Stephen, very happy to see new features like this, but I think the "death" part is the major users reducing their activity. I'd love to see some support from Facebook in promoting FriendFeed more to encourage those users to go back. Or maybe they don't want to? Regardless, bonus for me! Thanks Benjamin - you're awesome!
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, fair enough but major users always did come and go. Some of the departees who left said they were doing so because there was no new development. Clearly not all development is halted. Last week Paul hinted that FF may receive a major new feature, and characterized his participation as "20% time" -- I'll take that.
- Stephen Mack
I backed down off the all caps. The group "best of" is really useful, love it.
- Stephen Mack
Stephen, I agree - I'd just like some confirmation that Facebook cares about all this so I can know whether to focus my efforts on Facebook or FriendFeed or both.
- Jesse Stay
I noticed the best of on the iPhone the other day, wrote it out on a cake and then ated it.
- Josh Haley
Jesse, I think you should focus where your users are focused. What do SocialToo users want? But if they want Facebook focus, you should still keep an eye on FriendFeed, since the future Facebook will look a lot more like FriendFeed.
- Bruce Lewis
Paul Buchheit said the FB acquisition was attractive because of shared vision/direction. I would be surprised if a lot of that vision wasn't already embodied in this product right here.
- Bruce Lewis
not enough, best of day should be like a stream that can be traced back
- ffcode
We have received numerous reports of excessive FriendFeed posts showing up in Facebook this evening. While we are not 100% sure, it appears to be an issue on Facebook's end due to ignoring application settings. We have disabled all FriendFeed updates to Facebook until we are sure the problem is resolved.
See http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... for more information - it seems to also have impacted Twitter's Facebook app. Again, we are not sure if it is a problem on our end or not, but we are investigating now.
- Bret Taylor
Thanks Bret! FWIW when I checked the FF app settings in FB they were not the same options as I saw when I first set the app up.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
my freindfeed application is not working on facebook, and fr rest of..
- Madhav Tripathi
Click. Flip a switch and that's it. You guys rule.
- Pete Delucchi
Thanks, Bret. I've disabled it on my FB page and hope that cures what ails me. Appreciate the FF peeps being on top of it.
- Derrick
Yet another reason I'm happy I don't have a FaceBook. :P
- Trey Crossan
Good thing I only posted once to Twitter tonight. The duplication only happened once. Thanks for letting me know.
- Louis Gray
No problem, if I knew it was on your end, I wouldn't have cared, but thanks for letting me know about the situation. I was confused because it happened right as I was trying out a new twitter game. This was compounded by the fact that the game has no controls for turning off public messages. I'll bet they plan to add them later, but right now they want everyone to hear about it. It’s a...
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- Michael Fidler
So, is it fixed?Every tweet, every everything is showing up as individual news feed posts for all my friends, this is too much and I'm likely to piss them all off. Options ... 1.Stop tweeting etc. 2.Ditch the FF Facebook application. Hmmm, it's a no brainer. Anyone got any updates on this?
- Michael M Bailey
Ross and Dan made this video to illustrate the advanced technology we use behind the scenes at FriendFeed. (Ross and Dan, you are amazing - I can't believe how awesome this thing turned out)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
How very creative. This is very fluid and cool.
- Louis Gray
OK, not exactly what I was expecting, but very cool.
- Kevin Arth
Anyone have the video somewhere other than Youtube? it's banned here in Turkey and I can't wait until we get home (next month) to watch it!!
- Chris Myles
Bret, this video should be titled: A Love Song for FriendFeed ! Great vid (and music) !
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
This is superb. I just showed it to my 5 year old son who enjoys Lego and has already taken some great photos, including one or two of his toys. So now he has the seed of the idea that, in time, he could take multiple stills and put them together to make moving pictures. Thank you very much for posting it and giving me and him that opportunity. Maybe, he might use FriendFeed one day too!
- John W Lewis
I think they need to make a full stop-motion version of the Matrix in legos. Now THAT would be awesome. I wonder what bullet-time looks like in LEGO?
- Bret Taylor
i'd pay to see the stop animation lego matrix, but not the sequels
- patrick
"Equipment Generously Provided By Casey Muller" - hahaha!! THIS IS AWESOMESAUCE!!! I love the creative energy and vibe in this video... LOTS of work went into that one! Thanks guys!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Genius, how much time did that all take?
- Wayne Hornsey
Chris Myles: if you want ot - DM me an address and I'll mail you a copy.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I wonder what the engineering decision was to not use a WSGI interface.
- mikepk
mikepk: it supports WSGI, but it is not WSGI by default because WSGI does not support non-blocking I/O for things like hanging connections. See http://www.tornadoweb.org/documen....
- Bret Taylor
This actually is a very good piece of code! Thanks folks!
- directeur
cool, Bret, thanks :) I was just heading through the docs now.
- mikepk
Thanks for doing this, Bret! That's some pretty cool stuff.
- Keith Bourgoin
I'm hacking my own python web framework at the moment, so now the choice on whether I want to switch gears to this or not. I'm liking what I see so far.
- mikepk
Nice new title Brett.."Facebook Director of Products".. a good sign of things to come!
- Chris Myles
very very glad to hear this bit: "Tornado is a core piece of infrastructure that powers FriendFeed's real-time functionality, which we plan to actively maintain."
- Chris Heath
A very good project!...you know if will be possibile to use Tornado with other technogies except Python (such as JEE, Ruby On Rails, etc.)?
- Nicola Junior Vitto
Cristo: we tried to use the official Python coding conventions, though we may have inadvertently strayed. Those conventions are: ClassNames, method_names, variable_names
- Bret Taylor
Brilliant! I hope you can provide very valuable input for the next round of #python WSGI, which desperately needs a next round ;)
- Uche Ogbuji
thx Mike, but this is a kind of eventmachine (that sounds good) for Ruby, not a Tornado client or wrapper...isn't it?
- Nicola Junior Vitto
Excellent! Thank you. Was eagerly waiting for the day to come after looking this just 1 month ago; "changeset: 5afb8a445cad / date: 2009-08-11 16:34:48 / description: Initial open source packages" http://changelog.friendfeed.com/2009...
- NaHi
from f2p
Chris, yes it is fixed.. I swear it was broken ..
- Onur Gündüz
Ohhh, ummm, btw, your underhanded behind the scenes sell out still rankles my human decency, & a lot of others too, as should yours...thumbs down/dislike x 47.5 million dollars, however not being bitter of course, keep ignorance & bliss
- sofarsoShawn
@bret just out of curiosity - what would necessitate usage of such an engine for a *personal* project? :)
- Michael Bravo
Michael: it is a nice framework to use for any project in my opinion (though I am clearly biased). If you are doing anything real-time like the chat demo, something like Tornado is certainly necessary/useful regardless of the size of the project.
- Bret Taylor
from email
@bret and for little-sized hardware? should have try it on Maemo based :)))
- A.T.
@silpol I kinda fail to see Maemo devices being used for servers (unless it's some kind of satellite-based or other covert server maybe :) )
- Michael Bravo
from IM
@mbravo you never know... there are some unusual (and cool) apps for web servers, granted you abstain (on purpose) from classical models, e.g.server farm somewhere there and herds of clients connecting to it...
- A.T.
Bret: Cool, thanks. Just out of curiosity, which flavour of Linux is preferred by FriendFeed?
- Diego Barros
I think this is the best answer for the ultimate question: "Does python needs yet another web framework?" While most of us would say why, when one come across this, a real world proven technology, serving zillions of pages a day, one would say, well, why not. actually, why not even take it an try to integrate out next web app with it? great job! seems like joining FB won't do you any harm ;-)
- Tzury Bar Yochay
"Starting today, people who visit your profile will see it in the theme you've chosen... We've [also] added an option that lets you create a custom theme by uploading a background image and choosing a few colors."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Haha, cool. Thanks for the answer Bret :) BTW Congrats on the acquisition earlier this week. Fantastic news for a great team and great product :)
- Sam Houston
Duck hunt is awesome! Tell Kevin to go sit in the corner for a while. :-)
- Robert Scoble
But what if I don't want to see other people's themes? There's a reason I avoid doing that on Twitter. Can we make our theme the default at all times?
- Anika
ah, I figured as much there would be a setting, thanks Kevin! :P
- Tim Hoeck
Thank you, LE. It wouldn't have killed me to check that first, but I'm super tired.
- Anika
Robert: If you change your theme's background color to black (even though it won't display because of hte tiling) the links will turn white.
