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Michal Cierniak › Likes
Want LaTeX equations on the web? Check out this undocumented feature of Google Chart API: http://moultano.blogspot.com/2009...
Götz, Michal Cierniak, Joel Webber and 3 other people liked this
Google can generate your equations for you! - http://moultano.blogspot.com/2009...
Joel Webber, Roberto Bonini, Aaron D'Souza and 9 other people liked this
Sweet!
- Ruchira S. Datta
Awesome!
- Amit Patel
All math departments are going to ban google now :D
- Roberto Bonini
Short version: I'm moving to Zurich by end of the year! Long version: http://interimlover.livejournal.com/556732...
joey and Michal Cierniak liked this
Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp's websites out of Google, abolish fair use, tear heads off of adorable baby animals - http://www.boingboing.net/2009...
Joel Webber, Michal Cierniak, Roberto Bonini and 2 other people liked this
Most cited computer science articles: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/stats.... Most cited authors: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/stats...
sirishkumar, Michal Cierniak, Mark Trapp and Maxamad (Amazigh) liked this
I had no idea that p2p systems were such a havily researched topic. The 2001 "Chord" paper is #4 on the list!
- Bill Strathearn
from Android
Nope, not listed there. Oh well.
- Jim Norris
Eager to use Disqus for my blog, but want php, not js, so search engines can index comments. Tips? @danielha @disqus
Michal Cierniak, Louis Gray, anna sauce and AJ Kohn liked this
I'm the opposite — I *don't* want comments indexed because at the moment most search engines treat the guest's words and links as being my own.
- Amit Patel
Now that JavaScript is required for so many web sites, it seems odd that search engines are stuck looking at the static, served HTML.
- Bill Strathearn
I'd be afraid of search engines executing Javascript and indexing produced HTML. On the other hand, if it requests a PHP page, there's execution of code and generation of HTML, so that seems pretty similar. It's just a matter of where the code is executed. Maybe Google Caja makes it okay to run the Javascript in their crawlers.
- Amit Patel
Amit, isn't that particularly a concern with snippets? I know that's a challenging and frustrating issue! But in many cases, I've seen the content of comments for one of my blog entries to be not only substantially more voluminous but also, frankly, often more interesting than the entry itself, and it's clear that I end up getting a lot of relevant & high quality traffic to these entries from search engines *because* of those spiderable comments.
- Adam Lasnik
Should you receive "credit" (in the form of traffic) for another persons writing?
- EricaJoy
A more relevant question, IMHO, is whether the content is an appropriate match for a given search query. If someone searches for "etrade problems" and there are a ton of people ranting about specific problems about etrade in one of my blog entries, isn't that page likely a good result for that query? The idea of "credit" I believe is outdated. Who should receive "credit" for wikipedia...
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- Adam Lasnik
WRT "credit" being outdated, the fact remains that people are doing any and everything in the hopes of generating more traffic for their sites (hello entire SEO industry). Now, I am most certainly a fan of having relevant information surfaced in search results, however, I would prefer the relevant information show up directly instead of having to read through your blog post, then a...
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- EricaJoy
I see your point, but I respectfully disagree with both the premise and solutions. In particular, I feel that there's a high correlation between high quality comments and high quality original posts; it typically takes dedication and thoughtfulness for a blogger to create and maintain a strong community, so in that way, why shouldn't he or she get some "credit" for others' postings (so, too, with a forum). Also, I feel that your solution would too painfully remove context and flow.
- Adam Lasnik
(with that said, though, I understand and appreciate your frustration with regards to creating crap "content" just to rank, e.g., blackhat SEO. And in this regard, I think search engine efforts to better identify and reward quality authorship is a good thing in the long run).
- Adam Lasnik
Little did I realize, I was describing Backtype! They already do exactly what I describe wrt comments. http://www.backtype.com/EricaJo...
- EricaJoy
A Pair Of Dice Which Never Roll 7 - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtath...
Balazs Szabo, Michal Cierniak and Aaron D'Souza liked this
Some people like to work with their hands: http://damncoolpics.blogspot.com/2009...
Jennifer Taylor, Joel Webber, ffcode and 2 other people liked this
Fascinating what some people do !
- bellegarde-webb
great! usually those don't come up when one thinks what can be done using hands. nice
- ffcode
An early birthday present: The Gmail Javascript compiler was just open-sourced! http://code.google.com/closure... (it compiles JS into smaller, faster JS)
Mo Kargas, Sai Ram Kunala, Chris Lasher and 108 other people liked this
We first started work on it almost 8 years ago. It has come a long way since then :)
- Paul Buchheit
Happy Birthday Paul!
- AJ Batac
Today is actually just my internet birthday.
- Paul Buchheit
Well, thanks :) But for a verbose API I'll stick with YUI :P Have to inspect the power of templating and compiler, though.
- Claudio Cicali ♋
I wonder what happens when you apply it recursively -- can you get down to 1 byte of code that takes no time to execute? ;=)
- Brian Sullivan
Finally! This is great.
- Tudor Bosman
Happy Birthday!
- Robert Scoble
Nice!
- Micah Wittman
Unfortunately it looks like the internationalization features may be missing. I wonder why those were removed? (or if I'm just not seeing it)
- Paul Buchheit
Paul you are my best-friend :`(
- Onur Gündüz
if you were starting a new site today, would you use this over jquery (which friendfeed uses)?
- Karl Rosaen
Karl, jquery is a library, this is a compiler. I would use them both.
- Paul Buchheit
well, i mean closure library :) but yeah, they could be used together
- Karl Rosaen
ah, i see this is a link closure compiler, not the broader closure tools.
- Karl Rosaen
Refactoring, JS style.
- Gabe
Now, this is a good news
- Ozkan Altuner
@Paul the Closure project has three components: compiler, library, and template language. Looks like the Closure/library might be competing with jQuery.
- Shakeel Mahate
this is sweet!
- Jay
I think jQuery does a lot of stuff that might confuse the compiler, e.g. iterating over an array of string function names and creating new function wrappers (look at the way the parent/child/next/prev/etc functions get installed) The Closure library is also full of type annotations that help the compiler make better optimization choices, so you're likely to get a better compiled outcome using Closure than jQuery + fixes + compiler
- Ray Cromwell
@paul -- I know you've been wanting this opensourced for a long time. sorry it took such a long time. Nick Santos and the jscompiler team has finally done it! Cheers!
- Jing Lim
Happy Birthday
- ashish
Many happy returns!!
- Бутерброд с ветчумой
Happy Birthday, Paul!
- Andrew Terry
Happy Birthday Paul
- Sandeep Kalidindi
Happy B'day Paul! don't be evil :)
- sirishkumar
Congratulations to the team (and @Paul & Jing) -- I know everyone's been waiting a long time for this. For anyone considering whether to use jQuery vs Closure, consider that they're meant for largely different purposes. jQuery's good for enhancing static web pages; Closure's much better at building large apps. And as Ray points out above, Closure the library is going to get much better results from Closure the compiler than an arbitrary js library would, because of all the type annotations.
- Joel Webber
Paul Buchheit has been at the top of my best of pages all month. Rock on, Paul.
- Donald C. Lindsay
Hey HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL !!! Cool present!! <insert CAKE> :D
- Susan Beebe
Poor Piglet
CCN, Frankie Warren, Mona Nomura and 39 other people liked this
HAHAHAHA
- niniane
eff'n AWESOME! resharing :P
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
Awww :[ Poor Piglet!
- Alex
I didn't like him anyway. :D
- Faraz Mullick
LOL. Resharing!
- Mona Nomura
Freakishly ugly Procmail source code, via @dmitrylomov: http://opensource.apple.com/source... -- what's the ugliest code you know of?
Bruce Johnson, Karl Rosaen, Brook White and 6 other people liked this
Best part, from the header comment: "Seems to be perfect."
- Joel Webber
I like how it is all formatted for 80 char lines.
- Nick Lothian
There's a bit of code at Google that suffers from "ugly because of the 80-char line limit" syndrome. Seriously, who edits at 80 characters within the past 10 years?
- Joel Webber
Courtesy of my friend Ken... apparently, this sticker is on schoolkids' desks in Korea.
Kirill Bolgarov, zizukabi, Simon and 58 other people liked this
Damn. That'd be vandalized to hell in American schools. And protested.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
Sustain of Competition
- Acharad Sami VanJoulee
Wow.
- Todd Hoff
Well M. -- the Anti-Clique it does imply your soul purpose in life is to become a production cog in a great machine. That's worth protesting don't you think?
- Todd Hoff
And what about, 'When you feel drowsy, a competitor may have drugged you.'
- Micah Wittman
That's gotta be a joke, no?
- Joel Webber
Why is it in English though?
- ronin
Or "When you feel drowsy Freddy is waiting in the dark"?
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
The best part is that the Korean says "Sleepiness Prohibited".
- Darren
I actually meant that I was picturing American parents protesting that this was pitting students against each other. But yes, in the fight-the-man feeling, it does seem like a noble cause to protest about
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
yes , just shows that Teachers don't take crap from kids in Asian Countries !!.. and I might as well add their Governments too !!
- Peter Dawson
WOW, no pressure, right? Sobering message for young minds
- Susan Beebe
Given the national scores and drop out rates, I think American kids could use some pressure, something to remind them that they are in fact, competing in the global market, whether they like it or not.
- Ray Cromwell
I think I also need one of this to put on my desk
- Ozkan Altuner
Spent two hours tracking down an "access denied" error in IE. document.selection.createRange() throws it from off-domain frames.
Michal Cierniak, Ray Cromwell and Joel Webber liked this
Only two hours? :) I spent 8 hours tracking down a problem with IE6 and Flash ExternalInterface one time. :)
- Ray Cromwell
Well, let me tell you about the time I had to use the x86 debugger and and the release symbol server to track down a crash in window.resizeBy() in IE8! Isn't web development fun? ;)
- Matt Mastracci
Damn, you stole my thunder. I was about to say something about the time that I had to use the x86 debugger and symbol server to track down a freakishly bad performance problem in my IE history implementation. Turns out IE decided it was a good idea to serialize the entire compiled Javascript every time the #hash changed, using an apparently O(N^2) string buffer implementation.
