Just wrote something similar. I'm really disappointed - not the greatest of ideas and really poor execution. - Vince DeGeorge
Okay, now I have to try it because I'm a sucker for bad. :) - Morton Fox
I'm holding back trying it because I hate opening windows in a virtual machine. No Mac version is just insane - Duncan Riley
I wrote about it, too. But I'm willing to try anything once. - Hao Chen
tried it out today and wasn't too impressed. Although if they implement an API that would allow me to integrate my users in there might be some value to it. - Brad Williams
Why? I thought it was a good try, and represented enormous potential to be the next SecondLife, as it's able to run 3D stuff in your browser without having to download very bulky programs like SecondLife? SecondLife didn't work for me when I first tried it 1 year ago. It always crashed.. Never touched it since.. - Winston Teo
I tried it, it is a very, very, very unpolished 3d chat room, no more, no less.. it's not a social medium... it's a fancy chat room. - David Silvernail
Almost all of Google's first efforts are crap. They are betting the farm on distributed though, and this seems to fit with that strategy perfectly. - Kevin
No Mac version is beyond insane, it is just flat-out stupid. Why on earth didn't they wait until they could release it for every platform? I mean, unless the Windows folks are being used as open beta testers.... Just seems very odd. I agree with you Duncan. - James Mowery via twhirl
I hate to say it, but I agree. The quality of the graphics is great, but the UI is downright awkward to use. The pop-up bubble messages are annoying and I didn't see any way of private chatting. Customizing your avatar is pretty minimal too. - Jim McCusker
When a polished product exists in the market - i.e. Second Life.. why... oh... why! would you release this product that is clearly only in a pre-alpha version state? - David Silvernail
Second Life did not interest me, so I passed on Lively today. - Russellreno
Mine kept closing itself down before I could choose a character. Will keep trying. - sergiooooooo
yea im a pessimist as well in regards to those kinds of web apps. I have no faith in that kind of freeform avatar stuff. - Anthony
was lively rushed out the door because of vivaty? - Kevin
We geeks really need to be careful of seeing everything as an opportunity to critique, if not outright bash. Can't anything just "BE" what it is for an hour, a day, a week. What possible harm would come from someone trying it out? - Douglas E. Welch via twhirl
No Linux version? Typical. Of course, it's Google. That means I *must* try it. :D - possible248
Thanks for the tip. SL is bad enough so I'll definitely avoid this. - Jonathon
Yeah, I'm not really digging this app. I grew out of this virtual life phase on the internet a long time ago. - Dennis Jackson
Google is many many generations away from turning this into something useful, but at least they got one thing right - they put it on the web, not the desktop. - Nicholas Molnar
I'm surprised they didn't compare it to Twitter, because that would be comparable. /smirk - Eric Rice
I don't like that answer, as SL was a big waste of time for me. thanks for saving me the time - Jason Kaneshiro
sergiooooooo, yes, if its a roll in your sidebar. They're not extinct, but they are rare these days. Sprague, good to see you're still keeping the spirit alive - Duncan Riley
I used to use one, but it seemed as soon as I'd update it, people would go inactive, or I'd have to change it again. (Examples: GeekWhat and Kent Newsome, both who just about fell off the map) Now, I think the Google Reader shared items blog gives a good enough clue as to what I read and find important. - Louis Gray
I found that no one ever clicked on them so I removed it. It was just noise. - Kevin
I'm on the same boat as Kevin. No one ever clicked on them so, I just got rid of it. I have a section for "friends" that include a couple of blogs but that's it. - Candace Holly
I have one on my dembot blog and really believe in it. - Andrew Baron
My blogroll would probably span a few screens.. Anyway blogroll feels slightly 1990s.. Don't you think so? - Winston Teo
Which reminds me, I need to update my blogroll. - J. Phil
Still maintain one but update it about once a month as things change - Charlie Anzman
I still use them, but only for close contacts. I like them. - Jim Kukral
I once used them, when Zeldman was that name in the bottom of every blogroll (go figure why ;-) ) and then I stopped blogging - directeur via NoiseRiver
In my opinion, the best use for a blogroll is for a _short_ list of _related_ blogs that the reader can hit in order to get more information on the topic. The "600 blogs I read every day" doesn't seem to me to be the best use of a blogroll. - possible248
