harryzou - Likes - FriendFeed

This was amazing. I woke up to find that feature had been launched on Google Reader, and it was already supported in FriendFeed! Hats off to you! - Rodrigo Jaroszewski

They really make this new app. of GReader for FF. Awesome! - Erhan Erdogan

Just added a note on a shared item on Google Reader and once submitted it can be edited here as well! Well done!! - Joe Dawson

RSSmeme does it too! http://www.rssmeme.com/story/5... <-- click the Read Notes link - Benjamin Golub

sweet - Shey

Awesome! - James Polley

keso shared an item on Google Reader

Xiaonei deal post-mortem: who is smart here?

May 4 at 4:23 am - Link

terababy and harryzou liked this

MJiA posted an entry on MJiA

News Feed

April 23 at 7:30 pm - Link

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Philipp Lenssen posted a message

“Friendfeed opt-in ads”

February 23 at 3:25 pm - Link

Nicole Simon, harryzou, Lizunlong, Fuad Arshad and 11 other people liked this

The ads could be subscribe only, revolutionizing the way ads work ;). Once a week, a small item asks you if you want to subscribe to any ad feeds -- this item will render like the rest of new items popping up to the left. Or, it could be a menu item. If you subscribe to a topic of your choice, like "automic relevance detection based on what you read here", "movies," "technology", "books" etc., you will get 1 ad per week tailored to your selection. 1 ad per week is ridiculously little but on the other hand, it will actually receive your (voluntary, non-frustration due to opt-in) attention; plus, all ads are naturally disclosed as such. - Philipp Lenssen

I am not opposed to ads per se, but I would not want ads to creep into my friendfeed. Ads should be clearly separated and placed somewhere else, e.g. to the right of friendfeed items. - Mustafa K. Isik

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"I am not opposed to ads per se, but I would not want ads to creep into my friendfeed." While the ads would render just like the rest of feed items, they would also be strictly opt-in, as described, so if you don't want them... you just wouldn't subscribe to them. If, on the other hand, you would like these ads -- and they would be screened by the FF team to be incredibly cool and relevant :) -- you get the chance to subscribe to not one but many per week. The best thing, as these ad items would work like the rest of content items (except a visible disclosure), you could also discuss them, criticize them etc. Of course, pushing the ads to the right side (and still make them opt-in) could make sense as well. - Philipp Lenssen

With clearly separated ads, i.e. such that are not placed directly among feed items, I could live - even might want to try them out. Ads within the feed I would not even try out. I am sort of concentrated when I read my friendfeed and I feel that ads would just break the flow of browsing items. This is one of the major issues I have with Facebook's activity stream ... well, among many others. Ads being opt-in is OK, but what's the incentive to try them out? Are there really enough people who'd just opt-in for the fun of it/want to see how well the recommendations work? A co-op scheme similar to AdSense (integration?) would be interesting. - Mustafa K. Isik

I think this is a really important issue that needs to be solved in general for free content and services. sure, you can slap adsense on something or join an ad network, but i've pretty much stopped looking at adsense ads because of low-quality or poorly targeted ad blocks. I pretty much don't look at advertising online anymore because of irrelevance. so i think we're really in need of a new ad model. i like the idea of the deck because their ads r edited for quality and relevance. i like sometimes facebook fliers because they can be targeted to particular interests of mine. that's why i think this idea of opt-in ads is very interesting. because you would only opt-in to ads that interest you or provide value. that puts the onus on the advertiser to create better advertising. also i like the idea of something edited or screened by the community. i feel like a good ad format (if that's the way they go) for cool services like friendfeed will have to be hyper-targeted, authenticated by the community& offer value. - Ginger Makela

I think economies of scale make it very hard for startups to experiment with ad targeting. They just don't have access to inventory. Maybe it would help if a major ad network offered a publisher API which let you send in some text with other targeting hints and get back a big pile of ads with metadata and then the publisher could select a subset of them (based on whatever social voodoo) to show in some context. The closest thing I can think of is Amazon's associates web service. - ⓞnor

that's seriously brilliant. - Ginger Makela

@ⓞnor: That is a good suggestion. @Ginger: I disagree with your take on AdSense performance, but you are right with community screened and rated ads. - Mustafa K. Isik

loving ⓞnor's idea. it's clear that many small sites could build a better targeting engine specific to their content and purpose than a generic engine like adsense (not to say that adsense doesn't rock, it's just not the one size that fits all). access to the ad invetory is the real bottle neck. the key thing for the ad networs is how they control click quality (conversion rates) for their advertisers. - Alex Gawley

