"I believe that there is space between Twitter and FriendFeed for a service that's dumber than FriendFeed and richer than Twitter."
- Dave Winer
from Bookmarklet
This definitely deserves more than just a Like :)
- Nicola Quinn
I expect this piece to be very popular here on FF, but not so popular on Twitter. :-)
- Dave Winer
However, if you read it carefully, you'll see that it's not FF that I want -- it's too much. But it has features I don't want to give up.
- Dave Winer
I think as long as there continue to be third party apps that fill in the missing pieces for Twitter there still won't be a mass migration over to Friendfeed. Which is too bad. I think I prefer FF too even though hardly any of my friends are on it.
- Chinkerfly
good analogy of MS-DOS vs. MAC, and I don't ever see the mainstream public ever understanding FF. Twitter is easy to use and not so time consuming. FF is the behind the scenes look at feeds. Everything you want and then some, and to most that idea is too overwhelming. So, I agree, some in the middle would be nice for the society at large.
- Bob Blunk
I think that the other feature that is completely necessary is a way to view replies in context with the original tweet (like a threaded view). I understand the technical difficulties involved, but oh is that maddening.
- invariant - farewell FF
I completly agree with what he says in the end : " I think a graphic and visual Twitter would kick ass". Oh and groups... I can haz groups IN twitter? (no 3rd app please)...
- Tiago Jorge
from Alert Thingy
Wasn't Pownce essentially a graphic and visual Twitter? Didn't kick much ass as I recall.
- Brian Sullivan
I think trying to compare Twitter and FriendFeed is that whole apple/oranges thing. Twitter is basically public IM, whereas FriendFeed is a massive RSS reader. Just different ideas entirely. I am not sure if the connection between the two can or should be made.
- Rob Diana
This is why I think discussion features are highly overrated: People don't read the piece they're commenting on. I would be in favor of a system that wouldn't let you comment until you answered a CAPTCHA type question that proved that you actually read the piece you're commenting on. Because people don't read before they write, basically you just keep having the same "conversation" over and over, with people repeating their standard talking point on a subject.
- Dave Winer
BTW I did read the piece. Just because you say that Pownce doesn't fit your idea -- with no supporting evidence btw just an off hand remark doesn't make it so.
- Brian Sullivan
Except, often comments are in response to other comments, not the original post (which I did read, but didn't need to to make this comment).
- Kenneth LeFebvre
What I want to Like in this discussion is Dave's last comment.
- Chris Baskind
Okay I believe you read the piece, then I don't think your comment is accurate, I thought I did a pretty good job of anticipating this common response. Pownce certainly wasn't a good test of the idea, it was a lot more than I was asking for (as I said in the piece) and what I didn't say is that it had trouble staying up cause I didn't want to rub it in as it was going off the air.
- Dave Winer
Why not just eliminate the echo chamber through the company you keep?
- Eric Schwartzman
Ya, it is annoying to see comments from peple who obviously didn't read the article. But it is even more annoying to see the author criticize those comments and not possitively influence the conversation. I did like the article though.
- Bob Blunk
How do you feel about the author apologizing for annoying you? Just checking in advance, because I want to make sure I don't further annoy you. :-)
- Dave Winer
Of course it could be that you find the author checking in advance to be not just annoying but infuriating or condescending. It's so complicated. I'm so confused. :-)
- Dave Winer
I like the article as well -- the analogy seems succinct and appropriate. If you take it to its ultimate conclusion though .. what filled the gap between the Mac and MS DOS was ..... Windows.
- Brian Sullivan
It's funny, I would have picked the mid point that added some kind of threading, but kept the 140 character limit and the URLs for media (it would be nice to have the URL separated from the 140 characters though so I don't need to keep dealing with tinyurl etc).
- John
Correct. I wouldn't call either Twitter or FriendFeed anything more than first generation approximations of what people want. But leads built in the early part of a market have longevity. Apple got to make a lot of mistakes yet still was able to come back, over and over.
- Dave Winer
Interesting framing. I think that for friendfeed to really compete with twitter, it would need @ support. I agree with your picture comment and am amazed as to why twitter does not have the ability to embed and display pictures and video link. This is one of the killer features of the facebook iphone app. Could facebook be the middle ground application you are describing?
- Elisa
The analogy between DOS and GUI is a perfect one. Clear, succinct and right on the money. I had never thought to make that connection before. Obviously I'm biased as a photographer, but I think that the world is very much a visual place. This one aspect alone is what puts FF (and Pownce for that matter) head and shoulders above Twitter for me. FF is so much more than just images, but the images are powerful indeed.
- Thomas Hawk
The problem with a new service coming in between Twitter and FF though is mostly time. FF in some ways is at a disadvantage to Twitter because of first mover advantage, even with a better mousetrap they are a less popular service (so far, time will tell). The longer any new service waits the harder it will be to succeed. Of course both Twitter and/or FF could morph into the type of service that Dave is talking about. Maybe.
- Thomas Hawk
I can see huge advantages FF has over Twitter, but getting through the visual layout feels awkward. Great stuff under the hood.
- kilbuda
Thomas, either one could morph toward that position, and I hope at least one of them does. On the other hand, eventually something new will come along. Windows and Mac weren't the last word on personal computers -- you have cell phones, and web servers, to name two extreme (most personal to most impersonal). And Google wasn't the last word on search either -- Facebook has search in it and now Google is struggling to catch them (and I'm pretty sure they won't). FB also found a way to compete with mail...
- Dave Winer
...and I'm sure no one thought that mail could be competed with. In other words no need goes unserved forever but it can be delayed by a dominant player. Too bad, in retrospect, that FF didn't challenge Twitter when they were having all the outages. There was a rare moment of vulnerability, the kind of oppty that's not likely to come again.
- Dave Winer
Dave, I agree with your comment about that window of opportunity that existed when twitter had all that downtime. Even Pownce had an opportunity to do something during that period time to make it become a serious contender and instead just kind of went about it's business. It's frustrating because Pownce could have been so much more than it was.
- Jon, the Beartato of '10
The analogy is stretched. There's no "full circle", you're just talking about the same design issues that have plagued product developers since the beginning of time, and picking DOS/Mac as your analogy overstates the importance of Twitter. I also personally don't see any reason why Facebook and/or Pownce don't fit this "in between" service you're talking about, other than the latter's failure to get any traction.
- Eric P
And someone...will inevitably...find a way....to fill that space.
- Adriana
At this point in time for me, the difference feels like Twitter is akin to tapped-out telegraph messages bouncing around at high speed, whereas FriendFeed is a go-around-the-table commentary swarmed around an exhibit (at variable speeds).
- Micah Wittman
Twitter is just Twitter. If anyone looks for something else, then go ahead and choose another service. Feature creep is the first step to kill a perfectly good app. Friendfeed, jaiku, tumblr, they all have their uses but Twitter excels at conversations, it's not supposed to be media centric.
- Armando Alves
Friendfeed is still in its early stages, I would say still in the Alpha phase. The "something in between" you're expecting may be a future version of FF. For me the only thing FF lacks to reach that stage would be a mobile interface, something for posting quickly and on the go. I know there are some tools out there, but I need something like Twitterberry (I'm a Blackberry user) or similar with the advantages of FF. If this thing happens and is fully usable, then FF will blow Twitter away.
- Jordi Soler
What if you could talk to FriendFeed's database in real English and say something like this: "Please build me a view with no Likes; no Comments; No More menu of all my friends feed items that have two or more Likes and/or two or more Comments." Wouldn't that be the "in between space" that Dave is talking about? I've been asking for those kinds of features since February 2008. I will bet $100 that FF will take off after adding those kinds of features.
- Robert Scoble
Yes! After using FriendFeed a lot over the last few days I am really craving that type of feature set.
- Mike Flynn
The problem is that Twitter has already defined microblogging. The other services are already considered clones, and need more features in order to compete. The only way we really get something in between is when some application is able to reply to people at Twitter and build the needed functionality on top. FriendFeed has some of it, but it is mostly one-way replies. Bidirectional replies is needed, plus the obvious grouping and threading that everyone seems to want.
- Rob Diana
Today marks the 12 year anniversary for me and mrsth. We are going to dinner later tonight in the City and will share a vintage bottle from 1996. The 12 years have not always been easy, but we have a wonderful life together to show for it and four beautiful and amazing children. She's a terrific mother, lover, sometimes model for a photography obsessed husband, person, partner and most of all friend. Happy Anniversary.
- Thomas Hawk
from Bookmarklet
I donated 10$ last week and 10$ this week. Brings my total donation so far up from 50$ to 70$. I donated the $50 right after Obama won Super Tuesday. Everytime McCain does something monumentally stupid, I'll donate another 10$. I gave $20 in the last 2 weeks because he's been on a roll....
- Joel Ross Housman
I've been trying to turn NC blue, by donating to Harry Taylor on ActBlue. I appreciate his courage for standing up to Mr. Bush, and telling him what many wanted to say, but were too pussilanimous. Is Obama hurting for cash? Seems to me that he will be a shoe-in...
- david beckwith
I donated $25 to the Obama campaign last night. I used to respect McCain, until he became McSame and seemed to start using the same kind of rotten attacks that Rove used on him in 2000.
- ha3rvey (wants confit)
i don't like giving cash to any of these politicians. they'll never be hurting for it and I Want My iphone imac macair updated airexpress newwardrobe credit carddebtpaidoff longhaulflightsaroundtheworld4timesayear ... but sadly obama is always the underdog, will always be, has always been, just like hillary. no matter what anybody says, we know it's true. i'm giving as much money as i can and trying not to let it keep me up nights. ... just my opinion, of course. :-)
- Katie Ratcliffe
I was in too. Love how you characterized it though.
- Brad Nickel
Drew, yeah. It's getting hit hard and not keeping up with the demand very well.
- Akiva Moskovitz
That's what I've been trying to say (not that it's anyone's fault though) -- that TM is what it is, and its strong point is not speed. It might never catch identi.ca as a top story, but if it got acquired by Microsoft or Google or TechCrunch, it would zoom right to the top and stay there. It's the nature of news, it starts out small and as it grows it settles on a few stories and repeats them over and over until something new starts, and we start over again.
- Dave Winer
That's why I started TechJunk after doing the same thing for political news. Not to strangle the market (which is what TM/TC does, again no one's fault) but to act as a pied piper. As with blogging the way to get around group think is with individual judgment. Pretty soon the flaming will start, btw. :-)
- Dave Winer
This is what I mean when I say that TechMeme has changed. Gabe is chasing Google News with TechMeme now, not covering what regular people care about. Although the YouTube story that's on top right now is pretty important for us to know about and care about too. I think this is why I look at FriendFeed AND Techmeme. If you do that you get a good view of all stories.
- Robert Scoble
Why do you need to write about Identi.ca on Twitter and not the other way around?
- paul mooney
i didnt see it hit my google reader feed at all, only on friendfeed. @scobleizer "regular people" don't care about it at all.
- Jeremy Toeman
Dave's comment on speed and TM seems spot on -- I just looked at TM for the first time in week -- all the top stories are old (to the extent that they have been talked about on FF and maybe Twitter if it were ever running for hours and sometimes days)
- Brian Sullivan
Scoble, maybe its conscious on Gabe's part or maybe the algorithm now does what all human beings do when put in the same position. It happened in the 90s when the computer press only reported three stories: Apple is dead, Microsoft is evil and Java is the future. If you tried to say blogging is the future and Windows is dead, and there is new Mac software, and Java makes lousy UIs and will be used server-side only, and check out Flash, no one would have written it up.
- Dave Winer
You can fill in the blanks on what the big stories are in the late part of this decade (oy it's already the late part of the decade). When you look back ten years from now, it will be clear (probably) that Google has already peaked, and what was Viacom again? Scoble will be the new Master of the Universe, and TechCrunch will be about as interesting as News.com and Wired are today.
- Dave Winer
Now will Twitter be the main pillar of the new Internet, or will something like Apache be that? People like me believe it's the Apache model that's likely to galvanize this. Twitter needs to fade into the background the same way Apache did and the same way blogging software did. But Twitter is doing everything they can to be sure they are front and center, which creates this conflict. In March they *were* starting to fade into the background, and great new things were happening there, esp in politics.
- Dave Winer
Maybe it is because it is so slow and this morning I can't log in.
- Warner Crocker
Early yesterday I was getting a downloadable file rather than the site and couldn't register until later in the afternoon. I couldn't even go to profiles without being asked to download a file. Very strange. This morning I stopped using it because the site was too slow.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
identica.ca seems to be a direct clone of twitter - even down to the preformance issues...
- Tom Quinn
There is no doubt that a new site like identi.ca will suffer growing pains and performance problems. The big question in my mind is whether or not the community will contribute something to this open source project and try to make it better or just piss and moan about it.
- Mike Doeff
They have a weird bug - their page redirects to a sub domain of their company, where the Identi.ca-code, but the links go back to Identi.ca, but form data isn't sent back to the company-sub-domain when they redirect you back. If you change the form-actions with Firebug, everything works.
- sebmos
Techmeme should start linking FF discussion threads as "official" links on stories. They are frequently more interesting than what the other bloggers have to say about the same story. Not sure exactly how to do this but Gabe's pretty smart and I'm sure could figure out a way to do it.
- Thomas Hawk
@Thomas...ahhhhhhhhh..brilliant idea !! Thats extacly what techmeme s/do and not only with FF butt other forum driven sites too
- Peter Dawson
because techmeme are facists.. only a little though
- Tyler Gillies
thats a great idea thomas - take away more from the people who create the content - love it!
- Allen Stern
Oh my Godwin! I've been waiting nearly three years for someone to make such a comparison. Thank you Tyler!
- Gabe Rivera
who is godwin, i dont see his or her comment?
- Allen Stern
We all create the content Allen. Techmeme already links digg submissions to stories sometimes. I find the conversations at FF more interesting and mature frequently than the conversations at digg. It would seem a good fit to me. I'm sure Gabe could figure it out if he thought it added value.
- Thomas Hawk
Ok Thomas thanks for your clarification. I am just hoping I get a lead sometime this week.
- Allen Stern
Thomas: agreed FF threads tend to be be better than corresponding digg threads. But the problem with FF is the commentary around a post is typically scattered over multiple threads and often tricky to associate by machine (note Duncan's tweet above lacks a link). It's a partially solvable problem, but probably not worth it just to get FF comments right now.
- Gabe Rivera
I never figured out what identi.ca was (Twitter clone? something else?) - but I made an account. :)
- Don MacAskill
Funny.I got info about Identi.ca from Techmeme.You?
- Igor Poltavskiy
Even I'VE never referred to Techmeme as "fascists." @Allen, I'm assuming Seth Godwin? may have been on his blog.
- Cyndy
cyndy isnt that seth godin? im confused now
- Allen Stern
Cyndy, read what Gabe wrote again. Gabe is talking to Tyler, who compared Techmeme to fascism.
- Dan Kaplan
That's what I meant, Allen. Never mind. I'm confusing myself just replying. :)
- Cyndy
Oh how I love FriendFeed! I've really really enjoyed reading this thread. I will now post a summary of what we've seen so far.
- Gabe Rivera
SYNOPSIS: identi.ca, which almost topped Techmeme, should have topped Techmeme, because it's open source and therefore not just another buggy Twitter clone. This illustrates the problem with Techmeme, which TechJunk will help fix, and site owner Dave Winer should know because he knew 10 years ago what would be true and important today in tech. "Regular people" don't care about what's on...
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- Gabe Rivera
Godwin's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
- Yule Heibel
If it didn't sting so much that Synopsis would be hilarious
- Nathan Eckenrode
Identi.ca is cool - but the GPL 3.0 license dramatically limits its usefulness as a base for other services to build from.
- Soulhuntre
from twhirl
this thread should've ended with the synopsis. nothing else will possibly add further value. including this comment.
- Jeremy Toeman
@gaberivera's synopsis just gave me my first actual belly laugh of the day; and still giggling a little. Thanks, Gabe.
- Merredith Branscombe
Gabe, I love the synopsis. So, you were comparing Seth Godin to the Third Reich right? ;)
- Jackson Miller
Jackson, no -- not a fair comparison because people are still allowed to *comment* on the Third Reich.
- Merredith Branscombe
oh if there is reference to Godwins law - then who are the Nazi's and who is Hitler on this thread ?? :)-
- Peter Dawson
I think in this case TechMeme = Fascists = Nazis, which would make Gabe Hitler. (Disclaimer: This comment in no way, shape or form refelcts the opinion of the commenter and is simply a point of clarification.)
- Ken Sheppardson
Why is this supposedly a big story? Someone whips together a PHP app backed by a database and open sources it... woo hoo... How many people commenting on this or claiming it's a big deal have contributed to an open soure project? How many have run one that's gotten any traction? I've done and continue to do both. I think you all wet yourselves over the term without understanding when it...
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- Jason Carreira
from twhirl
This FF made me laugh. I'm glad I advertised on TechMeme. Everyone is looking at TechMeme to try to figure out the algorithm and whether or not Gabe is evil. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Mean kids...problem with throwing crap is it sticks. Others opt for hard work and engaging content. Markets...
- Mark Forman
I'm conflicted on this. I know Loren, have spent time with him, and know that he works by pushing boundaries, and I've always appreciated a lot of the subtle stuff in his work. However I know if I was Shel, I wouldn't be coping at all...in fact I'd probably fall to complete pieces. I cant help but read this post and feel for Shel. I said recently on a podcast, the Shel puppet was funny at first, but it did go too far, and much of that was a certain someones encouragement. I've never seen Loren dwell on the
- Duncan Riley
one topic or person for soo long before. It's out of character. I bet if he wasn't being egged on, he would have moved on to parodying someone esle
- Duncan Riley
Yeah doing that "hammering" thingie.
- Mark Forman
Thanks for the link Duncan. I now have more than enough evidence to backup my reasoning that Loren Feldman is a horse's ass.
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
Shey-don't know if how much this is "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..." but definitely a case of "if you lay down with dogs,you'll wake up with fleas..." Looking forward to a higher signal Net.
- Mark Forman
@MG: best... comment... EVER. Seriously, made me laugh out loud :)
- Bret Taylor
what? that's it? i don't think i've ever looked inside a telescope in my life. yet i went to a science school. i can't be the only one out there who doesn't care about WWtelescope
- Huy Zing
This looks amazing... hopefully it will get people to look up again. It seems that after the space race was done we lost some of that wonder about space... maybe this will help to put it back.
- Nathan Manley
I'm going to be the curmudgeon here. I'm sick of the stars. Let's get our heads out of the frickin' clouds and start putting more resources into caring for our own damn planet. Oceans, anyone? Space -- bah humbug.
- Adam Lasnik