It's also interesting in the context of the fact DirecTV viewers no longer get the Versus sports network, as they couldn't negoiate a deal with Comcast
- Ken Sheppardson
ask Al Gore how he feels about their negotiations re: Current TV
- Karoli
Comcast is very aggressive in keeping out local competitors - they have bought every local cable company or forced them out. They have locked out all local sporting events
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Yeah, here in San Francisco we couldn't get the Stanford/Cal game this fall... it was on Versus. And it means no daily, live Tour de France coverage next July :-(
- Ken Sheppardson
It was "rooter" before people started to mispronounce it.
- Gregg H.
I wonder what this means for their TV On Demand section - currently NBC is not listed for any shows and CBS is very big in that list. Will this change and now NBC will only be On Demand? Will Hulu now be a Comcast Cable only site?
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
The Network has changed to the point that combining cable + tv production can't corner the market in anything.
- Cliff Gerrish
consolidation of power and message control
- Karoli
cliff, if i have no access to nbc news because i'm not a comcast subscriber, the messages aren't especially helpful.
- Karoli
Don't you have access to NBC news via the network?
- Cliff Gerrish
cliff - they already "load balance" based on where/when you are streaming from/to - so now what's to prevent them from load balancing all ABC/CBS sites in favour of NBC?
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Francine, the argument against the acquistion is that they'll control the Network. They won't.
- Cliff Gerrish
That's a good question - will Comcast/NBC still allow Netflix/Mediafly content to be streamed at full speed or will it become traffic shaped
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
you mean will the net be.. you know... neutral?
- Ken Sheppardson
Google will spank properties that throttle - that alone will keep them playing fair.
- Rob La Gesse
All proprietary un-free software and platforms will lose in the long run.
- Gregg H.
Cliff, they already do. If I am watching a streaming video for more than 5 minutes I get traffic shaped. If i'm watching Comcast On Demand I do not. Will Hulu now be traffic shaped or will it get a pass? That what will be the clue if they are acting in a network neutral manner
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Windows is dog slow on good rigs, whereas Chrome OS is fast even on weak hardware.
- Raphael, Raphael
Francine - it is basically throttling of your bandwidth based on content and/or destination
- Rob La Gesse
Francine - if i'm streaming a video on Comcast the first 5 or so minutes are at my full bandwidth capability (15mbs) but if I continue past that point the speed of the video drops to less than 1mbs
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
But Silverlight is from Microsoft. How can it be good?
- Raphael, Raphael
Amazing Silverlight is actually seeing some traction. Developer Cuz predicted it would 2 years ago.
- JimmyJet
When Google switches Youtube videos to Ogg Theora natively palyabe in HTML 5 Browsers I think Gillmor and others that deride the importance of free software codecs and platforms will have a revelation
- Gregg H.
bah - I have to run an errand - I wish the video show could be viewed later
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
wish those questions had been asked in 2001
- Karoli
Bear - it can - they are always posted on building43.com a few days later.
- Rob La Gesse
Gillmor Gang is available on YouTube - your DVR of choice...
- Cliff Gerrish
google'll be using h264 and html5 video before any os codec
- Kevin Marks
Silverlight is as un-free as you can get.
- Gregg H.
Mike - use a hand grenade, Those suckers are tough!
- Rob La Gesse
seriously, take a pair of scissors and cut it. It works. surgically, even.
- Karoli
Is locked down linux an open system?
- Cliff Gerrish
The importance of the use of our computer devices in our lives are fundamental. That's why the software and hardware has to be free. Otherwise we don't control our lives. The software and hardware providers control our lives. That's the problem Steve.
- Gregg H.
But you need a real computer to debug anything. You couldn't actually debug from within Chrome OS.
- Raphael, Raphael
Is ChromeOS going to give you access to the command line?
- Cliff Gerrish
Gregg - that's crazy. As crazy as "free" healthcare.
- Rob La Gesse
strange disconnect between these guys talking about high tech and Mike opening a plastic insane package with his teeth.
- Karoli
The importance of the use of cars, homes, electricity and food in our lives are fundamental. That's why cars, homes, electricity and food has to be free. Otherwise we don't control our lives. [oh, "free" free]
- Ken Sheppardson
Chromium is NOT free. I pay for it with my attention and my gestures - and Google profits off both.
- Rob La Gesse
"opening a plastic insane package with his teeth" Either a good way to take out aggression or raise blood pressure, take your choice.
- JimmyJet
the livestream from SuperNova has been great. Good panels and very good discussions.
- Jerry Schuman
If we understand that phones are going to the Network -- why don't we see that television is going there as well.
- Cliff Gerrish
Aside from a philosophical view. After being Windows free for 2 years and being free of malware, spyware, adware, and not having to run virus scan software and all that crap, I really don't understand why people like Gillmor think Linux is second class to Windows. I would never want the pain and horrible experience of using Windows again purely for practical reasons.
- Gregg H.
Gregg, I understand Windows 7 is quite nice. I'm planning to buy a cheap Windows 7 notebook as a backup machine.
- Karoli
You guys should talk a bit about Status.net, formerly Laconi.ca. Evan Proudomu just got over $1 Mil in VC. It could wind up being a very viable free federated decentralized competitor to Twitter.
- Gregg H.
No, it's different, Karoli. I've also used it a bit, and it's more of a "universal inbox" than FriendFeed. It's just a client, rather than a stand-alone service.
- Ken Sheppardson
Is there a recording of the Tim Berners-Lee conversation somewhere?
- Mike Doeff
thanks, Ken. It's one of those services that definitely interests me...if I ever get in. :)
- Karoli
Nick: I still use RSS too. Saying something is dead is dead.
- Robert Scoble
We individually kill and give life to things every day. I don't use Google Reader much anymore, for instance. So to me Google Reader is dead.
- Robert Scoble
I used to think I'd want a universal inbox, but stuff like Threadsy have reminded me that I really want different "layers"/urgency in my inbox, e.g. SMS > IM > email
- Ken Sheppardson
Robert, I still use Google Reader...but only when what I'm seeing on Twitter/Friendfeed doesn't feel balanced to me. I can usually get that balance by going back to GR.
- Karoli
Karoli: lists will bring that balance to Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Ken, I'd definitely need filters or I'd just run away from the inbox screaming...
- Karoli
I still use GR - but I have about 10 feeds - the rest I get supplied by Twitter/TweetMeme
- Nick Halstead
the issue i have with tweetmeme, etc is how easily the echo chamber develops. I love it, but want to reach outside of it for info sometimes.
- Karoli
Karoli: I agree - the core categories will always be full of the echo/main crowd - but we will soon launch the ability for you to build your own channels that are filtered to your 'exact' requirements
- Nick Halstead
Used Threadsy 2 weeks ago, and okay concept, needs work still.
- JimmyJet
In the demo yesterday, Microsoft claimed that their Bing/Twitter search results filter out spam and surfaces quality results based on "social relevance"
- Mike Doeff
because it's a beta for a few 1000s....wait for lists to be rolled out...
- Antonella Stellacci
Mike, they're weighting it based on some kind of authority?
- Karoli
so "normal" people don't want to find new friends who share their interests?
- Jerome Hughes
Whatever it is, it's got to work for 'normal' people.
- Cliff Gerrish
@mikedoeff: Who decides "social relevance"? @Scobleizer Who is to say that this "social relevance' will be a democratic system? How can we prevent a new SUL/TechCrunch to happen, with people being disqualified for having "different" views?
- Antonella Stellacci
They called it "social relevance" but didn't really drill into what that means. Maybe some combination of # of followers, number of tweets, age of the account, verified status, etc.
- Mike Doeff
When will "normal" people get access to Twitter lists? I don't have it on my account. I might start using Twitter if I did.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ah...there's the 'track' ref. It's like coming home. :)
- Karoli
Yeah, I'm not one of the cool kids who get the lists feature on Twitter. :)
- Karoli
Potential issue with Twitter lists: Someone posts a list of CIO's. Sales rep's from Oracle, SAP, etc. use that list to pitch their products to those CIO's with @messages or DM's. Or they could find all of the people inside a company by finding a company list. It'll be like a free version of Jigsaw.
- Mike Doeff
lists =meta-data....so discovery of new users is one of the options...
- Antonella Stellacci
@mike u can DM a list? (sry for the stupid question, I don't have lists :(
- Antonella Stellacci
Is there convergence on a standard for lists, or is it too early?
- Cliff Gerrish
I wonder which will win out: sending stuff out to specified groups/audiences, or just sending stuff out to "everyone", and having whatever permissions you've assigned to specific people determine whether or not they see it. I guess it's the same thing. Nevermind. ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Antonella, you can't DM a list but it's an easy way to collect twitter id's in a specific niche. You can go down the list and follow people individually.
- Mike Doeff
Robert, I agree - would be a very bad move if PR firm, sales people, etc. abuse the lists features. They'll end up on a PR Twitter blacklist :)
- Mike Doeff
It centralizes with the user -- not with the services. This ties in to the purpose-centric web and the sidewiki discussion.
- Cliff Gerrish
So Threadsy isn't a service? Where's the line between services and clients?
- Ken Sheppardson
So will we see search come to Threadsy streams?
- JimmyJet
Robert: Click on your entry, click "Edit > Disable Comments"
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken: no. I want my curation to be public. Arnie: Wave could be useful.
- Robert Scoble
Ken: if I turned off comments I won't have the ability to type anything underneath the item.
- Robert Scoble
Arnie: Wave would be useful if it weren't stuck in the very lame email metaphor.
- Robert Scoble
But is that all you want to do? Be able to add comments to your post without other people being able to do so? I'm a little confused...
- Ken Sheppardson
Arnie: Wave is something I'm watching a lot.
- Robert Scoble
Ken: I want to curate and put it on MY OWN STREAM. Without you being there.
- Robert Scoble
..or you want to use FriendFeed as a text editor?
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken: FriendFeed doesn't work for what I want.
- Robert Scoble
Wave traps me...I want the ability to opt out of specific waves.
- Karoli
Ken: Private groups don't do what I want. I want a public curation where everyone can watch JUST ME.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Would "only let me comment on this entry" do it?
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken: very close. But now we need to go further. Let me post a video there. An audio there. A picture there. And bring in other tweets and items.
- Robert Scoble
The reality is that no one's interested in 'only scoble' -- everyone wants to create their own mix.
- Cliff Gerrish
Robert: So... a room where only admins (i.e. you) can post and comment, but everyone can view?
- Ken Sheppardson
Cliff: absolutely not true. My blog proves you wrong.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I'm only interested in certain posts from your blog. I don't need the whole stream. You're in my mix, you just don't know it.
- Cliff Gerrish
Cliff: and to rub salt in a wound. Twitter proves you wrong.
- Robert Scoble
Every time Steve says, "Rob?" - I start to answer :)
- Rob La Gesse
Cliff: that's cool. So you are listening to a group curation then.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: That's a pretty minor incremental fix, I'd think. Right now there are three types of rooms 1) Private, 2) Standard only admins can post, anyone can comment, 3) Public. Seems like a fourth type where only admins can post/comment but everyone can view would be pretty easy.