I like the idea of a "Related" drop down under each item that included ads as well as other posts that FF thinks is interesting. - engtech

opt in Ad's ? who will that benefit ?? I mean seriously, how many of us really want ads at all ? how many times do we even click on ad's ? - Peter Dawson

You can try something like this. Create a virtual person named 'Ads'( or something creative). Now create a feed for this person to whom others can subscribe. Now show that ad if its clicked by friend of FOAF if its relevant. - Varun Mahajan

I already see some of my "friends" pushing what you may considered as ads - see http://friendfeed.com/e/16a89e... - Atul Arora

I just saw the Mint item from http://friendfeed.com/adbot show up in my FriendFeed, since Kevin Fox is that user's "friend" and he commented on the item. So it looks like opt-in ads are here already. - Mihai Parparita

@Mihai: Indeed it does. The name sounds suspicious, no? - Voyagerfan5761

opt in ads are not bad. - Fuad Arshad

whitecrow posted a message on Twitter

“原来Google最容易被继承和本地化的是“幽默”。愚人节快乐！ http://tinyurl.com/2ral9q”

March 31 at 7:38 pm - Link

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keso posted an entry on keso's view

中国网民自发反击外媒歪曲拉萨事件

March 25 at 9:03 pm - Link

MJiA and harryzou liked this

Philipp Lenssen posted a link

List of Friendfeed feature requests & thoughts

March 25 at 7:53 am - Link

Neil, Anne Bouey, Steven Hodson, David Vasileff and 10 other people liked this

Sounds like somebody needs to change their site name to FriendFeed Blogoscoped. - Louis Gray

I second that motion, "FriendFeed Blogoscoped" :)- - Peter Dawson

And the blog tagline should say 100% Friendfeed instead of 80% Google :-) - Atul Arora

How about "Ex-Google Blogoscoped"...? :-) - Slippy Lane

Jess Lee published photos on Picasa Web Albums

March 24 at 11:36 pm - Link

Carlo Maglinao, Michal Cierniak, Turker Keskinpala, harryzou and 3 other people liked this

有好几张好像是根据一个人变的 - joojen

hey,how you do that? - wear-and-tear

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they were generated using http://www.faceofthefuture.org... - Jess Lee

the art transforms are good, too - David Vasileff

great! - Dennis

Neat how you can expand all the pics here on Friendfeed. (Wonder how this feature relates to copyright.) - Philipp Lenssen

the best one is the asian barack obama. i think the west asian rihanna looks like alicia keys. - Jess Lee

MJiA shared an item on Google Reader

Youtube 宣传战

March 25 at 1:17 am - Link

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Jess Lee posted a link

'The 21 Steps', by Charles Cumming

March 21 at 3:47 pm - Link

harryzou, brendan and Atul Arora liked this

a story told through the Google Maps interface - Jess Lee

Jess Lee posted an entry on jessblog

Why Polyvore?

March 23 at 11:24 pm - Link

harryzou, Paul Buchheit, Steven Hodson, Bret Taylor and 3 other people liked this

Louis Gray shared an item on Google Reader

Google's Design Guidelines

March 21 at 5:13 pm - Link

Christopher Yeo, Florian, marx, David and 8 other people liked this

I had the pleasure of helping to create this document. I hope they end up publishing it publicly! - Kevin Fox

Kevin, that's fun. Makes sharing the story a bit more personal. Why don't you just publish it yourself or e-mail it to me? :-) - Louis Gray

Google Legal? - Chris White

whitecrow posted a message on Twitter

“不管这条新闻是不是PR稿，百度产品的成功很大程度上是因为能够“最好的满足用户最基本的需求”，这一点很简单但很多公司都没有做到。搜索的用户转移成本很低，搜索的准确度已经不在是第一位，用户更在乎“速度”“效率”这两个根本需求。如果谷歌能够踏实的解决最基本问题，也许也不会到了今 ...”

