A lot of my real life friends have accounts on twitter but don't really use it. They all use Facebook though. Twitter seems like it is a great toy for spammers, marketers and social media enthusiasts. Am not convinced it will ever be as mainstream as Facebook/YouTube.
I suspect it will be exactly as mainstream as Youtube but it won't survive the experience.
- Adewale Oshineye
Umm.. YT is probably used by 500 M+ ppl.. I am not really sure Twitter will be that popular. What do you mean - "It won't survive the experience"?
- Bindu Reddy
Twitter is essentially a tool for monologues.
- Vishy
According to the leaked docs published by Twitter (which I couldn't resist reading) they're aiming to be a service for a billion people. Assuming they only get an equivalent reach and demographic to Facebook they'll still have achieved a kind of ubiquity in certain countries. However I don't think Twitter's simplicity/primitiveness would be appreciated by a mainstream userbase nor do I...
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- Adewale Oshineye
To use a an oft used quote - " Facebook is about who you used to know - Twitter is about who you would like to know ".... I personally use twitter and find it very good .... it all depends on the quality of the people you follow ..... yes there may be a twitter killer out there ... FF so far has not done a great job ... but for now .. Twitter is pretty good ......
- Vidya Bhandary
it's already on it's way outeeeee, passing fad
- sofarsoShawn
Twitter is how I set my status everywhere else and little else to me anymore.
- Michael W. May
If you look at Twitter as a message bus, and a means of keeping track of events (whatever events interest you), then it's very effective (in those respects more effective than FF). I never understand why it has to be an either/or situation
- Deepak Singh
It probably depends on the peers one follows on Twitter. For me Twitter has been a nice way to keep track on Indian politics and interesting quotes, links regarding it and has been immensely useful. Spammers are pervasive everywhere.
- Bharat Shetty
It depends on what your needs are but yes I think unless they add a killer option they will start to struggle against facefeed.
- Daryl Hunt on FF
On Friendfeed, I share/follow my interests. On Facebook, I share/follow what's happening in my & my friends lives. On Twitter, I do both. I still think there's plenty of room for growth for Twitter. I think it will eventually eclipse blogging, and approach/pass the volume of IM users.
- Adam Kazwell
That is *exactly* why FF will become more mainstream than twitter.. try explaining how to tweet to your parents (who are finally comfortable with email)!
- Chris Myles
You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Neat feature, but it's more focus on big shiney new features, while ignoring the glaring issues in need of polish in the site we currently have.
- Matthew DeVries
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ?
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
Great way to keep up with those you're most interested in; things you don't want to miss.
- Diego Barros
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
We've been acquired by Facebook! We are really excited about joining the Facebook team. (Note: FriendFeed will continue to operate - see the blog post for details)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
I am hoping this will lead to nice integration for cross posting! Currently using Twitter App on FB to post and I hate those ff.im links that end up on Facebook.
- Ivan Zlatev
it was good while it lasted, Friendfeed. :(
- holly
"FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team." Those are NOT encouraging things to read as a FF user.
- Scott of Two Countries
Sniff... not sure if I'm excited about this. But I have enormous respect for the FriendFeed team... so, I assume they believe in the move as more than an exit strategy.
- Michael Leggett
@#$& that's all I have to say. For now.
- Zachary TG
Facebook should have been aquired by Friendfeed. Why they hell would you give up your better product to a worse one? Did none of you give a shit about this service to begin wiht?
- Matthew DeVries
Coolest web 2.0 site I've ever seen & used. I hope things don't derail. Ads will be coming soon, which is fine, but.... then what 's next? Please no quizzes!
- Ben Hanten
Who would have thought that after Facebook were shamelessly being "inspired" by FriendFeed, the inevitable would have happened?
- Tyson Key
I'm pissed off. I wan to throw away the whole Internet :
- DarkBls
Hey guys, keep in mind that Facebook is blocked in workplaces across the nation. 250 million casual users commenting about last night's party does not intelligent conversation make.
- Hector
I really can't see how FB would buy FF only to shut it down. There are way too many innovations and features FF has that FB honestly needs. I'm looking forward.
- Harry Wolff
Oh, this does not make me happy. Not at all! I've stayed off of Facebook intentionally and FriendFeed is my favorite social network. This is like when the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. :>(
- Larry Hawes
i have stopped using FB for the most part and liked FF alot more. now FF will go the way of FB. screwed again.
- Joe Silence
Congratulations. Enjoy the new challenges of acquisition, and I'm looking forward to the result!
- Wade Dorrell
Berge Gazen beat your score in Mafia Wars
- Berge Gazen
Enjoy your fat paychecks, guys. You've sold us out.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Bravo Bret! Been following your successes ever since we had the opportunity to work together on the YellowPages.ca / Google Maps Canada deal. Congrats!
- Sebastien
I wished it was Google or even Yahoo!, instead...
- Tyson Key
i really hope ff stays as it is. fb is kinder carder while ff is a great tool.
- jkkmobile
Not sure what to make of this. It could eiter be a big win or a huge fail.
- dorn
It could have been Microsoft, which would have been worse for everyone. :(
- Tyson Key
Can I take this opportunity to say I HATE facebook?
- Alex Scrivener
seems the only ppl happy here are the ones in the biz or who stand to profit from the merger.
- Joe Silence
I guess we should get ready to get poked by our supposed friends and have various shit thrown at us? Plus 5,000 requests by apps that nearly all suck.
- Joey Gibson
There is zero way this could have been a win for anyone, but the now rich founders.
- Matthew DeVries
If I have to go to FB to use FF then it's a lost cause
- Randy Pollock
Painful. And apparently I completely misunderstood what FF was trying to accomplish both technically and as an organization. I guess Facebook must have dangled a pretty big bag of money in front of them.
- Ken Sheppardson
FriendFeed is Dead! Long Live FriendFeed! :/
- Tyson Key
I will reserve judgement, i don't like or use FB but if FF maintains it's current goodness i don't care who cuts the checks.
- Steve C
I hope this doesn't turn into an APP filled hunk of crap. I love FriendFeed, it was the untouched gem of microblogging. I don't want Mafia Wars invited in my FriendFeed!!! Congrats on the sale though.
- Jay Farmington
@Philipp: until the new masters start flexing their muscles and bringing in their own people to enforce their own vision.
- Joe Silence
I read the blog post and one statement stands out to me "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being." The time being. This is not just bad, I think it may be #FAIL
- berchman
Facebook obviously liked FriendFeed a long time ago. Why would they have copied so many features (feed item comments and the "Like" action, to name a couple) otherwise? It was only logical for this to happen eventually. Doesn't mean I like it, but acquisition is part of the game. I have the same feeling I did when SocialThing! was acquired by AOL, though.