I'm trying to convince myself to compile a decent blogroll since 2002:) - Federico Giacanelli
Perhaps it's time to convert the blogroll to a micro-blogroll. Better yet, I would like to display the people I find interesting (at friendfeed) as a widget. - Czar Derek Peterman
I recently dropped the blogroll on my blog. No one ever bothered clicking the links. What people do click are the links in my blog posts (yes, it does still happen). The blogs to which I link regularly in my blog posts are a much better barometer of the ones I follow than my blogroll ever was. I really didn't keep the blogroll up to date. - Hutch Carpenter
Hmm, regardless of clicks, SEO's understand that a blogroll link is a vote in Google, or at least indexing priority. If you really like someone, you'll tell Google about their blog by blogrolling them. I never nofollow those. - Brian Carter
Czar: How do you describe your "intersting" people at friendfeed? - directeur via NoiseRiver
I have it on good authority that a new blogroll widget is in the works that will bring blogrolls back - well at least with this crowd. I probably shouldn't say who and I don't know when, but it sounds like it will be dynamic and awesome. So don't count them out just yet - David Knight
My blogroll was too long for my sidebar, so I used to have a separate links page. I should clean it up and bring it back. Need to add a TON of social media bloggers I've been introduced to via FriendFeed these past few weeks. :D - Nathaniel Payne
are blogrolls that hump of cheese n the back of your fridge? :) - (jeff)isageek via fftogo
How about this for a theory: The blogroll has been superceded by Twitter and FriendFeed as the easiest way to track and associate oneself with others that are active, interesting and influential in social media - Daniel Young
It's crazy to me how many have dumped them when it's the first step in being social online if you have a blog... good for blogger to blogger luv and also good for pointing your visitors to additional related resources of value, so good all around. - Scott Bannon via twhirl
Duncan, this is so true. I was literally thinking late last night about doing a post on this as I was tidying up my own (relatively new) blog a bit and looking at the standard blogroll links that came with my Wordpress template. I had a quick look at a few fairly well-known blogs and there wasn't a blogroll in sight.. - Matt Hooper
Regarding the value of blogrolls for Google SEO. Check out this thread, about 3/4 the way down, for a comment on that by Adam Lasnik (Google search evangelist): "be careful about making assumptions on how Google does or will weight 'constant' links ;-" (http://friendfeed.com/e/7c7d98...) - Hutch Carpenter
I read blogs mostly in Google Reader. When I'm on a blog, I'm focused on the content rather than the sidebar. I like the blog roll concept, but it would reach a broader audience if it moved to the main column of content. For example, instead of showing a Last.fm widget in my sidebar, I automated a weekly post that shows my top artists from the prior week as a regular blog post. http://bit.ly/4rQvZU - Joe Lazarus
I think people need to start looking at traffic and subscribers. Granted, my blog is still fairly small, but I get more traffic and subscribers because of FriendFeed. - Rob Diana
If bloggers write less powerful titles, it will force people to click the link to see what the article is about ;) - Nick O'Neill
I'm amused by the terminology of "hurt" here, like FriendFeed is poking blogs with a sharp stick. Yes, there may be a short-term impact on ad revenue. There's also more commentary and discussion about blog posts, which may increase ad revenue long-term. The existence of active discussions outside of your blog is a *good* thing. - Brent Newhall
@Rob - that's the point I wanted to make. You have to buy off on the massive number of page reloads by commenters to believe that FriendFeed comments undermine bloggers' revenue. - Hutch Carpenter
Hutch, I love it! The thing is, even if Allen's highly inflated (10x!) figure was right that means $10 million dollar+ revenue sites (large blogs) would be hit by 1%, but the medium sized blog (say $350,000K) would be hit by $3500 and the small blog (say $3,500 and less in revenue) would be hit by $35 dollars...or less. - Robert Seidman
@Nick - now there's a different take. Less powerful headlines = more reason to click. - Hutch Carpenter
@Brent - I really wanted to avoid the "killing" meme. Hurt is better. And I agree that discussions outside the blog are a good thing. If you were to be commercial about it, discussions = marketing for a blog. You don't just market on your own site. You market out to where people are. - Hutch Carpenter
Who cares if FF affects blogger's revenue? Any blogger that cares is not a blogger but just a startup MSM clone anyway - Brian Sullivan
