FriendFeed reminds me of the school lunchroom in that the conversations that may have started elsewhere are picked up and rehashed, commented on, and amplified. FriendFeed (thus far) isn't a place for deep thoughts and debate, rather it's an easy interface/platform for anyone/anywhere to chime in to say they like something or to leave a short note in reply. It's the lunchroom, not the senate floor. It's also the lunchroom in that part of its early appeal is that it enables people to have a seat at the cool kids' table. Thus far, the "cool kids" sit at the tech geek table and part of the allure is that anyone/anywhere can saddle up to the cool kid's table and -- provided they don't make instant fools of themselves -- participate in the lunchroom discussion. read full post for more - Jason Goldberg
FF rooms initially seemed to be the place for the meaningful thought and debate around her but it seems that the usage has not really taken off. Blogs are still the hotbed of thought as you have no limits to what you can say - you have control. FF may have a higher character limit than Twitter but any limit inhibits deep thought as you are constantly mindful of your words getting truncated. - Colin Walker via fftogo
As with any social tool FF is another facilitator - a place where you can gather a large stream of data in one place for easier consideration. It's great that the discussion can happen in the same place but the limits are still frustrating. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Good idea to compare FriendFeed with a lunchroom. My impression is that in some cases really serious debates still take place in the comment sections of blogs and not on FriendFeed. The conversation over here is lighter and more "easy going", isn't it? - Matthias Schwenk
i think that i agree with this coloration of the media we are using and the result which are found after a period of time invested in their use.Jason, you certainly have captured the essence quite well and i believe that further development in this regard will continue to advance usage models such as these. perhaps one day there will be a sevice which does act as the Senate floor, but if you have sat in the chambers to observe those proceedings, even that is regulated as far as time is concerned within certain rules of procedure. - Nathan Eckenrode
I left a comment agreeing with you on this post. - Robert Scoble
Linking may be less important but as I've said elsewhere the alternatives do not always provide quality traffic to go with the quantity. - Colin Walker via fftogo
'Like' * 3!!! You said what we've all wanted to say, Louis - thanks for this great post. - Jesse Stay via twhirl
Interesting... and I wonder what this is going to do to Google's rankjuice flow model... if linking to others as part of a mutual info/attention ecomony starts to decline in importance and value. - Tom Beardshaw
@tombeardshaw, you can see how old-school google is .. - gregory lent
There's now a pretty good dialog in the Disqus comments on Louis' blog as well. Good reading - Charlie Anzman
@louisgray this is totally wrong. Linking is one of the most powerful signals you can send to Google about your importance and authority in your topical area. I will leave a bigger comment on your post but basically just read @DannySullivan comment carefully because he said it well. And he should know. Especially brand new bloggers NEED high quality links to even be found in Google. What % of your traffic is through Google? 60%? 75%? Enuf said. - Elliott Ng
@gregorylent maybe... searching people and what they've found here vs searching pages and their content on google? I find FF more useful for finding the latest content. Google still rules as an archive though. - Tom Beardshaw
@Elliott - I think the point of the post was that Louis is getting traffic from FF, google etc rather than from blogs linking to his posts. - John
I guess this could be seen as a Tipping Point for your blog, Louis. When you started out you relied on other people linking to you but now you generated enough content, authority and page rank that the referral traffic from blogs is minimal compared to what you get from Google searches. - John
John, that could be one way of looking at it. Also, year over year, a link from Scoble is about the same. I didn't get linked to from the big guys, aside from him, in 2007. I would get about 200 visits from his stories last year, and the FriendFeed one drove about 350 this year, with other mentions being in the 70 range. Also, this post wasn't supposed to be about me, per se, but about how the biggest blogs drove such a small amount of traffic, relative to social media, in general. - Louis Gray
IMHO, it was always the case that you got more comments the more you commented on other people's blogs. Sort of symbiotic relationship. FF seems to just be the next incarnation of the same rule. FF really is just a single portal to view a member's complete content stream and comment inline. - Shawn Smith
It would be interesting to take a look at a relatively new blogger who is active in social media to see what kind of numbers they are getting. - John
I agree with John above. I went through this with my niche blog. Now, my biggest worry is to keep advancing my game so I stay on the other side of the tipping point. Social Media is a part of that game, adding other services, networks, etc are an important part as well. But they're just tools. - John Frost
I'm inclined to think that there is something much bigger going on here. - Kevin
I think what's really going on is web browsing behavior is changing. People are less inclined to click on blog links. I think louis is right - folks are relying on aggregators and search engines to find content, or they're in their reader subscribed to so many blogs following the links within articles is less appealing. - Jason Kaneshiro
I think there is a point at which what Louis says is true, but it's after his blog "arrived" in a sense. After all, a link from Mashable that only give him 77 readers isn't much when he's getting 3,000 visitors from Google that same day. But it's a ton when no one knows who he is (including Google). I agree with John above about the "Tipping Point." - Bob Caswell
Great piece describing the changing landscape for how blogs are discovered and read. Interesting that the #1 and #3 blogs that drove your referrals were posts that themselves were powered by Techmeme and Digg. You indirectly got the benefit through those services. - Hutch Carpenter
i think i have to agree here. i used to find all kinds of new sites through post links but rarely click out of google reader unless i want to comment these days. ff and twitter drive me to more new sites now. - Steve Long
This applies to those people in the thick of the blogosphere and social media, NOT to the rest of the people on the Web who don't know what all this newfangled Web 2.0 stuff is. And quite frankly, that's a good 99% of the people getting online. - Wendy
I believe I agree with the change of discovery of content, but in the end it's still a link whether it's from a blog or from an aggregator such as FriendFeed - I still click on a link. We are simply adding multiple layers (shared thru Google Reader -> FriendFeed -> actual content). - simonpure
There's no irony of it being on Techmeme. I said that's where many people find their news... so it shows the system works. - Louis Gray
Links are still *extremely* important. Your 'Google/Organic' results wouldn't have happened unless you'd established yourself as a hub and authority in your 'neighborhood'. The only way Google understands this is by looking at links: quality and quantity. In addition, you don't get full credit for links right away. It takes time for Google to fully weight the links you have, thus avoiding ephemeral link gaming strategies. - AJ Kohn
Louis, great article on the sliding landscape of traffic aggregration, but I didn't see you make mention of the quality of your visits - only volume. SU for instance offers some great volume, but I'm not seeing a lot of stickiness from that source. However, I do see the smaller referers seem to build longer lasting communities - and yes FriendFeed has offered some great interaction. - ChangeForge via twhirl
"Ryan,
Perhaps you need to look at why you lost contact with those "friends" in the first place and then ask whether you really expected following them on a social networking to be a cure all. I think you'll come to quite a predictable answer.
There is no doubt that social networking can enhance current real life relationships and spark new virtual ones but I am not convinced that it is really able to revitalise old relationships that faded on their own and died of natural causes.
We are friends with people due to circumstance and environment, once those change it is often inevitable that we will go our own ways and the glue which holds the relationship together comes unstuck as we no longer have our environment in common.
What do you think?" - Colin Walker
Probably not the best, but I like reading GottaBeMobile.com - Justin Korn
I second the thanks to Colin. Disclosure: I write at jkOTR. ;) Julian, there's no lack of good blogs that follow mobile tech / trends. http://mobile.alltop.com aggregates quite a few of them to get you started. - Kevin C. Tofel
"There may be no real expectation in general but what about the expectations we put upon ourselves and the standards of behaviour we set? By being involved in online conversations such as blogging and social media we are putting pressure upon ourselves to stay involved and maybe this is something we need to get out of.
Once we have invested our time in these activities it's almost like reading a good book: you want to know what happens on the next page, in the next chapter, at the end of the story. It is often not human nature to just walk away from something we don't consider is finished and perhaps our online relationships fall in to this category. While we can and should put the book down we feel compelled not to." - Colin Walker
Why is online interaction such a contradiction? Do we see it as an escape or as a 'throw away' society and, if so, why do we often let it take priority over 'real life'? - Colin Walker via fftogo
The convseration here is being observed by a lot of people on line, because this network is open,open to your friends's friends and open to the search engines. You are right "Social media makes us all public figures", so we need privacy control and we need private message systems. I remember you said before that large scale conversations will reduce to small and closed circles with your several friends. - K.D.
the more open the topics are, the easier it will be "G"ed - kang
KD the scaling down is one thing that will happen, but the ability to set privacy controls by the user himself will be important too. It will need to be granular, and deal with specific situations. The user should be able to switch easily between different privacy levels at any time or within a specific context. - Alexander van Elsas
I've got a post coming later that picks up on something you say here as well as Louis' post and some comments from Ryan Brymer. There's a lot of good thought going on at present. - Colin Walker via fftogo
I would not temper, set boundaries, or authority on FF! It is great the way it is now! You want privacy go to FB! Do you really get privacy there or your stuff is spread all over the Net behind your back? - Igor The Troll
What about solving the privacy-problem within (existing) social networks? Today in most networks there are not much settings to be made: Either you are in or you are not. In the future it would be good to be able to chose from different layers of privacy which would result in more or less detailed views on profiles and contact possibilities, too. Maybe I should blog about this... - Matthias Schwenk
@Igor, Matthias, NO NO. Privacy is something I want to control as a user. Not FF, not Facebook, not Google. I'm responsible. So I get to decide what happens with my privacy. Facebook or Google aren't there to protect or manage my privacy, they are there to make revenues. let me worry about my privacy, that will work better. Walled Gardens won't be necessary as I control it. - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander just contract a Ninja Assassin Troll and you can sit naked in the middle of the Internet Island! LOL - Igor The Troll
Alex, doesn't Facebook, of all the current socnets, fit the fine grained control the best? You can control to what groups of people (including the public) can see what bits of your profile... It may not let your data out to other services, but in terms of privacy it allows you the most control. Facebook *does* let you worry about your privacy... - felix
Felix, who then is protecting you from Facebook? They help you with your privacy (read " let competitors not have access to your data", but they use it. Privacy can only be your own responsibility. You may want someone else to take care of it with your consent. But that needs to be a trusted party that has only one objective, protect you privacy the way you want it. It can't be a party that takes your data and gives you Beacon for it - Alexander van Elsas
"But unlike in the real world where we are expected to invest time and effort to keep these relationships valuable, there is no such behavior needed online." Once I had kids and job, the work required for most real world friendships went away. The amount required for social media is just right for where I am today. Rejuvenating connections over ideas. And I don't need to share or hear all the various details of our lives. - Hutch Carpenter
Alexander, true, true. :) But at some point your data has to be somewhere and that place is also going to provide functionality to determine prifacy. And if this is going to be widely used, it's most likely going to be controlled by an entity that is going to need to make money. My purpose is not to say that FB is great, far from it, but in terms of privacy it seems to me, they're doing probably the best job of any current big networks. - felix
Felix, I'd pay a trusted party to handle my privacy the way I want it. I'd never let a commercial organisation that isn't there to protect privacy handle that for me - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch you are right. It allows us to have many online connections. I just saw Phil Bauman call his FF friends "idea friends", as the relation is based upon sharing of ideas and conversations (in another fragmented thread ;-) But in real life, we tend to give and expect more in a friend relationship. - Alexander van Elsas
maybe they are just interested in what you have to say in terms of technology and stuff and social media. i follow some old dudes. and old dudes follow me back. but i'm like 23 so i'm kinda legal. - Caroline
i wouldn't know half the stuff i know if some old dude like say leo laporte wouldn't of givin me his take on certain things. - Caroline
I wrote in the comments on this post some of my experiences with smart youngsters. It's something I worry about perception wise, yes, but on the other hand, many of the most brilliant ideas in our industry come from people under 21. - Robert Scoble
Throughout history many young aged mathematicians and computer scientists have made breakthroughs. My opinion is that it may be caused by the information that they were able to build upon. Similarly, with the social sciences, I see that "friending" for young people is a form of building upon others experiences and thoughts. - Franklin Naval
I feel like an antique, using social networks and the like. I do not feel old, but my birth year says enough for some people. I am starting to tick the 'do not show age' box more often. Not because I do not like being, ehm, 40. But I do not want people to think I am some kind of peeping Tom. I am just here for the fun, conversation and information. But when age becomes a subject, I'd rather cover it up when it is not important at all. - Ruud van Wijngaarden
There are two IT groups that I regularly interact with in Singapore. SiTF is a trade association of mostly elder geeks. TDM is a fairly loose affiliation of technopreneurs, many still in University. Frankly I like TDM the best, and am most inspired by their ideas and passion. - Bill Claxton
On the other side, I enjoy talking with Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse, and he's 82. - Robert Scoble
Louis, on FriendFeed I don't discriminate based on age, only based on what content is shared. On Facebook, I don't think I would friend any youngsters that I did not know in real life. - Robert Seidman
Depending upon what is being discussed, I don't give it a second thought, either in online friending or in business. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
Argh...hate this part of FriendFeed so far. Two discussions going on for two FF posts about the same meta post. I know if you sub LG you see them all, but just in case the other one is here: http://friendfeed.com/e/417a79... - Jim Stanger
@Jim Stanger I think it would be a nice feature if we could somehow "merge" the same topic discussions. - Roland Hesz
I decided a while ago that with twitter and friendfeed I don't care who follows me, but I'll only follow back if they are saying something insightful about my areas of interest (tech/arts/politics). With Facebook I only add people I have met in real life, and think I am likely to meet again. - David Owens
efna, i am old as f, but if anyone cares that is their problem - gregory lent
It's an interesting discussion and is linked to something I was going to post about over the next day or so. It shouldn't be a problem but these are tough times we live in and we have to be seen to be making the right impressions. You've got me thinkning now. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Twittermarkerters and Friendfeed spammers are crashing every party - paul mooney
It's only creepy if you think it's creepy. For the rest of us, some of whom are older than you and grew up in the proto-digital millieu, it's just people with ideas. Stunningly bad ideas, sometimes, but ideas nonetheless. I'd add, for the true cynics, "Because segregating the wise from the foolish has worked SO well for so long." - Alexander Williams via NoiseRiver
Quote "At my old age of 31, were I to be a "real world" friend of any 20 year old girl, people should be asking questions" - Hey! Do you mind? There's nothing wrong with an 11 year age gap. I'm 35, my better half is 24. No impropriety there, and we've been together for several years. I also have friends ranging in age from early twenties to late fifties. - Slippy Lane
All conversation of age aside, it does raise up the issue of the term "friend" in social media: is a social media friend really a friend or a contact? What is the nature of the relationship, if there really is any? As a father of two I'm thinking about this more and more... But, you know, on the flip side, I always had older friends and acquaintances when I was a teen, but mainly through postal mail and amateur press associations. No Web. - Mark Dykeman
Mark, this is a bigger issue that can't get tackled in one post. MyBlogLog and others try to differentiate between "friend", "contact" and "fan", but it all ends up getting muddled. - Louis Gray
This is like mental age - your 'web age' is around 18-23. ; ) - Erhan Erdogan
I agree with your concern and understand your reasoning, but from a mother's perspective, I would much rather my 15-year-old son be reading technology news online and friending people like you and others than doing less favorable things like have been on the news recently. - Trish Robinson
Louis - I think the age mix is GREAT (and as you know, I'm just 'a few years' older than you :) Example: The relationship you developed with Pat Hawks (that I was just going to blog about??). It spanned TONS of websites with a positive result. When Seidman is younger than you, you're old. - Charlie Anzman
I'm mostly just thinking out loud and hoping to engage some conversation around the issue. It's clearly working, even if I have a few people thinking I doth protest too much (which I don't). - Louis Gray
I think, ultimately, it's a matter of intent. If you scour the internet for youngin's to Friend or Follow - well, that is creepy. If you're looking for like-minded individuals whose blogs, tweets, etc are interesting and provocative - who cares how young/old the subject is. In the end, we choose to follow people for the information or access to information that they provide - not if they are of legal age of consent. Or at least, I hope we do.... - George Smith
Long gone are the days when people we knew were easily categorised as family, friend, acquaintance, colleague and nemesis. Nowadays, we all sit in so many categories that social relationships benefit more from multiple "tags" than single categories. - Slippy Lane
@Louis I think we need a new definition for 'Friend', or perhaps a true alternative relationship identification. I agree with the normal social concerns around befriending a younger person, but there are clearly differences between online-only (somewhat impersonal), telephone (a bit more personal) and in-person (potentially creepy!) - Jim McCusker
Does knowing that you have minors following you make you post differently? - Yolanda
Social media is disruptive on many levels, including (not surprisingly) the real-life social level. Few social mores exist, and "creepy" can be entirely in the eye of the beholder. For example, we might all think it's great for middle-aged guys to exchange ideas with 20 year old co-eds online. If that turned into a get-together at a bar, it starts to look pretty different. - Tom Cunniff
@Yolanda, it does not. I don't cuss or link inappropriately as it is. I was once guided to assume my mom read my blog, and since she does, I should keep things nice and clean, for her, or minors, or anyone. - Louis Gray
It can be creepy. I've had to monitor the friending process. @Robert does have a good point about the "smart youngsters". It would be unfortunate if they couldn't learn from the good stuff that happens here. Common sense is what helps determine our approach. Good point/questions on your post. - phil baumann
Excellent advice on assuming your mom reads. Of course, I know my mom wouldn't. She keeps referring to Google as goggle. Sometimes I feel like I can just post whatever amuses me at the moment. Then, sometimes I remember what if a future employer, etc were to find something I've said... Is there no place to be yourself anymore? :) - Yolanda
Funny, but it's not creepy. I've been a friend of people with the triple of my age since I was 15 and it only helped develop me into a better person. Indeed, it was being friends with people my age that has got me bad habits and troubles. If those kids want to have a _real_ conversation, by all means allow them to have it, Louis. Receiving real attention by really smart and interesting people is what our youth needs to get back on track. - Rodrigo Jaroszewski
totally agree, in general the internet has brought us many gifts and alot of screwed up scary baggage, an friending for as harmless as it seems does get kinda creepy - Dan Rockwell via twhirl
Good post, covering a topic which deserves more attenction. I fully agree with you: in my situation, being 44 and father of four children (or should I say "boys") the situation imay be even worse. Years ago was different, since internet was only for few people, mainly adult and working in research or industry. Besides this, people who were young when internet began, are now getting old (including myself)... attenction and responsability is needed, I think. - Marco Castellani
@Louis - yes, the issue does get much more complex when the definition of "friend" is brought into it. Having said that, I must admit that if I'm approached by a young person in social media who I know nothing about, I'm very cautious (not always sure I'd want my mom reading my social media stuff... :) because I'm so conscious of the age difference. Which really sucks, in a way, because I remember what it's like at that age. - Mark Dykeman
What would you prefer? The in-depth "acquantince?" "Friend?" "Lover?" "Dude I drank with once?" It comes down to trying to *make* friends or deciding you only want to deal with a certain group of people. I suppose it depends on the account they're trying to friend you on... i.e. Facebook (personal information) and FriendFeed (generic feed of stuff). - keif via twhirl
Louis, in some way it's like subscribing to authors of books, essays, fiction or magazine articles. I don't often think of the ages of the writers of what I read -- many are long gone. In any case, we're all on a time-based conveyer belt sliding us closer to not-being every year. In the blink of an eye, the young people who subscribe to you will be older (and probably wiser) than we older people are. On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog, or that you are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or even 90-years-old. - David Newman
Its the people that don't ever ask themselves this question or think of it and push it from their mind that worry me. - Marco
i think its very valid to consider intent when adding anyone to your social grid (no matter the tool) but age should be secondary, i dealt w/ this awhile ago when a number of young college kids from the west coast started following me on twitter & facebook, i did the research and asked "why?" turns out i surfaced in one of their comp-sci classes so it became a mentoring situation, np - btw my 19 y/o son is on ff all the time - i like that he interacts w/ me & others here - age should really be irrelevant - mike "glemak" dunn
I don't get Louis's hesitation. I volunteer with tweens, and I've kept up with several of them as they've grown up through their teen years. I email them, and send them messages on Facebook, and talk to them on Skype, and their parents don't bat an eye. As long the conversations are 1) in a public place, or 2) on everyday topics in an easily accessible private place, like email, I think I'm fine. But then, that's me. - Brent Newhall
@Brent - but in the examples that you have provided, you meet the young people in person first, correct? That can give you a recognition and trust factor that you don't get when it's all virtual. - Mark Dykeman
Age should not be a factor. Being discriminated against for being young can be one of the worst things that can happen to young people. - Yuvi
I agree that we should not shut out the young, but I, er, had a friend who had experiences in real life and online where teen boys said they developed crushes on her. This very nearly made this FRIEND hide under the bed for the rest of her life. How does one avoid that? - MiniMage
I think the same thing about friending older people. I tend to think they usually don't know how to use the site (ie Facebook).. Sometimes I add, sometimes I don't. Facebook definitely creeps me out when it comes to this. - Liz Burr
It can also be awkward especially when you have different groups of friends who know you from different stages of your life... they all collide in Facebook and I am not sure I really want that! Facebook is older friends and college folks who i had lost touch with over the past 10 years and i use MySpace for my friends who live right around me. - Scott Lockhart
I'm old and I'm not happy. Everything today is improved and I don't like it. I hate it! In my day we didn't have hair dryers. If you wanted to blow dry your hair you stood outside during a hurricane. Your hair was dry but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull and that's the way it was and you liked it! You loved it. Whoopee, I'm a human head-kabob. - Thomas Hawk
As a woman in her late 50s, I'm holding a couple of tech-minority cards, and I applaud all who agree that age doesn't matter when it comes to intellectual discourse. Neither does gender or race or economic status or anything else except maybe the ability to type... I'm also a firm believer in being responsible for yourself and your own actions. That's part of being in a society. Teach your kids to speak up if something's inappropriate, and defend your privacy if you have to. Just don't hide from fear. - Linda Mills
Robert Scoble had an article on Alana Taylor.. basically (Intern/Girl Geek looking for employment in Tech), her networking is an open resume done on line in public, I think that’s kind of up front, the same for Corvida and how she got her place at RWW. - Mike Reardon
In some contexts, friending/subscribing/following is enabling self destruction and self harm - particularly in relation to young girls and young people who engage in at risk behaviours online (and their numbers are increasing). I know, I see this behaviour every day. And I see the kinds of guys who are subscribing and engaging it. Young people look up to some of us and assume we'll let them know if they're going too far. We are NOT their peers - we are guides to help or harm them depending on our ethics. - melmcbride
Wow. I never think about people's ages, but I guess if you are a guy talking to younger women or even men, that could look funny. Many young people follow me and I feel like I'm teaching. - Francine Hardaway
Really good - not what you expect with a huge twist but very enjoyable. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Thinking about seeing this tonight myself. I'll save WALL-E for when the kids come back from camp. - Harvey Simmons
Saw Hancock last night. It was better than I anticipated. Left some questions unanswered, but still a good movie. - Harvey Simmons
Definitely worth watching. Will Smith is becoming a good character actor - Colin Walker
Surprised how many people are seeing this despite it's bad reviews. But then again, Will smith is a pretty great actor so even on a bad script he can do wonders. - Bartek Gniado
Bartek - must admit, I'd not read any reviews so went in and formed my own opinion ;) - Colin Walker
Off to see it in about an hour - looking forward to it. Sounds like they've done the marketing better than I am Legend - people went in to that with the wrong impression. - Colin Walker via fftogo
I actually kinda like it so far. Threaded convo + notification is kinda cool. I think the notification piece is what is noticeably missing from Plurk. - Jennifer Leggio
I'd be happy to come play on yet *another* new microblog... no really? ;) geekmommyblog at gmail. Speaking of which - you must agree that http://www.socbut.com wins the prize for WORST name of a new microblog site. :) - Lucretia Pruitt
Anyone got an invite for lil ole me? colin @ colinwalker dot me dot uk - Colin Walker via fftogo
Duncan, if there are any more can you send one to robdiana at gmail dot com? Thanks. - Rob Diana
What does one more microblogging service hurt, right? lol. OnkelSchark at gmail dot com please. Thanks Duncan! - Mark Douglass
I talked about it on Profy this week in the Workarounds post. I'm trying it out, so have invites if people want them. - Leslie
how 'bout kwippyinvite (at or near) kshep.net. kthxbye! :-) - Ken Sheppardson
invites sent. Anyone else wanting them I'm heading to bed (just back in from a night out), happily send more in the morning, alternatively everyone on this thread is in, so has invites as well. - Duncan Riley
I would say blogging, because I count micro-blogging as just a subset of blogging. Meaning...I have really made no choice at all. I still get to do both :) - Rahsheen Porter
Does FF participation count as micro-blogging? I participate in FF a lot more than my blog now. More convenient, easier to start a conversation and keep it going. No self-imposed timetable or post quota to keep up with to make sure enough people are interested in being part of my "audience" (it's built in with FF). Easier to interact with people and get more interaction back. Easier to find the answers to my questions. FF does all I really wanted out of blogging anyway. - Lindsay Donaghe
depends on my mood and what I want to say. it obv takes a lot less cognitive ability to microblog, but many more mainstream people read my blog. - Philip Ryan Johnson
@Lindsay Yeah I definitely agree. FF takes away a lot of my time that I would spend doing other things, that's why I've significantly cut my usage over the past couple weeks. - Shey
definitely would stay with blogging. I can live without things like Twitter. - Rob Diana
If had known micro-blogging / lifestreaming would reach this level, I probably wouldn't blog at all - Charlie Anzman
I can always find time to micro-blog... - Rachel Beer
Micro blogging == FF? If FF posts supported more length, formatting and inclusion of media then blogging would disappear for most people - Brian Sullivan
I don't think we have to or need to choose. Both are great for different things. - Tris Hussey via twhirl
more and more I am falling towards the micro blogging side. I sometimes think I should just get rid of my traditional blog. - (jeff)isageek
Since you did not mention IM, blogging, even though I do little of it, there are times a long public rant is needed for the psyche - Michael W. May via twhirl
Mini-blogging. Creating content while wearing a mini-skirt. - Andy C
98% of my blog's readers do not know what twitter is and they don't care. When I used twitter tools to publish an daily digest of my tweets, they hated it. So: The answer is Blogging. - Rick Powell
I agree with Lindsay. Post directly to FF. - Russellreno
hey there I say go for the guest posts - (jeff)isageek
Why not Phil? You've got a good content base and guest posters can open that up to a new audience as well as expose those posters to yours. Go for it. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Hm. Thanks for weighing in.. now of course, the problem is finding people who are actually interested in guest-posting. - J. Phil
Why? Twitter updates reach two audiences: here and Twitter, and still can spark discussions in the same way any other service can. - Mark Trapp
I did it because Ive started to use my Twitter account for a single purpose and felt as though it was just adding noise to my Friendfeed acct. - Andrew Baron
The great thing about diversifying your services, I've found, is that it gives people who are following you finer grain control on what noise they want to hear. I may want to see everything you're doing and sharing except for your status updates: but if you combine everything into just using the Friendfeed share something link, I can't filter out the different types of items in your feed anymore. - Mark Trapp
I'm thinking about doing the same as I only use Twitter as a broadcast service now. - Colin Walker via fftogo
@Colin Same here. If I want a conversation, I post the message to FriendFeed - Shey
@Colin I think you nailed it. Twitter is more for broadcasting. FF is a lot more like a blog with comments. Most people dont include their tweets as blog posts. Anyway, once I turned off the Twitter noise, I started to think of FF much more like a link blog, which Im liking (but also not wanting to muddy up with my Tweets). - Andrew Baron
I want to do the same, but I'm wondering if ppl try and MSG me thru twitter after discovering in FF. Also, I'm now twitterfeeding my FF internal RSS. - Hao Chen
yes i have made that shift- using twitter to answer the question "What are you doing?" and discussing it over here on FF. - Nathan Eckenrode
I did the same a few months back and I don't regret it. The audience that I cater to on Twitter is different and I'm not about to go back and forth checking FF for Twitter replies. - Corvida via feedalizr
Twitter inside of friendfeed is pretty irritating. Not everything decontextualizes well. - Dave Coustan
boy I've been thinking about it for long long time, never had the guts @colin I'm twitterfeeding lots of my friendfeed on twitter just to keep my network over there in the loop, some people are just not happy with leaving twitter behind an dmoving on - Dobromir Hadzhiev
I put Twitter back in my ff stream again for now. - Andrew Baron
Not that I use Twitter much anymore, but out of respect for my subscribers, I axed it. Doing my part to make a cleaner environment on the internets. - Eric Rice
I've had Tweets turned off since day 2 on FF! - Siddharth Deb
Andrew, if I do not want to see your twitter, I will remove it with hide. But maybe I use friendfeed to always keep up with your twitter in here- so why not let your subscribers have the choice of what they want? - Nicole Simon
I REALLY want to love Twitter and I keep going back, but Im worried now that its not going to last and only use it for legacy purposes. I also think that my Twitter friends who dont know about Friendfeed would like FF. SO sad and interesting at the same time. - Andrew Baron
I can bike without using the handlebars, but then I hurt my penis when I hit a bump. anyone see the metaphor? - Noah David Simon
Awesome. I would suggest more books by Frank Herbert, he was an absolute genious. Especially – since it is almost no longer sci-fi – I would suggest "The white plague". And also the last books in the Dune saga (by Brain Herbert and Kevin J Anderson) are nice, but not necessary. - dekay
I'd recommend Samuel R. Delany - "Dhalgren", "Babel 17", or "Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand" are three of my favourites. - Bob Kingsley
One I'd recommend is "The Mote in Gods Eye" by Niven and Pournelle - about the best book on first contact I've ever read. - Colin Walker
Colin - but stay away from "Footfall" that book stank. - J. Phil
I would recommend "Blood Music" by Greg Bear, and "The 5th Column" by Robert Heinlein. And how about some Larry Niven love.. ah you have ringworld. Yes, good choice. - J. Phil
Agree with Colin on "The Mote In God's Eye" - I'd forgotten about that one! I recall now that it was, indeed, a terrific read. - Bob Kingsley via twhirl
Most of the books on the list cant find it on my mother tongue - George The Writer
Yea I put in Ringworld. Thanks for all the suggestions folks. You've given me a ton of new books to read. - Steve Spalding
It's amazing the way that most probably know the majority of these stories by watching the films but NOT by reading the book. Occasionally a film will do the book justice (Animal Farm was a great adaptation and had a huge effect on me as a kid watching it at school) but not often. - Colin Walker via fftogo
One other book that I've always liked: "Wave without a shore" by C.J. Cherryh - an interesting look at perception and willpower and how they shape our "reality". - Colin Walker via fftogo
Yeah, you should really check out Jeff Noon, he's buzzing :) - HollowMarkeD
I came, I saw, I was heartily unimpressed but at least _I_ hold my name there - just in case ;) - Colin Walker via fftogo
The one part that is intriguing is the possibility of connections with other services. However, that's not implemented yet. I was on vacation with no computer access during Plurkmania, so I guess I should leave town again during our July 4 weekend and see if sanity has returned by Monday. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
I can't even get on the site....it's shaping up to be just like the other services! - Mike Lewis
I don't think it's anything special. Just another site for social media "experts" to play both sides on. "Ohh, this could be the next Twitter. Or it may NOT be the next Twitter so I'll keep my Twitter account just in case.." - Shawn Farner via twhirl
Lessee...June's hot thing was Plurk, July's was identi.ca...what bizarre name will everyone be typing in August? - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
Yes, it's not anything special, but it's also not just a twitter clone. It's an open source, distributed twitter clone. That's what people like Dave Winer and Duncan Riley are excited about. I think to gloss over that and suggest that all the interest is simply about another microblogging service is disingenuous. - Michael C. Harris
Right now, it is just another microblogging service. When someone takes the source and uses it themselves, it will be just another microblogging service. - Shawn Farner via twhirl
Ontario, I haven't looked at the code in any depth (and haven't managed to get it running) but my understanding is that users can follow across installations. Shawn, your comment seems to dismiss the open source and distributed aspects completely. Is that what you mean ? - Michael C. Harris
"After all this is Dave Winer’s wet dream come true and that alone should be enough to prompt another peyote induced post by Steve Gillmor - that is as soon as we can get him to come out of his corner." - very funny :) - mike "glemak" dunn
I think it may prove to be an interesting study in how a service like this could (or should not) work as a federated service. Twitter replacement? Nah, there's not going to be a twitter replacement. - felix
yes the important part of this new service is not that it currently is a featureless clone of twitter, but that it has a capacity to be distributed and developed to in clude all those features we want (ie, SMS, track, IM) and to have scalability that does not rely upon one set of central servers to give us the fail whale. when twitter started out- there was not the same amount of energy directed towards it as there is at indenti.ca - Nathan Eckenrode
Whether it really has the capacity to scale and whether the distributed system architecture upon which it's based can address the shortcomings of Twitter has yet to be seen. Track, in particular, is pretty much a non-starter in this 0.x release and in the OpenMicrobloggingProtocol spec. - Ken Sheppardson
From the page "On the radio: a look at the year ahead, Office 97 is here and so are the bugs, why Command & Conquer has conquered my heart, and why you shouldn't download Netscape Communicator..." http://web.archive.org/web/199... - Mark Krynsky
Wow Kevin...that site really takes me back in time. Very cool, I especially like "This page is intended for use with Netscape 1.1 Use it for full effect". - Mark Krynsky
It just didn't look right in Netscape 1.0. I don't think it supported gif transparency or the 'align' image attribute or something. Don't even get me started on NCSA Mosaic. - Kevin Fox
Not in Web Archive. First web site was 2/2005. - Cyndy
My first client site: thomas-york.com / 1996-08-08 / http://tinyurl.com/5g6uoh (Want to know how much things have changed? Molly Holzschlag contacted me in late '96 or early '97 to say how much she liked that monstrosity.) - Roger Benningfield
It was 3 years old when the first shot was taken, and please don't hold the content against me, I'm a reformed conservative :-) http://web.archive.org/web/199... (and it was christmas when the shot was taken, hence the logo) There was another site older than this but I cant remember the exact URL. - Duncan Riley
Mark, sorry, I decided pulling up random sites in wayback machine was better in a different thread... so I pulled my comment about cnet. - J. Phil
Wow Duncan, fan of the animated gif back then? Me too, actually.. - J. Phil
J. Phil, geocities address as well :-) Back in the days where a .com cost $200 and hosting was prohibitively expensive for most...well for me anyway at the time :-) - Duncan Riley
Duncan - I was lucky that one of my good friends got a portable class C domain back in 1990 before network solutions decided to start reserving them for bigger customers. That became (and still is) talisman.org, 255 fixed IPs of real estate. - J. Phil
I'd participate, but archive.org is borking for my domain right now. I know it was 1995 for my first blog like thing, 1997 for my first domain (rizzn.com). Thankfully, since I used Tripod, my first teen angsty blog posts are forever gone. -
