gamble either way. May as well do something than nothing. - Tony, Paradox of FF

As for SM in general, I think it can be marketing, and in a lot of examples it is. But it certainly doesn't have to be, and in a lot more examples its just another form of communication. - Tony, Paradox of FF

hmmm .. Kutcher has 1 million followers ... Kutcher signed deal for a movie and tweets about the movie .. tweets about the making of the movie ... tweets about the opening of the movie .. one million ears/eyes hears about said movie ... one million followers go to movie .. yup built-in PR - gotta love it - Steven Hodson

Man's gotta eat, right? :) -- I was actually thinking about a post you wrote a while back that kinda has something to do with this. I'll have to try and figure out which one it was... - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

@Rahsheen - don't get me wrong I commend Ashton for building up a following the way he has and sure if he can use that at some point to benefit himself then all the more power to him I just felt that since people were asking how this could benefit him I would point out one of the way. That said something about this interests me and I'm currently going through much of his lead up to this (posts/video) to get a handle on it - probably be a post in it somewhere :) - oh and if you find the post let me know LOL - Steven Hodson

I tend to take the position of actors with a grain of salt. They do, after all, make their living pretending to be someone/ something they are not. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Rah, are you thinking of Marshall Kirkpatrick's "Twitter is Paying My Rent" post? http://marshallk.com/twitter... - Mike Doeff

@Rob having grown up in a family where my father was a writer and we often had actors and other "popular" types visiting I can tell you that your statement is to a very large degree off-base. Sure in some case it might be true but making a blanket statement like that is the same as saying Twitter is nothing but a cesspool of scummy marketers (sorry AJ couldn't resist :) ) - Steven Hodson

I used to be an actor, Steven, and I couldn't agree more. :) - Helen Sventitsky

@Steven Interacting w/ someone face-to-face is more likely a genuine interaction, an actor in front of a camera is (likely) a professional 'in their office.' (a cynical view for sure) That said, you are absolutely right, blanket statements can never be taken at face value. (except for that one...) - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

I think all of us would agree that your job does not make you who you are. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

@Rahsheen while it might be nice to think that I think there are examples that would prove otherwise - say the surgeon who thinks he/she is God and everything revolves around them ... the actor (head nod to Rob on this one) who becomes so locked into their own hype that they are nothing unless they are working. - Steven Hodson

sort of off topic (but not since it's about Ashton) does anyone have links to Ashton's videos about Twitter handy - Google is a mess with crap post links about his win over CNN <gag> - Steven Hodson

Definitely examples that prove otherwise, but we shouldn't automatically make assumptions about people based on their line of work. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I fall into the anti-assumption camp too, but I'll still take my 'grain of salt.' - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

as much as I would love to agree with you Rahsheen human nature dictates otherwise. It's a noted fact that we typically make all our assumption about a person based on the first 5 seconds of meeting that person. We spend the rest of the time either trying to prove those assumptions as correct, being surprised when they are wrong or for the majority just going with those initially assumptions. - Steven Hodson

@Steven: Ah, but you know I'm a marketer. I just have to change your adjective choice when you speak about me personally. Trust me, there are scads (great word I think) of scummy marketers. They give good ones a bad rap. - AJ Kohn

Rahsheen, I'm 100% on @aplusk's side. Twitter is coming of age. I agree that Ashton gets it, but now there are plenty of other dipping their feet into the Twitter pool for the first time. This is what coming of age is all about. Unlike Facebook, Twitter makes sense after you get in and play with it for awhile. So I say congrats @aplusk and congrats @ev. - Mike Reynolds

Mike Nayyar

Eat Jesus In a Kit Kat - http://i.gizmodo.com/5209233...

April 12 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Josh Haley, Jared Smith, Tony, Paradox of FF and 8 other people liked this

OMG I TOTALLY SEE IT - Mike Nayyar from Bookmarklet

8 more comments

When you see it, you'll shit bricks. - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

++ Jonathan hahaha, can't stop laughing. - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

definitely wrongmodo - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

He looks so disappointed. Probably because he's a zombie who has manifested in a candy bar. - Penguin It's Cold Outside

Awesome. He looks pissed. - Lisa L. Seifert

Now see, to me if anything it looks like the Transformers icon. - Tony, Paradox of FF

JESUS IS COMING!!!! And he's not pulling out, ZOMG. - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

Jesus is coming...quick look busy! - Cardeen Martinez

Looks more like MCP from Tron to me. - Josh Haley

Robert Scoble

I just realized hash tags are dead, er, less relevant than they were last week. #hashtagsaredead I gotta write up a blog post about why. Or you could speculate here:

April 9 - Comment - Like - Share

Donovan Watts, Jamie, Haim Schlesinger and 92 other people liked this

Hashtags are used to group things of common interest. Like all items from a conference. But, do we really need them now in an age of great grouping and filtering like we have here on friendfeed? - Robert Scoble

253 more comments

They've been dead for some time. Track makes them unnecessary - Ken Sheppardson

Dead? I think they're around on Twitter not as often, but they're still alive! - Shane Adams

Shane: first thing you gotta realize when a pundit says something is "dead" is that it doesn't mean they go away, just that thing become less relevant than they are today. - Robert Scoble

They are generally not needed. Just search on the same term and save a character. - xero

Yes, because more people are on Twitter and Facebook - for now - Steve Rubel

I know for me personally after I post an update I am like crap I should have #hashed xyz. It is not an involuntary action yet. It may never. - Michael woodard

were they ever really alive to begin with? Nobody can decide on which tag to use for a concept half the time, so you end up with multiple tags for the same thing, which sort of defeats it ... - Michele Neylon

Yeah, they are useful for comedic effect, but not much else. At least not on friendfeed. - Alex Scoble

#hashtagsaredead - Ryan Kuder

If Yahoo would get off it's duff and imbue Delicious with some statusness and conversationalizingness, we wouldn't need to hack Twitter with hastags. Then again, if Twitter would separate out tags and links from 140 characters, we wouldn't need Delicious. - Kawika Holbrook

Steve: right, but I bet that Twitter gets conversation threading eventually and Facebook already has better ways to tag content. - Robert Scoble

And, anyway, since friendfeed is an addon to Twitter, in this respect (this post went to Twitter) we get grouping of common items here. No hashtag needed. Oh, and you can search on any word in any of these comments and find this thread. - Robert Scoble

what is the percentage of 100% accuracy with hash tags? how many people who do know the hash actually use it? for me 'concept' filter, zeroing in on the sweet spot is best (for me) take #swf09 - how many people who were twittering about the Skoll World Forum 09 actually got it, used it most of the time? some of the time? only once? Skoll seems pretty right on to me, so i just filter Skoll - unique enough to pluck it out of the stream. Gets much more difficult with wider targets but can be done with + or - - michael sean wright

Don't count Twitter hashtags out yet...they came in handy in our local situation here in Australia. We did have one slight problem with some teenage bright spark hijacking the #bushfires stuff to a @bushfires group. Otherwise it was still very active for us back in February. Hashtags highly relevant in emergency situations. How they work on FriendFeed, someone else will have to tell me about. - George Hall (Australia)

"user tagging" will keep being relevant until machines can infer these tags themselves. They really can't at this moment. Normal search engines are still doing keyword-matching. - Meryn Stol

#bitchtlips will live forever - sofarsoShawn

So you're at a conference where you've never met half of the folks there. Sure you know your friends at table and have access to their feeds, but what about the table two over? If they don't use the name of the conference, your name, the name of the speaker or something that orients the feed toward the common experience, how will you know what's being said? The hashtag still seems relevant in that context. - Michael Sommermeyer

Did they ever have value? Twitter Search is certainly set up not to need them so long as you just use a common identifier term. - Pete Mortensen

# not dead until I can click on any word in a post and get the search results. only hash'd words are clickable. - John Treadway

They are dead because they were always stupid and because people make them up and other people can never find them I HOPE they are dead. - Francine Hardaway

Pete: yeah, they did, especially for events. That way everyone would see you are explicitly wanting to join the tag for that event. - Robert Scoble

Used to be a good way of 'tagging' keywords for easy search. But if the common subject is mentioned clearly in a conversation (eg. 'social media' vs #socialmedia) then agree, its days are numbered. Particularly the trend as online conversationalists move beyond Twitter. - schmediachick

I just lost a fight with Twitter search and http://tr.im today, trying in vain to locate an old link I forgot to ALSO save on Delicious. Even FriendFeed is fallow when it comes to historical organization. I miss Swurl's calendar-based timelines. This is so "in the moment" that there doesn't seem to be as much attention paid to "where's that link from that thing that happened last month that I now need for something coming up this very moment." - Kawika Holbrook

Kawika how do you use delicious in junction with Twitter? - Bryan Lee

Michael: conferences in the future will embed a friendfeed thread in their sites. Look at how many comments are here. Watch this live. It's amazing. - Robert Scoble

There's still some use of hashtags on Twitter and a few other services. Others have something similar to hashtags, which you might consider the same. But for the most part, I have to agree: hashtags are dying, and the reason for that is because we're getting much better with searching and filtering content. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... Here's the permalink for this item. Once you have that you can watch all the comments flow in live and you do NOT need hashtags anymore. - Robert Scoble

Hash tags enable intelligent indexing of Twitter. And (not so) subtle humor. #ScobleIsWrongAgain :-) - Brent Logan

Brent: Twitter is dead. Because if you want REAL indexing in live time of a conversation about a social object this is WAY BETTER than Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Keyword matching on the message is really not up to par with what's possible with tagging. - Meryn Stol

