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Dare Obasanjo › Comments
So I finally tried Wave... - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009...
JSLeFanu, Tyson Key, Gökmen Karasu and 75 other people liked this
Integrating into Gmail -- never thought of that as a possibility before.
- Brian Sullivan
Think of it as "live email"
- Paul Buchheit
The only problem I see is that advertising may not be the best way to make money from it.
- Brian Sullivan
@paul, Is it correct to replace email?
- Hasan Ozgan
Hasan, I don't understand your question.
- Paul Buchheit
A wave-gmail integration sounds like quite the challenge. Perhaps the real-time text updates will happen and will be useful, but I can't see the conversation fragmentation of Wave being a good thing for Gmail.
- Mitch
While I admire the approach of releasing something that's pre-beta, it seems there is quite a risk that people will think, "oh, I tried Wave and didn't get it," and they will not come back to it for a long time.
- Laura Norvig
Laura - Google wants developers in there making cool stuff in the lead-up to the public release. If it were only developers trying out each others tools, things would be stagnant.
- Mitch
I live and work in Gwave - business partner could not access wave due to inferior connections in Manchester and working in docs again was such a backward step!
- Callie O Farrell
That's true, Mitchell, I forgot about all the gadgets people are developing. Also, Gina Trapani pointed out that the one interface that most of us see when we opt in to "try wave" is not the only interface available. I would love to see some samples of simpler/different interfaces.
- Laura Norvig
@paul will wave ever replace email?
- Hasan Ozgan
Hasan, no, it will augment email.
- Paul Buchheit
The fact that Google Wave was not part of Gmail's roadmap and in fact is positioned as "the future of e-mail" was a sign to me that Google is now large enough to suffer the kind of organizational dysfunction that has done in its predecessors. As you mentioned, e-mail will be with us for a long time. It would have been better to position it as "the future of collaboration" and indicate...
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- Dare Obasanjo
Speaking of gmail-wave integration: http://www.engadget.com/2009...
- Mitch
There was shortage of wave invites when it came out but now people are waiting to give wave invites. I didn't see any of my friends returning to wave after they used it once. I log into wave everyday just to see if there are any improvements.
- ashish
Paul - Great insights! I too feel Wave is most suited as a team collaboration / productivity tool. The biggest hurdle is loss of context and convo structure. Once the wave team better organizes the UI, then it can go mainstream. Wave integration with gmail would be super cool and highly useful, plus it greatly would speed up user adoption.
- Susan Beebe
I just posted my comment above on your blog, facebook and here - LOL :)
- Susan Beebe
Mitch - cool share, thanks
- Susan Beebe
"The chronological flow of the conversation is lost." That's exactly the issue. Playback tries to address it but doesn't quite. I think there are other ways to do this, that will be tried both inside and outside Google. I'm thrilled that Google didn't force the Wave team to be part of Gmail from the start, because that would have added all kinds of unnecessary constraints. This way Wave can try lots of new stuff and Gmail can adopt what sticks.
- Daniel Dulitz
It's Sharepoint started from the web side instead of Office
- Nick Lothian
I had assumed that at some point Google would merge Wave and Gmail. It seems the natural progression. Also, I think the linearity problem will be addressed when they can figure a way to easily mark the new replies so that you can quickly see them - maybe in some from of selectable overlay or view of the wave
- Martha
Don't we think they should merge Gmail and Wave because we don't check our waves as often as our emails? What if we all had a cross-browser and mobile notification system for both Wave and email? Since I have installed the Chrome checker extensions for Wave and Gmail, the question of a merger doesn't make any sense. I can easily email and wave the same way I use Facebook, Friendfeed and...
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- Jérôme Flipo
PS: here's the Wave extension I use http://www.jeremyselier.com/entry...
- Jérôme Flipo
No, I think Google should merge Gmail and Wave because many times in the middle of an email conversation I wish I had wave functionality. Because the conversation has gotten hard to understand and I want to play it back. Because different subthreads have different people on them for no good reason. Because an idea has turned into a proposal and the words aren't quite right.
- Daniel Dulitz
Here's a specific type of merger I think could work. Wave "merges" with Gmail, GChat, and Docs, in that whenever you create an email/IM/doc you are creating a wave. Anyone can see that wave in its full realtime nonlinear glory from the product Wave. Any wave you have (whether started from Docs or email or...) can be seen in Wave. But Gmail, GChat, Docs, etc. provide only some functions...
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- Daniel Dulitz
@Daniel Dulitz sounds somewhat like how social networking aggregator such as friendfeed works. This way Google wave will aggregate all the activities of gmail,Gchat, docs and other "google activity" in one place.
- ashish
I am not so sure about Gmail or Gchat and how you would integrate them-- as Wave seems to have similar and some cases superior functionality that supplants them but being able to collaborate on the production/editing of Google docs in real time perhaps using Google voice conferencing would be nearing a game changer.
- Brian Sullivan
That would be great, Daniel. But I think it would require *a lot* of work for some teams at Google and some good explanations to users. I'm sure we'll find specific usages for Wave. Personally, I would let the service grow by itself, without complicating other services. Imagine if I start a Wave and some of my friends participate in it through Docs, some other from Gmail: many troubles...
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- Jérôme Flipo
@Dare: I disagree that Wave is evidence of organizational dysfunction (not saying there *is* not such dysfunction, but Wave certainly doesn't prove it). Whether you love it or hate it, and whether or not you think it will be successful, I believe it's evidence of a company that wants to continue to take risks and innovate in the face of organizational momentum. Why wasn't Wave part of...
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- Joel Webber
It seems like the only big issue is the non-linearity of Wave. So, instead of merging other products to offer alternative (somehow), why not let the creator/owner of a Wave choose if blips should be linear?
- Jérôme Flipo
Well Paul, I also think Wave is very clever. Yet I see a few problems regarding the launch process: 1. They launched it exactly like Gmail, by reducing invitation supply & delaying invitation delivery. Yet, unlike an e-mail account and a web based e-mail client this is a collaborative tool that you can not use alone. That's the main reason most influencers and early adopters are...
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- Cem ARGUN
Regarding my proposed merger... I think part of the problem of Wave is that it has too much capability for many people, but real experts (may) like the full-on experience. So let's make everything a wave. Experts interact with those things in Wave or some other full-on experience. But people in the slow lane can interact with _the same wave_ using "views" they are more familiar with --...
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- Daniel Dulitz
Jérôme, in addition to "linearity" there is also the issue of edits versus replies. Also, what do you mean by allowing the creator to choose if blips should be linear? Transforms are sequential today; the whole question is how to extract "(conversational) linearity" from "mere sequence." Linearity is a UI issue. Why allow the creator to specify the reader's UI, instead of leaving it up...
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- Daniel Dulitz
My definition of linearity is rather basic, as is my English :) I meant "non-threaded" conversation, just like here. I think most of the confusion comes from realtime hierarchical conversations: we can't determine easily where the discussion is going at a given moment. As a doc, a Wave must support sub-threads, but as a conversation it may be helpful to oblige participants to respond to...
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- Jérôme Flipo
Keep in mind that's there's a difference between the Wave Protocol/Architecture, and the Wave client, just like there's a difference between SMTP/IMAP and Outlook (vs Gmail). If the UI is not streamlined for a particular use case, then perhaps other clients can be designed which leverage Wave infrastructure, but provide a more optimal experience for a given problem space.
- Ray Cromwell
Jérôme, in my view not even email obliges people to respond only to the most recent email in the thread. Maybe Wave should always show a compressed "timeline" view of every event. Perhaps a very zoomed-out icon of the whole wave in the upper-left corner of the wave, showing its blip structure, nesting, etc., with hotspots everywhere there's a change you haven't read yet. To the right of...
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- Daniel Dulitz
10 things about Microsoft's PDC 2009: The good, the bad and the ugly - http://www.betanews.com/joewilc...
Matt Cutts and Cliff Gerrish liked this
I didn't hear much about PDC this year; when did it happen?
- Matt Cutts
from iPhone
It was on Tuesday and Wednesday. That's where http://blogs.msdn.com/ie... was first announced
- Dare Obasanjo
Carnage4Life on Why we don’t support Internet Explorer. - http://www.reddit.com/r...
"Sounds like trading one pain for another. The original post is about the hassle of supporting users' browsers. Doesn't seem much different from complaining about supporting installed apps."
- Dare Obasanjo
At the airport on way to bay area. Busy day ahead chatting with folks from 3 web properties & coffee with Kevin Marks.
Roberto Bonini liked this
Kevin Marks was on TWiT on sunday, right???
- Roberto Bonini
I believe he was
- Dare Obasanjo
from iPhone
Scaling databases is easy, high availability is hard - http://news.ycombinator.com/item... <= true dat
Daniel Chow, Lindsay, Toby DiPasquale and 8 other people liked this
Well, we've been doing high-availability in SQL for at least 20-30 years. I don't see how building your own custom, in-house, completely proprietary storage system is easier.
- Joshua Allen
It depends on the availability goals. SQL's approach is fairly expensive and in some cases ineffective for certain business goals.
- Dare Obasanjo
from iPhone
I think it just depends on your goals Joshua. If your entire product, like Google etc, is centered around data then it may not be easier to roll your own, but it's far more effective. If your data is adjunct to your main business then rolling your own may not be a good move. And from the article I think reliability and scalability are inextricably entwined. You partition, replicate, and...
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- Todd Hoff
Its Still Not Too Late To Greet Us As Liberators | The Onion - Americas Finest News Source - http://www.theonion.com/content...
Spot on and hilarious as usual
- Dare Obasanjo
Carnage4Life on Why Google Wave is the coolest thing since sliced bread (from a technology perspective) - http://www.reddit.com/r...
Thomas Amberg liked this
"Hard to take this blog post seriously when it gets fundamental facts wrong. The Google Wave client does not speak XMPP as the article implies. Joe Gregorio (a Google employee) listed the key protocols and APIs behind Google Wave a few months back in his post at http://bitworking.org/news... > There are actually 3 protocols and 2 APIs that are used in Wave: > * Federation (XMPP) > * The robot protocol (JSONRPC) > * The gadget API (OpenSocial) > * The wave embed API (Javascript) > * The client-server protocol (As defined by GWT) > The last one in that list is really nothing that needs to be, or will probably ever be documented, it is generated by GWT and when you build your own Wave client you will need to define how it talks to your Wave server. That last bit is the money quote since it invalidates a lot of the enthusiasm in the linked article. Downvoted for inaccuracy."
- Dare Obasanjo
I've given up on Firefox. It leaks memory like a sieve and is always consuming 1/2 GB of memory on both my machines. Back to IE 8 for me.
Have you tried Chrome? :)
- Matt Cutts
IE8 is pretty hard on memory too - when you add up the memory from all the instances it spawns. Chrome has done a much better job in managing the memory that each tab takes. Firefox has been getting a bad rap lately from Firebug though - the latest FB builds grind your browser when actually enabled.
- Matt Mastracci
I can't use Chrome because it doesn't integrate with Google bookmarks. When are you guys gonna fix that? :)
- Dare Obasanjo
My favorite upcoming Hotmail feature is https://wzqzha.bay.livefilestore.com/y1mbKvA... <= details at http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/blog...
Matt Cutts liked this
Keyboard shortcuts, a buddy list, a contact picker, auto-save of email drafts--these all sound like *great* features to add to a webmail product! :)
- Matt Cutts
indeed :)
- Dare Obasanjo
Carnage4Life on IE8 bugs you to install "Windows Search" whenever you type something in the address bar. The fix? Install Windows Search. That's one hell of a "resolution", Microsoft. - http://www.reddit.com/r...
"1. Microsoft is actually competing with Google by being innovative. Heard of http://www.bing.com and tried out features like http://www.bing.com/visuals... 2. This prompt is about having a desktop search library available so that an IE 8 feature for searching your history/favorites on your desktop works correctly. It doesn't have anything to do with web search."
- Dare Obasanjo
and this is any different to google trying to punt their own desktop search (despise apps like this... no need for them if you have even a modicum of computer literacy), toolbars etc at any available opportunity? want to install a prominent CD drive emulation program or media player? would you like google browser bar with that? shitty business practice is widespread.
- alphaxion
Questionable Traffic? I'll Show You Questionable Traffic. Thanks for Protecting Me From Myself, SolutionIP.
