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Erick Schonfeld › Comments
Fwd: This is my parents property on fire in Big Tujunga Canyon. - http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos... (via http://friendfeed.com/thomash...)
From Thomas Hawk, this is his parents house. His Dad saved it by hosing it down before evacuating. Amazing story.
- Erick Schonfeld
The other thing that I think that the friendfeed staff handled badly in this is that they gave the scoop to Michael "Twitter's Slave" Arrington. What a nice backhanded slap to all the people that evangelized the service and got you where you are today.
Kol Tregaskes, Criz, Ben Hanten and 23 other people liked this
Can't fully blame them, though. Arrington's got the clout. I mean, heck, if you're going to sell out to Facebook, you might as well go the full nine and sell out to TechCrunch, too.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I'm actually waiting to find out that Taco Bell and Mountain Dew have something to do with this.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I thought they had already started selling out to Arrington with the disabled comments feature.
- CAJ, somewhere else
Damn, I could really go for some tacos now.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Massive PR stunt though... ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
What did Arrington ever do for friendfeed in the past? Nothing. He ignored embargoes and completely dissed the service at every turn. By choosing him the friendfeed staff showed that they don't care about working with people that respect contracts and doing things right. Instead of going with the people that built the community, they chose a hack...nice.
- Alex Scoble
Yeah I know mate... maybe, just maybe the facebook people wanted that.. who knows?
- Rob Sellen :o)
Alex: do you know that it was the FriendFeed staff?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
You thinking that someone at Facebook leaked it to Arrington?
- Alex Scoble
from IM
That said I do wish I had gotten a call. But it was clear that Facebook's PR was in charge.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Arrington had it right: "At the end of the day, this wonderful company may tire of swimming upstream and go for an easy exit. I’m sure that a number of larger companies would love to snap up FriendFeed to get the technology, team and userbase. I mean, it’s not like Google is just going to sit there and watch this all play out without them. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am." http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Luca Sofri
That's what I was meaning too.... you know.. its the coverage they get over it... I think facebook would be pulling them strings considering it's them making the buy.
- Rob Sellen :o)
Alex: there are two companies involved. I don't know who leaked it to Arrington. I also was on my iPhone. I was lucky to have looked at Twitter as the story was breaking.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Alex, what makes you think that either company leaked the information to us? They didn't. It's called reporting. And if you knew how to read you'd see that it was one of our writers, Jason Kincaid, and not Michael who broke the story.
- Erick Schonfeld
Right, reporting...Reporting a story before it's been officially released requires a leak. And I'm sorry, but I don't read TechCrunch...for good reason.
- Alex Scoble
By the way, I was thinking more about Louis Gray when I wrote this than anyone else.
- Alex Scoble
Yeah, it would have been really cool if Louis had the scoop.
- Aviv
@paultoo please explain to your new Facebook overlords that email is supposed to be two-way http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Quang Tran, Marcel Weiß, Louis Gray and 5 other people liked this
Will do. Offhand, my guess is that they are afraid of spammy apps (I don't want to start getting mail from zombies or whatever apps my friends install).
- Paul Buchheit
Yeah, that's a good point, Paul. It would need a massive spam filter.
- Erick Schonfeld
Behind the scenes with @garyvee at one of the best wine stores in the world - http://www.facebook.com/note...
Justin Levy, Rick Turoczy, edythe and 3 other people liked this
the best video both of you ever did! wow! I've been following @garyvee for about a couple of years now, and I have a renewed appreciation for both of you guys! Truly awesome video. I'm pumped .. and am gonna #crushit :)
- Shivanand Velmurugan
Thanks! I love GaryVee and what he does and I think this came out.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I can't believe I'm watching this whole thing at 2:30 in the morning. But it got really good right around the halfway mark.
- Erick Schonfeld
Best quote by Gary Vaynerchuk about what would he do if he wasn't garyvee, "I would beat Gary VaynerChuk's face in."
- Erick Schonfeld
Calling my mob: #realtimecrunchup is next week @techcrunch - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Paul Buchheit, Holly Rae, FFer, Charlie Anzman and 5 other people liked this
The whole master plan is beginning to become visible. Well played TC ;)
- Frankie Warren
I sure wish this was televised! Would love to see it.
- jcunwired
Louis, I hope you are coming. Thi sis right up your alley. (I found this comment using FF's new realtime search btw :)
- Erick Schonfeld
You want me to go, Erick? Hm. Which panel am I on? :)
- Louis Gray
Would be good to meet you in person Louis :)
- Nick Halstead
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
Gil Francisco III, Nikhil Dandekar, Erik Erkelens and 14 other people liked this
""Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs. It has been discussed in literature since 1972 when the sentence was used by William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo."
- Christopher Sacca
from Bookmarklet
There is also this version with 21 mentions, also grammatically correct: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo, Buffalo: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo, buffalo."
- Brandon
If nothing else, it compresses well!
- Gabe
I lived in Buffalo as a child and I still don't understand that sentence.
- Erick Schonfeld
@erick which part? I am from Lockport and winters intermittently in Ellicottville.
- Christopher Sacca
can we talk about twitter? is it really down again?
Susan Beebe, Atul Arora and Rick Turoczy liked this
what's twitter
- Steve Gillmor
I don't know. Check google. Oh, wait.
- Erick Schonfeld
i like twitter
- Henry
i thought you only liked live search and bluetooth mice henry
- MG Siegler
i LIKE twitter... but i LOVE live and bluetooth mice
- Henry
twitter = ff marketing tip jar
- Steve Gillmor
OMG Eurovision. I'm thinking about finding the closest european bar
- Henry
Chrome: "The webpage at http://twitter.com/home might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address." Maybe it moved to Friendfeed.com?
