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Dawn Foster › Likes
I've written about Twitter passing WSJ/NYT in traffic, how we use Twitter for journalism, Twitter's tech partnerships, Twitter as a world changing technology platform, how Twitter pays my rent, how Twitter can be used for competitive intelligence, I wrote the SHIT out of last week's replies fiasco. Guess how many of 47 Twitter employees follow me.
Kartik Agaram, Iván Abrego, Adam Cohen and 90 other people liked this
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- Marshall Kirkpatrick
it's not about me feeling entitled to be followed, almost every person there follows like 150 people. it's about a. whether they use the tool the way many of the rest of us do and thus know how best to use it (there's awesome potential)
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
and b. whether they even care.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
I'm feeling sad about the future of twitter b/c I worry that the company is just going to dumb it down for mainstream users when it used to be this huge open platform with SO much potential for innovation. even if they didn't want to use it that way, it's tragic if they muzzle it so that mainstream users don't get scared away. twitter is supposed to be world changing tech, that can be frightening, but it's important
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
someone please tell me I'm wrong about this so I can go back to being really excited about Twitter again!
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
your wrong* feel better now? ;-)... (*have no idea if you really are wrong btw)
- Steve O'Hear
I wish I could. I've been feeling similarly in recent weeks. I've even started to wonder if Twitter Inc understands Twitter. ;)
- phil baumann
My guess would be that they way they see it, they have their heads down driving towards ubiquity and establishing Twitter as a standard platform. Building market share, so to speak. Everything that doesn't contribute directly to the number of users on the platform can wait.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, that sounds accurate and really dangerous.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Ken's probably right.
- phil baumann
<snip>use the tool the way many of the rest of us do<snip> This is a common mistake made by first movers and early adopters. The way *we* use it is not the only, best or even most profitable way. Which isn't to suggest they have a plan in place that will work -- simply that basing the assumption on how it is used by a small, tiny sect of the population (the digerati) is not a way to...
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- Brad_King
Marshall. Why don't we all decide to start ignoring them. Maybe that will teach them. They get too much free publicity for a poor job done in the past months ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Brad, that's a thoughtful comment for sure. To put it in context, though, hiding messages due to fear of information overload **on Twitter** is a clear move away from open, in my mind.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Brad - kinda like duct tape: can be used in ways never originally intended.
- phil baumann
do we need to relegate Twitter to the yet-another-mass-market source and find the next thing that allows power-consumers to thrive? I.E. what folks are now using FriendFeed for?
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
I don't know what Twitter Inc hopes to become. I think it's service would be as facilitator. i just don't know what it should facilitate. So far it looks like they're facilitating things for celebs.
- phil baumann
@Marshall: certainly there will be missteps. I am more interested in how they respond and what they do to fix those mistakes. In the dev world, errors happen all the time. HOW they respond to such mistakes, I think, are where we see what will become of Twitter. (And by open, I meant opening the architecture, not open information - I am more concerned by the dearth of usable Twitter applications than the @ fiasco)
- Brad_King
Marshall - why does it matter if they follow you? How many of the people who have subscribed to your work, retweeted your tweets, etc. do you follow back? Or are you concerned they aren't even paying attention to what's being written about them?
- phil baumann
Brad - good points I think. The response to the @ deal was pretty bad, though. And really, it is a loss of important opportunities to connect with new people on the service.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
They don't use the tool like we do. When the @replies flap happened, I checked @ev and @biz's accounts. Combined they'd only posted three tweets in 24 hours.
- Aaron B. Hockley
Hey Marshall, why don't you start by following back the other 7,000 people on your list? yah, there ya go! ;^)
- Michael Bailey
Phil, yes that is the case. I'm worried about them not listening to what their community of users says about the service.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
to me it appears that all twitter inc cares about is their exit, not the stability or scalability of their product nor the thoughtful analysis of most anyone interested in offering advice
- mike "glemak" dunn
As I understand it, it's as much an engineering issue as it is a marketing/usability one.