Daniel Brusilovsky, Josh Haley, James Stratford and 5 other people liked this
What was I doing? Reading Google Reader. Meanwhile, my wife keeps getting alerts that her service is going to be reduced to 56k speeds, due to "questionable traffic". She was reading mommy blogs...
- Louis Gray
Some kind of hotspot?
- Beau Liening
Maybe you've been compromised?
- Tanath
I guess mommy blogs are evil. (ducks) The "protecting me from myself" description is apt; some solutions can get to be TOO protective. For example, I appreciate the security policy of requiring a password change every 90 days, but this is more essential for some services than for others. If a non-essential service requires me to change a password I hardly remember anyway, I'm more likely to drop that non-essential service.
- John E. Bredehoft
SolutionIP doesn't do very well at detecting questionable traffic when all they are stopping in some cases are mainstream! :) I just posted it to Twitter, but will aggregate this and see if SolutionIP has anything watching their brand. From the way the rest is handled they probably missed the detail. I'm hoping I'm wrong.
- James Stratford
Yeah - I'd be sure your wireless router has a good password on it. Last time I saw stuff like that putting a password on my router stopped the problem.
- Jesse Stay
You or someone on your network may be infected with a botnet. Jesse is right that the first step is to rule out people who may be freeloading of your wireless network by password protecting it.
- Dare Obasanjo
Today is my two year anniversary at Google!
Adewale Oshineye, Gary Burd and MikeAmundsen liked this
Is there a cheesy tradition associated with yearly anniversaries at Google? At MSFT you're peer-pressured into bringing 1 lb. of M&Ms for every year you've been there. PS: Congrats.
- Dare Obasanjo
No such traditions, but that seems like a good one to start!
- Joe Gregorio
Congratulations! :)
- directeur
I just spoke with FriendFeed cofounder Paul Buchheit. Did you know that he promised family that FriendFeed would continue? More:
immaterial, Alfredo, deceth and 300 other people liked this
He told me they messed up by not communicating better last week. The deal happened so fast that they didn't pay attention to everything.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I like how this is starting
- Robert DeBord
o0o0o0
- Mark
Promises ?
- johnpiercy
as its own service?
- Lee
you are the one who keeps proclaiming its death
- Mark
That's what Compaq said when they purchased DEC. (for those of you old enough to remember)
- RobinDotNet
A promise is not a guarantee.
- Amit Morson
Such a tease, Robert. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
More smoke-blowing. I don't care of Paul swore on the graves of his ancestors. Actions speak louder than words. Some vague promise to a group of people I'm excluded from doesn't do much to assuage my unease.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, you're right, but it's not smoke.
- Louis Gray
Okay, Louis, true. I retract that first sentence. The rest of it, however, I'm sticking by.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva: well I feel a lot better about things today.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Continue just as it is? Or with key changes?
- Karma Martell
I would expect them to post more on this topic soon - on their personal blogs.
- Louis Gray
If that's what Paul wants to promise us, he needs to release some kind of official statement, not send a message through Robert.
- Rochelle
Soon.
- Louis Gray
I bet you as part of the contract, its in there not to shut this down
- Stephen Pickering
Rochelle: there are too many unknowns to make a definitive statement yet.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
keeping my hopes up. but i do remember working at a few radio stations that were bought, we'd get a memo saying 'the format is not going to change' about three weeks before we switched to spanish. i think there is just too much here for ff to vanish. keep the dream alive!
- michael sean wright
How can he when it`s lost all of its autonomy? Supplanted by Facebook, bought outright no?
- sofarsoShawn
It couldve been part of the deal not to let the site die
- Stephen Pickering
Robert, like you said, one can hope. However both of us know how corporates work and it takes one small decision from share holders to close down the service, no matter what.
- Nir Ben Yona
They want to get to Facebook and get those unknowns nailed down first.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Holden and Rochelle, etc., let's be patient. If you see the post I put up last night and add Robert's comments here, we should be feeling a lot better today than we did on Monday.
- Louis Gray
Robert, all right. Well, after my initial freak-out over this, I've gone into complete wait-and-see mode. More of these vague promises and 'coming soon' messages don't really do much for me. When someone say something definitive, then I'll be there to consume it. The rest of this just doesn't add up for much.
- Akiva Moskovitz
That was a great post Louis
- Stephen Pickering
Thanks, Stephen. I thought it was important.
- Louis Gray
Akiva, exactly, waiting for official word.
- Kol Tregaskes
Nir: the way it was told to me contractually it can't be closed down anytime soon.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I hope they don't change it so you have to have a Facebook account to use it. I have one, but share it with very few; I use Twitter and FF for everyone. I want to be able to use it the way I do now.
- RobinDotNet
Like any takeover/merger, some details just take time to work out. Hopefully FF can stay around in some form and help make FB better. We'll just have to wait and see. Thanks, Robert, for the info.
- Mark Edwards
I agree, we haven`t seen anything substantive in the way of contract etc but fingers crossed.
- sofarsoShawn
But doesn't mean it won't be shutdown at some point?
- Kol Tregaskes
And, Louis, I didn't see your post from last night but I'll read it as soon as I get back from the store.
- Akiva Moskovitz
was Pownce a bit like Friendfeed? I never used it
- Mark
I can't get my hopes up when Facebook is in the picture. :-(
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
I am very happy to hear that! I hope it gets bigger than Twitter. It's a much better service.
- Sam Guzman
Stable Door and Horse comes to mind.
- Kevin J Hatton
The fact that the FF folks haven't yet said "This is how we want it, so this is how it's going to be" is just evidence that they don't have the final say on the matter. If it's subject to some additional authority/approval, nothing is certain at this point.
- Ken Sheppardson
Kol: it won't be shut down anytime soon. He was quite clear about that.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Kol, the truth is they work for Facebook now, and therefore, FriendFeed can/will change, and it may not change 100% how you and I want. It may be part of Facebook's site later, and it may not. But Facebook is changing from what we know of it now to something new where they overlap.
- Louis Gray
In other words that was in the contract. Makes sense, since they were hesitant anyway
- Stephen Pickering
Robert, OK but maybe at some point though.
- Kol Tregaskes
I sure would like it if FF continued indefinitely.
- Jason Nunnelley
Kol: nothing in life is guaranteed.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Patience is a good thing. That said, if FriendFeed wasn't growing at a rate much higher than it has been, something would have to change. You don't bottle up such talent and experience and have it work on a product that was losing.
- Louis Gray
Robert, What about death and taxes?
- RobinDotNet
Good to hear. I am sure they will take time to decide what exactly to do with FF. How to integrate them together. What to do etc. FF the R&D for FB I think it could be
- Robert Anderson
Robert, true. All a bit vague still though.
- Kol Tregaskes
Scoble: encourage Facebook to keep FriendFeed as a premium brand. Let them tie it to Facebook data or whatever, but keep the system separate.
- Gary
Louis, right, this gives them legitimacy and exposure
- Stephen Pickering
Kol... if they wanted to grow they way they "deserved" to grow, this place would have changed underneath your feet to something you might hate. This is one way to put real capital and people behind the site as it is now.
- Louis Gray
So what? Do they continue try to grow friendfeed as an individual product? Or do they just leave it alive for those of us who actually use it?
- Sam Guzman
If this thing grows by leaps and bounds, FB is not going to close it
- Stephen Pickering
Mark: anytime a blogger says something is dead ALL that means is that it is less interesting than yesterday.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Over time, we will learn, Sam. It's a classical marketing/engineering decision. Do you build for the current user base, or the potential user base? With change. some were bound to leave anyway.
- Louis Gray
Louis, not arguing that at all. My point was about shutting it down or not. I'm at the wait-and-see stage, waiting for more news from FF.
- Kol Tregaskes
And any time I write a headline that says it's NOT dead... maybe I know what I'm talking about. :)
- Louis Gray
But this service grows more useful the more users there are
- Stephen Pickering
Something needs to happen. Twitter is useless now - maybe a new denial of service attack. I would love to see the Friendfeed technology spread to the mass user base that Facebook has.
- Frode Stenstrøm
Yeah, I understand. Maybe some of the extra publicity from the acquisition will lead to an increase in users...curious people signing up to see what it's all about.
- Sam Guzman
Well, at least he acknowledged they messed up.
- Rodfather
oh sweet, I just spent ages adding friendfeed people, setting up privacy and setting up FF to stream to my FB....now this might be a waste of time?
- Franz Sittampalam
from IM
Frode: that was what Paul told me too. He wants the tech here to be used by everyone.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I don't understand why Google didn't buy it instead.
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Rod, FriendFeed has no PR or Marketing. Maybe if they did, this would have been handled differently. Some things come naturally, and others are hard. But I bet you will see a lot more soon.
- Louis Gray
I've heard the same from another founder, Robert.
- Anne Bouey
Franz, no official word, just wait for an announcement from FF.
- Kol Tregaskes
They didn't want to work for google again.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Makes you wonder about a due diligence ckecklist and the speed of getting this deal done
- courtney benson
Kinda why they left. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Right, look at Google Reader. They don't know how to do social
- Stephen Pickering
It's all wonky and hard to understand
- Stephen Pickering
But GR is going in that direction.
- Kol Tregaskes
Companies come and companies go. They can go by closing their doors or by being acquired. Only time will tell whether FriendFeed has come and gone.
- Jeff Sayre
Google Reader is nothing like FF. No one really uses the social features.
- Sam Guzman
GR is trying, but its all wonky and totally un understandable
- Stephen Pickering
Oh. I just don't trust Facebook at all and can barely stand using it after being here.
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Jannifer, I think we have to look beyond the caricatures of people like Zuckerberg, and recognize that he too may want the same things we do. Facebook is growing up and I bet FriendFeed and its team is a big part of that.
- Louis Gray
Louis, hope so.
- Kol Tregaskes
courtney: Paul talked about that too. He said once the team made the decision they knew it had to be closed overnight to prevent it from leaking.
- Robert Scoble
Louis I think its a perfect marriage, genius engineers + genius Marketers
- Stephen Pickering
Real real time would be awesome in Facebook. I really hope it comes soon.
- Sam Guzman
Well, he didn't quite say "prevent it from leaking" but he said "it's important to do it all at once." I knew what he meant, though, that it had to be done fast to keep things from getting crazy, like they do once decisions like this get taken into public sphere.
- Robert Scoble
I am sure paul is truthful in that he would like for it to go that way, but this is a M&A situation, and even if it is written into the agreement, there are a million ways around it. At the end of the day, shareholders make the rules in a majority vote. If ff isn't integrated in fb somehow, I fail to see how it benefits fb.
- Erik Boles
from iPhone
Kol: Paul was emphatic that Facebook is a far more interesting company at this time in both company's history.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Somehow this doesn't sound too convincing. If Friendfeed has been losing a LOT of regular users because of their deal with Facebook, they'd be concerned. Friendfeed is likely to get you to speak on their behalf, since you are their most popular user. Maybe Paul is trying to convince you, so that he can indirectly convince others too. That might save an early end to Friendfeed brought on by the rapid loss of users.
- K N Ajit Narayan
I totally agree with Paul, by the way. Facebook is a much more interesting company to join right now than Google is.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook = Microsoft 2.0
- scott anderson
Robert: Did he mention anything about Mashable reporting an acquisition had been talked about since `07?
- sofarsoShawn
YAY! thanks Scoble for letting us know - i feel alot better today!
- Chris Clayton
Hey, Microsoft had a decent run
- Stephen Pickering
Louis: yeah, Zuckerberg is a lot smarter and a lot more down to earth than most of the press gives him credit for. He's always been straight up with me. Much better than other companies have treated me.
- Robert Scoble
And that's even including getting kicked off of Facebook for 24 hours.
- Robert Scoble
@ Scott, LOL Facebook = Microsoft 2.0! I see your point, but it far surpasses Microsoft Live attempt at a social network.
- Nakeva Corothers
Erik: technologies that have great audiences don't get killed. If anything will kill it, it will be us. By leaving.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, cool. Well if they can ditch a lot of their annoying features, like this FB Lite might be, then I might be interested in moving over with all the FF features implemented but I just can't work with FB in it's currently state. I had another go this weekend and still didn't like it. But I'd be even happier if FF stayed here. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
this is gonna be an interesting story to follow for sure. For now I am just using friendfeed the way I have been and see what comes out down the road. life is about changes.
