It can invigorate a company's image or squander its brand equity. To see which gambles paid off, Fortune turned to a few experts to judge some of the most dramatic transformations.
- David Finch
+1 Mel - I am gutted and don't know what to do if the main FF site closes
- Matt Hooper
Why would I leave friendfeed? This place works well enough for me.
- Talon Lardner
Manuel: back to my blog and Twitter, probably. I'm playing around with Facebook but it doesn't quite do it for me.
- Robert Scoble
I'm sticking around unless there's some sort of mass exodus which I don't see an immediate reason for.
- Mike Elliott
Not leaving 'til it closes, and I'm certainly not going to facebook or twitter even then.
- Jim Hearts FF
I'm sad, but I'm sticking around. I'm hoping others do to. At some point, the fuss will die down.
- Helen Sventitsky
Mike: because I expect it will get shut down eventually if it doesn't get invested in, and if it gets no new features it will fall behind Google Wave and other projects.
- Robert Scoble
This feels like that HBO Documentary about Brooklyn Dodgers going to LA haha.
- Manuel Mas
And, actually, Google Wave seems to be the most obvious thing for me to try out from now on.
- Robert Scoble
I will stick around until they move the features I like from friendfeed onto facebook.
- Bryan Lee
Isn't it a bit early to make decisions? Has there been an announcement that I missed that FF is going away? Even if it isn't where else is better at this point?
- Internet's Tad
I'm not going anywhere Helen...When it goes it goes...I'm sitting tight on the ship
- Bill Heslin
there used to be a kind of message board system ages back with FB. disppeared one day never to return, lets hope this will bring something of that back, who knows..
- Terry O'Fee
Waiting and watching. Robert, I know you have a discussion tab on FB but its not the same. ;)
- Melanie Reed
How soon before google wave becomes available to the early adopters/public?
- Bryan Lee
Mashable just published a How To Take Advantage of FriendFeed's Unique Features. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. A little late for that, no?
- Stephen Pickering
didn't you just just say "FriendFeed is dead. I will keep using it until Paul unplugs the last server, which could be years" ? or i'm missing something
- Liviu Barbat
I'll stick around to the bitter end.
- Dave Metzener
Robert: Earlier in the day you were excited for both FriendFeed & Facebook. It didn't sound like you were leaving FriendFeed. What changed? Why not stick around to see what happens?
- Jill Elswick
Bryan: I heard they weren't handing out beta access to non-developers until September. Cold be wrong but that's what I heard
- Mike Elliott
I'm in wait and see mode. It would have to be absolutely sucked in by FB for me to leave it completely.
- pea
Robert, if you believe this is a good deal for both FF and FB - why are you leaving?
- George F. Snell III
When should we cue in Titanic's last song by the band as FF sinks below leaving us all behind?
- Manuel Mas
Why leave now? Until it is changed or killed, it still works just the same.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Same assessment as you, I'll stick around but I need to find an option B now. I guess I'll go wherever Louis Gray recommends
- Alberto Saavedra
I plan on sticking around for a little while longer. Not ready to jump ship yet.
- David Finch
Melanie: yeah, real time really has me going. I will wait until I get a better sense from the FriendFeed team about what will be done here. I just am not getting the right signals from the team that there will be any investment in this. If that's the case, I'd rather invest my time somewhere else. Google Wave. Ning. Vanilla on Building43. Twitter, now that I got rid of the spammers. Etc.
- Robert Scoble
I'll watch and see what happens. IF I feel that it would be useless to stay, I'll leave the site.
- TeraDyne Azurepaw
I think the features of FF will be incorporated into FB (guilt free) and FB profiles will be more tied into FF. That's about all we'll see...
- Gus
Manuel: hey, Pirillo is over there. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I'm staying here until something else catches up.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, I can definitely see the value of your invested time on any service, but for the average user, what is the downside of sticking around here as long as the site still exists?
- Jeff P. Henderson
@Scobleizer: The big crowd is not even at Friendfeed yet and you are already leaving? Someone will be by in a few minutes with a drink. Please help yourself and stick around for the conversation. You will be greatly missed should you choose to leave so soon.
- David Damore
Social Media is a set of tools--I appreciate the connections I make, but I'm not getting too emotionally worked-up about the tools changing. FF probablywon't function as my Social Media hub much longer.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
I like it here, so I'll hang out as long as possible.
- sean percival
Not making any set plans yet, but keeping my eyes and ears open.
- Martha
And when Google buys Twitter, won't that be interesting
- Stephen Pickering
Bruce: have you played with Wave yet? I'm wondering how good that is? I gotta get an invite. Off to beg someone cooler than me. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I will continue to use it until it closes down in its current form.
- ashish
I'm a little pissed that we haven't heard much from our other "rock stars". Where the hell are they? This concerns them, yet I can hear a pin drop. I think there secretly plotting. Roflmao
- Jeunelle Foster
I don't want to but if it eventually goes down the way everybody's predicting it will then i'll have to look for alternatives :( .......by the way where do i beg for Wave invites :)
- Bhowmik Shah
I'd bet Microsoft buys Twitter before Google does.
- Gus
I haven't played with wave yet, but from what I've seen it's got potential. FriendFeed's got polish.
- Bruce Lewis
I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but I guess I'll be spending more time on Social Median. Perhaps someone should start putting together a decent buddypress site?
- Aram Zucker-Scharff
I might leave only because I quit facebook - I hate the mindset, the shallowness, and am afraid (make that certain) those people will come here
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Gus: Microsoft and Twitter deserve each other. They are both somewhat buggy and don't come up with new features very often. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I think I'll be heading back to Twitter until Google Wave is publicly available
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Robert: Since at the end of the day all these platforms are businesses and have to eventually make money does it make sense to keep investing time and effort into building communities on them when they can sell/merge at any time and dismantle the tools that keep the community in place? it seems like the portable community concept of something like Google FriendConnect now makes more...
more...
- Mike Elliott
The other rock stars are drinking. :-)
- Robert Scoble
If Facebook had an easier way of connecting with people but not showing them all the personal stuff I'm willing to show to my close friends (and the stuff my friends post about me), I don't think I'd need anything like FriendFeed or Twitter.
- Edward Coffey
Robert: I've played with Wave and I wouldn't really put it in the same category as FriendFeed at the moment. It's not really about sharing and conversing in mass form IMO. Its really conversation with maybe 20 people or so but its much more difficult to focus conversations about shared content. Let everybody know when you get an invite and your address so we can add you! :)
- Brandon Titus
It kinda proves a theory I have about us all being reduced (if I can use that word) to channels. I don't think social networking will go away, but as the internet and deals increase, so does the noise. Don't worry Scobe, you still show up in our Google reader every morning!!
- professor daddyo
Man, what are we going to do without these discussions like this?
- Stephen Pickering
Mike: No community is permanent. It's worthwhile to participate even if it's temporary.
- Bruce Lewis
@Gus, Well MS has large stake in FB so I'm not sure about that. I'll stick around here till it peters out. The tech news rooms here are top notch.
- Adi
I don't use FF much other than for private rooms, so I'll stay for those. Whatever other activity I have (which is sporadic and generally not personal) will also remain.
- Cheryl
I'll stick around until they pull the plug.
- Morton Fox
Leave friendfeed? what's the alternative I'd really like to know. Is it facebook?
- Tate DA FF MVP
I'll stick with it as long as it's here and people are still active. FF4L!!
- Cassidy
What is the next thing? Where do we go now? Not FB! But where?
- Michael Liss
I won't be deleting my account, but signing in and commenting? No. No real point to continue putting data into a service that is gonna get unplugged anyway. Guess we just have to return to blogs and twitter.
- BCK
what? leave and create a better version of Twitter? or start FriendsterFeed?
- Andy Sternberg
The downside for me? I invest time in things that WILL BE not that are. That's always been what keeps my interest and now that I know that FriendFeed probably will not be, even if it takes five years to totally die, I've lost a great deal of interest in it.
- Robert Scoble
Michael: I don't think anyone knows today where to go next, because there's no good substitute out there. We can only hope that the next destination will be obvious before they pull the plug.
- Bruce Lewis
With the price of bandwith/computing halving every year, there will be a new one of these popping up pretty quick
- Stephen Pickering
I'll just go to twitter. I have a facebook account but I hate it. Facebook is the walmart of the web.
- Darrel Davis
yeah~ definitly! @Jeunelle foster please come down,
- harri78son
I see now...This whole thing was a ploy to get everyone visiting Robert's blog! I am outraged! :P
- Brandon Titus
Brandon: OK, we can go over to YOUR blog. Got Echo? :-)
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: Very true. I've tried to get into FaceBook but it's hard to get the clean conversation feed along with lifestreaming content. It just seems to be full of distracting noise even with the ability to filter with lists.
- Mike Elliott
Robert, the same could be said about Flickr, they haven't had much inovation since Yahoo bought them, but people still use the service in droves.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Don't worry Kelly, a new one of these will pop quickly, if they kill this
- Stephen Pickering
Kelly: we don't need to leave tonight. Let's trash the house first! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Brandon, that's funny. At the Boston FriendFeed meetup, everybody else had learned about FriendFeed through Scobleizer. I was the only one who found him through FriendFeed.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm leaving my account here for now but I'll be removing all my feeds.
- Got80s
Anyway, for the rest of today at-least I reckon I'll be off FriendFeed - real conversation is being drowned out by the echoes of this deal.
- Edward Coffey
I'm staying here until there is a reason to leave. Though I don't hold out hope they'll keep the service alive forever... obviously, I'm always enjoysthin.gs too, but it's not quite the same. I REALLY can't see myself using facebook as much as FF though.
- Ted Roden
I need an adult beverage. then I'll trash the place...
- Kelly Mitchell
I despise FB. Please let them not just trash FF.
- Adam Webb
Considering the free Google Wave protocol implementation and ejabbered work together, it shouldn't be too hard to quickly build a FF type service that's scalable. Combine that with EC2 and S3 and you could probably get a lot of runway before funding is needed. Robert, I think the next service you switch to should be part owned by you, considering I bet a lot of the traffic here was originated from you evangelizing.
- Chip Ramsey
Bryan: it's worse than that. I'm hearing that Facebook bought FriendFeed for its team. Google Superstars. Makes Zuckerberg get out his wallet.
- Robert Scoble
Where will be the next pasture Mr. Scoble?
- Rami Taibah
Stephen: lol. Yes, the 50 million dollar man. But seriously, there's no doubt what they really want is the tallent.
- Brandon Titus
I'm gutted about this, but I knew that Virb account would come in handy eventually... sorta... maybe...
- Linda Mills
Holden, yeah, but it doesn't make sense to invest energy here when its eventually going to die anyway
- Stephen Pickering
I'm new on FF so I wonder, are people leaving FF because you'll have to use FB to participate?
- Christopher Doiron
Stephen: not only for Paul. The guy who started Google Talk is at FriendFeed. So is the guy who started Google Maps.
- Robert Scoble
Robert your not processing anything from what I see..Your just gonna dump it...thanks...makes us All feel so much better....Salt in a wound?
- Bill Heslin
Christopher, it's that the FriendFeed team's new bosses will turn priorities away from the site we love.
- Bruce Lewis
They'll probably cannibalize FriendFeed... nom nom
- Kelly Mitchell
funny how many people are joining friend feed on the news of this acquisition. i'm seeing lots of my twitter followers starting to join.
- mark silva
I say its WAAAYYY too early to speculate what will happen to friendfeed next. Let the drama of today die down.