- Voyagerfan5761
"Relationship Status: It's complicated" comes to mind. ;)
- Tyson Key
Wow, I finally sign up, and read this. This could end up being a very bad thing for FF fans: "Your FriendFeed friend just signed up on this poll, would you like to too?"
- Brian Bommarito
Congrats guys. And thanks for your continuos effort in helping promote and integrate web services, like mine, Wakoopa. That's awesome and I hope FB gets better because of it.
- Robert Gaal
This will give FriedFeed the attention it deserves. Otherwise it would have been a geek thing forever.
- Michael Netsch
Will there be a super poke feature launched tomorrow?
- Matthew DeVries
aw, this sux!! Congrats to the Friendfeed team though!
- acedanger
Does this mean that we'll be seeing an influx of webcam spammers, a la Twitter? Along with abolishment of the rooms feature, crappification of the search feature, and more "privacy features" that really just put more nails in the openness coffin?
- Tyson Key
Some people will do whatever their friends request........
- Michael Muller
I really don't see why people would be anything but excited about this Facebook freindfeed deal. Great news as far as I am concerned. The Friend feed team is going to go over facebook and make it that much easier to connect, share... isn't that what the social web is about?
- Kevin Murray
I know a lot of people who use Facebook and enjoy it and that's fair enough. It's just not my cup of tea. The chaps from Friendfeed will get rich and the technology will get absorbed in Facebook but I can't see Friendfeed continuing in anything like it's present form.
- Paul Nash
Don't be so negative, something good might eventually come of this...
- Tarmo Aidantausta
Congrats! I know you all must be crazy excited right now.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
chance for FriendFeed to become more mainstream... congrats FriendFeed team!
- Jeroen De Miranda
Nothing could make me happier than if they integrated the good tools from FriendFeed into Facebook, which is where all my friends are. So a big "yay!" from me.
- Ian Betteridge
happy for you guys, but not for all of us
- Flavio
congratulations. this is going to be interesting.
- Dave Beckett
I think I preferred the non-mainstream version of FriendFeed...
- Tyson Key
I'm turning on my black shirt, my black trouser, my black socks, my black shoes. Although I probably must be happy for you.
- Ton Zijp
NASTY NASTY BAD BAD. But we'll see...
- Daniel Morgan
Given that the FriendFeed team has never been anything but awesome & respectful of its community, I think it's unfair for people to assume that the Facebook acquisition is going to change that.
- Jess Lee
Why in god's name are we flying over this shark?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
- Matthew DeVries
Facebook is like a giant who listens to nobody. Please keep your attitude but I don't think you will be able to do so.
- Burak "cyrus" Bayburtlu
I don't know, Like it? or dislike it?
- Ömer Balamir
What happens to all the content that we've created and imported here, and the associated metadata? Will all that disappear into the ether?
- Tyson Key
If the FriendFeed guys can make FaceBook useful and responsive again, this seems like a pretty positive step!
- Robin Barooah
Robin, the Facebook users don't want that I'm afraid.
- Rutger Blom
I have big loss of data concerns. See http://ff.im/6pHjo Is there any way to archive all my FriendFeed posts, likes, comments, and pictures (friendfeed-media.com) off-line? Can some Archive.org-like snapshots of FriendFeed be made (Once a month starting Sept 2009)? I'd like to see the cross-links between my posts & other people's posts, even in 2020. -
- Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell: the FriendFeed site is not shutting down. Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users.
- Bret Taylor
I just overheard a coworker mention FriendFeed. This is how the world ends...
- CannonGod
kafa sayımı yapıp köyü satan ağalar geldi aklıma
- Alper Ömer Esin
Then provide us with a way to easily make a back-up of all of our posts and all of the posts we have Liked and Commented on.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want it to be handed off to Facebook.
- Zio Bonino
I don't see good things coming from this. Although I like Facebook, I liked Friendfeed more. Partly because of the environment and the smallness of it. That is now going to be ruined. So, 10-1 odds that Friendfeed will be no more within a year after it gets intergrated into Facebook?
- Mathew™ one of a kind
I doubt it Robin. Bret can only give us assurances about the "near future." Here's what I think will happen. Just like Twitter acquired Rael Dornfest and his awesome web services, Stikkit and I Want Sandy vanished (and so did he), Facebook will acquire all the talent from Friendfeed, shut this service down and Facebook will continue to suck.
- Jim in Real Time
Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want anything to be handed off to Facebook. And I don't want to lose anything.
- Zio Bonino
Congrats obviously, but im not sure about the feeling,, different user groups which can not integrate but collide.. hope there wont be an huge integration in the future.
- Yunus Tunak
I'm happy for FriendFeed! But, at the same time a bit worried about the future. Hope you guys convince FB to not be evil too.
- Vishal Verma
I can't believe it! damn! facebook tos will apply to friendfeed too? should i start to move to another service? why anyone would think that facebook public is friendfeed public?! damn! friedfeed was my favorite! I can't understand this move! they want to kill friendfeed or what?
- paula simoes ☃
"I bet I can find 1.000.0000 people who dislike this deal."...Welcome to FriendBook.
- Jacque
Well, huge congraulations to you and your team, you deserve every success. To be honest I had presumed this would happen sooner or later - the only business model cool little startups have is to hope they get bought by someone bigger for their brains and technology. I'm going to be in San Francisco in a couple of weeks and was going to stop by your office to bring you a cake and thank you for a great product - maybe I still will if you're still there and there's still a FriendFeed!
- Alex Lomas
The FF founders must have know this would be a very unpopular move. Most users I know here are not too fond of FB.
- Rutger Blom
"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" There's a bit of a contradiction in your statement, Bret. Nice try though.
- jcunwired
Now I can break my Internet plan at home.
- DarkBls
Grats Bret and the rest of FF. To all the naysayers... Lets see what happens before we start bitching....
- Rasmus Lauridsen
This ties in nicely with the fact that you soon will have the opportunity to make your Facebook profiles public and get followers there.
- Michael Netsch
I don't mean to be negative but there's got to be a win-win logic to each merger&acquisiton. Audience high in only quantity is clearly not a win for friendfeed in the long term by considering its unique selling points. Let's wait and see who will benefit from friendfeed's death now.
- ayca
It's all about the money. I would have payed a couple of dollars each month to use FF.
- Rutger Blom
Seriously, what is this? It's like Bret just announced that he's killed all your mothers or something. It could turn out good, it could turn out bad, but at the end of the day, who cares, it's just a website (I mean honestly, come on). I could see it going either way, but in the near term, this is a pretty big win for the FF team, so congrats guys.
- Chieze Okoye
To be honest, my heart sank a little but I am happy to congratulate you and the team for building such a good brand. Well done.
- Kevin J Hatton
I'm just surprised, that's all. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (it certainly isn't for the owners of FF). I'm willing to sit back and see what happens.
