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Chip Ramsey › Comments
Add Support for Groups - OpenSocial and Gadgets Specification Discussion | Google Groups - http://groups.google.com/group...
SocialSite group extensions
- Chip Ramsey
Closure Library - Google Code - http://code.google.com/closure...
Wow. GWT sans Java.
- Chip Ramsey
RESTful Partial Updates - http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-say...
Discussion of how to use JSON object syncing for REST partial updates
- Chip Ramsey
Script for syncing JSON objects - https://bug379517.bugzilla.moz...
Script for syncing JSON objects
- Chip Ramsey
Seasonal Flu Shots Double Risk of Getting Swine Flu, Says New Study - http://science.slashdot.org/story...
what the hell?
- Chip Ramsey
At Facebook watching Bret talk about Tornado.
Paul Buchheit, Ahsan Ali aka. Slick, Garin Kilpatrick and 5 other people liked this
Is anyone still here to see this?
- Eric Florenzano
I never saw an announcement for it.
- Cristo
/jealous
- Louis Gray
anybody take notes?
- Chip Ramsey
Tell him to let facebook employees know that friendfeed exists.
- Garin Kilpatrick
Wall Street Journal Takes Paywall Fight to Mobiles - http://www.wired.com/epicent...
It's official, the newspaper industry is as dumb as the music industry.
- Chip Ramsey
The Persistence API - OpenSocial - http://wiki.opensocial.org/index...
This article attempts to explain the process of reading and writing persistent data as well as illustrate the cases when the data will be available to different users.
- Chip Ramsey
Gliffy REST API Overview - http://www.gliffy.com/develop...
The only place on the internet that seems to reference the consumer request (i.e., 2 legged) specification. Stupid internets.
- Chip Ramsey
OAuth Authorization Flow - YDN - http://developer.yahoo.com/oauth...
Yahoo diagram of the 3 legged authorization
- Chip Ramsey
rubycas-server - Project Hosting on Google Code - http://code.google.com/p...
Single sign-on alternative to oAuth.
- Chip Ramsey
StraighterLine - http://www.straighterline.com/straigh...
$99/month college courses
- Chip Ramsey
HTML 5: The Markup Language - http://dev.w3.org/html5...
List of HTML 5 elements
- Chip Ramsey
OpenSocial REST Developer's Guide (v0.9) - OpenSocial - http://wiki.opensocial.org/index...
Tutorial for developing client apps for the OpenSocial REST API using 0.9 spec.
- Chip Ramsey
OpenSocial REST Developer's Guide (v0.9) - OpenSocial - http://wiki.opensocial.org/index...
Tutorial for developing client apps for the OpenSocial REST API using 0.9 spec.
- Chip Ramsey
Facebook Developers | Get Started - http://developers.facebook.com/get_sta...
Not OpenSocial, but good perspective on building social apps.
- Chip Ramsey
OpenSocial Tutorial - OpenSocial - http://wiki.opensocial.org/index...
Tutorial for developing OpenSocial gadgets.
- Chip Ramsey
OpenSocial - Google Code - http://code.google.com/apis...
Main OpenSocial Google Code website.
- Chip Ramsey
YouTube - Google I/O 2008 - Apache Shindig - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Very good overview of using Shindig in production
- Chip Ramsey
Facebook acquires FriendFeed. Interview with Paul Buchheit, cofounder of FriendFeed. - http://btre.blogtalkradio.com/74_2996...
Susan Beebe, TheHenry, Mark Gunnels and 125 other people liked this
No info about the financial aspects of the deal for now.
- TiTi
Ithink that tey have to do it now, or never
- abdellah
"committed to supporting the needs of FF user community"
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Nice :) Thanks Robert
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
^^until FB shutters FF
- jcunwired
nice scoop!
- Marc Ostrick
@Brian How many times have we heard that line before? :(
- Rodrigo Jaroszewski
I hope they made a bunch of money, because they SOLD US ALL :(
- Zio Bonino
Robert, was this really posted 5 hours ago?
- Daniel Chow
Robert: Say "cool" less!
- Stephen Foskett
I was thinking the same thing. Count how many times you said "Cool" Robert ;)
- Andru Edwards
This acquisition is most likely going to suck for users, but congrats to the FF team. Once Google announced Wave, selling to Facebook was probably the only remaining exit strategy worth the money.
- Chip Ramsey
last comment 2 hours ago on FF by Paul Buchheit, FF CEO, was just " :)" http://friendfeed.com/paul #friendbook
- Jacopo Gio
I don't know if i'm excited by the possiblities of this move, or frightened by what this could mean.
- John Czwartacki
I hope they don't spoil it for us. I just want to keep coming to Friendfeed.com
- Mark
If they had no plans of shutting down FriendFeed and rolling features into Facebook they would have said so right away to avoid speculation and to reassure FF users. I am trying not to be suspicious, but I am.
- Inside Alaska
I'm in the same camp Alaska
- Keith - @tsudo
Andru: it was about 100 degrees outside where I was doing the interview. I was trying to think cool and keep my cool. Heheh.
- Robert Scoble
Maybe now we'll be able to integrate Facebook feed with FF & twitter
- Justin Long
Faceborg...Googlebook...time to move back to StumbleUpon? Guess we should have seen this coming when FriendFeed got integrated into FeedBurner.
- Internet Strategist
This interview is pretty funny... the person interviewing sounds like he just wants to ask questions for the sake of asking questions...;-) ... thanks for the insightful interview but..
- Sherif Mansour
In the interview, it was said that FriendFeed was not in immediate danger and could have continued for a number of years on their own. I'm not quite sure if that is true, because FriendFeed didn't develop their own business model.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
About integrating the social graphs, my social networks on FF and FB had different purposes. I don't have any friends on FB whom I haven't personally met, whereas I subscribe to some people I don't know on FF just because their feeds are interesting. On a related note, the FB graph is undirected and the FF graph is directed.
- Ruchira S. Datta
@Scobleizer interviews Paul Buchheit, cofounder of FriendFeed RE acquisition by Facebook.
- Deano @ Byron New Media
Rough transcript: http://friendfeed.com/brlewis...
- Bruce Lewis
Paul and Brett jumped at the chance to increase their user base a thousand-fold. Whatever comes out of this is going to be huge.
- Raphael, Raphael
You are right vzx
- Nicolas Gosset
from IM
"tremendous opportunity" is so vague. Opportunity for who? What opportunity exactly? Or is it just the opportunity to allow the friendfeed employees who weren't already rich to get rich?
- Laura Norvig
Laura: it's every engineer's dream to change the world of 300 million people instead of a few hundred thousand people. That's why this is a tremendous opportunity.
- Robert Scoble
Sigh. I guess. It's just very hard to think of Facebook as a life-changing venue.
- Laura Norvig
Robert: Thanks for this - some information at last!
- Jim Connolly
Core features:
Isaac Aggrey, Gtp19, Tyson Key and 13 other people liked this
Importing feeds
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Commenting
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Following users (SocNet)
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Liking
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Bookmarklet
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Share (Link | Photos)
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Lists/Filters
- Jason Huebel
Groups
- Jason Huebel
DMs
- Jason Huebel
Share (Videos -- auto embed YouTube, Vimeo for now)
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Search
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
I vote to freeze features from here
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Seconded.
- Jason Huebel
Groups (including private groups?)
- Chip Ramsey
Yes Chip, I think that's easy
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
i think FOAF is an important feature...
- Trent Olson
Aggregated content should be frond and center, not hidden and virtually ignored. Oh, and service icons dammit.
- Matthew DeVries
Service icons should be THE important feature. ;-)
- Jason Huebel
It's part of the importing feeds module
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Matthew: I think that's a good point. FF is really two services. (1) A communications platform (2) An aggregator.
- Chip Ramsey
I demand 3 comely lasses of virtue true!
- Matthew DeVries
You should really listen to TWIG ep 2. Gina had some great ideas. Content would be pushed directly to our subscribers in the event server is overloaded, so the spice still flows, then when servers come back up, it syncs with home.
- Matthew DeVries
Yeah, Pub Sub Hubbub is a great idea.
- Jason Huebel
So what would the "client" be. The user's browser? Skeptical of a pubsubhub (PSH) having to ping potentially millions of clients that may or may not be online). In that case, an XMPP client on the browser end could make sense (e.g., http://drop.io and Google Wave). Hopefully, feeds people subscribe to would be offered through PSHs though.
- Chip Ramsey
Well, since the intention of this project is to clone the functionality of FF, the user's browser would be the primary client. Once the initial work of creating the clone is complete, then we could talk about creating alternate clients. Of course, the intention of the API is to allow 3rd parties to create alternative clients. So maybe we should only focus on the browser interface.
- Jason Huebel
Why not post a thread per feature and have users discuss the feature in detail and go from there?
- Kol Tregaskes
You also need a priority list, what comes first, what is important? A protocol or script would be a good start. I'd still like to see Google Wave protocol be used. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
And make sure you use tagging/hashtags for the different types of entries.
- Kol Tregaskes
I've always thought Usenet (at the backend) was an interesting model for an open source friendfeed or twitter model. Distributed servers around the world 'sharing' messages with one another so there was never a central server that would be overtaxed and have the potential for a fail whale.
- Andrew Leyden
++ Andrew P2P is the future and it makes so much sense economically too.
- vijay
yeah, built in this thing irc (with xdcc support) - we need decentralized conversations ;)
- minus-one
Maybe this is too forward thinking right now, and I have no idea what it would look like, but some kind of feature or method to discourage MLM/spammers would be great.
- Rochelle
Was hiding mentioned earlier? That's very important.
- Rochelle
Should we support OAuth and OpenID, too?
- Tyson Key
management of friends (block, collect, search, navigation through relationships...)
- Roberto
I'd like WordPress support. If we are going to host the content ourselves I would like to have it on my WordPress sites and distributed from there.
- Kol Tregaskes
Tyson: I vote Yes to OpenID and OAuth.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
+1 Kol's WP support suggestion
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
OpenID last, please.
- Raphael, Raphael
posts filtering through source/service icons
- Gtp19
Google wave protocol should be implemented, so that its easy to add up chat buddies. Right now, i cant get to chat my yahoo and msn messenger buddies from google talk, though yahoo messenger is rich in features (setting visibility per person basis). IM is not federated, Wave will make it federated. Its also a great aggregating(robots) and collaborating tool as u all know.
- Gtp19
Hmm, XMPP/Jabber is already federated. That's probably why it was chosen as the basis of the Wave Federation Protocol. Sure, most people use Google Talk, but there's nothing to stop anyone from running their own server and interoperating with it (as I've done in the past).
- Tyson Key
Oh, and there are Gateways for connecting to existing non-XMPP networks.
- Tyson Key
A backup (import/export) tool would be great too.
- ovigia
Hi everyone, really glad this is being discussed. Anyone have any ideas re: FriendFeed's special database sauce? "Table-less" or some such thing? Clearly, server loads with high use volumes would become an issue if regular RDBMS methods are used (see Twitter's stability issues last year and ongoing).
Neal Jansons, Alex Scrivener, Jason Wehmhoener and Kol Tregaskes liked this
Their database schema actually seems quite simple. The thing is, we're discussing a federated, distributed platform, which hopefully will not have as much load on DB's. But I'm no DB expert, so I'll shut up now.
- Kevin L
I think it would be pretty foolish to invest a lot of time and effort into this project without seriously considering what Alex says here.
- Jason Wehmhoener
How Friendfeed uses MySQL (also, don't forget to read the comments): http://bret.appspot.com/entry...
- Jason Wehmhoener
Well, you have couchdb http://couchdb.apache.org/ (which uses erlang) and http://hadoop.apache.org/ (which uses java). I'm not sure about using MySQL like FF did. That seems like a bad idea for the long term.
- Chip Ramsey
Persevere is worth knowing about: http://www.sitepen.com/blog...
- Jason Wehmhoener
The thing about using Persevere or CouchDB or similar is that not everyone has access to it on their hosting. And if we're talking about a federated system, it's probably best to stick with the ubiquitous DBMS's by default. I'm all for being set up to allow larger implementations to use more advanced back ends, but that's not what this project is about.
- Kevin L
MySQL as a JSON blob store is probably fine.
- Raphael, Raphael
I've been reading some interesting things about JavascriptDB: http://www.sitepen.com/blog... Somebody mentioned it yesterday.
- Jason Huebel
So, who is leaving FriendFeed?
Internet Strategist, sofarsoShawn, Mitchell Tsai and 154 other people liked this
And go where? Back to Twitter or...Facebook?
- Manuel Mas
no idea yet.... see what happens.
- Rob Sellen :o)
I have nowhere else to go. No where else gives me the high level of interaction that FF does.
- Mel Buckpitt
Same FriendFeed as before, I'll still use.
- Ben Parr
Of course if Paul hands me a few hundred shares of stock ... just kidding. Sigh.
- Robert Scoble
I was going to ask how you felt about the purchase, but now I see
- acedanger
Depends how much it changes.
- Andrew Leyden
Why leave?
- Mike Shulman
+1 Mel - I am gutted and don't know what to do if the main FF site closes
- Matt Hooper
Why would I leave friendfeed? This place works well enough for me.
- Talon Lardner
Manuel: back to my blog and Twitter, probably. I'm playing around with Facebook but it doesn't quite do it for me.
- Robert Scoble
I'm sticking around unless there's some sort of mass exodus which I don't see an immediate reason for.
- Mike Elliott
Not leaving 'til it closes, and I'm certainly not going to facebook or twitter even then.
- Jim Addz No Value
I'm sad, but I'm sticking around. I'm hoping others do to. At some point, the fuss will die down.
- Helen Sventitsky
Mike: because I expect it will get shut down eventually if it doesn't get invested in, and if it gets no new features it will fall behind Google Wave and other projects.
- Robert Scoble
This feels like that HBO Documentary about Brooklyn Dodgers going to LA haha.
- Manuel Mas
And, actually, Google Wave seems to be the most obvious thing for me to try out from now on.
- Robert Scoble
I will stick around until they move the features I like from friendfeed onto facebook.
- Bryan Lee
Isn't it a bit early to make decisions? Has there been an announcement that I missed that FF is going away? Even if it isn't where else is better at this point?
- Chrimmus Tad
I'm not going anywhere Helen...When it goes it goes...I'm sitting tight on the ship
- Bill Heslin
there used to be a kind of message board system ages back with FB. disppeared one day never to return, lets hope this will bring something of that back, who knows..
- Terry O'Fee
I can't wait to try out wave. ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
Waiting and watching. Robert, I know you have a discussion tab on FB but its not the same. ;)
- Melanie Reed
How soon before google wave becomes available to the early adopters/public?
- Bryan Lee
Mashable just published a How To Take Advantage of FriendFeed's Unique Features. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. A little late for that, no?
- Stephen Pickering
didn't you just just say "FriendFeed is dead. I will keep using it until Paul unplugs the last server, which could be years" ? or i'm missing something
- Liviu Barbat
I'll stick around to the bitter end.
- Dave Metzener
Robert: Earlier in the day you were excited for both FriendFeed & Facebook. It didn't sound like you were leaving FriendFeed. What changed? Why not stick around to see what happens?
- Jill Elswick
Bryan: I heard they weren't handing out beta access to non-developers until September. Cold be wrong but that's what I heard
- Mike Elliott
I'm in wait and see mode. It would have to be absolutely sucked in by FB for me to leave it completely.
- pea
Robert, if you believe this is a good deal for both FF and FB - why are you leaving?
- George F. Snell III
When should we cue in Titanic's last song by the band as FF sinks below leaving us all behind?
- Manuel Mas
Why leave now? Until it is changed or killed, it still works just the same.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Same assessment as you, I'll stick around but I need to find an option B now. I guess I'll go wherever Louis Gray recommends
- Alberto Saavedra
I plan on sticking around for a little while longer. Not ready to jump ship yet.
- David Finch
Melanie: yeah, real time really has me going. I will wait until I get a better sense from the FriendFeed team about what will be done here. I just am not getting the right signals from the team that there will be any investment in this. If that's the case, I'd rather invest my time somewhere else. Google Wave. Ning. Vanilla on Building43. Twitter, now that I got rid of the spammers. Etc.