- (jeff)isageek
sofarsoShawn: I don't know what you're talking about regarding Mashable.
- Robert Scoble
Maybe I missed it earlier in this thread but why can't they just come out and say something directly to the community? Obviously a lot of people are concerned and anxious about it... Why do we have to hear second-hand? And why has it all been so vague? No news is not necessarily good news in cases like this.
- Lindsay
Robert, Leo called himself Leo Scoble today because he deleted his 5000 FB friends and moved them over to his fan page
- Stephen Pickering
jeff: yeah. Visiting Facebook is going to get more interesting. He also said that the first month at Facebook (which starts Monday) will be all about learning about Facebook's code. So, no new features will come quickly.
- Robert Scoble
Ok. I hope Facebook changes a LOT so it's more tolerable. Although I don't like it, I need to set up a good Facebook page for business so I can remain competitive.
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
I hope they do right by you. You brought them to the party. I hope that gets recognized somehow monetarily.
- Jim Posner
Saying that it might be shut down at some point doesn't tell us anything new, though; after all, any site might be shut down at some point due to going out of business etc.
- Tristan Seligmann
When anything comes out of this it was always going to be long term.
- Kol Tregaskes
Can i just add - Paul never said friendfeed was going to die in the first place... instead they said the complete opposite - "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team."
- Chris Clayton
I'm not sure why everyone dislikes Facebook. What's wrong with it?
- Sam Guzman
sofarsoShawn, yes, Facebook had been talking to FriendFeed since 2007.
- Louis Gray
Lindsay, I bet the FriendFeed team has a very busy week and maybe you hear from them on all this soon.
- Louis Gray
Robert: "technologies that have great audiences don't get killed..." oh, come on, you know better than that! My dad worked at IBM so I've been seeing tech companies kill great stuff that their customers liked for most of my life!!!!
- Fred Davis
Jim, Scoble has gotten no money from FriendFeed (nor have I). Neither one of us expects to, as that would change the relationship.
- Louis Gray
He said FF would continue operating normally "for now". That was what freaked people out. But I'm glad to hear that Paul and company have plans to keep the service running for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't want to wake up one morning and find my favorite service was shut down.
- Jason Huebel
Fred, right, the Innovators Dilemma, but in this case its cost of running a website is halving every year
- Stephen Pickering
Louis: yes, but Paul told me that when I last was in the office they hadn't yet decided to go to Facebook. Everything happened in the past two weeks. I think you even walked in on one of their key decision points. He said they worked all weekend long on the agreement.
- Robert Scoble
Fred: nothing in life is guaranteed, yeah, you're right. But there's no business reason to turn this off anytime soon. If we all leave there will be.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: e.g., consumer company changes focus to biz or gets acquired... new company direction leads to consumer products getting killed despite popularity... that's just one of many ways that good tech gets killed all the time!!!
- Fred Davis
No disagreement on that at all, Robert. I know I walked in on something big, and that was my mistake for not calling ahead.
- Louis Gray
Seems their valuation stood on Roberts shoulders to some degree. At the least, a public thanks would have been nice.
- Jim Posner
Jason: i know, thats what got me freaked out too - i just thought i would add it in incase anyone missed it :) and because im a little bored! lol
- Chris Clayton
If FF were Twitter, we'd be screaming bloody blue murder about how they don't "get" user communication, etc., etc.
- Chris Baskind
Fred, can you give any examples? Any software I used to use that is no longer available was replaced with something better.
- RobinDotNet
No business reason that WE understand... 'cuz we don;t go to Facebook board meetings ;-) Facebook may have their own agenda... in fact, I assume they do...
- Fred Davis
Jim: I do this because I love it, not because I expect thanks or goodies.
- Robert Scoble
Why even bring this up if they can't talk about it? Nothing has changed just more innuendo and smoke and mirrors and a lot of 'what ifs'. Wake me when there's something concrete.
- Derrick
Robert: when you talk to paul next, can you push him into doing a public announcement on it all? Just give him a nudge in the right direction! :)
- Chris Clayton
RobinDotNet... god, too many to count! First one I was bummed about was in '85 when Musicworks was the best MIDI program on the Mac... got acquired by some jerky game company that decided it wasn't a game and stranded all the users! Yeah, eventually new better stuff came along... but that didn't do the users of the current any good at that time...
- Fred Davis
Derrick: sorry, I totally disagree. I didn't know that contractually they can't kill the service anytime soon.
- Robert Scoble
Derrick, there is more than smoke.
- Louis Gray
It makes sense, they had leverage to make that deal
- Stephen Pickering
Fred -- Okay, so that was one that was 24 years ago. Have any more recent examples? If you can't think of any, then they obviously weren't that important.
- RobinDotNet
Because they were hesitant, they had the leverage to make that part of the deal. Makes total sense
- Stephen Pickering
Um, apple buys leading music sequencing package and kills of PC version because, um, they want to force you to use a mac... come on, the list is endless!!! Companies screw customers by killing good products for their own reasons all the time....
- Fred Davis
Sorry, things are moving fast in this thread. There's a contractual obligation on FB's part to keep FF running?
- Jason Huebel
Fred, you keep saying the list is endless, but the only one you can name is one that came out about 2 years after the 1st Mac, 24 years ago. I'm just saying....
- RobinDotNet
Fred, but what if part of the deal was not to kill it?
- Stephen Pickering
This whole "Friendfeed is dead" mantra is, has, and always will be nothing more than an attempt to get attention. Friendfeed is successful and Facebook would never do anything to destroy that.
- Paul L. McCord Jr.
Derrick: believe me, Louis and I have been talking and concerned about the messaging coming out of this deal more than anyone. We both invested a lot of our time/careers here. Louis has been talking with the team too and that's where his post came from yesterday. I suggest you read it and read between the lines too.
- Robert Scoble
Understand Robert, Really not about your motivation, just good manners in my opinion for Friendfeed to thank you publically. Maybe they have and I missed it. I think you did more for promoting the service than the founders.
- Jim Posner
now, what facebook decides to do with friendfeed... who knows... Yahoo kept Flickr going... so far... but that seems like the exception... no one's really using jabber any more, but it lives on in the upcoming Wave and as XMPP at Google...
- Fred Davis
agreed scoble promoted the service in a big way
- Franz Sittampalam
from IM
Jim: thanks, appreciate it. Paul did thank me in the interview I did with him right after the announcement was made.
- Robert Scoble
If there is a contractual obligation on FB's part to keep FF running, the obvious question is what does this contract state and does it give a duration. Hopefully we'll hear more later.
- Kol Tregaskes
Why? What would be the point? I respect you two enough and all that you do in the world of social media and that's fine. I want a place I can converse, post my pictures, air my gripes, and continue to establish the friends I've made via Friendfeed. Will I be able to do that or not? I'm so tired of the conjecture. Some of us, are just people who love the service and more than anything, very simply, we just want to be able to utilize it.
- Derrick
Kol: I call it the "Paul is sleeping on the couch for a month" clause. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
LOL, Robert.
- Kol Tregaskes
For a company like Facebook, I would imagine that the consolidation of branding advantage would lead me to suspect that even if Friendfeed is kept going in some way, it will be re-branded as Facebook... just like Longs, Wamu, and Wells Fargo are going through right in Facebook's backyard.
- Fred Davis
Derrick, this is the place to do that. :)
- Louis Gray
"For now". ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Throws sheep at Kol
- Louis Gray
Hehe, Louis.
- Kol Tregaskes
The other main issue I have is that, now we are creating content for Facebook. Facebook owns our data. For some reason I didn't mind Paul and his team, they were blacksheep. If I wanted to make Facebook richer I would type in Facebook in the URL. I dont want to make Facebook richer.
- Robert Higgins
What are the alternatives to FF? Isn't there Streamy, Plurk, SocialThing?
- Eric
Louis, I'll be counting sheep soon, need sleep. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
@Eric, we've been evaluating alternatives in the CloneFeed/OpenFF room. None of them really come anywhere close to what FF offers.
- Jason Huebel
Eric, none of those services are really similar. SocialThing is closest, but FF is still quite a bit different.
- Sam Guzman
Of course, since I'm hoping Grabbit will replace Friendfeed for most people, I'm more than a little biased, and that makes me care a lot less about what happens to Friendfeed... even though I love the service, and hope Facebook keeps it going. We're already planning to support Friendfeed in Grabbit, and the new Friendfeed API is awesome, so who knows what the extent of the disruption...
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- Fred Davis
Sam, I know there is something. I am upset, because I wanted to buy FF someday! :)
- Eric
So the word now is that FF will be around for a while AND Paul's mentioned the possibility that parts of FF might be open sourced. Any idea what parts?
- Jason Huebel
There has to be an alternative.
- Eric
Jason: too early to know that for sure. I'd start with the API. From what my friends are telling me who are good developers the API is actually very well thought out.
- Robert Scoble
Eric: Not really. Make one.
- Sam Guzman
There was an alternative, but I think it shut down.
- Eric
There is no need to replace FriendFeed. That there are options to decentralize our info is great, but I'm not going anywhere.
- Louis Gray
It was called SocialThing.
- Eric
Fred: I just don't like Facebook's service for WHAT I DO. For my wife? It's freaking awesome. And the execs there have always treated me very well (Zuckerberg walked around Davos with me, while every other journalist was drooling over the opportunity to do that -- he's a lot nicer and smarter than most people give him credit for).
- Robert Scoble
SocialThing got bought by AOL, and it wasn't as good as FF anyway. You could see people's activity, but there was no real interaction. FF is what it is because of the interaction.
- Sam Guzman
Eric & Jason: my new web thingie Grabbit, will do everything Friendfeed does and more, so much more... it's still in alpha, and the beta won't be out until next month... but already the alpha features better Facebook and integration than Friendfeed, IMHO... so, check out grabbit.net and ask to be on the beta list, and we'll keep you posted...
- Fred Davis
@Louis, I'm not going anywhere either. But this acquisition not only scared people that FF might go away but also that their data would go with it. So there is /some/ need for alternatives.
- Jason Huebel
It was called Rejaw, and it was shut down.
- Eric
Fred: can't wait to see more about Grabbit.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Hey dude, I TOTALLY agree with you about Facebook! I've been telling people for a while that I think Facebook is in the process of Yahoo-ing themselves... and that ain't no compliment!
- Fred Davis
FriendFeed family or real family?
- Mona Nomura
FF is crazy to sell. They should've sold to Google, what were they thinking?
- Eric
I think someone needs to create a web dashboard like FF, but that somehow integrates e-mail.
- Sam Guzman
louis i agree with you. i am not going anywhere either. this is the place i love and think is awesome
- (jeff)isageek
Robert, is Paul referencing his FriendFeed family or real family? (not expanding thread - too long)
- Mona Nomura
Mona: real family AND FriendFeed family. They are one and the same if you look at it the right way.
- Robert Scoble
Sam: what do you mean "intergrate email" friendfeed already has email features so it depends on what you mean...
- Chris Clayton
Same here, Jeff. If FF is still around I'm not budging. It it goes FB on us then it's bye-bye.
- Kol Tregaskes
Google Wave is like FF?
- Eric
Sam, got that in Grabbit... email, RSS, blog alerts, news alerts, and more... plus the coolest friend management stuff to help you sort all that out, not just the messages, updates, and alerts...
- Fred Davis
Mona: if you want me to do something for you, talk Maryam into it first. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Fred: Then I am really excited to try it.
- Sam Guzman
Eric: just like the others you mentioned, it has 1 or 2 similar features, but completely different!
- Chris Clayton
and twitter, facebook, friendfeed, etc., of course... we're starting a signup on grabbit.net...
- Fred Davis
I used to use FeedEachOther which was like FF.
- Eric
Chris: Like the friendfeed stream, you could login and see all your friend's activity, but also see your latest e-mails (Could be easily accessed with a sidebar link, like direct messages). By commenting on an e-mail, you could reply. Just like FF direct messages, but it would send a real e-mail response. Does that make sense?
- Sam Guzman
Now there is Google Reader.
- Eric
Google reader is improving, but still has a long way to go. On the social side.
- Bluesun 2600
That's the one thing I've always liked about FriendFeed - the founders (and staff) interacts with the community, as do their family members. The community members were treated like family, too. :) Whatever which way, hopefully Facebook will integrate FriendFeed's functions to carry on the "feel" over there as well. Personally, I have the more the merrier approach! BTW see you Thursday, Robert! Gnomedex sold out!