- Kevin Fox
Robert, that's too much green monster for me. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
to your guys' credit you make it pretty hard to make this as hideous as you can make Gmail
- MG Siegler
@ Chris ..well, how about to make this personal themes showing through an option? /quick button, no need to go to settings - that'd be too far :] .. option for viewer, not for author
- Petr Buben
Ok so I'm shooting ducks here. is that part of the custom pages open to all?
- BairdWilliamson
I'm sorry, but this is the lamest thing FF has done (besides sell to Facebook, perhaps). This should not be default, especially when there's a theme that sends a duck flying across pages distracting you from reading them (it's like 1997 all over again). The only upside is that you can turn it off. It's a neat gimmick the first time, but after that it's just lame and becomes a...
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- Tanath
I'm sorry, Tanath, but I 100.000% disagree with you. Don't like it? Turn it off. Me? I love it.
- Stephen Mack
Already have - but it shouldn't be default behaviour.
- Tanath
Why not? I bet more people love it than hate it.
- Stephen Mack
Look, I'm excited that FF is still being worked on too, but this is arguably a step in the wrong direction. There's reasons why MySpace is going down the toilet, and different themes on every page is one of them. I'm inclined to take that bet, just not at this early point because it's mostly die-hard FF addicts that even know of the feature's existence.
- Tanath
As long you guys don't f*** with it, I can't see a problem. Why should FF staff avoid a feature only fearing its possible misuse? I'd rather see an option inside FF to explicitly hide user themes, if they get disturbing.
- David Schmidt
On or off, I can't see any themes on friendfeed except what I have in my browser's usercontent.css file. It would have been nice to include an "advanced user" feature that could have allowed us to enter in our own custom CSS for designing our own theme, sort of like how LiveJournal allows. That would have not only allowed customizing on friendfeed, it would also fix the problem with...
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- April Russo (app103)
David: you can hide other people's themes in your settings (top right of the page)
- Bret Taylor
Comparisons to MySpace seem off, since custom themes involve only four possibilities (background image, background color, bar color and box color) -- no widgets, no custom HTML, etc. And first and foremost, they can be switched off. How many times do you visit someone else's page on FF anyway? Most of the time is in your home feed or different lists. I just don't get the negativity, when it's a fun and optional feature that you can opt out from ever seeing again in about two seconds.
- Stephen Mack
I don't know if I consider customizing a few basic settings is really a "Theme".
- Steve de Mena
The correct analogy is to twitter.com user pages, right?
- Stephen Mack
Stephen, that was our thinking internally, though we also give a bit more control with the checkboxes.
- Kevin Fox
Forcing themes on others is bad. This needs an opt out. Glad I use custom CSS.
- Michael W. May
Michael: It DOES have an opt out. If you don't like it please opt out! Click Settings in upper right, you'll see two prominent check boxes regarding theme display.
- Stephen Mack
Kevin: Thanks! You're right, you did twitter one better by letting people opt out of seeing customized themes entirely.
- Stephen Mack
Michael, just uncheck the "See other people's themes" checkbox under settings and you won't see anyone else's theme.
- Dan Hsiao
Stephen's right. Read Bret's comment further up: "[Y]ou can do that by clicking "Settings" and then un-check the "See other people's themes" checkbox" - Bret Taylor
- Micah Wittman
i really like this.really really :-)
- dwightboozer
If this is any indication of what is to come, congrats :) Absolutely gorgeous!
- mySingapore
Thanks to the FF staff, this has been a long awaited request =) Ya'll rock!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
What's the next? I guess "FF background creator tools" will come out nowadays. :)
- Oğuz Serdar
To begin with, is "Themes" really a necessary feature? Still, great to see the new features coming. =)
- Winston Teo
Winston: yes. I've been waiting for this for a long time. It lets me put some personality onto my home page and that is, believe it or not, important. Very important for brands, too, if this is going to become a business.
- Robert Scoble
@All for design: Nice theme. Only the blue of the logo sticks out like a sore thumb.
- Peter
Can you guys stop adding awesome new features, please? Otherwise, no-one else will have a chance to catch up and it'll be an even greater disappointment when it goes. ;)
- James Myatt
Hurrah! I just themed my page along the lines of Twitter and my web page [ http://www.achean.com - shameless plug, but I need the hits! ]
- achean
I changed my background, but how do I let others see? when I click Bret's page, I still see my own background...I assume this is similar to twitter's custom theme where every user has a different background when their link is clicked. (I'm on friendfeed.com/bret, but still seeing my own background). -edit-Nvm...I guess I have to log out to see it...
- brainno722 (Peter)
@Kevin, thanks for removing the borders <3. @Peter he probably doesn't have a theme set for his own profile...
- Zulema ◕ ◡ ◕
issue uploading background. hangs on firefox & safari. tile image checkbox is greyed out.
- sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq
how can i change the font color of "my name"?
- Bahriye
Yeah, sorry I couldn't respond to that one before. :-)
- Kevin Fox
HI! I am not quite sure who you are but you must be cool if your at FriendFeed :) lol
- Holden Page
well i be darned .... we now can rejoice, since fast paced additions to already good product are surely fastly coming about off the feedpipe ... it'l be a hectic season of finest upgrades ... I'm sure they'l start with keyboard shortcutze. ... I mean Google Reader rules on that. Intelligent to the extreme. ..Google.com, on the other hand - are we sleeping? .. not even "/" ??.. and that...
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- Petr Buben
Congrats Ben! Totally agree with Jason. Our latest project wouldn't have become feasible without Ben -- I'm just so glad we managed to get a fraction of his time before he left! :)
- Simon
Congratulations, Ben! You're joining an awesome team.
- Anne Bouey
Congrats, you are now a "big company"! ;))))
- K.D.
That's not my picture! They got the picture wrong! In fact, I didn't get the letter of hire either. :( Oh, Hi there, Ben...if that's your real name. ;)
- Josh Haley
Ben 2.0 ;-) Good luck in the new role!
- Andy Bold
FriendFeed is now available in Persian! Thanks again to all of our Persian users — it has been extremely exciting for us to see FriendFeed so widely used around the world. You can set your language preference here: http://friendfeed.com/...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Any way we could auto-translate (or even have a link with the option to?)? It'd be great to really be able to collaborate with the non-English speaking world...
- Chris Reichow
wow, another language... I can't read it, but that is cool! :)
- Susan Beebe
Now if we could only filter out languages other then our own and have the lang:en search filter.
- DarknessFalls
You're welcome! We are excited to better support our Persian users.
- Bret Taylor
Thank you Bret, we love FriendFeed and happy for add Persian language to FF :)
- Nimaa
This feels so good to be able to view the pages in a way are eyes used to see Persian writings. Thank you so much! We really appreciate your effort! Thanks again ! :)
- تنهاترین انجل
Great Bret! I remember that in the past some persian people wrote here that whould be nice to have FF interface also in persian, probabilly because their language is very different and english isn't so diffused such in Europe. A welcome to persian friends! :)
- Roberto aka postoditacco
from fftogo
You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Neat feature, but it's more focus on big shiney new features, while ignoring the glaring issues in need of polish in the site we currently have.
- Matthew DeVries
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ?
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
Great way to keep up with those you're most interested in; things you don't want to miss.
- Diego Barros
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Bicentennial (Franc)
Exxxcellent, sir. We've been asking for this for awhile now. With this taken care of, how close are we to being able to collapse comments that we've expanded?
- Akiva Moskovitz
Let's call that a $50 million feature ;-)
- Laurent
+1 Akiva, was thinking the same thing - Also, thank you much! Been hoping for this. :-)
- Matthew Horton
Good to see development on FF hasn't stopped, Paul. I thought the FF API v2 post was the last FF update we'd ever see. This warms my heart :)
- LANjackal
it's not too late, personally alot my post-FB fears will be allayed if dev continues on FF.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Very cool! Keep bringing the cool features!
- Dakota O'Neill
can you please add one at the bottom of the page, too? i keep having to hit About then the friendfeed logo, and finally back at the beginning/top :)
- mike
Let me guess, the 500+ message thread about FB buying FF brought this on. Like!
- Evan Parker
Matthew, Laurent, Akiva Roflol. This is like the bouquet you get when you're the girl and he messed up. Louis, you were right. ;)
- Melanie Reed
It does not appear until certain number of comments are made. This is really nice because if it appeared twice in proximity it would not look nice.
- ashish
Now, can you add a collapse comments feature? I hate having to scroll up or down for what seems like miles and miles of comments just to get to another post.