- Steve O'Hear
Steve, except that a number of the twitter devs also did not know that the @reply change had happened and advocated internally to reverse it
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Marshall, your point is well taken. I'm not adverse to asymmetrical follows; I think it's prudent if track is used in connection with it. I'm with Ken here -- I think they're just in pedal-to-the-metal-build-market-share mode. This wouldn't bother me if they had one person -- one employee -- who had the task of interfacing with the community; representing twitter, engaging in conversation. I even offered to do it for free...they didn't notice. :) In some circles, it's called community management. :)
- Karoli
:) Michael, fwiw, I follow about 100 times more people than anyone who works at Twitter does. Karoli, that's a fair point.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Marshall - I have the same concern. It doesn't appear that they're listening. It's ironic that they have a great platform to interface with their followers/fans but don't seem to in a creative, enthusiastic way. In fact, the recent communications seemed to have been sarcastic.
- phil baumann
Marshall, yeah I see that. I think that everyone should use http://mobatalk.com since I'm just one guy doing it all by myself, debt up to my eyes, I care about our community, and nobody seems to care.
- Michael Bailey
Not to change the subject, but can we talk about how in the same week Twitter messes with Replies, Tumblr launched another 'dumb down' feature called "Tumblarity" that seems to do the same thing: and that is discourage conversation and encourage people to pump out 'viral' content that appeals to the widest/lowest denominator.
- Mark Schoneveld
Michael - I'll have to tweet that out.
- phil baumann
It's really funny when everyone thought that "Tom" made myspace - what a bunch of marketing crap - here's a guy who really is doing it by himself and there's nobody talking about it.
- Michael Bailey
Thanks @phil
- Michael Bailey
sorry Marshall, I didn't mean to come in here and hijack your conversation - leaving now....
- Michael Bailey
Marshall: Twitter has been like this for a long time. Why do you think I'm pushing Friendfeed so hard for the past 16 months?
- Robert Scoble
Scoble, you aren't even "on" friendfeed - I've tried having a conversation w/you there. You just pump feeds into it.
- Michael Bailey
I'm wondering what Twitter, Inc. would look like if it had FF peeps running things. Just a speculative question.
- phil baumann
I do think that they are strategically NOT listening to the tech press. Which is actually pretty smart to some extent. That way they focus on the bigger world and don't worry about getting on TechCrunch or in RWW.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, they don't have to listen to the tech press. However, they ought to be listening to their community. Proactively.
- Karoli
I agree w Robert, it would be smarter to NOT listen to the fishbowl
- Michael Bailey
Michael, you mean except for Scoble's 21000 comments and 18000 likes on friendfeed?
- Christopher Galtenberg
Christopher, no that's not what I mean at all.
- Michael Bailey
Michael: what the hell are you talking about? I'm here almost all day long and have TONS of conversations with people.
- Robert Scoble
Anyway, back to valuable points, like Marshall's
- Christopher Galtenberg
Perhaps NOW you are here (I don't come around often much anymore) - it's not important. No arguments needed.
- Michael Bailey
i agree with scoble....i have been moving to friendfeed because it a) lets me piece the conversation about my company together and b) has an infrastructure that actually works. if you could get all your twitter followers to friendfeed, why would you even need twitter?
- Crackle
Scalability and performance had to be central to their decision making. Removing features (@) doesn't make sense. You've got to wonder why they didn't go down the path that Jive took and look to move toward virtualization technology. A partnership with Amazon should be a no brainer since Bezos is on the board. Not enough cash maybe?
- Kim Feraday
Michael: it's funny. You only have commented here 33 times. Who the hell are you to tell me that I don't have conversations here?
- Robert Scoble
Thanks Christopher, next time just punch me in the face.
- Michael Bailey
Twitter's advantage is only the number of people already signed up. It's a subset of friendfeed.