March 13 at 10:14 pm - Link

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whitecrow posted an entry on 白鸦，以用户为中心的设计

上海，“实在”的互联网环境

March 12 at 11:08 am - Link

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MJiA posted an entry on MJiA

No Time To Think

March 10 at 9:36 pm - Link

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terababy posted a message

“开贴：从friendfeed信息聚合说开去”

February 29 at 4:19 am - Link

HanChee and harryzou liked this

(a) 信息聚合容易产生的两个问题，信息过载与信息重复。 - terababy

(b) 聚合信息的有效组织方式。 - terababy

(c) friendfeed 到底有没有价值。 - terababy

关于a，这不单是类似FriendFeed个人信息聚合才拥有的问题，RSS订阅、社区交友、电子邮箱乃至整个互联网都是如此，各种服务、浩海数量的用户，都充当信息源的角色，只要信息源一多起来，信息便如巨浪一样把你淹没。另一方面，有太多人对相同的事情感兴趣，更多的人充当着信息拷贝的角色。还有很多网络重度使用者，奔忙于各个社区、线上服务，如今个人信息聚合服务将这些社区、线上服务的输出数据聚合在一起，构成了各方位的交叉，信息愈加过载和重复，所以伊始就招来那么多的人的口诛笔伐。 - terababy

关于c，这个问题很关键，但是不好回答。官方起初喊的口号是即时关注亲朋好友的网络动态，但就算是 friendfeed 的创始人 Paul Buchheit 的订阅也大都是来自网络上的用户，压根谈不上亲朋好友，其被订阅者的信息对于他自己也大大折扣；从另一角度说，这不单单是 friendfeed 的问题，facebook、海内这样的真人社区起初的口号何况不是关注亲朋好友，还不是沦为交友网站? 这种结果对于网站方来说是很为难的事情，网站经营起始不会在社会上有多大影响力，一是为了营造欣欣向荣的景象，二是新用户实在找不到自己真正的亲朋好友，网站会在策略上提供你方便找人的方法，比如“推荐”这就是一个很显眼的只有交友网站才会提供的功能。所以单纯在网站经营起始，谈到底有没有价值为时过早。如果真的发展到人人都在 friendfeed，那确如 Paul Buchheit 所说，可以关注亲朋好友的信息了，信息变得有价值了，friendfeed 才会真正的有价值。 - terababy

关于b, 结合a和c，提出解决的方法，即信息的有效组织方式。组织信息的方式有几下几种：1 过滤、2 排序、3 相关信息聚合，最后是4 人性化显示。1 过滤是大多数人谈到信息重载、重复都会想到的方法，1.1. 让用户可以自己给每个被订阅者、每种类型信息制定权重；1.2. 方便用户控制某个被订阅者信息或其某种类型信息删除(或隐藏)；1.3. 提供过滤器 filter 只显示感兴趣的信息；1.4. 提供搜索功能方便寻找有用信息(类似于filter，但不同，filter是可以定制化、固化、多重组合的)。2 排序方式也相当重要，一般都是按 news feed 的时间倒序，friendfeed 则提供了不一样的排序方式，按 news feed的最后评注时间排序，这样热的信息会在上方。3 相关信息聚合的方式我们可以轻易做到的是按用户、信息源类型、时间进行聚合，按照标签(tag)进行聚合则给我们提供了一种新的思路，有相当数量news feed是提供tag信息的，不妨加以利用，新进的个人信息聚合服务 Second Brain 就是按照这种思路进行信息的有效组织的。4. 最后说一下信息的人性化显示，信息中主要有几个要素：信息源图标、信息发布者、信息类型、信息源、信息内容，提供信息源的图标这东西说大不大说小不小，做为信息展示中不多的图片它是非常醒目的，是肉眼看上去一下子就能区别其它信息源的重要标志，这一点 friendfeed并不没有做到；信息类型比如是发布了一篇“消息”、“日志”、“歌曲”、“图片”等等；信息内容最起码要显示完全的标题，国内一些个人信息聚合服务甚至会抓取全文，这一点实在要不得，素质，要注意素质问题。当然如果你可以抓取一下全文中的几张图片顺便显示一下将会是很不错的提高可阅读性的方法。 - terababy

Paul Buchheit posted a link

Perspective, FriendFried and the Scoble Effect

February 28 at 10:18 am - Link

Christopher Black, harryzou, Mark Douglass, Ryan Mahoski and 6 other people liked this

