Dan Stuart - Likes - FriendFeed

I think the current FriendFeed approach is close to optimal. Do you not see it that way? - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

FF has the inherant ability for the user to take control, both of what they see and the comments they allow. If a user is judicious in their lists and/or filters they should see mostly relevent content (IF that's what they actually want to see). The ability for a poster to moderate comments on their own post gives us the ability to avoid trolls/spam and/or steer the conversation (again,... more... - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Scoble and other "super users" have this problem much more than regular people because they have thousands of subscribers. This is also part of the reason that Twitter probably works better for celebrities -- it's more of a broadcast channel. - Paul Buchheit

They could have a million subscribers and it wouldn't be an issue, Paul: turn off comments on his FF posts and it would be all broadcast all the time. It's the number of people they choose to subscribe TO that is the issue. To be honest, it's like someone walking into a football stadium and then complaining that it's too loud. If one chooses to follow thosuands of people one must surely expect that the amount of 'noise' is going to increase. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

One thing that was tossed around a while back was the ability to disable comments from anyone you're not subscribed to: that'd allow those with a lot of subscribers to have high-signal conversations that their subscribers can still see and gain value from. - Mark Trapp

Perhaps he'd like a 'hide user' button similar to FB? This would prevent the "brings people into YOUR life that YOU DID NOT INVITE!" effect... of course the conversation could be rather disjointed. Maybe a small 'additional comments hidden' status that would show them when desired... Of course, without the conversations, FF == twitter? - Eric Borisch

Paul, can you help me test something? :) - directeur

The features that would make FF optimal would be to let users follow each other's hides and blocks. For most users this would be a nice, small improvement. For users like scobleizer it might make a huge difference. Of course, implementation details matter. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

The problem is that we don't keep groups relatively small. There are always those who are like me who like to connect, for one, but even normal people add tons of people to their groups. It's just natural. I remember I was first to add 1,000 people to my Twitter account and people thought I was weird. Now thousands of people do that. - Robert Scoble

One thing with Facebook is they capped it at 5,000 friends. Which kept it from being used by super-connectors but also caused it to be seen as a place where you talk with just your real life friends. Now that public pages are coming on strong, we're seeing that change. - Robert Scoble

Bruce: the FriendFeed approach is far from optimal. Many, many people told me they don't like joining a forum and like just lurking instead, which is why they chose Twitter (Tim O'Reilly is not the only one who told me this). Tim Robbins likes that on Twitter he can listen to his heros. He sees it as a learning engine. Those of us here love FriendFeed because it lets us talk. But it definitely turns off lots of people. - Robert Scoble

Paul: the solution is to let us toggle comments on and off. Give the USER CONTROL. If they just want to listen to their friends, hide all the other noise. But then give us who like commenting ability to turn that back on. - Robert Scoble

You have the ability to toggle comments on and off: Edit -> Disable Comments. - Mark Trapp

Robert, comments _are_ content. - directeur

Mark: that is on a PER ITEM BASIS though. Totally useless for what we're talking about. - Robert Scoble

directeur: yes, but they are content a LOT of people don't want to see or deal with. - Robert Scoble

Robert, but then you'll be a megaphone broadcasting "your" views. - directeur

Robert has the same comments (or the same potential) on his blog as he does on FriendFeed, so I don't think it's the comments themselves. I think it's the fact that FriendFeed makes comments almost on equal level as the original post, instead of burying them way down at the bottom of a page or requiring a click to view. Out of sight, out of mind, right? - Daniel Sims

Nothing in the API precludes someone from writing a FriendFeed client that hides all the comments so you just see a river of feed items. That's how Twhirl, AlertThingy, and all the native iPhone apps implement FriendFeed. - Mark Trapp

I have two arms. I barely use my left one. Please cut it off! - directeur

Turning comments off entirely would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you could authorize other users to delete comments on your items, you could minimize the forum problem. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

directeur: that's right. That's what most professional publishers want. - Robert Scoble

I really think the "comments are awesome, why would you ever want to get rid of comments" argument falls on deaf ears at this point. The solution ought to be how to turn off comments if you want to get Scoble (or the people he's saying he represents) back on the FriendFeed train, or to say they're not worth it. I do think if it weren't for the comments, there'd be at least a half dozen other things Scoble or people like him would come up with to not like FriendFeed at this point. - Mark Trapp

I like the idea of having another options to disable comments for people you're not subscribed to. That way you can allow conversation, but limit it to people you "know" if it makes you more comfortable or limits the noise. I think you should have the ability to set the option as a default for all new posts but be able to override it on a post-by-post basis: 1) public comments 2)... more... - Fa La La La Lindsay

Her Linday-ness: I want that but it would be hard to design. - Robert Scoble

Mark, I think you make a valid point but then the question becomes: if there are no comments, is FF still the best medium to use? If so, then the ability to turn off comments on one's entire feed should be easy enough to code and implement. I suspect, though, that all things being equal (meaning: there's no ability to comment on an item) FF would no longer be the best medium for a broadcaster. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Mark: I don't think these people will consider FriendFeed at this point. Too much momentum over on Twitter. Look at the news brands: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... you're not going to get them to switch off of Twitter at this point. Sorry. That game is over. - Robert Scoble

I think the real game is how does Facebook evolve? - Robert Scoble

The real game is an open decentralized solution. yes, I'm a dreamer. - directeur

Which leads everyone to wonder why you're trying to nitpick a feature like this, or base your argument on the lack of the feature. The real reason why you (and others like you) aren't into FriendFeed isn't because of the forum problem or the lack of a feature, it's because you think Twitter is better and that's where everyone is. That's fine: that's a great argument. The rest of it is inconsequential to that argument, and wouldn't invalidate it even if you got your way. So what's the point? - Mark Trapp

I've been talking with a lot of brands and celebrities and regular people. For public studying they like Twitter better. That has Facebook wondering what it will be in the future. - Robert Scoble

Mark: sorry, but I spent two years talking to thousands of people about FriendFeed and I'm just passing along why they didn't like it. Take that feedback or leave it. Your choice. - Robert Scoble

Mark: did you speak at dozens of conferences about FriendFeed and Twitter? Did you show hundreds of tech influentials FriendFeed and listen to their feedback? - Robert Scoble

But your feedback doesn't correlate to the real reason why you, and the people you say you represent, are saying why you won't ever use FriendFeed. You said there's nothing anyone could do to get people to use FriendFeed. - Mark Trapp

Mark: if I want to listen to ONLY tech influentials, I can on Twitter. I can't on Facebook. I can't on FriendFeed. http://twitter.com/Scoblei... - Robert Scoble

Robert, if you're going to pull the "don't you know who I am?" crap, it falls on deaf ears. Let's have a constructive conversation on what you're trying to talk about. - Mark Trapp

Can't you make lists in FF? - Andrizzle Gizzle

Sure you can: you can import feeds and lists on FriendFeed. - Mark Trapp

Mark: times change and at this point it would be hard to get anyone to take FriendFeed seriously. That said, I believe that it IS possible to move people from Facebook to Twitter or Twitter to Facebook, so THAT is the real battlefront. - Robert Scoble

any comment thread about 20+ without threading and community promotion/demotion becomes difficult to participate in (for me). Though there is a difference between discussing the radiator on a 94 Subaru and the nature of discussion forums. - Hayes Haugen

Robert: is the problem really comments or the fact that each time an item gets commented, the items pops back at the top of the list? Regarding the noise, I think that the "problem" with friendfeed is that it was much easier for people to plug in automated feeds and that as a result, there was less of an explicit action. I do not know how other people feel about this but I really miss... more... - Edwin Khodabakchian

Mark: OK, show me your public list the way I did on Twitter. You can't do that here, sorry. - Robert Scoble

Hayes: BING BING BING. - Robert Scoble

Ok, so it's not about who you read, it's who you can show that you are reading. - Andrizzle Gizzle

Bing goes the internet! lol - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Sure Twitter has a lot of momentum now, but how quickly the winds change. Frankly, it's a shame that FF is going to be neglected... I wish that someone with as much motivation and insight as Paul and the original team could take it over now that FB has consumed them. There is still SO MUCH potential in this platform that it is depressing to see it squandered. @Robert - I don't think it... more... - Fa La La La Lindsay

Robert, I don't use public lists: I believe you read my blog post about why I don't. But Hutch Carpenter does, and here's his FriendFeed public list on Innovation Management: http://friendfeed.com/innovat... - Mark Trapp

Robert, who do you call "influentials"? Do they talk "tech" all the day? Isn't it unhuman? Let's go back to spring/summer 2008, and redefine "smart" for me, please :) - directeur

Edwin: the problem is on FriendFeed it has the chat problem -- it gets noisy and gets noisy fast. - Robert Scoble

directeur: influentials are people who influence. I picked them. Shoot me. - Robert Scoble

The noise is largely proportional to the circles you're in. If you put yourself in a huge room, it will be a loud room. - Kevin Fox

Robert, do you remember the "MOAR NOISE" phrase? It was THE reason why I built NoiseRiver. Filters, I used to say when you were always saying: MORE NOISE! - directeur

Kevin: exactly. But on FriendFeed the room gets big VERY QUICKLY because as more people join they drag in their followers with them. - Robert Scoble

Facebook has the same problem. While we're chatting here, tons of tech news diversity have swooped by. - Robert Scoble

So Robert, should there be something built in to "warn" others of becoming "chatty". Something that says: "This comment is irrelevant. You may post again when you have something relevant and germane to our discussion"? So WHO makes those distinctions and judgements? - Melanie Reed

Compare this chat to http://twitter.com/Scoblei... which one brought more information to you? The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time. - Robert Scoble

Melanie: in a chat room you can't control people that way. - Robert Scoble

Robert: True, but [big number]*[average number] is far larger than [average number]*[average number] - Kevin Fox

Hayes you are correct. Slashdot has actually had the best discussion forums for more than ten years because it has threading and community moderation. Its not a trendy social networking site though so no one notices. If you had a social network site where you post topics but with Slashdot like forums it would rock. Only down side is moderators tend to inject bias but /. has good signal after moderation kicks in - Ed Millard

Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :) - Melanie Reed

(Where you (scoble) are the big number) - Kevin Fox

Does it really have to be one or the other Robert? - Internet's Tad from fftogo

Kevin: the problem with FriendFeed is if you and Melanie were having a conversation it would be pretty small, right? But I follow you. The second I touch your conversation it gets big. - Robert Scoble

If only someone could figure out how to make a room that gets big very quickly appeal to broadcasters... - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

This problem doesn't happen on the private Facebook because you have two-way friending there and a cap of 5,000. But on Facebook Pages? Absolutely. Noise baby noise! - Robert Scoble

Bruce: broadcasters don't like any of this because there's no way to monetize. Why do you think Arrington really hated this? - Robert Scoble

Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :) What I would like is what Tad is implying in his comment. You know you can have "...two opposites that have learned how to blaze together" ;) And excuse me, but is wrong with a big conversation? - Melanie Reed

"The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time. " If someone doesn't care about it on FF, they can hide it and not see it again. Problem solved. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Chatting is not intended to provide information. It is like planning -- it is the process of chatting that is what is useful not the words that are spoken/written. - Brian Sullivan

Thank you, Tina! and Brian! - Melanie Reed

Melanie: I love big conversations. That's why I loved FriendFeed. But most people aren't like me. - Robert Scoble

Tina: there are so many things going by on my screen in FriendFeed that hiding them all would take all day long. - Robert Scoble

Robert -- why is it that you think that people are like you and things should be done for your needs? - Brian Sullivan

FF is too busy!! - Joe Silence is not Santa

Brian: again, it's not about me. - Robert Scoble

Robert one word: APML. I used to yell it back in 2008, no one cared. You want "filters" by personal interest. - directeur

FreiendFeed sold ME on it two years ago. I've been trying to sell others on it. The feedback I'm giving is from OTHERS. - Robert Scoble

The Forum Problem is a problem? - teh Dork Knight aka Kenny

directeur: APML will never work. - Robert Scoble

oh dear, don't hate the messenger. - Joe Silence is not Santa

Robert: who are these "others" and what are their numbers? - Melanie Reed

Paul nailed it - Twitter is a broadcast channel. Massive amounts of subscriptions are fine there - it's all about reach. But if you want discovery, if you want to engage, then FriendFeed and FoaF is where it's all. They're NOT the same. One you can subscribe/follow as many as you want, in the other, subscription abuse will cripple your ability to view and interact. - AJ Kohn

Finally, a thread on this subject that makes sense. - Akiva Moskovitz

Threading may or may not help... it seemed to hurt with GoogleWave... it was so hard to follow all the tangents... of course without threading a lot of the tangents just get lost anyway. I guess I have given up on trying to catch everything... If it's important and I didn't see it the first time, eventually the concept will bubble up enough times for me to notice. That's one NICE thing about following lots of people and participating in lots of convos. - Fa La La La Lindsay

why won't APML, or something like it, work? i missed that memo - Marshall Kirkpatrick

Robert, go say this to Last.fm or the BBC :-) Smart recommendation engines are the future - directeur

FriendFeed may make some audience/discussion leak out, but also makes audience leak in through seeing what your friends are talking about. Arrington may be mostly concerned about the leak out. Other broadcasters may be looking for the leak in. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Marshall, me neither! :) - directeur

Also, the meta around the content in FF (likes, comments) is what helps turns random data into information. It's annotated and qualified. - AJ Kohn

Lindsay: true - Hayes Haugen

Thank you, AJ, yes. And you can sort that out when you want to on your own time. That's the utility of it. - Melanie Reed

Perhaps one solution to the 'forum problem' is to allow posters to selectively choose who can participate in the discussion but still be viewable to the public. - Rodfather

I love the noise but I don't subscribe to thousands of user. - ashish from iPhone

So maybe the real question is, why do some people prefer conversation over broadcasting and vice versa? Is the broadcast-mentality simply a matter of popularity (the inability to reciprocate all the connections, so just broadcast instead) or is the effort it takes to connect with people on a more meaningful basis a major turn-off? Or is it just the tools that people use and what makes it easier for them? - Fa La La La Lindsay

Rodfather, this will bring wars. Trust me. I'm not a commercial object. So you want to SHOUT and ask me to close my mouth? :) Moreover, close comments, other threads will be started and the noise you wanted to avoid will be even greater. The Streisand Effect, anyone? :) - directeur

For example: this discussion has 80+ comments and rolling. I don't mind that at all. I am engaged. I am also updating a web page on our web site as I do it and switching over to grade 30 some PRF's for students on the play Macbeth. I am not having any trouble with the "forum problem" or any "chattiness" I learned the "ropes" of FF when I joined and accepted that it as it was. - Melanie Reed

To me FF turns data (the river of content out there) into information (the good stuff - explained). The tool set FF provides is superior in this way - but it takes time to dial in the right set of filters to apply to the data set (which changes!) and many simply overwhelm the great filtering system they've provided. - AJ Kohn