- Mona Nomura
I'm not up to speed with this discussion, but FB must have bought FF to merge FF tech into FB. FF for everybody, not just Scoble and tech friends.
- Zato Gibson
...would continue as independant application or as zombie inside "failbook"? ;-/
- Claude LaFrenière
Sam: i was actually looking for a way to have the subjects of my emails show up on my friendfeed dashboard awhile ago - do you mean like that? Because that would be awesome!
- Chris Clayton
i would love to see friendfeed get a killer mobile app...maybe improve on fftogo a little more
- (jeff)isageek
Google Reader is my current alternative btw. I've found the share box today and now using it like FF's share box. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Google Reader is great, but it's not built to replace FriendFeed. It's not an aggregator, for one.
- Louis Gray
one thing is I don't think you can share images from pages as easily as FF's share.
- Bluesun 2600
Life2front has anyone heard of it?
- Eric
Chris: Yes, maybe have a subject show up in your feed, and clicking would expand to reveal the full e-mail. Reply's could be generated by commenting on the e-mail. I'm sure FF won't integrate this, but I'm just throwing it out there. It's something I wish some social service would integrate. Either that, or make e-mail inboxes more social. Kind of like Yahoo e-mails new features, but better executed. How cool would it be to login to your e-mail and be greeted by a FF like social stream.
- Sam Guzman
i think you can look at two services that were bought up and never really changed all this time in flickr and delicous so hey maybe friendfeed stays around as it is...maybe just integrates a bit more or something with facebook
- (jeff)isageek
Well you can put your services into a folder then create a bundle and share it. But no not quite like FF. It lacks a lot of features and Comments view is awful.
- Kol Tregaskes
and look how long google had grand central before they really even started doing anything with it.
- (jeff)isageek
I guess what I'm saying is, don't keep e-mail so separate from the rest of your online social activity. It should be more integrated than it is now, in my opinion. Why not include it in a service like FF?
- Sam Guzman
So Friendfeed stays on as a side project instead of being abandoned. Does that really make a difference in the grand scheme of things? The service isn't going to grow by leaps and bounds either in audience or functionality now. I guess a slow death is easier for people to deal with than a quick one.
- Dare Obasanjo
Sam: i love that idea... email services dont have RSS (not that i can find anyway) i was looking for 5 hours for one afew months ago so i could put it in a private group to show up on my FF stream. but i ended up being dissapointed!
- Chris Clayton
I hope we all converge over to Google Wave and that some clever sod codes a FF-type service built on the Wave protocol. :-) GWave is great fun to use!
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol: are you going to send me a download link? :P im still waiting for it from the 'sneak peek' survey i filled out AGES ago!
- Chris Clayton
Whhhhhhat how`d you try it already?
- sofarsoShawn
Dare: there are lots of things that don't get many new features but are still very popular. FriendFeed still has way more features and is better technology than anything else I've seen in the marketplace. Maybe someone will eclipse it, but that won't happen soon and, yes, a slow death is definitely better than a quick one. Why? Cause you can make plans and change your behavior.
- Robert Scoble
Download link for GWave? Don't work like that. ;-) Just wait until 30th September, Chris. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Chris, yeah, and I think what I'm describing would take more than just RSS integration. But Kol is right, maybe Google Wave will be the answer :) I can't wait to try it! Especially if other services can be integrated like in FF.
- Sam Guzman
Kol: but september is too long to wait :( blame scoble for making me a social media addict! :)
- Chris Clayton
Hehe, it will fly by.
- Kol Tregaskes
Robert: if this is just about whether they'll shut off the servers or not then why is this even causing hubbub? Given the complaining of a vocal set of users I'm sure that even if they planned to shut off the site, it'll keep going for a while. However it seems obvious that all their innovative ideas and day time hacking should be filled with innovating on Facebook not here.
- Dare Obasanjo
As both Louis and I have said - these guys have been nothing but actions thus far and haven't let us down. I see nothing changing from that yet, so I suggest everyone continue that trust. They have done nothing to break that trust yet. And like I wrote about, Facebook needs them as much as they need Facebook - Facebook wants to change into something more of what FriendFeed is, from what I've seen and read.
- Jesse Stay
It's not about shutting the servers off for some (most?) folks, it's a matter of how you reconcile FriendFeed and Facebook's views on content licensing, ownership, and privacy; whether we'll continue to see innovation at a pace faster than what Facebook's user base has historically been comfortable with; and whether we'll see a continuation of Friendfeed's openness towards third party developers and the open source community.
- Ken Sheppardson
And as I've said over and over again, Jesse, I think most of us trust the FriendFeed folks as individuals, but that trust doesn't necessarily transfer to Facebook as an institution.
- Ken Sheppardson
I second Ken. Zuckerbergs plans/dreams are also a kind of wild-card here. They could be favorable to us FriendFeed users, or not. Up till now, Zuckerberg hasn't done much favorable for me. That sucks. I wish it were different.
- Meryn Stol
Say what you want about Facebook but Zuckerberg and/or Facebook has revolutionized the Internet by forcing people to be real. (not real-time) It even reflects on Youtube - the commenters aren't as moronic as they were say three years ago, since more and more people are using their real names and identities.
- Mona Nomura
It's always like this and it never turns out the way Paul says it will, though I believe his intentions are honorable. At some point you no longer work for the old company and you start working for the new one. My guess is this has already happened. Soon people from the old team will have their new assignments, and then one day the server will go down. They'll bring it back up, but...
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- Dave Winer
Damn, Dave. And I thought that *I* was a cynic.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, I've been through it myself, and been in Paul's position.
- Dave Winer
Dave, I don't doubt that at all. It's just amazing from my perspective to see it put so honestly. Well put, sir.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Only when I was in Paul's position, I had a simpler situation cause we were developing shrinkwrap software and our mission was supposedly unchanged. We didn't have servers that had to be kept up 24-by-7. Even so, six months after the merger, the whole thing was turned upside down and the team had all-new priorities and tons of people had left, including the top guy (me!). I would get...
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- Dave Winer
Well put, Mona!
- Jesse Stay
Dave, I expect it to change, but I also expect that Facebook is doing this for not just the team they just acquired. I think Facebook really wants this technology.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, that may be true but they'll want it for Facebook. And if you're a fan of Facebook, that's great, Facebook's going to get better. But if you're not? If you're a a fan of FriendFeed? Then all you're going to end up with is a bastardized FriendFeed with lots of dipshit apps.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Jesse: I'm not so sure. The technology will need to be rebuilt for the Facebook infrastructure. That's one reason why Paul doesn't have good answers for us yet. He said he needs a few weeks to really dig into Facebook's code base before he even has a good idea of where he and the FriendFeed'ers can really add value.
- Robert Scoble
Akiva, I'm a fan of both. And you know you can ignore those apps - that's not something you can do on FriendFeed or Twitter. FriendFeed would have gotten just as bad as it grew.
- Jesse Stay
Dave: thinking back on why I joined FriendFeed, it was because I expected that the team would do something interesting in the future. That reason has now been fulfilled and now that these guys are at Facebook it'll be interesting to see what they do.
- Robert Scoble
Jesse, where is the button to ignore the apps? I want to ignore all of them, all the time. Instead, I have to click hide on every single bloody one of them and still get notifications from people wanting me to add apps. I'd tolerate Facebook better if there was a magic "no apps, ever" button.
- Rochelle
Somewhat selfishly, I have just gained a whole load of new friends on Fb, here and on Google Reader and have learned loads about sharing and subscribing for which I thank you all :-) I will just watch and wait now, but I do agree that if everyone dashes off somewhere else and deserts FF, it could well hasten its demise. Best to try and use all the services and interlink them if we can.
- Julia Ault
Rochelle: I want you to install the FriendFeed app. :)
- Louis Gray
I am sure that FB was not happy if FF was going into MS hands or Google hands ,they bought it and now they will be the most important live and live search player on top of the best social community,,I am happy for them and for us as well ,they will keep our home and thats great news
- Johni Fisher
Jesse, this is true. I guess my real point is—aside from the easy-as-punch Facebook app snarking—that the very philosophies on which each service was built are essentially different. I'm not saying that these divergent ideas can't be unified. I'm just not convinced that they're compatible enough to be integrated without irritating one group and overwhelming the other. I'm sure the...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
Wish I was a millionaire like him :/
- Mark
"I'm just not convinced that they're compatible enough to be integrated without irritating one group and overwhelming the other. " - very well put, Akiva.
- Meryn Stol
Akiva, who says they will become one site? Why not enable the two communities to remain separate if they want, under the Facebook brand? I don't think we know yet what will happen.
- Jesse Stay
Good news because I love friend feed in it's current format.
- Rob Cairns
Robert, yes, we don't know for sure, but then again we don't know for sure - I don't see reason to change too much of our trust until something actually happens. I do know Facebook wants to open up more, while still retaining your right to privacy. The privacy thing is something FriendFeed (or Twitter) doesn't have, and I think would be a welcome addition.
- Jesse Stay
Rochelle, you have to do it either by app, or individual (unless I've missed the option). That said, I would kill for the ability to do that on FriendFeed or Twitter. They don't even have that.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: FriendFeed doesn't have apps, so I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to; if you mean the ability to hide posts aggregated from a particular service, that's already there.
- Tristan Seligmann
Last I checked, Jesse, FriendFeed didn't have MafiaWars or Superpoke.
- Akiva Moskovitz
(If you click on "Hide", and then "hide other items like this one", you get a whole list of options)
- Tristan Seligmann
FriendFeed has a finite number of things to hide ("all items from Bob", "all Flickr posts", etc.). That's much more easy control than the thousands of apps on Facebook. It's like playing whack-a-mole over there. It feels like the more I hide, the more they appear.
- Rochelle
Akiva, Tristan, it's only a matter of time before the auto-dm apps appeared on FriendFeed. So long as FriendFeed grows, they will come. So long as it doesn't grow, it *does* disappear. There's no "hide all from the app that generated this DM" option on FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, and, with all of the hide options already present on FriendFeed, you don't think the devs would have had the presence of mind to include something similar for any supposed FriendFeed apps?
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, I trust that they'll add that as much as I trust they'll continue to fight for FriendFeed at Facebook.
- Jesse Stay
They don't even need any extra options; you can already hide direct posts based on the application that created them. For example, if you hide this post of Robert's, you'll get the option to hide all posts by iPhone.
- Tristan Seligmann
Jesse, I think no-one doubts that *they* will fight. The question is if they win. They're just employees now.
- Meryn Stol
Again, I'm surprised that my own cynicism—legendary in its own right—is being beaten about the face and neck in this thread.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Meryn, I also know the Facebook team - they're just as competent as FriendFeed's. Their original audience started different than FF's, but they too have to expand.
- Jesse Stay
Holden: engagement.
- Robert Scoble
It's hard for innovators to stop innovating, and for entrepreneurs to lose the total freedom and self-reliance that drives them. Every entrepreneur that I know personally (only a few, alas!) who has sold for the big bucks has eventually gone on to create something else.
- Kathy Fitch
Jesse, as I said earlier, my lack of knowledge on the plans of Zuckerberg is the problem. Do you know Zuckerberg? In the end, he's gonna decide what appears on Facebook or not. Also, it's not so much a matter of competence than it is a matter of vision and taste.
- Meryn Stol
I'm sure the FB engineers are competent.
- Meryn Stol
And wouldn't it be fascinating to have a gander at the kinds of separation agreements folks who leave FB must sign? Almost as interesting as seeing the acquisition agreement in this case.
- Kathy Fitch
It's totally unclear if future conversations we might have on FB will ever be indexable by Google. (or any other search engine) That all depends on Zuckerberg's final say. I can't look in the guy's head.
- Meryn Stol
Sure seems like you're scrambling, Robert, to place yourself in the center of this when you were completely blindsided by the sale. Justs sayin'
- Mattb4rd
Louis, nope! Those are two separate worlds for me and I intend to keep it that way.
- Rochelle
Once you stop owning something you lose the ability to make promises about it. Good intentions or no. One hard headed business decision like FF is not earning its keep or we need the resources elsewhere and it's done. Been on both sides.