- Brent Logan
Robert's got a great point about listening to the tech crowd. I just get the sense that Twitter may not be leading the service a path that maximizes what Twitter is worth (if anything). What's Twitter's vision?
- phil baumann
Bait is bait, Robert. You bit. conversation derailed. one of my fundamental objections to the flat thread is how easily a thread can be hijacked.
- Karoli
"Hey Robert - are you up for some beta testing in about 10 days or so? April 6" - that's the only one I was talking about.
- Michael Bailey
Phil: And again, I repeat...Twitter doesn't have to listen to the techies. It *does* need to listen to the community, interact, and respond, proactively.
- Karoli
Karoli: yeah, I'm thinking of blocking Michael. He's obviously an asshole to say something like that. So I missed his message. Geesh.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter is bigger, faster, and more high profile than anything the management team has done before, and their own personal celebrity seems to have become the growth engine instead of the users behavior and ideas. New users is fine, but retention is going to be critical to be valuable. I think they need to say no to a few PR invitations and possibly and adult supervisor to bring them back to reality. Maybe that's already in the works...
- Nancy King
Karoli - whatever, but before you do, take notice of what a "closed loop" you are making this seem like. No wonder nobody wants to come in here.
- Michael Bailey
Karoli - agree about the listening to community. Not necessarily act on what users think they want, but listen at some level. At least not alienate those who might be useful to their growth.
- phil baumann
Troll
- Christopher Galtenberg
It's all great that Ev and Biz built something successful, but I think it's time they hand it off to some folks who can manage it properly.
- Aaron B. Hockley
JFC, now I am an asshole?
- Michael Bailey
oh snap, Marshall! My guess is 3.
- jeannie christensen
MK, My experience is that my outlook is blasted as crazy or simply misunderstood. The platforms which will continue on the web are the ones which serve the Elite who control most things on this earth. Twitter as currently configured gives the little man too much power, and will be brought under control so as to be useful to a small number of people.
- bill giltner
Michael: yes. When you call me out for missing a single direct message on a series of days when traffic was extraordinarily high you are an asshole. If you really cared you would have tried again.
- Robert Scoble
Michael: especially when I have 18,000 comments here and you only have 33.
- Robert Scoble
@Scoble, Michael: Take the pissing somewhere else. We were discussing Twitter.
- Brad_King
Marshall, Jeannie's back on track: how many are following you? Out of curiosity.
- phil baumann
i suggest that friendfeed's comment strings have the "thumbs up" "thumbs down" feature similar to youtube to help keep the conversation on track and hide irrelevant comments
- Crackle
great advice, shall I forward the emal and the DM that I followed up with?
- Michael Bailey
ok Brad, sorry - I get a bit upset when people call me names. Sorry, let's move along.
- Michael Bailey
From an engineering standpoint, I agree with the new @replies rules.
- Michael Bailey
Brad: sorry for getting off topic here.
- Robert Scoble
maybe most of us have less than 10k followers, but there are enough "big ones" now and that creates a lot of database pressure
- Michael Bailey
TWO. that's the answer, that was first comment I left. Lead scientist and Rael D. are following me on Twitter, that is all. It's not about me, really, though. It's about listening and participating.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
@Aaron: there's a long valley tradition of that. Michael Lewis wrote a good book, The New, New Thing, about Jim Clark's role trying to transition from start-up to company. (Lewis was a prof of mine in grad school). It offers some interesting insights on what founders go through trying to take their "Blood" and turn it into a community use project. I think Twitter is simply going through this crossroads transition.
- Brad_King
@Michael, Scoble: We still love everyone. Sidetracks happen :)
- Brad_King
Phil, lots of issues could have been headed off at the pass with someone talking to the community at large. Example: API throttling. Most users saw it as a power play rather than a necessity. What the twitter dudes don't get is that their community isn't just geeks and celebs. Lots of regular folk who are trying to get it.
