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Frank S. › Likes
I wish Twitter would sell to Google so it would die like Jaiku and Dodgeball. But I won't post this over on Twitter. I really don't have much love for the service, even though I know I'll be stuck using it for the indefinite future. Jesse Stay has it figured out. It's a horrid place to try to communicate anything other than a bit of self pimping.
Anthony Citrano, John B. Osborne, Ozer Wrzl (EN) and 164 other people liked this
Here I can write the equivilent of an entire blog post. And even make changes. And even have a conversation. And use it as many times an hour as I want (Twitter rate limits my apps after a while cause I'm too heavy of a user).
- Robert Scoble
werd.
- imabonehead
I can sense already that FriendFeed is slowing down now that it is joining Facebook, while Twitter still has the best flow (and best system for following people and best mobile clients). So, we're stuck with Twitter, which is too bad, because the technology here is a ton better.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter is a piece of crap - BUT it's where the audience is (currently).
- Jim Connolly
Now it is starting to feel like FF again with you bigging it up again Robert ;)
- Travis Koger
Twitter is the new MySpace.
- imabonehead
Maybe google wave will change the way we use twitter, etc. again. Haven't tried it yet, but it might succeed where friendfeed "failed" - getting enough people to use it.
- Frank S.
Travis: I had to go and clean out my Twitter and Facebook accounts and spread out my usage.
- Robert Scoble
Agreed! - Friendfeed is so much better (for as long as it really lasts in Facebook world...)
- Matthew Blaisdell
from iPhone
Robert: I'm thinking of setting up a facebook account for my Marketing blog - what do you think?
- Jim Connolly
@Scobleizer I don't think Friendfeed would be quite so popular if it weren't for twitter
- Prolific Programmer
from IM
Twitter is the new Myspace - HAHA - this quote made my day. For me it is just becoming a multiplicator for my friendfeed but it is important for that!
- Sascha Pallenberg
Prolific: I'm not so sure. Blogs made Twitter. So, what if there were no Twitter? We would still talk up something else. But maybe FriendFeed wouldn't have thrived anyway. Twitter hit a sweet spot with its easy to program API, it's easy to use interface, and its cute name and branding.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter works extremely well on mobile devices. I constantly see people tweeting whereas it's more difficult to do with FriendFeed's interface for a typical user.
- imabonehead
Really think that Twitter is annoying it's users too much. There's some problems out there that are really being ignored. Here's an example of a problem that could be solved very simply, but no action is being taken (if it was solved it'd create a lot of goodwill) http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter...
- Edd McArdle
Robert, now that FriendFeed's people are working for Facebook, and since Facebook has already been making changes to make it more "open socially", do you think eventually that Facebook will become the best place to have serious conversations?
- Carlton Hackett
Carlton: yes.
- Robert Scoble
I've been thinking so too. Although, I wonder how the non-Soc/net junkies will respond to that?
- Carlton Hackett
Robert, two thoughts. #1 - do you think Google really would let it die? Acquiring Twitter would be more like its YouTube acquisition than Jaiku (in terms of price and # of users). Secondly, what would Twitter have to change for you to change your opinion?
- Ben Parr
I really, really, really want Twitter to work out is the thing. It's just a pain in the neck to communicate without either losing the conversation or spamming useless banter over multiple Tweets because you can't fit it in 140 characters. That's just my experience. Those still spending most their time there don't mind it I guess.
- Jesse Stay
I like Twitter. The conversation flows pretty well for me, and to be fair, I get more @replies there than I get replies here to my posts.
- Chris Nixon
I think a combination of the Retweet API and a true threaded replies architecture and UI could change some of my opinion on that though if they do it.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: It's NOT just your experience. Twitter is getting less valuable the bigger it gets. The spam / porn / bots issue is insane and ruining the experience.
- Jim Connolly
Chris: I have a twitter account with over 20,000 followers and get ten times as many replies here as I get there. Here I only have a small following. The calibre of people I connect with here is better too.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse, have Twitter improved their communication with developers since you wrote about it in April?
- Edd McArdle
Edd, over the last week I have noticed a difference, yes, but it's hard to tell if it will remain that way. They now seem to have a project manager over the API dev team (Ryan Sarver). He seems to be putting a filter on some things and keeping devs updated elsewhere. They're still learning though, much slower than FB or FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
agree on spam and bots, but it still is a nice little thing, if it remains what it was made for! marketing and reviewing thing isn't/shouldn't be there, true friendfeed is more effective as a tool for sending your message across, it is simple and strong
- testbeta
Testbeta: ... and FF works.
- Jim Connolly
Jim, Jesse, Robert: Value varies. For me, Twitter value continues to increase. I use it to find out what's happening, meet up with people, get random insights into how people are doing, find new people. It all works well. There are many different use cases and one tool does not have to do them all.
- Rachel Clarke
i couldn't agree more!
- lilian
Rachel: "It all works well"? Really? Twitter?
- Jim Connolly
Rachel, I agree with you. I just don't think Twitter works well for conversations, that's all. I use FriendFeed and Facebook for that. I use Twitter for different purposes, and I agree it does still have value.
- Jesse Stay
sometimes i think of Automattic's intense debate, but well friendfeed is intense debate, such a experience was never had on blogs, the commenting, liking, and so fast it propagates, even disqus commenting systems can't achieve what we have here on friendfeed, but i can't just throw away twitter, twitter still is good, true for the serious types it's word limit, reply system is a bit of...
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- testbeta
I would love to have FriendFeed as the commenting system on my blog.
- Chris Nixon
Chris, there are a few plugins that do that. I haven't tried them though.
- Jesse Stay
Chris: Check out what Scoble's doing with FF on building43.com
- Jim Connolly
Jim: yes. It works well for what I want it to do (I'm ignoring the ongoing issues with the DDOS). It's a free tool that adds far more value than it costs me to wait for odd outage.
- Rachel Clarke
Just checked your Twitter account and now understand exactly what you are saying.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse: agree, I use Facebook, Friendfeed, blogs, comments etc, all for different things. I even use the phone as a phone occasionally to talk with people ;-) But the assumption that one tool/service can do everything - and should do everything - is something I have a problem with. If something does not work for a person, don't use it.
- Rachel Clarke
The twitter ecoverse is cool, can do Psychological Profiles, can do Social Network Analysis. All those services that spawned as a result are amazing. I am also amazed at how dense Asians Languages are on Twitter, think about it they get about 60% more per tweet.
- Robert Higgins
Ben: at this point I am not sure what Twitter could do to win back my love. I will use it just like I use AT&T and United Airlines. I have very little love for those even though I use them frequently. Twitter wins because it is simple and flat and has great clients. I wouldn't cry if it disappeared, though.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
So why do you hate it?
- Raanan Avidor
You are a hypocrite! I remember you use to sing the praises of Twitter all the time. Another toy comes along and you start bashing it. If I was Friendfeed management I would cancel your account now before you start bashing them. Robert Scoble is nothing but a follower of crowds anyway.
- Paul L. McCord Jr.
You want it to die? Such an odd statement. I have met so many great people through Twitter, and the news information I can find through search or news agencies or even people who are newshounds are amazing. I know it's not perfect and the last few weeks have definately proved that, and the spam is just awful. But to want to kill it, what a strong statement.
- PC Easy
from twhirl
Twitter is not abot writing blog posts or having conversations, its about small pieces of information being communicated to anyone who wants to listen. You do not have to listen, if you want a conversation use a forum or FriendFeed, use WordPress for blog posts. Stop trying to make Twitter into something it is not designed to be.
- Darren Rollett
I really used to like Twitter, still do sometimes. What I don't like is the Twitter hype. I don't seem able to turn on any media channel these days without reading/hearing or watching about it. Even the BBC reported that Twitter was under attack recently on the main BBC news. FFS come on, there must be more happening in the world than a micro blogging site with a few million users...
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- Nick Bristow
If you owned twitter would you sell to google?
- cheapsuits
from iPhone
Robert, Atleast something positive could come out of it. If Twitter sells to Google they might(though its not guaranteed) make it opensource and then a federation of twitter server(ala wave servers) can co-exist happily and that way we'll own our stuff(as Anil Dash and other points out). Or they might integrate it in Wave framework. Not that people are not gonna complain about it but thats a different topic.
- Abhishek
Surely an improvement in the service would be a more positive wish?
- Chris Nixon
Say what you want but something with the architecture of friendfeed is far more conversational then twitter could ever be.
- cheapsuits
I don't know why people think Twitter is the place to converse. It's really not built for that. I find myself enjoying the flow of conversations more on Facebook and FriendFeed.
- Naomi Williams
Self pimping? Hmmm... Perhaps not for all of us. And besides, self-pimping isn't limited to twitter.
- @JonAston
PS - Maybe it's just me, but you seem bitter lately. Hope you turn that around for yourself.
- @JonAston
Jon: You are right. People pimp on FriendFeed too; as I say in my new book.... :-)
- Jim Connolly
@jim, they will do anywhere, this is human nature, they do even in real life, so why not in virtual one?
- abdellah
Abdellah: Absolutely.
- Jim Connolly
"(Twitter) It's a horrid place to try to communicate anything other than a bit of self pimping." AMEN
- Alejandro
Personally I wish Google would buy both Facebook and Twitter so they could both die.
- Brian Sullivan
@brian, hey where could I read to you then?!!
- abdellah
@Frank S. Google Wave will only be valid if you actually have other friends/collegues who use Google Wave. Otherwise you'll be using it with the *crickets*
- Naomi Williams
Oh yeah -- forgot that due to circumstances beyond our control FF is now Facebook. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
oh yeah , they share the same vision, they got the same perception...
- abdellah
It's the ff interface (developers) that make it great, but it's really you guys and gals, the people friendfeed attracted that make it valuable to me. Let's consider a real migration to a more reliable long term social media. It has to be open (data portable, unsellable) to get my trust
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I hope the FaceBook people will take comments like these to heart. I do like twitter but the functionality FriendFeed brought was the next generation in stream notification.
- Chris Jackson
Ohh time to pimp Jim's new book on Twitter ;)
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Mark: Yeah - all I need is a title. Oh, and a book....and the time to write one....then I will be pimping like a pro!
- Jim Connolly
Wow Robert, I was thinking this the past few days and could never bring it to words...well done
- Braden Douglass
Jim: I'm time bankrupt but love sharing and collaborating. Let's hire a ghostwriter to capture our best ideas in an intelligible manner :). Joking of course, there's no easy way to spread our thoughts but doing it ourselves
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I was gonna call the Funky Phantom. (That really dates me.)
- Jim Connolly
Robert, I challenge you to stop using Twitter for a month and then blog about the experience. And that includes hiding all Tweets in FF.
- Mike Doeff
from iPhone
Lets face it, Twitter was built as an update service - a big Internet megaphone. The natural transition has been from update service to marketing service. Big Internet Megaphone. It's good at that, but it's not at conversations nor at discovery. The larger problem is people still approach Twitter like a true social engagement tool - and it's simply not. The disconnect between perception and reality results in the poor adoption numbers and other soft metrics.
- AJ Kohn
twitter is noise. filter it and you can find some gold. imho, that's beyond mere self-pimpage
- Rob Schieber
Agreed Rob. I'd prefer semantic algorithms applied to all tweets. I'm interested in real time search and datamining. And semantic extraction on all status would allow for real time "sorting"
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
i'd love to meetup with fellows and see what api scraping is going on - know where threads are for that?
- Rob Schieber
Idk, This seems so much better then twitter.
- SeanParnell
It does have a lot of noise, granted - but if it went away now, I'm not sure where everyone would run to. Facebook is too silly, Linkedin is too stolid, and everything else is too fractured for me to communicate with all the people I want to in a single shot. Guess I'd end up doing everything through ping.fm after all.
- Ciaoenrico
Wow, Isn't online chit-chat such a fuss? :)
- SeanParnell
Robert, just a week or two you were saying that Twitter is beating FriendFeed because of scanability http://friendfeed.com/scoblei.... And you had lots of complaints about the FriendFeed user interface. You also talked about how Twitter was much better after you un-followed everyone and hand picked who you're following. I have to ask, what has changed in the past few days to make you say that the service should die? Feels like you're flip flopping.
- Mike Doeff
Can't you apply for extended API limits?
- Tristan Seligmann
love the single post/status page, i mean like this: http://twitter.com/twitter...
- testbeta
I noticed that in the past two weeks, the tweet intensity has greatly decreased from all my follows in Twitter. Granted, I'm not following too many, but the ones I do follow have traditionally tweeted a lot each day. Is this a trend (has Twitter become a has been) or is this simply a coincidental anomaly?
- Jeff Sayre
Robert I find myself on friendfeed more these days
- (jeff)isageek
@brian would you consider myspace if both facebook and twitter die?!!(ps: sorry I forget the LOL)
- abdellah
Myspace -- don't know. I haven't really tried or paid attention to it. But probably not -- isn't it Facebook like? Maybe usenet? ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
brian, let forget all those techie and go irc :)
- abdellah
IMO, people who don't like the limitations of Twitter and whine about it hampering them are using it wrong. Twitter is not a place to pimp your blog or drive traffic to your site. It is not an SEO tool. It's not a place for you to compete in order to get more 'followers'. If you've ever tried to do any of these things, or if you ever followed more than a few hundred people, then yes, no...
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- Otto
Well said Otto
- Chris Nixon
Jesse Stay: you should stop complaining so much about twitter when you build an entire business based on their lack of functionality and other issues.
- Mihai Secasiu
Mihai, I'm not complaining - they can do what they want. As I said I really want them to succeed. It's a matter of fact that they do have their flaws - I'm hoping to help them fix those, assuming they're listening at all. What are you doing to help Twitter get better?
- Jesse Stay
it is like twitter if for what,where, when and friendfeed is for why, how
- testbeta
Mike: just because I use a service doesn't mean I love it. I use ATT and United all the time and they suck too.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
And yes Twitter has some good things about it. Doesn't mean it is all good. Personally it is overused and overhyped and YES I am partially responsible.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Apostol I get value out of Twitter. You aren't listening. I get value out of AT&T too but it COULD be so much more. Chris I tried to be positive but Twitter just doesn't respond to positivity. Plus they are cynical AT BEST about their users. Read the Twittergate documents to see just how cynical they are.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Twitter was just there at the right time. It's not the best solution to the problem (microblogging), but it's good ~enough~.
- Trent Hamm
You seriously think Twitter will die once it gets bought by a 'bigger' company?
- Mike Shields
Mike: do you use Dodgeball? It was bought by Google. So was Jaiku.
- Robert Scoble
Trent: did you just call Twitter the Microsoft of microblogging? Yeah, that's sorta what I was trying to say too! ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I just find it amazing that all the early adopters get really snobby about Twitter now it is getting more mainstream. There is something snobby about people's attitude to Facebook as well. I'm not a fan of Facebook but I know more people who use Facebook than use Twitter or Friendfeed combined. Even my mum has a Facebook account but she'd never be on Twitter or Friendfeed. Twitter...
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- Paul Nash
I liked Pownce. I wonder what SixApart has cooking up for them. So there's really no chance for Plurk to make a comeback and take back the community? With all the outage problems Twitter has, I would think Plurk would try to capitalize on that. Guess not.
- John Wang
now if the Google Reader team could just get their new commenting system streamlined and real-time ... :)
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
Paul: it's not hard to understand if you are in our shoes. Here's why. When a company is young and struggling to get noticed, they love having early adopters. After all, that's the ONLY WAY a company gets to the next stage. I've never seen a company go straight to Oprah stage without getting early adopters excited. Then once the company gets enough traction they usually start mistreating the early adopters. In this case Twitter stabbed them in the back. Leo Laporte, for instance ...
- Robert Scoble
...got me excited about Twitter and was THE REASON it was the big huge deal at that 2007 SXSW. He had more followers than Mashable last year. But did he get put on the Suggested User List? No. So now Mashable has more than a million and Leo has a knife in his back. And you think it's amazing that early adopters turn their backs on Twitter? Really now.
- Robert Scoble
I don't see how Leo has a knife in his back. There was no preconceived notion that anyone would be added to that list. Who cares? He was fine before that list was created, and he can be just as fine now, and just as engaging.
- Andru Edwards
Andru: when he was hyping up the service and telling his users to use it, he was getting something in return: being at the top of the follower lists. When Twitter artificially put its own people at the top of the follower lists, and handed out grants of followers (worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars, by the way -- Mashable has changed its entire business to be Twitter centric) they specifically dissed Leo and many others. Most of whom won't point it out in public.
- Robert Scoble
Sadly true. I'm in much the same boat -- Twitter is a necessity for professionals and bloggers to stay on top of things, but other socialnets like Brightkite and FF are light years beyond it, which doesn't look to be changing any time soon. Don't even get me started on the spammers and the get-rich-quick'ers.
- Ryan Meader
But before the SUL was released, didn't Leo abandon Twitter in favor of Jaiku, due to Twitter having "Twit" as part of its name? Just saying, if I owned a list that I had complete control over, and someone showed that behavior towards me (whether it was right or wrong, I am not judging), I would think twice before putting them on a list that will result in many people seeing they they...
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- Andru Edwards
I can't agree with you more, Robert.
- Jon Ursenbach
Scobe: I very much disagree that it is about self pimping. Perhaps your senses are mush because you follow too many? I absolutely love getting that link to a new article or research, or to get a tweet from that celeb that makes me think and provides insight into a new world. I also use it as a research tool, for exploratory purposes. Twitter, as you know very well, is about what you make it, and that is a tenuous notion that really is influenced by who you follow.
- Chad Gesser
Andru: again, the list did NOT exist in the days when we were hyping up Twitter. So, there was a "promise" to early adopters that if they invested time in the service they could be at the top of the follower lists. Sort of how PlayFoursquare is today promising users that they can become mayors of places they frequent more than anyone else. What Twitter did was the equivilent of PlayFoursquare telling everyone that their "mayorship" doesn't matter anymore and that Oprah is now mayor of everywhere.
- Robert Scoble
Chad: one thing you have to remember about me is that I see that Twitter has 1,001 uses. Stop seeing the world as black and white. This is one post I'm making about Twitter among thousands. Translation: I already agreed with you. But you have to admit that many people use Twitter for self promotion.
- Robert Scoble
Andru: and anyway, the SUL is hardly the only reason to diss Twitter. Twitter still goes down all the time, it still has stupid rate limits. It still can't block spam effectively. It still has no friend management. It still has no features that didn't exist a year ago. And it is, in many respects, behaving worse. I'm hearing from developers that Twitter is becoming more closed, not more open (to monetize) and we're seeing them pick winners before the marketplace is done (bit.ly anyone?)
- Robert Scoble
The nice thing about Twitter is that it keeps your message short and to the point. Friendfeed is great but it doesn't lend itself well to an external app out of the browser. Also FriendFeed and any of these services you don't own your content
- Seth Goldstein
Seth: bing! So, back to the blog we will go. Except, why are we still here? ;-)
- Robert Scoble
Awww Twitter the "me" network :)
- Wayne Sutton
from iPhone
Anyone tried Streamy?
- cheapsuits
because the interraction is in real time
- abdellah
Wayne: retweet me. :-) abdellah: I thought it was because of all the sex. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
that was my expectation too ;)
- abdellah
I like friendfeed because of its realtimeyness, but I like twitter because it requires you to be concise. I have seen some brilliant tweets done in 140 characters or less. I think that's always been the allure of twitter, its sheer simplicity. How many features can you add to twitter without actually changing the core of what twitter is?
- Tomy Thomson
Robert: But what do you want from these companies ? Chaps like you give them the oxygen of publicity they need and they court you and then when they become successful you suddenly start to criticise them. Friendfeed has become successful (in great part to your endless plugging of it) and the founders will now go on to make money through their company being taken over by Facebook. You,...
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- Paul Nash
Scoble: no doubt....I can deal with the self promotion, the e marketing and spam garbage though to me is what has gooootttt to go
- Chad Gesser
Paul: my role in life is to use what will be, not what is. I don't turn on many companies, but Twitter isn't one that dealt with early adopters on good faith.
- Robert Scoble
nick: I explained why above.
- Robert Scoble
Is there a "social media" company that has dealt with early adopters in "good faith"? Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr I suspect don't qualify ? Any that do?
- Brian Sullivan
all platforms seem to have self pimpering styles, why so passionate against twitter? Objectional question, not one of rhetoric.
- nick tadd
Brian: I didn't know that any of those have actively dissed their best early adopters. Facebook kicked me off, but only because I broke the TOS. It's always been straight up with me. Same with Flickr, although I do watch Thomas Hawk's talk about their censorship.
- Robert Scoble
none as brian says, they all deal with them, and "the earlier adopter" contribute to their evolution until they sell (sorry)
- abdellah
nick: because it's so prevalent there. "Look at my blog post about xxx" is almost a staple on Twitter. It's a new RSS reader. Which is fine, I use it too for that! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I think you may have the makings for one of your future blogs here. Perhaps you do it for that reason? ;) The thing about Twitter is always going to be its LBE. It's a mainstream LBE to Social Media. For that very reason its perfect for business, government, and non profit to take public temperature and promote. The other "noise" is the "MV", the "mainstream voice". The conversation is 4 way.(and yes sometimes only 1 way) but there it is and its not going to go away any time soon.
- Melanie Reed
Yes, indeed, Twitter is the Microsoft of microblogging. It's good enough, but not the best - but it has the huge advantage that everyone is using it, so you have to use it for compatibility reasons.
- Trent Hamm
DAMN Robert I HATE that you are right on this one!!!!!
- Arleen Anderson
Hopefully you use it for positive self pimping and not for negative pimping... which is inevitable
- Kevin Burrell
If FF would have taken mobile seriously, the game might look different right now
- Alex C. Williams
Alex, they are taking mobile seriously - they sold to Facebook. :-)
- Jesse Stay
I can't see how Twitter can survive Facebook now. FB will bring Twitter down, the only chance they got is to sell to Google.
- Patrik Johansson
What makes people think Facebook or Twitter is all-conquering? There's a new generation coming through, and they aren't using these services. It's very important not to get sucked in by the hype of a service you use. Fanboys will talk up the positives and ignore the negatives, giving you a skewed message. The truth is somewhere in the massive grey area in between.
- Chris Nixon
The new generation uses Facebook a lot, but not Twitter.
- Steph (sh_skew)
from email
Let me say that it is not twitter per se. It is the population of twitter to make it the place it is at the moment. Whenever there is a (free entrance) place crowded of people, there will be spambots to pollute it.
- funkyboy
from Posty
Twitter is just a temporary solution for a quick mixture of instant messaging + status updates + chat forum.
