You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
Cool! can i get a daily or weekly email digest for the "Saved searches"?
- 0M0M
from email
This will be incredibly useful. Thanks to all involved in the design and execution.
- Kathy Fitch
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Franc, a rememberer
"As a devoted FriendFeed user, I have tried to convince all of my friends and family to join the site, but a handful of them never quite got their accounts set up properly. With our new Recommend friends feature, I can fix their FriendFeed experience by recommending subscriptions to them." Try it out at http://friendfeed.com/friends...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
What am I supposed to get when I click the 'recommend friends' link on someone's pop-up? Currently, the popup just goes away and I don't get directed anywhere else.
- FFing Enigma
Fred: yah, unfortunately, you can only recommend people who you are subscribed you and who are also subscribed back to you.
- Bret Taylor
Mark, I didn't submit a bug report since what is supposed to happen wasn't actually spelled out on the blog post or here; this might be the intended functionality... I hope not, but it's possible.
- FFing Enigma
Tina: it is supposed to pop up a dialog. Sorry for the trouble - we will look into it.
- Bret Taylor
At first I did not understand this, but now that I am checking it out, it is brilliant and addresses much of what we have complained about. NOW what will we complain about?
- Liza + = ?
Just to confirm Bret, the first image in the blog post is what the pop up is supposed to look like, right? Because that's nothing like what the ff.com/recommend page looks like....
- FFing Enigma
I notice that new subscriptions are automatically added to one's home feed. I consider that kind of a bug.
- Meryn Stol
Tina: yes, that is correct. The http://friendfeed.com/friends... page is just a list of people that we think could use some friend recommendations since they have few subscriptions. If you click on any of the "Recommend" links on that page, you will see the same, standard "Recommend friends" dialog.
- Bret Taylor
Where would we find recommendations that others suggest to us?
- Fred Yankowski
@Bret, who receive the recommandation see also who is the recommender?
- Roberto
Fred: You will receive an email as well as a notification on the top of your feed.
- Ross Miller
Roberto: yes, they see who recommended
- Bret Taylor
Bret, if I recommend friends to people who haven't signed in for a long time, will they get email? A lot of my bored friends are not active FF users I think. (quite logical)
- Meryn Stol
Not getting the pop-over when I click 'recommend' on the friendfeed.com/friends/recommend page either... FFox 3.0.12 if it's relevant.
- FFing Enigma
and can I see who has accepted my recommendation?
- Roberto
Roberto: You won't be notified if they accept/deny as the recommender.
- Ross Miller
Ross: Ah, it just appeared on my feed. Cool. (And thanks Meryn)
- Fred Yankowski
Meryn: yes, they will get an email with your recommendations
- Bret Taylor
from email
Bret, I accidently just received an email with previous recommendations. I had already viewed them through the web-interface. But indeed, it's there. Email looks good too, as I expected of course. :)
- Meryn Stol
hey Robert Scoble....I have a trade proposal....you send my name to all your friends...i send your name to all of my friends for the rest of my life....
- Bob DeMarco
I would like that deal, too, Scoble. I like this a lot.
- Ben Hanten
Bob: I charge $1 per friend. :-) just kidding, but the UI makes it so hard to send you to more than a few people.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Bret: You guys rock! This is so much better than FollowFriday, which I recommended just a while back. Now, I'm waiting for some recommendation emails! :)
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
If there’s something about friends and family not having their account set up properly, I’d prefer a way to recommend them the streams they forgot to add. For example, I could tell them “You forgot to add your Digg stream and your fourth and eight blog. Here’s the link.” Then he could just click the recommendation and had it set up easily.
- Natsuki Seika
As I have lots of subscriptions the pop-up window is *really* slow and always has been since the new UI (same thing for amending friends lists). :-( I like the feature though, so I could make a new friends list of my most recommended users and use that each time for each user?
- Kol Tregaskes
Last friday I taped an iPhone to my head and ran around Paris capturing the most famous sights in a single (somewhat shaky) shot. Here's the video: http://vimeo.com/12906858
that explain other FF posts, looking for tapes and where can one upload large video files ;-).
- Tzury Bar Yochay
Yeah, I never did get the duct tape though, so I had to use clear packaging tape instead (with a sock stuffed between the iPhone and my hat to get the correctish angle).
- Paul Buchheit
this was perfect, I opened up my Paris map and followed you :)
- İpek Aral Kişioğlu
I'm surprised you were able to follow. I didn't have a map (my iPhone was taped to my head!) so I made a number of wrong turns, though the high-level route was pretty basic.
- Paul Buchheit
Saw the vimeo on your stream and watched a little of it. Great stuff! Cool to see new iphone vid quality. (er 3gs? quality, hmm) Oh yeah, and enjoy Paris!
- Jay
It's actually a 3GS, not an iphone 4.
- Paul Buchheit
I think I might tape a photo of Paul with an iPhone taped to his head to my head because I want to get arrested for being a menace.
- Akiva
Ahhh this explains the "ducktape in Paris" stuff LOL :D (that picture is full of geeky win!)
- Susan Beebe
@Paul just curious how much battery did you have left after you were done recording?
- BRҰANSAҰS
Something like 22%, as I recall. I had put the phone in airplane mode to reduce wireless consumption and also because I'm concerned that an incoming call would stop the video or something.
- Paul Buchheit
Not bad. I guess you could get at least 2 hours of recording on one charge.
- BRҰANSAҰS
from BuddyFeed
If so, it'll just be transitional until smartphones are replaced by glasses-phones. Or smart glasses. Do we have an official name for those yet?
- Andrew C (✓)
Stephen, very happy to see new features like this, but I think the "death" part is the major users reducing their activity. I'd love to see some support from Facebook in promoting FriendFeed more to encourage those users to go back. Or maybe they don't want to? Regardless, bonus for me! Thanks Benjamin - you're awesome!
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, fair enough but major users always did come and go. Some of the departees who left said they were doing so because there was no new development. Clearly not all development is halted. Last week Paul hinted that FF may receive a major new feature, and characterized his participation as "20% time" -- I'll take that.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
I backed down off the all caps. The group "best of" is really useful, love it.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Stephen, I agree - I'd just like some confirmation that Facebook cares about all this so I can know whether to focus my efforts on Facebook or FriendFeed or both.
- Jesse Stay
I noticed the best of on the iPhone the other day, wrote it out on a cake and then ated it.
- Josh Haley
Jesse, I think you should focus where your users are focused. What do SocialToo users want? But if they want Facebook focus, you should still keep an eye on FriendFeed, since the future Facebook will look a lot more like FriendFeed.
- Bruce Lewis
Paul Buchheit said the FB acquisition was attractive because of shared vision/direction. I would be surprised if a lot of that vision wasn't already embodied in this product right here.
- Bruce Lewis
"Two weeks ago, we launched version 2 of the FriendFeed API in beta. Since then, we've watched how developers have been using the API and collected a lot of their feedback. We've implemented some changes, and now, we're ready to remove the beta label!"
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
A two weeks beta in the 2.0 era sounds almost blasphem! Congrats!
- Simone Ruffilli
Congrats to Ben and Gary for all their hard work getting this out the door. And thanks to all the developers who have been sending us great feedback the past couple weeks.
- Bret Taylor
"Today we are launching version 2 of the FriendFeed API for beta testing. We focused on making the API simpler to use, and we added number of compelling new features." Documentation: http://friendfeed.com/api...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
nice, good to see OAuth support, this will enable a larger 3rd party ecosphere around FriendFeed, I hope
- Jeroen De Miranda
After going through the documentation and playing around with some feeds, I love the fact that you can now see the subscriber lists of people who have their feeds set to private as long as you are subscribed to them and authenticate (mimicking the main site functionality). One thing that's absent is a discussion of Direct Messages. Do they show up in feeds if you authenticate? How do we find just direct messages?
- Mark Trapp
Mark: direct messages are accessed using the feed ID "filter/direct". Read more about feed IDs at http://friendfeed.com/api.... Also direct messages appear in the "home" feed.
- Benjamin Golub
Benjamin: ahhh, I see it now. I missed it when skimming that list over. Thanks!
- Mark Trapp
Can you post the wget version of the command line?
- Gabe
Gabe: wget --user=bgolub --password=passwd --post-file=MyPhoto.jpg http://friendfeed-api.com/v2... should work. In theory. Edit: nope. I'm not sure it's possible to do with wget.