- April Buchheit
We really wanted this when we were conference blogging--will be great for next time.
- Ruchira S. Datta
+1000 April - yes, i've wanted that for a while, too ... please :)
- Susan Beebe
Nice start. That means I can almost uninstall the Greasemonkey script that had been doing this for me for the past month or so. Now could we also get a link to collapse the comments again. Pretty please? Oh, and why no "Like" link at the bottom as well?
- Alex Schleber
ooh yes, a link at the bottom to re-collapse comments would be great. or maybe even every 30 comments or so there could be a re-collapse link. sometimes i expand and regret it in short order.
- Felicia Yue
Happy to see this :-) and happy for Myrna too
- Majento
now that I Like'd this post to show it to my friends, I keep receiving comments to it in my IM, most of them rather predictable. Is there a plan to add a @mute command that would stop the streaming of comments to a certain post to IM?
- 9000
from IM
We've been acquired by Facebook! We are really excited about joining the Facebook team. (Note: FriendFeed will continue to operate - see the blog post for details)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
I am hoping this will lead to nice integration for cross posting! Currently using Twitter App on FB to post and I hate those ff.im links that end up on Facebook.
- Ivan Zlatev
it was good while it lasted, Friendfeed. :(
- holly
"FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team." Those are NOT encouraging things to read as a FF user.
- Scott of Two Countries
Sniff... not sure if I'm excited about this. But I have enormous respect for the FriendFeed team... so, I assume they believe in the move as more than an exit strategy.
- Michael Leggett
@#$& that's all I have to say. For now.
- Zachary TG
Facebook should have been aquired by Friendfeed. Why they hell would you give up your better product to a worse one? Did none of you give a shit about this service to begin wiht?
- Matthew DeVries
Coolest web 2.0 site I've ever seen & used. I hope things don't derail. Ads will be coming soon, which is fine, but.... then what 's next? Please no quizzes!
- Ben Hanten
Who would have thought that after Facebook were shamelessly being "inspired" by FriendFeed, the inevitable would have happened?
- Tyson Key
I'm pissed off. I wan to throw away the whole Internet :
- DarkBls
Hey guys, keep in mind that Facebook is blocked in workplaces across the nation. 250 million casual users commenting about last night's party does not intelligent conversation make.
- Hector
I really can't see how FB would buy FF only to shut it down. There are way too many innovations and features FF has that FB honestly needs. I'm looking forward.
- Harry Wolff
Oh, this does not make me happy. Not at all! I've stayed off of Facebook intentionally and FriendFeed is my favorite social network. This is like when the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. :>(
- Larry Hawes
i have stopped using FB for the most part and liked FF alot more. now FF will go the way of FB. screwed again.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Congratulations. Enjoy the new challenges of acquisition, and I'm looking forward to the result!
- Wade Dorrell
Berge Gazen beat your score in Mafia Wars
- Berge Gazen
Enjoy your fat paychecks, guys. You've sold us out.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Bravo Bret! Been following your successes ever since we had the opportunity to work together on the YellowPages.ca / Google Maps Canada deal. Congrats!
- Sebastien
I wished it was Google or even Yahoo!, instead...
- Tyson Key
i really hope ff stays as it is. fb is kinder carder while ff is a great tool.
- jkkmobile
Not sure what to make of this. It could eiter be a big win or a huge fail.
- dorn
It could have been Microsoft, which would have been worse for everyone. :(
- Tyson Key
Can I take this opportunity to say I HATE facebook?
- Alex Scrivener
seems the only ppl happy here are the ones in the biz or who stand to profit from the merger.
- Joe Silence is not dead
I guess we should get ready to get poked by our supposed friends and have various shit thrown at us? Plus 5,000 requests by apps that nearly all suck.
- Joey Gibson
There is zero way this could have been a win for anyone, but the now rich founders.
- Matthew DeVries
If I have to go to FB to use FF then it's a lost cause
- Randy Pollock
Painful. And apparently I completely misunderstood what FF was trying to accomplish both technically and as an organization. I guess Facebook must have dangled a pretty big bag of money in front of them.
- Ken Sheppardson
FriendFeed is Dead! Long Live FriendFeed! :/
- Tyson Key
I will reserve judgement, i don't like or use FB but if FF maintains it's current goodness i don't care who cuts the checks.
- Steve C
I hope this doesn't turn into an APP filled hunk of crap. I love FriendFeed, it was the untouched gem of microblogging. I don't want Mafia Wars invited in my FriendFeed!!! Congrats on the sale though.
- Jay Farmington
@Philipp: until the new masters start flexing their muscles and bringing in their own people to enforce their own vision.
- Joe Silence is not dead
I read the blog post and one statement stands out to me "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being." The time being. This is not just bad, I think it may be #FAIL
- berchman
Facebook obviously liked FriendFeed a long time ago. Why would they have copied so many features (feed item comments and the "Like" action, to name a couple) otherwise? It was only logical for this to happen eventually. Doesn't mean I like it, but acquisition is part of the game. I have the same feeling I did when SocialThing! was acquired by AOL, though.
- Voyagerfan5761
"Relationship Status: It's complicated" comes to mind. ;)
- Tyson Key
Wow, I finally sign up, and read this. This could end up being a very bad thing for FF fans: "Your FriendFeed friend just signed up on this poll, would you like to too?"
- Brian Bommarito
Congrats guys. And thanks for your continuos effort in helping promote and integrate web services, like mine, Wakoopa. That's awesome and I hope FB gets better because of it.
- Robert Gaal
This will give FriedFeed the attention it deserves. Otherwise it would have been a geek thing forever.
- Michael Netsch
Will there be a super poke feature launched tomorrow?
- Matthew DeVries
aw, this sux!! Congrats to the Friendfeed team though!
- acedanger
Does this mean that we'll be seeing an influx of webcam spammers, a la Twitter? Along with abolishment of the rooms feature, crappification of the search feature, and more "privacy features" that really just put more nails in the openness coffin?
- Tyson Key
Some people will do whatever their friends request........
- Michael Muller
I really don't see why people would be anything but excited about this Facebook freindfeed deal. Great news as far as I am concerned. The Friend feed team is going to go over facebook and make it that much easier to connect, share... isn't that what the social web is about?
- Kevin Murray
I know a lot of people who use Facebook and enjoy it and that's fair enough. It's just not my cup of tea. The chaps from Friendfeed will get rich and the technology will get absorbed in Facebook but I can't see Friendfeed continuing in anything like it's present form.
- Paul Nash
Don't be so negative, something good might eventually come of this...
- Tarmo Aidantausta
Congrats! I know you all must be crazy excited right now.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
chance for FriendFeed to become more mainstream... congrats FriendFeed team!
- Jeroen De Miranda
Nothing could make me happier than if they integrated the good tools from FriendFeed into Facebook, which is where all my friends are. So a big "yay!" from me.
- Ian Betteridge
happy for you guys, but not for all of us
- Flavio
congratulations. this is going to be interesting.
- Dave Beckett
I think I preferred the non-mainstream version of FriendFeed...
- Tyson Key
I'm turning on my black shirt, my black trouser, my black socks, my black shoes. Although I probably must be happy for you.
- Ton Zijp
NASTY NASTY BAD BAD. But we'll see...
- Daniel Morgan
Given that the FriendFeed team has never been anything but awesome & respectful of its community, I think it's unfair for people to assume that the Facebook acquisition is going to change that.
- Jess Lee
Why in god's name are we flying over this shark?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
- Matthew DeVries
Facebook is like a giant who listens to nobody. Please keep your attitude but I don't think you will be able to do so.
- Burak "cyrus" Bayburtlu
I don't know, Like it? or dislike it?
- Ömer Balamir
What happens to all the content that we've created and imported here, and the associated metadata? Will all that disappear into the ether?
- Tyson Key
If the FriendFeed guys can make FaceBook useful and responsive again, this seems like a pretty positive step!
- Robin Barooah
Robin, the Facebook users don't want that I'm afraid.
- Rutger Blom
I have big loss of data concerns. See http://ff.im/6pHjo Is there any way to archive all my FriendFeed posts, likes, comments, and pictures (friendfeed-media.com) off-line? Can some Archive.org-like snapshots of FriendFeed be made (Once a month starting Sept 2009)? I'd like to see the cross-links between my posts & other people's posts, even in 2020. -
- Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell: the FriendFeed site is not shutting down. Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users.
