Sign in or Create an account
friends
rooms
me
everyone
Erick Schonfeld: Comments

Services

Facebook Blog delicious Digg Flickr Google Reader Twitter

Discussion

none this week, 73 all time
none this week, 2 all time

Subscriptions

Bret Taylor
Chris Brogan
Chris Messina
Dave Winer
Fred Wilson
Jason Calacanis
Loic Le Meur
michael arrington
Paul Buchheit
Robert Scoble
Scott Beale
Steve Rubel
Erick Schonfeld's Comments - View full feed
Twitter
MG Siegler posted a message on Twitter
delicious
Erick Schonfeld bookmarked a page on delicious
Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: The Top Five Reasons Not to Upgrade to the New iPhone 3G
August 7 at 8:05 am - Link
3g sucks, the battery sucks, the data plan sucks, SMS costs extra, WiFi is everywhere anyway. 'nuff said. - Erick Schonfeld
delicious
Erick Schonfeld bookmarked a page on delicious
Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: The Top Five Reasons Not to Upgrade to the New iPhone 3G
August 7 at 8:05 am - Link
3g sucks, the battery sucks, the data plan sucks, SMS costs extra, WiFi is everywhere anyway. 'nuff said. - Erick Schonfeld
FriendFeed
Paul Buchheit posted a message
“Maybe Cuil isn't supposed to be good. They must know that the results are bad, but they launched anyway. Maybe they aren't trying to build a full search engine, but just want to demo their crawling+indexing technology with the expectation that someone will buy the company and plug in better ranking.”
July 28 at 11:20 pm - Link
Where "someone" = MSFT, who has already shown that they are willing to pay a lot for non-functional search engines. - Paul Buchheit
That is what I was thinking, too. - Robert Scoble
Show 34 more comments
You'd think they'd work toward getting something relevant if you search on "cuil launch" - Michael Markman
It's the only thing that makes sense when you look at how bad the results are. You don't roll out something like unless you are just showing off the interface. - Kevin Bondelli
Would also explain the weak branding. Who cares, if it's just going to get plugged into something else? - Chris Baskind
Not very good results at the moment I will say - shinchi via twhirl
It must be so hard to launch something in a realm where there isn't much tolerance/patience for incremental improvement. The bar in this space is high and consumers are very picky. Look at Yahoo. Their search is actually pretty damn good. However, they keep losing share. - Sacca
agree with Sacca - also, I thought the people behind Cuil had already sold some search technology to Google and hence they wanted to try it out on their own this time - so if anything they'd have more intent than others not to flip. - Adam Kazwell
100% agree with Paul .... what they have launched really sucks and I don't think I would be going back again to search .... Sacca seems to be right that the bar is really high in this space and whatever gets launched really needs to work well or it will fail - Raza via Alert Thingy
It is also strange that Cuil has no presence on twitter or friendfeed. There is no friendfeed.com/cuil. There is a twitter.com/cuil account but no twitters there. It would be interesting to hear from someone at Cuil on the FriendFeed/Twitter as to why they launched with the poor results... - Atul Arora
Yahoo's crawl speed is not close to GOOG. - Michael
It's something, and a reasonable first step. Yes, the results aren't that great but they seem reasonably comprehensive. Their make-or-break will be showing continuous visible progress - if they don't, sure, they're just a $XXXm dog and pony show for another company too scared of Google to see straight, but if they do improve, there may be potential for even more upside than that. - David Weekly
Google Killer? I do not even need to look to know the answer - Mike Reynolds
maybe there could be business in opening up their index? - Alex Gawley
I'm not saying that the results are good, but people seem overly critical. I saw one piece on how their name is too hard to spell. But if they did become popular, this would not remain a problem. - Clare Dibble
It's embarrassing IMO. The results are thin and the images completely wrong. Not good is one thing ... Cuil seems a cut below not good right now. - AJ Kohn
There results aren't -bad- but they are in no way great. Worse yet, anytime you start throwing around X-killer, you are pretty much setting yourself up for destruction. - Steve Spalding
can a startup beat google with a link-based algorithmic search engine? msft's cashback.com is an example of changing the game. trovix.com's deep semantic indexing is changing the game. same for thefind.com. mahalo human-powered engine is too. Who else? - Tim Connors