- Todd Hoff
The only thing that would make a real difference in this case would be an unambiguous statement from Mark Zuckerberg himself. Let him address the FF community and actually say what he will commit himself to. I suppose he's a man of his word.
- Meryn Stol
Good news. Doin' the right thing!
- Rob Schieber
Yeah sure! Promises Promises!!!
- Jose Luis Santos
Hmm. A whole lot of the sale was in stock options. Takes awhile to get fully vested. The next few years should prove very interesting.
- Kathy Fitch
How can you live up to that promises when you no longer own it?
- John D Reasor
....hmmmm, we got the wrong impression then?
- Mark Essel
Nevermind, I'd feel a helluva lot better with an unattached open social media where I could rely on keeping contacts and connections however weak for as long as I chose to continue using the service.
- Mark Essel
Actions speak louder then words, and the key is the final decision is no longer up to him. I am sure Paul means every word he says I just not sure he is going to be able to keep it.
- Kim Landwehr
I don't expect FF to go away right away. I just expect things will definitely be different. I do hope that FB does improve, but I am also branching out given the sale.
- Kevin Whalen
"Promises are a bourgeois invention and, anyway, they're meant to be broken." [V. I. Lenin quoted from inexact memory] by
- ianf ⌘
@louisgray's »If you see the post I put up last night...« <http://friendfeed.com/scoblei...> If you cared for others to read that post, you'd have included a direct link to it. It's the essence of hypertext, and any "Silicon Valley early adopter, tech geek blogger" worth the name would have done just...
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- ianf ⌘
It would make some business sense to keep FF as some kind of separate site/module, if just to stop another site taking it's place and becoming another competitor.
- Robert Littlejohn
Hi Ian! I get what you are saying, but sometimes, dropping links to my own posts in other people's threads looks like spam. I also believe a good number of people saw it, and know how to get it otherwise. That said, it's right here: http://www.louisgray.com/live...
- Louis Gray
Robert - To say Facebook is more interesting to work for than Google may be a stretch. While Facebook is growing exponentially and has challenges, Google faces HUGE challenges just staying Google ... while exploring new areas of growth. Keeping the index relevant is a big challenge in itself. On the other hand ... the 'FF guys' have worked there already and know how they feel about what direction they wanted to go ... which .. I think ... makes a little more sense?
- Charlie Anzman
Charlie: remember most of this team already worked at Google. Facebook is pre IPO. Google is not. The potential rewards are much larger at Facebook and the potential to have an impact is much larger at Facebook too.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Posting links (references) to one's other posts "looks like spam"? That's news to me, and a lame excuse. In any event, given main difference between worlds of analog and digital publishing being ability in the latter case to refer back to source in unambiguous and granular fashion (rather than, as in analog, to indicate issue, chapter, page, verse, line, etc - if at all), not including...
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- ianf ⌘
ianf, I agree, but it feels like spam when you're doing it. Encourage him nicely.
- Bruce Lewis
i suspect that, if FF were to survive relatively unchanged it will be through an open-source effort. i doubt FF will survive as a stand-alone site w/ Fb paying the freight.
- MikeAmundsen
Why don't the FF founders release an official statement saying how long the site will continue and what we can expect if we stay?
- Tomy Thomson
Keep in mind that despite the best intentions, nearly half of all sincere promises end in divorce.
- April Russo (app103)
Robert: I agree that the technology with great audiences don't get killed off, but the name of the game to the shareholders is money. It makes a ton more sense for facebook to integrate friendfeed into facebook, an already monetizable model, vs. leaving it as a de-coupled technology that has to have a new revenue model built for it.
- Erik Boles
like x1000
- Vezquex: God of FF
With so much money still on the table in the form of stock options, there's certainly plenty of motivation to make FB stellar. If FF ends up being treated well, too (for whatever reason--a promise, a warm fuzzy feeling, its potential role in helping to make FB stellar), then I'm all for that.
- Kathy Fitch
There is a way to argue keeping FF going makes sense to FB: The important thing in social software ISN'T the software, it's the people who use it. If the people who use FF are sufficiently different to those on FB, then it could make sense to keep both services. Possibly they may end up using the same software, but have different brands. Think of VW group in cars (SEAT/Skoda/VS/Audi are...
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- Nick Lothian
Interesting thread. I think that Paul has the best intention and he will do everything he can to keep the existing service up. Dave Winer has a good summary of the forces he will have to fight against. Making a Facebook vs. Google vs. Microsoft decision was probably a hard one. I am wondering if Twitter was in the race too...Twitter + Friendfeed could have been a great team to go...
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
Why the outreach now and not earlier in the week? Has something spooked the FF team? Seeing people looking for alternatives, and poking around Google Reader, Streamy, SocialThing, perhaps? Robert said it himself, if people leave here, FF dies, and the team doesn't have a whole lot to sell to FB (yeah, arguably) and that could scotch the whole deal. So I'm just wondering why the outreach now?
- Dominic Jones
ianf: don't you know, links are dead? ;)
- Tristan Seligmann
read it from the begining, I'm happy FF crew is beginning to acknowledge the questions, Dave definitely has a point, but all-in-all I thought death was near, it looks like it gets delayed for some time. The main thing is ppl are still here although reader is the new playground...unfortunately the communication with their team isn't all that good...
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Dobromir, "read [297 more comments] from the begining" is not a good advice for anything, least of all here, in the Kingdom of Perpetual Constant Fragmentary Attention Overload, where realtime fly-by comments are the rule.
- ianf ⌘
Robert, thank you for sharing this info. I hope everyone got the message clearly. Wonderful news!
- Michael Fidler
from iPhone
Ok, I hadn't time to read all the comments on this thread. But this sure sounds promising, and I do trust Robert and Louis when they're saying something. So I'm hopeful:)
- Patrik Johansson
It is not whether Friendfeed lives or dies. It's whether our free-wheeling, anarchic, community-driven approach will be replaced by the bland family-oriented guidelines of Facebook. Will we still be able to chuckle of Asian men on a beach, for example?
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
hey all, we can't return to the past, what happen has already happened, now the question is this one, may a micro community survive inside a large community, the answer is YES, FF community can and may have the same social behaviour it has here, and when move to FB, we need just to preserve our connections, and to maintain the same behaviour. that all, but even ancients tribes don't survive without scarifying some of their tradition.
- abdellah
Will Friend feed just get - morphed into Facebook now? clearly they want to take on Twitter. I noticed that I tryed to remove my Friend feed from facebook recently because less techy friends complained that I take over there Friend feeds...! But I can't... mmmm
- PRBristolco.uk
FaceFeed. Nom nom nom.
- Marlin Forbes
My goodness, there needs to be a way to search comments...I scanned to see if Paul had chimed in, but didn't see that.
- Chad Gesser
Scobe: I hope he does chime in. I think he needs to since you broke that.
- Chad Gesser
Chad: I think he'll say more after he has a little time at Facebook and can give definitive answers as to what the FriendFeed team is going to do there. He told me that will take several weeks.
- Robert Scoble
no i didnt know that
- Chris Nwakalo
if so wonderful news
- Ronald
Facebook is genuinely interested in best in class customer experience. I can't yet envision what features or practices are incorporated or left behind, but it seems a positive move for users. There is always a die-hard loyal following that doesn't want to see their Freind (feed) go away. Heck, I still record The West Wing on Bravo.
- Jeff Marmins
Yeah i sure hope so robert. . i really rather not be on facebook.
- RamirezG
Chad, to aid in scanning, you can do a Ctrl-F (or equivalent) and search the current page for "- Paul Buchheit" and/or install my user script that adds a mini avatar to the beginning of each comment http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- Micah Wittman
Scoble, why do you think FriendFeed won't get sacrificed by Facebook management? Most sensible thing, to me, is to get FriendFeed integrated as a feature of Facebook, then eliminate the individual brand. Fact is, it's Facebook's decision at this point, unless the FriendFeed guys got something in writing to the contrary (which likely didn't happen). Sometimes you've got to go with your...
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- Jason Nunnelley
Jason: it doesn't really matter. I've been on Facebook all morning and they already have a lot of FriendFeed's features. Soon the rest will be moved over too. And the servers won't get turned off anytime soon, based on conversations with FriendFeed and Facebook. So, for now, use it and be happy. Me? I've already been spreading out my social networking time just in case.
- Robert Scoble
and before he disappears into a part of the web that I can't find.....how do you say his last name? Boo-Kite? Buck-heat? Really, I don't know and I wanna know. Just so I know, You know?
- Morgan Haley
*bumps* Scoble the weather vane, with the wind
- sofarsoShawn
Carnage4Life on Programming Praxis accuses The Daily WTF of name infringement - http://www.reddit.com/r...
"Have a contest on what the new "punny" name for that section should be and move on. It isn't worth all this drama."
- Dare Obasanjo
Bemused by how sulky Friendfeed users are acting at http://jungleg.com/2009... did they think the site would last forever, with no biz model?
Adewale Oshineye liked this
You mean like Twitter?
- Adewale Oshineye
I assume Twitter will eventually exit by being bought by Google. Their dreams of being a billion dollar company seem ridiculous from my perspective. But what do I know, I thought Friendfeed was an easily copyable service with no moat and yet they got bought for $50 million.
- Dare Obasanjo
I'm curious. Why do you think Google would buy Twitter?
- Adewale Oshineye
I can see Google buying Twitter for two reasons. The first is as a hedge in case "real time search" (aka what people are saying on Twitter right now) turns out to be a valuable search scenario for regular users and the second is so that the company has a big time social media play not just niches like Orkut or weirdly bolted on like in Google Reader.
- Dare Obasanjo
Adewale Oshineye liked this
Great presentation, wish all my coworkers on the UI teams would read this.
- Dare Obasanjo
Why doesn't Google Docs support pptx? Also, please don't email me pptx files :) - Edit: apparently it now supports docx, so my question and request is now limited to pptx...
Jack Wilson, K4SAC, NaHi, Daniel Rowley and 15 other people liked this
Seriously. Nobody wants that carp.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
I just send PDFs. Sink or swim!
- Akiva Moskovitz
I thought it was just upgraded to support docx and xlsx?
- Benjamin Golub
I hate .docx files!
- Johnny
It does support docx
- Liza
why would you hate docx?
- Jigar Mehta
Plain text... it's the only thing that will still be readable in 100 years.
- LogEx
LE, tell that to people who wrote in plain text 200 years ago.
- Akiva Moskovitz
My inlaws send me family photos in pptx files. Not even slideshows, just the jpgs dragged and dropped into a pptx file and sent away. I wonder if it's progress. Two years ago, they were sent in doc files.
- Antonio Yon
It's gotta be text and artistic so archeologist types will spend time deciphyring the message. All tech writings will be irrelevant, history will be most valued 1000 years from now
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I really like pptx for presentations, powerful stuff. But whats weird, I am working with some japanese project managers and they use .ppt for notetaking in meetings, with all of these complex embed tables and than laugh at me because google docs can't open it correctly. Trying to get them to type in a wiki we can all read and write is impossible. So we emaill .ppt files around :)
- Robert Higgins
It doesn't? Even my iPhone seems to support PPTX files so it is weird to hear Google Docs doesn't.
- Dare Obasanjo
Robert - that is positively bizarre!
- O.Shane
Someone asked if we use virtualization, so I looked it up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... & I'm even more confused. Can someone explain what & why?
Ho John Lee, Robert and Todd Hoff liked this
He asked if we used virtualization and wanted to discuss why not if we didn't. I'm not clear on what problems it solves for us but maybe I should talk to our ops folks instead. :)
- Dare Obasanjo
It lowers costs to deploy hardware/software, reduces energy consumption, allows for greater reliability through synching of duplicate systems either onsite or in a DR facility.
- Alex Scoble
Virtualization allows you to share servers between more users so that they have higher utilization which is more cost and power efficient. If you are running one app on your cluster then it's pretty useless, except as perhaps a nifty deployment API. In your typical data center however there are dozens of apps running from dozens of different groups that all went through their own...
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- Todd Hoff
There's one thing NO ONE is talking about in terms of #twittergate (the role of the SUL in pressure on @techcrunch). Will discuss here:
Joe Dawson, thinkQuick, Gordon Saunders and 33 other people liked this
TechCrunch is on Twitter's Suggested User List. They have been gifted about 880,000 followers by being on that list, AKA "SUL". That's worth a lot of money.
