 |
|
| FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more » |
Elliott Ng › Comments
Re: George Clooney Trivia From New 'Up In The Air' Movie - 341 - Travel News & Reviews - Galavanting Online Women's Travel Magazine and Community ::.. - http://www.gogalavanting.com/travel-...
"Let's just say that I've got a number in mind, and I'm not there yet. :) c- 10 mm. Although I think Ryan Bingham would just throw out the neck pillow and blanket. But since I fly coach and am a lowly P1 on UA I'll use it!"
- Elliott Ng
Re: Investor Carl Icahn leaves Yahoo board, apparently satisfied - http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009...
"@anthonyha OMG this is a coup of a headline. Should have definitely inserted a LOLcat of some sort into the post!"
- Elliott Ng
Web 2.0: Zynga’s Mark Pincus predicts an economy built around social apps | VentureBeat - http://venturebeat.com/2009...
Social apps uber alles.
- Elliott Ng
Thank you to my 50,002 followers. Look through my followers here and compare to my Twitter followers and what do you notice? I see fewer spammers. Fewer bots. Fewer social media experts. Thanks for joining me on FriendFeed! It has been an awesome two years!
Aron Stevenson, Thomas Power, Louis Gray and 91 other people liked this
FFFTW!
- Cjay
YAY!
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Down with bots, spammers, and social media gurus! Up with geeks! A big thumbs up on behalf of my fellow FriendFeed fanatics.
- Dennis Jernberg
I love geeks and FriendFeed has them in droves.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
are u going somewhere ;p
- zʍıɔ
You're welcome ;-) A question though, where do you think we geeks will congregate next? I'm thinking that since Facebook now owns the Friendfeed devs, FF will eventually starve to death... hopefully not.
- Roberto Teixeira
But I notice a lot of users interact on FF via Twitter not directly on FF. Also FF faces tough competition from the likes of Posterous and Tumblr which offer more functionality with similar ease of use as FF.
- Roger
Roberto: Not so long ago this very FF post from scobleizer would get something about 300+ likes and 150+ comments. Sadly, FF users are surely looking elsewhere.
- Arvind
FF is ok, but its not the be all and end all Robert.
- Micky
Arvind: yup. Foursquare! :-)
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Friendfeed wins
- ashish
I too think that friendfeed is still a winner... people that left just filtered themselves out of my conversations. They are no longer discoverable here to me. Their loss (imho)
- Chris Heath
Your welcome :). Friendfeed really really is awesome
- alfred westerveld
Yes Robert and Friendfeed is massively technically superior - Makes it even sadder that the platform here's being ignored by the new owners.
- Jim Connolly
Still the best place for discovery to me despite less interaction.
- Eric Logan
Robert - I love the community and friends here on FriendFeed. I am so happy I was on FF in early 2008 and got to experience it's wild and wooly growth path. Chatting with you and all these cool geeks is really fun. I've learned TONS from you guys and I truly appreciate the friendship too! :)
- Susan Beebe
I agree, way less marketing gurus and spammers =)
- Brodie Beta
Wewt! We are awesome, especially me </ego>
- Danny Minick
In my experience, I've been using ff more rather than less since the fb aquisition. I don't see why I would migrate to another community ATM. To me, Friendfeed is king. :) King of social media, that is.
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
Me, I'm sticking with FF for the foreseeable future. I'm even going to do my part to promote it, at least to my (right now) 1K+ Twitter followers.
- Dennis Jernberg
Friend Feed is the Future Robert and you just may be our Faithfull leader! :)
- PeaceMakersInc
Word.
- Gary
Thank you, Robert. I have learned quite a bit from you-and you have created/moderated some tremendous discussions/issues. Best wishes to you and your family.
- Harold Cabezas
LOL. I agree. I have 413 followers on Twitter. When I ask a question, I get no responses. Same here. Does nobody like me?
- Zachary TG
zachary check their subscriptions against their subscribers and you might have an answer there
- ffcode
yup! there is a decline...don't know what friendfeeders are upto...foursquare might not be the complete answer
- ffcode
I'm still here. I tried doing the Google Reader thing. While it's a great reader, I think it SUCKS as a social platform. I still use it, but I don't expect as much out of it as I used to. FriendFeed and posterous are what I like best for what I do. Facebook is getting a little chaotic for me. I've made lists, but I think I need to start pruning... LONG LIVE FRIENDFEED!
- Kimber Scott
U do like normal folks like us, who does have a life, like having hobbies such as movies, taking pictures, making jokes and listening 2 old radio jokes on the Internet lol...and wondering why spell check doesn't work somedays
- polou/indigo_bow
Has it really been 2 years? OMG that was fast.
- Elliott Ng
ROFL! No bots; just wait! The bots are coming, they always come.
- Brandon Smietana
In twenty years I would be surprised if the bots were not more human than the humans. "Statistical Natural Language Processing: When Humans Fail the Turing Test", coming to a research journal near you!
- Brandon Smietana
I never agreed to any embargo. Unfortunately they are rolling it out slowly. I wasn't on the first group. You'll be added soon.
Elliott Ng liked this
Not an embargo: "Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it. You're part of a small group receiving this feature, so don't tweet about it yet!"
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
Yeah, I read too quickly and missed that part. Had to delete at least one tweet in my timeline.
- Spidra Webster
...another platform to re-organize followers? Yay AND uuugh...
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
don't tweet it then. just post an image to friendfeed :D
- Elliott Ng
It is going to take months for lists to really get to their full potential. I've barely even gotten through .01% of adding people.
Thomas Power, Elliott Ng, Louis Gray and Kevin Tunis liked this
The hardest part is that you have to go to your follows page to select them. If you have a lot you are following, it is near impossible.
- Louis Gray
I was thinking about Scoble as I was making my lists. It took me 20 min. or so and that's with only 200 or so follows.
- Spidra Webster
where is the Twitter list feature? Robert can u screen snap it?
- Elliott Ng
Is anyone actually on FriendFeed anymore?
Ahsan Ali aka. Slick, Darren Heydon, Susan Beebe and 21 other people liked this
Doesn't seem like much conversation going on anymore
- Cristo
Hey how you doing? I just got in watched that movie "year one" really funny.
- orionstarr
from iPhone
No. Not ever.
- Louis Gray
im just looking for the exit door
- Tyson
here i am....the FUN has arrrrrrrrrrrived
- Marissa
perhaps it could be renamed FriendsOfLouisGrayFeed. :)
- Elliott Ng
It does feel slower but on the other hand it's still pretty busy.
- Stephen Mack
the signal:noise ratio continues to drop.
- Anthony Citrano
Anthony, is it the signal or the noise dropping?
- Cristo
Noise.
- Roberto Bonini
the ratio.
- Anthony Citrano
from BuddyFeed
You're all here! I've been browsing dead threads for so long, looking for signs of life, for FF survivors. I was hopeless, and I thought I was alone in those ruins. How many are you here? Do you have some water? How long do you think we'll survive? Oh my god, that's terrible... So many subscribers have disappeared in the past weeks, what a disaster. I'm not sure I'll be courageous enough to stay long... :)
- Jérôme Flipo
Yes !
- Luka
I'm not here. Forget you ever saw this comment.
- Robert Scoble
there is no spoon
- İbrahim Özdemir
FriendFeed? That is a geek thing, right? Folks who love running? O, wait. That was Friends Feet. My bad.
- Ruud van Wijngaarden
Gone totally
- Charlie Anzman
sold at the right time, didn't they?
- Gregory Lent
this is still my main web repo and chat site
- Christopher Galtenberg
Really? Seems busy to me. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
@Kol: busy is different from conversation, though. But I guess I sorta said that already. ;)
- Anthony Citrano
I'm here :).
- Daniel Rowley
Me too!
- Give 'Em DBizness
I don't find it very busy these days which does not motivate me into putting too much time into it.
- M F
M F, that's the very definition of a vicious circle.
- Stephen Mack
Exactly Stephen, but that's part of the problem, there are some people like me (and I know quite a few) who have decided to spend less time here because other people are also spending less time here and building communities elsewhere. And then you realise that you are more attached to the network of people you've made than the tool itself.
- M F
Still here (but didn't have much internet in the past 3 weeks).
- Mitchell Tsai
No
- Uncle CW™
Just balloon-boy and his friend bat-boy.
- Mike Nencetti
Interesting. At some point this week, my blog passed 1 million all-time visits (according to Sitemeter). That tracks back to January of 2006.
Kirsten Mitchell, Rodfather, Thomas Hawk and 31 other people liked this
Also interesting that you posted this as your GTalk status
- Jesse Stay
I just like doing it this way to bypass Twitter, Jesse. My GMail/GTalk status does not go to "that other network".
- Louis Gray
Congrats Louis!
- AJ Kohn
congratulations does that mean 100,000 or 10,000 individual people?
- Thomas Power
Thomas, that's a great question. Stats are easily manipulatable. 10,000+ connections here or other networks doesn't mean that many are engaged. Total visits to each story are less than the total subscribers to RSS (about 20k), etc. I would hope the number of unique visitors would be closer to 100k than 10k.
- Louis Gray
Stats are easily misinterpreted you are right, perhaps you should add the Quantcast tag. We have been running it now for 25 months and it is spot on http://www.quantcast.com/ecademy.... That's our audience and it tallies almost exactly with Google Analytics.
- Thomas Power
Thomas, I do have Quantcast running. But Sitemeter has been running for much longer and has the higher aggregate number. http://www.quantcast.com/louisgr...
- Louis Gray
You are No1 LG
- Thomas Power
Sweet Louis. No surprise.
- Hutch Carpenter
congratz !
- zʍıɔ
OMG that is amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congratulations Luis :)
- Susan Beebe
Congrats Louis
- Charlie Anzman
Congrats Louis!
- Elliott Ng
congrads, :)
- chaz2b
Congrats Louis!
- Michael Fidler
Congrats indeed Pal!
- Thomas Hawk
sweet!
- .LAG liked that
Re: I have 3,571 tweets that show that Twitter isn’t for lunch anymore - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
"Robert. This is classic Scobleizer. Great insights. And you're modeling the ability to revisit "old technology" (e.g Twitter vs. Friendfeed, and a feature that I basically forgot about) with fresh eyes. Now I'm wondering what I'm neglecting because its old news but actually could be part of something important. Hmmm. How about email? :) Thanks, E."
- Elliott Ng
Look what just arrived today! #minifigmold
Bahriye, Duff, DAL and 81 other people liked this
Cooool!
- Travis Koger
whoohooo!
- Anna Lynn M.
oh johnny!!!
- Yolanda
Were is Johnny's? I only see one there.
- Jimminy Fuller
so cool! want one!
- Tamara
Johnny's must not be touched until it makes it to Brisbane. :)
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
Um. How do you get it out of the mold (yes, I see it's a flexible silicone one. still.) without breaking off all the details?
- Michael R. Bernstein
With experience, I guess. :p
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu *gasp* uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu *gasp* uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu *gasp* uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu *gasp*...
more...
- Johnny Worthington
haha @johnny
- Imabug
:) @Johnny
- Ayşe E.
BREATHE JOHNNY! Yours are heading on their long journey tomorrow, along with other goodies not mentioned here. :)
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
*faints*
- Johnny Worthington
I thought it was a lego aunt jemima bottle at first.
- Ted Roden
Nice!
- BeeLing
want!
- Nathalie, Dreamer of FF
suave. :)
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
I'd be inclined to bake something with it, but I wonder if these silicone molds are really safe to use, that is, non-toxic. Hell, I'd take a chance, I guess ;-)
- Kittyburgers
It's like a cute little Cyberman from Dr. Who LOL
- Cheryl Allin
Yay! Minifig cakes for everyone!!! :-D
- Ladybug Heather
That is awesome.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
WIN!
- Micah Wittman
*waiting for my commission from LEGO http://friendfeed.com/ffunder... *
- Micah Wittman
I'm with Ted - my first thought was of maple syrup for some odd reason
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
It is indeed all your fault, Micah.
- Josh Haley
where is Mr. Bill - when you need him ?