A lot of people don't want to put in the time and effort to make the tool work for them like you, AJ and Melanie. I can empathize with that. I think it also has to serve their base inclination of either broadcasting or conversation, and the tool choice is also influenced by whether they already are part of a community on it or not. Most people won't leave their community even if it us using the less appropriate tool for their inclination. - Fa La La La Lindsay

directeur, then those people can make their own thread and allow everyone to comment. I'm thinking of in case there's a roundtable event where certain 'experts' in a field can have a thread to discuss a topic among themselves without worrying about others cluttering the thread. - Rodfather

AJ, indeed - the task is to build new concepts with and for filters. Filters, not to shut stuff out, but to mix it better to create a constant flow of narratives. - zeroinfluencer

AJ, is it more that FF provides the platform for the users to turn that data into information? The users are integral to FF. Now with Twitter you can program a week's worth of tweets (I have heard) but I don't wish to do that. Facebook... you could almost do that-although it does have engagement -you could certainly use it without. But FF runs on an engagement engine - Melanie Reed

Marshall: I don't trust automatic systems to guess what I'm going to be interested in next. Never seen a system yet that works. But we should debate this. - Robert Scoble

Robert, we should debate it! The robot that makes all my decisions for me says it's quite likely I would enjoy doing that! ;) - Marshall Kirkpatrick

That's getting into intelligent agents and AI once full blown - Melanie Reed

if you ask me, and you don't, the problem has always been lack of comment moderation and threading. Too many users isn't a problem if no one sees them. Slashdot was one of the first doing this, using an interface which is actually very similar to FF and it seems to work there. - Vincent van Wylick

Web tech needs to look outside their dev environments for richer influences in filter design: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - zeroinfluencer

Is the problem that Robert is looking for a single service solution. I see the same 'content' on Twitter and FriendFeed but I scan Twitter for 'raw information' and go to FriendFeed to 'discuss' it with others. I watch the news at home on TV but I talk about it with my friends or work colleagues around the water cooler or coffee shop table. I am comfortable existing in several spaces - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

@Lindsay: I don't know. I'd rather educate people on the power that FF can provide with a little effort. Or, that it actually doesn't take LOTS of subscriptions. Max it at Dunbar's number (which is what I do for my home feed) and you'd be fine. - AJ Kohn

+++ Johnny Scotty would be proud of you: The right tool for the job - Melanie Reed

@David: Exactly! My home feed - I tweak it. I use people like Robert and Rob Diana and Michael Fruchter and Anthony Citrano and Thomas Hawk and numerous others to bring a mix of themes and concepts into my feed. - AJ Kohn

So are we saying that its not the tool itself...but HOW it is or is not used that maxes utility? If so I agree! - Melanie Reed

@Melanie: Yes, the users are the key. The users are the filters. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/soylent... And the engagement provides a rich annotation and a secondary level of filtering. So yes, users and their engagement absolutely matter. - AJ Kohn

Sure, yes, how you use it maxes utility. But it also helps if it's suited to how you WANT to use it... if not it's a struggle. And people don't like to struggle, even if it's possible to make something do what you want it to... easier to use another tool if it fits your purpose better. FriendFeed fits my purpose so it's not a struggle for me... but for someone with a more broadcasting mindset than a conversational one, it's going to be tougher. - Fa La La La Lindsay

Vincent, most long-time FriendFeeders have spoken strongly against any sort of moderation/rating system for comments. No one wants mobs of people trying to control what other people can see like what happens on Digg. It's why every time the topic of 'Unlike' comes up, people rise up to talk it down because it creates an aura of competition and negativity. - Akiva Moskovitz

AJ, yes! users are the filters. - Melanie Reed

Akiva +++ - Melanie Reed

Anybody use Mailchimp here? It is tangential to the discussion. They have a cracker jack built in user educational system that monitors and makes usage suggestions. - Melanie Reed

Is lunchtime finally over yet? - Hayes Haugen

I'd love to peek in on the recommendation engine discussions. I'm in the 'they don't work camp' myself but I'm open to being convinced and perhaps technology has approached a point where it could work but ... from working in eCommerce I've seen it fail time and time again. Random factors, contextual issues etc. - AJ Kohn

@Melanie: Know of Mailchimp but don't use. The 'monitor and makes usage suggestions' sounds interesting though. - AJ Kohn

AJ, that's because the devs didn't pay attention when their instructors (ahem) were teaching it to them. ;) - Melanie Reed

Another point I'd like to make is that no one is forcing anyone to read the comments here. If people want a broadcast-only medium, it's fairly easy not to click on the 'x more comments' link. Unfortunately, Robert makes a painful observation: he played FriendFeed cheerleader for two years and the people who needed to take the bait didn't or did but then cut loose. That pretty much means... more... - Akiva Moskovitz

Johnny: I am comfortable with all of these too, but it's not about me. But, anyway, the business battle now is between Facebook and Twitter and it'll be interesting to see the choices that Paul's team makes and how those compare with the team NK over at Twitter is making. Then the market will choose which one is best. - Robert Scoble

Akiva: If I were at Facebook and knew that they could turn into the next MySpace I'd put every single engineering minute onto Facebook. Wouldn't you? - Robert Scoble

Like I said before, there is still SO MUCH potential here... and it's a shame to see it squandered. I think there are a lot of ways it could be taken to the next level. For sure it could be a contender to Twitter with a few enhancements, but fat chance of that now that there is no longer a dev team, and that it's "parent" is a competitor. - Fa La La La Lindsay

Robert, here's a good example: You want to debate intelligent recommendation agents? Allright, I know that you know Chris Saad. Chris is a very cool guy in fact! But do you know Deniz Oktar? Deniz, who is not as popular as Chris, is a SMART Turkish guy too and works on the same subject. If you limit your view to "popular" people, you'll definitely miss him. And debating such a subject without alternative ideas likes Deniz's or humbly mine, won't be perfect :) - directeur

Not sure, Robert. Is turning into the next MySpace a good thing for you or a bad thing? For me, it'd be bad. - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva, go take a look at (and experience) mailchimp's monitor and make usage suggestion system. It's adaptable for a number of scenarios - Melanie Reed

I think the business battle (other than the marketing to consumers end of it) will be occupied and won by Wave. Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed are mere toys in that world. - Brian Sullivan

Melanie, I'm not complaining about a solution that MailChimp could provide. I'm fine with FriendFeed as it is (for the most part). - Akiva Moskovitz

directeur: most people choose news brands to curate and find new people that will have something valuable to say. See http://twitter.com/Scoblei... for instance. That already is TOO MUCH so telling people to get more people or more things into their lives just isn't going to cut it for most people. - Robert Scoble

Allowing public panels where only the influential can talk certainly would have a useful role, Its just like panels at conferences. A lot of people would no doubt like to just follow the influential in these forums. On the down side it would make the already influential more so and it would probably lose some audience if it was done a lot because there is no democratic engagement. The people who don't spend all their time cultivating their fame and networks do say interesting things too. - Ed Millard

directeur: and, anyway. if he's in Turkey and not in San Francisco he's far less likely to influence tech in a major way. So I disagree. - Robert Scoble

(FYI - look at this conversation and tell me where else anything like this could take place.) - AJ Kohn

No, we're completely boring and worthless, Ed. We're not worth paying attention to. I mean, who wants to see a picture of our kids? ;) - Fa La La La Lindsay

Akiva, I meant for those who might struggle "getting" FF but would enjoy and benefit from it once they do. There's an "on ramp" to FF that rivals North Corridor Dallas coming out of an apt complex on to 50mph+ 4 lane traffic. Some of us are better at that than others, but you still see a lot of cars on the road. :) - Melanie Reed

IRC or a phpBB messageboard! - Joe Silence is not Santa

There has also been a lack of creative uses using the FF tool sets. Good uses of the tools inspires participation + it's easy to criticize -- harder to create. - zeroinfluencer

@Robert: Whoa, whoa. Weren't you arguing that adding 8K new people from Twitter Lists was a good thing? Is more better, or worse? - AJ Kohn

+++David - Melanie Reed

@David: Good point, no real developer platform. That's been a big boon for both Facebook and Twitter. - AJ Kohn

Robert, yet he DOES. You just aren't into that speciality :) If you think that every "tech" thing must happen in SF you really miss A LOT. - directeur

Woah, Robert, so you are saying anyone who doesn't live in SF doesn't count in a tech discussion? That's a little self centered isn't it? - Ed Millard

I understand it but I really dislike any discussions where the topic seems to be "how can we turn this thing that the people who use it like into something that people who don't use it and would only use it for selfish reasons like?" Screw them. If something's not as "techy" as Slashdot and it's more chaotic because the comments aren't threaded like Slashdot and there's no moderation... more... - Mark H

Lindsay, I want to see a picture of your kids. I only wish I had some to show back. ;) - Melanie Reed

Ed: you are NOT a careful reader. - Robert Scoble

Robert's not saying that those ideas can't happen, or that a true revelation can't come from elsewhere, but that ... the likelihood that someone outside of SF to influence tech is less. The Capital of the Internet is SF. I'd agree with that. But that doesn't mean it'll always stay that way, nor does it mean that tech from other areas can't be influential. (least that's how I read it.) - AJ Kohn

OK I just read it, you still said if you don't live in SF there is very little chance you will have any influence on tech. If you have no influence then you either have nothing to say on the subject, or even if you do have something to say it wont matter. - Ed Millard

Hrm, I think the whole thing is overblown. My personal FF landing page still has as much utility as my first day (if not more). Bleh, whatever. - Chieze Okoye

@AJ The FF API is beautiful, I don't think dev communities saw the richness that you can create with the aggregation of FF streams. A few valley PR oriented bloggers pushed 'conversation' as FF's 'killer app' - whereas, the realtime aggregation streams and republishing of content is radical and unique. - zeroinfluencer

Well I'm pretty sure all the people in Seattle, Toronto, Paris, London, Moscow,Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangalore, Boulder, etc. probably disagree - Ed Millard

@David: I'll take your word on the API and wouldn't doubt it given the FF team's chops. But fostering usage, that community - that's where things may have gotten shaky. Too few people leveraging it. It could still resolve back to an inability to really grasp what FF can do for them. - AJ Kohn

AJ, I think you're on to something. Back in the day, usability (including general user and disabled) use to be a well-known topic. Universities made it a part of the curriculum. Everything before and including e-commerce got the once over. But it occurs that the latest generation (including GLS and SM) have outpaced the community standards for usability. It's really the wild west again-... more... - Melanie Reed

Akiva: I suspect the noise problem Robert's describing from others isn't that comment threads get too long. It's that items keep popping to the top as new comments show up, when they don't want to see the new comments. I don't see any way around that except a separate client. It would take too much away from the FriendFeed experience for the default interface not to work this way. - Bruce Lewis

Mark, I didn't mean to suggest /. is the only solution to the forum problem. If you have really big forum discussions /. is time tested way to control noise and raise the signal level. On the other hand it would probably be a horrible solution for intimate and friendly discussions among friends. Someone earlier Lindsey? kind of had a good suggestion. When you make a post have a row of option buttons and let the poster set the kind of forum for that thread, broadcast, panel, open, modded, thredded, not.. - Ed Millard

Ed: I specifically said "far less likely." I didn't say there is very little chance. But, seriously, this is an argument for another thread. Lots of people think they have influence but actually don't have as much. For instance, I love to think I have influence on Facebook but I'm far less likely to influence that then Paul Buchheit is. Facts are facts. - Robert Scoble

Chieze glad you like FriendFeed. Me too. It's awesome. But that doesn't mean much to the rest of the world. - Robert Scoble

Robert, how often do you use "Add This"? It's germane :) - Melanie Reed

OK we will agree to disagree on that one and drop it. I've lived in the bay off and on, I think there are pluses and minuses to being there. - Ed Millard

Melanie: "Add This" being the "Add Photos" at top of FriendFeed? Not as much as I should. - Robert Scoble

Robert: No this service: http://www.addthis.com/ This is fast becoming the SM share button for many websites. Ours uses it. And FF is on it. Take a look at the entire list - Melanie Reed

FriendFeed's feature set will mean a lot to the rest of the world when it's fully integrated into Facebook in 2011. - Bruce Lewis

Bruce: I don't think it'll take that long. - Robert Scoble

Robert, you may be right, in which case FriendFeed is a relevant thing to look at. Maybe it isn't actually too far ahead of its time. - Bruce Lewis

Just like Lisp can make you a better programmer in other languages, FriendFeed can make you a better thinker when writing about other social networks. Popularity isn't everything, even for a blogger. - Bruce Lewis

You mean, it's not all about attention? :D - Fa La La La Lindsay

Who really knows why Twitter got all the traction? Does Scoble? I very much doubt it. I think there's a great effort going into finding a logical explanation for Twitter massive success and FriendFeeds more modest gains. My own best guess is that it has more to do with the madness of crowds than it does with any limitation in FriendFeed. Twitter had a decent enough foothold already by... more... - JSLeFanu from FreshFeed

Twitter got the traction because Twitter's easy. It requires very little effort to get into and it requires even less to participate. It's the same reason why YouTube comments are the cesspool of the Internet and MetaFilter's comments are not: anyone can sit around and watch videos all day and then trash talk them but you make people pay to comment and you'll weed out the chaff almost... more... - Akiva Moskovitz

David: I was there from early days on Twitter and studied how it grew. I know more than you might think. Remember, I was the first person to follow 1,000 people there and I was the 13,800ish user to join. - Robert Scoble

This link is the most illuminating one on FF traction at the time of the buyout. It indicates FF was just starting to regain traction after it had stalled out for a while and it suggests if maybe FF had stuck it out a while longer things might have changed. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... - Ed Millard

Twitter got hot in the early days because of Leo Laporte and because of SXSW and because it was goofy fun way for tech influencers to talk to their friends. It just kept growing from there. Another factor in addition to simplicity (Akiva's right there) is the API. Tons of clients and tools and services are built on top of it. FriendFeed got nearly none in comparison. - Robert Scoble

The difference may be luck of the draw ( a la Gladwell) - Brian Sullivan

People had to build tons of clients, tools and services for Twitter because the default web UI is so bad. - Ed Millard

Ed: what that graph doesn't show you is what we now know. Google Wave sucked a lot of attention of geek influentials away (IE Hype) and Facebook's Connect is running away with another game. I went into FriendFeed the week they decided to sell and asked them because I knew Twitter had new features coming that would make FriendFeed less interesting. I think the FriendFeed team looked at the competition and decided to fold. - Robert Scoble

How could I have ignored the API? It's like Firefox's plug-ins: it's the only thing that makes Twitter usable for many users. Without it, they wouldn't touch it. Heck, if it weren't for Tweetie 2, I wouldn't touch it either. - Akiva Moskovitz

And Facebook's Connect platform is getting incorporated everywhere. I think FriendFeed was hoping to become part of the general web, like what we did over on http://building43.com and that just wasn't going to happen because Facebook's Connect platform is rocking and rolling now. In fact, I made a fundamental blunder by not going with Facebook on Building43. If I had, our traffic would have been much higher than it is now. - Robert Scoble

You can be sure that once CNN and other assorted media outlets started plugging Twitter it was game over. Once the band wagon was rolling every "personality" was going to hop on. It is a little disturbing that Miley Cyrus has now joined the "everyone should delete their Twitter accounts" camp. - Ed Millard