- David Damore
likely david
- MG Siegler
Seems Twitter has returned to it's regularly scheduled program. Same location too ;)
- David Damore
everyone loves eurovision
- Robin Wauters
this would work better on the page if comments pushed this thread to the top
- MG Siegler
oh wait it does. but not when expanded i don't think. tricky
- MG Siegler
it's a western vs. eastern europe thing i think
- Henry
yes fail whale time again! Grrr
- Susan Beebe
no one likes eurovision
- Robin Wauters
here I was thinking it was my client being a PITA. good to know that it's just failwhales.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
lol - who takes Eurovision seriously? Even the BBC presenter (Terry Wogan) takes the piss out of it every year...
- Jamie
Yes, it's real! Was really DOWN !
- Giorgio Marandola
Why do I never see MG there? Has anyone ever really seen MG? Is he real, or a myth?
Susan Beebe and Bret Taylor liked this
i was there yesterday! check the tapes!
- MG Siegler
He's the one in the clown makeup
- Erick Schonfeld
i ran into shit on the segway
- MG Siegler
wow, this is like, real-time, dude.
- Robin Wauters
@erickschonfeld Thanks for support, but you edited out a key scene where the term "O Henry" becomes a meme in the bathhouses. This is key.
Tweet Feeds liked this
We are a family-friendly publication :)
- Erick Schonfeld
@jhstrauss Not better than this. http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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I didn't know you used to sing in a band. Is that the Bonfortes? :)
- Erick Schonfeld
Yes. We are currently on a little souled out [sic] stadium tour of in the South East US.
- Jeff Bonforte
I am at Cisco's building 3. Anyone want to meet for breakfast? Continuing my search for Internet fanatics!
mjc, Brian Daniel Eisenberg, Her Lindsay-ness and 3 other people liked this
It's lunchtime for me :)
- Tim McDougall
I am fanatical about the internet but i am not close to Silicon Valley:( What can i do?
- Tweet Feeds
Tweet Feeds: videoconference!
- Robert Scoble
right on! - skype or?
- michael sean wright
Or move.
- ld
Skype works but since I am at Cisco WebEx is more appropriate. Later though.
- Robert Scoble
how long are you there? i'm at your old workplace (winnov) nearby...and i'm hungry
- Rob Hyodo
Indeed a fanatic, from a different continent :-) Enjoy your breakfast
- Majento
Rob: I am free between now and noon. Could meet anywhere.
- Robert Scoble
Hah! Virtual lunch? You may be able to schedule a TelePresence conference!
- Jody Carbone
Is that the one in MIlpitas? I would be happy to treat you to lunch in that area if your game?
- Adam Helweh
Robert: A bit off topic on the immediacy angle but are you going to be going to Google I/O? A few of us "internet fanatics" who also happen to work for Best Buy will be there and would love to meet.
- Ben Hedrington
Jody: I could for sure! Of course not many people have access to a $300,000 telepresence system. They are cool to use, though.
- Robert Scoble
I spend most of my time at Cisco Building 12...but alas I'm in SF today...maybe next time.
- Greg Lato
Wish I could make it, have a bunch of tasks to complete this morning.
- Rick Bucich
Hi, Robert! I am in Lisbon but i am following you. I am also a Friendfeed fan. I got it in my 2 blogs:
- ramiromarques
Ben: I am planning on being at Google IO right now.
- Robert Scoble
Oops, I missed the word "breakfast" in your original message Robert. Guess your on to another adventure by lunchtime. :)
- Adam Helweh
Robert, your avatar is all green. Scary in a Hulk kind of way.
- Erick Schonfeld
I was at Cisco to drop off some videos I did for it
- Robert Scoble
Erick: you don't want to see me when I am angry! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Erick, The Hulk comes out on the Gillmor Gang. :)
- jcunwired
Gosh if I knew...I could have brought out a squad!
- Susan
Arrington and I disagree on future http://m.kyte.tv/ch...
Cedric Chee, John Downey, Dadah and 79 other people liked this
word up.
- john erik metcalf
I'm writing a post about this. Arrington believes that Twitter has won and that this is a winner take all market (the microblogging world, that is). I explain why this game has only just started.
- Robert Scoble
Gillmor Gang:http://gillmorgang.techcrunch.com/2009... Arrington's points here have me disagreeing with him.
- Robert Scoble
Re: Arrington et al http://www.zefrank.com/theshow...
- Matthew DeVries
Agree a lot...want will be needed is to have the babble of all real-time web information being filtered by a core set of people that I trust...I need a service that says..."from all the noise that is out there right now..the people that you trust think the following is important...the following is funny...the following is bunk etc...
- Mike Aikins
if you can't dominate the market, redefine it.
- MikeAmundsen
The majority of the "big bloggers" that I've read over the past week (esp re: FF beta) I think that most of these guy have got the whole thing wrong. The tech market is never a "winner take all" thing. It a winner takes the current level, but then we bring it all up to the next level There was IBM, then Mircosoft, then Google, now (Twitter, FB, FF?) -But what's after that? And like Microsoft grew from the relationship w/IBM who grows from this market?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Mike, can't you do that now: e.g. friends:justinlong likes:20 or some such?