Jake Kuramoto may be on to something. Louis Gray has noted that both Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan have joined FriendFeed, and the networking possibilities have certainly increased as a result. - Ontario Emperor

I worry that Scoble will bring noisy people to FriendFeed. :-( - Amit Patel

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Amit: I have to agree to apoint with your concern but you do have the final say on his effect on your feed by not subscribing to him. If it gets too noisey I'll unsub pretty quick - Steven Hodson

"you do have the final say on his effect on your feed by not subscribing to him". Not 100% true -- the "personalized communities" here overlap in the comments threads. Say, Adam subscribed to Eve. Sue subscribes to Eve. Robert brings Pete on board. Pete comments in Sue's thread, perhaps she's a friend of a friend. Adam will now see stranger Pete's output because Pete is a friend of Sue who's a friend of Eve (the only person Adam actually subscribed to) -- all due to Robert. - Philipp Lenssen

Right, wrong, indifferent I think the Scoble Effect does help drive features, if only to control the noise. Right Paul? - Jake Kuramoto

Agree with you Jake, the more people sign-up here the better as it will let us watch how experts tackle the issues arising! - Philipp Lenssen

that is a big thing about FF for me .. I am extremely intersted in how they grow - deal with things likea Scoble Effect (and yes Philipp you're right about the effect - I was a little "overviewish" I guess) and also what new ideas they will bring to the table to make FF even more valuable - Steven Hodson

I already unfriended him because of the noise it brought into my friends feed. I liked the new information, but it quickly became too noisy, and made FF less valuable to me. I still see his stuff now because of friend of a friend semantics. - Derek Collison

Is it the name, perhaps? It's a name you just want to follow. I didn't know it before yesterday, and now I've subscribed to him. Hmmm. - Slippy Lane

I'm not subscribed to Scoble and don't plan to. The “noise” I was referring to was the increased volume of friend-of-friend posts — described by Philipp Lenssen. I also think that as more strangers start following me, I'm going to be less open about what I post. I think that “big city vs. small town” feel may be unavoidable growth. - Amit Patel

I'd be inclined to agree with you there, Amit. We all love being part of (or peekers into) a tight little community, but when that community gets popular, well, there's always a trade-off. - Slippy Lane

But in the real world we all live in neighbourhoods where we tend to bump into the same people repeatedly rather than interacting with everyone on the planet. Maybe what we need are private groups or sub-graphs? - Adewale Oshineye

Paul Buchheit posted an entry on Paul Buchheit

The most import thing to understand about new products and startups

February 17 at 4:22 am - Link

Greg Coladonato, Soyapi Mumba, Stephen Foskett, Jick Nan and 24 other people liked this

"Even if you aren't the smartest person around, and your product is kind of ugly and broken, you can still be very successful, if you just build the right product. YouTube and MySpace are both fine examples of this." Ouch, I hope the founders of YouTube don't read that :) - Huy Zing

Humility? I always thought the 3 traits of good programmers were impatience, laziness, and hubris ;-)... seriously, nice blog. - Rob Hoeting

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...and a preference not to use perl, of course ;) - Alex Mendes da Costa

The #1 story on RSSmeme as of 6pm EST: http://www.rssmeme.com/story/5... - Benjamin Golub

FriendFeed does a great job of paying attention to user feedback and seeing what works. But a lot of the time, users don't really know what they want or will ask for things that turn out to suck. I'm curious if any user asked for GMail conversations or if that was an innovation that the team came up with on its own. - Jess Lee

Yeah, it's important to understand that "listen" is not the same as "obey". "Observe your users" might be a better way of putting it, but that sounds so formal, and slightly creepy. - Paul Buchheit

I agree with both Jess & Paul's comments. Build what people will want, not what they say they want - Chris White

If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse. - henry ford - paulm

"I sent it out to a few people for feedback, and they said that it was somewhat useful, but it would be better if it searched over their email instead of mine." lol. - j1m

i like the point about humility...i would take it a step further, in fact, and say that the key word is "service". this word encompasses both a personal attitude (serving others, with humility) and a market-based/need-based outlook rather than a product-based outlook (providing a service to potential users). that way you're focused on addressing an issue, rather than making a super spiffo whizbang product...addressing issues and needs is, in the end, what "service", whether it's "a service" or just "service", is all about. although i guess a super spiffo whizbang product under the hood helps. - Mike Massey

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