- Karoli
from BuddyFeed
right, @tropical, yet those @ replies still had to be sorted through
- Michael Bailey
Twitter's employees don't use Twitter the way we want them to, Marshall. Have you taken a look at any of their favorite tweet streams? There is a story there. :)
- Louis Gray
Who thinks Twitter right now is being used the way it was originally intended (whatever that was)?
- phil baumann
original intent? hell no, they didn't even know what it was going to be used for.
- Michael Bailey
Marshall, they don't seem to be very plugged in. http://twitter.100twt.com/
- Dave Winer
I guess it really doesn't matter what we say in here, Twitter still has $55MM sitting around
- Michael Bailey
Their original intent has evolved. that's what happens when you open something up to the community. No single developer can imagine every application for something this simple. Twitter+mobile=gamechanger. Still, there are lessons to learn from MySpace, Friendster, etc. that they don't appear to have learned.
- Karoli
Until a real community ponies up some cash for membership, any new service is always going to be looking for an exit, and in doing so will fuck over the very community which made it what it is.
- Michael Bailey
@Dave If I had to guess I'd say they are quite well plugged in, just not into the "tech crowd" or their own service. But they do quite well generating lots of talk in the world outside of Silicon valley. They've clearly made a choice to ignore this space.
- Alexander van Elsas
I believe the future of micro-blogging as we know it today with all followers seeing all posts is only sustainable in a defined group.
- Pierre-Armand Lalonde
Michael: see your friendfeed account, I'm talking to you on your other message.
- Robert Scoble
@Alexender: Ignore may be too harsh. The reality is the digerati are a small subset of who any company needs to reach. They are simply ALSO listening to other people (is my guess). We don't get our way all the time just because we were here first. (Which isn't to say I don't want my way too.)
- Brad_King
just to be clear again: I'm just using this as a data point re listening to conversations about the twitter technology, not saying I'm in any way entitled to be followed by anyone. fwiw, though, I do have more followers than all but like 5 or 6 of the 47 people on twitter staff and I talk about twitter all the time. so community members find my tweets interesting, just not the ppl i'm tweeting about.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Dave Winer: is that stream twitter employees only? could it be true that one of them doesn't know what friendfeed is?
- Karoli
Karoli - and I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. If you invent something without knowing how far it might go (that is, not having a vision), how do you lead the venture? Is something like Twitter even "leadable"? Or will Twitter turn out to be too fundamental a service to be a business venture?
- phil baumann
Marshall: you are not the only one to notice that Twitter's staff isn't participating in the community. Here's another test. Why is Oprah recommended to me to follow? Why isn't someone like Leo Laporte recommended? Or Dave Winer? Both have been using Twitter a lot longer.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - it appears that Twitter's going for the celebrity market, whatever that'll look like. If that's the case, it doesn't seem to be a very creative vision.
- phil baumann
Or, even worse, Twitter recommends to me to follow a cat, which is obviously a fake account. Why should I follow a cat and not Leo Laporte?
- Robert Scoble
I was the 10,280th person to start using Twitter - recommend me
- Michael Bailey
Phil, that's where community is the critical piece, which goes to Marshall's point. If they are not part of the community *they* created, should we worry? I think, yes, we should. Ignoring community means they don't understand their own product.
- Karoli
Robert, the Twitter team is not following early adopters or the developer community. But the Twitter team does follow the celebs. It's clear what they want to be when they grow up.
- Louis Gray
@Robert you know that is because they are on steroids. Growth is more important than user value. An old web 2.0 flaw ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Twitter is simply the first [service] to offer this new [technology]. as Dan York says, we didn't know we were missing a medium until Twitter showed us. That's exciting. But it's silly to think we'll all use this one Web site in the future, or a different Web site like FriendFeed. Frustrated Twitterati can _now_ take their µblog to their own domain and start collecting followers there...
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- Brian Hendrickson
Nail.on.head - Louis Gray
- Matthew DeVries
Ah, so the message is that the only community that matters is the celebrity crowd. ("in crowd" refrains ringing here...)
