commonsense4 › Comments

Is everything okay? Is the fire out now? I hope everything will be allright. - commonsense4

you check out http://rejaw.com/ yet? - Christian Anderson

Oh wow. Sorry to hear that =( - Mona Nomura

It's not that close but it must be big because of the stink. - Dave Winer

Problem is I have to be up in 3 hours to drive from here to Salt Lake City! Thinking maybe I should just take a shower drink some coffee and go now. - Dave Winer

Sucks almost scared me when I read it, but if I can't smell it near UCB I figure I'm alright too. Sucks that the smoke is affecting you though. - Danish Khan

I don't think it's bad you've noticed. I really wouldn't know the answer to that though. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I've noticed it, too. - Akiva Moskovitz

most of them are masquerading as black guys :)- There...does that make you happier ? Actually, if you happen to be on twitter too, you will find the same thing. These two spaces have a high degree of mixed bunch of ethnic peeps. Not sure the reasons of "Stickiness".. - Peter Dawson

Friendfeed feels very multicultural to me (with a heavy emphasis on SF bay area) - Jason Wehmhoener

Mona's from Japan, me(and some more folks) from India. Yep - diverse. Twitter is more diverse, but that's because there are more folks there. - Yuvi

In the spirit of Robert Scoble's anti-anonymity stance, I will go completely out of character and admit that I'm a Black female Mississippian in Kentucky (USA). Hi y'all. - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

Hi MiniMage :) - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I don't know if there are more of us, I just think that those of us who are here are frequent contributors. - cecily

Hey MiniMage - I'm from Mississippi too! Where are you from? I grew up in Vicksburg. - Internet's Tad

@Shey (shey): Hi! @Tad Donaghe (tad): Jackson - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF from NoiseRiver

COOL to know...neat!! Hi MiniMage! Of course, I love chatting with Shey, Cordiva and Bwana! - Susan Beebe

It may come as a shock but I am not a Black folk. ;) I am glad that it is what it is and that you pointed it out. Every ethnicity needs to participate for a community to really transform to the next level. Communication is the key to our species survival and if there is not inclusion and the feeling of being equal and welcome then honest communication never stands a chance against hatred and bigotry. - Mathew A. Koeneker

Not sure how it happened, but I think it's pretty cool. - Ha3rvey (not Akiva)

@mathew, on FF you will find more Jap /Chinese users then those who communicate in English alone. What we dont see, we dont know- syndrome. If FF had a translate this link beside every post , it would be gr8 way us (english speaking) to actually participate in other lingos and liekwise the other user too. - Peter Dawson

I know there is a thriving community of people from Iran who speak Farsi who are active friendfeed users. I subscribe to several of them. Mostly for the cool pictures they post. Many users have thousands of likes and comments which means the conversations are alive and well in their little micro-community here on FF. I'm working on an engine that will allow us to better interact with other micro-communities here on FF and across other socnets. Prepare to bridge the language/cultural barrier and go global. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

@Peter, I have noticed that as well with many of the FF users from the Middle East. Farsi is rather difficult to pick up. That would be a cool added bit of functionality to add though. - Mathew A. Koeneker

@Brian - Excellent. We must have been typing at the same moment. Please keep us posted on your work. :) - Mathew A. Koeneker

Ah I was not aware of that. Although I am black myself of Jamaican heritage, I don't think of my color too much. I am an individual first. Anyway any fellow Jamaicans or Jamericans? hehe - commonsense4

I appreciate the fact that I usually have no idea what race or gender a person is on the web. That allows me to size up others based on their expressed ideas and opinions, not their race, gender or age. That's democratization. - Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)

This is because the community is intelligent and friendly. Keep it up. FF is the anti-Digg. - Robert Scoble

There shouldn't be any taboo for noticing that. As Scoble said: people here are smart, and generally very friendly :) - directeur from NoiseRiver

I'd like to think it's because of the way the "friend" system works here - we've kept a lot of riffraff out of our circle and what's left are the intellectuals who understand that things like race, sex and religion don't define a person as a whole. I'm not saying we're "smarter" - but we think beyond the small. Other communities have a more "open forum" for commenting (see: digg.com) which leads to racism, sexism and intolerance (thanks anonymity!) . That simply will not stand here - and I'm thankful. - Vince DeGeorge

yes bridging the gap between micro-communities is going to be a BIG Thing. FF will really become the "tower of babel" for the internet community. :)_ - Peter Dawson

Just wanted too observe that this is a cool observation....or something - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

there are lots of people of color on every social network. The difference is equivalent attention and how interesting items get disseminated through the community. - Jason Toney

Good! All perspectives and facets of humanity are valid and neccesary to contribute online I reckon. To be honest I haven't noticed. - Mo Kargas

How the hell does anyone know if anyone is black or white on here? - Sam Pullara

Sam, avatars, flickr streams, conversation, engagement - Jason Toney

It's something I never noticed..probably attributed to how I grew up. However, since I have a multi-cultural background and, grew up in a multi-cultural area it's a good thing to see that anywhere. :) - Candace

I had go look at the Tad's post on the CNN special to context. Re: Tad's observation, I think that may be b/c FF serves as a melting pot for communities through aggregation, so you're just more likely to come in contact with people from many other groups than you may not have noticed before. To FF's credit, it's easier to have interactions the cross-cut groups b/c it's a more open forum allowing people to come together based on common interests. - Cornelius Toole

FWIW I'm a black guy from Mississippi, grew up on Hwy61, about 30mins from the Crossroads where Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul(for the blues fans out there). - Cornelius Toole

I've been active on the web since '95, and in all that time and outside of personal friends, I followed only a handful of women and precisely one black person: Dare Obasanjo. Since joining FF, my Input Circle has greatly diversified... almost 50% of the people I follow are women, about 10% are black, and so on. I fucking love it. - Roger Benningfield

It shouldn't be noticed. that's what i enjoy about being here. i can have conversation with anyone (race, religion, etc) without pretense. - nesman89

Lester, I'm nearly the opposite. I find having interesting, engaged conversations with people is only enhanced by understanding more of who they are. Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Upbringing, Industry, etc., in my humble opinion, only serve to enrich and enhance dialogue and relationships. - Jason Toney

Agreed, Jason. As an aside, my online relationships are definitely more diverse than their real world counterparts and I happen to like that very much. - Kyle Hebert

+1 for FF being intelligent, engaging and and friendly. - Tsega Dinka

It's.....interesting, but i'm not sure if the features it adds to the microblogging experience will be enough to sustain it in the long term. We'll see. - Iain Baker

I've been trying Plurk, trying to reserve judgment, but it just seems goofy. Interesting to place so much emphasis on the clique, driven by karma=activity and rewarded by visible improvements--like a teenager's wardrobe. So lots of process to drive the social interaction, but it feels very artificial and limiting, like I have to do just the right things to get accepted. I guess it's targeted to a younger demo? - Mark Arend

not yet, but the ppl volume is there already which is a big help - Duncan Riley