- Justin Long
I agree Robert. The argument Arrington is proposing is similar to the search engine wars of the mid-90s, with prognosticators stating that Altavista was the search engine.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
I honestly can't remember the last time I heard anybody agree with anything Michael Arrington said. He seems to be quite out of touch with the "community" and his credibility / level of influence are on a steady decline.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
Nicholas, I wouldn't count him out yet. For me personally his credibility / level of influence is rebounding. And it doesn't matter so much if his opinion is wrong. A-listers don't need to be right from the start. They just need to start conversations.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: Arrington once told me he's an entertainer. As long as everyone is paying attention to him he's going to do just fine.
- Robert Scoble
While I started out in micro-blogging on Twitter and also found it a great service during Australia's recent bushfires for volunteering, I wouldn't call it the be-all-and-end-all. After all, one period of unexpected downtime on twitter had me looking at the new beta here on FF. And this morning, I'm even looking at jaiku and identi.ca. Who says Twitter's won?
- George Hall (Australia)
I stopped paying attention to Arrington last year, but I'm starting to pay attention again now. Something good happened in Hawaii.
- Bruce Lewis
we all here?
- Nick
Nick, I'm here.
- Robert Scoble
Ah. Peace and quiet.
- Andrew Fowler
That picture is priceless.
- Pat Hawks
well hi, then. I don't think ppl will move to ff the same way they didn't pick up on pownce, which (a year ago) was (already) better than twitter in terms of feature-set — it had photos, content, an air app, etc.
- Nick
the key for the survival of sites like Friendfeed is not try to compete with Twitter, but to do things that Twitter doesn't. This is not a winner take all situation.
- Kim Landwehr
sorry, i missed that (on kyte). how do you use office w/ google docs?
- Nick
Nick: if someone sends a Word Doc to my Gmail address I can open it up in Google Docs.
- Robert Scoble
John: sounds a lot like Twitter/friendfeed, huh?
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Unless its a .docx format....?
- Justin Long
I'm sure the issue for FF isn't search. Search isn't the first reason for users to get their friends in a specific service. People go to Twitter because Twitter is the place to go. People went to Hotmail because others were on Hotmail. Now, and only now, people realize that Gmail is better. Unfortunately, it took years for Gmail to emerge. I guess people will learn how to use the real time web on Twitter and 5 years later, they try to optimize their usage with FF. Years.
- Jérôme Flipo
Justin: probably not, but those should be even easier for Google to read.
- Robert Scoble
Wouldn't you think people would go where the majority of their friends are? I'm kind of divided between FB and Twitter. I wish more of my friends used FF but...
- Justin Long
Robert: 1) I agree totally w/ twitter being an entirely useless way of finding ppl of value — ie it's good for following existing celebrities, and may even be O.K. for finding local randomers, but no good for finding services of value (those most likely to advertise in a highly targeted online setting!) 2) I take ALL my school notes on gdocs and i wish i could mass export just to be safe
- Nick
Jerome: right. But now friendfeed will be the place to go. Why? Because I can send you a link to something of great value.
- Robert Scoble
If I look at my geeky friends, they all try to "manage" Twitter, and still refuse to get lost on FF (the Twitter for "advanced" users).
- Jérôme Flipo
Jerome: two years ago all my friends told me that Twitter was the lamest thing they'd ever seen.
- Robert Scoble
Then they all shifted when more of their friends got onto it.
- Robert Scoble
See, that's what I think: the center of gravity isn't features, but friends. You have to have people in order to have substantive conversations. You go where you have a preexisting pool of sharers.
- Justin Long
Unless you have enough "pull" to be able to go into a new service and bring a bunch of people with you... like Scoble...?
- Justin Long
Robert: so they should have left Hotmail for Gmail once they knew Gmail had big storage, good search, threads, etc. My friends and family all know that Gmail is better, but making the change is psychologically hard. Now, the problem in social networks is that leaving Twitter or adopting FF means you've to move your friends with you. That's not the case for webmail and that's why I'm concerned about FF's future. People may admit that FF is better, but it will take years before they move.
- Jérôme Flipo
Scoble: do you think it is meaningful to compare the live feed on YOUR account to that of the average user? I dont think ANYONE else has numbers similar to yours in terms of updates/minute (or even /second)
- Nick
Wish there was a way to better integrate Twitter's stream into Friendfeed... so that you could see both streams and update them... that would make it easier to migrate to FF! Maybe so you could see your twitter stream but no one else could unless you happened to comment on something or like it??
- Justin Long
Jerome: right. This is why Twitter has won. The first inning of this game.
- Robert Scoble
Nick: I used to be the only one following 1,000 people on Twitter and everyone made fun of me. Now that is a common thing to see.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: but Twitter is your friends' first Twitter-like service. People are still learning how to use it. I'm sure FF may be the next winner, but in years. And in months, Twitter will probably have launch likes and comments. Then, what would be FF's raison d'être? Why do you think you'll want to stay on FF? You've already said that you go where your audience is...
- Jérôme Flipo
I didn't realize how bad Twitter was at searching until recently. That's why I've migrated to FriendFeed as well. The 140-character message is similar to the traditional Unix bias toward flat files. It works for simple uses, but if you need metadata, you have to use more elaborate methods. FriendFeed is analogous to a relational database.
- David Delony
Jerome it took Twitter three years to get to 20 million and be considered a "mainstream success."
- Robert Scoble
FriendFeed has a character limit, too. It's just more than 140 is all. I would have predicted the "Disqus" and "Intense Debate" type service would be dominating the borader conversation by now... I would have been wrong.