David Hall +1 Steven Berlin Johnson would be a good reference - the persistence of babble is incredible valuable in phatic communications. FF, through the web interface hides a lot of that. Instead, the babble was more bookmark centric and less about 'having a sandwich'. That's why you have, on the whole, better conversation threads on FF, and ending up having to duck out of the way of... more... - zeroinfluencer

Disturbing REALLY????? My word, Miley is absolutely right <sarcasm/> - Roberto Bonini

To paraphrase Louis Gray's wife, "nerds in startups are fickle". I speculate they had a lot of self doubt when they stalled out prior to that up tick, and decided to sell just about the time FF was starting to take off again. Someone waves $50 million at you during a period of self questioning that is a potent motivator, I think Zuckerberg saw that and he did nip a potential competitor in the bud. - Ed Millard

But all the above comments is about public sharing. I use FF a lot for project planning and development - it's fast - you can discuss items with good archive search, and you can post media. I wonder how many people use FF in this way, and ignore the public babble? - zeroinfluencer

Having read most of this thread (and Robert, comments are VERY valueble) the"forum problem" is NP-complete. Comments are valuable becuase seeing people reason is often just as enlightening, if not more so, than the original information. - Roberto Bonini

Ed - mind you, there's only a few ways you can get to the helm of the FB API design and product development. :) Who's to say this isn't all going according to plan? - zeroinfluencer

Roberto: me and you agree on that. In my research most people do not. They see these things as noise. But, if you make the comments toggle on and off we BOTH win! Plus, comments REALLY help search! - Robert Scoble

Ed: correction, it was $50 million. - Robert Scoble

Robert you keep talking about "your research". Is this anything more than anecdotal conversations? - Brian Sullivan

David, Well maybe Paul and Co. are doing a trojan horse on FB but what I've read about Zuckerberg he doesn't seem likely to relinquish control of anything he cares about and I am skeptical you are going to turn FB in to FF with their entrenched user base. - Ed Millard

@Scoble you're arguing from authority again. I think on a broadcast platform like Twitter that's an easier one to pull off. On Twitter it's a big "so what" if you've posted a load of BS because most people will simply miss any challenge to your "content." Post the same on FriendFeed and you get tackled and you get tackled in public. Reasonable enough grounds to explain your current stance and certainly as good as any reason I've heard you put forward yourself. - JSLeFanu

Robert, I stand corrected, and it is corrected, this editing your posts thing is one of FF's scarier features. - Ed Millard

OPEN QUESTION: Is FF gaining or losing users? I see very little here now - but I'm told user numbers are going through the roof. - Jim Connolly

Ed: tell me one thing. What's the biggest difference between FF and FB? There's already not as much difference as you'd might think. The one thing I miss over there? Real time search. - Robert Scoble

Twitter got big because it's about ego. Look at me, Me, ME! Twitter flourished because people like to talk about themselves. (FF is not, which is why it hasn't gained nearly as much traction.) It was developed as an update service. It has evolved into ... something else. As for comments, they are invaluable. - AJ Kohn

Jim: user numbers are not going through the roof here. I don't know anyone credible who has said that. The registered numbers are going up, but the active numbers are going down. - Robert Scoble

AJ: FriendFeed is just as much about ego as Twitter is. If not more so. - Robert Scoble

Ed, the goal is to design influentially for the web. Paul B does seem to give that ethos in his startup camp talks and general interviews. I would think FB would warm to that ideology. - zeroinfluencer

Very true. Robert. - Roberto Bonini

@Robert: How? Seriously, I'd like to hear your opinion. - AJ Kohn

Robert: In other words, as people like yourself, Arrington and even those little guys like myself with a couple of thousand subscribers leave - we're being replaced by less active users. Makes sense. I used to check in on and off all day. Now, 2/3 times a week, - Jim Connolly

Jim: not true. I don't see a lot of people joining in here and I'm watching it closely. Sorry. More people are leaving the back door than are coming in the front. - Robert Scoble

To me the two big ones are 1) perception that it more walled garden networks and not as open though certainly it has avenues which are more open like FF 2) its home to massive quantities of apps, games, spam from people trying to get rich that hold no interest to me, though obviously many others like them. FF is probably just overlooked by that crowd, if it were bigger it would be infected with all that crap too. FF seems to mostly just be good people from my limited time here. - Ed Millard

All User Centric Design is modeled around the ego. Good software design keeps that in mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - zeroinfluencer

AJ: Twitter is, for many people, about business now. Not ego at all. News brands: http://twitter.com/#... no ego. Tech companies: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... No ego. But here? It's ALL about ego! - Robert Scoble

David is right. - Robert Scoble

On Twitter the default is to show number you follow, number of followers, number of Tweets. That's all playing on ego and popularity. Nearly everything (even lists) is geared to stimulate a innate need to acquire more of something as a way to ... validate contribution or perceived influence or authority. FF does not show this in the default mode. - AJ Kohn

Companies and brands are the most aggressive form of ego there is, and they usually are direct reflections of the ego of the company's CEO. - Ed Millard

Alright Robert. In order to reduce the signal to noise ratio, we can do one of two things, we can use "Likes" to filter the comment stream. If I Like more posts from Robert than i do from LG, Roberts comments appear but not LG's. We can use semantics to (somehow) sort the thread and show comments relevant to the original post. (simply dumping noise isin't a solution - not all noise is noise all the time. Likewise, increasing signal in an echo chamber is fruitless) - Roberto Bonini

@Robert: Oh, I think Twitter is a great business tool! It's a marketers paradise. But I'm not sure that's what most people believe it to be. People still think they're going to get some sort of social dialog there. I think it's why Twitter churn is so high. People get it thinking it'll be one thing and quickly find out it's another. - AJ Kohn

+1 AJ, there are some people that use Twitter in awesome, constructive, useful, ways like Tim O'Reilly and Jay Rosen but a lot of people its pure self promotion. As for news outlets using twitter they are going to go wherever the eyeballs are, and they will go to multiple networks not just Twitter. Those are pure broadcast, no engagement, they aren't really a ringing endorsement of why Twitter is great. - Ed Millard

I'd bet FF *would* take off (but be worse for it) if it listed how many times the content I fed got liked and commented on, and that (along with subscribers etc.) were all listed right there at the top of my home feed. And that upon signing up, I'd get suggested users based on subscriptions but also who got the most likes and comments. Yet, I don't think that's conducive to what FF really excels at. - AJ Kohn

@Robert, biggest difference between Facebook and Friendfeed - reciprocal connections. Without a doubt. The apps, the ads, other stuff, is true, but for me the central difference, and the thing that betrays a fundamental difference of worldview between the two apps is whether or not you can follow someone's content without them having to follow you back. You can only do that on Facebook... more... - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

@Ed: I realized a long time ago that Twitter was a big Internet megaphone. And if you could get a lot of people to 'listen' to that megaphone well, that's powerful stuff. It's about Reach. Twitter gives your message reach. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't see it as ... transforming. - AJ Kohn

Those who study the art of propaganda consider reach to be everything, because following reach is influence, and following influence is control. TV is losing its reach in the Internet era so most of those "brands" and "personalites" are rushing to find a way to regain it, enter Twitter and FB. They are better because they are bidirectional. - Ed Millard

*Noise* :) - ashish

@Ed: I'd be interested to see more on how reach leads to influence. It often does but ... not always. Plenty of multi-million dollar ad campaigns in the graveyard as examples. Reach + ? = influence. - AJ Kohn

Ed I think you're right. I caught that TC piece at the time too. Seems to me that the FriendFeed guys had a bit of a crisis of confidence and grabbed lunch while it was on offer. In any case I always figured FriendFeed as a place to graduate to once you'd rammed up against Twitters limitations. And, as I'm sure you know, that doesn't take long. That's how I got here. I was actually on... more... - JSLeFanu

You don't have influence until you have reach so its the prerequisite. Then it a matter of how effectively you craft the message and push the buttons in your target audience. Some people are good at that part, some aren't, some fail, some succeed. - Ed Millard

Robert, I just wonder. Isn't twitter more about consuming the information and FF more about sharing and discussing? Look at http://twitter.com/Scoblei.... What can anyone add to that or comment on that? I agree it is getting a lot noisy in here (exhibit, this post). But not all posts will be this noisy I think. - Amit

+1 Jandy, she answered Robert's challenge to me better than I did. - Ed Millard

@Ed: I'm not sure. New memes start with someone small sometimes. Say ... keyboard cat ... and someone who has reach communicates that message and it goes big. So who has the influence? The creator of keyboard cat or the person to has the reach to make it go big? I find it very interesting. - AJ Kohn

Jandy: +100. You just nailed for me why I like Twitter and FriendFeed better than Facebook. Agreed. - Robert Scoble

Robertt, maybe this post and the scads of comments prove your point, but maybe your point is limited to your own experience due to your unique position in tech. You speak, noise follows. But that does not make Friendfeed irrelevant or useless for the average or even just left or right of average user. You have a unique experience that is going to color any forum you put your time into.... more... - Martha

+++Jandy - Melanie Reed

Well put, Jandy. - Akiva Moskovitz

I think the forum problem is not as big in smaller more intimate groups. Recently I've been very active in the DMU group here that includes a lot of folks who've migrated here from Flickr. The relevancy is much more higher in these venues than in the main feed because it's a smaller controlled experience. I do wish though that groups were more full featured like the rest of FF though.... more... - Thomas Hawk

oh of course and photo voting pools for groups would by awesome too. ;) - Thomas Hawk

Lists are not enough. Twitter, FF and other social networks need tagging by default, then filter on list + tag. That's the element that would kill the noise and turn them into interest networks. - howard shippin from BuddyFeed

Martha: you might have a point if we were just talking about me. But we're not. So, try again. Again, I've talked with thousands of people about these things. They tell me they don't like the noise that public forums bring. I've been doing this for 25 years and this isn't the first time I've heard this pushback. Facebook, by the way, on its iPhone app, handles it perfectly: it hides all... more... - Robert Scoble

You all keep referring to this as either chat or comments when actually its a discussion. I think that the ability to discuss anything on Friend Feed or anywhere else for that matter IS where you learn the most. I'm not techy like most of you, I'm just an ordinary 'average' user, but I see twitter more as a 'newsreel' of info, shallow but instant, whereas Friend Feed is more a 'thrashing out of ideas and opnions, and is therefore all the richer for it. - Sandra Large

Sandra: chat/discussion/forum/comments are all pretty much the same thing. Yes, the two are different. There CAN be lots of learning here, it's just that this is a lot noiser than other online things in some ways. - Robert Scoble

Robert, about noise: when you or other tech influencers introduce FriendFeed, you show the things you're excited about, which tend to be big and noisy, right? And if you're the first person someone follows on FF, they're going to get a noisy first impression. The slower growth that doesn't come through tech influencers may have less of a back door. - Bruce Lewis

And about the 25+-year-old forum problem: Moderated Usenet was great until moderators slacked off. Decentralized moderation fixes that, at least for small discussions. Larger discussions can lead to whack-a-mole (though I notice this one hasn't), but with one of the suggestions I made earlier in this conversation the number of whackers could scale with the number of moles. - Bruce Lewis

Moderation = censorship. Censorship sucks. Give the users control to hide and block. The less censorship the better. - Thomas Hawk

@Paul - what about a view to only see the user's posts/content ie no comments of others and no likes => then it becomes twitter like - Kishore Balakrishnan

Come on, it's hardly messier than Facebook, since the default view only includes the first and last comment. Basically the gist I'm getting is that people who think they're important don't want to listen to people who they don't think are important. Such is the human race, I suppose. - Victor Ganata

+++Victor hammer meets nail. - JSLeFanu

Robert said "FB iPhone app ... hides all comments with an arrow that you can then use to expand the comments. That is so much better than this mess here that it isn't funny". Robert, I must be missing your point because FF also hides most comments until you expand them because you want to read them... Don't want to read FF comments, don't expand them, problem solved. Or are you saying FF is a "mess" because it shows first and last comment? - Ed Millard

235 comments! I really don't want to expand *that* on FF! Is this a pain-point for anyone else? - Space Cowboy

Not for me. If I'm interested enough in the topic or dialog I'll click the time stamp and open the post page to read everything. The text amount is comparable to a medium length blog post: if I have the time to read that I have the time to read this if it interests me. - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

A typical blog post? Dragging & copying the comments only (which took about a min. of scrolling) produced 9200 words and 23 pages of text. Blog posts also tend to have a more easily read narrative. - Vincent van Wylick

The problem is for big conversations like this one you need threading and maybe moderation, but for more normal conversations that are smaller flat is better. Allowing a switch between the two adds complexity. For big conversations FF lacks the button to reply to a specific poster so the viewer can thread, at least as an option. Much of the noise level in this conversation is due to people having to manually try to fake threading. - Ed Millard

The threading vs. flat conversation is interesting to me - we've tried multiple times to put Disqus or Intense Debate on a film blog I write for, and every time we meet huge resistance to threading ESPECIALLY on long threads. People say they have a lot of difficulty finding the new comments when they aren't all at the top or bottom. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Why can't there be a summary fly-out with timestamps based on response rate to single comments and a "last comment made" link as well as "thread count" links and lastly, "participants in this thread" link? Collapse everything else except the initial post. The initial interface looking like this one, should always be available for those who want to "sort through". You want the... more... - Melanie Reed

Jandy, you kind of have to let the user flip between threading and flat to solve the chronology problem. Slashdot has a popup menu at the top that lets you view in "Threaded, Nested, Flat, No Comments". The down side is the UI gets progressively more complex both to implement and use unless you are going to force everyone to lowest common denominator UI. - Ed Millard

But Ed, that's what I have against the traditional "threaded" approach: all the fork like structure. It does get complicated real fast. What's needed is somewhere a "summary" for those jumping in late to "catch up" but also the "single comment" link to democratize the discussion. Threads have all the indentation problems of trying to follow that way IF I am picturing what you mean by thread. - Melanie Reed

+1 Ed - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

My other observation is this: everyone creates a "story" about the ideas and information they are taking in and immediately starts associating connections in their mind creating a mental picture whether they realize it or not when they are perceiving that information. Our user interfaces don't yet lend themselves to that especially where it come to dialogue and forums. We've accepted a... more... - Melanie Reed

Here's why you don't need indented/tangential threading: FF discussions tend to be small enough to fit in the "RAM" in one's mind. It curtails many threads that might ramble; the exception (like Paul's thread here) comes when the power of the topic/zeitgeist and vibe of a live chat going strong overrides that usual point of decay. Predictablly, one or several commenters here will start a new thread or escalate it to a blog post and summarize their thoughts based on what transpired on this stream. - Micah Wittman

Melanie, have you used Slashdot, they did forums earlier and better than anyone. The forum starts out flat, and then starts threading. Random community moderators start modding up the insightful posts, and burying the trolls, crap, etc. Once the moderation kicks in the "summary" is all the posts that were modded up to 5 which are shown expanded. All the lower moderated stuff is there but you have to clck to see. Slashdot would suck like YouTube comments if they hadn't solved the forum problem. - Ed Millard

It's organic, not hierarchical. As other have stated, there is as much to learn from watching the process unfold as there is to gain from end result. - Micah Wittman