Hmmm... well, if bloggers can't make money and quit blogging, what content would be shared in FF? Since so much stuff shared on here is from pro bloggers, I find that question pretty hilarious. I'm SURE TechCrunch doesn't care about revenue at ALL. - Cyndy
Like we keep saying to the music industry; "adapt or die!" - Chris Nixon
@Robert - You're right. The logic on ad revenue applies regardless of blog size. Conceptually, there's a relationship between blog subscribers and the number of comments the blog receives. So anything affecting that ratio should move up and down the blog size scale. - Hutch Carpenter
@Brian - that's a good philosophical debate there. Once you get paid for writing, have you left the philosophical origins of blogging? I tend to look at blogging as more a user-centered activity, not a corporate-driven activity. If you happen to get paid, good on ya mate. But at some point, these big time blogs (e.g. TechCrunch) look more like corporate media companies. - Hutch Carpenter
Cyndy -- I never said bloggers can't make money -- but if they are dependent on page views and advertising they are in the same boat as MSM media that they have been criticizing and showing no sympathy for, saying that MSM must adapt to live. If you make your bed you must lie in it. Adapt or die would be my advice. - Brian Sullivan
There are give and takes to everything, but at the end of the day I think there is a lot more "give." If a dozen people read and comment on an article of mine on FF it's worth orders of magnitude more to me than the pennies I would have earned if they clicked through. - Steve Spalding
Once again, a great demonstration of the rule that any headline which ends in a question mark can be safely answered with the word "No" :) - Ian Betteridge via twhirl
It will get really sweet when FriendFeed connects to other commenting systems. There is already some of that with Disqus. If comments are pushed back to the source article, they add value to the content published at that URL. Perhaps the killer upgrade from Friendfeed would be to have a widget that does in-place comments on any blog post. Actually that has already been accomplished with a Yahoo Pipes trick. - µnauta
Buen punto lo de los duplicados. A veces me pasa y los borro a mano, pero hay que aplicarle un poco de Arquitectura de Información a los servicios para no contribuir al ruido. - µnauta
Ironically, Sarah, I have almost stopped using Facebook completely. Twitter and FriendFeed have really taken over for me. What is sad though is that most of my friends don't understand why I like these services. Quite odd. - James Mowery
facebook is good for those who are not as social media obsessed as us, though. :) - Sarah Perez
nice one ... especially true for services, where you mostly ask your friends for e.g. a handyman or a lawyer ... local services: first you ask your friends, then you search, then you see an ad somewhere ... that's the order of how merchants get customers ... we started with ads, moved on to search, and now move on to the next phase :) - Oliver Thylmann
“I'm starting to notice that a lot of conversations on FriendFeed around blogs are based on the actual headline -- many haven't read the blog content. Not sure if that is good or bad.”
I try really hard to read an article before commenting. I may LIKE before reading, but I try not to comment. This actually happened to me on my "FriendFeed poser" article.. a lot of people replied angrily after reading the headline or maybe the first paragraph of the article. - J. Phil
@J. Phil - I'm the same way. I'll like something in a way to "bookmark" it at times but will only comment about the content if I've read the content. Headlines are meant to draw in readers but don't necessarily represent all content. - Jennifer Leggio
sounds about normal to me... it's like people who have opinions on books they have never read... - Jonathan Beckett
That's been one of my biggest beef's with FF all along. People say, "scan for interest, read for content", but I think there's a little too much scanning going on. At least give us an option to show partial/full feed for content. Doesn't anyone remember the "content is king" days anymore? - Kevin Donahue
Maybe I don't see the irony in this film and I'm taking it too seriously, but, as a Dutch person being, I think it's quite scary to see a 11 year old girl handling a weapon like this. I don't think you'll be able to find a girl in the Netherlands who touched a weapon like that ever. - Ton Zijp
And then she promptly walks around in front of the barrel - bad call - still... nice execution. As for the Why? Why not... Boy scouts tie knots, whittle sticks with knives and shoot bows & arrows. Why shouldn't a girl be interested in guns? It's not like it's a strictly male pasttime. - Lucretia Pruitt