- Robert Scoble
SUL?
- iconic88
SUL? Sulfuric acid?
- Richard
So what are you saying? That they shouldn't leak the docs because they got a lot of followers from Twitter?
- Dare Obasanjo
That they leaked the docs to become more popular on twitter?
- Tyler Hurst
the point most people are missing is that TechCrunch states they have spoken with Twitter. I am sure Twitter execs know what's coming and are prepared
- Kevin
brave new world...
- Bill Kinney
Wouldn't you think the <800k SUL-generated followers would have made @arrington LESS likely to publish the docs?
- Tom Guarriello
Dare: I bet that Twitter is threatening Mike with getting kicked off.
- Robert Scoble
Here is a link to a post of a dozen screenshots of Twitters admin panels http://www.nowhereelse.fr/admin-t... "There are 187 featured SUL Uusers"
- Mark
Tom: it's gotta be one consideration Mike is considering.
- Robert Scoble
Techcrunch did mention in one of their posts that Twitter is generating a lot of traffic for them. So the SUL does work for them. And it works for twitter as they stop TC from posting the documents
- Sidharth Dassani
Sure, Robert. But he's pushed it this far despite the SUL factor.
- Tom Guarriello
SUL = Suggested User List
- Manuel Arroyo
I bet that twitter prefers this to leak on techcrunch where Mike can spin some stories for them than to see the zip file with the docs appearing on a torrent site !
- Eschnou
wikileaks maybe?
- Mark
So twitter kicks arrington off. does he publish the docs? does that help him?
- Tyler Hurst
If Twitter kicks him off get ready for a big time firestorm! (Just mistyped: "firestory"!)
- Tom Guarriello
Tom: Mike is a journalist. He also says that someone else will publish them, so might as well tell everyone that these things are knocking around in public.
- Robert Scoble
Even without the suggested users list, TechCrunch must be weighing the cost of enmity with the most popular startup in the Valley right now. Don't they write like 3 Twitter stories a day? What happens if Twitter stops talking to them and takes all their press communications to Mashable (who are already beginning to kick TechCrunch's butt with their social media savviness?
- Dare Obasanjo
Robert - Arrington is NOT a journalist. Journalists check sources. Process journalism is NOT real journalism. He's a writer.
- Tyler Hurst
How did Arrington not check his sources? He confirmed they are real docs
- Kevin
Yes, read all his rationale. Seems sincere in trying to separate juiciest from items he considers newsworthy. BTW, I do believe he is a journalist.
- Tom Guarriello
Which would they kick? Him with ~8K followers? Not TC with ~1million followers.
- Mike Shea
Kevin - not just this article. did you see his article on how the free google apps was gone when it was just a page layout change?
- Tyler Hurst
Tyler: I've been in the hotel room watching as Arrington checked his sources on a story. You're wrong on that one.
- Robert Scoble
Mike: almost all of TechCrunch's followers were gifted to him by TechCrunch (same with Mashable, by the way). Before the Suggested Users List came along both had fewer followers than me, Leo Laporte, and a couple of others. Being on the SUL is worth lots of money (I believe it's worth millions, if you stay on it for a few years).
- Robert Scoble
Tom - these are stolen documents. What does his rationale matter at this point?
- Tyler Hurst
Dare: yes, I'm sure Mike is considering all the consequences. Also, if these documents really do exist someone will publish them. When I quit Microsoft I told 15 people and I didn't even know the guy who leaked my story.
- Robert Scoble
For the record, so far, I have not been given the Twitter documents.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble - so why doesn't Twitter just publish them? Get ahead of any new site?
- Tyler Hurst
Tyler: journalists have printed stolen stuff that's newsworthy in the past.
- Robert Scoble
Tyler: I don't know, but I bet that Twitter does not want these released.
- Robert Scoble
Tyler - So were the Pentagon Papers.
- Tom Guarriello
Tyler: I wonder, if I did have them, and I talked with @ev, would he offer to put me on the SUL in return for not publishing the documents?
- Robert Scoble
Scoble - are they newsworthy because they're stolen or newsworthy because they're juicy? What good does this do?
- Tyler Hurst
Scoble - now that's a damn good question about SUL.
- Tyler Hurst
No journalist should have accepted to be on the SUL and at least at this moment ask that they be taken off.
- Stephen Pickering
Dare, to answer your original question, the SUL is a gift worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions. Jason Calacanis has already set the price at $250,000. So, the SUL is, in effect, a bribe that can be used to keep journalists/bloggers/twitterers in line. If you had a gift in your hand worth hundreds of thousands of dollars you would think twice before turning that gift away. I know I would.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: I'd say no to that, @ev knows that those docs are out there now anyway. If you were the only with them (hypothetically speaking), then he might have. But he'd probably equate it to extortion. Would you really want that?
- Mike Shea
I think twitter could just delete the techcrunch account if it wants to make a point. SUL removal wouldn't do much as they already have a lot of followers from it.
- Darren Stuart
Stephen: that is a very difficult ethical position to arrive at, especially if your competitors are also on the SUL (Mashable is on the SUL right now).
- Robert Scoble
Darren: wrong. If you remove yourself from the SUL you immediately start losing followers and start falling behind your competitors.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble - so you're saying that blackmail is okay as long as it benefits you?
- Tyler Hurst
Darren: in the race for advertising and PR and all that being at the top of the follower list gets you all sorts of goodies. http://www.wefollow.com for instance displays people in order of the number of the followers.
- Robert Scoble
How did the valuation for getting on the SUL end up being done? Is there a dollar value per follower based on link click throughs + ad clickthroughs?
- Dare Obasanjo
No one in the TC office yet, according to CrunchCam. Probably all sleeping. Boy today is going to be a busy day for them.
- Mark
Tyler: no. I'm not saying that. I'm hoping that if I am in any of these positions that I would take the high road. But living on the high road is very difficult.
- Robert Scoble
Dare: I used to help run a magazine with 100,000 subscribers that made millions in revenue every year.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble - That's the answer I'd expect from you. Journalists ALWAYS take the high road.
- Tyler Hurst
Dare: you could use a CPM (advertising fee per 1000 viewers) of $5 and come up with some sort of valuation.
- Robert Scoble
You can't objectively report on a company who is paying you directly and for that matter its impossible to also be a journalist and the owner of the news organization. In the past there's always suppossed to have been a firewall between content and the business side. But that's out the window. Notice all the puff pieces about bing on the NYtimes. Hmmmm, I wonder if that could be all the advertising dollars? Hmmmmmm
- Stephen Pickering
Tyler: journalists don't always take the high road. There are several New York Times journalists on the SUL if I remember right.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble - I wouldn't say the NYT is a leader in journalistic ethics anymore, either.
- Tyler Hurst
Wise words from @arrington "News is stuff someone doesn’t want you to write. The rest is advertising."
- Mark
Stephen: exactly. Money does cause news organizations to carefully consider their coverage, even those who say it doesn't and that have a "Chinese firewall" between editorial and advertising.
- Robert Scoble
No one is in this tight economy its all about $$$$$$$$$$$$
- Stephen Pickering
Mark - BS. he publishes rumors too.
- Tyler Hurst
Stephen: if I had the documents I'd have to consider its impact on my employer, Rackspace. That's why I disclose all my conflicts of interest.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble - do you believe Arrington's claim that he just received these documents?
- Tyler Hurst
Robert: Trick is to take the employer out of the equation. What would you do if you were on your own?
- Mike Shea
Robert: good points, are techcrunch going to publish the stories is the question now? I think twitter is at a point now where it does not matter if techcrunch start a war with them if they were to just ban all techcrunch and employee accounts.
- Darren Stuart
There's no better publicity than bad publicity. Just remember that. Remember the whole Ashton and CNN thing? That turned out to be backed by twitter and created HUGE publicity for them. Something doesn't smell right. Not saying all bad publicity is good for both parties, but in a situation like this, it's plausible that both Ev/twitter and Mike/TC are just laughing their asses off as the publicity pulls in more page views
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
Mike is not a journalist. He is a self-confessed showboater.
- Mark Littlewood
Mike - so much for the honesty, transparency and authenticity we hoped social media and such would provide. A new ruling class has just replaced the old one.
- Tyler Hurst
Tyler: yes, I do believe Arrington.
- Robert Scoble
Does twitter go after the hacker?
- Tyler Hurst
Tyler, especially with the whole mob thing and FF. Something is up here. Of course, I could be completely off my rocker and it's all just one big coincidence and Mike really is that much of a pompous ass.
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
The twit poll on the issue from TC http://twtpoll.com/2a1oiv showed an overwhelming stance from the community that posting the information is unethical. It might be better for TC to let someone else (Mashable) post the information, resulting in removal from a SUL and gaining both ethical rapport with the community and an edge over competition. This is one story that would be rough to break, why is that only TC has the information so far? That is the more alarming concern.
- thestaticfrost
Well so far all he has posted about is the Twitter Reality TV pitch. So I suppose there is a chance Twitter convinces him to not post anything else. In my mind it would look bad if he backs down now given the perception of the SUL.
- Kevin Whalen
Mark: Mashable won't publish these either. They have benefited from the SUL a lot more than Arrington has.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, interesting POV, I would still personally stand down on the issue.
- thestaticfrost
ethics a side I think its a case of - if SUL pageviews > estimated story pageviews then do not publish
- Darren Stuart
Mark: on the SUL? Yeah, but the SUL is interesting and won't stop being interesting just because I stop writing about it. There are rafts of new journalistic text books being written because of it.
- Robert Scoble
The more I think about this...the more it seems plausible that twitter has been doing stuff behind closed doors to generate publicity. Who's heard of twitter going after ANY hacker? Why is it only TC that this email was sent to? If a hacker REALLY had this info, wouldn't they do something a bit less obvious? Like I dunno...sell the stuff? Which brings up another question....how much did TC pay for this info? I guess if TC continues to be on the SUL we'll know the answer.
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
Mike: what would I do if I were on my own? I'm biased toward publishing, but I need to know the facts first before I really could say one way or the other.
- Robert Scoble
To put it in reverse, maybe if you got the documents you could give them back to Twitter in exchange for getting on the SUL. :)
- Louis Gray
Mike: it's possible that the hacker works for TechCrunch or has a business relationship with TechCrunch. Mike has built a good network of people who offer him news before anyone else. The thing is now Mike has access to internal info at Twitter that will be hard to avoid in interviews with Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Mike/Robert: If a less reputable blogger/company had this information, it would already have been posted and this conversation would be moving another direction. The pageviews would trump any SUL.
- thestaticfrost
mark - what a crappy way to make a name for yourself. publishing stolen documents to serve the public good is one thing, publishing as a smear campaign is wrong.
- Tyler Hurst
Mark: I don't believe that's true. Remember, TechCrunch only had about 50,000 followers on Twitter before being added to the SUL. I seriously doubt one story would get them more than 100,000, even if it was the most interesting, sexy story around.
- Robert Scoble
Tyler, it would be an awful way to make a name for yourself, I agree but that is not the issue.
- thestaticfrost
Louis: word gets around when you extort companies. It's not a good thing and almost always comes back on you eventually as the people involved move to other companies and spread the news around.
- Robert Scoble
Louis: if I had the documents I wouldn't use them as extortion for that reason. I know one guy who extorted a company and I'll always remember that.
- Robert Scoble
Tyler, if TechCrunch was doing it as a smear campaign they would publish a lot more of the documents and have started off with something other that a softball.
- Matthew McCowan
Arrington is getting it both ways here. He writes about it to say they're not going to post the most juicy stuff but he still gets most of the benefits of posting everything. A lot of people are talking about it. He's a master hypeologist.
- Justin Whittaker
Matthew - that was in reference to a small blogger grabbing the documents and throwing them all out there.
- Tyler Hurst
Justin: that is accurate about Arrington.
- Robert Scoble
Tyler, oh gotcha - sorry
- Matthew McCowan
Freaking Kelso is on the suggested users list, Arrington has 800K subscribers, hooray how many tweets fall silent in the Twitter forest. Much ado about nothing and the SUL.
- Patrick Boegel
Matthew - no, techcrunch is doing it for the page views, of course.
- Tyler Hurst
Robert, interesting tie of numbers into the SUL growth of TC. Perhaps there is an exorbitant value of the SUL, this story would just be pennies in comparison. I see no feasible monetary gain available for TC to violate this ethical issue.