Ed, no, I haven't used Slashdot but I'm willing to give it a try. I'm pretty adaptable. But when I see a problem and it becomes "the picture" for me, in this case a circle then I know its time for the leap out of the present "prison of one idea". ;) - Melanie Reed

Micah, its true threads are bad for small friendly forums. Some of this discussion is about what happens when the forums on "celebrity" social expert's threads get so big they overflow readers brains and they turn in to *noise*. One noise problem is organization, the other is some post and some posters are better than others in the mind of the celeb and the reader. - Ed Millard

Slashdot dealt with most of the forum problems ten years ago, they had to to survive the trolls. The problem is their UI needs to be complex to be flexible and keep everyone happy. Their audience is also mostly geek power user. When you get to social networks the other UI school is demanding the UI be dirt simple so the unwashed masses can cope, but dirt simple mean its inflexible and it ticks off nearly everyone, especially power users. Hard problem to solve... making everyone happy. - Ed Millard

Ed, conferences have break-out groups. The same idea should be employed. - Micah Wittman

Ed, yes, you offered a little explication for others of what happens when you lost the ability to categorize your"story" into a mental picture that is associated with previous "stories" you have stored in the brain. That end result is "noise". Some of us are better at doing that than others, that's true. But there come a point of over flow for all of us. What our UI needs to do is to amplify and assist in that "story" constructing process. - Melanie Reed

Break out groups is a nice idea, but it seems a bit cumbersome. You need to make a new post, post a link here and get some critical mass from the first forum to move. If you do it five times you would splinter the first forum and lose critical mass, especially in a "real-time" forum where people will only watch one forum at a time. Chances are most people will cling to the first forum if its interesting. - Ed Millard

Ed and Micah, what I hear both of you saying, and Robert as well, is that at some point in the "story" constructing process, the dialog from the forum needs to end in the narrative of a blog. Up till now, the blog component has been a random, unattached part of the discussion. AM I hearing that you think that in some way it should become part of the UI? So that the discussion gets... more... - Melanie Reed

Not sure I follow, blog is kind of a one voice, one direction thing, only way a forum morphs to blog is when once person splits off the forum to make a more in depth point and posts the blog link to the forum. I'm mostly just talking about the various methods for restoring order in a big forum, and improving signal to noise ratio. Most entail putting more options and more UI in and around the forum and making the UI more complex which many think is bad on a social network. - Ed Millard

Ed, as I was writing this, it occurs to me that what I'm suggesting is what I may have just figured out (finally) that Google Wave is trying to get us to do. But if so, I beleive FF could actually do it better. the "noise" problem that was created by the various forms of SM, inside and outside of the platforms, was the inability to "connect the dots". We didn't have a framework for how... more... - Melanie Reed

One of the problems that we haven't solved is the usefulness of digression and random access of connective tissue in the "story" process. That's the wild card that often comes up as "noise" - Melanie Reed

I can't speak for Robert. Some of his issue "seems" to be he only wants to see the Silicon Valley/SF movers and shakers in his feed talking about tech and social networks, and he doesn't much want anyone but that same group to be posting on forums under his auspices. Friend Feeds openness is bad for that. The same is true for all the Twitter celeberati. They don't want peons anywhere near their online presence to tarnish it. - Ed Millard

Only way I can see to maintain FF openness for those who want it, and celeb broadcast only mode for the celebs who demand it, in one social network is you have to have an option when you make a post on your feed to control the forum methodology (i.e. broadcast only peons can only look on, panel mode where only my social elite are allowed to speak & peons can watch, private where only my circle can speak and see (FB mode), or completely OPEN(FF mode). - Ed Millard

There also seems to be an issue where someone you follow, through the "like" process, can inject pictures of kittens, babies and man titteh in to your feed. Of course that is kind of the original point of social networks, seeing what your network sees. I think some just want hard core tech news and talk and twitter lists probably do allow an uber though somewhat lifeless feed like that. - Ed Millard

Ed, well, that is the territory of the heart when it comes into contact with the machine. And oddly (or maybe not so oddly) there is a post on my feed that addresses that theme: http://friendfeed.com/faithx5... ;) Digression and Random access at work. lol And I find that refreshing. I'm always excited about how some new idea may be generated because I allowed what... more... - Melanie Reed

@Melanie: I fully believe in non-linear learning. The ability to take input from diverse thematic content and synthesize something ... to apply something from one world to the other. That's where I think we're heading. I think of it a little bit like a digital version of Burroughs' Cut Up technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - AJ Kohn

I can't believe I read the whole thing - Michael Slattery

Such a simple and obvious solution: provide an optional *LIST* view for Friendfeed items. Open the comments only on items that look really interesting. Am I missing something obvious? Then Friendfeed could easily emulate Twitter on all essentials (and surpass it in many other areas). - Sean McBride

Sean, I think the obvious thing you are missing is there are no FF developers any more so FF probably isn't getting anything it doesn't already have. And there are camps here that don't really like the alternatives that FB and Twitter offer which is why this is such a hot button issue. I wish there was one social network that had lists, open forums, walled gardens, and broadcast mode based on the wishes of the person running a feed so everyone could be happy in one network. - Ed Millard

Compare these two. FriendFeed has great pictures, but content that is, well, not interesting. Twitter, on right, has 6,000x better content but doesn't look as nice due to no pictures. Will Brizzly come to rescue? - Robert Scoble

156 more comments

I hope somebody comes up with a fabulous client to maximize content and serve up more media - Susan Beebe

And people wonder why I don't come here much anymore. Sigh. - Robert Scoble

FriendFeed used to be very heavy in tech discussions. Now it's rare I see a tech discussion on the "best of day" feed. - Robert Scoble

The cap on the left is infinitely preferable to the right. I can't tell you how glad I am not to be inundated with tech stuff all day long. One man's trash... - Jim Is Not Smart

Time to adjust your subscriptions. - Bruce Lewis

try PowerTwitter ...also, which service has 6000x more users? doesn't that affect content choices? - .LAG liked that

I keep looking for the comments link on Brizzly. - Tom Landini

PowerTwitter is a great add to the twitter website (Firefox add-on) - Susan Beebe

There's more to talk about than just "tech", seriously... - Rob Haas

Robert - Do you have any general news, world news Twitter lists/groups? I tried scrolling through you lists, but they all seem pretty tech-slanted. If Twitter is to replace Friendfeed and Google Reader, then we need to be able to get real news and information out of the thing. - Matthew DeVries

The left is a best of day from your 28000 subscriptions. The right is a heavily curated list focused on something you are interested in. Try "best of" on a curated list (there is a link at the bottom of every list feed to best of for that feed). - Benjamin Golub

agree totally with you Scoble, Bruce: adjusting wouldn't make a difference now - ffcode

Ben - great advise! - Susan Beebe

I know twitter is occupied with infrastructure and list improvements, but you would think they could be building brizzly-esque features pretty easily. - Sean Montgomery

Sean - right. Twitter has to stablize their platform, then focus on UIX - Susan Beebe

Matthew: I'm a geek. Other people are doing news lists. I might start one, though. You are the second person to ask for one. - Robert Scoble

and there aren't tech discussions here one of the prime reasons are Scoble left and he is usually followed by around 10k folks everywhere, and his predictions affect all, weak or strong minded - ffcode

I find it a fascinating observation: Twitter is better than FriendFeed because there's more tech discussions in my feed. Is that the criteria you use for judging other social media sites? Because, IMHO, social media is about connecting people, not about tech discussions. - Glen Mistletoe

ffcode: sorry, I'm tracking the geek participation here and sorry, the really geeky stuff has definitely gone down. - Robert Scoble

always wondered how your feed would look like but it is clear you are no different ;) - ffcode

Robert - I come to you because you're the best list builder and analyzer of signal to noise. - Matthew DeVries

Glen: sorry, where the geeks go generally the general public follows. Generally. And, anyway, compare this stuff to Facebook. Even there it's a loser, sorry. I watch my wife's feed all the time and compare it to FriendFeed and FriendFeed loses. She said "ew" when she saw my page here. - Robert Scoble

Glen: by the way, I can make such a screen shot for a bunch of different genre's, not just tech. Twitter has far more diversity and has far more flow of all kinds. http://listorious.com 's huge first weekend demonstrates that. - Robert Scoble

Jim: if you don't want just tech, check out http://listorious.com -- what list would you like? In one weekend Twitter got more diversity thanks to lists than FriendFeed did in 18 months. And no "ew" pictures. - Robert Scoble

You still have to come here. It's mandatory - Charlie Anzman

sad one of the best place is going down like this and it is going the way every other social network is "just for fun"....:( - ffcode

Charlie: I do, but now you know why I don't show off FriendFeed at conferences anymore. - Robert Scoble

FriendFeed's still here. Unfortunately when Scoble, FriendFeed's top user goes, so go the users. - Jesse Stay

number of places on the twitter display where you could see an inline discussion: zero. - SuezanneC Baskerville

I follow Scoble, but I'm not going anywhere, Jesse. - Jim Is Not Smart

Either that, or this just means FriendFeed has gone mainstream, and is no longer just tech users any more ;-) - Jesse Stay

Jesse - Robert left Twitter for quite a while (well, not left, but just had it parroting his FF) and it didn't seem to hurt Twitter any. Robert can't make or break a service all by himself. - Matthew DeVries

I guess I just don't get it. My Facebook connects me with friends I haven't seen in years and relatives I contact rarely. With Facebook, I can keep in touch far better than I ever have in my life. I learn about my cousin in the ICU with pneumonia, and my good friend in Indiana who just had a grandson. The whole format is not compatible with tech discussions; the length restrictions... more... - Glen Mistletoe

Code junkies best of week: http://friendfeed.com/code-ju... - Bruce Lewis

@Cristo: +3000. @Robert: Change your subscriptions. You just haven't curated your worldview here as much lately. Things change, so must your prism. - AJ Kohn

as usual, Robert's death of FF posts shoot up the charts. get it? - Steve Gillmor

Matthew, see my second comment. I think some of it is that FriendFeed's userbase has changed as well. It's not the tech early adopters any more. I expect with Facebook's acquisition it will become more so that case. - Jesse Stay

My point being this comparison doesn't mean much - Jesse Stay

What is "geek" to you Robert? Because I've been seeing plenty of "geek" posts in the subscriptions and rooms I follow here on FriendFeed. - Itachi

Mehmet: geek is someone talking about technology or talking about building something or excited about using such. Do you see any geek in the friendfeed screen shot? I don't. - Robert Scoble

Agree with Jesse here. - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

Bruce: is that the best example you got? All those items have no discussion! - Robert Scoble

And like Tom's comment [keep looking for comments link on Brizzly] LOL! - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

o.O Louis is pretty geeky. His kids already have Macbooks. - Matthew DeVries

The most active discussions I've seen on FriendFeed lately are only when someone proclaims or laments its decline. Sad but true. - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

Or when Jason holds a live chat. - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

Robert, twitter=no conversation. I'll deal with the 'ew' pictures by simply using the 'hide' button, that's why it's there. You go your way, I'll go mine. It's all good. - Jim Is Not Smart

do anybody no why Scoble can't just leave us alone. Friendfeed is dying according to him, no need to make it a self fulfilling prophecy. The more you "high profile" users criticize FF the faster folks will leave it. - Gunny doesn't side-hug™

Coding geeks communicate best with code. Neither twitter nor FriendFeed let you indent. So there's going to be more sharing and less conversation for coders. - Bruce Lewis

Robert ,the best of the day are comments and likes on a post ,not content. all the contents from Twitter,blogs,Rss etc are here and its better to get them here or in public groups or in private , I am not sure that on Twitter ppl are acting ,they are just reading same as here - Johni Fisher

agree with Steve Gillmor, users are here but they are doing things way different now than they used to when Scoble was around - ffcode

agree more than 100% that "those" tech talks are just gone - ffcode

You're comparing a hand crafted twitter list to friendfeed's user-generated best-of-day? - Andy Bakun

Gunny, give the guy a break. He feels forced to be on twitter and misses the conversations on FriendFeed. Did you look at the right-hand picture from twitter? No conversation happening there at all. Zero. I can't imagine hanging out there all day. - Bruce Lewis

I skip all the tech anyway. Who says it's "better"? - m9m, Crone of FriendFeed

Cristo: try seeing feed around those times when there when acquisition talks - ffcode

Why can't there be a friendly friend feed and a tech friend feed? Is there no other use for the internet than to talk about the internet? - m9m, Crone of FriendFeed

Tech and coding news is primarily what I look for in FriendFeed, and I find it. Conversation happens, as well as users bumping things up with likes. Subscriptions (friends and rooms) help filter tech content that I want to see. A like is sometimes as good as a comment. - Itachi

and Andy: you are yourself stating what Scoble has been saying all the way twitter is place where you can get your taste now not here anymore - ffcode

Robert- regarding your early early comment- I find it refreshing that FF isn't about tech - anna sauce

+anna, +Glen, and even +cristo - Kamilah Gill

Does Plurk get this much attention about its inevitable death? Now there's a service that could really use the wake-up call. - Mark Trapp

Robert never got infatuated with Plurk, Mark. - Itachi

Robert most of the change is in the place that you decided to open a subject and to post ,I remember 3 months ago your posts here were with tooons of comments and interest and from the day that you are posting your Twitter FAV here, there is not much action ,just think on that ,I like to read your Twitter FAV but I would better have them in a group and get yr posts like in the past - Johni Fisher

Yeah, you're pretty geeky there when you have to search how to make screenshots - KapitanObvious

agree Johni - ffcode

thx ff - Johni Fisher

To be honest, any social network with content governed by who you're subscribed to, and having image media in a feed is going to come up with something you don't like. This is because no one is on topic all the time, especially on Twitter. If you want sanitized feeds from *only* tech experts, geeks and what have you, these sort of services aren't going to cut it for you.... more... - Mo Kargas

I sure like the interaction here, comments, community...this post shot over to Twitter, but there is nothing going on there about it. - Eric Matas

@Eric Yes exactly, to me it looks like a glorified RSS stream from different sources, fundamentally a list of content and that's it. The topics Robert is after may not be present on FF, but the conversation is far more intuitive. - Mo Kargas

"glorified RSS stream"...pretty much sums it up. - Itachi

Hey GUISE, we're forgetting that the list on the right will fail-whale often as twitter never seems to remember how to run their servers. As to the content on the left not being interesting, well...at least I know it's real people who aren't trying to get me to buy into some new brand or some interchangeable tech company that will just be bought by facebook one day and disappear. :) - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

I just can't wait for the day that Scoble ditches Twitter for the junk it is. Should give me a good laugh. - Itachi

Twitter has no "ew" pictures because it has no pictures. You can use the fftogo option that turns off media if you want no pictures. - Bruce Lewis

For conversations, friendfeed wins. For tons of blabbers and links, twitter wins. But agreed, activity has gone down heavily on friendfeed. Twitter mania has caught everyone. - Amit

Interesting tech discussions from http://friendfeed.com/paul... are "Think big. Code small" and the ooc one. - Bruce Lewis