- Matt Shaulis
Matt: metadata on friendfeed does NOT take away from friendfeed's size, though. On Twitter typing "RT: " takes away four characters and typing tags takes away even more.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: It's good for everyone though. It prevents rambling, hyperbole, and bloat. It has not prevented text messaging from becoming a global craze...
- Matt Shaulis
Why is Twitter a mainstream success? Because of how it was used in certain cases and what sort of publicity it got by those cases. Mumbai, the Hudson River plane, Australian bushfires. FriendFeed can get the same sort of thing, all it needs is imaginitive use of FriendFeed capabilities in a crunch. The added bonuse of aggregation greatly enhances its use in such cases, too. Do it properly, Friendfeed will hold its own.
- George Hall (Australia)
What takes more time and resource: implement FF's features in Twitter or gain Twitter's number of users? I love FF, but without a big promotion push from its community, I fear that FF will never go mainstream.
- Jérôme Flipo
George: But FriendFeed lacks a cute name meaning the "bubble headed bleach blondes" will not like saying in on the air. ;) hehehe
- Matt Shaulis
Jerome: I guarantee that in two years (Twitter is two years older than friendfeed) we'll be talking about friendfeed and not Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
I agree something like Friendfeed will be more interesting, certainly.
- Dominick Brady
what makes twitter a mainstream succes is the cases that goerge mentions PLUS the mobile aspect FF weill never get there until I can have it on EVERY mobile devices
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
How boring is it to say "I posted a FriendFeed message" versus "I Tweeted" .... Come on... it might sound silly, but it's marketing 101. The media and the glitterati will not adopt FriendFeed because it's not "fun" to talk about. (Not to mention, it is confusing to average people and will only get moreso.)
- Matt Shaulis
It's like no one watched the film in my link. You'd all understand Arrington if you did, and we wouldn't have to have a giant ass thread to explore it.
- Matthew DeVries
guruvan: what if every mobile device becomes a clone of the iPhone? That's where it's headed.
- Robert Scoble
I tend to agree. I am already really into this new version- even being in beta.
- Chris Parton
Matt, all its missing is a cute little mascot. The name's good enough...and cute enough...but it needs something visual. Mascot, visually identifiable immediately. Something that stands out in the minds of a bubble-headed bleach blond. Hmm, do bleach-blonds HAVE minds?
- George Hall (Australia)
Matt: fair enough. Twitter has a fun attitude.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: don't you think there's going to be legacy TXT for a while though?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
WOW, scoble. that's a bold statement. i have a hard time believing that. they just dont have the brand equity
- john erik metcalf
but yes the clone of the iphone is for real
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
George: yes yes yes.. the mascot too.. all the way. Great point as well.
- Matt Shaulis
John: so did MySpace two years ago.
- Robert Scoble
twitter is becoming a household name.
- john erik metcalf
@Matt and George. Marketing is FF problem right now. Media coverage, for sure, name maybe.
- Jérôme Flipo
John: so was MySpace two years ago. Twitter is only used by 10 to 20 million. Facebook is 200 million. If Twitter's success means anything then it shouldn't even exist.
- Robert Scoble
Medai coverage + Name + Mascot + Etc. == Marketing
- Matt Shaulis
Matt: Financial Times is writing about friendfeed on Monday. And so it starts.
- Robert Scoble
friendfeed could easily become a household name too if there were 50 different clients to meet everyone's different wants and needs for friendfeed
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: friendfeed is simplifying its API to get more people to be able to write for it. Twitter's API is so simple even I could write an app for it. Friendfeed's API is far more complex.
- Robert Scoble
Even google figured out android needed a visual mascot. It's worked, too, for linux, having Tux the penguin. Twitter has the bird and the fail whale. At the moment, we have the incredible Scoble, but due to similarities with the Hulk, we have copyright and trademark issues there. Other suggestions?
- George Hall (Australia)
Robert: LOL @ Financial times.... hehehe... I suppose it is a start... but it's no Tonight Show with Jay Leno. :-D
- Matt Shaulis
Ellen and Jay talked about Twitter for a good 2.5 minutes
- Matt Shaulis
Matt: In a year Ellen and Jay will need to talk about something else.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: my gut tells me that if that is true, it won't be FF. It will be something newer. But yes... Google will soon buy Twitter which means it is getting shelved and we will all have to move on.
- Matt Shaulis
The clip, look at the clip, all will be answered in the clip all will be answered in the clip. When you hear "Yellow swim trunks" think "Arrington" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew broke FF.
- Rochelle
Speaking of third-party stuff and API's, the iphone clients for Friendfeed need some work. Too much crashing in motherfeed and and Nambu
- George Hall (Australia)
Robert: agreed re: twitter api simplicity...I think I could do it too. Eager to see easier ff api and more clients esp mobile ones....then I can get tons of people to take it everywhere they go....then people will really be engrossed in their phones walking thru traffic ;)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Matt: there will probably be something new that +I+ will be onto, but I usually look for the newest and best way to do something.
- Robert Scoble
Well, Jive.ly's certainly not it!
- Chris Parton
Chris: when I see it I'll probably talk about it here all day long and get everyone pissed at me. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Facebook seems to be doing alright without a cute name or mascot.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: so does Microsoft and Google and Amazon.
- Robert Scoble
And Seesmic seems to fail with a good name AND a cute ratoon :)
- Jérôme Flipo
You sure Microsoft's success isn't because of Clippy? :-)
- Bruce Lewis
And remember Microsoft's Windows emblem? That's practically a mascot/trademark instantly identifying it
- George Hall (Australia)
Google has also its Clippy, it was for Google Docs, to make it mainstream :D http://blogoscoped.com/archive...
- Jérôme Flipo
I try to jump out on Seesmic every now and then; I want to get into the video interaction but it always seems like the same 15 people are out there. Like a big video conference on odd topics
- Lou Paglia
seesmic is certainly trying to branch out and make more interaction happen
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
winners be damned this is good discussion, but while I really like FF twitter has a considerable league up on general cache and public sphere already. General adoption is going to be that much more challenging for every platform just from social app fatigue
- Patrick Boegel
Hey, i started on Seesmic this week...it's actually quite good. I like it more than Tweetdeck. It's only let down in one area, the userlists. As groupings, they're too static. Tweetdeck lets grouped friends be a column that's actively updated. Other than that, it's superior to Tweetdeck.
- George Hall (Australia)
Patrick: thats actually why I like FF so much...as I get better and better at it it relieves the fatigue by aggregating my content and republishing it for me
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
George: I am a huge fan of peoplebrowsr ....way more powerful than anything I've used ....better than tweetdeck for sure
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: I agree, for me I like the aggregation. But the less voracious social app users? We will see
- Patrick Boegel
I think the aggregation makes people more voracious -especially when they see how it reposts to where THEIR friends are. If friendfeed were to be able to repost stuff to Facebook as well as twitter it would be a SMASH hit
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I think that, as I grow more and more into social apps, FF grows at a comfortable pace with me. But that's just me +shrug+
- Chris Parton
Chris: good point...I think people are generally comfortable with the pace on facebook (and myspace and similar) and they're just becoming comfortable with the pace on twitter - the pace on friendfeed is a little more hectic even still (omg with the realtime feed even more so) and will take some getting used to for people, but they will.. Especially if FF develops the outbound feeds...out to twitter is good, but it needs to go to where the people have their friends ....whereever that is
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I don't know my history too well, but in my limited time following you, you guys don't totally agree too often :)
- Bwana ☠
Very good points. I feel as though I have outgrown many of the other services and am ready for a fluid and fast-paced real-time entity. Also, my FF doesn't seem to be posting to Twitter haha!
- Chris Parton
100% agree - if everything feeds into everything else, in the end it may just be a question of interface / controls. Friend Feed is well on its way to being a streamlined interface for both Twitter and Facebook at the same time with all the relevant meta data. An interface, that I personally prefer. But, ultimately, agreed we are in the stone age and this is barely started much less over! P.S. Love the edit feature : )
- JP Maxwell
Chris: I bet if you tried to hit their website youd get you a failwhale...doubt its on FF's end ;) -----and I agree about out growing the others...but my friends have not, so I still use them...but more and more, as a way to get stuff into FF
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Robert's goin' Green! Ahhhhh!
- Charlie Anzman
Bwana: lol! probably not, but which guys are you referring to?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
And how fun would the discussion be if everyone agreed on it all....little mutual lovefest and that's it heh.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I was referring to Arrington and Scoble
- Bwana ☠
My extended family is set up to get a weekly FriendFeed summary by email. It doesn't get more comfortably paced than that.
- Bruce Lewis
Again, just so right on w/ Twitter being just the beginning. When you introduce something new to a group of people previously not exposed to it, often the simplest thing wins at first. It is only once the adoption has occurred that people start wanting more. The simplicity becomes limiting and people demand this or that, but you never could have started out with it all.
- JP Maxwell
And the internet itself is founded upon the idea of using the simplest thing as the base layer and then building onto that base....FF build well onto the simplest layers like twitter - being able to like and comment on tweets over here is a great addition...but still leaves twitter as an important piece
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Laying down the gauntlet. The drama!!!
- sofarsoShawn
Robert, true, the game has just started and we do need better filters, but there is nothing stopping Twitter from implementing some of the same features we see on Friendfeed, Facebook and more. Threaded conversations and a like button do not constitute barriers to entry.
- Erick Schonfeld
Can someone please tell me how either of these startups are going to make money? Please?
- Bwana ☠
which startups?
- Spotcher
Erick - twitter has only just got its service engineered to handle it's existing features, whereas FriendFeed has been built as a well maintained scalable infrastructure right from the start. I wouldn't underestimate FriendFeed's technical lead - it may be larger than Twitter's user-base lead. Not to mention the fact they'd have to lead their user-base perhaps unwillingly.
- Robin Barooah
google wasn't first, but they had a great idea and incredible execution. FF might have the same effect on soc-net.
- MikeAmundsen
Robert I agree with you 100% on the value of the "meta data" aspect of FF. I'm not so sure that advertising isnt already viable on twitter. Google adwords functionality integrated into the side bar of twitter would be much more targeted than the google content network. So even on a basic level it is viable. I agree that it could be much more. Google can just sit back and integrate into any or all existing social networks. The myspace deal paid of in much the same way.
- James Ketchell
Ewww, Cheyenne yo you do know he's married.
- sofarsoShawn
That is true.
- sofarsoShawn
correct...current state of information is chaos, jumbled mess...need organization...ff is a start
- Michael
Why the concentration on selling adverts? I mean, advertising is dead. I don't want to be bombarded with adverts any more. I'd pay a subscription to Google so I no longer have to see Google Adsense, either on their home page or anywhere else on the web. I'd pay a subscription to Twitter to continue to use the platform and not be bombarded with Ads. Can we go back to selling people things, services, instead of using adverts for things to support things and services? Pretty please...?
- Alasdair Allan
Alasdair: advertising is a $300 billion a year business. THAT is why I concentrate on it.
- Robert Scoble
nice - the difference between *THE* answer and many solutions. It's just what solutions dominate, what ends up being a robust niches and what dies (and it's an ever shifting playing field in this case).
- Stuart Miniman
FF FTW!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Advertising might be a $300 billion a year business, but it's not really very interesting, is it?
- Alasdair Allan
the metadata angle to the discussion on twitter versus FF/FB is an interesting one. for first time users harder to grasp; on the other hand richer metadata structures make it indeed much easier to really filter the information; not only for directly using FF, but also for third party engines building on top of FF API's
- Jeroen De Miranda
Alasdair: Advertising is far from dead. Just because you're not a fan doesn't mean the rest of us are not. The truth is advertising is prevalent in our society because we need it. You need to know where those people, things, services and such are. The best of anything goes to waste if no one knows about it. The key to advertising, though, is to deliver it to you in such a way that you like it, and is relevant to you. Most current media doesn't allow for that. Social medial advertising does offer potential.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Who cares what Arringtoin says? Last week he said Google was buying Twitter
- paul mooney
I think twitter has much more metadata capability than we see on the surface. A good search correlation algorithm could take temporal and spatial metadata as weighting vectors; more weighting vectors: indexing + analyzing link targets (and their metadata), retweets, replies, follows, tweets sources, and the kicker indexed RSS feeds from the top N news/info/media web sites, etc. Correlate a search term against these vectors and self-tune using user rating. $.02
- Ankush Narula
I disagree with you on so many things, Robert, but I watched this video, and you make excellent points. I do believe you're right.
- Stan Scott
Get arrington to set up a realtime private room for techcrunch staff
- Christian Burns
This is the future speaking: you are both wrong.
- Todd Hoff
The meta data and "likes" you are describing that is the advantage of friend feed is reminding me of what Plurk is trying to do. I don't like it over there, and I'm trying to figure it out over here on Friendfeed. Maybe when you have 19,000 subscriptions FF makes sense, but for the little guys, it's not so transparent.
- Peggy Dolane
Twitter's victory will be short-lived and potentially Pyrrhic. It's a cool toy everybody can play with but not a great tool for serious users. I still can't see it paying for itself over the long run unless as a data collecting device for Google. And the best point: all the metadata is currently within the 140 characters. And apps not limited to 140 characters are so obviously more useful.
- The Web's Wendell Wittler
Definitely love Robert's calling out of Mike at the end. They're both nice, smart guys, and I'm glad we have a system (the Internet) where they can discuss this for all of us to see, and discuss with them/each other as well.
- Tyler Hayes
hint you on the next challenge: Servers will distributed into multi-region server farms management that somehow will focus on local activities but still synchronized with primary server farm.... That would be how megatons of meta data will be delivered seamlessly without causing too much traffic collision and bandwidth waste... I think..
- Pico Seno
I finally understand the value Robert gets out of FF, and it's because he can easily pool lots of useful metadata (likes, links, comments) to each of his own posts out of the vast trove of friends. For the rest of us, there's the live feed, which works better on Twitter than FF. I still think that in the future, we will all be Scoble though and have gadzillion more friends.
- Prokofy Neva
Of course Arrington says Twitter won, they pay him with flow. He's their boy. http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Jacob, carl morris, Steven Perez and 16 other people liked this
plus here is he on here????
- Rob Sellen :o)
I just don't get why anyone is willing to discuss Twitter with him seriously. He's got an obvious reason to want to please Ev, Biz, Fred, Bijan, et al. And why those guys are willing to compromise reporters the way they do is another good question. It should be part of any discussion about this stuff, because inevitably Twitter, or whatever follows it, is and will be used for news. If the transport mechanism isn't neutral, how can anyone on it have integrity?
- Dave Winer
If you were to ask Fred and Bijan where they stand on net neutrality, I'm pretty confident they're in favor of it. They're good people, I can say that and be believed because they haven't done me any favors. But if they did, everyone would say I'm saying it because they paid me off. It's a measure of how scared people are of TC that people don't say that about them. To the extent that I am scared, I'm willing to go through the fear.
- Dave Winer
twitter is obviously for "less savvy". to me it's just not enough, and i'm sure that relatively soon there will be more and more people with such a position. that will be thw right time for friendfeed
- Kirill Bolgarov
Oh please, get off your high horse. Twitter does not pay us to cover them with money, flow, or anything else. They don't need to. They are the hottest tech story in town.
- Erick Schonfeld
Erick, here's a chart that shows clearly that they do give you flow, a huge amount of it. http://tr.im/iA7w
- Dave Winer
speaking about neutrality, twitter is a brand and it belongs to a legal person. i don't think that anything leterally belonging to a legal person can be claimed neutral
- Kirill Bolgarov
I'm more and more thinking that Twitter should be a protocol, not an app
- anna sauce
Erick, one more thing -- in my opinion, and this all is just my opinion, you need to make your statement true. Either start a new account on Twitter and stop using the old one, or put a disclaimer on every piece that mentions Twitter or a competitor, explaining your business relationship with them. There's no inbetween here, you've been a serious journalist before, I think -- you must understand that you can't take something of value from someone you cover without telling your readers about it.
