James Urquhart › Likes

Rob, yeah - this is a huge opportunity for them to be a leader. If they don't , the masses will take over. - Jesse Stay from twhirl

My OpenMicroblogging app has been downloaded more than 2000 times since I wrote it this summer, there is a lot of interest in having interoperable microblog services. - Brian Hendrickson

Brian what's interesting about that is that each installation has the potential of thousands to tens of thousands of users that can all talk with each other on other networks. I'd love to hear some stats on what people are doing with the 2,000 downloads from OpenMicroblogger. - Jesse Stay from twhirl

The technology would better be dubbed "MicroForum" because it replaces the need to be on forums where everyone just throws short posts back and forth. Especially in the case of vertical market laconica instances, people are really having short discussions. - randulo

randulo that's an excellent comparison - Jesse Stay from twhirl

ha ha - Cee Bee

hahhahahahha TINA!!! - Mona Nomura

lmao Tina - Carmen - Happy 2010!

No, Carmen, it's lmoo!!! - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

hahahah Tina! we should call him emoo instead of emo. - Carmen - Happy 2010!

HOW CUTE MONA AWWW - Caroline

I think I ran into that dude at an Arcade Fire show once. - Akiva Moskovitz

There is nothing cuter than a Highland Cow. - Miriam

Tina, LOL! But I quite like your new do - Sally Church

LOL Tina. - Alex Scoble

Emoo - Josh Haley

Too funny. ;) - Daynah

Oh an highland coo! :) - Niki Costantini

emoo HAHA - Mona Nomura

EMOoooo! - Dave Q

hahaha that's hilarious! - Patrik Johansson

udderly preposterous - MiniMage TKDteacher of FF

Emoooo hairy coooo ;-) - BeeLing

ridiculously funny! - Chieze Okoye

Ahh. Emo Cow you make me smile. - Mathew A. Koeneker

Crap service though... - Johnny Worthington

pho shizzle!! - imabonehead

my nizzle! - Mona Nomura

Just remember that it's pronounced fuh...then again I think the restaurant names above make that pretty clear, hehe. - Alex Scoble

It's more funny when people know how to actually pronounce 'phơ'. - Akiva Moskovitz

Jason, were you around the Golden Triangle during the late 80s C-Net BBS explosion? Your name seems very, very familiar. - Akiva Moskovitz

@jason, if every Vietnamese restaurant serves Pho, then probably yes. lol - Daynah

I think it's great that Beaumont even has a Vietnamese restaurant, When I lived there, you had either American, Chinese, Italian, or Mexican food. Anything beyond that is progress! - Akiva Moskovitz

Even if Pho Shizzle were not the shizz, I'd totally have to eat there for the awesome name. - Ayşe E.

Remember that Asian karaoke guy from that movie with Ed Norton and Ben Stiller? He needs to be the entertainment! lol - Trish R

Up here, we get a bunch of Thai puns: Thai One On, Bow Thai, Thai Fighter, etc. - Akiva Moskovitz

What is that wiggle after the letter O called? - Rochelle

I don't know, but I like how you described it. - Alex Scoble

Pho Shizzle, my nizzle - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

A 'horn' according to UNICODE. - Akiva Moskovitz

What the Pho... is that in Seattle? In Bellevue? If so I've almost take a picture of it myself! Hehe! - Fa La La La Lindsay

I am so happy to see a place called 'Pho Shizzle' ... I joked that would be a good name for a Pho place three years ago, I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought it would be funny. Lindsay--What the Pho is in Bellevue (but I think that is a different one in the pic)...it's on NE 8th - Bren -- feeling merry

bren i just sent my husband the pic and he said, 'see, i told you it would be a funny name.' and i remember him saying it 3 yrs. ago too because i was pregnant at the time. - Admiral Anika

I was right, I think... There is one in Bellevue: http://whatthepho.net/ - Fa La La La Lindsay

not being the only one, ftw - Bren -- feeling merry

bren, i just told him and he said, 'obviously a fellow genius.". - Admiral Anika

hahahaha edit: don't show him my feed, he'll be sorely disappointed - Bren -- feeling merry