- Mekkar
mmmmm legoman cake...
- Felicia Yue
oh my goodness. WANT.
- Elliott Ng
from iPhone
HAVE
- Josh Haley
OK, that was mean. They're available at lego.com
- Josh Haley
:(
- Josh Haley
The guy with the Lego cake maker is tossing stones at burning man.
- Joe
Tossing 1x1s - maybe. :P
- Micah Wittman
Probably so. Blue ones.
- Joe
where'd you get it?
- Melissa
oddly enough, at Lego.com search for cake mould
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
cool, thanks Josh
- Melissa
:)
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
I don’t feel safe with Wordpress, hackers broke in and took things - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
carl morris, Tyson Key, Susan Beebe and 87 other people liked this
Well, if you have fixed the hole by upgrading; you should feel a lot safer now. I guess strong user adoption does bring the wrong kind of attention.
- Anindya Chatterjee
Anindya: we're watching. Looks like they haven't gotten back in since the upgrade and some of the other changes we made. Knock on wood.
- Robert Scoble
I'm very tempted to switch to a SixApart install. As a Perl programmer I'd be much more familiar with the backend.
- Jesse Stay
Robert, btw, I'm sure between all your users you can find a backup. I have a bunch via Google Reader I could get to Rackspace to import for you. I'm sure others have even older entries than I have. Let us know if you want help restoring the old scobleizer.com!
- Jesse Stay
robert - i can tell you this - you need to watch it like a hawk - when i thought i was safe - i wasn't - InsideTransit continues to get hit - and I still believe there is some patches and stuff that RS can do as well - the bigger issue is what's on the server - because that's where they put the shells and then they can do whatever they want.
- Allen Stern
Not cool, hopefully things will work out.
- Kim Landwehr
Jesse: luckily it was July and August, when I wasn't doing much blogging. No biggie. Thanks. Allen: yes, Rackspace Cloud has a security team now and they are actively looking at ways to make Wordpress safer for our customers. It really sucks getting hacked. Let me know if you find any other ways to protect the systems.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Yea getting hacked sucks. My early days with my blog aboutonlinematters.com I got hacked and luckily my ISP had a backup. Since then I have treated my Wordpress blog like any dev site - with a subversion repository and complete backup. But there are days... like today... when I think strongly about a platform like typepad.
- Arthur Coleman
what i have found is locking down the files helps - but you need to ftp into your site and make sure that nothing has been edited or added - in my case, on all my sites, the hackers put files all over that were base64 files - and what they do is include them into WP or they just run them direct - nearly a full shell. i've asked RS to create a way so that i can be notified of any changes to files - they say it's too heavy to run.
- Allen Stern
Robert, I just miss the traffic from your "You are SO Unfollowed!" article. (one of the casualties) ;-)
- Jesse Stay
There's a lot of great info they deleted - I'm a little ticked they would be completely insensitive like that to prove a security flaw. It affected much more than just you.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: yeah, that's probably the one blog that I miss. It's also the one that got me to notice they deleted a couple of months.
- Robert Scoble
Jesse: that still is cached over on Google at http://74.125.155.132/search...
- Robert Scoble
No way "You are SO unfollowed" is out? I loved that one! :-( thanks for the cache Robert
- Sofia @ SoMaFusion
If you have no time to take care of yuors blog, maybe it's better if you choose the pro offer from wordpress.com ( I think scobleizer.com can have the minimum requirement to stay there).
- wolly
here it the VIP hosting http://en.wordpress.com/vip-hos...
- wolly
wolly: it's not just about time, attacks come from all directions so you've gotta have a holistic approach to security. How many of you regularly change passwords and make sure they are really good ones? (Twitter got broken into not because of hacks, but because they didn't practice good password security).
- Robert Scoble
It saddens me: it is morally reprehensible your hosting company convinced you to switch with the seduction of plugins and customization without emphasizing or handling the increased responsibility of upgrades. Your blog was not unique and not a special target, the worms sweep across millions of blogs indiscriminately and hit whatever is vulnerable. If your host is lax in upgrading, the...
more...
- Matt Mullenweg
that's true :-) I use password very strange and very verylong that I cannot remember and I use a service like clipperz.com to login.
- wolly
wolly, Robert was hosted on WordPress.com for about 4 years -- he was actually the very first VIP. Although there were dozens of security updates to WordPress in that time, his blog never had a problem because it was always up-to-date. He only switched away a few months ago.
- Matt Mullenweg
Ciao Matt :-) I didn't know that, so scoble come back to the light side :)
- wolly
Matt: yup, that's true. I've learned my lesson. Running your own servers are a lot harder than just having them hosted on Wordpress.com.
- Robert Scoble
To be frank, it completely breaks whatever trust I had in Rackspace.
- Matt Mullenweg
But Matt, I've been talking with many blog owners, including at TechCrunch, and they say that Wordpress' updates break their custom plugins. That's why they don't upgrade immediately. So, sounds like Wordpress has a mess on its hands that the hosted version of Wordpress didn't have (I couldn't run a lot of plugins and video embeds and other fun things on the hosted version of Wordpress). So, to blame it on my hoster/employer (Rackspace) exclusively isn't really a good attitude either.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, It happens. We were hacked too. My observations lead me to believe that this summer was the worst in a long time. Its a war and its going to be a war until the attitude towards hackers changes. Let's stop being fascinated in the least bit by how they do it (this goes towards Kevin Mitnick and his supporters- I don't ever want to pay good money to read about your scams on the...
more...
- Melanie Reed
Matt's got a point that with greater power (self-hosting) comes greater responsibility (more need to keep an eye on security), but I think to say that Scoble's blog was not a special target is a bit disingenuous. High-profile sites are always a higher-value target.
- Rachel Luxemburg
Matt: I think you need to really look at all the damage that's being done to a wide range of sites, many of which are NOT hosted at Rackspace, before throwing more barbs. That's bull. Sorry. But I added a link to this conversation to my blog so people could see your point of view.
- Robert Scoble
If a plugin is preventing you from upgrading (did it?) then let's figure out how to fix that plugin. All I can do in WordPress is build in the notices (your blog was asking you to upgrade for months) and the one-click updates for both core and plugins. I agree it's not your (Robert Scoble's) fault because I don't think you made the conscious decision to take on the increased responsibility.
- Matt Mullenweg
Matt: the reputation around the Net is that upgrades on Wordpress break things. This wasn't a Rackspace recommendation. It's also a problem with all upgrades. I've gotten hosed by upgrades elsewhere. Look at all the people upgrading to Snow Leopard who are having things break.
- Robert Scoble
Matt: TechCrunch hasn't upgraded its blog either and it wasn't hosted on Rackspace (at least not until a couple of days ago).
- Robert Scoble
I'm not saying there isn't lots of misinformation around the net, I'm saying "how can I help your blog, please." If it's a plugin preventing you from upgrading, let me know the plugin and we'll fix it even if we didn't write it. That's the beauty of open source.
- Matt Mullenweg
Robert -- Avoiding upgrades because they're annoying to deal with isn't a viable longterm strategy.
- Rachel Luxemburg
they need to take care of Scoble's blog, well for he is a VIP and the smashing they would have would do a lot of damage to your customer base and otherwise, would they reply to an ordinary guy say like me? i think not,well wordpress/automattic is having their tough moments, hope things get well and they get their repute back
- testbeta
Matt - you blaming Rackspace for security vulnerabilities in YOUR software platform is kinda like blaming Dell when a Windows box gets hacked. I think you are being irrational.
- Rob La Gesse
Matt: in my case it was the REPUTATION of Wordpress's upgrades that was keeping me from upgrading. I was waiting to see what other people reported broke. I didn't realize the severity of the security problems. But, I am now upgrading automatically. So I'm fixed. But you still have a reputation problem. Lots of people are reporting things break when they upgrade.
- Robert Scoble
Rob, I'm not blaming them. I'm saying it's the responsibility of any host, of any software, to stay up to date. If there was a SSH vulnerability on Robert's box I would say the same thing. Software updates are inevitable, there is no such thing as bug-free code, so staying up to date is a must.
- Matt Mullenweg
Isn't all this open source code? If it's broken, why not fix it? Doesn't everyone have the responsibility to do that? It's not any one source's fault in that case.
- Jesse Stay
Matt - I agree with you. So make Wordpress upgrades SAFE, automatic AND do some internal validation of plugin code to let users know they may be running something that is potentially insecure.
- Rob La Gesse
Matt, agreed. Not when its turned out as fast as people are yelling for it. People can't have it both ways.
- Melanie Reed
Matt: all Rackspace was providing to me was a Linux host. I was responsible for getting my upgades done on anything I ran on that system. But now we have a team making sure we're following best practices. That is NOT Rackspace's problem, though. That's like blaming Microsoft for a bug in Adobe software.
- Robert Scoble
I never listen to the reputation, I always upgrade as a security upgrade is out, and if a plugin doesn't work or I deactivate it or I fix it. Security is much more important than a plugin and Matt knows how many plugins has my blog (when he looked my backend he was very sad ad he said that it was the first time for him to see so many plugin in a blog :-) ) To have a self host blog it's difficult and time expensive.
- wolly
There are several very useful plugins specifically addressing security issues; and monitoring WP for suspicious activities (both on file and database level). Here are some articles with tips to harden your blog http://bit.ly/sZgh6 (delicious bookmarks). I only install plugins from authors from whom I know that they implement top level php; no breaking of upgrades on my 3 WP blogs has taken place (2.7-2.8-2.8.4)
- Jeroen De Miranda
Yeah, plugin issues are the responsibility of the plugin developer, not Wordpress's. I don't see how this is Wordpress's or Rackspace's fault.
- Jesse Stay
By the way, Matt, Sheamus, over on my comments on my blog, says he has the latest upgrades in place and he's still being broken into. You might help him figure out how the hackers are breaking in still.
- Robert Scoble
Sorry, I was under the impression Rackspace had recommended you move away from WordPress.com and taken responsibility for the system. I was worried about your blog -- I emailed you about this in August but never heard back. It breaks my heart when someone's WordPress gets compromised.
- Matt Mullenweg
I understand the feeling though - if people are still being broken into after being told a fix was made, especially if you're not a developer, that can be a little scary. I'd look to other solutions in that case if it were me, and it's no one's fault. It's just perception and fear, very valid fear.
- Jesse Stay
I do believe there is a false sense of securty that WORDPRESS fosters by hosting plugins. I think many assume that because they download the pluging VIA Wordpress, and FROM Wordpress, it is somehow vetted.
- Rob La Gesse
Matt: no. I wanted to move to my own install of Wordpress so that I could run many more plugins and start doing stuff other professional bloggers were doing. I am learning very quickly just how much work goes on behind the scenes to make sure my words were protected.
- Robert Scoble
Once you've been hacked once if you don't clean up every trace (preferably a systems person does this) it's very likely something is left that allows the spammers to easily break back in, regardless of what version you're on. That's why the trouble with upgrading is worth it, it's much, much less than the trouble of fixing a hacked blog.
- Matt Mullenweg
Jesse: yeah, at Microsoft when a box got broken into they wouldn't let you use it anymore. They forced you to reinstall it with all patches loaded. They assumed that it was compromised and that someone stuck a back door in somewhere. That's a lot of work too.
- Robert Scoble
install either wp-backup or wp-dbmanager and configure database backup: every day; download to your local pc (or to a system other than your hosting provider); run a check once a month to see whether you can reconstruct the blog in case of calamity, That is my procedure; works fine.
- Jeroen De Miranda
if a commoner gets hacked, then he should move to wordpress.com services or what?
- testbeta
they should just make it not have any security holes!
- Mark
Robert, if you like I'd be happy to host your blog for you (and I'm on Rackspace servers). I can keep it secure as well. I'd only ask some mention of SocialToo somewhere (or payment of some form in order to cover the cost of bandwidth).
- Jesse Stay
I would also be able to keep it backed up for you.