Paul, maybe they launched because they believed gathering data and feedback from the public would help them improve their ranking and other aspects of their service? I don't think that their ranking is anywhere near as good as Google's right now. But, there's no a priori reason to believe that Cuil ranking won't improve quickly. Anna, Russell, et.al. are actually pretty sharp. I for one am excited to see another player in search with new ideas about infrastructure and user experience. - Kevin Scott
They of all people should have known to release with fast results (latency).. The fact that they did not surprises me, and had the exact effect I would expect.. I have no plans on going back, good results or not.. :) - Derek Collison
Does "launch early" work for search engines? Don't think so.. - Jing Lim
One of the nice things about Google is the speed they index. Consider the indexing of a blog post made yesterday: Google already picked up the post and Cuil has not. http://www.cuil.com/search?q=C... VERSUS http://www.google.com/search?h... Google shows 367 results and that is trouble for Cuil. They'll need to work on that quickly to convince people they are being serious. - LPH
it's about as useful as Archie(Gopher ref) - clarke thomas
considering I got server overloaded errors when I tried it at first, I'd have to say launching early was a big error in judgement. - sean808080
The indexing speed of Google and other search engines is pretty good, but another area that needs fixing is when content moves. It takes a long time for Google to catch up. Example: Let's say you move your blog or an early well-praised site goes stale, many search engines have trouble adjusting their rankings to the new site or to push down the older one. - Loren Heiny
Trouble is that indexing and ranking are closely linked. If all you return is a hitlist there's no good ranking that can be done. Can't yet tell whether they're in that situation. What I don't get is why the rush to launch now. - Daniel Dulitz
I read similar thoughts on Reddit yesterday and they made some sense... is there any chance all the negative buzz right now is going to hurt their buyability though? - Philipp Lenssen
IMHO there have to be better ways to show off your very own crawling+indexing technologies than opening up to the public and getting thrashed for not delivering what people expect when you dub your service search engine. I have a hard time believing that the cuil/cuill guys did not know what they were doing though ... Were they pushed to release by financiers? Were they in dire need of usage data? - Mustafa K. Isik
I do think they built Cuil to be bought. The reason they launched is they hoped their valuation will go up with all the press blitz... Which seems pretty well planned.... I think they went overboard selling themselves to the press and did not expect some of the back-lash. Of course, the saying goes - "All press is good press :)". So who knows this might indeed increase their valuation to 100s of millions :). It all depends on what the folks over at MSFT think/know about search :)) - Bindu Reddy
someone cough microsoft cough - Sarah Perez
M$ bait! ah ha!! Bindu and Sarah, you're on to something there!! - Susan Beebe
I liked this thread so much that I blogged it: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008... - Erick Schonfeld
As of yesterday, they didn't even have their own name indexed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/b... - Brady Brim-DeForest
actually, they are off to a decent start. They have a nice interface that needs work, and some results are good and many others bad. I can tell you it takes about a year to getting your feet under you and figure out where you can fit in the search ecosystem. They are funded for a three year run it seems, so I would give them a year and see where the product is at. - Jason Calacanis
grabbing contextual images process is too weird! (o_O) - Pınar Yanardağ
great discussion. the more I've read about the various GRAVE screw-ups (with porn images being linked to some people's bios, etc.), the more I tend to agree that they must have known that things weren't ready. It just feels too much like a prototype... Thus the buy-out scenario seems plausible. Who knows, buying their indexing technology could actually give a boost to MSFT or even Yahoo, given that they have a hard time keeping up on the tech/scale side of search. One thing we do know is that Google... - Alex Schleber
... isn't going to buy them :) I wrote a post on the branding aspect of the Cuil debacle earlier today -> http://businessmindhacks.com/p... but now I'm not so sure anymore if they were even serious about the whole thing. Maybe they're having a hearty laugh right now that no one is getting the joke. If they are serious though, it's a horrible launch and horrible branding. - Alex Schleber