- Bora Wiemann
Just having a discussion today that Twitter will eventually go bankrupt when the hype is over
- Khuram Hussain
I don't agree with you Robert. Twitter is easy to use, succinct and versatile. I've made multiple very meaningful connections through my use of twitter. I do like friendfeed's threaded conversations which are great but in a way it only helps those who have big followings like yourself, because people are more apt to comment on your thread than say mine because they know the conversation...
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- Lon Cohen
For example - how do I message you directly so you know I'm speaking to you (i.e. Twitter @ reply) but all your followers and my followers know that we're having a conversation in Twitter back and forth so that they can follow and interject when they want. Everytime we do that we have to start a brand new discussion thread and I have to "tell" you somehow that I'm talking to you. Twitter is like email/phone conversations and friendfeed is like collective blogging/commenting.
- Lon Cohen
Amen, Robert.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
The power and beauty of twitter originate from limitation. Think of it as conversation haiku.
- Brendan
NETTUTS.com: 30 PHP Best Practices for Beginners - http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news...
Frank S. liked this
Did FriendFeed sell after seeing Facebook Lite? That's VERY interesting and answers a few of the troubles I am having with Facebook.
Linda Lorie, Iván Abrego, Daniel Rowley and 40 other people liked this
Paul said he did not know FB lite before
- K.D.
your guess is as good as mine
- Lipanantsi
good conjecture... guess we'll find out soon.
- Nathan Chase
It's also why I'm taking a wait and see approach and not listening to any of the "jump" posts
- Jesse Stay
NO I am sure they are selling because wave is coming, why should they sell to FB if FB is currently working on mini FF clone akka FB lite?
- abdellah
I wouldn't be surprised if an 'open-garden' version of Facebook arises from the foundation of FB Lite, and that version will be very similar to Friendfeed.
- Mo Kargas
If true, would make a lot of sense. But as abdellah says Wave makes great sense too. btw: 6:00am ? early bird?
- Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic
Alex: it's 8:07 a.m. here in San Antonio, Texas.
- Robert Scoble
well, if the friendfeed team takes over facebook lite it would be some good news.
- Mark Essel
I don't know where I stand on this, because while I don't use FF alot, I appreciate it. But I loathe FB as it slides into MySpace-ity.
- Trine Curtis
I agree with Trine there... I stopped using FB a while ago.. It was nothing more than a waste of time. At least with Twitter/FF it's useful interactions, most of the time. FB Lite looks interesting, but Facebook already lost me.
- Jared Quinn
just to add to what I said before, I think (mean speculating) the the new Google product that the executive Google told @robert S, may be a new Greader more social oriented, so let suppose that Greader change UI for a better (sharing+like) facility, what would happen?
- abdellah
My bet is on the obvious reason. They sold after seeing the pile of money
- Mirco
Facebook lite.... hmmm Isn't a hype? I read about 10 blog posts about this "project" this morning (I'm an early bird!) and I'm not convinced at all. Facebook is not a search engine, facebook is not a FriendFeed look alike even in a light version and groups in facebok are borings to say the less. The problem here is every web 2.0 sites or 2 dot 0 wannabe are trying to be 'expert' in...
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- Claude LaFrenière
Claude: Facebook is now a search engine. I disagree with you there. Mirco: sorry, $50 million isn't that much, I know Paul was hoping for a lot more when he started the company. In fact, Paul told me several times he wasn't interested in selling and wanted to go all the way and build an engineering-friendly environment.
- Robert Scoble
Mo: technology slowdown? Robert: its 11:16PM in Sydney
- Tyson
@abdellah Doesn't Google Reader already have a fairly decent like, comment, and sharing facility? It seems fairly complete to me aside from the fact that it does seem to gather social media reactions and display them inline. But neither does Friendfeed.
- Jim Reverend
from email
So you are saying he sold FF for whatever he could get before getting wiped out by a competing product? Hmm. Kinda makes me wish we could have seen the competing product slug it out instead.
- Trine Curtis
@jim, it is all about the perception that the UI may induce, for the moment Greader is just like any FeedReader, with some social feature enhancement, let think about a new design that bring all the social feature in the top of the scene reither then trying to hide them. a better UI should be a Thread based one) like in FF, at Greader it is a feed oriented one.just question (how long is the shared like conversation you have in Greader), at the best I will say a feed commented by ome people that all.
- abdellah
@abdellah I see what you're saying. And you're right, Google Reader could do well with a new UI that really highlights the sharing and social aspects that an online Feed Aggregator is really made for.
- Jim Reverend
Esp. for emerging markets, where many have no laptops but everyone has a mobile, FB Lite is brilliant move. It also moves Twitter closer to the dumb pipe many of us have been using it as w/FF (soon FB?!) being our primary aggregation of our stream. Twitter becomes a pure channel that lot of people use but noone ever goes to. But re Google, picture this - they (finally, now) pick up...
more...
- Thom Kennon
Facebook will destroy friendfeed, most likely, :(
- imran
Facebook Lite may be just a version of Facebook for bandwidth saving: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... It's quite possible: not only users with slow internet connections got poor Facebook-browsing experience, but also Facebook itself spends lots of money on abroad traffic and would gladly shrink these expenses.
- Pavlo Zahozhenko
FBlite does seem to lend credence that part of the reason FB bought FF was to avoid legal liability, as it brings more outright FF functionality online.
- Christopher Galtenberg
What triggered FF sale would be kindoff a mystery for The time beign, given the needs of capital for a steady growing perhaps FF FOUNDERS decide to play it safe, get less but get it now and keep developing under a better capital capture company; as for FB LITE we'll need to see what its focus would be aimed so that in future retrospective confirm or denie that it was the reason of the sale.
- Marco ILLESCAS
from iPhone
can someone answer me about iGoogle as social hub and answer 2 FB lite perhaps
- polou/indigo_bow
Hard to know if the FriendFeed team knew about FB Lite and if it precipitated their decision. Guess they saw they were lagging in terms of network effect and that it was hard to forecast if they would ever gain more momentum that they already had amongst some early adopters. It might have been the best time for them to tie their future up with a bigger player.
- Paul Papadimitriou
@robert and all, have any one checked the improvement of GREADER (damn it is worth caps) , in Greader the answer to the question why FF sell to FB.
- abdellah
Facebook to FriendFeed: “You Complete Me” - http://staynalive.com/article...
 |
Enrique Flores, amoa bourahima ouattara, Thomas Power and 25 other people liked this
Yay! I love watching my stories come out real-time. Can't wait to see this on Facebook.
- Jesse Stay
FeedBurner Hubbub working for you yeah? That's great!
- Brett Slatkin
Wow Jesse. Yours is the first really thoughtful post concerning this merger. It almost gives me hope (almost). Great post.
- Keith - @tsudo
I had not considered how they fit together now we'll just see if they can integrate them to create a product that is even better than the sum of its parts.
- Keith - @tsudo
Thanks Keith - some will just not like it. For instance, some like to remain anonymous, and this merger most likely won't allow that. It's not for those people.
- Jesse Stay
Brett, I'm becoming more and more a fan of yours the more I learn about Hubbub and PubSub. I also love that you do a lot of your work in Perl. :-)
- Jesse Stay
Thanks for not being so ignorantly pessimistic like everyone else.
- Gus
Well, thanks Jesse. Good to hear you're liking the Hubbub. I'm a big Python enthusiast (from my day job, Google App Engine); Mr. Perl himself is Brad http://bradfitz.com --it's really easy to get the names mixed up so no worries at all!
- Brett Slatkin
Dang - I'm mixing my Brads and Bretts up! Well, the "Br" name is pretty cool in my book, regardless.
- Jesse Stay
Either that or it's you Google guys and former Google guys :-)
- Jesse Stay
I know, right? Too many Br names.
- Brett Slatkin
Nice post. My concearns come from a) The 'Team' now works for Facebook. b) FriendFeed is about discussion, Facebook is about games, dating spam and poking. c) The current requirement for Facebook is mutual follow. FriendFeed isn't. Your point about privacy is ok but I don't want to have to Friend everyone I want interaction with in a meaningful manner. d) FriendFeed doesn't have...
more...
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Not all pessimism is ignorant, Gus. And nice comment, Johnny.
- abacab
Wow Jesse awesome post! Facebook rocks and now it's just going to rock more :)
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
Johnny, a lot of assumptions there. I think you misunderstand Facebook and what its potential is if you think it's only about games, dating spam, and poking. So does that mean FriendFeed will bring Facebook LOLCatz? Facebook isn't just mutual follow any more - they're gradually changing to have a model more similar to FriendFeed's, and FriendFeed will allow them to do that even more. I...
more...
- Jesse Stay
and you can throw a sheep at me any time at http://jessestay.socialtoo.com, but, thanks to Facebook, I probably won't get it because I am able to ignore all those invitations.
- Jesse Stay
hear hear but don't forget Matthew Fraser's book http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp...
- Thomas Power
Any thoughts on the quickness of implementation? I have already seen posts on. The FB blog eluding to a new search... Also the race is apparently on as Google has a new search too... I'm hoping this competition brings some amazing innovation.
- Walt Ruppar
from iPhone
Walt, don't believe anything you read unless it comes from Facebook or FriendFeed. No one knows what or how quick the implementation will take place.
- Jesse Stay
Not even from you? :) Yeah, definately a lot of speculation going on right now, but the two points I mentioned were straight from FB (http://blog.facebook.com/blog...) and Google (http://googlewebmastercentral....)... Enjoy your vaca and great post!
- Walt Ruppar
from iPhone
happy to to become the first network
- amoa bourahima ouattara
New blog post: you are SO unfollowed! http://scobleizer.com/2009... I'll follow on FriendFeed anyone who comments here:
Ozer Wrzl (EN), Jens Christian Freund, Harold Cabezas and 157 other people liked this
Follow me!
- TheHenry
TheHenry: I already am! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Please don't unfollow me!! :)
- Carlo Nasuti
Very interesting approach Robert. If it is working for you that is awesome though. Hope all is well. Give Roc a big hug for me.
- C.C. Chapman
Yo...
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Not too much unfollowing please.
- Tim
i'm in
- Tai Hsia
Can you follow me?
- Giorgio
ok I'll allow you
- Derry O Donnell
What's going on here?
- Andru Edwards
I think you're already following me Robert.
- Andrew Leahey
well ok )
- Denverken
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
- Robert Kenney
[comments here]
- Nick Humphries
I will comment here! :)
- John Ptacek
Great blog appreciate all of your "likes" that I would not have noticed before. Thanks for all the time you spend educating us.
- Gary Prechtel
auto-follow always seemed like a bad idea. people can always msg you but your stream will get totally cluttered if you dont do a little bit of housekeeping.
- William Kapes
"baby I'm a star" -Prince (off purple rain)
- Michael J. Carrasquillo
novel approach, seems sound
- Danny Ayers
Consider me available for following. :-)
- Eric D. Wilson
Okay, I'll bite..
- Tanya
Bring it Scobleizer.
- Todd Pringle
I agree, Twitter is much better this way.
- Ryan W
I appreciate your work, and your passion for social media.
- Evan Travers
sounds simple...
- Mateo Yadarola
Scoble follow me baby
- Jadito
Oh you are getting quite a response here!!!! I'm commenting so you'll follow me but the thing is you're going to LIKE following me because you'll learn all about Sedona through tons of videos and you'll love it so much you'll want to pack your camera and head out here! =)
- SedonaTV
Thanks for the mentions, Robert (and you know I'm not commenting just for the follow - I just like to follow you, which is what counts!)
- Jesse Stay
Actually Robert, now I've seen you've tidied up your twitter, I'll probably follow you there again too. :-)
- Tim
hey follow me scoble
- Andy Jenks
Meh, who cares really, not like you read everyone you followed. Plus unfollowed you anyways, not like you have to say that's interestined except friendfeed spam.
- Steve
joining the crowd - good move Robert.
- Adam
follow me
- Tai Hsia
welcome to Boulder
- Andrew Hyde
@scobleizer just created the most important tech follow list on Twitter.
- Christian Anderson
aww shucks, and here I was thinking it was just me who you unfollowed.
- Jess Sloss
I underwent the same situation, Robert - I unfollowed almost everybody on Twitter who duplicated their accounts here on FrF. I got a tempest of fury for this action. web3 is too personal still ))
- massagin
Scoble in Boulder = Trouble.
- Jim Halligan @jim
I feel fortunate that you're still subbed to me on FF. I haven't even noticed whether you unfollowed me on Twitter. But you following me, still hasn't gotten me the chicks. :P Always fun seeing your posts, long as you don't block me, it doesn't matter if you follow me or not. :)
- Arlan Koizumi
I did the same thing some weeks ago after avoiding twitter because it got too noisy. It was instantly better. But in the mean time I started to use FF more and I like it better here so I hardly go near twitter now.
- Murray Barton
You already follow me here on ff, which i use more than twitter.
- dthree
What's up?
- Kevin Whalen
from iPhone
Hey Robert, so for following >1,600 is it that right way taken by Philtro and Filttr?
- Martin Adamek
I'm glad you mentioned Loic, he caught a lot of flack for doing this earlier.
- Steven Cains
Hey Robert - fight the tweetspam !
- Michael Neale
Don't think you are following me on Twitter anymore..please do and best regards
- Karma Martell
I'm still trying to figure out the following... so I'm watching how you do it scoble.
- Matthew Schrock
Good plan. I'm looking forward to your results. I'm trying to figure out all these social media elements. I would appreciate your Twitter follow.
- David Stanley
hope this new approach works for you!
- timepilot
Oh, so now you are only easy on FF.
- James Watters
Odd internal response, I don't follow everyone who follows me cuz of the very noise you talk about. And, there's no good reason for you to follow me since I'm unlikely to deliver news of interest to you. And yet, here I am, posting on FriendFeed so you have the OPTION of following me, a stranger who is not the same kind of SMART as you. Who'd have thought...
- Della Mauler
Interesting statement about original content value of FF independent of twitter. Twitter is where you keep your noise level down...
- James Watters
This seems like asking for trouble to me, Scoble. But, it's your time and bandwith to do with what you will. Since only a handful of people (by that I think I mean just one) follow me on Twitter, it's pretty easy for me to weed out the bots. The people I follow are my internet nerds (mostly the Rev 3 crew) so I know their interests are in line with mine. Hit me up for some edifying conversations about Lost and video games, Robert.
- Jeremiah Green
Here you go Robert! [also via twitter: @Scobleizer Therefore: only approx. 1.7 million "active" human @Twitter users contribute 50%+ of all activity, right? #engagement] Regards, @AAinslie
- Alexander Ainslie
The green avatar is so disturbing mate. :)
- Jordan Windebank
I'll lead, you follow. So where are we going?
- Tom Sheppard
I was sad to see you unfollowed me, but now you may follow me again, so all will be well in the world.
- Jodi
following the leader...
- John Munro
You're still following me - does that mean I'm a smart feller? ;)
- Brett Kelly
so glad I mail Robert a business card every month :)
- Christian Anderson
Della: the thing is here I can follow you and put you into a list and watch you less frequently than some of my other people. So everyone wins. But only here on FriendFeed. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Some of us have been doing this from our start. Kind of cool, eh? But our numbers don't grow quickly so we were tagged as "slow." Nice to see you catch up with us! Also, this may shock you, there sre folks who follow and communicate with only 3 folks on twitter and they are HAPPY! Imagine....
- lynda spangler
Yay. Now he will follow a librarian.
- Joe
Follow this dot!!! .
- Bwana ☠
I've long thought the entire Twitter "etiquette" of always following who follows you to be a bit of a folly. I'm following 114 at the moment, and the stream still moves too fast for me to keep up with.
- Darren Landrum
Comment!
- anna sauce
ok
- Vasu Srinivasan
Good test, count me in... I don't follow tons of people, I follow a few prolific Scoble-types and the rest are more focused in areas I'm interested in.
- David Ziembicki
I'm not following tons of people, just a select few. More to follow on FB when facebook has completely integrated Friendfeed-funcionality. ;-)
- Wolfgang G. Wettach
I only follow people I know or have something interesting to say, did you really have 160000 people that said something worthwhile???
- Gerard van Schip
Well I commented via your Blog so instead of repeating myself I'll link to comment http://disq.us/1ms9
- Keith - @tsudo
Gerard: everyone says something worthwhile once in a while. The trick is to see it when it happens. Here on FriendFeed, by the way, you have a better shot because good stuff usually gets liked and commented on, so it pulls up higher into my view.
- Robert Scoble
come join us here folks http://ff.im/6dUHN xxx
- Mark
Okay. But will you read and comment on my stuff?
- Mellissa
Robert, I posted this after Loic's decision and it looks like it will need another update. http://www.knowthenetwork.com/blog... I think there is value in stating your follow policy.
- Keith - @tsudo
cool
- Zach Cheatham
Hello?
- Vicky
following all the discussion of you unfollowing everyone on twitter has made me think about doing the same thing and starting fresh.
- (jeff)isageek
not unless we beat you in the Ashes
- Mark
Nice post Robert, and no surprise it's an improvement. ;o) I have seen it for me too.
- Rob Sellen :o)
1 thing I find Robert still worth following @Scobleizer when I am not on friendfeed & on my Hootsuite or PeopleBrowsr. therefore not much affected, not much 2 bother me, ego not gone at all. luv your post Robert it is a frank posting
- polou/indigo_bow
Follow me Robert, I promise I'm not annoying. :) @cluteman
- Greg Clute
from iPhone
You've piqued my curiosity.
- Kathy
Robert, thank you! I follow you and enjoy your "likes" and your energetic takes. I also enjoy your Building43 interviews! I am a constant FriendFeed user now. Thank you!
- Tobin Truog
This made me realise I must be more active on FF and comment/post more :-).
- Mats Pettersson
I think I'll give FriendFeed a go! Never tried it, but looks easy and I need to understand the interwebs better. @CodeSamurai_Com
- CodeSamurai
butt-kissing is not a prerequisite for being followed, he will follow you anyways :D
- Mark
Count me in! (Please??)
- Ricky Maveety
lol @mark. ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
You can follow me, but since you follow a lot of people, you probably can't pay attention to the stream of tweets.
- Alex Knight
Alex..that's the WHOLE point he did this... ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
IMHO 1,647 is still way too many people to follow.
- Alex Knight
I will NOT get baited into ... ah CRAP. I follow very few people on twitter, mainly only to find info from Android developers (my topic of choice). If you mention anything about the food you are currently eating, etc.. you will probably not be followed. If you post 80,000 times a day, you will not be followed, since Twitters interface sucks (not so for FF). Also, no offense to other social users, but if you resend your FF/FB/<insert other social site here> entries to twitter, I probably won't follow.
- Tim Hoeck
http://socialspark.com/blogs... Chris Pirillo is Scum.
- Mark
good move IMO
- Joanna Nicol
Love the post, love the response.
- Chris Rogers
from BuddyFeed
nice hanging out at with beach w/ you last week! follow moi!!!
- Raina Lee
I always feel like scoble's following me
- Rodney J Woodruff
from iPhone
Don't forget your Dunbar number, Scoble! There are only so many people you can have meaningfully connect with online.
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
Mark is right. No butt kissing. Ew.
- Robert Scoble
"I always feel like, somebody's watching me..."
- Wizetux
Comment!!!! Ohh wait but you already follow me...
- Amit Nangare
Follow me, if you aren't already....please. Thanks,
- Steve de Mena
here is my comment ZOL
- Shane Gibson
Comment? What kind of coomment, Robert? :-)
- Mitch Featherston
Whoop there it is! On Twitter @jimgoldstein
- Jim Goldstein
from iPhone
Oh..Oh... Mr. Kotter...Mr Kotter..follow me!
- Scott Booher
Glad to see you're writing more than 140 characters on that blog. Doesn't that feel liberating? Maybe we should be allowed character# based on your metric for powerful/smart/newsmaker
- Noah Bloom
You already follow me here on FF, for which I thank you. So, I'll just say thanks for the phone call the other day. :)
- Jeff Harbert
I'll take a follow!
- Jeff Weber
@shaunhess
- Shaun Hess
Ok, so follow me again and I will follow you back. Thanks!
- Audrey
Robert - I fail on most of your criteria so I'm not expecting you to follow me. The thing is I don't care if you follow me back - this is social media and everyone has their own choice. I choose to follow you because you entertain and inform me. The relationship is 100% one way and I am more than happy with that!
- Pon
Robert - Last night at GDGT Party the person at the Blackberry booth said: 1) She had 'heard of Twitter, never friend feed' uses neither 2) Is SCOBLE is coming tonight 3) Wow, your Blackberry is really "archaic" and find out when contract lets you upgrade. F-D UP? Booth babes need primers.
- Liza
Interesting theory... people who comment more apt to contribute?
- Mark Philpot
I know someone else who tried this strategy last year, with similar results. I've been debating it. Once I got over 3K followers on Twitter life just got weird. Started to spend X amount of time every day blocking porn spam.
- Patricia F. Anderson
Liza: yeah, sorry for not coming to the party. I went and saw Obama's CTO instead.
- Robert Scoble
Steve Lynch: my Dunbar number is higher than yours is. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Nice summary Robert on the whole Unfollow thing, but would it be too repetitive if I re-post on my FF?
- Keith Rowland
What is the best friend feed aggregation strategy of non-friend streams (eg RSS, twitter, etc)? Imaginary friend per service, then add to lists? Multiple services per imaginary friend or 1 to 1? Or add the services to a group? What are the considerations?
- John Brown
Keith: you can repost anywhere you like, thanks!
- Robert Scoble
I'm in!
- Craig Shipp
still wondering how you are able to handle such a big load of subscribers here and e.g. so many followers with twitter o_0. I am already (sometimes) lost with the few i got till now. Lately with one sweep almost 40 to 50 contacts in twitter disappeard and i have no clue why ... boah, how are you handling the noise? Hell, with so many ppl in, you might have a terrific noise? Or you wear just good headphones ;)?
- Ronald
I very much agree that being choosy is the key to Twitter. I'm not nearly on the scale that you are, but in my experience, freely following people (whetther they follow me or not) and then mercilessly cutting back on them over and over again results in a kind of darwinianly better and better signal to noise ratio.
- Tim Maly
Touche!
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
Count me in
- Johnny
Hi Robert
- Randy Allen Bishop
Liked the blog post and totally agree. I've been meaning to do something similar. What I do is occasionally prune and then add some "better" replacements, so my total is always 2000 follows.
- Bora Zivkovic
I don't see how anyone can manage so many users without groups. Then again, with groups you could just make an "ignore" group.