- Mark Trapp
Gabe: wget doesn't support multipart forms as a design decision. If you post a file, FriendFeed returns a 404, and if you post data, the query is too long for wget to handle.
- Mark Trapp
Good work, look forward to seeing what developers can create
- Joe Dawson
Woowoo, bgolub's password is “passwd” ;-)
- Amit Patel
Amit: I wonder how many people tested that :)
- Benjamin Golub
Thanks to bgolub posting his password, I now have all of FriendFeed's secret documents about notorious users, useless metrics, Justin Timberlake's promoting FF on Oprah's show, hiring Colbert as a spokesperson, Ev Williams being just a “distraction”. TechCrunch is going to love this! ;)
- Amit Patel
Yes big big thanks to the whole team for all their hard work!!
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
from iPhone
I think Paul's one of the most innovative peeps. after all his legacy is gmail, adsense and "dont be evil" :)- the very fabric of the Internet ecosystem comprises of at least 2 of the former items that he invented. !!
- Peter Dawson
"Info-monopolies tend to be good-to-great in the short term and bad-to-terrible in the long term. For a time, firms deliver great conveniences, powerful efficiencies and dazzling innovations. That's why a young monopoly is often linked to a medium's golden age. Today, a single search engine has made virtually everyone's life simpler and easier, just as a single phone network did 100 years ago. Monopolies also generate enormous profits that can be reinvested into expansion, research and even public projects: AT&T wired America and invented the transistor; Google is scanning the world's libraries. The downside shows up later, as the monopolist ages and the will to innovate is replaced by mere will to power."
- RAPatton
from Bookmarklet
"Still, in a land where at least two mega-colas and two brands of diaper can duke it out indefinitely, why are there so many single-firm information markets? The explanation would seem to lie in the famous American preference for convenience. With networks, size brings convenience. "
- RAPatton
"There are digital Kashmirs, disputed territories that remain anyone's game, like digital publishing. But the dominions of major firms have enjoyed surprisingly secure borders over the last five years, their core markets secure. Microsoft's Bing, launched last year by a giant with $40 billion in cash on hand, has captured a mere 3.25% of query volume (Google retains 83%). Still, no one...
more...
- RAPatton
There's a subtle but important difference the author seems to overlook. Google's monopoly is open meaning that there are no big threshold costs to bind you to the monopoly. With a few clicks, you can change your search engine from Google to Bing if you want to. Therefore a lot of evil things associated with past monopolies are less likely in current open monopolies. Maybe those open monopolies are much better for humanity.
- Lode Nachtergaele
Serendipity is what makes life much more interesting and memorable than if you lived your life exactly what you planned. Because of this, my original plan was to go to med school but ironically I'm working in the software field.
- imabonehead
my receipt is that every day we should do something that is frightening to us. whether it is fear of height , speed or approaching to pretty girls :) it increases serendipity and sets you free on daily basis.
- Bojan Babic
"Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided."
"The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration. Printing created prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into an exercise in superstition. Printing assisted in the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into a sordid if not a murderous emotion."
- Tudor Bosman
I knew that was Neil by the end of the first sentence. :)
- Micah
Boy, that's a lot to lay at the feet of one invention. It also seems like a hideously simplistic view of medieval European society. It seems laughably wrong to me to suggest that technology operates on society -- for better, worse, or both -- from the outside, like an alien invader. Technological change is both cause and effect of social transformation. Saying "the printing press made poetry obscure" is like saying "the airplane caused world war II".
- ⓞnor
from Android
Some nifty papers about modeling terrain, rocks, terrain with archways/caves (height maps can't do this), autumn leaves, cracked objects, roads …
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
Lots of pretty pictures and diagrams in these papers.
- Amit Patel
"I've long been fascinated by the common human illusion that ideas can be sorted into good and bad, when all experience shows this not to be the case. We could play the game all day long where I describe a simply terrible idea and then tell you about the people who got rich implementing it just right. Let's try a few... How about a comic strip that is literally a bunch of stick figures? It will be called XKCD and have no discernable characters. Done! It's the most viewed comic on the Internet. How about a movie about two gay cowboys? Done! Academy Award! How about a comedic TV show about a Nazi concentration camp? Done! It was called Hogan's Heroes and was a hit in its time. How about a Broadway musical about a bunch of frickin' cats? Done! You'd be hard pressed to come up with an idea so bad that it couldn't succeed with the right execution. And it would be even harder to imagine a great idea that couldn't fail if the execution were left to morons. Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Words to consider for everyone who hates remakes and sequels: "Movies are good or bad because of execution, not concept. [...] The self-appointed movie critics went on to point out that Office Space was already a movie, so there was no room left in the universe for a Dilbert movie. That's a bit like saying there's no point in creating a romantic comedy because someone already did that one. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a movie is."