One anecdote deserves another. I've posted on FF regularly for 1.5 years. I comment frequently on others' tech posts, but most of my own posts are not strictly tech-angled. This week I asked "FriendFeeders : NEED ADVISE: Best all-around value Netbook today - which one?" and it got 16 LIKES and 20 COMMENTS. The last time one of my posts hit/surpassed that threshold was early August http://friendfeed.com/search... - Micah Wittman

One thing I noticed is no conversations. Just straight links to other sites. Kind of boring. - Todd Hoff

BTW is it possible to stop getting the twitter updates from others on Friendfeed? Slowly I am seeing my friendfeed aggregating only the twitter updates. - Amit

Yeah, you can Amit. Just click "hide" on a tweet you see in FF, and then choose to "hide other items like this one"...and go from there. - Itachi

Robert is just being Robert, always stirring things up! LOL, I really do ♥ you for it though. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Wait, you were all like ' I LOVE FF ' this summer. Singing your praises on the TWiT network and all that jazz. You're even more of a fair weather fan than Minnesotans with our sports teams. - Clark Baumgartner 蔵明馬武刀

No hatin' on the Vikings here, they try hard :p - Itachi

Twins? Timberwolves? Wilds? Take your pick if the Vikings don't do it for yeh. - Clark Baumgartner 蔵明馬武刀

You know what makes me laugh... People who use FriendFeed in other languages probably don't see this or any of the stuff Robert is interested in... - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

+Johnny W. - Kamilah Gill

BTW... Heaven forbid we actually have fun on a Sunday... Your lawn's that way - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

You're really going to show me Wall Street Journal on your Twitter feed and compare that to Friendfeed's personal interaction? You know better, Robert. - Eric @ CSTechcast.com from iPhone

KapitanObvious++ for the burn. - Andrew C

One of the nice things about Friendfeed is the way you can hide a post like this and not see it ever again. It would be nice to have a way to filter posts from specific people if they contained certain words such as twitter, lists, dead, or friendfeed. :) - SuezanneC Baskerville

Robert GFY dude, seriously. - LANjackal

""glorified RSS stream" - yeah, except my RSS feeds have been culled down to sources that add their own insightful commentary so it's not an endless stream of retweets of _all the same damn links repeated over and over_. That Twitter screenshot looks really information-light once the repeats are filtered out... - Andrew C

FRIEND Feed. - Internet's Tad

And this coming from a man who posted this online: http://valleywag.com/assets... :P - Jan Ole Peek

The Friendfeed screenshot shows 222 total interactions in the first three entries. The twitter one shows 14 (and I'm counting the one at the bottom that is cut off). Oh wait, those aren't interactions, those are links to other places. - Andy Bakun

I think Robert is just confusing the point of the site. The name is FRIEND Feed, not interesting feed, useful feed, news feed, etc. This is where I hang out with my friends. - Internet's Tad

Robert, you're cool and everything, but sometimes the things you post make me think of you as an arrogant asshole. The beauty in friendfeed is that there are so many different flavors to sample from. There are plenty of sites to go to that are tech heavy if that is what you are looking for. Why bother here if it's not what you want? Move on and shut the fuck up about it. Jesus. - DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE

Amen. - Internet's Tad

For someone who doesn't like Friendfeed or thinks Friendfeed doesn't offer as much value as twitter, he sure does post here a lot. - Andy Bakun

This is exactly the kind of post I don't want in my feed. Adjusting my subscriptions now. Sorry Robert, but I gotta block you on Friendfeed. See you on Twitter. - Rodfather

Robert. You are stating the obvious: of course friendfeed is going to decline: there is no more engineering or innovation power behind it! The key question is: "is a friendfeed++ going to reborn as part of facebook and have a much more profound impact?". The jury is still out but knowing the quality of the team I would not bet against it. - Edwin Khodabakchian

I think this post is very rude to the posters in your screenshot, especially the second two. They are sharing themselves and their lives with us. If that doesn't interest you, unsubscribe or hide but to call them out and mock them as 'sad' is, well, sad. FriendFeed is full of people that I enjoy discussing all kinds of topics with, including technology, but they are more than just early... more... - joey

Thank you Joey. I find the screen shot to be particularly offensive considering the tenor of the post. Stop being a jerk Robert. - DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE

Holden: I have removed my Twitter favorites from FriendFeed because of your post and my Twitter account too. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Scoble, you need to clean your Twitter DM's like stat. - Outsanity

@Robert - Just because FriendFeed isn't 90% tech and personal branding posts doesn't mean it doesn't have value. You used to be such a big proponent of lists here and molding your subscriptions so they were full of info but not noise... now that you've neglected your pruning efforts and gone over to Twitter then your feed is full of more noise (to you) than info. It's not FriendFeed's... more... - Fa La La La Lindsay

Her Lindsay-ness: sorry, so many geeks have left and there are just more interesting information (FOR ME), more interesting conversations (FOR ME), and I'm learning a lot more over on Twitter (ABOUT WHAT I WANT TO LEARN). FriendFeed HAS changed and that's OK! For you. Not for me. And, sorry, I looked at rejiggering my accounts here, but the info just isn't coming here and Twitter is... more... - Robert Scoble

Then go away. What the fuck. Why keep coming back here to make posts about how horrible it is. It just makes you look like more of an asshole than you intend to be I'm sure. Seriously. If you think there is no value in it, then it's kinda counter-productive to keep posting here, right? You act like the guy that graduated high school but keeps coming back hanging out at lunch and during pep rallies. It's a little bit creepy. What is it that you hope to gain by that? - DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE

I agree with Gunny. YOU caused the mass exedus from Friend Feed Robert, by announcing its demise. Let's see what would happen if instead of moaning about its lack of techy feeds, you began promoting it instead. Look on it as an FF experiment. - Sandra Large

I like reading your stuff Rob but yeah --- if you're only going to come here to diss FF, perhaps you should just exit FF completely. Also, it's a FACT that Twitter is inferior to FriendFeed based on communication alone because look...here I am, discussing this topic and others can follow along w/o having to search through random comments and pages [they can even comment easily also! *gasp*!]. FF probably will die eventually, but Twitter was freakin' stillborn. Just a glorified RSS service... - Scott Carmichael

Its all becoming a Robert Scoble 'self fullfilling prophecy' lately on here. You can't have a conversation on Twitter like this, twitter is a newsreel of headline news, that's all its good for, Friend Feed is as its name implies, a feed for friends to discuss anything under the sun, and not just about technical stuff. - Sandra Large

I don't agree that a person who's become dissatisfied with a service should leave. I've often heard change should come from within. With that said, I'm not sure Robert is pushing for positive change. Can it occur? With Zuckerberg calling the shots, maybe not. Maybe he owns every idea that the FFounders will ever have for the next few yrs, keeping those changes for Zuck's baby. Maybe FF will improve, & maybe the techies who were drowned out on Twitter will find they can be seen & heard here. Who knows? - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

My post is up: http://scobleizer.com/2009... - Robert Scoble

Gone mainstream? - Amit Morson

it gone mainstream alright - Fajar Nurdiansyah

You can't blame Robert for the fact that the FF guys sold out AND left the ship more or less rudderless. If they had bothered to figure out even a tiny bit of a PR strategy around the take-over, then things might not have gone downhill so fast, or at all. And, yes, you can filter out all of the emo stuff (nothing wrong with it BTW, but that can be had from your IRL friends on Facebook)... more... - Alex Schleber

Robert: accepting the accuracy of observations about the amount of interesting conversations from your perspective, there still remains a question regarding what could be the cause? while one theory may be a decline in friendfeed activity, another possibility is the decline in your own activity. what evidence can support one hypothesis over the other? - Mike Chelen

methinks a service can go on without an ego? personally i pop back here every now and again for the occasional conversation. i'd prefer more intelligent discussions on here, not just tech related, maybe i'm not following enough people? eh. - Terry O'Fee

+1,000 joey. "emo stuff" that can be "found on Facebook"? LOTS of arrogance on display here from several directions. Alex, I know that you're tempering your statement by saying that there's nothing wrong with "emo stuff", but that's still awfully dismissive. FF is more like a number of simple blogs because the whole world can access the posts. FB is a walled garden, and tends to be way more dumbed-down (except for when I look at the FF people I'm subscribed to in FB). - Kamilah Gill

Hey, guys? Don't feed the troll. - Akiva Moskovitz from BuddyFeed

now you tell us. - Jim Is Not Smart

Friendfeed never gone..! - ★ Soner Gönül

Well if FriendFeed has nothing else going for it, I can at least read a deep exchange of ideas here as to why it's toast. Perhaps thats why I'm sticking. Btw, slightly off topic, but am I the only one finding Twitter list creation a complete chore compared to doing the same on FriendFeed? - JSLeFanu

I don't see the problem. My pecs dominate your feed. Who can complain about that? - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

LOL @Rasheen™ - Glen Mistletoe

Rahsheen, it's ok to let the one's own fun part of life intersect one's social media sphere http://friendfeed.com/tad... , but not when it's someone else and it can be used in the wrong context to misappropriate a point. - Micah Wittman

It amazes me how people will continue to use a service just to complain about it. Just STFU and GTFO. - Steve Lowe

Micah, I don't follow what you're saying... - Kamilah Gill

Robert - Just make Twitter fix the 140 character limit thing already! - Matthew DeVries

then it would be a blog or what a tumble log? - ffcode

strange people resist so much even when they know this is it - ffcode

Robert, setting aside your point, your methodology here is insulting. Why? My response is here: http://friendfeed.com/zeigen... - Stephen Mack

Kamilah, fair point. I'll explain without sarcasm. Robert's shower photo was a bit of fun that is fine and doesn't represent the whole of his on- or off-line contribution. Andy's photoshopped photo of Rahsheen doesn't represent the whole of Andy's contribution (which is very much technical, btw) or by extension the community's many contributions through the friendfeed medium. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. - Micah Wittman

friend feed is totally awesome! - Bishal Adhikary

great one man... - Bishal Adhikary

COMMENT 1) "There's a lot more than me here. http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo.... shows lots of things that are getting engagement. - Robert Scoble" http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo... ... COMMENT 2) "You are not following the right people. This is always the problem if FriendFeed isn't working for you. - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF" http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo... - Micah Wittman

I just looked, and http://friendfeed.com/ninjamo... still is getting a lot of engagement and there's is stuff to learn there. - Micah Wittman

Robert, I am considered a "geek" by a number of people, but I don't need or want to talk about technology 24/7. I have other interests and I like to see where they connect. I want to see coalescence. I can't get disparate connections always watching or listening to the same track. Even Richard Feynman believed that...as do many others in other "geek" fields. When I was little I happened... more... - Melanie Reed

Robert, are you reading the tech related groups? If you read Best of you are going to get all sorts of stuff as you know. I have lists and saved searches for specific topics and browse them for the likes of tech. Best of it not the best place for tech only (well any single topic). - Kol Tregaskes

I've come to the conclusion that all of Robert's posts must be read with one fact kept in mind. Even when he doesn't say it, his posts are based on the assumption that many/most people want and like what he wants. - Eoghann Irving

Robert, why do you constantly feel the need to shake the death rattle? We are well aware that FF is dying and even more aware that you see it coming. If you really did care about the service you would try to reverse the trend instead of speeding it up. - Jason Williams from iPhone

Robert I joined FF when I saw you singing praises of it on Twitter and have been loving it ever since, you seem to have a lot of interesting stuff to say, and a lot of people follow you. But, you seriously need to stop coming to FriendFeed and doing everything in your considerable power to kill it, and then complain because you are successful in doing that. Twitter is for people who like shouting through megaphones in a crowd of people shouting through megaphones, FF is for people who like conversations. - Ed Millard

@edmillard ..said the man who only imports one thing into FF, his Twitter account.. seriously though. Scoble can't kill FF because it's already dead, it just doesn't know it yet. And yes, I am still using it for a bit because it makes such a handy searchable archiving/surfacing tool, and for some aspects of the community. But the reality is that FF founder's sold out b/c they were lacking confidence that they could change FF sufficiently/quickly enough to sustain any real growth. - Alex Schleber

So FriendFeed founders gave up and sold out to Zuckerberg more or less for the liquidation value, i.e. for their IP and continued highly-skilled/paid labor for FB. It's that simple. Thinking about it any other way is a fantasy. 5 Stages of Grief... And yes, it pains me to say it. Had high hopes for this platform. I wish they would have found a way to evolve FF where it would have continued to grow, I don't think they were very far off. It's like the gold-miners who gave up 10 ft from the mother lode. - Alex Schleber

Alex you are mistaken, most of my recent posts are from FF and sometimes cross posted to Twitter if they are short and not FF specific. I didn't know the FF etiquette that twitter posts are shunned when I started. Most of my limited time here is spent in comments anyway, since I prefer the conversations to the megaphone. - Ed Millard

@Ed "Twitter is for people who like shouting through megaphones in a crowd of people shouting through megaphones, FF is for people who like conversations." You basically summed up my blog post about this whole thing (http://friendfeed.com/bluecoc...)... - Fa La La La Lindsay

Lindsey, same concept, yours was thorough, mine was short. I think part of being a geek is we opt for the superior tech, not the popular tech. FB and Twitter are popular but inferior for conversation. I had no interest in them until I found FF recently. Its a problem we geeks are letting Zuckerberg kill the superior tech here with his checkbook. I'm thinking we should launch an open friend feed like directeur is talking about, free of business conflicts. It is the geek thing to do but it would be hard. - Ed Millard

One bad day does not mean it is bad for the whole year :) - ashish

don't you ever get tired of hitting refresh every other minute? - Giancarlo Caparo

LOL, let's see you sort though hundreds of reply of Twitter, shoot a video of that... - Robert Higgins

*yawns* - T. Brent, technopeasant

Sadly, FF has largely become a photo sharing, jokes and food pics sharing site - tech community is gone. - Susan Beebe

Yes, Twitter really has raised the bar in that arena. - Glen Mistletoe

Glen LOL - Susan Beebe

ZING! I shared a lame joke a few minutes ago, Susan! http://ff.im/aTQG6 I don't feel really bad about it. That's true, many people know me as a developer, but I'm not only that. I'm a jazz/anime/languages... LOVER :) - directeur

If only someone would have told Robert that his feed is his own creation and if he is unhappy there is only one place to look fir the reason. Oh, wait... - MVB (Grinch of FF) from iPod

seriously, talk about mis-matched comparisons. This general list is less focused than that built-for-a-purpose list? Well, no offense, but no shit, Sherlock. - Chieze Okoye

Good idea. Algorithm: search for the text and determine whether it is oft-repeated boilerplate or near links to the same page scattered across many blogs. - Daniel Dulitz from iPhone

8 more comments

I'd be concerned about spammers using this as a way to gauge how well they are bypassing Google's detection. A well-written machine learning algorithm that optimizes spam phrases based on the return value from Google's JSON API could theoretically improve to the point of not looking like spam. - Bill Strathearn

Using the text alone is likely to bring a lot of false positives. Just think of all the "Great post, thank you" comment spammers -- some people may actually be posting that legitimately while others just want a link. - John μller

What Bill said. You'd have to train up a different, non-production classifier. Then you face the question of whether you want to support that API/feature forever, esp. given that the bad guys might end up getting lots of mileage out of such an API. - Matt Cutts

John, I would probably *manually* delete a comment that reads "Great post, thank you" (believing it's spam). But you could also simply show a captcha when the API says it might be spam -- which would then be harmless to those low-confidence returns (and I would think "Great post, thank you" would receive a low confidence rating due to being so short). I.e. those who really want to post such "spamlike" congratulations would merely need to complete the captcha. - Philipp Lenssen

Bill and Matt, interesting and unfortunate problem, though is there any way to resolve that issue? And how do programs like Akismet solve that problem? - Philipp Lenssen

Bill's and Matt's issues are surmountable, but at what cost? Philipp, turning the question around, why would you want this? It would be more accurate/useful to perform the spam check within a higher level service, which could have an API. - Daniel Dulitz

Isn't essentially what the DCC does : http://www.rhyolite.com/dcc/ - Soren Riise

What would also be interesting would be a service that separates legitimate people names from product / service names. I think I would totally install that as a plugin on my blog, Mr. "discount plane tickets" & Ms. "best data recovery" can go post their comments elsewhere :-) - John μller

John — I get that kind of comment spam from names like Tanwa, Philip, Jay, Vector, Youku, and Lance. :-( - Amit Patel

"The best way to put it might be that starting a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun, if you're into that sort of thing. Which is to say, not at all, if you're not." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

"It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women." --- You are kidding right? :) - τorƍue

No info about the financial aspects of the deal for now. - TiTi

29 more comments

Ithink that tey have to do it now, or never - abdellah

"committed to supporting the needs of FF user community" - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Nice :) Thanks Robert - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

^^until FB shutters FF - jcunwired

nice scoop! - Marc Ostrick

@Brian How many times have we heard that line before? :( - Rodrigo Jaroszewski

I hope they made a bunch of money, because they SOLD US ALL :( - Zio Bonino

Robert, was this really posted 5 hours ago? - Daniel Chow

Robert: Say "cool" less! - Stephen Foskett

I was thinking the same thing. Count how many times you said "Cool" Robert ;) - Andru Edwards

This acquisition is most likely going to suck for users, but congrats to the FF team. Once Google announced Wave, selling to Facebook was probably the only remaining exit strategy worth the money. - Chip Ramsey

last comment 2 hours ago on FF by Paul Buchheit, FF CEO, was just " :)" http://friendfeed.com/paul #friendbook - Jacopo Gio

I don't know if i'm excited by the possiblities of this move, or frightened by what this could mean. - John Czwartacki

I hope they don't spoil it for us. I just want to keep coming to Friendfeed.com - Mark

If they had no plans of shutting down FriendFeed and rolling features into Facebook they would have said so right away to avoid speculation and to reassure FF users. I am trying not to be suspicious, but I am. - Inside Alaska

I'm in the same camp Alaska - Keith - @tsudo

Andru: it was about 100 degrees outside where I was doing the interview. I was trying to think cool and keep my cool. Heheh. - Robert Scoble

Maybe now we'll be able to integrate Facebook feed with FF & twitter - Justin Long

Faceborg...Googlebook...time to move back to StumbleUpon? Guess we should have seen this coming when FriendFeed got integrated into FeedBurner. - Internet Strategist

This interview is pretty funny... the person interviewing sounds like he just wants to ask questions for the sake of asking questions...;-) ... thanks for the insightful interview but.. - Sherif Mansour

In the interview, it was said that FriendFeed was not in immediate danger and could have continued for a number of years on their own. I'm not quite sure if that is true, because FriendFeed didn't develop their own business model. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

About integrating the social graphs, my social networks on FF and FB had different purposes. I don't have any friends on FB whom I haven't personally met, whereas I subscribe to some people I don't know on FF just because their feeds are interesting. On a related note, the FB graph is undirected and the FF graph is directed. - Ruchira S. Datta

@Scobleizer interviews Paul Buchheit, cofounder of FriendFeed RE acquisition by Facebook. - Deano @ Byron New Media

Rough transcript: http://friendfeed.com/brlewis... - Bruce Lewis

Paul and Brett jumped at the chance to increase their user base a thousand-fold. Whatever comes out of this is going to be huge. - Raphael, Raphael

You are right vzx - Nicolas Gosset from IM

"tremendous opportunity" is so vague. Opportunity for who? What opportunity exactly? Or is it just the opportunity to allow the friendfeed employees who weren't already rich to get rich? - Laura Norvig

Laura: it's every engineer's dream to change the world of 300 million people instead of a few hundred thousand people. That's why this is a tremendous opportunity. - Robert Scoble

Sigh. I guess. It's just very hard to think of Facebook as a life-changing venue. - Laura Norvig

Robert: Thanks for this - some information at last! - Jim Connolly

Good for Bing. Shows that the comparison is valid even if they don't come out on top. Sites like this justify the improvements. - Dan Stuart

Good find Loic. Perfect example of why I don't like Bing - Keith - @tsudo

The cast has longevity...I assume there are many more sequels with this group to come. Great entertainment and very slickly executed. - Dan Stuart

Still, I wish they could really go back in time, pluck out the original actors, and use them w/today's technology & writing! - Jason Wong

Google webmaster blog is well-known as reputable: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ - Matt Cutts

73 more comments

Live has a good webmaster blog too: http://blogs.msdn.com/webmast... Their most recent post about getting out of the penalty box is quite good. - Matt Cutts

It is important to get back to the basics once in awhile and I am rebuilding my blog from the foundation up, which is why I am asking. - Robert Scoble

Is SEO/SEM still relevant? - Mona Nomura

Google also just started a video channel for webmasters: http://www.youtube.com/GoogleW... Over 30+ videos already up to answer common questions. - Matt Cutts

I'm a big fan on http://www.seobook.com (Aaron Wall) and http://highrankings.com (Jill Whalen) - Jason Kane

Thanks Matt! Does anyone have a good checklist? - Robert Scoble

The Yahoo equivalent is the Yahoo! Search blog: http://ysearchblog.com/ - Matt Cutts

SEO Book: http://www.seobook.com AND SEOMoz: http://www.seomoz.org - Vinny

http://blackwaterops.com - Brandon Wirtz

I am not shocked that a Google employee was the first to answer this, by the way. - Robert Scoble

@Mona: ...can you expand on your question? What has made optimizing content and Web sites for search engines less relevant? - .LAG liked that

The only SEO that has been able to show me actual results is http://NowSourcing.com - MarkCarras

SEOmoz for sure. - mjc

@virante.com (http://www.virante.com/seo-too...) - Mark Traphagen

Mona: yes. Techcrunch tells me 60% of it's traffic comes from search. - Robert Scoble

http://centuryhouse.net/ upcoming SEO Blog - Robert Enriquez

This post will open the floodgates. Another vote for SEOMoz here however - Mo Kargas

Let's see. There's my blog of course: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ . For search news, Search Engine Land is quite comprehensive: http://searchengineland.com/ . I often check Google Blogoscoped http://blogoscoped.com/ or Google Operating System http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/ for other interesting news. - Matt Cutts

Robert -- while not a one place checklist, visit http://forums.digitalpoint.com/. I've implemented some of their recommendations thus far and I feel like it's already making a difference. - Aanarav Sareen

I've recently heard Google changed their algorithm, plus with aggregating sites indexing for us (FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter), there are many outlets and methods of people reaching our media -- that is, if we remember to segregate to keep various audiences interested. ie: staying away from ping.fm like services. - Mona Nomura

And then there's the HTML documentation that we offer for webmasters: http://google.com/support... plus our help forum http://www.google.com/support... - Matt Cutts

Thanks, Robert. - Mona Nomura

I'll let other folks suggest additional outside info. There's everything from Eric Goldman who talks about legal aspects of search http://blog.ericgoldman.org/ to SEO by the Sea http://www.seobythesea.com/ which talks about patents related to SEO/SEM/search. It's a really broad field. It's almost like asking "What are some good sources for information about blogging?" :) - Matt Cutts

What a timely question Robert :) I'm just studying up on this whole subject for my own site, and didn't really know where to start. Nice - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Yes, another vote for SEOmoz here. This checklist is pretty comprehensive: http://www.seomoz.org/dp... - Craig Bailey

Must read SEO blog: http://www.thegooglecache.com/ - Mark Traphagen

"Does anyone have a good checklist?" We wrote an SEO beginner's guide at http://googlewebmastercentral.... that I proofread before it went live. You can also do searches like [wordpress seo guide] and there are several good resources in the search results. - Matt Cutts

http://delicious.com/search... - Jay Neff

Mona, Yes. something like 90% of all traffic starts with a search engine, so unless you are a destination site ,you rely on search to send your traffice. There are times when RSS Subs can be more valuable, like when you are doing loyalty building, but generally NEW users are finding you through a social media or through search. More people are in search than social media..Ergo its still relevant - Brandon Wirtz

Aanarav, I would recommend some caution regarding Digital Point. Some of the more aggressive stuff that gets pitched in corners of DP can get you in trouble. - Matt Cutts

I am a fan of Search Engine Guide http://www.searchengineguide.com Great advice and solid writers. - Ross Dunn

The sites listed here are (mostly) excellent for sure. I'm also kinda partial to the SEO Success Pyramid (since I wrote it). http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/the-seo... - Matt McGee

I'm adding all these to http://delicious.com/jayneff... thanks! :) - Jay Neff

TR: http://www.seoteknikleri.com , http://delicious.com/wolkanc... - Volkan Yılmaz ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶

This is a MUST read in my opinion: SEOMoz http://www.seomoz.org/article... - Doug Lawrence

Of course Google is going to be the Dali Lama of SEO but there are many gurus of interest: http://www.searchengineacademysc.com - Laurel Phelps LaFlamme

Not that I'm biased, but LinkMoses http://www.ericward.com/article... and the Link Building Best Practices QandA http://www.ericward.com/bestpra... are on my must read list. - Eric Ward

@seomoz great docs, great tools, and a fun and informative blog & community - Julie Bovee Hill

Interesting how few SEOs seem to hang out on FF. On Twitter this would be a massive swarm of link dropping. - Matt Cutts

For WordPress I recommend http://www.yoast.com - Erno Hannink

Matt: this went to Twitter too. I have good PR's on both friendfeed and Twitter. - Robert Scoble

What about excellent content? Is that still important? I mean, useful material for human beings? Shouldn't that be well ranked by search engines? And of course, a usable and web standards compliant site. - Alexis Bellido

me - chaz2b

Thanks Scoble! I've been looking for this info myself, actually. - Adam C.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog for technical specs on SEO and http://www.seobook.com/blog for business insights in relation to SEO - Dave Fuentes

Thanks for this list. It finally showed me that value of FriendFeed over Twitter and Facebook. Good answers. Rock on. :-) - Martin Seibert

I just want to mark this for building43 which I just did with this comment. Oh, I wish I had invisible comments to add metadata/metatags to items like this. - Robert Scoble

Leather: I never liked delicious. It isn't setup to have a conversation like what happened here. - Robert Scoble

Leather: when I search friendfeed for building43 I want this post to come up. Here, take a look: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... No need to create another item in delicious. - Robert Scoble

www.SEOmoz.org, www.SEObook.com , www.SEOquake.com and also www.webpagefx.com is quite useful. - Hayk H.

As Alexis Bellido says, "a usable and web standards compliant site." I recommend http://www.w3.org for brushing up on the compliance side of things (even if it gets a bit technical). It's the standards by which the web runs, from the horses mouth, so to speak. - David August

You may want to try #Neil_Patel & his #Quick_Sprout outfit http://www.quicksprout.com/about... See his post: "How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines" http://bit.ly/JeXq1 - informative & good free advice. I've been digging into this subject myself for the benefit of a product one of my companies is incubating and this chap and his firm keeps rising to the top of my list. I am also fairly certain that he will advise you for free in return for a good word to your "subjects" ;) @AAinslie - Alexander Ainslie

This post and more importanly the timeline of the replies are in and of themselves useful as a measure of which SEO/SEOm firms are paying attention online. Not that this is an automatic measure of capability or quality, but you gotta question how good any site is that doesn't link drop on this particular post, be it a self drop or otherwise, given who the author was/is. I*'m, amazed there haven't been more. This might be tell us a thing or two about FF and the SEO community. - Eric Ward

Just a comment regarding Digital Point, they commonly recommend greyhat/blackhat techniques, and offer lots of stupid stuff for a price. The same advice can be had for free on BlackHatWorld.com. Information wants to be free. ;) - Lee Ingram

http://www.seobook.com with Aaron I rate highly, digital-point is probably a good place for short term success on splogs but nothing sustainable long term for a proper business. - Mark Edmondson

If this is about your blog vs SEO in general, that's a bit different. For blog SEO you might try Aaron's lengthy article on SEO for bloggers, http://www.seobook.com/blogger... Joost DeValk's Blog http://www.yoast.com or Matt Cutts favorite commentator: http://www.wolf-howl.com - Lee Odden

Some of my favorite WordPress SEO recommendations are from Yoast: http://yoast.com/article... - and this is an outstanding presentation on WordPress Blog SEO: http://wordpress.tv/2009... - Don Campbell

Eric, thanks for your offerings. I think that maybe the lack of SEO people here may be down to the fact that we are all working hard implementing all these techniques for our clients. There are plenty of SEO companies who merely do the work, rather than write down what they are doing and share with the rest. http://dragonsearchmarketing.com/blog... , the shop I work at part time is running really hard right now, with 3 new hires in the last 2 months. - Mark Zip

As to the reflection on the Ff community, perhaps that is because FF is bleeding edge and most work in the trenches of SEO is being done short of the bleeding edge, where there are more "regular" folks. - Mark Zip

Just joined StomperNet . Not a plug as I am still new with them (1 Week) http://stomping2.com/ and would like to know how others view them. They provide very detailed info through video. Seem to have an impressive staff on board. They are a paid subscription but think it is worth it so far. Would especially like to hear what Matt Cutts has to say about them. Should I cancel my subsription or not? - Jonathan

Jonathan: I know some of the StomperNet folks, they are very smart. - Robert Scoble

It does feel special to be using this service and be so connected in such a varitey of topics. Just tried the similar search (after reading comments on Matt Cutts ff) and did my usual search to see how a system works. http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/images... Need to get more non naked pics going :) - Jonathan

Jonathan, that would be a longer conversation than the FF textbox has room for. - Matt Cutts

Confidential SEO Secrets Book (down to earth and real). ;-) http://www.allenharkleroad.com/Home... - Allen Harkleroad

Matt Cutts, should i use them or not? Are they doing harm? I am trying to learn but not move into the black hat. - Jonathan

Various guys: Seobook, seomoz, www.searchandsocial.com - gareth【ツ】

Black hat is an attitude. - gareth【ツ】

http://yoast.com/article... - Sprague D

Killer SEO / SEM info for Small Businesses http://www.flowtown.com/blog :p - Ethan Bloch

SEOMoz is good, Seobook is good, I would also recommend WebmasterWorld as well. Supporters area on WebmasterWorld has some of the best minds hanging out there... - Bill Hartzer

Robert - The most recent article I did on free SEO resources is here: http://anzman.blogspot.com/2009... Hope it helps! Charlie - Charlie Anzman