- Bryan Lee
Yeah lets all get drunk and start a fight. This whole thing is hilarious to me. Funny how media can start a panic. I ain't goin no where, I like to coloring.
- Jeunelle Foster
Bill: I said I won't leave until I hear more from the team. Why must you always be a drama queen?
- Robert Scoble
Kelly, I wish they would absorb FriendFeed, but despite the talk I don't think openness and Facebook are compatible.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, Ex-Google Superstars is how I see it too. I don't see big plans for FF the sense was we were the last thing on their minds.
- Melanie Reed
Can't help being an attention whore, its what I'm good at :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Okay so we sit tight and wait and drink. lol
- Kelly Mitchell
but there is no time to wait a special direction on internet, It's too fast!!
- harri78son
Kelly: My analogy for this is like the female praying mantis luring the male for sex, then it bites its head off. You can see the pic in my story http://bryansays.com
- Bryan Lee
I'm in the eyewear business and so I always know how to make a spectacle of myself :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Bruce: I agree. Wouldn't it be feasible for them to simply keep the two properties separate then? FriendFeed would be the open/public portion of Facebook and Facebook could stay closed and keep its current private user base.
- Brandon Titus
Bryan, pretty graphic and right on the money.
- Kelly Mitchell
Why shouldn't he pull out his wallet. FB needs to monetize. The ex Google Rockstars know just how to do that
- Stephen Pickering
I'll stick around and see what happens, but might not bother so much with another 'social' web site again.
- Grant Bierman
:) I am what I am Robert...I'm A DRAMA QUEEN? LOL that's funny....even though I'm a much better queen than you I still wuvs ya...Still processing all this as everyone else is...Sorry...might be shooting from the hip and I shouldn't
- Bill Heslin
Am I the only one excited to see how Facebook integrates FF? I have hundreds of FB friends that I know personally, yet know nobody that I am "friends" with on FF or Twitter. FB has my friends but I'd love FF's functionality.
- Christopher Annunziata
There's this optimistic talk about keeping FriendFeed around as R&D. I'm skeptical about it.
- Bruce Lewis
I'll leave FriendFeed as soon as there's somewhere to go to; currently, I'm not convinced there is.
- Tristan Seligmann
Also when you are hanging with the Master of the Universe for four hours, its sort of like Bill Clinton going to Korea. Kind of influences you.
- Stephen Pickering
Rami: I don't know. That's why I'm talking with you. I just know I won't continue to invest my time in something that will soon get no more investment. That's not who I am. I will hang out with Louis Gray until he finds something cool. By the way, someone gave me Google Wave already, thanks!
- Robert Scoble
This should be a reality television show. This is where the real drama queens will come out to play.
- Jeunelle Foster
Bruce: I disagree with you about Facebook and openness. They are a lot more open than they used to be and are MUCH more professional and friendly than, say, Twitter is.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I look forward to your review of Wave.
- Bruce Lewis
Openness and Facebook are not one and the same.... polar opposites. Bah humbug.
- Kelly Mitchell
Yup the big dogs are sitting back laughing at this whole thing
- Jeunelle Foster
It doesn't necessarily have to be "R&D" but really a completely separate product. Something like YouTube is to Google. Although that's a terrible analogy...I guess the products are too similar to keep separate.
- Brandon Titus
I'd pay-per-view to see Scoble and Sebastian Bach fight
- Mattb4rd
The Chinese government is much more open than it used to be. It still doesn't meet my standards.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: also, Zuckerberg is seeing the real money is in search. So he HAS to be open to really do great there.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Any chance you could share your Wave address?
- Brandon Titus
Did anyone get a chance to see Youtube HTML 5 Demo?
- Stephen Pickering
Brandon: I don't have my own address. Someone gave me theirs so can't share.
- Robert Scoble
Zuckerberg doesn't make money from other companies' search engines, so he's still limiting what data can go out. I see FB getting more open about what data they take in.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: Wave is very geeky. I think the UI has a lot of FriendFeed's problems x10. We'll see how that first impression sticks.
- Robert Scoble
And Wave will only be as good as how many users it has
- Stephen Pickering
I guess what I'm trying to say is even if you don't think your time here is an not an investment ;anymore in anything Robert...We still, or at least I do, consider your input valuable. And if you were to jump ship too soon, I think we would all lose something. So, even if things don't look good...please hang around..That's what I meant to say...
- Bill Heslin
Where will I go? Probably no where. Friendfeed was the first time I really got to feel like I found a home. Other places don't interact and blend multiple social services like Friendfeed does/did. Just as plenty of other people have said, I'm waiting for Google Wave at this point. I'm already a Google whore, might as well wait for the Wave to come through.
- Matthew Horton
Bruce: data that goes out can be embedded on blogs and websites and interact with things. Also, if you get into Google's search engine you can get a LOT of traffic, which then you can monetize on your own service.
- Robert Scoble
Not necessarily nailing the coffin shut yet here. Going to hang around and see what develops....what seems likely at the moment may be a totally different thing tommorow :O)
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
I am leaving at midnight. 2 accounts will be deleted, mine and one I manage for another site.
- April Russo (app103)
Robert: Hope you enjoy Wave! The UI is definitely way off for content sharing (at least in my first impression) and more suited for group communication for the very scenarios they threw out in the demos. Get much beyond that, or have too many people and the system starts to break down. Obviously, the underlying Wave infrastructure could be used to create something similar to and better than Friendfeed.
- Brandon Titus
Yeah, the cool thing about Wave is the problem they solved with the protocol. Not really their UI implementation. I think there are huge opportunities with both Open Social and the Wave protocol.
- Chip Ramsey
OK, I have been out of touch and I guess I missed something. I see nothing wrong with staying with all the feeds I am tied to!
- Dave Sickmeier
April, please don't delete your account. We lose interesting history when people do that.
- Bruce Lewis
There is no Facebook and no FriendFeed, it is now called TwoFacedFriend...
- Kelly Mitchell
Bill: I'll be around but probably a lot less. Actually I was thinking that this was good timing. We have a new baby due in September and my other son is just starting to learn to talk, so want to spend more time hanging around with the family.
- Robert Scoble
I am gonna wait it out. If the community as a whole migrates I will go with them, but I don't want to overreact.
- Neal Jansons
it's time to have another serious look at Plaxo. There are some very clever people there too, I believe?!
- Matt Hooper
Truth is, being addicted to FriendFeed isn't a good lifestyle.
- Robert Scoble
April: why so sudden and why delete accounts? I don't get that.
- Robert Scoble
As you should. Family is much more important than any of this. And now I have to go fix my wig! LOL
- Bill Heslin
depends what they do with the service - I like friendfeed and facebook so I think it will probably work okay for me
- Nick Stone
Brandon: oh, oh. You said it "Wave doesn't scale." Not good.
- Robert Scoble
FF also has good tools for using it in moderation -- best of day, week, which you can get by email. Lists help.
- Bruce Lewis
I have been spending most of my time on Brightkite. It's a smaller community and more fun. A better alternative than twitter or facebook.
- John C Ferron
Robert, and yes when he does that (Money in Search), it will change the playing field in lateral ways across the Internet, especially in ePortfolios and other like applications that don't need to be walled gardens
- Melanie Reed
Your right, Robert, but you would eventually learn to moderate your use, and a service like this is going to be needed
- Stephen Pickering
And Leo and Dick Debartolo are on the wine train, missing all this...I envy them...lol
- Bill Heslin
Will there ever be an app that just leaves facebook out of the equation - we could only dream
- Ryan Gerritsen
i'm leaving, watching from twitter would be a better option for me.
- rama mamuaya
I am not likely to invest time in another community that I don't have a stake in. If I contribute it will be because I have a personal interest and am part of the team that runs the show. That is the only way I will feel comfortable investing my time & energy into it.
- April Russo (app103)
If we could get the other "Rock Stars" who are obviously having a "virtual prayer meeting" somewhere to get together and talk about what changes they wish to see and what they would like to see develop for social media, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and now this Google Wave, we would probably all feel a little better as we might be able to see down the dark cold tunnel but they're out...
more...
- Jeunelle Foster
i think that I'll keep posting to friendfeed until it fully integrates with facebook
- Carlos Leiva Burotto
Man, I can understand Louis' feelings. Look how much he and Scoble have put into this
- Stephen Pickering
I'll continue to use FF until there's reason not to. I'm patient enough to see what happens to it. What's the hurry?
- Cathryn Hrudicka
I just started on Friendfeed. It can't go away!
- Paul McElligott
Lets start FeedFriend - the Bizaro friendfeed minus Facebook integration
- Ryan Gerritsen
Well, I was rather hoping for some sort of joint deal between Twitter & FF... I'm not sure if I'll stick around in FF or not. I'm definitely not a fan of Facebook
- Tim Bergman
Paul, that's what so frustrating. Just given time, we know it would have caught on
- Stephen Pickering
This really SUCKS because when you don't have great "developers" to put something together like FriendFeed, you're really just gonna have to either take it up the ass or commit suicide. I'll hang myself 1st with all my clothes on :)
- Jeunelle Foster
I'm wherever good, smart peeps are ('cuz I'm not smart enough). I don't invest much in tools - it's the people I care for. I'm not gonna abandon FF now but I understand that we'll need a way to foster the kind of community that got fostered here. Nothing lasts forever - and that's mostly a good thing in the long run.
- phil baumann
from Android
i'll be here until either the bitter end or something else comes along ... i'm really hoping that the ff-team will turn facebook into more of what it was before the apps came along... i think that's when FB really took a downward turn for me
- Chris Heath
Venues like this will come and go, the whole social media landscape is in a constant state of flux I don't see why so many are up in arms. The life cycle of all the current venues are short and most of the leaders are nearing the end of their lives as we know it. But fear not, many new shiny toys will be bestowed upon us to play with. Now let's be social again! (ps. I'm sure we've seen NOTHING yet!)
- Paul Monaco
Tweet: the cheese is in Zuckerberg's office! :-)
- Robert Scoble
And for anyone that wants to know why I am deleting my account and not just moving away and leaving it to rot like i would normally do...just read the policies of facebook. Anywhere I have an account with data I don't want to be exploited commercially, in a way that exploits me personally, I'd delete it just as fast if the service were bought by facebook.
- April Russo (app103)
Zuckerberg is Master of the Universe. He spent 4 hours with Paul Friday. That would have an effect on anyone
- Stephen Pickering
I know I am able to post status updates in Facebook to "Everyone" now, but when will we be able to search these open status updates?
- Kevin Whalen
from iPhone
I can't wait till my mom gets one of my "Queenie" updates....that's gonna b fun...lol..
- Bill Heslin
Kevin, when God, ie Mark Zuckerberg, says you can
- Stephen Pickering
I love FF but I think this is a great move. If FB takes the best ideas from FF and they open it up theres is so much potential for a great community.
- Gary Gannon
Definitely see what happens... Not looking forward to Facebook turning this into a free-for-all like Facebook :-)
- Maria Reyes-McDavis
Gary a potential for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
- Stephen Pickering
Not going anywhere for the time being. I'm not a big Twitter fan, and unless FB makes some big time changes, it just doesn't do it for me. Will be listening for any other social media that might come round the bend.
- Bonnie Foster
We are getting tired of all those constant platform changes, aren't we?
- Harald Felgner
Herald and Stephen, Yes! More and different is not always better, just more and different.
- Melanie Reed
I can't leave Facebook. I have too much built up there. And that won't do anything anways. It will just be a small blip to them.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
so what content aggregator in the absence of FF?
- WarLord
My apologies if this has already been asked, but Robert you are very close the FF team. You had no idea this was coming?
- Ben Hanten
I'm not leaving. I like FriendFeed and Facebook.
- Kimber Scott
Ben: not one iota. I did sense that they were struggling to figure out how to compete, but didn't think they would sell. Paul always told me he didn't want to sell.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I'm confused - on the one hand you've said this is such a great thing for FF as well as FB - but on the other hand you also say you're leaving FF because of of it. Why - if this is such a great thing for FF?
- Matthew Blaisdell
WarLord: there isn't a good aggregator. That's why it's stupid to delete your feeds.
- Robert Scoble
OK, a friend talked me down. He told me I'd be saying sorry for starting this post by the 400th comment. He's usually right. So, instead of saying sorry, I'm going drinking. See ya in the lobby in 10 minutes!
- Robert Scoble
I may be dense about this, but why would you leave until you saw which way it was going?
- Jerry Kidd
Good question, Jerry. I wanna know this, too.
- Brad Williamson
Robert, I think he struggled with it, but 4 Hours with Mark is a big persuasion
- Stephen Pickering
Matthew: I expect that the engineers will get put onto Facebook. So, if the smartest people are working on Facebook and not on FriendFeed, why would I stay here? Why wouldn't I start moving my work and social graph and all that over to Facebook?
- Robert Scoble
LOL...there ya go Robert...I knew you would come around...Drink Drink!!! have a really nice cocktail...
- Bill Heslin
The people I've come to know on FriendFeed are what I'd miss though, so I'd like to take my social graph with me wherever I might end up next. There's a business opportunity right there.
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
When I think about it - I found your post as well as the TechCrunch article via Google Friend Connect. So maybe it is time to join that Wave!?
- Harald Felgner
Jerry: I said I was going to wait until I talk with the team more, but the things I'm hearing tell me they've already been bought to work on Facebook proper. So, unless someone tells me that's wrong, that tells me I should spend more and more of my time over on Facebook and not here. But my friend convinced me I'm being hasty and emotional. :-O
- Robert Scoble
Mathew: Scoble said early on in this thread that he invests his time into emerging networks, not things that "are already here" I think thats why he will be moving on to the next big thing, like google wave or watchever new social network emerges out of this. I suspect that another startup will emerge to try and fill the shoes left behind by friendfeed. This is always the case. When napster left, you had morpheus and kazaa, then bit torrents.
- Bryan Lee
Robert - Makes sense - except that it still doesn't seem like a great day for Friendfeed - if it just gets abandoned (by FB as well as by leaders like you...)
- Matthew Blaisdell
Matthew: FriendFeed=Facebook. It's a great day for both. Cause I'll end up at Facebook either way! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Anyway, these are just the emotional ramblings of someone trying to figure out how the world shifted today. Have fun!
- Robert Scoble
clue to the denouement: where is the most valuable processing of this event. Right here.
- Steve Gillmor
I'm just curious what new startup will roll into the limelight because of this announcement?
- Bryan Lee
Robert, FriendFeed != Facebook - look at the quality of commentary/people here
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
FriendFeed can stop improving right now, and I'll still stick around until something else catches up. Maybe that something else will be Facebook. I'll wait and see.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm probably out. Back to open source for me at this point. Time to take another look and see how things have progressed with Laconica, JaikuEngine, NoseRub, and some of the other secondary options. I may also go crawling back to Twitter. Given a choice between Twitter and Facebook... sigh...
- Ken Sheppardson
Monique: It's not about rapid change, it's about where to invest effort. I don't really have any interest in investing my time and energy on Facebook... so why wait?
- Ken Sheppardson
Steve: Yeah, you're probably right. I appreciate the work Bret, Paul, Benjamin, et al have done, and I was really looking forward to where they were taking things... before they were taking it to Facebook.
- Ken Sheppardson
I think I will just stay on twitter, because I can't stand facebook.
- Tomy Thomson
Stephen: FF has died? Well, then, how am I typing to you?
- Robert Scoble
Tomy, why change? You can listen to the Beatles and the Stones!
- Stephen Pickering
Ken: it's all good. they're moving to a radically larger playground, and they can't afford to abandon those who appreciate them
- Steve Gillmor
They will keep FF just will make it better
- Johni Fisher
I'll wait to learn more before making any decisions
- Herb Hernandez
Robert, well, metaphorically. Whether its a few months or a year
- Stephen Pickering
Tomy: Twitter is like Facebook but without likes and comments. Oh, wait, Facebook is a lot like FriendFeed already. I just commented on Louis Gray's item there. Oh, and there's applications. We can play games! :-) Herb: I'll try to go see the team next week. I'm also interviewing Yelp.
- Robert Scoble
But Steve, what if the larger "playground" turns out to be very different from the one pitched to them? What if the FF team finds that their vision isn't shared after all?
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, ok maybe you are right. Maybe it will be like the R&D. That would be great!
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen: are you trying to get on the Gillmor Gang? We seem to kill things before they are really dead there too.
- Robert Scoble
Hey Robert , you make friendfeed slower ! I guess you should leave here really x)
- Melissa Taylor
Anyway, I'm going drinking. For real this time.
- Robert Scoble
I'm planning on easing out of Friendfeed in the next couple of days, so I can get the contacts of people I know on here and who's opinions I value.
- Jon, the Beartato of FF
Steve, oh yes, If I were him, I would pull out all stops to get this team. I totally understand from a business perspective, all perspectives
- Stephen Pickering
@Steve @Bruce, here's the post http://jungleg.com/2009... -- it's a crazy idea but GR could make an extra effort and put up a better web experience
- Jorge Escobar
I like FriendFeed, a lot, but too few of my friends use the service to make it really useful. So I guess I'll leave.
- Adam Washington
Adam, stay, if even only for the aggregating features
- Stephen Pickering
YES he's sitting in the back laughing while drinking Peppermint Schnaps
- Jeunelle Foster
Scobles outta here. He went to get a life! hehehehehehehe
- Stephen Pickering
totally staying....this really is just the beginning....and, i just built FF into all of my Intro to Soc sections!!!!
- Chad Gesser
I thought you said you'd hand in there until they turn the last server off. What changed your mind?
- Paul Chaney
Speaking of Google. What was the point of them buying Jaiku and doing nothing with it?
- Bryan Lee
I'll at least stay for aggregation and extending 140 character tweets, and pray maybe it will become Facebooks R&D, but I know that's a longshot
- Stephen Pickering
I should get a life too but alas the temptation is too great for "attention whoring"
- Jeunelle Foster
Regarding the "team's plans", I really don't expect to hear anything from Bret, Paul, et al. At this point I'm happy to let the Facebook (i.e. the non-FriendFeed) folks try to convince me that they're ready to do things differently. That involves more than just hiring a team.
- Ken Sheppardson
Well, maybe Paul can influence Mark not "to be evil"
- Stephen Pickering
those who think FB has any choice but to go down the FF road are not thinking this through
- Steve Gillmor
@Stephen, I was alternating between friendfeed and twitter (stones and beatles, respectively :P) but I don't see the point in staying with a dying technology, which unfortunately is where friendfeed is headed. The tech of friendfeed itself will hopefully live on in facebook. I really think facebook has become a slightly less obnoxious version of myspace, and that's being nice.
- Tomy Thomson
Steve, Oh, I totally understand. It was genius of them. Proves how Mark is indeed Master of the Universe
- Stephen Pickering
Steve, self-interest does not guarantee anything. People and companies can act irrationally.
- Bruce Lewis
So Steve, do you see two separate properties indefinitely? Or does Facebook just slowly start too look more FF-like, then one day they redirect friendfeed.com to facebook.com?
- Ken Sheppardson
*eye roll* thread is getting to the point where it's too long and people are now asking questions that have been answered thrice.....Lock down time.
- Matthew DeVries
ff was the important value, not twitter
- Steve Gillmor
Steve, why didn't Ff take over FB? Yeah Facebook has the money, but it's the inferior product.
- Matthew DeVries
Oh sure, who do you want in your office, Ev or Paul Bucheit? Paulllllll!
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen, didn't the TechCrunch article say that the FF team would be split between two bosses, neither of which was Mark?
- Bruce Lewis
That's right. Paul may end up running that thing, or at least be No.2
- Stephen Pickering
@ Robert: The majority of apps on FB are useless imo. Every time I log on I get bombarded by 'add your relative' and 'blackjack' app requests. And don't get my started on the quizzes and other BS. Ah well, I will join your fan page on facebook!
- Tomy Thomson
Wow - isn't this jumping to conclusions? No one has said anything's going away, nor do we know what they're doing to do with it. Stick around, wait to see what happens, then jump. Nothing's happened yet - I think it will all be for the better in the end and you'll know where to go when the FF Team says Jump.
- Jesse Stay
Kurt, he's gonna sit on it for a while, see what shakes out
- Stephen Pickering
jesse skip to the bottom for the apology
- Steve Gillmor
The FF Team hasn't let us down yet, have they? I still trust them - only when they break that trust do we jump.
- Jesse Stay
@Scobleizer I've been on Google Wave for about a week working on an interesting idea I have for it. It's very promising but its very alpha right now. You won't find it worth your time just yet.
- Noah White
Ah - sorry Robert - didn't see the clarification towards the bottom. Thanks Steve.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, you still in the Boston area?
- Bruce Lewis
Why rush to judgment? Even if the "team's plans" are off-base, what's the base? And what's off? Experience, resourcefulness, respect for users and smarts under fire all matter more than "plans." Wait & keep seeing.
- Doc
What the hell? Just because someone buys FriendFeed everyone has to ditch it? ABORT SHIP, ABORT SHIP! Doesn't really make sense so soon. Has anything changed yet? Is it the end of the world? Don't just leave because everyone says they will either. Stick around, the ship is still afloat.
- Nick Humphries
But, if they did pull the plug, with bandwidth and computing halving every year, there would be another one of these pop up in no time
- Stephen Pickering
I don't see a point in leaving Friendfeed until the doors close on us... if and when that happens.
- Alex Knight
Actually facebook is the most popular rss reader of all time :)
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
Bruce, we just left today. I'm actually in Niagara Falls, NY right now. Just finished watching a beautiful view of the Falls at night.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, if anybody can persuade me (us?) that Facebook is going to be good for the FF team it's you. Maybe write a blog post or something.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm in it to win it. FF isn't shutting down tomorrow or next week. But it's funny to me that so many dicuss the content... It's the connections made with others that are in jeopardy, not the LOLCat photos...
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from fftogo
Because of Quantum Wave effects there are an infinite number of Universes, some of which The Gillmor Gang is still broadcasting
- Stephen Pickering
Bruce, I'll be working on a post really soon. Also, Louis Gray and I are going to record a phone call about it tomorrow, which I think should prove useful. I've got a lot of knowledge about Facebook, and he does about FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
Kurt, oh yeah, I totally get that and so does Scoble, but you've got to understand his short term hurt. Look at how much energy he put into this thing, and what did he get? Nuttin
- Stephen Pickering
You mean McLuhan is in Scoble's body? He's in the movie Being Robert Scoble?
- Doc
Nonsense Stephen he gets paid in attention every single time
- Steve Gillmor
I was wondering how long this would take to happen. Soon as I saw FF being purchased by Facebook I knew you would bolt. Not 100% surprising.
- Christopher Mercer
Part of beauty of FF: all their shows are taped. And yet open ended.
- Nick in Manila
It depends how much FF changes. No reason to leave until and unless it gets annoying.
- Igor Goldkind
It's "I'll respect you in the morning."
- Sean Gallagher
Oh, I'm not leaving. Hell, I even still have a myspace account. It's just a question of engagement
- Stephen Pickering
Good night all. Tip for Jeunelle: You get more attention if you make your feed public. Make a group for your private stuff.
- Bruce Lewis
they'll have to scrub this one pretty good before they shut it down
- Steve Gillmor
@scobleizer that means half of the total activity on friendfeed will be reduced
- Sidharth Dassani
Maybe if Facebook hadn't stolen all Scoble's data, he'd stop worrying and learn to love them.
- Sean Gallagher
Actually even os Brasileiros are coming over to FB
- Stephen Pickering
My mother is on Facebook. The end is nigh.
- Sean Gallagher
"Maybe Jeunelle doesn't want attention" - says who? I only stepped away to pour me a nice glass of Sauvengion Blanc", and thank you Bruce for the advice I'll look into that tomorrow. After all tomorrow is another day. Twiddly Dee
- Jeunelle Foster
there is no reason to leave. I seriously doubt facebook will kill it.
- Logan Lindquist
Maybe if I blog my twitter of Scoble's FriendFeed and then link it from Facebook via a Digg of a del.icio.us bookmark, it will create a singularity and this thread will have never happened.
- Sean Gallagher
Can someone comment on what April Russo said about Facebook content policy? Seems like a very important piece of the puzzle.
- metalerik
I wouldn't worry about it. The markets will take care of it. If Facebook becomes evil, the masses will fork somewhere else. We're in the age of Openness
- Stephen Pickering
I will only leave friend feed if it becomes a facebook clone. I can't stand facebook but I still use it cause my friends and family use it, but if friendfeed becomes annoying like face book then I see no point in staying here.
- Colide81 (James)
from iPhone
You know Sean maybe smarter than he looks....hmmmmm :) and what's with that bird head?
- Jeunelle Foster
Quote of the Day: "Microsoft and Twitter deserve each other. They are both somewhat buggy and don't come up with new features very often. ;-)" - Robert Scoble
- Diego Barros
It's a starling fledgeling. The perfect symbol for social networking-- it eats whatever you give it, then poops on you.
- Sean Gallagher
That's what I want to reincarnate as....an angry poopin bird
- Jeunelle Foster
Just reading all the news about FF and FB. Disapoints me personally, biz wise nice job. Um not a huge FB user so I don't know what my plans are yet. Like you wait a bit and see....
- Bryan Thatcher
from iPhone
I hope FF doesn't go away and fold in to FB. I don't need FB. It's like bringing a machine gun to a knife fight.
- Diego Barros
I won't leave FF until they make me or there's no community left. Whichever comes first.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Well, it's made me think twice about vesting too much into any one service (so has the demise of tr.im). I use Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, and FF all pretty equally, so I guess I'm not feeling this as much as some.
- Bill Kinney
Jannifer, Yes we will on his JS-Kit Echo commenting system he will put on his blog. It's real time like this
- Stephen Pickering
I'm leaving. Google Wave, Twitter, Reader will plenty suffice now. Farewell, former friend.
- Californian
Oh Stephen - I'm not sure what that is... but it won't be like Friendfeed. :-(
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
At some point I imagine I will. I have no interest in joining facebook. When I do depends on what facebook does with ff.
- Quasar
I'm sticking around till FB screws it up. But I was keeping FF separate from FB because most of my FB friends are my born-again Christian relatives who won't like the controversial stuff of mine that makes it onto FF's news feed. Still, I'm going to look for other similar sites. Posterous is one.
- Dennis Jernberg
I'm not leaving but I'm not moving to Facebook. The main thing for me is to keep the contacts I've gained from FriendFeed and hope we all can meet on another similar service somewhere somehow.
- Kol Tregaskes
Maybe. But i really want Google Wave invite.
- ★ Soner Gönül
It's hard to say at this point. The only thing that's changed is who pays the server bill. Ask me in a week. And yes, a Google Wave invite would sure go a long way to make this better for me.
- Dale
I'm thinking about. Just heard the news. I don't want to make a quick decision on that, but I have good reasons why I#m not at Facebook. If FF belongs to it... I'm shocked. Okay, however I'm concentrating more on Twitter. Any alternatives for Friendfeed?
- Ryo / Fuck Facebook
I don't leave if Facebook doesn't make something dramamatic to FF
- Kristian Salonen
Leaving a favorite site isn't always a conscious decision for me. The cool site loses its cool and you just kind of drift off.
- Dale
from email
Oh yeah, and I added my Posterous blog to my FriendFeed feed, so you'll be seeing whatever I post there in your home feed here. That is, if you subscribe to me here, or if one of your subscribers likes or comments. Me, leave? Not yet! ;)
- Dennis Jernberg
I'm loyal until they make it worth me leaving.
- Jesse Stay
I'm here until they slam the gates shut. But I am hiding all your BS posts about it being a good thing :)
- jcunwired
If you want to be sure that I quit Friendfeed you have to see my burial. I will never quit while being alive! :-)
- Kolja
I'm staying but it's like when you know that the company you work for has been bought by someone else and might close it, you lose motivation and start looking for another job, it's hard to invest time and energy if there might be no future. Not that the future of FF was guaranteed before but now it does not look good at all.
- M F
I'm heading to Plurk! who's with me? *tumbleweed*
- Iain Baker
Friendfeed is two totally different things: the original RSS aggregation service, and a social network service/community. Lifestream.fm is a reasonable replacement for the former. As to the latter, it's the people, not the tech they're using, that makes FF special. I've benefited greatly as a 'consumer' here, reading posts - if that continues on Facebook, it will probably get me to...
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- SteamCentral
i'll be around until it becomes unbearable, probly until it's been damaged badly by FB style feature creep and riddled with ads and spammers. oh, and absolutely stupid censorship policies. that'll be a real killer.
- Joe Silence is not dead
The CloneFeed group has given me some interest. It gives some hope in case FF really goes away or merges badly with FB. I like FB but just don't want to fully mix the two activities/audiences.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I'd rather keep my Friendfeed as my "professional aggregation" and Facebook as personal stuff. I blog, tweet, etc. stuff that a lot of my friends could care less about. And I post stuff to Facebook that isn't interesting or relevant to clients / followers.
- Gregg Le Blanc
Google Wave is what I am looking for. The problem with moving to Facebook is that I use it for close friends and family so things like comments and pics etc that I post to it I would not want to have available to all of the contacts I have on FF at the moment. Mainly because I like to separate those I know from those that I converse with if that makes sense. I loved that on FF I could...
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- Travis Koger
Whilst I am not 'leaving' FF, I will not be investing anywhere near the type of interaction I have done previous to yesterday's announcement as I just see it as wasted time.
- Travis Koger
I have to wait & see what, I don't want to lose the community; where do I go? This feels like Pownce all over!
- clarke thomas
Nope, not yet. I still dream about FF and FB to coexist. I think Facebook is even more boring now, after this announcement. Anyone else feels this way?
- Patrik Johansson
Not me. I will be glad when all the people who say they are leaving do so my feed won't be full of people saying they are leaving.
- Alan Simpson
FF is my first big social networking investment (or time) - I'll stay and then move, if forced. I'll certainly investigate other tools in an effort to fill any gap left by FaceFeed.
- Jason Miller
I just saw that a woman's twittering her childbirth made the front page of BBC's world news webpage. I don't know to make of it, but I don't want to hang out at Twitter much anymore.
- Mitch
Mitch: we Twittered our childbirth in 2007 and we will again in September, but probably not on our main account.
- Robert Scoble
won´t leave!!! i LOVE friendfeed. @Mitch i know what you mean. So many stories and this is the one they picked?
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
i think i'm stayin, and wait what's goin on facebook. i will feel upset if they dont allow the users to make their choice of using one or other site, but looks like they gonna force to use FB instead of FF :(
- Dani Martínez
Not sure how on board with FriendFeed I ever was to begin with to be honest...
- Gurpreet
FriendFeed will be fine - FaceBook is fine - and so is Twitter - I might check out AmpliFeeder, I suspect quite a few FriendFeeders will migrate there as the days go by.
- Chris Loft
Not leaving FF but I can't wait till it's properly integrated with Facebook. Interesting thing: Wave's API is open so there's nothing to stop Facebook creating an app to make Facebook & Wave work great together. Not so much either/or as and... and..!
- Matt Moran
Has anyone tried amplifeeder? edit: so far don't see any friending abilities though
- metalerik
Why leave? But will be open to see other options - facebook doesn't (currently) provide to me what I get here.
- amygeek
OH NO, I just finish moving all my stuff HERE!
- Terence
Robert: I closed down my embeds today. Sad for my blog.
- Mark Essel
I stay on FriendFeed, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc.
- Emmanuel Gadenne
I won't delete my account, but as FF morphs into the ball of confusion that is Facebook, I won't be very active.
- Jeremy Brooks
I will. No point sticking around when you know it is going to die sooner or later. With twitter you still have the hope....
- Davide D'Incau
I'll leave Facebook if FF gets harmed. And go back to Identi.ca... ;-)
- Torrid Luna
Yeah, I'll probably leave Facebook too. If they're going to "steal" the FriendFeed functions and just let FF die, I will not have any sympathies left for Facebook. I'll go "all Google" or something.
- Patrik Johansson
I'll stay on FF, FB and T, and BK, and other, BrightKite is not well utilised, is good even on beta.
- Andy Ghozali
I joined posterous for blogging/lifestreaming and will continue to use twitter. I might go on facebook once in a while, which is what I was doing anyway.
- Tomy Thomson
Robert: If you're looking for an awesome real-time discussion platform, you should migrate to Fluther. http://www.fluther.com
- Ben
I'm staying put and watching the ship sink. I'd really like to believe that FriendFeed will have some longevity, but I won't hedge my bets.
- Tyson Key
Steve Gillmor said "clue to the denouement: where is the most valuable processing of this event. Right here." so for now, FF looks like the space.
- Barbara K. Iverson
I intend to stick around to see what Facebook have planned. I think the takeover has everything to do with the direction FB's been heading in lately, what with their open challenge to Twitter
- Dennis Jernberg
I don't see it as leaving, but rather seeing the possibility that it might leave us. FF was and still is just about my favorite site and uberaggregatorthing that I ever saw....
- Rob Schieber
Nope... I'll stay, even if I ride it to a bitter end.
- Mark Jepsen
depends. if they stay seperate services, i wont like the acquisition,but i'll stay. if they become 1 service, i'm out. and where is every1 going from friend feed anyhow. what else is there?
- echostreamer
Will wait and see what happens with FB
- Ted Kinzer
fb ruins everything. Have the Privacy policy "not "changed since fb came into the pic? Can they not build their own ideas instead of buying everyone else's? leave us geeks to play in our playground and stay in yours. greedy buggers. The second they pull a skanky fb move i'm out. bitches.
- seastarerrin
Leaving no. Checking out other venues yes.
- Martha
Just maybe Facebook will listen to the Friendfeed engineers in charge of user interface/usability starting with the type size and fonts. Not all marriages are made in heaven. Culture clashes are sure to pop up.
- Alan Morris
I was about to focus a little more on FF but since I heard about the purchase and read rumors about FF being integrated in FB and being shutdown and all this, I'm getting a little ... well.. undecided.. Just checked Streamy, didn't like it. If a.tinythread.com get's more development, this might be the next thing to migrate to. I'm sure not moving to FaceBook. I have my account, I have...
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- Dan van Moll
Not interested in being part of Facebook. Goodbye, FriendFeed. :-(
- TranceMist
I wish more folks would see the big picture. We need to focus on independent projects that are NOT part of the Google-Yahoo-Microsoft borg. As soon as a site gets absorbed it is time to find another independent site. Yes, I do realize that some may have actually been part all along and only pretending they were independent in the first place - especially if they were founded by...
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- Internet Strategist
At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.
- David Finch
from Bookmarklet
"“Things that I thought were unacceptable a few years ago are now commonplace in my house,” she said, “like all four of us starting the day on four computers in four separate rooms.”"
- David Finch
from Bookmarklet
Great blog appreciate all of your "likes" that I would not have noticed before. Thanks for all the time you spend educating us.
- Gary Prechtel
auto-follow always seemed like a bad idea. people can always msg you but your stream will get totally cluttered if you dont do a little bit of housekeeping.
- William Kapes
Oh you are getting quite a response here!!!! I'm commenting so you'll follow me but the thing is you're going to LIKE following me because you'll learn all about Sedona through tons of videos and you'll love it so much you'll want to pack your camera and head out here! =)
- SedonaTV
Thanks for the mentions, Robert (and you know I'm not commenting just for the follow - I just like to follow you, which is what counts!)
- Jesse Stay
Guess I might as well delete that overpriced twitter app I bought last week.
- Shea
from iPhone
Actually Robert, now I've seen you've tidied up your twitter, I'll probably follow you there again too. :-)
- Tim
Meh, who cares really, not like you read everyone you followed. Plus unfollowed you anyways, not like you have to say that's interestined except friendfeed spam.
- Steve
@scobleizer just created the most important tech follow list on Twitter.
- Christian Anderson
aww shucks, and here I was thinking it was just me who you unfollowed.
- Jess Sloss
I underwent the same situation, Robert - I unfollowed almost everybody on Twitter who duplicated their accounts here on FrF. I got a tempest of fury for this action. web3 is too personal still ))
- massagin
I feel fortunate that you're still subbed to me on FF. I haven't even noticed whether you unfollowed me on Twitter. But you following me, still hasn't gotten me the chicks. :P Always fun seeing your posts, long as you don't block me, it doesn't matter if you follow me or not. :)
- Arlan Koizumi
I did the same thing some weeks ago after avoiding twitter because it got too noisy. It was instantly better. But in the mean time I started to use FF more and I like it better here so I hardly go near twitter now.
- Murray Barton
You already follow me here on ff, which i use more than twitter.
- dthree
Don't think you are following me on Twitter anymore..please do and best regards
- Karma Martell
I'm still trying to figure out the following... so I'm watching how you do it scoble.
- Matthew Schrock
Good plan. I'm looking forward to your results. I'm trying to figure out all these social media elements. I would appreciate your Twitter follow.
- David Stanley
Odd internal response, I don't follow everyone who follows me cuz of the very noise you talk about. And, there's no good reason for you to follow me since I'm unlikely to deliver news of interest to you. And yet, here I am, posting on FriendFeed so you have the OPTION of following me, a stranger who is not the same kind of SMART as you. Who'd have thought...
- Della Mauler
Interesting statement about original content value of FF independent of twitter. Twitter is where you keep your noise level down...
- James Watters
This seems like asking for trouble to me, Scoble. But, it's your time and bandwith to do with what you will. Since only a handful of people (by that I think I mean just one) follow me on Twitter, it's pretty easy for me to weed out the bots. The people I follow are my internet nerds (mostly the Rev 3 crew) so I know their interests are in line with mine. Hit me up for some edifying conversations about Lost and video games, Robert.
- Jeremiah Green
Here you go Robert! [also via twitter: @Scobleizer Therefore: only approx. 1.7 million "active" human @Twitter users contribute 50%+ of all activity, right? #engagement] Regards, @AAinslie
- Alexander Ainslie
You're still following me - does that mean I'm a smart feller? ;)
- Brett Kelly
so glad I mail Robert a business card every month :)
- Christian Anderson
Della: the thing is here I can follow you and put you into a list and watch you less frequently than some of my other people. So everyone wins. But only here on FriendFeed. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Some of us have been doing this from our start. Kind of cool, eh? But our numbers don't grow quickly so we were tagged as "slow." Nice to see you catch up with us! Also, this may shock you, there sre folks who follow and communicate with only 3 folks on twitter and they are HAPPY! Imagine....
- lynda spangler
I've long thought the entire Twitter "etiquette" of always following who follows you to be a bit of a folly. I'm following 114 at the moment, and the stream still moves too fast for me to keep up with.
- Darren Landrum
Good test, count me in... I don't follow tons of people, I follow a few prolific Scoble-types and the rest are more focused in areas I'm interested in.
- David Ziembicki
I'm not following tons of people, just a select few. More to follow on FB when facebook has completely integrated Friendfeed-funcionality. ;-)
- Wolfgang G. Wettach
I only follow people I know or have something interesting to say, did you really have 160000 people that said something worthwhile???
- Gerard van Schip
Gerard: everyone says something worthwhile once in a while. The trick is to see it when it happens. Here on FriendFeed, by the way, you have a better shot because good stuff usually gets liked and commented on, so it pulls up higher into my view.
- Robert Scoble
Nice post Robert, and no surprise it's an improvement. ;o) I have seen it for me too.
- Rob Sellen :o)
1 thing I find Robert still worth following @Scobleizer when I am not on friendfeed & on my Hootsuite or PeopleBrowsr. therefore not much affected, not much 2 bother me, ego not gone at all. luv your post Robert it is a frank posting
- polou/indigo_bow
Follow me Robert, I promise I'm not annoying. :) @cluteman
- Greg Clute
from iPhone
Robert, thank you! I follow you and enjoy your "likes" and your energetic takes. I also enjoy your Building43 interviews! I am a constant FriendFeed user now. Thank you!
- Tobin Truog
This made me realise I must be more active on FF and comment/post more :-).
- Mats Pettersson
I think I'll give FriendFeed a go! Never tried it, but looks easy and I need to understand the interwebs better. @CodeSamurai_Com
- CodeSamurai
butt-kissing is not a prerequisite for being followed, he will follow you anyways :D
- Mark
You can follow me, but since you follow a lot of people, you probably can't pay attention to the stream of tweets.
- Alex Knight
Alex..that's the WHOLE point he did this... ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
IMHO 1,647 is still way too many people to follow.
- Alex Knight
I will NOT get baited into ... ah CRAP. I follow very few people on twitter, mainly only to find info from Android developers (my topic of choice). If you mention anything about the food you are currently eating, etc.. you will probably not be followed. If you post 80,000 times a day, you will not be followed, since Twitters interface sucks (not so for FF). Also, no offense to other social users, but if you resend your FF/FB/<insert other social site here> entries to twitter, I probably won't follow.
- Tim Hoeck
Oh..Oh... Mr. Kotter...Mr Kotter..follow me!
- Scott Booher
Glad to see you're writing more than 140 characters on that blog. Doesn't that feel liberating? Maybe we should be allowed character# based on your metric for powerful/smart/newsmaker
- Noah Bloom
You already follow me here on FF, for which I thank you. So, I'll just say thanks for the phone call the other day. :)
- Jeff Harbert
Ok, so follow me again and I will follow you back. Thanks!
- Audrey
Robert - I fail on most of your criteria so I'm not expecting you to follow me. The thing is I don't care if you follow me back - this is social media and everyone has their own choice. I choose to follow you because you entertain and inform me. The relationship is 100% one way and I am more than happy with that!
- Pon
Robert - Last night at GDGT Party the person at the Blackberry booth said: 1) She had 'heard of Twitter, never friend feed' uses neither 2) Is SCOBLE is coming tonight 3) Wow, your Blackberry is really "archaic" and find out when contract lets you upgrade. F-D UP? Booth babes need primers.
- Liza
Interesting theory... people who comment more apt to contribute?
- Mark Philpot
I know someone else who tried this strategy last year, with similar results. I've been debating it. Once I got over 3K followers on Twitter life just got weird. Started to spend X amount of time every day blocking porn spam.
- Patricia F. Anderson
Liza: yeah, sorry for not coming to the party. I went and saw Obama's CTO instead.
- Robert Scoble
Steve Lynch: my Dunbar number is higher than yours is. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Nice summary Robert on the whole Unfollow thing, but would it be too repetitive if I re-post on my FF?
- Keith Rowland
What is the best friend feed aggregation strategy of non-friend streams (eg RSS, twitter, etc)? Imaginary friend per service, then add to lists? Multiple services per imaginary friend or 1 to 1? Or add the services to a group? What are the considerations?
- John Brown
Keith: you can repost anywhere you like, thanks!
- Robert Scoble
still wondering how you are able to handle such a big load of subscribers here and e.g. so many followers with twitter o_0. I am already (sometimes) lost with the few i got till now. Lately with one sweep almost 40 to 50 contacts in twitter disappeard and i have no clue why ... boah, how are you handling the noise? Hell, with so many ppl in, you might have a terrific noise? Or you wear just good headphones ;)?
- Ronald
I very much agree that being choosy is the key to Twitter. I'm not nearly on the scale that you are, but in my experience, freely following people (whetther they follow me or not) and then mercilessly cutting back on them over and over again results in a kind of darwinianly better and better signal to noise ratio.
- Tim Maly
Liked the blog post and totally agree. I've been meaning to do something similar. What I do is occasionally prune and then add some "better" replacements, so my total is always 2000 follows.
- Bora Zivkovic
I don't see how anyone can manage so many users without groups. Then again, with groups you could just make an "ignore" group.
- Oscar M. Cantu
from iPhone
Great blog post. I totally agree on the noise level. I figure I have blocked a few hundred accounts on Twitter, and my noise level has dropped dramatically. Thanks for the follow!
- Tony "Frosty" Welch
Robert - I figured you were in DC from FF, but she had NO IDEA what a CTO is. Point is, she was eager to give you a Blackberry, but not me, and I wish I had a Scoble costume to pretend for 5 minutes.
- Liza
@Robert I think you are starting another mass follow again.
- Steve Chou
from fftogo
Steve: that's not the problem. As long as spam doesn't enter the system I can deal. Keep in mind here I can choose how I follow. I can put you all in a folder that I never look at, if I wanted to.
- Robert Scoble
my feelings were hurt that you unsubscribed to me on twitter, but i agree with your methods
- Brian Appleby
Brian, yeah, but I follow you here. So there.
- Robert Scoble
really doesn't matter as long as i can follow you, that's the beauty of these services
- Brian Appleby
How did you come to follow so many to begin with? I get annoyed with ppl and unfollowing is easier than sifting through their garbage constantly.
- R1CC1
Autofollow was a horrible idea to begin with.
- David Chieng
I kind of tired to keep an eye on who follows me now,the ones I'm following is much more important.:-)
- Steve Chou
from fftogo
Robert: we need more intelligent spam-follower-filtering on Twitter! We need to fix this.
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
@David +1 I think auto follow is such a bad idea to begin with,and people like Robert now even need to pay to unfollow these people.
- Steve Chou
from IM
How much did SocialToo charge for running the unfollow script?
- Shane
I've always been very picky in who I follow on twitter. I follow 40 people, and I can't guarantee that I see every single tweet. I don't scroll back usually, unless it's my "Real Life" column in Tweetdeck that couldn't fit on my screen.
- Tom Ribbens
My birthday is also January 18th, therefore you must follow me Robert! ;)
- Chris Luckhardt
from BuddyFeed
Thanks Steve! $25 is pretty reasonable. Wonder if anyone else will be jumping on the bandwagon
- Shane
Sometimes the tortoise beats the hare after all... building organically based on getting to know people and interactions tends to avoid the ghastly spammers, seo peeps and bots
- Sally Church
I'm outside your sphere, but bootstrapping is bootstrapping right?
- Travis Bedard
Tuesday night for the first time in 2 months I UNfollowed everyone on Twitter who wasn't following me. Since you had UNfollowed me, yup I unfollowed you. My Twitter account is so /FUBARed! It only goes to page 506 to show who I'm following and after that it is BLANK! I don't even know if they show in my Home stream. So Robert, I value what you say. Know I can tweet profusely - but it's as @replies to others with the occasional micro-blog thrown in. Question, what DID I do to cause you to UNfollow me?
- Arleen Anderson
Oops - I also meant to ask, Robert: how are you managing to follow the couple thousand that you are now re-following on Twitter? You must be using groups, I guess...any other methods? I find ~500 people to be a near max in terms of how many folks I can fully read.
- Lance M. Brown
Following your inspiration, I unfollowed almost 100 people last night and blocked about 1000 spammers, cam girls, MLM marketers, and the like. Twitter is more like it was a year ago, its almost like I gave my Twitter account an enema and it worked. Thanks for the original idea.
- Mark Edwards
Robert, I started out only following those I know and those I am genuinely interested in. I've only followed back a few of the people who've followed me. I have a second account that I decided to experiment with. I followed about 700 people on there. It has had about double the followers of my main account consistently. I am about to try some new tricks there with an auto-follow script I'm writing but I think I will stay the course with my main account.
- Paul The Raven
Robert, I tried the "follow everyone" (almost) method for a short time - then I'd unfollow about once-a-week. Now I try to schedule a "follow new" once a week. TweetDeck's group feature makes following lots of folks bearable. So does FF, but you've been saying that for-ever!
- Kathy E Gill
I will follow you if you follow me (Genesis)
- Keith Barrett
I may not be smart, but I'm smart enough to follow you!
- John Pfaff
It occurred to me (and surely to someone before me), that different definitions of "following" might be a big factor here. If I'm following someone, it means I'm following along with their updates. But others might see themselves more as becoming part of a person's "following". Not that they are necessarily reading the person's stuff, but they are willing to be considered part of that person's inflated Twitter posse, as part of the influence-trading aspect of Twitter.
- Lance M. Brown
Robert, I think that the biggest thing that changed is not that you were "wrong" (to follow everyone) before but that the Twitter population has changed so much. A year ago, pretty much everyone on Twitter was real, and interesting - now there's so much automated gaming the system going on that the signal to noise ratio has gotten unbearable. So I think anyone who cares about more than...
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- Matthew Blaisdell
I can't imagine how it would happen technologically, but it would be great if there was a way to ditch followers who weren't actually reading your tweets.
- Lance M. Brown
Enjoyed recent posts and look forward to more from you! Keep it up.
- One Degree Connected
All right, I'll bite :) - although I'll say that I did the mass-unfollow-thing months ago - long before it was cool.
- Justin
from Nambu
Your most active followers are on FF. No loss.If you really wanted to make a bold statement you ought to have blocked all of your followers and started from scratch.
- Benjamin Taylor
Been a while since I put you and Shel On the record...Online
- Eric Schwartzman
Good article Robert. I honestly enjoyed the perspective. I found the same to be true, but on a much lower scale, of course ;-)
- Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
I don't get it - so now you are using Twitter kinda like a normal person, and its some kind of miracle that it works better?
- Nick Lothian
I'm impressed you can keep up with 1600 people. I have trouble enough with the little amount I have. I did find that making FriendFeed imaginary friends and putting them in groups for those I'd like to read occasionally (but not on a regular basis) has helped a lot
- Tamara
me! i offer nothing but the warm feeling of having accepted a ff reject.
- Marco
ok. so how will you filter the noise now
- Kfir Pravda
Ooo, I've won the lottery. You'll follow me now. Wheeee! (how do you have the time to go through all of the names by hand? VA assistance?)
- Peggy Dolane
Interesting trend on twitter - I always wondered what sense it made to follow tens of thousands of people, too much noise. I'm finding it hard enough to follow 2900 (looking to cull even that down as I mostly tweet about 30 people!)
- Tia Singh, Life Coach
I like your ability to influence so many people. I'm following you (mostly here - on FriendFeed) because it's one of the ways to learn how you do it (but, please, do not follow me if you do not see anything you could learn from me :-).
- Hanna Wiszniewska
I would come up w/ a better vetting process.
- Joe
got to get a pic up so i can fit the criteria, I only follow 45 people and some of them are on thin ice ( Im lookin at you Scoble)
- James Hunter
"Where in The Net is Robert San Diego?" (cit.) :-)
- Luca Perugini
from iPhone
I'm not kissing your arse,but i do learn a lot listening to you.
- Paul Downing
@scobleizer why would you randomly follow people who comment in this post when you just got done knocking FFollo and having to unfollow a gazillion people on Twitter?
- Bryan Zirkel
Bryan: because I'm following people one by one and putting them into lists on my screen. Autofollowing means you aren't doing ANY of that thinking. Also, autofollowing will get you spammers, if they ever show up (and they will).
- Robert Scoble
@Robert: Read your blogpost and that's indeed what I look at to follow people too. No autofollow and even close friends have to tell something interesting for me to (keep) following. Friends who are new to Twitter (no tweets yet) get the benefit of doubt.
- Patrick Mackaaij
If you follow me, great, but if you don't I'll understand. :) And I ought to do some pruning myself...
- Grant Bierman
I still don't understand how you want to follow someone who just writes a comment over here. Well, this is not the first time. I did not understand why and how you followed 100k people. I find it hard to properly follow 100 people.
- Sumanth Kolar
Sumanth: obviously there are degrees of "following." When you read the New York Times, do you read the entire paper word for word? I don't. Same when I'm following. I only get random slices of some of my lists. Others, which have 500 people on them, get 100% read.
- Robert Scoble
I'm still here . . . although tired after teaching all day. Louis Gray came to my PR class at SFSU and WOWED the 50 students [except for one who thinks we are making too much of social media] We won't be following him.
- Shari Weiss
I still like the "stranger stream" of Twitter vs "friend feed" of other applications. I don't feel the need to read all tweets from everybody - and tools let me check my fave tweeples. I think mass unfollowing destroys some of the social contract - Robert you are lucky because you are well liked and can do some risky things but companies for example (not Brands of One) would be in...
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- Laurel Papworth
As @charleneli predicted back in January, 2009 will be the year of de-friending on social networks. It's here.
- Mark Evans
Laurel: yeah, you have to navigate these waters carefully if you are representing a brand, that's for sure!
- Robert Scoble
i will not get followed back: not powerful, don't have a brand, not a news maker... but i kinda understand the reasons
- Dani Martínez
I still think it all goes into how you use twitter. If your using it as a communication tool it depends on if you are looking for broadcast or 2 way. Its interesting to watch as some of the bigger names turn back from the broadcast and go back to the 2 way.
- Luke Kilpatrick
@Robert so when you're taking in information from FF do you have a feed of several dozen/hundred "key" people and then categorize the rest, or are you mainly searching? Do you utilize groups at all or mainly just rely on what comes across your feeds? I guess I'm curious as to how you're using FF to collect information.
- Bryan Zirkel
I have found Twitter becomes noise rather than a conversation once the following/follower thing gets over a certain mark. I think this is the dirty little secret of Twitter - if it just turns into white noise, rather than a filter, then it becomes less than useful.
- Michael Liss
I'm interested in how we'll all feel over the next few years as social networks continue to change and more people and organizations get on them. Obviously, many of us are getting fed up with spammers and are unfollowing them on Twitter and Facebook. I am also having a hard time keeping up with new subscribers on FriendFeed because I know less about them from their profiles and have to...
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- Cathryn Hrudicka
BTW, I feel like I'm finding lots of interesting new people to follow from these discussions that Robert and others are holding on FF. Cool!
- Cathryn Hrudicka
Am I too late to comment and get followed?
- Hichame Assi
LOL! I follow those I find interesting and which can give me useful information. And hope someone follows me for the same reasons.
- Flavio
Very interesting post - I've always thought that you guys who follow loads of people must get completely swamped by noise! Like you, I've found it useful to follow companies I use that have interesting products like Zoho and Evernote as a way of keeping up to date with their latest innovations. Excellent idea spelling out your "follow criteria" - it needs to become standard etiquette for social networks so that people don't get offended when they aren't followed back :) .
- David Meredith
aren't you doing the same thing here, that you did in Twitter? Choose carefully who you follow, filling your brain with pollution doesn't make you smarter
- Allison
Just finished reading the Mashable post on your unfollow exercise. It's attracting attention from all the other big names now.
- George Hall (Australia)
Very interesting indeed, I only to unfollow a few, cause I just never had auto follow on.. So now I just unfollow the ones I'm bored of..
- Jaap Willem
Seems like a good idea. Although Louis Gray also has a few valid points on his latest blog post why it might be a mistake http://bit.ly/19UKxk
- Silver Hage
I've never understood the auto-follow procedure on any social network. Even on Facebook, where it is obligatory, one can still lower the noise by simply hiding the updates of those who want to follow you, but perhaps also have little personal connection and therefore can be hidden.
- Noah Gray
It seems like the unfollowing was the easy part. Choosing who to follow again must have been a chore. I think it is crucial in twitter (and FriendFeed for that matter) to have a clear out every six months or so otherwise you get bogged down in an information feed you don't really care about.
- Chris Nixon
I can totally understand why you had to do this. I'm following 2700-ish folks on Twitter and I need 3 groups to manage it (using TweetDeck). I feel I am keeping up with most of my local community and the general tech community at large though I'm sure I'm still missing quite a bit of stuff from people who are not in the 3 groups. I also wonder how much more I can actually handle.
- Ken Seto
Um... well, I made something of myself, but then I didn't like what I made, so now I'm doing it all over again. Not sure how that fits with your criteria! Plus, I really don't have a brand or any influence to speak of. I do look great in boxers, however.
- Mark Jepsen
OK, OK, changed my picture. Instead of a green clock (a clock is my personal brand) I put a picture of myself. A lot of people told me to do that....
- Bora Zivkovic
I am still looking for info on holographic technology being used for news delivery. Perhaps it's a technology that hasn't even been invented yet or is sitting on a shelf somewhere. What say you? http://specialdee.wordpress.com/2009...
- Denise
Hoping your new look account has had the desired effect. No need to follow me, I'm not the interesting type, I'll just be glad if your insights, links & content continues. Congrats & good luck
- JanLawrence
Here's what's interesting, Robert, I've noticed an uptick in followers even if you reply or RT or like someone's tweet, not just if you follow that person. Then again, perhaps that's the intent - if you like or RT someone's idea, that's a kind of stamp of approval.