- Ken Sheppardson
Hope Threadsy has security for the UN's/PW's they require for each service??
- JimmyJet
Scoble, yes. I use a microcommunity to filter items -- not full feeds.
- Cliff Gerrish
Ken: even easy stuff takes engineering time.
- Robert Scoble
Threadsy in Chrome gets a basic auth pop up from twitter.com for my API credentials every time it tries to access Twitter :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Cliff: I know. I have seen this. Sort of like how TechMeme works.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Sure, but asking Paul to add a fourth room type sure seems easier than casting out some general lazyweb request for curation tools ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Scoble, techmeme is read only. This is a little different.
- Cliff Gerrish
Ken: FriendFeed has no engineering team working on many new features. I've already asked for new features. I've been asking for this stuff for years.
- Robert Scoble
Ken: Threadsy in Chrome (4): I am no longer getting a request to relog or give permission to twitter. refreshing auto like it should
- amarquart
Does Facebook still prevent developers from caching data for more than 24hrs?
- Ken Sheppardson
Threadsy seems to define the pipe that exists between services. The Oauth issue is critical -- it comes bak to identity.
- Cliff Gerrish
Ken: Windows is Amazon's top seller. I want to be dead like that.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble, we are already giving curated content e.g. this channel that is defined by 20 of the top Twitterati - http://twitterati.tweetmeme.com/ - soon these channels can be built by anyone
- Nick Halstead
Ok - i didnt get in on this till now - will it be archived?
- Chris Jackson
Yeah, it'll be published to YouTube in a day or so.
- Cliff Gerrish
Nick: that's not really what I want?
- Robert Scoble
RSS?? (which we all know is dead, ..but still); mp3 ?? Steve, I understand your effort to make a point by inconveniencing us with lack of rss, I get it, but from that stage further it is just pain in the a**.
- Mindaugas Dagys
First, FriendFeed is _not_ going away. (in fact, we're working on switching it to new servers) Second, I know everyone wants to know what the team is working on, but we don't pre-announce things, so for now all I can say is that there's good stuff on the way. Re: http://friendfeed.com/jworthi...
Paul, working on friendfeed.com stuff or facebook.com?
- Kol Tregaskes
I like the first sentence. The rest is just gravy.
- Derek Coward
I'm totally happy if we just reside on decent servers, and get occasional IT help... We'll keep the rest of the ship running :)
- Christopher Galtenberg
Paul - is that why it's been slower lately vs.pre-fb ?
- Allen Stern
Paul please repeat it in re-phrased form: Friendfeed is NOT going to repeat destiny of Jaiku? Y/N
- A.T.
Can't wait... **Fingers tapping desk impatiently**
- AJ Batac
But what does "going away" mean, Paul? And what does "team" mean? And when you say "pre-announce", are you talking about the Palm Pre?
- Ken Sheppardson
Allen, the slowness is due to growth (more users and more data), but I put in a few fixes yesterday that should speed things up a bit.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, sometimes when I open up threads I get the Opps... error. Is that related? It has been happening more and more these last few days.
- Kol Tregaskes
Still better than twitter and facebook. Thanks for the update!
- Mike Nencetti
Paul, thanks for the incredible work with FriendFeed. Please, keep it alive! and most importantly keep it FriendFeed!
- Ciro
as long as FF doesn't go dark or fall to pieces due to lack of maintenance, i think most ppl would be appeased.
- Joe Silence
Does this mean that the sky is not falling and we should stop running around screaming GODZILLA! and pointing in the direction of FB?
- Tony C
from fftogo
also, thank you for making such a great service in the first place!
- Joe Silence
Thanks for the update! Would like to know if there will be actual development done on FriendFeed in the future (other than bug fixes/minor updates) but I understand if you can't really talk about that too much.
- Brandon Titus
Paul: so still no answer from you as to if your 'good stuff' is being developed for FB or FF? The silence suggests it's FaceBook you're working on, or at least transferring FF into an 'add on' for Facebook?
- Jim Connolly
Kol, fb platform and openness, primarily.
- Paul Buchheit
i made a post here - http://www.centernetworks.com/friendf... - one interesting note - maybe FB keeps FF running nice and smooth to keep the early adopters happy as it's a great way to get new features out to them via this channel... just a thought.
- Allen Stern
Wow. I've had to eat my words before but these are the best-tasting ones yet!
- Akiva Moskovitz
from BuddyFeed
Akiva, just add salt. You know which kind :)
- Micah Wittman
These are the best words I could have expected by Paul. There is obviously a cultural difference between the two platforms and audience and I'm assuming both the former FF team and the FB team recognize that and are sensitive to the community. Thank you Paul and I hope you are feeling better....
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Allen, you're in good company on that thought - there were musings on that concept right after the buyout.
- Micah Wittman
Damn, 20+ likes within a matter of 2 minutes.
- Itachi
I feel a few "I told you so's" coming though... :-)
- Jesse Stay
Thanks Paul. Glad you're working on maintaining/improving performance. I've definitely seen issues here. Looking forward towards your influence and changes over at the blue giant.
- Mark Krynsky
Paul - thank you for letting us know, and I do hope you feel better!
- Jennifer Dittrich
The big question though is will FriendFeed continue to add new features? There's a difference between that and it going away. (and hence my argument w/ Scoble the other day)
- Jesse Stay
Paul: Seriously weird that you're there reading this, and totally ignoring each relevant, yes no question. No one's asking you to pre announce anything - just genuinely concerned (and increasingly so) that they do NOT include developing for FF.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse: Paul answers that question - BOOM - rumour mill dies and we finally get something positive to say. Ya know what - we won;t get an answer though. He's reading this, he knows the answer, but he won't.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse: For now, FF has more features than any other platform for this type of niche. There's some catching up to do before I'm worried about new features.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
AWESOME!! Thanks for helping to quell some concerns Paul. Looking forward to what comes next, but hope that FF never dissappears also.
- Travis Koger
from iPhone
Shouldn't we be asking the facebook guys, and let Paul keep working? Or is he wearing many hats (friendfeed head honcho and facebook openess builder)?
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Paul: I'm right, right? There's something stopping you from saying that you are no longer adding new features to what 'we' know as Friendfeed?
- Jim Connolly
Not for nothing, but I took my friendfeed embed off my tiny blog for a few weeks after the facebook buy out. There was just this empty spot on my eyesore of a website, so I put the embed back. We care because we like the connections we've made here and don't want to lose them. It's personal for us to.
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Paul: Amazing how quickly you guys have adopted the Facebook attitude to silence. Pity.
- Jim Connolly
Paul: blink twice if you will add new features to FF. I won't tell anyone, honest.
- Edward Zwart
FWIW he did just upgrade servers. My e-mail notifications are almost real-time. Sounds to me like they're still improving the service.
- Jesse Stay
Jim: Don't blame Paul on that, it's not fair. He's only allowed to say so much at this point but I'm very satisfied on what he said.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Jesse: The questions not if they keep the servers running - we want to know if this is a dead platform.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: in Paul's defense Facebook's PR is more controlling than FriendFeed's was. I'm sure he's having to consider the effects his words will have on other people inside Facebook. But, I'm VERY HAPPY that Paul is here giving us hints as to what's coming. I wish it had happened six weeks ago so we wouldn't have lost so many people, but maybe that would happen anyway.
- Robert Scoble
Jim, there may be a few new things, but as I said, the team is mainly working on fb platform and openness, so it's unlikely that there will be any big new features of ff (except maybe one that I've been thinking about for a while...).
- Paul Buchheit
Did the Walrus think about Feed Splicing? :-)
- Robert Scoble
Paul: Finally - THAT'S what we were wondering.
- Jim Connolly
Cool Dude: Need it to have a classier forum than the parent; Parent is still good but the options here make it just a bit nicer.
- ThatDBD
Paul: Pity. At least we now know not to expect any developments or improvements. Thanks for answering the question. Whilst it confirmed my fears, it's good to know what's happening.
- Jim Connolly
I have no problem with FB integration (notice my drool above). Hoping for good friend conversion tools to bring subscribers over as friends or fans on Facebook from FriendFeed. (Connect.registerUsers FTW!)
- Jesse Stay
As a result - Jim has left the platform.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: this is a change from last week, by the way. My sources were telling me that we weren't going to get any new features and now Paul is refuting that and saying we might get one new feature here.
- Robert Scoble
I'm still drooling - anyone have a towel?
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: I'll buy you a virtual one over on Ning.
- Robert Scoble
personally, i would be happy just to have FF not fall apart and die. given the post-acquisition situation, anything beyond that is gravy!
- Joe Silence
Robert, I heard Ning is dead - care to send me one on Facebook? ;-)
- Jesse Stay
Robert, think of it as 20% time. If there's a feature I want, I'll just add it :)
- Paul Buchheit
Thank you for the clarification, Paul, and hope you are feeling better.
- WorldofHiglet
a communication channel that will be around and getting improved no matter what happens, our blogs :D I'll be commenting on yours Jim. 20%, that's a helluva light better than 0%, that's actually much more than I expected. Could we crowd source funding to buy you more %?
- Mark Essel
Even if there no new features in Friendfeed, I am happy with Friendfeed just staying on.
- ashish
how many users are there on friendfeed is there any chance we could buy it out (and get a full time dev staff back)? This platform rules, the dev team is incredible (albeit on facebook stuff now).
- Mark Essel
Paul, if you wanted me to bake you some cookies, all you had to do was ask, GEEZ.
- Derrick
Question: how many facebook bucks do we have to buy in total to get Paul and team working on friendfeed more of the time (100% ;)
- Mark Essel
Twitter doesn't accept cupcakes any more (just check Foursquare when at their offices). How about FriendFeed? :-)
- Jesse Stay
Mark, I'm okay with better Facebook integration. There's a lot of power in that (hence my drooling).
- Jesse Stay
I've got mixed feelings Jesse. I have friends on facebook. Then I have people that get excited by the same stuff that I do on friendfeed
- Mark Essel
Mark, I'm really hoping it ends up the best of both worlds - that would be really cool
- Jesse Stay
im going back to efnet - i got a bus for 7pm - anyone want on? :-P
- Allen Stern
I don't think you can mix the two sites at all. This has been repeated over and over. FriendFeed's technology might be portable, the concept, no.
- Jorge Escobar
Is it too late to do something about it. If it's a question of funds, can't we raise some? I mean this is the best communication platform I've come across yet. Facebook could be, if they just handed over the reigns to Paul, but its unlikely that sort of shift could happen.
- Mark Essel
Is the user perceived need of a full time devoted dev staff a fallacy?
- Mark Essel
I think you could make the case that some sites and services can in fact be "done" at some point, and simply require resources to keep them up and running.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken: That's a potential advantage of turnkey application-level hosting such as App Engine: the resources to keep them up and running are almost entirely outsourced. ~All costs are variable costs, monetization improves over time, variable costs decline over time, so services that are "done" can literally just coast.
