Oh look, lets develop a "peace index" that lets us be judgmental and claim to be marking down "objectively" of anyone who doesn't agree with our point of view. i.e. AMERICA IS EVIL crap. - Robin Cannon
Really excellent beginners guide to SEO by Michael Martine. Covers the important aspects in a simple and clear way, well worthwhile reading even by experienced SEO people for an idea of how you can explain things to the SEO novice! - Robin Cannon
1. Search, 2. GMail, 3. Reader, 4. Analytics Can't think of anything else I "actively" use. - Yuvi
Search, Gmail (although via IMAP in Thunderbird), Google Reader, Google Talk, FriendFeed (Hey, just look at the service. They _are_ what makes Google.), Google Calendar (in Thunderbird) - sebmos
Gmail, Reader, Search, Docs, Calendar (everyone in our family has an account with shared calendars. Comes in handy as my son lives with his mom and the poor kid is always on the run!), Analytics, AdSense reports. - Kevin C. Tofel
Funnily enough I forgot Google even did search when I first read this... 1. Reader, 2. Search, 3. Gmail, 4. Docs, 5. Calendar, 6. Youtube - Richard Bradshaw
1. GMail, 2. Search, 3. Maps, 4. Reader, 5. Docs, 6. Sheets, 7. Blogger, 8. SMS gateway (46645), 9. WAP gateway - m.google.com, 10. Google Apps, 11. code.google.com, 12. App Engine, 13. Google Translate, 14. Custom Site Search, 15. Picasa, 16. Feedburner. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
1.Search, 2.GMail, 3.Reader, 4.Talk, 5.Calendar (that's every day usage) - Xavier Donat
1.search, 2.youtube, 3.reader, 4.maps, 5.ego search emails - Cat Laine via twhirl
Reader, Mail, iGoogle, Calender ( but not so much these days) - Roberto Bonini
Gmail, Reader, Blogger, FeedBurner, Search, Picasa, Docs, Analytics, Talk, GrandCentral, Calendar, Maps, Translate, Health, and some others that I don't use often enough to remember. - Voyagerfan5761
mobile Google apps/Cal/Email, GCalendar, Gmail, GoogleApps (Docs, etc), GReader, Groups, Gears, Toolbar, news Alerts, GTalk, Search, Maps/Earth, YouTube, iGoogle / News, Picassa, Goog-411, ... just started using Google Health - Susan Beebe
I believe "comment" is just only one part of the web interaction, besides "comment", the intention to comment, the time to comment (reaction time), the frequency to comment(comment once or always), where to comment(everywhere or only here).....all contribute to the interaction, so don't care two much about "comment", just have fun! - K.D.
I haven't even touched the subject of traffic with this. I personally believe that distributed conversations lead to more interaction on the place it all started. - Alexander van Elsas
I agree, without a place like friendfeed, I would never have been exposed to your article at all. Hooray for FF and it's fragment promoting brethren. - Jon-Paul Bussoli
I still want comments from url posts on FF to be integrated with my blog. - Eric Hamilton
Great post! It's a very logical argument. - Mark Dykeman
perfect post - agree 100% myself though I do understand the seo/traffic focused concerns I think they will find that this fragmentation of comments and distributed systems will ultimate improve their gross readership, casting a wider more diverse net - to most other than pure monetary driven that would have to be a good thang right :-p - mike "glemak" dunn
@Eric, if that's so why are you commenting on FF instead of the blog? ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Mike, you are right. I have gotten a lot more traffic to my onw blog ever since people started seeing it at Twitter, Friendfeed, Disqus and other sites (sites I probably don't know about). Conversation shouldn't be centralised. Let it scatter, it's better for all of us ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Mark Dykeman thank you. @Shey says (on my blog) he wants to centralize the discussions, not the comments. My blog title used the word comment, but the post was about conversations. Centralization isn't a good idea imo. That's why I said: - Alexander van Elsas
"But some things should not be forced into central destinations. And conversation or comments are on that list. They need to be set free. They need to scatter around this wonderful universe. One giant conversation. Who cares if we can’t follow it from beginning to end. The great thing about it is, we can always start a new one!" - Alexander van Elsas
Sometimes I'd like the ability to link conversations - e.g. when one comment on my blog raises an interesting issue, but people talking on FF miss that. But in general I prefer the idea of more conversation rather than more focused. - Robin Cannon