- Bret Taylor
I just overheard a coworker mention FriendFeed. This is how the world ends...
- CannonGod
kafa sayımı yapıp köyü satan ağalar geldi aklıma
- Alper Ömer Esin
Then provide us with a way to easily make a back-up of all of our posts and all of the posts we have Liked and Commented on.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want it to be handed off to Facebook.
- Zio Bonino
I don't see good things coming from this. Although I like Facebook, I liked Friendfeed more. Partly because of the environment and the smallness of it. That is now going to be ruined. So, 10-1 odds that Friendfeed will be no more within a year after it gets intergrated into Facebook?
- Mathew™ one of a kind
I doubt it Robin. Bret can only give us assurances about the "near future." Here's what I think will happen. Just like Twitter acquired Rael Dornfest and his awesome web services, Stikkit and I Want Sandy vanished (and so did he), Facebook will acquire all the talent from Friendfeed, shut this service down and Facebook will continue to suck.
- Jim Hearts FF
Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want anything to be handed off to Facebook. And I don't want to lose anything.
- Zio Bonino
Congrats obviously, but im not sure about the feeling,, different user groups which can not integrate but collide.. hope there wont be an huge integration in the future.
- Yunus Tunak
I'm happy for FriendFeed! But, at the same time a bit worried about the future. Hope you guys convince FB to not be evil too.
- Vishal Verma
I can't believe it! damn! facebook tos will apply to friendfeed too? should i start to move to another service? why anyone would think that facebook public is friendfeed public?! damn! friedfeed was my favorite! I can't understand this move! they want to kill friendfeed or what?
- paula simoes ☃
"I bet I can find 1.000.0000 people who dislike this deal."...Welcome to FriendBook.
- Jacque
Well, huge congraulations to you and your team, you deserve every success. To be honest I had presumed this would happen sooner or later - the only business model cool little startups have is to hope they get bought by someone bigger for their brains and technology. I'm going to be in San Francisco in a couple of weeks and was going to stop by your office to bring you a cake and thank you for a great product - maybe I still will if you're still there and there's still a FriendFeed!
- Alex Lomas
The FF founders must have know this would be a very unpopular move. Most users I know here are not too fond of FB.
- Rutger Blom
"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" There's a bit of a contradiction in your statement, Bret. Nice try though.
- jcunwired
Now I can break my Internet plan at home.
- DarkBls
Grats Bret and the rest of FF. To all the naysayers... Lets see what happens before we start bitching....
- Rasmus Lauridsen
This ties in nicely with the fact that you soon will have the opportunity to make your Facebook profiles public and get followers there.
- Michael Netsch
I don't mean to be negative but there's got to be a win-win logic to each merger&acquisiton. Audience high in only quantity is clearly not a win for friendfeed in the long term by considering its unique selling points. Let's wait and see who will benefit from friendfeed's death now.
- ayca
It's all about the money. I would have payed a couple of dollars each month to use FF.
- Rutger Blom
Seriously, what is this? It's like Bret just announced that he's killed all your mothers or something. It could turn out good, it could turn out bad, but at the end of the day, who cares, it's just a website (I mean honestly, come on). I could see it going either way, but in the near term, this is a pretty big win for the FF team, so congrats guys.
- Chieze Okoye
To be honest, my heart sank a little but I am happy to congratulate you and the team for building such a good brand. Well done.
- Kevin J Hatton
I'm just surprised, that's all. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (it certainly isn't for the owners of FF). I'm willing to sit back and see what happens.
- Jason Huebel
Wow, I specifically use friendfeed b/c it is not facebook. Sounds great for the friendfeed team, but not necessarily for friendfeed users.
- Evan Parker
Born to be sold, like in the old "new economy" era. Remember the late nineties?
- Federico Bolsoman
Sudden desire to check out Strands again... but hey, kudos on the incoming $$ for FF team
- Leslie Poston
This is wisdom. Bracing for Google Wave is a good idea.............
- Kevin J Hatton
this is clearly a talent aquisition... why am i not excited about this? could it be because facebook has been blatantly stealing features from friendfeed shamelessly. Likes were clearly not an original facebook idea...realtime feeds is another i could go on...
- Tate DA FF MVP
While I'm sad, because I suspect this means the best things about FF will disappear or I'll be forced to use FB in some way, if the buyout was for some awesome amount of money, I can't say I blame 'em for taking an offer -- I would.
- Andy Bakun
I came to FriendFeed because I don't like facebook. Now the question is, will facebook become more like friend feed? or will they just take friend feed and turn it into facebook?
- Tom Ray
FF could be a good R&D arm for facebook.
- Andy Bakun
My biggest concern here is that FB has a completely different audience than FF.
- Rutger Blom
Fucking morons. FriendFeed is doomed now. Think logically. Facebook has NO REASON to keep FriendFeed alive. It will simply take FF's best features, suck the life of out of it, then trash FF. Way to go, FirnedFeed, damn.
- Jeremy Buff
This announcement should have been held off until the plans for Friendfeed were known. Regardless, this is *bad* for FF users. Best case: it continues on, but with stagnated feature development. Worst case: it's gone.
- tollie williams
I don't want my FF feed on Facebook :( I use both, but maintain both profiles separate
- Leandro Ardissone ⍨
Sigh... Happy for the team if this is what they want, but baffled by the move. The users that are going to leave because of this will make FF a graveyard and the users it gains, well... Hello spam? Sorry, but I don't like it.
- Vince DeGeorge
from iPhone
Well, I guess it is time to dismantle my friendfeed. We all know where this is headed. So, so glad I didn't move all my rss feeds from greader to friendfeed like so many cheerleaders suggested.
- Matthew Speicher
Dang, and just as I was starting to get used to how FF works. FF is useful on it's own. I hope this only improves FF's system, rather than having it disappear into Facebook's wake.
- Don Faulkner
My big question to everybody here is this: What are the potential downsides / upsides to this acquisition? I mean on paper I just don't see what the pros OR cons are. I don't care for Facebook but I don't see how them acquiring FF is going to change everything.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
furthermore they are 2 different things: I follow a lot of people here that are not in my facebook list, which is for IRL friends!
- Flavio
I don't know where to go next either. I had just settled down to make imaginary friends for all my non-FF tweeps, etc. now, I'm not sure if I should bother.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
I hope friendfeed continues to operate normally but it does not look good.
- ashish
integrate best features of ff to fb, then try to innovate in fb if possible, then kill ff... that's it, cheers, all the best. grrrr...
- Kemal
niczak has good points. FF & FB aren't exactly competitors, but they aren't orthogonal either. Let's hope FB's smart enough to see the difference and improve both platforms.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Nicholas: The upside for Facebook is they just bought an engineering team that's built many of the feature's Facebook's going to need to stay competitive. The upside for FriendFeed's engineering team is $$$ and the ability to build system for a wider audience. FriendFeed's user base is small enough that it'll either get absorbed into Facebook or move on, and FF will become a footnote on the Internet timeline.
- Ken Sheppardson
Don, I don't think FB wants to maintain two platforms.
- Rutger Blom
first tr.im (heard about it yesterday), now this. I wasn't a heavy tr.im user (yet), but sad to see it go, even if I think url shortening is silly.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
As FB said they're interested in the people and not in the site, what if the community will keep running FF without its current staff?
- Flavio
I'll have to go with Flavio's position too. Given this news (plus tr.im and who knows who's next), I'd tend to favor community supported or federated services for things like this in the future.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
I am purposely not on facebook because I don't really want to talk to people I have not talked to in 20 years.
- Andy Bakun
Once again. I'm happy for the FF team. They worked hard and now collect. That's fair. Wonder if they're sitting in a bubble pool drinking champagne while we cry out here ;-)
- Rutger Blom
trouble is (from my perspective), that the philosophies of the two platforms are at odds. FB wants to bring people to the site and keep them there, while FF is a hub, bringing people in and then sending them back out. (That's part of why it's hard for the newcomer to understand, IMHO.)
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Quote «Taylor and Cox say that the Friendfeed product will live on independently, and eventually Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook. But the Friendfeed team is not being kept whole. Some employees will now report to Cox, others to engineering head Mike Schroepfer. In my opinion that means, long term, the Friendfeed product itself is unlikely to be a big priority.¶ But Facebook is...
more...
- Philipp Lenssen
+1 Kol for the techcrunch article!
- Don Faulkner
from IM
techcrunch: "Cox agreed, noting that Facebook is focused on being a platform and a service, and not just a destination site." I certainly hope so!