Here's a bunch. http://www.seomoz.org, http://www.seobythesea.com, http://www.mattcutts.com, http://www.searchengineland, http://www.searchenginejournal, http://yoast.com, http://www.seobook.com, http://www.seoptimise.com, http://www.thegooglecache.com, http://seo2.0.onreact.com, http://wiep.net and of course http://www.blindfiveyearold.com or look at my delicious bookmarks http://delicious.com/ajkohn2... - AJ Kohn

I found http://www.waferscale.com as the best website which provides meaningful and easy to understand articles on SEO - Xelios

now if you have a CIALS site the above would be like a fart in a Gail,not much of an impression. - tomartomartini

What do you have in mind? Disqus does have some options to push/pull comments from ff. - Paul Buchheit

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Yeah, but they're segregated. The "perfect" solution would be to mirror the comments here AND there, updating in real-time to maintain the integrity and consistency of the conversation. - Carter Rabasa

Mirroring comments would be tricky because the foreign comments wouldn't have users associated with them. - Gabe

@Gabe But is it possible to use FriendFeed's imaginary friends feature to overcome that? - arunthampi

arunthampi: Even if FF made it so imaginary friends could own comments, does Disqus have a similar feature? - Gabe

I don't care much about fixing Disqus+FF, I care about fixing the problem, which is that there are too many places to comment. Even in FF two posts about the same blog by two people have two disjoint comment streams, which is fine when the commenters on one are distant in the friend graph from commenters on the other, but it's not fine when the commenters are close. - Daniel Dulitz

Foreign comments are interesting. With the rise of third-party auth, the claim that a user named "Daniel Dulitz" authenticated a comment using Facebook Connect allows a degree of confidence in identity (i.e. only the blog could fake that). - Daniel Dulitz

So I want to be able to carry on a conversation in my "place," but I want to be made aware of other places that are also having relevant conversations, and I want to be able to merge "my place" with any of those other places if I choose to. Specific example: I'd like FF to convert "share" in Reader to "like" in FriendFeed if it's already in my home feed. Or after the fact, if I see another great conversation, I might want to merge my FF post -- and its comments -- into someone else's post. - Daniel Dulitz

I don't mind that there are a lot of places to have a conversation -- what I mind most is that a single conversation gets fragmented (I see out-of-context Disqus replies). What I mind second most is not being able to make my conversation cross over. FriendFeed is internally great about managing overlapping circles of visibility and crossing over conversation streams as appropriate (and not when not) -- in an ideal world these semantics would hold across conversation services. - ⓞnor

I guess that's my point -- and also that the ideal world would come about with a FF widget that corresponds to a single conversation and allows foreign commenters. I could put that widget on my blog, FF could know from my RSS feed that I have the widget, and presto there is a comment service with this property. How does FF help streams cross over? I know how it makes me aware of other streams but not the crossing over part. - Daniel Dulitz

Hmm, maybe there is something like this... http://www.pathawks.com/2008... have to take a look. - Daniel Dulitz

I'm placing my bet on Friendfeed. - Brandon Mendelson

Facebook is mostly mundane status updates with no content feeds in my network...which leaves it entirely uninteresting compared to FriendFeed - Dan Stuart

"Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (pictured here), president of Google’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations, is leaving the search giant and joining Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners as a CEO-in-residence." - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

Chock full of accurate tips. 10 of them, in fact. - Kevin Fox from Bookmarklet

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Oh man, I wish more designers would realize and accept number three instead of fighting it. Clients don't care, at all. - Mark Trapp

Looks like one of my book shelves. - Adam Helweh

I know a lot of designers who would be happier if they internalized #4. It's important to listen to a client's design suggestions and discern the underlying issue rather than just listen to (or resent and disregard) the consequent design 'advice'. - Kevin Fox

"Most people learn this the hard way, the day their computer crashes. Usually it happens at the worst time, before a client meeting or something similar. If you think that this isn’t design-related, you are totally wrong." - Clare Dibble

Woh - the photo that goes with #9 is of Susie on the webmaster team at Google. Rather funny. - Shannon Bauman

Shannon, you think that's funny? My wife thought it was a photo of me at first! - Gabe

I actually DO remember my professors mentioning each of these at least once - if not several times during my time at university (many were freelance designers or consultants teaching classes on the side). Great advice! Can't stress #5 enough. Also, the inverse of # 2 can occasionally be true. Sometimes there's nothing like a fire under you to inspire crazy/great ideas! - Jeanette Bosman

I also thought that was you Gabe! But on another note, I was recently talking to a friend about some sites I have designed, and he kept saying "Somethings not right. I can't tell what, but it's not right". Is this a very common occurrence? And how do you get people to tell you specifically what they don't like? - Robert Felty

omg! I so have to tweet this - Sarah Perez from Bookmarklet

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That's actually kind of annoying - sofarsoShawn

oh, it's just silly, I laughed - that's how a lot of people perceive twitter - Sarah Perez

This is hilarious! - Josh Haley

So good. - Mike Nayyar

fantastic - pestwave

Very funny. But hit a little close to home in spots, which is why it is funny. - Robert Scoble

Thanks for sharing. This is absolutely hilarious! I need to tweet about it :) - Troy Malone

LOL omg that was funny, however it was way over 140 characters long. - Ardail Smith

I recently spoke with a school board about modernizing their curricula and using new online tools to network with community and disseminate. All they've heard about it is the stereotypical inane tweet "I'm getting in the shower now". They don't quite "get it". I'm not evangelizing Twitter per say (go Yammer!), but I am continually finding myself trying to help people "get it" so they can make organizational decisions. I worry they'll watch this video and fortify their underestimation of socialmedia. - Ryan Stanley

Along these lines, look at this photo of me with the Texas Governor: http://www.flickr.com/photos... -- yes, I'm friendfeeding/twittering while meeting the gov. - Robert Scoble

It's vivid！ I so have to tweet this~ - 呢喃

The true about Twitter :) - Roman Zolotarev

always good to have a "reality check" and it looks like the twitter nut is older than the other guy...cool - Barbara K. Iverson

Funny and well done! Is it just me or does the skeptical character rememble Kevin Rose with longer hair? - Micah Wittman

well done. - Thomas Hawk

I felt a little uncomfortable. I don't want to be like these people. Y'all are my friends, RIGHT? ;) - Jorge Escobar

awesome, LOVE IT - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I laughed out loud, srsly. - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

brilliant, I did not see the marketing experts though - M F

Awesome - Moses Kpetigo

This isn't funny, it's hilarious - Len Lynch from twhirl

As the advert shows..twitter certainly has a future but the concern is can twitter cope with overcapacity? - Moses Kpetigo

Very Funny....I'll pass it to fellow Twitter Peeps..... - Key Andrew

Yeah so I tweeted this, despite it's annoyingneas factor, it is kind of funatatastc and grows on you - sofarsoShawn

I warned you when I first saw this. This is a corruptible feature. It INVITES this kind of nonsense. - Robert Scoble

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I think i missed some drama whilst traveling - andy brudtkuhl

if I wasn't feeling so ill right now I'd be working on rant on how wrong this is .. maybe tomorrow after I get back from our doctor's appointment and I'm feeling better .. I can't even describe how many ways from wrong this is - Steven Hodson

Steven: what was wrong was Twitter's poor decision making process here (and poor selection of algorithms). They screwed their community and they really don't care about what they are doing here. Defaults are important. They communicate a lot about what kind of community you want using your service. There's a LOT to attack here from a variety of different angles. Here's one: let's assume you're religious. Now, why is Dooce a default? What does that communicate about Twitter's choices? Not good, me says. - Robert Scoble

What does it matter? Why are you basing authority on the number of followers someone has? Let Calacanis and others waste their money. - Mark Trapp

Mark: it has nothing to do with number of followers. That's level one. Look deeper. Think about what it communicates to the community. Compare to how friendfeed's recommended feature works (totally different, friendfeed's is FAR better thought out and is not corruptible). - Robert Scoble

There's a community on Twitter? They got lucky all the early adopters brought their communities TO Twitter. - Mona Nomura from fftogo

@Mark .. because for better or worse those "default" people in the list will be among those selected by new comers especially as Twitter moves forward into the mainstream. The very fact that they are there in the list will give the average user signing up for the first the idea that they are the people to follow. - Steven Hodson

The defaults a community has tells you what kind of community it will become. Go subscribe to ONLY the default list over on Twitter. Tell me what you learn. I have a whole list and I've noticed a substantial change in Twitter's community since it was turned on. They did severe harm and don't even know why. I'm not telling them, either, without a consulting fee. - Robert Scoble

Steven: go deeper. This is like an onion. I reacted the same way, with emotion at first. That's layer one. There's a bunch of layers to this one. Stop thinking emotionally and just look at what that communicates to a community. - Robert Scoble

Are there people who actually purchase heavily followed Twitter accounts? There are techniques people employ to gain followers with no particular agenda or content--is this to sell the account to someone who may think they can use this audience--or is it just cyber-vandalism? (spamming to gain followers) - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Steven: here's another layer to the onion. Visit the follower list of anyone on this list. Here's TechCrunch's follower list: http://twitter.com/TechCru... Now click on 100 followers. Do you notice anything weird? I sure do. These are NOT real people! - Robert Scoble

the potential audience you can get by being included there is so huge...is this unexpected behavior for people who think bigger is better? - .LAG liked that

Rob: anytime you can build an audience that has specific attributes that will have value. I totally expect people to sell their Twitter accounts at some time in the future. I'm willing to pay Jason Calacanis $5,000 to write five tweets to his followers, for instance. That's a form of that kind of financial pressure. - Robert Scoble

@LAG so buying your audience is acceptable? if so then this whole Social Media thing really is nothing more than a scam - Steven Hodson

It'd probably be more efficient to just pay straight up for followers. That is, say, 10cents per follower, 50cents... whatever. Then Twitter could just give you as many "impressions" on the Recommended list as it took to get to that number. They could even add "Recommendations" to every page. Not ads, of course... "Recommendations" Based on the content of that page or who you're already... more... - Ken Sheppardson

@Robert I'll look at all this tomorrow .. right now I need Nyquil :) but I'll be watching this until I pass out - Steven Hodson

I was just thinking this in Subway @Scoble & his first comments re: Leo Laporte & the suggested followers [backtype] then I ate my sub - sofarsoShawn

@Steven: no, no, no...not saying it's acceptable to me. but the size of the audience draws the kind of "monetize these many eyeballs" kinds of people who buy their way into everything. suits, and that ilk. to them, it's acceptable behavior, because they buy audiences, they don't grow them. - .LAG liked that

.LAG: exactly. Which is one reason why I am liking friendfeed more and more. Have you noticed that @biz and @ev rarely participate in building a community while Paul and Bret at friendfeed participate a lot more in the community? Look at all of their different feeds. Here, let me post those in here: - Robert Scoble

Paul Buchheit: http://friendfeed.com/paul (co-founder of friendfeed). - Robert Scoble

Evan Williams: http://twitter.com/ev (co-founder of Twitter). Interestingly enough he's been participating more lately. - Robert Scoble

Bret Taylor: http://friendfeed.com/bret (co-founder of friendfeed). - Robert Scoble

Jack Dorsey: http://twitter.com/jack (co-inventor of Twitter). Interesting that he doesn't give credit to the other inventor, http://twitter.com/noah - Robert Scoble

@Scoble: right, right, right. but there WAS a time when the Twitter founders were more active in the community. i've been on it since 2007. perhaps the size of the community passed a tipping point were it's just too unsustainable. don't know...i mean, come on, ashton kutcher has nearly 298K followers, how can anyone interact with an audience like that? - .LAG liked that

Sanjeev Singh: http://friendfeed.com/sanjeev (co-founder of friendfeed). - Robert Scoble

LAG: I've been on Twitter since 2006 and I've been hanging around Ev since 2000. He doesn't get involved in the community at the same level that others have and that's been pretty consistent. But, who cares? He's a lot richer than I am. - Robert Scoble

I love that http://twitter.com/noah helped invent Twitter and even HE isn't on the suggested follower list while other execs at Twitter are. Shows another way how corruptible this list is. - Robert Scoble

Robert and Steven: I see one of two arguments being made: 1) that the suggested users are being construed as being somehow representative of the "proper" use of Twitter, and because they aren't using Twitter as you want it to be used, having a bunch of people mimic the suggested users would be detrimental. If this is the argument, get over it. Communities are organic: Facebook isn't the... more... - Mark Trapp

The other argument I can see is that the people on the suggested list are being forced on new subscibers who don't know anything about Twitter and thus they will only learn what the suggested list tells them. If this is the argument, I think you miss the method by which late adopters adopt things. They don't join services blindly and hope something happens: someone, or several people,... more... - Mark Trapp

Mark: Facebook never had a default set of users. In fact, they kept people like me from building huge following communities. I disagree about how late adopters are getting into Twitter. Lately every TV and radio station has been mentioning Twitter. These people are joining Twitter without having any friends, so they choose the defaults. That experience is lame and not personal so they don't get the usage of Twitter and so they leave. This is why Techcrunch has follower after follower who don't engage. - Robert Scoble

http://www.noahglass.com/2008... -- the story behind Twitter's beginnings. Interesting that Noah isn't on the suggested follower list. He helped to invent Twitter and now seems to be on the "outs" with the current administration. Shows how corruptible this list is. If you aren't "in" with @ev you will be punished and written out of history (look at Jack's Twitter description, he doesn't acknowledge Noah at all). - Robert Scoble

Robert, but they aren't joining without knowing anyone: I hear it all day on MSNBC when they cover it, "Follow Contessa Brewer and the rest of the MSNBC team," or "Follow me on Twitter, http://twitter.com/ricksan...," or a celebrity talks about Twitter, they're searching for that celebrity. Take a look at what happened when you and Louis Gray started evangelizing FriendFeed: you... more... - Mark Trapp

After catching up on this issue, I'm glad I started on Twitter last year before this garbage started. Feels like high school clique time. You can only be popular IF .... I'll stick to the people who I like to read and vice versa, thank you very much. - ursi

Mark: you need to study the followers that are joining lately. They are demonstrating you are wrong in your assumptions. Now why that is the case is up for debate (I say they are fake accounts and Twitter is propping up its numbers, but @ev says they are real people). But go over to any of the people on the suggested list and look at their followers. They look NOTHING like the people who follow me. - Robert Scoble

And Robert: I'm arguing that Facebook didn't need a suggested users list to change drastically in community tone over the years. It changed when they started adding more colleges. It changed again when they started adding high schoolers, and again when they let anyone join. Once it got insanely popular, it changed again. Communities evolve: if it wasn't the suggested person list,... more... - Mark Trapp

Robert: if they are fake accounts, how does it negatively impact anyone's experience? The only thing fake accounts do is inflate follower count numbers, which you said has nothing to do with this issue. - Mark Trapp

Mark: I agree with that, but Facebook is far more engaged than Twitter is and has a far larger audience than Twitter does too. Twitter is in risk of burning out like a meteor who gets very bright and very hot and then hits the ground. As it sees more and more spam and broadcasting style types of people it has risks of losing a lot of people. Facebook had other "hooks" to hold its audience in place (Facebook is like velcro, Twitter is like a piece of string). - Robert Scoble