- Karoli
Karoli: celebrities are important to generate hype. It's a brilliant strategy. But one that I think will ultimately leave Twitter wanting.
- Robert Scoble
No any community that can gather 1M followers in week :)
- Pierre-Armand Lalonde
Brian Hendrickson: Until they all talk to each other (and they don't right now), they're not relevant. I am a hard-core Identica denizen, but since there's no bridge from twitter back to identica, i don't use it as much. Why? Because the majority of those I call "community" are on Twitter. My social graph is there.
- Karoli
oh, at the core it all boils down to OCD and Ego's
- Michael Bailey
Robert, celebrities are a handful of people. There are millions using Twitter. They seriously cannot manage a handful of celebs and still listen to the larger community?
- Karoli
At some point, people who are spending VC money will need to stop being looked at as "leaders" or "visonaries" and we'll need to start talking about people who are actually making this medium pay-off.
- Michael Bailey
Karoli: well, they do have other things to do too like make their servers work. It's impressive that they've been able to keep the service mostly up and running.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, my point (and it will sound self-serving but I mean it in a much more general way), is that out of 47 employees, not one is tasked with monitoring and interfacing with the community. That strikes me as poor business.
- Karoli
@Karoli Twitter execs don't need to follow or listen to anyone as their service grows like crazy without any effort on their side. It's a short term winning strategy, but severely flawed as pointed out here. Question is do they really care? Evidence seems to be pointing towards "don't care"
- Alexander van Elsas
Alexander: agree.
- Karoli
Alexander - it does appear they don't care. Which begs the question: why do we care? :)
- phil baumann
@Karoli my self-serving counterpoint would be something like "I spent 11,000 hours developing a system based on the community feedback, and now nobody cares" so I don't blame Twitter for NOT listening.
- Michael Bailey
the "community" is real quick to say things like "follow your passion" or "don't give up" and yet when someone actually sticks it out and makes the technology work, those same people are nowhere to be found.
- Michael Bailey
@Karoli there is a bridge http://tw2omb.singpolyma.net/ and my software has the client feature but i'm revamping it at the moment, and I believe identi.ca/evan is working on it for Laconica
- Brian Hendrickson
Just because they are not following doesn't mean they are not listening. There are plenty of way to mine the data without having a huge following list.
- WorldofHiglet
@WorldofHiglet: well said!
- Brad_King
I care because in essence I have always felt Twitter was a GREAT service. That feeling is disappearing fast now that I am forced to pay attention to 95% spam/traffic account following notifications. Takes away all the fun in discovering new people. I will be forced to mark Twitter e-mail notifications as spam, and that is a FAIL for what used to be a great service.
- Alexander van Elsas
Michael, I understand the frustration. But twitter has the user base to justify some modicum of community management.
- Karoli
@Karoli agreed on the user base, but mixing their technology with the ego-serving attitude of a vocal-minority doesn't work out well.
- Michael Bailey
Alexander - ditto
- phil baumann
Like I said in another thread, Twitter is evolving. They're evolving into a finely tuned organism optimized to add users at the fastest possible rate with the smallest possible footprint and the minimum amount of engineering effort and infrastructure investment.
- Ken Sheppardson
I am far more concerned abt the lack of good Twitter Apps and of a user-interface that allows me to *easily* go through my list of followers, form groups, delete and block, recategorize by location (for when I travel), ect. Those are the user tools that would be *most* beneficial, I think.
- Brad_King
WorldofHiglet actions speak louder than words. Not once has Twitter demonstrated that they had the first clue what the community at large was doing or how they were using the service, nor have they indicated that they care.
- Karoli
@karoli, those are the 47 Twitter employees in the article that came out last week. And you can tell what they're tuned into by what they talk about, same as anyone else. They don't really talk about much, themselves, they aren't even conversing. I don't think they're following celebs, I don't think they're following anyone. That's just how it looks from reading the conversation.
- Dave Winer
@davewiner it's astounding that one of them doesn't know what friendfeed is.