Meryn: you are absolutely wrong. Here, search on this in the next minute or so: foopoo - Robert Scoble

foopoo is already indexed in search. Wow. http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Hashtags dead because no clearinghouse on what they mean. They get co-opted and perverted to generate follows and reads. And Twitter search tools have improved massively in short time. Readable tags take up too much of my 140. Short ones are not obvious. - Wilford

Hashtags are now most likely used just to get more followers in same interest if that even!. I have seen people misuse hashtags , for example "I Love my dog #iphone" wtf has dog to do with an iphone or how much you love your dog.... you know what I mean? Anyways i use tweetgrid.com for clearing things out and don't pay attention to tweetdeck or so to say twitscoop anymore. - Live Crunch Blog

What a cool way to get help writing your blog post... where were you earlier today when I was having brainfreeze? - Kathy Colaiacovo

Well I think the foopoo example sorta ended this argument - Matsis

Yes, that's keyword matching. So what's the big deal? Hashtags are merely a way to add keywords to a piece of content the "#" denotes that it should not be read as part of a sentence, but that they are just some extra keywords. - Meryn Stol

So using Friendfeed with twitter eliminates the need for hashtags, essentially? - Derek Schauland

Kathy: everything changes now that we have live display. - Robert Scoble

God, does it ever! - Kathy Colaiacovo

Kathy: everything changes now that we have live indexing. - Robert Scoble

Derek: yes. - Robert Scoble

Matsis: foopoo was indexed in less than five seconds. It used to take a minute for the indexer to work. Freaking amazing. - Robert Scoble

but this requires a single source? hashtags come from lots of places. - Jonathan Hopkins

Live / non-live is a separate issue. Hash-tags might not be real-time also... - Meryn Stol

and you get so used to it! I was on a live chat (supposedly) last week - but they were moderating the comments... and the delay was so annoying to most of the participants. It's an on-demand world now - Kathy Colaiacovo

Meryn: you aren't getting it. If you want to create a tag, you can do it here. I just created foopoo and now search works on that. No need to create an ugly tag. - Robert Scoble

Hashtags are pretty much just tags for your tweets - Chris Martin

Sweet sweet the live view works on the iPhone! - Bryan Lee

Wrong: I like making up really fun & zany ones: #robertscobleshotshit!WHoo!!!!!YEAH!!!!!!WootWOOT!!!!!!!! - sofarsoShawn

There's only one reason for hashtags now: To mark something as being related to something else not explicitly mentioned in a post, and point out that marking. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

And, because our conversation here is grouped all together you don't need a hashtag to create a thread. - Robert Scoble

I hate this "this is dead, that is dead" crap. They work for some things, for others they don't. Move along people there's nothing to see here. - Jeremy Armer

Twitter does real-time search just fine. Anything you type in a tweet, including "foopoo" can be searched on. - Meryn Stol

I do agree though - searches have changed and the # seems irrelevant now. - Kathy Colaiacovo

Robert, "Twitter is dead" is a different argument than hash tags are dead. FriendFeed is a different animal with it's own advantages and disadvantages, but as long as Twitter is alive, so will be hash tags. - Brent Logan

If you can work in what you'd tag as context into your actual post, you don't need hashtags. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

By the way I still am wondering why Gabe Rivera didn't add LC for aggregation on techmeme, even tho atul and other ppl are sending tips to #techmeme - Live Crunch Blog

Brent: Not true. Twitter's real-time search means hash tags aren't needed for Twitter either. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

hashtags are a hack. I've been saying this forever: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

Brent: Twitter will copy friendfeed. Mark my words. If they don't, Twitter is dead. - Robert Scoble

The concept is good (esp. for event listings) - but there needs to be ONE place to go to register them so you don't end up with 10 other ppl using yours. But it is out of control on Twitter - some people have 3 in every post - where is the content? - Robyn Hawk

jeremy: saying something is "dead" causes you to pay attention. Sorry, but this is provable and is why this technique is used so often. - Robert Scoble

Here in the Portland Oregon areas we use #pdxtst (Portland Twitter Storm Team) to tweet about weather conditions. No form of search can replace it. - Brent Logan

Hashtags served their purpose early on and were the tool of Twitterati in the know. It's like anything that trends... It's cool until the grown-ups arrive. And now with Twitter's growth, the grown-ups have indeed arrived. Once the grown-ups arrive and start using something to forward an agenda it dies. - matt

Brent: you could just include pdxtst in a message. you can find it by doing a search for it. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I hope Twitter does adopt FriendFeed style conversations. I still see value in hash tags. - Brent Logan

http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... Here's all items with pdxtst included in them. - Robert Scoble

http://beta.friendfeed.com/filter... pdxtst filter - Christian Burns

Hashtags are machine language which is unnecessary. I talked about it last week. http://www.louisgray.com/live... - Louis Gray

Robert, in other words, you'd prefer I embedded gibberish in my messages for search purposes, just don't prepend them with a hash? - Brent Logan

now you tell me... - Ecosaveology

Excellent point John - it is convenient to be able to click on the hashtag words! - Robyn Hawk

Hashtags can be useful if everyone in the group that uses them agrees on a single tag. Poeplebrowsr makes interesting use of them by making groups ot of the people that use them. But, as said above #mosthastagsaresilly just ask the #hashtagmafia ;) #jesseisrighttheyareahack - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Brent: tell me how this would be improved if everyone had to post #hashtagdiscussion to join in this comment thread? Note that you don't need to do that anymore to have your comment grouped with other people's on a common topic. - Robert Scoble

I think hashtags must be ironic #butyouknewthat - Alan Thornton

Scoble but the search results doesn't have a live view or doesn't poll like Twitter search. - Bryan Lee

Bryan: yeah, I know. That's getting fixed by the friendfeed team. We asked about that last week at the press conference. - Robert Scoble

Also once someone has entered the tag into a discussion, and then I comment or like it, It's part of my discussions page - Christian Burns

Bryan Lee, I attempt to tag articles I like for posterity in Delicious and then -- if they may be of interest to others -- share them in Twitter. The former is indexed storage and the latter is quick conversation. I stills struggle with Twitter and FriendFeed as a repository of knowledge and sentiment. Hashtags were meant to give some structure to Twitter. Ultimately, however, it still feels like the Wild West. - Kawika Holbrook

Imagine if every post on here had to include #hashtagsRdead - Christian Burns

Robert, you're missing my point. Tags are very useful for searching topics, even in the absence of a continuing conversation. It's author-intended indexing. Blog posts use tags. They just have a special field for doing it. If FriendFeed or Twitter allowed for a special tag field, I'd love it. It would be prettier than hash tags. But it hasn't happened yet, so calling hash tags dead is premature. - Brent Logan

Brent: yes, but see I would only have to put a hashtag at the top node, and everyone does NOT need to include the hashtag individually anymore to join in. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I agree. Hash tags are ugly for enabling conversations. That's not their only purpose, though. - Brent Logan

Brent: I just changed the headline that started this to include a hashtag. - Robert Scoble

Robert: or someone could insert the hashtag into just one of the comments - Christian Burns

Sorry, I'm a little confused. This is like a chat room. A hashtag on Twitter is aggregating independent thoughts, no? Apples and oranges? - Catherine Ventura

Ha! #ScobleizerIsFunny - Brent Logan

The one purpose they really do server at this point, Robert is to make a searchable term out of a more commonly used word so that search does NOT pull up unintended tweets. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

kawika never thought to share my delicious links on Twitter. I just have friendfeed handle that. - Bryan Lee

Here's the search that pulls up all items with the tag #hashtagsaredead http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... See, now no body needs to include that hashtag in their comment to be grouped in here. On Twitter they'd still need to use the hashtag. Oh, and notice how I can add a tag AFTER the fact to make something more searchable here! - Robert Scoble

Wait... hashtags are dead? What about !groups and @#tagfamilies?? - Ken Sheppardson

Never used them or liked them. Get more results searching for normal words because no one actually remembers to add the hashtag - BCK

Hashtags are very useful in lots of different contexts (local, relevance, mimicking behavior), but they are not the sole method and definitely not intuitive enough for mass adoption - Tiffany Winman

Meh. #scoblesayingitdoesntmakeittrue - Suburban Oblivion

Robert, imagine a TV channel wants to start a live discussion on twitter. It says: "guys, use the hashtag #xxx". Now, it can watch only updates with this hashtag; making just a live search for "xxx" would be false - there would be so much noise. - Konstantin

Ken LOL - Jesse Stay

They're not dead. Yea, you could save a character by not using the # sign, but that could lead to confusion depending on what the tag is. Same with not using @ before someone's username... fine if you're @Scobleizer, not so fine if you're @John. On Laconi.ca, you can subscribe to hashtags (different from subscribing to a keyword), which is convenient for event attendees. - Marina Martin

Catherine: Twitter is a chat room too. Just because it doesn't look like one doesn't mean it isn't. It's been a chat room for me for years. - Robert Scoble

Marina, you can use ! to exclude items I believe - Jesse Stay

Marina: OK, they are dead for a lot of things that they are being used for today, but not totally dead. :-) - Robert Scoble

Dead or dying? I'm usually late to most trends so if I haven't started yet it's probably not dead. Maybe. - CAJ, somewhere else

Marina: notice how i changed the headline here to be more accurate. That's something you can't do on Twitter, either. (refresh this page). - Robert Scoble

Robert: Touche! But its a very big room... and this is a dedicated closet - Catherine Ventura

Robert I don't understand this. maybe it's late and I'm being silly but hashtags are to bring together lots of people in one place. this is a single thread, started by you. - Jonathan Hopkins

Catherine: Oh, we can start lots of offshoots. - Robert Scoble

Jonathan: this is lots of people "in one place." No difference. This is like me saying "here's a hashtag" let's talk. - Robert Scoble

Posted my thoughts on this: http://coldacid.net/blog... (Did I beat you to it, Robert?) - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

