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Trevor Cook › Likes
A little bird told me that Facebook now has 140 million users and that revenue is higher than most blogs have reported.
Jeroen De Miranda, Charlie Anzman, jswi_jim and 82 other people liked this
Is FB worth $10 per user?
- LogEx
Was it a little bird going tweet, tweet, tweet:)
- James
LOL @ James...
- Dennis Goedegebuure
Revenue higher than reported, as in, profitable? Or just not losing as much?
- Tom Ribbens
Logical: a lot more than $10.
- Robert Scoble
LogicalExtremes: I say yes simply because I can explain its value to my mom.
- trextor
The bird told me he has a Twitter account but rarely uses it to Tweet, though.
- Robert Scoble
Tom: the bird wouldn't tell me that.
- Robert Scoble
Watch the 140 million run screaming as they realise lawyers might start issuing summonses against them on FB: http://www.theage.com.au/nationa...
- mattpovey
Robert how much higher is the revenue???
- Susan Beebe
mattpovey - As someone who libels and assaults frequently... that scares me!
- Andrew
Susan: the bird wouldn't discuss numbers other than to say all estimates he has seen are low.
- Robert Scoble
great news. they've really captured the way people communicate quiet effectively.
- Rahul Krishnakumar
I just can't make myself like Facebook. In part I think it's not really wanting to keep up with old friends. Don't get me started on the stupid apps and the layout.
- BEX
Facebook is really growing in my neck of the woods...TONS of co-workers have jumped on FB now... all happening VERY fast. Transparency is the new reality. I get folks calling me from work asking how all this "social" sh*t works... LOL pretty shocked n00bies!
- Susan Beebe
I wonder if the progression remains "neopets" --> "myspace" --> "facebook" .. both my daughters went through these three distinct stages. IRC was in there for a bit; followed by forums and blogs; and now they just IM
- LPH™ and his dog P™
It is amazing how many customers now you directly communicate with on a daily basis through SMS, twitter and facebook.
- Shaun Haney
Most blogs report $150 m? I would put it between 200-300 M based on back of envelope calculations that assume a low RPM
- Bindu Reddy
Who told you? I am guessing someone from Facebook. They get a bad story, they "leak" to you it's not true, you post it. People believe you. Why don't they just people what they make if they care. Posting like this make you look like a shill.
- Michael Stearne
i never pay a attention to the adv on FB right slider.so the revenue i think should be lower than most blogs have reported:D
- jedorstar
http://www.facebook.com/press... has the user number (140M)
- Ashwin Bharambe
If I could pay ten bucks to insta-ban all annoying app requests and pathetic ads, and more options for designing my front page, I'd go for it...
- Terry O'Fee
When this is anything more than unsubstantiated rumor, I'm sure they'll be happy to put their cards on the table.
- Sam
My forecaster's "sell" order stands. Or, buy puts, your choice. AOL didn't die in a day, either; in fact, it took one of the greatest value dumps of all time, directly upon the heads of Time Warner shareholders. Please, of course I know it's not public, I'm talking Cred Trend Puts. I can't imagine a single reason for the web needing FB by 2012; it was a cute start to socially stuff and MySpace UI cleanup, but the vast majority of The Normals will use it as a Social Registry and virtually never log in again.
- michael silverton
A revenue of $10 per user per year is achievable - advertising + premium vanity features ought to do it.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
As to longevity, I don't know - i dislike all the fluff in FB, apps and games, but I can see it growing into a living family tree - our parents are joining, our children are joining, and I now have a whole multi generational network including my parents' friends, my friends' parents - you get this whole "village" of real connections if you use it that way, quite warming when like you have moved countries a bit, and the value could grow. A grounding space in a increasingly disconnected and virtual world.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
@scoble: A lot more than 10$ per user? 1.4+ billion in revenues? Is that whtat we're talking about, or was it just what it worths?
- Martino Sabia
Martini I don't know the numbers. I thought I was being asked the value of each user.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook is becoming pretty common and integrating itself within the non-tech crowd. Is it only a matter of time before they roll out some type of subscription plan? I would be willing to pay monthly (maybe $10) As long as they keep adding new features and keep refining the interface.
- Bob Blunk
there have been stories on FF lately about how poorly ads do on social networking services compared to search advertising. Does anybody have different reports or experiences?
- Davide D'Incau
Doesn't surprise me, more friends of mine are joining it by the day.
- Ed Richardson
incentive ads perform poorly on a CPA basis; conversions occur for the wrong reason and have a high cancellation rate.
- Peter Warnock
It seems to me that FB is more embraceable for low tech people than Twitter
- Craig Mische
It's the apps, after the newness wears offs or the advertisers push back, FB will have to do some real marketing. They have a gold mine of data that they're not using.
- Peter Warnock
@Craig - How in Bob's name is a crazy multi layer, multi threaded, multi page, multi media mess easy for a ludite depression era grandmother to get than a single line where you post 140 characters?
- Matthew DeVries
If Facebook needs to start charging than they've failed at their mission and are leaving way too much money on the table. The power in facebook comes in the fact that they now know what we like, what we hate, who we follow, who we listen to. That is worth so much more to people than the pittance they'd be able to make by charging us a fee at a price we wouldn't run screaming to the hills over. They need to keep it "free" and sell that information to the ad people, the politicians, the entertainers.
- Matthew DeVries
Interesting. Congress bails out banks, but not auto industry. When I was at Davos I saw lots of banks and congressmen, but no UAW workers.
Daniel Schildt, Mathew A. Koeneker, cjmart and 9 other people liked this
Interesting and pretty sad.
- Adriana
It'll still happen, Robert. Just needs a tweak or two...
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Guess we now wait and see if GM is really going under at the end of the month.
- Dave Hodson
Perhaps congress has less stake in auto industry? Bail out has nothing to do with saving economy and jobs but saving corporate interest.
- Moushumi Kabir
The Senate wins the Grinch Award for 2008. Or alternatively, the Satan award.
- Karoli
This is due to some Southern Senator's relationship to Japanese car companies with workers in the South (non-union) and the Republican's desire to break the last strong Union in U.S.A. I would rather see the gov let the car companies go bankrupt and protect the workers pensions, unemployment ins. and re-education into green jobs. It would cost less than propping up a failed CO. and be better for overall economy to apply capital efficiently.
- Erik Weese
Mark - no, it won't. I am against the auto bailout, but will readily grant supporters that it made a lot more sense than the financial bailout did. And the financial bailout was more than 50 times bigger, with zero accountability, far less moral, and oh, it passed!
- Anthony Citrano
Know we know who really runs America.
- Sean McBride
Okay: @Gregory Agreed. @Erik Check out the service workers union, their role in the scandal with the Illinois Governor and the $26Million they donated to Obama. @Sean but why would a group that now uses oil as a commodity not want to keep these laggards around?
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
@Anthony Why don't you think it will pass with some tweaking?
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Many years ago I worked for a plastic injection molding company and 70% of their business was for GM. There are thousands of such companies and if any of the big three fails they will likely take thousands of companies with them. I just wonder if the Republicans who killed this bill would have done so if McCain had won the election and a Republican administration was coming in in a few weeks.
- Jeff Jones
@Jeff but the demand for cars, and therefore car parts, won't change whether GM/Chrysler exist or don't exist. People will still purchase cars, somebody has to make them, and somebody has to make parts for them.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Very different problems. In October, banks were not longer issuing commercial paper, short term loans between business. Without out such loans, businesses (including GM) can't pay their suppliers, can't make payroll, etc. There is 1.75 trillion dollars worth of commercial paper outstanding any given week. In comparison, GM's annual revenue is $200 billion. Loan the banks $700 billion, they will issue commercial paper again. Give GM $8 billion, what will it do differently in the next 12 to 24 months?
- Steve Wilhelm
@Mark: When, next year? That's too late for GM.
- Anthony Citrano
@Steve - sounds great in concept. That's not what's happened though. Credit remains frozen and bonds are not getting underwritten. The banks kept the money.
- Anthony Citrano
That said, I don't think we should let the big three fail. But I personally want to see: much higher CAFE standards, elimination of the Flex fuel loop hole, targets for hybrid and alternative fuel cars in fleet, and UAW concessions on future wages, benefits, and pensions.
- Steve Wilhelm
Generally speaking, bad businesses should fail, including these. But what I suspect will happen at this point what may happen is a last-minute "forced" credit push by Treasury from the (bankrupt) big banks who got TARP money and to the automakers.
- Anthony Citrano
Revealed: The Two Most Useless Words on any Website - http://rich-page.com/web-ana...
Lorraine Ball, siggimus, Laura Norvig and 3 other people liked this
Click here to read the story
- Louis Gray
Which do you find more offensive? Book burning or flag burning?
Trevor Cook, Andrew, Jeremy Dunck and 5 other people liked this
Ooh....that's a tuffy, but I would have to agree with Chris. The Flag can't really DO anything. It's just a symbol.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Flag burning is protest; book burning is censorship.
- Gabe
My first reaction was book burning, because like Chris says, books are useful. but they are both symbolic destruction of an idea or ideal. Flag burning wouldn't work as a protest unless it were offensive. This question made me rethink an automatic, underlying belief, which is why I shared it with you here on FF.
- Clare Dibble
both are fun, but I guess it depends on the material. Plastic can release some fairly offensive toxins when burned.
- Paul Buchheit
I think Gabe has dismantled this question properly.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I think it depends on the book.
- Jeanette Bosman
Possibly the flag as well. Like if the flag had my face, or a picture of a kitten...
- Jeanette Bosman
Perhaps a better question is which is more fun? Books are great for creating heat, but they're pretty boring to burn. A burning flag means you can wave around fire. How awesome is that?
- Gabe
Indeed both but i agree with Jeantte too.I think flag is symbol of a country and its people so burning it is more insulting.
- shannon
I don't think mere offensiveness can cover both of them. Speech can be offensive to some people, and flag-burning is a sort of speech. Book-burning is an attempt to shut down speech, and while that may be technically "offensive", hurting people's feelings is the least of its problems.
- Neil Kandalgaonkar
Both acts are symbols of expression. They are neither offensive or respectful without additional context. (I do like the question.)
- Kevin Gamble
As part of a larger question of politics, I find it interesting that people tend to pick teams and go with one or the other. Not too long ago, it occurred to me that it is kind of funny that in the US we have one team that is for the death penalty for criminals, but against a woman's right to choose, and the other one is vice versa. It would make more sense if abortion options, assisted suicide and death penalty advocates were on the same team, as they all involve the government interference with life.
- Clare Dibble
I also agree with Kevin that context is important: for example I believe burning is the proper way to retire a flag. But burning old love letters might be a way to release that part of the story back to the universe, so that could also be true of books. Burning doesn't have to imply censorship (though in practice it has). And Gabe is right that fire you can wave around is cooler than fire that just sits there.
- Clare Dibble
Book burning, per Gabe's first comment.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Is there any philosophical difference between, say, burning a Nazi flag versus burning a copy of Mein Kampf?
- Gabe
Such a good question. I think I find book burning more upsetting than flag burning for I find more value within a book than in a flag. A book represents far more important concepts to me than a flag. Pledging allegiance to a flag or to what a flag stands for can be done blindly and without much thought, but to be able to read, comprehend, and glean knowledge from books requires more skill.
- April Buchheit
In fact, it takes far less than setting a book on fire to cause me some distress. Just seeing Camilla crumple up or tear pages off from her books or throw her books around can be quite disconcerting for me.
- April Buchheit
Book burning. A flag is a tribal symbol which arguably does more harm than good.
- Tanath
Bump. Sorry! Neither is particularly offensive to me. Objects are objects. All things are, in time, rendered unto dust. Our thoughts remain.
- Slappy Line
book burning, flag burning isn't offensive
- Trevor Cook
Having lunch atop Waterstones Picadilly - great bookstore- with Parliament and the wheel in view. Nice life.
Trevor Cook liked this
Twitter CEO: The revenue's coming soon, but I won't tell you how | Webware - CNET - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17...
akira, (jeff)isageek, Jose Maria Pelaez and 32 other people liked this
And speaking of expansion, there are several projects on the books. Williams said that the top feature requested on Twitter is grouping, and that it's in the works. This will enable users to segment their Twitter friends into sub-networks to send specific groups certain posts. It will also make Twitter a more useful tool in business.
- Dave Winer
from Bookmarklet
Those of us on http://www.peoplebrowsr.com already have grouping. It definitely makes Twitter more useful to business.
- Robert Scoble
I keep wondering is I should look into peoplebrowsr..
- Dave Winer
Churchill Club podcasts. http://www.churchillclub.org/podcast...
- Dave Winer
Grouping is a feature that's so useful I might even consider paying for it... but when you can already do so for free [currently] with tweetdeck or others, you'd have to wonder about pinning your revenue hopes to it. They'd have to offer a lot more as well
- David Miller
Dave: I think you'd find lots of the concepts of PeopleBrowsr interesting. You should watch the video here for a good demo: http://www.kyte.tv/ch...
- Robert Scoble
Hey Robert. The guy in the Kyte video is Jodee Rich. Were you in Australia or does he live overseas now?
- Barak B
Barak: he visited my house in Half Moon Bay.
- Robert Scoble
haha robert i love how you're recording yoru password lol
- stanleyyork
He knows what is best. Maybe an expansion could make twitter more useful?
- Jack
So if grouping becomes reality, does that make apps like Peoplebrowser less appealing (although i realize PB brings more than grouping to the table)?
- David Bisset (sn)
PeopleBrowsr is one of the best looking SocNet apps I've seen - highly feature packed, with novel utility...very nice
- Susan Beebe
i'm not sure he knows how himself just yet - but the iwantsandy purchase/hire hints that they are planning to try a few things
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
Teasing strategy?
- Marcello Del Bono
The making chasm - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_b...
Trevor Cook liked this
so true
- Trevor Cook
I am watching CNN and seeing bad employment numbers from US auto industry. Interesting, though, here in China US brands, like Buick, are very popular.
Brian, Mo Kargas, Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah and 11 other people liked this
That's refreshing. US Autos need some good news (especially here in Detroit), regardless where it is coming from
- Ken Burbary
Toyota own's here in Uganda, American cars are very hard to find.
- Jon Gosier
from feedalizr
It's likely that in China US brands are popular because they're an import and therefore a status symbol.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
US brands like Buick are actually made in China. They're popular because historically before China was communist, Buick was a very popular brand. So when GM entered the market in the 90s, they thought they'd begin by bringing a well recognized brand back. It worked. Became status symbol for all government officials and wealthy folks. Now they're introducing other GM lines like Cadillac etc.
- Christine Lu
Very cool, Christine =)
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Interesting about the Buick "brand's" adoption. When I visited (Guangzhou) China in 1987, Mercedes seemed to be the popular auto (and truck) there (aside from waves of bicycles).
- Jim Courtney
Buick seemed very popular 2+ years ago, when it was primarily the only car on the road, but now don't see it that often in Shenzhen or Songjiang. (there are few re-branded cars there sold as Buicks, like the Suzuki) Buicks in the US use Chinese engines, but the cars I think are made in the US(though it is cheaper to replace the whole engine nowadays then to fix parts). You will notice slight refinement differnces; such as how much better a German VW is made VS a Shanghai VW.
- clarke thomas
I read an article, I'm pretty sure it was about Buick, how they designed a model in a Chinese design shop specifically to appeal to the Chinese market.
- mikepk
And at Ford, we've seen profitable results this quarter in South America and Europe, where the Blue Oval is particularly popular.
- Scott Monty
All the western brands are majority-owned joint-ventures by Chinese. Mercedes is still the most prestigious brand for government officials, and Audi for the richest in China.
- Joshua Allen
@Christine Lu: That's very interesting. Though I did guess they were produced in China. I wonder if there is ANY real goods import from the US to China.
- Amit Morson
"There were some bright spots around the globe for GM. It saw a solid 4.3% jump in sales in China, even as industrywide sales there declined, allowing it to pick up market share. China has become an increasingly important market for GM, one which accounts for more than one in ten vehicles it sells worldwide." - http://money.cnn.com/2008...
- Steve Wilhelm
Buicks rock. My Buick set on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Thomas Hawk
the auto industry has been have problems for a long long time, just ask anyone who lives in the state of Michigan which has been in a one-state recession for almost 5 years
- Jonathan Jesse
The problem is that money is sitting offshore. Corporations aren't going to bring it back into the US just to lose 35% to taxes.
- Chris Mayer
Agreed, Chris. That's why potential auto manuf. bailouts are disgusting to me. They made their beds by just moving junk metal and pumping up stock returns, instead of focusing on making a good product matching customer desires and making profits through customer satisfaction. Hope China can learn lessons from us.
- Kevin Leroux
I don't know if its wise to save the big three. Capitalism is about renewing the old and I cant see Ford, GM, and Jeep changing anytime soon. What if we let them fail. Doesn't that give companies like Tesla a real chance of changing cars in this country?
- Erik Weese
president-elect obama will bail out the big three, think about he has massive support from the unions and also has governor granholm (of michiga) on his economic transition team. we definitely see an economic bailout for the big 3. also i doubt very little limits on these companies as any more would put even more constraints on them and more job loss/facotry closure, less union employees, etc
- Jonathan Jesse
Erik... are you saying if we lose Ford GM and Jeep then we'll all be able to afford Tesla cars? How's that work, exactly?
- Michael Markman
Well, American brands are actually quite popular overseas. People actually consider it a.. mark of wealth of sorts, if that makes any sense. In some countries, anyway. Which is a good thing for us, of course. Whatever little help we can get, we probably could use. Also, by what I heard on CNN last night, it sounds like Ford doesn't need a bailout as much as GM does.
- deepikaur
Yes, Ford seems to be better positioned. GM has been having issues for quite a while; years. I really do not think Chrysler learned from their last bailout round and that bothers me.
- Robert Miller
@ergophobe FriendFeed is more of a forum than Twitter is, so its community features are far better. I need more than 140 chars, to explain.
Steve Chou, Jay, Nicola Quinn and 28 other people liked this
140 characters is just not enough most of the time
- Trevor Cook
Limitations can cause creative condensation of communication.
- Phil Boiarski
To me Twitter is the "news ticker", and Friendfeed is more interactive. While both can do the other's job, each one is suited mainly toward those roles.
- David Bisset (sn)
Oh, the irony.
- Nate Pilling
I think 140 characters is a great filter.
- Nicola Quinn
I also find the Like function on FF useful to squirrel things away in your Comments/Likes for later perusal.
- Nicola Quinn
Marko, the film "The Five Obstructions" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) is an interesting take on the idea. Lars Von Trier forces Jorgen Leth to re-make a short film five different times, each with a different "obstruction" or imposed limitation. In the first example, Von Trier forces Leth to remake the film, but the limitation is that each shot can be no more than 12 frames (1/2 second) long. In essence, Von Trier forces a "twitterization" of the original. ;-)
- Karim
Also, Frank Herbert's "Destination: Void" series of sci-fi novels starts off with a series of space missions that end in disaster. SPOILER ALERT: one of the missions eventually figures out that the disasters are actually *intentional,* the idea being that the experiment can only succeed if the crew figures out how to avert disaster. It is only through overcoming the *intentional* limitation that they go on to achieve greatness...
- Karim
sometimes you do need more than 140 chars, but the limit does make the writing more concise and limited to usually one thought which is a good thing
- Todd Dewell
@Karim, a Destination: Void shoutout, you are my hero!
- Christopher Galtenberg
So is FriendFeed an aggregator with community features or a community that aggregates content? :)
- Bwana ☠
Bwana, I think people start out using it as the former but are more satisfied with the service when they use it as the latter.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
+1 Tina, It is much easier to track a conversation on ff - even given search and hashtags on twitter
- Alistair (alpinefolk)
Every time this pops up, I think the person being responded to @negrophobe.
- Admiral Anika
lol Christopher :-D
- Karim
Down with logorrhea!
- Phil Boiarski
I have been able to find great info from people posting short blurbs and a link on Twitter.I think of Twitter as a dictionary and FriendFeed as an encyclopedia.
- Dana Fosburgh
@jayrosen_nyu Doing blog search well is HARD. May I suggest that you give Technorati a try? There's a nice simple interface at http://s. ...
Trevor Cook liked this
can we have that full url
- Trevor Cook
Sorry! Full URL is http://s.technorati.com/
- David Sifry
Whopper Virgins: it doesn’t get much more offensive than this - http://www.inquisitr.com/10231...
Ontario Emperor, Alex Haar, Chris Darling and 19 other people liked this
wow. an unfortunate demonstration of all the things wrong with America.
- Anthony Citrano
*buries her head in her hands*
- Helen Sventitsky
>.< No.
- Yolanda
Yeah, I am going to throw up. They took their unhealthy crap to Romania and fed it to farmers in the countryside. BK, KEEP YOUR CRAP HERE IN THE STATES. You and McDonald's have gotten enough people sick on your BS food. Stay the heck out of Romania.
- Raoul Pop
:|
- Anna Haro
who is responsible for this brilliant idea??
- Jay
Wow that's so lame.
- Brandon
I can't believe this shit.
- Mo Kargas
No No No No no NO NO nO NO....make it not be true
- WorldofHiglet
*face-palm*
- MikeAmundsen
Maybe they'll give me one if I pretend to be a Whopper Virgin. :)
- Morton Fox
Jason, yes. Better still: I'm not 100% sure (hence it's not in the post)but I think there's a TV campaign to go with it as well. PR gone bad.
- Duncan Riley
There is a TV campaign... just saw a commercial today on CBS while watching a game. Bleah.
- Dan Monzelowsky
forgot to add: it's on the same IP address as owned I presume by the PR company, but I can't confirm the name, only that it shares the IP with official sites for Bayer and Florida area Audi dealers
- Duncan Riley
i could get behind this, if they'd helicopter in some whoppers to refugee camps and places where people were starving to death.
- Karim
Honestly, did not find this 'offensive' at all..borderline may be. Nothing that a little tolerance and open discussion cannot solve. If this were packaged as art would there be so much discussion?
- Mahesh CR
Mahesh, what's not offensive about flying into somewhere in the third world and asking people who struggle to feed their family to pick which tastes better: a whopper or a Big Mac.
- Duncan Riley
Wow, great marketing BK, lets ruin the diets of the last remaining people on earth that have not had their eating habits corrupted by western processed food, loaded with hollow carbohydrates, saturated fat and salt.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Exactly, Jeff. Would it be as cool if we were hunting down "crack virgins" and teaching them the ways of the crazy-pipe?
- Anthony Citrano
give me a break. you'd all love a juicy tasty whopper right now.
- Dave Winer
Social media vs PR. Let battle commence! :)
- David Sim
social media is the delivery mechanism, PR is the outcome... PR agencies should be offering Social media solutions... IMHO
- Simon T Small
This is brilliant and offensive at the same time. I can only imagine sitting in on all the meetings that led up to this. Someone needs to track down the PPT ASAP.
