Friendfeed is no longer .. all that's left is the flick of the switch.
- John Blanton
It's nice for the FF peeps. They'll see what it's like to deliver new features for a decent size user base.
- mrshl
Mike: I wouldn't worry about FriendFeed. I see it as Facebook's R&D department now. We're the test bunnies for what 300 million people will get! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Now Friendfeed will be able to go head to head with Google wave! So long as the team are allowed to lead from within Facebook how can this possibly be bad?
- Ade Lack
Nice comments. Also looking forward to realtime search and 300M+ users ... watch that in realtime! My screen will melt I guess.
- Peter van Teeseling
I'm only really sad because it completely breaks my on-line life. I'm excited for the FF team and for FB but that's only one aspect and I don't see how it can be merged.
- James Myatt
Mark: can you verify that this is a real account somehow? Tell us something about what we did in Davos together that I didn't share.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, the user name for Zuck misspells his name, just like he misspelled yours.
- Louis Gray
Mark, if that is really you. Please don't let people on FB find users on FF. Some of us are looking for the anti-social web. Private groups and no friend requests from long lost classmates was a big plus over here.
- Chip Ramsey
Robert: from what I can tell most FF users do not share your enthusiasm or optimism. From what I can see FriendFeed team members will be absorbed into Facebook R&D, FriendFeed as a property will whither and most will cash out as soon as they can. Do you have some other information that you can share that supports your optimism?
- Brian Sullivan
Robert: Do you have *any* reason at all to believe that friendfeed will survive as a distinct entity?
- Christopher A Carr
How does everyone know what's going to happen? I prefer Rob's tone of "what should happen" - fear vs possibility
- Ankush Narula
from iPhone
Really interesting perspective you provide here. I was thinking this whole time that this would hit Twitter hard, but I see now that Google might be the real target, because of the whole real-time search. Nonetheless, I love all the Google employees that are hoping facebook becomes more "open" in the process. Something tells me facebook doesn't care about being open, but being a...
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- Rahul Krishnakumar
Rahul: That's not encouraging. I don't see how you get that from that article.
- Christopher A Carr
Wait I owe Scoble an apology. I read several places that he had a financial interest in Friend Feed. That information , if true,clouded my perception of his commentary of FF. If you believed that true, he comes across as a shill trying to protect his investment IMHO. In his blog post he denounces any financial connection. Now I feel stupid because good practices dictate that he would have disclosed such in his writings. I suck sorry Robert.
- cheapsuits
from iPhone
Hmmm - I keep my FB social, private, and mainly family. I keep FF public and work-oriented only. Will I need two accounts? Or just delicate messing about with privacy controls? I'm not looking forward to shifting - may FF last a long while still. FB is too busy, and FF is lightweight and gives me exactly what I want, with a much cleaner interface. Thanks very much Robert, your blog post is much appreciated!
- Allyson Lister
cheapsuits: Robert has said 1,000 + times that he has no financial interest in ff.
- Christopher A Carr
Robert, how can you say you don't get how FF users are sad and up in arms? FB's attitudes and culture are different enough for this to be a serious shock. In short, lots of people think FF=good, FB=bad, for better or worse. Your own list of cons is enough to get FF users up in arms.
- Don Faulkner
Christopher I see it now. Easy to see what he said when it isn't filtered by FF haters. What more can I say then I suck? I surely am not going to kill myself over it.
- cheapsuits
from iPhone
Thrilled for Paul, but amused that FB's first big land grab is another biz that isn't monetized properly either! Arrogance or Ignorance?
- Jan Simmonds
Jan, FF has some great technology and some great people. It's not about the service itself.
- James Myatt
Here's why people are up in arms: I think it's in the company's best interests to keep the properties existing separately ... especially since like you said, it's a geekier community on FF. Why not integrate the cool *features* FF has within Facebook but keep friendfeed.com as-is?