- Karoli
@brad_king I could build that, no problem.
- Michael Bailey
Here's another bit of data. I did two of these at the same time, one for the people of the NYT on Twitter and the other for the people of Twitter on Twitter. The Times peoplel discovered my thing within 5 minutes (they noticed when the bot followed them) and they were talking about it immediately, and exchanging theories on what it was. As far as I can tell, the Twitter folk don't yet know we're listening to them.
- Dave Winer
@karoli I know lots of people that do not know what Friendfeed is. That is a Silicon valley attitude ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
http://nyt.100twt.com/
- Dave Winer
@Michael: what I've suggested isn't rocket science of course. I think it's instructive that twitter (and many 2.0 companies) have overlooked the basics of usability. Would love to see those apps get built.
- Brad_King
Dave - that seems to tell us something. So, are they not listening with a purpose/strategy, or just plain old not listening?
- phil baumann
@Brad of course, none of this is rocket science, hell even rocket science itself isn't that difficult - I'm agreeing with you that those features in an app would be beneficial. Be warned however, that the "basics of usability" will be trumped if it doesn't readily serve one's ego.
- Michael Bailey
Knowing human nature, Phil, it's probably the latter. It probably never occurred to them to listen.
- Dave Winer
@Phil: Or, might I suggest a third alternative, they are simply not listening to *you*
- Brad_King
Whereas the Times hires people whose profession is to be curious about WTF is going on.
- Dave Winer
Yeah @Phil, that's probably true (what Brad said). Heck even Dave Winer doesn't listen to me, why would the Twitter folkeratti? ;^)
- Michael Bailey
@Brad - Oh I'm sure they're not. And I don't blame them in that case.:)
- phil baumann
Marshall, are you still here?
- Michael Bailey
@Phil: hahaha!
- Brad_King
Dave Winer popularized recipient-controlled distribution, Jack Dorsey made it 2-way and realtime on a single domain, Evan Prodromou created a way for any site to join a realtime 2-way network.
- Brian Hendrickson
Alexander: When a service is built on your product, it seems to me worthwhile to know it exists. When it's one that wins things like Techcrunch 50, it especially seems worthwhile to be aware of its existence.
- Karoli
Well yeah, but even RSS which was supposed to provide a "summary" ended up shipping the entire contents of a site around the web. Nobody could expect Twitter to anticipate how their system would be used. Nobody can do that.
- Michael Bailey
What a great conversation. looking forward to catching up when I get back from work in the lab.
- Brad_King
okay, I lost the post about identi.ca and laconica...but the identi.ca bridge only goes *to* twitter. It needs a lane going the other way...twitter to identi.ca. [EDIT] Found the post, thanks for the link. First I knew this existed!
- Karoli
Michael - and I suppose anyone with that kind of visionary powers wouldn't be courting Kelso.
- phil baumann
@phil, yeah, and if you find them, invest on my behalf, would ya? ;^)
- Michael Bailey
Yes, I had a crude tweet-pulling client working in my OMB, now fixing it. and @singpolyma wrote the bridge I linked to but I haven't tried it yet, and @evan is getting a lot of requests and I spoke to him briefly about it in San Francisco and it seemed a possibility depending on licensing
- Brian Hendrickson
Even if we could bring in the top 2,500 Twitter users and ask them for a concise list of all the features of a "killer app" it wouldn't be done. Way too many ideas and implementations for a single app.
- Michael Bailey
Yes but when there is a good open source "clone" written in a fast-to-develop language then people will start creating new iterations of this medium
- Brian Hendrickson
@Karoli I think that people living outside the Silicon Valley bubble have never heard of TechCrunch or FF. It may be interesting, it's also true that we tend to find things much more important than the rest of the world. They can do without a service like FF and still live happy ever after ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
we don't need a fast-to-develop language (RoR didn't scale, nor will any others). We need people who understand programming, low-overhead, efficient methods, etc.
- Michael Bailey
It's "programming" - it's not supposed to be easy.
