Susan Beebe

yes...linked to each other, but not combined (if that makes sense). maybe a link under More to related posts/convos? - Trent Olson

See Robert Scoble's Qik video on FF Conversation clusters; micro conversations; rooms and need for better tools on FF... good piece Robert & Patrick (impromptu camera man!) http://qik.com/video/135273 - Susan Beebe

yes. stitching together memes using people is desirable, especially considering how fast the Friendfeed River of Noise runs. This is a classic cataloging technique. It's the "See also" or "Related topics" technique. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

In the new model, do you see this comment under your initial comment AND under my name ? - martin english via twhirl

Yes- b/c with new articles coming up I see a few diff. FF posts about it- having clustering sounds great, and like Trent's idea of "more..." - anna

I'd like to have the choice of joining the connected conversation or starting a new conversation. The private room idea is interesting, but it might be too much effort (and too much room invite spam) for most people to start a new room, invite a specific list of friends, and have them join and participate.. - Hao Chen

Certainly Not. I've watched Robert's video and I couldn't agree less with him. It would be terrible if lots of conversations were carried on behind closed doors - which is what he's advocating. It would completely defeat the purpose of having an open system where people can actually move through the social network and discover each other. Likewise it would be terrible if all of the conversations about the same content were aggregated together automatically just like reddit. - Robin Barooah

Has anyone stopped to wonder why it is we love FriendFeed so much? I think the quality of the conversation has a lot to do with the fact that it is seeded in small groups and then grows across the social network. Duplicates may be annoying some of us, but are they such a problem that we should risk destroying the community to get rid of them? - Robin Barooah

Robin: private conversations happen all the time. Look at Calacanis' email list or Facebook or, well, the Fortune conference I am now at. I wish there were more choices in who I have conversations with. - Robert Scoble

@Robert - agreed - and personally I don't have any problem with people like you 'manually' connecting conversations. My point is that FriendFeed is currently different - it's semi-permeable, and perhaps we love it because of that. Imagine you automatically aggregated conversations based on content and FriendFeed had 100M users - I don't want to be in a conversation with the 1% of those people who happened to post about a particular news item. - Robin Barooah

What about this: You see the item you or one of your friends shared with its respective comments and a link (something like "more discussions") so you can see more conversations about the same item. If many of your friends shared it, you see the one with more comments first. - Alejandro S.

Robert, so you have what, *thousands* of people you can have conversations with and it's not enough? Really? You could always go raise some venture capital and attempt to build a service that would allow you to have even more conversations. I don't think that should be FriendFeed's or any other company's goal though. That's not a slam on you, I just don't think these services should worry about designing to solve for your very extreme case. - Robert Seidman

Robert: I follow 3000. That is enough. The problem we are discussing isn't that I don't have enough. Why are you changing the discussion. Actually THAT is what we are discussing! How to keep random people from changing the conversation! Heh! - Robert Scoble

Scoble, you may have ADD. About 5 comments up (as I write this) you wrote (in THIS thread): I wish there were more choices in who I have conversations with. - Robert Scoble Or, I merely misunderstood what you meant. - Robert Seidman

I don't see a need to connect the conversations any more than I believe there should be only one place to have a comment thread on a blog post. If Robert and others believe that commenting on FriendFeed is okay, then commenting in multiple places in FriendFeed is okay as well. - Louis Gray

I don't see a problem with people trying to link the conversations together, but I also don't lose sleep over the fragmentation. This is another case where I would rather see conversations connected by some third party tool. I don't think it should be a FF thing. I am also pretty positive such tools already exist. - Rahsheen™

Scoble: I did watch your video Susan linked to, but I come down being with Louis and remain steadfast in the hope that FriendFeed doesn't design the service to your tastes. Here's why: you follow three thousand people. If FriendFeed scales to 10 million users you can pretty much count on 99% of them following less than 100 people. I have no doubt FriendFeed has these stats and can check it with the current base. You're such an extreme use case that you're a bad person to design this service. - Robert Seidman

I want a feature in FF that allows me to SEE all the conversations in flight around a particular post so that I can join 1 or multiple convos and comment accordingly. Currently I can NOT see the entire picture. I can't even imagine how huge the conversations would be if we had EVERYONE in the same conversation. this goes back to my request to have the ability to FLAG a convo to a particular category of interest. - Susan Beebe

Robert: I'm not designing this service, first of all. Second of all, I've shown it to a LOT of people and the #1 thing they tell me why they don't come back? "It's too noisy." So, there's something wrong with the design that's keeping it from going really big, so I seriously doubt we'll get to 10 million users anytime soon. - Robert Scoble