It's machine language. Don't understand why people use it -- Twitter's trend algorithm catches keywords with or without hashtags. I just do it because it's funny. #WhoCares. :) - Mona Nomura

but it's a place created by one person. hashtags help create a single place, created by lots of people no? - Jonathan Hopkins

I'm digging this live view can't wait till it's out of beta! - Bryan Lee

Jonathan: OK, I get that. So, go start another thread on friendfeed and post the URL here. Now we'll have two places all tied together. No hashtag needed. - Robert Scoble

I agree w/ Brent that Twitter should just include a field for 2 or 3 tags and not count it toward the 140 char limit. I guess this would break the SMS functionality though. Then again, they're not clickable in text messages so they're just taking up space in most SMS messages anyway. - Jeremy Armer

Chris: you beat me. I might not even do a blog post. :-) Maybe blogs are dead too! :-) - Robert Scoble

Since we ARE talking hashtags, one thing I WOULD like to see is something in the Twitter system NOT reading anything hashtagged as part of the 140-character limit. Again, where that helps is in emergency uses of Twitter and other micro-blogging apps. More room for the real information, and meaning you could use more than one hashtag. Anyone thought of that before today? - George Hall (Australia)

Jeremy: Twitter will never do THAT. Why? Because it makes Twitter far more complex. - Robert Scoble

George: that would be a cool way to handle hashtags. Too bad that Twitter is still chasing scaling problems and not able to use its developers for building new features. They will fix that eventually, though. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Agreed, simplicity is Twitter's "killer app". - Jeremy Armer

Robert: Blogs aren't dead, yet. Wait for FriendFeed to uncap the length of a post and add inline links and images. :D - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

;-) For sure - but then I have to post the URL back in here - a hashtag does that automatically. with or without the # - having one word to unify distributed content is useful right? focus should be on search and the language we are creating together on here. friendfeed, twitter, whatever - this is all the groundwork for the language of the live web, no? PS good chat, loving this view on FF - Jonathan Hopkins

ROBERT! LOL!! - Mona Nomura

Robert: And I'd suggest write up a post anyway. You do a much better job at blogging than I do, and probably have a different viewpoint. Even if it's only a little different, it helps expand everyone's view of the matter. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Robert, you hit the nail on the head. Anytime Twitter is used for anything other than sending and replying to messages, it complicates the intended simplicity. I've only seen hashtags work great in intimate settings, but on bigger scales, it loses it's desired effects. - Mike Lewis

Jonathan: You have a point there. The "@user" convention has spread far beyond Twitter. - Jeremy Armer

Hash tags are still useful on Twitter because not all posts concerning a particular subject contain the subject in question. Not everybody follows everybody on Twitter so using hash tags is a good way to find those subjects. Smaller groups use hash tags to coordinate their conversations and make search easier. - Aulia Masna

Hash tags aren't dead. If anything I think they are growing. I've seen more people using them since the election that before. - ChiliMac

Chris: you tease you. I can't wait for the day I can put a 4,000-word blob up into friendfeed. Jonathan: you really don't need to even put the URL back in here. You just need to use the same word or set of words in the top level to join them together. For instance, why write #w2e when you really just mean "I'm attending the Web 2.0 Expo." Here, search on Web 2.0 Expo now and see what happens. - Robert Scoble

Here's a search for "Web 2.0 Expo." http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... Notice that I didn't need to use a lame ass hashtag to join together lots of conversations. - Robert Scoble

fundamentally a hashtag eliminates more than it adds. using #wine eliminates confusing a convo about wines with "love the new wine colored lipstick" - Catherine Ventura

Hashtags were always a kluge. Threading + fabulous search makes them unnecessary. - Eric Johnson

uhhh... what's a kluge? - Catherine Ventura

While I'm in a talkative mood today...giving the Australian bushfires back in February as an example, we utilized hashtags thusly: #bushfires for main general information. #vicfires and #nswfires for the information relevant to the two states which had bushfires at that time, Victoria and New South Wales. #fireupdates for more specific types of info. #firecomments for condolence messages, keeeping them off the main hashtags. We tended to treat the hashtags more like channels back then. - George Hall (Australia)

Catherine: that's a good point. But if you are talking about wine, you probably have some modifiers that make sense. So if I search for "wine and merlot" I bet I will only get back discussions about wine, not about lipstick. Also, friendfeed lets you search for "wine" and then subtract out anything that mentions lipstick. - Robert Scoble

OK thanks! - bit clearer now. Twitter does the same thing without #tags but crucial difference is the presentation of results as individual tweets versus conversation threads you can jump into. - Jonathan Hopkins

Catherine: here's a search for all items that include the word "wine" but that do NOT include the word "lipstick." http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Robert, your "foopoo" example IS a tag without a designator as tag. The purpose of a #tag isn't to FIND, but to TELL others where something is to be found. It's an ad hoc channel, not a query. - Shoq

Kluge = a clunky work-around. A hack. But there's still so much blurt going on on Twitter that hashtags will be with us for some time yet, I'll bet. - Eric Johnson

In fact, this item is NOT included in that search because it includes the word "lipstick." Friendfeed filtering really rocks and we haven't even started using it yet. - Robert Scoble

BUT - using a #tag is a way of someone labeling their content because they want it to be found, rather than letting someone just find it. Plus - it helps fuel pre-filtered (to some extent, minus the spam/opportunists) feeds to be mashed up with other stuff - Jonathan Hopkins

Shoq: I sort of got that. Which is why I included an official hashtag in my headline above. That way you can see that we're specifically going to tag things here. Also, it will let Twitterers use that tag and join in the conversation. - Robert Scoble

By the way, Robert, I claim first dibs the idea on having hashtags outside the 140-character limit. - George Hall (Australia)

Robert: nice, but identical to google, fundamentally, and we have to anticipate that wine is a fashion forward lipstick color. But what if it's your street name? Or your last name? Or you are mispelling the sound your children make when they want to watch TV? I wouldn't write off the power of the "secret decoder ring" magic of a hashtag just yet... - Catherine Ventura

Jonathan: if I want you to find a conversation about wine I bet it will be found if I just discuss wine. Here, let's see if this works. Damn, it does work: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

so wine is the hashtag (just without the #) ;) . . . . . - Jonathan Hopkins

Catherine: well, if I do a search for wine and find lipstick I know something is wrong and Google has already trained me to try a different search. :-) How many people know how Google works? Billions. How many people know about hashtags? Maybe 20 million. - Robert Scoble

And thanks for saying "doesn't mean it's dead." But anyway, so if the tag does dual duty, it's not dead, but merely being reassigned to a more useful and formalized role. - Shoq

Jonathan: now you're getting why I realized that hashtags are dead, or at least, a whole lot less relevant from now on. I still might use them here and there, but I am not forced to, like I am on Twitter, to join a conversation together. - Robert Scoble

Robert: pretty good. only anomaly was an appliance list by stephanie with a "wine cooler" - Catherine Ventura

Catherine: here, let's get rid of the cooler: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Robert: pretty good but there were some crystal wine glasses. Still, impressive... - Catherine Ventura

Um, sort of . . . i think though there will always be a 'word' that people agree to use to lump content together and help each other identify it without question from other content that *might* be relevant. But, yep -=reckon we agree that there's no real need for the # anymore. so, it comes down to tags then - which is all over the web and that comes back to my thoughts re the fact we are just creating a live web language together here. And well done you for getting conversations like this going . . . ! - Jonathan Hopkins

I think #hashtags, like Tweets, are amorphous and will be used by people how they need/want to use them. - Jeremy Armer

Maybe it's not death but evolution? Hashtags were useful in the way they were used in Twitter (and well before that). Technology and knowhow have improved to practically make a tagless hash. I could search for the word "the" if I wanted to. Or perhaps "teh" but who would ever think to hashtag that? - CAJ, somewhere else

Jeremy: That's exactly what I think - Chris Martin

Chris: you can edit comments (or delete them) if you make a mistake. I can delete them too, under items that I started. So, I'll delete your extra one in a few seconds if you don't. - Robert Scoble

Okay, now what about getting a specific date range in FF searches? Specific format? - George Hall (Australia)

Tags define a community. Those #Tcot and #teaparty and #idol people cannot be served by an arbitrary "track" query. They are both tools with very different uses. - Shoq

Oh, THAT is another reason why hashtags are dead: they will be used by spammers. But HERE we can delete and block spammers. - Robert Scoble

Wait. Robert are you saying you can censor the comments you don't like? Interesting! - CAJ, somewhere else

Shoq: good point. Alan: yes, I can. But I won't. Can you guess why I won't censor your comments? - Robert Scoble

Cuz you like people's opinions, even if they're different? Because you're not China? I give. - CAJ, somewhere else

Robert: Because he would start a "Scoble censors FF comments!" thread? - Jeremy Armer

At least we've lost the old IRC commands, like /join #Scoble - Catherine Ventura

hashtags are often misused or abused - Kim Landwehr

Hashtags are great when you are having a conversation on Twitter on a topic. Dead? Hardly. Lots of people are just figuring them out. And while plenty of techies know how to filter and use friend feed for conversations, face it, it's the minority of users. - Peggy Dolane

You can also "censor" out/block spammers in Twitter, too. It's only on your particular computer, so everyone else still sees the annoyances. - George Hall (Australia)

Jeremy is right: http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... - Robert Scoble

i never know what are the right hashtags to use - Nicholas

The spam issue is probably the best argument against them. I can block spammers on Twitter but I can't stop them from littering all over tags I watch. Nick: I never know the right ones either. - Jeremy Armer

I can see Robert's point, though. One of the things that killed off Yahoo Groups was the fact they eventually filled with spambots, etc. Now that's all you ever find in a Yahoo chat room - George Hall (Australia)