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
The Scoble Pendulum.. How long till we go back to FOLLOW!! FOLLOW!!! FOLLOW!!!! ? :)
- Adrian Scicluna
I did a purge on Facebook for the same reasons a few months ago. It's under 300 and it's people I actually care about. I've come "this close" to running a purge on Twitter but haven't yet. Maybe this will spark me to do it. I've kept FF tight from the beginning.
- Rob Williams
moving from FB to FF ... fewer, longer, more meaningful threads. welcoming your follow. cheers
- marc calamia
alright - follow me... - thx in advance Robert Scoble...
- Nilesh
All that commenting in the past counts for nothing?
- Kevin Gamble
Hey Robert... Great post... On FriendFeed, I increasingly put people without meaningful and valuable content on a separate feed that I rarely check... Its a more "sensible" way to unfollow, i think... I only unsubscribe if I get pissed at someone etc. I wish, FF gave users the option to only unsubscribe from comments and likes (but keep the main feed). This would be a good tool to control the noise...
- Onur Kabadayi
I agree with Robert (duh!). I very briefly made the effort of checking out the new follows and deciding whether to follow back. I think once I hit a thousand I shifted to a model of occasionally saying, "If you want me to follow you, talk to me." Hit two thousand and quit saying anything or checking followers. I don't care if they follow me as long as they either say useful things like real people or don't talk at all. I've never autofollowed back. This strategy works for me.
- Patricia F. Anderson
I have a large difference between people I follow (around 2000) and people who follow me (around 1800) - I choose people who are important sources of information. People choose me if they think I am an important source of information to them. I never thought it would have to be a one-to-one relationship as to who is useful to whom: some are informative, others are good listeners and learners. I learn from people I follow and I hope my followers learn from me.
- Bora Zivkovic
I also think that those of us who follow larger numbers of people don't use the stream in the same way. It is more dipping in and out of the stream, trusting that the important stuff will be repeated enough to float to the top, engaging with conversations of the moment. I wrote a blogpost on this earlier this year: http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2009...
- Patricia F. Anderson
Someone told me twitter can be separated into two types. (id say at least two)
- Kay Proskin
Scoble, I am beginning to think you are a cult leader :). Look at all these comments! I am using FF more and more these days... Useful for eGuiders.com that's for sure.
- Marc Ostrick
I like Robert. He was one of the first people I followed on Twitter and brought me to FF. But I don't understand why people are desperate to have him follow them. Status? Some kind of virtual autograph?
- Tech Introvert
What the heck. Follow me if you like. I'll be as entertaining & informative as I can.
- Aaron Schaub
from iPod
Been considering doing the same. Your post just might be the flame that lights a fire you-know-where to get it done.
- Kate
I only follow a few people and keep losing track so lord only knows how you managed to even begin to keep track of a conversation before friendfeed came along
- Iain
from BuddyFeed
Well done! Who need followers that aren't reading your tweets anyway.
- Sean Rasmussen
I'm considering doing same once I'm more confident in my use of FriendFeed. I RT'd this and it resonated with at least one of my followers.
- Tony Hollingsworth
'Hand-crafted personal network' is the meme of the moment, and whilst I can see the workmanship, where's the value going to be for you, Robert, in following this rag-tag (no offence people :) ) of folks from a gazillion different verticals. (OK, so they're mostly life scientists).
- Andrew Spong
I use to want to be Bob Dylan. Now I am not so sure.
- aTechDude
My take: you can't be an authentic, credible voice to your community if you let 'sex & dollars' spammers hang on to your coattails. Spam followers matter.... in a bad way. Allowing them to be associated with you diminishes your potential value to genuine followers. It's a pain. It takes time. It's worth doing. More on this, if interested: http://tr.im/vJwb
- Andrew Spong
Hope to see more "old fashioned blogging", like it better than tweets. Tweets are bound to disappear into oblivion the moment they're posted.
- Willem (@wim66) ☠
"Spam followers matter.... in a bad way." - I certainly agree with this. I block pornbots just as quickly as they follow me. I'm less vigilant about the commercial follows, but usually they go away by themselves after a while.
- John Craft
You're already following me here (don't care about twitter tough), so i just hope you don't un-follow, even though you probably don't understand what i'm talking about most of the time, since it's in portuguese.
- Diego Sana
So what happened to the advantages to following so many people you always talked about?
- Bas
Thanks for connecting here, still learning all the advantages of FF
- carece
@Andrew Regarding spam followers and the idea that allowing them to follow you somehow dilutes your credibility, I just have to disagree. To me that places the burden on the wrong person. I don't have time to waste pruning those who follow me, unless they are overtly annoying.My stream is public, they can follow me anyway. What matters to me is that the spammers leave me alone. If they don't, I block them. If they keep quiet, I don't care.
- Patricia F. Anderson
What is important is not who follows me, but who *I* follow.
- Patricia F. Anderson
Follow me if you want, but I gotta warn ya, it's scintillating stuff!
- Pierce Presley
Funny my twitter feed is much noisier but I have been very selective on who I follow. I have tried to make the feed relevant and actionable. At times I post things that seem out of the norm on my twitter feed but that is mainly for the few people who follow me that don't get it but I am trying to keep up their interest level. I also control who follows me, yes this breaks the model but I think the follow everyone model was broken and reckless
- Richard Gallo
Am I interesting? Dunno. I'm often controversial, tho. ;) BTW, we met in person at a Pittsburgh Blogfest, but I really don't expect you to remember that.
- Eric Williams
Enjoyed the post. I just started Twitter a few days ago to get away from Facebook. I like friendfeed the best - can't wait until it becomes more mainstream.
- Robby Parker
Awesome move. Consider that my comment please :)
- Charlotte Barker
friendfeed is definitively more evolved that Twitter. Conversely, user bases of Twitter is still its real (and unique) point of strenght...
- Marco Castellani
Don't want you to follow me (unless you find my stream of interest) but it's quite interesting the number of people that comment to get you to follow!
- Ben Drury
Hey Robert! So, I would like to talk to you about a social media company I'm working with right now. They launched a few months ago and their trajectory and momentum is pretty amazing. Oh, and I started unfollowing the noise in my Twitter after I commented on your blog post.
- Gregg Le Blanc
Great ideas. I've been selective (though it fluctuates) about following people/accounts on Twitter since I joined about 2 years ago. I can't take too much noise.
- Joe Lance
from twhirl
I'm asking the same thing Bas asked... what about your video on the benefits of following so many people? I took a stab at that method of madness by starting to follow all kinds of people, and following anyone that followed me... but I always felt like I was missing good content from good people because of all the "spam". I started to use TweetDeck to create groups/columns for...
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- Timothy Federwitz
@Patricia - reminds me that I should probably review all my twitter followers and thin things down. :)
- JA Castillo
I did almost the same thing - unfollowed about 1000 from my 1500, no attention is way better
- Maarten den Braber
Couldn't agree more. It's about time we all grew up. BTW Don't follow me. :-)
- Gee Ranasinha
Robert what's the deal with Twitter?
- stockmanmarc
Your post makes good sense. I didn't auto-follow & still find folks to unfollow because their noise gets too loud.
- Debra Ellis
Very clever. I imagine the signal to noise is sooooo much better.
- Chris Brogan
I've been thinking about unfollowing a bunch twitter folks as well. I'll look at SocialToo again. My initial experience with SocialToo wasn't good. However, it was during their infancy.
- Ron Hudson
I don't blame you at all. Leo was all over that yesterday.
- Daniel B. Honigman
why would simply leaving a comment prompt you to follow me?
- David Wescott
You're not going to change your mind and mass unfollow us are you?
- walidmREALTOR
I suspect it identifies you as a real person interested in dialog, David.
- Eric Williams
Followers are currency and you have plenty to spend
- Lee Odden
Bob, did you do anything on Twitter recently ? Did you massively refollow people ? Seems like you screwed up Twitter : down for a while... ;-)
- Enikao
Your ego is amazing. You make it seem like it is a special deal to be followed by you. I'm glad there are many very bright, talented people here who follow others, regardless of class, education, social status and not based on some snobbish criteria.
- RuthNH
Wow, this is a lot of comments. And kudos for following Followable people who have something interesting to contribute to your day. I'm glad you did it, because that means you'll find AND share more interesting things. This, in turn, makes you more followable too. Thanks for seeing the light, so to speak.
- ax0n
Did this take down Twitter this morning Robert?
- frank barry
That must of taken a long time :-) I've always been a fan of twitter, but I must say they have struggled in the last few weeks. We are working with their API on a project and their seems to be an issue every other day that causes problems. Do they have what it takes?
- Chris Nadeau
I follow under 200 people and it's great. I can't imagine 1k+ . I add about three or four a month.
- Mike Janicke
I unfollow people when I find I ignore their tweets/updates. After reading your blog, I think we ALL need to be more judicious.
- Janet Barker-Evans
Is this why Twitter is down? LOL! Can't check to see if you unfollowed me. Hope not. You, Shel Israel, and Jeremiah Owyang were some of the very first people I followed way back before Twitter even had 100,000 people on the service. -- It's been a fun ride but, of course, the spammers always show up to make things difficult.
- Brenda Young
How do you really know if you should be following someone until you follow them for a while? Sometimes I don't start talking to someone until I see a common interest, then I tweet back and we start talking, but that could be months later. I don't follow everyone back, but I follow back those that interact. I will unfollow once I see that won't happen, or I don't like their tweets.
- Nadine Gilden
Twitter is victime of it own success, they have to re learn how to scal better, but more important they have to learn to share better.
- abdellah
looks like you'll need to follow at least 343 people LOL
- Shari Weiss
Friendfeed takes over for twitter finally?
- Thomas Resing
@Patricia I don't want potential followers to be put off by who is following me. I wouldn't want them to think I care more about have n+1 followers than I do about what they're going to see if they review who I've allowed to follow me. Not to cull spammers suggests I care more about my experience than theirs. To a great extent, the quality of their experience will determine the quality...
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- Andrew Spong
1600 ... isn't that a big number too? It could be you'll think again before you follow every one here :)
- Mario Gastaldi
Still waiting for my Building 43 t-shirt. Not that I'm bitter or anything. ;-)
- Donna Tuttle
Be sure to come by Dallas when you swing through Texas!
- Zaneology
from Nambu
Respect your opinion Robert but we'll have to agree to disagree. Yes I despise all the FakePornSpamBots who follow me. I block as many as I can, but can't keep up. Our views differ regarding what is important to SEE! I treasure home Home stream! I read it, refresh, read, refresh and in minutes I have the pulse of the world... at least MY world! EVERYONE has something of value to share at some point. If I UNfollow tens of thousands, I will miss so much worthy of consideration.
- Arleen Anderson
Just another reason why it's good to diversify, I can still read your posts here. :)
- Luis Sandoval
Funny. I was catching up on news on Friendfeed for some odd reason. Great post; plenty for new and long-time users alike to consider there.
- Alex Howard
I'm still waiting for the ultimate tool to manage my followings - I can only manage to keep up with about 1/3 of those following me. I'd love to see something that can tell me what friends of mine also follow those that I am or those that are following me. Maybe it's out there and I missed it?
- TheDiva Rockin
Anyone interested in assessing the quality of their followers should check http://tweetblocker.com. It's pretty chastening. I aim to improve on my C rating. http://www.buzzom.com is a fun, fast way of decoupling yourself from non-reciprocal followers. You can select individuals to purge, or flush 50 random non-reciprocal followers at a time.
- Andrew Spong
Robert, your timing could not be better. ;-)
- Dave Martin
Great post, with perfect timing! Dang it, Dave Martin just took it off my lips.