- Daniel Dulitz
They could open up something like friendfeed. Distributed social networks, with many servers would make search more challenging (search like status could help). The Internet keeps on chugging, it's a distributed information network that's been alive for many years. Our social networks should live, as does the underlying Internet.
- Mark Essel
Nice Daniel, I've been having fun playing around there (frankensearch.appspot.com). I'm using it to get to learn a little more about scala and lift now.
- Mark Essel
might be a full-time job times 2 or 3 for any fresh devs - safe to say Paul's got a bit of a head-start which changes that equation significantly! .... Also maybe almost as important is simply keeping spammers in check - that makes the difference between a ghost town vs the happy place here we want to keep coming back to enjoy ...
- Dan Freeman
Istanbuldan buyuk bir eferimi hakketti bu cocuklar, bizim icin calisiyorlar
- MobilAdam
from fftogo
Yes, this helps a lot. Thank you, Paul. We were beginning to fight amongst ourselves over these things.
- Kamilah Gill
I bet a good contextual advertising box off to the side could generate 35-50million dollars in 6 months with a user base of 1 million people. The assumption is that the average user spends 100-200 bucks on the site making purchases they'd normally make anyway and the affiliate percentage goes to the social host.
- Mark Essel
Friendfeed's health needn't be measured by the team's willingness to add new features. Shovels haven't changed in hundreds of years, but nobody is running around saying shovels are dying. A shovel is a great tool --a simple one, at that. If anything, I'd take away features on FF, but that's just me. Thanks for jumping in, Paul.
- Chris Baskind
Chris: the problem is that a shovel doesn't get more utility the more people that use it. FriendFeed does.
- Robert Scoble
I think the problem is that some people feel extra messianic some days (which is perfectly okay), and then refuse to see/believe/accept when others don't feel the same way AND point it out. The refusing part is not really okay, I guess.
- Michael Bravo
Thanks for these reassuring words Paul. Have been working hard to get more Flickr users over here after the recent rash of censorship there. Friendfeed's TOS and lack of censorship is a breath of fresh air compared to Flickr.
- Thomas Hawk
I wouldn't say lack of censorship, but community moderated filters. ;)
- Uncle CW™
I think you're unnecessarily complicating the discussion by adding new vocabulary, Robert. Now you're talking scale, not features. A product needn't expand its feature set to remain useful. Feature creep is the devil, anyway. ;-)
- Chris Baskind
You can’t predict what the future of technology will bring; so trying is a fool’s game. You can only adapt to the new realities as best you can. Paul's word is that it is still worth the time to invest in FF the tool. The tool may stay in this form but that's still a better design for me than Twitter. If FF is a shovel, Twitter is a spoon feature-wise. Audience volume-wise, it is the reverse.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
"Feature creep is the devil." truer words!
- Joe Silence
Ok here's an example of what the social media + contextual ads could like like (sorry can't embed iframe twitter they go full screen so I showed it with friendfeed). But the idea is clear: http://victusmedia.com/social-... This works by sending your tweet stream to zemanta, and then does some backend stuff (which we're working on improving) to get relevant ads from amazon
- Mark Essel
I've been rough on you guys in some comments around, but I'm VERY encouraged to see that you guys see a future for FF. Thanks for shining some light, Paul.
- Scott of Two Countries
A respectable amount of information. Thank you.
- Matthew DeVries
Chris: Pownce had more "features" than Twitter did, yet it died. So did other aggregators like Jaiku. It's not "features" that matter in social software. Well, at least not completely. It's a combination of features with crowds that matter. If the crowds leave FriendFeed has a lot less utility to everyone than if they flow in. Look at this item here. Why is it interesting? Because there's people here talking about it.
- Robert Scoble
take your time PB Bear take your time
- Thomas Power
This is definitely more of the answer we were looking for. Thanks, Paul.
- Alex Scoble
All I can say is "thank you" for letting us know what's going on. I'm glad to hear FF will be around for the foreseeable future. :-) LONG LIVE FRIENDFEED!
- Jason Huebel
I can't find any wave that is even remotely comparable with friendfeed's conversation, if you found one will you invite me? (muzzle at googlewave)
- Emme Ci
Great news, I await the new functions eagerly
- Mo Kargas
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the best thing I've seen ALL day!! woo hoo!! Thanks Paul :) {{{ HUG }}}
- Susan Beebe
Just a few words of assurance go a long way, Paul. Thank you for finally giving us something more solid to stand on. It's been frustrating for a lot of us waiting for the other shoe to drop and this news makes it much easier to keep investing time in FriendFeed. Please don't be shy about reaffirming that it's not going away on a regular basis because it's always good to hear.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
I will say it for the least time! Friendfeed kicks ass :). The rest who is saying friendfeed is dying. please SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!
- alfred westerveld
Tnx Paul, people just want to see that are not "alone"
- CantorJF
from FreshFeed
"As a result - Jim has left the platform. - Jim Connolly" - Was this guy ever on the platform?! A quick glance at his most recent posts [first page] show pretty much 100% of posts made from other platforms. Cut him and his blood runs blue. Twitter blue :)
- 1x29
IF you glance over the Right Wing guys publications-there is some serious Terrorism encouragement from those sociopaths. This looked like a real strong example of what they are encouraging their followers to do??? Been saying we need to pay attention they are respectable foes to intelligence and their agenda is to win at all costs. Dudes they are great foes, need to,got to, have to pay attention to what they are doing. Peace love your neighbors dudes.
- ThatDBD
@ThatDBD I think you're responding to the wrong thread...
- Fa La La La Lindsay
It's fascinating that so many people seem worried about new features. Until recently Twitter added almost no features at all and yet it continued to grow in popularity. FriendFeed's recent slump is all about perception, not tech.
- Eoghann Irving
these conversations take too much time for narcisists with tight schedules (stars). Publicity skyrocketed Twitter to the limelight. Friendfeeds champions are tech geeks, and folks that love chatting and sharing. There aren't many of us though. Give us time, or let us own the platform with a public ipo /buyin from facebook. Free friendfeed!
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Looks like it's official then: FriendFeed lives! On new servers, even! (At least for now...)
- Dennis Jernberg
This is great news! Thanks, Paul, for the update, and if you get a hankering for a feature, great! I'm fine with the tech being your personal sandbox in exchange for keeping the service alive. Robert, I hope this means we'll see more of you and your family - and hear from the ones who have mastered the art of rolling over. Johnny, thanks for having the courage to ask the hard questions (and Louis for helping you frame the issues.) wow - life feels good again!
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
from iPhone
This is brilliant news from Paul! Now can we put this FriendFeed is dying business to rest please? It's a self fullfilling prophecy because by saying FF is dying, folks begin leaving, causing a downward spiral which would then cause it to come true!
- technogran
Wan't it to stay? Then begin spreading the word! Get others to use it! At the moment its not mainstream so encourage ordinary users to use FF! The more popular it becomes the less likely it is to fold.
- technogran
technogran: sorry, today you see what's going on. Bing? Displays your Facebook and Twitter tweets. Google? Twitter. Where's FriendFeed in this equation? Now do you get why FriendFeed is destined to be a tiny niche player and why the real action is on Facebook?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, if FF gives me what I'm looking for, why do I care where "the real action" is? If FF serves its niche well, what's the downside?
- Scott of Two Countries
Robert, do you mean that Google doesn't index Friendfeed posts? Friendfeed is the first site that comes up if you search for my name.
- Victor Ganata
Excellent point Victor - but FF only imports a small % of twitter's posts. Ergo Google is still not getting Twitter.
- Roberto Bonini
@Scobleizer - this item is not interesting because of the conversation. it's interesting because of who it's from, and what he said. The fact that there's a conversation around it and that conversation is easy to find and read is a bonus (a feature) that sets this service head and shoulders above others (IMHO). There's really not much interesting in the comments here, if you ask me. You could get rid of all the comments that aren't Paul's and the value of the entry doesn't diminish that much.
- Chris Heath
That isn't to say that conversations around items aren't ever useful or valuable (or interesting as robert says)... but in this case i would say it's who it's from and what he said.
- Chris Heath
Chris: you nailed, in a single paragraph, why Twitter is winning. You now can choose who shows up on your screen and under what context. Well, I can because I have list support. Everyone else will get that next month. Victor: Roberto is right. I barely see ANY of the good stuff I see on Twitter come over here. Well, it comes here because of my favorites feed, but that isn't in nearly as useful a form as it is over at http://www.twitter.com/scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you keep saying that's the reason Twitter's winning - I can do that in Facebook and FriendFeed as well.
- Jesse Stay
Well, the problem is that Google doesn't seem to index tweets as well as it indexes Friendfeed posts. And Google has never been able go inside Facebook's walled garden. Hopefully that will change.
- Victor Ganata
(and I have been able to for the last year or so)
- Jesse Stay
Victor, that changed today - see ReadWriteWeb's post. Facebook is opening up public status messages to search engines now.
- Jesse Stay
Why is Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed a zero sum game? I use both Twitter and FriendFeed a lot - they have different strengths - and they feed into each other. Facebook I use less, but that's a personal issue because I simply like it less. Why does there have to be a winner? And +1 Scott, if I'm in the niche market that FF is serving and I'm happy with it, why should I care if "the real action" is on Facebook? If that's the case, I'll take FF's "fake action," thank you very much.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Paul: Thank you for letting us know status as much as you are able. The fact that you took time to write anything says a lot. So thank you for that. And thank you for FriendFeed in general. It truly does rock. Have a great day.
- Morgan Haley
Why don't you just give us all Facebook accounts for the one's that don't have them and be done with it. But the Turbocharged FF/FB accounts!!
- Gene Williams
@Gene, sorry, you'll have to wait for a FB invite like everyone else!
- Andrew C
@Andrew Oh that sucks, I'm still waiting for my Facebook invite. Do you have one to spare?
- Patrik Johansson
FriendFeed is still the best place to 1) Aggregate all content from around the Web and 2) See others activity around the Web. Also, if you assume Facebook wins, piping content through here fills out your Facebook profile. So of course I'm still here.
- Louis Gray
There you go, Allen. Straight from (one of) the horse's mouth. :) Louis is still here, still active and even interacting with you.
- Curtiss Grymala
yep - i just saw a pic of his kid in a tshirt :)
- Allen Stern
"Consultant Louis Gray appears to be using Google Reader to share content he finds interesting." Wait, I see him right up there.^^^^^
- Christopher Harley
hate facebook, and scoble's prediction that facebook would be the next big thing! you just can't help those folks that just get there for the girl-boy thing...or for their friends and family, there is a lot of people doing it there and a great section of that isn't of any help when it comes to questions and tech stuff, it might be a big thing but compared to friendfeed it is...
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- ffcode
You know it would be cool if everyone left FriendFeed because then Louis and I would have the edge against everyone else that left it in the dust. It's still an awesome tool guys!