- Oscar M. Cantu
from iPhone
Great blog post. I totally agree on the noise level. I figure I have blocked a few hundred accounts on Twitter, and my noise level has dropped dramatically. Thanks for the follow!
- Tony "Frosty" Welch
Hello Hello!
- Sam Goldfield
Robert - I figured you were in DC from FF, but she had NO IDEA what a CTO is. Point is, she was eager to give you a Blackberry, but not me, and I wish I had a Scoble costume to pretend for 5 minutes.
- Liza
@Robert I think you are starting another mass follow again.
- Steve Chou
from fftogo
Steve: that's not the problem. As long as spam doesn't enter the system I can deal. Keep in mind here I can choose how I follow. I can put you all in a folder that I never look at, if I wanted to.
- Robert Scoble
my feelings were hurt that you unsubscribed to me on twitter, but i agree with your methods
- Brian Appleby
I'm in!
- Chris Rossini
Brian, yeah, but I follow you here. So there.
- Robert Scoble
really doesn't matter as long as i can follow you, that's the beauty of these services
- Brian Appleby
How did you come to follow so many to begin with? I get annoyed with ppl and unfollowing is easier than sifting through their garbage constantly.
- R1CC1
Autofollow was a horrible idea to begin with.
- David Chieng
I kind of tired to keep an eye on who follows me now,the ones I'm following is much more important.:-)
- Steve Chou
from fftogo
Whoa lots of comments I'm following you longtime lol
- Edgar Rodríguez
from iPhone
Robert: we need more intelligent spam-follower-filtering on Twitter! We need to fix this.
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
@David +1 I think auto follow is such a bad idea to begin with,and people like Robert now even need to pay to unfollow these people.
- Steve Chou
from IM
How much did SocialToo charge for running the unfollow script?
- Shane
I'm in!
- rich brant
from iPhone
I heard its 25 dollars.
- Steve Chou
from IM
I've always been very picky in who I follow on twitter. I follow 40 people, and I can't guarantee that I see every single tweet. I don't scroll back usually, unless it's my "Real Life" column in Tweetdeck that couldn't fit on my screen.
- Tom Ribbens
My birthday is also January 18th, therefore you must follow me Robert! ;)
- Chris Luckhardt
from BuddyFeed
Thanks Steve! $25 is pretty reasonable. Wonder if anyone else will be jumping on the bandwagon
- Shane
Haha....I also threw the devil horns for Scobleizer...that should count for something. ;) http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Chris Luckhardt
from BuddyFeed
OK, let's try it! And what about Twitter?
- Alexei Zheglov
Thanks for your post. Last time I checked you follow me here on FriendFeed. OK not to follow me on Twitter.
- Pilgrim Five
Smart way to clean house.
- Jeremy Chone
u have already subscribing me although i am just a-staying-at-home mum =)). thanx scoble. u are really a nice geek. haha!
- zʍıɔ
Let's do it.
- Kate
this is like an awesome commentfest
- Edgar Rodríguez
You can follow me, but I never say anything. Oh.. wait....
- James Macgill
follow me!
- Tate DA FF MVP
from BuddyFeed
Sometimes the tortoise beats the hare after all... building organically based on getting to know people and interactions tends to avoid the ghastly spammers, seo peeps and bots
- Sally Church
Tap, tap... is this thing on?
- Yanik Falardeau
This is the best place to follow you. On twitter you only see post headlines, but friendfeed is where the conversation takes place.
- Michael Fidler
Ah crap. You're already following me :)
- Jason Nunnelley
I'm outside your sphere, but bootstrapping is bootstrapping right?
- Travis Bedard
Tuesday night for the first time in 2 months I UNfollowed everyone on Twitter who wasn't following me. Since you had UNfollowed me, yup I unfollowed you. My Twitter account is so /FUBARed! It only goes to page 506 to show who I'm following and after that it is BLANK! I don't even know if they show in my Home stream. So Robert, I value what you say. Know I can tweet profusely - but it's as @replies to others with the occasional micro-blog thrown in. Question, what DID I do to cause you to UNfollow me?
- Arleen Anderson
I hope you'll follow me...
- Shane Tilton
Follow me, eh?
- Joey Gibson
Trying to fill out those dropped Twitter follows?
- Jamie Elgie
Scoble: Have you convinced Guy Kawasaki against his "follow everyone that follows you" mentality?
- Kevin Pruett
please do what you must to have the most effecient feed mr scoble, the random will still creep through the cracks, ;)
- chaz2b
I still haven't really adopted FriendFeed, but I will get interesting here in time if you follow me.
- Lance M. Brown
How are your cleanup efforts coming along?
- Jennifer Ruggiero
Oops - I also meant to ask, Robert: how are you managing to follow the couple thousand that you are now re-following on Twitter? You must be using groups, I guess...any other methods? I find ~500 people to be a near max in terms of how many folks I can fully read.
- Lance M. Brown
Following your inspiration, I unfollowed almost 100 people last night and blocked about 1000 spammers, cam girls, MLM marketers, and the like. Twitter is more like it was a year ago, its almost like I gave my Twitter account an enema and it worked. Thanks for the original idea.
- Mark Edwards
Excellent!
- Don Strickland
Robert, I started out only following those I know and those I am genuinely interested in. I've only followed back a few of the people who've followed me. I have a second account that I decided to experiment with. I followed about 700 people on there. It has had about double the followers of my main account consistently. I am about to try some new tricks there with an auto-follow script I'm writing but I think I will stay the course with my main account.
- Paul The Raven
Robert, I tried the "follow everyone" (almost) method for a short time - then I'd unfollow about once-a-week. Now I try to schedule a "follow new" once a week. TweetDeck's group feature makes following lots of folks bearable. So does FF, but you've been saying that for-ever!
- Kathy E Gill
I am just taking it slow.
- Rick Cogley
from iPhone
Hey.
- Kreg Steppe
I will follow you if you follow me (Genesis)
- Keith Barrett
I may not be smart, but I'm smart enough to follow you!
- John Pfaff
It occurred to me (and surely to someone before me), that different definitions of "following" might be a big factor here. If I'm following someone, it means I'm following along with their updates. But others might see themselves more as becoming part of a person's "following". Not that they are necessarily reading the person's stuff, but they are willing to be considered part of that person's inflated Twitter posse, as part of the influence-trading aspect of Twitter.
- Lance M. Brown
Robert, I think that the biggest thing that changed is not that you were "wrong" (to follow everyone) before but that the Twitter population has changed so much. A year ago, pretty much everyone on Twitter was real, and interesting - now there's so much automated gaming the system going on that the signal to noise ratio has gotten unbearable. So I think anyone who cares about more than...
more...
- Matthew Blaisdell
I can't imagine how it would happen technologically, but it would be great if there was a way to ditch followers who weren't actually reading your tweets.
- Lance M. Brown
Enjoyed recent posts and look forward to more from you! Keep it up.
- One Degree Connected
I don't want to be left out please!!
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Your most active followers are on FF. No loss.If you really wanted to make a bold statement you ought to have blocked all of your followers and started from scratch.
- Benjamin Taylor
Been a while since I put you and Shel On the record...Online
- Eric Schwartzman
blah.
- imabonehead
Good article Robert. I honestly enjoyed the perspective. I found the same to be true, but on a much lower scale, of course ;-)
- Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
i'm in!
- Criz
I don't get it - so now you are using Twitter kinda like a normal person, and its some kind of miracle that it works better?
- Nick Lothian
I'm impressed you can keep up with 1600 people. I have trouble enough with the little amount I have. I did find that making FriendFeed imaginary friends and putting them in groups for those I'd like to read occasionally (but not on a regular basis) has helped a lot
- Tamara
Follow....how about some promotion!
- Bob DeMarco
i'm in
- Joshua Smith
from twhirl
9/11 Was an Inside Job
- bill giltner
Stop it, or I will have to get a restraining order.
- Sriks7
In my mind I'm important enough to follow ;-)
- Jonathan Callahan
Hello Robert....Whatever your favorite genre is...http://listen.grooveshark.com/#...
- Michele Lorito-Chase
Looks like you have a lot of work to do following everybody.
- Corbett Barr
now i'll have to write something interesting...
- Robert Littlejohn
me! i offer nothing but the warm feeling of having accepted a ff reject.
- Marco
ok. so how will you filter the noise now
- Kfir Pravda
Ooo, I've won the lottery. You'll follow me now. Wheeee! (how do you have the time to go through all of the names by hand? VA assistance?)
- Peggy Dolane
Great :)
- Baard @ Pixum
Interesting trend on twitter - I always wondered what sense it made to follow tens of thousands of people, too much noise. I'm finding it hard enough to follow 2900 (looking to cull even that down as I mostly tweet about 30 people!)
- Tia Singh, Life Coach
211th comment: WTF
- Geer
Good :)
- ★ Soner Gönül
I like your ability to influence so many people. I'm following you (mostly here - on FriendFeed) because it's one of the ways to learn how you do it (but, please, do not follow me if you do not see anything you could learn from me :-).
- Hanna Wiszniewska
I would come up w/ a better vetting process.
- Joe
why would you do that?
- james
got to get a pic up so i can fit the criteria, I only follow 45 people and some of them are on thin ice ( Im lookin at you Scoble)
- James Hunter
"Where in The Net is Robert San Diego?" (cit.) :-)
- Luca Perugini
from iPhone
I'm not kissing your arse,but i do learn a lot listening to you.
- Paul Downing
@scobleizer why would you randomly follow people who comment in this post when you just got done knocking FFollo and having to unfollow a gazillion people on Twitter?
- Bryan Zirkel
Bryan: because I'm following people one by one and putting them into lists on my screen. Autofollowing means you aren't doing ANY of that thinking. Also, autofollowing will get you spammers, if they ever show up (and they will).
- Robert Scoble
@Robert: Read your blogpost and that's indeed what I look at to follow people too. No autofollow and even close friends have to tell something interesting for me to (keep) following. Friends who are new to Twitter (no tweets yet) get the benefit of doubt.
- Patrick Mackaaij
If you follow me, great, but if you don't I'll understand. :) And I ought to do some pruning myself...
- Grant Bierman
Let's give it a try. :0)
- Toma Kazakov
I still don't understand how you want to follow someone who just writes a comment over here. Well, this is not the first time. I did not understand why and how you followed 100k people. I find it hard to properly follow 100 people.
- Sumanth Kolar
Sumanth: obviously there are degrees of "following." When you read the New York Times, do you read the entire paper word for word? I don't. Same when I'm following. I only get random slices of some of my lists. Others, which have 500 people on them, get 100% read.
- Robert Scoble
I'm still here . . . although tired after teaching all day. Louis Gray came to my PR class at SFSU and WOWED the 50 students [except for one who thinks we are making too much of social media] We won't be following him.
- Shari Weiss
I like cheese!
- Paul Puri
Shari: Louis wows me too. Glad to see the class is getting into it.
- Robert Scoble
He he :)
- Richard Holas
I still like the "stranger stream" of Twitter vs "friend feed" of other applications. I don't feel the need to read all tweets from everybody - and tools let me check my fave tweeples. I think mass unfollowing destroys some of the social contract - Robert you are lucky because you are well liked and can do some risky things but companies for example (not Brands of One) would be in...
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- Laurel Papworth
As @charleneli predicted back in January, 2009 will be the year of de-friending on social networks. It's here.
- Mark Evans
Laurel: yeah, you have to navigate these waters carefully if you are representing a brand, that's for sure!
- Robert Scoble
you can put me on your boring list...
- Charles Tanton
i will not get followed back: not powerful, don't have a brand, not a news maker... but i kinda understand the reasons
- Dani Martínez
I still think it all goes into how you use twitter. If your using it as a communication tool it depends on if you are looking for broadcast or 2 way. Its interesting to watch as some of the bigger names turn back from the broadcast and go back to the 2 way.
- Luke Kilpatrick
@Robert so when you're taking in information from FF do you have a feed of several dozen/hundred "key" people and then categorize the rest, or are you mainly searching? Do you utilize groups at all or mainly just rely on what comes across your feeds? I guess I'm curious as to how you're using FF to collect information.
- Bryan Zirkel
I have found Twitter becomes noise rather than a conversation once the following/follower thing gets over a certain mark. I think this is the dirty little secret of Twitter - if it just turns into white noise, rather than a filter, then it becomes less than useful.
- Michael Liss
I'm interested in how we'll all feel over the next few years as social networks continue to change and more people and organizations get on them. Obviously, many of us are getting fed up with spammers and are unfollowing them on Twitter and Facebook. I am also having a hard time keeping up with new subscribers on FriendFeed because I know less about them from their profiles and have to...
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- Cathryn Hrudicka
BTW, I feel like I'm finding lots of interesting new people to follow from these discussions that Robert and others are holding on FF. Cool!
- Cathryn Hrudicka
Am I too late to comment and get followed?
- Hichame Assi
I'm definitely around :)
- KyNam Doan
Aren't you following me already? If not, you should be! LoL
- Thomas Ward
I'm definitely late to be followed. :D
- Faraz Mullick
I don't get it but ok :)
- Parvez Halim
LOL! I follow those I find interesting and which can give me useful information. And hope someone follows me for the same reasons.
- Flavio
Very interesting post - I've always thought that you guys who follow loads of people must get completely swamped by noise! Like you, I've found it useful to follow companies I use that have interesting products like Zoho and Evernote as a way of keeping up to date with their latest innovations. Excellent idea spelling out your "follow criteria" - it needs to become standard etiquette for social networks so that people don't get offended when they aren't followed back :) .
- David Meredith
aren't you doing the same thing here, that you did in Twitter? Choose carefully who you follow, filling your brain with pollution doesn't make you smarter
- Allison
Just finished reading the Mashable post on your unfollow exercise. It's attracting attention from all the other big names now.
- George Hall (Australia)
Very interesting indeed, I only to unfollow a few, cause I just never had auto follow on.. So now I just unfollow the ones I'm bored of..
- Jaap Willem
Seems like a good idea. Although Louis Gray also has a few valid points on his latest blog post why it might be a mistake http://bit.ly/19UKxk
- Silver Hage
I've never understood the auto-follow procedure on any social network. Even on Facebook, where it is obligatory, one can still lower the noise by simply hiding the updates of those who want to follow you, but perhaps also have little personal connection and therefore can be hidden.
- Noah Gray
It seems like the unfollowing was the easy part. Choosing who to follow again must have been a chore. I think it is crucial in twitter (and FriendFeed for that matter) to have a clear out every six months or so otherwise you get bogged down in an information feed you don't really care about.
- Chris Nixon
I can totally understand why you had to do this. I'm following 2700-ish folks on Twitter and I need 3 groups to manage it (using TweetDeck). I feel I am keeping up with most of my local community and the general tech community at large though I'm sure I'm still missing quite a bit of stuff from people who are not in the 3 groups. I also wonder how much more I can actually handle.
- Ken Seto
Um... well, I made something of myself, but then I didn't like what I made, so now I'm doing it all over again. Not sure how that fits with your criteria! Plus, I really don't have a brand or any influence to speak of. I do look great in boxers, however.
- Mark "DerBingle" J
OK, OK, changed my picture. Instead of a green clock (a clock is my personal brand) I put a picture of myself. A lot of people told me to do that....
- Bora Zivkovic
I am still looking for info on holographic technology being used for news delivery. Perhaps it's a technology that hasn't even been invented yet or is sitting on a shelf somewhere. What say you? http://specialdee.wordpress.com/2009...
- Denise
Hoping your new look account has had the desired effect. No need to follow me, I'm not the interesting type, I'll just be glad if your insights, links & content continues. Congrats & good luck
- JanLawrence
Here's what's interesting, Robert, I've noticed an uptick in followers even if you reply or RT or like someone's tweet, not just if you follow that person. Then again, perhaps that's the intent - if you like or RT someone's idea, that's a kind of stamp of approval.
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Hej hej!
- Peter
The Scoble Pendulum.. How long till we go back to FOLLOW!! FOLLOW!!! FOLLOW!!!! ? :)
- Adrian Scicluna
I did a purge on Facebook for the same reasons a few months ago. It's under 300 and it's people I actually care about. I've come "this close" to running a purge on Twitter but haven't yet. Maybe this will spark me to do it. I've kept FF tight from the beginning.
- Rob Williams
moving from FB to FF ... fewer, longer, more meaningful threads. welcoming your follow. cheers
- marc calamia
ok, you´re following me already :-)
- Torsten Eckert
alright - follow me... - thx in advance Robert Scoble...
- Nilesh
All that commenting in the past counts for nothing?
- Kevin Gamble
Hey Robert... Great post... On FriendFeed, I increasingly put people without meaningful and valuable content on a separate feed that I rarely check... Its a more "sensible" way to unfollow, i think... I only unsubscribe if I get pissed at someone etc. I wish, FF gave users the option to only unsubscribe from comments and likes (but keep the main feed). This would be a good tool to control the noise...
- Onur Kabadayi
I agree with Robert (duh!). I very briefly made the effort of checking out the new follows and deciding whether to follow back. I think once I hit a thousand I shifted to a model of occasionally saying, "If you want me to follow you, talk to me." Hit two thousand and quit saying anything or checking followers. I don't care if they follow me as long as they either say useful things like real people or don't talk at all. I've never autofollowed back. This strategy works for me.
- Patricia F. Anderson
I have a large difference between people I follow (around 2000) and people who follow me (around 1800) - I choose people who are important sources of information. People choose me if they think I am an important source of information to them. I never thought it would have to be a one-to-one relationship as to who is useful to whom: some are informative, others are good listeners and learners. I learn from people I follow and I hope my followers learn from me.
- Bora Zivkovic
I also think that those of us who follow larger numbers of people don't use the stream in the same way. It is more dipping in and out of the stream, trusting that the important stuff will be repeated enough to float to the top, engaging with conversations of the moment. I wrote a blogpost on this earlier this year: http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2009...
- Patricia F. Anderson
Someone told me twitter can be separated into two types. (id say at least two)
- Kay Proskin
Scoble, I am beginning to think you are a cult leader :). Look at all these comments! I am using FF more and more these days... Useful for eGuiders.com that's for sure.
- Marc Ostrick
I'm not sure your following me.
- Amit Morson
Hey Scobie :D Follow me !
- paniaguai
I like Robert. He was one of the first people I followed on Twitter and brought me to FF. But I don't understand why people are desperate to have him follow them. Status? Some kind of virtual autograph?
- Tech Introvert
What the heck. Follow me if you like. I'll be as entertaining & informative as I can.
- Aaron Schaub
from iPod
Been considering doing the same. Your post just might be the flame that lights a fire you-know-where to get it done.
- @katebuckjr
Well done! Who need followers that aren't reading your tweets anyway.
- Sean Rasmussen
I just want a toaster!
- ZuDfunck
I'm considering doing same once I'm more confident in my use of FriendFeed. I RT'd this and it resonated with at least one of my followers.
- Tony Hollingsworth
'Hand-crafted personal network' is the meme of the moment, and whilst I can see the workmanship, where's the value going to be for you, Robert, in following this rag-tag (no offence people :) ) of folks from a gazillion different verticals. (OK, so they're mostly life scientists).
- Andrew Spong
I use to want to be Bob Dylan. Now I am not so sure.
- ZuDfunck
um.....
- Spencer
My take: you can't be an authentic, credible voice to your community if you let 'sex & dollars' spammers hang on to your coattails. Spam followers matter.... in a bad way. Allowing them to be associated with you diminishes your potential value to genuine followers. It's a pain. It takes time. It's worth doing. More on this, if interested: http://tr.im/vJwb
- Andrew Spong
I'll have mine to go.
- ZuDfunck
Hope to see more "old fashioned blogging", like it better than tweets. Tweets are bound to disappear into oblivion the moment they're posted.
- Willem (@wim66) ☠
"Spam followers matter.... in a bad way." - I certainly agree with this. I block pornbots just as quickly as they follow me. I'm less vigilant about the commercial follows, but usually they go away by themselves after a while.
- John Craft
You're already following me here (don't care about twitter tough), so i just hope you don't un-follow, even though you probably don't understand what i'm talking about most of the time, since it's in portuguese.
- Diego Sana
So what happened to the advantages to following so many people you always talked about?
- Bas
Thanks for connecting here, still learning all the advantages of FF
- carece
@Andrew Regarding spam followers and the idea that allowing them to follow you somehow dilutes your credibility, I just have to disagree. To me that places the burden on the wrong person. I don't have time to waste pruning those who follow me, unless they are overtly annoying.My stream is public, they can follow me anyway. What matters to me is that the spammers leave me alone. If they don't, I block them. If they keep quiet, I don't care.
- Patricia F. Anderson
What is important is not who follows me, but who *I* follow.
- Patricia F. Anderson
Follow me if you want, but I gotta warn ya, it's scintillating stuff!
- Pierce Presley
Funny my twitter feed is much noisier but I have been very selective on who I follow. I have tried to make the feed relevant and actionable. At times I post things that seem out of the norm on my twitter feed but that is mainly for the few people who follow me that don't get it but I am trying to keep up their interest level. I also control who follows me, yes this breaks the model but I think the follow everyone model was broken and reckless
- Richard Gallo
Am I interesting? Dunno. I'm often controversial, tho. ;) BTW, we met in person at a Pittsburgh Blogfest, but I really don't expect you to remember that.
- Eric Williams
Enjoyed the post. I just started Twitter a few days ago to get away from Facebook. I like friendfeed the best - can't wait until it becomes more mainstream.
- Robby Parker
Awesome move. Consider that my comment please :)
- Charlotte Barker
friendfeed is definitively more evolved that Twitter. Conversely, user bases of Twitter is still its real (and unique) point of strenght...
- Marco Castellani
Don't want you to follow me (unless you find my stream of interest) but it's quite interesting the number of people that comment to get you to follow!
- Ben Drury
Hey Robert! So, I would like to talk to you about a social media company I'm working with right now. They launched a few months ago and their trajectory and momentum is pretty amazing. Oh, and I started unfollowing the noise in my Twitter after I commented on your blog post.
- Gregg Le Blanc
I'm asking the same thing Bas asked... what about your video on the benefits of following so many people? I took a stab at that method of madness by starting to follow all kinds of people, and following anyone that followed me... but I always felt like I was missing good content from good people because of all the "spam". I started to use TweetDeck to create groups/columns for...
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- Timothy Federwitz
@Patricia - reminds me that I should probably review all my twitter followers and thin things down. :)
- JA Castillo
thanks
- Keith
I like conversing with interesting people. Sometimes that means commenting to get followed, @cogiva. ;)
- Eric Williams
Hi Scoble!