- Jason Huebel
Wow, I specifically use friendfeed b/c it is not facebook. Sounds great for the friendfeed team, but not necessarily for friendfeed users.
- Evan Parker
Born to be sold, like in the old "new economy" era. Remember the late nineties?
- Federico Bolsoman
Sudden desire to check out Strands again... but hey, kudos on the incoming $$ for FF team
- Leslie Poston
This is wisdom. Bracing for Google Wave is a good idea.............
- Kevin J Hatton
this is clearly a talent aquisition... why am i not excited about this? could it be because facebook has been blatantly stealing features from friendfeed shamelessly. Likes were clearly not an original facebook idea...realtime feeds is another i could go on...
- Tate DA FF MVP
While I'm sad, because I suspect this means the best things about FF will disappear or I'll be forced to use FB in some way, if the buyout was for some awesome amount of money, I can't say I blame 'em for taking an offer -- I would.
- Andy Bakun
I came to FriendFeed because I don't like facebook. Now the question is, will facebook become more like friend feed? or will they just take friend feed and turn it into facebook?
- Tom Ray
FF could be a good R&D arm for facebook.
- Andy Bakun
My biggest concern here is that FB has a completely different audience than FF.
- Rutger Blom
Fucking morons. FriendFeed is doomed now. Think logically. Facebook has NO REASON to keep FriendFeed alive. It will simply take FF's best features, suck the life of out of it, then trash FF. Way to go, FirnedFeed, damn.
- Jeremy Buff
This announcement should have been held off until the plans for Friendfeed were known. Regardless, this is *bad* for FF users. Best case: it continues on, but with stagnated feature development. Worst case: it's gone.
- tollie williams
I don't want my FF feed on Facebook :( I use both, but maintain both profiles separate
- Leandro Ardissone ⍨
Sigh... Happy for the team if this is what they want, but baffled by the move. The users that are going to leave because of this will make FF a graveyard and the users it gains, well... Hello spam? Sorry, but I don't like it.
- Vince DeGeorge
from iPhone
Well, I guess it is time to dismantle my friendfeed. We all know where this is headed. So, so glad I didn't move all my rss feeds from greader to friendfeed like so many cheerleaders suggested.
- Matthew Speicher
Dang, and just as I was starting to get used to how FF works. FF is useful on it's own. I hope this only improves FF's system, rather than having it disappear into Facebook's wake.
- Don Faulkner
My big question to everybody here is this: What are the potential downsides / upsides to this acquisition? I mean on paper I just don't see what the pros OR cons are. I don't care for Facebook but I don't see how them acquiring FF is going to change everything.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
furthermore they are 2 different things: I follow a lot of people here that are not in my facebook list, which is for IRL friends!
- Flavio
I don't know where to go next either. I had just settled down to make imaginary friends for all my non-FF tweeps, etc. now, I'm not sure if I should bother.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
I hope friendfeed continues to operate normally but it does not look good.
- ashish
integrate best features of ff to fb, then try to innovate in fb if possible, then kill ff... that's it, cheers, all the best. grrrr...
- Kemal
niczak has good points. FF & FB aren't exactly competitors, but they aren't orthogonal either. Let's hope FB's smart enough to see the difference and improve both platforms.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Nicholas: The upside for Facebook is they just bought an engineering team that's built many of the feature's Facebook's going to need to stay competitive. The upside for FriendFeed's engineering team is $$$ and the ability to build system for a wider audience. FriendFeed's user base is small enough that it'll either get absorbed into Facebook or move on, and FF will become a footnote on the Internet timeline.
- Ken Sheppardson
Don, I don't think FB wants to maintain two platforms.
- Rutger Blom
first tr.im (heard about it yesterday), now this. I wasn't a heavy tr.im user (yet), but sad to see it go, even if I think url shortening is silly.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
As FB said they're interested in the people and not in the site, what if the community will keep running FF without its current staff?
- Flavio
I'll have to go with Flavio's position too. Given this news (plus tr.im and who knows who's next), I'd tend to favor community supported or federated services for things like this in the future.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
I am purposely not on facebook because I don't really want to talk to people I have not talked to in 20 years.
- Andy Bakun
Once again. I'm happy for the FF team. They worked hard and now collect. That's fair. Wonder if they're sitting in a bubble pool drinking champagne while we cry out here ;-)
- Rutger Blom
trouble is (from my perspective), that the philosophies of the two platforms are at odds. FB wants to bring people to the site and keep them there, while FF is a hub, bringing people in and then sending them back out. (That's part of why it's hard for the newcomer to understand, IMHO.)
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Quote «Taylor and Cox say that the Friendfeed product will live on independently, and eventually Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook. But the Friendfeed team is not being kept whole. Some employees will now report to Cox, others to engineering head Mike Schroepfer. In my opinion that means, long term, the Friendfeed product itself is unlikely to be a big priority.¶ But Facebook is...
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- Philipp Lenssen
+1 Kol for the techcrunch article!
- Don Faulkner
from IM
techcrunch: "Cox agreed, noting that Facebook is focused on being a platform and a service, and not just a destination site." I certainly hope so!
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Brilliant move by both Facebook and friendfeed. Congratulations!!! I have theories of what they have planned, but I doubt you would verify any of them. This is going to go so well with their SocialTV which they have been developing. I'm so happy for you!
- Michael Fidler
I don't see what's so bad about it since no one knows right now what the outcome will be, everyone is just making assumptions that could possibly be wrong..... Might help just sitting back and seeing what happens first before complaining.
- ChaCha Fance
Nooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrghh! I´ve resisted getting a facebook acct for so long...
- Thomas Bøhm
ChaCha, if everybody would do that there would not be much discussion would there? This is part of the fun.
- Rutger Blom
I wonder how the discussion over on facebook would compare to this?
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Don, I doubt there is any discussion going on there. They're too busy throwing quizes at each other.
- Rutger Blom
Congrats, FF! I'm approaching the situation with cautious optimism. A lot of my friends only share stuff via the Facebook wall/feed, so if Facebook is able to make their feed more like the FF feed (i.e. good, instead of sucktacular) through this acquisition, it's mostly a win for me in the end.
- Brian Chang
At least my Feedburner stats might go back to normal again.
- Rutger Blom
/me pokes Rutger. (just getting in practice. ;)
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Where will we go for the FFunderCats, bacon memes, and angry artists fighting over photo reshares now? ;)
- Tyson Key
If anybody has doubts as to what happens to the FriendFeed community or our stored information here, read this statement from Bret (in this thread) "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users". Now maybe you can see "whats so bad about it" and curb your optimism. Not good.
- jcunwired
Congrats FF. Fix their live feed situation please.
- Edward Barnieh
@josh: do you think FB will throw away all the crap people use? various quiz, pick 5 and so on?
- Flavio
@jc: our data will not go away in the near future. what will be in few months? in a year?
- Flavio
Let's see if you can do a bit better than just not being evil this time around.
- Tim Tyler
Wooohooo!!, seems like we are being sent back to "good" old Facebook. Congrats Bret!!
- Danli
Looks like I'm going to repeat the same thing many others did. My first reaction was "Oh my..." I have refused to join Facebook due to its philosophy while I have been with FriendFeed from the beginning for its. I'm sad and somewhat apprehensive.
- Sean Leather
Congrats. I suppose this means the end of FriendFeed but hopefully a better Facebook.
- Harry Toon
Please say that facebook.com will be shutting down, and the combined company will still be called FriendFeed... I bet it won't happen, though.
- Tyson Key
"Regarding FB/FF - Here's how it's [probably] going to work. You will most likely have an account merge, all of the services FriendFeed supports will now be aggregated on Facebook, and all of your FriendFeed friends will be in a "list" on Facebook. The FF Groups will become Facebook Groups. The FF lists will become Facebook Lists." http://ff.im/6pNxq
- Ozgur Uckan
Nothing like an early retirement payout :)
- Owen Greaves
Congratulations Bret. For me this merger makes a lot of sense. Facebook will provide the "quantity" of users, which friendfeed deserves :).
- Karthick R
FriendFeed + Facebook... Oh noes FriendFace is coming (http://www.youtube.com/watch...)! Now sorry for that link, and seriously, thanks for your work, guys. Please don't let the spirit of FriendFeed to be blown away =)
- Anton
hey, that is great guys! interested to see how you integrate.
- Brian Walsh
Mind blown. Never expected this. I'm also disappointed, yet optimistic at the same time.
- Angus Burton
Kinda curious to see how this will all pan out...although i wouldnt want the friendfeed stuff just integrated into facebook. I feel like im among a group of people who i genuinely share interests with here...dont want to lost that.
- Cassidy
Best case: Facebook will continue to support and develop FriendFeed. Worst case: this is great news for Amplifeeder.
- David Gaw
FAIL. Facebook is the new myspace, and now friendfeed will become a part of that BS. Can't say I'm too surprised because eventually we all sell out. BTW I don't see friendfeed lasting more than the rest of this year, if that. The good news is that we can all be subjected to add 'Are you related to a monkey?' and Blackjack apps while having annoying personal ads on our profile pages. Fuck this shit.
- Tomy Thomson
Well done, well deserved, I hope FB's means and infrastructures empower your guys to even better things. But if quizzes appear in "my" friendfeed, evil things will haunt you and your descendents for 3 generations.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
♪ ♪ This is the end.... beautiful friends ♪ ♪
- All for design
Well, I don't see the point of sticking around here if I have accounts in both and this is going to get swallowed whole into Facebook anyways. Put simply, goodbye.
- Micah Collard
The social community that has been behind FriendFeed creators have built a wonderful product. Only problem is, we don't have Zuck's checkbook :(
- jcunwired
friendfeed is a beautiful product, only god knows what facebrook will do to it. Hopefully the ability to upload files (such as mp3s) will not be removed. Zuck is a tool.
- Nibi
Congratulations. I'm sorry to say that I don't plan to move with you.
- Lars Juhl Jensen
Facebook is lucky to have such a talented group of people ... Congratulations FriendFeed!
- Rob Kurrus
doesn't look like a bad joke, better be for the good then, but... Well congrats anyway guys, you did something AWESOME now let's see where Mark takes it
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
That's too bad. Liked the openness if FriendFeed, and the lack crap that is on Facebook. Once FriendFeed dies, it will be Twitter only.
- Mike D.
Congrats, but concerned that FriendFeed and its tools may disappear. Merging the tools with Facebook seems impossible.
- Mike Reynolds
So, what does the acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook mean to us, users of both websites: Can I make a friend request from FriendFeed, and be approved for both, on one click
- Reyna Carlos
Exciting news guys. I am actually looking forward to your collaboration with / work for FB. No matter what people may or may not like about FB, it does succeed in reaching a more "diverse" audience compared to most other Web 2.0/social web companies. Paired with your team's excellence in realizing features that succeed in pleasing the geekiest of Web 2.0 affine individuals, I think you are steering towards exciting waters :)
- Mustafa K. Isik
*heart sinks* actually a bit of shock - I think that Facebook will leave Friendfeed as-is but I don't think there is hope for future innovation in Friendfeed since their best superstar team members will be pulled onto 'more important' Facebook issues...
- Pon
And the metastasizing, walled-garden that is Facebook, continues to eat the Web. Bring on Google Wave.
- Christopher A Carr
:-) + :-( very happy for the team, huge achievement, hoping to see export of innovation but not a shut down of this unique community and location
- Majento
There goes FriendFeed down the toilet. well I WAS having a good day. until hearing this crap!
- Scratch5150
Congratulations, and best wishes for your future together! :-)
- Ruchira S. Datta
Wow, I was beginning to use Friendfeed as my defacto social site...Facebook is more for real life friends. They'll just take what makes Friendfeed great, add it to Facebook and slowly kill this site.
- Manuel Mas
What is the big deal? I think it'll make FF bigger and better. You should be happy about that!
- orionstarr
I am disappointed. I don't want to have to go to Facebook to do what i do here. I can not imagine they will port over all the features we enjoy here. We lose a lot for only a slight benefit to Facebook.
- Robert
It could be worse, myspace could've bought them lol...
- orionstarr
Awful news for users but congratulations to you guys. Ideally, FB will run FF as a distinct service but I'm not hopeful. I don't want the diversity and noise that facebook brings - people doing quizzes on which movie star they resemble and playing silly games. I also wanted to keep my day to day social activity distinct from the targeted information and discussion I use FF for.
- Rajit
Only just started taking a serious look at FF after hearing acquisition by FB. Sounds like I'm laggard rather than a leader in use of web 2.0
- ManojRanaweera
I think how Pon said it is what I'm feeling: *heart sinks*.
- Andy Bakun
Congratulations, i am really happy for you guys!! :)
- Mona Nomura
I'm not a Facebook fan, but can't begrudge the FF gang their chance to reap the rewards for all their hard work. However, it would be a shame if FB ruins the good thing we all have going here.
- Ken Morley
So what now? a name change too? FriendFace? FeedBook? FaceFeed? god Facebook really sucks. oh well. Adds anyone?
- Scratch5150
Congrats to the FF team... I hope the service doesn't disappear into a fold of light and heat.
- Brandon
if all the things that make FF great are brought to FB then I'll be happy to use it
- Mike Chelen
The community won't be there. Been on FB longer than any other, don't have nearly the relationship or sense of community there that I do here or on Twitter.
- Karoli
Karoli: that is due to the effectiveness of the FF platform and interface, which help to join conversations and find interesting people more so than FB does
- Mike Chelen
Mike: I suspect that FB wants FF for the search possibilities, not the community-building aspects. But we'll see.
- Karoli
i guess congrats are in order, but I'm going to now go and remove everything I have that feeds into FF, and I have to ask -- do I have any rights over my archive? I have a private feed, and I have no interest in offering up my lifestream to the FaceBook data-miners. I hope the FF folks get what they hope for out of the deal, but my FriendFeed experience has been effectively killed.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I just learned about the FF acquisition by Facebook - WOW~! Congratulations Bret, Paul and FF team!! holy cow ........Mooooooooo! Where's the FF Acquisition Party? :)
- Susan Beebe
RT @alirizaesin FriendFeed, R.I.P. Home tweet home!..
- Ozgur Uckan
Congrats to facebook. Now, Twitter is the best.
- Ebru Baranseli
Congratulations to the FriendFeed guys on the Facebook Acquisition. Not a big fan of Facebook, so I hope my favorite Uber Aggregator, Realtime Social, Microblogging site of awesomeness is not entirely absorbed into the Facebook infrastructure. I wait with baited breath to hear what "normally for the time being" means ;).
- Tom Horn
Can I now have comments propagate in both directions as far as Facebook/Friendfeed is concerned?
- Piaw Na
*checks date*. Damn .. not April 1st, must be for real. While I'm happy for the FF team, since I guess this is what they wanted (congrats guys!), I can't help but think this is the beginning of the end for a great service and a vibrant community. There are reasons I don't spend any time on Facebook and do spend lots of time on FF, and some kind of "FF integrated into Facebook" just won't cut it. I hope this service will live on for at least a few more years.
- Andrew Perry
Gratz to the FF team but as a user I'm not completely happy. In short, I like the FF team/product much more than I like the FB team/product. Best of luck to all.
- timepilot
Dang! I've killed another site! Sorry guys... FF was doing fine until I started coming here again! Same with Pownce! Went there and liked it... went underground for a spell... came back and still liked it, so I stayed. A few months later... BOOM! I have the touch! (I'm thinking I'll start devoting a lot of time to Twitter... maybe I can kill that one, too!)
- Mark "Godt Nyt Ǻr"
Bret, congrats on the acquisition. You guys put in a lot of hard work to create this community. I just hope you learned the mistakes Pownce made, Jaiku etc, and ensured that you didn't sell out your community, but that you helped it evolve into something as great as this into something better. Good luck in future endeavors!
- Mike Lewis
Oh yeah? Ok: take tour money and go to the hell. :-(((
- Claude LaFrenière
Yay for you guys, I mean that seriously, I 'like' what this means for you personally, but -1000000 cool points for doing it with FB. Sad day.
- Threepwood
Karoli: FF search is so useful because it is integrated with all the other great features that help to find relevant content. if FB wants to have a similar capability, they must also develop the underlying architecture.
- Mike Chelen
from IM
shakeel, the reasons for friendfeed to join facebook are probably about other things besides money, since many of the FF staff left high-paying jobs to join in the first place
- Mike Chelen
from IM
Well I've thought about it, and I'll stick around until I start seeing that crappy Facebook logo, I only have 71 subscribers here, I hate to do it but I'll probably scrap the whole thing and start over somewhere else. still can't believe that shit.
- Scratch5150
Congrats, team! It's bittersweet, though.
- Anne Bouey
So now we will have FriendFeed blocked at work too. Darn.
- Mark Scrimshire
"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future" is not exactly inspiring for the long term for those of us who came here to escape Facebook for a) it's walled garden and b) privacy concerns. Nice for the Founders to make a pile of cash but for the many of us, it feels like we got sold down the river. Sad.
- Sally Church
cacarr: updates for FB have progressed rapidly in the past, count how many months since new features such as api calls and site redesigns have have been implemented
- Mike Chelen
from IM
I can't believe it either. I feel as if — for the moment — I am lost in the wilderness, adrift.
- roamin
Congratulation to the FF team! You guys deserves this. I just hope that Facebook does not change the directions of FF.
- Vinko
Congrats Bret! Hope the transition goes smoothly for you guys.
- Cristo
I hope this means better integration: liking here will auto-like on fb and such :D if that's the case, I won't mind the ads *wink* *wink*
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
Franc, cant stand facebook ads in their current format, hope they will be fixed eventually :P
- Mike Chelen
from IM
Grats, dont spend it all in one place.....
- Robert Higgins
congrads. I think it will be good for BOTH companies.
- Logan Lindquist
Now that you guys have $$$ you should swap out the not so very pleasing default avatar!
- See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
Hope you guys enjoy your new jobs. Meanwhile we get to watch a great alternative to Facebook with a promising future go down the tubes. A really sad and unfortunate day.
- Todd Holmes
Congratulations to all the FriendFeed team. I hope you'll be able to keep the FriendFeed spirit up at Facebook. Kudos for all the great work you've been doing.
- Paul Papadimitriou
I use FriendFeed and Facebook so it would be awesome to see FF features in Facebook. Congratulations!
- krzychukula
from IM
judging by the nearly 600 comments as i type this, including my own earlier one, FF could use a Don't Like button as well. or would, if we were going to be using it much longer.
- kelly
Nice, i like to wish you all the best for your new job (and it's really hard, i know). I'm happy, but... don't let die FF!!
- Seo (ignobile) Guru
Hope FriendFeed remains open. Love the spirit of FF
- Bernaldo Barrena
Seriously, what a coincidence! Just on Saturday I claimed to be both twitter- and facebook-free. I loved FF product and personally helped to bring at least a dozen of my friends into the community. I'll stick around for a while though.
- ǝuǝƃnǝ
This deal makes sense, now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask! Congrats facebook and ff!
- Garin Kilpatrick
I suppose Facebook had to do it, with Twitter and Google Wave as competitor...
- Alexander Kruel
I am noticing a lot of people going to re-esumate their lifestream.fm account now!
- Flavio
I don't think FB acquiring FF is bad. But I don't think it's good either. We'll see. :-) In the meantime, keep up the good work!
- Alexander Gieg
Oh shit. Love FF, hate FB. I'll NEVER, EVER merge my two accounts. I'd rather unsub from both than merging. I'll wait for the developments, and in the meantime look for an alternative.
- Alliandre (la Ippe)
How long until ex-FriendFeed employees start jumping ship from Facebook? I wonder...
- Tyson Key
Thomas Power still believes that Facebook/FF/Linkedin (2010) will be acquired by Apple (2011) and this is a transitional acquisition in the SN market cycle. The world is shifting to Mac, iTunes, iPhones and FB own the next generation. Apple have $29bn of cash on deposit price is not an issue. Google must jump for twitter while MS fiddle in the sticks with Yahoo. BillG will be back at the MS helm 2012.
- Penny Power
:( Happy for FF people, sad for the service. Was going to move from fb to ff this week..
- Martynas
Flavio: never heard of lifestream.fm before, but I'm going to go check it out. I'll reiterate, though, that I'm now shy of any service like this, since it can disappear just as it's getting good. I heard about sweetcron.com last night (via http://ff.im/6pR2w). Maybe it's time to move from centralized to distributed again.
- Don Faulkner
Just finished setting up my lifestream.fm at http://lifestream.fm/dfaulkner. Lifestream does what it says, and no more. FF's search blows lifestream away. FF is more flexible about adding source feeds, but lifestream does fine without the flexibility I suppose. FF still wins, or would, if I thought it would be sticking around. :P
- Don Faulkner
I also hate facebook, not because of their silly quizzes and pokes, but because I suspect they would like to maintain massive user base as the determining factor in choosing a social network. I would love to switch to orkut as I use so many other google services, but I can't because nobody else does. That should not be my criteria.... I thought friendfeed would try to make social networks work together.
- Ru Viljoen
I don't understand why everyone is so negative about the situation?
- orionstarr
@orionstarr - it's like Starbucks buying your neighborhood coffee shop and saying it still cares about the customers. You know it's just not going to be the same as what you've come to love.
- Robin Barooah
Presumably FF will go on the back burner - and the team will try and "fix" Facebook.
- Tim Tyler
I've watched Facebook morph from a relatively organised and well implemented social networking tool into the hulking mess it is now - and I really, really hope that a similar thing doesn't happen here with the inevitable changes this will bring about.
- Leslie Moore
Come on guys, out with the long-term game plan, this is tedious.
- Andrew Eglinton
NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, I mean Cool.
- sofarsoShawn
Teach Facebook how to be FriendFeed. Let the small but fast teach the big but slow. Don't forget what Paul says - don’t be evil.
- whatidiscover
I never understood what drives a dog to really love rolling around in bird poop, what evolutionary track led to this. But lo and behold, they loooove the bird poop.
- felix
from Bookmarklet
"Rather than trying to replace Microsoft Office, as Google obviously hopes to do, they’ve picked a niche on which to focus: Team meetings for workgroups much like the Team Apart team, separated by geographical distance but connected by broadband. A Team Apart meeting room can be filled with notepads, whiteboards for freehand drawing, images, web pages, and live video chat windows for participants. The meeting rooms, reachable at teamapart.com but stored in the cloud somewhere, preserve the materials from their last meeting. ss1Without thinking, I instantly liked holding meetings at Team Apart. The lightly-colored default design is simply appealing — it’s got Web 2.0 style without being overbearingly so. The rooms aren’t overbuilt, so they’re easy to operate via the few buttons at the top. My meetings never go beyond four people, so the four-person restriction in the current free version isn’t a problem. And I have the option to use a still photo instead of a video feed as my avatar, for those times I don’t feel like being watched while I eat during a meeting."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
It's only a matter of time for someone does something like this for Wave as an extension.
- Ray Cromwell
Ray, the broadest, most general product isn't always the best or most successful.
- Paul Buchheit
This, to me, would be a logical extension for FriendFeed as it moves into business, with real-time chat on the side.
- Louis Gray
Paul, I agree, but that applies to Friendfeed too :) I love the FF UI, how stripped down and uncluttered it is, it does exactly what I want. But if FF+FB forces me to log into Facebook now and view FF functionality as part of the larger FB UI, I'm not so sure it will be as appealing anymore. I still want to go to FF directly, I'm not really interested in FB features.
- Ray Cromwell
"After acquiring On2's video compression codecs in a deal valued at approximately $106.5 million in stock, will Google simply turn around and open source them? It certainly looks that way. In both the press release and the blog post announcing the acquisition of On2, Google makes a point of saying that it believes "high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform" - and that On2 is a means of achieving that goal. As is typical of Googlespeak, this tells us close to nothing. But if you also consider the company's so far fruitless efforts to push through a video tag for HTML 5 - the still gestating update to the web's hypertext markup language - the On2 acquisition looks an awful lot like an effort to solve this browser-maker impasse."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Reporters are always asking me if I think that Google is still "good". My answer is always yes, and this is an example of why.
- Paul Buchheit
That was my first thought, too. The HTML5 group has been having conflict over using H.264 (licensing) vs Ogg (no penetration, worrisome quality and CPU usage). This could solve the whole thing.
- Don MacAskill
Army of Darkness...preferably with beer and friends
- Alex Scoble
Alex - neither of those things exist on school nights.
- Matthew DeVries
I'm not a big fan of watching something I've already seen, but I could probably watch The Last Dragon again. I suspect seeing that would be a first for most of you, since it tanked at the box office. Why? Taimak is so beautiful!
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
+1 to The Lives of Others and Spirited Away; wonderful movies. And I'll add Tous les Matins du Monde, Immortal Beloved, and The Red Violin. All amazing movies if you love music.
- Joel Webber
+1 to The Lives of Others and Spirited Away; wonderful movies. And I'll add Tous les Matins du Monde, Immortal Beloved, and The Red Violin. All amazing movies if you love music.
- Joel Webber
+1 to The Lives of Others and Spirited Away; wonderful movies. And I'll add Tous les Matins du Monde, Immortal Beloved, and The Red Violin. All amazing movies if you love music.
- Matthew DeVries
Bridges of Madison Cou…no, never mind, I can't bring myself to that level
- Glen Campbell, esq.
Anything by Hitchcock or Miyazaki. Almost anything by Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Tarantino, or Coen Bros.
- LogEx
this is an example of a discussion prompt that got messy. So I vote for two, too: Revenge of the Nerds, Moving Violations, and anything with Kate Blanchett, I mean by Woody Allen. I mean produced by Harvey Weinstein.
- Lane Rapp
Cast Away — more than anything, I liked the skillful use of silence in the soundtrack, which you don't hear much in today's films. I'm biased, perhaps, because I interned with Sound Designer/Re-recording Mixer Randy Thom, but often I choose films based on their soundtracks as well as for visual reasons or a good screenplay.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
MANY Capra films: It's a Wonderful Life (try watching it outside of Xmas so you aren't influenced by that), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night, American Madness, You Can't Take it With You
- Spidra Webster
@andrei_c Thanks for mentioning some other great films—there are so many different reasons certain ones resonate and we remember them over time.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
Some really good suggestions. Pi, stalker, oldboy are definitely worth to watch again. I could watch the good the bad and the ugly everyday. Mulholland drive and sraight story are my suggestion.
- Mario
from Android
Some great suggestions. My personal play list now contains: The Big Lobowski, Brazil, Blazing Saddle, Young Frankenstein, The Great Escape, Waynes World, Fight Club, Memento, The Godfather, I, II and III, Fast times at Ridgemont high, Fargo, Being John Malkovich, Serenity, A Clockwork Orange, Alien, Dr. Strangelove, Teh Conformist, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Some Like it Hot. Blade...
more...
- Ken Morley
star wars series, ocean's eleven, the prestige
- Ahmet Soyata
Nine Queens - bet most people have never watched it
- Andy Davies
"This is, without a doubt, the best comment ever on TechCrunch. Left by “J” on MG’s latest iPhone rant about the Google Voice debacle. Beautiful."
- Atul Arora
from Bookmarklet
Thomas, Reader will never be the place for "conversation", but the likes have promoted more interaction already. Facebook has blatantly copied features as well, but also does not really have the same level of discussion.
- Rob Diana
Google Reader and even Facebook have awful features for discovering new people, for what it's worth. In FriendFeed, it's serendipitous - neither can match that.
- Tyson Key
Loved: "If Twitter is the equivalent of a high school diploma, FriendFeed is a Master’s degree." Great post, Rob.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Tyson, I agree that Reader has very little discoverability and the new features just help with searching. Facebook is a little better for discovery as the network is significantly more powerful, but they still have a ways to go.
- Rob Diana
Thanks Mahendra. My thinking is that people complain that FriendFeed is "too complicated" and Twitter is "so simple". But that never really explained the relative difference.
- Rob Diana
Yes, that is only part of the truth. Is the pace of 'introducing new features relative to your critical following base' a lesson to learn for FriendFeed?
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
As long as friendfeed continues to lead the way, they will be well rewarded for their efforts eventually. I wonder what the “killer” feature is going to be which you mention. It’s funny you should be the one to bring it up, because I keep thinking about your suggestion of a unified communication platform. From what I’ve heard, that’s what Wave is supposed to be, but I haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t know. I still think you were on to something, and perhaps friendfeed will be moving in that direction.
- Michael Fidler
Maybe so, but I can still like Google Reader's innovation.
- Louis Gray
Michael, I do not know what the killer feature might be. Wave is closer to the unified communication platform, but could definitely impact FriendFeed eventually. However, it is still in a very closed beta, so there is plenty of time to wait.
- Rob Diana
Louis, the incremental changes in Reader are very interesting. There is significant power with google behind it, and likes have definitely had some impact. I am curious to see if the activity changes at all.
- Rob Diana
Oh, come on! Since when are software products, and then webapps such as GReader, expected to be set in stone once out in the open? Of course they will be changing, and adopt proven solutions from other domains. We should be grateful for them for taking that route, even without attribution to "our" FF [it's not ours, btw., its Bret's and Paul's and Ana's and Sanjeev's and Jim's and...
more...
- ianf ⌘
Doesn't anyone think FriendFeed is ripping off what came before it just a little? The liking system is very similar to Digg's votes, and the topic+comment system is a forum in AJAX clothing. There will always be innovation on the web, we just tend to see a lot of innovation being built off others' ideas.
- Mitch
Mitch, I wish FriendFeed would rip off some some threaded comments and rating system. The comment system at DailyKos has been real-time for almost 3 years.
- Admiral Anika
Yes! Threading would be much appreciated. In one of Paul Buchheit's interviews he tells us that comment liking is coming, so at least some form of rating is on the way.
- Mitch
An aside: I absolutely HATE how Google Reader haphazardly added Like to post items. WTF cares? It doesn't fit there.
- Tamar Weinberg
Conversely, do you _want_ "the masses" on FriendFeed?
- Rick Cogley
It's funny - As much as I want FriendFeed to go mainstream, I remember how much better Twitter was a year or so ago.
- Jim Connolly
Some of the new social features feel like they were added by committee. "Add a 'like' button, ok? And can you make it real time?"
- Rick Cogley
Rick and Jim, the masses may not have quite the same effect here as they did on Twitter. Because you can create your own lists, and really tailor what you see, a larger user base may not be as visible to you.
- Rob Diana
Rob, you don't have to follow everyone on Twitter, you know. Just follow people you know, trust, or who's opinion you value or need to hear.
- Ian Betteridge
Ian, I know that you don't have to follow people on Twitter. I was just pointing out that FriendFeed has better features when dealing with larger groups of people. Twitter by itself does not provide that, although almost all of the third-party clients do.
- Rob Diana
"Agile Messenger was recently updated to support iPhone OS 3.0's push notifications. The obvious comparison will be to BeejiveIM, since they both do the same thing: provide a multi-client chat app offering push notifications on your iPhone. We'll have a hands-on with Beejive later, but this is how Agile Messenger (iTunes link) works. Oh, and we're giving away five promo codes so you can try it yourself, just check the end of this post. The first screen in Agile Messenger is a series of switches for each protocol supported. These switches make it easy to see what you're connecting to when you tap the Connect button. There's support for ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and Google. You can only log in to one account per service, however, so if you have 2 Google accounts, you're going to log in to one at a time. I'm told they are working to change this."
- Arnaldo M Pereira
from Bookmarklet
The difference will be how long each keeps you logged into the service. Beejive is 24 hours - Nimbuzz is (a worthless) 30 minutes. IM+ is 3 days (? I think...). No idea about Agile.
- Vince DeGeorge
"The real power of OS X lies in all of the hidden gems beneath what you see at first glance. Technologies like Expose, Spaces, Stacks, Spotlight and others help users tap the power of their Mac, while keeping the experience sleek and elegant. Aptonic’s Dropzone, a third party application designed to further simplify your Mac experience, fits into this group perfectly and naturally. It’s Like an Intern for Your Dock Dropzone is an application that resides in your Dock like any other app. The power of Dropzone comes into play when you begin dragging files onto its icon. Similar to the appearance of a Stack, Dropzone will expand giving you options of what to do with the file or files you’ve selected. Think of it like Automator for your Dock."
- Arnaldo M Pereira
from Bookmarklet
I was looking at the features and it's similar to this one app called Overflow but with more functions
- Outsanity
This pretty much gets rid of my need for Transmit's Dashboard widget.
- Akiva Moskovitz
E-trade offers them for $25 https://us.etrade.com/e.... The way it works is that this keychain thing spits out a new number every minute, and you include that number with your password at login. Even if someone gets your password (due to a keylogger or the like), it will quickly be invalid.
- Paul Buchheit
Blizzard almost never has them in stock. Whenever they get a batch they sell out in a few hours. Apparently they work. lol
- Heather
I do not know how reliable they are now but a few years ago, the quartz in this would get out of sync for a non trivial percentage of users, which resulted in a lot of customer support issues.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
bought one for the hubby's warcraft account. he hasn't been hacked since. (nearly once every couple weeks prior to that)
- Nathalie, Dreamer of FF
I would pay for this option also and being that I run GApps at work, would also do it for all staff.
- Travis Koger
from iPhone
What would keep someone from writing this as an iPhone/Android app?
- Matt Cutts
It would need to hook into the Google auth system Matt. (or automatically change my password every minute, which would probably trigger some abuse system inside google)
- Paul Buchheit
Matt: Nothing, as demonstrated by Blizzard's implementation of it as a free iPhone app already. :)
- Stephen Mack
I wish this could end phishing, but it can't, because "it will quickly be invalid" doesn't help much if it's used to generate a session token the very moment it's entered. Perhaps the key should ask you what OS/browser you're using, how recently you logged in on that machine, etc. -- facts known to Google and associated with your browser session -- and generate different numbers depending on your answers. Tricky business.
- Daniel Dulitz
It doesn't solve all problems Daniel, but it does solve some. The twitter hack for example was apparently due to a guessed password or something (though I'm not up-to-date on the news, so maybe that's no longer the story).
- Paul Buchheit
Frankly, I want an RFID-like chip in my cell phone + ubiquitous RFID readers. The cell phone would also require you to type a password or PIN, so it's something you have + something you know. And there's a fake PIN that looks like it worked but causes a lockdown behind the scenes, so if you get mugged you tell people the PIN is 5555 when your PIN is really 2343.
- Matt Cutts
Paul, it's just a lot easier to make this happen if it solves the _biggest_ problem. :-)
- Daniel Dulitz
I think the biggest problem is that people want absolute convenience and absolute security. I have never had any personal information stolen or accounts hacked. It might be because I'm a boring person not worth stealing from, but it could also be that I don't put information all over the place. I only use my phone to make calls, I only download from well known sites, I don't allow porn...
more...
- Heather
I disagree with that reasoning Daniel. The phishing problem is real, but today's Twitter problem for example does not appear to have been phishing related, and probably would have been prevented by a device such as this -- is that not sufficient evidence that this solvable problem is worth solving? It also prevents people from using bad passwords, using the same password on multiple accounts, etc, which is very useful in the apps-for-your-domain context.
- Paul Buchheit
As soon as PayPal offered theirs I bought it immediately and like many others, I'm in line to get one for our two WoW accounts. I loved these as a Systems Admin where we required them to get past the firewalls if you were a remote worker.
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
+1 Paul, I've been a SecureID user many years at work, and with ETrade, so I've got two, so far, but it makes you wonder if every account you used required SecureID, you'll eventually need a REALLY BIG keychain. ;)
- .LAG liked that
There is no reason why the same SecureID fob can't be used with more than one site.
- Jauder Ho
Matt Cutts: BlackBerry (maybe only BES) has had "password under duress" for a while. When enabled you swap the first and last characters of your handset password, it unlocks but also triggers admin side alerts. Quite cool, but I suspect the only people that use it will be the military :)
- Alex Lomas
jh: yeah, RSA should probably offer this as a service; get one SecurID from them, and you can register it with any site that supports it.
- Tudor Bosman
Paul, no, I don't think the fact that some hacks would be prevented by a method is sufficient reason to implement that method. Apps has supported SAML for quite a while, see http://code.google.com/apis... , so Apps admins can use auth methods of their choice including this one. If I'm going to take your $25 for a token, I'd like to make it more...
more...
- Daniel Dulitz
@jh, @Tudor: yeah it would be great if one SecureID could service multiple accounts for the owner, but i think each key fob is unique to the account holder and service they're issued for; some foreknowledge of the site/account the fobs will be used for is required. with the one I use at work, I signed some paperwork, sent it to Tech, and then got the fob few days later. Sounds like a potential customer-service nightmare for RSA if they when that route.
- .LAG liked that
They'd probably pick up more paid accounts. Just the concept would probably convince numerous new users.
- Charlie Anzman
Great idea! It's also a great way of branding the name if it's on a key chain of something else cool. Verisign offers it as a second layer of security on their OpenID accounts. They were charging before, but I just checked and it's free now. I'll have to get it for my account. Two-factor identification should be standard everywhere, especially on bank accounts.
- Michael Fidler
I'm waiting for Google to handle all my Internet passwords, all encrypted behind a master Google accounts password and a security calculator/keychain type of mechanism. I wouldn't perhaps need to use that physical extra security code each time I log in. It could be set to once a day, and secure login can be reset at any time during the day (if you don't feel confortable using public web terminal at a netcafe, you can simply activate secure login for any activity done after you logout.
- Charbax
Also, I believe Google should easily show me a complete log of all activities on my Google account, this way I could find out if something fishy is going on. If one is paranoid while using a public terminal, there should be a "monitor in realtime all activity" window so you can see if anything weird is going on while you are logged in and you should imediately be able to cancel/restore/logout in realtime once any of that fishy activity has been detected.
- Charbax
For $25 -- that's worth the peace of mind.
- CarolAnnB
Matt, regarding RFID: I've seen applications using bluetooth for a similar purpose. If a specific phone comes within range, the computer unlocks/wakes up/launches the missiles/etc. I'm not sure that RFID adds much, though I'm unfamiliar with how easy it is to spoof the identity of either bluetooth or RFID.
- DGentry
in case you weren't aware, there are other options for SecurID other than the fob - like the mobile app http://www.rsa.com/node... or software token (RSA is an EMC company, my employer)
- Stuart Miniman
I have my paypal key, I feel secure because of it. And it only cost me $5.
- Luis
The future of security is going to include some strong password/identity tools. Agreed on the value of the rsa key, could our smart phones generate similar sequences without risking theft?
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
@Charbax: Gmail (and possibly other apps?) does show you when someone else is logged in at the same time as you are, as well as their IP. Not precisely what you're suggesting, but is still quite helpful.
- Joel Webber
surprised these things are still popular. Years ago we used them at GE and perhaps they still do... But wouldn't it be more convenient to add a dynamic part to a password with a question like your wife's age + XX, or day first child was born + XX or year this picture was taken + XX. The variation of lets say 5 questions plus a random addition or subtraction would add enough variation and security no ? curious to see this your comments.
- Bart LePoole
I have the Paypal one, and one for my BofA account. I would definitely get one for Google and for my Amazon account. *HINT*
- ha3rvey (business time)
Why would I want one for every account? Why can't I use the same one for all my accounts?
- Gabe
paul, that's a great idea for a start-up (btw user should have *one* item for all accounts)
- Massimo MaxKava Cavazzini
Stuart: thanks cool that rsa is proactive about it. It also looks like Matt suggested mobile devices take on this responsibility earlier in the thread
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
These tokens are mostly based on OTP solutions. Google also must consider the other options; PKI - for maksimum security (e-signatures) - And also, Google's application must be supported with most tokens regarding to its support (PKCS etc.)
- Zafer Yılmaz