- thestaticfrost
Patrick: even if you aren't on the SUL most of your followers aren't listening. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I'm sick of being monetized into the services I use.. It's almost enough to make me stop it all altogether.
- John Blanton
John - stuff has to get paid for.
- Tyler Hurst
Says John as he drinks a $4 latte from Starbucks.
- Robert Scoble
"I'm sick of being monetized into the services I use." - Then turn off the TV and radio, don't buy any newspapers or magazines, or look at any ad-supported web sites. It's the way of the world.
- John Craft
Stupid posh coffee. Normal coffee, with milk, please.
- Mark
I guess I'm not seeing how the SUL status of TC is factoring. TC is going ahead and publishing the information they deem to be part of their news mission. Is the insinuation that if SUL status were not a factor, that TC would publish the entirety of the documents without culling non-TC mission-related information?
- Matthew DeVries
that is what I mean Robert, I follow you for interesting information, not because someone suggested it, sure there are people who sign on for Twitter and just follow a host of the suggested users I guess, but I just see zero value in that, there is nothing organic in it, so it does not bother me, I am pretty sure the likes of Tech Crunch and Mashable have each questioned whether being on there has hurt or helped. Followers and fans is pretty "loose" terminology, and a metric that gets dicey after some time.
- Patrick Boegel
I fully agree with the premise that SUL-Status is a COI consideration.
- Matthew DeVries
Patrick: Arrington tells me that being on the SUL has brought them audience and, therefore, money.
- Robert Scoble
I don't have a problem with Techcrunch releasing the articles they are, however don't say they are doing in for public interest. They are doing it for Techcrunch interest, nothing wrong with that, but lets be honest.
- Kim Landwehr
Right now the man with all the answers is fast asleep in his bed, dreaming of world domination
- Mark
Kim - yep.
- Tyler Hurst
Matthew: pat of the "Mission" of a business is never to shoot yourself in the foot.
- thestaticfrost
Can we just ignore the people who claim SUL status is not of value? It's like arguing with flat-eatherers at this point. Just accept it as fact and let's discuss how this value is affecting TC's behavior here.
- Matthew DeVries
Robert: This is what happened when the lovely Veronica Belmont finally responded to my questions regarding the number of 'bots' following those on the SUL :http://ff.im/57MjU
- Jim Connolly
I'd like to see an estimate of the ROI of being on the SUL. Different for everyone, but it can be modeled. Would bring an interesting new perspective into the discussion.
- Peter Kim
Matthew - the only debate of SUL value would be total worth, not if it has a worth.
- Tyler Hurst
If I could offer you hundreds of thousands of extra hits on your website a year, for FREE, would you accept?
- Mark
Mark: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
- Robert Scoble
Nothing is ever free.
- thestaticfrost
But that's a debate for a different thread. We're in the midst of a real time story right now, and we should be discussing how that thing of value is affecting TC's reporting of a story. I would contend it's not, as TC is going ahead and publishing the documents, without regard for loss of SUL-Status.
- Matthew DeVries
hehe
- Mark
What if Twitter is using their influence at TechCrunch, to manage the delivery of this 'story?' Better that, than someone publish the story, with a negative spin.
- Jim Connolly
Matthew: how do you know it's not? Mike has already said he's talking with Twitter and he hasn't published the information. So, he gets best of both worlds. Gets credit for having the info, and now has inside access that no one else has. The SUL might never have even come up (I doubt it has, actually) but now we're wondering what kind of deal they made.
- Robert Scoble
That would be a good point, Jim, but what I've read from Arrington is that they're publishing the documents that relate to their news mission.
- Matthew DeVries
here is a link to a story that deals with Arringtons "wise words" http://ff.im/5g6LJ
- Marco
Matthew: yes, which leads me to think that he made a deal with Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
TC has not let the cat out yet, no reason to believe that it will. They made it past the first hour of having the information which is most crucial to it being fully released.
- thestaticfrost
Robert - I agree that is a realistic concern, but I would reserve judgement until the story rolls.
- Matthew DeVries
Good point Jim. That TC story was actually Incredibly measured. Not like arrington at all. Hmmmmm....
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Matthew: I'm not judging, just bringing up the potential conflicts of interest to discuss them. I don't see anyone judging here yet.
- Robert Scoble
I agree with Arrington's assertion that publishing what kind of panties @ev's wife wears would not be within TC's news mission.
- Matthew DeVries
Correct. You're not judging. Just trying to stem the mob till they have a true target.
- Matthew DeVries
Robert: In your experience, would Michael Arrington NORMALLY be this careful about drip feeding a story, so as NOT to offend the person / company featured in the story?
- Jim Connolly
And Robert: your points here SHOULD be in the front of everyone's mind when they do roll the story.
- Matthew DeVries
I may be naive here, but I also think any Twitter-directed communication regarding the release should be disclosed by Arrington when the story rolls, else he's not a reporter, he's a shill.
- Matthew DeVries
Jim: Twitter is the story of the year. So, yes, he's being more careful here than he otherwise would. And, if these documents were stolen, he's also a lawyer and is being careful to make sure he stays on the legal side of the line. I would be very careful with this story too. I have a different conflict of interest, though, which is that I'm an employee of Rackspace and would have to consider the impact of such a story on my company.
- Robert Scoble
Let's be clear if Techcrunch has the information, so does someone else. The information is going to get out. Techcrunch maybe releasing the story slowly to maintain the interest. My guess is they are getting a lot more hits with this story then they would normally
- Kim Landwehr
Matthew: I like to pretend I live in a dream world sometimes too, but I don't. I doubt we'll hear what was actually said back and forth in an off-the-record conversation. If i were Ev the first thing I would have said is "this is an off the record conversation, right?" And then if Arrington repeated it he would lose status too, because sources wouldn't trust him to talk openly.
- Robert Scoble
Kim: if other people have the story they will publish it all at once. So doing a slow rollout would actually be stupid. I bet no one else has the story, yet.
- Robert Scoble
I don't see them on the twitter SUL
- Orli Yakuel
Ok, going too lunch. This will probably outpace me too far to catch up. Not ducking direct questions to me.
- Matthew DeVries
Orli: see who?
- Robert Scoble
Orli: if you are already following TechCrunch and Mashable they won't appear on the SUL, you've gotta check with an account that isn't following them.
- Robert Scoble
oh, silly me. I remember that list before BTW, it's just got HUGE. who's checking there anyway?
- Orli Yakuel
Orli: most new users of Twitter get shown the list and get the option to follow everyone on it.
- Robert Scoble
It looks like some of the same information is being released on a French Web site per bizjournal
- Kim Landwehr
Sorry if this is a repeat, I haven't managed to read every single comment... @techcrunch didn't even publish these docs first; why are they taking all the heat? This was the first place I saw it - http://bit.ly/10FySf
- Kenton
um.
- Orli Yakuel
Kenton: Because Arrington himself said he would publish them. Arrington is a joke and far from a true journalist.
- John Fox
John: I disagree with you about Arrington. But so far nothing is that interesting in what the French site has published. So I'm wondering what the big deal is? Maybe Arrington knows that there's no real news value in what was gained, so he is making lemonade out of lemons? The real story here is that Google's security measures were overcome, so this is a cautionary tale about putting private info into the cloud.
- Robert Scoble
I totally agree about your cloud comment Robert. This should be a lesson to everyone who's jumping on the bandwagon without thinking about the risks.
- Kenton
Here's another post from Business Insider. Now that the docs have been published, everyone can link ethically, even though the info was stolen. Ahh, I love the journalism business sometimes. http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter...
- Robert Scoble
Robert: I don't see where the educational part of the content is that he's going to publish. What will be gained except corporate secrets and Twitter's dirty laundry? If this was a major corporation, he'd an injunction would be in effect right now. Yes, shame on Twitter for putting that kind of information in the cloud without adequate security, but then again, Arrington doesn't need to take advantage of the situation for notariety alone. That's a poor ethical standard.
- John Fox
John: Arrington gets the best of both worlds. He gets credit for thinking through the publishing of this info, while other people do the dirty work. See http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter... Why didn't Arrington just publish? Well, the SUL is one potential reason. Are there others? Did @ev give him an exclusive? Or some other reason not to publish? We'll never know.
- Robert Scoble
Arrington is definitely doing some back dealing which quite frankly makes him lose credibility.
- Kevin Whalen
from email
I think by the time Arrington wakes up (lazy bastard) he will have been Scooped by other websites
- Mark
Mark: already has been: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter...
- Robert Scoble
Robert: I don't doubt that Arrington walked a fine line, thinking through the publishing of the info. I don't fault him for that. As a tech writer myself, I know there are certain things that will get you sued in a heartbeat. However, I don't see what Arrington has to gain from this other than notariety and to get TC's name out there even more. This is a tainted story from the start....
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- John Fox
Ok question, are we mad at Techcrunch ie Arrington, because he published only part of the information or that he publish the information at all or that he said he would publish it and didn't?
- Kim Landwehr
I'm not saying it's okay to publish ill-gotten confidential material but people would be less tempted to do so if Twitter were more transparent and less secretive. For a social network, they have a real 1.0 social media philosophy. Even Facebook reveals information about their userbase and growth. But Twitter is like a black box as the #fixreplies disaster revealed. And since that hashtag dropped off the Trending Topics, we've never heard any more about their proposed solution.
- Liz
The lack of democracy on the SUL is one of the most disturbing aspects of Twitter. It pushes Twitter towards an echo chamber since new people just follow the same old people. There needs to be some serious rotation.
- Trent Hamm
Didn't Kevin Rose design an enhanced SUL for Twitter? Where people who identify themself with a tag tell you who they follow with that tag?
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew: yes, Rose runs http://www.wefollow.com -- the problem is that most people on the home page and at the top of most lists are on Twitter's SUL.
- Robert Scoble
Just logged into twitter and a big red box tells me my account is suspensed for strange activity. Hmm
- Mark
But I can still post. Hmm
- Mark
I am reading that thousands of twitter accounts have been wrongly suspended due to "human error". Has anyone heard anything?
- Mark
he sees to have delisons of Grandure Murdoch gets away with hacking becasue of his power and the willingness of cronys to take the fall and the plod to turn a blind eye - he still needs to mak the public interest defence which he has not
- Maurice Walshe
Twitter's response: http://blog.twitter.com
- Liz
Judging by Liz's link, looks like Twitter chose to play cards in public and Twitter just won. Talking about "The underware drawer" analogy flat out says the documents are gossip and not a story. This makes TechCrunch look like a gossip rag. Twitter also focused on their users and their security- the Ace of Spades. Bravo.
- E-Advocate Network
Calling TechCrunch a journalistic entity is an extreme stretch of the imagination, as the vast majority of their blogs are opinion totally devoid of fact. TechCrunch has found that "ethical line" Arrington mentioned, and tripped right over it, falling face first into the sewer. Indeed, TechCrunch's true colors have now revealed just how much of a gossip rag they are, totally lacking in...
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- jcunwired
I was wrongly suspended along with 9 others months ago. It was a terrible experience.
- DaveDelaney.ME
my question for mr. scoble is, if the same documents landed in your inbox would you have done the same thing?
- Tobias Lewsadder
poop
- Jacob
Just curious about something. Earlier I tried following Techcrunch on Twitter and found I was blocked, supposedly "at the request of the user." Since I don't remember saying a bad word about Techcrunch or Michael (as Robert can attest from discussions in the past couple of months, I've usually defended Arrington on a few things), I'm wondering if the block was TechCrunch's doing or Twitter's.
- George Hall (Australia)
RT @cshirky Remember, Back In The Day, when Google used to build stuff, *then* announce it? I miss those days. *cough*Wave*cough*ChromeOS
Jérôme Flipo, Jeff Weber, i80and and 18 other people liked this
Dare, while I understand your point to some extent, I think it'd be a bit difficult to have developers working on cool open source stuff like Wave if it was neither announced nor at all available ;). And given that Google had partners working together with it on ChromeOS, had we failed to even mention the project until it was fully available to the public, then people would be mad at us withholding info. Sometimes it's just really hard to win in the world of public opinion here :P
- Adam Lasnik
It's also a little tricky to build open source software in secret
- Adewale Oshineye
Well Chrome OS is not really 'building opensource software'. I think like Android and Chrome browser is that they are building it, then they wil opensource what they have built.