- Joel Webber
I'll admit I get a little thrill every time I have to attach a Win32 debugger to IE.
- Matt Mastracci
Hell, sometimes that's easier than trying to figure out what Firefox is doing by looking at the source. It's not like you can get the bloody thing to build anyway...
- Joel Webber
Hah, true. It's the best way to understand all the fun parts of contentEditable.
- Matt Mastracci
Yeah -- that's how I discovered how to turn off all those irritating "edit handles" on images and tables in Gecko. There was really no doc other than the source. But I still never got it building (or at least building an executable that didn't crash constantly).
- Joel Webber
Pretty sure I've never managed to get a compilable build of firefox either. I did manage to get a build of thunderbird working at some point in the past while I was trying to implement something, but the whole thing is a nightmare of build scripts and dependencies.
- Matt Mastracci
Two guys who travel the US making free and awesome commercials for small businesses - http://www.boingboing.net/2009...
Michal Cierniak and Joel Webber liked this
His name is Robert Lee! Ha ha.
- Bob Lee
That kicks so much ass.
- Joel Webber
I tend to agree with Scoble about the "forum problem", but at the same time I really like seeing comments. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's less of an issue if you keep groups relatively small. re: http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Marc Dong, John Serra, Bertrand Doux and 81 other people liked this
I think the current FriendFeed approach is close to optimal. Do you not see it that way?
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
FF has the inherant ability for the user to take control, both of what they see and the comments they allow. If a user is judicious in their lists and/or filters they should see mostly relevent content (IF that's what they actually want to see). The ability for a poster to moderate comments on their own post gives us the ability to avoid trolls/spam and/or steer the conversation (again,...
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- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Scoble and other "super users" have this problem much more than regular people because they have thousands of subscribers. This is also part of the reason that Twitter probably works better for celebrities -- it's more of a broadcast channel.
- Paul Buchheit
They could have a million subscribers and it wouldn't be an issue, Paul: turn off comments on his FF posts and it would be all broadcast all the time. It's the number of people they choose to subscribe TO that is the issue. To be honest, it's like someone walking into a football stadium and then complaining that it's too loud. If one chooses to follow thosuands of people one must surely expect that the amount of 'noise' is going to increase.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
One thing that was tossed around a while back was the ability to disable comments from anyone you're not subscribed to: that'd allow those with a lot of subscribers to have high-signal conversations that their subscribers can still see and gain value from.
- Mark Trapp
Perhaps he'd like a 'hide user' button similar to FB? This would prevent the "brings people into YOUR life that YOU DID NOT INVITE!" effect... of course the conversation could be rather disjointed. Maybe a small 'additional comments hidden' status that would show them when desired... Of course, without the conversations, FF == twitter?
- Eric Borisch
Paul, can you help me test something? :)
- directeur
The features that would make FF optimal would be to let users follow each other's hides and blocks. For most users this would be a nice, small improvement. For users like scobleizer it might make a huge difference. Of course, implementation details matter.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
The problem is that we don't keep groups relatively small. There are always those who are like me who like to connect, for one, but even normal people add tons of people to their groups. It's just natural. I remember I was first to add 1,000 people to my Twitter account and people thought I was weird. Now thousands of people do that.
- Robert Scoble
One thing with Facebook is they capped it at 5,000 friends. Which kept it from being used by super-connectors but also caused it to be seen as a place where you talk with just your real life friends. Now that public pages are coming on strong, we're seeing that change.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: the FriendFeed approach is far from optimal. Many, many people told me they don't like joining a forum and like just lurking instead, which is why they chose Twitter (Tim O'Reilly is not the only one who told me this). Tim Robbins likes that on Twitter he can listen to his heros. He sees it as a learning engine. Those of us here love FriendFeed because it lets us talk. But it definitely turns off lots of people.
- Robert Scoble
Paul: the solution is to let us toggle comments on and off. Give the USER CONTROL. If they just want to listen to their friends, hide all the other noise. But then give us who like commenting ability to turn that back on.
- Robert Scoble
You have the ability to toggle comments on and off: Edit -> Disable Comments.
- Mark Trapp
Robert, comments _are_ content.
- directeur
Mark: that is on a PER ITEM BASIS though. Totally useless for what we're talking about.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: yes, but they are content a LOT of people don't want to see or deal with.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, but then you'll be a megaphone broadcasting "your" views.
- directeur
Robert has the same comments (or the same potential) on his blog as he does on FriendFeed, so I don't think it's the comments themselves. I think it's the fact that FriendFeed makes comments almost on equal level as the original post, instead of burying them way down at the bottom of a page or requiring a click to view. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
- Daniel Sims
Nothing in the API precludes someone from writing a FriendFeed client that hides all the comments so you just see a river of feed items. That's how Twhirl, AlertThingy, and all the native iPhone apps implement FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
I have two arms. I barely use my left one. Please cut it off!
- directeur
Turning comments off entirely would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you could authorize other users to delete comments on your items, you could minimize the forum problem.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
directeur: that's right. That's what most professional publishers want.
- Robert Scoble
I really think the "comments are awesome, why would you ever want to get rid of comments" argument falls on deaf ears at this point. The solution ought to be how to turn off comments if you want to get Scoble (or the people he's saying he represents) back on the FriendFeed train, or to say they're not worth it. I do think if it weren't for the comments, there'd be at least a half dozen other things Scoble or people like him would come up with to not like FriendFeed at this point.
- Mark Trapp
I like the idea of having another options to disable comments for people you're not subscribed to. That way you can allow conversation, but limit it to people you "know" if it makes you more comfortable or limits the noise. I think you should have the ability to set the option as a default for all new posts but be able to override it on a post-by-post basis: 1) public comments 2)...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Her Linday-ness: I want that but it would be hard to design.
- Robert Scoble
Mark, I think you make a valid point but then the question becomes: if there are no comments, is FF still the best medium to use? If so, then the ability to turn off comments on one's entire feed should be easy enough to code and implement. I suspect, though, that all things being equal (meaning: there's no ability to comment on an item) FF would no longer be the best medium for a broadcaster.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Mark: I don't think these people will consider FriendFeed at this point. Too much momentum over on Twitter. Look at the news brands: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... you're not going to get them to switch off of Twitter at this point. Sorry. That game is over.
- Robert Scoble
I think the real game is how does Facebook evolve?
- Robert Scoble
The real game is an open decentralized solution. yes, I'm a dreamer.
- directeur
Which leads everyone to wonder why you're trying to nitpick a feature like this, or base your argument on the lack of the feature. The real reason why you (and others like you) aren't into FriendFeed isn't because of the forum problem or the lack of a feature, it's because you think Twitter is better and that's where everyone is. That's fine: that's a great argument. The rest of it is inconsequential to that argument, and wouldn't invalidate it even if you got your way. So what's the point?
- Mark Trapp
I've been talking with a lot of brands and celebrities and regular people. For public studying they like Twitter better. That has Facebook wondering what it will be in the future.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: sorry, but I spent two years talking to thousands of people about FriendFeed and I'm just passing along why they didn't like it. Take that feedback or leave it. Your choice.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: did you speak at dozens of conferences about FriendFeed and Twitter? Did you show hundreds of tech influentials FriendFeed and listen to their feedback?
- Robert Scoble
But your feedback doesn't correlate to the real reason why you, and the people you say you represent, are saying why you won't ever use FriendFeed. You said there's nothing anyone could do to get people to use FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: if I want to listen to ONLY tech influentials, I can on Twitter. I can't on Facebook. I can't on FriendFeed. http://twitter.com/Scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
Robert, if you're going to pull the "don't you know who I am?" crap, it falls on deaf ears. Let's have a constructive conversation on what you're trying to talk about.
- Mark Trapp
Can't you make lists in FF?
- Dragon Goldmaple
Sure you can: you can import feeds and lists on FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: times change and at this point it would be hard to get anyone to take FriendFeed seriously. That said, I believe that it IS possible to move people from Facebook to Twitter or Twitter to Facebook, so THAT is the real battlefront.
- Robert Scoble
any comment thread about 20+ without threading and community promotion/demotion becomes difficult to participate in (for me). Though there is a difference between discussing the radiator on a 94 Subaru and the nature of discussion forums.
- Hayes Haugen
Robert: is the problem really comments or the fact that each time an item gets commented, the items pops back at the top of the list? Regarding the noise, I think that the "problem" with friendfeed is that it was much easier for people to plug in automated feeds and that as a result, there was less of an explicit action. I do not know how other people feel about this but I really miss...
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
Mark: OK, show me your public list the way I did on Twitter. You can't do that here, sorry.
- Robert Scoble
Hayes: BING BING BING.
- Robert Scoble
Ok, so it's not about who you read, it's who you can show that you are reading.
- Dragon Goldmaple
Bing goes the internet! lol
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Sure Twitter has a lot of momentum now, but how quickly the winds change. Frankly, it's a shame that FF is going to be neglected... I wish that someone with as much motivation and insight as Paul and the original team could take it over now that FB has consumed them. There is still SO MUCH potential in this platform that it is depressing to see it squandered. @Robert - I don't think it...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, I don't use public lists: I believe you read my blog post about why I don't. But Hutch Carpenter does, and here's his FriendFeed public list on Innovation Management: http://friendfeed.com/innovat...
- Mark Trapp
Robert, who do you call "influentials"? Do they talk "tech" all the day? Isn't it unhuman? Let's go back to spring/summer 2008, and redefine "smart" for me, please :)
- directeur
Edwin: the problem is on FriendFeed it has the chat problem -- it gets noisy and gets noisy fast.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: influentials are people who influence. I picked them. Shoot me.
- Robert Scoble
The noise is largely proportional to the circles you're in. If you put yourself in a huge room, it will be a loud room.
- Kevin Fox
Robert, do you remember the "MOAR NOISE" phrase? It was THE reason why I built NoiseRiver. Filters, I used to say when you were always saying: MORE NOISE!
- directeur
Kevin: exactly. But on FriendFeed the room gets big VERY QUICKLY because as more people join they drag in their followers with them.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook has the same problem. While we're chatting here, tons of tech news diversity have swooped by.
- Robert Scoble
So Robert, should there be something built in to "warn" others of becoming "chatty". Something that says: "This comment is irrelevant. You may post again when you have something relevant and germane to our discussion"? So WHO makes those distinctions and judgements?
- Melanie Reed
Compare this chat to http://twitter.com/Scoblei... which one brought more information to you? The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time.
- Robert Scoble
Melanie: in a chat room you can't control people that way.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: True, but [big number]*[average number] is far larger than [average number]*[average number]
- Kevin Fox
Hayes you are correct. Slashdot has actually had the best discussion forums for more than ten years because it has threading and community moderation. Its not a trendy social networking site though so no one notices. If you had a social network site where you post topics but with Slashdot like forums it would rock. Only down side is moderators tend to inject bias but /. has good signal after moderation kicks in
- Ed Millard
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :)
- Melanie Reed
Does it really have to be one or the other Robert?
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
(Where you (scoble) are the big number)
- Kevin Fox
Kevin: the problem with FriendFeed is if you and Melanie were having a conversation it would be pretty small, right? But I follow you. The second I touch your conversation it gets big.
- Robert Scoble
If only someone could figure out how to make a room that gets big very quickly appeal to broadcasters...
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
This problem doesn't happen on the private Facebook because you have two-way friending there and a cap of 5,000. But on Facebook Pages? Absolutely. Noise baby noise!
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: broadcasters don't like any of this because there's no way to monetize. Why do you think Arrington really hated this?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :) What I would like is what Tad is implying in his comment. You know you can have "...two opposites that have learned how to blaze together" ;) And excuse me, but is wrong with a big conversation?
- Melanie Reed
"The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time. " If someone doesn't care about it on FF, they can hide it and not see it again. Problem solved.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Chatting is not intended to provide information. It is like planning -- it is the process of chatting that is what is useful not the words that are spoken/written.
- Brian Sullivan
Thank you, Tina! and Brian!
- Melanie Reed
Melanie: I love big conversations. That's why I loved FriendFeed. But most people aren't like me.
- Robert Scoble
Tina: there are so many things going by on my screen in FriendFeed that hiding them all would take all day long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert -- why is it that you think that people are like you and things should be done for your needs?
- Brian Sullivan
FF is too busy!!
- Joe Silence is not dead
Brian: again, it's not about me.
- Robert Scoble
Robert one word: APML. I used to yell it back in 2008, no one cared. You want "filters" by personal interest.
- directeur
FreiendFeed sold ME on it two years ago. I've been trying to sell others on it. The feedback I'm giving is from OTHERS.
- Robert Scoble
The Forum Problem is a problem?
- teh Dork Knight
directeur: APML will never work.
- Robert Scoble
oh dear, don't hate the messenger.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Robert: who are these "others" and what are their numbers?
- Melanie Reed
Paul nailed it - Twitter is a broadcast channel. Massive amounts of subscriptions are fine there - it's all about reach. But if you want discovery, if you want to engage, then FriendFeed and FoaF is where it's all. They're NOT the same. One you can subscribe/follow as many as you want, in the other, subscription abuse will cripple your ability to view and interact.
- AJ Kohn
Finally, a thread on this subject that makes sense.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Threading may or may not help... it seemed to hurt with GoogleWave... it was so hard to follow all the tangents... of course without threading a lot of the tangents just get lost anyway. I guess I have given up on trying to catch everything... If it's important and I didn't see it the first time, eventually the concept will bubble up enough times for me to notice. That's one NICE thing about following lots of people and participating in lots of convos.
- Her Lindsay-ness
why won't APML, or something like it, work? i missed that memo
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Robert, go say this to Last.fm or the BBC :-) Smart recommendation engines are the future
- directeur
FriendFeed may make some audience/discussion leak out, but also makes audience leak in through seeing what your friends are talking about. Arrington may be mostly concerned about the leak out. Other broadcasters may be looking for the leak in.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Marshall, me neither! :)
- directeur
Also, the meta around the content in FF (likes, comments) is what helps turns random data into information. It's annotated and qualified.
- AJ Kohn
Lindsay: true
- Hayes Haugen
Thank you, AJ, yes. And you can sort that out when you want to on your own time. That's the utility of it.
- Melanie Reed
Perhaps one solution to the 'forum problem' is to allow posters to selectively choose who can participate in the discussion but still be viewable to the public.
- Rodfather
So maybe the real question is, why do some people prefer conversation over broadcasting and vice versa? Is the broadcast-mentality simply a matter of popularity (the inability to reciprocate all the connections, so just broadcast instead) or is the effort it takes to connect with people on a more meaningful basis a major turn-off? Or is it just the tools that people use and what makes it easier for them?
- Her Lindsay-ness
Rodfather, this will bring wars. Trust me. I'm not a commercial object. So you want to SHOUT and ask me to close my mouth? :) Moreover, close comments, other threads will be started and the noise you wanted to avoid will be even greater. The Streisand Effect, anyone? :)
- directeur
For example: this discussion has 80+ comments and rolling. I don't mind that at all. I am engaged. I am also updating a web page on our web site as I do it and switching over to grade 30 some PRF's for students on the play Macbeth. I am not having any trouble with the "forum problem" or any "chattiness" I learned the "ropes" of FF when I joined and accepted that it as it was.
- Melanie Reed
To me FF turns data (the river of content out there) into information (the good stuff - explained). The tool set FF provides is superior in this way - but it takes time to dial in the right set of filters to apply to the data set (which changes!) and many simply overwhelm the great filtering system they've provided.
- AJ Kohn
A lot of people don't want to put in the time and effort to make the tool work for them like you, AJ and Melanie. I can empathize with that. I think it also has to serve their base inclination of either broadcasting or conversation, and the tool choice is also influenced by whether they already are part of a community on it or not. Most people won't leave their community even if it us using the less appropriate tool for their inclination.
- Her Lindsay-ness
directeur, then those people can make their own thread and allow everyone to comment. I'm thinking of in case there's a roundtable event where certain 'experts' in a field can have a thread to discuss a topic among themselves without worrying about others cluttering the thread.
- Rodfather
AJ, indeed - the task is to build new concepts with and for filters. Filters, not to shut stuff out, but to mix it better to create a constant flow of narratives.
- David Bausola
AJ, is it more that FF provides the platform for the users to turn that data into information? The users are integral to FF. Now with Twitter you can program a week's worth of tweets (I have heard) but I don't wish to do that. Facebook... you could almost do that-although it does have engagement -you could certainly use it without. But FF runs on an engagement engine
- Melanie Reed
Marshall: I don't trust automatic systems to guess what I'm going to be interested in next. Never seen a system yet that works. But we should debate this.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, we should debate it! The robot that makes all my decisions for me says it's quite likely I would enjoy doing that! ;)
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
That's getting into intelligent agents and AI once full blown
- Melanie Reed
if you ask me, and you don't, the problem has always been lack of comment moderation and threading. Too many users isn't a problem if no one sees them. Slashdot was one of the first doing this, using an interface which is actually very similar to FF and it seems to work there.
- Vincent van Wylick
Web tech needs to look outside their dev environments for richer influences in filter design: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- David Bausola
Is the problem that Robert is looking for a single service solution. I see the same 'content' on Twitter and FriendFeed but I scan Twitter for 'raw information' and go to FriendFeed to 'discuss' it with others. I watch the news at home on TV but I talk about it with my friends or work colleagues around the water cooler or coffee shop table. I am comfortable existing in several spaces
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
@Lindsay: I don't know. I'd rather educate people on the power that FF can provide with a little effort. Or, that it actually doesn't take LOTS of subscriptions. Max it at Dunbar's number (which is what I do for my home feed) and you'd be fine.
- AJ Kohn
+++ Johnny Scotty would be proud of you: The right tool for the job
- Melanie Reed
@David: Exactly! My home feed - I tweak it. I use people like Robert and Rob Diana and Michael Fruchter and Anthony Citrano and Thomas Hawk and numerous others to bring a mix of themes and concepts into my feed.
- AJ Kohn
So are we saying that its not the tool itself...but HOW it is or is not used that maxes utility? If so I agree!
- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: Yes, the users are the key. The users are the filters. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/soylent... And the engagement provides a rich annotation and a secondary level of filtering. So yes, users and their engagement absolutely matter.
- AJ Kohn
Sure, yes, how you use it maxes utility. But it also helps if it's suited to how you WANT to use it... if not it's a struggle. And people don't like to struggle, even if it's possible to make something do what you want it to... easier to use another tool if it fits your purpose better. FriendFeed fits my purpose so it's not a struggle for me... but for someone with a more broadcasting mindset than a conversational one, it's going to be tougher.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Vincent, most long-time FriendFeeders have spoken strongly against any sort of moderation/rating system for comments. No one wants mobs of people trying to control what other people can see like what happens on Digg. It's why every time the topic of 'Unlike' comes up, people rise up to talk it down because it creates an aura of competition and negativity.
- Akiva Moskovitz
AJ, yes! users are the filters.
- Melanie Reed
Akiva +++
- Melanie Reed
Anybody use Mailchimp here? It is tangential to the discussion. They have a cracker jack built in user educational system that monitors and makes usage suggestions.
- Melanie Reed
Is lunchtime finally over yet?
- Hayes Haugen
I'd love to peek in on the recommendation engine discussions. I'm in the 'they don't work camp' myself but I'm open to being convinced and perhaps technology has approached a point where it could work but ... from working in eCommerce I've seen it fail time and time again. Random factors, contextual issues etc.
- AJ Kohn
@Melanie: Know of Mailchimp but don't use. The 'monitor and makes usage suggestions' sounds interesting though.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, that's because the devs didn't pay attention when their instructors (ahem) were teaching it to them. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Another point I'd like to make is that no one is forcing anyone to read the comments here. If people want a broadcast-only medium, it's fairly easy not to click on the 'x more comments' link. Unfortunately, Robert makes a painful observation: he played FriendFeed cheerleader for two years and the people who needed to take the bait didn't or did but then cut loose. That pretty much means...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
Johnny: I am comfortable with all of these too, but it's not about me. But, anyway, the business battle now is between Facebook and Twitter and it'll be interesting to see the choices that Paul's team makes and how those compare with the team NK over at Twitter is making. Then the market will choose which one is best.
- Robert Scoble
Akiva: If I were at Facebook and knew that they could turn into the next MySpace I'd put every single engineering minute onto Facebook. Wouldn't you?
- Robert Scoble
Like I said before, there is still SO MUCH potential here... and it's a shame to see it squandered. I think there are a lot of ways it could be taken to the next level. For sure it could be a contender to Twitter with a few enhancements, but fat chance of that now that there is no longer a dev team, and that it's "parent" is a competitor.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, here's a good example: You want to debate intelligent recommendation agents? Allright, I know that you know Chris Saad. Chris is a very cool guy in fact! But do you know Deniz Oktar? Deniz, who is not as popular as Chris, is a SMART Turkish guy too and works on the same subject. If you limit your view to "popular" people, you'll definitely miss him. And debating such a subject without alternative ideas likes Deniz's or humbly mine, won't be perfect :)
- directeur
Not sure, Robert. Is turning into the next MySpace a good thing for you or a bad thing? For me, it'd be bad.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, go take a look at (and experience) mailchimp's monitor and make usage suggestion system. It's adaptable for a number of scenarios
- Melanie Reed
I think the business battle (other than the marketing to consumers end of it) will be occupied and won by Wave. Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed are mere toys in that world.
- Brian Sullivan
Melanie, I'm not complaining about a solution that MailChimp could provide. I'm fine with FriendFeed as it is (for the most part).
- Akiva Moskovitz
directeur: most people choose news brands to curate and find new people that will have something valuable to say. See http://twitter.com/Scoblei... for instance. That already is TOO MUCH so telling people to get more people or more things into their lives just isn't going to cut it for most people.
- Robert Scoble
Allowing public panels where only the influential can talk certainly would have a useful role, Its just like panels at conferences. A lot of people would no doubt like to just follow the influential in these forums. On the down side it would make the already influential more so and it would probably lose some audience if it was done a lot because there is no democratic engagement. The people who don't spend all their time cultivating their fame and networks do say interesting things too.
- Ed Millard
directeur: and, anyway. if he's in Turkey and not in San Francisco he's far less likely to influence tech in a major way. So I disagree.
- Robert Scoble
(FYI - look at this conversation and tell me where else anything like this could take place.)
- AJ Kohn
No, we're completely boring and worthless, Ed. We're not worth paying attention to. I mean, who wants to see a picture of our kids? ;)
- Her Lindsay-ness
IRC or a phpBB messageboard!
- Joe Silence is not dead
Akiva, I meant for those who might struggle "getting" FF but would enjoy and benefit from it once they do. There's an "on ramp" to FF that rivals North Corridor Dallas coming out of an apt complex on to 50mph+ 4 lane traffic. Some of us are better at that than others, but you still see a lot of cars on the road. :)
- Melanie Reed
There has also been a lack of creative uses using the FF tool sets. Good uses of the tools inspires participation + it's easy to criticize -- harder to create.
- David Bausola
@Robert: Whoa, whoa. Weren't you arguing that adding 8K new people from Twitter Lists was a good thing? Is more better, or worse?
- AJ Kohn
+++David
- Melanie Reed
@David: Good point, no real developer platform. That's been a big boon for both Facebook and Twitter.
- AJ Kohn
Robert, yet he DOES. You just aren't into that speciality :) If you think that every "tech" thing must happen in SF you really miss A LOT.
- directeur
Woah, Robert, so you are saying anyone who doesn't live in SF doesn't count in a tech discussion? That's a little self centered isn't it?
- Ed Millard
I understand it but I really dislike any discussions where the topic seems to be "how can we turn this thing that the people who use it like into something that people who don't use it and would only use it for selfish reasons like?" Screw them. If something's not as "techy" as Slashdot and it's more chaotic because the comments aren't threaded like Slashdot and there's no moderation...
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- Mark H
Lindsay, I want to see a picture of your kids. I only wish I had some to show back. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Ed: you are NOT a careful reader.
- Robert Scoble
Robert's not saying that those ideas can't happen, or that a true revelation can't come from elsewhere, but that ... the likelihood that someone outside of SF to influence tech is less. The Capital of the Internet is SF. I'd agree with that. But that doesn't mean it'll always stay that way, nor does it mean that tech from other areas can't be influential. (least that's how I read it.)
- AJ Kohn
OK I just read it, you still said if you don't live in SF there is very little chance you will have any influence on tech. If you have no influence then you either have nothing to say on the subject, or even if you do have something to say it wont matter.
- Ed Millard
Hrm, I think the whole thing is overblown. My personal FF landing page still has as much utility as my first day (if not more). Bleh, whatever.
- Chieze Okoye
@AJ The FF API is beautiful, I don't think dev communities saw the richness that you can create with the aggregation of FF streams. A few valley PR oriented bloggers pushed 'conversation' as FF's 'killer app' - whereas, the realtime aggregation streams and republishing of content is radical and unique.
- David Bausola
Well I'm pretty sure all the people in Seattle, Toronto, Paris, London, Moscow,Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangalore, Boulder, etc. probably disagree
- Ed Millard
@David: I'll take your word on the API and wouldn't doubt it given the FF team's chops. But fostering usage, that community - that's where things may have gotten shaky. Too few people leveraging it. It could still resolve back to an inability to really grasp what FF can do for them.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, I think you're on to something. Back in the day, usability (including general user and disabled) use to be a well-known topic. Universities made it a part of the curriculum. Everything before and including e-commerce got the once over. But it occurs that the latest generation (including GLS and SM) have outpaced the community standards for usability. It's really the wild west again-...
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- Melanie Reed
Akiva: I suspect the noise problem Robert's describing from others isn't that comment threads get too long. It's that items keep popping to the top as new comments show up, when they don't want to see the new comments. I don't see any way around that except a separate client. It would take too much away from the FriendFeed experience for the default interface not to work this way.
- Bruce Lewis
Mark, I didn't mean to suggest /. is the only solution to the forum problem. If you have really big forum discussions /. is time tested way to control noise and raise the signal level. On the other hand it would probably be a horrible solution for intimate and friendly discussions among friends. Someone earlier Lindsey? kind of had a good suggestion. When you make a post have a row of option buttons and let the poster set the kind of forum for that thread, broadcast, panel, open, modded, thredded, not..
- Ed Millard
Ed: I specifically said "far less likely." I didn't say there is very little chance. But, seriously, this is an argument for another thread. Lots of people think they have influence but actually don't have as much. For instance, I love to think I have influence on Facebook but I'm far less likely to influence that then Paul Buchheit is. Facts are facts.
- Robert Scoble
Chieze glad you like FriendFeed. Me too. It's awesome. But that doesn't mean much to the rest of the world.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, how often do you use "Add This"? It's germane :)
- Melanie Reed
OK we will agree to disagree on that one and drop it. I've lived in the bay off and on, I think there are pluses and minuses to being there.
- Ed Millard
Melanie: "Add This" being the "Add Photos" at top of FriendFeed? Not as much as I should.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: No this service: http://www.addthis.com/ This is fast becoming the SM share button for many websites. Ours uses it. And FF is on it. Take a look at the entire list
- Melanie Reed
FriendFeed's feature set will mean a lot to the rest of the world when it's fully integrated into Facebook in 2011.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: I don't think it'll take that long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you may be right, in which case FriendFeed is a relevant thing to look at. Maybe it isn't actually too far ahead of its time.
- Bruce Lewis
Just like Lisp can make you a better programmer in other languages, FriendFeed can make you a better thinker when writing about other social networks. Popularity isn't everything, even for a blogger.
- Bruce Lewis
You mean, it's not all about attention? :D
- Her Lindsay-ness
Who really knows why Twitter got all the traction? Does Scoble? I very much doubt it. I think there's a great effort going into finding a logical explanation for Twitter massive success and FriendFeeds more modest gains. My own best guess is that it has more to do with the madness of crowds than it does with any limitation in FriendFeed. Twitter had a decent enough foothold already by...
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- David Hall
from FreshFeed
Twitter got the traction because Twitter's easy. It requires very little effort to get into and it requires even less to participate. It's the same reason why YouTube comments are the cesspool of the Internet and MetaFilter's comments are not: anyone can sit around and watch videos all day and then trash talk them but you make people pay to comment and you'll weed out the chaff almost...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
David: I was there from early days on Twitter and studied how it grew. I know more than you might think. Remember, I was the first person to follow 1,000 people there and I was the 13,800ish user to join.
- Robert Scoble
This link is the most illuminating one on FF traction at the time of the buyout. It indicates FF was just starting to regain traction after it had stalled out for a while and it suggests if maybe FF had stuck it out a while longer things might have changed. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ed Millard
Twitter got hot in the early days because of Leo Laporte and because of SXSW and because it was goofy fun way for tech influencers to talk to their friends. It just kept growing from there. Another factor in addition to simplicity (Akiva's right there) is the API. Tons of clients and tools and services are built on top of it. FriendFeed got nearly none in comparison.
- Robert Scoble
The difference may be luck of the draw ( a la Gladwell)
- Brian Sullivan
People had to build tons of clients, tools and services for Twitter because the default web UI is so bad.
- Ed Millard
Ed: what that graph doesn't show you is what we now know. Google Wave sucked a lot of attention of geek influentials away (IE Hype) and Facebook's Connect is running away with another game. I went into FriendFeed the week they decided to sell and asked them because I knew Twitter had new features coming that would make FriendFeed less interesting. I think the FriendFeed team looked at the competition and decided to fold.
- Robert Scoble
How could I have ignored the API? It's like Firefox's plug-ins: it's the only thing that makes Twitter usable for many users. Without it, they wouldn't touch it. Heck, if it weren't for Tweetie 2, I wouldn't touch it either.
- Akiva Moskovitz
And Facebook's Connect platform is getting incorporated everywhere. I think FriendFeed was hoping to become part of the general web, like what we did over on http://building43.com and that just wasn't going to happen because Facebook's Connect platform is rocking and rolling now. In fact, I made a fundamental blunder by not going with Facebook on Building43. If I had, our traffic would have been much higher than it is now.
- Robert Scoble
You can be sure that once CNN and other assorted media outlets started plugging Twitter it was game over. Once the band wagon was rolling every "personality" was going to hop on. It is a little disturbing that Miley Cyrus has now joined the "everyone should delete their Twitter accounts" camp.
- Ed Millard
David Hall +1 Steven Berlin Johnson would be a good reference - the persistence of babble is incredible valuable in phatic communications. FF, through the web interface hides a lot of that. Instead, the babble was more bookmark centric and less about 'having a sandwich'. That's why you have, on the whole, better conversation threads on FF, and ending up having to duck out of the way of...
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- David Bausola
Disturbing REALLY????? My word, Miley is absolutely right <sarcasm/>
- Roberto Bonini
To paraphrase Louis Gray's wife, "nerds in startups are fickle". I speculate they had a lot of self doubt when they stalled out prior to that up tick, and decided to sell just about the time FF was starting to take off again. Someone waves $50 million at you during a period of self questioning that is a potent motivator, I think Zuckerberg saw that and he did nip a potential competitor in the bud.
- Ed Millard
But all the above comments is about public sharing. I use FF a lot for project planning and development - it's fast - you can discuss items with good archive search, and you can post media. I wonder how many people use FF in this way, and ignore the public babble?
- David Bausola
Having read most of this thread (and Robert, comments are VERY valueble) the"forum problem" is NP-complete. Comments are valuable becuase seeing people reason is often just as enlightening, if not more so, than the original information.
- Roberto Bonini
Ed - mind you, there's only a few ways you can get to the helm of the FB API design and product development. :) Who's to say this isn't all going according to plan?
- David Bausola
Roberto: me and you agree on that. In my research most people do not. They see these things as noise. But, if you make the comments toggle on and off we BOTH win! Plus, comments REALLY help search!
- Robert Scoble
Ed: correction, it was $50 million.
- Robert Scoble
Robert you keep talking about "your research". Is this anything more than anecdotal conversations?
- Brian Sullivan
David, Well maybe Paul and Co. are doing a trojan horse on FB but what I've read about Zuckerberg he doesn't seem likely to relinquish control of anything he cares about and I am skeptical you are going to turn FB in to FF with their entrenched user base.
- Ed Millard
@Scoble you're arguing from authority again. I think on a broadcast platform like Twitter that's an easier one to pull off. On Twitter it's a big "so what" if you've posted a load of BS because most people will simply miss any challenge to your "content." Post the same on FriendFeed and you get tackled and you get tackled in public. Reasonable enough grounds to explain your current stance and certainly as good as any reason I've heard you put forward yourself.
- David Hall
Robert, I stand corrected, and it is corrected, this editing your posts thing is one of FF's scarier features.
- Ed Millard
OPEN QUESTION: Is FF gaining or losing users? I see very little here now - but I'm told user numbers are going through the roof.
- Jim Connolly
Ed: tell me one thing. What's the biggest difference between FF and FB? There's already not as much difference as you'd might think. The one thing I miss over there? Real time search.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter got big because it's about ego. Look at me, Me, ME! Twitter flourished because people like to talk about themselves. (FF is not, which is why it hasn't gained nearly as much traction.) It was developed as an update service. It has evolved into ... something else. As for comments, they are invaluable.
- AJ Kohn
and the ability to edit comments, moderate comments, import all my feeds, bumping up of older posts
- Holden Page
from IM
Jim: user numbers are not going through the roof here. I don't know anyone credible who has said that. The registered numbers are going up, but the active numbers are going down.
- Robert Scoble
AJ: FriendFeed is just as much about ego as Twitter is. If not more so.
- Robert Scoble
Ed, the goal is to design influentially for the web. Paul B does seem to give that ethos in his startup camp talks and general interviews. I would think FB would warm to that ideology.
- David Bausola
Very true. Robert.
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: How? Seriously, I'd like to hear your opinion.
- AJ Kohn
Robert: In other words, as people like yourself, Arrington and even those little guys like myself with a couple of thousand subscribers leave - we're being replaced by less active users. Makes sense. I used to check in on and off all day. Now, 2/3 times a week,
- Jim Connolly
Jim: not true. I don't see a lot of people joining in here and I'm watching it closely. Sorry. More people are leaving the back door than are coming in the front.
- Robert Scoble
To me the two big ones are 1) perception that it more walled garden networks and not as open though certainly it has avenues which are more open like FF 2) its home to massive quantities of apps, games, spam from people trying to get rich that hold no interest to me, though obviously many others like them. FF is probably just overlooked by that crowd, if it were bigger it would be infected with all that crap too. FF seems to mostly just be good people from my limited time here.
- Ed Millard
All User Centric Design is modeled around the ego. Good software design keeps that in mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- David Bausola
AJ: Twitter is, for many people, about business now. Not ego at all. News brands: http://twitter.com/#... no ego. Tech companies: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... No ego. But here? It's ALL about ego!
- Robert Scoble
David is right.
- Robert Scoble
On Twitter the default is to show number you follow, number of followers, number of Tweets. That's all playing on ego and popularity. Nearly everything (even lists) is geared to stimulate a innate need to acquire more of something as a way to ... validate contribution or perceived influence or authority. FF does not show this in the default mode.
- AJ Kohn
Companies and brands are the most aggressive form of ego there is, and they usually are direct reflections of the ego of the company's CEO.
- Ed Millard
Alright Robert. In order to reduce the signal to noise ratio, we can do one of two things, we can use "Likes" to filter the comment stream. If I Like more posts from Robert than i do from LG, Roberts comments appear but not LG's. We can use semantics to (somehow) sort the thread and show comments relevant to the original post. (simply dumping noise isin't a solution - not all noise is noise all the time. Likewise, increasing signal in an echo chamber is fruitless)
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: Oh, I think Twitter is a great business tool! It's a marketers paradise. But I'm not sure that's what most people believe it to be. People still think they're going to get some sort of social dialog there. I think it's why Twitter churn is so high. People get it thinking it'll be one thing and quickly find out it's another.
- AJ Kohn
+1 AJ, there are some people that use Twitter in awesome, constructive, useful, ways like Tim O'Reilly and Jay Rosen but a lot of people its pure self promotion. As for news outlets using twitter they are going to go wherever the eyeballs are, and they will go to multiple networks not just Twitter. Those are pure broadcast, no engagement, they aren't really a ringing endorsement of why Twitter is great.
- Ed Millard
I'd bet FF *would* take off (but be worse for it) if it listed how many times the content I fed got liked and commented on, and that (along with subscribers etc.) were all listed right there at the top of my home feed. And that upon signing up, I'd get suggested users based on subscriptions but also who got the most likes and comments. Yet, I don't think that's conducive to what FF really excels at.
- AJ Kohn
@Robert, biggest difference between Facebook and Friendfeed - reciprocal connections. Without a doubt. The apps, the ads, other stuff, is true, but for me the central difference, and the thing that betrays a fundamental difference of worldview between the two apps is whether or not you can follow someone's content without them having to follow you back. You can only do that on Facebook...
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- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
@Ed: I realized a long time ago that Twitter was a big Internet megaphone. And if you could get a lot of people to 'listen' to that megaphone well, that's powerful stuff. It's about Reach. Twitter gives your message reach. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't see it as ... transforming.
- AJ Kohn
Those who study the art of propaganda consider reach to be everything, because following reach is influence, and following influence is control. TV is losing its reach in the Internet era so most of those "brands" and "personalites" are rushing to find a way to regain it, enter Twitter and FB. They are better because they are bidirectional.
- Ed Millard
*Noise* :)
- ashish
@Ed: I'd be interested to see more on how reach leads to influence. It often does but ... not always. Plenty of multi-million dollar ad campaigns in the graveyard as examples. Reach + ? = influence.
- AJ Kohn
Ed I think you're right. I caught that TC piece at the time too. Seems to me that the FriendFeed guys had a bit of a crisis of confidence and grabbed lunch while it was on offer. In any case I always figured FriendFeed as a place to graduate to once you'd rammed up against Twitters limitations. And, as I'm sure you know, that doesn't take long. That's how I got here. I was actually on...
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- David Hall
You don't have influence until you have reach so its the prerequisite. Then it a matter of how effectively you craft the message and push the buttons in your target audience. Some people are good at that part, some aren't, some fail, some succeed.
- Ed Millard
Robert, I just wonder. Isn't twitter more about consuming the information and FF more about sharing and discussing? Look at http://twitter.com/Scoblei.... What can anyone add to that or comment on that? I agree it is getting a lot noisy in here (exhibit, this post). But not all posts will be this noisy I think.
- Amit
+1 Jandy, she answered Robert's challenge to me better than I did.
- Ed Millard
@Ed: I'm not sure. New memes start with someone small sometimes. Say ... keyboard cat ... and someone who has reach communicates that message and it goes big. So who has the influence? The creator of keyboard cat or the person to has the reach to make it go big? I find it very interesting.
- AJ Kohn
Jandy: +100. You just nailed for me why I like Twitter and FriendFeed better than Facebook. Agreed.
- Robert Scoble
Robertt, maybe this post and the scads of comments prove your point, but maybe your point is limited to your own experience due to your unique position in tech. You speak, noise follows. But that does not make Friendfeed irrelevant or useless for the average or even just left or right of average user. You have a unique experience that is going to color any forum you put your time into....
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- Martha
+++Jandy
- Melanie Reed
Well put, Jandy.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I think the forum problem is not as big in smaller more intimate groups. Recently I've been very active in the DMU group here that includes a lot of folks who've migrated here from Flickr. The relevancy is much more higher in these venues than in the main feed because it's a smaller controlled experience. I do wish though that groups were more full featured like the rest of FF though....
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- Thomas Hawk
oh of course and photo voting pools for groups would by awesome too. ;)
- Thomas Hawk
Lists are not enough. Twitter, FF and other social networks need tagging by default, then filter on list + tag. That's the element that would kill the noise and turn them into interest networks.
- howard shippin
from BuddyFeed
Martha: you might have a point if we were just talking about me. But we're not. So, try again. Again, I've talked with thousands of people about these things. They tell me they don't like the noise that public forums bring. I've been doing this for 25 years and this isn't the first time I've heard this pushback. Facebook, by the way, on its iPhone app, handles it perfectly: it hides all...
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- Robert Scoble
You all keep referring to this as either chat or comments when actually its a discussion. I think that the ability to discuss anything on Friend Feed or anywhere else for that matter IS where you learn the most. I'm not techy like most of you, I'm just an ordinary 'average' user, but I see twitter more as a 'newsreel' of info, shallow but instant, whereas Friend Feed is more a 'thrashing out of ideas and opnions, and is therefore all the richer for it.
- Sandra Large
Sandra: chat/discussion/forum/comments are all pretty much the same thing. Yes, the two are different. There CAN be lots of learning here, it's just that this is a lot noiser than other online things in some ways.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, about noise: when you or other tech influencers introduce FriendFeed, you show the things you're excited about, which tend to be big and noisy, right? And if you're the first person someone follows on FF, they're going to get a noisy first impression. The slower growth that doesn't come through tech influencers may have less of a back door.
- Bruce Lewis
And about the 25+-year-old forum problem: Moderated Usenet was great until moderators slacked off. Decentralized moderation fixes that, at least for small discussions. Larger discussions can lead to whack-a-mole (though I notice this one hasn't), but with one of the suggestions I made earlier in this conversation the number of whackers could scale with the number of moles.
- Bruce Lewis
Moderation = censorship. Censorship sucks. Give the users control to hide and block. The less censorship the better.
- Thomas Hawk
@Paul - what about a view to only see the user's posts/content ie no comments of others and no likes => then it becomes twitter like
- Kishore Balakrishnan
Come on, it's hardly messier than Facebook, since the default view only includes the first and last comment. Basically the gist I'm getting is that people who think they're important don't want to listen to people who they don't think are important. Such is the human race, I suppose.
- Victor Ganata
+++Victor hammer meets nail.
- David Hall
Robert said "FB iPhone app ... hides all comments with an arrow that you can then use to expand the comments. That is so much better than this mess here that it isn't funny". Robert, I must be missing your point because FF also hides most comments until you expand them because you want to read them... Don't want to read FF comments, don't expand them, problem solved. Or are you saying FF is a "mess" because it shows first and last comment?
- Ed Millard
235 comments! I really don't want to expand *that* on FF! Is this a pain-point for anyone else?
- Space Cowboy
Not for me. If I'm interested enough in the topic or dialog I'll click the time stamp and open the post page to read everything. The text amount is comparable to a medium length blog post: if I have the time to read that I have the time to read this if it interests me.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
A typical blog post? Dragging & copying the comments only (which took about a min. of scrolling) produced 9200 words and 23 pages of text. Blog posts also tend to have a more easily read narrative.
- Vincent van Wylick
The problem is for big conversations like this one you need threading and maybe moderation, but for more normal conversations that are smaller flat is better. Allowing a switch between the two adds complexity. For big conversations FF lacks the button to reply to a specific poster so the viewer can thread, at least as an option. Much of the noise level in this conversation is due to people having to manually try to fake threading.
- Ed Millard
The threading vs. flat conversation is interesting to me - we've tried multiple times to put Disqus or Intense Debate on a film blog I write for, and every time we meet huge resistance to threading ESPECIALLY on long threads. People say they have a lot of difficulty finding the new comments when they aren't all at the top or bottom.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Why can't there be a summary fly-out with timestamps based on response rate to single comments and a "last comment made" link as well as "thread count" links and lastly, "participants in this thread" link? Collapse everything else except the initial post. The initial interface looking like this one, should always be available for those who want to "sort through". You want the...
more...
- Melanie Reed
Jandy, you kind of have to let the user flip between threading and flat to solve the chronology problem. Slashdot has a popup menu at the top that lets you view in "Threaded, Nested, Flat, No Comments". The down side is the UI gets progressively more complex both to implement and use unless you are going to force everyone to lowest common denominator UI.
- Ed Millard
But Ed, that's what I have against the traditional "threaded" approach: all the fork like structure. It does get complicated real fast. What's needed is somewhere a "summary" for those jumping in late to "catch up" but also the "single comment" link to democratize the discussion. Threads have all the indentation problems of trying to follow that way IF I am picturing what you mean by thread.
- Melanie Reed
+1 Ed
- Bicentennial (Franc)
My other observation is this: everyone creates a "story" about the ideas and information they are taking in and immediately starts associating connections in their mind creating a mental picture whether they realize it or not when they are perceiving that information. Our user interfaces don't yet lend themselves to that especially where it come to dialogue and forums. We've accepted a...
more...
- Melanie Reed
Here's why you don't need indented/tangential threading: FF discussions tend to be small enough to fit in the "RAM" in one's mind. It curtails many threads that might ramble; the exception (like Paul's thread here) comes when the power of the topic/zeitgeist and vibe of a live chat going strong overrides that usual point of decay. Predictablly, one or several commenters here will start a new thread or escalate it to a blog post and summarize their thoughts based on what transpired on this stream.
- Micah Wittman
Melanie, have you used Slashdot, they did forums earlier and better than anyone. The forum starts out flat, and then starts threading. Random community moderators start modding up the insightful posts, and burying the trolls, crap, etc. Once the moderation kicks in the "summary" is all the posts that were modded up to 5 which are shown expanded. All the lower moderated stuff is there but you have to clck to see. Slashdot would suck like YouTube comments if they hadn't solved the forum problem.
- Ed Millard
It's organic, not hierarchical. As other have stated, there is as much to learn from watching the process unfold as there is to gain from end result.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, no, I haven't used Slashdot but I'm willing to give it a try. I'm pretty adaptable. But when I see a problem and it becomes "the picture" for me, in this case a circle then I know its time for the leap out of the present "prison of one idea". ;)
- Melanie Reed
Micah, its true threads are bad for small friendly forums. Some of this discussion is about what happens when the forums on "celebrity" social expert's threads get so big they overflow readers brains and they turn in to *noise*. One noise problem is organization, the other is some post and some posters are better than others in the mind of the celeb and the reader.
- Ed Millard
Slashdot dealt with most of the forum problems ten years ago, they had to to survive the trolls. The problem is their UI needs to be complex to be flexible and keep everyone happy. Their audience is also mostly geek power user. When you get to social networks the other UI school is demanding the UI be dirt simple so the unwashed masses can cope, but dirt simple mean its inflexible and it ticks off nearly everyone, especially power users. Hard problem to solve... making everyone happy.
- Ed Millard
Ed, conferences have break-out groups. The same idea should be employed.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, yes, you offered a little explication for others of what happens when you lost the ability to categorize your"story" into a mental picture that is associated with previous "stories" you have stored in the brain. That end result is "noise". Some of us are better at doing that than others, that's true. But there come a point of over flow for all of us. What our UI needs to do is to amplify and assist in that "story" constructing process.
- Melanie Reed
Break out groups is a nice idea, but it seems a bit cumbersome. You need to make a new post, post a link here and get some critical mass from the first forum to move. If you do it five times you would splinter the first forum and lose critical mass, especially in a "real-time" forum where people will only watch one forum at a time. Chances are most people will cling to the first forum if its interesting.
- Ed Millard
Ed and Micah, what I hear both of you saying, and Robert as well, is that at some point in the "story" constructing process, the dialog from the forum needs to end in the narrative of a blog. Up till now, the blog component has been a random, unattached part of the discussion. AM I hearing that you think that in some way it should become part of the UI? So that the discussion gets...
more...
- Melanie Reed
Not sure I follow, blog is kind of a one voice, one direction thing, only way a forum morphs to blog is when once person splits off the forum to make a more in depth point and posts the blog link to the forum. I'm mostly just talking about the various methods for restoring order in a big forum, and improving signal to noise ratio. Most entail putting more options and more UI in and around the forum and making the UI more complex which many think is bad on a social network.
- Ed Millard
Ed, as I was writing this, it occurs to me that what I'm suggesting is what I may have just figured out (finally) that Google Wave is trying to get us to do. But if so, I beleive FF could actually do it better. the "noise" problem that was created by the various forms of SM, inside and outside of the platforms, was the inability to "connect the dots". We didn't have a framework for how...
more...
- Melanie Reed
One of the problems that we haven't solved is the usefulness of digression and random access of connective tissue in the "story" process. That's the wild card that often comes up as "noise"
- Melanie Reed
I can't speak for Robert. Some of his issue "seems" to be he only wants to see the Silicon Valley/SF movers and shakers in his feed talking about tech and social networks, and he doesn't much want anyone but that same group to be posting on forums under his auspices. Friend Feeds openness is bad for that. The same is true for all the Twitter celeberati. They don't want peons anywhere near their online presence to tarnish it.
- Ed Millard
Only way I can see to maintain FF openness for those who want it, and celeb broadcast only mode for the celebs who demand it, in one social network is you have to have an option when you make a post on your feed to control the forum methodology (i.e. broadcast only peons can only look on, panel mode where only my social elite are allowed to speak & peons can watch, private where only my circle can speak and see (FB mode), or completely OPEN(FF mode).
- Ed Millard
There also seems to be an issue where someone you follow, through the "like" process, can inject pictures of kittens, babies and man titteh in to your feed. Of course that is kind of the original point of social networks, seeing what your network sees. I think some just want hard core tech news and talk and twitter lists probably do allow an uber though somewhat lifeless feed like that.
- Ed Millard
Ed, well, that is the territory of the heart when it comes into contact with the machine. And oddly (or maybe not so oddly) there is a post on my feed that addresses that theme: http://friendfeed.com/faithx5... ;) Digression and Random access at work. lol And I find that refreshing. I'm always excited about how some new idea may be generated because I allowed what...
more...
- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: I fully believe in non-linear learning. The ability to take input from diverse thematic content and synthesize something ... to apply something from one world to the other. That's where I think we're heading. I think of it a little bit like a digital version of Burroughs' Cut Up technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- AJ Kohn
I can't believe I read the whole thing
- Michael Slattery
Such a simple and obvious solution: provide an optional *LIST* view for Friendfeed items. Open the comments only on items that look really interesting. Am I missing something obvious? Then Friendfeed could easily emulate Twitter on all essentials (and surpass it in many other areas).
- Sean McBride
Sean, I think the obvious thing you are missing is there are no FF developers any more so FF probably isn't getting anything it doesn't already have. And there are camps here that don't really like the alternatives that FB and Twitter offer which is why this is such a hot button issue. I wish there was one social network that had lists, open forums, walled gardens, and broadcast mode based on the wishes of the person running a feed so everyone could be happy in one network.
- Ed Millard
How to Eat a Chicken Wing - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Spidra Webster, Tudor Bosman, Mona Nomura and 5 other people liked this
That's great
- Rodfather
Dude, this is awesome.
- Mona Nomura
I love how superhero comic book articles on Wikipedia are just insanely full of information. I mean, the Kitty Pryde article is not a whole lot shorter, if any, than George Washington's.
Michal Cierniak, Jim Norris, Stephen Mack and 2 other people liked this
See Wikigroaning at SomethingAwful. http://www.somethingawful.com/d...
- Jess Lee
Yes, that's what I was going to say, Jess.
- Kamilah Gill
Ah... I'm not a SA reader. Awesome. The Civil War vs Civil War (comics) one makes me laugh.
- Andrew C
Forest Rohwer now talking at #NASMH meeting on viral diversity
Michal Cierniak and Ruchira S. Datta liked this
Rohwer @NASMH "Cellular life only exists for the viruses have something to eat"
- Jonathan Eisen
Rohwer #NASMH - Viruses rule - 10^31 viruses, 100 million species, major predators of planet, contain most of planets genetic diversity, gene transfer vectors, cause many diseases
- Jonathan Eisen
Rohwer - if you want to know what microbiologists will be doing in 5 yrs, look at what virologists are doing today #NASMH
- Jonathan Eisen
Rohwer blast vs. SEED DB to do functional assignments http://theseed.uchicago.edu/FIG... #NASMH
- Jonathan Eisen
Viruses carry many more genes for "cellular metabolism" than previously appreciated #NASMH
- Jonathan Eisen
#Virus metagenomes are good diagnostics of what type of community sample came from #NASMH
- Jonathan Eisen
Rohwer at #NASMH referring to #PLoS One paper on 454 sequencing of viruses in Cystic Fibrosis patients http://www.plosone.org/article...
- Jonathan Eisen
Rohwer studying viruses in coral (which are much like humans only prettier) when bleached #NASMH
- Jonathan Eisen
Also looking at human associated viruses (e.g., in blood) via sequencing - many novel #NASMH
- Jonathan Eisen
"We all of course also have herpesviruses - different complexes depending on how much fun you have"
- Jonathan Eisen
Rohwer - really important to know what the "background" is re: viruses so we can know when emerging ones come out #NASMH
- Jonathan Eisen
My kind of talk!
- Vincent Racaniello
Dvorak in 1984: "There is no evidence that people want to use these 'mice'. I don’t want one of these new fangled devices."
rowlikeagirl, hecho en eu, Isaac Hepworth, Jan Ole Peek and 27 other people liked this
Anytime someone uses the phrase 'new-fangled', their opinion gets defenestrated on the spot.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Anytime someone uses the phrase "defenstrated," their opinion gets lauded on the spot.
- Stephen Mack
Ah, he was just trolling. It's what Dvorak does best. :D
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
He'll say anything to get readers.
- Scott Ludwig
from iPhone
Almost anything. Here is a video of Dvorak explaining to Winer how he stirs the pot-http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Parody
Does anyone actually read Dvorak anymore?
- Joel Webber
@jgv I type Dvorak - does it count?
- Бутерброд с ветчумой
I like him. He's like a grumpy uncle. I remember reading his articles in the free MicroTimes magazine.
- Rodfather
@Robin: I sincerely hope your typing in Dvorak doesn't make the result any harder to read :)
- Joel Webber
His ability to be completely wrong in his predictions is legendary. And to contradict himself.
- Kevin Pedraja
I like Dvorak a lot. Tech Journalism needs more contrarians
- Hari
No it doesn't!
- Akiva Moskovitz
Just got my Magic Mouse today - really like it.
- Jesse Stay
It has a few shortcomings. It doesn't play nearly as well in a Windows 7 VM nor in Synergy. But overall I like it. And I'm normally a trackball guy.
- Akiva Moskovitz
In Dvorak's defense, who really likes the mouse? It's not elegant in any way - just a pointer - it's a kluge between the technology we had in the 80s and the presumably brilliant interfaces of the future.
- Rob Sterling
I love listening to Dvorak. He knows his stuff, he doesn't always troll. And he's got a great "I'm a grumpy grandfather" voice.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Dvorak is absolutely right. There's no evidence people want them. And he doesn't want one. Case closed.
- Stephen Mack
Personally, I'd like a combination of a full keyboard and a stylus pen rather than the keyboard/mouse setup.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
I don't like the mouse. I do, however, love me some trackpad and tablet/touch screen display.
- Miss Elle
SWEET! Sidewiki is now available for Chrome & other browsers! Try our new bookmarklet: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009... (via @googlesidewiki)
Joel Webber and Michal Cierniak liked this
THE LAST DAYS OF THE POLYMATH - http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content...
Maxamad (Amazigh), Sean Kelly, я был в лесу and 41 other people liked this
"The monomaths do not only swarm over a specialism, they also play dirty. In each new area that Posner picks—policy or science—the experts start to erect barricades. “Even in relatively soft fields, specialists tend to develop a specialised vocabulary which creates barriers to entry,” Posner says with his economic hat pulled down over his head. “Specialists want to fend off the generalists. They may also want to convince themselves that what they are doing is really very difficult and challenging. One of the ways they do that is to develop what they regard a rigorous methodology—often mathematical. “The specialist will always be able to nail the generalists by pointing out that they don’t use the vocabulary quite right and they make mistakes that an insider would never make. It’s a defence mechanism. They don’t like people invading their turf, especially outsiders criticising insiders."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
There is definitely a place for polymaths in some form: someone needs to be that people-person guy from Office Space who takes information from two or more disparate groups to form a coherent picture. But the requirement of an agreed lexicon from specialists isn't a defense mechanism: there's a lot of time that can be spent on trying to flesh out terms which could be better spent...
more...
- Mark Trapp
I do think there is a tendency for specialists to overcomplicate things though. Even though I know quite a bit about computers, I still don't know what people are talking about half of the time (and it usually turns out to be something simple). Making up fancy terms makes the work seem so much more magical and important, like you're on the Star Trek or something. Now go realign the tachyon beams with the anti-matter stabilizers :)
- Paul Buchheit
Haha. My background is in philosophy, where everything one can talk about probably has an -ism or a -ness or a -itude attached to it. The terms lock out people who only dabble in the hard problems, but they are great shorthand for those who are versed in it. Descartes writes about a philosophy of mind in his Meditations on First Philosophy, and a bunch of people over the course of 300...
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- Mark Trapp
Me likey
- Michael Ehline
"The question is whether their loss has affected the course of human thought. Polymaths possess something that monomaths do not. Time and again, innovations come from a fresh eye or from another discipline. Most scientists devote their careers to solving the everyday problems in their specialism. Everyone knows what they are and it takes ingenuity and perseverance to crack them. But breakthroughs—the sort of idea that opens up whole sets of new problems—often come from other fields."
- Clare Dibble
The problem with specialization is that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Then if you encounter a screw, and hammering a screw is precisely the wrong thing to do. That's why you need generalists.
- Piaw Na
it's axiomatic that: a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until he finally knows everything about nothing
- Ervin
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A Heinlein
- Bill de hÓra
I have to disagree with you Mark, as also having a background in philosophy, I find it is just as easy to get locked into a semantic argument about some term as it is a possible shortcut to a broader discussion. Most of time time I find people who throw around -isms would prefer not to discuss things deeply because they don't want to ever re-evaluate the basics, it's too frightening,...
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- Ňicķ
What colors do you see? http://i.imgur.com/CLvcc.gif
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Voldemar, Artemko, Maxamad (Amazigh) and 24 other people liked this
Pretty cool!
- April Buchheit
I mostly see shades of blue.
- Gabe
Ah, cool tricks with physics and visual perceptions.
- imabonehead
No matter what image I stare at these days, I see FriendFeed Blue in them.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Awesome!
- Ruchira S. Datta
Cool!
- Anne Bouey
As far as I know, this is simply the blue pigments in your eye more depleted than the red, causing the gray walls to show up redish. This is local, hence you need to focus on the dot, before and after the switch, otherwise it won't work.
- Egon Willighagen
Whoa, that was cool!! trippy experience :)
- Susan Beebe
The best part is seeing the positive color image, looking away a bit and seeing that it's actually grey, and looking back at the dot and having the color snap back in.
- Seth
Great systems presentation by Jeff Dean: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/project... (I especially like slides 23-35)
Sean Kelly, Bruce Lewis, Andres Montano and 114 other people liked this
really liked the numbers, much better than just saying "registers < memory < disk"
- Ertuğ Karamatlı
I liked this part: ---Users specify high-level desires: *“99%ile latency for accessing this data should be <50ms” *“Store this data on at least 2 disks in EU, 2 in U.S. & 1 in Asia”
- Ahmet Alp Balkan
really good document thx
- Nicolas Dufour
Don't just like it - read it.
- Hayes Haugen
I would love to see more information like this :) Ideas on where I should be looking (other than FF of course!)
- Susan Beebe
Interesting stuff. I'm downloading the PDF now...
- Tyson Key
FOUND Magazine | The Cons ... - http://www.foundmagazine.com/find...
ǝuǝƃnǝ, Paul Buchheit, EricaJoy and 4 other people liked this
They both look like real winners.
- April Buchheit
The combination of "I <3 him" and "asshole" really stands out.
- Daniel Dulitz
Missing from the "Cons" list: "Named Chase"
- Gabe
Al Franken kicks eleventy-million kinds of ass in health-care hearing - http://www.boingboing.net/2009...
Michal Cierniak liked this
Tmesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
Michal Cierniak, Shakeel Mahate, James Tindall and 11 other people liked this
"phenomenon in which a word or set phrase is separated into two parts, with other words occurring between them: "A-whole-nother", "Abso-fuckin-lutely", "Wel-diddly-elcome"."
- Simon
from Bookmarklet
I think it's also the only word in the English dictionary to start with "tm".
- Simon
In-be-frikin-credible!
- Paul Buchheit
I though "A-whole-nother" was really just a bastardization of "A whole other"
- Gabe
Bah, real linguists call it infixation.
- Stephen Mack
LEGEN-WAIT FOR IT-DARY. That's ri-goddamn-diculous.
- The Bohemian Penguin
The Second Life of FriendFeed? - scobleizer's posterous - http://scobleizer.posterous.com/the-sec...
Michal Cierniak liked this
"Second, in this Twitter age you can't hide things from us anymore. See in the 1990s you could PR your way out of this problem by saying something is important. Today? We know too many people deep inside the company and they Twitter what they are working on and where they are moving. Last week Gary Burd said he's leaving FriendFeed/Facebook. That speaks volumes. I'm also hearing that the team has been split up and is working 100% on Facebook issues. I've said that publicly and no one from Facebook or FriendFeed has called me to tell me I'm wrong."
- j1m
from Bookmarklet
I'm still rather enjoying it, and still see most of the people I care to here. I just hope they manage to keep what's different about FriendFeed as they merge into Facebook -- primarily asymmetric relationships, conversations, and content discovery. Facebook itself has always been nigh-useless for this purpose.
- Joel Webber
Oh, and Twitter still makes me want to blow my brains out.
- Joel Webber
=Joel on both counts -- facebook is something different and less interesting. Twitter is worthless (for me. I assume, because all the people using twitter are not running around eating flesh, that it is possible to both be sane and to find twitter nonworthless)
- j1m
FF > FB ∴ FF FTW
SuezanneC Baskerville, Mitchell Tsai, Martha and 99 other people liked this
Heh, is there going to be an argument over dinner when Paul gets home?
- Stephen Mack
Uh-oh. But you tell him, April!!
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Stephen: There's no argument. He knows how I feel.
- April Buchheit
This makes me laugh...this is great stuff.
- Alex Scoble
Agreed, priceless. :)
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
∴ ?
- Kevin Fox
This made my day! Make sure Paul remembers what his team created and don't let FB shut us down. :-)
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Best post of the day!!! :)
- Susan Beebe
is that "greater than" or "write FF to the file FB?"
- Cliff Gerrish
Cliff: Uh, both? :)
- April Buchheit
Kevin: ∴ FF FTW!
- April Buchheit
April rocks. Go FF and go April. :)
- Louis Gray
Cheer section is getting crowded behind April....
- Harold
Updated (18:16 PST)
- April Buchheit
I'm with you April!!
- Rachel Lea Fox
I think that's the first time I've seen the therefore sign used on FriendFeed :)
- Glenn Slaven
It's just my way of saying I'll take FF over FB anytime, any day.
- April Buchheit
A to the Men!
- Felicia Yue
Standing ovation.
- Bruce Lewis
Indeed Best post of the day. Simply the truth!. :=)
- Bicentennial (Franc)
April +++++++++++++++++++++!
- AJ Batac
Ooh, hex math. Can I play?
- Glen Campbell
Good thing Stephen Mack pointed that out in the top comment. I and possibly others would have missed the connection.
- Vezquex: God of FF
♥
- AJ Batac
'April! April!' chant is going on
- Christopher Galtenberg
*hands April the key to the city*
- Micah Wittman
♥
- Mitch
I fully agree.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
But what did the Walrus say?
- Robert Scoble
By the way, lots of Facebook employees say "FB 2010 >= FF 2010 ∴ FB 2010 FTW." Or "FB 2010 (include FF) > Twitter 2010 ∴ FB FTW
- Robert Scoble
liking for Scoble's last comment. I'm seeing similar
- Jesse Stay
I can believe FB 2011 >= FF 2011. If they can pull it off in 2010 I'll be very impressed.
- Bruce Lewis
The big question is whether that will be "greater than OR equal to" or "greater than AND equal to"
- Jesse Stay
awww, you spelled it out better than any social media expert I know of! (exception maybe Mashable just cuz he wants me)
- sofarsoShawn
Sorry - Facebook won't ever rise to the level of FriendFeed unless they let you turn off all the ads, the lame "invites" for bullshit apps and the lowest common denominator feeling. They can add all of FriendFeed's features, but until they make it look like something that appeals to a tech-savvy audience, who cares?
- Internet's Tad
It'd be wonderful if, instead of dumbing down FriendFeed (by merging it into FB) they could smarten up FaceBook by removing all the retarded cruft.
- Internet's Tad
Tad: have you seen the lightweight Facebook? Or, even better, have you seen the iPhone app? It doesn't have any retarded cruft. I was at Apple's headquarters today. Guess which app was being downloaded faster than almost any other app? Right. Facebook.
- Robert Scoble
Tad, you just made me spit out my soda. HA!
- Eric @ CS Techcast
I use Facebook as my sorta, Black Book as old timers say, aka booty calls. I made a list :)
- sofarsoShawn
Both Facebook Lite and the iPhone app pale in comparison to plain ole FriendFeed. Why not just change the banner up at the top to say FaceBook Lite and let that be that? There's nothing at all on FaceBook that I'd like to see show up in FriendFeed.
- Internet's Tad
Tad: FriendFeed's infrastructure can NOT deal with 300 million users.
- Robert Scoble
300 million users aren't interested in FriendFeed, obviously. But, if they create a FaceBook Lite that's got all of the existing FF functionality without any of the sline/LCD bullshit of FaceBook Classic, and can handle more users, then I'll be all for it. I'm not going to hold my breath. I think the best we'll end up with is FaceBook Lite updating in real time with hordes of Mafia invites, virtual gift spam and ads for the new Booty Blaster 2010 app. Let's hope they prove me wrong!
- Internet's Tad
April FTW - I realize I'm late for that. But yay for the FF wimmin! And the therefore sign! (How do you even do that on a keyboard? Mac please)
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
+1 Tad - That's the fear, Facebook will morph the features to an audience that will use it very different than FF. Although I can see how FB can really benefit from the design and features of FF, the community result will change due to the culture FB has already created.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Tad, is the issue a tech-savvy audience or just a non-stupid one? I sure hope, if your vision comes to pass, they intro a Smart Hide feature where we can hide all that crap in one or two clicks, separating stupid content from its posters. AS in, Yes I want to see my niece's new baby; No, I don't EVER want to play even one game she invites people to.
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
Tad: I never get Mafia invites or virtual gift spam. I don't know why you even care about those things? They certainly never show up on the iPhone app.
- Robert Scoble
Yeah, something like that Mary.
- Internet's Tad
Robert, I have high school friends and other acquaintances who constantly invite me for Pillow Fights or Mafia games or whatever. I don't really want to know that FriendA just harvested a marsh mellow field or that FriendB just assassinated someone else. My FaceBook smartphone app is full of mostly FriendFeed repeats from my FF friends. Why go to FB to see that?
- Internet's Tad
Tad: I just ignore those requests.
- Robert Scoble
Also, I've NEVER seen any conversation on FB last as long as this one has.
- Internet's Tad
I don't care for any of the apps myself and to be honest some people's posts are just plain insipid. If I see a pattern of vapidity from one individual, I hide them. I honestly don't care that they hate Mondays or are hungry and need food. Blah!
- April Buchheit
I do ignore the requests, but back to your Living Room analogy. Just as you won't tolerate awful people in your living room are you content to have salespeople in your living room, even if they're easily ignorable off in the corner?
- Internet's Tad
Scoble: I saw a great quote in CloudAve today about "follow the people who are changing the world, not milking fake cows". Facebook is one of those places where I have quite a few "real life" friends that....well....aren't changing the world. And I'm OK with that, I think FB was designed to "have fun with Friends" more than many social apps. I also don't think I need to create two...
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- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
MaryB, I just copied and pasted from Kevin Fox's comment. :) Originally, I just posted "FF > FB" and then Kevin Fox made his comment, so I updated my post accordingly.
- April Buchheit
Right - FB is just a place to catch up with old friends who aren't really tech savvy. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's like Sun City here in AZ. I go to visit my in-laws there, and I'm glad it's there, but I'm not gonna go hang out with that crowd (old, retired folks) all the time.
- Internet's Tad
manielse: true. But this is one reason why many people tell me they like Twitter better than FriendFeed: they can control who gets on their screen. Here you really can't. I can show up in almost anyone's threads, which reduces utility for them. That's not true over on Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
On Twitter, it would have been nigh impossible to have a conversation this rich. It'd degenerate into a lot of u's and 2's and 4's, etc. Twitter has a lot of smart content, but it's in short bursts.
- Internet's Tad
That's the magic of FF Tad, it's a hybrid of the tools of today (Twitter, FB) and some we don't talk about any more (IRC, Usenet, Bulletin Boards) that allowed better engagement with a fully public audience.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Robert, you can't control who gets on your Home feed - which is exactly the charm of FF, I think, and I hear a lot of people talk about the serendipity of friends of friends, so I think I'm not alone in that. But I also have heard you talk about collaboration rooms, and Tina about lists, which suggests to me that if we're willing to apply a little elbow grease, we can get pretty specific about who we see and who we don't. So I think that's a bit of a copout for the folks who say they prefer Twitter.
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
Mary: it's the charm but also what kept FriendFeed from really going mainstream. I heard that over and over and over again.
- Robert Scoble
Tad: Twitter is a great way to tell your audience to go someplace. Lots of URLs there. So, what is wrong with bringing your Twitter audience over here when you specifically want a chat? That's what I do.
- Robert Scoble
The main feed in FB vs in FF is a great point Mary. I use Greasemonkey script Facebook Purity to clean the fake cow\quiz junk btw, a great script!
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
You know how I know FB's better? There's more babby shares. :)
- sofarsoShawn
There's nothing wrong with that Robert. I like Twitter for the most part. I just don't like FaceBook, and unless I see a compelling reason to use it a lot, I won't.
- Internet's Tad
Best. Post. Ever. Thanks April. (Why do the women always have the sense in the family?)
- Martha
Deadliest day for suicides: Wednesday - Mental health- msnbc.com - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id...
April Buchheit, Michal Cierniak and Ruchira S. Datta liked this
"The study also found if you make it through Wednesday, your risk for suicide plummets by more than half the following day; Thursdays have the lowest rate, with only 11 percent of suicides."
- niniane
from Bookmarklet
Hump day indeed.
- Daniel Dulitz
from iPhone
How did I miss out on this blog and upcoming O'Reilly book? http://buildingreputation.com/ "Building Web Reputation Systems"--what fun!
sirishkumar, Rocco Galluzzo and Michal Cierniak liked this
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