- Josh
Duncan, as I said, it can be considered borderline offensive. we conversations like these around McDonalds coming into India. I like to distinguish between the product and the communication around it. I concur with most comments about BK being route to unhealthy eating practices. The communication I take with a pinch of salt. As always the ability to choose or not gives us control over...
more...
- Mahesh CR
from twhirl
Mahesh CR do you work for the PR firm spinning this disaster?
- Samantha DeWitt
Samantha + 1
- Duncan Riley
thanks for the tip Duncan I posted about it
- Trevor Cook
The terminology is a "double entendre"; some suits idea of a clever enrollment strategy, & oh so "cute". This "National Geo" imagery of costumed innocence (virgins). NOT a mention the health aspects of all the associated "foods" hawked by this gargantuan chain most are not worthy of being Proud of or INFECTING yet another culture with.
- Chris Darling
I'm thinking about selling my photos to the Vatican as proof that God exists. http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2008...
Trevor Cook liked this
they don't need proof
- Trevor Cook
"When the new president takes the oath, he should say, loudly and proudly: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear.." http://www.latimes.com/news...
Trevor Cook, David HC Soul, Jeff De Cagna and 3 other people liked this
I'm glad Dave Winer got to hear the Berkeley J-School crowd explain to him that listening too well to the users is unethical.
Gib, JMaultasch, ana and 29 other people liked this
Crowdsourcing does not always provide the answers that you expect. I wonder what would be on the front page of the NY Times if popularity was the determining factor for what stories got published. Celebrity gossip? If so, would they be obliged to hire Perez Hilton as their managing editor? People also tend to not like depressing news like people dying in wars, world hunger, pollution,...
more...
- scott anderson
Crowdsourcing? Who said anything about crowdsourcing? Who said newspapers should start editing the front page based on popularity? Where did the phrase "cater to the masses" come from? Where are you getting these things from? "If you want to keep their interest, you need to be interested in them." That was his main point. Does that say "edit the front page by market survey?" Jeez-a-roni.
- Jay Rosen
Slippery slope. How do you get there from here? Quoting from Dave ... "it was largely considered unethical for a reporter or editor to know which sections of the paper were most read by users of the paper. If the reporter knew, the story goes, he or she might be influenced by peoples' interests in deciding what to write about." Dave indicated that this type of thinking was a bug. I disagree.
- scott anderson
It's often commonly known information that some parts of the magazines are more often read than others (while that information is based on the small sample of tests). Anyways, in most newspapers most commonly read page is comics. ;)
- Daniel Schildt
Where's the switch? The switch that causes people to hear Dave Winer saying, "listen to users" and yet what the brain receives is "abandon all judgment, all intelligence to whatever people tend to consume." Where is that switch?
- Jay Rosen
BTW, here's the piece people are responding to. http://www.scripting.com/stories...
- Dave Winer
Jay, it's the same switch that flipped when people told us at Salon a decade ago that we should never look at our traffic reports because it would corrupt our judgment as journalists and turn us into bottomfeeding scum.
- Scott Rosenberg
Yes, the same switch; and I recall that battle pretty well. By the way, is "slippery slope" considered a thought? I mean do people still think of that as an argument: "once you start down, the only option is complete loss of balance until you hit the bottom?" To me that seems more like an escape from the necessity of having to think about something, but maybe shouting "slippery slope" at a problem still sounds like a thought to some folks. If so, it's kind of sad, no?
- Jay Rosen
My most popular blog post is a throw-away picture of Bruce Lee beating up Chuck Norris. Knowing my stats, do I keep posting Lee/Norris stuff? No. But the next ten most-pop posts are about science, and I notice what style and format appeals to ppl, and I may slightly modify my writing style of posts about science - making them better because of this information.
- Bora Zivkovic
I can process the readers' info and not go down the slippery slope. I am still in charge, but feedback - direct through comments and indirect from traffic stats - improves my writing. Newspapers can do the same.
- Bora Zivkovic
Right. "Slippery slope" can mean "pack appropriate footwear, move with caution" but too often people use it to mean "that's scary, let's just sit tight." And there *are* sometimes piles of dazed bruised people at the bottom of the hill.
- Scott Rosenberg
Maybe this is what it is. When people make that equation, "to listen is to cave," they are not making an observation about listening at all. They are making an observation about other people, what scott anderson called "the masses." The masses lack discipline, the masses want entertainment, the masses want Britney Spears-- not news. Most important: the masses are not me, the observer of other people and their decadent habits. And so to challenge the equation, listening=caving, is to take "the masses" away.
- Jay Rosen
But "masses" are interested in stuff other than Britney Spears. Sometimes they don't know it because all the media serves them is Britney Spears: http://scienceblogs.com/clock...
- Bora Zivkovic
You never know what you'll learn if you listen, that's what's really stupid about arguing about whether you should listen or not. Maybe the people who want to say something to you might just make the difference between driving off the cliff and finding a new future. Maybe it's keeping *you* from having the great idea that cracks the nut.
- Dave Winer
BTW, when did listening become "listening in the aggregate." If you know anything about me, you know that I don't think of users as couch potatoes, passive participants. In the 80s when I ran a software company, we used to design regcards so as to solicit original thoughts, not just box-clicking. When a new batch of regcards came in I grabbed them and studied them for interesting comments. When I had a question, I called them and asked. It's also good for business if people get that you care what they think
- Dave Winer
BTW, you might have to listen to 100 users to get 1 good idea. In 1986, I had a meeting with Guy Kawasaki when he worked at Apple. I showed him an early version of one of our products, we had thrown the kitchen sink into it, every half-baked R&D idea, cause our company was failing and this was our last chance. One idea intrigued him. He said everyone at Apple was hand-designing foils to print on Laserwriters (they were new then). He took a piece of paper and drew a box around one of our pages, and...
- Dave Winer
asked if we could do that. Of course we could, and we did, and we immediately sold 1K copies of the product for Apple people, but more importantly, they were so excited by it, they in turn sold many more thousands to their customers, and our company went from being in the brink of shutting down to gushing cash. All because (drum roll) we listened to a user. Ask Guy if you don't believe me, he's on Twitter.
- Dave Winer
Once again, this leaves me wondering how journalism manages to be arrogant without being awesome. (The profession, not so much the people that practice it -- one suspects they've elevated a rough draft of their core values to a religion, and now can't escape from it.)
- j1m
The thinking behind the slippery slope comment was that newspapers are a business that exist to make a profit. The last season of "The Wire" provides a good example of what I was referring to. Once you start down that road, these temporary bailouts become more seductive.
- scott anderson
Also, I never indicated that users should not be listened to. I was referring to the actual quote related to ethics from Dave's article that you obfuscated in your twitter post.
- scott anderson
Lastly, for the record I am not a journalist. I don't even claim to be a good writer. I am a user of the news attempting to communicate my concerns related to this topic to those that in my opinion appear to have a self serving agenda.
- scott anderson
Who is it that you're saying has a self-serving agenda? I like the "in my opinion" part. In my opinion your mother wears army boots! Heh.
- Dave Winer
@Dave: You and Jay. I believe that blogging in all its forms has a valuable role to play in our society. However, I also believe that MSM publications that maintain strict journalistic ethics, including accountability, also provide great value and that the two should not be mixed or try to emulate each other.
- scott anderson
Well there you have it. You should make such accusations carefully and with evidence and back it up. What exactly is my supposed undisclosed (and unknown to me, btw) conflict of interest? (Can't wait to hear this.)
- Dave Winer
@scott "The last season of "The Wire" provides a good example" of a talented auteur unfortunately working out old grievances in public, spinning an entirely unbelievable tale of willful ignorance of total disregard for the truth. Simon also managed to transplant a 1995 newspaper into the current day, an organization that apparently has never heard of the internet, either for reporting the news or checking it out before starting up the presses.
- tim windsor
And I'm with Scott Rosenberg. Slippery slopes call for greater caution, but not total avoidance.
- tim windsor
I've seen this careful to not listen approach in interviews, too. It seems like a lot of journalists only ask questions they already know the answer to. Of course, they want the expert being interviewed to give the answer, but they might as well be putting words in his/her mouth.
- Gordon Vaughan
The line between listening and trusting your own judgment and expertise is a challenging one, no matter how you cut it. But I agree that the "slippery slope" argument is nonsense. If a journalist lacks the judgment to avoid the slide, h probably doesn't deserve the title.
- Pete Forsyth
Also, @davewiner -- I've been trying to participate in this discussion on your blog, but my comments have not been making it past moderation. Can you take a look?
- Pete Forsyth
It's unfortunate that the intent of my original question has gotten lost in this discussion. I blame myself for being too flippant and not tying the point I was attempting to make more directly to the exact issue I had a problem with. I'll try to rephrase the question again in a more precise manner. Dave was informed by the Berkeley J-School crowd that they believed it was unethical to use the data about which sections of a newspaper are most popular in decisions papers make about where to invest resources.
- scott anderson
I responded to Jay's post because he had generalized and distorted the opinion of the "J-School crowd". In hindsight I should have called him out on this and left it at that. All of my comments have been directed to how this specific type of data is collected and used and this issue alone. In regards to the more general question of whether newspapers are listening to their users or not,...
more...
- scott anderson
That said, for those that believe it is beneficial to use the data about which sections of newspapers are more popular than the others, how should this data be compiled and applied in an ethical manner? Do you survey all the potential users of a paper like the NY Times (aka the masses, the aggregate, etc.) or do you isolate a sample group based on some criteria? What is that criteria?...
more...
- scott anderson
The problem with the letters to the editor is that they are designed to protect the existing power relations. See this dust-up about the inappropriateness of letters to the editor in science publications: http://scienceblogs.com/clock...
- Bora Zivkovic
There are much better ways to listen to the readership than letters to the editor. News outlets have many opportunities -- some more legitimate than others -- to shape the public discourse and influence public opinion. In reporting, in the structuring of the medium, in the archiving of information. Proactively seeking out feedback is important -- and is commonplace in other industries. Some approaches clearly have ethical implications, while others don't.
- Pete Forsyth
@davewiner If your claim is simply "news outlets should listen to their users," it seems there isn't much for anyone to argue with. I think that's pretty uncontroversially true. However, it's seemed at several points that you are taking a stronger position than that.
- Pete Forsyth
I don't equate listening to caving or that listening will result in bottom feeders but I do not discount the effects that come from the pressures related to being a profitable business, especially in tough economic times. A blog or a niche publication is a much different animal than a news corporation. Are there specific processes or firewalls that exist in the news industry that...
more...
- scott anderson
I think knee-jerk or reactive answers come out of a specific context, and to suggest that news organizations are dumb or naive misses a more nuanced point. The kind of influence that advertising directors etc. sometimes try to exert over editors can be extreme, and so editors' developing a tin ear to that sort of thing can, in many cases, be a very good thing. It's important hear feedback, but it's also important to not waste one's time hearing repetitive feedback that you can't ethically act upon.
- Pete Forsyth
When Obama said he was not against all wars, just "dumb wars" people seemed able to handle it. Their heads did not explode from having to make a distinction. So...There's smart listening and dumb listening. I think everyone can handle that too-- including everyone looking in on this thread.
- Jay Rosen
Jay, I think we all agree that the distinction is important. The point I'm trying to make is that resistance to input is not always, or necessarily, a bad thing. That is a starting point for finding a solution though, not an end-point. Trusting journalists to have good judgment implies respecting their right to say "in my judgment, this particular feedback is garbage."
- Pete Forsyth
As an aside, I have been blocked from commenting on Dave Winer's blog, for reasons that aren't clear to me. That's why I haven't been involved in the discussion over there -- not a lack of interest.
- Pete Forsyth
Channel 9 just reported that the attackers in Mumbai had blackberries and were checking websites etc for news of there attacks, including video.
Trevor Cook, Morton Fox and Susan Beebe liked this
bad ol' blackberries! ah ha! (this is really funny... criminals eating blackberries...oh sooo tough!) LOL
- Susan Beebe
They weren't sponsored by BlackBerry or anything.
- jjprojects
I'm starting a trip to Barcelona today. - http://www.dopplr.com/travell...
Jonas Anderson, Steve Chou, Trevor Cook and 5 other people liked this
I'll be there from November 29th until December 4th. See more in my Dopplr profile.
- Robert Scoble
If you get a chance go eat at "El Bulli" and tell us how it was. On many lists as the best restaurant in the world. Wiki page for Restaurant Magazine's top 50 lists for the last 6 years...and it's won the last 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Mark Krynsky
damn it. the envy's setting in deeper every time my fingers touch a key
- Enrique Gutierrez
from twhirl
El Bulli is shut for the winter months and Ronaldinho was sold to Milan but there are plenty of other places to eat and there will be a great football(soccer) game tonight against Sevilla.
- Jack Sagel
@Robert, you mentioned you were bringing a Netbook on your trip, which one are you bringing, how long have you had it, and what is your experience with it so far?
- Jeff P. Henderson
It's a Lenovo model. I have to set it up tonight. Will report more when I get some mileage on it.
- Robert Scoble
Jack, what about Sunday? Or later in the week? Would love to meet up with other FriendFeed users there too.
- Robert Scoble
What are you doing in Barcelona?
- Jack Sagel
sunday is great for me-my son is running in a big race at 10am at Montjuic(where the Olympic stadium is)
- Jack Sagel
Jack: NokiaWorld is next week. I have to finish my expense report, then I can work on my schedule. Sigh.
- Robert Scoble
well if sun you want a giuded tour of Bcelona let me know
- Jack Sagel
Bring your woolies...there's a cold wind blowing here :-)
- eduardo
NokiaWorld?!?!? Oh man... swing by San Diego and just smuggle me there in your luggage. I'm testing the N96 right now & gotta say - it's "better enough" than the N95... <3 me some Nokia
- Enrique Gutierrez
Jack: that would be fun! Maryam and the baby will be along too. Eduardo, thanks for the warning!
- Robert Scoble
Enrique: I have an N96. It rocks. Love the Nokia stuff. I hear there's a new touch-screen Nokia coming out. Will be interesting to compare that to iPhone.
- Robert Scoble
Spain is one of the countries I'd like to visit someday... Scoble is soo lucky!
- Susan Beebe
no problem-let me know where u are staying and I will pick you up around midday if you're all not too jet lagged
- Jack Sagel
godspeed scoble , have fun;)
- Alemsah Ozturk
Robert: The Nokia 5600, touchscreen. Now that I've fanboye'd the N-series, it might be hard for me to pay attention to the 5600... time will tell though. I'll be nagging WomWorld for one of those as well, I'm sure.
- Enrique Gutierrez
from twhirl
Susan: there are major downsides. For instance, my expense reports are freaking a pain in the behind. And there is all that travel. 125,000 miles so far this year on United alone. I actually look forward to weeks when I stay home and next year I'm turning down all sorts of travel. Spain, though, is one place I've wanted to go. I agree, I am lucky. The people I've met and the experiences I've had are really magical.
- Robert Scoble
I hope your trip goes smoothly - interesting but uneventful.
- Internet Strategist
Oh, and this will be Milan's third trip to Europe since being born (he's only 14-months old). He's done more traveling than I did in first 25 years of life.
- Robert Scoble
So Robert don't miss the "vaso de oro" in barcelloneta old town close to the see.. It's the best ever real tapas in barca, my Spanish friends use to take me there.
- Christian
visit gaudi's sagrada familia one of the most amazing buildings in the world and the Miro and Picasso galleries are well worth visiting of course. And Barca FC has one of the best trophy rooms in world football
- Trevor Cook
check out: http://www.qype.co.uk/es511-b...
- eduardo
If you're a meat fan, check out the El Paraguayo restaurant: http://www.barcelona-metropolitan.com/Article...
- Luke Robinson
strongly recommending: http://barcelona.unlike.net/ the definitive city guide for the mobile generation - enjoy Barcelona!
- Margit Hinke
Robert, may I suggest an Offbeat Guide to Barcelona: http://www.offbeatguides.com/destina...
- David Sifry
from twhirl
I hear it's a great city - I'm sure you'll let us know how you like it
- Tim Ake
Check out the Gaudi architecture. Dude was a visionary.
- Phil Boiarski
I've played with the Nokia touchscreen, although not sure it was a fully ready for release one. it was lovely and fun through
- Rachel Clarke
The architecture is fantastic, Jean Nouvel's Torre Agbar is one building that stands out but the whole city has a wonderful modern vibe.
- Steven Cains
According to my FriendFeed stats for every participant there are 4.69 lurkers. I discuss how I learned that here:
Philip J Beyer, Daniel Schildt, Christopher Golda and 58 other people liked this
For the past several months I've been following EVERYONE who shows up on my view. Those are participants. People who click like. People who leave comments. I am now following 4,601 people according to FriendFeed. Yet if I look at the larger pool of who is following me there are 21,578 there. Who are these lurkers? Have I caught every participant?
- Robert Scoble
Sneaky :-)
- Gordon Saunders
interesting
- Brendon Wadey
you should get me that many followers lol
- Brendon Wadey
I'm pretty sure I've caught most of the participants. Why? Because I've both begged for people to let me know and, also, because if you look at how 4,000 people link out to other people and get their audiences involved you'll see that they touch more than 100,000 FriendFeeders.
- Robert Scoble
so do you still believe there are >100K FF users Robert? :)
- Jeremy Toeman
Interesting statistic. Seems like a fairly high participation rate. I wonder how that compares to other social media sites such as Twitter as well as Blogs?
- Jeff P. Henderson
It would be great if you could compare numbers with other notables to see if this is specifically a Scoble ratio, or a more generally observed phenomenon.
- Gordon Saunders
Brendon: followers are fun, but following is more important. Someday I'll write a book about why. But, short version is that if you follow smart and interesting people they'll get you involved in interesting conversations. They'll make you smarter and more interesting. Guess what? That'll get you more followers. It's a vicious cycle. I haven't seen anyone with a lot of followers who isn't smart and interesting here (and/or a participant).
- Robert Scoble
That is why I'm so picky about who I follow.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
Jeremy: yes, there are. Provably so. Just visit the "Everyone" feed and you'll see that most of those aren't in my sphere of influence. Heck, there's an extremely interesting Farsi crowd here that I can't even read, so I don't follow them for the most part.
- Robert Scoble
That is probably the most useful tip I have heard from anyone in quite awhile, it makes sense and is true. But yes followers are fun :)
- Brendon Wadey
The wonders of a larger sample size... see by that standard, I'm following 119, and have 86 following me. Since I've started using FF, I've had ... less than a dozen comments and likes combined. So if I were running these numbers, I'd say - "interaction on FriendFeed is nil - whereas interaction on Twitter is incredible"... then again, my echo chamber resides in Twitter and is small. Breaking through that is the next trick...
- Enrique Gutierrez
Jeff: on blogs the rate of lurkers is much higher. Arrington has a million RSS subscribers, yet how many of those participate in his comments? Only a very small percentage.
- Robert Scoble
Funny, I am subscribed to every single person on this thread so far, which validates that I don't have any participants who I haven't followed yet. Wonder what all those lurkers are doing? I bet that they very rarely visit FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, when you start going into higher numbers; any group of people becomes representative of the general demographics. This means it represents the same classes of people: 20% Leaders, 80% followers. You, Sir, belong to the former. Your numbers are representative of the same fact. I do not anticipate this to change, this is the structure of the society, how we are built.
- Parth Awasthi
@Robert, That is what I suspected. Comparing Blogs to social media sites is an apples to oranges comparison.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Scoble, your point on touching 100,000 FriendFeeders is interesting. Am comparing it to the statistic that LinkedIn shows on people connected to ones contacts..i have 13,000 contacts via the immediate 194 of mine. But purely in terms of engagement/participation am thinking FF beats LinkedIn.
- Mahesh CR
Parth: yes, but this is the first time in history where we have the names of the lurkers! :-)
- Robert Scoble
That is an amazingly high participation rate
- Internet Strategist
I'd love to know what they're all doing, especially the 15 people that should (by the 1:4.7 ratio) be interacting with my feed. I should hire a team of christmas elves to hook up the comments on my timeline...
- Enrique Gutierrez
Participation is also harder on popular blogs now, with many requiring registration, captchas or email confirmation steps. The harder it is to say what you want, the less likely folks are to bother.
- John
hahaha
- Brendon Wadey
Yea there are many blogs that I go to but never comment, because I don't want to take the time to sign up for that blog nor do I want more accounts with places I might only go to once in awhile.
- Brendon Wadey
The Lost Lurkers of Atlantis. Imagine if they all decided to decend upon a comment thread all on the same day. There should be a count down or something to give it a shot.
- Micah Wittman
I lurk, therefore I am
- Pete Gilbert
@Brendon That is why I wish everyone used Disqus or something where you don't have to sign up just to leave a comment. Cause I personally will not sign up.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
@Robert, I think there are plenty of lurkers that do not participate, but read as they either do not have a significant enough interest in the topics at hand or they do not agree with the views posted and do not wish to start an argument. I believe the latter was very true during the election, especially for those with Right leaning views, who were grossly outnumbered by the Left leaning points of view here on FF.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Yup and hopefully one day that is how it will be
- Brendon Wadey
I'm a lurker, for the most part, I have a hard time bouncing around to everyone's feeds. I really should consider just using FF as my main source. It's so handy.
- Chris Pugh
I certainly hope I'm not a lurker! Though I don't really participate on FriendFeed as much as I'd like. I'm actually more on Twitter and FB than FF, and I've tried to heavily integrate both only to find that I updated too much when I did that. How do you mitigate the overabundance of updates? lol
- Carlton Hackett
What would a social network with no lurkers look like?
- Ziad
Here's the problem. I bet that there are tons of lurkers who don't even sign in, or follow. So, there are now three classes of people here: 1. Participants. 2. Logged in lurkers. 3. Invisible lurkers. I bet that for every one participant there are 5 in #2 and 50 in #3. Participants are worth their weight in gold.
- Robert Scoble
wow
- Brendon Wadey
Carlton and Pete: I already followed you, so you aren't a lurker. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Whats great is after commenting on this post a couple of times I've had two ppl subscribe to me in the past two minutes.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
John, Brendon, that's why I'm glad to see Disqus, Backtype, IntenseDebate & other comment mechanisms that avoid the need for that.
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
I have been added people since this convo as well
- Brendon Wadey
Very interesting, indeed. I had actually stopped reciprocating follows, this being one of the reasons. I figured that, if someone was worth following, I would see them in my view at some point. Otherwise, they are probably not active or don't have anything I want to see. I think FF may be the only service where you can do this.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Is that called "followed by association"?
- James D Kirk
I too agree on who you follow too, it does make you smarter and I need to work on being a bit more involved as well.
- MedicalQuack
I can only think of a couple of possible explanations. I'm sure a certain percentage are just people who never took to the service and never came back. The other explanation is simple enough - in any medium where there are creators and consumers the consumers far outnumber the creators. I'm kind of surprised the ratio is that low actually.
- invariant - farewell FF
@Robert Do you know what your most commented FF post has been to date - how many comments attached? Thanks.
- Micah Wittman
Hahaha @Scobleizer I don't know about this one. Perhaps for someone that has an incredible volume of audience, sure... in fact, I'm sure there's some bell curve you can apply to an equation with enough samples from people. The attention bucket is exponential & variant significantly. such as - 8 readers on my blog, subscribed, but approximately 1000 readers a month. We need to take a sample & get some data & charts going.
- Enrique Gutierrez
Not sure there's much wrong with lurking - Usenet used to encourage a period of lurking before participation to get a feel for the group. Perhaps people are naturally doing the same thing here.
- John
I also want people to realize that just because I don't subscribe back to you doesn't mean I hate you or something. It either means your just not active enough, fill most of your feed with Twitter, Wakoopa, etc or you are just too knew and I don't know yet.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
stats is one of the hardest things to get, and get done right.
- Brendon Wadey
invariant: we always knew that the lurkers far outnumbered the participants. We saw this back in the mid 1990s on CompuServe (where people PAID to participate and read forums, so we had lots of good numbers). Back then it was 1 to 50 or lower. I bet that the real lurkers aren't even subscribing . I think FriendFeed has demonstrated that there's a third group that was unmeasurable before: lurkers who will log in to get something of value or just to try out a service before discarding it.
- Robert Scoble
understandable
- Brendon Wadey
1:5 particpant vs lurker ratio. That's pretty good ratio in an online community.
- Leon Ho
Another reason: in the time it took me to type my comment this post went from 2 to 40 comments. Everything that needs to be said gets said very quickly on your posts.
- invariant - farewell FF
Micah: I don't know which of my FF items was most commented on. Seems that a very high comment rate is more than 100. It's rare that I see that here. Brendon, agree, stats are full of lies. One thing that's very interesting is that I found three new people on this thread so far.
- Robert Scoble
When someone follows me, I typically look at their content and frequency of posting before deciding to follow them. As Robert said, I 'm looking for quality content also (i.e. stuff that is interesting to me).
- Jeff P. Henderson
Rahsheen, didn't you recently say "if I'm not following you back, it's my fault I'm sorry" or something like that? Which is it?
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
Brendon - I don't think it'd be that difficult. You'd have to get a small number of the few types of Internet people out there... all in all - you could probably run this experiment with (arbitrarily) 24~ people's stats
- Enrique Gutierrez
from twhirl
Leon: the problem is I don't know the real "lurker" numbers because I can't see FriendFeed's true traffic for my posts. So, there might be 5-100 more "unregistered" lurkers here that we can't see, which would bring down the ratio more to be closer to blogs.
- Robert Scoble
yea true
- Brendon Wadey
Those numbers are more in line with what I've seen moderating forums and in ecommerce conversion rates. There will never be anything with NO lurkers because there are so many who are afraid to say anything. Forcing people to log in or sign up is a major participation killer, so anyone serious about increasing participation really needs to remove those obstacles.
- Internet Strategist
I've already had two people subscribe to me since this thread started.
- Jeff P. Henderson
@ Jeff I do the same exact thing.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
I tend to work the opposite way around - I'll subscribe to somebody when I see an interesting post/comment, but unsubscribe later in the rare case that I find I can't cope with their content.
- John
I just finally got a TypePad account yesterday because I really wanted to leave a comment in a blog that required one. The first comment I made was suggesting they remove the requirement to log in. To the blogger's credit he immediately DID remove it AND followed up with me. What we do - every little improvement - makes an enormous long-term difference.
- Internet Strategist
I do a lot of lurking, and I follow a lot of links and Google a lot of things that I've never heard of before. That's how I ended up here, it's also how I found Twitter. I think sometimes it's networking or info overload that causes people to abandon communities or services they've joined or spend more time reading than commenting. It's easy to end up out of your depth.
- ilene
That is exactly how I work as well
- Brendon Wadey
I don't even remember how I found out about Friendfeed. I think it was through Twitter. Hell I don't even know when I joined. Just know that it was sometime in the middle of July...I think.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
@ilene, that is exactly the value of following interesting people on FF. Once you do that, participation is inevitable unless one is very shy.
- Jeff P. Henderson
I also found it through twitter, didn't use it for awhile and just started using it quite abit now, starting to really like it :)
- Brendon Wadey
Friendfeed really is something, I have just spent an hour using this application (yes I consider it an app) and have really been enjoying myself. :)
- Brendon Wadey
Robert: Right. I wonder at what point a high comment count precipitates branching off onto a new FF post or even something longer format (I have had the urge before, but shrug it off b/c the immediacy loses steam). I've noticed you springboard to a blog post at times, but my recollection holds that it's related to a convergence in your broader experience and not specific to a frenzy of response (measured by volume of comments).
- Micah Wittman
@Jeff I've tried that on Twitter, but at least here it seems likely that even if you don't have a direct connection to someone already that you might still get a response. :)
- ilene
@Bredon Wakoopa considers it an app as well.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
I know the blog posting series I want to read: a system to regularly make the rounds of all the appropriate Social Networking sites, keep multiple blogs updated, and stay on top of it all.
- Internet Strategist
oh how i love web 2.0 :) :)
- Brendon Wadey
I originally viewed friendfeed as a way to keep up on postings throughout the web from the people I enjoy following. I added links to some of my own sources but didn't really expect anyone to follow me. I think a lot of people use friendfeed analogously to an RSS reader but grouped by people instead of websites.
- invariant - farewell FF
Checked email. 2 FF subscribes and a Facebook friend request to boot (I may get to that one in a week)
- Micah Wittman
One thing I have noticed regarding the number of comments and participation on a post is, that it is not only related to the level of interest, but is definitely dependent on the time of day, who, and how many people are on FF at the time. i.e. Friday night is a good time to post if you want interaction.
- Jeff P. Henderson
I would bet a lot of people signed up once to check it out and never came back. There are a lot of ways the site could improve for first-time users, which would improve retention.
- Louis Gray
Posting is good. Interesting posting is better. I prefer people who post when they have something to say, rather than just to participate.
- Alexandros Georgiadis
Louis: I bet a lot of people visited it from my blog once and didn't even sign up. Getting people to participate really is difficult, isn't it?
- Robert Scoble
lol @ Jeff P. Henderson - you know what that says about our social lives
- Internet Strategist
@ Louis, that is very true and has been discussed many times here. New FF users do not have a very good experience the first time they use the service until they are following several active people. Those who do not understand this may move after their first visit.
- Jeff P. Henderson
What is even more interesting is people who answer me over on Twitter but won't participate here. That, too, is interesting behavior.
- Robert Scoble
Do those twitterers know about FF?
- James D Kirk
Robert started this by posting the comment to Twitter and here. Does anyone know if he has written anything on Social Media strategies like that one? Or know of anyone else who has? One thing FF could do to improve usability is to put the comment option at the bottom too instead of just at the top.
- Internet Strategist
I second that, Internet Strategist. "Comment" at the bottom, too!
- Alexandros Georgiadis
Plus, no going to the top of the page after subscribing to someone.
- Alexandros Georgiadis
Yep, my scrolling finger is getting mighty sore on this thread.... ;-)
- Jeff P. Henderson
James: yes. See http://www.twitter.com/scoblei... . Internet Strategist: nope, I haven't written anything up about these strategies yet. I'm just playing and learning.
- Robert Scoble
Auto refresh or Real time would be nice
- Alexandros Georgiadis
WOW 90 comments in less that 45 minutes!
- Jeff P. Henderson
For new FF people, I think there should be a part 2 to that lovely video I remember seeing when I first joined. Like a Top 10 list of things to do once on FF. And some recommended followers as well. That should get you off to a running start.
- Amani
Louis Gray has written countless articles on his Blog about how to use FF. Definitely worth a read. http://www.louisgray.com/live...
- Jeff P. Henderson
Thanks Jeff. Just what I needed. I just figured out how to import my blog feed and to filter anyone's feed to see just their blog posts. How can they be sharp enough to make those easy and not put the comment option at the bottom?
- Internet Strategist
I rarely log in to FF to participate as most of my social circle hasn't adopted FF, let alone Twitter yet. However, I was on FF before you, and for a while I had an 'imaginary' Scoble set up to follow. Now I use the comments feature of the Facebook news feed like I would FF. I don't have time to participate everywhere, so I usually participate where my closest-knit social circle is present. Not sure what kind of a 'lurker' that makes me, but hopefully that gives some helpful insight.
- Mike English
Oh, and I saw this first on twitter, but for once came over to comment.
- Mike English
I just started following you about a week ago only on freind feed. It's really neat to see that you are taking the time to see who all of us are so to speak.
- Enriqueta
I suspect that everyone uses SM sequentially instead of all at once because there are too many. Based on this FF exchange has been far more illuminating than Twitter so far. What we need is a tool that automatically logs in a particular persona to each site. One that we can configure to present links to all potential places to visit and drag and drop them to the priority we prefer. Ideally it would allow a large number of personas and easily switch between them. (That could be a programming challenge.)
- Internet Strategist
Mike: cool, welcome back. I am on Facebook more lately too, but the quality of the conversations are decidedly different, which I find interesting (although the participants have a lot of overlap, which also surprised me). Enriqueta, welcome, hope to see you more!
- Robert Scoble
My info-stream comes mainly from the nexus FriendFeed - Greader with Twitter as the connective tissue. Even when I'm bounced to a source site (blog, news), all of my dialogue (comments, chat) has moved to the FF space. But the trickle down (or up) effect from comments being moved between platforms (blog> Greader> FF> Twitter> blog...) has de-centered the conversation. New protocols to structure this ecosystem (where & under what circumstances to leave a comment, start a conversation) are emerging.
- Brad Kligerman
I can't participate in all smart conversation initiated by all friendfeed's smart guys.. even though I want to.. therefore I lurk..
- Pico Seno
You weren't kidding about "countless" articles on FF. There are 689 of them! I thought some might be interested in his latest http://www.louisgray.com/live...
- Internet Strategist
@internet Strategist, Subscribe to Louis Gray here on FF and you well see all of his new articles as soon as he posts them.
- Jeff P. Henderson
I already did but thanks for the suggestion (in case I hadn't figured it out yet). I subscribed to you too. Thanks for the assistance and I do hope you'll visit my blog. It is at http://GrowMap.com and I added it to my feed here so you can get an idea what I post about there. (Filtered posts at http://friendfeed.com/growmap...)
- Internet Strategist
Hmm, I have an even lower participation rate. For every participant, there's at least 6 nonparticipants. @Robert, do you look for new participants in the public feed?
- Tanath
Tanath: yes, I do look there often to see if anyone is doing something I'd be interested in.
- Robert Scoble
I'll wager (fairly heavily) that "lurkers" aren't really even "lurking". Let's face it, if you like FF, it's fun to be engaged, but why on Earth would you just "watch" all this chatter? Seriously, I cannot think of a worse hobby than "I lurk on FriendFeed"...
- Jeremy Toeman
@Jeremy - I disagree. Lurking on FriendFeed can be quite fun, entertaining and informative (not that i'm a lurker). My guess is the lurkers don't read through all the "chatter" but rather skim through and find interesting links and information they may be, or may not be, looking for.
- Justin Korn
Interesting discussion. I'm very new, Twitter and FB about a month ago and FF this week. Still finding my feet or rather still trying not to put my foot in my mouth when commenting. Must get over that and just go for it. Would say I've never seen anything like this before but then, as I said, am new to social media anyway so what do I know. Great being here, already inspired a new work of art :)
- Nicola Quinn
Talk about being super-transparent in a way.
- Ms. B
Ditto @Mike English: "I rarely log in to FF to participate as most of my social circle hasn't adopted FF, let alone Twitter yet. I don't have time to participate everywhere"...and I am pretty much shocked that some people do. My ex-husband, a programmer, and his crowd all Twitter, which is interesting to follow because he and his friends are very smart and all involved in technology,...
more...
- Colleen
Colleen I agree, it's a strange but interesting world here with few rules which makes it both refreshing and quite exciting. And I love the new topics I've been able to explore which I wouldn't bother looking into any other way. It's also great to be able to reply in more than 140 chars here.
- Nicola Quinn
Jeremy: there are a wide variety of reasons that people would lurk here. Did you know that lots of these threads are showing up on Google now? So, people are finding them on Google, reading them, deciding they are lame, and moving on. Other people are hearing about various things here over on Twitter. Others are hearing about them from various blogs. In fact, if you visit my blog you might see my FriendFeed item on my blog. Are you a lurker? Hmmm.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, shouldn't you be asleep, or packing or something?
- Nicola Quinn
i think you are doing it wrong robert ;)
- Chris Hofmann
I've been frustrated lately with lack of purposeful dialog with me on Facebook and Twitter, even though I've been doing everything I can to get some type of interaction. I'm hoping FF will be the answer I'm looking for in finding actual participants and making true connections.
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Chris: of course I'm doing it wrong. That's why I'm following all of you so I can learn the right way to use this darn contraption. Jannifer, welcome, will be looking for you. Nicola, already packed. Sleep? Um, would like to, but got this stupid expense report I'm finishing up.
- Robert Scoble
I signed up because it sounded like a cool idea, really. xD Nowadays I just link people to my FF account and let people find my other social presences from there. It's much more simple for me, in that way.
- Neurario
Can't find who said, why would anyone want to add people they don't know? That's exactly why I joined here to find some new cool friends and repattern my aging neurons with some stimulating ideas and conversations :)
- Nicola Quinn
Bon voyage Robert, have a great trip, Spain is fantastic and hope your expense report didn't give you too much of a headache.
- Nicola Quinn
Forrester / @jowyang has some interesting related stats here http://blogs.forrester.com/grounds...
- Mike Reynolds
Lurking is always necessary for a beginner. People learn to participate in time. It's like high school on the net.
- Phil Boiarski
I am not sure your analysis of the lurker stats stands up. Obviously for your feed it is true but to generalize is probably not appropriate. There probably a number of reasons why people lurk on your feed but participate otherwise. First is that comments on your posts tend to get very noisy, very quickly making it difficult and time consuming to participate other than a quick scan. Second is that a lot of FF do not have English as a first language making it even more difficult for them to participate.....
- Brian Sullivan
That gives another really good reason why something like FF is so good. People who don't know English or even another language they could spend there time reading people's posts and even asking questions, and could possibly help them learn that language.
- Brendon Wadey
There may be others as well but they don't immediately come to mind. I think to judge participation you need a broader set of data. How many FFers are there? How many have ever participated? How many have participated in the last day, week, month? I am thinking that participation on a broad scale might be even more than you 4.69 stat indicates.
- Brian Sullivan
You are right, and if you look back into the comments as I said earlier that one of the hardest things to get and to get done right is stats, it's almost impossible to get depending on what you are looking at. But yes, if you can get that information it would show a better picture, and probably would be much more.
- Brendon Wadey
Another problem with using your posts as a gauge-- because of the stupid FF bubble algorithm this post has stopped rising to the top even though comments and likes continue to be added. Even with your posts the participation rate might be higher if this was not the case.
- Brian Sullivan
Echoing a lot of comments here w/ my own take: I'm a sysadmin & programmer on Twitter & FF for a couple months. Believe it or not, none of my family friends or colleagues use either so I have been lurking until I got a feel 4 how it works and until I felt I had something worth saying. To me, there are so many out there that comment and participate with nothing useful to say. I would rather be a lurker than one of those guys!
- Brendten Eickstaedt
Is something useful opinion?
- Brendon Wadey
As someone who would consider themselves a lurker, I agree with HealthMash. There is quite a bit of participation that adds nothing to the conversation.
- Joseph Ferris
Yes absolutely. What isn't useful, at least 2 me, are comments from people who clearly just want their name out there. As Jim Rome says "have a take and do not suck!"
- Brendten Eickstaedt
2 me FF most useful as the aggregator of my info-stream. I first found of b/c I am on so many social sites I can't keep them all straight. Just point people 2 FF and be done w/ it. Until a couple of days ago I didn't read a single comment or follow a single person. I did use it to find the info streams of other interesting people tho but never followed them. I guess that makes me one of @scobleizers invisible lurkers!
- Brendten Eickstaedt
Yes like others, I get responses not here, seems few people I know are on FF. Interestingly I get more feedback via Facebook via the Twitters I do than Twitter, problem is I'm not getting complaints from FB people about me 'flooding their feed'. If I disconnect Twitter and FB it would literally be like cutting the rope to Facebook, I find little there except the group I know IRL and responses/dialogue to keep me there - games and apps and groups don't do it for me.
- Tim
I actually think part of the problem is there are too many social media sites - competition is spreading groups far too thinly - why I've never signed up to Bebo and delayed with Facebook and Twitter, and only recently signed up with LinkedIn. I felt I had too many others (Livejournal, Podcasts, Myspace, RSS feeds, forums etc). It's only recently I felt those apps had a maturity and enough followers in people I know personally to go for them. Twitter I think has a LONG way to go in that department.
- Tim
Word of mouth and first impressions mean a lot. It took a few enthusiastic comments regarding FF for me to check it out - and I had to make the commitment to try it. It's also nice when the service is clearer - such as the '25 uses for FF' etc posts. Those are great - not everyone will find those. It's important when you're importing what others say. It nearly got me disowned for embarrassing a family member once - and caused us both to quit that particular networking site.
- ilene
I have to agree with Tim on two points. A lot of the members of my site and listeners to my show are not into a lot of these newer social media sites, which is somewhat ironic given that they are techs who do gravitate around two of the oldest forms of social networking on the net - BB forums and newsgroups. Also, these sites are now so numerous the entire arena can be overwhelming.
- Rick Savoia
clever idea Robert!
- Susan Beebe
I wonder if that 4.69 number will go down over time as some people move from lurker status to interactive status? FF isn't for lurkers it's for conversations and not passive users. Lurkers should stick to TV, radio, and other one way media outlets.
- Jeremy Campbell
from twhirl
I think you have missed people. Unless you stop unfollowing from time to time. Perhaps, the comments or likes disappeared before you had time to see.
- MaryAnn Chick Whiteside
I decided to do a little research with FFHolic and it seems the participation rate is around 80% - http://blog.justinkorn.com/index... - right on target with Robert's numbers
- Justin Korn
I think your discovery of such a high "participation" rate just goes to prove that FF is still in the Early Adopter phase. Those 100K or so that are using it, are USING it!
- James D Kirk
i wager 25K "active" users. #1 user = scoble (~19K subs), #1 room = rww (~3K subs). seems hard to believe that there would be any more than that...
- Jeremy Toeman
Top of mount Wellington in a snow storm
Sidharth Dassani and Trevor Cook liked this
wish I was that would be wild
- Trevor Cook
That's where the beef comes from, right?
- Chris Baskind
no, Chris, beef comes from cows.
- Trent Olson
Chris, its a national park I think. It's a big mountain behind Hobart, Tasmania.
- Duncan Riley
Time Video: Walking While Working - http://www.time.com/time...
Trevor Cook liked this
A treadmill-desk combo that lets you exercise and work simultaneously - and she burned 2000 calories in a week. Amazing.
- Steve Rubel
that's insane I wouldn't like to be trying to work near someone doing tht
- Trevor Cook
RSS is more popular than Twitter, but Twitter is about to catch up - http://www.google.com/trends...
susan mernit, Dave Martin, Mike Elliott and 47 other people liked this
One could make the argument that searching for RSS is as useful as searching for HTML or word processing. It just quietly does its job.
- Louis Gray
One could also make the argument that they're kind of related.
- Amyloo
what louis said
- mike "glemak" dunn
The problem is marketing - no one in the early/late majority even knows the term RSS to look up.
- AJ Kohn
It's not a problem. As Louis says, you don't need to know what HTML means to use the web. Technology has its place, but it doesn't have to be in your face. :-)
- Dave Winer
@Dave: I'm not saying it has to be in your face, but RSS isn't an easy concept IMO, particularly since you have multiple readers from which to choose. Digest. Delivery. On-demand. I think all would be more accessible to early/late majority folks. I love RSS so I'd like to see it gain greater usage.
- AJ Kohn
What's even more interesting for me: it shows how far behind Germany is, even behind Netherlands, Sweden etc.
- Frank S.
Anybody know what the latest RSS adoption stats are? I'm looking at a new survey of the audience I serve in my day job (safety managers), and I'll be curious to compare what they said about RSS to a more general audience. Figures for my study (still preliminary) show about 60% never heard of it. Interestingly, it's not the youngest managers who are more aware; 41-50 year olds are most up on it. (BTW I never think these end-user figures mean much; more of the power of RSS happens behind the scenes, IMO.)
- Amyloo
@Amyloo: Do you have a link to your study? I'd be interested to see the numbers.
- AJ Kohn
No link yet. Responses still coming in so no report.
- Amyloo
Here is one item I don't get. I have met almost no teenagers who have heard of twitter, much less use it. I don't get it - these kids send 1000+ messages a month and twitter is foreign.
- tim
tim - im, sms & facebook are their tools of choice - twitter is seen as lame, my two teen kids are on twitter but could care less about it, one of my son's though is on friendfeed & actively uses it but he's a comp-sci geek ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
oh yeah - i could care less about twitter too :-p
- mike "glemak" dunn
glemak, I've noticed that about kids, too. Those who do know about it associate it exclusively with the original "What are you doing?" purpose and roll their eyes at me for using it.
- Amyloo
tried to get both the 22 & 19 to use Twitter. they like it, but in the end their social graphs are in Facebook & Myspace, so the big question is "what's the point, there's nobody on Twitter". The constant discovery of new people online does not really have a corollary in FB, so they don't see that value (yet).
- Mark Schulz
yeah mine are 19 & 16 - facebook is their preferred "friend" & "status" environment & they tend to know most in meatspace too, which is different than the percentages of twitter & friendfeed users i'd imagine, it is for me at least...
- mike "glemak" dunn
There could be false positives here since RSS is a political party in India. This is more accurate. http://www.google.com/trends...
- Steve Rubel
Twitter is a funny word; RSS is an acronym for a protocol. Funny wins.
- Cliff Gerrish
I recently started using Facebook again. 60%+ of my friends' updates? They come from Twitter. Now you know why FB wanted to buy Twitter.
Nicholas James, piero babudro, Patrik Johansson and 20 other people liked this
How many Twitter updates come from FF?
- Brian Sullivan
I have friendfeed update my Twitter acct and then Twitter updates my facebook, works great!
- Kelly Johns
All my updates and feeds are getting in a bit of a twist resulting in duplicate posts in some places. Might unravel and start again.
- Nicola Quinn
I tend to drive everything off ping.fm, which updates my status on Twitter, Facebook and BrightKite.
- Richard Peat
Thanks Richard, will look into that.
- Nicola Quinn
Ping.fm is the best!
- Susan Beebe
I used to enjoy having Twitter update my FB status, but like Nicola, I started getting duplicate posts in the FB minifeed once I started having FF update my FB mini-feed. Now I update Facebook separately. I love having everything collect in FF which feeds the FB minifeed, no more duplicate posts there. If only FF could update the FB status....
- Helen Hoefele
Helen have you any idea how to get the Twitter feed off FB? There are some things I post on FB and not on Twitter and would like to reinstate the FB feed onto FF so they show here.
- Nicola Quinn
Nicola, to stop Twitter from updating your FB status, try this: in FB, in lower left corner under Applications, go to your Twitter App, and make the changes there.
- Helen Hoefele
Thanks Helen, will have a play.
- Nicola Quinn
Matthew: FF adds new features often. That's why it'll succeed. Be careful with the posting feature, though. It can make your Twitter account very noisy if done wrong.
- Robert Scoble
As FriendFeed can automatically update Twitter, I can take care of two birds with one stone each time I post on FF.
- Ernie Oporto
I still use both FF & Twitter. However, I had to turn off some of the FF -> Twitter options, as it DID make my Twittering very noisy indeed for a short time.
- Ian May
Once friendfeed makes it easier to follow conversations (that are not originated by you) it will make it a lot easier to participate. Right now, if you leave a comment on a post that is not yours, you have to go to Comments & Likes to follow it, unless I am missing something.
- Kelly Johns
Kelly -- you can follow posts you commented on wherever they are -- but since it is most likely they will be near the top and findable in your comments and likes list -- that is where you would most easily find it. I don't know why you think that is is difficult though.
- Brian Sullivan
Chrome Is A Threat To Firefox? - http://www.lockergnome.com/it...
Trevor Cook liked this
I love chrome. I don't use add-ons and I love the speed
- Trevor Cook
in the long term, it could be... Firefox's footprint is too big, almost unusable on my macbook
- Luca Filigheddu
from twhirl
Wondering what companies have set up Twitter for their company/ brand/ product/ service?
Trevor Cook liked this
telstra do in Australia and also Virgin
- Trevor Cook
The True Value of Social Media Consultants | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon - http://www.horsepigcow.com/2008...
Trevor Cook liked this
Inspirational, uplifting and smart write-up of what separates good from great social media consultants by Tara Hunt. By the same logic, engaging a great SCM consultant in and of itself is a badge of honor, since it demonstrates the organization is willing to put their community, and their community's agenda before their own. But what I don't understand is why she closed the comments on this blog post 5 days after it was published. Can anyone help me out on that one?
- Eric Schwartzman
from Bookmarklet
I think the integration of traditional comms experience with social media understanding can be very important for clients most of whom are going to be in transition and will in any event rely on traditional stuff for the most part for the next few years
- Trevor Cook
What does 4,500 early adopters look like? Click here to see: http://friendfeed.com/scoblei...
Kelly W., Mitchell Tsai, Susan Beebe and 31 other people liked this
...now I feel dizzy, and me posting this will only make it worse... :)
- WorldofHiglet
Welcome.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
ok, the option of watching other people's streams just ROCKS o_O
- George Tziralis
I know that I'm one of them but OMG how can you stand this?!
- Orli Yakuel
Orli: I LOVE this. But usually I don't watch it live like that, but just refresh often.
- Robert Scoble
still unfamiliar with FF. mostly on twitter as @2healthguru. thanks for invite and keep up the videos!!
- Gregg
I'm curious about what are your lists looks like? Do you use lists?
- İbrahim Uzun [ j ]
What i keep thinking about when i see this is how can this be used to show others the power of Social Networking (FF and Twitter in particular). Good example Robert.
- David Bisset (sn)
It. Doesn't. Stop.
- Jared Smith
I usually drop into real time mode for a quick peek at what's happening *NOW* and then retreat back to the main FF UI and my custom lists. Good stuff though Robert. Always interesting to see your view of the noise as it flys by.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
hahah, SCARY
- Andre
Jared: now you see what I mean by "the World Wide Talk Show." 24 hours a day. It's crazy! And I'm only following 1/10th to 1/100th of those on FriendFeed (and that's a small number compared to Twitter and Twitter is a small number compared to bloggers and bloggers are a small number compared to humans). Now you understand why the value is going to be in the filtering systems that the geeks make for us.
- Robert Scoble
Brian: real time really rocks during news events like #mumbai or Election Night. Watching what you all were saying in real time then is a lot of fun.
- Robert Scoble
watching it must cause FriendFeed quite a bit of traffic... :) btw, being smart is actually bad, most people don't like you being smarter than them (talking out of experience here, so better don't waste your time to argue...)
- Dorian Muthig
This is crazy! Just crazy stuff! I sometimes can't even follow my own feed of 63! How does RS ever respond to any of our comments?
- jamesdkirk
Awesome, I've embed in my blog autor's profile!! http://www.abc.es/blogs...
- Javier Duro
His is a robot. You actually believed that he was a real human being?! How naive.
- Rolf Schewe
jamesdkirk: I just refresh often and type fast. Rolf: did you have to tell everyone the truth?
- Robert Scoble
so you don't watch the realtime feed and try to interact then? That makes sense.
- jamesdkirk
Scobleizer: The Lawnmower Man!
- Bastard Operator From FF
Whoa, busy, very busy.
- Grant Bierman
jamesdkirk: I really only look at real time feed during news events like Election Night or earthquakes or #mumbai. It's easier to interact just by refreshing the browser and clicking "Comment".
- Robert Scoble
MY GOD, it's full of stars...
- David Bisset (sn)
Strangely enough it doesn't really seem that much worse than mine with a lot less subscriptions. I really don't like or use the real time view though so maybe my feeling isn't really accurate.
- Brian Sullivan
Looks at how good his AI is. He detected my comment and had and instant response. How could a human do that while that firehose of a feed he got is scrolling by?
- Rolf Schewe
Rolf: one thing about human beings: they are far more efficient at pattern recognition than machines are. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Arghhh ...I couldn't stand looking at that for too long!
- Peter Cattell
Robert: Until your model. You almost had me there.
- Rolf Schewe
This is phenomenal for the first 10 sec. But ultimately overwhelming.
- Eric Thompson
Eric, it is pretty crazy, isn't it? It's fun to put it up on a second monitor so you can peek over at it once in a while. It's the ultimate attention diffuser, though. Impossible to do anything else but watch it.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, yes I think there's something intriguing about Friendfeed. I'm amazed that my 16 & 17 yr old daughters haven't found this yet. But they will. They're still texting at the rate of 3000/month. This isn't that different from watching thousands of feeds scroll by.
- Eric Thompson
Way too much noise to be useful.
- JonathanJoseph
Jonathan: I disagree. But, that's why you can choose your own editor(s) here (the people you follow become editors and are "picking" things for you to see by clicking "Like" and commenting on them )and why I say that it's far more important to follow carefully than who follows you. The best FriendFeeders bring you high value stuff and low noise. I'm following 200 of such people in a list. But that doesn't mean there's no value to a high flow list either.
- Robert Scoble
I find the live feed fascinating. Pattern recognition yes, cellular automaton too.
- Nicola Quinn
@Robert. I agree with that, but the realtime stream is far too much to be filtered in any relevant way. FF is great if you use it right (like creating lists) but simply folliowing 4500 in realtime makes it worthless imo.
- JonathanJoseph
Jonathan: there is a TON of filtering still to come to RealTime streams. For instance, I filter mine by making a list, which has its own RealTime stream (only 200 people, all hand selected, are on that). Also, in future you'll be able to filter by talking to the stream. For instance, say you have too much. What if you could say "please only show me items with likes." Still too much? "Show me only items with four likes and at least two comments." And there's lots more, too.
- Robert Scoble
What if you could say "show me only items with 'Mumbai' in them?" Or, show me only items from people who Tim O'Reilly is also following? Or, what if you could say "show me only items from people located in India?" Can you start to see how your RealTime stream could be filtered?
- Robert Scoble
that was actually not as fast as I thought it would be (except when Chris P.'s coupons showed up). Very interesting. I found someone new to subscribe to.
- Laura Norvig
waves! Hi Mom! Hello feed! Umm is this thing on? ;-)
- Tim
@ergophobe: FriendFeed is different from Twitter. FF is an aggregator, so pulls in all your stuff, not just Tweets. It also is threaded.
Nicholas James, Didier Girard, Patrik Johansson and 6 other people liked this
I think ff is better than twittter because it is a richer information environment
- Trevor Cook
I am not going to post about my book for a while out of respect to #Mumbai. My book seems very small compared with the horror over there.
Trevor Cook, Antonio Altamirano and Tyson Key liked this
your book about Twitter should have an entire chapter about how Twitter is used during major news events like #mumbai
- Robert Scoble
I really feel for the folks over there. I've got a few contacts whom I haven't kept in touch with for a while now. I hope they're OK. :(
- Tyson Key
@sofiagk I usually spend most of my time over on FriendFeed now because it's easier to hold a conversation. http://friendfeed.com/scoblei...
Trevor Cook, Anthony Farrior, Tyson Key and Mir "hamidreza" Mosavi liked this
Time for FFHolics Anonymous? ;)
- Tyson Key
Tyson: maybe.
- Robert Scoble
in terms of addiction I think we could safely all create Procrastinators Anonymous.
- sofiagk
@Sofia Gkiousou - Hah
- Tyson Key
I have followed about 500 people on FriendFeed in past three weeks. It's far easier for me to follow you there than on Twitter.
Molly, J. Abdul-Qahhar, Lon Safko and 40 other people liked this
If you want me to follow you, just leave me a message here. I am specifically looking for smart people and early adopters.
- Robert Scoble
I coudn't agree more, although I can't compare with the number.
- Alexandros Georgiadis
Hi Robert, early adopter and entrepreneur here who likes to think he's smart :)
- Terry Smith
Hope I can get on the "smart list" :)
- Valeria
rambn: well, everyone is smart until they prove otherwise. That's why we have unfollow. :-) Also, everyone on FriendFeed is a defacto early adopter. I figure that since it took me 1.5 years to understand and use RSS that anyone who joins in the first 1.5-years of a service is a defacto early adopter. That means we have another five months to go.
- Robert Scoble
Thanks for following me by the way, Robert.
- Tyson Key
Hey Robert, It looks like I fit the criteria. Although, Im doubtful about the 'smart' since Im always broke! :)
- Michael G. Galli
Tyson: thanks for bringing me good stuff!
- Robert Scoble
hi Scoble, I'm an italian researcher about online cities http://friendfeed.com/turboy ;)
- Simone Riccardi
Robert - I'm probably one step off pace and 10 points short IQ to qualify for the honor of being followed by you...
- Mike Seidle
Michael: money != smart. Many great people were broke.
- Robert Scoble
Giving ya a comment for a follow back. Thanks
- Mardee Thompson
I need to level up to "smart"
- Ernie Oporto
"I listen to bands that don't exist yet"
- Kevin Morris
I was already following you on Twitter and Friendfeed. I'm trying to learn how to use Friendfeed. Twitter is not helping me make strong connections & alliances and I cannot succeed until I can make connections. I'm an early adopter and hope I'm smart in doing so.
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
@Scobleizer Hmm, I think you're already subscribed to me - here's a few suggestions though (ccg, bmevans, netzoo, gebl, hifisamurai, ochua1)
- Enrique Gutierrez
from twhirl
Why did it take you 1.5 years to learn how to use RSS?
- Amani
Jannifer: building strong connections is still difficult here, but is much easier here than on Twitter because you can have conversations around one topic, like we are here.
- Robert Scoble
music + a user generated world that consumes media through non linear networks = a new form of non linear social music
- Dizzy Banjo
I run www.Newte.ch and do marketing research. Just started using PeopleBrowsr and love it!
- Vedø
Thanks Robert, I keep telling myself that, appreciate the support :) I am the king of early adoption though and tech, so I have decided to throw my hat in the game and will have my own tech/gadget/review/ blog-site up for 2009. Its about time I did what I always wanted to do!
- Michael G. Galli
Robert, why are you finding FF easier than Twitter? You're welcome to follow me - I'm an Internet industry person (CEO, Sonic.net, independent bay area ISP)
- Dane Jasper
Did U tried TweetDeck? you could build groups in similar ways as here on FF.
- Francois Lamotte
Amani: cause I'm really not that smart. Also, back when Dave Winer first showed it to me I wasn't feeling enough pain to push me into using it. Eventually the pain got worse and worse until I finally asked Dave about it again and started using it.
- Robert Scoble
In my opinion, RSS is something that has no learning curve (it took me less than 2 minutes to figure out how to use them), although it's a Your Mileage May Vary thing...
- Tyson Key
Friendfeed is better to have longer conversations. more space for one.
- sofiagk
Francois: yes, I like TweetDeck but I do a lot of my FriendFeeding on my iPhone. Dane: FriendFeed is better for a whole lot of reasons. I need to do a video on why. Threading is one reason.
- Robert Scoble
Hi Robert. I'm a web content and seo strategist always on the hunt for cool web apps/design. (also wrote the Digital Needs section of Seagate.com.) Pick me, Pick me!
- Doug Vanisky
Robert, are you the most prolific frienfeeder? If not, then I would be suprised ;-)
- Julien
Hi Rob - I hope I meet the high standard of the other 500 people you've added. Cheers!
- Eric
I work in the social media space but only within the home furnishings vertical. Thanks for the invite!
- Leslie Carothers
follow me! I'm smart and early - it's 6:30 a.m.! Have a great time in Barcelona :)
- Corinna Makris
No South Africans on the list, yet...pick me! (although I may be a bit random for you...haha). And @carlspies @palesa08 @xsyn @singe @robstokes @uberEllis
- Roger Saner
Julien: nope, I'm not the most prolific. This service keeps track of stuff like that: http://www.ffholic.com/
- Robert Scoble
Does Smart mean a comment such as "Pick me, Pick Me"?
- Yatin Vadhia
Hey, Robert. Good idea -- I wish more people I follow on Twitter were using FriendFeed.
- Omar Gallaga
Robert Follow Me www.lessnau.com
- John Lessnau
totally agree that FriendFeed makes it much easier to *really* follow more people.
- Kevin Gamble
It would be great to go along and rethink things together
- Vitaly Pimenov
Aloha Robert! Absorb your tweets like a sponge fish. New on FriendFeed, but I'm a quick study. Scour posts for inovation, always looking to push to the next level. Testing new formats to be revealved shortly. Tweets @AlohaArleen
- Arleen Boyd
looking forward to see how many messages this post will get. anyway, greetings from mexico!
- Enrique De La Torre
I would like if you follow me. Thanks!
- Kyle Reddoch
Thanks to all the new people. Remember to put your Twitter feed into FriendFeed, along with your blog, your Flickr stream, your video streams, and more. That way I can get to know you by following you here.
- Robert Scoble
I am following everyone here now except for those who have private feeds.
- Robert Scoble
Anyone else on Profilactic too, out of interest?
- Tyson Key
Legistraight.org, a recently launched public policy wiki. We are also compiling a comprehensive list of Financial Crisis resources. On Twitter (@legistraight), created this FriendFeed acct just for you Robert. http://legistraight.org
- Legistraight.org
Hiya Robert. Count me in if you like! ;)
- Erin McMahon
Arguably smart and not the absolutely last adopter.
- That Software Guy
Ok, I'm waiting for a follow, @dfletcher on Twitter, went to Barcelona recently. Great destination. Enjoy! Is this your first trip to Spain?
- Dave Fletcher
Dave: yeah, it's our first trip to Spain.
- Robert Scoble
Dave: I see you are the CTO for state of Utah. You should meet Jesse Stay. He's here on FriendFeed too at http://friendfeed.com/jessest...
- Robert Scoble
Smarter than who? I'm young and as smart as me.
- İbrahim Uzun [ j ]
Second time lucky!
- Jonathan Greensted
Hope you have a great time. Endless number of sights to see around Barcelona. Don't miss Sagrada Familia and Gaudi architecture. Nice beach south at Castelldefells and Sitges is a cool sidetrip.
- Dave Fletcher
it's thanks to you Robert that I started to use FF and I think it's great idea
- Ioana Monica Muntean
Thanks to all the new people I'm now following 4,500 people on FriendFeed. Wild.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, your real time feed must be flying. can you still read it following that many people?
- Mark Schulz
Hello Robert, I'm a 13-year-old designer, developer, and entrepreneur. I'm part of a new company, 9Miles Media. Thank you. ;)
- Melik Yuksel
Hey Robert.. another Bay Area adopter here (@goyato) .. artist, writer, and digital dabbler. Been on FF for a little while, but haven't really started following too many. Thanks for the push.
- Yato Yoshida
i'm spending a lot of time trying to great groups of folks... is it possible to make your groups public?
- Jason Calacanis
@Melik Yuksel - Yet another upcoming Young 'Feeder? (I'm only 5 years older than you, to be honest, and also new to FriendFeed). I look forward to see where you take this crazy train! ;)
- Tyson Key
Jason: I haven't figured out a way for me to share my group with you, but you can click on http://www.friendfeed.com/scoblei... and see everyone I'm subscribed to. I manually added each of the 4,500. So I guess you'll have to do it the hard way too.
- Robert Scoble
Hey Robert, I'm a veteran UX designer and entrepreneur (mostly for the financial industry) currently starting up a company called Thropic (@thropic) that specializes in t-shirt fundraising. Would love to dialog via FF. Cheers- Miguel
- Miguel Rodriguez
me i am only ne:)
- Aykut Karaalioğlu
I'm not sure if I'm smart, but I'm somewhat of an early adopter. Yep. :)
- Bryan Villarin
I'm still learning FF's advantages, but an early enough adopter to be here already, and smart enough to take you up on your offer. :)
- James Dickey
Been on FF for a short time. One of the best things that happened to me for now!
- Ms. B
@Tyson Key - I like to think that. ;) I'm also new to FriendFeed, quite frankly, I don't know which part of it to start from. :)
- Melik Yuksel
twitter is not conducive to following people its good for now but not the recent past
- Trevor Cook
Wow we're plenty here. Don't know if it's 'clever' to stand in the line but it's late over here in Athens, raining and not a bad idea to...take cover :)
- Vicki Kolovou
Hello Robert, been on here for a while, but I find I still use Twitter more (same username). As Chief Architect for a networking software company, I keep up with new developments, and even create some of them :-)
- John
early adopter
- John Munro
Wow, the real-time feed is faster than the Gentoo IRC channel on FreeNode, and that is often one Hell of a high-traffic channel (I hated being in it, the first time I used IRC).
- Tyson Key
Great to have met you Robert at Blogworld Expo. Check my 12sec friendfeed post for my flip video talk with you.
- James Guske
He probably got the entire New Testament in that 12 seconds!
- jamesdkirk
hi robert, we're both following each other on twitter. would love to see you following on FF, too! thanks :D
- henry
@Melik Yuksel - Take note, you'll probably find that FriendFeed consumes quite a lot of your time, once you get into the swing of things (I get the XMPP feed and struggle to sift through it). I'm still a moderate Twitterer though (I do about 10 posts a day roughly - sometimes more, sometimes none at all, though).
- Tyson Key
More of a "learning the value of early adoption" kind of guy which makes me a johnny come lately of sorts... inspired by Twitter, intrigued by FF... and excited about my new account with PeopleBrowsr.
- Matson Breakey
I could hope I would be added to the smart list. Yee-ha!
- Christian Messer
Josh: I wouldn't know how to do it. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Hey Robert - great to follow you on FB and twitter - connect on Friendfeed too? Saw your post on twitter on being an early adopter. As an entrepreneur and SBO following "techie stuff" is important to keep biz running - so I'm a wellness coach and naturopathic consultant who is also a geek.
- Antonia Teixeira
++++++++++OK, I got everyone above here will need to add everyone else tonight, thanks! +++++++
- Robert Scoble
thought you already followed me here, but looks like not.
- Katherine Druckman
Hey Robert, I'm always looking for new products to test and experiment with. Saw your post on Twitter.
- Stefan Halley
Robert, the energy and time it takes to be friends with 150 people in the 'real' world is the limit for most humans. Dunbar number etc. FB automated the 'social graph' i.e the map of our real world relationships. But still demands increasing energy and time to maintain authentic relationships. Twitter is a real 'evolutionary' breakthrough because with a minimum of energy you can staying in 'grooming' range of thousands of people. Is there a Twitter number i.e. the maximum number of people you can follow?
- Mac Taylor
I might be a smart people to follow but you never know. Seriously, I think it would be fun. :-)
- Dragos Roua
Mac: depends on your goal. If it is to drink beer with everyone on your list, then Dunbar number probably comes into play, although I've probably tripled that and have met more than 10,000 people face-to-face (I have 8,000 business cards from just past eight years). But, if you just want to "snack" on a media stream like my real time feed, then you can follow 20,000 without a problem. On FriendFeed it is better, though. I can have "high flow" stream and "low flow" stream that I watch much closer.
- Robert Scoble
In my "low flow" (Called a "list" here on FriendFeed) I've only put about 200 people. It's interesting to see the difference between the two. One is much more focused. The high flow is much more entertaining (more cool YouTube videos and LOLcat photos, etc).
- Robert Scoble
I quite like using Twhirl though - but on the other hand I don't have a massive amount of followers!
- Jim
I still don't get Friend Feed. Anyone got a good video tutorial?
- MarkCarras
Oh why not... I'm doing my share of searching for news, so Scoble should hop on as well. ;)
- Jorg Jansen
Only problem is there isn't a single apparent friendfeed app on iPhone
- Scott
Follow me because I'm a legal community manager at Avvo
- seadevi
Robert - I'm smart cause I can see your offer to follow me is one I can't refuse. I'm an early adopter in manner of following the uber-early adopters so they iron out the new gadget and techy kinks and suchlike. I was already following you btw on Twitter. Not sure I quite get FF yet though.
- nicky jameson
Wow, look at this comment thread, awesome!! :) Lots of cool people, I am subscribing to here...thanks Robert!
- Susan Beebe
Robert, I am somewhat of an early adopter and I hope it makes me smart. I ran a computer business for 11 years and now I am trying to help others learn the business of tech. It seems some of my associates don't think there is value in social networking. I hope that by connecting with respected names who are early adopters of social networks such as Friendfeed and Twitter they will understand that such services can be quite useful in marketing their businesses and supporting their customers.
- Rick Savoia
I'm loving Twitter, need to explore FF a bit more. You never know where you will get inspiration from.
- Dave Kresta
Hi Robert. Actually I'm a huge fan of yours and until now was a lurker, so thanks for the coaxing to come out and introduce myself. :-) I'm an early adopter and given your high praise of FriendFeed, consider myself smart enough to create an account today to join in the conversation. I tweet as well @belindasimcox and am looking forward to seeing the effect your following me has. PS. A big thanks to your generous tweet attitude - I get your tweets sent to my iPhone - they beat the newspaper any day
- Belinda Simcox (Sim)
Hello - I am a MD/PhD working in the field of medical informatics and studying the use of social networks as a model for expanding our work at the New York State Department of Health in patient/clinician medical networks. Still trying to figure out the best use for short messaging. Twitter name is pathalemd.
- Patricia Hale
I'm changing politics online at http://politics4all.com
- Thomas Cook
@alexsteed See http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone... Addison & Steele, Daniel Defoe were the bloggers and citizen journalists of their day. They're in revival.
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