- Tamar Weinberg
I agree this is more of a play against Google. I think eventually Twitter and Facebook will team up more to provide real time streams of user updates between the two systems. I wonder if the first step is using FF for the collection of these streams and the next step is acquiring the method of pushing these streams or content.
- CodeSamurai
I like the separate sites and maybe they will allow both options, Facebook is too busy for me and Friend Feed cuts to the chase and I hope we don't see "FaceFeed" with everything combined without options.
- Barbara Duck
They got some talented people at FriendFeed.
- Kenneth Yeh
Depends on their implementation of the idea. Personally, I'm more excited about Wave based on what I know about the two, which I admit is very little.
- Bryan Bartow
I have a Wave sandbox, and it IS awesome! The announcement has to be related to the new OS or android
- Keith Barrett
Keith, if it's what I'm talking about then it is neither.
- Bryan Bartow
Bryan: hummmmm. Now I'm more tortured
- Keith Barrett
In the interest of full disclosure, my information is two levels removed from the source. Google -> vendor -> me. Still, I trust the source and when the idea was told to me it sounded very plausible.
- Bryan Bartow
I hope it's Google Base integration with Open Social widgets!
- Mitch
@manuel I just came back from Win7 ship party and i am astonished that how many man years does it take make a OS.
- Ruchit Garg
My team was actually asked to work on the project, but we unfortunately had to decline. It definitely would have been a cool project.
- Bryan Bartow
Ruchit: I understand, just speculating. Yet considering it sounds like a Linux distro running Chrome, it does not sound all that impossible.
- Manuel Mas
Maybe its the ability to call up contacts list when composing a message. That would be groundbreaking. :/
- jcunwired
@Bryan: Is it a Netbook with Chrome OS with all the Google Apps built in. Something like a GPad?
- Abhishek Tiwari
Chrome OS wouldn't be a real surprise. Even a Linux distro by Google wouldn't be a shock. Wonder what it could be... hmm...
- ChristianWV
killer than wave??? how many of you think google wave is a path breaking one?????
- hariharan kumar
Should be considerably easy for Google to accomplish since Wave is vaporware to the overwhelming majority of web users - even savvy ones who know about it.
- Chris Duffy
cool is always relative. I have learned not to get too excited. It may be cool for you but not me.
- Phillip Miller
It's going to be an anti-aging skin cream. It will be called the G-formula.
- Tomy Thomson
When I first heard about Wave, I thought big deal, chat and email. But after watching the entire presentation, I see it could replace Email, IM, IRC, Forums, Blogs and their commenting systems, etc.. and put it all in your 'INBOX'
- Tim Hoeck
from Android
Wave seems like another Orkut to me, so it wouldn't surprise me if there is something better coming.
- Cristo
Google AdSense on the new Coca-Cola Freestye soda dispensers?
- RAD Moose
@Abhishek Nope. Not hardware related if it's what I'm thinking.
- Bryan Bartow
I'd be willing to bet it is mobile-related.
- LogEx
Google shoul create a highly robust social media platform that integrates Google's products: profiles, mail, calendars, chat, voice, picassa, blogger, gReader, search, latitude, maps - that is what I would build :)
- Susan Beebe
from BuddyFeed
I'm just going to call it gootopia (or should it be googtopia. hmm)
- Micah Wittman
from iPhone
Susan, I think that is happening already, bit by bit. Every month there are new capabilities and integration points. I'm optimistic on that front.
- LogEx
I was dreaming about getting access to wave now something new and better?!!!
- Mostafa Lameei
Mostafa: There's always something new and better coming from every front.
- Manuel Mas
Logical - Google product integration has way more potential than they have currently in production now. I see layers of useful and revenue generating features and improvents. The potential roadmap I see for this is highly disruptive and needed.