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Brilliant move by both Facebook and friendfeed. Congratulations!!! I have theories of what they have planned, but I doubt you would verify any of them. This is going to go so well with their SocialTV which they have been developing. I'm so happy for you!
- Michael Fidler
I don't see what's so bad about it since no one knows right now what the outcome will be, everyone is just making assumptions that could possibly be wrong..... Might help just sitting back and seeing what happens first before complaining.
- ChaCha Fance
Nooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrghh! I´ve resisted getting a facebook acct for so long...
- Thomas Bøhm
ChaCha, if everybody would do that there would not be much discussion would there? This is part of the fun.
- Rutger Blom
I wonder how the discussion over on facebook would compare to this?
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Don, I doubt there is any discussion going on there. They're too busy throwing quizes at each other.
- Rutger Blom
Congrats, FF! I'm approaching the situation with cautious optimism. A lot of my friends only share stuff via the Facebook wall/feed, so if Facebook is able to make their feed more like the FF feed (i.e. good, instead of sucktacular) through this acquisition, it's mostly a win for me in the end.
- Brian Chang
At least my Feedburner stats might go back to normal again.
- Rutger Blom
/me pokes Rutger. (just getting in practice. ;)
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Where will we go for the FFunderCats, bacon memes, and angry artists fighting over photo reshares now? ;)
- Tyson Key
If anybody has doubts as to what happens to the FriendFeed community or our stored information here, read this statement from Bret (in this thread) "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users". Now maybe you can see "whats so bad about it" and curb your optimism. Not good.
- jcunwired
Congrats FF. Fix their live feed situation please.
- Edward Barnieh
@josh: do you think FB will throw away all the crap people use? various quiz, pick 5 and so on?
- Flavio
@jc: our data will not go away in the near future. what will be in few months? in a year?
- Flavio
Let's see if you can do a bit better than just not being evil this time around.
- Tim Tyler
Wooohooo!!, seems like we are being sent back to "good" old Facebook. Congrats Bret!!
- DanDan
Looks like I'm going to repeat the same thing many others did. My first reaction was "Oh my..." I have refused to join Facebook due to its philosophy while I have been with FriendFeed from the beginning for its. I'm sad and somewhat apprehensive.
- Sean Leather
Congrats. I suppose this means the end of FriendFeed but hopefully a better Facebook.
- Harry Toon
Please say that facebook.com will be shutting down, and the combined company will still be called FriendFeed... I bet it won't happen, though.
- Tyson Key
"Regarding FB/FF - Here's how it's [probably] going to work. You will most likely have an account merge, all of the services FriendFeed supports will now be aggregated on Facebook, and all of your FriendFeed friends will be in a "list" on Facebook. The FF Groups will become Facebook Groups. The FF lists will become Facebook Lists." http://ff.im/6pNxq
- Ozgur Uckan
Nothing like an early retirement payout :)
- Owen Greaves
Congratulations Bret. For me this merger makes a lot of sense. Facebook will provide the "quantity" of users, which friendfeed deserves :).
- Karthick R
FriendFeed + Facebook... Oh noes FriendFace is coming (http://www.youtube.com/watch...)! Now sorry for that link, and seriously, thanks for your work, guys. Please don't let the spirit of FriendFeed to be blown away =)
- Anton
hey, that is great guys! interested to see how you integrate.
- Brian Walsh
Mind blown. Never expected this. I'm also disappointed, yet optimistic at the same time.
- Angus Burton
Kinda curious to see how this will all pan out...although i wouldnt want the friendfeed stuff just integrated into facebook. I feel like im among a group of people who i genuinely share interests with here...dont want to lost that.
- Cassidy
Best case: Facebook will continue to support and develop FriendFeed. Worst case: this is great news for Amplifeeder.
- David Gaw
FAIL. Facebook is the new myspace, and now friendfeed will become a part of that BS. Can't say I'm too surprised because eventually we all sell out. BTW I don't see friendfeed lasting more than the rest of this year, if that. The good news is that we can all be subjected to add 'Are you related to a monkey?' and Blackjack apps while having annoying personal ads on our profile pages. Fuck this shit.
- Tomy Thomson
Well done, well deserved, I hope FB's means and infrastructures empower your guys to even better things. But if quizzes appear in "my" friendfeed, evil things will haunt you and your descendents for 3 generations.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
♪ ♪ This is the end.... beautiful friends ♪ ♪
- All for design
Well, I don't see the point of sticking around here if I have accounts in both and this is going to get swallowed whole into Facebook anyways. Put simply, goodbye.
- Micah Collard
The social community that has been behind FriendFeed creators have built a wonderful product. Only problem is, we don't have Zuck's checkbook :(
- jcunwired
friendfeed is a beautiful product, only god knows what facebrook will do to it. Hopefully the ability to upload files (such as mp3s) will not be removed. Zuck is a tool.
- Nibi
Congratulations. I'm sorry to say that I don't plan to move with you.
- Lars Juhl Jensen
Facebook is lucky to have such a talented group of people ... Congratulations FriendFeed!
- Rob Kurrus
doesn't look like a bad joke, better be for the good then, but... Well congrats anyway guys, you did something AWESOME now let's see where Mark takes it
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
That's too bad. Liked the openness if FriendFeed, and the lack crap that is on Facebook. Once FriendFeed dies, it will be Twitter only.
- Mike D.
Congrats, but concerned that FriendFeed and its tools may disappear. Merging the tools with Facebook seems impossible.
- Mike Reynolds
So, what does the acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook mean to us, users of both websites: Can I make a friend request from FriendFeed, and be approved for both, on one click
- Reyna Carlos
Exciting news guys. I am actually looking forward to your collaboration with / work for FB. No matter what people may or may not like about FB, it does succeed in reaching a more "diverse" audience compared to most other Web 2.0/social web companies. Paired with your team's excellence in realizing features that succeed in pleasing the geekiest of Web 2.0 affine individuals, I think you are steering towards exciting waters :)
- Mustafa K. Isik
*heart sinks* actually a bit of shock - I think that Facebook will leave Friendfeed as-is but I don't think there is hope for future innovation in Friendfeed since their best superstar team members will be pulled onto 'more important' Facebook issues...
- Pon
And the metastasizing, walled-garden that is Facebook, continues to eat the Web. Bring on Google Wave.
- Christopher A Carr
:-) + :-( very happy for the team, huge achievement, hoping to see export of innovation but not a shut down of this unique community and location
- Majento
There goes FriendFeed down the toilet. well I WAS having a good day. until hearing this crap!
- Scratch5150
Congratulations, and best wishes for your future together! :-)
- Ruchira S. Datta
Wow, I was beginning to use Friendfeed as my defacto social site...Facebook is more for real life friends. They'll just take what makes Friendfeed great, add it to Facebook and slowly kill this site.
- Manuel Mas
What is the big deal? I think it'll make FF bigger and better. You should be happy about that!
- orionstarr
I am disappointed. I don't want to have to go to Facebook to do what i do here. I can not imagine they will port over all the features we enjoy here. We lose a lot for only a slight benefit to Facebook.
- Robert
It could be worse, myspace could've bought them lol...
- orionstarr
Awful news for users but congratulations to you guys. Ideally, FB will run FF as a distinct service but I'm not hopeful. I don't want the diversity and noise that facebook brings - people doing quizzes on which movie star they resemble and playing silly games. I also wanted to keep my day to day social activity distinct from the targeted information and discussion I use FF for.
- Rajit
Only just started taking a serious look at FF after hearing acquisition by FB. Sounds like I'm laggard rather than a leader in use of web 2.0
- ManojRanaweera
I think how Pon said it is what I'm feeling: *heart sinks*.
- Andy Bakun
Congratulations, i am really happy for you guys!! :)
- Mona Nomura
I'm not a Facebook fan, but can't begrudge the FF gang their chance to reap the rewards for all their hard work. However, it would be a shame if FB ruins the good thing we all have going here.
- Ken Morley
So what now? a name change too? FriendFace? FeedBook? FaceFeed? god Facebook really sucks. oh well. Adds anyone?
- Scratch5150
Congrats to the FF team... I hope the service doesn't disappear into a fold of light and heat.
- Brandon
if all the things that make FF great are brought to FB then I'll be happy to use it
- Mike Chelen
The community won't be there. Been on FB longer than any other, don't have nearly the relationship or sense of community there that I do here or on Twitter.