Another advantage of the known tag signifier is that people can decide on the fly what attentions they want to route an item to without an interface. - Shoq

right. the yahoo groups were fixed. less flexible. We can still, in effect, say, "quick, go to channel 3"... - Catherine Ventura

the point about spammers spoiling hash tags is valid -- however they only seem to be a real problem for trending topics, smaller group conversations appear to be immune thus far in my experience. - Peggy Dolane

George, that is true about chat, but the follow concept alters that paradigm significantly. You can determine who is in the flow, to some extent, and even enough extent for many people (as some like the noise seepage that gets in.) - Shoq

so what about 'invisible #tags' that don't form part of your 140? much like tags in blog posts only even less visible without clicking through. Other stuff could be added . . . location, mood, timezone, authority, etc etc - all improving search results using the meta data manually/automatically assigned to your tweets/comments/threads whatever - Jonathan Hopkins

Jonathan: I think the main issue w/ that is the 140 character simplicity is what makes it so customizable. I can make a Twitter app that works any way I want. When features get added, it complicates the process and narrows the possibilities. - Jeremy Armer

Jonathan, all true, but not while anyone is pretending to live within the 160 SMS limitation (twitter reserves 20 for name). That's the problem there. - Shoq

Jeremy: for sure. Simplicity is key - it's what it doesn't do etc . . . but I reckon there's a few things that will need to be done to deal with the scale and maintain value for everyone. - Jonathan Hopkins

That proves the power of a thread. It's getting interestingly long. In my view, hashtags are cool, but they're represented here as the post's thread itself (that could've been with some tagging-system prior to filtering). The hashtag could've been treated as a shortener, as "This post went to FF #ff51x32" but FriendFeed went for that by linking to the discussion itself so. Hashtags are nice to explore the twitter world as you can find, I'm sure, any of those used words for any case. - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

Jonathan: it's like back in the day when you called someone collect and they refused to pay. It was a free call to signal something. With an 'invisible' hashtag, I could technically write a very long tweet. #sothisishowtogetaroundthelimitof140characterstakethattwitter. :) - CAJ, somewhere else

Shoq: definitely Alan: ;-) - Jonathan Hopkins

Alan, I'd really love to see that long a hashtag actually work in a Twitter client... - George Hall (Australia)

Everyone wants the 140 do more. I think they're great. They force concision, point to payload, and all but crush feature-creep. We shouldn't call them "updates." They're "headers." - Shoq

Well, I tried #testtoseehowlongahashtagcanbeandificanactuallyuseupallthecharactersthatareallowedwillnotusepunctuationtobreakanythingupjustincaseicannot and it allowed it. Of course...I used up my character limit. - CAJ, somewhere else

twirl, btw. Jus' sayin'. - CAJ, somewhere else

Doesn't really matter if things are hashtagged or not in the grand scheme of searching capabilities. - Elizabeth Parmeter

I liked how you got that #hashtagfromhellandback to go outside the lines Alan. #nicework #deservesprize - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Shoq: I agree, w/o the 140 character limit most Tweets would be as boring as most blogs are. - Jeremy Armer

Rob: That was surprisingly hard to type. I'm WAY too used to proper punctuation, spacing, etc. No wonder I'm enjoying FF! - CAJ, somewhere else

I'm still noticing one thing with the FriendFeed searches...if I want a set of feeds from a specific date, I'm still scratching my head on how to do that. Merely inputing one single time like "Feb. 7 only brings up anything with that date in the title or text, not what I specifically want, which is all feeds in that search ON or between certain dates. - George Hall (Australia)

George: that's a good feature request. - Robert Scoble

Egad, my second bright idea of the day... - George Hall (Australia)

But it's a clear need. Can't find anything in the FriendFeed search that helps pin down specific periods. If I want to look back over feeds from all the first week of February, at present it's go through heaps of back pages or hit and miss. That's a much-need feature. - George Hall (Australia)

George: It is indeed. Suggest it in friendfeed-feedback and friendfeed-beta, hopefully Paul & co. will add it (and sooner rather than later). - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Alan: I totally understand. I have a hard time with just tweets, because I like to be clear, and as well "spoken" as possible, and like to use punctuation to provide emphasis that would be the if I spoke what I wrote. But I do appreciate how character limits get me to think in shorter, more powerful phrases. (LinkedIn profile was WAY hard to do!) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

To Chris...suggested it in Feedback. Done. - George Hall (Australia)

#hashtags are inanimate objects. how can they be dead... or alive? ;-P - .LAG liked that

George: Awesome! LAG: Oh, you... :D - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Hash Tags will continue to be useful for groups of people - paul mooney

Adequate search capabilities make any form of tagging irrelevant. - rob friedman

keyword is "adequate." I find that unless a search facility can take into account synonyms (as Google's can) it's probably not going to be adequate. My biggest problem: searching for "mission" and coming up with diplomatic missions, or searching for "missionary" and NOT coming up with religious work, but something vastly different! - Justin Long

Well only the smart people it seems know to quantify their search by using the primary search term, and then 2-4 or more words which help narrow things down. Let's not search for root latin words in google. - rob friedman from twhirl

A generic search will yield a generic result. A more thought out search query is likely to yield something specific or nothing at all. - rob friedman from twhirl

Are there any hard numbers on the use of hashtags on Twitter over the last twelve months? A simple trendline graph? - Sean McBride

Fascinating that something "dead" can inspire such a discussion! ;) Srsly though, when I came up with hashtags (http://tr.im/fj_hashtags) they were proposed as a way to provide on-the-go context with zero overhead. If your tag got picked up and used, great! If not, welcome to the longtail! I find hashtags useful in heterogeneous/cross-network situations --or via SMS when conference wifi sucks. They were never intended as a final solution, but as a convenient, transparent stop-gap, still find them useful. - Chris Messina

Also, consider how #pman was used to stage protests in Maldova: http://tr.im/maldova. They didn't use FriendFeed groups for that. - Chris Messina

I'm quite happy to do a search w/o hash tags. Sometimes, I have to OR several possible terms, but it doesn't particularly bother me. - Seth Greenblatt

Hashtags can be useful for including descriptive metadata about text which is not evident in the text itself. There are many valuable uses that should be evident if one gives the matter a moment's thought. - Sean McBride

By the way, where's that guy who thought nobody uses FriendFeed? He's proven wrong again. Do we have a hashtag for him? - George Hall (Australia)

George: #arringtonyoufool :D - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

The best reason to use hashtags are for sarcastic remarks #Icantfindmysockssoitmustbemonday - Matthew Sauer

Matt: we need you in the #hashtagmafia #natualhashman #jointhefun - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Chris Messina--thanks for jumping in with some sanity. ;-). Trying to make a call on what's dead is dead, so lets stop. As long as 140-character text messages continue to dominate and grow, hashtags will always be around. Folks like to annotate (that is, add metadata) things and hashtags are a lightweight, simple way to do that. If anything, Maldova should be a wake-up call regarding this. Hey--what about best practices about how, when and when not to use hashtags? - Albert Willis

Whoa! Slow down the # hate train! While I acknowledge that its a lazy way of finding and grouping content for human search and consumption, I use them extensively within the enterprise to aggregate content for knowledge management purposes. Lets not start the "just say no" campaign just yet. - jcunwired

It's not about #hashtags, it's about structured metadata for the Semantic Web, of which hashtags are just a small subset and primitive type. Why Robert Scoble is probably wrong about this: let him name a search engine which can identify and separate the pro-hashtag from the anti-hashtag comments in this discussion. #hashtags+ - Sean McBride

Ok so if they're dead then why are people still using them? And is there really a replacement that can work just as well? (No, friendfreed groups don't count since it's outside of Twitter). Twitter Search does to some degree, but hashtags are great to group content that may not have mentioned a searchable term otherwise. - R. Alexander Spoerer

I think short and useful hashtags will be great for taxonomy of microblogging. - Alp

I think hashtags are what FF needs to incorporate to make the filters truly useful. Allow community tagging (with approval) and you get more useful organizing of data. Search for Roku vs. #Roku to get an idea. - Kevin Kuphal

"Rooms" can be used for tagging. Any message can be addressed to one or more rooms as well as your public feed. FriendFeed is different from Twitter in the sense that you can post messages to rooms without posting it your own feed. On Twitter, everything appears in your own feed. It's a must. - Meryn Stol

sms compatible public micromessages are the tightest, most basic communications platform we have. it is only going to become more ubiquitous. in-line tags indicate relevance, and allow for permission-less participation in something while you are typing. they are human-prefiltering and they can be used anywhere you type. this is only going to become more important overtime. this is standards level not service level issue. search and in-line tags will co-exist and integrate together. - Michael Lewkowitz

Excellent analysis by Michael Lewkowitz. Robert needs to reexamine this subject. - Sean McBride

oh I thought hashtags were being celebrated in growing semantic web - is that not the case any more? #hashtagsaredead - Julian Edward

Julian -- Robert had a sudden gust of "inspiration." :) - Sean McBride

I didn't know people were using hashtags for conversations. What I like tags for is so you can browse a pre-existing taxonomy of what people find important at a concept level. Tag clouds. You can't do a general word cloud because there's too many and it takes too much semantic knowledge to map to equivalence classes. By a community using RoR, for example, as a tag then you can browse and easily find all Ruby on Rails posts without already having to know all possible forms of RoR. - Todd Hoff

I think its on the way but we're not there yet. If you search for a term on twitter and dont use a hash, then you will get thousands of minor relevant terms. Using hash tags at least lets the educated user let you know the central theme of the tweet. (i really do hate that term, so i must be getting old). Sites like friendfeed are setting the standard for true real time search... more... - James Ketchell