- Jesse Stay
Allen, I just hope that everybody stops blogging so I am the only one doing it. If you naysayers all stop FriendFeeding, that's fine too. Go have fun on your Twitter. :)
- Louis Gray
I noticed a decline, but it really seems to be picking up lately, especially in the last week.
- RAPatton
i thought we were all going to posterous? i booked a big coach bus to take us all over there! rubel is driving! :-P
- Allen Stern
hahahaha "go have fun on your twitter" there isn't anything like friendfeed, no not even posterous...
- ffcode
I haven't noticed any big declines since the week or two after the Facebook announcements. Most of the people I interact with are still here... and I've subbed to new people... I don't know what that article is talking about. Seems like the article is a self fulfilling prophecy: let's say that everyone is leaving FriendFeed so that everyone will leave FriendFeed. Actually, it almost...
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- Fa La La La Lindsay
kind of, though I've noticed most have changed exactly how they use it before and after the big sell, for example there are fewer imports of the particular services and more of personal blog RSS's, which I'm sure is due to who own the content issue
- sofarsoShawn
ffcode, Paul Bucheit posted something just yesterday, as did Benjamin Golub. They're still using the site.
- Jesse Stay
moved on as in moved on to another projects are they still working on ff?
- ffcode
jesse, but their activity has seen a drop, bret isn't doing much
- ffcode
I've personally noticed a large drop among the usual people I subscribed to. My main feed was so dead I even had to ask if the real-time feature broke down.
- sofarsoShawn
ffcode, they're working on the facebook code now... figuring out how to move forward while integrating the friendfeed features (iirc)
- Chris Heath
Great... Just when I was getting used to FriendFeed... So what's the new fad service? Outside of Google Wave and the still going strong Twitter/Facebook news, I haven't heard of anything new coming out lately. Maybe it's just me but I'm itching for more revolutionary free stuff. Posterous FTW though. :p
- Fake Name
ffcode, they released Tornado server recently. I think that was a pretty significant activity
- Jesse Stay
Fake Name, don't go anywhere... Long Live FriendFeed
- Chris Heath
For the record, Allen, Cal didn't lose this weekend because they had a bye week. :)
- Louis Gray
i'm of the opinion that FriendFeed (the service) is of more value -- to me-- than FriendFeed (the community) and if the community goes off and disipates it will be a loss, but the service is still worth a lot to me
- Chris Heath
I stopped pruning my FF feed to promote interaction and don't bother sharing with FF as much. I just post links through twitter now and upped my usage for facebook. I also stopped updating the rooms I started.
- Alan Le
FF is still my favourite, although I'm quite. But that's due to other activities.
- Ton Zijp
this is control, and you all who registered on ff need to be here ASAP...and we need to rebuild the conversations ETA a day at most...
- ffcode
I'm still here. More active some days than others. But when we DO need to abandon the ship, why not try Cliqset?
- Patrik Johansson
hahhahaaaa, yeah that'd be FriendFeed done right
- sofarsoShawn
Yeah I read that article. I don't think it's better than FF, not close. But when FF goes down, maybe Cliqset could be something?
- Patrik Johansson
Fake Name, what scrutiny are you holding my feed up to? Not sure what you mean.
- Chris Heath
I use FF for aggregation, for discovery of interesting stories, and for following discussions. I never received much interaction with my own posts here. It's a mystery to me why people complain about FF complexity when Facebook is way more complex and less intuitive. Twitter is too simple, and therefore requires ridiculous hacks like RTs and @s. Unpopular Jaiku is better than Twitter....
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- howard shippin
@Chris Heath, it was just a fancy way of saying I've subscribed to your feed.
- Fake Name
btw oward, why is Jaiku better than Twitter? You didn't exactly clarify. Personally though...yeah, end of the day I either want a better RSS or a better RSS segmenter than anything else. FriendFeed is nice but it's still more of a lifestream than a Yahoo Pipes' Dream.
- Fake Name
Fake Name, well that makes sense... i kind of thought you might have been putting me down in a sarcastic manner, but that makes sense too
- Chris Heath
Haven't found anything to replace it with just yet, so yeah, I'm still here.
- Steven Perez
To be honest, I have stopped listening to a lot of social media 'experts'. FriendFeed has always been about social interaction for me... After 1,000,345 stories on Twitter vs Facebook, it's getting old. Interaction may be down... but it may be the content, not the service.
- Johnny Worthington
Good thread, my comment on the post here: http://alexschleber.posterous.com/my-comm... If FF goes away entirely, it would be a huge loss of the (Twitter) archiving capabilities. I still don't get why FF didn't go the full-on Twitter client route, they could have pwned TweetDeck with better groups, MUCH better persistence, etc. They could have ridden the Twitter hype wave all the way. Of course to make that happen, they would have had to optimize the Twitter use cases.
- Alex Schleber
I like FF for everything it does that Twitter DOESN'T. I'm very glad they didn't just make it another lame Twitter client. How many of those do we really need?
- Fa La La La Lindsay
FB could easily inject thousands or millions of new users. The fact that they don't, and probably won't, sucks. I think ff was bought because it was seen as a threat, and now I fear it is being left to die. sigh.
- Garin Kilpatrick
I think the 50 mio is a transfer payment to FF guys... They dont need anything and I dont think that they seen ff as a thread.
- Atif UNALDI
pity, i was just starting to enjoy using friendfeed even though no body ever replied to any of my comments lol
- Loc
@bluecockatoo / Lindsay, I wasn't saying that FF should ONLY be another Twitter client, rather the best, on top of also being the best for other services and FF discussion (different use cases). BTW, you may have noticed that FF was always at least 50% Twitter content. Why deny/fight reality, especially if that reality could have greatly bolstered FF instead of seeing it flounder and then having to sell out to Zuckerberg for the coding talent (AKA liquidation).
- Alex Schleber
I've actually been spending more time here lately, still subscribing to interesting feeds - but also started looking for decent replacement. Expecting may be some time before I find one - no hurry ....
- Dan Freeman
Uh yeaah bitch, I just signed up today, bow down and worship.
- Gina
Garin, i suspect ff guys had facebook in mind when they were designing it...
- ffcode
"While comparing Posterous to Friendfeed is like comparing a bagel to a piece of fish, ..." lol. But.. can't argue with the OP; it's a shame..
- thinkQuick
I still open up FF and leave it running all day long.
- Chris Jackson
Yup, still using it. At the Mac FriendFeed still rules over Twitter. Slightly different story on the iPhone where Twitter is served by several superb third party clients, in particular Twittelator Pro, which drag me to the platform. On the Mac though it's a no contest. I'm staying in the hope that FriendFeed will see further updates. If this doesn't happen and if it rots on the vine then I'll consider other services. For now though FriendFeed seems the best there is out there.
- JSLeFanu
have we passed 100 comments yet so Scobelizer will take note
- Chris Heath
No, nobody uses FriendFeed any more. I certainly don't.
- Mellissa
I still use FriendFeed, although I haven't been as active as I would have liked, as of late. :(
- Tyson Key
I didn't want to respond to this yesterday but I think it's really sad that blogs\news try to put things into the Deadpool before they actually happen. Throughout my career I've seen this, X is dead and in many cases they still exist. Why does media (including blogs) feel it is there role to speed up or create a death? My view is that if they are still talking about it, it's normally still doing OK.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I especially liked how she called us idiots as we had it wrong this whollllle damn time. Oh yes, because she's in the superior position to make such a crude judgment call. Dumb fug.
- sofarsoShawn
Shawn, who's she? and where did she say this? now i'm interested...
- Chris Heath
I do, but I wish there was a way of filtering what the Facebook app posts, e.g. no "@" replies...
- David "Lefty" Schlesinger
from Nambu
I use Friendfeed a lot more than Twitter because there is less noise and spam so it's fine if the numbers are low as long as they keep running it. I do spend most on my time on facebook because that's where my close friends and family are. It would be easier to be here if there was interaction on any of my posts.
- Jason Williams
from iPhone
@fake name (Twitter vs. Jaiku) ...It's not like I actually use Jaiku, but I see that it has threaded conversations. That's an improvement right there.
- howard shippin
I find myself using friendfeed even more after the acquisition. I usually start conversations here and auto-post to twitter. I just seem to get more interaction here than twitter. I get a few @replies here and there on twitter but its usually my close friends.
- Bryan Lee
so am i... maybe it's december, not friendfeed? students are back to their studies, business people realize that the quarter ends in september and so on... i've cut my browsing to minimum - no twitter, no facebook, only friendfeed
- Kirill Bolgarov
Off topic: Do your Twitter updates come as fast as usual or are they late? Because mine are unusually late. Google Reader shares too.
- rukku
I must have missed something - whats the connection between @chrissaad and js-kit / Echo. As I remember - @chrissaad was in the data portability concept. Are the two tied together?
TerryStorch: So you know, #digeratiteam is working on YouVersion Web, mDot, Blackberry, Android and iPhone simultaneously! Announcement next week. - http://twitter.com/TerrySt...
The development team at #LifeChurch is top notch - Jesus I pray that you continue to bless the #digeratiteam with ideas that are out of this world.
- Chris Jackson
I'll probably stick to uploading via email
- Chris Heath
Useful review, Zee. The Techcrunch post suggests the app's not so useful, but you get a more promising story here. Trying it now.
- Tom Landini
id use posterous more if there were an Android app.
- Chris Jackson
Yup, good review. IMHO, Posterous draws its power and its usefulness from the fact that it works through email. I don't even see the need for an iPhone app!
- Rubin Sfadj
Yeah, nice angle. I do think that a bit more text support would be nice. As would the ability to delete photos from an album, which doesn't appear to be possible even on the Posterous web site... unless I'm missing something.
- Grey Drane
Hey can someone give me the quick run down on why posterous is better/different than wordpress/blogger or just a quick sales pitch on it. Not seeing the benefits from the outside looking in???
- Cody Heitschmidt
@Cody one rarely does, which is why you must look from the inside out .. Seriously, it takes zero effort to start a posterous blog (one of its selling points), so why not just try it and see.
- Vincent van Wylick
Excellent, just as I start using Posterous!
- Jalada
Ok thanks Vincent and Michael. i will give it a shot right now.
- Cody Heitschmidt
Bof, as if we had time to assimilate all the crap even just our friends produce.
- Richard A.
Posterous is great. Downloading the iPhone app now...
- Chris Warfield
My picture ended up in my posterous account because I entered the info before taking the shot, but what happens when the user doesn't have an account? I'm just curious; besides I think I'm going to open a separate account for the iPhone anyways
- Michael Fidler
I wish Twitter would sell to Google so it would die like Jaiku and Dodgeball. But I won't post this over on Twitter. I really don't have much love for the service, even though I know I'll be stuck using it for the indefinite future. Jesse Stay has it figured out. It's a horrid place to try to communicate anything other than a bit of self pimping.
Here I can write the equivilent of an entire blog post. And even make changes. And even have a conversation. And use it as many times an hour as I want (Twitter rate limits my apps after a while cause I'm too heavy of a user).
- Robert Scoble
I can sense already that FriendFeed is slowing down now that it is joining Facebook, while Twitter still has the best flow (and best system for following people and best mobile clients). So, we're stuck with Twitter, which is too bad, because the technology here is a ton better.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter is a piece of crap - BUT it's where the audience is (currently).
- Jim Connolly
Now it is starting to feel like FF again with you bigging it up again Robert ;)
- Travis Koger
Maybe google wave will change the way we use twitter, etc. again. Haven't tried it yet, but it might succeed where friendfeed "failed" - getting enough people to use it.
- Frank S.
Travis: I had to go and clean out my Twitter and Facebook accounts and spread out my usage.
- Robert Scoble
Agreed! - Friendfeed is so much better (for as long as it really lasts in Facebook world...)
- Matthew Blaisdell
from iPhone
Robert: I'm thinking of setting up a facebook account for my Marketing blog - what do you think?
- Jim Connolly
@Scobleizer I don't think Friendfeed would be quite so popular if it weren't for twitter
- Prolific Programmer
from IM
Twitter is the new Myspace - HAHA - this quote made my day. For me it is just becoming a multiplicator for my friendfeed but it is important for that!
- Sascha Pallenberg
Prolific: I'm not so sure. Blogs made Twitter. So, what if there were no Twitter? We would still talk up something else. But maybe FriendFeed wouldn't have thrived anyway. Twitter hit a sweet spot with its easy to program API, it's easy to use interface, and its cute name and branding.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter works extremely well on mobile devices. I constantly see people tweeting whereas it's more difficult to do with FriendFeed's interface for a typical user.
- imabonehead
Really think that Twitter is annoying it's users too much. There's some problems out there that are really being ignored. Here's an example of a problem that could be solved very simply, but no action is being taken (if it was solved it'd create a lot of goodwill) http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter...
- Edd McArdle
Robert, now that FriendFeed's people are working for Facebook, and since Facebook has already been making changes to make it more "open socially", do you think eventually that Facebook will become the best place to have serious conversations?
- Carlton Hackett
I've been thinking so too. Although, I wonder how the non-Soc/net junkies will respond to that?
- Carlton Hackett
Robert, two thoughts. #1 - do you think Google really would let it die? Acquiring Twitter would be more like its YouTube acquisition than Jaiku (in terms of price and # of users). Secondly, what would Twitter have to change for you to change your opinion?
- Ben Parr
I really, really, really want Twitter to work out is the thing. It's just a pain in the neck to communicate without either losing the conversation or spamming useless banter over multiple Tweets because you can't fit it in 140 characters. That's just my experience. Those still spending most their time there don't mind it I guess.
- Jesse Stay
I like Twitter. The conversation flows pretty well for me, and to be fair, I get more @replies there than I get replies here to my posts.
- Chris Nixon
I think a combination of the Retweet API and a true threaded replies architecture and UI could change some of my opinion on that though if they do it.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: It's NOT just your experience. Twitter is getting less valuable the bigger it gets. The spam / porn / bots issue is insane and ruining the experience.
- Jim Connolly
Chris: I have a twitter account with over 20,000 followers and get ten times as many replies here as I get there. Here I only have a small following. The calibre of people I connect with here is better too.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse, have Twitter improved their communication with developers since you wrote about it in April?
- Edd McArdle
Edd, over the last week I have noticed a difference, yes, but it's hard to tell if it will remain that way. They now seem to have a project manager over the API dev team (Ryan Sarver). He seems to be putting a filter on some things and keeping devs updated elsewhere. They're still learning though, much slower than FB or FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
agree on spam and bots, but it still is a nice little thing, if it remains what it was made for! marketing and reviewing thing isn't/shouldn't be there, true friendfeed is more effective as a tool for sending your message across, it is simple and strong
- testbeta
Jim, Jesse, Robert: Value varies. For me, Twitter value continues to increase. I use it to find out what's happening, meet up with people, get random insights into how people are doing, find new people. It all works well. There are many different use cases and one tool does not have to do them all.
- Rachel Clarke
Rachel: "It all works well"? Really? Twitter?
- Jim Connolly
Rachel, I agree with you. I just don't think Twitter works well for conversations, that's all. I use FriendFeed and Facebook for that. I use Twitter for different purposes, and I agree it does still have value.
- Jesse Stay
sometimes i think of Automattic's intense debate, but well friendfeed is intense debate, such a experience was never had on blogs, the commenting, liking, and so fast it propagates, even disqus commenting systems can't achieve what we have here on friendfeed, but i can't just throw away twitter, twitter still is good, true for the serious types it's word limit, reply system is a bit of...
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- testbeta
I would love to have FriendFeed as the commenting system on my blog.
- Chris Nixon
Chris, there are a few plugins that do that. I haven't tried them though.
- Jesse Stay
Chris: Check out what Scoble's doing with FF on building43.com
- Jim Connolly
Jim: yes. It works well for what I want it to do (I'm ignoring the ongoing issues with the DDOS). It's a free tool that adds far more value than it costs me to wait for odd outage.
- Rachel Clarke
Just checked your Twitter account and now understand exactly what you are saying.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse: agree, I use Facebook, Friendfeed, blogs, comments etc, all for different things. I even use the phone as a phone occasionally to talk with people ;-) But the assumption that one tool/service can do everything - and should do everything - is something I have a problem with. If something does not work for a person, don't use it.
- Rachel Clarke
The twitter ecoverse is cool, can do Psychological Profiles, can do Social Network Analysis. All those services that spawned as a result are amazing. I am also amazed at how dense Asians Languages are on Twitter, think about it they get about 60% more per tweet.
- Robert Higgins
Ben: at this point I am not sure what Twitter could do to win back my love. I will use it just like I use AT&T and United Airlines. I have very little love for those even though I use them frequently. Twitter wins because it is simple and flat and has great clients. I wouldn't cry if it disappeared, though.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
You are a hypocrite! I remember you use to sing the praises of Twitter all the time. Another toy comes along and you start bashing it. If I was Friendfeed management I would cancel your account now before you start bashing them. Robert Scoble is nothing but a follower of crowds anyway.
- Paul L. McCord Jr.
You want it to die? Such an odd statement. I have met so many great people through Twitter, and the news information I can find through search or news agencies or even people who are newshounds are amazing. I know it's not perfect and the last few weeks have definately proved that, and the spam is just awful. But to want to kill it, what a strong statement.
- PC Easy
from twhirl
Twitter is not abot writing blog posts or having conversations, its about small pieces of information being communicated to anyone who wants to listen. You do not have to listen, if you want a conversation use a forum or FriendFeed, use WordPress for blog posts. Stop trying to make Twitter into something it is not designed to be.
- Darren Rollett
I really used to like Twitter, still do sometimes. What I don't like is the Twitter hype. I don't seem able to turn on any media channel these days without reading/hearing or watching about it. Even the BBC reported that Twitter was under attack recently on the main BBC news. FFS come on, there must be more happening in the world than a micro blogging site with a few million users...
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- Nick Bristow
If you owned twitter would you sell to google?
- cheapsuits
from iPhone
Robert, Atleast something positive could come out of it. If Twitter sells to Google they might(though its not guaranteed) make it opensource and then a federation of twitter server(ala wave servers) can co-exist happily and that way we'll own our stuff(as Anil Dash and other points out). Or they might integrate it in Wave framework. Not that people are not gonna complain about it but thats a different topic.
- Abhishek
Surely an improvement in the service would be a more positive wish?
- Chris Nixon
Say what you want but something with the architecture of friendfeed is far more conversational then twitter could ever be.
- cheapsuits
I don't know why people think Twitter is the place to converse. It's really not built for that. I find myself enjoying the flow of conversations more on Facebook and FriendFeed.
- Naomi Williams
Self pimping? Hmmm... Perhaps not for all of us. And besides, self-pimping isn't limited to twitter.
- @JonAston
PS - Maybe it's just me, but you seem bitter lately. Hope you turn that around for yourself.
- @JonAston
Jon: You are right. People pimp on FriendFeed too; as I say in my new book.... :-)
- Jim Connolly
@jim, they will do anywhere, this is human nature, they do even in real life, so why not in virtual one?
- abdellah
"(Twitter) It's a horrid place to try to communicate anything other than a bit of self pimping." AMEN
- Alejandro
Personally I wish Google would buy both Facebook and Twitter so they could both die.
- Brian Sullivan
@brian, hey where could I read to you then?!!
- abdellah
@Frank S. Google Wave will only be valid if you actually have other friends/collegues who use Google Wave. Otherwise you'll be using it with the *crickets*
- Naomi Williams
Oh yeah -- forgot that due to circumstances beyond our control FF is now Facebook. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
oh yeah , they share the same vision, they got the same perception...
- abdellah
It's the ff interface (developers) that make it great, but it's really you guys and gals, the people friendfeed attracted that make it valuable to me. Let's consider a real migration to a more reliable long term social media. It has to be open (data portable, unsellable) to get my trust
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I hope the FaceBook people will take comments like these to heart. I do like twitter but the functionality FriendFeed brought was the next generation in stream notification.
- Chris Jackson
Ohh time to pimp Jim's new book on Twitter ;)
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Mark: Yeah - all I need is a title. Oh, and a book....and the time to write one....then I will be pimping like a pro!
- Jim Connolly
Wow Robert, I was thinking this the past few days and could never bring it to words...well done
- Braden Douglass
Jim: I'm time bankrupt but love sharing and collaborating. Let's hire a ghostwriter to capture our best ideas in an intelligible manner :). Joking of course, there's no easy way to spread our thoughts but doing it ourselves
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I was gonna call the Funky Phantom. (That really dates me.)
- Jim Connolly
Robert, I challenge you to stop using Twitter for a month and then blog about the experience. And that includes hiding all Tweets in FF.
- Mike Doeff
from iPhone
Lets face it, Twitter was built as an update service - a big Internet megaphone. The natural transition has been from update service to marketing service. Big Internet Megaphone. It's good at that, but it's not at conversations nor at discovery. The larger problem is people still approach Twitter like a true social engagement tool - and it's simply not. The disconnect between perception and reality results in the poor adoption numbers and other soft metrics.
- AJ Kohn
twitter is noise. filter it and you can find some gold. imho, that's beyond mere self-pimpage
- Rob Schieber
Agreed Rob. I'd prefer semantic algorithms applied to all tweets. I'm interested in real time search and datamining. And semantic extraction on all status would allow for real time "sorting"
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
i'd love to meetup with fellows and see what api scraping is going on - know where threads are for that?
- Rob Schieber
Idk, This seems so much better then twitter.
- SeanParnell
It does have a lot of noise, granted - but if it went away now, I'm not sure where everyone would run to. Facebook is too silly, Linkedin is too stolid, and everything else is too fractured for me to communicate with all the people I want to in a single shot. Guess I'd end up doing everything through ping.fm after all.
- Ciaoenrico
Wow, Isn't online chit-chat such a fuss? :)
- SeanParnell
Robert, just a week or two you were saying that Twitter is beating FriendFeed because of scanability http://friendfeed.com/scoblei.... And you had lots of complaints about the FriendFeed user interface. You also talked about how Twitter was much better after you un-followed everyone and hand picked who you're following. I have to ask, what has changed in the past few days to make you say that the service should die? Feels like you're flip flopping.
- Mike Doeff
I noticed that in the past two weeks, the tweet intensity has greatly decreased from all my follows in Twitter. Granted, I'm not following too many, but the ones I do follow have traditionally tweeted a lot each day. Is this a trend (has Twitter become a has been) or is this simply a coincidental anomaly?
- Jeff Sayre
Robert I find myself on friendfeed more these days
- (jeff)isageek
@brian would you consider myspace if both facebook and twitter die?!!(ps: sorry I forget the LOL)
- abdellah
Myspace -- don't know. I haven't really tried or paid attention to it. But probably not -- isn't it Facebook like? Maybe usenet? ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
brian, let forget all those techie and go irc :)
- abdellah
IMO, people who don't like the limitations of Twitter and whine about it hampering them are using it wrong. Twitter is not a place to pimp your blog or drive traffic to your site. It is not an SEO tool. It's not a place for you to compete in order to get more 'followers'. If you've ever tried to do any of these things, or if you ever followed more than a few hundred people, then yes, no...
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- Otto
Jesse Stay: you should stop complaining so much about twitter when you build an entire business based on their lack of functionality and other issues.
- Mihai Secasiu
Mihai, I'm not complaining - they can do what they want. As I said I really want them to succeed. It's a matter of fact that they do have their flaws - I'm hoping to help them fix those, assuming they're listening at all. What are you doing to help Twitter get better?
- Jesse Stay
it is like twitter if for what,where, when and friendfeed is for why, how
- testbeta
Mike: just because I use a service doesn't mean I love it. I use ATT and United all the time and they suck too.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
And yes Twitter has some good things about it. Doesn't mean it is all good. Personally it is overused and overhyped and YES I am partially responsible.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Apostol I get value out of Twitter. You aren't listening. I get value out of AT&T too but it COULD be so much more. Chris I tried to be positive but Twitter just doesn't respond to positivity. Plus they are cynical AT BEST about their users. Read the Twittergate documents to see just how cynical they are.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Twitter was just there at the right time. It's not the best solution to the problem (microblogging), but it's good ~enough~.
- Trent Hamm
You seriously think Twitter will die once it gets bought by a 'bigger' company?
- Mike Shields
Mike: do you use Dodgeball? It was bought by Google. So was Jaiku.
- Robert Scoble
Trent: did you just call Twitter the Microsoft of microblogging? Yeah, that's sorta what I was trying to say too! ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I just find it amazing that all the early adopters get really snobby about Twitter now it is getting more mainstream. There is something snobby about people's attitude to Facebook as well. I'm not a fan of Facebook but I know more people who use Facebook than use Twitter or Friendfeed combined. Even my mum has a Facebook account but she'd never be on Twitter or Friendfeed. Twitter...
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- Paul Nash
I liked Pownce. I wonder what SixApart has cooking up for them. So there's really no chance for Plurk to make a comeback and take back the community? With all the outage problems Twitter has, I would think Plurk would try to capitalize on that. Guess not.
- John Wang
now if the Google Reader team could just get their new commenting system streamlined and real-time ... :)
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
Paul: it's not hard to understand if you are in our shoes. Here's why. When a company is young and struggling to get noticed, they love having early adopters. After all, that's the ONLY WAY a company gets to the next stage. I've never seen a company go straight to Oprah stage without getting early adopters excited. Then once the company gets enough traction they usually start mistreating the early adopters. In this case Twitter stabbed them in the back. Leo Laporte, for instance ...
- Robert Scoble
...got me excited about Twitter and was THE REASON it was the big huge deal at that 2007 SXSW. He had more followers than Mashable last year. But did he get put on the Suggested User List? No. So now Mashable has more than a million and Leo has a knife in his back. And you think it's amazing that early adopters turn their backs on Twitter? Really now.
- Robert Scoble
I don't see how Leo has a knife in his back. There was no preconceived notion that anyone would be added to that list. Who cares? He was fine before that list was created, and he can be just as fine now, and just as engaging.
- Andru Edwards
Andru: when he was hyping up the service and telling his users to use it, he was getting something in return: being at the top of the follower lists. When Twitter artificially put its own people at the top of the follower lists, and handed out grants of followers (worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars, by the way -- Mashable has changed its entire business to be Twitter centric) they specifically dissed Leo and many others. Most of whom won't point it out in public.
- Robert Scoble
Sadly true. I'm in much the same boat -- Twitter is a necessity for professionals and bloggers to stay on top of things, but other socialnets like Brightkite and FF are light years beyond it, which doesn't look to be changing any time soon. Don't even get me started on the spammers and the get-rich-quick'ers.
- Ryan Meader
But before the SUL was released, didn't Leo abandon Twitter in favor of Jaiku, due to Twitter having "Twit" as part of its name? Just saying, if I owned a list that I had complete control over, and someone showed that behavior towards me (whether it was right or wrong, I am not judging), I would think twice before putting them on a list that will result in many people seeing they they...
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- Andru Edwards
I can't agree with you more, Robert.
- Jon Ursenbach
Scobe: I very much disagree that it is about self pimping. Perhaps your senses are mush because you follow too many? I absolutely love getting that link to a new article or research, or to get a tweet from that celeb that makes me think and provides insight into a new world. I also use it as a research tool, for exploratory purposes. Twitter, as you know very well, is about what you make it, and that is a tenuous notion that really is influenced by who you follow.
- Chad Gesser
Andru: again, the list did NOT exist in the days when we were hyping up Twitter. So, there was a "promise" to early adopters that if they invested time in the service they could be at the top of the follower lists. Sort of how PlayFoursquare is today promising users that they can become mayors of places they frequent more than anyone else. What Twitter did was the equivilent of PlayFoursquare telling everyone that their "mayorship" doesn't matter anymore and that Oprah is now mayor of everywhere.
- Robert Scoble
Chad: one thing you have to remember about me is that I see that Twitter has 1,001 uses. Stop seeing the world as black and white. This is one post I'm making about Twitter among thousands. Translation: I already agreed with you. But you have to admit that many people use Twitter for self promotion.
- Robert Scoble
Andru: and anyway, the SUL is hardly the only reason to diss Twitter. Twitter still goes down all the time, it still has stupid rate limits. It still can't block spam effectively. It still has no friend management. It still has no features that didn't exist a year ago. And it is, in many respects, behaving worse. I'm hearing from developers that Twitter is becoming more closed, not more open (to monetize) and we're seeing them pick winners before the marketplace is done (bit.ly anyone?)
- Robert Scoble
The nice thing about Twitter is that it keeps your message short and to the point. Friendfeed is great but it doesn't lend itself well to an external app out of the browser. Also FriendFeed and any of these services you don't own your content
- Seth Goldstein
Seth: bing! So, back to the blog we will go. Except, why are we still here? ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I like friendfeed because of its realtimeyness, but I like twitter because it requires you to be concise. I have seen some brilliant tweets done in 140 characters or less. I think that's always been the allure of twitter, its sheer simplicity. How many features can you add to twitter without actually changing the core of what twitter is?
- Tomy Thomson
Robert: But what do you want from these companies ? Chaps like you give them the oxygen of publicity they need and they court you and then when they become successful you suddenly start to criticise them. Friendfeed has become successful (in great part to your endless plugging of it) and the founders will now go on to make money through their company being taken over by Facebook. You,...
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- Paul Nash
Scoble: no doubt....I can deal with the self promotion, the e marketing and spam garbage though to me is what has gooootttt to go
- Chad Gesser
Paul: my role in life is to use what will be, not what is. I don't turn on many companies, but Twitter isn't one that dealt with early adopters on good faith.
- Robert Scoble
Is there a "social media" company that has dealt with early adopters in "good faith"? Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr I suspect don't qualify ? Any that do?
- Brian Sullivan
all platforms seem to have self pimpering styles, why so passionate against twitter? Objectional question, not one of rhetoric.
- nick tadd
Brian: I didn't know that any of those have actively dissed their best early adopters. Facebook kicked me off, but only because I broke the TOS. It's always been straight up with me. Same with Flickr, although I do watch Thomas Hawk's talk about their censorship.
- Robert Scoble
none as brian says, they all deal with them, and "the earlier adopter" contribute to their evolution until they sell (sorry)
- abdellah
nick: because it's so prevalent there. "Look at my blog post about xxx" is almost a staple on Twitter. It's a new RSS reader. Which is fine, I use it too for that! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I think you may have the makings for one of your future blogs here. Perhaps you do it for that reason? ;) The thing about Twitter is always going to be its LBE. It's a mainstream LBE to Social Media. For that very reason its perfect for business, government, and non profit to take public temperature and promote. The other "noise" is the "MV", the "mainstream voice". The conversation is 4 way.(and yes sometimes only 1 way) but there it is and its not going to go away any time soon.
- Melanie Reed
Yes, indeed, Twitter is the Microsoft of microblogging. It's good enough, but not the best - but it has the huge advantage that everyone is using it, so you have to use it for compatibility reasons.
- Trent Hamm
DAMN Robert I HATE that you are right on this one!!!!!
- Arleen Anderson
Hopefully you use it for positive self pimping and not for negative pimping... which is inevitable
- Kevin Burrell
If FF would have taken mobile seriously, the game might look different right now
- Alex C. Williams
Alex, they are taking mobile seriously - they sold to Facebook. :-)
- Jesse Stay
I can't see how Twitter can survive Facebook now. FB will bring Twitter down, the only chance they got is to sell to Google.
- Patrik Johansson
What makes people think Facebook or Twitter is all-conquering? There's a new generation coming through, and they aren't using these services. It's very important not to get sucked in by the hype of a service you use. Fanboys will talk up the positives and ignore the negatives, giving you a skewed message. The truth is somewhere in the massive grey area in between.
- Chris Nixon
The new generation uses Facebook a lot, but not Twitter.
- Steph (sh_skew)
from email
Let me say that it is not twitter per se. It is the population of twitter to make it the place it is at the moment. Whenever there is a (free entrance) place crowded of people, there will be spambots to pollute it.
- funkyboy
from Posty
Twitter is just a temporary solution for a quick mixture of instant messaging + status updates + chat forum.
- Bora Wiemann
Just having a discussion today that Twitter will eventually go bankrupt when the hype is over
- Khuram Hussain
I don't agree with you Robert. Twitter is easy to use, succinct and versatile. I've made multiple very meaningful connections through my use of twitter. I do like friendfeed's threaded conversations which are great but in a way it only helps those who have big followings like yourself, because people are more apt to comment on your thread than say mine because they know the conversation...
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- Lon Cohen
For example - how do I message you directly so you know I'm speaking to you (i.e. Twitter @ reply) but all your followers and my followers know that we're having a conversation in Twitter back and forth so that they can follow and interject when they want. Everytime we do that we have to start a brand new discussion thread and I have to "tell" you somehow that I'm talking to you. Twitter is like email/phone conversations and friendfeed is like collective blogging/commenting.