- Karoli
Karoli: that is due to the effectiveness of the FF platform and interface, which help to join conversations and find interesting people more so than FB does
- Mike Chelen
Mike: I suspect that FB wants FF for the search possibilities, not the community-building aspects. But we'll see.
- Karoli
i guess congrats are in order, but I'm going to now go and remove everything I have that feeds into FF, and I have to ask -- do I have any rights over my archive? I have a private feed, and I have no interest in offering up my lifestream to the FaceBook data-miners. I hope the FF folks get what they hope for out of the deal, but my FriendFeed experience has been effectively killed.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I just learned about the FF acquisition by Facebook - WOW~! Congratulations Bret, Paul and FF team!! holy cow ........Mooooooooo! Where's the FF Acquisition Party? :)
- Susan Beebe
RT @alirizaesin FriendFeed, R.I.P. Home tweet home!..
- Ozgur Uckan
Congrats to facebook. Now, Twitter is the best.
- Ebru Baranseli
Congratulations to the FriendFeed guys on the Facebook Acquisition. Not a big fan of Facebook, so I hope my favorite Uber Aggregator, Realtime Social, Microblogging site of awesomeness is not entirely absorbed into the Facebook infrastructure. I wait with baited breath to hear what "normally for the time being" means ;).
- Tom Horn
Can I now have comments propagate in both directions as far as Facebook/Friendfeed is concerned?
- Piaw Na
*checks date*. Damn .. not April 1st, must be for real. While I'm happy for the FF team, since I guess this is what they wanted (congrats guys!), I can't help but think this is the beginning of the end for a great service and a vibrant community. There are reasons I don't spend any time on Facebook and do spend lots of time on FF, and some kind of "FF integrated into Facebook" just won't cut it. I hope this service will live on for at least a few more years.
- Andrew Perry
Gratz to the FF team but as a user I'm not completely happy. In short, I like the FF team/product much more than I like the FB team/product. Best of luck to all.
- timepilot
Dang! I've killed another site! Sorry guys... FF was doing fine until I started coming here again! Same with Pownce! Went there and liked it... went underground for a spell... came back and still liked it, so I stayed. A few months later... BOOM! I have the touch! (I'm thinking I'll start devoting a lot of time to Twitter... maybe I can kill that one, too!)
- Mark Jepsen
Bret, congrats on the acquisition. You guys put in a lot of hard work to create this community. I just hope you learned the mistakes Pownce made, Jaiku etc, and ensured that you didn't sell out your community, but that you helped it evolve into something as great as this into something better. Good luck in future endeavors!
- Mike Lewis
Oh yeah? Ok: take tour money and go to the hell. :-(((
- Claude LaFrenière
Yay for you guys, I mean that seriously, I 'like' what this means for you personally, but -1000000 cool points for doing it with FB. Sad day.
- Threepwood
Karoli: FF search is so useful because it is integrated with all the other great features that help to find relevant content. if FB wants to have a similar capability, they must also develop the underlying architecture.
- Mike Chelen
from IM
shakeel, the reasons for friendfeed to join facebook are probably about other things besides money, since many of the FF staff left high-paying jobs to join in the first place
- Mike Chelen
from IM
Well I've thought about it, and I'll stick around until I start seeing that crappy Facebook logo, I only have 71 subscribers here, I hate to do it but I'll probably scrap the whole thing and start over somewhere else. still can't believe that shit.
- Scratch5150
Congrats, team! It's bittersweet, though.
- Anne Bouey
So now we will have FriendFeed blocked at work too. Darn.
- Mark Scrimshire
"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future" is not exactly inspiring for the long term for those of us who came here to escape Facebook for a) it's walled garden and b) privacy concerns. Nice for the Founders to make a pile of cash but for the many of us, it feels like we got sold down the river. Sad.
- Sally Church
cacarr: updates for FB have progressed rapidly in the past, count how many months since new features such as api calls and site redesigns have have been implemented
- Mike Chelen
from IM
I can't believe it either. I feel as if — for the moment — I am lost in the wilderness, adrift.
- roamin
Congratulation to the FF team! You guys deserves this. I just hope that Facebook does not change the directions of FF.
- Vinko
Congrats Bret! Hope the transition goes smoothly for you guys.
- Cristo
I hope this means better integration: liking here will auto-like on fb and such :D if that's the case, I won't mind the ads *wink* *wink*
- Bicentennial (Franc)
Franc, cant stand facebook ads in their current format, hope they will be fixed eventually :P
- Mike Chelen
from IM
Grats, dont spend it all in one place.....
- Robert Higgins
congrads. I think it will be good for BOTH companies.
- Logan Lindquist
Now that you guys have $$$ you should swap out the not so very pleasing default avatar!
- See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
Hope you guys enjoy your new jobs. Meanwhile we get to watch a great alternative to Facebook with a promising future go down the tubes. A really sad and unfortunate day.
- Todd Holmes
Congratulations to all the FriendFeed team. I hope you'll be able to keep the FriendFeed spirit up at Facebook. Kudos for all the great work you've been doing.
- Paul Papadimitriou
FUCK. The internet just lost a good service. Friendfeed is dead
- Ryo / Fuck Facebook
I use FriendFeed and Facebook so it would be awesome to see FF features in Facebook. Congratulations!
- krzychukula
from IM
judging by the nearly 600 comments as i type this, including my own earlier one, FF could use a Don't Like button as well. or would, if we were going to be using it much longer.
- kelly
Nice, i like to wish you all the best for your new job (and it's really hard, i know). I'm happy, but... don't let die FF!!
- Seo Guru
Hope FriendFeed remains open. Love the spirit of FF
- Bernaldo Barrena
Seriously, what a coincidence! Just on Saturday I claimed to be both twitter- and facebook-free. I loved FF product and personally helped to bring at least a dozen of my friends into the community. I'll stick around for a while though.
- ǝuǝƃnǝ
This deal makes sense, now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask! Congrats facebook and ff!
- Garin Kilpatrick
I suppose Facebook had to do it, with Twitter and Google Wave as competitor...
- Alexander Kruel
I am noticing a lot of people going to re-esumate their lifestream.fm account now!
- Flavio
I don't think FB acquiring FF is bad. But I don't think it's good either. We'll see. :-) In the meantime, keep up the good work!
- Alexander Gieg
Oh shit. Love FF, hate FB. I'll NEVER, EVER merge my two accounts. I'd rather unsub from both than merging. I'll wait for the developments, and in the meantime look for an alternative.
- Alliandre (la Ippe)
How long until ex-FriendFeed employees start jumping ship from Facebook? I wonder...
- Tyson Key
Thomas Power still believes that Facebook/FF/Linkedin (2010) will be acquired by Apple (2011) and this is a transitional acquisition in the SN market cycle. The world is shifting to Mac, iTunes, iPhones and FB own the next generation. Apple have $29bn of cash on deposit price is not an issue. Google must jump for twitter while MS fiddle in the sticks with Yahoo. BillG will be back at the MS helm 2012.
- Penny Power
:( Happy for FF people, sad for the service. Was going to move from fb to ff this week..
- Martynas
Flavio: never heard of lifestream.fm before, but I'm going to go check it out. I'll reiterate, though, that I'm now shy of any service like this, since it can disappear just as it's getting good. I heard about sweetcron.com last night (via http://ff.im/6pR2w). Maybe it's time to move from centralized to distributed again.
- Don Faulkner
Just finished setting up my lifestream.fm at http://lifestream.fm/dfaulkner. Lifestream does what it says, and no more. FF's search blows lifestream away. FF is more flexible about adding source feeds, but lifestream does fine without the flexibility I suppose. FF still wins, or would, if I thought it would be sticking around. :P
- Don Faulkner
I also hate facebook, not because of their silly quizzes and pokes, but because I suspect they would like to maintain massive user base as the determining factor in choosing a social network. I would love to switch to orkut as I use so many other google services, but I can't because nobody else does. That should not be my criteria.... I thought friendfeed would try to make social networks work together.
- Ru Viljoen
I don't understand why everyone is so negative about the situation?
- orionstarr
@orionstarr - it's like Starbucks buying your neighborhood coffee shop and saying it still cares about the customers. You know it's just not going to be the same as what you've come to love.
- Robin Barooah
Presumably FF will go on the back burner - and the team will try and "fix" Facebook.
- Tim Tyler
I've watched Facebook morph from a relatively organised and well implemented social networking tool into the hulking mess it is now - and I really, really hope that a similar thing doesn't happen here with the inevitable changes this will bring about.