Hashtags cut through a massive amount of irrelevant clutter. - Sean McBride

In an extremely inefficient way that also looses a lot of relevant items. - JP Maxwell

It doesn't lose any relevant items -- one is free to search on the full text of documents in tandem with metadata. - Sean McBride

Hashtags aren't necessary in a world of full-text indexing, but they impose a small amount of keyword discipline. And they make it a lot easier to track a multi-part conversation. I think as Twitter grows they become much more useful. - Jeff Newfeld

So I guess what we're agreeing here is that hashtags are de-hashed, we use tags or keywords. Just like we did before Twitter appeared. - Jon Lebkowsky

I agree with jeff. It differentiates text search from what the actual content is about. I don't wanna search all text, justbyhose conversations that are relvant to this subject. And follow Friday is an excellent example of this. - Roberto Bonini

To many people are looking at hashtags in the context of a a FriendFeed user. But hashtags are only relevant in the Twitter world. A # tag give a 1 charecter symbol letting whom ever is reading the tweet that the following charracters represent a search/subject term. This prevents confusion. Look at it this way if I ending a tweet with "Robert Scoble" people might thing I'm directing my... more... - ChiliMac

Wow so much to sort through however I have to completely disagree in the context of Twitter usage. IMO, hashtags are not dead. Their use and purpose has just evolved. They are no longer relevant for search however are a mechanism for grouping. Pitch a topic and a hashtag will naturally form to focus the topic and keep conversation on point. - Rob Jensen

I think they just help people search. Click on the hashtag and see the search. Otherwise keywords are searchable in any event with the hashtag. - Bill Romanos

tags won't die. hashtags might, tho. - MikeAmundsen

I keep forgetting to use hashtags. People should just search for keywords of interest to them. - Morton Fox

A recent hashtag, #iagaymarriage, is being used effectively for information exchange, meetings, etc. Here, it's very efficient to agree on a single term for this purpose. - Stan Scott

I never really used them. - Ernie Oporto

If everyone comes to a spontaneous consensus about a hashtag (e.g. #followfriday), it works. Hashtags start out used by a few and get adopted by more...if it's useful and makes sense. - CAJ, somewhere else

Hash tags are speaking machine language - Jeremiah Owyang

germans still love them - kosmar

Tagging tweets has for a long time been something I thought would add value to Twitter. Hashtags may be a convenient solution for some to organize conversations, but they're 1) ugly and 2) take up space. Being able to tag tweets would empower Search.Twitter. Many users may think hashtags are the same as tags, but tags offer true metadata. It would be in Twitter's interest to roll out tagging sooner rather than later imo. - phil baumann

http://hashtags.org are not dead. Far from it. Happy #followfriday!! - Garin Kilpatrick

hashtags should be dead. they're space-consuming and redundant. - Karoli

Not to mention the work that goes into making them uniform for a particular event. Small I know, but still an issue. - Angela

yeah, I've never really been able to get into 'em... the #followfriday one is the only one I've been able to ever type... - Krikit Media

I still think people are too lazy to remember to work their keyword into a post on Twitter and while this feed stream is cool, I don't see how every event will remember to create a FF stream on their website. Plus, how do I pick up on that if I'm sitting in room with only my BlackBerry or iPhone? It's kind of essential to be able to use these tools in the form their were intended at the moment. Twitter is SMS. FF is a web stream. #BlackBerry #iPhone #FF #Twitter #socialmedia #haveipissedyouoffyet? - Michael Sommermeyer

Robert, PLEASE write up a post on this and deflect some of this criticism that keeps getting heaped on me. I don't think I explained it well enough and my misinterpretations seems to have gotten a lot of peoples' knives out. :( - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris If you get people to take their knives out then you got a reaction. That's the most any writer can hope for. - MarkCarras

a) Threaded convos like this can be too much. This is what I expect to see when I visit a hashtag page, blog, or forum. The rest of the time, I'm content to see thoughts of people I sub to. b) These judgments seem to be based on twitter implementation. hashes ~link~ in identica. if one is used, you can click it, skim what others are saying, then return to your stream. They also build clouds: Public Clouds, Profile Clouds, & Group Clouds. One glance gives an instant feel for what's on peoples' minds. - exador23

c) I believe hashtags are just a step toward semantic linking. The !bangtag (for identica groups) takes another small step: as used, it's essentially a ~subscribeable~ hashtag, delivered real-time to your personal stream when used. Eventually I hope the # & ! will be hidden. It's the ~link~ that's important, the char is for SW. Hopefully the final step will be the SW links for you. My 2c. peace. - exador23

sorry. figured I should give an example. Imagine the ! and #'s are gone & you just have the links: http://identi.ca/notice... And how useful is it to have metadata like this when considering if you want to follow someone: http://pikchur.com/iso Note these clouds evolve continually & each tag is a link. - exador23

Curious. Considering Jeremiah's point about writing machine language and Robert's suggestion that hashtags are dead (in the context of search), should @replies also be killed off? I mean, the @username convention is useful, but super nerdy. Shouldn't we just move to full/real names? - Chris Messina

but both # and @ tags both show intention, which natural language doesn't. - ryan

Dave Winer

Of course Arrington says Twitter won, they pay him with flow. He's their boy. http://scobleizer.com/2009...

April 10 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jacob, carl morris, Steven Perez and 16 other people liked this

plus here is he on here???? - Rob Sellen :o)

17 more comments

I just don't get why anyone is willing to discuss Twitter with him seriously. He's got an obvious reason to want to please Ev, Biz, Fred, Bijan, et al. And why those guys are willing to compromise reporters the way they do is another good question. It should be part of any discussion about this stuff, because inevitably Twitter, or whatever follows it, is and will be used for news. If the transport mechanism isn't neutral, how can anyone on it have integrity? - Dave Winer

If you were to ask Fred and Bijan where they stand on net neutrality, I'm pretty confident they're in favor of it. They're good people, I can say that and be believed because they haven't done me any favors. But if they did, everyone would say I'm saying it because they paid me off. It's a measure of how scared people are of TC that people don't say that about them. To the extent that I am scared, I'm willing to go through the fear. - Dave Winer

twitter is obviously for "less savvy". to me it's just not enough, and i'm sure that relatively soon there will be more and more people with such a position. that will be thw right time for friendfeed - Kirill Bolgarov

Oh please, get off your high horse. Twitter does not pay us to cover them with money, flow, or anything else. They don't need to. They are the hottest tech story in town. - Erick Schonfeld

Erick, here's a chart that shows clearly that they do give you flow, a huge amount of it. http://tr.im/iA7w - Dave Winer

speaking about neutrality, twitter is a brand and it belongs to a legal person. i don't think that anything leterally belonging to a legal person can be claimed neutral - Kirill Bolgarov

I'm more and more thinking that Twitter should be a protocol, not an app - anna sauce

Erick, one more thing -- in my opinion, and this all is just my opinion, you need to make your statement true. Either start a new account on Twitter and stop using the old one, or put a disclaimer on every piece that mentions Twitter or a competitor, explaining your business relationship with them. There's no inbetween here, you've been a serious journalist before, I think -- you must understand that you can't take something of value from someone you cover without telling your readers about it. - Dave Winer

anna - it can't, as far as it's a standalone business. the keyword is business - Kirill Bolgarov

i agree with Dave, i recall Techcrunch did that before while mentioning other products. I believe it's just an ethical thing. Maybe not as critical as Dave puts it, but it's only my opinion - Kirill Bolgarov

Dave, what is your chart is supposed to prove exactly? TechCrunch is a suggested user. We didn't ask to be one. And we have disclosed plenty of times that we are on that list, and even have gone into details about what kind of traffic it sends us. By your reasoning, we would need to disclose every time we write about any Website or service that links to us or sends us traffic. That seems unreasonable. There is no business relationship to disclose. Period. - Erick Schonfeld

Dave: I think the problem here is you've got a hard time establishing causality. Does TechCrunch give Twitter good press because they're on the Recommended list or are they on the Recommended list because they give Twitter good press? - Ken Sheppardson

Erick, of course there is that approach -- and that gets you the flow and you don't have to disclose. And as you said you didn't ask to be on that list, but you also didn't ask to be taken off it either (or did you?). About there being no business relationship, well -- that's not true is it. That flow is worth money. It's a gift and there's got to be a reason they gave it to you and not to some other publication. As a reader of TC, and I am a reader, I wonder what the quid pro quo is. - Dave Winer

Erick, and my original comment was to Scoble, wondering why he was willing to discuss Twitter with Mike. I wouldn't -- I don't think there's much chance he'd criticize them, when you have such a sweet deal! - Dave Winer

Dave: What's the threshold? Where's the line in the sand? At what point does a business relationship exist between a recommendation service and those it recommends? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, it's really hard to see Twitter as a recommendation service. Schonfeld said it well: They are the hottest tech story in town. It's quite possible they were rewarding TechCrunch for trashing them, maybe they like publications that make them look bad, and make their competitors look good. But they would be very unusual people if that were so. - Dave Winer

"it's really hard to see Twitter as a recommendation service" -- so what would you call the list of users they recommend new users follow? - Ken Sheppardson

I get that there's all kinds of history, bad blood, and animosity in this specific situation, and I'm just thinking about what sort of principles and guidelines we can abstract out of it to apply across the board. What's the appropriate relationship between an entity that says good things about a service and a service that has the power to send traffic back to that entity? If I say good... more... - Ken Sheppardson

Paul Buchheit

Ev’s Advice For Startups: “Do Something Awesome” - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

April 9 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Kevin Whalen, Nicholas James, Daniel Rowley and 13 other people liked this

"He is also asked what he thinks about Facebook’s Twitter-like redesign. “Did they redesign?” he jokes. Then he admits he is impressed and hints that some of the things Facebook did is on Twitter’s own design roadmap. (Maybe Facebook got some ideas from their acquisition discussions with Twitter which fell apart). One thing that Twitter plans to do better is make it easier to share videos and photos, perhaps with inline viewing. Now, that would be awesome. Williams says: Yeah, I think we should support images and video better than we do today, it does not mean we should host them, maybe viewing inline. I don’t want to get into competition with Youtube. Twitter is lubricant for Web content." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

4 more comments

Twitter's lack of metadata and forced tinyurl'ing is friction to sharing web content. - Andy Bakun

This'll cause an economic catastrophe in the tinyurl market/industry! Those startups will need a government bailout. Thanks Twitter! - Ray Cromwell

of course "do only AWESOME" but in reality... do something what makes awesome amount of MONEY! :) - Elmira Gazizova

Ray: Nice. They're in a tough spot though, almost any functionality they add is likely piss off some of the developers - Brian Stoner

"easier to share videos and photos".. hmm - all web apps expans until you can share photos - Nick Lothian

Robert Scoble

@ Sweet_Olive I get dozens of requests to "please RT." I almost never do if they ask that way. Much better to say "here's something cool"

April 9 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris, Evan and Kol Tregaskes liked this

Zee.

Touchdown FAIL - http://www.zee.me/blog...

April 6 from Zee Slash Blog - Comment - Like - Share

Dan Rua, TobiasVerhoog.com, Rubin Sfadj and 246 other people liked this

Hahahahahah oops... - J. Abdul-Qahhar

48 more comments

Idiot. And this is why I don't like when players fool around on the field. DO YOUR JOB! ugh. - ♥patricia♥

LOL DOH! - CW™

that was amazing. and it did autoplay in FF! how hot is that. i hope the coach benched that guy! - Charles Hudson

Oh dumb people... - Mike Nayyar

that is awesome, reminds me of the banking industry - Bryan Thatcher

The wonderful thing about tiggers is tiggers are wonderful things. The tops are made of rubber, the bottoms are ... oh shit! - Mattb4rd

What a wanker. - Andrew Trinh

This never gets old. and the fact he didn't learn from this is even better http://www.youtube.com/watch... - BCK

I think the death penalty is legal in cases like this. - Dave Winer

Zee your website is throwing HTTP 500 errors doesn't look good. :( - rob friedman

yeah, sucks eh Rob....bloody site5...should be up in a few more minutes...(hopefully) - Zee.

+10 dave =D - Ken Morley

huh, that's nifty that you have the comments fed from here into your blog post. :) which plugin is it? - rob friedman

yeah, it's awesome - not sure if i'm meant to be talking about it just yet though. They haven't released it but i'm testing it out - Zee.

pillock! - Rob Sellen :o)

please share when you can Zee, I'm very interested. - rob friedman from twhirl

<hand smacking forehead> - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

LOL!!!! - Luca Filigheddu

Hilarious ! - Nir Ben Yona

ROTFL - Robie

can't believe it :D - antonio pavolini

so close and yet so far from the target =) - Davide D'Incau

lololol - Chris Farrugia

AHAHAHAHAHA! - vijay

lol - Alp

@Peter - so true. - Nir Ben Yona

pmsl show of eh lol - eric

I think the correct expression would be 'Oops'. - Erwin Blonk

missed it by that much... - Gary Fredrick

oops.... - ybs

ahahahahahaha - Lucio

Cool :-) - Zee Waqar

wuajajajajajaj great! - Francisco Kemeny

looks like an Eagles receiver... - Anthony Farrior

What a muppet! :-) - Kol Tregaskes

BCK is right: he didn't learn. FAIL. - Bill Sodeman

XD - Jay

hahahah :) - Metin Kahraman

Anthony - yeah - and he did it again on Monday Night Football this season - learned nothing from this earlier balls-up .... - Patrick Jordan

One of the top 10 animated GIFs of all time - Roger Benningfield

somene did a self-pwnage! - imabonehead

a) Was he trying to break his longest touchdown dive record? b) Was it something that worked during training sessions? c) Is he excessively stupid? d) All of the above - Nenad Nikolic

这个绝对有意思 - 佛徒

None other than Philly's own DeSean Jackson. Best part? He didn't even learn from this, as Patrick said. It's all about ME. - Sean O

just found the video - what a pillock http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Zee.

231! terrific, let's ffholic this, that must be #1. ;p - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

#4 for those interested, great post Zee, the animated gif gave a feeling on that first FF beta day that was inexplicable, modern times type of feeling, that things were changing for the service in interaction gathering. 8} - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

missed it by that much lol - Zax Stevens

Can hear Homer now.... Doh! - Michael Karagines

Louis Gray

It is Twitter who should be wearing the "Beta" label, not FriendFeed. Here's why:

April 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Svartling, Burak Çelebi, Bryan R. Adams and 164 other people liked this

Beta products are usually unfinished, and could crash at any time, or lose your data. - Louis Gray

65 more comments

Twitter often goes down without warning. Twitter has been known to lose tweets, avatars and followers. - Louis Gray

Twitter often foils developers with API limits and outages. - Louis Gray

In contrast, FriendFeed practically never goes down. - Louis Gray

FriendFeed, if anything, errs by "over counting" your comments and likes, not undercounting. - Louis Gray

FriendFeed stores all your comments and images in a robust, searchable database. - Louis Gray

I think FF has the realtime thing down... Twitter is still working out the bugs (now that's beta) ;-) - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

So while the FriendFeed team respects you by putting a beta on their newer interface, they are offering a high quality, stable, product where the data is safe. Twitter, on the other hand, could go down at any time, and take your data and metadata with it. - Louis Gray

i vote we move friendfeed to mode delta - can i get a show of hands? - Allen Stern

Louis: Totally correct. I really expect the behavior of twitter from a 6-12mo out of the gate startup. By three years old I would think that you have matured enough to AT LEAST be able to notify users of the current status. Twitter seems to think that if they don't post it, no one will notice or remember. wrong...Maybe some pointed ALL CAPS has helped this week...we'll see during the next outage - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

The best thing about Twitter is its search engine. They didn't even make the search engine. They bought it. And they still haven't integrated it for all users. - Louis Gray

To be fair, FriendFeed hasn't had the same kind of load demands that Twitter has had to accommodate. - Mike Nayyar

In contrast, the FriendFeed team has a robust search engine from the people who helped make Google's search engine as strong as it is today. - Louis Gray

Mike, FriendFeed does not have the load Twitter does. But at this point in its lifecycle, the traffic and users are comparable. - Louis Gray

Twitter is the only site I know that can turn outages into cult following. FF doesn't have or need a Fail Whale! - Shane

Mike: Totally true, but twitter has been able to see the load demands coming for some time, AND they've had positions open in their techops department for over two months now. If they would bother to fill them, they would have the extra hands on deck necessary to deal with problems. (P.S. I applied and have not heard word one...) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Talking about the Fail Whale! I just got it. No lie. "Twitter is over capacity" Must be traffic from NCAA finals - Shane

Love the cheeky "Here's why:" crosspost on this one, Louis :D - Daniel J. Pritchett

FF wished it had enough users to create the load issues that Twitter has to deal with. - Erik K Veland

Yes straight form "unplanned maintenance" to failwhale - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Twitter has to deal with SMS, does that count for anything? - Mitch

I saw a fail whale tattoo once - wasn't sure what to make of it. I mean, you're clearly into twitter because of the tat, but does it make you a hip edgy tweeter to have a negative impression of twitter branded on your body? I hope that tattoo was a fake. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Erik: after a few more twitter days like today, with the new interface @ FF it will - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I can't help but think that Twitter is responsible for its own API problems. I'm glad that the API exists to enable powerful clients like TweetDeck but if Twitter would only internalize some of the more obvious awesome features they could really reduce the API load while optimizing some of the required indexing in-house. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Erik, that's probably true, but what we're discussing is the quality of service. Google scales without downtime. FriendFeed has scaled without downtime. Twitter has had any number of scaling issues we are all familiar with. Successful sites grow. Great sites grow smoothly. - Louis Gray

Daniel: I disagree. Using the clients to produce constructs out of simple API should lead to lower system loads @ twitter. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I think the whole beta labeling thing needs to go out the window. We live in a constant state of Beta on the web, so why use it? - Brandon Mendelson

@Rob - if Twitter enabled FF-style filters you don't think they could save themselves the agony of ten billion people running Tweetdeck 24/7 just to keep up with various custom lists? Granted I haven't whiteboarded the whole thing just yet but it certainly seems to me like it would result in a lower net load. - Daniel J. Pritchett

One other consideration for Twitter -- no site has had to change to suit to what its users' want to use the product for quite like them. - Mitch

Mitch, I'm willing to give that point if you can back it up. Are you familiar with the changes that have occurred with FriendFeed over the same time period? - Louis Gray

LG, you are a smart, smart man. - Rochelle

Daniel: I'm not sure how the filters implemented would save on the people running their clients 24/7? Filters, no matter where they're placed don't cause me to shut my client down. My tweetdeck runs about 20/7 ;) I sleep about 4 hours a night. I do shut it off then. otherwise it eats all my memory by the time I get up. (but maybe you are right...I just think dumping larger chunks of more compressed raw data to the clients and letting the clients process it is a better load scheme.) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

What are you asking for? Proof that Friendfeed hasn't changed? Go through the FriendFeed-Feedback room and read all the suggestions from people about changes they'd like to see. Aside what was implemented in this beta (like DMs and profile blurbs), virtually nothing was changed for the entire life of the current UI of FriendFeed except for little tweaks that the FriendFeed team wanted like alt-text URL lengthening or "view this article in Digg" (or similar) in the dropdown. Just tweaks IMO. - Mitch

FriendFeed had tonnes of backend changes though, as Bret's blog post illustrated quite well with the schema-less SQL storage. - Mitch

How long have you been using the site, Mitch? I've been watching for 18 months, and the changes have been far more dramatic, in my opinion, than those from Twitter, which just does one thing, period, still. - Louis Gray

Well since I snatched up my username I haven't stopped using it if that's any indication. I just see everything that's happened in the current incarnation of FF as things tweaked. The IM bot and FFNotifier were pleasant surprises along the way though. Props to the FriendFeed team for all they've done but the volume of things in the Feedback room unanswered shows more than you're counting it for I think Louis. - Mitch

I do agree that Twitter is pretty stagnant Louis. I just thought you were being a little rough on it and wanted to play the devil's advocate as I curiously often find myself wanting to do when reading your work. - Mitch

I wouldn't consider it "rough" as much as just counting up the many issues they have had, Mitch. I see the strain developers have first-hand in working with the site, and the parallel of their downtime with FriendFeed's revamp made it a good topic. - Louis Gray

Good topic, agreed. Playing off of what's hot I suppose, I can't blame you. - Mitch

so....Windows is always in beta?.. - kang

FriendFeed never crashes - Adam Singer

FriendFeed probably got Penguin a backrub (please confirm otherwise). - Mitch

Twitter has been driving me nuts lately, clicking on follow doesn't work sometimes, very slow, etc.. - Brian

@Mitch - if FF or Twitter indexes things in the same manner Google does (i.e. find every keyword and proactively index it before it's searched) then that's a flat amount of regular data processing that they can plan around. They don't have to actually send the results of your search offsite unless you come in and flip through your filters/lists to see what's happened since your last visit. An active external search might not be that efficient - it could be hammering the server with the same query - Daniel J. Pritchett

...repeatedly, and then it's up to the server to recognize a repeated search. It's probably a good idea for the search engine to optimize to first store and then incrementally update repeated searches, but who knows if Twitter or FF is actually doing that. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Beta-lables have to go. It's the Web 2.0 equivalent of the Web 0.89a Under Construction gif. Look at Gmail, half a decade in beta! Ludicrous! - Erik K Veland

We'll probably never find out details that specific re:search. - Mitch

Google released whitepapers exactly that specific that I read in grad school. If I had to guess which current social networking company would follow in their footsteps on that naturally I'd say FF, not Twitter. - Daniel J. Pritchett

@Daniel +1 - kang

I'm trying hard to find the whitepaper that I read way back when but it's been 4-5 years and there's a lot of cruft that's popped up in the meantime. I'll be sure and DM you if I can find it, Mitch. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Sounds good. Too bad Google Docs wasn't around back then. I love storing all my PDFs there. - Mitch

@Mitch - This isn't as academic as the paper I read but it's still a pretty exhaustive treatment of Google's page crawling and indexing. I hope it will do for now. http://www.scribd.com/doc... I imagine people aren't quite as likely to home in on the search aspect of current-gen services that do more than just search, so who knows when we'll see academics tackling FF/Twitter search... - Daniel J. Pritchett

Thanks LG :) great review :) - Live Crunch Blog

Louis, not only has twitter been stagnant the last 18 months, they've actively _removed_ features. - Andy Bakun

Andy, you say that like it's a bad thing. - Erik K Veland

Judging from Twitter's /actions/ or /output/ as opposed to its PR, yes, it's still in testing. In fact, they have the freedom to tweak it incessantly because they haven't come up with a business plan. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Well, it's bad when you're using that feature and it seems to be key to using the site effectively. I used to use the IM integration on twitter a lot, since the order things came in made them easy to read and follow the threads of conversation. That's impossible with the regular twitter UI, and IM doesn't exist anymore. - Andy Bakun

@Louis Comparable users and load? Come on....;) When Kevin Rose tweets to 400k people and 50k respond with an @ message, that type of load is something FriendFeed hasn't even sniffed yet. - drew olanoff

Drew, it is something Gmail has sniffed though - Jesse Stay

Louis meant that FF is keeping up with Twitter at the same relative ages, i.e. FF has as much traffic at X months as Twitter did a year (two?) ago. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Jesse, Gmail was in private beta for some time, and then was invite only (in a very controlled manner) for sometime after that. Plus, usage spikes that "realtimeweb" services see such as sporting events and natural disasters cannot be replicated in an email setting. - drew olanoff

Twitter's never worked properly, the end :-) - Richard A.

I hate to say it but Twitter often feels more like someone's hobby than a business. - Rod Bauer from twhirl

Even a hobby would output a labor of love. - Andy Bakun

I've never loved too much twitter, but now that all the "big names" - in US especially - are pushing friendfeed against it, I'm beginning to appreciate Twitter more than ever. :-P - Markingegno - Donato

FF has a API Rate Limit, too... (500/day) - Alp

Friendfeed has real time updates :). Twitter does not :( - Garin Kilpatrick

Brent

These are good: Email address it would be really annoying to give out over the phone: http://bit.ly/zriL#mcsweeneys

April 1 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris liked this

Mike Fruchter

I need recommendations for Wiki software. Self hosted and easy to use.

April 1 - Comment - Like - Share

Ben Greenberg, Jeroen De Miranda, Martin Seibert and 28 other people liked this

I know about MediaWiki already. - Mike Fruchter

40 more comments

You should get out and find a good fit at http://www.wikimatrix.org/. That said, I've run PmWiki and Screwturn and found them both pretty straightforward. How many users do you have? Are you looking to have multiple namespaces within your wiki? - Daniel J. Pritchett

Disclaimer: I have an MS in CS, so my concept of "easy" or "fun" might be unrealistic. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Ushahidi uses DokuWiki. I'm not too fond of it though. - Meryn Stol

Oooh! Here's your question asked and answered on StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questio... Also click through on the "wiki" tag to see related articles on SO. http://stackoverflow.com/questio... - Daniel J. Pritchett

WordPress Wiki Plugin -> http://wordpress.org/extend... - andy brudtkuhl

@Daniel, thanks. The amount of users will be a 3-4 max. You lost me at multiple namespaces . I will check out the links you provided. - Mike Fruchter

Andy, thanks. The Wiki will be independent from WP. It's for the company I work for. - Mike Fruchter

Mike, check these out : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... , http://www.wikimatrix.org/ - Alp

Multiple namespaces would be like "MainPage::MarketingDepartment" versus "MainPage::SupportDepartment". In other words, as a wiki grows you could have multiple discrete sections of the wiki that contain pages related to a single project. Those projects might want to have the same basic page names in effect, and namespaces allow you to do that. 3-4 people can work around it without much trouble. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Wikis are great *because* of the lack of official structure. Develop your own internal wiki usage conventions and people will do just fine - as long as they can search. - Daniel J. Pritchett

I was pondering on using Drupal as an alternative. Any downside to this? I know its primarily a CMS system. - Mike Fruchter

Great recommandations on stackoverflow. Thanks, Daniel - Mike Fruchter

I strongly recommend you get some advanced login capabilities, e.g. linking up with a windows domain or using Facebook Connect or something. Remove as many barriers to contribution as possible. Layman's version: If people have to log in, they won't bother. - Daniel J. Pritchett

I have not used Drupal or any other CMS as a wiki... I'm not even sure how you would do that. Sure you can create posts/objects and link them to one another, but that doesn't feel like a wiki to me. The #1 thing that makes a wiki is the fact that I can type [[Name of a new page]] and that becomes a clickable link to said new page. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Using Drupal as a wiki is possible: there are installation profiles that'll set up and configure everything for you. That said, it's not dedicated wiki software, and it feels like shoehorning a wiki experience into Drupal's user experience. Edit: looks like there's no Wiki installation profile for d6, which stinks. - Mark Trapp

@Michael - I've setup WP instances with this plugin for wiki only purposes.. .just like you are thinking for drupal - andy brudtkuhl

I'd recommend Deki Wiki by Mindtouch. There's an open source version that installs under Apache or as a virtual machine. Editing and organizing information is extremely easy, and rivals some blogs. Includes hooks into multimedia, video sites, etc. - Glenn Batuyong

Mike, if you want to use Drupal, another way to go might be the Book module: since you can customize permissions all over the place with Drupal, the Book module might provide a reasonable alternative to the wiki experience: http://drupal.org/handboo... - Mark Trapp

If Deki Wiki is not too hard to install (no experience), I'd surely try that out. It's also used by Mozilla. (interview: http://www.ddj.com/web-dev... ) - Meryn Stol

I will always suggest Zoho: http://wiki.zoho.com/login... - Admiral Anika

I would've suggested Zoho as well, but Mike insists on self-hosting. The big reason I like Zoho is not its UI (kinda irritates me) but the fact that it accepts Google and Yahoo! logins. No new account required! - Daniel J. Pritchett

For installation and testing purposes, be sure you try JumpBox-style virtual installs of these wikis. It will save you a lot of time for testing different systems you might end up discarding. Here's one for MindTouch Deki: http://www.jumpbox.com/app... You can run it using the free VMWare Player. - Daniel J. Pritchett

MoinMoin is my favorite (featureful, community, Python, themed), but has a little admin setup upfront cost. TiddlyWiki is the simplest/fastest/lightest I've used and is all-in-one no admin, plus mobile. Being a single HTML/Javascript file, you can even put it under VCS. - Micah Elliott

Thanks for the feedback everyone! - Mike Fruchter

SocialText has a pretty good self-hosted solution. And they're Perl so even more bonus points. - Jesse Stay

Mike: If you know PHP, be sure to take at least 10 minutes to look at PmWiki. Doesn't get any easier. I've installed/managed MediaWiki, TWiki, DekiWiki, a .Net engine called Flexwiki... and no matter how easy *any* wiki claims to be, none of them really seem to deliver on the promise of being... well... frictionless. They all have a learning curve, idioms, etc. My recommendation would be to just pick your poison, chose something that's well-supported and popular built in a language you know, and dive in. - Ken Sheppardson

Great thread! Ounce for ounce, high level of nutrition. Thanks, all. If I recall correctly, PmWiki was used by identi.ca (before it moved to Trac) as a bug tracker, and was so quick and simple I submitted a bug report that I otherwise would not have bothered with had I faced more complicated software. - Micah Wittman

One very good commercial (but free for non profit) wiki is Confluence from Atlassian. To my knowledge it is the only wiki that natively supports distinct spaces. Although it is a good wiki, it is not the silver bullet that addresses all our community needs. - Olivier Biot

Regarding Drupal and wiki support, there are possibilities to implement a "wiki page" content type for which you can enforce unique page titles with the "unique field" module (http://drupal.org/project...). Or get inspiration from resources like http://cwgordon.com/how-to-... - Olivier Biot

We currently use MediaWiki as our knowledge database but we plan to switch to confluence, an enterprise Wiki system. - Dennis R.