...and something about the twitter default list seems like fraud ... - ursi

Robert: if you're worried about spam and broadcasters, look at email: we all use it to great effect even though 90-95% of all email is spam. (And by the way, FriendFeed is a little too realtime, I feel like I'm one and a half responses behind) - Mark Trapp

Steven - yep, this is "bullshit" - more elite crap from Silly Valley. This has to stop. Twitter is loosing credibility with the business and tech community when they resort to playground antics and popularity contests. Don't they have Advisors to help them not commit such obvious faux paux? Geesh! Arrogance, youth and lack of insight is really hurting twitter right now. - Susan Beebe

Mark: here's something to think about. If there are people creating lots of fake accounts, why are they doing that? To prop up numbers? To spam everyone like someone did to my followers recently? To do something else? Or, are they really real people but just ones that haven't followed anyone and haven't written any Tweets? They make the system seem lame. I found a lot of cool people in first year or two by looking at followers of other people. Look at Techcrunch right now. Lame, lame, lame. - Robert Scoble

How could a list be formed that wasn't fraudulent in one way or another? Do it by the numbers? We know numbers don't indicate quality. Do it by a curator? Well they have poor taste. It's not clear there's anyway to do this list, so why not money? - Todd Hoff

Todd: numbers actually DO tell a big part of the story. The people who have accounts that have the most engagement, for instance (most liked posts, most commented on posts) ARE better than 99.9999% of the other friendfeeders (I've been tracking that stuff manually and the value there is HUGE). - Robert Scoble

Todd: even follower numbers DO tell a story. In my experience the most popular bloggers generally DO do better content on average than other people. So, if you use a real algorithmic approach that can get you a LOT further than the Twitter list did. The real trick is to not make it a default, show the list like a menu in a restaurant (pick and choose your favorites) and make the list infinite (I've followed 17,000 people here and friendfeed still is suggesting more people to me). - Robert Scoble

Robert: I have no idea what they're doing, but you take past examples of email and usenet, they seem to be a natural progression of any communications platform. And Usenet and Email are two opposite extremes: what was different about Email that allowed it to survive a massive influx of lame users and lame activity? I'm thinking it's the same thing that makes Facebook work: it's not that... more... - Mark Trapp

The restaurant everyone goes to doesn't always have the best food. It's often just the small network effect of recommendations. I've tracked this :-) Using that as the metric for building a list would still be fraudulent. For example, if you post something you'll have more likes in one post than I'll have for the rest of my life. I would still humbly say there's some worthwhile content in my humble space. - Todd Hoff

Mark: you are matching the thinking here on friendfeed. Notice that you can't see my follower counts. You also can't see who is following me. That's very interesting social engineering. Also, everything in friendfeed is decentralized. No one has the same experience here. That too is why I really love friendfeed. It also makes it a bit hard to get into. - Robert Scoble

Todd: on average, though, restaurants that are popular have better food than ones that don't. I've tracked this too. You're wrong, by the way, about how friendfeed works. Liking puts YOUR stuff into my followers' view. So, your thesis is TOTALLY WRONG. You'll have just as many likes as I will. Why? Cause I'll like your stuff, putting it into my audience's view. - Robert Scoble

WOW Friendfeed is like the last noble social media hold out.... - sofarsoShawn

I don't give a shit about it because I don't count followers. And I didn't get into it to make money. - Graham English

As long as I'm totally totally wrong Robert. I've never found your average case in my experience Robert. Popular restaurants are usually popular for the same reason TV shows are popular, they are bland enough not to offend the majority. You rarely if ever like my stuff, no hard feelings, so the trickle down theory doesn't really apply here either. And depending on the fickle trickle also strikes me as a fraudulent approach. It still does not directly address quality. - Todd Hoff

My theory on these astronomical numbers: Spammers are running bots to create new Twitter accounts - probably hundreds a day. When the bots hit the Suggested Users page, they just accept the default users because, chances are, some percentage of those users are auto-following (an easy way for the bot to gain followers and look semi-credible on a statistical basis). So these pumped up numbers are totally bogus. Out of 200K followers for an account like @techcrunch I'll bet that over 50% are bots. - Mike Doeff

Mike: I totally agree. Todd: I just looked over your friendfeed. There's some stuff there that I missed and clicked like on, but you have pretty eclectic tastes. I can see where you're coming from. I disagree with you. There's a reason why sushi or fine scotch whiskey are a little unattainable for most people and aren't that popular. They are acquired tastes and not for the masses. - Robert Scoble

@Robert: Is Dooce supposed to be some sort of atheist icon or something? Sure she mentions her conservative surroundings and upbringing regularly, but I can't imagine she completely alienates religious readers. Most of her content is pretty universal from a "this is what it's like having a family" POV. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Calacanis move is a move he's done time and again. He did this to Fark about 10 years ago, getting their ad guy fired. He has deep pockets, the "Big Stack" if you will. He's using the power of the big stack to force Twitter all-in or fold. If I had Calacanis money that's exactly what I'd be doing. Kind of like Redford in that Demi more hooker movie. - Matthew DeVries

Daniel: I have seen complaints about the language she uses. Imagine you have no idea who she is. Now imagine your thoughts if you see her recommended by Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Bah, lots of the alpha bloggers in Valley culture cuss all day, too. You're now talking about a Disneyfied take on Twitter. I imagine censorship of that stripe would really dampen the spread and value of microblogs. - Daniel J. Pritchett

my thought would be more "bleh, there's one to avoid following" rather than "the entire site is filled with people I find deeply offensive". I do see the point that the recommended list doesn't represent the average users, it merely shows those with the deepest pockets or the bigger army of fans. - alphaxion

Do you think they'd accept a crisp fiver? I want 200,000 followers - sofarsoShawn

Can we just accept Scoble's naming of Dooce as a "For example hypothetical" and stop picking it apart. Holy shit people THERE'S THE POINT, GO CATCH IT! *points in the other direction* - Matthew DeVries

Daniel: if you want the mainstream you have to care about this crap. Half of Americans voted for McCain, remember? - Robert Scoble

Has anyone asked the Twitter ppl if they plan on rotating that list of recommendations from time to time? - Sarah Perez

I was thinking the "Dooce alienates McCain voters" problem could be solved by segmenting the recommendations into topical lists, but then I realized that cramming Dooce into a "gleefully vulgar unrepentant ex-Mormon Mommy Bloggers" niche would be ghettoizing her. - Daniel J. Pritchett

@Matthew DeVries: It's too bad we can't effectively splinter this discussion in multiple directions on FF. Oh well, at least we're talking. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Netflix recommends movies based on categories and refined by "likes". That would get new users started following things that appeal to them. - Robert Hafer

Wow.... interesting how this tiny little aspect of the service has become such a hot spot. I'm guessing this shows that, most of all, Twitter is important. :-) - Jason Calacanis

sound like sour grapes regarding scoble etc, are people saying they SHOULD be on the list? why? don't like the fact others are getting more followers...yet they say size of followers don't matter so much... sheesh... - Rob Sellen :o)

I so agree with you on this Steven - Charlie Anzman

I bet Calacanis could probably just get some chick to tattoo his face on her breasts for a lot less money and get just as much attention. - Thomas Hawk

Thomas thatis both super funny and true!! - Susan Beebe

The uncensored, complete interview. I thought Jon Stewart did a great job skewering CNBC. He was thoughtful & analytical, but still highly entertaining. Jim Cramer handled a very bad situation (the video of him talking about scamming the SEC!!) fairly gracefully and actually came across as less of a jerk than I had expected. - Jess Lee from Bookmarklet

37 more comments

Argh, not available in Canada. Anyways, here's the part from the aired interview that I think needs to be tattooed across the insides of the eyelids of nearly every journalist in America: "I'm under the assumption - and maybe this is purely ridiculous - but I'm under the assumption that you don't just take their word at face value. That you actually then go around and try and figure it out.". - Andrew C

Wow. - Paul Buchheit

Amazing. Jon Stewart absolutely nailed him. It made for some uncomfortable viewing at times, but we need more interviews like this. It's sad that it takes a comedy show host to do this. - Paul Grav

Flipping. Amazing. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Stewart is brilliant. - Chieze Okoye

Doucheborough. Fantastic. - Chieze Okoye

I had the impression sometimes that Jim Cramer is going to cry. Especially when that video was shown. It was painful to see him being ripped apart. - Roland Hesz

Cramer absolutely must have been intending to just sit there and take it no matter what, as if that would just let it all blow over. It was sorta strange. He was certainly no Tucker Carlson. - Ken Sheppardson

my question: did Cramer know that the street.com video was coming up? or was this an ambush? if this was a surprise to him , Cramer handled it very well. the key msg from Stewart seemed to be the shared understanding in the financial community of the 'shenanigans' that we going on for quite some time. in that regard, i thought Cramer dissembled quite a bit about his knowledge/role in that aspect of wall street trading. i don't think Cramer was prepared for that aspect of the discussion. - MikeAmundsen

@Chris: you make a good point. CNBC might be thinking Cramer can 'take one for the team' on this one and Kudlow and others will not need to answer any serious Qs. - MikeAmundsen

I love what Jon says about there being two markets, the one that is being sold to us as long term, "put your 401k in it, leave it alone, it's safe" and the other real market that is fast, transactional, ethically dubious, happening in the backroom and putting that long term market at risk. "It feels to us, and I'm speaking as a layman here, like we are capitalizing your adventure". - Jason Wehmhoener

My understanding was that you need a small amount of active trading to make the passive trading strategies work. i.e., the vanguard index fund holders are being subsidized by the active traders, rather than the other way around. - Amit Patel

Amit, the problem is that John Q. Public is inexpert in the mechanics of the admittedly necessary active trading, and what Jon is trying to get Cramer to admit to is that the financial news networks have an ethical obligation to illuminate those mechanics, particularly when the financial industry is behaving contrary to ethics. The accusation is that the failure to sound the warning bell makes CNBC a willing accomplice. - Jason Wehmhoener

I agree that making Jim Cramer take the "blame" is a bit disingenuous but he probably makes for better TV than the CEO of CNBC would. (and I do agree with Jon that his hands aren't entirely clean) - Jason Wehmhoener

Mike, I have not watched it yet but to answer your question Cramer knew he was in for a rough time. He was on the Martha Stewart show yesterday and discussed the fact he was going to be on Jon that evening and was nervous. I think CNBC is trying to do some damage control and as someone else said they are letting Cramer take one for the team. - R. Ferguson

There's a differrence between active trading and outright scamming and manipulation though. - Paul Buchheit

Why is it that the only 'journalist' in the US, one willing to hold people accountable for their actions, is a comedian? - MVB (Grinch of FF)

as to is it fair for Cramer to take the hit, yes it is. He was the public face. I heard Andrew Sullivan talking on the Diane Rehm show this morning and he said this interivew will likely be a cultural seminal moment. Here you have a comedy channel calling him out. He feels the MSM & Washington still do not get the fact the American public is looking at things soberly and have no tolerance for the foolishness of old. - R. Ferguson

Chris makes a good point that CNBC viewership is likely higher during bull markets. People want to hear the fantasy, especially while it's still somewhat plausible. People also want to be entertained, and I have to admit that I can't personally name any other CNBC commentator besides Cramer, in spite of my low opinion of Cramer himself. Jim Cramer may be less bullish than CNBC in general, but he's still far too bullish for my taste. Financial news is not where people should be looking for entertainment. - Jason Wehmhoener

@MVB: In the olden days, the court jester was the one who could freely speak about things that nobody else was willing to say. TV comedians are today's court jesters. - Amit Patel

Amit, it's weird to describe index fund holders as "being subsidized by" active traders. Arbitrageurs and speculators of many stripes are necessary to set prices, but they get paid for their labor, and that money ultimately comes out of the pockets of passive "dumb" investors. (The more arbitrageurs, the less money they get.) I don't think public mutual funds are the right way to capitalize this arbitrage (for a variety of reasons), and existing actively traded mutual funds are mostly minor scams. - ⓞnor

The fourth estate, the one that the authors of the Constitution meant, no longer exists. Today's 'journalists' would never have uncovered Watergate because they are too afraid of 'losing access' to report anything bad about anybody. - MVB (Grinch of FF)

Here's part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Jason Shultz from twhirl

For once, I completely agree with Chris White, Cramer isn't the guy to answer the tough CNBC questions Kudlow would be a good choice. Cramer is actually a pretty stand up guy. He readily admits his failed investment advice. Its the market shit happens that isnt supposed to. A good deal of the failed advice with regards to his previous bank recommendations was the willy-nilly inconsistent way the government tackled the issue. Around december he just plane stopped giving bank advice because of it. - Geoff Schultz

Chris, according to Salon and CNBC, it's middle aged (A25-49) male professionals worth over $1 million: http://friendfeed.com/e... and http://www.cnbc.com/id... - Mark Trapp

Ever read "Liars Poker" Chris? Pretty early on in the book you figure out why they all need blood sugar meters. By the way I prefer Bloomberg 90% of the time I only watch Cramer and Fast Money. - Geoff Schultz

I read bloomberg.com (don't really watch TV at all, actually) and I've always felt that they do good straight facts based reporting, which is basically what I want from financial news. - Jason Wehmhoener

I think the orange on black is awesome. The palette is derived from the bloomberg consoles that traders have had on their desks for decades. Those screens were an incredible thing to have access to once upon a time, particularly if you had an interest in technical analysis of charts. These days that info is pretty widely available on the web. So, ya, I used to work for a stockbroker, and that palette is nostalgic. - Jason Wehmhoener

Chris: the CNBC page I linked describes the occupations of its audience: "Viewers of CNBC business news programming are business executives and financial professionals that have significant purchasing power. According to a July 2004 survey by Mendelsohn Media Research, the median household net worth of CNBC Business Day viewer exceeds $1.2 million." - Mark Trapp

Chris, you might be surprised at the lack of taste and intelligence frequently exhibited by financial professionals. I understand where you are coming from though. - Jason Wehmhoener

The point of announcing your demographic is to attract advertisers, who can easily verify the information. It's also independently verified by Nielsen and Mendelsohn. There'd be no point to lie about your audience demographic. And to compare on-air personalities to a company's ad sales division is a specious argument at best. - Mark Trapp

Chris you forgot to adjust its only $750,000 now =P =P =P - Geoff Schultz

I just watched the whole thing, and I thought Stewart came across as he always does: a complete dick, frothing with righteous indignation. - Joey Gibson

can someone post a link to an unedited transcript? - Chris Hollander from fftogo

If I was ever going to feel sorry for Cramer, I sure won't now: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009... - a reprint of Cramer's response on his paywalled blog. - Andrew C

Wow, ya, blame Obama for the economy. Nice. - Jason Wehmhoener

Cramer impressed me. Really, it's a well and good to criticize now, but what's done is done. Cramer did a good job of taking the heat from Stewart without looking like the crass entertainer I assumed he was. I still won't watch his show, but I have a higher personal opinion of him after this interview. - Kenton

@Kenton. I agree, he had the balls to come on the show and take it on the chin. Few would have done what he did. I hope he can learn from the criticism. - Paul Grav

best thing ive seen since quite some time - Chris Hofmann

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