- Pete Gilbert
I did almost the same thing - unfollowed about 1000 from my 1500, no attention is way better
- Maarten den Braber
Couldn't agree more. It's about time we all grew up. BTW Don't follow me. :-)
- Gee Ranasinha
Robert what's the deal with Twitter?
- stockmanmarc
Your post makes good sense. I didn't auto-follow & still find folks to unfollow because their noise gets too loud.
- Debra Ellis
Very clever. I imagine the signal to noise is sooooo much better.
- Chris Brogan
I've been thinking about unfollowing a bunch twitter folks as well. I'll look at SocialToo again. My initial experience with SocialToo wasn't good. However, it was during their infancy.
- Ron Hudson
I don't blame you at all. Leo was all over that yesterday.
- Daniel B. Honigman
why would simply leaving a comment prompt you to follow me?
- David Wescott
You're not going to change your mind and mass unfollow us are you?
- walidmREALTOR
Sup! :-)
- Jon Winters
I suspect it identifies you as a real person interested in dialog, David.
- Eric Williams
Followers are currency and you have plenty to spend
- Lee Odden
Bob, did you do anything on Twitter recently ? Did you massively refollow people ? Seems like you screwed up Twitter : down for a while... ;-)
- Enikao
Follow me! @carloscomputers
- carloscomputers
very cool timing with just before twitter goes down hard! well done Robert! @crbrowning
- Colin
@davidorban
- David Orban
I've followed you and have really enjoyed your posts. I think I would miss that
- Tom
Good to hear that your experiment has stopped the spam @lindsaydavies
- Lindsay Davies
ciao Robert!
- alex
Your ego is amazing. You make it seem like it is a special deal to be followed by you. I'm glad there are many very bright, talented people here who follow others, regardless of class, education, social status and not based on some snobbish criteria.
- RuthNH
DON'T follow me! I write in Italian :-)
- Lorenzo Strambi
Here I be
- Robert
Wow, this is a lot of comments. And kudos for following Followable people who have something interesting to contribute to your day. I'm glad you did it, because that means you'll find AND share more interesting things. This, in turn, makes you more followable too. Thanks for seeing the light, so to speak.
- ax0n
You killed twitter.
- Melissa Pierce
and now with twitter down, many will flock to here!
- Mark V. Fusco
Did this take down Twitter this morning Robert?
- frank barry
That must of taken a long time :-) I've always been a fan of twitter, but I must say they have struggled in the last few weeks. We are working with their API on a project and their seems to be an issue every other day that causes problems. Do they have what it takes?
- Chris Nadeau
I follow under 200 people and it's great. I can't imagine 1k+ . I add about three or four a month.
- Mike Janicke
I unfollow people when I find I ignore their tweets/updates. After reading your blog, I think we ALL need to be more judicious.
- Janet Barker-Evans
Is this why Twitter is down? LOL! Can't check to see if you unfollowed me. Hope not. You, Shel Israel, and Jeremiah Owyang were some of the very first people I followed way back before Twitter even had 100,000 people on the service. -- It's been a fun ride but, of course, the spammers always show up to make things difficult.
- Brenda Young
How do you really know if you should be following someone until you follow them for a while? Sometimes I don't start talking to someone until I see a common interest, then I tweet back and we start talking, but that could be months later. I don't follow everyone back, but I follow back those that interact. I will unfollow once I see that won't happen, or I don't like their tweets.
- Nadine Gilden
Twitter is victime of it own success, they have to re learn how to scal better, but more important they have to learn to share better.
- abdellah
looks like you'll need to follow at least 343 people LOL
- Shari Weiss
Friendfeed takes over for twitter finally?
- Thomas Resing
@Patricia I don't want potential followers to be put off by who is following me. I wouldn't want them to think I care more about have n+1 followers than I do about what they're going to see if they review who I've allowed to follow me. Not to cull spammers suggests I care more about my experience than theirs. To a great extent, the quality of their experience will determine the quality...
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- Andrew Spong
1600 ... isn't that a big number too? It could be you'll think again before you follow every one here :)
- Mario Gastaldi
Hi... do I get a follow?
- Jason Mayoff
If you are already following me. Will you double follow me? :)
- Brady
Still waiting for my Building 43 t-shirt. Not that I'm bitter or anything. ;-)
- Donna Tuttle
Respect your opinion Robert but we'll have to agree to disagree. Yes I despise all the FakePornSpamBots who follow me. I block as many as I can, but can't keep up. Our views differ regarding what is important to SEE! I treasure home Home stream! I read it, refresh, read, refresh and in minutes I have the pulse of the world... at least MY world! EVERYONE has something of value to share at some point. If I UNfollow tens of thousands, I will miss so much worthy of consideration.
- Arleen Anderson
Just another reason why it's good to diversify, I can still read your posts here. :)
- Luis Sandoval
Cheers!
- Jeff Wiant
Funny. I was catching up on news on Friendfeed for some odd reason. Great post; plenty for new and long-time users alike to consider there.
- Alex Howard
I'm still waiting for the ultimate tool to manage my followings - I can only manage to keep up with about 1/3 of those following me. I'd love to see something that can tell me what friends of mine also follow those that I am or those that are following me. Maybe it's out there and I missed it?
- TheDiva Rockin
Anyone interested in assessing the quality of their followers should check http://tweetblocker.com. It's pretty chastening. I aim to improve on my C rating. http://www.buzzom.com is a fun, fast way of decoupling yourself from non-reciprocal followers. You can select individuals to purge, or flush 50 random non-reciprocal followers at a time.
- Andrew Spong
Robert, your timing could not be better. ;-)
- Dave Martin
Great post, with perfect timing! Dang it, Dave Martin just took it off my lips.
- Vadim Lavrusik
/me waves
- Kevin Johnson
from iPhone
I hereby rename this comment thread neoTwitter <waves at followers>
- Andrew Spong
Awww, you gotta admit, saturation, the level of influence that you have, because of your high follower, count, is a tool of mass destruction. Seriously, did you think if you recommend an online service that people would not try it out? Was this an asassination attempt
- Peter Murphy
I'm glad i'm not the only one who misses /me actions from IRC, Kevin. ;)
- Eric Williams
With today's Twitter outage your timing is pretty stinking good, Robert. :)
- Chris Cree
Now to get the rest of the world to follow that same logic when it comes to follow/unfollow! I only started being more selective as Twitter (and everyone else) started getting aggressive with spammers or anyone that even remotely did a single spammy tweet. Now if only there were the same contact management tools available for the other social networks as with Twitter. No matter what though, I'll continue updating my status when I eat a peanut butter sandwich! (With Fluff of course!).
- Paul Monaco
Twitter couldn't handle the mass unfollow load, blew up...
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I've been followed by Robert Scoble :-)
- David Finch
Follow iPolitics
- Jacob Kobi Gamliel
Now I think that it is time to think about a way to make money using Twitter.
- abdellah
@Mark, +1. When in doubt, the default delegation of blame goes to Robert.
- Dave Martin
what is critical mass for twitter? Too few and nobody interacts, Too many and spam bots overwhelm, Is it 1K or 2K needed to get a real experience?
- WarLord
Hmm can you unsubscribe from "comment notification via e-mail" in FF on a *specific* topic? This one :-)
- Patrick Mackaaij
Of course I thonk it is a different experience if you hand follow reading each bio from the beginning then these mass purges are unnecessary
- WarLord
I thought you already followed me. lol
- Duane-PreppyDude
Not sure if you do, but here I am...
- Aron Michalski
I am intrigued how RT addict will RT now?!! (ps: FF please don't post this to my twitter)
- abdellah
I have been keeping my twitter account private a majority of the time lately b/c I am going through a divorce, but I really kinda like it. Have been reducing followers as well as the number I follow.
- Jackson Miller
You should follow me here in FF and on Twitter too!
- Karthi
hopefully most of us have proven our worth beyond commenting on this single thread
- andy brudtkuhl
I like the way you operate, Scoble. Thanks in advance for the follow!
- Dr. Frank Ramblings, Ph.D
Nice way of doing it...
- Charles
No need to follow me unless you are actually going to engage in conversation with me.
- Jeff Hurt
If you're already following and we comment, will you unfollow? *wink Hoping all is well your way!
- Dayngr
4&5 are my favorite! Those are big reasons I decide to follow someone too.
- Kelly Mitton
I'm lucky. Have never had Twitter spam. But then again I'm no Scoble either :)
- Lori Reed
I am the peanut butter eating bot
- Benjamin Spector
If you are already following me on ff does that mean I get a cookie or something? ;-)
- Tomy Thomson
I'll add my name to the list. I came back to FF after the Twitter DoS outage. Maybe Scoble broke Twitter by all his unfollowing. He was the "glue" holding Twitter together. :-)
- Tom Newman
Robert: Here's the bit you missed off the end of your title here: .... and put them in that group I don't read :-)
- Jim Connolly
Hi Robert, greetings from germany.
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
add me for your social media and the practice of law news!
- Rex Gradeless
Great post. I'm sure that some people might say that this kind of mass unfollowing will hurt Twitter, but I think it's just the opposite. Users who are following people they have no interest in just to pad their own numbers are diminishing the meaning of "following."
- Mark Denton
@Ulrichmargarita
- Ulrichmargarita
To stave off being unfollowed we need to comment here ya say?
- Jason
you are already following me here... perhaps you'll consider re-following me on twitter too
- t i n y m
I don't know how you ever did it the other way. I am not in the tech world near as much as I used to be, which wasn't a whole lot. I just followed some random people I saw on SMugMug-related people on here when I started. You were one of them. I had no idea who you were (and still don't :-), but you talked about Twitter a lot too, which got me on there as well. Both services have really...
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- James Schipper
Follow away!
- Ferdinand Perez
ok 400 jackpot
- abdellah
Quality over quantity in all things, including (perhaps especially) Twitter. Loved your friending methodology -- those are the same rules I've applied since being on Twitter. Posted them onto Posterous to share the love with credit to you: http://lorilaurentsmith.posterous.com/
- Lori Laurent Smith
it's not about unfollowing, it's about filtering...
- Barak Hachamov
I started out following everyone on Twitter.Then I got wise. When someone's stream becomes more noise than signal, that's when I consider unfollowing. I realize that threshhold is different for everyone, but I'll take "what I had for lunch" over a dozen bogus "marketing tips" any day.
- Julie Barrett
from twhirl
Well, I am trying to use FriendFeed more after watching Scoble's video on all those monitors he had up. I'm not a big consumer of information and don't own a TV but this online social stuff has been a perfect fit into my life because I can connect with people who are fountains of knowledge on a specific subject or are "human mashups". I like both!
- Adria Richards
Why !?
- Bertrand Soulier
from iPhone
I've been reading al of this unfollow bits, and this point of yours:
- Donna
Hey, I think that today you might make your point about FriendFeed being more interesting than Twitter. Hope you are well. Talked with @fransteps this morning and she is excited to work with you at Rackspace.
- Kami Huyse
hi
- George Desmyter
I would appreciate the follow, thanks!
- Jeff Reisdorfer
I've been reading all of this un-follow posts lately, and this point of yours in WHY you unfollowed: "#2 Because I personally care about everyone I am following their noise level is a LOT lower. ." Is exactly what I do. And now I am starting to understand Friendfeed more. and using posterous to do aggregate posts. So is this overload making more people sit up and think first? I think so. At least the intelligent ones.
- Donna
I love you Scoble! ;)
- Carol Levesque
with all due sycophantism :)
- jeff hammond
This is a great move, Robert. It's also a lot more human...I was almost convinced that you were the only person who could actually drink from the fire hose without choking.
- Steffan Antonas
That sounds fair. After this morning, I've renewed my love for FriendFeed and Tweetworks. Until the next DDos attacks, of course. I will miss the fake porn stars, but I did when I moved from L.A.
- Scott Pierce
Steffan; I agree...there is no way anyone else could do what Robert S. does. It's good to see him become human.
- Robert Jones
This has been my problem for about the past six months. I routinely go in and unfollow, get the noise level down to where I want it, and then end up following back a bunch of new people, some of whom I'm incredibly grateful to get to know. When I had track, it was a whole lot easier to manage the stream, but I suspect even that tool would now be out of hand. I have a set of rules for...
more...
- Karoli
hee hee. i am commenting not so much to beg your follow but what a clever pitch:)
- Tresha Thorsen
Robert - I have not read all 416 comments so if this was asked and you answered forgive me. What was the all of a sudden revelation that caused you to reverse stance on Twitter Followers?
- Jeff Vreeland
It's difficult to maintain and filter a list on all the social networking sites. I cannot even imagine maintaining the kinds of lists you must deal with, Robert.
- Jeremy Brooks
Dude, you broke Twitter! When you unfollowed all of your 100,000 the other day you pulled the rug right out from under it, so it fell down and now it can't reach its beer. :-)
- Robert Morrison
Actually I felt rather sad being fav'ed by you on FriendFeed then dumped.. But again. I get more from you from FriendFeed, so oh well, stop talking about Following and Get on more with Tech! :P
- Du Senyao Peter
Me Me! lol!
- Bill McGehee
i like the idea of importing favorite tweets into friendfeed. i haven't used that favorite feature much because i haven't seen any real use in it. thanks!
- Jonathan Blundell
When twitter is down I always wish I could tweet: checkout friendfeed. Nevertheless, how will following folk that leave a message here really improve the quality of your input? While I don't want to judge many of the fine folk on this thread, are they all that interesting? In other words, isn't this the start of the same problem you had on Twitter...
- Jon Mountjoy
what like here? this is a comment :)
- michelle harris
Barak - isn't filtering just unfollowing while pretending you're still following? ;)
- Matthew Blaisdell
Well to bounce back on your Twitter is down comment I think it is time to watch this video again http://www.youtube.com/watch... Hilarious!
- 77Agency
Robert, I'm glad you decided to stop auto-follow (finally). :)
- Veronica Sopher
I'm in
- Jeroen Sangers
from Nambu
works for mw
- Brendan Jackson
from twhirl
Robert, but why clutter your FriendFeed stream? This comment is not to get you to courtesy follow me on FriendFeed, think you've established you've changed your thinking. :)
- L.P. NEENZ FALEAFINE
OK, I have enough people to follow so I will close the comments on this thread. Thank you everyone, I will try to get to everyone today.
- Robert Scoble
Lobbyist in eigener Sache (1/5) - Meinungslenkung in Deutschland - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Frank S. liked this
Ich wusste es, sehe ich da Ähnlichkeiten zu einem Franken - wahhh - das is ja unglaublich.
- Meiky
[SteroidFeed]: Here is my new way of watching feeds on FriendFeed. I call it SteroidFeed but it is also a "Multi-Talk" style interface ... the file sits locally and allows me to view multiple topics. I've attached a copy of the simple html. Feel free to modify the html but please leave attribution and share your changes. Leave a URL if on Internet.
SteriodFeed.html 1 KB
【无声胜有声】, i80and, HealingBrush and 89 other people liked this
Of course, the version I uploaded does not include my own entries but instead has the iPhone entry as an example. My local copy uses "from:lph" so I can see my entries and add comments quickly. (e.g., this comment is added through steroidfeed.html and not through the site.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
If Adrian Veidt had FriendFeed instead of just satellite TV, this is totally how he would have read it.
- Andrew C
There is a danger, Chrome has trouble with this many connections to FF.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
I borrowed it here, LPH. http://friendfeed.com/louisgr...
- Louis Gray
I've changed this file a bit so that a fourth column is available, and this holds a rowspan of my own entries. This makes tracking easier.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
I should state that the fourth column is an embed so that I can add comments, photos, files, etc. - That code is similar to the one on my personal blog: http://www.layneheiny.com
- LPH™ and his dog P™
SteroidFeed 1.01 is now available: http://friendfeed.com/lph...
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Really cool!
- matiasjajaja
hey i like this!
- Susan Beebe
Have fun Susan
- LPH™ and his dog P™
from iPhone
Interesting use of Iframes for this, gonna play with this, really cool LPH and his Dog. Thanks!
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
Thanks! I'm trying it out now.
- Mark "DerBingle" J
Let me know Susan, Mark, and Dan.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Ah! I like. Thanks.
- Christopher A Carr
You are most welcome Christopher Carr
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Trying this on a 1024 x 768 resolution, 12-inch notebook - and it is fine with all four columns.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
OK - so are you asking - can I span this across multiple monitors? -- because Elvis used to watch multiple t.v.s at the same time.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
(Veidt's TV setup: http://skew.dailyskew.com/uploade... )
- Andrew C
that's great!
- PaperDoll
Keep it comin' :)
- Charlie Anzman
I have made a meme of friendfeed embeds here: http://ff.clipotech.com/
- Svartling
Svartling - yes - your setup is nice. I've gone back and forth between 3 and 4 columns. My desktop setup can handle 4 but the notebook (1024x768) can only handle 3. Therefore, http://www.steroidfeed.com is only sitting at 3 right now. I'm also missing the instructions on how to make changes for anyone not familiar with FF.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Yes I was thinking of make 3 columns but I decided to make it 4 because my web stats shows that most visitors have a resolution at 1024x768 or higher. Maybe I will change to 3 columns. Hmm..
- Svartling
Really appreciated man, one of the best things for my following attitude
- Amiroo ™
Adobe AIR Zooms Past 200 Million Installs, And We Have Some Apps To Recommend - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
John kowal, Daniel Rowley, Adnan and 4 other people liked this
15 Hilarious Examples of Geek Graffiti - Listverse - http://listverse.com/humor...
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OnuRC, Daniel Rowley, Banu Pluie and 29 other people liked this
omaygad! scoble like lamış :)
- Volkan Yılmaz ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
Flickr is in troubles too according to @om maybe I should start backing up my years of photos http://gigaom.com/2009...
Demetrios the Traveller, Bill Romanos, carl morris and 48 other people liked this
Interesting. Backing up photos sounds like a good idea either way. What is the best way to back up Flickr photos?
- Adam
There's an interesting paid service idea, archive repository. Just API in and grab the photos etc?
- David Eedle
don't tell me you don't already have a backup of your photos :-) the real problem is the social value of flickr. that's is inestimable
- Lawrence Oluyede
i thought people UPLOADED photos to Flickr, meaning that the originals are on some other computer. that's been my M.O. backup what? my local HDD? already done.
- .LAG liked that
But how about people like Robert Scoble who uses Flickr as the repository for his blog's photos? It sounds like a lot of work to go in and relink all the images to a different location.
- Edmund Tay
Hmm. I have almost 4000 photos on Flickr and many more on local storage. Where to next?
- Victor Panlilio
Use picasa to sync ALL your library online. I just dragged my albums into folders and BLAMO everything is backed up AND synced online :)
- Jaime
I use Flickr as my backup... :-(
- Benoit Cazenave
@Edmund: that's his fault entirely. It seems kinda dumb to me anyway
- Lawrence Oluyede
i keep all photos on flickr. yikes.
- drew olanoff
Lawrence: There are pros and cons to hosting your images on Flickr and linking to it. Pros would be "unlimited" storage and bandwidth and being able to link to that same image from multiple locations. Cons is of course being reliant on the existence of Flickr and also those funky filenames that get generated when you upload to Flickr. That makes migrating image links pretty difficult since your original image filename won't match with that on Fllickr.
- Edmund Tay
...interesting. it never occurred to me that some folks would look at Flickr as permanent storage solution. I've always just seen is as an efficient way to share a selection of my photos with people i know, through time and space.
- .LAG liked that
Flickr Backup for mac? http://sourceforge.net/project...
- drew olanoff
Interesting info, guess I'll have to find some other place for my externalized backups...
- Benoit Cazenave
I was just looking for the best way to sync my iPhoto lib and a service like Flickr or Smugmug. Not bad to have a service like Flickr to backup 20GB of images for less that 25$/year
- Frédéric Sidler
I was just looking for the best way to sync my iPhoto lib and a service like Flickr or Smugmug. Not bad to have a service like Flickr to backup 20GB of images for less that 25$/year
- Frédéric Sidler
May be Yahoo will sell Flickr as eBay is wanting to do with Skype. May be SmugMug can purchase Flickr from Yahoo and make it the free/social version of SmugMug?
- Vinko
Ok, Flickr are laying off people but there isn't anything to substantiate that they are in trouble
- David McDonald
Meh, time to look for a tool to migrate nearly 200 photos from Flickr?
- Tyson Key
Yah, but what do you do when you have 20,953 photos on flickr? And all those comments and tags? The thing you want to save is all that social networking, organizing and tagging, you already have a high-res copy somewhere on your hard drive at home...
- Paula W
Hmm, but what if you don't, out of interest? For what it's worth, I've used Flickr (and Picasa) as a "final destination" for images after I've taken them, and tend to delete or otherwise archive image files after I've uploaded them. I'm sure there are a few others who do that, too.
- Tyson Key
I used to be able to BackUp my Flickr Crap using Website Downloader which was Super cuz it also Backed Up all my Flickr Comments + those from Flickr Friendz - I gotta look into it again cuz they have some Restrictions on me + I don't like it 1 damn bit!! ;))
- Billy Warhol
wow - http://www.youtube.com/watch... - wow for so many reasons
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Gavin, Kol Tregaskes, Jesper Lind and 149 other people liked this
Wow this is amazing
- Chris Saad
This took my breath away - amazing voice
- LPH™ and his dog P™
I'd admit it...I was getting a little misty-eyed. Hard not to.
- CAJ, somewhere else
When will Simon Cowell bag the ugly ass haircut?
- Alex Scoble
I love these things. Worth watching.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, agreed. I wish the iphone had the ability to send a link to a youtube video quickly so this could be sent to my daughters today
- LPH™ and his dog P™
I wish they tuned down the audience a bit... Could barely hear her at times
- Mark Philpot
this lady certainly has a voice! good for her i say for being brave. :)
- Tatty Gibson
OMG, I'm in tears here. That was lovely and wow that song with all that. Had to favorite it. </sentimental wimp>
- Admiral Anika
Is good to see what nature can do. Incredible voice!
- Rafael
Alan, me too. Out of this world.
- Meryn Stol
Newspaper says she's the frontrunner to win: http://news.scotsman.com/enterta...
- Sprague D
That's a magnificent clip, I wish America's Got Talent was so entertaining and surprising.
- Jonathan Coffman
i watched this last night, love her! Her voice is a true gift.
- Laura Zickus
Thanks for sharing that - perfect for this time of year
- Jesse Stay
She's this year's Paul Potts. Great voices, the pair of them.