Sounds good enough pho me. - Mike Lewis

+1 Chet - Iain Baker

I always wanted to start a restaurant named Pho King. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Mark, there's a restaurant called Pho King Noodles here. There's also one called Fu Kee. Here's the listing, http://yp.yahoo.com/py... - Trish R

There's a chinese restaurant in Soho, London, named "Lee Ho Fuk." As the legend has it, the first two words were originally transposed. Incidentally, that same restaurant was immortalised in the song "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon - Slappy Line

A buddy of mine in Philly was seriously considering starting a Pho chain. I recommended he call it "Pho Real." - Marko Bon

Ha! We actually saw a "What the PHO" restaurant in the Seattle area when we were on vacation out there a couple months ago. The hubby was so amused by the name that he insisted I take a picture of the sign. He was joking afterwards that we should drive back and he could get his picture taken under the sign (we never did go back, though). **laugh** - Cheryl Jones

There's a What the Pho in downtown Bellevue, Cheryl. It's not all that. - l0ckergn0me

Well I'm impressed - Bwana ☠

Video comments will be appreciated when we're using these instead of laptops. - Rex Pechler

I find it hard to be less impressed. Might be possible, but maybe on the Microsoft Summit next year. - Dani Radu

First there was the Big Ass Table now it's the Big Ass picture frame? http://twurl.nl/1ntrz8 - Kevin Shannon

dropping Java support is quite telling - Dave Hodson

lol! And by early adopters you mean, people who were on it long after college students? We still use it. - Shawn Farner from twhirl

That explains why I don't understand the sudden disdain for Facebook. The cool kids are taking their ball and going home... no wonder it was a mystery. - Bwana ☠

Shawn: good point. OK, early adopters who were not college students. :-) - Robert Scoble

I've noticed a definite trend amongst college students, they'll hang out on Fb for about a year, and then they steadily use it less and less. Fb is geared for college, lots of people use it here and there, but kids currently in college are on it A LOT. - Shawn Kirsch

I never bothered with it to begin with... so cluttered. - TranceMist

I've stopped using facebook as well. It started feeling like MySpace. - Beau Liening

Heh this api will bring you back to Facebook -- it did me! See if you can get it to run on 5,000 friends lol http://apps.facebook.com/density... - Prokofy Neva

I just don't feel like I'm on the internet when I'm on Facebook. - Michael Turro from twhirl

To FB: turn off the firehose of app spam and vampire biting and we might come back - Christian Anderson from Alert Thingy

While Friendfeed has many advantages over Facebook, Facebook has others over Frienidfeed. Facebook has a better developed repetoire of friend capabilities (before but also including chat). Friendfeed profiles pale in comparision to Facebook. The Friendfeed threaded conversations is a major advantage for them, witih the feed including many popular services. - Alex Hammer

but you get sucked into some of those apps with the returning of plants and eggs and superpokes and it starts to get painful and obligatory... - edythe

Never liked Facebook. Don't know why. - Svartling

The developer issues for Facebook is centered around that their is now competition for the developer's resources at a time when the new rules are being enforced and the low hanging fruit has been picked. For users, the issues are that there are too many repetitive apps, too many apps that require use and propagation to get value and an interface that has issues under the weight of too many applications. - RAPatton

Facebook apps managed to spam out the early adopters... - engtech

Yes, the Facebook apps spammed me out. I now use Facebook like LinkedIn: I politely answer friend requests and occasionally post stuff. - Francine Hardaway

Facebook might get interesting again if Microsoft makes a play for it. - Rafe Needleman from Alert Thingy

Facebook just functions as an address book for me. They squandered the opportunity to make newsfeed useful. Which is why we are all here. :) - Christopher Sacca

I use Facebook to reflect my friendfeed. That's it. I login once a month from the iPhone to see what's going on. - Magnus Jonsson from Alert Thingy

e things in other places, as well. I've moved on certainly. - Rich Palmer from twhirl

facebook's old. twitter is where it's at - Chuck Boyce from twhirl

I think tech savvy early adopters are moving off it, but a lot of the rest of the world is staying on it and moving onto it. Everyone I know knows what Facebook is and can understand what they get from it, even if they don't use it. No one I know who isn't a tech person knows or even understands what the point of twitter or friendfeed is. Different strokes and all that... it doesn't have to be a zero sum game, not yet at least. :) - felix

That's what early adopters do, they come, look around, and eventually move on. I still use Facebook to be social with the regular non-geek people that don't know about the other 5000 ways to be social on the web. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

In a way it is such a shame that facebook has lost its momentum because that's where I was starting to find all my old friends, taking them elsewhere after that. If they don't register at the least techy site - will they register at all? - Alex von Halem

i completely disagree, robert. the early adopters of facebook were college students. "early adopter" bloggers didn't join until a year or two after facebook started from what i've seen. and facebook -- as far as i know -- is still dominating colleges. also, it's grown to more than 70 million monthly active users. in other words, early adopters in the tech world have never mattered to facebook, and they still don't. - Eric Eldon

It is sad that a consumer focused site is losing so much momentum, especially after picking up all of that Google tallent. I am beginning to believe that Yahoo has it right, here: social networking is a feature that should be implemented in a suite of services. The opposite--social networking is a platform on which serivces should be built--is bound to fail the test of time. Even with... more... - James Urquhart from Alert Thingy

Facebook needs to start providing content and become a true portal. Even your frinds get annoying after awhile. - Alex C. Williams from Alert Thingy

I'm enjoying Facebook because ~90 of my dance friends have moved there from Tribe.net (fears of Tribe.Net collapsing due to lack of critical mass outside SF, and lack of funding). My 227 Facebook friends average age 37 (age 17-72+), so it's not quite the college set. I play rock-paper-scissors with an old Orchestra friend who's now a history professor in Texas. I can listen to my MSR friends "status" about their kids winning skiing awards or their surgery issues (and these MSR guys DON'T use Twitter). - Mitchell Tsai

My "geek friends" from 1976-2008 are 99% not on Twitter, much less FriendFeed. These guys mostly run MSR research areas, CTOs/CEOs of companies, CS professors, Internet lawyers... Many were major hackers in their day, & most of our population would call em "geeks". Only 1 out of all those geek friends uses Twitter, and he's a very light user. Facebook & LinkedIn statuses are great because I can hear if they are "feeling sick", see new pictures of their kids, or hear a blurb about their latest projects. - Mitchell Tsai

Good one robert. Was thinking if I sould comment on you blog or here ;-) I believe that services like friendfeed, Twitter actually help the good stuff appear. In a blog you need lots of readers to be able to spread your message, otherwise it might never be seen. That is why anyone non-professional can't compete with the pro's. But FF and Twitter allow us to send our message accross... more... - Alexander van Elsas

Good article, but why the Godwin point? - Rubin Sfadj

Rubin: I just pulled that out. Alexander: I am a FriendFeed addict. Someone please help me! Heheh. - Robert Scoble

Collaborative editing at its best ;-) Still, I didn't mean to influence your writing. - Rubin Sfadj

who needs a team... you ARE the dream! great post. though I do still differ on the moon thing... :) but i really do like this post... all the great commentary on Arrington's post has been fun to observe but this post totally sums up why scoble is scoble... to an observer, like me, anyway. - Matt Shaulis

This is inspirational. One of your best posts ever. - Thomas Frütel

Robert - I think this was probably one of your best posts this year. And I agree with Alexander - now that that the more 'corporate' blogs are so focused on breaking news, it's the great stories and commentary that can still set a small, individual blog apart. But at the same time, I don't think blogging has been taken away from the individual bloggers because the big blogs do a different kind of blogging. - Frederic

I think that blogs are great because they can be laser focused: they do not care always about more users as much as the right users. The other aspect is that there is a very competitive pressure constantly pushing people to create more interesting content. I think that creating an empire around TechCrunch would kill both of those aspects. The blogosphere has to remain dynamic and organic. The challenge is to find a business model to reward people to create great content. - Edwin Khodabakchian

I think that blogs and twitter etc are us the variants of glue to keep us together a as a race / society. If the goal is to leverage its soley to make $$$$ then its the wrong goal. As a means to better human beings and make thereby manage to e co-exist I am all for that. - Peter Dawson

Phenomenal post. Reinforces the tongue-in-cheek nickname I posted for you earlier: King of All Social Media! - Bill Bittner

excellent post, Robert! - susan mernit

Michael Arrington’s Rant - Good but What’s Missing? The User http://techleaders20.blogspot.com/2008... - Alex Hammer