Robin, you can link discussions manually can't you? All of these features are nice to have, but conversation is free, and can't nor should be encapsulated in one place. - Alexander van Elsas
Shey wonders why I feel centralising discussions would restrict them. My reply is that that isn't really my point: it’s not so much restrictive, it’s just not very valuable to me. It’s impossible to get all these conversations in one place. It makes that place a destination site, something that we need to get rid off. Social media allow interaction anywhere. It isn’t restricted or centralized. Centralization will need a business model that is destination based. And that limits our options. It doesn’t set us or the conversation free. A bit theoretical perhaps, but I firmly believe in freedom. - Alexander van Elsas
There are some great comments all over the place around this conversation, it's fragmenting already :-) - Alexander van Elsas
Alexander, I think I understand what you're saying: centralization != 100% freedom. To an extent, that is true. But as a reader, I would appreciate being able to easily access multiple discussions. - Shey
Shey, and you can! No need for tools, just take a look around (as you do already!) You are probably in more conversations already than humanly possible :-) - Alexander van Elsas
"If Earth had to send one man to the Intergalactic Olympics, who should go?" - Hutch Carpenter via Bookmarklet
Interesting discussion. Think they've gone for a pretty simplistic option though, and deliberately taken a wide selection of sports for variety. Ronaldinho is being sold by Barcelona in large part because, despite his skills, he's considered a poor trainer who lacked fitness last year - hardly the definition of a great athlete. Probably right to have a decathlete first. But then arguably for all round athletic ability you'd need to have 10 decathletes, which is a slightly less interesting list! - Robin Cannon
having been a decathlete - I would say they are the best all-around athletes bar none... - Tony via Alert Thingy
But not many decathletes can't do what Lebron and Tomlinson can do. Those two guys have amazing athletic abilities that is evident in their respective sports. - Shey
While everyone has different practices and preferences, this is a really good reference point. Designing a website isn't just about the coding, or the CSS, there are steps that every designer takes from inception to completion. These steps might not be the same as everyone's, but it's a worthwhile overview of one possible method. - Robin Cannon
“A week or two ago I came across a site that has anonymous testimonials about employers and conditions, and salary comparisons etc. Can anyone tell me what the thing was called, I've completely forgotten?!”
Thanks. Hadn't found that one. :) Not exactly the one I was looking for (I think it was in beta) but very much the kind of info I needed, cheers. - Robin Cannon
Nice piece here. Examines how in many ways the explosion of social media to the mainstream is a continuation of fanzine and small-press culture. The collaboration and shared ideas, the varying quality and the self publishing aspect from the underground press in the 1960s to the fanzine boom in the 1990s bear many of the same factors as the social media and blogging boom of today. - Robin Cannon
Nice piece here. Examines how in many ways the explosion of social media to the mainstream is a continuation of fanzine and small-press culture. The collaboration and shared ideas, the varying quality and the self publishing aspect from the underground press in the 1960s to the fanzine boom in the 1990s bear many of the same factors as the social media and blogging boom of today. - Robin Cannon
For me some particularly great graphic and web design resources and pages. Well worth stumbling, there's excellent material there for anyone with an interest in design. Also some really nice tattooing stumbles. - Robin Cannon
..or open your bugzilla and let the community assist :) - Naor
Maybe they took the idea and ran with it... "The server at twitter.com is not responding". - cmiper
I agree with Naor open source it and see what kinda crazy crap the community can come up with. Of course that doesn't solve the server down aspect :) - Tom Ray via twhirl
@Tom seriously speaking - I still can't figure out if the problems are hardware related, infrastructure or architecture. spending some time in my past with tier 1 telco billing, processing both inserts and lookups of several millions "transactions" per day can be very tricky without the proper architecture in place.. here is where the community might assist - Naor
Open Source Twitter??? Won't work unless the infastructure is right. - Roberto Bonini
This is an interesting article, I've thought of it, but hadn't dared say it. I think we're all betw a rock and a hard place. Even if Twitter came back to 100 percent reliability, it would be a long time before confidence returned, if it ever would. For the 180th time this is why centralized communication systems suck. - Dave Winer
Open source twitter? Ok, lead developers get in a fight and it forks: Twitter and Fwattr. Fwattr adds a ton of features but Twitter remains the same. Twitter development seems to stagnate and everyone moves to Fwattr. Fwattr devs reunite and merge back with Twitter. Meanwhile, there were 10 different standards developed throughout this drama. Yeah, let's open source Twitter. Now I'll turn around so I can promptly get tore to shreds..I couldn't resist, it's Friday :) - Bwana McCall
@Naor- I agree -its very tricky to build industrial strength apps that sustain X transactions /min. Having a good farm of servers or the latest servers is just one facet of the solution. It all has to come together, H/w, architecture, network bandwidth etc. Do startups complete a due diligence review on scalability , watermarks,/ thresholds etc.Or just launch as quickly as possible and hope for the best ? - Peter Dawson
Yeah, Opening up Twitter wouldn't be good. However, I'm sure that there are all sorts of people that could help Twitter right now. - Roberto Bonini
The fact that everyone kicks off when twitter is down shows how addicted we all are. Those who can't put up with the outages will go elsewhere or stop using it. But they'll always have that feeling that the party is happening without them. Twitter, in the words of Lou Reed, I'm sticking with you. Cause I'm made out of glue. - Gez
If i was another social network, I'd be marketing like crazy right now.. plurk plurk... - Britney Mason
Gez, we're just weaning ourselves off it bit by bit - Andrea B
Twitter is dead if you shut it down now. People will leave to another service and once the become rooted in that service they won't want to go back. I don't see how shutting down Twitter would work....via feedalizr - Chris Rodgers
@Peter, too often "just launch quickly" twitter is very visible so we all see what happens, but many others struggle with the same issues and loose customers (and make me loose my hair trying to assist :)) I can't blame them really, there is a lot of pressure from the funding guys and sometimes very bright young guys but with not enough experience, when it comes to large scale type of services I always advise to have "one gray hair" guy around and accept that planning ahead is not necessarily something bad - Naor
I totally disagree. Proof: Jaiku. It has totally lost it, since closing signups! I'm a big fan of twitter. My patience is not endless. But they created something amazing. I still love to evangelize it. - DC Crowley
"A well thought out plan. So not for Twitter then." hilarious! - Richard Bradshaw
it is definitely hard to convince my friends to use it since every time I try and demo it, it is down.... not very convincing.... my only problem is that I've got everything already syncing with Twitter... I don't want to have to do it all again, so I guess the bottom line for me is that I hope they fix it - nick carrasco
The downtime is still exaggerated. Barring a few isolated examples there haven't been a plethora of examples of it being down for long periods. The fact that I still use it on a daily basis, and have rarely been unable to do that, suggests it's up a lot more than its down. Not that it's perfect, but the flaws are overstated. - Robin Cannon via twhirl
be it because I'm using Twitter off-peak - because I'm in Europe - or because I use clients (thwirl and twibble) I haven't really seen a lot of the much-touted downtimes. so whats with that? - Günther Mulder via twhirl
@Morton Fox: Yeah. Shut Twitter down. It's not meant to be working anyway. - Ryo
Opening twitter would not be good? That's the only solution if you see it long-term. Live free or die hard :) - Ryo
i agree with gunther - twitter in european day time is seamless!!! - Denise Young
Pretty accurate assessment. Still like Ben Stiller, but it's true he only has two roles. But then, nothing wrong with that really. Sean Connery has successfully made a career of playing himself for five decades. - Robin Cannon
Very worthwhile advice to anyone who's guest posting elsewhere. How to fit into the ethos of the blog you're posting to *and* maximise the benefits to your own blog as well. - Robin Cannon