- Jesse Stay
So the take away messages are: 1) hosting services like Rackspace support the hardware and OS layer and you're are on your own for everything else, 2) maintaining your own website is difficult work, even for experienced IT professionals, 3) social media experts may not really know how to use the social media tools they are recommending, and 4) while hosted applications like Wordpress.com provide less flexibility, they take less effort and can be more reliable for the average small business.
- Steve Wilhelm
I'll also install any plugins you're interested in trying
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: in my case, I now have a team of the top security guys at Rackspace working on it and making sure my system is up to date and backed up. They also are learning a lot about this and other people who have had problems and are building a list of best practices.
- Robert Scoble
This is eventually why I didn't go with Mosso. The service looks good, but you still have to manage your app yourself which opens you up to problems like you've experienced. It would be cool if they offered another layer of management on top so apps could be completely hands free.
- Todd Hoff
the alternative (i.e. strong vetting of all plugins) would turn the whole WordPress ecosphere into something such as Ning.... only some 300 addons (as far as I know); little flexibility very intransparent how to get your addin accepted .... Not an attractive model for me....
- Jeroen De Miranda
Robert, excellent - just wanted to make sure the offer was out there. Maybe that could be a tiered service for Rackspace, although I'm not sure it's something Rackspace wants to get into. Bluehost barely makes any money off of that type of service.
- Jesse Stay
Steve: I think that's a reasonable set of assumptions. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. When I was on Wordpress.com I was always jealous of blogs that were able to run the latest plugins and use the latest embed codes from various sites.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, it's even more fun when you can customize the plugins and themes as a developer. :-)
- Jesse Stay
@testbeta wrdpress.com is a very good choice if you don't have time or you don't know how to manage security on yors self hosted blog
- wolly
wolly: that takes out the open source fun part ;) well i have nothing much to do on my blogs so i keep mine updated ;)
- testbeta
I agree with you :-) but many people love blogging non update theirs blogs :-)
- wolly
when my sites were hacked - a wordpress employee reached out to me- i dont remember her name but we sent a few emails - i could write for days about what happened to my 5 sites - my take is simple - i think the issues are a combo of rackspace (my host) and wordpress (my software) - i can tell you this - in 3+ yrs on drupal, i was NEVER hacked. and Matt is right - the real issue is that...
more...
- Allen Stern
Allen - what version of WP are you running today?
- Rob La Gesse
2.8.4 on all of them
- Allen Stern
Allen - good :)
- Rob La Gesse
If there's a shell script on the same server as you, even if it's not your account, everything on that server is at risk regardless of the software or its version.
- Matt Mullenweg
Matt - that is NOT true
- Rob La Gesse
I would switch to a new server if I were infected at this point.
- Jesse Stay
Properly configured, user space can be isolated and these scripts cannot cross-pollinate.
- Rob La Gesse
It can be -- but publish a shell login on your server and we'll see. ;) The right answer is to scrub that sort of access.
- Matt Mullenweg
Matt - that comment on the "shell script" is silly. What are you actually trying to say?
- Robert J Taylor
Some sort of backdoor that allows a remote user to execute code -- it's super common.
- Matt Mullenweg
rob/matt - that wsa one of the biggest issues with my RS account - i had all the sites together in one "client" so when they hacked one - they were able to move around with their shell script into all my other sites - now each site is in a sep. "client" so the damage can only hurt me on one site - and believe me it does hurt :( i believe insidetransit and centernetworks are hit in google
- Allen Stern
@Scobleizer I'm sticking with @wordpress it doesn't worry me that much, plus I always update and have backups of db and site emailed to me
- Justin Yost
Allen - that was within one user space though. So what I stated above still stands true.
- Rob La Gesse
Allen and Robert are big enough that if they had a problem they could contact us and we'd help them, though as far as I know neither did, but I worry a lot more about smaller folks who get hit in the same way. The knowledge for how to properly clean up after a hack is more systems than software and not widespread.
- Matt Mullenweg
As Allen mentioned above, he did have a conversation with Wordpress.
- Rob La Gesse
matt - thanks for putting me in the same category as robert! *blush* - i did reach out to you - and your security guy was helping me big time - it seemed to turn out that the WP Contact Form 7 was the thing that caused it to start - i didn't document it all online because the security guy wanted time to get the plugin developer to fix the upload hole. - btw his name was mark jaquith and he was great
- Allen Stern
So why not some scheme where Wordpress vets a plugin and "blesses it" - perhaps a small charge for this service? As long as Wordpress is advertising plugins on the dashboard I think there ample reason to hold Wordpress to some level of accountability for those plugins
- Rob La Gesse
rob - that's what i told mark - they should offer that service for a tiny fee - stamp a "certified" stamp on it.
- Allen Stern
Just updated all my sites, doesnt look I was hit.
- sean percival
sean - no one would hit you - they know you would lala all over them
- Allen Stern
sean - happy for you!
- Rob La Gesse
I've read almost all of the comments here, not hearing these mentioned once: Robert did not backup, kept the default 'admin' username and failed to update. These are three of the most basic security measures out there. Not blaming it on Robert, because we all fail on this sometimes, but these basics really are important!
- Abounding Media
http://twitter.com/markjaq... warning of Mark in April - kept me away from WP contact form 7
- Jeroen De Miranda
Abounding: yup. And the lesson here is don't host your own version of Wordpress unless you have a security team making sure you're doing it right and backing up (something I never did on Wordpress.com, by the way). Oh, and Twitter taught us that even if you do all of that you've gotta make sure you pick great passwords and think through ways that social hacks could be done to get into your accounts.
- Robert Scoble
I've written a much longer post on this: http://wordpress.org/develop...
- Matt Mullenweg
http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2008... some great tips of Mark Jaquith on writing secure plugins - I use these and other tips when scanning the PHP code of new plugins that I intend to use (before deploying them)
- Jeroen De Miranda
Jeroen, thanks for posting that. I've had phishers getting into one of my WP installs recently, but couldn't tell which plugin it was. I deactivated two plugins, including CF7, the other day, and haven't had any more problems. And a shoutout to Ryan Boren on the WP dev team for helping me to de-infect.
- John Craft
Robert: Welcome to the world of web development for impatient users and disgruntled hackers
- Melanie Reed
http://wordpress.org/develop... great post of Matt Mullenweg about WordPress security!
- Jeroen De Miranda
john - the CF7 is what killed me a few months ago - it's because the form allows uploads even if you don't actually have them on - i believe they patched it but i have not gone back there.
- Allen Stern
anybody know if a little smily face appearing in the lower right hand corner of ones footer is a sign of a compromise on a self hosted wp blog?
- Richard Reeve
John, your are welcome! SQL injects attacks specifically exploit data entry fields used by the plugin; one should at least scan the PHP code of these plugins, and look at what kind of escape functions are used around handling of the data entry.
- Jeroen De Miranda
"it's because the form allows uploads even if you don't actually have them on" - wow. That's bad.
- John Craft
Richard is wp-stats smily :-)
- wolly
"anybody know if a little smily face appearing in the lower right hand corner of ones footer is a sign of a compromise on a self hosted wp blog?" - if you didn't put it there, it probably is. In your admin go to appearance, theme editor, and read the footer.php file.
- John Craft
Richard - are you using the WordPress.com Stats plugin?
- Andre Natta
some plugins worth considering to install are: wp-exploit-scanner, wordpress file monitor, WP security scan, anti virus
- Jeroen De Miranda
I don't understand why people are worried about a plugin breaking when it comes to upgrading WordPress. If a plugin does break, disable it for the time being. I rather have a secure installation of WordPress running and would worry about fixing the plugin afterwards.
- Jason Hansen
Hmmmm . . . I run WP Stats, but see no smiley face.
- John Craft
ah...thanks folks...stats it is. phew...so I'm not paranoid...
- Richard Reeve
There appears to be some a-holes who can break into wordpress blogs very easily. I'm not sure at this point that the new Wordpress Thesis blog that I'm interested in getting is safe either. There is some security issues with Wordpress and their incompetence to fix the problem is growing every year. They keep coming out with new versions to replace the old versions yet they still have a problem. This is serious guys.
- Jeunelle Foster
The problem with WordPress is that it forces you to upgrade. Imagine if Microsoft forced everybody to upgrade to Vista/Windows 7 in order to get their security holes plugged. WordPress should release security patches for the current and at least for the previous version.
- Nikolay Kolev
They dont force you to upgrade. If you dont want to patch, you can leave it at the current version ( but with a risk )
- Kashif Khan
Where's the patch for the 2.7 version then?
- Nikolay Kolev
Their versioning strategy bumps up numbers even for patches . And how many versions behind should they support ?
- Kashif Khan
Many of the WordPress security issues are not coming from the WordPress itself, but from the poorly written WordPress plugins. I think it would be nice if Automattic starts an "Automattic Certified" program giving blog owners the peace of mind they need. Every hacker can upload a plugin at WordPress.org, advertise it as something great, bloggers install it, see that it's nothing as advertised, uninstall it, but the WordPress instances are already hacked.
- Nikolay Kolev
Plugins are open source and free and nobody (well, with some exceptions) would pay to get their free plugin certified. The only way to do this is by having a community review process, based on some credibility score and voter authority system where 1,000 fake hacker accounts won't, for example, outweigh Matt's or Mark's votes.
- Nikolay Kolev
part of the problem is the cry wolf syndrome - if i updated every day wordpress had a security problem i'd want to be salaried on the payroll :D Wordpress needs some sort of alert notification - twitter or something that indicates if there's an update AND the severity and if its severe enough sends it to my phone.
- mal
let me play the other side of the coin - i've been using vbulletin for my forums for probably more than 5 years - and it's never once been hacked - why is this - is it because it's paid? is it just more secure? would love to get some input on why wordpress seems to be the attacker's gold.
- Allen Stern
@allenstern because it pays back better to have wp hacked
- A.T.
Another devil - I have clients using Expression Engine for years (with plugins) and haven't had a problem either. Checking security sites, EE has had very few vs the many with WP and some with Drupal. Matts suggestion that one hosts with him to avoid problems and keep updated just isn't in the cards for business sites. Just too many vulnerabilities with WP over the years for me to recommend it.
- PXLated
i can tell you that within 2 days of moving from drupal to wp, my sites were hacked - all of them - and it made me seriously question the move - the reasons i moved were because wp is a bit easier to edit/code than drupal and because the admin panel in wordpress is awesome compared to the crap panel in drupal - i wrote up a whole post about why i moved - i'd like to see matt write a post about their qa and security procedures for their releases
- Allen Stern
Alen, once Drupal 7 get released, you may actually go back. :)
- Nikolay Kolev
Robert - If I were you I'd move away from Wordpress and fast. Its security record is dire and has been for ages. Other solutions are a lot more stable, whereas Wordpress seems to have security bugs every second week. Why anyone puts up with it is really beyond me. I moved to MovableType and haven't had to worry about caching issues or security problems
- Michele Neylon
#somethingpersonal WP calls you "technical evengelist", Robert. When you say «Yes, I didn’t have a backup. I should learn to do backups» I call you a mediawhore. Nothing TECH-NI-CAL, just bulled ego. Learn Security, Performance, Reliability, you ignorant piece.
- Капитан Сильвер Буллет
Robert - "the reputation around the Net is that upgrades on Wordpress break things" I'm sorry but that's just not true, I use many many plugins across about 20 sites and I've only ever ONCE had a plugin break during a WP upgrade.
- John O'Nolan
Definitely check if Google Reader has your lost posts - as of a few months ago, it didn't handle deletes very well :)
- Michael Herf
This recent wave of WordPress incidents shows the negative side of using open source software. Matt says that there are many people looking into WordPress' source code, but the problem is that probably half of those people have malicious reasons for doing so.
- Nikolay Kolev
@Matt - why not have a module that adds *automatic* upgrades? The one-click update feature is very nice, but zero clicks is better. With a decent snapshot/rollback system you could update most people securely right away--email them and let them rollback if something breaks.