- Robert Scoble
I'll watch and see what happens. IF I feel that it would be useless to stay, I'll leave the site.
- TeraDyne Azurepaw
I think the features of FF will be incorporated into FB (guilt free) and FB profiles will be more tied into FF. That's about all we'll see...
- Gus
Scoble: Ning?!?! Really?
- Manuel Mas
Manuel: hey, Pirillo is over there. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I'm staying here until something else catches up.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, I can definitely see the value of your invested time on any service, but for the average user, what is the downside of sticking around here as long as the site still exists?
- Jeff P. Henderson
hmm, ning. unexpected, but understandable
- Alistair (alpinefolk)
@Scobleizer: The big crowd is not even at Friendfeed yet and you are already leaving? Someone will be by in a few minutes with a drink. Please help yourself and stick around for the conversation. You will be greatly missed should you choose to leave so soon.
- David Damore
Social Media is a set of tools--I appreciate the connections I make, but I'm not getting too emotionally worked-up about the tools changing. FF probablywon't function as my Social Media hub much longer.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
I like it here, so I'll hang out as long as possible.
- sean percival
Not making any set plans yet, but keeping my eyes and ears open.
- Martha
And when Google buys Twitter, won't that be interesting
- Stephen Pickering
Bruce: have you played with Wave yet? I'm wondering how good that is? I gotta get an invite. Off to beg someone cooler than me. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I will continue to use it until it closes down in its current form.
- ashish
Google/Twitter vs. Facebook/FriendFeed
- Stephen Pickering
+1 ashish
- Liviu Barbat
I'm a little pissed that we haven't heard much from our other "rock stars". Where the hell are they? This concerns them, yet I can hear a pin drop. I think there secretly plotting. Roflmao
- Jeunelle Foster
I don't want to but if it eventually goes down the way everybody's predicting it will then i'll have to look for alternatives :( .......by the way where do i beg for Wave invites :)
- Bhowmik Shah
I'd bet Microsoft buys Twitter before Google does.
- Gus
I haven't played with wave yet, but from what I've seen it's got potential. FriendFeed's got polish.
- Bruce Lewis
I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but I guess I'll be spending more time on Social Median. Perhaps someone should start putting together a decent buddypress site?
- Aram Zucker-Scharff
I might leave only because I quit facebook - I hate the mindset, the shallowness, and am afraid (make that certain) those people will come here
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Gus: Microsoft and Twitter deserve each other. They are both somewhat buggy and don't come up with new features very often. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I think I'll be heading back to Twitter until Google Wave is publicly available
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Robert: Since at the end of the day all these platforms are businesses and have to eventually make money does it make sense to keep investing time and effort into building communities on them when they can sell/merge at any time and dismantle the tools that keep the community in place? it seems like the portable community concept of something like Google FriendConnect now makes more...
more...
- Mike Elliott
The other rock stars are drinking. :-)
- Robert Scoble
If Facebook had an easier way of connecting with people but not showing them all the personal stuff I'm willing to show to my close friends (and the stuff my friends post about me), I don't think I'd need anything like FriendFeed or Twitter.
- Edward Coffey
Robert: I've played with Wave and I wouldn't really put it in the same category as FriendFeed at the moment. It's not really about sharing and conversing in mass form IMO. Its really conversation with maybe 20 people or so but its much more difficult to focus conversations about shared content. Let everybody know when you get an invite and your address so we can add you! :)
- Brandon Titus
I'll stick around until the end.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
It kinda proves a theory I have about us all being reduced (if I can use that word) to channels. I don't think social networking will go away, but as the internet and deals increase, so does the noise. Don't worry Scobe, you still show up in our Google reader every morning!!
- professor daddyo
Man, what are we going to do without these discussions like this?
- Stephen Pickering
Mike: No community is permanent. It's worthwhile to participate even if it's temporary.
- Bruce Lewis
@Gus, Well MS has large stake in FB so I'm not sure about that. I'll stick around here till it peters out. The tech news rooms here are top notch.
- Adi
I don't use FF much other than for private rooms, so I'll stay for those. Whatever other activity I have (which is sporadic and generally not personal) will also remain.
- Cheryl
I'll stick around until they pull the plug.
- Morton Fox
Leave friendfeed? what's the alternative I'd really like to know. Is it facebook?
- Tate DA FF MVP
I'll stick with it as long as it's here and people are still active. FF4L!!
- Cassidy
What is the next thing? Where do we go now? Not FB! But where?
- Michael Liss
I heard it's MySpace
- sean percival
I'm staying until the end as well.
- Mitch
I won't be deleting my account, but signing in and commenting? No. No real point to continue putting data into a service that is gonna get unplugged anyway. Guess we just have to return to blogs and twitter.
- BCK
quick! everybody back to MySpace!!!
- acedanger
what? leave and create a better version of Twitter? or start FriendsterFeed?
- Andy Sternberg
The downside for me? I invest time in things that WILL BE not that are. That's always been what keeps my interest and now that I know that FriendFeed probably will not be, even if it takes five years to totally die, I've lost a great deal of interest in it.
- Robert Scoble
Michael: I don't think anyone knows today where to go next, because there's no good substitute out there. We can only hope that the next destination will be obvious before they pull the plug.
- Bruce Lewis
With the price of bandwith/computing halving every year, there will be a new one of these popping up pretty quick
- Stephen Pickering
I'll just go to twitter. I have a facebook account but I hate it. Facebook is the walmart of the web.
- Darrel Davis
Should we move to where?? haha
- harri78son
I'll be here until something actually changes for the worse
- Dennis O'Neil
harri78son you could come back over to my blog and we could setup JS-Kit Echo. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Damn now I need a drink :)
- Jeunelle Foster
That's right, Scoble is the catalyst for these longer threads anyway, so it might as well move to his JS-Kit
- Stephen Pickering
Robert, that's a pity. I'm lucky to deal in things that only get more interesting as they get older.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm torn. What are our options?
- Kelly Mitchell
yeah~ definitly! @Jeunelle foster please come down,
- harri78son
I see now...This whole thing was a ploy to get everyone visiting Robert's blog! I am outraged! :P
- Brandon Titus
Brandon: OK, we can go over to YOUR blog. Got Echo? :-)
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: Very true. I've tried to get into FaceBook but it's hard to get the clean conversation feed along with lifestreaming content. It just seems to be full of distracting noise even with the ability to filter with lists.
- Mike Elliott
I'm here till the end.
- Nolan Alston
Robert, the same could be said about Flickr, they haven't had much inovation since Yahoo bought them, but people still use the service in droves.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Don't worry Kelly, a new one of these will pop quickly, if they kill this
- Stephen Pickering
Kelly: we don't need to leave tonight. Let's trash the house first! :-)
- Robert Scoble
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
- Stephen Pickering
Brandon, that's funny. At the Boston FriendFeed meetup, everybody else had learned about FriendFeed through Scobleizer. I was the only one who found him through FriendFeed.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm leaving my account here for now but I'll be removing all my feeds.
- Got80s
I have no idea where to go...
- Johnny
Let's make the longest thread in FF history
- Stephen Pickering
Anyway, for the rest of today at-least I reckon I'll be off FriendFeed - real conversation is being drowned out by the echoes of this deal.
- Edward Coffey
Damn it. Why is Arrington always right!
- Stephen Pickering
Jeff P. Flickr is different Yahoo bought them for their user base. Facebook bought Friendfeed for their features.
- Bryan Lee
Got80: why do that? Who cares if your feeds are going in here?
- Robert Scoble
Edward: that is true. It caught us all off guard and we're still processing it.
- Robert Scoble
Kind of huge things in this time,.hmmm
- harri78son
Facebook bought FF for Paul Bucheit
- Stephen Pickering
I'm staying here until there is a reason to leave. Though I don't hold out hope they'll keep the service alive forever... obviously, I'm always enjoysthin.gs too, but it's not quite the same. I REALLY can't see myself using facebook as much as FF though.
- Ted Roden
I need an adult beverage. then I'll trash the place...
- Kelly Mitchell
I despise FB. Please let them not just trash FF.
- Adam Webb
Considering the free Google Wave protocol implementation and ejabbered work together, it shouldn't be too hard to quickly build a FF type service that's scalable. Combine that with EC2 and S3 and you could probably get a lot of runway before funding is needed. Robert, I think the next service you switch to should be part owned by you, considering I bet a lot of the traffic here was originated from you evangelizing.
- Chip Ramsey
Bryan: it's worse than that. I'm hearing that Facebook bought FriendFeed for its team. Google Superstars. Makes Zuckerberg get out his wallet.
- Robert Scoble
Where will be the next pasture Mr. Scoble?
- Rami Taibah
Stephen: lol. Yes, the 50 million dollar man. But seriously, there's no doubt what they really want is the tallent.
- Brandon Titus
I'm gutted about this, but I knew that Virb account would come in handy eventually... sorta... maybe...
- Linda Mills
Holden, yeah, but it doesn't make sense to invest energy here when its eventually going to die anyway
- Stephen Pickering
I'm new on FF so I wonder, are people leaving FF because you'll have to use FB to participate?
- Christopher Doiron
Stephen: not only for Paul. The guy who started Google Talk is at FriendFeed. So is the guy who started Google Maps.
- Robert Scoble
Among other ex-Google superstars.
- Robert Scoble
Robert your not processing anything from what I see..Your just gonna dump it...thanks...makes us All feel so much better....Salt in a wound?
- Bill Heslin
Christopher, it's that the FriendFeed team's new bosses will turn priorities away from the site we love.
- Bruce Lewis
They'll probably cannibalize FriendFeed... nom nom
- Kelly Mitchell
funny how many people are joining friend feed on the news of this acquisition. i'm seeing lots of my twitter followers starting to join.
- mark silva
Go where, do what?
- frankiecarl
I say its WAAAYYY too early to speculate what will happen to friendfeed next. Let the drama of today die down.
- Bryan Lee
Yeah lets all get drunk and start a fight. This whole thing is hilarious to me. Funny how media can start a panic. I ain't goin no where, I like to coloring.
- Jeunelle Foster
Bill: I said I won't leave until I hear more from the team. Why must you always be a drama queen?
- Robert Scoble
Kelly, I wish they would absorb FriendFeed, but despite the talk I don't think openness and Facebook are compatible.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, Ex-Google Superstars is how I see it too. I don't see big plans for FF the sense was we were the last thing on their minds.
- Melanie Reed
Can't help being an attention whore, its what I'm good at :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Okay so we sit tight and wait and drink. lol
- Kelly Mitchell
but there is no time to wait a special direction on internet, It's too fast!!
- harri78son
Kelly: My analogy for this is like the female praying mantis luring the male for sex, then it bites its head off. You can see the pic in my story http://bryansays.com
- Bryan Lee
I'm in the eyewear business and so I always know how to make a spectacle of myself :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Bruce: I agree. Wouldn't it be feasible for them to simply keep the two properties separate then? FriendFeed would be the open/public portion of Facebook and Facebook could stay closed and keep its current private user base.
- Brandon Titus
Bryan, pretty graphic and right on the money.
- Kelly Mitchell
Why shouldn't he pull out his wallet. FB needs to monetize. The ex Google Rockstars know just how to do that
- Stephen Pickering
I'll stick around and see what happens, but might not bother so much with another 'social' web site again.
- Grant Bierman
:) I am what I am Robert...I'm A DRAMA QUEEN? LOL that's funny....even though I'm a much better queen than you I still wuvs ya...Still processing all this as everyone else is...Sorry...might be shooting from the hip and I shouldn't
- Bill Heslin
Am I the only one excited to see how Facebook integrates FF? I have hundreds of FB friends that I know personally, yet know nobody that I am "friends" with on FF or Twitter. FB has my friends but I'd love FF's functionality.
- Chris Nunz
There's this optimistic talk about keeping FriendFeed around as R&D. I'm skeptical about it.
- Bruce Lewis
I'll leave FriendFeed as soon as there's somewhere to go to; currently, I'm not convinced there is.
- Tristan Seligmann
Also when you are hanging with the Master of the Universe for four hours, its sort of like Bill Clinton going to Korea. Kind of influences you.
- Stephen Pickering
Rami: I don't know. That's why I'm talking with you. I just know I won't continue to invest my time in something that will soon get no more investment. That's not who I am. I will hang out with Louis Gray until he finds something cool. By the way, someone gave me Google Wave already, thanks!
- Robert Scoble
This should be a reality television show. This is where the real drama queens will come out to play.
- Jeunelle Foster
Leo's going to need a new show, TWIF
- Stephen Pickering
This week in Facebook
- Stephen Pickering
Anyone here ever feel like we're just being tossed around from website to website by the big players?
- Christopher Doiron
Thanks Kelly :)
- Bryan Lee
Chris, Yep
- Stephen Pickering
Bruce: I disagree with you about Facebook and openness. They are a lot more open than they used to be and are MUCH more professional and friendly than, say, Twitter is.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I look forward to your review of Wave.
- Bruce Lewis
Openness and Facebook are not one and the same.... polar opposites. Bah humbug.
- Kelly Mitchell
Yup the big dogs are sitting back laughing at this whole thing
- Jeunelle Foster
It doesn't necessarily have to be "R&D" but really a completely separate product. Something like YouTube is to Google. Although that's a terrible analogy...I guess the products are too similar to keep separate.
- Brandon Titus
I'd pay-per-view to see Scoble and Sebastian Bach fight
- Mattb4rd
The Chinese government is much more open than it used to be. It still doesn't meet my standards.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: also, Zuckerberg is seeing the real money is in search. So he HAS to be open to really do great there.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Any chance you could share your Wave address?
- Brandon Titus
Did anyone get a chance to see Youtube HTML 5 Demo?
- Stephen Pickering
Brandon: I don't have my own address. Someone gave me theirs so can't share.
- Robert Scoble
Zuckerberg doesn't make money from other companies' search engines, so he's still limiting what data can go out. I see FB getting more open about what data they take in.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: Wave is very geeky. I think the UI has a lot of FriendFeed's problems x10. We'll see how that first impression sticks.
- Robert Scoble
And Wave will only be as good as how many users it has
- Stephen Pickering
I guess what I'm trying to say is even if you don't think your time here is an not an investment ;anymore in anything Robert...We still, or at least I do, consider your input valuable. And if you were to jump ship too soon, I think we would all lose something. So, even if things don't look good...please hang around..That's what I meant to say...
- Bill Heslin
Where will I go? Probably no where. Friendfeed was the first time I really got to feel like I found a home. Other places don't interact and blend multiple social services like Friendfeed does/did. Just as plenty of other people have said, I'm waiting for Google Wave at this point. I'm already a Google whore, might as well wait for the Wave to come through.
- Matthew Horton
Bruce: data that goes out can be embedded on blogs and websites and interact with things. Also, if you get into Google's search engine you can get a LOT of traffic, which then you can monetize on your own service.
- Robert Scoble
Not necessarily nailing the coffin shut yet here. Going to hang around and see what develops....what seems likely at the moment may be a totally different thing tommorow :O)
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
I am leaving at midnight. 2 accounts will be deleted, mine and one I manage for another site.
- April Russo (app103)
Robert: Hope you enjoy Wave! The UI is definitely way off for content sharing (at least in my first impression) and more suited for group communication for the very scenarios they threw out in the demos. Get much beyond that, or have too many people and the system starts to break down. Obviously, the underlying Wave infrastructure could be used to create something similar to and better than Friendfeed.
- Brandon Titus
Yeah, the cool thing about Wave is the problem they solved with the protocol. Not really their UI implementation. I think there are huge opportunities with both Open Social and the Wave protocol.
- Chip Ramsey
OK, I have been out of touch and I guess I missed something. I see nothing wrong with staying with all the feeds I am tied to!
- Dave Sickmeier
April, please don't delete your account. We lose interesting history when people do that.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm sticking around.
- Nation Hahn
There is no Facebook and no FriendFeed, it is now called TwoFacedFriend...
- Kelly Mitchell
Bill: I'll be around but probably a lot less. Actually I was thinking that this was good timing. We have a new baby due in September and my other son is just starting to learn to talk, so want to spend more time hanging around with the family.