- Travis Koger
from iPhone
Adewale, on the one hand I can buy the argument that it is better to announce before it gets leaked if you have collaborators (although that's what NDAs are for) on the other hand these announcements have had the air of vaporware that MSFT has been accused of in articles like http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD...
- Dare Obasanjo
I agree with Dare. There is a fine line here. The chrome os announcement would have been so much better with code. Heck, enen ms had bits to go with the 2003 PDC.
- Joe Beda ()
from iPhone
Just my personal opinion, but while Google is pretty good at keeping projects under wraps until they're ready (e.g. Chrome), when you work with outside partners, the odds of a leak are much higher--even if those partners are under NDA. I didn't get a vapor-like feel from the Chrome OS announcement because it reminded me of the Android announcement; there was clearly substance to Android, but at the same time the Android handsets take a while to get to market. Again, all just my personal opinion.
- Matt Cutts
Agreed, Matt. The early Android leaks/rumors didn't come from within Google, to my knowledge; they came from partners. And @Travis: Are you suggesting that software is only open source if the entire process has external contributors from day one? That's a pretty high bar, and I can't think of many significant open source projects that would meet it.
- Joel Webber
@Joel My understanding of opensource software is that if the claim is made that it is opensource, then it must have external contributions and the code must be published with the appropriate license etc. I have no doubt that when this is released that it will be opensource, or if not soon afterwards, but do not believe that it can be considered opensource until then. However, more than...
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- Travis Koger
from iPhone
@Travis: Fair enough, I understand your meaning more clearly now. As for whether the timing was meant to be disruptive, I can't say with certainty, since I'm not involved in this project. I can say, though, that seems more likely to have been announced for the reasons Matt suggests above -- if there are external partners involved, it's basically impossible to keep quiet, so there's no point in trying.
- Joel Webber
@Joel I can see Matt's point, however I thought from the news release that this has already been with partners and so far no specific leaks. Why could this not been announced after this week, as I reckon it would not have made much difference to the schedule... But then I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. ;)
- Travis Koger
from iPhone
Matt, this goes back to Anil Dash's "Microsoft Moment" post. The question isn't whether Google considers it a vaporware announcement or not but whether its impact to the industry is the equivalent of one. This is where the comment about Google's view of itself diverging from the industry's view of it is pertinent. It isn't like the various so-called "vaporware" announcements of...
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- Dare Obasanjo
Remember that ChromeOS leaked before the announcement, so there isn't even a question of whether leaking could have been avoided. Honestly I think it's hard to have any "negative impact to competitors" from an _OS_ announcement (where the market is already locked up) or from a _research project_ announcement like Wave (where there is no market yet). Given a choice between announcing...
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- Daniel Dulitz
Carnage4Life on 2009: Rise of the run-of-the-mill developer? - http://www.reddit.com/r...
Ho John Lee liked this
"Without all the context it is hard to provide good advice but here goes anyway. In general, I'd agree with a manager who says that developers working nights and weekends on work projects is not healthy as a routine practice. This implies that you either have bad project management practices (i.e. estimates are inaccurate, death marches, etc) or that you have developers who are bad at time management (i.e. read reddit during work hours, etc) and then make themselves look heroic by doing their day job during off hours. I also agree that it is a bug to rely on nights and weekends from employees to ship projects because the kind of people who fall for that may one day realize they are being suckers and move on to start their own company, better pay, etc and it isn't guaranteed that the next person you hire will fall for the same malarky. NOTE: This isn't to say there aren't crunch times during a project where everyone stays late or comes in on Saturdays. Just that it shouldn't be routine..."
- Dare Obasanjo
Sourceforge,Firefox and now KDE/Gnome/Ubuntu. How many more Open Source projects will Google target in quest for world domination?
seriously?
- Adewale Oshineye
It;s just not me noticing this. See http://www.pcworld.com/article...
- Dare Obasanjo
Interesting data on Facebook's various revenue sources. Most interesting is $75 million a year from the "Gifts" feature.
- Dare Obasanjo
Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success -- By The Numbers - http://www.businessinsider.com/six-mon...
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Interesting stats on adoption and benefits to customers of Facebook Connect
- Dare Obasanjo
The best news distribution platforms on the planet in order of value (according to me): 1. Feedly 2. Peoplebrowsr 3. Google Reader 4. Friendfeed.
Kathleen Capps, Thierry R. Andriamirado, Kol Tregaskes and 24 other people liked this
I would say: 1) Google Reader 2) FriendFeed 3) There is no #3.
- Louis Gray
Louis, what about Posterous?
- frank barry
No Twitter?
- Brandon Mendelson
Posterous and Twitter are included into the ff stream.
- Jim Braux-Zin
Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo! News. :)
- Dare Obasanjo
The line above is a test. Twitter Search is somewhere in there. But if we are talking about distribution, one should really start with e-mail.
- Louis Gray
+1 Louis Gray.
- Jason Huebel
Feedly makes GReader more useful...too bad it's locked into Firefox though
- .LAG liked that
Louis -- I think of Feedly as Google Reader PLUS -- and that is a very big plus. Do you perceive any advantages of Google Reader over Feedly? I can cover much more ground more nimbly with Feedly compared to GR for the same unit of time. (I subscribe to over 1,000 feeds). You may well use these tools in ways that I haven't imagined.
- Sean McBride
Sean, it depends on your use case. I like Feedly a lot and was the first to write about it. But I use Safari instead of Firefox, and am not going to switch browsers for one service.
- Louis Gray
Brandon - Peoplebrowsr is Twitter PLUS -- and that is a very big plus.
- Sean McBride
My main beef with Friendfeed: no list view, no mark as read (and therefore too much noise). Two issues that would be extremely easy to fix. But it is still a great news distribution platform, truly revolutionary.
- Sean McBride
Ah -- the browser issue; got it.
- Sean McBride
How's PB doing these days? I'd gotten tired of waiting for it to get out of alpha and switched to Tweetie for Mac. I'm also not crazy about running it in a browser window and both the Air and Fluid.app options for PB are less than ideal. I did like a lot of the functions PB offers, but wish I could find a comparable native Mac app. Maybe Nambu, but that still needed some maturing last time I checked, too. This is all a little off-topic, but other than this, I'd pretty much agree with your ranking.
- Grey Drane
Grey -- I just took another look at Peoplebrowsr yesterday, and it finally clicked for me. It's operating on all cylinders. The design is elegant and slick, despite the wealth of functionality. (There IS a learning curve on customizing it to one's tastes.)
- Sean McBride
Sean -- Cool. I'll have to give it another look, then.
- Grey Drane
Five or six years ago I used email heavily for news gathering, using various subscriptions and news alert services. Now my use of email for that purpose has dropped to near zero -- much too clunky and inefficient.
- Sean McBride
Friendfeed, memeorandum, Google News, Skygrid, and Feedly are my faves.
- Robert Scoble
The deeper powers and virtues of Feedly only become apparent after heavy use with a large feedbase -- one can easily navigate across one's entire collection of feeds in complex and swift ways that Google Reader can't begin to match. The conceptual design of the Feedly interface is really stunning.
- Sean McBride
Feedly rocks no doubt. I never go into GR now. I love that Feedly keeps adding features that make it even more useful.
- frank barry
PB does have a more mature feel now, but seriously, STILL alphaware??!!! What's up with that? Pull the trigger already, devs!
- Grey Drane
Robert -- I didn't mention Google News because I feed Google News searches into Feedly and Google Reader; for me, Feedly and Google Reader subsume Google News. Have to take a look at Skygrid -- hadn't heard of it. (You may have meant to type Google Reader there instead of Google News.)
- Sean McBride
What I like about the current Peoplebrowsr: 1. no desktop app required (except my browser) 2. tons of valuable functionality 3. many of the function buttons are hidden until one hovers over them; not too cluttered 4. feels fast and zippy 5. easy lateral navigation through stacks with left/right cursor keys 6. pause button, mark all posts as read, wipe read posts, resume flow 7. various...
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- Sean McBride
Sean -- Do you use PeopleBrowsr for FriendFeed, too? Or just Twitter? It seems buggy and generally not great for anything but pure Twitter statstream. My FriendFeed "Home" feed gets all sorts of excess junk in it, just for one example.
- Grey Drane
Grey -- I am only using Peoplebrowsr for Twitter -- looks like you've bumped into some alpha-style problems around the Twitter edges.( I would love to see Feedly take on the challenge of fully and optimally integrating Twitter into its interface model.)
- Sean McBride
Sean -- Yep. That'd be the way I'd like to go, too, for news anyway.
- Grey Drane
Sean -- BTW, what are some of those high-quality Twitter feeds you follow? I'm following a few, but I'm not sure how many I'd call "high-quality".
- Grey Drane
Grey: We'd love to know more about issues that you have with PeopleBrowsr's FriendFeed support. We are improving all the time, and need (and love) the feedback. Thanks!
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
That said, the reason i started using (and subsequently joined) PeopleBrowsr, is because of the ability to watch large numbers of streams simultaneously. When used in conjunction with FriendFeed's website, I think it's an incredible way to absorb large amounts of news very rapidly. It's been invaluable (for me) in determining the veracity of sources for news from Iran.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Grey: a few Twitter feeds that I've found to be valuable: Antiwarcom, alleyinsider, amnesty, atul, bbcpolitics, bbcscitech, BreakingNews, CBSNews, CFR_org, cnnbrk, cqpolitics, dailydish, DavidCornDC, DemocracyNow, dorait, EFF, foxnew_pol, FP_Passport, Gizmodo, glenngreenwald, guardiannews, guardiantech, haaretzonline, harpers, huffingtonpost, HuffPolitics, infowarsstories,...
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- Sean McBride
Sean: I wonder if you have all those added to a group in PB, and if so is it public?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob -- I will look into doing that. I take it that you work for Peoplebrowsr?
- Sean McBride
That would be awesome :) (and you can also pass out a link to the group stack - non PB users can just use the link to get the stack w/o logging into PB - just use the export at the bottom of the stack)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Yet another great Peoplebrowsr feature!
- Sean McBride
Tiny Peoplebrowsr features that make a big difference: for instance: the count of new tweets at the top left corner of stacks, and the countdown as they enter the stack. I now feel like I have some control over the deluge (particular in combination with Pause, Mark all posts as read and Wipe read posts).
- Sean McBride
Rob -- OK. I've just joined the PeopleBrowsr group here and will be posting some of my experiences there.
- Grey Drane
Sean -- Thanks. I'll check some of those out, but if you do get them all into a public PB group, let us know!
- Grey Drane
Grey -- do you have any Twitter feeds that you especially value?
- Sean McBride
Thanks Sean and Grey for the great comments! Love reading you guys. Here are some PeopleBrowsr videos: Lite http://is.gd/IMI7 Adv. http://is.gd/JfGU Business http://is.gd/JfIa
- SHHHE
SHHHE -- these links demonstrate that videos are often more effective than manuals and books for getting a quick handle on new programs.
- Sean McBride
Sean -- I've only just started following news feeds on Twitter, so there aren't any that I "especially" value yet. I still get most of my news there from the actual people I follow, which is a valuable resource in itself, of course. That said, the Telegraph's feeds are the one's I seem to notice the most in my statstream, but I don't actually click through to (or retweet) much of their content.
- Grey Drane
TweetTabs. It is rather auckward that you need to click on the favorites. But a good real time news as people type.
- Nitin Nanivadekar
Apple - Redirect to iPhone Buy Page - http://www.apple.com/retail...
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iPhone availability widget shows which stores in your area have the iPhone 3GS
- Dare Obasanjo
Great information on the dollar cost of having a slow rendering web page by Bing and Google.
- Dare Obasanjo
Opera Software reinvents complete irrelevance ⢠The Register - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009...
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Aaman (Clone of FF) liked this
Not up to Ted's usual standards even though Opera Unite is such a juicy target.
- Dare Obasanjo
AdSense: The (Weak) Elephant in the Room - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Not sure I buy the premise of this article given a key pillar of its argument is "social media advertising" is the new hotness.
- Dare Obasanjo
Interesting note on algorithms replacing human editors who currently update the site four times a day. I think I heard the backstory on this without understanding the repercussions.
- Dare Obasanjo
Other ways to read this feed:
