Hoo boy Yuvi. Here's what I've been doing the last couple days. Looking at people who liked/commented on blog posts of mine and on posts by others I've liked. I click on their profile and see what their content stream is, and their discussion. If their activity looks like something I want to follow, I subscribe. Been adding a lot of subscriptions that way. - Hutch Carpenter
Have you run a likes compatibility report lately, Yuvi? - Mark Trapp
Yuvi, there are things to do than just be on FF! Are you on Twitter? Go check out Wikipedia, SEOmoz, AndyBeard! You do not need 15k Followers on FF to be relevant, just follow the people that you can learn from. - Igor The Troll
Congrats Franklin. It's always nice to see the little guys getting some exposure. Louis Gray is truly a class act, but we already knew that. :-) - Mike Fruchter
*snort* As long as it's not Tori Spelling style. - Cyndy
Congrats Franklin, can't say you didn't deserve it - Dobromir Hadzhiev
I'd recommend you post an entry trying to measure the "Louis Gray Effect" in terms of RSS subscribers, or another metric you feel appropriate, in a couple weeks. - Denton Gentry
A lot of speculation -- based on pseudo reverse engineering -- it would be interesting if FF commented on this. This goes to the core of what is the essence/power of FF I think. - Brian Sullivan
Brian - you're right. Call it empirically-based speculation. Interesting to hypothesize the "why" of the bounce-to-the-top algorithm. - Hutch Carpenter
As a relative newcomer to FF and all the associated stuff, I found this to be a very interesting read. Thanks, Hutch :) - Bob Kingsley
I love following you guys - I never, ever, ever in a million years would have thought of or taken the time to figure out how the beach ball mechanism works on FF. great stuff - Marco
Just to add more speculation to the mix -- I am guessing that clicking on a link (or playing a video/mp3 inline) also counts as a "touch" maybe with more weight than either a comment or a like - Brian Sullivan
Thanks Bob - I've been here for 4 months or so, and I really hadn't take the time to understand how this works. - Hutch Carpenter
Great post Hutch. I'm very interested in the algorithmic stuff behind FF. On twitter, I never used the Favorites feature because they have no meaning behind. Here I 'like' all the time. I also like seeing the stuff that my network liked and commented on. - Alan Le
Excellent post Hutch, I know Darwin would agree. Thanks for the mention :-) - Mike Fruchter
Two small addenda to what I've seen with Likes. (1) It seems that you can "resurrect" an old item with no Likes by Liking it. The first Like puts it back to the top. (2) I actually did put an old item back to the top of FriendFeed by Liking it. Happened with one of Frederic's Last Podcast posts. Steven Hodson even commented on this happening (http://friendfeed.com/e/4e549e...) - Hutch Carpenter
Louis, thanks again for including me in the list. I am honored. - Franklin Pettit
I'd like to follow you folks here, if you're on the list speak up and make it easy me and the others who are as lazy as I am! - David Knight
Wow, thanks Louis! It's great to be recognized for nothing more than my own random incessant blathering. ;) - Nathaniel Payne
I saw this post yesterday and just got around to read it, only to discover that I'm on it! Thanks for including me Louis - I too am honored. Your blog is one of those gems on my list as well. - Jesse Stay
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 won't do the spreadsheet thing for hides, but i would like to see who i've blocked listed somewhere "privately" - i haven't done that to many yet but as ff grows it will be a useful poison pill for trollish folk :-p - mike "glemak" dunn
Guess I'm just tolerant as I've only hidden maybe one or two things (aside from filtering all non-commented/non-liked tweets). - Akiva Moskovitz
I have a gut feeling I'm following a good chunk people for the sake of following people, but I'm not too sure, which is why I want to systematize it. One thing that's making Friendfeed frustrating for me is the feedback loop effect: someone popular likes, comments, or shares something, within an hour you get it reshared in all the services, reblogged, etc. at least 20 or 30 times. This might be a dud in trying to alleviate that problem, but I want to explore it for a couple days and see where it goes. - Mark Trapp
One thing I've noticed in the last few minutes of implementing this experiment is that I'm getting more and more hesitant to hide stories now: don't want to hit my "hide" quota. My mind is a silly place. - Mark Trapp
but thanks for sharing w/ us mark - watching troubled minds work via ff is fascinating ;) - mike "glemak" dunn
After about 5 hours of this, I've found nobody really hitting my arbitrary number of 5 hides. I currently have 26 people of which I've hidden at least one of their entries, and only one person where I've hidden 3 (no 4 or 5s). It might be a slow news day, but the stories I'm finding myself hiding are actually political ones, not social media ones. Every McCain gaffe gets at least 4 or 5 mentions. I'll see how it is tomorrow. - Mark Trapp
Well written. In my opinion standards are the problem here. Will there be any company break out and really innovate on e-mail? The risk is, that some new features may not work in every context. This would make things more complicated for "normal" users... - Matthias Schwenk
Google is definitely making the moves. They have taken a lot of steps already, integrated Google talk for example, presence, reduced spam (I never get spam in my inbox). But there is so much more to do as I pointed out ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Matthias, I just realised I didn't react to your point of things becoming more complicated. You are right about that. For that reason I never got around using those add ons that make Outlook "social", xobni for example. Outlook itself isn't "simple". Gmail is a very nice platform though. I like it best, even though they still would have along way to got to implement my wish list ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
What I wish is that someone would come up with a way of telling me when I haven't heard from someone in a long time, or the ability to tag an email to a project (or a label) and tell me how many messages I've gotten on that tag, and what the last one was... So that I could better use gmail for contact management and project management. I have a number of smaller projects that tend to fall through the cracks and while I have tried to come up with a number of ways to handle that, it'd be nice to be built in. - Justin Long
Justin nice list of features. If a few creative people would sit down for it, there are so many possible improvements thinkable. Google seems to be at it, but I seem to hear often the team working on it isn't very big (I don't know). But there is a lot to win still. - Alexander van Elsas
Pity that someone can't come up with a Greasemonkey script that could do it... I don't know anything about programming something like that. It ought to be possible because you can access Gmail through IMAP... wonder if an open source webmail project could be created to "extend" gmail? - Justin Long
Some users have come up with their own strategies of handling email which are pretty good. I've covered this in my Blog post "How to handle Email overload" sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/how-to-handle-email-overload/ - Sachendra
To me its not so much a matter of managing email - for which there are any number of good suggestions, I use Zero Inbox - but rather better tools for understanding the social connections and the convergence between projects and specific email addressses; the ability to treat email as data for analysis; the ability to better thread conversations; the ability to better expose email threads to more people while keeping some emails private etc. and more - Justin Long
The problem is that Outlook has too many features and is too big, but Gmail is designed to only have the features that most people use, right? I seem to recall reading that Gmail was mainly features used by, like, the regular users of email (not so much powerusers). I do wish that Gmail was "extendable" - like Firefox's plugins! That would be great - because then you could plugin the functionality that you need while resisting feature creep. - Justin Long
If Gmail was extendable like Firefox that would be great. - Matthias Schwenk
"To me it seems that having instant access to information makes the information itself less important. We don’t need to remember things, we can simply query it. The information itself becomes less valuable because the transaction costs to obtain it have dropped to zero." Disagree. The value of information isn't the cost to get it. It's what you can do with it. - Hutch Carpenter
@hutch - agree! the easier the more valuable, the more flexible, the more you can expose yourself to...all of which equal greater learning - Julian Baldwin
Ha Ha Hutch, but there you are falling into my little trap. Although there isn't a single good definition of knowledge I would say that doing something with information adds to knowledge. Information sitting somewhere isn't valuable. Acting on it provides us knowledge. A simple example would be that I could easily Google 10 (or maybe a 1000) tips to start up a business. But that information in itself does not make me a great entrepreneur. Instant access to information is ok, but not that important! - Alexander van Elsas
It is what we can do with that information, having been there before, having earlier experiences or deep knowledge on the matter what separates the great entrepreneur from the one that can Google the right answers.I bet a great investor doesn''t look for the right answers, he looks for an entrepreneur that has been there before. That is way more valuable. And you can't Google that - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch - You should copyright the last sentence! - Charlie Anzman
Steven Hodson has produced yet another cliffhanger based upon this post, wondering what is going on in that cranky brain of his ;-) : http://tinyurl.com/69veqc - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander - Just because it's easy to find doesn't make information worthless. Just because you have to spend a lot of time or money doesn't make the information valuable. Your statement in the post is too sweeping. An example of an experienced entrepreneur is nice, but one of about a zillion examples of mining information, good or bad. - Hutch Carpenter
Well I didn't say worthless. I meant that if the act to obtain info becomes futile, the info itself will lose value. In my mind human behavior often works like that. If something is difficult at first (obtaining info) it becomes valuable to be able to obtain. But once we solve that, the value doesn't lie in the obtaining, it lies in the processing. You and I are saying the same thing. I decided to make people and knowledge more important than info, but that doesn't make me right. It's just a thought ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Well, I'm still not sure about your angle on this one: "act to obtain info becomes futile". Futile? Not sure I understand that. But the processing part is right on. Peer review, in a looser sense than academia, is a great way to separate the good information from the bad. As is the author's reputation and previous work. Those are important aspects in the processing of information. - Hutch Carpenter
You decided to make people and knowledge more important than info. As if that was your decision. :-) BTW, by that logic MySpace, Facebook and Digg(and in that order) are much more important (since that's what "the people" are using). If you want to be an expert instead of an arrogant pontificator, you'll have to use those services more so that you can be "the man of the people" you espouse to being. - Robert Seidman
We are making a distinction between the information itself and the "understanding and application" of it. The information is important but I would agree that the importance has been reduced because of the webs ability to dilute it. We can all obtain information now but to truly understand that information is key. Knowledge is power as the saying goes. This is why people are more important - not in a numbers context, but because of the ability to process the information we can obtain and use it effectively. Information is still important but the importance of having the information has diminished as (for the most part) we can all access it. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Colin - give me an example of the web's ability to dilute information. Not following that. - Hutch Carpenter
Robert, I meant to say that when writing my post, I decided for myself that I found people and knowledge more important. I didn't write that down right in the comment above here.The rest of your comment I don't get. If you feel I'm an arrogant pontificator that's fine. I don't see myself at all as the man of the people. I'm just another dude writing out his thoughts. You may like them or you may not. That's not up to me to decide. - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch, the futile was aimed at the ability to Google almost anything. It takes a few seconds to get to information now, where it could take much longer before search engines and indexing. hence the term "Futile" ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Hutch - previously, information would be predominantly held by its creators or in paper (yes, paper) publications meaning we had limited access, limited ability to re-publish and generally single, authoritative sources. Now, information is posted, re-posted, edited, summarised, quoted and otherwise used in ways not within the intended context of the information author all in the name of 'fair use'. While the ease of access has improved it is harder to identify 'quality' information and sort the wheat from the chaff. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Colin, that is an excellent remark. I thought about the massive amounts of information combined with indexing and search that lead me to people and knowledge, but this dilution you describe leads to a difficulty to find quality. I like that aspect ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
@Colin I'm not sure it's very easy to find quality information in a library either. I think it's easier on the Internet for good stuff to bubble up to more people. - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell - but in traditional paper form there is less to wade through and you are normally going direct to the source rather than second, third, fourth hand information with no guarantee of accuracy. - Colin Walker via fftogo
Ever wade through a really _big_ library? I remember going through the Harvard Widener stacks and seeing an entire row (1,000s-10,000s of books) of just children's books from the 1800s-1900s. It was awesome! I'm not sure there was less to wade through. I still go to the 12-floor library at Kent State University (Kent, OH) and it's massive. I can go to one floor and just sit forever looking through books. Books don't guarantee accuracy either. There's a lot of 2nd-3rd-4th hand info. - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell that is where a great librarian would come in handy wouldn't it. Unique expertise to help you find what you need ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Just what I was going to say Alexander (work getting in the way again) - Colin Walker via fftogo
...and on the Internet, people might need a librarian/guide also, likle a tour guide through the wilderness. I was thinking about starting an InternetTourGuides.com service at one point. - Mitchell Tsai
Good idea. We also have the idea of collaborative filtering to assist with the process of getting the decent information so maybe in a couple of years we may be getting somewhere. - Colin Walker via fftogo
I think we're already doing an ok job. Definitely can improve, but Wikipedia, FlyerTalk, Flickr, FriendFeed, YouTube, Google News, Google Search, TechMeme/TechCrunch, Slashdot are a start... (Haven't tried Technorati much so can't vouch for it). - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell these are are all aggregation type sites. They definitely serve a purpose, but only until a certain point. We can index or aggregate anything we want, but we might have an increasing need to find knowledgeable, experienced people. It also ties in with my feeling that we will see smaller, much more focused communities become more valuable to us as well. ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Darn Colin, I got such a nice compliment of you, but Akismet thought it was spam, yet again. Don't know how to de-spam your profile over there. But thanks, you made my day :-) - Alexander van Elsas
Way back in the original social media, the printing press, weren't scurrilous pamphlets produced, full of slander? Newspapers distributed without regard to facts? Online media benefits from many eyes on it and that vastly improves its quality and integrity. Yet this sort of instant access is damned as undermining the credibility of said information. - Hutch Carpenter
Hutch, you are right that the very sae things happened before social media. I think (but maybe Colin should be answering this) that Colin was referring to another phenomenon. In the days of printed paper and books it might have been more clear if something originated from an authoritative source (for example a book written by a well known author/philosopher). On the web, in social media, there are now many sources, making it difficult to find out where something came from or who wrote it. - Alexander van Elsas
As an example. If you would read a book by Aristotle you would probably have a sense of quality. Reading a post of some guy called Alexander van Elsas doesn't have that same "quality" ring to it. Some even think he is just an arrogant dude ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander - this is where I go back to Mitchell's comments. Aristotle is definitely a known entity. He brings authority. But the infinite amount of knowledge in the world could not be written about and digested by him. So we have many, many authors out there. This issue of whether someone actually knows a subject applies for the billions of tomes out there, not just what Aristotle produced. And magazine articles. And newspapers. And research papers. Ya know, I ought to blog this... - Hutch Carpenter
I can't advise on cars - when my daughter was that age, they still made the Ford Tempo - but any reasonably safe four-door with good gas mileage should do. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
Re cars, if you're looking to avoid the SUV/minivan route, I recommend the Mazda 6 wagon. Good gas mileage and room for gear in the back. And so glad again that you guys are home! - Carla Thompson
I think Robert achieved his goal though, to generate a lot of buzz on a certain topic by posting a ridiculous article title. It's almost trolling at a higher level, getting blog authors hot and bothered instead of the peanut gallery. - J. Phil
I think Scoble may be attempting to will his thoughts to be true because it suits him. :) - Jim Kukral via twhirl
I think Scoble has a point though in terms of looking at very early data around how conversations are evolving. Certainly not mainstream but Facebook too is seeing the value in allowing conversations that might have previously occurred elsewhere. - David Recordon
I said it elsewhere, Robert's point is arguing quantity over quality - Julian Baldwin
Cyndy - excellent lol. Julian - Why did the phrase "Social Media Wal-Mart" just pop into my head? - J. Phil
Nice post Duncan, I also agree that conversation is evolving. People are gravitating more to FriendFeed and other services rather than just commenting on blogs. It's so much easier here in FF to join a discussion and track the progress. With the ability to link it back to your blog helps connect the conversations. I think Scoble is a little premature in putting a fork in this one. - Larry Kless
@j. phil there's an excellent post topic for you.."Are you social media's wal-mart?" - Julian Baldwin
This, in part, contributed to my exile - a sense of apathy develops when you are just faced with a "mine's bigger than yours" contest. The focus is wrong. Yes, we need to know what tools are available but we should be concentrating more on what we can achieve with them rather that what they can do (i.e. just looking at the bells and whistles). Just because something has feature x,y and z doesn't mean it will make us more productive. - Colin Walker via fftogo
I think it has to do with the group of people on FriendFeed. Early adopters are trying to figure out what site will be big next. This is also true of the tech blogs/sites TC, Mashable and RWW. If you stay in those feeds, there is a lot of echo. - Rob Diana
I'm never really concerned with what's coming out next - I think the existing tools work great and are underused since none of them have attracted mainstream attention... we already have interesting ways to interact with people, it's too bad our conversations are concerned less with people and more concerned with investing countless hours discussing failing services like Twitter - Julian Baldwin
It's a sign that Web 2.0 services have matured and ready for a wider group of users. - Harry Chen
I like your style: especially on the issue of comments being dead, you don't realize how silly the idea is until someone reads it back to you in the way you did. Keep 'em coming. - Mark Trapp
Love it, and it's the first time I hear your voice. Not as cranky soundning as I thought ;-) Great podcast, I'm subscribing :-) - Alexander van Elsas
Dude, Alexander Vanellis? Who is that guy ;-) We can do a skype call and practice pronouncing it together ;-) Hell, I don't even know how to pronounce it! I love it that it took me about 900 words to write about a "destination"and you get that down within a minute or so :-) - Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander glad you liked it and as far as Skype id concerned just add 'codenut' as a contact and I'm available to you anytime you want :) although I'm afraid if we started talking too much about tech my head would start hurting LOL - Steven Hodson
Paris gave me trouble. I saw good before evil. Ha. Guess, that makes me an optimist. - RAPatton via Bookmarklet
Ha, I was the opposite: I've been exposed to that trick for the Paris one, so I caught it, but it took me a few moments to see what was off about the Good/Evil illusion. Only saw "Good." - Mark Trapp
I was the same way. I had to look to find evil. I could tell their was something in their, but it did not jump at me. - RAPatton
Cannot yet see the Paris one. Really love the one where the words are scrambled, but you can still read them. Taught me something I didn't know. - Hutch Carpenter
I love this stuff. Had the hardest time with blocks, but i have bad eyesight, lol - Globecode
I've noticed that here even, when a Google Reader share of a blog post gets more traction than the author's own feed. Same content in both entries, but the sponsorship by a trusted name means a lot. We all have to earn our way to that position, don't we? - Hutch Carpenter
Different strokes... FF is a good place for discovery - you don't need to be a content producer to benefit. I'm surprised it's taken this long. - Colin Walker
It just reminds me a bit of the tons of Digg users who rarely submit stories, but vote and comment instead. - Mark Dykeman
It's healthy. Mainstream adoption of FriendFeed is going to look a lot more like direct posts than it does today. Not everyone will have an RSS to bring here. Wait until websites include the "Add to FriendFeed" button on their articles. - Hutch Carpenter
Off the wall question: if Hodson and Winer are correct and Twitter was intended to be a broadcast service, and not a conversation service, does that mean that Twitter was not designed as a Web 2.0 application? If true, it's interesting to note that it became a Web 2.0 service because of customer requests. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
More to the point - despite their technical differences, on a high level Twitter and FriendFeed are competitors - as are emails, letters written in longhand, and skywriting airplanes. All of the above are communication methods, and when a person wants to communicate, he/she has to decide whether to send a telex or use Jaiku. For the average user (not the early adopter), Twitter is a good and easy way to communicate - when it works. I wonder if the time for Jaiku to replace Twitter is past - it took me several weeks to get a Jaiku account, and if it wasn't for my friends in the Oracle community, I still wouldn't have a Jaiku account today. Lesson one - if you don't let people join your social network, you won't have social network. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
Great post Steven. I have one question (which OE hits on above). "The attitude seems to be that FriendFeed will take the place of Twitter because of the conversation factor. The problem is that Twitter was never intended to be a conversation medium." Never intended in terms of the architecture? Or in terms of the 'proper' use of the service? Different assertions there. - Hutch Carpenter
Deliciously long essay on FriendFeed & Twitter. Loved it! Nice job, Steven. - Mitchell Tsai
@Hutch even the Twitter folks themselves IIRC have said the Twitter was first concieved as a type of CMS so right there we see that it wasn't intented as even a broadcast medium. In regards to the proper use of the service I'm not sure they even had an idea of this beyond being a simple way for them to pass messages back and forth to each other at the office - which is what Twitter originally was used for -it was only once it got exposed at SXSW that I think the conversation became a part of the concept. - Steven Hodson
@Mitchell thanks for the typo slap :) and I'm glad you liked the post - Steven Hodson
I came a little late to Twitter than a lot of the early adopters and never truly "got" Twitter - perhaps I didnt put the effort into developing a Twitter following or convince friends of mine to connect to it (actually tend to use a ventrilo server for friend to friend socialising online) - I agree that FF is a different product - its great to provide and read commentary on the articles and information out there... its a service that has clicked for me - David W via NoiseRiver
There isn't a "fed up of this subject" button? Ah well ... "hide" - Slippy Lane
Great stuff and it's not just Twitter. All services are conceived as one thing but are forced to respond to user demand in order to retain those users which often takes them way beyond how the service was originally pictured. If you don't move with the users then the users will find somewhere else to go but - as Twitter has discovered - this can have all sorts of other ramifications. Perhaps it is time for Twitter to scale back but what then is the impact of that? How far can you push things before you both annoy and frustrate your existing user base and alienate new comers with an over complex service? - Colin Walker
@Steven - the reliance on @replies and DM maybe surprised the Twitter gang. But it's a case of a service having to adjust to its users. Without those features, it appears the service wold lose its functionality for a lot of people. This seems like a textbook web 2.0 example of "put it out there, see how people use it and adjust accordingly". - Hutch Carpenter
Perhaps 90% of most successful companies' ideas are not really picked up by their customers. Will your ego allow you as a CEO to shift to the 10% that the audience really wants (sometimes desperately)? I see this often as the stumbling block for many companies. They've been nursing their pet idea for so long, it's very hard to shift. Sometimes this is the difference between the "A" and "B" players. Twitter team seems to be B/C quality now, but they are on a steep learning curve - maybe "A" later... - Mitchell Tsai
well said - poser comes from surfer lingo btw, for guys that would show up w/ nice boards and "pose" on the beach while the real surfers paddled out - very recognizable on the beach and in social media ;) - mike "glemak" dunn
remember when all those people came out initially and called Twitter a "fad?" Lots of folks hated it. Didn't matter though it still represented innovation and to that end eventually even the haters were brought on board. Same thing will happen with FF. Gillmor is a hater right now. But he'll eventually come around. They always do. Same thing happened with the conversion from film cameras to digital cameras. It just takes some more time than others. - Thomas Hawk
your article was boring linkbait. How's that much different from Digg? :-) People should be allowed to use services any way they see fit. You get out what you put in, so what difference does it make? Perhaps Gillmor wants to use FriendFeed merely as a way for Scoble to have an easy way to see his tweets on FriendFeed, so be it! - Robert Seidman
already on my block list for his dipshit commentary on gillmor gang. - Scott Cropper
Well written article! I also have a problem with these "posers" showing up as recommended users and I also feel FriendFeed is not an application you can look at on paper and dismiss. This happens more often than not. - Bwana McCall
Sweet! My first linkbait! As for the boring part.. we will see how popular it is... - J. Phil
Boring linkbait can be quite effective, J. Phil, I suspect it will be among your more popular articles! - Robert Seidman
I agree with Robert. Back when Scoble posted numerous tweets on Twitter, people started arguing with him that he was using Twitter "wrong". His response was great: essentially, there is no "wrong" way to use Twitter. Use it how you like to. FriendFeed is the same way. What if all I want is a lifestreaming service that I can post to my blog sidebar? Does it make me a poser just because I don't particularly want to join and interact with the community that is on the service? I don't think so. - Nathaniel Payne
Bwana, so the issue is more a product development issue w/FriendFeed continuing to recommend the same people. Do you really have an issue with Gillmor or anyone else not really using the service? - Robert Seidman
Nathanial, if it was anyone but Steve Gillmor, I'd agree with you. He's not doing that though. He's hedging his bets. - J. Phil
I will preface what I said with an agreement that someone who doesn't necessarily interact with FriendFeed shouldn't appear as a "recommended" user. ;) - Nathaniel Payne
Yup. I read it. Phil. I gave up trying to pay any attention to Steve after his rude interview with Bret Taylor, who was more than courteous in his replies to Steve's leading questions. Gillmor's snobish and elitist line of questioning with Bret and others who work at Friendfeed is testament to his child like behavior when it comes to FF & Twitter. His is noise I can do without, so I have one simple answer: Block on Twitter, Block on Friendfeed. Problem more or less solved. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
So if he signed up for the service, tried it out, then discontinued using it, that makes him a poser? Does not compute. - Kirk Kittell
Brian, about the same conclusion I came to, but I thought I'd set off some fireworks first. - J. Phil
Whether he tried it or not is irrelevant... he's not using it, so why is he a recommended user? - Bwana McCall
don't look at the recommendations, the way they're are generated is questionable maybe even random, besides that the post was LOL, it felt right - Dobromir Hadzhiev
@Bwana - That doesn't make him a poser. A poser is trying to get in front of the crowd to be seen by that crowd. Gillmor isn't inserting himself in front of this crowd, his account is being placed there by the service. - Kirk Kittell
I noticed these folks too, I think "using it wrong" is a bit harsh, but all the same, I've begun weeding them out of my subscribe list. I have GReader to pull in feeds, I come to FF for the conversation. But if there's conversation on FF around something posted on an inactive users list, I'm happy to partake of it if it's interesting. Just because one doesn't like the source, doesn't mean the resulting bits around it aren't worthwhile! - felix
There's nothing wrong with just setting your feeds up and walking away. That's just one way to use this service. There are other, more social, ways to use it, and that's ok, too. Agree that what's raw is if he still lands in the Recommended list. Plurk does this, also, I believe. Who do they "recommend?" The usual suspects...which can be rather boring. It may give the creators brownie points and blog links, but little ense. I would hope the FF gurus would mix it up more often. - Jim Stanger
Kirk, then why won't he delete the account? Or stop feeding? - Bwana McCall
why should he, Bwana? Not that this is the case w/