- Dave Winer
anna - it can't, as far as it's a standalone business. the keyword is business
- Kirill Bolgarov
i agree with Dave, i recall Techcrunch did that before while mentioning other products. I believe it's just an ethical thing. Maybe not as critical as Dave puts it, but it's only my opinion
- Kirill Bolgarov
Dave, what is your chart is supposed to prove exactly? TechCrunch is a suggested user. We didn't ask to be one. And we have disclosed plenty of times that we are on that list, and even have gone into details about what kind of traffic it sends us. By your reasoning, we would need to disclose every time we write about any Website or service that links to us or sends us traffic. That seems unreasonable. There is no business relationship to disclose. Period.
- Erick Schonfeld
Dave: I think the problem here is you've got a hard time establishing causality. Does TechCrunch give Twitter good press because they're on the Recommended list or are they on the Recommended list because they give Twitter good press?
- Ken Sheppardson
Erick, of course there is that approach -- and that gets you the flow and you don't have to disclose. And as you said you didn't ask to be on that list, but you also didn't ask to be taken off it either (or did you?). About there being no business relationship, well -- that's not true is it. That flow is worth money. It's a gift and there's got to be a reason they gave it to you and not to some other publication. As a reader of TC, and I am a reader, I wonder what the quid pro quo is.
- Dave Winer
Erick, and my original comment was to Scoble, wondering why he was willing to discuss Twitter with Mike. I wouldn't -- I don't think there's much chance he'd criticize them, when you have such a sweet deal!
- Dave Winer
Dave: What's the threshold? Where's the line in the sand? At what point does a business relationship exist between a recommendation service and those it recommends?
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, it's really hard to see Twitter as a recommendation service. Schonfeld said it well: They are the hottest tech story in town. It's quite possible they were rewarding TechCrunch for trashing them, maybe they like publications that make them look bad, and make their competitors look good. But they would be very unusual people if that were so.
- Dave Winer
"it's really hard to see Twitter as a recommendation service" -- so what would you call the list of users they recommend new users follow?
- Ken Sheppardson
I get that there's all kinds of history, bad blood, and animosity in this specific situation, and I'm just thinking about what sort of principles and guidelines we can abstract out of it to apply across the board. What's the appropriate relationship between an entity that says good things about a service and a service that has the power to send traffic back to that entity? If I say good...
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- Ken Sheppardson
testing to see if FF handles links any different than before - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
just a simple hyperlink, Twitter should do that.
- Erick Schonfeld
In addition to pause, there should be a way to slow down the updates. I miss the old groupings.
Dobromir Hadzhiev, mjc and Tyler (Chacha) liked this
I believe you can still get the old style on beta.friendfeed.com.
- Tyler (Chacha)
definitely they need to offer an option to slow down the feed, but it's pretty friggin' cool, distracting and addictive for now :)
- Mario Sundar
The problem with slowing down the feed, is that it never catches up, and you eventually are 5 minutes behind. That is the achilles heel of realtime, it is in real time.
- Tyler (Chacha)
Yes, it is cool, Mario. And I like watching it. But case in point. I had to switch to Standard view, just to reply to your comment. Otherwise it would have scrolled down the page and out of view before I even had a chance to reply.
- Erick Schonfeld
Once you hit comment it stops, but yeah, the feed moves really fast lol.
- Tyler (Chacha)
should give you the option. 15 30 45 or 60 seconds
- Randy
blogging: bad spelling and grammar kill your traffic, sharability, study says http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Chris Loft, Betsy Weber, Lu Tao and 3 other people liked this
Uh... surely we didn't need a survey to point out those rather basic facts?
- Juha Saarinen
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
@Juha, see Kathleen's comment above - lots of people don't believe this yet. Also, as we wrote in the post, even if it's intuitive - these numbers put additional emphasis on making the right decision in a split-second blogging environment. Rick - isn't that crazy that this is what the world has come to? You have to give some thought to whether you are going to click the little "share"...
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- Marshall Kirkpatrick
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
For writing learnin' I'm interested in reading http://www.copyblogger.com/
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
Um, talking about credibility, this study was conducted by a "copy editing" service. What do you think they are going to find?
- Erick Schonfeld
Erick, you can see the questions asked and the sample set was from Amazon Turk, so it seems pretty legit as lightweight anecdotal stuff goes. Calling this tiny startup a "service" may be overstating it too, it's like a couple of cats in their bedrooms building on a cool idea. I think their doing a survey is a great idea and found the results interesting. Besides, who funds studies that doesn't have an interest in the topic? That's reason to be suspect but not sufficient reason to reject it I think.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Maybe you were just goofing around though and I took your comment way too seriously :) We need a service that crowdsources humor detection in web content. Seriously.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
<p>Following is <a href="http://www.goosegrade.com/reader-...">gooseGrade's abstract</a> introducing the results of their study. I've made several corrections (original in <b><i>bold italic</i></b>) to grammar and spelling.</p> <blockquote><p>ABSTRACT: It appears that grammar, spelling, factual, and other errors do affect <b><i>(reader opinion)</i></b> readers'...
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- evan orensky
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
I love how this post generates so many comments. It shows that more people care about language than we may think. I'll forgive typos and a few spelling mistakes. But not if it becomes too distracting. I've given up reading a few blogs because of too many errors. And that's a shame -- they were informative but badly written.
- Joy-Mari Cloete
from FriendFeed MT Plugin
Calacanis is mad I posted this. I hope he gets over it because I like the guy: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008...
mjc liked this
do you blame him?
- Zee.
No, I don't blame him. Just hope he doesn't blame me for doing my job.
- Erick Schonfeld
TechCrunch Turns Into FuckedCompany 2.0 - http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog...