- Vadim Lavrusik
I hereby rename this comment thread neoTwitter <waves at followers>
- Andrew Spong
Awww, you gotta admit, saturation, the level of influence that you have, because of your high follower, count, is a tool of mass destruction. Seriously, did you think if you recommend an online service that people would not try it out? Was this an asassination attempt
- Peter Murphy
I'm glad i'm not the only one who misses /me actions from IRC, Kevin. ;)
- Eric Williams
With today's Twitter outage your timing is pretty stinking good, Robert. :)
- Chris Cree
Now to get the rest of the world to follow that same logic when it comes to follow/unfollow! I only started being more selective as Twitter (and everyone else) started getting aggressive with spammers or anyone that even remotely did a single spammy tweet. Now if only there were the same contact management tools available for the other social networks as with Twitter. No matter what though, I'll continue updating my status when I eat a peanut butter sandwich! (With Fluff of course!).
- Paul Monaco
Now I think that it is time to think about a way to make money using Twitter.
- abdellah
@Mark, +1. When in doubt, the default delegation of blame goes to Robert.
- Dave Martin
what is critical mass for twitter? Too few and nobody interacts, Too many and spam bots overwhelm, Is it 1K or 2K needed to get a real experience?
- WarLord
Hmm can you unsubscribe from "comment notification via e-mail" in FF on a *specific* topic? This one :-)
- Patrick Mackaaij
Of course I thonk it is a different experience if you hand follow reading each bio from the beginning then these mass purges are unnecessary
- WarLord
I am intrigued how RT addict will RT now?!! (ps: FF please don't post this to my twitter)
- abdellah
I have been keeping my twitter account private a majority of the time lately b/c I am going through a divorce, but I really kinda like it. Have been reducing followers as well as the number I follow.
- Jackson Miller
You should follow me here in FF and on Twitter too!
- Karthi
hopefully most of us have proven our worth beyond commenting on this single thread
- andy brudtkuhl
If you are already following me on ff does that mean I get a cookie or something? ;-)
- Tomy Thomson
I'll add my name to the list. I came back to FF after the Twitter DoS outage. Maybe Scoble broke Twitter by all his unfollowing. He was the "glue" holding Twitter together. :-)
- Tom Newman
Robert: Here's the bit you missed off the end of your title here: .... and put them in that group I don't read :-)
- Jim Connolly
add me for your social media and the practice of law news!
- Rex Gradeless
Great post. I'm sure that some people might say that this kind of mass unfollowing will hurt Twitter, but I think it's just the opposite. Users who are following people they have no interest in just to pad their own numbers are diminishing the meaning of "following."
- Mark Denton
To stave off being unfollowed we need to comment here ya say?
- Jason
you are already following me here... perhaps you'll consider re-following me on twitter too
- Michelle
I don't know how you ever did it the other way. I am not in the tech world near as much as I used to be, which wasn't a whole lot. I just followed some random people I saw on SMugMug-related people on here when I started. You were one of them. I had no idea who you were (and still don't :-), but you talked about Twitter a lot too, which got me on there as well. Both services have really...
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- James Schipper
Quality over quantity in all things, including (perhaps especially) Twitter. Loved your friending methodology -- those are the same rules I've applied since being on Twitter. Posted them onto Posterous to share the love with credit to you: http://lorilaurentsmith.posterous.com/
- Lori Laurent Smith
it's not about unfollowing, it's about filtering...
- Barak Hachamov
I started out following everyone on Twitter.Then I got wise. When someone's stream becomes more noise than signal, that's when I consider unfollowing. I realize that threshhold is different for everyone, but I'll take "what I had for lunch" over a dozen bogus "marketing tips" any day.
- Julie Barrett
from twhirl
Well, I am trying to use FriendFeed more after watching Scoble's video on all those monitors he had up. I'm not a big consumer of information and don't own a TV but this online social stuff has been a perfect fit into my life because I can connect with people who are fountains of knowledge on a specific subject or are "human mashups". I like both!
- Adria Richards
I've been reading al of this unfollow bits, and this point of yours:
- Donna
Hey, I think that today you might make your point about FriendFeed being more interesting than Twitter. Hope you are well. Talked with @fransteps this morning and she is excited to work with you at Rackspace.
- Kami Huyse
I've been reading all of this un-follow posts lately, and this point of yours in WHY you unfollowed: "#2 Because I personally care about everyone I am following their noise level is a LOT lower. ." Is exactly what I do. And now I am starting to understand Friendfeed more. and using posterous to do aggregate posts. So is this overload making more people sit up and think first? I think so. At least the intelligent ones.
- Donna
This is a great move, Robert. It's also a lot more human...I was almost convinced that you were the only person who could actually drink from the fire hose without choking.
- Steffan Antonas
That sounds fair. After this morning, I've renewed my love for FriendFeed and Tweetworks. Until the next DDos attacks, of course. I will miss the fake porn stars, but I did when I moved from L.A.
- Scott Pierce
Steffan; I agree...there is no way anyone else could do what Robert S. does. It's good to see him become human.
- Robert Jones
This has been my problem for about the past six months. I routinely go in and unfollow, get the noise level down to where I want it, and then end up following back a bunch of new people, some of whom I'm incredibly grateful to get to know. When I had track, it was a whole lot easier to manage the stream, but I suspect even that tool would now be out of hand. I have a set of rules for...
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- Karoli
hee hee. i am commenting not so much to beg your follow but what a clever pitch:)
- Tresha Thorsen
Robert - I have not read all 416 comments so if this was asked and you answered forgive me. What was the all of a sudden revelation that caused you to reverse stance on Twitter Followers?
- Jeff Vreeland
It's difficult to maintain and filter a list on all the social networking sites. I cannot even imagine maintaining the kinds of lists you must deal with, Robert.
- Jeremy Brooks
Dude, you broke Twitter! When you unfollowed all of your 100,000 the other day you pulled the rug right out from under it, so it fell down and now it can't reach its beer. :-)
- Robert Morrison
Actually I felt rather sad being fav'ed by you on FriendFeed then dumped.. But again. I get more from you from FriendFeed, so oh well, stop talking about Following and Get on more with Tech! :P
- Du Senyao Peter
i like the idea of importing favorite tweets into friendfeed. i haven't used that favorite feature much because i haven't seen any real use in it. thanks!
- Jonathan Blundell
When twitter is down I always wish I could tweet: checkout friendfeed. Nevertheless, how will following folk that leave a message here really improve the quality of your input? While I don't want to judge many of the fine folk on this thread, are they all that interesting? In other words, isn't this the start of the same problem you had on Twitter...
- Jon Mountjoy
Robert, but why clutter your FriendFeed stream? This comment is not to get you to courtesy follow me on FriendFeed, think you've established you've changed your thinking. :)
- L.P. NEENZ FALEAFINE
OK, I have enough people to follow so I will close the comments on this thread. Thank you everyone, I will try to get to everyone today.
- Robert Scoble
wonder if FF could collapse to just the text.
- phil baumann
phil: yes, but they need to see the need. I think FriendFeed sees comments as its differentiator. That's stupid for a lot of things I want to do with FriendFeed. I want to reuse my likes in other ways, but FriendFeed doesn't give me the flexibility.
- Robert Scoble
be a lot of work to strip it out. there'd have to be a option to strip out comments, etc.
- phil baumann
also, isnt FF just losing out from a branding perspective? Who outside of the tech world knows what FF is?!
- Ryan Day
How often do you go back to the early favorites / likes for either? something I am struggling with.
- mrpotter
mrpotter: well, that's where FriendFeed shines. Yes, once in a while I do go back to old stuff. For instance, try to find the picture of the plane crash in the Hudson. On Twitter that's impossible.
- Robert Scoble
robert - yes. collapsing kills the point of FF. ...Raises the question of giving ff users even more options for viewing .
- phil baumann
Ryan: really? on my screen there's 3x more Tweets than FF items.
- Robert Scoble
Scobleizer: "FriendFeed doesn't give me the flexibility" *Yet *Hopefully soon and not never.
- David Damore
so FF gives us better search, Twitter better scanability. which is preferable - or does that depend on what your purpose?
- phil baumann
I really like having a column view in Tweetdeck; if I could get a similar view for Friendfeed lists I'd add more lists & see more content.
- clarke thomas
Yeah, I hope FriendFeed gives us a lot more flexibility. This is the #1 complaint I hear from people (that the comments are too "heavy" and "noisy.") You can see that visually when you put them side-by-side. On the other hand, I like FF's images and videos better.
- Robert Scoble
Maybe its because I read as I scroll. It's practically unconscious to me.
- Ryan Massie
clarke: yeah, the new FF API is something I hope gives developers this flexibility.
- Robert Scoble
I wish I could follow "Scoble Favorites" in my twitter feed
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen: I wish you could too. That's one reason for you to come here to FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
to be honest, neither FF or Twitter provides the ease of scanning that either GReader or Delicious does in terms of things I've cared enough to "like", "bookmark", "share", or whatever you want to call it.
- Criz
nicefishfilms: heheh. Actually sometimes I'm shocked by the engagement I get over on Twitter. it's been going down, though, as the early adopters figure out FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
More flexibility in the views would be nice, but greasemonkey should never be the solution.
- Ryan Massie
Friendfeed is Twitter for information addicts who aren't driven away by walls of text.
- Trent Hamm
Why would I want to scan a river of information that's in constant flux? That doesn't make sense to me. I need to see the engagement around an item, not just the item itself. It could definitely be an option (that I'd never use), though.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Its like viewing a list of music in iTunes, sometimes you want to see the list of songs, other times you'd like to see the album covers, sometimes coverflow is useful. It just depends on how you want to consume the information. I think both Twitter and FriendFeed could improve here. Maybe the client side readers will do it first.
- Ryan Massie
Rahsheen: sometimes I just want to know what items you picked for me to read. It could list underneath the item how many comments and likes there are instead of showing those all to you.
- Robert Scoble
Why govt some govt agencies block social media sites and others don't?
- Dennis Smith
Tweetdeck makes scanning enormously easy for Twitter... something similar for FF would be great.
- Peggy Dolane
Peggy: I can't wait to see what Seesmic does for FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, is there any ETA of the Seesmic/Friendfeed integration that you know of?
- David Finch
from iPhone
friendfeed is yet to be attacked by spammer which is inevitable once mass adoption takes place. what can seemic do that twirl has not already done on desktop?
- Tate DA FF MVP
from BuddyFeed
Tate: FriendFeed has many more defenses against spammers than Twitter does. But you're probably right. They will figure out how to get around them. For now, though, it sure is nice.
- Robert Scoble
i'm already noticing more 'marketers' here on FF. Thanks for the seesmic tip
- Lane Rapp
I would rather look over the FriendFeed one though. Twitter just looks boring.
- Andrew
So, make a user style. How hard is that? @-moz-document url("http://friendfeed.com/scoblei...") { .info, .likes, .comments, .media { display: none; } } (or, leave the .media one off, so you get the photos and such)
- Joel Bennett
Seesmic may solve it for friendfeed as they did it for facebook (it's scan-enabled for the eye and comments are 1 click away). But it would be more preferable to have the comments in a simultaneously scrolling window next to the feed...
- Jcm Manuel
Since the release of his new book Making It All Work, David Allen has updated the original GTD workflow chart to include the new elements from the book.
- David Finch
from Bookmarklet
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from Bookmarklet
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from Bookmarklet
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from Bookmarklet