- Lon Cohen
I'm waiting for the FaceBook app for the Android phone. I thought I heard it was in the works.
- Chris Jackson
This thing makes me think how much mobile app dev of soc net tools will drive (and, actually for someb is already driving) smartphone sales. It's obvious, but this makes it so clear. Thnx
- Alberto D'Ottavi
from fftogo
This is why I hate the app store so much. Cool app, massive delay in getting it to market. Why do I have to download this crap through Apple? Why can't I download through FB directly? Frankly, all developers of "free" apps should release through Cydia, so those of us with jailbroken phones don't have to put up with Apple's BS.
- Otto
I hope Spotify release their app on Cydia if Apple rejects it. What a great reason for millions of people to jailbreak their phones. :)
- Jamie Cansdale
Looking forward to this, three weeks until available?
- Joe Dawson
Taking ages isn't it! I've been refreshing the app store a couple of times a day hoping for it to arrive. Dont even use Facebook that much, just wanna play with the update :)
- Simon Wicks
I pray with my sister this morning - Thank you that we hear your voice and that we are the called of your name. I love you Daddy and I want to be more like you.
- Chris Jackson
My wife Lori made a deal with our daughter Alexys. If she helped keep her room clean and dishes done and got up in the mornings without whining and throughing a fit - she would get a Build A Bare.She ...
- Chris Jackson
what do they have against webkit? maybe "won't officially support" means "we know it works but we'll create enough FUD to scare you back to IE"
- Glenn Batuyong
I love that Bret, Paul, and Kevin checked in. They probably are looking at their screens and asking "what do we do now?" how about ship some new features before Facebook overlords take you off to do bigger things?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I feel sorry for all you addicts. My use of it is purely social.
- Bruce Lewis
I do like FF and use it almost every day. Wouldn't it be great if FB either left it alone so we can continue to use it as "professionals," or somehow incorporate it into a more "mature" version of FB that didn't have all the annoying, time-wasting apps, games, etc. I'd much prefer a totally customizable FF "wall."
- Cathryn Hrudicka
I think FFundercats HO!!!!! would have worked but I'm here anyways.
- Jimminy Fuller
Actively fighting addiction to anything on a daily basis, but I'm still a FriendFeed fan! (I'd have been here sooner but I've been staring at Phoebe Cates pics for longer than I realized.)
- Mark "DerBingle" J
Thank you Robert Scoble to be here. :) BTW is this looks interesting for FF replacement? : http://streamy.com/ ? May be... I'll try it to see. :)
- Claude LaFrenière
Why should I? Whats in it for me? You doing some sort of survey of people to send out the police to do a "Safety Check" on when the site is shutdown?
- Uncle CW™
here. anecdote: a friend of mine just signed up for FF this evening. apparently the FriendFeed hype of the last 24 hours pushed him over the top. leaves me wondering whether FF has actually gained users today?it would be a crafty way of marketing the service. I'll wake up tomorrow to discover that there was a problem with the paperwork and the FriendFeed team have had a change of heart.
- JSLeFanu
from BuddyFeed
Count me in even though I was just starting to get hooked. I guess it's time to find a rehab and get all sobered up until the next relapse with some other new addiction. Isn't life grand?
- Usman Bashir
oh hey, look, the added an "add comment" link to the end of the comment list. Huzzah!
- Brett Kelly
from iPhone
++Jay. I was going to do the same thing yesterday but I didn't want to pay the money.
- David Cook
David -- this was a $9.95 session but you can get them for $7.95 and there are also 25% off coupons if you do online check-in prior to your Delta flight. That's an incentive for folks to use that service and offload kiosk use at the terminals. Very savvy marketing by the folks at GoGo and Delta combined.
- Jay Cuthrell
well, it's 12:12 a.m. and I'm perusing FF from my iPhone via BuddyFeed before turning in. so yeah, I guess I count. "Here!" (raises hand)
- Don Faulkner
from BuddyFeed
I recommend FF to some of my clients, and there are some companies and nonprofits with presences here—not like Twitter, but I'll be curious how that will be affected when FB takes over more. Most have FB fan pages, groups and/or causes, too.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
Yeah, me too. I just saw the request to have a comment link at the bottom of the comments from one of your friends just yesterday and here it is. I'd say they are listening. Thanks FF.
- Keith Rowland
И так чятег, пока Скобл не поговорит с нами представителями СовиетФрендфидика, все мои записи теперь можно читать в этом тредике. Пользуясь случае передаю Парню Бухайту и его команде большой привет, в связи с тем что [He can has sleep naw].
- ideali
превед кетаец! давай сегодня сделаем тебя счастливым!
- Махатма Бугоганди
точно! поэт, пародист, переводчик. известный блоггер.
- Махатма Бугоганди
я вчера был в издательстве, с меня сведения об авторе просят. давайте, говорят, напишем, где учился, что генеральный директор. и что известный блоггер.
- Махатма Бугоганди
а можно получить профессию известного блоггера? какие экзамены сдавать надо? какую специализацию лучше выбрать - микроблоггинг или аудиоподкастинг?
- Махатма Бугоганди
Один чувак пришол в чятег и говорит я известный блоггер кто тут тру на первый второй рассчитайсь. А ему говорят чувак у тебя сертификат есть что ты известный блоггер? Вот иди Зайке экзамен сдай потом приходи. А Зайка стоит такой с топором и улыбается. Щас думает счастливым его сделаю.
- Махатма Бугоганди
Я потерял интерес в данный момент. Я буду скрывать, как и любой другой. Это хромой, что вы захватили этот. Пивные правила. Спокойной ночи. :-)
- Matthew Horton
More than a friend of FriendFeed, was starting to use it as a full lifestreaming platform and loved it. It's made a whole lot of other sites make sense.
- achean
Hi, I'm Bette... I don't know if I'm an addict, but I can't stay away... I keep checking, just to see if something's new... and I cry if I get no responses to a post. Is that addictive behavior? :D
- Bette Cooper
Yup, I have blocked all the impersonators now. You will still see them, but I don't see them and they no longer can comment on any of my items.
- Robert Scoble
@scobleizer As far as I can see you have blocked not only the impersonators (who renamed themselves back the moment they found out you have a problem with this) but most of the folks who chatted there.
- Махатма Бугоганди
@meatreach yes, see next thread. Scobble becomes anti-Russian.
- Never Impersonate You
Maxatma: well, that's just too bad. I speak English. Sorry. People who don't speak English really don't have any business commenting on one of my items, except in rare cases.
- Robert Scoble
Why you, Robert Scoble, don't block users from Spain or Italy? China or arabic countries? Those users that comments on non-English languages?
- Never Impersonate You
@Robert, in fact they do speak English. But they also do make fun of Friendfeed and everything that's going on there. You can block them or take part in this fun. ;)
- Махатма Бугоганди
I prefer FF over twitter and facebook, but all my friends are on twitter and/or facebook. Maybe facebook will get it right this time now that it has acquired FF. If they simplify it a bit more without removing functionality. Then I would spend a bit more time on FB. Lets hope all goes well with the merger. If not I'm jumping ship and going over to Google Wave. oh wait, I'm going to go with Google Wave regardless! ;-)
- Captain Jack
Bu arada Russian friends Turkiye'ye selamlar gonderiyor.
- ideali
@scobleizer i can speak english and i beg you to remove bann from all russian friendfeeders, because we are all from it-community, working in internet companies and we came with peace, you asked for feedback from friendfeed addicts — we show you how really it is being frf addicts, we change names, we chat, we making things that are not serious. Why so serious? Unlock people, they are not bots, they just playing the game of real addicts and have fun. Common.
- ideali
shaun: I started this post to demonstrate that a lot of us are still here and aren't likely to leave. At least not quickly. So, life goes on after FriendFeed gets acquired by Facebook. Point proved.
- Robert Scoble
Robert He says ; Our Russian friends say to hello to Turkey
- Osman Üngür
ideali: have them send email to scobleizer@gmail.com and I'll unblock anyone who says they weren't impersonating me.
- Robert Scoble
Hector: good morning! I need coffee.
- Robert Scoble
@robert yes they (we will) stay here, I think tat the migration process will take time and after reading @Paul Bucheit, I think that what we all are trying to get even if we don't say it explicitly is to preserve a kind of intimacy (beeing a part of the Huge faceBook community) don't mean that FF community will preserve their intimacy, why should a community be a plan one, (let imagine a community as a set of sub-community) that all.
- abdellah
Wow!! So many likes and comments; is it a record Rob?
- میر «عرفان» موسوی
@scobleizer thank you, for understanding. be cool, guys we just want have fun here a little. Take care.
- ideali
@Robert RE "I have enough noise in my life. I don't need to have more" - isn't it a lot of noise having 26K subscriptions and 46K subscribers on your frf account? I'm kind of surprised - you create a community that large around yourself, yet when you see a new and unusual activity you just block it right away.
- Махатма Бугоганди
@Robert, patience? Who's talking about patience? It's about curiosity, not patience. When something strange and unusual happens around you, you can either try to stop it or try to see what it can develop into. You choose to stop - and it stopped. Well, not stopped - just moved to some other place. And do you really know what it was and what it was about to bring you?
- Махатма Бугоганди
I'm here all the way from South Africa! I dig this service and I'm not quite ready to give it up. Regardless of the news about the acquisition, this remains an awesome service.
- Paul Jacobson
I'm new to ff but find more valuable information here than anywhere else!
- Janet Crance
I don't know how I rate my addiction relative to others, but I shared Hitler's reaction upon hearing the acquisition news (despite happiness for Paul and Bret)
- Chris Duffy
I'm sure this is part of Scoble's plot to poll all the people who really read his posts, and unfollow the rest. So I raise my hand.
- Shivanand Velmurugan
Just a wannabe. Not an addict (yet).
- Carole Hicks
It might also be a way for me to filter down my "following" count (diff (my followers, scoble)) are the only people I really need to follow. Those that scoble follows, I can safely unfollow and use Scoble as my social media filter :)
- Shivanand Velmurugan
pardon the arrogance but it really sucks this great forum of sharing will turn into a myspace humdrum. Now I have to find another SM where first adopters and well informed techies won't haft to compete with general "noise"
- earl wallace
Well, here's a comment I can later delete and rob the owner of 1500!
- Matthew DeVries
I just mention the 1500 mark since it was such an iconic query to see... that and the 500 Likes club of FF posts. It's pretty exclusive stuff... but it's also sobering to note that the subject matter required to get to these levels isn't always a uniform mix of cares/concerns.
- Jay Cuthrell
When I heard the FaceBook news, I tried to quit FriendFeed and I couldn't... I'M HOOKED
- The Web's Wendell Wittler
i clicked the "1488 more comments" and my computer nearly exploded. and yes, i am using an amiga 500.