Tommy Williams and Randal Leeb-du Toit liked this
Dare Obasanjo is good at reading selectively and then making broad generalizations. I guess he missed this one, http://tinyurl.com/4xms96, and this one, http://tinyurl.com/4m8zb6, and 70 percent of our other posts that are not about the financial crisis.
- Erick Schonfeld
Will someone please leak the TC50 company list yet? I guess I gotta get up at 6 a.m. -- sigh. I bet someone leaks it at 5.
Michael Fidler and Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF liked this
Here you go, Scobie. Don't tell Mike where you got this: http://tinyurl.com/2q9j9y
- Erick Schonfeld
erick!!!! It's late and I can't sleep and you got me!!!!
- Andrew Warner
Erick: I ain't falling for that. Tara Hunt already got me once tonight.
- Robert Scoble
falling for what... oh.
- Zee.
just rolling with the punches, boys :)
- Erick Schonfeld
Rick Astley headlining the Seesmic party???
- Andrew Feinberg
When Gmail comes back I'm going to send a mass mail to every one of my contacts that it's back up.
Czar, Internet's Tad, Dobromir Hadzhiev and 8 other people liked this
its back for me
- Allen Stern
me too, but for now I'll just use Friendfeed :)
- Erick Schonfeld
Still down. I think Allen had them shut down my account.
- Louis Gray
Mine still down too. I would use Yahoo Mail like Allen says but I forgot the password and I think it sends it to my Gmail to restore it :)
- MG Siegler
okay, now i think it's back. i'll stop acting like ron burgundy in his glass case of emotion now.
- MG Siegler
mg - that might be the funniest thing i've heard all day
- Allen Stern
louis, dont post any screenshots, mmkay?
- Allen Stern
Still down as of 3:07 PST
- Mike Doeff
That's probably what took it down in the first place :)
- CynicRoot
down as of 6:18pm, (though kevin fox's tip did do the trick :)
- Will DeLuca
Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: The Top Five Reasons Not to Upgrade to the New iPhone 3G - http://thomashawk.com/2008...
3g sucks, the battery sucks, the data plan sucks, SMS costs extra, WiFi is everywhere anyway. 'nuff said.
- Erick Schonfeld
Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: The Top Five Reasons Not to Upgrade to the New iPhone 3G - http://thomashawk.com/2008...
3g sucks, the battery sucks, the data plan sucks, SMS costs extra, WiFi is everywhere anyway. 'nuff said.
- Erick Schonfeld
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.
Alexander Oelling, Torsten Eckert, ~C4Chaos and 84 other people liked this
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
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
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.
- Christopher 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
from 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... VERSUS http://www.google.com/search... 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™ and his dog P™
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...
- 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/post... 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...
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- 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
Who is going to the Fortune Tech Conference this week in Half Moon Bay, CA? We are having open tweetup on Tuesday at Ritz at 5:45 pm
Lucretia Pruitt, Visiting Europe and Brandon liked this
I am in SF for the Inman real estate/blogging conference this week... Don't think I am doing anything tuesday night I might swing down and say g'day.
- Scott Lockhart
I'll be there.
- Erick Schonfeld
Off topic: what is the best swimming beach at Half Moon Bay?
- Sean McBride
Sean: I would NEVER swim in Half Moon Bay. Water is way too cold. But if you're going to attempt it, I'd probably pick the beach by Sam's Chowder House in Princeton. At least there's usually a bunch of surfers there who'll come and save your behind if you get into trouble.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - thanks for the insider info! I'm a beach fanatic, and was wondering whether your neck of the woods was worth checking out. (Presently I am enjoying Second Beach near Newport, RI -- the water is relatively temperate in July and August.)
- Sean McBride
I'll still be dropping by for this! Now that I've recovered a bit from the sleepless marathon of BlogHer this past weekend! :)
- Lucretia Pruitt
Gonna try to make it w/some other cool folks from SF...
- Shannon Clark
Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong http://seesmic.com/videos...
See my comment in FriendFeed to the related Inquistr post to see why I am right.
- Erick Schonfeld
Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong - http://www.seesmic.com/video...
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Jon-Paul Bussoli, Michael C. Harris, Mathew A. Koeneker and Pat Hawks liked this
See my comment to the Inquistr post above, "Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong," to see why I am right.
- Erick Schonfeld
Prove Erick at TechCrunch Wrong - http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r...
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins, Svetlana Gladkova and McFrugal liked this
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
Seesmic joins the comment-hijacking club. Need an API to return comments to blogs from Twitter, FF, Seesmic, etc: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008...
Mike Wills, Baard @ Pixum, Colby Palmer and 2 other people liked this
With time. With time. The rush to smear is too much. Deep breaths. :-)
- Louis Gray
What, Louis? I'm not allowed to make suggestions? I should just shut up and wait for these things to work themselves out? Please.
- Erick Schonfeld
I am with you. We need some sort of API so comments can be posted back to the source.
- Mike Wills
Check out ScribbleLive. Pretty decent liveblogging platform that just launched: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008...
Justin Yost and Capn' One Eye - adrift liked this
To get noticed by TechCrunch, just get a seat next to one of them. I think there's some kind of money to be made from Events' organizers, a sort of yeld management: the closer to a TechChrunch guy, the better chance to get noticed, the more expensive. In case you've got a 24 wide inch screen, 2nd seat would do, too.
- petitesphrases
It's not like we get assigned seats:)
- Erick Schonfeld
Facebook knows who you are, and that's worth more than you think - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008...
AJ Batac, nadim, Paulo Gomes and 35 other people liked this
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
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
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
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?
- Edward 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 :)
- A.T.
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
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