Susan: you should learn to use the search. Go to the "Everyone" tab. Then search on something. You'll see all conversations, including from people you've previously blocked or hidden. In fact, this would be a killer feature: to be able to search the main topic of a comment cluster right from a link at the bottom of the cluster. Sort of like Techmeme lets you turn on search if you want (it's in the preferences on there). - Robert Scoble

Susan I understand the flag/pin, but here's the critical piece I am missing as far as ability to see the entire picture -- why? Why does anyone want this? I for example am very interested in how Apple is handling Steve Job's health, but if you provided me with a tool that allowed me to read every post and every comment on this topic, there wouldn't be enough time to get through it. It could be done, but I don't see what the true benefit is beyond some illusion of control. What am I missing? - Robert Seidman

The tools are already here to make Friendfeed pretty much anything you want. While the comment fragmenting can be mind-boggling, it also has 'some' advantages, like good or very popular pieces hitting the front page multiple times. I have invested a lot of time here and have a lot of faith in the FF team to do what works ... over time ... at the right time. Hopefully I won't be wrong. I hope I'm not in the minority I visit and clean up my own feed about once a day (IE: Items without comments ... gone). - Charlie Anzman

@Scobelizer - people I've shown FF to have made similar 'it's too noisy' complaints. But when I've asked them what they mean it's always the FOAF stuff that they dislike - specifically the 'celebrities' who they don't have any connection with. I personally like some of what the a-list have to say, and enjoy the stream of content that I don't have time to look for, but some of my friends have switched off FOAF because of me commenting on posts by you, Arrington, etc. - Robin Barooah

@Scobelizer - could it be that people think it's too noisy when you show it to them because your personal view is much more noisy than almost anyone elses? In fact I unsubscribed to you myself, although am subscribed to some people who are subscribed to you who act as a filter for me. - Robin Barooah

Robin, exactly: imagine the service as intended, and not as some SNS pyramid scheme to drive traffic to your blog or Scoble/Louis Gray "super users". You follow less than 50 people, your real friends, family, co-workers. You see their pictures, their blog posts, what they find interesting to share, what music they're liking etc all in one convenient place. Too quiet for Scoble, but not too noisy for most. - Robert Seidman

Robin: yes, that's possible, but usually the noise they mean is the duplications that they see, and also that conversations keep coming up in their face. They are used to Twitter or Facebook, which just is a straight stream. Then I teach them about hide and they usually calm down. The subscribing to noisy people is a problem, but think about a newbie: who should they follow? No one? Then FF is lame. Scoble? Great for techie geeks who like that kind of flow. - Robert Scoble

Even if you follow a few non-noisy people you still see lots of duplication and noise. It's a real problem. Most people don't like systems like these. They don't also like participating in conversations, especially when they don't know who is participating. - Robert Scoble

@Scobelizer - I don't disagree with those statements. I just think the solution isn't obvious and may end up being quite subtle. Also - as to newbies - perhaps it's not going to spread though people typing www.friendfeed.com into their browsers and not knowing who to follow but though word of mouth giving them some obvious personal starting points. - Robin Barooah

Robert Scoble: Good call - I do need to learn to use the FF search better to find conversations / topics (I rarely use this feature and should do so more often - thanks!). I've only blocked 2 people and hidden FOAF on some heavy feeds (too much noise); I like REALLY like your idea of Search with main topic (parent) displayed with related topics (children) with Links to each. The Techmeme example you gave was great too - that would be cool! - Susan Beebe

Robert Seidman: the reason I want a "Flag conversation" feature in FF is so that I can view / monitor conversations and IDEAS as they emerge. I may not participate in all those conversations, but I will scan them for sure - and I will LEARN and grow from my exposure to the marvelous ideas and concepts presented in those rich and diverse threads. I've learned much even from this one thread and the related ones; multiply that same "effect" times multiple other related (children) threads and you have an enormous opportunity to learn volumes and contribute to conversations in new venues you previously were unaware of! That's powerful conversation. - Susan Beebe

Susan, I use the Read Later Greasemonkey plugin for Flagging convos. - Rahsheen™

Rasheed do you have a link to that Greasemonkey script so I can use it too... nice idea! - Susan Beebe

Thanks, Susan. But I *do* understand why you want flag and completely agree it'd be a useful feature. What I don't understand is the value in seeing every single comment on a topic everywhere commenting on a particular topic occurs (though as Scoble notes you can get much of it via search). - Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman: This same convo is happening in at least 3 active ares on FF with Scoble and I participating. This is where the signal is. I want to scan (not read every comment -- too time consuming -- to learn and also participate/ contribute to each related convo accordingly (although sometimes I must read all the comments in order to fully appreciate the developed maturity of a particular thread; especially, when linked threads are involved like today). Granted, I won't participate in 30 convos; afterall, I am human and need to get work done!! ha, ha! - Susan Beebe