Guns Kill, Cars Kill, Planes Kill, Diet Kills. All have been used as weapons, but there is generally one thing on that list that is known to be used as a weapon of defense by free peoples. Though I don't own a gun, I think it is commendable that young people are taught to handle a weapon that can be used in defense against those that would wish her/him harm. The only problem I have with guns is when in the hands of criminals, whackos, and the inexperienced... for though it can protect, it can also be turned against the owner. - Curtis Cross via twhirl
Cyndy, we will get all the nice anti-weapon-people overhere & this'll be a nice & friendly place to be. No filmdirectors will be shot down around the corner anymore. From now on & in eternity. ;-) - Ton Zijp
11 yr old kids in Africa do this all the time, while high on khat. - Robert Hafer via twhirl
I'm having Blues Brothers flashbacks: http://tinyurl.com/5b4wa4 ... I wouldn't recommend that for in class "Show and Tell", but definitely a good skill to have when you get ditched at the alter. - John Budnik
Wow, that honestly might be the most impressive video I've seen in awhile. - Shawn Farner
and I thought the lawn zombie was freaky... I bet that dad won NRA Father of the Year! - ChangeForge via twhirl
I fear that I have started a household war with my girlfriend by saying this video disturbs me... - Clay Newton
And United Statians worry about violence in schools ... anyone see the connection? - Wibbly
that's adorable, and she's getting quicker too: http://tinyurl.com/624y8d -- now is there any wonder why child labor was such a big hit in the industrial revolution? - Pete Delucchi
funny, my 11 year old was practicing something similar with my boyfriend and new weapons purchase a few weeks ago - she's pretty good too, scary - Susanne "Renee" Bullo
Sign her up for the new GI Joe movie....NOW! - Luis
One paart of me thinks this is amasing, the other thinks we really need stricter gun laws. - Max Dubin via twhirl
that's awesome! it gives me so many ideas for stuff to teach my girls. - Bruce Williams
Ugliest thing I have seen in a long time. Who would teach a young person such a thing? There is alot of other challenges to be able to take apart, video and show off. I vote for: Parent FAIL. - darodave
@darodave in particular if her family has weapons like that around the house, I'd much rather have her be familiar with them (and their dangers) than not. - Bruce Williams
Why would a family need guns like that in a house? Who in the US need an automatic assault rifle in their house? - darodave
Currently? No one. But can you read the future? - Curtis Cross via twhirl
Sorry, I am trying to think logically about this thread. Lets just send this link to the families of Columbine or Virginia Tech victims. Makes me real proud to be apart of a something that lets these devices exist. It doesn't make sense. - darodave
@darodave what doesn't make sense? U.S. citizens have a right to own guns, so that the government isn't the only entity with that power. either you buy that or you don't - if you do, then you have to accept that the horrible tragedies of Columbine and Virginia Tech are the dear price we pay for that right. I would never suggest anyone be proud of those events, but perhaps you could be proud of our armed men who freed the concentration camps in WWII. - Bruce Williams
more likely testing launch of App store before the big day, they always do this before something big, but hey it's Tuesday on the East Coast, so you never know. - Wayne Sutton
weird though, they normally don't take it down this early for a tuesday new product launch... - MG Siegler
my money is on the app store. minor upgrades if any on the macbooks - Joseph Skerbec via twhirl
I'm hoping for the redesigned Macbooks (crosses fingers). - Howard Saavedra
Heck, I'd ask for more followers (I would probably be about 500th or lower), but then Scoble would block me ;) - Vince DeGeorge
I am reported as having 662 but FF tells me I have 952. Seems like a higher than normal margin. If I understand it, those folks are either private or lurkers? - Sacca
Nuts that I made this list ... good stuff :) - Nick O'Neill
a nice list of enemies that must be destroyed. :) just kidding "I'm not here to make friends!" - Marshall Kirkpatrick
@Sacca, the author's said that they can only crawl active accounts that have published activity. There are likely _a ton_ of accounts that were created, following you for example, that weren't picked up due to inactivity. Mine was off by 25-30% as well. And if you think about it... even the most popular activities here just graze 100 likes or comments, not 2000, so there are a lot of people who don't participate. - Louis Gray
I'm with Chris, I'm being underreported, private ones? - MG Siegler
I have 63. I thought I would have made the list. - Rob Williams
This should be fun to explore new users. - Mark Krynsky