Is it possible that they might be taking advantage of the disconnect between mainstream and social media? Cuil has made it in the news but to what extent has the negativity made it to the mainstream? If people get their news outside of the social media circle (which, as we are all quickly discovering, is a vast majority) and only hear that "Google killer Cuil has launched today" but don't dig deep enough to discover its faults, won't Cuil get some real attention? Maybe, but the funny part is that most of those people will be using Google to find it :) - Derick Valadao
I think it is tough doing a PR launch. I think the obsession with dropping a nuke over the PR is an helpful one. Mightily prefer to build it up over weeks and months of relationship building but most importantly great execution and a great product. - azeem
Twitter
Robert Scoble posted a message on Twitter
Twitter
Duncan Riley posted a message on Twitter
Seesmic
Duncan Riley posted a video on Seesmic
Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong
Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong
June 19 at 11:57 pm - Link
See my comment to the Inquistr post above, "Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong," to see why I am right. - Erick Schonfeld
Blog
Duncan Riley posted an entry on The Inquisitr
Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong
June 20 at 12:03 am - Link
Interesting experiment Duncan - Svetlana Gladkova
You are actually proving me right. Because not only do I have to comment on your blog, but also here on FriendFeed under each of the entries for this same post (RSS feed, Seesmic post, Twitter feed). It is pain in the ass. i should only have to respond once and the comments should be distributed everywhere. - Erick Schonfeld
Twitter
Erick Schonfeld posted a message on Twitter
Blog
michael arrington posted an entry on TechCrunch
It’s Firefox 3 “World Record” Download Day, But I’m Still Waiting
June 17 at 9:46 am - Link
I have been reloading the various pages but no luck, going to be a poor record attempt this way. - Gerard van Schip
According to the timeline - I can start downloading in 3 minutes...! - Jason Kintzler
Show 32 more comments
Starts at 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern. Which is NOW! - Shey
Firefox3 page is a bit slow right now. Maybe I'll go and download IE instead ;) - Benedikt Koehler
Full URL fail, spreadfirefox, getfirefox, and mozilla are all unavailable lol - tsudohnimh via twhirl
So Mozilla shows us they are popular.... and that they can't manage a launch event. - Gerard van Schip
It's like waiting in line at Starbucks people...you're waiting for a reason - Jason Kintzler
Would be fun if Mozilla publishes network and server stats after this event, should be fun to watch. - Gerard van Schip
I can't get at any of the download pages I know. mozilla.com, getfirefox.com both highly unresponsive. - Voyagerfan5761
@Gerard van Schip: that's what I was thinking. Maybe two world records at once? - Jake (aka Jawee) via twhirl
People need to realise that the record attempt is for a 24 hour period. Whether they launch at midnight, noon, or any other time of the day, it would make no difference! - Tony Ruscoe via fftogo
I had a feeling this was going to happen... surely they would've planned for this, right? - Johan Lieu
I suppose I'll wait a few hours until the initial rush is over...right now it's pointless to refresh - Bwana McCall
That's what happens when 5 million people try to download something at once. - Erick Schonfeld
@Tony Ruscoe: The point is is that it would be awesome to be one of the first. - Jake (aka Jawee) via twhirl
Tony, that's why it should've started in the middle of the night for what's presumably the largest install base (the United States). The people who are going to download it right away would've stayed up to download it, and they wouldn't be attempting to download it at the same time as all the other people who wouldn't have stayed up. If I had to guess, this was a move to say "in addition to breaking/even though we didn't break the 24 hour download record, look how many people downloaded it in the 1st hour!" - Mark Trapp
The connection was reset, great, so much for trying to download FF3 - Bob Ngu via twhirl
@Jake: My comment was in reference to the original blog post, which said Mozilla should've given themselves some running room by starting at the beginning of the day in order to hit the 5 million target for the record... - Tony Ruscoe via fftogo
You think they would have figuered on getting hammered....awesome job! ;) - John Crosby via twhirl
I would love to participate in the world record, but all the Firefox download pages are down. : ( - Jess Lee
Direct download links http://friendfeed.com/e/1392bd... - Bwana McCall
Managed to snag it from the FTP site, but not sure that counts towards the record. Will grab it again later when it's up properly. - Richard Bradshaw
http://download.mozilla.org/?p... - Richard Bradshaw
hard to set a record if we can't download it.. - Adriano Gonçalves
The rest of the direct download links, courtesy of Bwana McCall: http://friendfeed.com/e/1392bd... - Voyagerfan5761
re: Bwana URLs, don't do it, it download RC3, not the final version - Bob Ngu via twhirl
What's the MD5 of the final? With Fx2, the final RC was identical to the final. - Richard Bradshaw
I thought the latest version version before today was RC2? - Shey
There was a quick RC3 release to fix a couple problems on the Mac. - Mark Trapp
@Bob: I got "Firefox Setup 3.0.exe". Sounds like a final to me. - Voyagerfan5761
@Voyagerfan, I got that too, its only later on in the install process that it said RC3 - Bob Ngu
What's the MD5? I think it's c971bb2273d24d62dd15dcdbd6030ea3 for the final. - Richard Bradshaw
Still no FF3 for Mac download.... poor! - Gerard van Schip
way to stumble out of the gate with your major promotional effort, Mozilla...it's ok, I still love you. - Chieze Okoye
I just downloaded and installed FF3 on my mac! - femme bot via Alert Thingy
I just downloaded the Beta two days ago, so I bet I have the latest release candidate anyway. - Francine Hardaway
finally got it installed on my main work PC. Installing to laptop now. Will get it on desktop at home later. 8^D - Chieze Okoye
Blog
michael arrington posted an entry on TechCrunch
Damnit…FriendFeed Gets Even More Useful With An Interestingness Filter
June 6 at 12:19 am - Link
Come on in, Arrington...the water's fine! - Trent Olson
Trent: Arrington doesn't even use Firefox 3.0 (he admitted such tonight). Why do we want him here? - Robert Scoble
Show 19 more comments
Yes!..Mike will come along with time as FriendFeed becomes the place to be. Its called the resistance trap of the first impression - Joao
Robert: yeah, I saw the post about Arrington not using FF3...what the heck does he use, then? FF2 has become unusable...Safari? Not IE...that would shatter my faith in you A-Listers... - Trent Olson
Would be nice to get an RSS feed of these summaries. - atzmon
This is really cool feature.... FFmeme ? - Kevin
@Robert I like your response on Arrington's article about the lost database! - Joe Dawson
Kevin, according to Paul and Bret, it's based on your own subscription list, so it's personalized and a bit different than Techmeme. - Mark Trapp
@Kevin - I created a FFmeme "room" on day 1 of the "room" feature as I knew this day would finally come! ha, ha!! http://friendfeed.com/rooms/fr... - Susan Beebe
Arrington is getting technically *slow* !!! Doesn't seem quite as tech savvy as he once was? hmm why? and he's STILL not in FriendFeed actively? c'mon Mike, the water is fine! Hey do you remember the Borg on StarTrek? "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." ;-) - Susan Beebe
I love how the top 4 "best" stories on my Friendfeed are about this new FriendFeed feature. Echo chamber. - Erick Schonfeld
Erick -- I noticed the same thing :-) - mathew ingram
Dont necessarily believe the stuff about Michael. He would have said that to upset the Mozilla people. He recommended it to me, I've seen him using it, and he's even written publicly that he uses it...indeed it was FF3 that made him switch from Flock. - Duncan Riley
@Duncan - ok that makes way more sense... I always had the *perception* that Arrington was an early adopter, so hearing he was on FF 2 didn't make sense. Thx! - Susan Beebe
See "Search for best 100 articles from the last day (or 2 days, 3 days...)" http://friendfeed.com/e/b4029e... using "num=100". I'm finding the 100-item search much more interesting than the regular 30-item search. - Mitchell Tsai
Arrington is drinking the same koolaid as Scoble now, it's in the air, it's in the water, it's everywhere - Bob Ngu
Watch out. - Jason Kaneshiro
I do not want Arrington on FF. He is a Flaming Troll. - Igor The Troll
Great product positioning! The addiction of having to read FF would only get worse. - Winston Teo
Igor The Troll : hide him... oh wait, you can't - directeur
How can we hide Michael the Troll if we Trolling him? LOL - Igor The Troll
I see a motion picture in the making! "The Revenge of the Trolls" Starting Michael Arrington playing himself as a Flamming Troll. Will definitively win an Oscar! Ok, here is the plot. All the people who read his blog for years turn into Trolls and eat Michael Alive. LOL - Igor The Troll
I'm using Safari. and I love it. Where is the "Blame Arrington" script. Why does Scoble get all the love? I say we go medevil on all the Alist. Equal opportunity sodomy for all social pests. Twitter Killers. feed them to the dogs. - Noah David Simon
"Interestingness Filter"... Even if you put a total crap online Arrington their algorithm will still think that it's interesting. I know you won't even read what I'm writing (too "shy" to share with individuals of your kind?) but the fact is it doesn't filter on Interestingness, it does on popularity and this is VERY different. Hear me? Very different :) - directeur
Twitter
Erick Schonfeld posted a message on Twitter
Twitter
michael arrington posted a message on Twitter
Flickr
ouriel published photos on Flickr
tough time at my new office by the sea
netvibes new wizard
Twitter the RSS filter
April 22 at 7:21 am - Link
Show off. ...via twhirl - Erick Schonfeld
Blog
Paul Buchheit posted an entry on Paul Buchheit
Facebook knows who you are, and that's worth more than you think
April 17 at 2:17 am - Link
I agree with the potential, but I wonder how social network sites that hog the data could also exploit that without getting into trust issues. It would be more effective to exploit that knowledge outside of the network itself, especially when the user is going to make financial transactions (e.g. buying something on the web). - Alexander van Elsas
You made me rethink (momentarily) my assessment of ChaCha, an Indiana "human powered" search engine from the brain child that brought us voice mail Scott Jones. There are some smart people working on it and there is potential there, but this identity thing is important. I doubt stay at home moms making 5 cents a search will be better at finding things online than me. - Clare Dibble
Show 16 more comments
Facebook's biggest opportunity is . . . identity management? I don't think so. - Erick Schonfeld
Identity ownership ...via AlertThingy - Omar Ismail
"Ebay has had a relatively solid lock on the auction market due to network effects, but with billions of dollars in profits, a $42 billion market cap, and 10 years of not innovating, I'm willing to bet that won't last." -- So you're saying Facebook is the new ebaykiller? - j1m
I'm thinking about advertising. For example, when you search, getting served ads for relevant products that your friends use/have raved about in the past. I would be much more likely to click an ad for a product if I knew it was based on a friend's recommendation. - David Adam
Facebook's biggest opportunity is . . . making users mad, IMHO. It's made me mad more than once. - Voyagerfan5761
Someone is going to kill ebay. Google (because of it's massive distribution) and Facebook (identity info and significant distribution) are the most likely candidates. - Paul Buchheit
Interesting point. I recently deleted my Facebook account. I *might* sign up again if it were an absolute economic necessity, meaning, you have to have an account to buy something online. But they have an extremely long way to go before earning my trust back. - Jason Kaneshiro
Erick, I'm not sure what you mean by "identity management", but knowing who people are is very valuable. It's how every organization that really cares about security works. Think of FBI background checks, except instead of manually finding and talking to your family and friends, it's done automatically. - Paul Buchheit
I think Amazon is in the running too. I've heard more people are using the 'buy it now' feature on Ebay, which is more up Amazon's alley, although they don't currently have a very robust social networking component. - Chris White
Facebook will use micropayments, I'm pretty sure about that. Not only will that open up new opportunities for application developers, it will open up an enormous revenue stream for that. This isn't exactly "identity management", but it will work because Facebook's users are real people and it's a trusted environment because of that. People will trust their money into Facebook's handy. MySpace, for example, won't be able to do that. - sebmos
I guess that eBay will be "killed" by Amazon and Craigslist (and other similar platforms). Craigslist for auctions, Amazon for e-commerce. But eBay has its own Craigslist-clone running, Kijiji. So who knows. I doubt that Facebook will kill eBay, though. - sebmos
There are things that are valuable. There are things that are profitable. And the two are correlated. But there are (sadly) things that are valuable but won't bring profit, and thus will be underdeveloped, and there also are (sadly) things that are worthless but bring profit, and thus will lead to bogosity in the world. - Amit Patel
Great article! Too bad about the ominous sounding title though. I think it's nothing but positive that the distinction between online and offline behavior is blurring so much. (Obviously you do too Paul, but I still rue the title!) But I agree with Alexander's comment that a more publicly accessible model will help a lot too. How to let it live outside the network, but remain protected from exploitation by cheaters? - Ed Zwart
I have a large and valuable social network. If an application can unlock the value there (not just to me, but to my employer as well, for instance), then I think Facebook can justify its huge valuation. - Piaw Na
Maybe I'm weird but I've never bought anything on Ebay. It seems to require me to put too much trust in random and unaccountable strangers. Now if Facebook were to make their Marketplace into the ultimate combination of Amazon's Used&New and Ebay but backed up with a decent attack resistant trust metric system then they'd be able to justify their valuation. - Adewale Oshineye
Decided to react to Paul's post and thought of 5 ways for Facebook to start justifying their $15 bln valuation: http://tinyurl.com/3szhdh It's interesting to see what other ideas float around about that. The are infinite possibilities, but it's a balancing act in my opinion. - Alexander van Elsas
The line about eBay not having innovated in the last 10 years was interesting to read. Perhaps you could elaborate on that a bit. I don't watch eBay closely and only mostly use it for "direct buy" stuff (I don't like the added info noise of having to track an auction, even though I understand that is exactly what's exciting to some about the service) so I don't know much about it. - Philipp Lenssen
@Adewale trying to overcome existing general problem of uncertainty in trade? trade people were trying to do that for ages :) - silpol
re: phillipp; My thoughts exactly! - that ebay line struck me as the single most important/intriguing sentence of what was a very cool post. Paul, any interest in writing further about the ebay dilemma?? Just how vulnerable are they and why?? Consumerism (linear) is obviously a major issue in america right now - and yet very few bloggers seem willing/able to work the topic into the discourse of the day (re: dots have yet to be connected). - Will DeLuca
delicious
Erick Schonfeld bookmarked a page on delicious
BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The press becomes the press-sphere
April 14 at 10:12 am - Link
The never-ending story - Erick Schonfeld
delicious
Erick Schonfeld bookmarked a page on delicious
BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The press becomes the press-sphere
April 14 at 10:12 am - Link
The never-ending story - Erick Schonfeld
delicious
Erick Schonfeld bookmarked a page on delicious
Early notes on GoogleApps (Scripting News)
April 8 at 12:20 pm - Link
"My bet on Microsoft in the late 90s just ran out of gas" - Erick Schonfeld
delicious
Erick Schonfeld bookmarked a page on delicious
Early notes on GoogleApps (Scripting News)
April 8 at 12:20 pm - Link
"My bet on Microsoft in the late 90s just ran out of gas" - Erick Schonfeld
Blog
Erick Schonfeld posted an entry on TechCrunch
At Launch, Mytopia Shows Social Networks How To Play Nicely Together
March 21 at 11:40 am - Link
This is acompany to keep an eye on. They launched cross-platform casual games that work on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and its ebsite on day one. Monday they are launching same games on iGoogle, Apple, Yahoo, and Vista widgets. You can play against people on any other network or widget. - Erick Schonfeld
Once more apps start doing this, does the power of the social networks become diminished? - Erick Schonfeld
Google Reader
Louis Gray shared an item on Google Reader
FriendFeed = More Hyped Yawn
March 15 at 8:40 am - Link
Wow... I can't believe he just blew up like that. It doesn't look like you were attacking him at all and all of a sudden he just comes after you. - Brandon Titus
It's not too big a deal. He can have "last word" here. He blew up on Twitter as well. http://twitter.com/duncanriley - Louis Gray
Show 22 more comments
One of the best bits of advice I ever read was 'Imagine your mother is reading your blog'. Does Riley always swear so much ? I think the article is way over the top. - Andy C
New catchphrases for the week: "awesomesauce" and "tits on a bull" - Jason Kaneshiro
The most amusing part is being mentioned as if I positioned as an A-Lister. Anybody who has talked to me or traded e-mails knows I know my place. But... seriously... I'm not engaging here. - Louis Gray
LOL. Someone needs a hug. If that's what he calls someone "coming after him", I'd hate to see someone really give him some nasty criticism. I hope he lightens up and realizes his overreaction. - Bwana McCall
Calling you Louise as an insult was a throwback to Jim Rome-Jim Everett. What year is it again? Resorting to LCD insults, nice. Remember this guy called Doris Lessing's comments "the ditherings of an ignorant old woman". - Jake Kuramoto
Holy cow. Talk about temper tantrum. Personally, I'd say *his* article is about as "useful as tits on a bull" - Michelle W
lol: "That’s right, I forgot, I’m a complete retard." Ironically, I think his post has just welcomed you permanently to the A-list. - j1m
Also there are amusing comments, like "Grow up, you immature, ill tempered idiot. You sound like an 5 year old stamping his feet, throwing a tantrum who has just discovered swearing." - j1m
Not the kind of insight you'll expect from a person who claim to blog for a "bloody long time". - Carlo Maglinao
Well, it still generates press for FriendFeed. :) - Chris White
So do you think Duncan will log into FriendFeed and read this comment thread :| - Jason Kaneshiro
Louis, just wondering, are you doing PR for Friendfeed? - Erick Schonfeld
heh I don't agree with you there Louis... the techcrunch I've read is wrong most of the time, specially this Duncan fellow. - Mario Romero
If he's not doing PR, he should be. I dismissed FriendFeed just as fast as Duncan until I read his blog post about it. - Bwana McCall
@Erick, no. My LinkedIn profile is here: http://www.linkedin.com/profil..., but I firewall work and the blog, so they should be out of it. (please) - Louis Gray
He responded to my comment on his blog: "his whole tone was Duncan is an idiot and it does these things and its wonderful because I say so. If you can see that you're either up his arse so far the sun isn't shining, or you need some remedial reading lessons." I think he means "can't" in that second sentence. - Brandon Titus
"Grow up, you immature, ill tempered idiot. You sound like an 5 year old stamping his feet, throwing a tantrum who has just discovered swearing." That was me. It got under Riley's skin so much he chose to delete it, which is very satisfying. Plus I got a very amusing email with more profanity. - Andy C
I wish Duncan would make all his TechCrunch posts this colorful. - Jess Lee
@Jess, sure... just keep me out of it! :-) - Louis Gray
It's an odd discussion. One party is saying others who don't like Friendfeed should like it. The other party replies that those who do like Friendfeed shouldn't. Why not just let those who like it use it and let those who don't like it, well, not use it. E.g. I never used Twitter or a (traditional) feed reader and even when others love it, if it's not for me why should anyone worry. Might be better to just leave friendly tips on how to improve browsing but not try evangelize about the right or wrong things to do. I suppose this whole debate is partly caused by the fact Friendfeed is a bit like a rorschach ink test... you can project anything into it based on your suscriptions, which complicates reviews as there's not "one" Friendfeed. - Philipp Lenssen
Wow, is there nothing Duncan likes, or do I just keep seeing is negative posts? :( - Paula Hawk
I agree with one of his points though: conversation at the source isn't enhanced by friendfeed. Certainly it's a different use case, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a part of the aggregator. By using APIs, SocialThing is actually able to push comments/replies/likes back to the sources. Then you can have both conversations with friends and with the public. What's yet to be seen though is a service which merges both conversations in a meaningful way. - taj
Sorry to "get off topic," as it were, but this discussion has revealed a drawback in FriendFeed. When Louis shared this item, a ton of discussion took place, yet (last I checked) there was hardly any discussion at the FriendFeed link to the post in Duncan Riley's own feed. http://friendfeed.com/e/8fe997... Louis had to go to that entry and manually link to this entry, since FriendFeed didn't automatically relate the two. - Ontario Emperor
@Ontario_Emperor I don't know if that's a drawback, I don't think FriendFeed would have any problem associating the posts, this is just the way the comment communities work on FriendFeed (I think it's pretty cool). We're discussing with Louis his shared item, which happens to be Duncan's post which also has its own comment thread for his friend circle. - Mario Romero
With FriendFeed's introduction of search capability, this issue is effectively solved. Try a search for the words more hyped yawn. - Ontario Emperor
Blog
Erick Schonfeld posted an entry on TechCrunch
An Alexaholic Moment: Visual Search Engine ManagedQ Gets Snapped
March 14 at 9:40 am - Link
Wonder what people on friendfeed think about this. Snap blocks a search site that is snarfing its Website images in violation of its TOS. Too harsh or totally justified? - Erick Schonfeld
FriendFeed
Bret Taylor posted a message
“Help FriendFeed convert the skeptics! Vote "Yes, FriendFeed's a great service" here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008...”
March 14 at 4:21 am - Link
Wow, have to say I'm surprised at all the negativity....how could someone *not* like friendfeed? - Benjamin Golub
Don't sweat Duncan Riley. He's like Mikey from the old life cereal commercial. He hates everything. In any case, I don't utilize services just cause the cool kids are there. I utilize them because they are useful. And FriendFeed is a useful tool for keeping track of 'people' as opposed to just subscribing to a blog. More at http://blog.awakenedvoice.com/.... - Rob Safuto
Show 22 more comments
"As the chart I pulled from FriendFeed demonstrates, nearly half of all entries from my friends come from Twitter." Truth be told if half the entries I'd see here were from Twitter I wouldn't like Friendfeed either. So I guess it depends on your subscriptions (though of course it will be improved once the global-mutings-of-a-type-of-feed are implemented on the user settings page). - Philipp Lenssen
I like FriendFeed for the fact that it is introducing me to more people with the "friend of" feature. It's extending the conversation to a wider group of people. - Steven Melfi
I voted Yes, Friendfeed wins hands down on coverage of services, UI, and performance and most of all the private commenting community is rich, you are really on to something here, all the inane YouTube style comments are gone from here because you actually know the people or have few degrees of separation - this is a great product - Aneto
Duncan Riley signed up for one day. It takes more than a few minutes to get FriendFeed. But he's TC's resident grump. - Louis Gray
Can we impose a rule that you can't review services like FriendFeed unless you've been using the service for at least a week? Duncan brings up a few decent points but it reminds me of all of those MSM journalists who reviewed Twitter based on a quick glance at the Twitter home page. - Mike Doeff
I have a truly marvelous point-by-point debunking of this post which this margin is too narrow to contain. - j1m
"Can we impose a rule that you can't review services like FriendFeed unless you've been using the service for at least a week?" I think that's hardly feasible for a blog with multiple posts per day... imagine the blogger having to use dozens of crappy services throughout the week (we know FF isn't crappy, but some other services may be)! Of course, even if you use something just for a day you should follow your instinct if you think the tool needs longer evaluation, and disclose that in the post. Otherwise, I think what's more feasible is to write a follow-up once you used a service longer, and/ or integrate comments into the post from people who used it for longer already. (Some blogs don't update their post with comment feedback though, which I think is unfortunate.) - Philipp Lenssen
PS: On the other hand, there may well be a blogging niche for someone only actually doing a couple of used-for-a-week reviews per week. It would not be a news blog but a review blog. Hmm. It's easier if you are a niche blog focusing only on one company, I guess, because then you can take the time to use the company's tool for much longer stretches of time. - Philipp Lenssen
Hopefully this helps. http://tinyurl.com/2nfuer (I threw a Trackback as well) - Louis Gray
Voted. It is indeed a great service. Concept, UI, speed makes it a perfect.. Check it at least 3 times a day. - Zoltan Szendro
Voted Yes. - Carlo Maglinao
The poll's a little disappointing. The choices equate to 'I haven't heard of FriendFeed' 'I like FriendFeed' and 'I might try FriendFeed' but the results are framed as 'FriendFeed is not good, good, or undecided'. Sigh. - Kevin Fox
Still, it's an honest comment. Taking the devil's advocate stance can force people to view their choices in a different light. However, putting the survey at the end of such a blatantly neg