- Leslie Moore
Come on guys, out with the long-term game plan, this is tedious.
- Andrew Eglinton
NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, I mean Cool.
- sofarsoShawn
Teach Facebook how to be FriendFeed. Let the small but fast teach the big but slow. Don't forget what Paul says - don’t be evil.
- whatidiscover
"Two weeks ago, we launched version 2 of the FriendFeed API in beta. Since then, we've watched how developers have been using the API and collected a lot of their feedback. We've implemented some changes, and now, we're ready to remove the beta label!"
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
A two weeks beta in the 2.0 era sounds almost blasphem! Congrats!
- Simone Ruffilli
Congrats to Ben and Gary for all their hard work getting this out the door. And thanks to all the developers who have been sending us great feedback the past couple weeks.
- Bret Taylor
We had some networking issues that were causing packet loss over the past couple days that (we think) have been resolved. If you noticed the site being a bit sluggish, it should be improved now.
There were some bugs in the "Twitter publishing" code that caused some entries to get published on Twitter when they should not, and others to not get published when they should. I've cleaned up the code to eliminate these problems, but it's possible some settings were lost. Please verify your settings at http://friendfeed.com/setting...
Cheers for this Paul. How cool is it that one of the founders of FF still gets his hands dirty in the code. Once a coder, always a coder :-)
- Keith Bennett
from Nambu
Thanks Keith :) By the way, if none of your posts are making it through to twitter, it may be that you changed your password. To verify, simply click "Save changes" at http://friendfeed.com/setting... and we will check that your Twitter credentials are still good (and sign-out then back in to fix).
- Paul Buchheit
Are you kidding me, there's actually some settings and options somewhere in the new friendfeed?! *passes out from the news*
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew, in general all the same settings that the old ui had are available on the new one (plus a few more), though they are now divided on to several different pages. You should be able to reach all of the the settings by clicking on the word "settings" below your name in the top-right part of the page (the dialog shows a few, and links to all the others).
- Paul Buchheit
Where are the settings to turn back on the service icons, to sort by service?
- Matthew DeVries
You can filter by service by searching for service:twitter (or whatever service you like), and of course that can be combined with other search operators as well. See http://friendfeed.com/search... for more.
- Paul Buchheit
Thanks Paul, sounds like you pulled an all nighter to fix these.
- Robert Scoble
So to filter by a service, I have to know the service, which I won't know because the icons are gone, and I no visual queue by which to see it's a new service, OH and I need to write a separate filter, myself for all 2000 services that can feed to FF? Does that seem right to you?
- Matthew DeVries
Yeah, unfortunately the code had gotten rather involved since it was trying to support both the old ui and the new (the old ui worked on a per-service basis instead of letting you decide individually on each entry), and the logic sometimes became inconsistent. I simplified it quite a bit, so there should be less room for bugs now :)
- Paul Buchheit
Matthew: Seems logical to me. You can read, so you can see if an entry came from Twitter, or Facebook, or Flickr (or even Flickr Favorites). And anyone importing 2000 feeds into FriendFeed is required to change their surname to Scoble. ;)
- Andy Kruger
I have an idea, how bout next to each post, say next to the How long ago, you put something, say, the favicon for the service that posted that feed, then when I click on that icon, it takes me to all of that person's posts using that service? Wouldn't that be a great way to do it? It would certainly be a sever load neutral feature. In fact I think once you put it in, you'd never ever...
more...
- Matthew DeVries
Nice try, Matthew, I congratulate you on being awake, and carpe-diem'ing Paul here, but have to disappoint you - if FF wanted us to have favicons, they'd already issued us our favicons. Do you see any favicons that made the transition from earlier version. No? You think Paul nuked them by mistake... be my guest, and I'll be looking forward to the next couple of years' worth of your pleading for favicons when you could be learning to live both here and thereater without them.
- ianf ⌘
No, I just use the scripts to put them back, but that is such an inelegant hack for something that should have it's own option to implement.
- Matthew DeVries
I'm a bit confused about the "Post my FriendFeed entries on Twitter by default" and "FriendFeed (when there's no Cc box)" options. Are these exclusive? Does checking the first one mean all my FriendFeed posts will get posted to Twitter even if I uncheck the Cc box?
- Tony Ruscoe
Paul, thank you thank thank you for the "Check CC Twitter box by default" option!!! That's one step closer to only needing Friendfeed. I'm almost ready to dump Google Reader AND Twitter now!
- CAJ, somewhere else
Tony, the "cc twitter by default" option sets whether then checkbox is checked or unchecked by default in the share box and bookmarklet. The other option ("when there's no cc box") applies mostly to the API and other off-site interfaces, such as email (mail share@friendfeed.com) and IM. For any given post, only one setting applies.
- Paul Buchheit
I publish to Twitter by default but now link directly to the source. I figure that those finding outside of FF want to go to the source (while those reading on FF are already seeing the discussion).
- Mike Reynolds
Hi Paul, about 15 mins ago I "shared" an item from FF here to "my feed" and "cc Twitter". But still not showing up on Twitter. Just thought I'd let you know.
- Brian
Thanks Brian. It turns out there was a bug in the "Share" feature that sometimes caused us to sometimes not send the tweets (the new code errors on the side of not sending tweets). It's fixed now though. Please let me know if you spot any others.
- Paul Buchheit
Appreciate the heads up Paul. Simple example of how companies can connect with their audience.
- kilbuda
Paul, that did the trick! Thanks for looking into that. BTW, that was a quick fix! Just shared an item on FF and it pushed thru to Twitter instantly.
- Brian
Hello Paul, when I try to publish just my google talk status to twitter and have "Link to source site instead of FriendFeed conversation" selected, it doesn't send the tweet. I'm not sure if this is because twitter seems to be having difficulty right now or if it's the lack of a source link because it's a google talk status?
- ehaab
ehaab, publishing to Twitter was broken this morning, so no updates went out. It should work fine now however, including publishing updates from Google Talk. Sorry about that.
- Paul Buchheit
thanks! it was driving me batty trying to figure out why it wasn't taking.
- ehaab
I think it's still broken. I just posted via the Bookmarklet and CC'd twitter... no go. EDIT: my latest one just posted, must be intermittent.
- Daniel Sims
Hi Paul, Mine is still not working. I have also checked the setting page.
- zahedzadeh
"As a devoted FriendFeed user, I have tried to convince all of my friends and family to join the site, but a handful of them never quite got their accounts set up properly. With our new Recommend friends feature, I can fix their FriendFeed experience by recommending subscriptions to them." Try it out at http://friendfeed.com/friends...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Keep giving Robert crap. He must wield his like lense for good!
- Mark Essel
What am I supposed to get when I click the 'recommend friends' link on someone's pop-up? Currently, the popup just goes away and I don't get directed anywhere else.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Fred: yah, unfortunately, you can only recommend people who you are subscribed you and who are also subscribed back to you.
- Bret Taylor
Mark, I didn't submit a bug report since what is supposed to happen wasn't actually spelled out on the blog post or here; this might be the intended functionality... I hope not, but it's possible.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Tina: it is supposed to pop up a dialog. Sorry for the trouble - we will look into it.
- Bret Taylor
oh I just overreacted with Bug Report! At the very least the guys get a few minutes to look it over before Paul or whoever their manager is comes around with new implementation ideas
- Mark Essel
At first I did not understand this, but now that I am checking it out, it is brilliant and addresses much of what we have complained about. NOW what will we complain about?
- Liza
It worked for me, just started connecting the social network. Facebook has some pretty groovy network/node connector
- Mark Essel
Just to confirm Bret, the first image in the blog post is what the pop up is supposed to look like, right? Because that's nothing like what the ff.com/recommend page looks like....
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
I notice that new subscriptions are automatically added to one's home feed. I consider that kind of a bug.
- Meryn Stol
Tina: yes, that is correct. The http://friendfeed.com/friends... page is just a list of people that we think could use some friend recommendations since they have few subscriptions. If you click on any of the "Recommend" links on that page, you will see the same, standard "Recommend friends" dialog.
- Bret Taylor
Where would we find recommendations that others suggest to us?
- Fred Yankowski
@Bret, who receive the recommandation see also who is the recommender?
- Roberto aka postoditacco
Fred: You will receive an email as well as a notification on the top of your feed.
- Ross Miller
Roberto: yes, they see who recommended
- Bret Taylor
Not getting the pop-over when I click 'recommend' on the friendfeed.com/friends/recommend page either... FFox 3.0.12 if it's relevant.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Bret, if I recommend friends to people who haven't signed in for a long time, will they get email? A lot of my bored friends are not active FF users I think. (quite logical)
- Meryn Stol
Roberto: You won't be notified if they accept/deny as the recommender.
- Ross Miller
Ross: Ah, it just appeared on my feed. Cool. (And thanks Meryn)
- Fred Yankowski
Meryn: yes, they will get an email with your recommendations
- Bret Taylor
from email
Bret, I accidently just received an email with previous recommendations. I had already viewed them through the web-interface. But indeed, it's there. Email looks good too, as I expected of course. :)
- Meryn Stol
hey Robert Scoble....I have a trade proposal....you send my name to all your friends...i send your name to all of my friends for the rest of my life....
- Bob DeMarco
I would like that deal, too, Scoble. I like this a lot.
- Ben Hanten
Bob: I charge $1 per friend. :-) just kidding, but the UI makes it so hard to send you to more than a few people.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Bret: You guys rock! This is so much better than FollowFriday, which I recommended just a while back. Now, I'm waiting for some recommendation emails! :)
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
If there’s something about friends and family not having their account set up properly, I’d prefer a way to recommend them the streams they forgot to add. For example, I could tell them “You forgot to add your Digg stream and your fourth and eight blog. Here’s the link.” Then he could just click the recommendation and had it set up easily.
- Natsuki Seika
As I have lots of subscriptions the pop-up window is *really* slow and always has been since the new UI (same thing for amending friends lists). :-( I like the feature though, so I could make a new friends list of my most recommended users and use that each time for each user?
- Kol Tregaskes
"Today we are launching version 2 of the FriendFeed API for beta testing. We focused on making the API simpler to use, and we added number of compelling new features." Documentation: http://friendfeed.com/api...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
nice, good to see OAuth support, this will enable a larger 3rd party ecosphere around FriendFeed, I hope
- Jeroen De Miranda
After going through the documentation and playing around with some feeds, I love the fact that you can now see the subscriber lists of people who have their feeds set to private as long as you are subscribed to them and authenticate (mimicking the main site functionality). One thing that's absent is a discussion of Direct Messages. Do they show up in feeds if you authenticate? How do we find just direct messages?
- Mark Trapp
Mark: direct messages are accessed using the feed ID "filter/direct". Read more about feed IDs at http://friendfeed.com/api.... Also direct messages appear in the "home" feed.
- Benjamin Golub
Benjamin: ahhh, I see it now. I missed it when skimming that list over. Thanks!
- Mark Trapp
Can you post the wget version of the command line?
- Gabe
Gabe: wget --user=bgolub --password=passwd --post-file=MyPhoto.jpg http://friendfeed-api.com/v2... should work. In theory. Edit: nope. I'm not sure it's possible to do with wget.
- Mark Trapp
Oh dear. And now I'm thinking "Command line Friendfeed UI - I can do that - that would be do-able" ;-) Nice work peeps, especially the subscriber list info! :-)
- Andy Bold
Gabe: wget doesn't support multipart forms as a design decision. If you post a file, FriendFeed returns a 404, and if you post data, the query is too long for wget to handle.
- Mark Trapp
Woowoo, bgolub's password is “passwd” ;-)
- Amit Patel
Amit: I wonder how many people tested that :)
- Benjamin Golub
Thanks to bgolub posting his password, I now have all of FriendFeed's secret documents about notorious users, useless metrics, Justin Timberlake's promoting FF on Oprah's show, hiring Colbert as a spokesperson, Ev Williams being just a “distraction”. TechCrunch is going to love this! ;)
- Amit Patel
Yes big big thanks to the whole team for all their hard work!!
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
from iPhone
Grasslands is pretty cool looking, but when I comment on a post, the comment field is hidden in the grass. :D
- Josh Haley
Nice job! These are some pretty spiffy themes. I would have commented earlier, but I was busy shooting ducks. I switched from Helvetica to Steampunk for now. I still want my old school monochrome monitor black screen and green text theme :P
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
"old school monochrome monitor black screen and green text theme"? oh hellzyeah! can we also get an amber monochrome version?? they can be called "Hercules Green" and "Hercules Amber"! :D
- Joe Silence is not dead
oooooo...I like that...Hercules Green and Hercules Amber
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
Grasslands has sun and clouds in Opera, but not in Firefox.
- Peter
Peter I see the sun and the clouds even in Firefox
- Niki Costantini
Cool, I like Orion and Duck Hunt is fun in a simple way... But I'm going to stick with Helvetica for now. Wouldn't mind a Blue variation of it.
- Grant Bierman
Cordys Cloud application had the cloud+grass combination since about a year, and now this theme of FriendFeed makes my page look like my applications ;) mighty nice ;)
- Ashish Tiwari
I'd like,, I really would like to have a full black and green theme, like old vintage computer from the '80's, but with the power of new technology. SO, please, make me happy...
- Francesco OC
annnnd back to helvetica.....steampunk is too slow on my netbook. really really want vintage computer "hercules green" or amber theme guys! :)
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
yes mike! hercules green or amber theme! perfect...
- Francesco OC
Today, Google engineers announced a technology called PubSubHubbub that makes RSS/Atom more real-time, and they deployed the technology on FeedBurner. FriendFeed also added support for the technology, so if you have a FeedBurner feed, your updates should show up in FriendFeed within seconds rather than minutes after the feed updates.
To enable it for your FeedBurner feed: go to Feedburner, click on the "Publicize" tab, and then click on "PingShot" and enable the PingShot service. That will enable PubSubHubbub and send your feed to a number of ping services.
- Bret Taylor
Once step closer to being able to build an open distributed twitter like system!
- Edwin Khodabakchian
this has been done already by superfeedr.com - google's behind the game on this one, but def takes it mainstream.
- Scott Magdalein
I don't understand. Updates won't appear on Feedburner in realtime, so what's the point?
- Peter
Peter: most blogging platforms ping Feedburner when you post a new entry, Feedburner pulls down the feed, Feedburner then pings the hub, then the hub notifies FriendFeed :)
- Benjamin Golub
Thanks Benjamin. Alas, my feeds are not that sophisticated.
- Peter
We're still working out kinks so if you have any issues please send me a message!
- Brett Slatkin
You lost me at "Today" I shall now just smile and nod politely
- Steve C
If I understand correctly this essentially turns any site with a feedburner feed into a real time publisher? But to read it in real time you need what?
- BryanSchuetz
Since this is a Google thingie, does it work on Google Reader already?
- Tarmo Aidantausta
FriendFeed can receive the pings *RIGHT NOW*
- Brett Slatkin
guys, how long are we really talking before it should appear here? Seconds or minutes?
- Zee.
The Reader integration is a prototype; more to come soon!
- Brett Slatkin
no way, so Google Reader could technically go real time??
- Zee.
is that SUP's role take up by those rss accelerator? or SUP is losing a chance to propagate in this field?
- huixing
Huixing: we plan to support all widely adopted real-time standards to make FriendFeed better. We are not tied to SUP only.
- Bret Taylor
from iPhone
Brett, why didn't you use the weblogs.com ping protocol? Your comment there about RSS, right up front, really captures the whole philosophy -- right? Let's just reinvent stuff that already works, so... Why? To break everything that already works? It won't happen that way. It'll only make your adoption curve steeper.
- Dave Winer
Is this working for anyone else? Anyone getting near real time publishing to Friendfeed with feedburner?
- Zee.
from iPhone
Would you ping me (dave dot winer at gmail dot com) when I can use RSS with this system. I'll be happy to evaluate it and provide feedback if necessary, and endorse it if it works. Thanks in advance.
- Dave Winer
Alright we've fixed in the spec Dave. Sorry for the mistake. Followed up.
- Brett Slatkin
I had enabled from way before, let's see if the post I'm about to publish works. I'll DM you Zee if it does!
- Jorge Escobar
can someone please let me know if they've managed to get this working?
- Zee.
There's also a WP plugin I wrote that does the same thing. This might be a good option for anyone who's not using feedburner. http://wordpress.org/extend...
- Josh Fraser
Zee, I set this up for my Empoprise-BI blog, wrote a blog post (using Blogger), and six minutes after posting I haven't seen anything in Google Reader or FriendFeed yet. So if you're not getting advertised response, you're not the only one. I'll test again at a later time.
- John E. Bredehoft
cool...just want to be sure it isn't me alone
- Zee.
Update - seven minutes after posting, the post showed up on FriendFeed (both in my f