- Robert Scoble
I am gonna wait it out. If the community as a whole migrates I will go with them, but I don't want to overreact.
- Neal Jansons
it's time to have another serious look at Plaxo. There are some very clever people there too, I believe?!
- Matt Hooper
Truth is, being addicted to FriendFeed isn't a good lifestyle.
- Robert Scoble
Well said Robert
- Kelly Mitchell
April: why so sudden and why delete accounts? I don't get that.
- Robert Scoble
As you should. Family is much more important than any of this. And now I have to go fix my wig! LOL
- Bill Heslin
depends what they do with the service - I like friendfeed and facebook so I think it will probably work okay for me
- Nick Stone
Brandon: oh, oh. You said it "Wave doesn't scale." Not good.
- Robert Scoble
FF also has good tools for using it in moderation -- best of day, week, which you can get by email. Lists help.
- Bruce Lewis
I have been spending most of my time on Brightkite. It's a smaller community and more fun. A better alternative than twitter or facebook.
- John C Ferron
Robert, and yes when he does that (Money in Search), it will change the playing field in lateral ways across the Internet, especially in ePortfolios and other like applications that don't need to be walled gardens
- Melanie Reed
Your right, Robert, but you would eventually learn to moderate your use, and a service like this is going to be needed
- Stephen Pickering
so much DRAMA
- Kevin Pruett
Kevin, the Drama is warranted
- Stephen Pickering
And Leo and Dick Debartolo are on the wine train, missing all this...I envy them...lol
- Bill Heslin
Will there ever be an app that just leaves facebook out of the equation - we could only dream
- Ryan Gerritsen
i'm leaving, watching from twitter would be a better option for me.
- rama mamuaya
I am not likely to invest time in another community that I don't have a stake in. If I contribute it will be because I have a personal interest and am part of the team that runs the show. That is the only way I will feel comfortable investing my time & energy into it.
- April Russo (app103)
If we could get the other "Rock Stars" who are obviously having a "virtual prayer meeting" somewhere to get together and talk about what changes they wish to see and what they would like to see develop for social media, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and now this Google Wave, we would probably all feel a little better as we might be able to see down the dark cold tunnel but they're out...
more...
- Jeunelle Foster
i think that I'll keep posting to friendfeed until it fully integrates with facebook
- Carlos Leiva Burotto
Did you guys see Dave Winer's URL shortner, http://rp.ly? Genius.
- Stephen Pickering
Jeunelle: Rizzn and Louis Gray and I did a podcast earlier where we talked through some of our feelings. It was very, um, theraputic.
- Robert Scoble
hahaha I must of missed it, I'll dig it up. A bit quiet still though. Haven't heard peep from Chris Brogan and all them other STARS
- Jeunelle Foster
Louis's blog post was classic.
- Bruce Lewis
Man, I can understand Louis' feelings. Look how much he and Scoble have put into this
- Stephen Pickering
I'll continue to use FF until there's reason not to. I'm patient enough to see what happens to it. What's the hurry?
- Cathryn Hrudicka
I just started on Friendfeed. It can't go away!
- Paul McElligott
Lets start FeedFriend - the Bizaro friendfeed minus Facebook integration
- Ryan Gerritsen
Well, I was rather hoping for some sort of joint deal between Twitter & FF... I'm not sure if I'll stick around in FF or not. I'm definitely not a fan of Facebook
- Tim Bergman
Paul, that's what so frustrating. Just given time, we know it would have caught on
- Stephen Pickering
I'm staying...
- Luis
Thanks for feeding the flames, there, Scoble. *WHAT* on earth is so scary about all this?
- Brad McCrorey
Brad, FF has died. Scoble made this thing. And what does he get out of it? Nuttin
- Stephen Pickering
Was this the Exit Strategy? I don't see how FF makes money right now?
- Keith Rowland
Stephen: I got you all as friends.
- Robert Scoble
:-)
- Stephen Pickering
This really SUCKS because when you don't have great "developers" to put something together like FriendFeed, you're really just gonna have to either take it up the ass or commit suicide. I'll hang myself 1st with all my clothes on :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Jeunelle HAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
- Stephen Pickering
I'm wherever good, smart peeps are ('cuz I'm not smart enough). I don't invest much in tools - it's the people I care for. I'm not gonna abandon FF now but I understand that we'll need a way to foster the kind of community that got fostered here. Nothing lasts forever - and that's mostly a good thing in the long run.
- phil baumann
from Android
i'll be here until either the bitter end or something else comes along ... i'm really hoping that the ff-team will turn facebook into more of what it was before the apps came along... i think that's when FB really took a downward turn for me
- Chris Heath
I follow the Cheese!
- Rich Weaver
Venues like this will come and go, the whole social media landscape is in a constant state of flux I don't see why so many are up in arms. The life cycle of all the current venues are short and most of the leaders are nearing the end of their lives as we know it. But fear not, many new shiny toys will be bestowed upon us to play with. Now let's be social again! (ps. I'm sure we've seen NOTHING yet!)
- Paul Monaco
Tweet: the cheese is in Zuckerberg's office! :-)
- Robert Scoble
And for anyone that wants to know why I am deleting my account and not just moving away and leaving it to rot like i would normally do...just read the policies of facebook. Anywhere I have an account with data I don't want to be exploited commercially, in a way that exploits me personally, I'd delete it just as fast if the service were bought by facebook.
- April Russo (app103)
Zuckerberg is Master of the Universe. He spent 4 hours with Paul Friday. That would have an effect on anyone
- Stephen Pickering
I know I am able to post status updates in Facebook to "Everyone" now, but when will we be able to search these open status updates?
- Kevin Whalen
from iPhone
I can't wait till my mom gets one of my "Queenie" updates....that's gonna b fun...lol..
- Bill Heslin
Kevin, when God, ie Mark Zuckerberg, says you can
- Stephen Pickering
I love FF but I think this is a great move. If FB takes the best ideas from FF and they open it up theres is so much potential for a great community.
- Gary Gannon
Definitely see what happens... Not looking forward to Facebook turning this into a free-for-all like Facebook :-)
- Maria Reyes-McDavis
Gary a potential for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
- Stephen Pickering
Not going anywhere for the time being. I'm not a big Twitter fan, and unless FB makes some big time changes, it just doesn't do it for me. Will be listening for any other social media that might come round the bend.
- Bonnie Foster
We are getting tired of all those constant platform changes, aren't we?
- Harald Felgner
Harald Yes!
- Stephen Pickering
I say we all leave Facebook instead.
- Larry Roth
Herald and Stephen, Yes! More and different is not always better, just more and different.
- Melanie Reed
I can't leave Facebook. I have too much built up there. And that won't do anything anways. It will just be a small blip to them.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
so what content aggregator in the absence of FF?
- WarLord
My apologies if this has already been asked, but Robert you are very close the FF team. You had no idea this was coming?
- Ben Hanten
I'm not leaving. I like FriendFeed and Facebook.
- Kimber Scott
Ben: not one iota. I did sense that they were struggling to figure out how to compete, but didn't think they would sell. Paul always told me he didn't want to sell.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I'm confused - on the one hand you've said this is such a great thing for FF as well as FB - but on the other hand you also say you're leaving FF because of of it. Why - if this is such a great thing for FF?
- Matthew Blaisdell
WarLord: there isn't a good aggregator. That's why it's stupid to delete your feeds.
- Robert Scoble
OK, a friend talked me down. He told me I'd be saying sorry for starting this post by the 400th comment. He's usually right. So, instead of saying sorry, I'm going drinking. See ya in the lobby in 10 minutes!
- Robert Scoble
I may be dense about this, but why would you leave until you saw which way it was going?
- Jerry Kidd
Good question, Jerry. I wanna know this, too.
- Brad Williamson
Robert, I think he struggled with it, but 4 Hours with Mark is a big persuasion
- Stephen Pickering
Matthew: I expect that the engineers will get put onto Facebook. So, if the smartest people are working on Facebook and not on FriendFeed, why would I stay here? Why wouldn't I start moving my work and social graph and all that over to Facebook?
- Robert Scoble
LOL...there ya go Robert...I knew you would come around...Drink Drink!!! have a really nice cocktail...
- Bill Heslin
The people I've come to know on FriendFeed are what I'd miss though, so I'd like to take my social graph with me wherever I might end up next. There's a business opportunity right there.
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Dunno if I'll leave the ship...
- Wario
When I think about it - I found your post as well as the TechCrunch article via Google Friend Connect. So maybe it is time to join that Wave!?
- Harald Felgner
Jerry: I said I was going to wait until I talk with the team more, but the things I'm hearing tell me they've already been bought to work on Facebook proper. So, unless someone tells me that's wrong, that tells me I should spend more and more of my time over on Facebook and not here. But my friend convinced me I'm being hasty and emotional. :-O
- Robert Scoble
Mathew: Scoble said early on in this thread that he invests his time into emerging networks, not things that "are already here" I think thats why he will be moving on to the next big thing, like google wave or watchever new social network emerges out of this. I suspect that another startup will emerge to try and fill the shoes left behind by friendfeed. This is always the case. When napster left, you had morpheus and kazaa, then bit torrents.
- Bryan Lee
Robert - Makes sense - except that it still doesn't seem like a great day for Friendfeed - if it just gets abandoned (by FB as well as by leaders like you...)
- Matthew Blaisdell
Matthew: FriendFeed=Facebook. It's a great day for both. Cause I'll end up at Facebook either way! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Anyway, these are just the emotional ramblings of someone trying to figure out how the world shifted today. Have fun!
- Robert Scoble
clue to the denouement: where is the most valuable processing of this event. Right here.
- Steve Gillmor
I'm just curious what new startup will roll into the limelight because of this announcement?
- Bryan Lee
Robert, FriendFeed != Facebook - look at the quality of commentary/people here
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
FriendFeed can stop improving right now, and I'll still stick around until something else catches up. Maybe that something else will be Facebook. I'll wait and see.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm probably out. Back to open source for me at this point. Time to take another look and see how things have progressed with Laconica, JaikuEngine, NoseRub, and some of the other secondary options. I may also go crawling back to Twitter. Given a choice between Twitter and Facebook... sigh...
- Ken Sheppardson
++Steve Gillmor
- Bruce Lewis
Ken you'll be back.
- Steve Gillmor
I don't think FB will change it all so quickly. But I do like Laconica, too.
- Monique Hodgkinson
Steve you're making it hurt worse! ;-(
- Stephen Pickering
Monique: It's not about rapid change, it's about where to invest effort. I don't really have any interest in investing my time and energy on Facebook... so why wait?
- Ken Sheppardson
stephen how so
- Steve Gillmor
I don't know where to go :(
- K.D.
I'll make up my mind when I figure out what better alternative there is to Friend Feed.
- Anthony Teegarden
Because we know FF has died
- Stephen Pickering
Steve: Yeah, you're probably right. I appreciate the work Bret, Paul, Benjamin, et al have done, and I was really looking forward to where they were taking things... before they were taking it to Facebook.
- Ken Sheppardson
I think I will just stay on twitter, because I can't stand facebook.
- Tomy Thomson
Stephen: FF has died? Well, then, how am I typing to you?
- Robert Scoble
Tomy, why change? You can listen to the Beatles and the Stones!
- Stephen Pickering
Ken: it's all good. they're moving to a radically larger playground, and they can't afford to abandon those who appreciate them
- Steve Gillmor
They will keep FF just will make it better
- Johni Fisher
Choose I meant
- Stephen Pickering
Please stop with FF has died chatter!
- Bryan Lee
I'll wait to learn more before making any decisions
- Herb Hernandez
Robert, well, metaphorically. Whether its a few months or a year
- Stephen Pickering
Tomy: Twitter is like Facebook but without likes and comments. Oh, wait, Facebook is a lot like FriendFeed already. I just commented on Louis Gray's item there. Oh, and there's applications. We can play games! :-) Herb: I'll try to go see the team next week. I'm also interviewing Yelp.
- Robert Scoble
But Steve, what if the larger "playground" turns out to be very different from the one pitched to them? What if the FF team finds that their vision isn't shared after all?
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, ok maybe you are right. Maybe it will be like the R&D. That would be great!
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen: are you trying to get on the Gillmor Gang? We seem to kill things before they are really dead there too.
- Robert Scoble
Hey Robert , you make friendfeed slower ! I guess you should leave here really x)
- Melissa Taylor
Anyway, I'm going drinking. For real this time.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHA
- Stephen Pickering
they can go build it again. but zuckerberg has been wanting this for some time
- Steve Gillmor
need to wait what will happen to FF
- Toni @ NavinoT
I'm planning on easing out of Friendfeed in the next couple of days, so I can get the contacts of people I know on here and who's opinions I value.
- Jon, the Chilled Beartato
Pickering: RSS is dead, not FF
- Steve Gillmor
Steve, oh yes, If I were him, I would pull out all stops to get this team. I totally understand from a business perspective, all perspectives
- Stephen Pickering
business is design
- Steve Gillmor
HAHAHA great comeback Steve. On that note I think I'll have a beer. :)
- Bryan Lee
Steve, OK, I'll keep the faith that maybe Scoble's idea that this could be a Facebook R&D could happen. That would be great!!!!
- Stephen Pickering
Steve, did you see the post about this being an opportunity for Google Reader? I think it was by Jorge Escobar.
- Bruce Lewis
Reading through all this is hilarious. We really should have a social media reality show Robert
- Jeunelle Foster
no bruce, how so
- Steve Gillmor
Jeunelle, Robert went drinking :)
- Stephen Pickering
So he ain't all that. Just kidding hehehehe :)
- Jeunelle Foster
He was saying Reader has most of the features of FF, and this could be their chance to expand and fill the niche FF filled: http://friendfeed.com/social-...
- Bruce Lewis
disagree bruce GR has no explicit contract with users
- Steve Gillmor
Contract or contact?
- Bryan Lee
Wave might be boosted, but has similar immaturity at the social graph level
- Steve Gillmor
I don't understand the part about the contract.
- Bruce Lewis
If Ning is 750m why FF is just 50m ?
- Johni Fisher
users consciously contribute metadata to FF
- Steve Gillmor
Do we want Google to buy Twitter?
- Stephen Pickering
@Steve @Bruce, here's the post http://jungleg.com/2009... -- it's a crazy idea but GR could make an extra effort and put up a better web experience
- Jorge Escobar
I like FriendFeed, a lot, but too few of my friends use the service to make it really useful. So I guess I'll leave.
- Adam Washington
Adam, stay, if even only for the aggregating features
- Stephen Pickering
You are testing us Scoble.
- Özer (Wrzl) Dölekoğlu
YES he's sitting in the back laughing while drinking Peppermint Schnaps
- Jeunelle Foster
Scobles outta here. He went to get a life! hehehehehehehe
- Stephen Pickering
totally staying....this really is just the beginning....and, i just built FF into all of my Intro to Soc sections!!!!
- Chad Gesser
I thought you said you'd hand in there until they turn the last server off. What changed your mind?
- Paul Chaney
Speaking of Google. What was the point of them buying Jaiku and doing nothing with it?
- Bryan Lee
I'll at least stay for aggregation and extending 140 character tweets, and pray maybe it will become Facebooks R&D, but I know that's a longshot
- Stephen Pickering
I should get a life too but alas the temptation is too great for "attention whoring"
- Jeunelle Foster
Jeunelle HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
- Stephen Pickering
hehehe lol
- Jeunelle Foster
Regarding the "team's plans", I really don't expect to hear anything from Bret, Paul, et al. At this point I'm happy to let the Facebook (i.e. the non-FriendFeed) folks try to convince me that they're ready to do things differently. That involves more than just hiring a team.
- Ken Sheppardson
Well, maybe Paul can influence Mark not "to be evil"
- Stephen Pickering
those who think FB has any choice but to go down the FF road are not thinking this through
- Steve Gillmor
@Stephen, I was alternating between friendfeed and twitter (stones and beatles, respectively :P) but I don't see the point in staying with a dying technology, which unfortunately is where friendfeed is headed. The tech of friendfeed itself will hopefully live on in facebook. I really think facebook has become a slightly less obnoxious version of myspace, and that's being nice.
- Tomy Thomson
Steve, Oh, I totally understand. It was genius of them. Proves how Mark is indeed Master of the Universe
- Stephen Pickering
Steve, self-interest does not guarantee anything. People and companies can act irrationally.
- Bruce Lewis
So Steve, do you see two separate properties indefinitely? Or does Facebook just slowly start too look more FF-like, then one day they redirect friendfeed.com to facebook.com?
- Ken Sheppardson
yes bruce take twitter for example
- Steve Gillmor
But Paul could end up being a great influence on Mark
- Stephen Pickering
not indefinitely Ken, but long enough to transfer enough value to avoid making twitter look like the good guys
- Steve Gillmor
Steve, will Google buy Twitter?
- Stephen Pickering
you're "VERY excited" about the deal, but plan to leave friendfeed? why, exactly? i don't get it...
- Shawn C. Reed
dunno, don't really care
- Steve Gillmor
*eye roll* thread is getting to the point where it's too long and people are now asking questions that have been answered thrice.....Lock down time.
- Matthew DeVries
ff was the important value, not twitter
- Steve Gillmor
Steve, why didn't Ff take over FB? Yeah Facebook has the money, but it's the inferior product.
- Matthew DeVries
Oh sure, who do you want in your office, Ev or Paul Bucheit? Paulllllll!
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen, didn't the TechCrunch article say that the FF team would be split between two bosses, neither of which was Mark?
- Bruce Lewis
matthew who says they didn't
- Steve Gillmor
That's right. Paul may end up running that thing, or at least be No.2
- Stephen Pickering
@ Robert: The majority of apps on FB are useless imo. Every time I log on I get bombarded by 'add your relative' and 'blackjack' app requests. And don't get my started on the quizzes and other BS. Ah well, I will join your fan page on facebook!
- Tomy Thomson
ff has been running dev for a year
- Steve Gillmor
Wow - isn't this jumping to conclusions? No one has said anything's going away, nor do we know what they're doing to do with it. Stick around, wait to see what happens, then jump. Nothing's happened yet - I think it will all be for the better in the end and you'll know where to go when the FF Team says Jump.
- Jesse Stay
Kurt, he's gonna sit on it for a while, see what shakes out
- Stephen Pickering
jesse skip to the bottom for the apology
- Steve Gillmor
The FF Team hasn't let us down yet, have they? I still trust them - only when they break that trust do we jump.
- Jesse Stay
@Scobleizer I've been on Google Wave for about a week working on an interesting idea I have for it. It's very promising but its very alpha right now. You won't find it worth your time just yet.
- Noah White
jumping is bullshit, no place to go
- Steve Gillmor
Ah - sorry Robert - didn't see the clarification towards the bottom. Thanks Steve.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, you still in the Boston area?
- Bruce Lewis
Why rush to judgment? Even if the "team's plans" are off-base, what's the base? And what's off? Experience, resourcefulness, respect for users and smarts under fire all matter more than "plans." Wait & keep seeing.
- Doc
What the hell? Just because someone buys FriendFeed everyone has to ditch it? ABORT SHIP, ABORT SHIP! Doesn't really make sense so soon. Has anything changed yet? Is it the end of the world? Don't just leave because everyone says they will either. Stick around, the ship is still afloat.
- Nick Humphries
the doctor is in the house
- Steve Gillmor
But, if they did pull the plug, with bandwidth and computing halving every year, there would be another one of these pop up in no time
- Stephen Pickering
I don't see a point in leaving Friendfeed until the doors close on us... if and when that happens.
- Alex Knight
Actually facebook is the most popular rss reader of all time :)
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
Bruce, we just left today. I'm actually in Niagara Falls, NY right now. Just finished watching a beautiful view of the Falls at night.
- Jesse Stay
There's a house?
- Doc
Steve, is that Doc Searls?
- Stephen Pickering
of cards
- Steve Gillmor
hover over the name stephen
- Steve Gillmor
Jesse, if anybody can persuade me (us?) that Facebook is going to be good for the FF team it's you. Maybe write a blog post or something.
- Bruce Lewis
Don't get so close.
- Doc
unfollow please sidney
- Steve Gillmor
Doc, Calacanis recommended your book to his audience on THis Week in Startups. Can't wait to read it!
- Stephen Pickering
I just left facebook a couple weeks ago - hope friendfeed doesn't devolve into quizzes and walled gardens
- Doug Holton
It's the Gillmor Gang in a perpendicular universe.
- Doc
yes it is
- Steve Gillmor
and about fucking time
- Steve Gillmor
Stephen, make sure it's the *new* 10th anniversary edition of Cluetrain. Both it and the old one are being sold. 8 extra chapters in the new.
- Doc
No doubt, Steve
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
I'm in it to win it. FF isn't shutting down tomorrow or next week. But it's funny to me that so many dicuss the content... It's the connections made with others that are in jeopardy, not the LOLCat photos...
- MVB (Grinch of FF)
from fftogo
Because of Quantum Wave effects there are an infinite number of Universes, some of which The Gillmor Gang is still broadcasting
- Stephen Pickering
Bruce, I'll be working on a post really soon. Also, Louis Gray and I are going to record a phone call about it tomorrow, which I think should prove useful. I've got a lot of knowledge about Facebook, and he does about FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
we never stopped stephen
- Steve Gillmor
Heheheheheheheheh
- Stephen Pickering
JFC, I was gonna go to bed, and here we are. Wherever this is. Do we all really live in Scoble's butt?
- Doc
Doc comes through with yet another metonym: the perpendicular universe (= FF).
- Nick in Manila
I would have had something out sooner but I've been driving a car all day. :-)
- Jesse Stay
no it's Marshall McLuhan's butt
- Steve Gillmor
Is this SRC?
- Doc
Kurt, oh yeah, I totally get that and so does Scoble, but you've got to understand his short term hurt. Look at how much energy he put into this thing, and what did he get? Nuttin
- Stephen Pickering
You mean McLuhan is in Scoble's body? He's in the movie Being Robert Scoble?
- Doc
Nonsense Stephen he gets paid in attention every single time
- Steve Gillmor
Social relay chat?
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
No who's on first
- Steve Gillmor
Scoble Relay Chat.
- Doc
the medium is the message
- Steve Gillmor
OK, OK, Steve. I admit, I listened to Dave Winer's chat this evening about it
- Stephen Pickering
yeah I read the liner notes instead
- Steve Gillmor
Confessions of Stephen and Steve
- Jeunelle Foster
And the medium is the network?
- Stephen Pickering
Are we paying Scoble now? Are we his excreta and are those a form of currency?
- Doc
as richard manuel used to say the check's in yr mouth
- Steve Gillmor
Doc, HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
- Stephen Pickering
I thought it was "the check is coming in your mouth." Just looking for accuracy here.
- Doc
no, doc it's a contraction of 2 of the 3 promises
- Steve Gillmor
I forget what the 3rd is
- Steve Gillmor
I'll love you in the morning?
- Doc
could be
- Steve Gillmor
Well, it's almost morning here. I'll tape this show and watch later. G'night or g'morning, all.
- Doc
Goodnight, Doc!
- Stephen Pickering
I was wondering how long this would take to happen. Soon as I saw FF being purchased by Facebook I knew you would bolt. Not 100% surprising.
- Christopher Mercer
Part of beauty of FF: all their shows are taped. And yet open ended.
- Nick in Manila
It depends how much FF changes. No reason to leave until and unless it gets annoying.
- Igor Goldkind
It's "I'll respect you in the morning."
- Sean Gallagher
Oh, I'm not leaving. Hell, I even still have a myspace account. It's just a question of engagement
- Stephen Pickering
Good night all. Tip for Jeunelle: You get more attention if you make your feed public. Make a group for your private stuff.
- Bruce Lewis
they'll have to scrub this one pretty good before they shut it down
- Steve Gillmor
Maybe Jeunelle doesn't want attention.
- Sean Gallagher
Hell, they keep Orkut going. Storage and bandwidth keep getting cheaper. Might as well keep this going
- Stephen Pickering
Orkut! The favorite social network of 9 out of 10 Brazilians.
- Sean Gallagher
And 9 out 10 of the best looking women!
- Stephen Pickering
True.
- Sean Gallagher
@scobleizer that means half of the total activity on friendfeed will be reduced
- Sidharth Dassani
Maybe if Facebook hadn't stolen all Scoble's data, he'd stop worrying and learn to love them.
- Sean Gallagher
Actually even os Brasileiros are coming over to FB
- Stephen Pickering
My mother is on Facebook. The end is nigh.
- Sean Gallagher
"Maybe Jeunelle doesn't want attention" - says who? I only stepped away to pour me a nice glass of Sauvengion Blanc", and thank you Bruce for the advice I'll look into that tomorrow. After all tomorrow is another day. Twiddly Dee
- Jeunelle Foster
there is no reason to leave. I seriously doubt facebook will kill it.
- Logan Lindquist
What's the record number of comments?
- Stephen Pickering
Logan, I hope your right
- Stephen Pickering
Maybe if I blog my twitter of Scoble's FriendFeed and then link it from Facebook via a Digg of a del.icio.us bookmark, it will create a singularity and this thread will have never happened.
- Sean Gallagher
What about Identi.ca?
- Jerry Heiselman
Sean, you may even create a time machine!
- Stephen Pickering
Can someone comment on what April Russo said about Facebook content policy? Seems like a very important piece of the puzzle.
- metalerik
I wouldn't worry about it. The markets will take care of it. If Facebook becomes evil, the masses will fork somewhere else. We're in the age of Openness
- Stephen Pickering
I will only leave friend feed if it becomes a facebook clone. I can't stand facebook but I still use it cause my friends and family use it, but if friendfeed becomes annoying like face book then I see no point in staying here.
- Colide81 (James)
from iPhone
James, Touche
- Stephen Pickering
You know Sean maybe smarter than he looks....hmmmmm :) and what's with that bird head?
- Jeunelle Foster
Quote of the Day: "Microsoft and Twitter deserve each other. They are both somewhat buggy and don't come up with new features very often. ;-)" - Robert Scoble
- Diego Barros
It's a starling fledgeling. The perfect symbol for social networking-- it eats whatever you give it, then poops on you.
- Sean Gallagher
That's what I want to reincarnate as....an angry poopin bird
- Jeunelle Foster
Just reading all the news about FF and FB. Disapoints me personally, biz wise nice job. Um not a huge FB user so I don't know what my plans are yet. Like you wait a bit and see....
- Bryan Thatcher
from iPhone
I hope FF doesn't go away and fold in to FB. I don't need FB. It's like bringing a machine gun to a knife fight.
- Diego Barros
I won't leave FF until they make me or there's no community left. Whichever comes first.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
We'll never get to talk to Robert Scoble again. :-(
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Well, it's made me think twice about vesting too much into any one service (so has the demise of tr.im). I use Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, and FF all pretty equally, so I guess I'm not feeling this as much as some.
- Bill Kinney
on to Google Wave.
- Jason Wilson
from BuddyFeed
Jannifer, Yes we will on his JS-Kit Echo commenting system he will put on his blog. It's real time like this
- Stephen Pickering
I'm leaving. Google Wave, Twitter, Reader will plenty suffice now. Farewell, former friend.
- Californian
Oh Stephen - I'm not sure what that is... but it won't be like Friendfeed. :-(
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
At some point I imagine I will. I have no interest in joining facebook. When I do depends on what facebook does with ff.
- Quasar
I'm sticking around till FB screws it up. But I was keeping FF separate from FB because most of my FB friends are my born-again Christian relatives who won't like the controversial stuff of mine that makes it onto FF's news feed. Still, I'm going to look for other similar sites. Posterous is one.
- Dennis Jernberg
I really want a Google Wave invite now..
- Peter
I'm not leaving but I'm not moving to Facebook. The main thing for me is to keep the contacts I've gained from FriendFeed and hope we all can meet on another similar service somewhere somehow.
- Kol Tregaskes
Ditto what Kol just said.
- LogEx
ditto on the Google wave invite
- Kim
you hit the nail on the head there Kol
- Kim
Maybe. But i really want Google Wave invite.
- ★ Soner Gönül
It's hard to say at this point. The only thing that's changed is who pays the server bill. Ask me in a week. And yes, a Google Wave invite would sure go a long way to make this better for me.
- Dale
Joined Posterous. http://jbug.posterous.com Wouldn't mind a Google Wave invite, though...
- Dennis Jernberg
Me too, Dennis. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
I don't leave if Facebook doesn't make something dramamatic to FF
- Kristian Salonen
I will wait and see.
- Matt G
Oh yeah, and I added my Posterous blog to my FriendFeed feed, so you'll be seeing whatever I post there in your home feed here. That is, if you subscribe to me here, or if one of your subscribers likes or comments. Me, leave? Not yet! ;)
- Dennis Jernberg
I'll be sticking around just a little while longer.
- April Russo (app103)
I'm here for the duration
- Charlie Anzman
I'm loyal until they make it worth me leaving.
- Jesse Stay
I'm here until they slam the gates shut. But I am hiding all your BS posts about it being a good thing :)
- jcunwired
If you want to be sure that I quit Friendfeed you have to see my burial. I will never quit while being alive! :-)
- Kolja
I'm staying but it's like when you know that the company you work for has been bought by someone else and might close it, you lose motivation and start looking for another job, it's hard to invest time and energy if there might be no future. Not that the future of FF was guaranteed before but now it does not look good at all.
- M F
I'm heading to Plurk! who's with me? *tumbleweed*
- Iain Baker
Like I said before, I'm staying here until the end.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
Friendfeed is two totally different things: the original RSS aggregation service, and a social network service/community. Lifestream.fm is a reasonable replacement for the former. As to the latter, it's the people, not the tech they're using, that makes FF special. I've benefited greatly as a 'consumer' here, reading posts - if that continues on Facebook, it will probably get me to...
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- SteamCentral
i'll be around until it becomes unbearable, probly until it's been damaged badly by FB style feature creep and riddled with ads and spammers. oh, and absolutely stupid censorship policies. that'll be a real killer.
- Joe Silence
not leaving. NEVER hoho I haven't left FB nor friendser.
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
The CloneFeed group has given me some interest. It gives some hope in case FF really goes away or merges badly with FB. I like FB but just don't want to fully mix the two activities/audiences.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I'd rather keep my Friendfeed as my "professional aggregation" and Facebook as personal stuff. I blog, tweet, etc. stuff that a lot of my friends could care less about. And I post stuff to Facebook that isn't interesting or relevant to clients / followers.
- Gregg Le Blanc
Google Wave is what I am looking for. The problem with moving to Facebook is that I use it for close friends and family so things like comments and pics etc that I post to it I would not want to have available to all of the contacts I have on FF at the moment. Mainly because I like to separate those I know from those that I converse with if that makes sense. I loved that on FF I could...
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- Travis Koger
Whilst I am not 'leaving' FF, I will not be investing anywhere near the type of interaction I have done previous to yesterday's announcement as I just see it as wasted time.
- Travis Koger
I have to wait & see what, I don't want to lose the community; where do I go? This feels like Pownce all over!
- clarke thomas
not me.
- Edward Barnieh
Nope, not yet. I still dream about FF and FB to coexist. I think Facebook is even more boring now, after this announcement. Anyone else feels this way?
- Patrik Johansson
Not me. I will be glad when all the people who say they are leaving do so my feed won't be full of people saying they are leaving.
- Alan Simpson
What becomes of the broken hearted?
- Joe Dawson
I'm staying on!
- Charles Lau
FF is my first big social networking investment (or time) - I'll stay and then move, if forced. I'll certainly investigate other tools in an effort to fill any gap left by FaceFeed.
- Jason Miller
I just saw that a woman's twittering her childbirth made the front page of BBC's world news webpage. I don't know to make of it, but I don't want to hang out at Twitter much anymore.
- Mitch
Mitch: we Twittered our childbirth in 2007 and we will again in September, but probably not on our main account.
- Robert Scoble
won´t leave!!! i LOVE friendfeed. @Mitch i know what you mean. So many stories and this is the one they picked?
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
i think i'm stayin, and wait what's goin on facebook. i will feel upset if they dont allow the users to make their choice of using one or other site, but looks like they gonna force to use FB instead of FF :(
- Dani Martínez
Not sure how on board with FriendFeed I ever was to begin with to be honest...
- Gurpreet
FriendFeed will be fine - FaceBook is fine - and so is Twitter - I might check out AmpliFeeder, I suspect quite a few FriendFeeders will migrate there as the days go by.
- Chris Loft
Not leaving FF but I can't wait till it's properly integrated with Facebook. Interesting thing: Wave's API is open so there's nothing to stop Facebook creating an app to make Facebook & Wave work great together. Not so much either/or as and... and..!
- Matt Moran
Has anyone tried amplifeeder? edit: so far don't see any friending abilities though
- metalerik
Why leave? But will be open to see other options - facebook doesn't (currently) provide to me what I get here.
- amygeek
Facebook bought friendfeed http://adage.com/digital...
- Rob Johnson
OH NO, I just finish moving all my stuff HERE!
- Terence
Robert: I closed down my embeds today. Sad for my blog.
- Mark Essel
I stay on FriendFeed, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc.
- Emmanuel Gadenne
I won't delete my account, but as FF morphs into the ball of confusion that is Facebook, I won't be very active.
- Jeremy Brooks
I will. No point sticking around when you know it is going to die sooner or later. With twitter you still have the hope....
- Davide D'Incau
I'll leave Facebook if FF gets harmed. And go back to Identi.ca... ;-)
- Torrid Luna
Yeah, I'll probably leave Facebook too. If they're going to "steal" the FriendFeed functions and just let FF die, I will not have any sympathies left for Facebook. I'll go "all Google" or something.
- Patrik Johansson
I'll stay on FF, FB and T, and BK, and other, BrightKite is not well utilised, is good even on beta.
- Andy Ghozali
I joined posterous for blogging/lifestreaming and will continue to use twitter. I might go on facebook once in a while, which is what I was doing anyway.
- Tomy Thomson
Robert: If you're looking for an awesome real-time discussion platform, you should migrate to Fluther. http://www.fluther.com
- Ben
I'm staying put and watching the ship sink. I'd really like to believe that FriendFeed will have some longevity, but I won't hedge my bets.
- Tyson Key
Steve Gillmor said "clue to the denouement: where is the most valuable processing of this event. Right here." so for now, FF looks like the space.
- Barbara K. Iverson
I intend to stick around to see what Facebook have planned. I think the takeover has everything to do with the direction FB's been heading in lately, what with their open challenge to Twitter
- Dennis Jernberg
I don't see it as leaving, but rather seeing the possibility that it might leave us. FF was and still is just about my favorite site and uberaggregatorthing that I ever saw....
- Rob Schieber
+100 Rob Schieber
- Tyson Key
I will stay. Facebook will not Win.
- TheHenry
Nope... I'll stay, even if I ride it to a bitter end.
- Mark "DerBingle" J
depends. if they stay seperate services, i wont like the acquisition,but i'll stay. if they become 1 service, i'm out. and where is every1 going from friend feed anyhow. what else is there?
- echostreamer
Will wait and see what happens with FB
- Ted Kinzer
fb ruins everything. Have the Privacy policy "not "changed since fb came into the pic? Can they not build their own ideas instead of buying everyone else's? leave us geeks to play in our playground and stay in yours. greedy buggers. The second they pull a skanky fb move i'm out. bitches.
- seastarerrin
I'm here till the ship goes down.
- Lee Watters
Leaving no. Checking out other venues yes.
- Martha
Just maybe Facebook will listen to the Friendfeed engineers in charge of user interface/usability starting with the type size and fonts. Not all marriages are made in heaven. Culture clashes are sure to pop up.
- Alan Morris
I am leaving Web - Back to Telnet
- Dominique Rabeuf
Dominique, too late. The web already assimilated it with the telnet: url schema.
- Bruce Lewis
OK so only snmp/ssh
- Dominique Rabeuf
Hell no, not leaving. Best service on the web.
- Christopher Galtenberg
from iPhone
gonna ride this one out to shore.
- Sean Oliver
hu?
- Dries Grobler
back to blogs :-)
- Mostafa Lameei
I was about to focus a little more on FF but since I heard about the purchase and read rumors about FF being integrated in FB and being shutdown and all this, I'm getting a little ... well.. undecided.. Just checked Streamy, didn't like it. If a.tinythread.com get's more development, this might be the next thing to migrate to. I'm sure not moving to FaceBook. I have my account, I have...
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- Dan van Moll
Minitel 3815 (?)
- Dominique Rabeuf
Not interested in being part of Facebook. Goodbye, FriendFeed. :-(
- TranceMist
I wish more folks would see the big picture. We need to focus on independent projects that are NOT part of the Google-Yahoo-Microsoft borg. As soon as a site gets absorbed it is time to find another independent site. Yes, I do realize that some may have actually been part all along and only pretending they were independent in the first place - especially if they were founded by...
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- Internet Strategist
Immediate Infrastructure Needs: (for development use)
Kol Tregaskes, Matthew Horton and Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ liked this
Version Control
- Jason Huebel
Hosting
- Jason Huebel
Wiki or something similar for longer-term collaboration.
- Jason Huebel
I can probably provide VPS hosting with Subversion. I typically use eBoundHost. It's only $25/mo, so I'm willing to handle that out-of-pocket.
- Jason Huebel
Any objections?
- Jason Huebel
Not me. I can help with the hosting if needed.
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
I'm about to purchase it now. It can be up and running by tomorrow afternoon, I think. If we decide not to use it, I can always use it for my own business needs.
- Jason Huebel
Version Control: Github? I love git. Makes branching easy, which is very helpful when trying to keep master clean.
- Chip Ramsey
That could be a good option for now. I haven't used git, myself.
- Jason Huebel
I also wouldn't need to get hosting for the time being.
- Jason Huebel
another option for version control that would give you a wiki: http://code.google.com/project.... I personally use Redmine http://www.redmine.org/ with git and really like it.
- Chip Ramsey
My only worry is that whoever we choose, we need to be able to easily migrate off of them if/when the time comes. VCS's make that easier, of course. But the goal is to avoid vendor lock-in in every aspect. Lesson learned. ;-)
- Jason Huebel
from IM
Yeah, I've used redmine too. I currently use Trac, but I honestly don't have a preference when it comes to the web interface. The underlying VCS is what I'm interested in. I'm cool with git. I'll just have to do some quick reading. :-)
- Jason Huebel
from IM
Still don't have an invite, so I may be wrong about this, but I've always thought one could build a FF clone on top of Google Wave.
Kol Tregaskes and Matthew Horton liked this
Yeah, but 'till then we should write something maybe with appengine?
- directeur
That's what I was thinking. Appengine would be a good platform.
- Jason Huebel
Yeah, and upon the wave standard I mean, not on Google's service. Maybe a "room" is a "wave" that people can ride and post to? Since there are sub-threads in a wave? Still not sure on how it all works.
- Daniel Sims
Yeah, I would definitely use Wave. Here is a free open source reference implementation: http://code.google.com/p... Also, using ejabbered as the engine for shipping the xmpp around could make it very scalable (again for free). http://www.planeterlang.org/en...
- Chip Ramsey
So I guess python would be the way to go then, eh?
- Jason Huebel
for the robot client: http://code.google.com/p...
- Chip Ramsey
I'm not sure I like the idea of being locked into AppEngine
- Chip Ramsey
Chip, I think it's a question of finding a good, scalable platform at the moment. I don't think any of us have the resources to self-host something this big.
- Jason Huebel
I use Amazon Web Services extensively for a large production system. There seems to be considerable lock-in when using AppEngine. Just scares me.
- Chip Ramsey
Oh, FriendFeed is now Facebook’s “official” R&D department! - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Stanislas Jourdan, Daniel Rowley, Hutch Carpenter and 88 other people liked this
My reactions to today's news!
- Robert Scoble
SCOBLE YOU MUST GET THEM TO KEEP FRIENDFEED PURE-- and RUNNING!! AAAGGGH [ i just heard 5 minutes ago. I'm on vacation ] :)
- Schneider Mike
Interesting thoughts.
- Angus Burton
Bummer - not likely to be an improvement
- Internet Strategist
Friendfeed is no longer .. all that's left is the flick of the switch.
- John Blanton
It's nice for the FF peeps. They'll see what it's like to deliver new features for a decent size user base.
- mrshl
Mike: I wouldn't worry about FriendFeed. I see it as Facebook's R&D department now. We're the test bunnies for what 300 million people will get! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Now Friendfeed will be able to go head to head with Google wave! So long as the team are allowed to lead from within Facebook how can this possibly be bad?
- Ade Lack
I want a FB test bunny t-shirt ;)
- Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)
Nice comments. Also looking forward to realtime search and 300M+ users ... watch that in realtime! My screen will melt I guess.
- Peter van Teeseling
I'm only really sad because it completely breaks my on-line life. I'm excited for the FF team and for FB but that's only one aspect and I don't see how it can be merged.
- James Myatt
I think it'll make fan pages even cooler.
- Gus
Mark: can you verify that this is a real account somehow? Tell us something about what we did in Davos together that I didn't share.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, the user name for Zuck misspells his name, just like he misspelled yours.
- Louis Gray
Mark, if that is really you. Please don't let people on FB find users on FF. Some of us are looking for the anti-social web. Private groups and no friend requests from long lost classmates was a big plus over here.
- Chip Ramsey
Username is "markzukerberg"? ..
- Mads Kristiansen
Robert: from what I can tell most FF users do not share your enthusiasm or optimism. From what I can see FriendFeed team members will be absorbed into Facebook R&D, FriendFeed as a property will whither and most will cash out as soon as they can. Do you have some other information that you can share that supports your optimism?
- Brian Sullivan
My reactions to today's news! ~ http://ff.im/6pPEE :D
- CannonGod
One of the worst things for me is that many employers, including the site I'm working at, block Facebook, but not Friendfeed.
- James Myatt
James - www.anonymizer.com/ ?
- Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)
Robert: Do you have *any* reason at all to believe that friendfeed will survive as a distinct entity?
- Christopher A Carr
How does everyone know what's going to happen? I prefer Rob's tone of "what should happen" - fear vs possibility
- Ankush Narula
from iPhone
Really interesting perspective you provide here. I was thinking this whole time that this would hit Twitter hard, but I see now that Google might be the real target, because of the whole real-time search. Nonetheless, I love all the Google employees that are hoping facebook becomes more "open" in the process. Something tells me facebook doesn't care about being open, but being a...
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- Rahul Krishnakumar
Christopher: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... It clearly seems that facebook will use friendfeed to be a playground for future features.
- Rahul Krishnakumar
Rahul: That's not encouraging. I don't see how you get that from that article.
- Christopher A Carr
Wait I owe Scoble an apology. I read several places that he had a financial interest in Friend Feed. That information , if true,clouded my perception of his commentary of FF. If you believed that true, he comes across as a shill trying to protect his investment IMHO. In his blog post he denounces any financial connection. Now I feel stupid because good practices dictate that he would have disclosed such in his writings. I suck sorry Robert.
- cheapsuits
from iPhone
Hmmm - I keep my FB social, private, and mainly family. I keep FF public and work-oriented only. Will I need two accounts? Or just delicate messing about with privacy controls? I'm not looking forward to shifting - may FF last a long while still. FB is too busy, and FF is lightweight and gives me exactly what I want, with a much cleaner interface. Thanks very much Robert, your blog post is much appreciated!
- Allyson Lister
cheapsuits: Robert has said 1,000 + times that he has no financial interest in ff.
- Christopher A Carr
Robert, how can you say you don't get how FF users are sad and up in arms? FB's attitudes and culture are different enough for this to be a serious shock. In short, lots of people think FF=good, FB=bad, for better or worse. Your own list of cons is enough to get FF users up in arms.
- Don Faulkner
Christopher I see it now. Easy to see what he said when it isn't filtered by FF haters. What more can I say then I suck? I surely am not going to kill myself over it.
- cheapsuits
from iPhone
Thrilled for Paul, but amused that FB's first big land grab is another biz that isn't monetized properly either! Arrogance or Ignorance?
- Jan Simmonds
Jan, FF has some great technology and some great people. It's not about the service itself.
- James Myatt
cheapsuits: I'm sure you are forgiven. ;-)
- Christopher A Carr
Here's why people are up in arms: I think it's in the company's best interests to keep the properties existing separately ... especially since like you said, it's a geekier community on FF. Why not integrate the cool *features* FF has within Facebook but keep friendfeed.com as-is?
- Tamar Weinberg
I agree this is more of a play against Google. I think eventually Twitter and Facebook will team up more to provide real time streams of user updates between the two systems. I wonder if the first step is using FF for the collection of these streams and the next step is acquiring the method of pushing these streams or content.
- CodeSamurai
FF = Facebook Labs
- Andrew
I like the separate sites and maybe they will allow both options, Facebook is too busy for me and Friend Feed cuts to the chase and I hope we don't see "FaceFeed" with everything combined without options.
- MedicalQuack
They got some talented people at FriendFeed.
- Kenneth Yeh
Dos Equis 'Most Interesting Man' Is a Great Beer Salesman - http://adage.com/article...
Fossil Huntress, Bertrand Doux, joefouche and 32 other people liked this
"Through mid-June, a period when imported beer sales dropped 11%, sales of Dos Equis rose more than 17%, moving the brand into eighth place among imports (in a tie with Stella Artois), when shipments rose 13%. That success prompted Heineken executives, who had been running the ads since 2007 in a few stronghold markets for the brand, to take the message national this spring. "There's never really been an import brand that's been built so clearly through advertising," said Benj Steinman, publisher of Beer Marketer's Insights. Equally unprecedented is the campaign's reliance on two things rarely seen -- actively shunned, even -- in beer ads: a gray-haired protagonist, played in the Dos Equis ads by veteran TV actor Jonathan Goldsmith, who in every ad acknowledges that he doesn't always drink beer."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
I love it. I saw someone who looked like him and immediately wanted to grab a Dos Equis and say to him, 'Stay thirsty my friend'
- Rodfather
Dude looks just like Lindsay's step-father! :) Love the ads.
- Chrimmus Tad
"stay thirsty my friends!"
- topo
I started a thread collecting all of The Most Interesting Man's "observations" a few weeks ago...please add to it here: https://friendfeed.com/lagtime...
- .LAG liked that
I'll admit it worked on me. Too bad it's really not a great tasting beer. The take-offs tell you that it's great advertising though http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Andrew Smith
LAG - that is a great list
- Keith - @tsudo
Tsudonimh... thank you. Stay thirsty, my friend. ;)
- .LAG liked that
Seemed like a clear nod to the Chuck Norris Facts http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/ and SNL's Bill Brasky skits before that. I agree that it's pretty awesome he doesn't always drink beer, but when he does he often enjoys Dos Equis, which you can buy if you want... or not, he could care less.
- Chip Ramsey
Why FriendFeed's designer, Kevin Fox, is to blame for FriendFeed being too difficult to use: he f**ks with affordances. (UPDATE: he answers me toward the end of the comments with a GREAT set of answers).
29travels, Lucas, FFTornado and 138 other people liked this
Affordances. They are important. What does that mean? A door knob "affords" being turned. It almost demands it. Yet FriendFeed is screwing with things like links. Here, click on "hide." That should just hide one item, right? That's the affordance. Yet you'll soon find there's a whole world stuck under that little link. You can hide Tweets. You can hide me. You can hide all sorts of stuff.
- Robert Scoble
Is it difficult to use?
- Manuel Mas
Hmm.. is it difficult to use?!
- Orli Yakuel
i heard larry wall once say about perl "make simple things simple, and hard things possible"... the simple things are definitely *not* simple in ff, increasing the learning curve right at the start... i rekon if they fix that... they have it made! :)
- simran
It's a peace of cake
- Mark
Ooooo. One does not often see Robert swear. He's really worked up about it. Care to respond Kevin??
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
#2 Look at the time stamp. Did you know that's also a link? Where's the affordance? Not there. Yet did you know you can click that and that is your permalink? Many people have trouble figuring this out. But here's an ultra affordance killer. Did you know you can click it twice and get a popout menu? Not many people do. Kevin has overloaded links with too many features and he has broken the affordances of what links usually do.
- Robert Scoble
Orli: actually, yes, it's difficult to use.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble: You may be right now that I read what you had to say. I don't think there is a proper FAQ/guide for all the little details hidden in FF.
- Manuel Mas
And noses were designed to support eye glasses.
- Todd Hoff
well I just managed to wipe out my entire friend feed account when I was trying to add a new one for a different twitter account
- NW Angel
I agree - too many possible results from a given action. Manuel, no one reads FAQs and if you need to, the app is DOA
- Sameer
Well, I don't see it as difficult to use. Its more that there are many things in here hidden that would aid users if there were more upfront.
- Manuel Mas
Most of us get basic functionality out of the site with how things are at the moment.
- Manuel Mas
Look at this complaint too about FriendFeed being difficult to figure out: http://twitter.com/sethgol... Seth Goldstein runs a tech company. He's a geek. Adverse to more pain than a lot of us. Yet he can't figure out how to delete a list. He's not the only one to tell me that FriendFeed is too difficult to figure out. FriendFeed still needs a design rethink to make these issues go away.
- Robert Scoble
Sameer: Agree.
- Manuel Mas
Valid points, Robert, but a complex interface, once learned, becomes simple, too - although that's not the best design philosophy for a massively public website.
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Its the visual impact of seeing too many options even if you dont use them. V. overwhelming for the try and buy new comer
- Sameer
I think it is one of the worst UIs on the web today. Which is why I hardly use it. It violates all the rules of good design. Stuff is not obvious, it is not easy and it is not even quickly learn-able. I've spent years in product management and really, this is one of the worst.
- Shripriya
I think the issue here is Discoverability. There are a lot of little hidden secrets to FriendFeed that become obvious only after you've figured them out. They're not very obvious on their own. Personally, it doesn't bother me but that's because I know it. If I were a new user, I'd be at a loss as well. It seems to me that the primary design goal at FriendFeed is a minimal UI (perhaps at all costs).
- Akiva Moskovitz
Roberto: I can't think of another web app that messes with link affordances the way that FriendFeed does. Can you think of one?
- Robert Scoble
People who figure out how to use a system are often the last ones to recognize how difficult it is to use. It's a self selection thing.
- Ken Sheppardson
But affordances are subjective and reliant on the end-user. Take the @ sign or hashtags for instance. Unless you're talking about Apple, it's hard to blame a designer for affordance rule enforcement.
- Sam Harrelson
There is a balance with "affordances" though -- if you have a very complex set of features you could have a knob/button/link for every feature but that would not work either
- Brian Sullivan
@Robert, do you think FF need More Icon?
- abdellah
Sam: we've all clicked on hundreds of thousands of links. We all have an idea of what happens when you click a link.
- Robert Scoble
Sam, the @sign in Twitter was emergent - something users created.
- Sameer
Sure, but I've seen lots of platforms use the date function as a permalink enabler.
- Sam Harrelson
Manuel, agree. Robert, I wouldn't say it's difficult, but confusing (or useless sometimes). I'm not sure it's a design problem though.
- Orli Yakuel
abellah: an icon is probably better than a link, yes. I know that Kevin (from an interview I did with him more than a year ago) likes sparse UIs. He is of the school that you just watch where people trip over themselves and then build UI for that. I think that's smart, but I wish that FriendFeed would iterate its UI faster to pave paths where people are having troubles.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, sorry, but you're late on this trend too :) First, being not to follow everyone on Twitter. FF ui has always been terrible. Most tech people I know don't understand how to use it. And I think I use less than 10% of the available features.
- Shripriya
I like FriendFeed as it is. It's obviously a power users tool as is, but then I wouldn't want it stupid simple reminiscent of installing a Windows OS. There just needs to be a decent screencast on the home page explaining all the features. No one reads FAQs these days. Video Game designers just turn the first level into a tutorial for 99% who won't read the manual and I don't mind. Maybe FF needs a tutorial when you first sign up?
- CannonGod
Think about the affordances of FF and compare them with Twitter. Then compare the relative effectiveness of desktop / mobile applications developed for both. There is not a one good app for FriendFeed. This is because of the MANY "extra shite" links and an overly complex API, not because of popularity differences in the services.
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Holy shit this item is already in Google: http://www.google.com/search... -- Google is going real time!
- Robert Scoble
Great designs shouldn't need tutorials.
- Manuel Mas
@Sameer right, but we created the @ sign to do a certain feature. Folks on identi.ca have their own signifiers. That will inevitably happen here as well as folks grow comfortable with this platform.
- Sam Harrelson
Shripriya - I think most people who come back dont find it confusion. Its the first timers that run away - and thats FFs biggest problem.
- Sameer
Needless to say, we all love Friendfeed, but we also need a Greasemonkey script to learn which service was posting into the time-line, and the entire issue of groups/rooms really needs a rethink because it's so hard to find any, especially If you're a newcomer..
- Nir Ben Yona
Engagement is deep; Adoption is sparce.
- Sameer
TV ads (at least in australia) are considered misleading if "a person of slightly less than average intelligence" misinterprets them... i think you will find that it takes "smart techies" a while to figure out the nuances of ff, not saying everything should be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, but the defaults that way would give everyone a great start... especially when introducing innovative stuff (like "the live web") :)
- simran
Scoble: That Google real time thing is even more impressive than this discussion!
- Manuel Mas
Manuel - Yes. I like to say that if you need to write a manual for your product, it's too complicated.
- Jeff Harbert
Shripriya: I've been complaining about this stuff both in public and in private for a long time. And I wasn't behind in following everyone on Twitter. Come and study how I use FriendFeed to follow small groups of people closely, especially for Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Wow, this did get into Google fast.
- phil baumann
Robert: Holy shit, that's impressive - http://www.google.com/search... - sod Twitter I say, if you're in marketing then you need to get on FriendFeed for instant Google indexing of a subject!
- CannonGod
@Manuel there will be always a need to manual and tutorial, people have to sell or to promote so event if you have to explain a basic evidence, write a document make it in pdf format, sell it or share it, but for the sake of simplicity please never ever do FB style document.
- abdellah
UI design is a very difficult thing to do because so many people have different ways they use things. However, I do agree with you Robert that FF does need a redesign to make more of the feature more user-intuitive.
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
Sameer - I've been back many times, I still barely use it. All the stuff Robert mentions, I had no clue. And its not worth my the time investment.
- Shripriya
i would expect to see the tweet before this one.. http://www.google.com/search...
- Orli Yakuel
Robert - the twitter thing (ie. unsubscribing and not following everyone) was a bit of a joke. But on FF, you are the biggest proponent. If you can't get them to change, no one can.
- Shripriya
Phil: THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT GOOGLE REAL-TIME INDEXING! XD
- CannonGod
Agree Sam, but Twitter nor identi.ca expose a gazillion features in the core app.. Its about managing the "first impression is the lasting impression" thing
- Sameer
Here's the interview I did with Kevin last year: http://qik.com/video/73962 Shripriya: yeah, I keep hearing that from other people I try to evangelize FriendFeed to. One guy, who is a tech advisor to celebrities in Hollywood told me they will never use it because it's too hard to figure out and because there aren't good mobile clients for it, like there are for Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Jake - :)
- phil baumann
@Sameer That's true for a certain demographic, but I look at sites my 8th graders frequent often and I have no idea how they put up with the features. Or take an xBox 360 controller... lots of buttons that do way too many things for my old 30 year-old mind, but my students find it intuitive.
- Sam Harrelson
http://scobleizer.com/2008... - 18 months ago you said their UI was brilliant :)
- Mark
Shripriya- thats ok. Plenty of people I personally know that have signed up for Twitter and never come back because they couldn't find a use case. No app is for everyone. Its about appealing to a large number of folks that see relevance.
- Sameer
Wow, not only is this indexed in Google, but the Likes are getting indexed as well. Don't see the comments indexed yet, tho.
- Sam Harrelson
Maybe FF will always be the power aggregation tool online that only a few use. But is the "few" large enough? I wonder.
- Shripriya
47 emails in my gmail inbox already from this thread (as i commented and said follow updates on twitter)... surely they can batch them at least by the minute... after all... email isn't realtime :)
- simran
Search results for "I don't get FriendFeed" - http://friendfeed.com/search...
- phil baumann
Mark: you took me out of context. I said it both sucks AND is brilliant. That is true. Even today.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert, can I add that UI is so clean that functionality are just a part of the design, they need to make more light on them (hey they are all blue link the same sized blue link) :)
- abdellah
The missing mobile client certainly is a downer. I love a lot about FriendFeed, but lack of a *good* mobile client, and other minor annoyances may keep me from staying here. Sure I know I will come back from time to time (and I haven't left yet), but not sure I can live here on a daily basis like I can with Twitter because of the great clients for my desktop and phone, like TweetDeck.
- Timothy Federwitz
Sam, the feature laden apps you mention that your students use, have intent built in them. The purpose is known before you came. XBox = don't do homework. Hell, Id learn how to use very button too :)
- Sameer
I think FF is a different beast altogether and not as easy to create a mobile app for, based solely on service functionality and what we actually do here.
- Manuel Mas
Tim: that's why I like the IM integration wtih GTalk. Gets around the site UI and works great on the mobile as well.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Scoble: I think this was a pretty rude way of giving your feedback. Why are you being so provocative lately?
- Eric Florenzano
from iPhone
difficult for who? the basics are easy....getting the most out of all the tools available is a different story but at least the tools are there. Not so in twitter
- Craig Shipp
Sameer: Yep, good point. Similarly, I see FriendFeed having a very useful apparatus in my work/personal flow as a news/twitter/info client. I mostly use it via IM but also find the site pretty intuitive for how I use it and prefer it over Twitter, etc.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Eric: because no one engages unless you make a strong point and I sure wish Kevin would fix this stuff so I can evangelize FriendFeed better.
- Robert Scoble
Craig: I have shown FriendFeed to many hundreds of people over the past year and I keep getting this complaint over and over.
- Robert Scoble
I disagree with that approach Robert. A strong point is not always necessary. Most times it's a turn off and sets the wrong tone. Sure you get a lively discussion, but half of it is trying to explain you're not reallllly upset about it.
- Bwana ☠
It's fine to complain but I don't see any useful suggestions here from Robert or any other commenters. A problem without a proposed solution is essentially a whine.
- Brian Sullivan
Bwana: we've been complaining about these issues for more than a year. And I am upset about it. It keeps me from having a good time evangelizing FriendFeed. Just search here for how many people don't get FriendFeed. And those are the ones who'll tell you in public.
- Robert Scoble
Just reading this, I have learned 4 things I DID NOT KNOW about friendfeed functionality.
- Liza
Back again, to say FF still isn't cool!
- K.N. Ajit Narayan
Robert: I couldn't disagree more. Please don't fall into that Arrington/Loren Feldman trap. People engage in a more constructive way when the topic is interesting. Just look at Leo's shows for proof that I'm right.
- Eric Florenzano
from iPhone
I didn't say this wasn't a case for a strong point, I'm simply stating it's not always necessary per your statement "no one engages unless you make a strong point"
- Bwana ☠
Liza: that's another reason I did it in a strong way. I knew it would get engagement. WHen you get engagement your item gets spread to more and more people and that helps out the community overall.
- Robert Scoble
Timestamp? Click, double click? Permalink? I wish I knew all of this before.
- Liza
Ultimately the best thing to happen to FriendFeed would be the mass proliferation of 3rd party apps that offer a better user experience overall. Let the market sort out best functional IxD. How many highly active Twitter users use Twitter.com regularly? Not many, because there are several Twitter apps that afford a more active Twitter experience. Without them, Twitter would be news from 2006.
- Laura Scott (@lauras)
I disagree. I came here because I agree with the point (as I stated in another thread), not because of the strongness. You may attract certain types with that, but not moi.
- Bwana ☠
I also show twitter and friendfeed to a lot of new Internet users and they get confused easily. I think the only solution is to show one simple process and then after they master that for a week or so then show them another feature.
- Craig Shipp
The best level of engagement that I've seen regarding Leo Laporte is when Arrington called him out openly and there was the big fuss of him getting thrown off the show. Just saying.
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Eric: OK, heard and understood. But name another designer who does stuff with links that Kevin does. That needs to be pointed out strongly, I think. But then I get crazy about design, especially when people keep telling me over and over that FriendFeed is too hard to use and figure out. Even Liza, who has been here a lot, didn't know all that stuff was "hidden" under the affordance of the link.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I appreciate your sharing this info, but it feels strange that all of this seems like a secret. Intention is bizarre.
- Liza
So Robert, do you really think Kevin and FF are actively ignoring this issue?
- Bwana ☠
Bwana: yes. Why? Because it's been like this for 18 months.
- Robert Scoble
As a user, I do feel like it is intentionally hidden.
- Liza
Interesting
- Bwana ☠
It isn't about ignoring. It's about continuance. These affordances have been here since FF started.
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Michael: and they f**k with the affordances that everyone has learned on EVERY OTHER WEB SITE. This is why I used strong language.
- Robert Scoble
Oh, and the "new ui" upgrade that happened a while back did nothing but add to the hidden complexity
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Robert, The UI's difficulty is best expressed in comment threads with a huge number of comments, such as yours - http://friendfeed.com/bitchfe...
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
And I am tech savvy, not an idiot, but the argument is, oh, you just aren't enough of a techie to get it.
- Liza
I think the beauty of friendfeed is the fact that it can be used as a very basic tool but also has the power to do much more in the right hands
- Craig Shipp
Who are the right hands?
- Liza
And once these get fixed, the real thing that people can't figure out is what is new. On every other website there's an affordance for that. Even in SimplyTweet new Tweets are green. Quick, figure out what is new here that you haven't seen from the last time you were here. You can't.
- Robert Scoble
Robert speaks truth.
- Bwana ☠
Craig: That's the biggest copout I've ever heard. Maybe Kevin needs to go bak and read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug.
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Liza: people like me who click on everything looking for secret features. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Don't Make Me Think ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) by Steve Krug may be the kind of design you are looking for.
- Todd Hoff
@Todd: great minds think alike
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Robert: but even Wordpress.com uses the date affordance as a permalink. http://bit.ly/Dwnm6 I understand the concerns about the mass of feature clarity here, but I don't see that particular date/link function as a standard bearer.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Scoble: OK point taken. So let's make this constructive: what should they do to fix it? For the timestamp, my suggestion is to make it bluer and underlined--which everyone associates with links. Do you agree? How can they fix the hide functionality, though? I'm struggling to think of a way.
- Eric Florenzano
from iPhone
Liza: I found a lot of bugs in WIndows 95 by unplugging my mouse and trying to use the entire UI via the keyboard. But then I'm weird. Most people will never try anything. In fact, Google's own research shows that fewer than 1% will click on "advanced search." These weird affordances are even harder than THAT to figure out.
- Robert Scoble
So if this doesn't change, FF may not get as wide of an adoption that it deserves. Hide, permalinks, and little things make a huge difference. The technology is too good for this to be its downfall.
- Bwana ☠
Not having older items shaded or otherwise marked as old does effectively contribute to noise.
- phil baumann
I'm not saying friendfeed can't be made better. I'm just saying it can be used from a basic level with little training.
- Craig Shipp
I was accused of working for Friendfeed at an event 2 nights ago, for being an evangelist, and I still know very little about the functionality. AND I do like to think, I do click on a lot, but I also appreciate the intention of inclusion.
- Liza
Eric: I would NOT put two hidden features under one link. They need a tab of "customizations and secret features" and put all that stuff there.
- Robert Scoble
I'm not sure it's ever going to change at this point... which is sad
- Bwana ☠
Liza: everyone knows I'm so excited about FriendFeed that they whine when I don't bring it up. Seriously. It's funny.
- Robert Scoble
Whoops sorry Michael, didn't see yours. But it is a good book. Affordances is a bit abstract. He does a good job making the idea concrete.
- Todd Hoff
what social site is better?
- Craig Shipp
Twitter made a big improvement with contextual menu, such may add a value in FF too.
- abdellah
Craig: define better. Twitter is easier. Facebook has more hooks and more users.
- Robert Scoble
Which social site has the better UI?
- Bwana ☠
Bwana: which is why I used strong language.
- Robert Scoble
Until FB and twitter update in real time they aren't even in the game as far as I'm concerned
- Craig Shipp
Robert: Twitter has the best UI?
- K.N. Ajit Narayan
better UI!! ask myspace ugly by purpose.
- abdellah
The problem is w/o knowing the affordances, Newbies create too much noise, feel embarassed and retreat - felt that but did not retreat
- Liza
Facebook used to have a great UI imho. It's changed so much, now I can't find anything
- Bwana ☠
FF has the better UI would be my guess. But better is such a subjective word.
- Brian Sullivan
K.N. define "best." It's certainly easier to understand than FriendFeed is. Especially if you use a great client like SimplyTweet on my iPhone or Seesmic on my desktop.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble: I'm not sure about the tab idea. It would add a lot of visual load on ever pageview. Instead, I'm thinking maybe if hide was a hover dropdown. When you hover over it, it says "Hide just this item", and "Hide all items like these" so that you know what you're getting into. This could work just like the top subnavigation items in many websites, which people are familiar with. Thoughts?
- Eric Florenzano
Agree Twitter's UI is great - was in a studygroup of power users - most of us use web interface with multiple browsers rather than Tweetdeck, b/c simplicity is preferred.
- Liza
Eric: this is why I'm not a UI designer. I like your solution better.
- Robert Scoble
Hover is an evil thing in a real-time interface
- Bwana ☠
I may repeat it but contextuel menu, yes do it well, that all , FF have to do that , twitter have done it.
- abdellah
i hate chasing links
- Bwana ☠
Bwana: Ahh yeah, good point. Maybe it would have to pause realtime (considering you are actually doing an action)
- Eric Florenzano
Robert: Was talking about Twitter, the site...It's really easy to work with, provided you are not following too many people..
- K.N. Ajit Narayan
On FF you can type in the box and hit enter. How difficult is that?
- Craig Shipp
Yeah Eric, it would have to
- Bwana ☠
Even this thread is hard to read. No ability to specifically reply etc. Another reason I rarely visit.
- Shripriya
FF used to pause real time whenever you your cursor was over a posting or its comments-- somehow that feature got removed.
- Brian Sullivan
Basically, Robert, you're saying that FF is too clever for its own good.
- Mistletoe Glen
Shripiya: This conversation will definitely stink unless you find the hidden permalink
- Bwana ☠
lisa, that's one thing and four words :)
- Craig Shipp
Which supports Robert's argument
- Bwana ☠
I don't know if I will be able to handle a better FF
- Craig Shipp
I went to grab a glass of water, and have no clue what is going on now - see what I mean?
- Liza
@Craig Oh for sure you can remember the alpha version and when beta come.
- abdellah
Maybe using IM is best, don't know, but, for now, I find it labor intensive vs. Twitter. I like BOTH, and I will continue to use BOTH, but that does not mean there are not simple fixes to improve the UI.
- Liza
@liza no you know for sure what is going on , you know that this thread is about "....", you remmeber what you have said before, you remember the person for whome you talked so for sure you know were you are at the discussion.
- abdellah
It would be nice to see some of the FF team on this discussion, Kevin Fox in particular.
- phil baumann
I want to reply to indiv comments, it is impossible unless I say @robert or HEY BWANA, that is silly, crappy design. Am I missing something? Plus, everyone calls me LISA not LIZA, so I can hardly answer the questions directed at me without looking for both.
- Liza
Robert should have cc'd the FriendFeed feedback room
- Bwana ☠
Phil: it is Sunday and they do need some time off of their work. Hopefully Kevin will show up tonight or tomorrow.
- Robert Scoble
Liz: yep, I love FF's IM integration. I've got a popout window open on the side of my desktop and can keep up with things (from this thread and everything I monitor on FF) much more easily.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
LIZA - not lisa or liz, ha ha
- Liza
With that said, I love FriendFeed's comment UI. That's what hooked me to the service
- Bwana ☠
After reading about affordances (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...), it appears the problem is that many of them are hidden when they should be perceptible.
- Mistletoe Glen
Robert - I am clicking on everything in site, so if I blow up something, oops, sorry.
- Liza
Liza apologies. multi-tasking fail.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Glen, yep, that's where discoverability comes in. Things should be easy to discover based on visual cues. It shouldn't be like playing a game of Myst.
- Akiva Moskovitz
UNaffordances
- Liza
Robert - yeah, even if they read this tomorrow, there's good stuff here that's important if the service it to grow in use.
- phil baumann
Say it with me folks : User-friendly-ability. We HAZ NONE here.
- Sean
Robert - now that you are here, I also think it is a mistake to expect users to choose FF or Twitter - recently you have backed off and choose to use both, BUT many of your "followers" are testy with those of us who use both. Until FF is easier to use, I will use both. That is my choice. Positioning FF as Twitter hating is bad move, ppl.
- Liza
Who is positioning FF as a Twitter hater? Some people hate Twitter (I personally think Twitter is a waste of mindwidth). How does that have anything to do with FF other than the fact that they post on FF?
- Brian Sullivan
Brian, do a search, you will find MANY ppl are positioning FF as anti-twitter, and I don't agree with the approach. I personally get a LOT of grief from both sides of the fence for using both, and I am not going to pick a side just b/c others tell me I should.
- Liza
Annoyance: There's no comment, like, etc link at the bottom of the comments. So... I read 160+ comments and have to scroll back to the top to comment? WTF?
- Kevin Donahue
Kevin - yes, that is a frustration.
- phil baumann
Kevin, totally agreed with that comment, especially when using via the iPhone. It's nice to see comments per OP, but the UI for managing things is horrible and wastes a lot of time, denting my enthusiasm for more participation.
- Sally Church
Officially PISSED OFF - using IM FAIL. Opens new page for every feed. Then I respond in Gtalk and get unknown command. F this. Time to breath deep and try not to explode.
- Liza
Liza, type in "help" for the list of commands in IM or there's a list on the site. Not sure about the page thing... I don't get that in GTalk.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Liza: consistently when people meet me they ask "what is next after Twitter?" I don't answer FriendFeed, I wish I could.
- Robert Scoble
I don't like help menus or reading instructions. I appreciate your efforts, but I am just pissed off in general b/c I like to figure things out on my own. I can't spend yrs clicking on FF for hidden treasures.
- Liza
People always ask me why should they use FriendFeed over Twitter.... it gets old after a while
- Bwana ☠
Robert - exactly, if we knew what was next, it would be dull. Beauty in playing, mashing, exploring.
- Liza
Wow Robert, way throw out an HCI term! Are we going to discuss GOMS or Fitts' Law next? :-)
- Bill Welense
from iPhone
Bwana - I gave it a shot yesterday with some success in the last day. - http://ff.im/6kbAN
- phil baumann
Robert - nice comment. Would love to tweet it to share, but don't know how to isolate it on this f-d up interface.
- Liza
Liza - I'd like to be able to tweet comments they way Disqus allows it.
- phil baumann
This is Liza frustrated and cranky, sorry for letting my evil twin out, but this feed triggered it. #blamescoble
- Liza
I'm wondering if FriendFeed will remain the domain of us geeks. Is that a BIG enough market for their business model though?
- Jim Connolly
I secretly hope so, Jim. Twitter was great in 2006 B.K. (Before Kutchner) when it was populated only by geeks :)
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Holden: Well, I'm pretty sure someone hopes to make some money from FF.
- Jim Connolly
Sam: I have to admit, I would hate to see FF flooded like Twitter is.
- Jim Connolly
The fact is Robert that These problems have never crossed my mind. Actually, come to think of it. A unified settings page would be nice. However. Just becuae the UI is unconventional, going against the grain, does not mean it's a bad UI. I'd love to see a mockup of how you would do it better.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Holden: I didn't say it wasn't great. I still use and love Twitter. I just miss the good ole days.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Don't even get me started with a wish list of options.
- Liza
CONFESSION: I did not know until now about double clicking on the time-link to get a pop-out window.
- Jim Connolly
Holden: Twitter's a spam-filled hunk of crap.
- Jim Connolly
Holden: You may not automatically see a business model, but they would have had to produce something to get $$$ funding. BTW: Twitter's got the audience, though. It's where the people are. Only reason I use it.
- Jim Connolly
Friendfeed is not difficult to use. It is so intuitive. I love that I can easily block certain things, search for items that have a specific number of likes, see a user's likes, etc. It's wayyyyyyy easy.
- Ben Hanten
Ben: A lot of new users tell me they can't figure it out.
- Jim Connolly
they're not trying then, Jim
- Chris Heath
If this was put up to a vote, I would vote to have a better FAQ, but I would definitely keep the design as free of extra buttons as possible.
- Ben Hanten
Hmm, wow, lots of comments fast on this post. Too bad it's a Sunday, I imagine Kevin is up to other things right this second...
- Jason Wehmhoener
Can someone help me find the link to create imaginary friend?
- Krishnamoorthy
Holden, well that's their loss if they can't 'get it' - friendfeed is simple and IMHO if you can't 'get it' then that's your problem, not friendfeed's
- Chris Heath
Krishnamoorthy - http://friendfeed.com/setting...
- phil baumann
the Imaginary Friend function is now a part of Groups. for example, I created a private "group" with my wife's name and brought in all of her feeds since she's not on FriendFeed.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Ok, the imaginary friend thing is a different story. Awesome concept; but way too much work to add a bunch of users.
- Ben Hanten
I think a good start would be to have a totally different "entry point" for setting up hiding rules. Also, defaults might need to be reconsidered. Is it the best to always start off by showing everything from a user? FF already asks you to select your "top five" feeds you want to show off in your profile... Could it make sense to only show stuff from people's top five by default, so one needs to opt-in to get any more of their feeds?
- Meryn Stol
Perhaps a big, dedicated "mute Twitter" (though I'd prefer "Kill Twitter" ;)) button would also make sense. After all, Twitter is in itself responsible for most items - and thus most potential "noise" - on FriendFeed.
- Meryn Stol
you can still quickly create an imaginary friend (as Sam said it's part of groups now) but if you don't want to choose the private group setting yourself just go here http://friendfeed.com/setting...
- Chris Heath
maybe i'm wrong and an imaginary friend is different than a private group, but the functionality seems the same - there was a discussion a few months ago about this: http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- Chris Heath
Chris, yep... good point.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Imaginary friends are easy to setup, but... you really should be able to do a whole batch of them.
- Ben Hanten
Ben, it's rather janky, but my students have private Twitter accts for labs in my class that I read and interact with using the Imaginary Friends + private Groups feature. Plus, I have a nice archive of all student activity that I can search through. Not a great solution, but a good workaround for my extreme case.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
there's a lot on the friendfeed roadmap, and i think that's one of the items... if you participate in the friendfeed feedback room you can get lots of answers to these types of questions http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- Chris Heath
You can search for the official FriendFeeders' feedback, as Chris suggested, with this saved search: https://friendfeed.com/ffss...
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
Interesting topic. For me personally I use FF for reading rather than contributing or commenting, and via mobile more than the web, but I do agree the UI isn't the best. I would like a google reader or better still, a Feedly style interface. I want to know about what I haven't seen that's in my groups or feeds. And I want that simple and easy with no hidden features or maybe simple and expert interfaces.
- Keith Bennett
from BuddyFeed
You'r right Robert.
- ALPER DURUKAN
It's not the UI that's keeping the mainstream from using the site. This is akin to asking why the mainstream has yet to discover the wonders of traditional message boards. Fact of the matter is most people don't have the desire (not to mention spare time) to continually engage with a stream full of random social media tidbits on a regular basis. But if that's your cup of tea, I think the UI is excellent for sharing, discovering, and keeping up with the real-time chatter.
- Aviv
ANNOYANCE: Why is it so difficult to find a list of just my "likes"? I can't find it at all. I can only find my likes through the "My discussions" link. Ugh.
- Kevin Donahue
Kevin, it's pretty simple to get to your likes. http://friendfeed.com/samharr...
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Has Kevin Fox responded to this thread?
- Manuel Mas
Not sure he should -- seems like Robert made vicious and personal attack -- and a lack of response might be appropriate and classy.
- Brian Sullivan
I certainly wouldn't join into this pile-on if I were Kevin. "Oh hey, I noticed you all were kicking me while I was trying to have a weekend, here I am now, go ahead for another round!"
- Jason Wehmhoener
On the bright side, you know your service is about to hit mainstream when your biggest cheerleader starts to hate it (see Twitter).
- Aviv
Aviv: nah, that's not a good predictor.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Have you noticed that the time stamp behavior of acting like a permalink is pretty much the norm across many sites? Check facebook and twitter for example.
- Tsega Dinka
One thing I would like to know is, where is the link in friendfeed to the application key? I always have to search it from google.
- Ru Viljoen
it's unnecessary to be brutally rude RB but these comments are valuable, we are expecting alot from 12 FF supergeeks, they cannot be perfect but they are incredibly good already.
- Thomas Power
I think "hide" was perfectly designed. The user doesn't get smacked in the face immediately upon loading a page in friendfeed that resembles the control panel of an old fashioned telephone switchboard. One simple hide link, that the user will click when they want to hide something, that then asks what you want to hide. It's called not overwhelming the user with too much info at once,...
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- April Russo (app103)
April: they can put a lot of functionality into "settings" that would also do the same thing as hide does today. Most people don't figure out that the hide link has extra functionality.
- Robert Scoble
It's better than what facebook does, which is to hide their multi-function hide button, until you hover over the item. I'd rather have it the friendfeed way and at least know it's there by looking and not by having to play "find the invisible features" game by moving my mouse all over the page waiting for all the little facebook easter eggs to make themselves known. You have no idea how...
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- April Russo (app103)
I DON'T KNOW WHY WE'RE YELLING! I LOVE LAMP!
- Mark "DerBingle" J
(I'm being facetious. Robert's STRONG points are still pretty tactfully expressed, IMHO.)
- Mark "DerBingle" J
And I don't understand how any twitter user could possibly not know that the timestamp is a permalink. Timestamps on twitter are permalinks too. Ok, the clicking again thing was a bit of an easter egg, but how else could you add a nifty little feature like that without adding any clutter? Even if you gave a full tutorial FAQ, how on earth could you present all these little extras in a way that doesn't overwhelm a newbie and make them run away without reading the huge FAQ?
- April Russo (app103)
Missing the point, not about geeks vs non-geeks, even geeks disagree on UI issues,and it is dismissive and insulting to act as if mainstream is not geeky enough to understand crappy UI. My opinion matters, and it was not until a fellow geek, Scoble, brought it up that anyone acknowledged that there may be some UI issues.
- Liza
So go back to using twitter.
- jcunwired
I know of a site that has worse issues, for example, clicking the RSS icon on a page takes you to a forum thread with a gazillion posts explaining how to subscribe to the content you want, using all the custom crap they have. You basically have to learn how to build your own RSS url before you can subscribe. And don't click the "Mark" button on a forum thread there unless you want to...
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- April Russo (app103)
FF may be messing with affordances, but I don't see it as f*cling with them. I see it as an attempt to innovate. The 'nonintuitive' behavior is a bit of a PITA, but it adds richness to the app. It is also innovation in action. The most painful upshot of suck innovation ia the fet associated with playing with a UI's functionality - you might end up breaking something really important or...
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- Jason Miller
from iPhone
JCUnwired That is not helpful or constructive. Stick to one-sided debates.
- Liza
Funny thing is though... I have used Excel and Word without ever reading a manual. Now I'm pretty ninja at both but never had any formal training. Neither has about 95% of the people I know how use it, yet everyone I know has worked it out enough to use it well. See, they have these things up the top like File, Edit etc that hold the functions. Those things are not always required and...
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- Johnny Worthington
Which social app has the best interface? Easy Facebook.
- John Hardy
As far as I can tell "affordance" and "discoverability" are different ways of looking at the same concept. And I've been complaining about the timestamp thing for a long time.
- Karl Knechtel
I've been complaining about FF's ease of use since I started using it. I'm glad there's some traction on it. ridiculous that the time stamp is not displayed as a (permanent) link.
- jbrotherlove
Never mind that the timestamp isn't displayed as a link. The problem is that it makes no sense for the timestamp to be the thing that is clicked.
- Karl Knechtel
I like it, its a nice gate. It keeps FF tech based. It keeps things relevant. Its an Acid Test. There are plenty of alternatives. And those alternatives that cater to everyone, are full of Blither Blather. If you pass the gate, and pass the Acid Test, you learn about the community and the discussion. With a robust Community and Discussion, Self Policing and Spammers are annihilated. Self Healing Robust System.
- Robert Higgins
Apostol Apostolov, Ana ( http://friendfeed.com/ana ) has confirmed that they're on the issue of adding recipients and groups after posting an item about a month ago - http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- Chris Heath
I totally agree with Robert HIggins & Johnny Worthington's recent comments
- Chris Heath
Robert, thanks for your thoughts. Three quick responses: affordances aren't something that someone fucks with, they're something that a designer gives to a design and it's fine to say that you don't think I'm designing a product with proper affordances or strong enough affordances, but the implication that I fucked them up is that I took the gestalt natural affordances of something and...
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- Kevin Fox
The above distinction is important because the argument then becomes one of whether or not FriendFeed has been imbued with proper affordances or not. Now naturally the answer varies from person to person, as it does with any UI for any product. FriendFeed is trying to balance functionality with simplicity and, as is the case for any product with that task, any point on the spectrum could be criticized for either hiding too much of the complexity or showing too much, even at the same by different people.
- Kevin Fox
So the strategy then becomes, as has been mentioned here, one of making the simple things easy and the complex things possible. The most common tactic to enable that strategy, and one we rely upon a lot at FriendFeed, is that of progressive disclosure. This works for some people and not for others, but it's usually an excellent way to make a UI that's not intimidating to a new user, and...
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- Kevin Fox
As for the timestamp also acting as the permalink: Well, you're absolutely right. This is a completely improper affordance that only makes sense if you happen to be familiar with blogs that use the same convention. Fixing this (with something less heavy-handed than a link that says 'link' or 'permalink' or (gasp) an icon of two links in a chain) is high on our list and I want to fold it...
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- Kevin Fox
When we get that worked out in a way we're happy with then we'll roll it out. Until then, it's also important to consider user confidence, and that tweaking a UI too often when trying to find the right answer makes users less comfortable with the design and their ability to manipulate it, even if they don't consciously notice any change. For this reason a few things stay rough a little longer until we have what we think is the right answer, not just a stopgap one.
- Kevin Fox
As always, thanks for the feedback, and for trying to make FriendFeed a better place.
- Kevin Fox
Wow
- Bwana ☠
Wow. +500 xp to Kevin.
- Sam Harrelson
Kevin I love you because you explain why you are messing with the affordances! :-)
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Doesn't sound like they're ignoring it to me, Robert :)
- Bwana ☠
Bwana: me neither! Glad Kevin explained.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I'm liking this article simply because of Kevin's explanation of why things are the way they are here on friendfeed. He knocked that one out of the park.
- Alex Scoble
Kevins camp. In Japanese there is one word for beauty. Kirei. Actually, it is the same word for Clean Kirei. 奇麗 FF for me is clean and beautiful. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" Leonardo daVinci
- Robert Higgins
So if we're going to change the time stamp from being a permalink, can we use it to sort posts chronologically? That is the one affordance no one can discover.
- Andrew Smith
I didn't read the full thread, but reading the top and (what is at this point) the bottom really helps me understand what the UI people do. Thanks Robert and Kevin!
- Andrew
Big props to Kevin Fox.
- Sameer
Kevin rocks. Even on a Sunday night. They pay me to say stuff like that at work. The thought of having to step up to the plate anytime 24/7 with that level of professionalism is daunting, to say the least. So yah, big props to Kevin Fox.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I actually like the current UI. I like the feature set. I agree it DOES need a more intuitive and quicker way to know about and learn the deeper features.
- George Hall (Australia)
There is something to be said for having the conversation first - then Kevin calmly explaining his pts. It gives others a chance to respond honestly, and then Kevin gets far more valuable feedback. Selifishly, I also like the fact that I can see others' views - many who did not address UI issues but showed a defensive sense of entitlement (see Louis's chart on new adopters)...Robert,...
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- Liza
Great responses Kevin. For the record, I'm a fan of the "progressive disclosure" approach.
- Mike Doeff
from iPhone
Really great points, Robert. I've learned some things because of this discussion. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
- Brian Adrian
One answer to Kevin. Blogs, since the beginning of when I started to use them used the "permalink" or "#" convention. I guess the thing is that in FriendFeed the CSS here is hiding the blue underline, so people don't know that the time stamp is a link. It's tough designing for the web, I know. That's why I don't do it. At least very often. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Twitter uses a time stamp as a perma-link as well. </fuel to fire>
- Bwana ☠
Yeah. I just tweeted about that myself. </more fuel to fire>
- Dennis Jernberg
Fascinating. Didn't know about the timestamp as permalink, but I didn't suffer from unnatural affordance issues prior to reading this discussion either. Not an ubergeek, but I don't suffer. So, maybe FF is not "above the heads" of the average, but merely yields enough at any level to meet whatever the particular need might be, wacky affordances or not. And people who avoid it because it is "too hard" need to toughen up a bit. This is 2009 and the Internet, after all.
- Martha
Also, the "Share" link exposes the permalink as well which I think was a great addition to alleviate the time stamp confusion.
- Bwana ☠
Wow. How did Kevin get those 5 paragraphs contiguously posted? Copy-paste-post. Copy-paste-post? Or is there some other secret weapon not yet released?
- Nick in Manila
Nick - I'd bet 1000 gil on Notepad/Textedit :)
- Bwana ☠
I'm waiting for the twitter theme for friendfeed, to show people exactly how easy FF is to use considering its features and exactly how braindead twitter's UI is.
- Andy Bakun
Nick & Bwana: Textedit and copy/paste/post. As I was c/p/p-ing I thought about how I could make a tool using the API to allow for this kind of thing, then envisioned how that would break FriendFeed and banished the thought. (and then I just commented about it anyhow. Oh what have I wrought? I am become death, destroyer of words.)
- Kevin Fox
Bwana: hey, at least FriendFeed's designer listens and answers back. That might get more mud thrown his way, but a whole lot of love too. Personally Twitter's design isn't very good, but everyone thinks it is because it doesn't have many features so they perceive that as simplicity. I perceive it as inferior but that really pisses off the Twitter types and they start arguing with me about stuff like the above.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I was just thinking that. We would NEVER get this kind of interaction with a Twitter dev on a work day.
- Bwana ☠
Part of me knew Kevin would address this at some point. It was merely a matter of when.
- Bwana ☠
I hope this thread/conversation doesn't end any time soon, either here on this post or elsewhere. I want FF to be the best it can.
- phil baumann
I think FF is waaaaaay easier to use than Twitter and recently started using FF to follow my twitter feeds. Images and videos are inline and comments are threaded (no silly @ replies). I only wish more of my friends were on it!! (also, it would be nice if comments were formatted with the commenters name first which seems to be the convention on most sites i.e. "May: blah blah blah").
- May
To go back to the top a little bit: does anyone think it ISN'T weird that not all the links on FF are blue? Not just the time stamp: the service your content was imported from, your name at the top of your profile, and the time stamp are all non-blue links. Is there a logical reason for those inconsistencies? I've never understood that.
- Andrew
Awesome explanation by Kevin. I happen to love FF's progressive disclosure. I think the 'hide' feature is a great example of this. You could argue that they might make the second stage a bit more obvious, but it's still a lot better than a huge drop down menu at the start.
- Ben Reierson
Even Twitter has a ramp up time. It took me about a month of working it to get comfortable with it. Only slightly longer than it took me with Twitter. And it is light years better in most every way. I agree with Robert's desire to enforce change through public criticism, but I think it important to keep it in perspective: FF is generally a better experience on all fronts. Kudos to Kevin Fox and the rest of the team. I feel confident they are more than capable of seeing issues and resolving them.
- Martha
i never really had a problem with that Andrew, and I never had the problem with the permalink either... if your mouse changes from pointer to finger, then it's a link and you can see the destination in the status bar
- Chris Heath
Andrew: I actually hate blue underlines. Designers have hated that affordance for years. They look ugly. They make text harder to read. I'm in Kevin Fox's camp on that one. Get rid of underlines! Just make affordances that people can figure out without being told about (like clicking twice on hide or clicking twice on the time stamps).
- Robert Scoble
robert, i don't get your clicking twice on hide problem... hide seems fine, and while i don't use it much i don't recall clicking twice, like with the timestamp
- Chris Heath
Chris: normal people don't mouse over every word in a UI to discover whether there is a secret link there. Also, explain how hovering over "hide" would tell a user that there's different functionality there if you click twice on that word?
- Robert Scoble
Chris: if you click twice on the word "hide" you will get different UI that will give you different choices. If you click twice on the time stamp you will get a popout window. Not intuitive at all.
- Robert Scoble
when i click hide i get an undo and hide options links, that seems the correct UI - i agree with you on the timestamp, but the hide thing isn't the same
- Chris Heath
++Kevin
- Cristo
Chris: Hide does act differently, I agree, but most people, in my experience, don't look at the second page because they don't expect to see more options. Remember 99% of people never click on Google's Advanced Options. Do you REALLY expect people to click twice on Hide? I don't. And even if they did, shouldn't those features be in settings too? Where people expect to find them?
- Robert Scoble
i don't buy your beef w/ hide, but i agree on the timestamp - i also agree with you on not having to hover everything to see if it's click-able and also don't like underlining, so there needs to be some other visual cue of the link/feature
- Chris Heath
sometimes features do need to be learned/taught and everything can't be intuitive... i think we might be overshooting our ideals for usability. remember the days of three ring binders and books and manuals for using any given system or software package? we've come a long way, but users do have to learn some things. i think friendfeed has done a good job of making the site usable for the...
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- Chris Heath
Given a top complaint about FriendFeed is too much noise, Hide needs to be more intuitive.
- Bwana ☠
Since I still get the dumb blonde / not techie treatment from many, I am going to go w/ it and say that even I figured out hide early on. The timestamp stuff was news to me.
- Liza
I'd wager at least half of FriendFeed doesn't know about the second page of hide options. I've had to explain it countless times and a ton of people didn't even know you could selectively hide services based on comment/like behavior, etc
- Bwana ☠
Kevin, Thanks for listening and major props for taking your time to listen to constructive critisicm.
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
9/10 of the folks that use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc don't know all the features and functions. Having every single function be completely intuitive and/or labeled is not needed for mainstream acceptance or usage if that's what we're all worried about here.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Every single function, I agree. Hide, needs to be more intuitive.
- Bwana ☠
Bwana, I agree as a power-user, but how many folks would actually use "Hide"? It's an edge-case function that will/would never catch on with the mainstream. I just don't get these complaints.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Sam: you're right. But I didn't get this kind of pushback when I evangelized Twitter and Facebook had many more hooks to get people into their system than FriendFeed does (and keep them there) and even Facebook doesn't have a lot of the weird affordances that FriendFeed does even though it's more complex. The complaints I get consistently on FriendFeed (a lot of which have to do with...
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- Robert Scoble
Oh, and the number of comments here tells me a lot of people feel very passionately about FriendFeed and want it to be better, even if they are telling me I'm full of it.
- Robert Scoble
The complaint is noise. There's too much. There's too many duplicates. I don't want to see "X". These are complaints I see and answer often. The solution is hide and they don't know about them. It's not a power user function imho.
- Bwana ☠
FF lost a lot of users during the initial launch because people didn't know about or want to properly hide unwanted stuff.
- Bwana ☠
"FriendFeed is full of baby photos" Classic complaint. Solved by hide.
- Bwana ☠
It's always the user's fault. Always.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Robert, I got on Twitter around Thanksgiving of '06 b/c of your evangelicalism (thank you/curse you btw!). But the concept there was/is much more easy to grok. Of course folks are going to think FF is hard b/c it is hard. But to bastardize JFK, "we choose to go to the moon and do these other things in this decade not b/c they are easy but b/c they are hard!"
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
friendfeed isn't hard...unless you think a blank piece of paper is hard.
- Alex Scoble
Depends on your definition of hard. Some people think complicated or inconvenient is hard.
- Bwana ☠
Alex, have you ever written a book for a publisher that loaned you money and expects the money back? A blank piece of paper is incredibly hard!
- Sam Harrelson
Look at lists. Very powerful tool of FriendFeed, but for some, it's too much work. Some may call it hard, some may call it.... too much work :)
- Bwana ☠
Sam: but this blank piece of paper can write itself thanks to the integration with other sites :)
- Andrew
I know in the apps I've tested, if the UI was difficult for the end user, they would avoid using it.
- Bwana ☠
Andrew, you are completely right. Good point. I'm thinking from a contributing point of view (b/c I'm a teacher and I always want to influence, etc) but you're right.
- Sam Harrelson
Alex: is blank paper sort of like a blank Wordpress entry screen? I get it then.
- Robert Scoble
Seeing a real-time stream of the full conversation is highly desirable and one of the best features of the service. I design and use software all the time and didn't know about the time stamp link until someone told me about it. Robert is doing them (another) favor by using controversial language to bring attention to the issue. I bet we see an update in a week or two and the service will be better for it.
- Chip Ramsey
I can see it now: if entry["from"]["id"] == "scobelizer": theme = "lots-o-links"
- DGentry
either that, or entry["body"] = pigLatinize(entry["body"])
- DGentry
Wow ... Great dialog. Kudos to Kevin for his comments! I have demo'd Friendfeed for more people than I can count. Most of the issue has to do with people's time vs value (or just fun). Is it harder than Facebook? NO! Nobody says you have to use it all and 9 out of 10 people I've demo'd Facebook for have NO IDEA what a permission is (Think about that ... and the defaults?!). Twitter has...
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- Charlie Anzman
Then ... The Friendfeed Browser and OS!
- Charlie Anzman
Robert, given Kevin's responses, you might want to edit/tweak the Original Post/headline. I wish there was a way to promote the comments so they were 'pinned' to the OP
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Aaman: what's an OP? The headline?
- Robert Scoble
Oh, thank goodness. I was wondering what an OP was, and feeling dumb that I didn't know. I didn't want to have to read 328 comments to find out.
- Mistletoe Glen
Yes, the Original Post - I wasn't familiar with the term myself, and saw it first on this very thread, then googled it. (It can also mean Original Poster)
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Glen: I'm not scared of feeling dumb. I feel dumb every day given the quality of the people I hang out with.
- Robert Scoble
@Kevin: wondering if there could be a link that would take you to a page that would show what features have been added, disabled, or removed.
- Harold
Robert, you should lock comments, so it's immortalized properly at Kevin's reply
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew: you make sense. I've locked the comments here so you can see Kevin Fox's reply without digging back too far.
- Robert Scoble
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure vs. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery - http://www.flickchart.com/ACA0D94...
MB Linder and Louis Gray liked this
This caused me to pause... Burton's great portrayal of the darker side of Reuben's childlike alter-ego, or Myers over-the-top comedy spy spoof? I think I have overall more love of how unique Big Adventure is, so it gets my nod.
- Nathan Chase
Austin Powers, though funny, gets less good over time.
- Louis Gray
Boo Louis. The sequels may have beaten some of the jokes into the ground, but the original is still hilarious. Many years later, lines still randomly pop into my head and make me laugh. Eh, Comrades? Eh?
- Chip Ramsey
Saw the intended for adults inception of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse"-B4 hollywoodization into movie adventure. The Pee Wee act beats the light shtick of Powers hand-down...oops, pun intended.
- Kirsten Mitchell
from iPhone
Other Companies Should Have To Read This Internal Netflix Presentation - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
This is excellent. We may want to reconsider our boilerplate employee manual.
- Chip Ramsey
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