- Mark H
That was just amazing. And the perfect song for both her situation and to start the waterworks. Now i have to follow the show and see if she wins.
- Kevin Fox
While I absolutely detest these shows, I must say, this woman got to me.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
It says "embedding disabled by request."
- Dawn
You can click through to YouTube via the link. :-)
- Kevin Fox
Awesome
- Rodfather
Wow.
- Todd Hoff
Oh, Duh. Got it, Kevin. This reminds me of the British man who sang opera. It was unbelievable. I think our American shows shoudn't limit the age. I'd love to see what some of the older folks here can do.
- Dawn
Here's the opera guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Dawn
Dawn, America's got talent doesn't limit age either
- Jesse Stay
Great! I was thinking of American Idol. Never seen America's Got Talent.
- Dawn
"so you think you can dance" limits at 30 years or so. Such a shame.
- Kevin Fox
"So that's just one side of me!" Hahaha. So nice, she's courageous and willing, good game! So modest to have her walk away after her performance, I'm almost crying.
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
Wow. I usually avoid all of these types of shows. But that was very cool!
- Louis Gray
I actually felt a lump form in my throat. Good for her.
- cecily
As LG said, it's my first view of that. Damn talents' shows, they got me.
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
it's terrific.. awesome.. fantastic..
- Ozan Kilic
I loved this-she is sublime!
- Susan Dennis
What a beautiful voice. Love how she proved them all wrong.
- Patrick Ward
Fantastic. Thanks for the newspaper link @Sprague D, her life story is just as amazing.
- Henry Burger
awesome
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
Wow!
- Phil Maxwell
WOW! brought a few tears to my eye.
- Jasmin Smith
incredi-wow.
- Micah Wittman
Beautiful.
- Uncle CW™
Gosh, I think I've watched this video like 50 times already.
- Nir Ben Yona
Just goes to show how synical we all are, and how fast we are to judge people.
- Steve Mactaggart
from twhirl
Incredible stuff.
- Russ Jackson
Not bad! I still prefer this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch... - That said, it was a surprisingly good performance. Not as much as Paul Potts, who was entirely horripilative and transcendent.
- david beckwith
This was a surprise--and lovely, thx
- susan mernit
and I love this song
- Erin @queenofspain
Awesome performance. I've never seen the look of pleasant surprise on Simon's face before. You could tell that even he enjoyed it. He still needs to get a better haircut though.
- Alex Scoble
Britain may have talent, but that's more than I can say for Simon Cowell. The man is the Antichrist, as far as i'm concerned.
- Iain Baker
He was a tamed little kitteh for 6 minutes during that performance though.
- Alex Scoble
Don't know enough about Cowell to make a value judgement on the man. Sometimes (and I don't know if this is the case with Cowell) the a-hole attitude is a public front. It's possibly the case with Gordon Ramsey, and it certainly is with Ann Robinson - I've been to a recording of 'The Weakest Link' at Pinewood Studios, and she switches 'bitch mode' on and off along with the cameras.
- Ian May
Wow! Brings back memories when I first saw paul potts...
- Jorg Jansen
Seriously? This reeks of scripted viral. The show caught (online) fire in '07 with the Paul Potts audition...arguably the hottest shared video of the year. When the show returned last year, there wasn't an act even minutely close to the WOM impact Potts had generated the privious year. Clearly the BGT online buzz strategy for '09... Potts 2.0. #fail
- Zach Lytwyn
The best thing about this thread is that there is really only one cynical jaded comment out of all of them.
- cecily
Britains Got Talent FTW!
- Nicholas James
I cried...
- mjc
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
- josh neff, geek at large
I was completely amazed...
- Anthony K. Valley ©
Watching Simon's eyes go wide was soooooo worth it.
- Great Scott!
ahh, the power of the edit. great job of making her look like a 'cat lady' for the first several minutes. all the more powerful when we find out she's not totally daft.
- MikeAmundsen
That is one courageuos woman with an amazing voice. Goosebumps all over.
- Jochen Lillich
Don't judge a book by its cover!
- TheHenry
That's absolutely awesome
- C.K. Johnson
'Embedding disabled by request'! :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
Kol you can still follow the link to Youtube ;)
- Nicholas James
Nicholas, yeah I did just wondering why it didn't work embedded. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Using High School Stereotypes to Compare FriendFeed to Twitter - http://www.banane.com/workblo...
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Sajida H Khan, tinypants - Hagitha of FF, Amani and 52 other people liked this
that IS scoble!!!!
- Rob Sellen :o)
this photo is kinda out of context. oh well.
- anna sauce
"Twitter’s more like the hot high school football player that occasionally notices you at dances, but is slowly blowing out his knees and doesn’t study, and FriendFeed is the funny, charming computer geek that carries your books for you and opens doors. A little harder to get to know, but a lot more value."
- anna sauce
I think you found another great metaphor there. Oh and it's hard to judge my "call to action" thread as a good metric of activity here as I only have 1000 subscribers, but I should mention that thread got the most likes and comments out of any thread I've ever done.
- Alex Scoble
commented on blog too ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
wow, thanks Rob!
- anna sauce
Alex, I know, it was the only way I could get active users- and Arrington's "unique views" seemed a little off to me. As ever the struggle for metrics in social media.
- anna sauce
As a side note, it's funny that you use the highschool nerds vs jocks metaphor. Robert was voted most likely to join a club in highschool.
- Alex Scoble
watch out Alex, don't divulge too much about your brother! With 4 siblings I can attest it's a slippery slope. The things I know about my siblings... (well, for a fee they can be yours.) I was trying to compare the feature-richness of FF to Twitter's one-note features. Not sure it worked, but hey.
- anna sauce
I picked that post becuase it was hilarious - and showed the weird creativity of FF people (Morton...)
- anna sauce
Worked for me!
- Alex Scoble
Excellent post Anna. Not sure what else to say, you've nailed it
- Mo Kargas
as per the article: I can just picture Robert Scoble looking all fly in his Prius, aviators, windows down: the wind blowing through his hair...wearing Apple Bottoms Jeans, boots with the fur...:o)
- sofarsoShawn
It's perfect. Nailed it!
- Helen Sventitsky
thanks Helen! Thanks Shawn! Thanks mo!
- anna sauce
@Anna: great post!
- .LAG liked that
thanks .LAG!
- anna sauce
thanks Abby!
- anna sauce
I always figured Robert Scoble would have been an inside linebacker (yes, and a member of computer club) or something athletic. Shows how much I know.
- Jay Cuthrell
I feel vaguely guilty knowing Robert Scoble's Hall of Fame info from his brother. Anyone else?
- anna sauce
Jay: I ran four marathons in high school. Plus was on nearly every club.
- Robert Scoble
Hmmm, I guess I kind of missed the mark...LOL. & Wow Scoble 4!!! You're my hero! I'm totally picking up Melancholy now
- sofarsoShawn
Thanks, Anna! I'm hoping a lot of people will see this and stop the Twitter vs. FF Death Match going on this week. After rediscovering FF upon the beta release, I had a brief fling in which the two of us ran away to a cheap motel together, but now I've come back home and embraced Twitter, the mother of my children (1K followers) and realized that my life will be a lot better if I'm just friends with benefits with Friendfeed. In other words, I now realize a distinct role for each and am happy using both.
- Mark Traphagen
And my horrible metaphor above has NOTHING to do with my views on marriage and fidelity! Probably should've stuck with your high school dating scenario, Anna!
- Mark Traphagen
It's FF vs Facebook not FF vs Twitter!
- JP Maxwell
No kidding JP, did you read the article?
- sofarsoShawn
did I say Facebook! I meant Friendster! Shit.
- JP Maxwell
Mark, I love your relationshiop-sexinthecity style metaphor, and in no way does it represent your views on IRL relationships or morals, of course. The high school stereotypes are useful in cinema, and comparing social networks! Scoble- south bay is a great running town. I did hurdles. It prepared me for a career in email marketing (ba-dum dum)
- anna sauce
JP ... Friendster? I had almost forgotten that old (bad) memory. Let it die a quiet, dignified death!
- anna sauce
Great service comes to the iPhone - Read it later http://news.cnet.com/8301-17...
Frank S., Rolf Schewe, Michael Lehman and 3 other people liked this
How is this app any different than instapaper?
- Christian Burns
It's not but there's nice Google Reader integration
- Steve Rubel
from IM
Oooooo. Really?
- Roberto Bonini
@Steve: I have to say that the Firefox extension is no small potatoes either. Great link. I read this last night and was going to track it down today.
- Rolf Schewe
Syncing the iPhone app to my Firefox extension was not easy, but I finally got it working. They definitely need to tweak the syncing setup a little and make it more simple. That said, it looks like something I will use a lot, both the extension and the app. The Google Reader feature is gonna be huge for me.
- Rolf Schewe
The Conficker worm has started to update infected machines with a mystery package of data. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1...
Rob Diana, arthur park, CantorJF and 10 other people liked this
A boat's a boat but the mystery package could be anything... it could even be a boat!
- KyleHase
Webware: Battle of the multi-column Twitter clients:
There was a time, not long ago, when the p.. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17...
Tac Anderson, Morton Fox, Jeff and 11 other people liked this
OK, but where's #PeopleBrowsr?
- Grey Drane
Great article Rafe thanks!
- Justin Broderick
from Alert Thingy
Is there a good client that doesn't run on AIR? I like Nambu on iPhone but it doesn't have a PC client...
- brainno722 (Peter)
Good question Grey...I believe that it's ready for the big time too. I am about to delete tweetdeck for being a memory hog..takes and never gives back.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: Yeah, TweetDeck has some nice features, but what really bugs me is that the API calls max out way too quick -- and I only use it for my pro Twitter account which has very few follows. PeopleBrowsr still has some bugs (and to be fair, the developers are still calling it alpha-ware), but its feature set still blows away anything else I've tried.
- Grey Drane
Grey: re: TD API calls - slow it down...the refresh is configurable...the default settings don't work. I have been in pretty close contact with PB crew. bugs are disappearing fast. I have one fix I'm waiting for (autocomplete @ names) and I will switch permanently. feature set way blows TD out of the water. TD has a massive memory consumption problem and is not functional for me. Even at Alpha, I'm happier with PB. If my hack today gets my group lists out I switch today.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
BUT - I also note, TD has new release out today. AND I also note, that I'm using FF more and more as a primary interface
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Thanks for making the chart view of the features it make it really easy to compare all the apps.
- Jeff
trying out Seesmic desktop...can anyone compare this and Tweetdeck?
- brainno722 (Peter)
Rob: Thx. I had actually played around with the refresh settings when I first set up TweetDeck and thought I'd set them really low, but maybe I misunderstood and set them really high? Anyway, I prefer PB's approach: only refresh when the app window actually has focus.
- Grey Drane
wow, ok, first service I've really really liked in awhile, blip is like twitter for music (zero uploading): http://blip.fm/thekrose
Alisha Wright, Victor Panlilio, Susan Dennis and 20 other people liked this
oh but it adds so much "noise" to the tweetstream..but so am I told does Friendfeed haha!
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Blip is the best secret on the web. Like many others, I rushed over to check out the beta when it was first announced. My initial DJ's are many of the usual suspects! Unfortunately, when I went to back to have another look around a month ago, not a single one of them was still active. I had to start over, and I'm so glad I did. It was simple thanks to the great community there. It's one of my favorite services right now. I could go on and on, but why spoil it!
- Michael Fidler
Sometimes I want to blip a song that I've got stuck playing in my head but it's not on Blip, what to do then?
- Andrew Trinh
guys, if you like blip.fm, ya gotta try http://grooveshark.com . Nice clean UI, GREAT music selection
- Kathryn Schakel
A private note to PR people - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
bcultral, Steve Read, Louis Gray and 25 other people liked this
I'm not a PR person so you can probably disregard this, but what I've found is the secret to good pitching is that it's not a pitch at all. It's telling someone about something really cool between friends.
- Jesse Stay
"So, how do good PR people pitch me? They do send me email. But they build a relationship with me first and find out what I like to write about. One example? Jeremy Toeman. He tells me all the time that he has clients he doesn’t pitch to me because they aren’t going to be interesting to me or my readers. He protects his relationship with me from crappy pitches."
- Thomas Hawk
Jeremy's always done a good job with PR.
- Thomas Hawk
Robert - agree with you on both counts: vast majority of PR "pitches" are horrible, horrible misfires; and you painted with too broad a brush before. I still don't buy your theory that all good things are automatically found by their natural audiences and vice versa, and I think many companies benefit from good comm counsel. But the vast majority of PR dollars are wasted on painfully clueless practitioners doing nothing strategic; just blasting hundreds of awful pitches to folks like you (and me.)
- Anthony Citrano
I think it's important to take a look at this from the PR clients' eyes. They demand results, now. And this causes a lot of the acerbic PR attempts that people experience. Blast the message out, scream and shout, wave your arms because it might get 50 people to pay attention now. It's a lot easier to do that than build relationships like you mention. Even though that is far more successful (any Seth Godin post makes this clear).
- Chris Stevenson
What we know about radically new design of friendfeed (leave more details here):
Durukan Duru, Iván Abrego, lemuel and 72 other people liked this
1. It will turn on at http://beta.friendfeed.com at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday morning (tomorrow).
- Robert Scoble
2. They discussed this new version with a bunch of bloggers and journalists on Thursday. At least two people recorded that entire session (Techcrunch and me). My video will be up on Monday. I'm also trying to edit up a "highlights" video that also will be up on Monday morning.
- Robert Scoble
3. The old version will not change. To see the new UI you'll need to visit http://beta.friendfeed.com -- it will stay that way for at least a couple of weeks as "kinks" in the new UI are worked out, Bret Taylor told us on Thursday.
- Robert Scoble
4. We are not allowed to share many details or screen shots until 9 a.m. Monday morning Pacific Time.
- Robert Scoble
5. I will reserve judgment on the new design until Monday morning but it is quite different and has lots of new features. It'll be interesting to see who likes it and who hates it.
- Robert Scoble
Now that's teasing ;-)
- Yuval Atzmon
Hopefully they'll mention some of the features that set it apart from FaceBook. FB has really encroached on FF feature territory lately. I have found discussions I used to have on FF have moved largely to FB.
- Eric Hamilton
I'm excited!
- Aaron Draczynski
Eric: how it is different with Twitter and Facebook will be very clear, both just by playing with it and by watching the videos. It introduces some very different ideas than either Facebook or Twitter have introduced.
- Robert Scoble
I really think the story here is whether the Facebook redesign makes Friendfeed irrelevant - because I think it does. I'm much more interested in what my real friends post than any imaginary clique online -- and I think most other people will be too. Just my .02
- Wayne Schulz
6. My new icon was made specifically to look great in the new design.
- Robert Scoble
What time will that be for us in the UK? Im useless at working this out.
- Simon Wicks
7. I'm excited too, but I don't have it yet and there's some parts that do concern me. Can't wait to discuss those with you on Monday. I do know I'm going to use lists a LOT more than I am currently.
- Robert Scoble
Simon: 5 p.m. I think.
- Timothy Griffin
Simon 5 pm ?
- M F
Simon: 5pm London time (BST), or 4pm GMT
- James
Wayne: you haven't seen the new design of friendfeed which introduces lots of new stuff that Facebook will probably copy. I do NOT agree with you, by the way. Facebook still is struggling with "publicness" and other issues that make friendfeed viable.
- Robert Scoble
So FriendFeed is going to have a green color scheme?
- Yuval Atzmon
Thanks very much guys, ill waste away the last hour of work playing around then. Its all i usually do anyway.
- Simon Wicks
Yuval: no, I didn't do that for any color scheme reasons. It's just that my icon will look good and stand out on the new friendfeed. Your personal icon is much more significant on the new version so many of you will want to have new icons ready to go. The icon was shot by @thomashawk in friendfeed's offices, though. They had some Hulk gloves lying around and Thomas asked me to put those on and shot a bunch of pictures that I like a lot.
- Robert Scoble
6pm CET.
- Peter Kruit
Looking forward to the new design, hoping there is a way to reduce redundant posts. -I see a lot of the same info as people Tweet the same info they post in their other networks.
- Jamie Ginsberg
Will there be a new mobile design? FriendFeed currently doesn't work on my Series 60 Nokia phone, unless I use ff2go. I like m.twitter.com, and wish FriendFeed had similar... Yes, I know there's an iPhone view, but I don't use that (though on my iPod Touch, it so rocks)
- Colin Charles
from twhirl
8. My video was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II at 1080p resolution with a 24mm F2.8 lens and steadied by a monopod. Techcrunch's video was handheld and shot on a Flip Mino HD camcorder. I'll let you decide which one to watch. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert, one question: you said "Lists". Is there any attention profiling features? Any personal relevancy real experience? I give you one name and tell me "ok" or "nope". Chris Saad.
- directeur
Colin: no new mobile version is coming tomorrow, although the new design works on iPhone/iPod Touch. They know they need to work on getting more clients like TweetDeck/Twhirl to support them, along with more mobile clients too.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: let's talk tomorrow when i can answer that question fully.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, ok, I see :) You've answered it!
- directeur
Colin: What is your experience of ff2go on S60? I started reading about it today and I'm going to try it (sorry for going off topic here).
- Paul Jacobson
from twhirl
Robert and Wayne: There seems to be this notion that Facebook pioneered its current look and feel but it seems very much like the current FriendFeed look and feel when it comes to how the stream is represented. I can see Facebook copying FriendFeed in future iterations but FriendFeed seems to have been first to the mark in this department.
- Paul Jacobson
from twhirl
Paul: ff2go is ok, but every once in a while I'll have to logon to the main site to get the API key. In that sense, its mostly annoying. On the iPhone interface, that never happens - once logged in, the cookie stays around leaving you logged in. But the service itself? I like it. Go ff2go, because it enables me to FriendFeed when I'm on my phone
- Colin Charles
from twhirl
Robert: Thanks! Its good to know that they're looking into a mobile version. And while twhirl supports them (kudos), lets hope Tweetdeck and more support them. My main concern is a mobile site - please do pass on that if you get a chance. Thanks
- Colin Charles
from twhirl
Hmm, the official FriendFeed iPhone/mobile version seems to work fairly well for me in Opera Mobile under S60, for what it's worth. I don't think anyone's built a dedicated client, though.
- Tyson Key
Tyson: Ah ok, will test it out in Opera Mobile. I tend to use the stock browser that comes with the phone more though
- Colin Charles
from twhirl
FFToGo itself works pretty well in the standard WebKit-based browser, though.
- Tyson Key
thanks for the fftogo feedback Colin!
- Paul Jacobson
from fftogo
Robert, did you considered RTL support for this new version? you know that more than 3K ff users are using Persian language.
- farzaam
farzaam: what's RTL? In the press event friendfeed's co-founders talk about Iranian and Turkish users, by the way. They know they need to do more to let us filter by language.
- Robert Scoble
farzaam: I do not work for friendfeed, by the way. From your question it makes it sound like you think I do.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert - Right To Left, presumably
- Tyson Key
I still don't get how to use FriendFeed as it is and now it is changing? I hope I can understand it better when it changes. Mr. Scoble obviously loves it, but I cannot figure out why and how. I consider myself computer savvy too.
- Hummie
Robert, well Twhirl supports FriendFeed but feel it needs a bit of work. Shame Alerty Thingy have stopped. I'm looking forward to testing the new beta sometime Monday evening.
- Kol Tregaskes
Hummie: let's talk tomorrow because so many things are changing. If you want to learn about the current version of friendfeed, I made a video here: http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Robert Scoble
Interested in the significance of why being part Hulk part Oompa Loompa is critical to new FF ;)
- Patrick Boegel
@Robert, RTL is about language direction(right to left support) and could easily integrated to friendfeed by just adding "change direction" flag where text inserted(esp. in comments). the problem is we could not mix English and Persian words in our comments.
- farzaam
Patrick: you'll see tomorrow. :-) farzaam: thanks, I understand now. Yeah, that's important but I don't think they've changed anything about how languages are handled. They are working on several issues there, though. I'll keep following up on language issues, though, because I'm interested in the topic.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, will the icons be bigger or is 75x75 still fine?
- Gaby K. Slezák
Gaby: I think 75x75 is still fine, but I'll know for sure later when they give us access.
- Robert Scoble
thanks robert, can't wait to see the all new friendfeed tomorrow :-)
- Gaby K. Slezák
What we also know: Robert can't stop talking about it even though he doesn't have it.
- Louis Gray
Louis, hehe.
- Kol Tregaskes
the A/B split test says that color schema will be tracked, but this is not the important, it will be user centered, may be there will be some shortcut too.
- abdellah
Facebook making Friendfeed irrelevant? Not for me. FB and FF could have identical interfaces and FF would keep me and my main social graph, not Facebook. Why? The community here is amazing. I've met some irl, not met others, and all are friends. On FB, entirely different, and a little weird to have my mother, ex-husband, former co-workers and kids all on the same graph. It's inhibitive, and it doesn't make for community participation.
- Karoli
from BuddyFeed
As far as I know it's a complete UI overhaul, so the question for me is whether FriendFeed wants to be more like Twitter: simple as hell (and destined to less tech savvy people)
- Kris
Sounds to me like Scoble is not that impressed with the new beta? It's gonna be interesting to see what it looks like and if it's any friendlier to new users.
- Jim Connolly
@Scoble : You have been trying to create a good hype about FF before new design get out, i just hope it doesn't depress us badly!
- Junal Rahman
Junal - discussion does not have to be interpretted as hype
- Patrick Boegel
I think it is fair to say that many people will be unhappy with the new UI for whatever reason and others will love it.
- Paul Jacobson
Paul - you're right. That will happen. Change is tough.
- Hutch Carpenter
@scobleizer Thanks for the tease on the new FriendFeed UI.
- Mike Reynolds
For Some, Voice Mail Is Losing Its Allure - NYTimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
Numan Arda Çebi, Jason Nelson, Andrew Currie and 44 other people liked this
"Tim Kassouf from Baltimore, 24, who calls himself “a certified voice mail hater,” said he had 68 messages, 62 of them unheard, in his cellphone mail box. Scott Taylor, 41, a senior manager at an e-commerce company in Phoenix, said voice mail was “just totally an ineffective communication method, almost ancient now.” Like many others, Mr. Taylor advises callers on his outgoing message to try his cellphone or to send an e-mail message if they need to reach him right away. It is good advice. Research shows that people take longer to reply to voice messages than other types of communication. Data from uReach Technologies, which operates the voice messaging systems of Verizon Wireless and other cellphone carriers, shows that over 30 percent of voice messages linger unheard for three days or longer and that more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes “rarely even dial in” to check them, said Saul Einbinder, senior vice president for marketing and business development for uReach, in an e-ma"
- Thomas Hawk
from Bookmarklet
I sooooo hate voicemail. It's the worst thing. I hate the nagging feeling that you ought to be checking it, long winded messages where people won't simply leave you a phone number, having to have a pen to write down a number. I wish voicemail would die. People should use email or other electronic means of communication over voicemail. Come to think of it, I pretty much hate the telephone all together.
- Thomas Hawk
I solved this problem: I have a message that says not to leave me voice mail. It's interesting how few people do.
- Robert Scoble
Hmm funny, I think about going voicemail-only with my phone. As in: People can never call me.
- Meryn Stol
i have not checked my voicemail in over two years. the outgoing message warns people of such, yet people still leave messages, i see them there, but i am not nearly THAT curious to see what someone who clearly cant comprehend that I MEAN it when i say i don't check it has to say. FUCK'em.
- merkley???
I have removed the voicemail facility on my number and replaced it with a message telling people to email me, a much better solution
- Arthur Guy
at least with visual voicemail you can see who it is before deciding to skip it or not. What really pisses me off though is when people block their number. No way in hell I'm ever answering any call with a blocked number. Most likely I will also not listen to that voicemail either.
- Thomas Hawk
Nice mention of PhoneTag, which I've been very happy with. I'm looking forward to try google voice's voicemail transcription service, too.
- David Vasileff
Voicemail has allure?
- Mistletoe Glen
I looked at our Vonage account a few days ago. We had 132 voicemails on our personal number from Dec. on. I deleted them all without listening to them. Everyone knows that to reach us you either call our mobile or email/text us. From our business # I had 75 voicemails from Dec. on and they were all the same, "I just emailed you this information" then a rereading of the email they just sent. Sigh. On my cellphone, I stopped checking my voicemail in Sept. I'm maxed out now.
- Admiral Anika
I'm very slow at check home voicemails, but my mobile gets checked as soon as I see there's a message there. Think there is still a use for voicemail, but its certainly not a favourite form of messaging of mine . . .
- Ed Richardson
I find SMSs a very potent alternative to voicemail. In the US, the user base that communicates via SMSs is miniscule but here in India, it is omnipresent.
- Parth Awasthi
I hate getting voicemails and having to check it.
- Alan Le
so do i - i hate phone calls altogether.. the expectance of immediacy by people is outrageous - especially in the cell phone age
- andy brudtkuhl
Rod - if you can get in! I've signed up a dozen times.. need a solution for my biz asap
- andy brudtkuhl
I find myself not checking my voicemails because so many of them are junk. They're not technically spam, but they tend to waste my time. Visual Voicemail at least gives me some flexibility on when I want to listen to which message, but it's still an annoyance.
- Kevin Elliott
Most people know not to leave me a voicemail. Their number pops up on the caller ID. I know they called and I'll call them back when I have a moment. Voice is a crappy medium for leaving any kind of information.
- Eric P
Visual VM ftw.
- Mona Nomura
Eric, I totally agree. (I also hate vlogs for the same reason, esp when they're just talking into the camera, as it's basically a slower and less helpful way to get one's message across.)
- Andrew C
I want visual VM. How can I get it? I also want google voice. I check my cell phone voice mail on my iphone. At least it lets you see who it is from.
- Amani
I love the new transcription in Google Voice. Also once you define your cell phone to Google Voice you can dial straight into your voicemail box. So far its been a great tool.
- Matt Martin
It costs me to listen to my voicemail on T-Mobile so if I know who it is (i.e. from the last caller number) then I don't bother to listen to it. I also don't tend to leave voicemail. Most people see the missed call and call you back anywhere.
- Kol Tregaskes
The pattern that invariably happens is that somebody will call me in a meeting. I won't be able to answer it, because that's just rude. Then I'll wonder the whole rest of the meeting what the message is.
- Wirehead
I'm surprised more companies aren't doing this - either hiring, contracting, or giving away a brand 2 the more influential people on Twitter
Ben Hedrington, Frank S., Gordon Saunders and Iain Baker liked this
Imagine if Subway, for instance, offered Scoble free lunch for a year, no strings attached
- Jesse Stay
Or, pick any local restaurant or business, find the most influential person in your area on Twitter, and find something they would be interested in and talk about. Give it to them.
- Jesse Stay
If Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or Oprah can use something, and have millions flock to it because they talk about it, I bet that can be amplified ten-fold on Social Networks.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: I ate there today anyway. :-) I actually don't like getting gifts. It makes it much tougher to write about the companies I love already. That said, being inside a company opens up stuff. That's where Microsoft deserves credit for starting Channel 9, which turns five years old next Monday.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I understand, but if it's Subway, you'd never write about them anyway. But if you ate there regularly because it was convenient (or free) people would eventually hear about it. Also, there are plenty of people on Twitter that *would* take gifts, and it wouldn't hurt to have that bias. (ie they don't regularly review products)
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: what would be smarter is for them to sponsor Tweetups. That would let us talk about them in a context that makes sense. Getting gifts makes me feel dirty, and I've learned about myself that I don't like writing about things when I feel like I'm getting bought off. I bought my own Toyotas and Apple computers, for instance. If I got those for free I wouldn't feel so good about endorsing them.
- Robert Scoble
Excellent idea, Robert. Not enough of that going on, either.
- Jesse Stay
better than gifts to individuals (which raises all kinds of issues) are companies offering access & services for many AND showing they listen & react. Scott Monty of Ford offering lots of bloggers rides/use of Fords is good - better is his active engagement & response
- Shannon Clark
I'm still not fully against compensation. For instance, Glenn Beck advertises Dog food on his talk show. It has nothing to do with politics, and therefore doesn't affect his bias in any way. Yet, he talks about it, to a specific demographic that buys that stuff. He's just a normal person buying normal Dog food. Social Media could be used in the same way, but even more amplified.
- Jesse Stay
Apple previewing iPhone OS 3.0 at an event March 17 - http://venturebeat.com/2009...
Moses Kpetigo, timepilot, corvin and 37 other people liked this
I don't see a source? :S
- Jalada
Whats in it????? Push????? Copy and paste????? Over the air sync????
- Roberto Bonini
Maybe it'll support MMS. =)
- Daniel Bruce
Set expectations accordingly or you'll be disappointed. Why do I bother, people never listen and are always disappointed
- Bwana ☠
Who CARES about copy and paste. BACKGROUND, PLEASE.
- Mona Nomura
and maybe folders?? would be nice as well..
- Jaap Willem
We need to move away from MMS - why save media locally, when we can e-mail? Cloud? MMS is backwards thinking, imho.
- Mona Nomura
Sure, ignore a technology "everyone" (at least here) knows and uses, for the promise of some other non-obvious, probably not well known (and as a result, harder to use), not universally supported tech. That's good business practice. =p
- Daniel Bruce
MMS don't care. Copy/Paste don't care. iDisk app, now, that'd be nice.
- Paul Grav
I'm backing Mona up with 1 MILLION JIGAWATTS! We need to ditch MMS and move forward.
- vijay
I want a stable browser. I fear I'm setting my expectation too high.
- Bwana ☠
MMS is also backwards compatible with many, many millions of phones which don't support email, either at all or well. Not supporting it is just embarrasing.
- Ian Betteridge
Sorry Jalada, source was a good one: Apple :)
- MG Siegler
+1 Ian, my point exactly. None of the non-smart phones have good, or any, support for email, much less the cloud or the internets. If I wanted to send a pic to any of my friends or family, I can't zap it into the cloud and magically expect them to be able to access it (they can't, none of their phones have e-mail or internet support worth a damn). With MMS, however, I can send it to them, pretty much without exception. It's a complete show-stopper.
- Daniel Bruce
mms is for grandmas. I don't know anyone that uses it.
- Zio Bonino
How about Apple Store 3.0 with reduced restrictions and deprecation of capricious app banning? :)
- Ray Cromwell
+1 Mona; here's hoping for Background Apps, which will allow some innovation by app developers to improve upon what MMS and SMS offers. Background Apps also need improved battery life == new hardware hopefully.
- Bob Hitching
There are many free services that enable picture emailing, without logging into the services. Facebook and Flickr are the two most common. With Docs to Go coming for all mobile platforms, why do we need MMS? (to add, I've personally never MMSd documents but someone in another thread said it was common)
- Mona Nomura
from fftogo
Because there's like 100 million phones that can receive MMS, and 90 million of them have really sucky web browsers, application environments, and slow network speeds.
- Ray Cromwell
But what would you be using MMS for? If multi media is your number one need, get a multi media phone. And most multi media phones have native SNS apps.
- Mona Nomura
from fftogo
And another MMS question: wouldn't you want to view and save media via desktop w/out flashcard adapters and cables? The future is simplicity. Minimal chords, attachments, basically accessories that get tangled up and hog up USB or FireWire holes.
- Mona Nomura
from fftogo
The simplicity for me is taking a picture and sending it asynchronously to a phone number without having to care what kind of phone it is. There are far too many legacy phones to ignore MMS. Your assumption is that everyone upgrades to the lastest phone, I know quite a few people with 3+ year old phones. And I bought my Nanny a "free" Nokia media phone, an old Series40, which can't run squat.
- Ray Cromwell
So let me get this straight: because MMS has been the standard to share media since 2003, naturally, more phones support MMS. Because more phones support it, and most people still have older phones, there is still a need. Ok, that is fair. So if you have a need to instantly send your Nanny pictures then why choose an iPhone? And I still stand by my statement that MMS is backwards thinking. Apple and AT&T made a bold and perhaps game changing move omitting MMS. I agree with their strategy 220%.
- Mona Nomura
from fftogo
I heard Nova excludes MMS, too. All hear say until Pre and 3.0 is rolled out. Bottomlime: I'm all for fewer accessories and peripherals, moving on to other options. I wonder if there's a way to exclude MMS from my plan to get the people I correspond with in the habit of checking where I aggregate my media in lieu of hardware dependence.
- Mona Nomura
from fftogo
There's something to be said for interoperability and standards. And the use case is really other people sending me MMS . The iPhone doesn't support vCard or iCalendar either, again, eschewing standards that have been in place for a decade. I honestly don't see forcing someone to launch a browser and synchronously load photos as an improvement over an asynchronous push technology that works without a gazillion web based UIs, chewing up extra battery life and memory.
- Ray Cromwell
??? I email my photos or upload to various sites. People who do heavy business activities on their mobiles all have phones that support the various oulets I aggregate my media. All others, access them via desktop/laptop. As for Vcard and calendar, that is a whole different topic, but I have found my work arounds. The resources are there. It's just new and different.
- Mona Nomura
from fftogo
Either which way, my bottomline is: the future is minimalistic simplicity, and omitting hardware dependency. Once you lose your phone, the MMS media is lost with it. As is data you didn't get a chance to sync. How are solutions to that NOT forward thinking?
- Mona Nomura
from fftogo
If MMS is to be replaced with cloud storage, then define an OMA/IETF/3GPP REST API for this that is standardized and can be adopted by hardware, applications, and sites. Simply replacing it with a website just fragments everything and makes mobile implementations less efficient. MMS is about instant-photo sharing, not snapping photos and asking people to look at them later when they get to a desktop
- Ray Cromwell
If I extend your argument, we should replace SMS with gazillions of Twitter clones. How does 20 proprietary interfaces improve user experience over a single one? The vast majority of people using these devices for media sharing aren't as tech-savvy as you think. Create a standard, then get MobileMe, Flickr, Picasa, FaceBook, MySpace, et al, to adopt it.
- Ray Cromwell
LOL Ray I think we see different big pictures. I stated my point and you stated yours, clearly we are not going to see eye to eye. It would be interesting to re-visit this thread two to three years down the road.
- Mona Nomura
The Smart Execs Leave Before The Fall. - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Nicholas James, Daniel Rowley, Grzegorz Balnis and 7 other people liked this
User data ownership on Facebook and why it doesn’t matter - http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Xiangzhen, Kevin Murray, Shivanand Velmurugan and 95 other people liked this
I'm glad to see Robert back to long-form, insightful blog posts, rather than getting distracted by twitter and friend feed.
- Steven (optionshiftk)
You do realise that they extend their license to stuff you link to right? They can subicence as steve points out to their hearts content and you lose the value of your own content. I agree with your blogs sarcastic point about serving facebook. I made a similar one myself.
- Anton Mannering
from twhirl
I took a different angle on this too. I'm less worried about the things I know, and more worried about what we do not know. In essence we transfer all control to Facebook, but they are not transparent about what they actually do with our data. We don't know if we are signing up for the next best thing or selling our soul to the devil. Mark is answering the wrong question and we fell for it again: http://bit.ly/19GmYF
- Alexander van Elsas
BTW here is an excellent writeup of Amanda French comparing TOSes of different sites like Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Youtube. Moral of the story? The uproar is justified: http://bit.ly/tJJBK
- Alexander van Elsas
As a person who builds very consumer facing products and features I believe it DOES matter. With power (175 millions users) comes responsibility. FB has an obligation to transparency regardless of whether there service is free, and it's TOU is one piece of that transparency. If you claim one thing and do another, or you claim one thing and then claim another thing because your business is changing, that matters...
- Ryan
Who uses FB to publish original works? Promotion yea. But don't people who have something to protect get their ©, ®, ™ before putting it out there and then just link to it from the various mediums?
- Ryan Stanley
Just read Alexander van Elsas post. We should be discussing this on his FF feed. Great post and insightful analysis. Glad to see someone actually read and posted the TOU.
- Ryan
@Ryan, @Jason, thanks guys! You're welcome to discuss it on my FF feed, it's here: http://friendfeed.com/e... , but here is fine too ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Robert and Alexander, I have to agree with Robert. As I mentioned to you, Alexander, if you go to any institution implementing a GLS or CMS, you pretty much have to play by their rules and (having learned by painful experience) your data is not necessarily treated as if you are an esteemed author who could sue THEM for plagiarism. ;) That's as Robert says, reality. So I agree with his response.
- Melanie Reed
In the early days, I treated my portfolio as a catchall for everything. I went with the bait. But having learned who really has the most "rights" to it and then with their upgrade, having seen all my legacy RSS link and bookmarks destroyed I was forced into the realm of Robert's reality. Facebook, Flickr, etc are going to do what they are going to do. Now, I can adopt a strategy that serves my needs out of that....or not. I'm learning as I go.
- Melanie Reed
@melanie the most important issue is the lack of transparency. We are forced to give up everything while they do not. It is not an equal balance. Saying that that is just the way it is is accepting a bad practice that could easily be replaced by a good one.
- Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander I agree that lack of transparency is the important issue. Now whether I like it or not I have to try to understand the other party here. I can see (but not like) the effectiveness of the ad targeting FB uses. How pivotal is that to FB's revenue? Seriously, would any of us say 'yes' willingly to allowing ANY of our demographic information to be used by Ad customers?
- Melanie Reed
@Ryan, Your copyright is still valid and is not changed by Facebook's TOS. It you read their TOS carefully, you will find that by posting or sharing your content on FB, you are granting them an unlimited license to do whatever they want with your content. You still own the copyright, but it's value might be greatly lessened by allowing FB unimited usage rights.
- Jeff P. Henderson
What if I'm a unsigned and indie band that uses Facebook to promote our music in a group or fan page. Does the TOS give FB the right to "use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute" those works for commercial purpose?
- Matt Albiniak
@Alexander This brings up how business on the Internet is done. How do we want that done? How do we want businesses to conduct their research on target audiences? What should they know before hand in order to market to us? How do you want them to do that? I'm not fighting for their "rights" so much as I am asking that the methodology of what is acceptable marketing practice (that will be effective) is defined. BTW- I have a stake in this as our org has copyrighted material up on FB, too.
- Melanie Reed
@Matt, Based on my interpretation of the TOS, I would say probably yes.
- Jeff P. Henderson
@melanie my simple answer would be to choose a business model that monetizes user value. It would force you to do the right thing, always. Check out smugmug as a very positive example. They do not just have paying customers, they have paying fans!
- Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander If I understand you, that would indeed cause a problem that many are trying to avoid: disenfranchisement in the digital world. Not everyone is capable of paying. So as I understand it, thus the two-tiered system as Flickr does with their pro accounts and the free. So how do we address that?
- Melanie Reed
"Zuckerberg is saying: "We're not evil. Just trust us!" But this has been the mantra of nearly all companies that handle personal information. What company would say: "Yes, we intend to use your data maliciously and in ways you'll abhor"? There are many problems with Facebook's policy of 'trust us'" http://www.concurringopinions.com/archive... Solove, as always, gives an excellent analysis of the pitfalls.
- LogEx
@melanie, you do not have choose a model in which every user has to pay to receive value (although that is the cleanest model there is). freemium is definitely a great model too. Provide a service for free and extra's as a premium. Either way. A user centric model will ensure you give more value to the user than to anything else.
- Alexander van Elsas
@logical extremes, I recall banks and insurance comapnies saying the same things and look where that got us ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
@Alexander, exactly. Facebook should either drop the pretense, or adjust the TOU to describe exactly what they intend.
- LogEx
Matt, Melanie, etc...I'd definitely suggest you take 5 or 10 minutes, and go read the earlier mentioned comparison by Amanda French http://bit.ly/tJJBK . The differences between what MySpace, for example, asserts as a right over your data, and what Facebook does, are both real and relevant to any creative type. Amanda has ferreted out the relevant sections of the license terms for multiple sites, and compares and contrasts well.
- Ken Kennedy
Scoble's missed the boat, same as Chris Brogan. Facebook (and LinkedIn) has Terms that are NOT the same as everyone else's, and which, unlike MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa and Twitter, do NOT permit you to revoke their license to use your content. I dove into the legal issues here: http://is.gd/jJXy
- Maxwell Kennerly
Article on the new Facebook TOS changes and protecting yourself http://tinyurl.com/d4oeps
- Chris Miller
from twhirl
@Ken, thank you for replying and @Alexander, thank you as well! Ken, I did read Amanda's post. And, with respect to you and others, I still agree with both Robert and Matt. And in regard to MySpace, they are the ones who allowed access to everyone's private data to the search engine Spock. That's why I don't use MySpace or Spock among other reasons.
- Melanie Reed
the point is if you upload it to facebook and decide later you want it deleted, and it's not deleted then....well it's nice to want things. I don't think this justifies the uproar, only that people should (have already been) thinking twice about what they put on those sites. It may, and probably won't, ever really go away once it's out there.
- Richard Lawler
Really good side by side comparison here- http://amandafrench.net/2009...
- Ryan
@Melanie ... no worries! As long as you've got the data, you're more than entitled to make your own decision. If I were you, I'd keep stuff I want to monetize off of FB, though...you really have no control once you've uploaded it there. It's a walled garden that FB can cash in on as they will. (note: I expect this will get restated before too long...this is too big a grab even for FB, but as of now, that's how it works out).
- Ken Kennedy
@Ken, Interesting that you said that just now as there was a Facebook Ad, (company unknown as I didn't clickthru-that's one less cpv they'll have to pay for) that popped up on my right in Profile view that claimed "Monetize User Content" -"Grab content off your site from users and put it on T-shirts." roflol. This does provide some humorous aspect to me especially when you consider, I could get our ministry content out to a greater territory. ;)
- Melanie Reed
GOLDEN Rule: Don't put anything on any site/form/webpage that you may change your mind about. Once it's out there it will never disappear. imho
- walterh
@walterh, I hear what you're saying, and I definitely grok the spew of 'information wants to be free' (FTW!), but that's not really what's critical here. This is "boring" legal stuff...regardless of whether or not the data is available in some cache somewhere (which it is), this is FB asserting the right to use whatever you upload for it's own commercial purposes, forever. That's a whole different issue that "it never gets deleted anyway".
- Ken Kennedy
@ken I am not really trying to argue your points. I was trying to say that all forms like FB will at sometime try to sell your info when they reach a critical mass. A perfect example of this is the phone scam going on right now were people call you telling you that your car warranty will end soon. These people are calling me on my cell phone. I only give my cell to trusted contacts as it is the only real way to get a hold of me in real time. That so-called trusted contact or service has sold my info.
- walterh
@ken .....if you don't put personal info out on FB then when this happens you will not be regretting what you have done or posted.
- walterh
@walterh Just FYI, the car warranty thing isn't a sold data issue...it's just a "brute force" attack on phone #s (ie, they call them all). It's gotten so cheap to make phone calls, even LD, that much like email spam, the minuscule response rate they get pays for it. As for personal data on FB, again, I understand that, but it's not really what we're talking about. Consider a band that wants to share their music, but not intending to let FB monetize it if they get popular. They're out of luck.
- Ken Kennedy
So the expiry clause was in there when I signed up (i.e. if I leave they lose their rights over my content). If they have now changed the terms but I've not agreed to the new terms, then I'm not bound by them, right? Or did I miss a "we can change the terms whenever we feel like it and you're still bound to them" clause?
- Yan
@ken I understand your point. Let me ask you this. Has a case like this gone to court yet. PS the warranty people have never called me at home. Had that number for 20 years. Every other sale company calls me at home. I do see your point that it could be "brute force"
- walterh
The blog post has merit, the headline, not so much.
- jcunwired
I basically agree with Robert that this isn't shocking since Facebook hasn't respected user's much; however, I do think ascerting ownership to data already in the system crosses the line. This is similar to the Google Reader shared feed issue that Steve Gillmor railed on for a while.
- Robert W. Anderson
yeah, he reels em in with the hyperbole
- Josh Haley
hyperbole Josh? yeah that Bill of Rights crap is overrated. BTW Google fixed that problem.
- Steve Gillmor
Beyond the argument over who owns what and who's creating value for whom is a more interesting question, I think. Most people will not give a second thought to their rights to the intellectual property they create on Facebook. They just use it. They upload photos and videos and talk to each other. It strikes me that one thing Facebook is remarkably good at is capturing a user's...
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- David Erickson
hmmmm ... fascinating and important points being made here. However we are at the core talking about the morality and selflessness of corporations. The only way to own your own data completely is keep on your hard drive. Look at the terabytes of data Magnolia unfortunately lost last week. Their intentions were entirely altruistic, yet a technical malfunction intervened. We are in the midst of a radical shift and "ownership" is going to be defined by security, trust, and new elements ...
- Bankwatch
... that have yet to be defined. Do you trust Google? Do you trust your bank? Do you trust gmail Apps Premium? These are fundamental questions and the answer will define internet and our future. Market forces will take care of it, but getting there might be ugly.