- jack
Now that I have instructions (thanks LouisGray) and figured out my Bookmarklet! I am LOVING the ease of use! addict - not quite...
- Robyn Hawk
Actually, I lied. I am not a die-hard friendfeed fan. I desperately want to be but have just not been able to get into a good "feeding" rhythm. Maybe I need to add some more friends
- Anant Gairola
I don't need to be addict. I'm just here, everyday, absorbing so many geeky info :D There's no place like FF
- Lysender
I'm still with ya, Robert. Whatever FB paid for FF, it wasn't enough!
- Donald C. Lindsay
New here, but learning. Tips for best use?
- Barbara Langham
@bdlangam From my perspective the #1 tip in this category is: Explore and define "best use" for yourself. Despite potential "finishing" impression of some productive consolidations in this collective-collaborative cognition space, the emergent #cognosphere is still WAY too nascent to assert anything other than initial impressions. March to the beat of your own drum; build your own...
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- michael silverton
yeah sorry, late. was at Shambhala Music Festival, I know tardy, sorry...
- sofarsoShawn
I'm getting hooked, still figuring it all out
- Michele McGraw
I think I do. Not enough contacts to make a impression.
- Michael Schlag
huge win for both companies ?? is it a win for the FF community ?? who comes first ?? the business or the users ?? I bet you within 6 months, I wont be using FF as much as I use it now !!
- Peter Dawson
i agree - facebook has been getting on my good list this past year and I just love friendfeed.
- Chris Jackson
Just as I re-dedicate myself to using FF, FB acquires them. If FB can integrate FF's deep feature set, it would be a win-win-win.
- Jim Duncan
True or false: Facebook needs FriendFeed more than FriendFeed needs Facebook.
- Joel Zehring
I'm excited too, but at the same time I'm afraid facebook may make some wrong moves with their acquisition. We've seen this happen before.
- Steven (optionshiftk)
If this makes it so I have one LESS place to go to follow my social media, then it will be great. I already have too many different places with different people and different conversations for differ purposes that overlap and make it unnecessarily complicated.
- David Rondeau
FF > FB? not great, actually. diversity is better than monopoly. and i'm concerned about aggregation features getting deprecated (in the name of progress and chrossing the chasm and all that jazz.. of course ;)
- jacek
This is a IP, technology and talent grab.. I don't see the 2 sites being consolidated
- Dave Senior
It may be a big win for both companies but is likely a big lose for FF users.
- Brian Sullivan
FriendFeed functionality on Facebook would be nice. The reverse, not so much. They're trying to address two entirely separate purposes and as such, need to remain completely separate.
- Adam Reyher
I hope Facebook turns into FriendFeed. That would be great!
- Wo
I'd really love to see the real-time threaded conversation feature of friendfeed be adopted by facebook.
- Steven (optionshiftk)
Looking forward to your analysis Robert
- Ken Seto
I can see development of FF slowing down as the team brings the tech over to Facebook
- Dave Senior
Indeed, Brian. FF devotees should be pissed over this. I can't believe Facebook will do anything but carve out a few choice pieces of FF meat - likely making them even more Twitterish - and dump the rest. FF will be gone within six months.
- Shéa Bennett
This is a huge win for both companies, and a huge fail for every net surfer.
- TiTi
yeah it may not be that bad. maybe i'm exaggerating.
- Edgar Rodríguez
Well, I think the FF team can certainly help the Facebook UI. But, all I take away from this is FF going away.
- Yolanda
One thing to consider is this: If we have "trusted" the FriendFeed people not to screw things up, hopefully we can trust them to make sure they're still in control in the terms of the acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
Yes, Robert. Like TiTi said, huge win for both companies, huge fail for the people who like FriendFeed. "Welcome to FaceFeed! Would you like to take a quiz?"
- Zach Flauaus
I think this is definitely a huge win for both but maybe not for the users. I think it could be good or bad for users but I hope that Facebook will allow FriendFeed to continue and push the envelope with emerging technologies. I imagine this is Facebook and FriendFeed teaming up against Twitter.
- Brandon Titus
.-( Good for Friendfeed, but horrible for people that like friendfeed and hate facebook &their UI or where FB is blocked
- Del_
It's good timing. FF uniques fell almost 10% in July.
- Shéa Bennett
this is bad news for twitter, me thinks.
- Brian Ries
Absolutely, Robert. Its a very good tech acquisition for Facebook, they get a great team with a well developed technology stack. It lets the FriendFeed founders get a good, early exit.
- DGentry
I hope so. I know my initial reaction was not as negative as most of the others I'm seeing in my stream. Maybe I'm just being naive.
- Herb Hernandez
Hopefully this means the power of friendfeed will be utilized. Awesome news
- Marcus
This is why I follow Mr. Scoble, yes that is Mr. Scoble :) always has his fingers in the breaking news.
- dennis podgorski
I'm fired up about this union between FriendFeed and Facebook. With the exception of my social media group, I've used FriendFeed primarily as an aggregator--despite it's being my favorite GUI and functionality. I think this is going to bring the substance to FriendFeed that it's been missing. Very exciting!
- Jim W
I have a hard time drawing my line of Public v Personal. I use Twitter & FriendFeed for public use and I use Facebook for private use. I have not even once made a status update on Facebook. I am not sure I want FriendFeed on Facebook. I am intrigued about the possibilities of integration but I am not sure I will adopt.
- thestaticfrost
The power of FF will be used -- but it won't be pretty and won't be for good.
- Brian Sullivan
I have to agree with Robert on this. I think this is likely to be a great deal moving forward. I'm excited about it, and happy for the FriendFeed crew. They've done an AWESOME job.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I am not as excited about this. I don^t like Facebook as much
- nchenga
i think this is going to add more value to Facebook
- Lee Kent
It certainly makes sense, and I agree that it adds value to FF. I wonder how many of the 250 million users of FF will be using it in its current form.
- courtney benson
Just surprised this didn't happen earlier. Facebook has been mimicking FriendFeed's functionality for a while now. Nice that FF is finally getting paid for their R&D efforts.
- Aaron Strout
I think this will make me drop friendfeed or facebook
- Nicolai Rygh
Please explain - this may be win for Friendfeed - but as far as us the users/fans... we're the big losers in this right? I really really can't stand Facebook :-( Help us have hope...
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
here is the explanation, FF have t sell the soonerr, better then laterr, they choose the right momment, wave is there and it is a big promise
- abdellah
when Google start wave, they surely shown their non desire to acquir FF it was implicite
- abdellah
The idea here is growing on me. I see the business case...I'm still not sure as to the impact on Twitter and different users who prefer one tool over another and/or use the two differently.
- Derek Shanahan
I'm trying to defer my pessimism...but I feel an "I Want Sandy"-type fail in the wings. As for FF needing to sell, that wasn't the case; the founders had the money to keep it going for as long as they wanted, basically. We'll see, I suppose. We'll see.
- Ken Kennedy
This is really interesting. This will bring a bigger pool of social media services to people. As it is now, regular folks don't venture further than Facebook, with this acquisition, many will realize that there is a plethora of great other services and social media websites that they can engage in.
- Rami Taibah
Ya know when you get a bad feeling about something - I have one about this deal. Can't put my finger on it, but it don't feel right.
- Jim Connolly
FriendFeed now to get BIGGER than Twitter?
- Jim Connolly
"when Google start wave, they surely shown their non desire to acquir FF it was implicite" - I think that probably covers it.
- John Craft
Isn't this the kind of daring move that Yahoo should have made?
- Andrew Warner
Seems like a HUGE win for Facebook. Not so sure for the future of FF, though.
- Chris Wood
This is really interesting. This will bring a bigger pool of social media services to people. As it is now, regular folks don't venture further than Facebook, with this acquisition, many will realize that there is a plethora of great other services and social media websites that they can engage in. On the side of the coin, I am kind of worried about FB privacy issues and data portability
- Rami Taibah
is there a dislike button anywhere? I did exactly the opposite FB never appealed, FF rocked...
- Valeria Maltoni
FriendFeed will not be the same place, in terms of the community, but this keeps friendfeed around for a while. Awesome! Where's Arrington? Did he reopen his account?
- Benjamin Taylor
Whatever FB and FF does, don't tell Oprah... That's a sign it's over..
- Timothy Latz
FF isn't blocked at work, FB is. FF usefulness would nose-dive for me if blocked.
- Brett Veenstra
Brett: this is likely to pave the way for more client applications for Facebook, which will not be blocked at work.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
"Annoyed by ads in Gmail? Here’s how to get rid of them. It has been discovered that by simply adding two sentences to the end of an email you can trick Gmail into hiding all ads."
- Martin Bryant
from Bookmarklet
Just curious, will quoting "I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath." fool AdSense too, or at least force it to display public service ads?
- Sebastian
It's certainly worth a try, Sebastian!
- Martin Bryant
You know, this isn't working for me. I was joking above, but it only works for me if I email me. I put the phrase in my signature line thinking that if someone replies to me, gmail would still recognize it in my reply and continue to block, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
- Kevin Arth
Which browser do you normally use? :-)
- Todd Hoff
It's about frickin' time, Guy! You're the guy who handed Steve Balmer a Macbook Air as a symbol of good design and yet you've been using Twitter all this time? Either start using friendfeed or switch to using Dells. You can't have it both ways. :)
- Alex Scoble
You missed out on the earlier days of FriendFeed, but then it's never too late to start using it.
- imabonehead
I don't think Guy understands he can write comments to his posts, instead of new posts to conversate
- Stephen Pickering
Welcome, we arent experts here but we manage to muddle through some how
- Robert Higgins
Alex: Can I get a Dell through you?
- Guy Kawasaki
Get it on! FF is just great, even for using it as a Twitter-app.
- Kolja
from Viigo
I use Both Twitter and FriendFeed and I'm happy with it.
- Svartling
from iPhone
Really! I thought you invented it ;)
- Bulent Keles
Friendfeed consolidates most all of the other social networks into one feed and then echos it out to twitter also, for the masses. FF is a well developed web app! The bookmarklet and web widgets work very well.
- Keith Rowland
congrats Guy! I think you'll like it :)
- Glenn Hilton
This is """literally""" the first time I commented on your feed. As always, welcome to new users such as yourself. Self + for my improper use of air qoutes.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
from iPod
Poor Myrna must be bored everyone pile into her feed and entertain her!
- Geoff Schultz
I'm listening to Howard Dean and Bill Frist discuss Healthcare on Charlie Rose after hearing John Bolton on Jon Stewart destroy my mood about Iran, nuclear and WW3
- Myrna
War is soooooo 20th century. They need to get with it.
- Geoff Schultz
Welcome here, maybe it takes people like you to bring the finesse of FriendFeed to the world! (can't let @scobleizer do all the work on his own, can you?)
- Ruud van Wijngaarden
now figure a way to have my friendfeed autopost alltop content, maestro!
- adam garrett
You have plans to update m.youversion.com - i don't see an easy way to get to a specific verse quickly - the old version worked. and i don't think search is working the way intended.
- Chris Jackson