- Susan Beebe
from iPhone
If I had to guess, I would say 1) some type of Youtube Appliance (=Apple TV done right) or 2) Google News 3.0 (shifting from news to a discovery engine). The TV thing is probably bigger and somewhere they have a big competitive advantage with Youtube.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
USB plug in directly to right ear download contents of mental zipper - ready to upload to friends
- PookyMedia
Another big opportunity besides realtime communication is media streaming so my guess is a Silverlight-like (RIA) platform with special focus on adjustments dependent on the device used for consuming and open enough that augmented reality innovations will play nice with current "standard" codecs
- Alberto Saavedra
Google Web Drive, under the "Cosmo" codename. Read Blogoscoped or GOS. I think Ionut told me he expects Cosmo to be launch before Sept.
- Jérôme Flipo
from iPhone
Google Web Drive would be cooler, in a way..ve.
- Nick Humphries
"Google buying FF" - Noooooo! It will just get killed like some of the other high profile acquisitions they have made.
- Travis Koger
@Allen I love the concept, @Travis google killed the app that were at their first stage of development, FF is 85% finished (mean completed) the rest 5% will be user innovation, so even if Google buy FF they will not change a line in the code or the architecture.now who is the firt to like this post?!! what did Greader this week? who from Greader left the office to go to FF? too many question!!
- abdellah
but let be clear, all the above are just speculation.
- abdellah
Nope Abdellah. Cosmo have been mentionned numerous times in official docs and in the code of some apps.
- Jérôme Flipo
from iPhone
@Jerome havn't understand what do you mean by Cosmo
- abdellah
It has to be quantum computing. all computation done outside of time and space.
- Walter Logeman
I'm thinking Google Chrome with Native Client for super fast rendering of web applications (including Wave).
- George Moga
Introducing Google Goo: Making the web squishy, coming late 2009.
- DGentry
Won't be hard to be cooler than Wave. Yes, I'm not a big Wave fan: way too noisy, messy, unusable... Maybe I'll change my mind in the future but for now, I still don't get what we'll do with this stuff and I don't buy the idea.
- Pascal Thivent
Okay, here are my predictions. First, let me say that being cooler than Wave will be quite hard because that's pretty awesome (do you have sandbox access Pascal? Because I'm sure that will change your mind). (1) Google TV - Never mentioned anywhere officially and would definitely be cooler than most others, however VEVO is somewhat similar. (2) GDrive/Cosmo/whatever they call it - would...
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- Californian
This churn in applications wears me out! Where do you get the energy?
- ZuDfunck
The amount of web-based applications being delivered from Google is amazing. There is so much potential in Google voice apps, Google Wave, which will put their social apps on steroids and now an OS. If they can leverage their brand and fan base into these other verticals; they will be a force to reckoned with and a huge target for anti-trust regulators...
- Mark Harai
Google Cloud. In your pocket, on your desk, embedded ---anywhere, anytime at anyprice.
- Thom Kennon
Wow Thom - that actually does sound VERY cool...
- Mark Harai
Probably something to do with a more direct Windows competition. If you look at Google's recent products, many of them are meant to replace Microsoft products.
- William Mougayar
from iPhone
A multi-platform OS is the only thing in my mind that could top Wave. Can't wait to find out for sure though what this will be!
- Garin Kilpatrick
I bet it's the Gdrive after I've just paid for an extra 10GB storage on Google. Would be cool to be able to access all my files from any google app, so I could add a picture from picassa webalbum or embed a video of mine/ favourited without having to go to the other site and copy a URL. This would set it up nicely for google OS
- Steven Horner
from iPhone
It's a kind of gyro balanced 2-wheel personal transportation device, IT will change everything. The way we live, the way cities are built.
- Ray Cromwell
Crazy. I wonder if it will read my mind and stream content related to my thoughts in real-time.
- Dane
What!? Cooler than Wave. I'll give my left nut to find out what & to be a tester.
- Brian Felix
from iPhone
Whatever it is, I'm sure IT WILL BE BIGGER THAN THE INTERNETS!