- Mark Trapp
I suspect that remakes and sequels are hurt by reversion to the mean and the need to be different.
- Paul Buchheit
Hogan's Heroes was actually about a POW camp for Allied airmen, which is orders of magnitude easier to make a comedy about than a concentration camp.
- Gabe
Congrats DeWitt and the rest of the Buzz team! It looks clean and well designed. I also see some stuff here that was part of the FriendFeed API and now the new Facebook Graph API (e.g., the convenient use of "me" to reference the currently authenticated user without needing to remember the user ID)
- Benjamin Golub
from Bookmarklet
How do you get around not being able to make HTTP DELETE and PUT calls in all environments (especially JavaScript)? Is there a way to override the HTTP method via a request parameter?
- Benjamin Golub
Thanks, Ben! We do have a way of exposing both HTTP verbs and custom verbs via alternative mechanisms, though we didn't document it for this launch. I'm not exactly sure why not, but I'll find out.
- DeWitt Clinton
Awesome job; favour? Next time you run into Zuckerberg can you tell him no, I will not be his nice Jewish boyfriend. I mean yeah I do like the nerdy hoody look, but I'm looking for someone with more direction, more ambition: knows what they want outta life and are not afraid to reach out and snatch it. And also to quit face stalking me :-)
- sofarsoShawn
from iPhone
It was a great delivery. Loved the focus on simplicity, and one of the best explanations of the social graph ever.
- Bill de hÓra
I almost fell off my chair when I saw those simple lines of code. At that point Bret, Mark and The Facebook Team deserved, at least, a standing ovation.
- Lula Rocha
Oh there's gonna be some waves of backlash on this one I'm afraid! I understand why the opt-in on the personalization on profiles, but not sure it was a good idea without some global initial prompt to opt-in for the user. Reminded me of the google buzz roll out. But you did look very smooth and relaxed. Zuck stills needs to loosen up a bit though.
- Phil Ashman
Well, I couldn't listen because the stream doesn't aggregate. There are still dups out here. You might have made provision for them.
- Melanie Reed
Phil, no Publicly Available Information was added in this launch. All that data has always been available (well, for the last several months at least). What Facebook added was privacy controls around that finally. Facebook added *more* privacy, not less. Have you seen what Google and Twitter profiles reveal to developers by default?
- Jesse Stay
That was a great and ground breaking keynote. As a recommendation engine provider we are following closely.
- denizoktar
It is amazing how Bret can simplify APIs and make it sound so easy. The url centric API design is awesome and it reminds of the clean urls at Friendfeed. Thank you Bret
- Shakeel Mahate
Nice job Bret. Very innovative and complete, I'm blown away actually!
- Chris Myles
That was pretty amazing - it's clear you have had a huge influence on what Facebook has done since they brought the Friendfeed team on board. Oh, and I like Fuki Sushi too - I used to go there when I lived in Palo Alto, but the name always made me titter ... and you had to pair it with In and Out ... c'mon you guys did that on purpose right? Yeah, OK, I'm 12.
- Laura Norvig
The FB docs don't have info on the client credentials flow - I was trying to 'divine' it from the OAuth spec, but I couldn't get it to work. Can we get the individual flows outlined in the docs?
- Justin Hart
"Each of these companies seeks to create unique runtimes and APIs that provide a strategic wedge that can drive other aspects of their business. At one level this is a battle for the hearts and minds of developers and ISVs, but these developers are merely a means to an end. Gaining broad adoption for their runtime platforms translates into their ability to create massive derivative value through downstream products and services. For Apple, this is hardware and paid media (content and apps) sales. For Google, this is about creating massive reach for their advertising platforms and products. For Adobe, this about creating major new applications businesses based on their platform. For Microsoft, it is about driving unit sales of their core OS and business applications."
- wouter
from Bookmarklet