I went thru this exercise recently, used wikimatrix for research - was going to self host and tried a few but then opted for hosted instead -http://glemak.pbwiki.com - the wiki space is very full and socialtext is still the best enterprise at scale option though for 3-4 users it'd be overkill - mike "glemak" dunn

http://tinyurl.com/ylr2hc - Praveen Vasudev

Doing a major ERP implementation and using Confluence for the documentation of the design during blueprinting. Team of 50 using it. Works well, but like any wiki, content is inconsistent at times and requires editing. We won't use it long term. Also using Sharepoint within our corporate portal. Would NOT recommend it.. - Dave Ploch

For easy and hosted and good integration with videos, online presentations, etc, try Google Sites (aka JotSpot) http://sites.google.com - Scott McMullan

@Dave - Sharepoint is great if it's the only wiki your IT department will let you install. I agree that it's rarely a first choice for any particular project though. - Daniel J. Pritchett

FOSWiki (was TWiki) might be interesting. - Tyson Key

actually socialtext and sharepoint work well together - http://www.socialtext.com/product... - mike "glemak" dunn

Thanks for that link Mike Dunn! I just shared it with a blog commenter who was looking for e2.0 collaboration addins for sharepoint: http://www.sharingatwork.com/2009... - Daniel J. Pritchett

Confluence WIKI - there's a reason that there's a Universal WIKI Converter product for all these other brands - b/c you out grow them and need the rich feature set of Confluence WIKI if you are serious about collaborating, business needs, and Enterprise 2.0 with the WIKI as a core technology bringing it together. I recommend to not underestimate these longer term objectives. http://is.gd/k1NT A migration can always be done, but better to start on right and best of breed tool at the get go. Cheers! - Ellen Feaheny

We have done multiple wiki projects in our agency. The best enterprise wikis are Foswiki for open source wikis and Confluence for commercial high-end-solutions. MediaWiki is only for public wikis similar to Wikipedia best of breed. - Martin Seibert

just had some good experience starting to use pmwiki http://www.jeroendemiranda.com/WordPre... for hosting some documentation on my blogs - out of the box installation on http://www.bluehost.com - Jeroen De Miranda

Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

cant believe how bad corporate web applications can be - and they pay big $$$ for them too!

April 1 - Comment - Like - Share

Jack Frizzell, Nicholas James, Alexei Zheglov and 13 other people liked this

Example: Taleo recruitment platform - extremely unwieldy, broken in several browsers, and totally clueless about international differences (I was asked to "sign" with a zip code and social security number, for a job in the UK?? Made something up, but 10 minutes thought on their part would have come up with a reasonable solution) - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

20 more comments

The amount of "clue" is not distributed evenly among the world. Just the same, I almost can't believe how ugly some people's blogs are. - Meryn Stol

And what's even more amazing is that so much people accept this. Not only do the creators not know any better, the customers don't either. Or they simply don't care. I think that many people have needed to "desensitize" themselves from ugliness because there are so many ugly things in the world. "Resentisizing" yourself to ugliness comes at a price: You're annoyed by anything less then beautiful around you. - Meryn Stol

I think this is too much to take for people who have to get out in the real - and currently quite ugly - world. Lowering your standards is a survival mechanism. - Meryn Stol

ugly is not really a problem - not usable is another. Not being able to apply for a job in the UK because the system expects an US phone number or postcode is inexcusable. Stupid form verification. Fancy javascript only form features that are necessary but only work on one browser. (PS: I really dont mind an ugly blog, i have one, just means the person focused on the content and isnt a... more... - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Unusable might be even worse than ugly (at least for things that you actually want to use) but it's a system of the same: carelessness. BTW your blog is far from ugly! :) - Meryn Stol

I've come across the problem with zip codes myself in sites and databases that were supposed to be for the UK, I'm always amazed that no one had tested them with an UK postcode before going live. - M F

Well, depending on when the application was designed it may have been intended or spec'd for US use only and now the owners of the software license are making due with it rather than paying for a new version or upgrade. I don't know if that's the case, but it's possible. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

I know that the european sales people within a division of Johnson & Johnson had to do all sorts of weird things because the CRM allowed only US format phone numbers - so they had to enter customer's contact numbers in comments forms that were meant for something else. We are talking a million dollar plus implementation of SAP with several full time consultants, and in the end they got... more... - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

you gotta go and see what we have inside -- mediocrity in BI is just over any sensible limits (and I don't even bother you with zeroes how they are paid) - A.T.

Hehehe, I have done enough clever custom analytics that my CV comes up for BI jobs. If mediocrity is that big, perhaps I ought to apply, I'm competent! - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

@iphigenie: Joelle, what's the problem with the Autonomy? (I'm not working for them, just talked with a person who does few days ago.) - earlyadopter

There's nothing wrong with Autonomy - it is a very slick piece of technology (albeit expensive) that works very well within certain parameters. But it is being sold as the universal make-sense-of-information-even-with-no-structure solution, and it cannot do that. If you have a certain amount of structure in your documents, and a restricted focus, it will work (i love the "copy a whole... more... - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Re "you quietly use something else": like what? (I'm not implying there are no alternatives) — I mean "when you spent a million" already, what are the alternatives? - earlyadopter

alternatives are Fast (used to be yet more expensive, not sure what the acquisition by MS did), Vivísimo (very slick on the clustering), several semantic search technologies, several open source solutions - or adding things around Autonomy to undo the bits that are messed up (we removed all clustering, put some cleanup options at the indexing/in level and several layers of post... more... - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

That's why I am trying to get companies to fail faster. I don't believe that 90% of startups fail if they plan better. Spend somewhere b/w 10-20k on requirements and prototyping to get you to that next critical decision point. If you realize that you or the industry is not ready for your idea, you arent completely bankrupt an demoralized. www.xgineer.com. my 2cents - Greg Smith

But again Autonomy doesnt deserve pounding next to entreprise management systems, resource planning and process management - software that needs its price once again in consultancy to adapt (badly) to an entreprise needs is just ridiculous. Especially when the benefits are so hard to measure, and measured by the software itself... These are all garbage in/garbage out, and alas... - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Greg's totally right - but you're very fast to 10-20k, 2-3 people, hardware/hosting costs etc. And alas within a larger company there is a desire for more formal planning, more secure choices, and that pushes costs a lot. They'd spent 200k on a proof of concept before I even joined (2 suppliers, staff, license etc.) - the big mistake is usually to want to build something with far too... more... - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Re "garbage...": when my Dad asked me long time ago what I'm doing he rephrased my answer that way: "oh, you're automating haos..." :) - earlyadopter

have you ever seen enterprise software which worked out of the box with no consultancy around the implementation? (I mean with consultants hours vs. license cost other than 50/50 or 40/60 either way) - earlyadopter

That's what I think is wrong - it should be complete enough that a lot of the customisation could be done in house, and perhaps incrementally in an agile way. You might still choose to use consultants, but it would not be required by the vendor. I mean you have the original license, then a yearly maintenance fee, a yearly support fee, and on top of that you are required to have hundreds... more... - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

I think when they have too many customers to handle they start creating reasonable documentation, training materials, and thinking over the "default" configurations which make sense, instead of allowing to change ANY setting and counting on consultants who will do that for big big bucks ¶ and yeah, the lack of attention to interfaces not intended for the end user (like in "this is for admins, they'll figure it out") amazes me ¶ I don't think a lot of enterprise tasks could be solved through the opensourse - earlyadopter

Scott Kveton

"kveton" Google search is disturbing now - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

March 30 from Flickr - Comment - Like - Share

carl morris, Mark Douglass, Jay Neff and 3 other people liked this

that is seriously wacky. it's not like your blog hasn't been linked to shitloads of times. wtf? - Marshall Kirkpatrick

My "rel=me" links seem keep themselves above the Twitter result http://www.google.com/search...... Try linking to your stuff using "rel=me" from your blog, etc. http://microformats.org/wiki... - Ben Hedrington

so this is interesting, twitter put rel=me at href="/marshallk/friends" id="following_count_link" rel="me" is that not an odd place to put it? - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Tomorrow is Ada Lovelace Day, Celebrating the World's First Computer Programmer http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...

March 23 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Kostantinos Koukopoulos, Michael Kacer, carl morris and 4 other people liked this

And today, as every monday we had our weekly Lightning Talks in the Ada Lovelace space - Simon Lucy

Steve Rubel

BusinessWeek is tying its social network comments into Twitter. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits...

March 23 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, carl morris, Susan Beebe and 6 other people liked this

carl morris › Likes