- Andy Bakun
It is a Google-branded reality distortion field developed in collaboration with Apple. The reality distortion field prototype is so strong that Eric Schmidt was forced to resign from the Apple board of directors, lest his field encounter that of Steve Jobs reulting in mutual annihilation in a devastating burst of pure energy.
- thegeniusfiles
That's a really interesting idea, Gabe. It seems to go a bit against the drive that Google Apps will reduce the need for IT departments though, so I doubt it.
- Californian
Google will be hiring people to come to your house and physically direct your searches.
- Chris Baskind
Google has created an OFF button for the internet and will demonstrate their magic later this year. After that, Google will solidify the world under one government known as the Google Wave Party. Then, SkyNet will be born and we will all be shocked and amazed when Google Androids storm through our neighborhoods, killing us all.
- Bradley Farless
More exciting than Wave. Has got to be Tsunami
- Sidharth Dassani
developed an amazing product. Cashed out (smart). Could have had incredible impact on the future of social search and innovation at Yahoo but were thwarted by a band of disorganized bumbling executive idiots who wouldn't recognize talent if it hit them in the face. Most important opportunities to innovate came under Terry Semel's watch who was more concerned with being the highest paid CEO in America than either innovation or shareholder value.
- Thomas Hawk
Thomas Hawk is right. Yahoo reminds me of Podtech. Had lots of superstars under their roof and then couldn't listen to them to make things happen.
- Robert Scoble
Stewart's resignation email sums it up brilliantly. Put differently, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
- Thomas Hawk
Robert -- as in sports superstars often don't really make good team players. Corporate progress is a team sport,
- Brian Sullivan
Comparing the exits of founders of other high profile sites and the resulting impacts would make it interesting. I just can't think of any examples at the moment.
- Mark Krynsky
Brian: you're right. But they are superstars because they've figured out something. If you hire superstars and then don't listen to them that shows you just wanted to own something cool, you didn't want to really use it, or their knowledge, in a deep way. In corporations team behaviors come mostly from the top, the players are mostly there to execute. You can't change much from underneath in a corporation.
- Robert Scoble
its the famous Jerry Yang quote "we inserted their DNA into ours"
- Marc Canter
Yahoo should be thinking like Warren Buffet since one could hardly argue the longevity of his success. In order to be and stay successful, Buffet says he surrounds himself with the smartest most talented people he can find and stays out of their way. Perhaps Yahoo should take this advice to heart.
- Devlin Dunsmore
from twhirl
I have nothing to say on Flickr in particular. But I wanted to Like this for Marshall's use of FriendFeed to do research for a blog post.
- Hutch Carpenter
this defection in particular worries me. flickr was by far my favorite yahoo property. i think it'll be okay but i worry...
- MG Siegler
Caterina and Stewart represent the heart and soul of what Yahoo! could have been.
- Joe Lazarus
"Yahoo reminds me of Podtech"! that's an interesting comment, at least to someone outside the valley. lol
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Flickr made Yahoo relevant. When they acquired Flickr and del.icio.us I though that Yahoo really understood where things were going.
- Tac Anderson
This departure leads to concern for the future of Yahoo, and the future of the work that we've entrusted to Yahoo. Whatever emerges from this, the new company should immediately embark on a program to make users' data portable, to address this concern. Users have been an abstract thing to Silicon Valley, it would be great if now that the superstars are leaving Yahoo, the industry could turn to the users for inspiration, and start to trust them with their own work.
- Dave Winer
Finally! I got up around noon and tried to download it, surprised to find out that Firefox 2 was still the latest version. Mozilla botched the launch.
- Vezquex: God of FF
I love New York Times visualizations, they seem to be the only newspaper really learning how to use the web best, the should do fine.
- Joe Mac Stevens
This thing is taking off like wildfire, although I guess it's been around for a while. I probably just missed it the first time around, being my non-trendy self. Upside down memetagging, anyone? (Yes, I'm kidding.)
- Ontario Emperor