- Bankwatch
It is a cheap and risk free business model for the service provider: The user generates all the content, is responsible for all legal consequences (even when the provider reuses the content in an unanticipated way), but the service provider may make all the profit out of it. whereever, forever. This business model was once called Web 2.0...
- Arnd Gronenberg
you're right. facebook should be used as a hub, flickr gives you CC options, it's not hard to set up a wordpress blog for the same, i think youtube are the last in the list. there's plenty of apps on facebook that will update your profile when you upload photos to flickr, or make a new blog post. they're not perfect but they're getting better.
- Terry O'Fee
They changed their mind: http://blog.facebook.com/
- Liron Eizenman
Most people wun care too much. But yes i agree it's creepy.
- Alekkus
Well, then there's the 25 Things you didn't know about in the Facebook TOS: http://bit.ly/25thingsTOS
- Steve Woodruff
To me it clear from Mark Z's post that the lawyers were tasked with drafting a revised TOU and blew it. ROLLBACK!
- Ryan
doesn't say much for their lawyers on the writing and the way the TOS was handled...
- Stuart Evans
from twhirl
This is the new age of transparency. The big CEOs will have publicly available pictures of them from college. Professional images will become humanized. Social media has allowed us to share everything about our lives and so we did. I thought Mark made a great point in his first post regarding the issue when he explained that in order to give the community the services that they want, certain legalities are necessary and must be represented in the TOS. We just have to get used to the new age.
- David Spinks
@David, if Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg too for that matter, are just as transparent as they force you to be then it would be fine. Until that moment it is pretty ridiculous that privacy only works one way. You must disclose everything and they take it all without providing the slightest clue what they actually do with it
- Alexander van Elsas
I wish someone would analyze TOS that bank credit cards, mortgages impose. The funny thing is that while Facebook is having to backtrack - it probably never would have screwed us over - but banks that increase rates from 3.9% to 39% over night - regularly do.
- Anshu Sharma
Good post, Robert. It's always been clear that Facebook has put their own interest in content assets first, but in fairness it's not so different that way than say...Friendfeed. One does pay a certain price for posting in Facebook, but to reach those who are more interested in relationships than in marketing their content, it's a good price oftentimes. I do think that over the next year that more publisher-friendly terms will come to Facebook, they've been lazy and now they'll have to catch up.
- John Blossom
Google Mobile - Sync (This is huge if it works well. Am trying it now). - http://www.google.com/mobile...
nmind, Jeff, James and 82 other people liked this
so far, no sync :(
- Mistletoe Glen
It seems to work great. Only 5 Google Calendars though.
- Wallace Wilson
I'd try it out but iPhone has this odd limitation of only one "Exchange" account at a time and I already sync with my Work Exchange. :(
- Paul Wade
Yes, this is ONLY useful if you don't already sync your iPhone to an Exchange server!
- Stephen Foskett
Love this. Hope that Apple end up supplementing lost MobileMe revenue with increased handset marketshare. Want to know if GoogleSync and MobileMe can be used in tandemn (until MobileMe subscription expires).
- Conor Ogle
Working well on WinMO so far, just needed to backup and import my outlook contacts into Google first. Looking forward to this thing moving
- Tyler Brownfield
Conor, I don't see why not. I have my work exchange server and my mobileme account (along with Yahoo, Gmail (email)) all on the same iphone and it all works great. I just wish I could add a second exchange account for Google.
- Paul Wade
Worked for me on my Windows Mobile, but I couldn't sync my calendar, as i'm already syncing elsewhere!
- Les Zaldor
Thanks. Do you think a one-time sync to get Google in line with MobileMe is going to be enough? I'm concerned about one overwriting the other.
- Conor Ogle
Google sync uses ActiveSync in Windows Mobile. This means I can't sync to both it and my work exchange server... such a bummer.
- Alan Le
Conor, MobileMe and Exchange Activesync are kept completely separate on the iPhone. No data crossover at all.
- Paul Wade
I like the thought, but I won't put it to use. I don't want my personal stuff, mixing with my work stuff anymore... Maybe another time, remember it's beta, but we all know google will keep it beta for like 2 years (i.e. gmail still beta) lol
- Jayson Flint
So what happens to my Address Book?
- Conor Ogle
Working here, fantastic - been waiting for this for a while. If you have multiple Google Calendars make sure to visit m.google.com/sync on the phone (not on the computer) and select the additional calendars you want to sync.
- Ben
I've had this for some time now using nuevasync.com... but, now I can sync directly to google, and remove nuevasync from the equation. nice.
- Neil Bernhart
This is a major game changer IMO. Why would any small business owner want Blackberry or Exchange servers at this point? GMail allows you to park a domain & gives you 7+ gigs for free. With OTA sync, you get the Blackberry-esque features, also for free. If I have 10-50 employees, I have the choice of hosting multiple servers onsite with multiple moving parts along with purchasing CALs, HW & SW maintenance, and dealing with never-ending storage needs. Or, I could let someone else do it for little to no cost.
- Peter Ghosh
oh, and beware... push eats battery life on the 3G like there's no tomorrow. if you can live with getting updates every 15 min, I would stick with fetch.
- Neil Bernhart
NuevaSync has been offering the same service from months on the iPhone and other phones. It can also do up to 8 calendars.
- Chris Williams
Only one calendar is synced from Google. Nuevasync supports multiple calendars.
- Jared B. Luther
Jared, you can sync up to 5 cals with Google Sync. Sadly, none of them can be shared calendars from what I'm seeing. Sticking with NuevaSync for now.
- Kevin C. Tofel
@Kevin - they can be shared. I'm viewing shared and even public calendars with Google Sync on my iPhone.
- Wallace Wilson
Is this one of those things that doesn't work with Google Apps for your domain? It doesn't seem to want to work for me.
- Ryan Anderson
I am a Google Apps user and I am getting nada. Me thinks I will be heading back over to Nuevasync.
- Matt Martin
@Peter, if I was a small business owner, one thing that I'd consider is the security. Google Apps doesn't give you any ability to manage the device. Both BES and Exchange allow you to remotely kill or hobble a device as well as push custom apps and security policies. You can get BES free for less than 10 devices or go to hosted Exchange/BES. Sure it costs you money, but businesses should be concerned about where all that data is going and being stored.
- Kenton
@Ryan, I found the fix. You need to go into the dashboard for your domain and enable the sync.
- Matt Martin
@Ryan and Matt: It DOES work on hosted domains. You need to login to your Google Apps admin control panel and enable sync.
- Peter Ghosh
@Peter, thanks for the heads up. Seems to be working well..
- Matt Martin
I think for individuals and small businesses this is going to be killer in which data security and device management can be a bit more lenient. I wish just sucks I'm stuck with Exchange already at work.
- Brian Bufalo
@Kenton - Good take on security. Given that this is using Activesync, I think the Google Apps-enabled kill switch is imminent (ActiveSync via Exchange has kill switch features). The fact that the domain's Google Apps admin has to enable sync'ing in the first place is a good start.
- Peter Ghosh
btw, 1 hour in and this feature is nerdtastic!!!!
- Peter Ghosh
Thanks for the tip on enabling it via the Google Apps dashboard; seems to work fine for me now.
- Mistletoe Glen
Nice! I didn't know about the activation from within the Admin panel of Apps for Domains, and now it's working great. Thanks Matt & Peter!
- Haggis (Sean Loyless)
Still no news and/or tricks on how to get the calendar to sync to the Nokia symbian phones?
- Henrik Söderlund
I don't have any options for additional calendars on m.google.com/sync, just the iPhone setup instructions. Is this an Apps bug?
- Haggis (Sean Loyless)
Tried setting it up on my HTC Mogul and it no work. Had to change the username to cjwelle%gmail.com for the user name to get the domain to show up. But after that no sync of any information. Not ready for primetime in my book.
- Uncle CW™
Setting up Google Sync now. updating my N82 firmware first. hope it wont delete my contacts list like it does for iPhone.
- Sunil Joseph
Wallace, thanks for correcting me. I wasn't able to see my shared calendars, but after your comment I thought about it. My shared cals are from a Google Apps account and our admin likely hasn't enabled it for that one. Thanks!
- Kevin C. Tofel
I've been using the version for BlackBerrys for a couple of months or so, but turned it off the other day as it kept retracting my appointments during syncs leaving me with an empty calendar and missed appointments! Not sure what was happening there, and it's hard to tell if there's a newer release for the BBs that's come out now too.
- Benjamin Watt
Sounds like a good idea but I can't get it set up. Keep getting "exchange account validation failed" but no clues as to what failed. Are there any restrictions on usage outside the US?
- Mark Warren
I use this on my BlackBerry and it works extremely well for me.
- Christopher Howie
from twhirl
I also found a problem here in germany - if you try to sync more than one calendar it said "this device is not supported" - adding ?hl=en to switch to english helped and I could sync all my shared and read only calendars: http://m.google.com/sync?hl=en
- Frank S.
Works perfectly for me. Now I can stop using nuevasync...
- Jorg Jansen
I've used the BlackBerry version for a few months now. It's great!
- Rob Boek
Well, If you are using and depending on /or can't get around another service, e.g. an Exchange server, in your cross sync calendar and contacts mix Google Sync is most likely not going to do much for you. Las time I checked, Google Sync assumes the dominant position and does not let you specify any sync conditions you'd might come to expect from other syncing apps. E.g. syncing contacts to and from your Google account not optional. I'd like to be able to tell Google how and what I'd like to sync, though.
- Vidar Andersen
If apple would simply support CalDav on the iPhone this would be a moot point. I can have iCal attached to Google Calendar and working off-line... but not the calendars on my iPhone. I don't get it...
- Brian Roy
Proof of the pudding for me will be how it handles alarms. If that works well, bye bye MobileMe!
- Chris Hearn
I wonder if using ActiveSync has any implications for Verizon users who have the $30/mo data plan for "Web Mail/Web Browsing", vs the $45/mo plan which is for "Syncing of Calendars/Tasks/Email/Web Browsing"? Could they be doing any packet capture by protocol?
- Jef
works awesome. i've been using nuevasync since i got the phone but was waiting till google did their own. now i'm happily waiting for them to support sync for tasks with.... ?
- tommy payne
from twhirl
NO, it doesn't work great. It has all the same problems with any other Exchange Sync. Your phone is "slaved" to the "exchange" - once that happens - no other contacts, no other calendars (with Google Apps you only get 1 calendar). The limitations of this pretty much out-weigh the up-side.
- Brian Roy
This is very tempting, except just this morning I was thinking that I need to start extracting myself from excessive dependence on the Google. I guess I could use this if I can figure out some other Google service to jettison.
- Erik S
I've been using Neuvasync for the past 9 or 10 months. It's a free Exchange service that interfaces with your Google calendar and contact store. It worked extremely well providing near real-time OTA synch between my iPhone, Outlook (with a Google account) and the web. I've now switched over to Google's Exchange service. Since Google was already hosting my contacts and calendar there was...
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- Troy Forster
from twhirl
I've noticed that if you setup Google Sync with your iPhone and have the OS X Address Book set to sync with Google, it appears the latter no longer happens. While OTA updates seem to work flawlessly between Google Contacts and the iPhone, if you intend to keep the Address Book in sync with the other 2 then something is in need of fixing.
- Scott Jarkoff
Any difference between Exchange and MobileMe push on the iPhone with regard to battery life?
- Chris Hearn
ilike :) works so far
- videopixil
How is this handling fields that Google doesn't have in Gmail, i.e. birthdays? I'm a little hesitant to just sync contacts specifically, because Gmail doesn't have the number of related fields that the iPhone or the Address Book app does.
- Aakar Shroff
its not new though... its existed on the blackberry for a loong time (and has been working quite well for me)... is the "new" just the version for the iPhone or am i missing something?
- simran
Currently Google Sync only supports Contacts for my Nokia N95 Too bad I use GooSync now for my calendar, but it only updates a couple of weeks ahead. Wish Plaxo had 2 way sync with Google Contacts. And that I could use any address book in gmail.
- nooble
Took a while to get this up and running well, but I've decided to forgo access to my work email/calendar to have my Google Calendar on my phone.
- Bill Glover
I have never been a big fan of Google's contacts system. If contact photos (which I use in my iPhone for caller ID) don't get synced they way Outlook does it, I won't bother. Google needs to overhaul the whole UI and feature set of it's contacts system. Right now it is probably the worst of all the main webmail services.
- Rolf Schewe
youll let us know?
- Richard Binhammer
from twhirl
I have a question for anyone who's used this so far. What happens with conflicts? How does it determine if a contact is the same and which one wins the conflict? Can this be set? It would be nice if the phone wins for phone number conflicts and Google wins for email address conflicts (possibly address, too), but that's a pipe dream, I guess.
- Chieze Okoye
Also, what happens with contact images? I don't want to overwrite the ones already on my phone but it would be nice to have some pulled from GChat for the rest of my contacts that don't have them set already (so I guess I would like phone to win contact image conflicts)
- Chieze Okoye
D'oh! only the main calendar on WinMob! Sucks! Oh well, guess I won't be using it now. Switching to Nuevasync, I guess.
- Chieze Okoye
Google just came out with "Latitude" which will show everyone where you are. http://m.google.com/maps... Discuss it here:
metalerik, J. D. Ebberly, Luke and 85 other people liked this
This looks like the payoff from the Jaiku purchase. Location aware applications are the way to go, I just don't know if it will reach the critical mass and flow necessary for it to become useful.
- Dave Senior
Nothin new here.Nokia had launched an App like this called "friendView" months ago. Although yes....this has a broader scope since it supports multiple platforms , rather than just symbian phones.
- Ray
Google Latitude makes my phone smarter than the Jaiku Nokia client ever did. I'm looking for connections bgoldbach@yahoo.com via Latitude.
- Bernie Goldbach
Big (and little) brothers (and sisters) will be watching me.
- Marc Pinter
I could see it gaining critical mass where others don't simply because it's Google.
- Jalada
anybody knows how to uninstall it? I'm feeling stalked since I activated it :-\
- Markingegno - Donato
When you visit the latitude page from an iPhone, you get a coming soon page. Native iPhone app in the works?
- Dave Senior
Looks really interesting! I am keen to explore it further. Oh, if anyone is interested I have a post with a couple thoughts here: http://pauljacobson.org/2009...
- Paul Jacobson
Link to Nokia FriendView : https://friendview.nokia.com/
- Ray
I like this function, hopefully it will get used by many people, it makes finding people much easier. Add me if you like: diff.us@gmail.com
- Uwe Schwarz
Hmm, how does this compare with FireEagle?
- Tyson Key
Burglars will find this very useful.
- AlexBowman
I'm still waiting on the next leap with location-based services. After using Jaiku, Plazes and numerous other LBS apps, nothing really new here, except becoming available to more people I guess... Who cares where your friend and relatives are if you can't communicate with them or exchange opinion on places, etc... For when the real contextual services integration?
- Rudy De Waele
This is privacy's nightmare, anyone has some info on link between NSA and Google ? (http://bit.ly/klmw)
- Christophe Pierret
Alex: only stupid ones will. How do you know who else is or is not in my home just because I'm not there?
- Robert Scoble
Christophe: privacy is dead, get over it.
- Robert Scoble
Every one can now be Mr Bourne & enact some CIA game - like having a chip implanted in your wrist !! Why on earth would I want anyone to track me down tho - unless I am treking in the Patagonian mountains
- viki saigal
@Robert feeling the same. If you want privacy don't use the Internet :)
- Orli Yakuel
Not convinced it will change my habits. It's cool technology, but it doesn't bring me value (personal view): http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2009...
- Alexander van Elsas
sorry Robert, but "privacy is dead" is a stupid argument. It may be dead for you, it is not dead for a lot of people.
- Andre
The future is mobile, Google understands that. Mobile and social. Look at Japan (a country not included in the available countries, by the way).
- Paul Papadimitriou
My life is an open (Mac) book ..he said ! @ Scoble
- viki saigal
missing search fucntionnality when invitating friends
- Frédéric Sidler
I think it's nothing dramatically new - others offer similar services - what's important is that it's Google. And that gets widespread attention and adoption readily. Piece at http://TheNextWeb.com on Latitude this morning - http://twurl.nl/ohhzrq - and a piece I wrote entitled 'Imagine there's no Google' which scared the crap out of a few people, for differing reasons! ( http://twurl.nl/0b0dx6 )
- David Petherick
Hmm, I recall certain early UMTS-enabled phones in the UK (mostly made by Motorola and NEC) having Assisted GPS functionality for use with mapping services provided by 3. Interestingly, the "Find Me" service that utilised it was discontinued ages ago, and I don't know of any services or methods of accessing that functionality with a webapp...
- Tyson Key
As for privacy, don't use the app if you don't want people to know where you are. besides, it's possible to enter any info you want. currently I am in Yokohama Japan, as far as this app is concerned.
- adam garrett
Latitude is pretty cool but as @mtrends (Rudy) said it's not exactly anything new. The fact that it's Google does mean it'll have far larger reach than any of the other similar mobile services I've tried in the past. Personally I would have loved to see GTalk integrated so you could chat to your friends through the same app. *That* would be a nice next step. (It is the year of conversation after all ;) - http://is.gd/i6Zn)
- Tarek Abu-Esber
Andre: your cell phone company knows exactly where you are if you are carrying a cell phone. So, not sure how this has any more privacy implications than carrying around a cell phone in the first place. With this I choose who sees my location. That puts me in charge of my privacy.
- Robert Scoble
Obviously they lack vision, given that Location-Based Services are a Big Thing(TM) as of late.
- Tyson Key
@Robert: I know, and I have been personally using brightkite for quite some time now -- I am just trying to say that privacy is not dead at all. http://www.eff.org/issues...
- Andre
and @Robert, personally I think the geo aware stuff should focus more on the paranoids. For example there is no mention of granular permissions on google latitude home. So some privacy sensitive person jumps on and say "oh fine, now everyone will be able to see where I am. not interested."
- Andre
Interesting to watch what people thinks about it in Twitter search: http://search.twitter.com/search...
- Orli Yakuel
Hi guys, Google scares us! We are running a LBS plus location contextual services integration (similar to brightkite) , so you can partecipate, comment, private messaging, etc... But Google has all but in separate properties, it could soon integrate Talk, MyMaps and now Latitude all together....
- Christian
Am I the only one who is not finding how to uninstall it [I'm on a laptop, using Gears]
- Markingegno - Donato
I have a love/hate relationship with Google, love the services, hate the monopoly. GeoLoc is a huge topic for Sergey and Larry, this is a strategic direction of Google. Latitude will succeed, because of Google's power on the internet and Google's strategic will. They changed the way internet works by simply clustering search results by GeoIP location. I now have to fight from France to be listed in search results in the UK or US (with an english-language site), I should have hosted my server in the US...
- Christophe Pierret
@scoble "That puts me in charge of my privacy"? Yes, Latitude lets you actively increase your visibility. But it doesn't limit your carrier from knowing where you are, whom you call, etc. It's a facade, not actual control. And, as cool and useful as it may actually be, privacy concerns will likely limit its mass appeal.
- Tim Peter
According to the site, currently supports only Android, Blackberry, Windows, and Symbian. iPhone and Java coming soon. ;-) @davesenior was right
- Danny Whitt
looks good, installed it on my SE w950i and works well. I like it.
- Parth Awasthi
Since it won't support my Country, I just set it from iGoogle - Sweet.
- Orli Yakuel
Hmm, does it work on Symbian OS/S60v2? Also, does it support GSM/UMTS triangulation for phones without a GPS chipset?
- Tyson Key
Robert do you want privacy to be dead? Your statement leaves no room for anything else. Privacy is constantly losing ground to social media, but there shouldn't be a trade off. Put the user in control, that is the only way privacy can be managed. Unfortunately there is no business model that supports such an obvious solution ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Alexander: I have learned over and over again that by trading my privacy I get way more back in return. So, I guess I am in the process of killing privacy in some form, yes. Certainly the world I live in is far different than the world my parents grew up in, privacy wise.
- Robert Scoble
I've been using a si,ilar app called nokia friendview from nokia beta labs. But google latitude will obviously overshadow it due to the mass support/appeal. I only wish google had integrated Gtalk (nokia friendview allows you to comment on other peoples statuses through the app) with the application so you could chat with the contact in real time ..in case they have not shared their number with you. But then again ... Would you really show your location to someone who doesn't have your number ? Comments ?
- Ray
@scoble I have to disagree that privacy is dead for everyone, it's dead for Web2.0aholics, for sure. Facebook / twitter / friendfeed / del.icio.us etc have public disclosure of personal information as a business model, and it brings value for PR-minded people (like U :-), for joe-the-plumber it is a whole different matter The value of public disclosure of personal information in this case is not well perceived..
- Christophe Pierret
You say you're concerned with privacy, but it seems you don't even tried to uninstall the app, do you? Did you succeed?
- Markingegno - Donato
It will only work if I can turn it on for different groups of friends at different times. Also, this is one more reason Facebook needs their own Maps solution.
- Jesse Stay
Christophe: I didn't realize that credit card data bases had anything to do with Web 2.0. Or cell phone services that know where you are every minute of every day (and who help out the government to find you if needed). Or the hundreds of thousands of video cameras that we don't even notice anymore like in Las Vegas Casinos watching our every move. Or that grocery store buying cards aren't reporting that you bought Diet Coke last night. Yeah, right, you have complete privacy. Keep on believing that.
- Robert Scoble
Wow! The first screenshot is from Istanbul! An 'easter-egg' for all of us living in Turkey! :-)
- Burak "cyrus" Bayburtlu
Sadly can't see any integration options and no iPhone for now. Hope soon.
- Kris Haamer
@scoble Your point about "privacy is dead" and "puts me in charge of my privacy" are contradictory. I think you're right on the first one. But limiting whether or not my friends can see where I am is not my biggest privacy concern. My friends aren't the ones I worry about.
- Tim Peter
It's reasonable to expect a certain lack of privacy when in public places but I agree with some of the others, this is a little creepy.
- Mattb4rd
@Robert your privacy isn't dead, you are making conscious decisions to trade it for value. And that is the way it should work for everyone. Point is that most don't understand this or know how to deal with it. By control I'm not saying lock it up. I'm saying I want to be the one that decides, not Facebook, Google or whoever.
- Alexander van Elsas
@Christophe I agree about your concern of privacy, in this delicate matter. At Mobnotes.com for location sharing we use this simple approach: we let the user broadcast his position, we don’t do automatically. So it’s up to you to send and share your location and let your friends Know where you are. That’s it.