Darn, just missed. 5 minutes late, that should be my motto. - J. Phil
it's pretty interesting to me, actually, that for being as tiny, tech focused and A-list driven as people say FF is - nobody's got more than 20% of users following them and only 7 people have more than 7% of users following them. That makes me think things are more diverse around here than I thought. No? - Marshall Kirkpatrick
@Marshall The truth is, small blogs have a bigger voice here than any other social service. - Shey
@kriskrug then I must be a Sucka Playboy! Dont get how I could've make this list, but its a nice bday surpise anyway. - Schlomo Rabinowitz
Looking at a graph of the top 50 users, the Default Nine effect isn't all that pronounced. The distribution of users looks pretty much like the sort of thing you get when you do any graph of this sort (i.e. a classic long tail) http://kshep.posterous.com/gra... - Ken Sheppardson
i'm yearning for the day that the top 5 are non-techies...that will be a great day for Friendfeed! - Pokai
I especiallylike Pokai's comment—I'll be happiest when the top users are diverse people, not just "techies." - Cathryn Hrudicka
Pokai....I don't think that is even possible. - Rahsheen Porter
The list reports my followers at 255, FF shows me closer to 355, but still cool to be on the list at 209 even if I feel I'm not as active on FF as many, many others, guess I'm still relatively active... - Shannon Clark
If my stats were reported correctly, I would appear in the top 100 - woo hoo!! - Susan Beebe
If they published a list of the top 75,000, I'd totally make it. ;) - Wes Justice
Alas, I've not hit the top 250... ;-) - Mark Dykeman
this list isn't as useful as a list of top n most interesting people (the people with the most "likes" or top n users with the most comments.) - Alan Le
I like Alan's idea. That would be fun to know. - Yolanda
Reminds me of the baby on the Van Halen 1984 cover. That's right.. I'm old. - Brad McCrorey
How long is this debate going to continue? Hasn't it finished yet? And yes I hate Plurk too. - ChaCha Fance
I still want to know why anybody cares what "iJustine" thinks. she never has anything of substance to say and, in this case, is clearly after some exposure. - Brett Kelly
To bad we can't hide a room share... imho twitter Vs. friendfeed should be put to rest. - Czar Derek Peterman
I'm using this and like it. I'm going to try it against several of the other popular ones and see which one survives. I stopped using clients because Twitter was down so much and because Twitter's API was just, well, barfing with my data flows. - Robert Scoble
I really like the column view. I use it since two days now and it really makes it easier for me to stay on track, because I have different groups for different people and a few searches on special topics. - Sebastian Küpers
I have to say that the Summize integration plus the ability to create groups is really cool - luca Filigheddu
Yes, I agree with luca. Unfortunatley I can't help myself from being uncomfortable with the Air apps look & feel :( - Marcello Del Bono
Looks different from other twitter clients, with that column view, I'll give it a try - João Almeida
TweetDeck rocks! Louis brought it to my attention and I never looked back! Groups, Search, Summize integration, multi-panel view, and slick UI are awesome. Only beef: sucks a lot of memory, but that's sorta my fault for putting multiple searches / group queries in there - gotta tweak it some. Love it!!Se - Susan Beebe
I've officially ditched Twhirl for TweetDeck after using over the weekend. Needs tinyurl though. - Geoff Peterson
Looks promising, however I couldn't run it on PowerPC, the Air installer reports an error. - µnauta
The column layout is really, really helpful. But I'm missing tons of features from twhirl. Would love to see the column view as an option in twhirl. - Johannes Kleske
One of the columns could be FriendFeed - João Almeida
This could be much cooler if each column could be a different feed, it could be the all in one desktop aggregator. Friendfeed column at the very minimum is almost a necessity with Twitter's issues. - Greg Hollingsworth via twhirl
Looks really promising. I don't like that it requires too much space on my screen, but this is easy to get fixed. And I have already suggested quite a few new features. - Alex Popescu via feedalizr
i'm hardly using twitter thes days, but this is a neat app. much better than most of the other clients i've used including my favorite, twhirl - Cee Bee
In part via Dave Winer, was it? What, just because he's famous and I'm nobody he gets the credit for his part (which I said first but no-one is listening http://pastoid.com/yy+) but I get no credit for telling you how to subscribe across installs, http://pastoid.com/yz+ (I'm just kidding ;) - Michael C. Harris
Seriously though, nice article. I doubt that any of the people doing installs now are going to try to be a competitor to identi.ca. Most of them are actively helping Evan out. - Michael C. Harris
Michael, apologies, I should hat tipped it. I spent 4 hours shopping for a birthday present for my wife today, I feel frazzled, so cut me some slack :-) - Duncan Riley
When it's open source, do you call them clones, or is it part of the same thing? - jjprojects
Slack cut, it was way too cold to be shopping today. - Michael C. Harris
Michael, it pissed down when I came out of Chaddy as well...just my luck. JJ, good point, I tossed up alternatives, but clones was short for the headline :-) - Duncan Riley
the open source nature of Identi.ca is going to be fun to watch.. hopefully most dev efforts will go towards helping Evan further develop Identi.ca. - Susan Beebe
Duncan, heh, I didn't expect that, I was just kidding, but thanks. And you get even more slack cut just for having to go to Chadstone :) - Michael C. Harris
Twitter has the "first to market" thing going for it. Most people I know are just starting to hear about Twitter and are beginning to use it. I'm in Twitter, now FF and moving to use Identi.ca and others. The landscape changes fast...but I think Twitter will be the most used of the group and most popular. - Geoff Peterson
I'm fed up trying stuff before others. I'll stick to twitter for the time being - Graham Lawrence
gah the endless FF vs twitter debate, first and foremost FF wasn't about taking on twitter it was about cramming all your social network feeds into one place, then suddenly it was the next google, and now its the next twitter - Dan Rockwell via twhirl
maybe its just me but it sure seems like some folks comment on friendfeed w/out actually reading the post - this was not a ff replacing twitter related post it was about bootstrapping in general and the rapid scaling effect of ff bootstrapping off of twitter, much like podcasting off of blogging - this blind commenting does the original poster a disservice & labels you as a *chose your favorite expletive* - nice post btw dave :) - mike "glemak" dunn
It might grow faster than Twitter, but it's another thing entirely. Twitter is all about communicating; FriendFeed is about sharing. It's similar, but not the same. Also FriendFeed is doing the Plurk thing: receiving the Twitter refugees while those guys finally iron out the kinks and get Twitter up and running once and for friggin' all. - Juan Carlo Rodríguez
If I end up buying a 3G IPhone soon, I guess FriendFeed will be a lot more useful then it is to me now, on my TMobile Sidekick Slide. I can still get something out of FF on a Sidekick - but can't interact or comment from there and FF doesn't seem to have a mobile site, just a IPHone site. - Marshall Sponder
I love Twitter like you love an abusive girlfriend -- you know it's not going to work out, but you really wish it would, and you *do* love her... - John Biesnecker
Wow that sucks. Hope he doesn't really get in trouble - klecu
um, i'm as much of a libertarian, keep the gov't outta my life as the next guy, but if we allow people to sell their votes doesn't that mean that the person with the most money will always win? Is it really necessary for the US to act like some 3rd World country? - chartreuse
"selling" votes is a violation of democratic principles and is (and has been) illegal. If you're protesting democracy by selling your vote, then you deserve the consequences. Many of the folks working on electronic voting systems for the last 20 years have had to develop mechanisms to prevent vote selling (for example, the lack of receipts) while still ensuring the integrity of the vote. Your protest is stupid, whiny, and laughable. - Glen Campbell
Oh come 'on now, millions of Americans sell their votes every election for the 'entitlement program' or 'moral value' of their choice... this kid is just more direct in saying put the money in my hand. - Scott Bannon via twhirl
Oh this is stupendous. :D I'm with Scott. Nothing new to see here, but I'm very very glad the subject was raised. P.S. The United States isn't a democracy, hate to burst bubbles. :) - Hal Rottenberg via twhirl
Lock him up for a year. When he gets out, tell him it was just a joke. - William Beem
Corruption is the most insidious problem faced by government; it's not a laughing matter. Why can't I just pay the IRS agent a few hundred dollars to ignore my deductions? Let me take the government contractor on a trip to Disneyland right before he approves my bid for the contract. If a vote can be bought and sold, it makes a mockery of democracy. Yes, there's corruption in government, but that's no excuse to permit it, or even encourage it. - Glen Campbell
Good call Hal, everyone forgets that line, "and to The Republic for which it stands..." - Scott Bannon via twhirl