- Michael Herf
@robert: we might be able to help you recover the lost blog posts if you want. Google Reader has an archive of them and we helped another blogger in the past recover her losses. Let me know if we can help.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
@matt when do you start to care about poor people unlike robert... who can't afford *VIP* i am willing to pay $25+ per month of course with my adsense ads :}
- Imran Jafri
@robert by the way you made one of the worst choice to move away from wordpress.com i think it wasn't price issue rather you wanted to be brand *ambassador* for rackspace which was only possible if you host your blog on their damn servers... if i get enough visitors i would switch to wordpress.com vip without taking 2nd breathe........
- Imran Jafri
I run just a few plugins, and research and vet them first. And upgrade to new WP versions within a week. Look, attacks happen, running self-hosted can get complicated. But this is true with any software or OS
- Bob Morris (polizeros)
from iPhone
Nikolay, it's always better to have more people looking at the code, because a bug that's been found is better than a bug that hasn't. WordPress used to get almost no security problems and people thought it was because it was coded differently, when in fact it was coded far worse than it is today it just didn't have enough users to make it worthwhile to target. Also where many...
more...
- Matt Mullenweg
Nikolay: I would also push back against your assumption that using Open Source software equals less security. Microsoft Windows and OS X are both closed source and both have security holes - there is a competition each year to help MS and Apple find them and fix them. Both Apple and Microsoft came away with security holes to fix this year. So just because it's open source doesn't...
more...
- Tim
that's what you get for the fun of installing and hosting your own installation, instead of using "the cloud".
- Ihar Mahaniok
Robert - I recommend WP S3 Backups for backing up your database to off-site storage. Amazon S3 is a great place to host backups of your Wordpress database and is relatively inexpensive. You *always* want backups *off* the server so in case the server is compromised, the backups are still clean. This plugin works like a charm, is automatic and could have saved you. Cheers!
- Scott Jarkoff
anybody know of a test that can be done to see if a wp blog has been compromised? Has a few strange user subscriptions about a week ago...but not noticing any thing else...I did upgrade weeks ago, but soon enough?
- Richard Reeve
bug exploits keep security IT folks in their day job, sad but true.
- Jim Posner
In IT it keeps me busy but the reality is if you update your software on a regular basis you can minimize these from affecting you.
- Rob Cairns
Robert, any chance archive.org has some of your old blog posts? Google Cache?
- drew olanoff
Matt, another thing to note is that Wordpress.com is often blocked in China (even if you have your own custom URL like scobleizer.com). There are advantages to NOT being hosted by Wordpress.com although your point about increased responsibilty for keeping up with security patches is still valid.
- Elliott Ng
Drew: yeah, but what do I do? Just republish them?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Sure why not. Scoble's best of. Reason why I hate stuff on the net sometimes is good stuff gets lost.
- drew olanoff
Give a try to the "WordPress Database Backup" plugin for WordPress and you'll receive regular backups on your email
- Francois Lamotte
Robert, You can get all of your lost blog post html out of Google Reader. I'm not exactly sure how to link Disqus back, maybe it's as simple as re-adding the old posts with the same title/date i.e. Url (I don't use it). Yet another reason to use FULL RSS feeds (instead of summary). See RSS isn't dead.. it's now a backup tool too! (http://ff.im/7JrlC)
- Chris Myles
Wordpress is a great blogging tool. It is however the largest target now - much like how Windows gets a crap-top more virii because it's the most used system. Someone used Drupal as am example of security... well I'm sure if Drupal was anywhere near the scale of usage Wordpress is you'd see hacks for that too.
- Gregory Wild-Smith
Robert: Just repost them with the dates set to the original dates they were posted. Simple, and no-one will ever know ;)
- Gregory Wild-Smith
I have always had a bad feeling about Wordpress. YMMV.
- Gordon Joly
from twhirl
Robert It could be a Rackspace problem and Not a Wordpress Problem. They might to increase there security on the Rackspace!!! You should checck into that!!
- Paul
One of the reasons I waited 2 years to switch from MovableType to WordPress was due to the security issues. I felt that the track record improved over the past year and moved 11 sites over. I can say this I employ a very extensive back up scheme but still worry about it. The ability to upgrade with a single click of a button has made it much easier to upgrade, but I always worry which plugins are going to break as I use a lot of plugins.
- Todd Cochrane
It's interesting to me to see the number of people who are "afraid" to implement a security update because it might break a plugin. I wonder if these are the same people who don't run system updates on Mac or Windows because it might break SIMBL or some other haxie. Your core = your core... without it you're smoked. Case in point: Scoble. If your plugins aren't working after an update, let the author know and request an update, but BY ALL MEANS don't ignore security upgrades.
- Kevin Donahue
hmm... I think that a lot of this conversation is missing something. Most software security updates are usually tested in hosts and thus delayed in their own releases by at the minimum of a week's time usually. This is due to hosting internal testing of patches before rolling it out to all servers. Now, whether or not RS actually performs these types of procedures, I don't know... but I...
more...
- Ben Hwang
First: I keep my blog up to date. Always. Fuck plugins, I decided that when I made the decision to use WP for my blog that updates would be a priority, only because of all the security issues that I remember from the early early days. Having said that, I have to agree with Robert that the perception with WordPress, despite all the work with auto-updates and in-blog notification is STILL...
more...
- Christina Warren
from iPod
I am spending the day finally making a back-up of my web space, then the upgrade.
- Sebastian Keil
you are right to not feel safe: when you are on the dominant platform, holes get taken advantage of really fast. At least it being open source you know it will also get plugged fast
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
"what do I do? Just republish them?" - Robert, you can set the published date to the original July or August date in the "new post" form. Where it says "publish immediately," click "edit".
- John Craft
I couldn't disagree more that the reputation is that an upgrade will break a plugin. How many plugins reach into the Wordpress core and screw around with it? Less than 5%? Any examples of plugins that broke w/ 2.8.4?
- beersage
Somebody hacked into my WordPress blog earlier this year as well. It was a bummer because I was working on a draft copy of a blog post that was very rough and had not been edited and they published it. I was on vacation shooting in Chicago and didn't figure it out until several hours after they'd already published it. Fortunately they didn't seem to do anything malicious other than...
more...
- Thomas Hawk
@Robert: "[Rackspace] are learning a lot about this and other people who have had problems and are building a list of best practices." Is it possible this list is something RS might share?
- John House
@Matt Mullenweg: I do like WordPress (even though we had a public argument with you and another Automattic employee on TechCrunch a while ago) and I am a passionate supporter of open source software - don't get me wrong. But sometimes open source code makes it a bit easier for hackers! For example, one hacker hears about an exploit and without communicating with others, finds the hole independently by just looking into the source code and starts exploiting it on his own.
- Nikolay Kolev
Gregory Wild-Smith Bingo!
- Melanie Reed
Social Media Club blogs got hit as well as several of our personal blogs (still sorting it all out). We try to keep up on most upgrades, but every time we do, simple plugins (like the Event calendar) break. Seems silly, but we have hours of work after each upgrade to try and keep everything intact, and sometimes, we end up downgrading until the 'essential' plugins catch up, which...
more...
- Kristie Wells
I have 2 wordpress blogs. One on my own domain and one at wordpress central. Still can't get my head around their upgrade gymnastics - may just stick with eBlogger after all.
- Houseofmax
i don't know what will happen in times to come but from the existing platforms, i love wordpress and i am not going anywhere, but that doesn't matter for wordpress right? ;)
- testbeta
Robert, at the end of it is just only your bloody laziness in upgrading that led you here :) Jokes aside, please at least be honest and say you didn't upgradede twice... :p.
- Matteo Flora
Nope. I upgraded to 2.8.4 as soon as it was out but the hackers had already broken in.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
The fact that WordPress is currently being exploited doesn't mean that other platforms are immune. For example, the recently discovered XSS issue with Ruby on Rails makes not only blogs, but every unpatched site a target. So, the only issue I'm having is forcing us to upgrade to a new major version without much time to do proper testing (I'm not talking about personal blogs here). I...
more...
- Nikolay Kolev
So Techdirt was hacked a bit ago. See their reaction: http://www.techdirt.com/article... it is the reality of owning a web site guys - ANY software is hackable if someone really wants in.
- Adam Singer
@Robert: as I see it Wordpress is as vulnerable as any other web app. Upgrading does good, but preemptive security does more and better. I know Matt and he knows I'm in awe with him and Automattic but simply spoken I DON'T TRUST WORDPRESS as I don't trust any other software. A little WebApp Security Firewall (or at least a little .htaccess rules for admin and preemptive locking of...
more...
- Matteo Flora
i find it interesting, and depressing that people are blaming Rackspace, they're blaming Wordpress, they're blaming Robert, but no one, *no one* seems to be willing to blame the only, ONLY people who deserve blame: the evolutionary failures that attacked Robert's blog.
- John C. Welch
Thanks to your post, I found backdoor Admin in my own blog (created yesterday apparently). Promptly deleted it, upgraded blog and took other measures, which I blogged about
- Adi Rabinovich
@Matt Mullenweg: "so staying up to date is a must. - Matt Mullenweg" You gave the birth to one of the coolest piece of free software on the net, also your community is strong an love-full, you can do some PRs listening to Scoble that is crying, but you couldn't do anything better than you did. Take it easy man, all your competitors still suck. (PS. also a cleaning utility to understand better if everything is ok on our hosts would be cool ;-)
- righini riprova
Matt: What does a user need to provide, in order to be considered for a VIP wordpress.com account?
- Jim Connolly
caveat operator
- Mike Chelen
Take technology out of the picture. Something bad happened by some bad person. Happens every day... it's called crime. If a bad person got into my house because I had a weak lock or left my door unlocked, what do people usually say? "That bad person shouldn't have done that!"? Well, sure, but bad people do bad things... nothing we can do to stop them other than make it harder or...
more...
- Chris Hearn
I would simply like to reiterate the point that if you're going to put free open source software on a rented web server, you need to either know how to administer it or hire someone to do it for you. Neither Rackspace or Wordpress are to blame here. We discuss this with our clients all the time who view web development as a one off expense, then get upset when their site is hacked because it wasn't maintained.
- JP Maxwell
One more point, I think there are way too many false lines drawn over aras of responsibility - "I'm systems, not a PHP programmer. I'm a PHP programmer, not a Javascript person. I'm a designer, not a programmer or a systems person." If you are a WEB developer or responsible for maintaining hosted WEB applications, you need to know a bit about it all. It simply isn't sufficient to demarcate your knowledge sphere and point your finger at the other guy.
- JP Maxwell
Wow !
- ★ Soner Gönül
elliottng: Interesting back & forth between WordPress creator @photomatt & @scobleizer on Friendfeed http://bit.ly/NNYMo - http://twitter.com/elliott...
honestly I think Matt was a bit defensive. Wordpress.com isn't the right answer for everyone. Need more plug in certification/compatibility testing
- Elliott Ng
from iPhone
Re: Rumor v2: Kaifu Lee Is To Launch Innovation-Works - http://www.mobinode.com/2009...
"Will be interesting to see how different the "real" news is from what is on the site right now."
- Elliott Ng
Re: How stupid is this – Apple possibly trademarked glossy chat bubbles - http://www.shootingatbubbles.com/index...
"Shooting at Bubbles indeed!"
- Elliott Ng
Re: How a Great App Recommendation “Engaged Me”, Thx TechCrunch & Animoto - http://www.opencandy.com/2009...
"Congratulations Bro! A good decision. No, a great decision! Animoto guys should be happy with this endorsement!"
- Elliott Ng
"Silly to proclaim the death of RSS while instead using technologies that rely on RSS." Yeah. http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archive...
Nicholas James, Werner Trotter, Ugur Sahin and 14 other people liked this
"I don't use gasoline anymore. I fly everywhere instead."
- Dave Winer
"Electricity is dead. I have toast every morning with my eggs."
- Dave Winer
We don't need farms, I get my fruit at the super market. (Actual statement by someone that said we didn't need more water in the Central Valley. It works here.)
- Rob Fahrni
don't need electric for toast and eggs ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
I love the "X is Dead" linkbait tactic. Just need to find the next thing to proclaim dead. How about Free? e.g. "Free is Dead"? or "The Long Tail is Dead"? or "The Black Swan is Dead"? or "The Tipping Point is Dead"? Mmmm...tasty.