- Christian
@Robert The fact that you and I believe that it's foolish to believe there still is as much privacy as we'd like is pointless. Patriot act was the definitive blow on privacy. What is interesting is that many people believe that they do have some privacy and want to retain some. "Personal data" is the Web2.0 money. Part of the success of Facebook is how they allow you to have some "perceived" control on disclosure of information
- Christophe Pierret
Well at least Google didn't buy Brightkite which means Brightkite will continue to develop. Bkite is my favorite location based service. They've had an iPhone app for a long time now.
- Rutger Blom
@alexendar I'm with Scoble on this one. Facebook, Google and the like are not the big threats to privacy. Mobile phone carriers, credit card companies and local governments are. The data trail we leave unconsciously (i.e., credit card purchases, phone calls, security camera images) are far more troubling than those we leave consciously on social networks.
- Tim Peter
Burak: actually the first image centers the map to your own location. Mine is in Athens.
- Panagiotis Astithas
I totally get how this could be cool say, on the G1. I mean, once again a new app/feature comes out that merely hints at what's around the corner. I mean, I agree with Ray above, Nokia Chat aka Contacts on Ovi - does the same thing, but with a lesser known service... However it does have full contacts integration AND chat enabled. Jaiku was only a few years ahead of its time huh? The 'active contacts book' is finally happening...
- James Whatley
Ahh not available for Turkey!
- Ahmet Alp Balkan
common sense, people! be wary with who you share your information with! i just manually set mine to the entire town. good luck finding me in the 30,000 people who live here. to be honest i like the brightkite setup better, googles version is a little dodgy at the moment.
- Terry O'Fee
@Tim The threat isn't related to a single service but to ignorance and the inability to control privacy ourselves. Current web business models simply prevent us being in charge of privacy ourselves. Privacy isn't dead, we just need business models that enable us to be responsible for it ourselves so that we can make the trade offs Robert is talking about
- Alexander van Elsas
After all my ramblings and concerns about privacy, I will probably be using Latitude nonetheless once it gets integrated on Windows Mobile or iPhone or Android (web browsing on mobile devices is so boring)
- Christophe Pierret
not available in South Korea, sigh
- Reed
Each and every "where am I " social media startup (Brightkite I'm talkin' bout you!) can this morning bend over and kiss their ass goodbye. Interesting to see what type of integration will be coming.
- Wayne Schulz
I always wanted to know where I am
- paul mooney
The lurkers over at TweetStalk suggest they have a three-phase roadmap; wonder if linking TweetStalk to Latitude is part of that creepy plan.
- Art Beecher
I thought about this more during my commute to the office. What worker privacy implications arise if I subscribe all of my field technician's cell phones, which the company owns, and checked up on them throughout the day?
- Mattb4rd
@Tyson Key: yes it works with cell based location. Less accurate than GPS, but accurate enough for many use cases.
- Davide D'Incau
@Reed. You can also get it from http://m.google.com/latitude on your mobile
- Ray
I think google is taking privacy seriously. They also have information about that in their help pages. For example, they say "Google Latitude only reports your last updated location and does not keep a history of previously reported locations. " http://www.google.com/support...
- Davide D'Incau
Still doesn't integrate with Blackberry GPS on Vz network, which was opened up a few months ago now. :-(
- cmiper
I read somewhere in the marketing material that google promote it as real-time. It does not seem to be real-time at least on symbian devices. Example, when you update the status text it won't immediately update on your gtalk profile. there is actually quite a long delay.
- Davide D'Incau
I'm checking it out by downloading Google Gears, which automatically detects where I am via my computer. However, it's detecting where my nearest host's location is, and not mine. Still in the same vicinity, so it's ok.
- Shevonne
I like the fact that you can update manually as well, I really don't want to pinpoint certain exact locations, but more of a wider area sometimes.
- cmiper
True. It's always good to be given options.
- Shevonne
@Shevonne same thing on the Blackberry, the GPS isn't available to GMaps, so it uses tower location, to show your approximate location.
- cmiper
I'm using it now. Just have to wait for more people to install it.
- Richard A.
Some more buzz here: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets...
- Christian
I'd be interested to know what google plan on doing with the data. While there are indeed many different ways in which your activities are being captured, the really sensitive ones tend to have massive restrictions on what they can do with that data. Privacy is your right to keep data about you from being public knowledge if you wish and only you can allow it to be shared. Privacy is not and never will be dead unless all of this data is in the public domain.
- alphaxion
I can't believe they have not unveiled a G1 app at the same time!
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
@christophe yes, privacy nightmare. I'll test it and remove it immediately.
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
not really big news, actually. most of mobile twitter clients I've tested on both iPhone and G1 already propose to post a GPS info with associated map. It's twitter + localization but without twitter :)
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
I wonder what all those people saying that Twitter, Facebook or personal blogging is exhibitionism will think about this!
- Jordi Soler
"My friends aren't the ones I worry about. - Tim Peter" <--- Enough said.
- Derrick Burns
Awwwww... No Philippines...
- Ron
Wow - everyone has completely missed the enormity of this. First, the update is real time (I tested it this morning). Second, Google is showing that it's not a play for the (profitless) social media stage but more likely a bid to get users to give up their location in exchange for ....... LOCATION AWARE ADVERTISING!! Come on all you smarty pants -- nobody can figure this out but me?
- Wayne Schulz
wayne its obvious to me, im not that smart even :)
- atul abraham
from twhirl
Doesn't support my phone so it's dead to me.
- Morton Fox
Whoa, it's apparently in a new 3.0 version of Google Maps for my Blackberry. Sweet!
- David Wilson
I realize I already give Google a mountain of my data, but the idea of posting my exact location to Google and the internet at large seems like a cross between really egotistical and downright creepy in a George Orwell sort of way.
- Eric P
So we are now that much closer to the adsense on our coffee mugs, with ads relevant to our breakfast conversations. (yippie!!)
- April Russo (app103)
With Latitude, I'm okay with getting relevant ads. Like being reminded that Denny's is giving away free breakfast after the Super Bowl while I drive by. Or a coupon from the local super market. However, I would like to see more Gtalk integration or tweeting abilities to ask What are you doing?
- Tyler Brownfield
yes - i like it - much better mapping than Bright Kite but miss easy photo integration (or did I just not spot it in latitude? -surely is Google Maps layer)
- Julian Edward
Privacy International identifies flaws in Google Latitude: http://bit.ly/HPmJ
- Christophe Pierret
Wow lots of people seem scared that they'll be really stupid and share their location with people they don't know. Why would they do that? And for thoe worried about people seeing your house is empty for the weekend why not set your location manually to home while you are away? Or just turn off Google Maps on your phone and it won't update. Easy.
- Luke
Why I’m leaving Twitter! - http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2009...
Susan Beebe, Neill Adamson, Tyson Key and 30 other people liked this
Hi Kevin. We are new to Twitter and I just happened to catch your tweet on leaving. It led me to your blog and I love it so count that we will start to follow you through this RSS. Cheers!
- Rob Cosgrove
Sorry to hear you're stepping back from Twitter, Jim - though I totally understand your reasoning. When someone has generated a huge following, like you have, I would imagine managing it is very time consuming indeed.
- Alysson (SEOAly)
Indeed, I have a fraction of followers as you, and I find it to be a time suck and exhausting. I know there are tools to thread the tweets, etc., however, I'm on "tool" and "app" overload. In any regard, I'll join you here...I've been on FF for a bit, yet I have only just started using it in earnest. Cheers!
- Regina Rainwater
I understand your decision to move to FF and I think I'll also explore that option! We'll talk soon as you're one of the people I love to talk to.
- Holli B.
I am very sorry to hear you are leaving Twitter, though with the time you spent on it, I certainly understand why. I haven't quite "drank the FriendFeed Kool-aid," but I would be very curious to hear your take as to the benefits of FF vs. Twitter as some time passes. (If there are benefits.) Much respect to you.
- Jennifer Mitchell
Hey Jim, I hear you, Friend Feed is certainly a better filter however the interface needs a Deck. Hopefully a fully featured one is not far away. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive... If this becomes a fully featured reality I don't think I will need a web "browser" any more, just a web page viewer.
- Digital Ministry
Jim, only for you would I try to figure out yet one more computer "thing." I am already on computer savvy overload! If you get a second, would you please tell me where to go to learn about friendfeed? I miss you!
- ClaudiaBroome
Would never even have given Friend Feed another thought: one man can change the fortunes of a social networking platform.
- coffee_offline
Friendfeed really is the best...!
- James Fridley
I would stay on Twitter, but use FriendFeed to view twitter.
- Paul Kinlan
from Friend Deck
Digital Ministry, what do you think I need to do make FriendDeck fully featured?
- Paul Kinlan
from Friend Deck
Hey Paul, thanks for building FriendDeck, Its pretty cool. Drop me an email and I will send you my suggestions. brad@digitalministry.com.au
- Digital Ministry
from Friend Deck
Jim, I'm hoping you'll count me as one of those you will stay in contact with through friendfeed. I value all I've learned from you and your contribution to Twitter and now Friendfeed, either way.
- Kelli Parisian
Not all twitterzens are marketeers. Good luck but don't blame Twitter because you can't time manage two things at once.
- Phil Boiarski
Twitter can definitely be a 'blackhole' of time.
- Traci Knoppe
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, you've given me something to think about with my own Twitter use.
- Andy Beal
Friend feed can also integrate back into your comments on your blog if you work on it :)
- Doug aka Nullvariable
I too found it was hard to keep up & too much time on my bum in front of this screen! Thanks for the tip on friendfeed...we'll see if I can get this figured out :) You are stuck with me following you around like a lost pup! lol
- Jaimie Hernandez
Being a newbie to social networks and blogging, I too have spent a lot of time just on Twitter. I'm not having the same problem as you are but just knowing your situation is understandable and gives me some perspective. I have subscribed to your news letter and hope to learn more from you. Thanks!
- Carol
Jim-- just follow back only the people you want to interact with. Stop keeping an eye on every new follower. You'll just run into the same problem with friendfeed. It's not a "tool" problem, it's a "wanting to do it ALL" problem. You don't have to keep everything two-way - it's just not possible (that's what managing "fame/celebrity" intelligently comes down to, you know -- accepting that).
- Stephanie Booth
Hi Jim - I'm really sorry to hear you have left Twitter - I have just set this up to follow you here. Still getting to grips with it! Hope you are well :-)
- Leila
WOW! Thanks for the comments. Twitter was fun, enjoying FriendFeed now. Had almost 100% positive response. Great not to have 200 DM's waiting for me each day. They call FF a hose of information - BS! Try using a 20k strong twitter network for 24 hours :) Only people who didn't get my point, were all following less than a few thousand. This is easy and a LOT more fun for me too. Thanks again! It's all about freedom of choice.
- Jim Connolly
With that many followers, Jim, I see your point. I still have a small following and it's still manageable, but I can see where it will get to the point of being impossible to manage. I've been using FF for awhile now, sending what I find via StumbleUpon & other services here - and then broadcast out to Twitter. I look forward to your future articles.
- Erich Miller
Nice post Jim. :o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
Jim - Stephanie Booth is right. IMHO you needed to alter the way your fame lets you manage Twitter, not leave it. 22,000 people benefited from your insight... even if they didn't engage you - but they always had the chance if need be. You will just run into the problem here eventually and be forced to manage another problem. You're happy not to have 200 DM's waiting? What? You don't want 200 people to interact? Or weer they all fluff DM's. What is the diff b/t that and 200 comments here on FF?
- Michael J. Pratt
Michael. Thanks for the kind words. 95% of the DM's were people asking me to tweet links for them or asking me to 'recommend' them to my followers. What you call 'fluff.' Unless I am missing something (if I am please explain it) I totally fail to see what you and Stephanie warned me of - that I can have this same DM problem here? Is there something about FF I need to know about, I would REALLY appreciate someone telling me. Had a 100% positive experience here so far. Thanks Michael.
- Jim Connolly
Those who followed Jim over to FriendFeed and are new here may find the links I've included in my FriendFeed Quick Start Post useful. See http://www.growmap.com/friendf.... We have some of the same types of issues here but since Paul DOES participate at times I'm still hoping he'll pull some of his more serious FF promoters in as advisors. That hasn't happened yet so far as I know but we do have the FF Feedback room at http://friendfeed.com/rooms....
- Internet Strategist
One word of advice for anyone new to FF. Subscribe judiciously and let the power of Friend of Friend do the heavy lifting.
- AJ Kohn
Just had someone suggest to me that you left Twitter for FF due to FF offering you shares etc. I know it's not true but you might want to knock that rumour on the head!
- Gregor Spowart
I've been telling people for weeks that "engagement" is the key to the mutual benefits of twitter. But, if I get to the same status as you, having to spend all day filtering followers and DMs, then I'd set up a twitterfeed and say goodbye to the little blue bird too
- David Bradley
@Gregor - Shares in FriendFeed? It amazes me how people come up with this stuff. It's flattering that they wrongly assume that the FF people even know I exist. :-)
- Jim Connolly
Jim, welcome to FF! You will note that it is impossible for me to "send" you anything... all I can do is engage in conversation on a thread of yours, or "call out your name" on a thread of mine. And that's why this whole thing scales well, is real-time-friendly, and allows you to follow up on conversions at YOUR convenience. And FYI, I'm echoing FF to twitter but not the reverse...so people know where I am. You may not want to do that however!
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
Richard, thanks for the welcome! Your point is a good one - people were telling me yesterday that I would end up with the SAME problem here, as I had with 23k followers DM'ing me on Twitter. I'm about 10 days in as a regular FF user & it's been 100% positive & extremely enjoyable. I'm finding so much useful content here.Thanks ;-)
- Jim Connolly
hi jim, i was going to ask you the same thing, that do you really relate with those thousands and do they relate back, cos from what i am noticing most dont even interact, they just follow and unfollow and do the cycle over and over. but i still love twitter cos of the people i have met, sometimes i just make my updates private so as to prevent random people from adding me.... look forward to reading ur friend feed
- elnatobi
Couldn't agree more with you about the threaded conversations. They are richer on FF without the 140 character restriction.
- Neill Adamson
Elnatobi: Twitter has the 'numbers' but lacks the ability for people to REALLY communicate. I used to have my conversations with my followers on my blog. INTERESTINGLY almost all of the Twitter followers who were interested in actually having a conversation are here on FF too!
- Jim Connolly
Neill: Threaded conversations is something Twitter really needs to start offering. Otherwise, as services like FF gain more mainstream coverage, they will start nibbling into Twitter's user base.
- Jim Connolly
Where's the 'puter? - http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
April Russo (app103), LonelyBob, Kevin and 76 other people liked this
Does anyone feel a little scammed! Cmon, SUPEROBAMAMAN doesn't have a computer running Google Earth yet?
- Steve Rubel
He's been in the office for less than 24 hours . . . no one on the first day of the job has a desk that looks like it's theirs. 8-)
- LJF Wolffe
You are all missing it: His ENTIRE desktop IS the computer. He's calling in his prefs for wallpaper and icons.
- Morgan Haley
I don't think he has a cellphone. I know they said he might be able to keep his black berry. But, I never saw anything saying that he is able to keep it.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
It's built into the surface of the desk and blends when he isn't actively using it or defaults to wood when the phone rings.
- Martha
I don't think that desk gets a computer. There is a private office off the main room. But really, what do we think he does all day, type bills in Word and surf Wikipedia? He is constantly moving and shaking. Information is looked up for him and placed on his desk at his request. I'll be suprised to see a computer on that desk.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
IT is probably late in setting it up. Typical!
- Jim Goldstein
I did hear yesterday that the Press Secratery was having problems getting logged on to the computer.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
I always loved that desk...very fancy rugged.
- Justin Oberman
This picture is what we've waited for for more than a year and all you have to say is "where's the 'puter?"Jesus Christ.
- teh Dork Knight aka Kenny
You probably wouldn't be satisfied until the Oval Office was the first beta version of a Holodeck running on Linux-based software.
- teh Dork Knight aka Kenny
But...you're right. I noticed that this morning. No laptop, and a 1995 phone setup. WTF?
- Jim Mitchem
His first day on the job and you expected him to be on the social networks? :)
- Morton Fox
@Chris Thanks, I hadn't seen that news.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
Hey, he just moved in. It's not like he brought his own in. Besides, what if there is an enormous workstation set up in that little room where Monica and Bill did the dress-staining?
- Phil Boiarski
I imagine he'll just bring his Mac over. http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Steve Garfield
from twhirl
Dude. Obama so doesn't need a computer. I'm sure he's got some neural interface or something we just can't see that sends Twitter straight into his optic nerve, ya know?
- Ken Sheppardson
It's in the desk? It probably talks too, like the MCP from Tron...uh oh.
- Rob Haas
Hey Steve, did u think of the title to this share?
- Zee.
Okay, so when the President rings the IT Help Desk for support, who answers, and where are they based, and has it been outsourced overseas? :)
- Chris Eldridge
@Zee yes. PR training! I got you here, right? :-)
- Steve Rubel
they probably are installing Windows 7 on it as we speak.....! Until then Blackberry only, I guess.
- Joe Buhler
Deleted a comment for profanity.
- Steve Rubel
ffs steve! ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
so he gets windows mobile for official use, and a berry for personal? Since when was any windows OS secure??
- Ian May
can't remember where but I read he was going to be the first US president to use a laptop in the oval office.
- ursi
The phone setup is pretty impressive (well it was once). It's a special phone with all types of encryption devices built-in. To buy one you have to undergo a full background check & a bunch of other security checks.
- Steven Cains
He just shifted into the office. Give him some time to get d lappie!
- Jason
You just know that Steve Jobs is hard at work on a custom job for Obama.
- Steven Perez
Not so sure about that, Steven. Not a huge number of macs in governmental offices.
- Mr. Gunn
it's a giant, wood panel Surface device
- ian kennedy
+1 ian kennedy! LOL
- Susan Beebe
You know how it goes, IT wasn't notified. It will take a couple of weeks for them to get one ready. I'm wondering where that RED phone sits ..
- Tom Parish
I think his specially tailored blackberry is all the computer he needs.
- imabonehead
LOL Steve :) Great title, seriously... :)
- Zee.
Zee, thanks. I gotta blog on this subject. It's a skill we all need in this day and age (especially if you want to influence)
- Steve Rubel
I think I remember that the president has another office attached to the oval office where a computer and messier paperwork sits. I think there has been mention of this re: Clinton and bush's use of email.
- Scott Gatz
I reckon there's a den with beanbags, a beer fridge, snacks, chilled music, and a Mac just off the Oval Office.
- John Samuelson
WIth Google Killing Products, Is Reader Next? - http://www.micropersuasion.com/2009...
Ravi, Wade Dorrell, Marcus Beagley and 34 other people liked this
I hope not. It's a convenient, reasonably functional way to check on my fav feeds. I don't always want to launch a separate client for that. Hop back to my Gmail tab, select Reader and I'm good to go. I also like full feed readers and ones that show images and clickable video links.
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
2 syllables: FeedDemon
- Glenn Slaven
I can boil this down simply: if it's not core search or part of Google Apps or currently monetized, it's at risk or at minimum will be monetized.
- Steve Rubel
feed demon is three syllables.
- Scot Mcphee
FeedDemon: 3 syllables. I won't mind going back to NetNewsWire. Also 3 syllables.
- Graham English
oh, and yeah, google reader is awesome. unfortunately i reckon they will monetise it no matter what blogs think. they could include their ads in a way that doesn't stop people advertising in their feeds. e.g. a side bar, like in gmail.
- Scot Mcphee
d'oh!, my point still stands!
- Glenn Slaven
Data, data, data. GReader may not be directly monetized but you bet they are mining the attention data just as Ask is mining Bloglines attention data. Lots of juice tidbits in there to support behavioral targeting for example and than some. With nearly 70% of the RSS reader market share, GReader is here to stay.
- Bill Flitter
No way
- Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct
@Ed but they will need to monetize it. Maybe Flitter can help.
- Steve Rubel
@Bill but within a small market. Why not push it broader?
- Steve Rubel
@Steve. Agreed. But I think it's a core property. I can't remember the fine print, but I think they can data mine Reader same as Gmail, correct?
- Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct
Ike from the blog's comments is right, and I'd like to hear more on what he thinks will happen.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Steve. Not sure I understand your comment, "But within a small market. Why not push it broader?"
- Bill Flitter
Short version: "No."
- Jeff
Note that last comment is from a senior Google exec.
- Steve Rubel
Thank gawd, I love Reader, it's easily the best aggregation tool I've used, and I've used lots. The new design was great, the mobile versions are great, it works great as an Web App in Chrome, and I can only see it getting better.
- Will Higgins™
i hope not, I hope people will clock on to syndication and they could monetize via contextual ad-sense - perhaps they could merge it with gmail to increase awareness
- Franz Sittampalam
from twhirl
Nope, Reader is my inbox for RSS feeds. They wouldn't kill it because I need/use it would they? =)
- B2B Specialist
Google Reader is basic for my online activity: icurrently use it not only to keep in sync with my feeds but also as a blogging platform (i've got a blog post about this if you want more details: http://mirkofm.tumblr.com/post...). Moreover, its mobile interface is huge and i will definitely miss it if they're putting it aside.
- mirko
I am disappointed that Notebook is not going any further. I use it all the time when researching things and for organizing notes for meetings.
- Kevin Shannon
I kept away from Evernote because of Google Notebook, it had enough functionality for my needs... I will have to reconsider Evernote.
- Claudio Calligaris
For those of you with too many notes to count...you can export them to Google Docs. Tools / Export to Google Docs.
- Claudio Calligaris
They do monetize it indirectly through feedburner and adsense for feeds - the more users they get reading feeds the more will see those ads. Plus Reader is so heavily tied into iGoogle that it barely makes sense to look at them as two products.
- Eric P
I don't think google reader will broaden it's audience unless it provides some additional ways to view the posts that are independent of which feeds it's in.
- Shawn McCollum
I don't care for Google reader and I can't like it. But the end of the developing of Notebook was the worst news of this year for me. I used it every day, many times to save links to post and I couldn't find anything as good as it for me. That's really sad and none of their suggestions have the same features or usability as it.
- Bibi
Feedly is the future of Reader.
- Kevin Gamble
I agree with Bill, Reader is a goldmine of attention data. It may not directly generate revenue, but it is still valuable to Google. Google could also choose to directly monetize it. It wouldn't be too hard to throw contextual ads into the interface without being disruptive. And lastly, I'm not sure it's the future of Reader, but Feedly is pretty cool, and getting cooler all the time.
- Robert Clockedile
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