- Michael Bailey
not for a network of millions of microblogs, you're thinking of scaling silos which is different
- Brian Hendrickson
Just checked out Dave's link. The two tweets about Friendfeed are unbelievable
- Jamie
how would those microblogs be connected, if not via a few silos?
- Michael Bailey
there are at least 3 implementations right now of the http://openmicroblogging.org specification for site-to-site microblogging. 1: Laconica 2: OpenMicroBlogger 3: A wordpress plugin called nsw or something. And the Jaiku team has been actively improving the specification.
- Brian Hendrickson
the protocol is just OAuth with a couple of fields added, and it's push-based so there is no polling
- Brian Hendrickson
oh, sounds like a modified pingback structure
- Michael Bailey
it lets people [Follow] you in realtime using a simple push. if you were microblogging at microblog.michaelbailey.com and you had 7,000 people at identi.ca following you, your message would be POSTed one time to that server. if 4,000 people at Leo's army.twit.tv were following you, your server would do a 2nd POST to deliver the notice/status to that community.
- Brian Hendrickson
also, thinking outloud, and a few steps ahead, there'll eventually need to be a "registration" list maintained someplace to facilitate the discovery of what sites I could push to, which is a silo
- Michael Bailey
all instances of OpenMicroBlogger ping a central search server with the URL of each status, and the search feature uses that central server, so that will facilitate discovery, but yes the other thing a "registration" list would do is make the [Follow] process more streamlined, right now you have to copy/paste a URL to follow someone on a site where you have not registered.
- Brian Hendrickson
well, lessons learned from RSS were that people were quick no navigate to the early content aggregators, rather than wondering around looking for individual sites, so the issue of scaling the silo will remain - but, it does sound interesting and I'll look forward to watching it mature.
- Michael Bailey
how many Twitterati would choose blogger.com over self-hosted wordpress? people are definitely interested in this, check out the download count of the #1 software package here http://open.srcphp.com/#top_co...
- Brian Hendrickson
Brian: I think that analogy's distorted a bit. I'd say it's more a question of how many people would install their own email server.
- Ken Sheppardson
off to a good start, but I don't think the first 25,000 will really count, and there's a ways to go for that.
- Michael Bailey
And let me just say that I for one like how FriendFeed comment streams are flat, and the converation wanders all over the map to things that are completely unrelated to the entry, but they always tend to come back on track. It's an actual conversaion, not some explosion of nested comment conversation fragments.
- Ken Sheppardson
agreed - what ken just said ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
Ken - well put. An acid trip that brings you back home.
- phil baumann
Ken: openmicroblogger has friendfeed-style vertical comment threads, it also has comet-push for realtime for both notices and comments.
- Brian Hendrickson
@Ken agreed - nested replies are only good in theory ;^)
- Michael Bailey
Ken: email servers are private, microblogs are simply easier blogs. i've created 700 or so posts in my 1.5 years of microblogging
- Brian Hendrickson
See, like that there. I don't know what the heck openmicroblogger has to do with anything, but I'll defend to the death your right to sidetrack the converation by talking about it ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
haha thanks
- Brian Hendrickson
I would guess that it will find it's niche, but like opml it will remain too convoluted for the masses.
- Michael Bailey
you can run openmicroblogger on a GoDaddy host, i've done it
- Brian Hendrickson
I mean, heck, people still hit reply all and then say oooops
- Michael Bailey
in the early days of email - back when all data was passed using UUCP (i.e. before the internet) email servers were exactly "public" in so much as if you had the UUCP bang path you could send anyone a message
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
it's only until scaling issues hit that forced smtp to be created
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
LOL heck Mike, I still remember doing archie searches
- Michael Bailey
evan's protocol will surely hit some scaling problems if it becomes popular. xmpp has all of that covered of course and is speedy as hell, but not so easy to host yourself. I installed erlang and checked out punjab and it's all very cool.
- Brian Hendrickson
yes, microbologging over xmpp is in a lot of ways at the same stage as html over http was at when apache was created
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
mike and mike killing the conversation with talk of UUCP and Archie - doh!
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
*crickets*
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken the reason i'm making noise over here is because people don't realize they can collect their followers and their content in their own database, and that they can "manage" their social network the way they manage their blog.
- Brian Hendrickson
status.net and twitteronia will help move the conversation along i think
- Brian Hendrickson
or maybe it's not that they don't realize it, it's that they don't care :-)
- Brian Hendrickson
It may just be that the logic leap between "Twitter doesn't seem to be listening to me" and "Go get a server and build your own Twitter" is a little too much for most people. :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
don't "build a twitter", just microblog from a service that is part of a network, or install a microblog on your own site. identi.ca makes the former trivial. openmicroblogger makes the latter trivial.
- Brian Hendrickson
Karoli, I agree that they need to do lot more of this but Twitter does have people like @crystal doing community mgmt on Get Satisfaction.
- Mike Doeff
As the developer of openmicroblogger, you might have a slightly different definition of "trivial" than the typical disenfranchised Twitter user, Brian. ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
oh I dunno - the reality of that is it is too disconnected - when all the the microfeeds are pulled in, and I go to leave a comment, I expect a pretty rapid response - but in actual use, the person pushing the data out isn't even "there".
- Michael Bailey
I get responses days or sometimes weeks after leaving a comment, then I'm like "huh? oh yeah, I've moved on"
- Michael Bailey
of course, were I an A-Lister, I'd be all for it, because as long as my "message" gets pushed out to all platforms, I don't really care about engaging in conversation
- Michael Bailey
as search is developed on the http://openmicroblogging.org network of microblogs, you'll be able to see replies on other hosts more easily, and for the next version of the protocol there will be an attempt to allow @replies between sites but it will be tricky to keep the spammers out.
- Brian Hendrickson
which will no doubt turn into a full-time job and degrade the service and then when you take steps to keep them out, you'll piss off your community - wait, are we talking about Twitter now? lol
- Michael Bailey
Let's just create OOAPI, the open openAPI
- Michael Bailey
well, it seems to have died in here, thanks for the great conversation (and I'll overlook the name calling and bashing...Robert) ;^)
- Michael Bailey
the community already has a choice of several pieces of software. but yes thanks for the conversation Michael and Ken and Mike and Mike ;) happy microblogging
- Brian Hendrickson
this thread officially has reached its quota of mikes - justsayn ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
The fact that this conversation is happening over at FriendFeed (and could never exist on Twitter) is pretty telling in itself. It's hard to get excited about Twitter. In fact, I see less and less value in the service as time goes by. I wonder if they can deliver in the near future.
- Kevin Pruett
*mike threshold now officially surpassed* I'm 5 hours late to the party, but just planting a post-it note that says High density of information, Return here sometime. And I whole-heartily agree with Ken's single-level threads work best on ff. Were there a scattering of sub-branching comments, it would be akin to shuttling around one or two people in/out of a side rooms for a chat when a...
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- Micah Wittman
yes agreed, i love the single level threading of ff as well
- mike "glemak" dunn
yay! my name is not mike! :) interesting post and long thread! ;) though I'm naturally biased about 'tree'-threading, I like to have the option to list or thread if I want. Oddly enough, I'm building something which isn't a million miles *between* twitter and friendfeed (on top of a phreadz platform). </plug> - back to the topic though, 2/47 isn't bad for a journo: even less of them follow the developers who have actually built interesting/useful/unexpected/valuable things on their platform.
- kosso
speaking from experience eh kosso - i for one am glad to call you an honorary mike ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
I've only seen a tiny bit of video of the twitter founders - there's not much charisma and there's something else I can't put my finger on. Probably it's that "normal introverts" look arrogant under the "sudden darling" media spotlight.
- Richard pancakhaus Walker
OH: "Don't be a cock, support the open web."
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