- Elliott Ng
Who cares if consumers use the technology, it is still a vital link from source to consumer.
- Gary Walter (gwalter)
Sigh. The hackers got into my blog, left some invisible text in places I didn't catch, and now have gotten me kicked out of Google. Grrr.
Colleen Kulikowski, Mitchell Tsai, Krishnamoorthy and 51 other people liked this
how the hell they do that?
- Mycaptain
what?
- michael sean wright
wow.
- Joe
Hardcore grudgery!
- Daniel J. Pritchett
huh
- directeur
I'm guessing by *invisible text* he means people loaded white-on-white keywords into his header and footer like the sort of NSFW content blocked by your office's firewall.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
So do you like your Cannon, Robert? What model is it?
- Joe
So much for having your own blog giving you control of your content?
- Jesse Stay
I got screwed cause the old blog.grazr.com got hacked (didn't know it) and it was redirected to my new blog. So now my pagerank is like -5 or something.
- mikepk
shocked that after the hell i went through on rackspace/mosso they wouldn't have known what to clear - i was out of google too - it's so fun - all of my sites got hit too over time so i lost a ton of google.
- Allen Stern
I hate to say it but as Allen and Jesse are hinting at this is a black mark on your hosting provider.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
I still get yahoo search referrals for casinos and nsfw stuff. blah. #spammersshouldbekilled
- mikepk
why is this rackspaces fault?
- Mark
I've seen injected content on RSS feeds that didn't show up on the blog itself. :-/ Sorry to hear!
- Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕
there's a virus or something like that which places an iframe in your page. just change your ftp password, scan your machine for virusses, and find the code in the pages and then google will let you in again
- Hakan İyice
Maybe it's a black mark because Scoble is a Rackspace employee, but it's not Rackspace's fault something happened to a website. They run the server, not the website.
- Mark Trapp
daniel - just to be clear - they have said to me time and agian it's not their side, it's wordpress side.
- Allen Stern
Is that acceptable? I know that ever since I've moved from hosted Blogspot over to self-administered WordPress I've had some crazy spam issues. Maybe that's just a natural consequence of the blog growing and not a result of my hosting choice.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
They used some sort of admin hack. We changed a whole bunch of stuff and now the hack has stopped (we deleted the admin account and did a bunch of other stuff). I'm not sure how it happened, but we're getting smarter about setting up Wordpress, that's for sure!
- Robert Scoble
Allen: there are folks inside Rackspace who know how to clean this up. I'm now working with them.
- Robert Scoble
Use XENU to find all the links and kill them, makes life easier to find all the places the embedded code ended up. Worked for me when this happened to me last year.
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
In a separate thread, Robert admitted his blog was running WordPress 2.7.x, which was vulnerable to an exploit detailed here: http://wordpress.org/develop... -- and then once in, hackers can inject spam only visible to robots. If you have a WordPress blog, please update to the latest version -- 2.8.4 -- to prevent hackers from doing the same thing to your blog that they did to Robert's.
- Stephen Mack
It's such a damn shame that you worked so hard to have an Internet presence and some bastard sits around in his basement and try to whack you off the net
- Houseofmax
Robert, if you need some WP help from experts, check out the wordpress.org forums and/or wptavern.com. That's where us WordPress nerds hang out. We can give security tips, maybe specific to your host. We also have several people who are skilled at post-hack analysis, to determine how they got in and prevent it from happening in the future.
- Otto
Stephen: I think that was ONE of the exploits they used. The exploits continued even after updating (they've stopped now, because we made it hard to find the admin account -- that's something I would do immediately too, change the name of your admin account).
- Robert Scoble
Otto: thanks. Some of those guys work at Rackspace and they are helping out now. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Wordpress rocks. :)
- Louis Gray
Oh yes it does Louis!
- Hutch Carpenter
Robert, that was probably how they got in originally, and probably left themselves backdoors that worked even after you updated to 2.8.4.
- Stephen Mack
Daniel: nothing about the hosting choice makes WordPress (or any other web-level application) more susceptible to spam. Your site is accessible via a fully-qualified domain name, which is how spammers are finding you (via Google or other means). That domain could be attached to any host, the spammers don't care or necessarily know who that host is. What a host is responsible for,...
more...
- Mark Trapp
Most of Rackspace's products are unmanaged at the application layer, but managed at the system and network layer.
- Mark Trapp
Yes, that is the usual case. A successful hack causes insertion of hidden admin accounts or other backdoors, to let them get in later. One of the steps we always recommend after getting hacked is to a) copy any new "content" you have made into text files somewhere, and then b) restore the site and database from a backup prior to the hack. This prevents anything they inserted from being...
more...
- Otto
I had to pay triple my yearly hosting fee just to cover the bandwidth lost to spam before I figured out how to blacklist spammers using a WP plugin.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Also, if the Rackspace guys find any possible security problems, have them email the info to security@wordpress.org . It'll get analyzed by experts that way.
- Otto
Who is responsible Host? WP? Is it possible to have an eye over errors logs and failed attempt !
- Honey
same exact thing happened to me a month ago. I finally got it sorted out. I'm happy to share what I learned if interested. I went to d msg you on Twitter but i'm one of the masses to be unfollowed
- Jim Goldstein
Jim: you can DM me here, which is even better!
- Robert Scoble
I figured :) Hence my presence here.
- Jim Goldstein
Robert, if I'm clear on this you are positive this isn't a Rackspace/host/server failure but a failure to secure the script (FREE AND COMMON) you used for your blog. Right? It's not like you had your SQL server hacked or something similarly systems related.
- Jason Nunnelley
Just highlights one of the major drawbacks of Cloud Computing. You don't really have control of your own destiny. Of course, that's not to say the same thing can't happen when you do.
- Ward Mundy
WTF?
- Tyson Key
Ward, can you tell me what this has to do with cloud computing?
- Jason Nunnelley
In my instance they added an official looking xmlrpc.php file. Adjusted the header.php file and hid files in my plugin directory. More here http://groups.google.com/group... It took a while to clean out my blog plugin directory to start from scratch and to look through various files for encrypted code...
more...
- Jim Goldstein
I ASS-U-MEd the blog was hosted at wordpress.com.
- Ward Mundy
I don't understand - what does getting 'kicked out of Google' really mean?
- Zach Landes
Zach: my blog was removed from the Google index until I clean it up.
- Robert Scoble
Ugh! Hackers stink!
- Karen Swim
My bad... Powered by Rackspace Cloud Hosting (so it has a little something to do with Cloud Computing) :-)
- Ward Mundy
I blame TCP/IP.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Ward, it's running Apache 2.2, so by that logic Apache is to blame. So does your website.
- Jason Nunnelley
no blame the fame, none hack the unknow (anonyme).
- abdellah
Same thing has happened to us, actually. Honestly more annoying than harmful in our case, anyway.
- Jason Preston
Rob and I are cleaning it up now...*sigh*
- Robert J Taylor
Yikes - that sucks. My site got hit with hidden / invisible spam links few months back - big PITA to fix and to get Google juice back gradually.
- Patrick Jordan
that happened to me last week... The Rackspace team helped me clean it up - While Google said many Rackspace/Mosso sites were affected I was told (and agree with) - they host thousands and thousands of sites and it's WordPress - not them.
- andy brudtkuhl
That would piss me off to no end. Wow. Sorry Robert :(
- Andru Edwards
This was actually "hidden" in plain site by the exploit that affected WP 2.7.x All better now. Robert, tell Google to turn the juice back on!
- Rob La Gesse
That seems strange to me Robert...google searches have lots of NSFW stuff, so why would you be removed from the index altogether?
- Zach Landes
Zach: if I were a betting man, it's because scobleizer.com has a very high PR, and having that stuff there could adversely affect a whole lot more of the index than just his site.
- Mark Trapp
Wow, that is insane. Glad to hear you got it back up in a timely manner, thanks to your team.
- Martha
Curiously, the exact same thing happened to my blog (Twittercism.com), pretty much around the same time it happened to Robert, on both occasions. And like him, I was hacked the second time after the upgrade to 2.8.4. And it was invisible text in the footer. It was fairly easy to remove, but still, an irritant. (Incidentally, a WP Plugin called exploit scanner was very useful. http://ocaoimh.ie/exploit...)
- Shéa Bennett
Sounds like the Backwards Hack... How to Fix: http://www.gulker.com/fixing-... That was likely a botnet script, not an actual hacker, btw...
- Chris Gulker
Sigh. I run a few dozen WP sites, and I have yet to have any of them hacked into. I'm feeling left out here. :(
- Otto
oh oh so the last time you were hacked you still have the after effects of it, try the antivirus plugin for wp, it checks the themes for bad and malicious links
- Keith Dsouza
Wow! Scoble's Wordpress blog got hacked (click through for the details) & the hacker's secret changes got him thrown out of the Google Index for a while. Make sure you: 1) Always back up your Wordpress blog. 2) Update to 2.8.x, as 2.7 had the vulnerabilities that were exploited in Scoble's case. 3) Check your install for exploits (there are plugins for this), as well as your Google indexing once a week or so.
- Alex Schleber
Truly feeling bummed for you Robert! I've had a problem for several weeks of spammers going after my email. Gotta say.. people need to know that all sites are subject to hackers.
- Arleen Anderson
yikes!
- mutenewt
heh - I wonder if that's why Twitter bulk unfollow purchases have been down this week. :-)
- Jesse Stay
Wow, that really sucks. It's hard to believe so little can screw up so much.
- Aram Zucker-Scharff
Ouch! Google should know your blog!
- Amber Case
Hacked again? That sucks. I saw that you had cleaned it up, so I went to check on things. Someone on my team already saw the bad stuff was gone, so they revoked the removal early this afternoon. Looks like you're already back in the index.
- Matt Cutts
You've been hacked twice in a month haven't you.
- Jimminy Fuller
i just found more bad files on my mosso account - im seriously done :( matt - can you check insidetransit.com? thanks
- Allen Stern
Yikes, that sucks. Link injection is the scourge.
- Elliott Ng
Matt: thanks, Google is fast lately. I remember the days when we waited weeks for search engines to reindex! Hopefully we got it all fixed now. We're definitely learning a lot about Wordpress best practices.
- Robert Scoble
how do these hackers get to find a way IN? how?
- Sardar Mohkim Khan
Install a good web application firewall such as dotDefender, ModSecurity, eeye, imperva it will help you to stop those attacks.
- Daniel
That blows - hope you tech guys figure out how to eliminate crap like this : ) I'm sure that won't stop you for long...
- Mark Harai
My blogs been hacked since I first had it and I don't even care enough to update it, that alone should show you how much I care about the internet and blogging.
- Jeunelle Foster
Be nice if twitter would figure out a financial model that would let them help folks who have been spammed or otherwise compromised
- Sean O'Reilly
This same thing happened to me and ALL of my blogs got removed from Google and I'm now working as a cashier. Several years of solid work completely gone. I don't know why Google and WordPress don't do something about this. This was one of the worst things to happen to me in my entire life... :(
- Uniquely Cool
By the way, I've only found one sure fire way to keep from getting hacked... and that is to convert your WordPress blog into a static HTML site. Sucks losing some of the interactive features, though. :(
- Uniquely Cool
Recently had a drop in my PR, but it must be something I did or said. There must be a better way to enhanced your blog security than going non-interactive, like having your own domain
- Houseofmax
This is really depressing. My situation is way worse... I could literally lose my house because of a wordpress exploit. :(
- Uniquely Cool
yikes, just found this
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
Because @jowyang didn't tell me where he's going and I learned it anyway I am very tempted to tell the world to mess up his launch. :-)
A Mitchell, Bert DuMars, Roger Jennings and 56 other people liked this
so a startup then..
- Zee.
But I won't, because he's my friend and so are the other people involved. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Thanks for the tease anyway. :)
- Steven Walling
Hmmmm...
- Simon Young
I hear he'll announce it "within days" and it's a pretty interesting gig.
- Robert Scoble
When will we find out Robert?
- Dave "Freedom 35"
friend = somebody reliable. keep it secret. keep it safe :)
- Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic
Are there cameras involved?
- Simon Young
Funny. He didn't tell me because he thought I would tell everyone. :-)
- Robert Scoble
so go ahead and tell us! : )
- Teri Gidwitz
Teri: believe me, I'm tempted, just to teach him a lesson! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Rob you're such a trouble maker hahaha
- Jeunelle Foster
What I want to know: Who will replace him at Forrester?
- Dave "Freedom 35"
BTW, I dig the new avatar, glad the green is gone ;)
- Keith - @tsudo
Will he be interviewed on Building43?
- Simon Young
Dave: not possible to replace him, sorry.
- Robert Scoble
Well, payback is always worse. They're recruiting for a replacement at Forrester. Go look at his "former" blog; HR guy posted.
- Teri Gidwitz
Same here. Green was getting a bit putrid.
- Dave "Freedom 35"
Simon: nah, it's not a building43 kind of thing.
- Robert Scoble
Big shoes indeed.
- Dave "Freedom 35"
Oh. Interesting!
- Simon Young
Robert - you post on the race for real time web is amazing - I really want to know where you see real time TV fitting into this?
- James Stewart
Don't pull an Arrington, man. Be cool.
- Daniel Fath
Nice going Robert, we all are looking forward to knowing when the time comes.
- courtney benson
Damn... I got excited for a second that I may be among the first to know what he's up to. I guess I'll wait to find out along with everyone else!
- Jodi Echakowitz
Daniel: it could be "JeremiahGate!" :-)
- Robert Scoble
I think you guys are already breaking the ground by using Kyte etc and I tune in, but as a business channel in NZ I believe we need to be out there every day interviewing amazing people, streaming it live, enabling real time chats via FF and the Ustream intergration with facebook - I see facebook as the new TV platform that most people spend their time hanging out on and if they see an...
more...
- James Stewart
FF is pretty cool for these kinds of flash news teasers. :)
- Dave "Freedom 35"
James: real time TV: http://friendfeed.com/search... Heheh.
- Robert Scoble
haha oops - didn't know about that!
- James Stewart
James: FriendFeed's real time search engine has a lot of cool features that never were explored. I really hope that's what they are going to do for Facebook.
- Robert Scoble
thx Robert ....thats super cool
- Johni Fisher
The problem is that most people that use the internet are still just getting on facebook, I am 25 and I only have a handful of people friends my age that twitter as they don't have a community on there they can identify with - I like what you said about Facebook Public - that is definitely where I see them going with some serious live streaming intergration. Facebook will win because...
more...
- James Stewart
Robert: True man, since I saw this partnership happen my head has been whizzing with ideas for the implications of it. >> Most of the people in my age group watch videos that have been shared on facebook by their friends and favourite groups. Definitely some new stuff with video on it's way - keep us posted! Thanks for the replies :)
- James Stewart
Amazon?
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: no and not Facebook either. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Either your going to be a big tease or a tattle tale either of which will get you beaten up on the playground, so stop it (:
- Kim Landwehr
from BuddyFeed
DBAD
- Josh Haley
Kim: heheh.
- Robert Scoble
Robert. You're a friend, but you've a habit of breaking news --sometimes when folks aren't ready. It's not personal, but I just know your traits. I'm going to brief you in detail on Wed. We can do a video if you'd like --I'll come to you. Hugs?
- Jeremiah Owyang
awww... ;-)
- Chris Heath
Robert - hug Jeremiah, do the video - but insist he brings that little dog with him. IT is cute :)
- Rob La Gesse
Will Robert put away his (fake) wounded pride and interview Jeremiah on Wednesday? Oh yes, he will - and now we have a deadline. Good work Robert!
- Kami Huyse
bring @goodboyrumba along for the video! :)
- Rachel Luxemburg
"Be excellent to each other."
- Steve Rubel
Jeremiah: :-)
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
OK, can we flashmob to celebrate Jeremiah's new gig right after the interview?
- Elliott Ng
Jeremiah: here is the deal. I am not under embargo but already know the news. So I think I will call Arrington because you didn't embargo me. Oh, and I +do+ keep embargoes. I am even keeping a secret about two things you will learn in the morning.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I still struggle with my 7 year old son to not steal his siblings' thunder in matters important to them. It's not easy for him.
- Josh Haley
I know those two things, Robert.
- Louis Gray
I know a lot of things, not even just two, but maybe not the two you are thinking of
- Jesse Stay
Kami, I saw Robert yesterday, and I asked him if I'd hurt his feelings, he said "yes". Robert and I go back, there was a time (ustream launch) where we well, didn't coordinate on news. He's truly a friend, and someone I respect as a media trailblazer --but I need to get everything coordinated. To be clear, he was on the list of folks I'd brief in detail --others just got cursory info.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Here's a long discussion on where Jeremiah Owyang will be going next. Interesting discussion developing on embargoes and 'bloggers'
- Drew B
Lets figure out where he is going. Who is in most need of Jeremiahs incredible intelligence on social media?
- Nisse
Drew, is it interesting that Robert is threatening me that I didn't tell him? Should bloggers assert themselves to get news? (it's a bit fun watching him get antsy)
- Jeremiah Owyang
Is he going to disneyland?
- Cliff Gerrish
Jeremiah: my feelings were hurt because you told pretty much everyone else in the industry other than me. Here's a hint: they can't keep their mouths shut either. But I will. You will know tomorrow that I actually do know the news. But the other deal is that you're wrong. I've kept hundreds of embargoes over the past year and haven't leaked them to anyone. If you weren't a friend and...
more...
- Robert Scoble
So they want the publicity you can bring but want to control the timing and message. I would be inclined to not agree as well. Sounds like you are being used.
- Brian Sullivan
I hear news all the time about people who aren't necessarily friends but would generally want the news quiet - does this mean I should start leaking those details? I'm not sure the right answer to that. The problem though is often the way I hear about that information is through other friends who were trusted to keep the info private. Is it worth betraying the trust of those friends as well?
- Jesse Stay
The problem comes maybe when you are "friends" with everybody but also are trying to be a legitimate reporter at the same time. We criticize television and newspaper reporters for this all the time but tech reportage seems to get a pass.
- Brian Sullivan
Jesse, yeah your situations seem tough because if you leak, you're a jackass because someone else can't keep their mouth shut.
- Chris Heath
Brian: everyone uses me, I'm used to it, it's part of the role I play in life. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I was planning on telling you before the announcement --and the offer still stands. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, that wasn't my intent.
- Jeremiah Owyang
What's the point here??
- Andru Edwards
nothing really andru, I say we just move along and let Robert and I handle this offline. Clearly, we need to work this out.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Talking to Scoble now, I apologized. I take back what I said above, he's not broken any embargos in a while and I take that charge back. I also briefed him, as a friend, and more. Sorry Robert, I crossed the line.
- Jeremiah Owyang
I'm going to guess Jeremiah will join Dave Armano and Peter Kim and work for Dachis.
- Ari Herzog
Ari - that's my guess too.
- Hutch Carpenter
Now watch Scoble jump to Streamy right now to tell what Jeremiah is doing next. Ha!
- Bryan R. Adams
This is funny! "JeremiahGate" got love it :)
- Susan Beebe
Scoble is very good at keeping secrets and creating Buzz! :)
- Susan Beebe
Thanks Jeremiah! Excited for you.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I want a "Gate" named after me :-)
- Jesse Stay
Robert, excellent start at creating the "buzz" for @jowyang 's launch LOL
- j damon brown
Link Baiting 101: Start a fight with Scoble.
- Jason Calacanis
Once again, calacanis ftw
- Chris Heath
from iPhone
Dude, why would you do that? I knew where you were going both times, and I kept it to myself. I coulda broken it, but why violate trust.
- Jeremy Pepper
Jeremy: who you talking to? No one has violated any trust. We're all cool now anyway.
- Robert Scoble
Jeremy: and when I left Microsoft someone DID violate my trust and leaked it within hours. So what? It all works out. Coordination is overrated.
- Robert Scoble
LOL Jason. But Robert is right, co-ordination can be overrated.
- Ian Betteridge
Group hug.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremiah - your recognition and classifications/categorizations of trends and strategies is truly unique. Thank you for all you've done at Forrester. Whatever your new role is, I hope you'll continue to share your thoughts.
- A Mitchell
Not enough people care about http://twitter.com/scoblei... so I can't justify the time investment. 1,700 faves in 2 weeks. Whew!
Nicholas James, Andrew Terry, Elliott Ng and 7 other people liked this
come on scoble, you of all people should know that it takes time.. oh wait was that a tweet reply bait?
- Shivanand Velmurugan
I prefer your likes - better organization here on FriendFeed for that.
- Jesse Stay
I like your thinking, but Twitter just doesn't have enough good content and it's not a good platform for this experiment.
- Louis Gray
Sure makes for a good feed, though.
- Kathy Fitch
Twitter is definitely missing the "like" feature and threaded discussion. Friendfeed completes Twitter. Its too bad Twitter didn't buy Friendfeed.
- Elliott Ng
Louis: I totally disagree. There's a TON of great content on Twitter and my Faves feed demonstrates that. 1,700 faves in just two weeks.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, while one can come across great content on Twitter, Jesse is right; organisation and engagement are better served by Friendfeed's "Like".
- Andrew Terry
from iPod
Somehow, my small story on Blogger turning 10 hit the front page of Digg. It's a black art I will never understand.
Roberto Arancibia, Wayne Sutton, Billy Warhol and 32 other people liked this
Only my second time ever.
- Louis Gray
:)
- sean percival
Good thing I don't care about traffic or ads, for gaming the system might make me focused on the wrong things. :)
- Louis Gray
You're just that good, dude.
- Rick Klau
It's not me, Rick... it's all Blogger.
- Louis Gray
No idea, Scott. I am not in charge. :)
- Louis Gray
who can tell? the "secret sauce" is a moving target...that's why they keep pissing off the power users. I wonder if people still sell front page access for $$$ ?
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
from Android
Congrats!
- Anne Bouey
Mazel tov. I guess. :)
- Elliott Ng
Who is astorygirl? Is she a valued Digger?
- John E. Bredehoft
Look here: http://friendfeed-media.com/843e457... Was Blogger Buzz hacked for a short moment?
- Ton Zijp
The same kind of black art dominates the Spanish equivalent Meneame. Well, in fact, it is "controlled" by a tight and nearly closed user community who knows the rules very well and manages the front page news stream.
- Jose Maria Pelaez
My guess is that the submitter is not a huge digg user, so the number of diggs required is much lower than what is required from top diggers.
- Rob Diana
Whoa!
- Charlie Anzman
I Love Blogger!! Super Tool for EZ Blogging + some Fab looking Templates + coloured Fonts without going thru the Programming Pain of Crappy WordPress!! Do U wanna Blog or do U wanna be a Programmer!! + Flickr works Brilliantly with Blogger - Super for getting some awesome Visuals into Blog Posts compared to Boring Text Posts on even more Boring White BG on WordPress!! ;))
- Billy Warhol
Re: The best “audience” conferences (Pulver vs. Broback) - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
"The Upcoming resource is a great one, example of online generosity that pays off for everyone. Thanks Robert, and good seeing you yesterday at Shel's."
- Elliott Ng
"The Upcoming resource is a great one, example of online generosity that pays off for everyone. Thanks Robert, and good seeing you yesterday at Shel's."
- Elliott Ng
http://twitpic.com/eok74 for Friendfeed: Mona has more cowbell :-)
 |
John Wang, AJ Kohn, Elliott Ng and 12 other people liked this
Chris looks smitten.
- Louis Gray
Love the hair
- Shevonne
He looks like he just took a shot from an inhaler. LoL someone needs to photoshop that. :)
- Bryan Lee
Louis: I think everyone at Gnomedex is smitten.
- Robert Scoble
Mona is taller than Chris. Whodathunkit?
- Mark Aitken
Mark: and a whole lot better looking, too! :-)
- Robert Scoble
No arguments here... Wait, did you mean Chris?
- Mark Aitken
I met Mona, and kept thinking about...Legos. :)
- Elliott Ng
They should have made Mona T-shirts I think... for #Gnomedex
- Mark Aitken
Oh, my...such a cutie... :)
- JA Castillo
Seattle PHOTOWALKING Gnomedex alert! EARLY Friday morning with @chasejarvis (did the Nikon videos). Details:
Akiva Moskovitz, Kevin Pedraja, randy stewart and 5 other people liked this
7 a.m. Friday morning. We'll get to Gnomdex in time.
- Robert Scoble
Meet at Chase' studio: 3333 Wallingford Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98013
- Robert Scoble
Chase is on FriendFeed too: http://friendfeed.com/chaseja...
- Robert Scoble
I'll totally be there! :)
- kk+
Sample of his work with Nikon: http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog...
- Robert Scoble
kk now it's getting even better! I wish we could get Thomas Hawk there.
- Robert Scoble
there's a super solid group of photographers attending gnomedex as usual. my 'gig' this time around is to do a photo recap in the last 15 mins before closing. make sure you jump in front of my lens. :)
- kk+
Robert, I'm there! Thanks for the heads up. Looking forward to it.
- Alberto Lopez
from iPhone
kk: Oh, I will! Can't wait to see who shows up at 7 a.m.! Alberto, see you there!
- Robert Scoble
Can me and my little point and shoot come?
- Liana Shanes
OK count me in!
- Elliott Ng
Oh man... that's early, but how could I not?
- randy stewart
*grumble* 7am. guess i'll just stay up all night. why not make it 5am?! ;)
- kk+
Chase's video was one of the factors in my deciding to get a D90. Hope to see you guys.
- Kevin Pedraja
I'd be there but that just doesn't fit into our child-directed morning schedule.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Re: Where To Buy Trust Agents - http://www.chrisbrogan.com/where-t...
"Congrats, Chris. I bought a copy of Trust Agents on Amazon."
- Elliott Ng
Re: louisgray.com: Hi Facebook. It's Me, FriendFeed. This New Relationship? It's Complicated. - http://live.louisgray.com/2009...
"Amazing post Louis! It is the circle of life in the Valley..."
- Elliott Ng
Re: louisgray.com: Hi Facebook. It's Me, FriendFeed. This New Relationship? It's Complicated. - http://www.louisgray.com/live...
"Amazing post Louis! It is the circle of life in the Valley..."
- Elliott Ng
Re: louisgray.com: Hi Facebook, It's Me, FriendFeed. This Relationship? It's Complicated. - http://blog.louisgray.com/2009...
"Amazing post Louis! It is the circle of life in the Valley..."
- Elliott Ng
Is a Twitter retweet or a Facebook/FriendFeed "like" better. My answer my surprise you:
kensuke, Iván Abrego, Mitchell Tsai and 63 other people liked this
The retweet is better. Why?
- Robert Scoble
1. The retweet shows up as a top level item here in FriendFeed. Which gets you more branding.
- Robert Scoble
Yes, but your tweet got me to FriendFeed for the first time in months. So now I'm totally confused.
- Jennifer Leggio
Facebooks like system is pointless.
- Simon Wicks
2. A retweet usually gets retweeted, a lot. I retweeted a guy this morning saying that Eric Schmidt had resigned from Apple's board. That got retweeted a lot.
- Robert Scoble
Likes, just "bump" content, while a retweet duplicates the content and potentially gets shared several times.
- Rob Diana
I like retweet better. But if facebook had a dislike button, I would be equally happy!
- Dakota O'Neill
like is only promoting to shared friends where are retweet is promoting to everyone. No?
- Edwin Khodabakchian
3. A retweet gets you credit, while "likes" just get you buried and no one is sure why they got lots of engagement.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook is a joke. Like on friendfeed is pretty simple too. A retweet say a lot about your content but I think generating an actual discussion in friendfeed is the most powerful
- Johnny
The retweet also directly acknowledges the original author, building relationship. FF Likes on Twitter have no such attribution.
- Peter Kelley
Johnny: A retweet will get more conversation going and get you branded more than clicking like will.
- Robert Scoble
That said, I love likes. You can check my likes out at http://www.friendfeed.com/scoblei... -- that's something that's hard to do with a retweet. I've done 21,000 likes so far. I don't know of a way to count how many retweets I've done.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: I agree. I was saying that generating a conversation (like this one) is more powerful than likes and retweets.
- Johnny
Retweet overall but both have benefits
- Travis Tasset
from iPhone
I think that you're right, Robert. The Twitter retweet is better because there's some action behind it. In my opinion, the Facebook "like" feature really doesn't do much. It's more of a placebo than anything. Facebook's like is just a "slap on the wrist" letting the author know that it's "approved" by other people who come to the site. There's no reward for getting the most "likes" - it's like Digg but more retarded and something you wish you could euthanize already.
- Kenneth
A like is just FB's way of trying to copy twitter and facebook, but I guess google reader has the same thing now
- Billy Fung
Also, here, likes can be used to search. You can tell FriendFeed's search engine "show me all items about Google that Scoble has liked."
- Robert Scoble
I think likes are great, but FriendFeed should also work on its presentation of reshares. I'd extend the datamodel to support an optional "originating item" for each item. The text (via: [url]) looks a bit messy.
- Meryn Stol
your #1 reason for why RT is better than something is because it ends up in friendfeed??? not much of an incentive for the ~44 million twitter users really, is it?
- Jeremy Toeman
With a retweet, it can be shared with multiple friends across MULTIPLE networks - my tweets can be posted onto Twitter, FriendFeed and even Facebook. Where does the Facebook "like" come into play? No where! Tweet away!
- Kenneth
Exactly my thoughts too Meryn. Twitter should implement that as well. The original source gets lost after a couple of RTs.
- Sumanth Kolar
Kenneth: you can send your likes on FF to Twitter, I do
- Peter Kelley
Too much noise on Facebook, I still keep RTs in high regard.
- Amy Chorew
Jeremy: a large percentage of my Facebook friends are sending their Tweets over there. Facebook has a similar liking system. I guarantee you that there's more than 44 million on Facebook (last number I heard was 250 million). And I'm getting WAY MORE engagement here on FriendFeed than I am on Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter's reach is the key -- added to FriendFeed's real-time conversation, it's a powerful combo. Facebook is still too much of a walled garden.
- Don Tamihere
Peter: good point. I think I was dragging on Facebook's "like" and not FF. Now if you want to compare FriendFeed's likes with Facebook's...that's another can of worms I don't wanna go into.
- Kenneth
The database guy in me (my left elbow) is screaming that re-tweets duplicate data in a way that isn't easy to track. The social effects are nice, but can't this be replicated in a way that's a lot cleaner and more useful?
- Ryan Massie
but ya said friendfeed, not facebook. :)
- Jeremy Toeman
Jeremy: read the headline again. I specifically mentioned Facebook. And, anyway, we're all here on FriendFeed. How did THAT happen?
- Robert Scoble
well i came here because i wanted to see what you were up to and since you don't blog anymore... ;)
- Jeremy Toeman
Jeremy: heh, why blog when I can have engagement with you here?
- Robert Scoble
RT as it feels like more of a commitment to the content rather than a passive vote
- Daniel W. Rasmus
because you need to keep up your overall internet presence. doing it here is not in your best interests. IMHO that is. :)
- Jeremy Toeman
On a side note: currently Google Reader "likes" are worthless as you can´t even subscribe to someone else´s like-stream. It´s even hard to find a way to see your own like-stream in Google Reader (although there /are/ at least 4 ways...)
- peter huesken
Yeah, duh, likes aren't viral!
- James Watters
Re-Tweets have this very natural word-of-mouth feel, but I'm concerned that you loose metadata by doing it the way twitter does. Instead of taking the firehose data to re-assemble this metadata after the fact, shouldn't the platform build the metadata as part of the process? I'm not saying that the word-of-mouth feel should go away by any means, but how accurate are the re-tweet counts that I have been seeing on sites recently?
- Ryan Massie
James: They're more viral on FriendFeed due to the friend-of-a-friend views than they are on Facebook. But you're right, it's nothing like twitter.
- Ryan Massie
Also Re-Tweeting has another problem: How do you retweet a tweet of more than 133 chars without paraphrasing at least part of it?
- peter huesken
FriendFeed Likes are much more elegant than a retweet - the Grey Poupon of SM. :)
- Nick in Manila
Why does one have to be "better" than the other? They are two different apps for sharing thoughts about content. The RT works well on Twitter, you just RT anything you like (and feel other might find interesting). When you like someone's content on FB, you give it a vote and everyone who is a friend can see it. If you want to add a comment you comment. If you want to share it, you use the share function. Now you can share tweets RTs on Facebook anyway, I'm not sure why it even matters which is better.
- nicky jameson
A retweet takes more time to do and shows more interest.
- Randy Allen Bishop
This is wrong. A retweet is copying someone's work and trying to drive traffic towards yourself using it. A like and/or a comment is much better as you are acknowledging the work of the author. Retweeting is parasitic. Liking is symbiotic.
- Alex Scoble
Alex: that's interesting. As a content owner I'd rather you retweet, though. Why? Gets my ideas greater distribution.
- Robert Scoble
What Randy said. A "like" means different things to different people. To me it might mean, "the title of this sounds good, the topic interests me, but I don't have time to read it." I would "Like" something like that, but I would *never* retweet something without visiting the link first and at least scanning it, preferably reading the whole thing. Also, Alex, I don't think a retweet is an attempt to drive traffic towards yourself. How do you figure?
- Laura Norvig
Because when people see the retweet they are seeing what you wrote. It's the same as if I copied a blog post from Robert and put it on my blog with attribution to him. I'm doing this to get people to read my blog, I'm not doing it to help him. If I really wanted to help him, I would link to his blog post and write something about why I agree or disagree with that. A retweet is parasitic...
more...
- Alex Scoble
Alex: first of all, nothing you write in 140 characters is going to have much value, and certainly won't be enough value to charge for it. Second of all, if you RT: properly you also link to the source person or URL. Third of all, it's nothing even close to copying an entire blog post, but that really is sweet that you think Tweeting is blogging. They both have the same attributes, I...
more...
- Robert Scoble
RT's on Twitter are more manual and take a little more engagement then Like unless you are using SW to manage your tweets - RT duplicates...
- Robert Freeze
Alex, your logic is twisted, no? RT is intended to share with your followers something someone else said or found, who they might not already be following. If traffic is driving anywhere it's to them; those reading your RT are already following you. Your point also assumes everyone's playing the numbers game.
- Jim Barry
@Scobleizer It looks like you RT % is 1.85, of total tweets. Data from: http://tweetstats.com/graphs...
- David Damore
First off, I don't write in 140 characters, because I do all my posting from friendfeed. 140 character limit is whack, but that's another argument. Second, nothing about Twitter really builds participation. It's all about islands versus on friendfeed, which is why reposting (I hate the "tweet" non-word) is even necessary. The fact that it's necessary is a symptom of the problems of the...
more...
- Alex Scoble
They serve different purposes. FB/FF like is just a quick shared bookmark. Twitter has a Favorite option that's similar, but it's geared toward recall more so than sharing/recommending. Retweet is not even a built-in Twitter feature, but many Twitter apps have the feature and people use it to share/recommend other people's tweets.
- Lawrence Liu
from twhirl
Alex: if you visit my blog you'll notice that my like feed isn't showing up in the FriendFeed widget there, while my retweets are. That's a huge problem and one I don't know how to solve.
- Robert Scoble
How about the share option in FF, then change the FWD: to RT?
- Lee
I will like things here when I don't want to comment, but I hadn't thought of it as a proxy for RT. Now you have me thinking about forwarding my likes here twitter.
- dthree
You could combine the feeds using Yahoo Pipes. It's a bit messy, but here's my combined posts, comments, and likes: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes...
- Ryan Massie
Isn't this just like a Scobelizer chat room?
- Peter Mullen
I think I'm going to take the core of your question Robert and post it to my Facebook non-social media friends and see if they can even parse the question. I'd expect some funny "uh...what?" responses.
- Elliott Ng
the like SHOULD be much better. this is a voting system. FF needs to help you filter content this way however. retweets just confuse things even more and create even more noise. FF should have default searches that are all your friends with 2+ likes...this is your personal best of the day. if FF does not make use of these advantages, then it will continue to muddle about.
- lew
Here's why Robert and I disagree. He sees these spaces as primarily a marketing tool for building a brand and getting his media out to eyeballs. Reposts work great for that because it's like a ball thrown in to a room of mousetraps. I mostly want to have conversations and am here for fun. Reposts suck for that because they fragment conversations. I don't like that...AT all. :) That's why both services can coexist.
- Alex Scoble
++ Alex... services like this don't succeed because they are good marketing platforms, they succeed because regular people like to use them.
- LogEx
as soon as we have threaded conversations on twitter, i suspect you will hate conversation being distributed on duplicates (retweets). My vote is for likes on ff.
- Sajida H Khan
when i like something it gets tweeted... so it's like a retweet for friendfeed content... it doesn't come back over here as my own, but that's okay with me
- Chris Heath
The ReTweet is -sometimes- better as it keeps track of the last RTers.
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
Once again, FriendFeed and Twitter are complementary: it's better when a FF 'like' is ReTweeted again and again. Facebook's like.. huh.. it's.. different (?)
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
Retweeting on twitter is equlivent to "share" on friendfeed. Retweet and like are uncomparable, in the same way that twitter's favorite and ff's like are uncomparable.
- Andy Bakun
from Android
the spammers are here - how do we report the guy above?
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Taken care of - boom! Like That!
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Robert, I think you're completely wrong. FriendFeed ranking is poo. A retweet is mostly poo --- depends on the context of your Twitter experience, and your POV. Is your POV "Is it better to BE retweeted? Or liked as a status update on FaceBook" ? or "Is it better to retweet someone ELSE'S Tweet or to Like someone else's FaceBook update?" I'd argue in both cases, the retweet sucks....
more...
- Gib
Gib: where do you get the poo from? Sigh.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: OMG! you're like the fasted gun in the west! By poo I mean, as a person without your scaling issues, if someone Retweets any random Tweet of mine, I'm like, "huh? THAT'S what you want to repeat to your following?" For mortals, viral stuff isn't everyday occurrence. On the other hand, as a mortal, on FaceBook, when a few people like a photo or update or comment, my other friends...
more...
- Gib
I agree with Andy that a Twitter retweet is more like a FF share than a like. "Retweet", in my opinion, is simply Twitter-speak for "share".
- Dennis Jernberg
On the moment itself an RT is better, but a 'like' has a longer life, since it can be used in FF search queries.
- nooble
RT was a community generated method, and can easily be done in friendfeed or facebook
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I think we can expect Google Reader and Facebook, among others, to emulate FriendFeed's useful "Like" system in more ways, including likes in feeds, as a search filter, etc. SOON.
- Ryan Sholin
+Alex. I agree much more with his sentiments than Robert's; likes are a much better way of showing appreciation for a post. 1. I don't care about building my brand. 2. Why wouldn't likes propagate just as well as RTs? They both show up in my FF stream. 3. See 1. Don't worry, Robert will come around eventually, just like he did with following people on Twitter.
- Niklas Morberg
I guess I'm against the grain on the RT versus Like feature. I don't hate RT but I think they can become Spam noise in some ways. If you follow several people who follow the same people, you get an endless flow of the same tweet for a while with no extra value. Whereas a "Like" (in FriendFeed) bumps the conversation back into many peoples focus. In both FF and FB, the "like" also tags it to your attention when future comments are made.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
If you use Feedly in Conjunction with Retweets and Tweets you can kind of follow your Karma and get feedback on how they are dynamic and changing
- Robert Higgins
RTs are better so I can continue to play with extracting valuable trends from them on my little experiment http://www.retweetradar.com!
- Ben Hedrington
We all know Twitter is the front-end & FriendFeed is the back-end ;) Hype builds quicker on Twitter, FriendFeed hosts the discussion.
- CannonGod
You can add ur own opinion on a RT if space permits. with ff its commenting and liking which are 2 different things. U can comment and not 'like' the post.
- Freddie Benjamin
Very good point Freddie but that usually gives you no room when you include the "RT @username" or the new person alters the original tweet (I hate this). RT is to Like as @ reply is to commenting. Both serve close to the same purpose but work very different. FF's direction keeps everything tighter coupled while Twitter is very loosely coupled in the approach.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
This one is worth a retweet in itself: That said, I love likes. You can check my likes out at http://www.friendfeed.com/scoblei... -- that's something that's hard to do with a retweet. I've done 21,000 likes so far. I don't know of a way to count how many retweets I've done. - Robert Scoble
- Riaz Kanani
Facebook is closed, essentially, as I will always only ever see a "like" from either someone who is already my friend or a friend of a friend. Twitter is open, in that when someone I'm following retweets (from either someone they're following --- a 1st gen RT --- or a 2nd/3rd gen RT of someone they're following is also following or exposed to...whew!...) well, then I am exposed to a...
more...
- Thom Kennon
I just paid @jesse's SocialToo for the great unfollowing. Good bye 106,089 people. And bots. And spammers. And SEO and social media experts.
Mike Elliott, Bronson Harrington, Greg Birch and 38 other people liked this
Hopefully you can find some value in twitter now!
- Johnny
I unfollowed 500+ the other week and can actually keep up now
- Johnny
I tried to follow anyone that was following me with similar interests and finally got way out of hand. I'm following roughly 300 with 800 followers and I get a lot more value out of twitter now
- Johnny
will there be no difference now between @notsecretscoble and this ID?
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Not sure, but i keep refreshing his twitter ID and its slowly dropping. weird.
- Johnny
I'm pretty sure you auto-followed me way back in the day (as in over a year ago) - so I'm likely purged tonight.
- Patrick Jordan
Nicely played....
- Clifford Kennedy
Do you expect the spammers/SEOs to stop following you because you unfollowed them?
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Aaman: yes. Most of them are following just to get the follow back.
- Robert Scoble
I'm surprised it took you this long to drop the massive follows. I've found myself constantly trimming. Of course, I'm in a smaller pond than you are.
- Derek Shanahan
Derek: I was busy with FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
How are you determining who to keep following and who not to keep following? What @jesse rules?
- Elliott Ng
Elliott: nope, I've already picked who I'm going to follow over at http://www.twitter.com/notsecr... -- I'm already up to more than 1,000 there.
- Robert Scoble
The great shower begins! It's the right move. I've been thinking for weeks of doing the same, but I've just been weeding out one at a time bc I'm afraid I'll forget some of the people I've had good engagement with, but I may be just too tempted by the "shower"
- Stephen Pickering
In my book picking who you are going to follow and ignoring everyone else is the definition of a snob.
- RetiredTeacherD
What about friendfeed? You have 25k + subscriptions here, 28K+ subscribers here. Is it only followers who are bad SEO, spammers, and hated marketing experts?
- RetiredTeacherD
Now that I'm returning to work full time, it will be much harder to follow all of the people (I know, I know, a measly 500 or so) that I am right now. Perhaps I should do the same, or at least go through and selectively unfollow people (a little easier with the numbers I have) that I'm not connected with personally or who aren't really providing much in my twitter stream. I probably should do similar in FF. Cut down on the noise.
- Travis B. Hartwell
http://sherflock.com is a great twitter flock management tool Squeejee is developing. Very beta right now with some bugs but you can see who doesn't follow you back, follow/unfollow and search for new people to follow.
- Bradley Joyce
I believe I had more fun and got more information following 500 then I do following 1500, I can't imagine any value in following 60,000 other than a sales list
- Kim Landwehr
from BuddyFeed
I confess this is a powerful Forrest Gump moment for me. Remember that scene in Forrest Gump when he stops running and tells everyone to go home? I bought into the egalitarian, populist notion that Robert had that the more people you follow, the smarter you got, and I autofollowed and autofollowed and autofollowed until I canna take it ena-more Captn! Now Forrest is telling us to all go home and get a life. :)
- Elliott Ng
So I gotta figure out how to unfollow 5k follows and follow back the 1-2k that I want to follow. So how the heck do I do that without spending all day on it? (a) start with everyone on my TweetDeck list (b) scroll through my own tweets to see who I @ tweeted, (c).....???? Argggh!
- Elliott Ng
Hey now, not all SEO experts are digital-carpetbaggers.
- AJ Kohn
AJ: yes, but calling them that gets them to call you names, which increases your Google rank! :-)
- Robert Scoble
@Robert: touche. :)
- AJ Kohn
It used to be that the more people you followed, the less likely you were to see link spammers, bots, advertisers, etc. That changed, for me at least, sometime in April.
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
I noticed it was goodbye to me too. I think you'll revisit your thoughts on this.
- Ken Camp
Am I un-followed? >:(
- Sheryl
Sheryl: first I am unfollowing everyone, then after I hit zero I will follow those who are already being followed by http://www.twitter.com/notsecr...
- Robert Scoble
I was soooooooo confused! :) That's IS what I thought I read before. We've been packing, unpacking, staying cool as best we can in the HEAT, and somehow I misunderstood. Thanks, Robert :)
- Sheryl
Robert ,you can recommend Twitter to use the new Argentinian start up http://www.keepcon.com/eng... they have a platform with automatic moderation mechanisms ,great ppl and great tool
- Johni Fisher
Robert - There are actually some 'real' SEO experts. Lots of them (and SEO works). Unfortunately the amount of 'not-so-experts' on Twitter (and outright scammers) has not only forced me to do the same thing, but I have pulled back substantially from SEO (for income) because it isn't worth my time competing with these rookies ... and I'm not the only one. Let the buyer beware.
- Charlie Anzman
Robert - I am seriously thinking of doing the same thing! Thank you for the inspiration. Now how do I go thru and sort out all the followers I wanna keep...hmm. I will start with my FriendFeed lists (sorta matches my tweetdeck lists)... this is gonna be time consuming! augh
- Susan Beebe
I'm looking forward to hearing how this goes. I'm rethinking my follow strategy and to see this might just push me over the edge to take action
- Jim Goldstein
When people unfollow you because you unfollowed them, they are not being petty or are just after "the follow". When you unfollow a person, you're saying, "I'm no longer interested in reading your Tweets." Why should they continue to follow someone who isn't interested in their opinions? Then it is just one-way broadcasting, like celebrities who follow 83 people and have half a million...
more...
- Liz
Liz: Robert can certainly see any @ comments I make in response to him - it doesn't kill conversation at all. By trimming down, one can actually see all of the public tweets that people you're actually interested in make. I follow people I'm interested in, period - I don't care whether they're interested in me. I often connect with new people because they say something @ me even though I'm not following them. It's a LOT better than just following people by the 1000s.
- Trent Hamm
Is it so strange to imagine that between two people one might find value in following the other, but that the feeling might not be mutual? I might be interested in following scoble, but I can understand why he might no be interested in following me. That seems entirely reasonable.
- G Dan Mitchell
Dan: I not only agree with you, but I think the vast majority of relationships are that way. I'm interested in reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, but does that mean he should be interested in reading mine? I'm interested in Person X's observations, but that doesn't mean he/she should be interested in mine.
- Trent Hamm
"It's a LOT better than just following people by the 1000s"...I assume by this, @Trent, that you have both had large & small followings in order to compare the two. @GDan, I'm not saying that every relationship has to be reciprocal. I follow a lot of people who don't follow me back and some people follow me whom I've chosen not to follow. I was just trying to explain why someone might...
more...
- Liz
I hate to say I told you so, but... actually I don't hate it. Robert, I told you so! :)
- Ian Betteridge
SocialToo looks pretty awesome
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
Thanks Steve! Lots more features coming - follow our blog at http://blog.socialtoo.com for updates.
- Jesse Stay
Re: The Conference is alive and well! - http://connect.phocuswright.com/2009...
"Congrats on your success with this registration drive, Bruce. PhoCusWright is definitely a must-attend event. I'm looking forward to contributing to the event's success."
- Elliott Ng
Other ways to read this feed:
