thoughts? - Jason Calacanis from Bookmarklet

yep jason - here's most likely how you got so many so quickly - http://www.centernetworks.com/friendf... - Allen Stern

the one thing Twitter has it is that it was first before FF in that space. And that brings name recognition to the "masses" and a large inertia that you have to overcome before you can become a true replacement, no matter what technical advantages you bring to the table. I have 5 times more followers in Twitter than FF, and sadly a mass migration doesn't seem to be happening for these folks. - Daniel Robitaille

Your post to a given site takes on more life when it hits the pages of friendfeed. It's almost like you weigh where you want to "release" a post first knowing that it will get "picked up" by friendfeed. - todddoubleu

I do not think Twitter will survive as CMS systems that run into message bus systems are the hardest to scale on ruby on rails nd they do not have the money to fight two fronts ruby on rails scalability and new features to stave off competition. - Fred Grott

good link, allen. some additional default choices would be fantastic. read: better discovery mechanisms. having only members of the echo chamber as default choices makes for a duller feed. no offense to present company. ;) - Brooks Bayne

I think all this FF > Twitter discourse is seriously, seriously underestimating the power of Twitter's unparalleled portability. It's 100% usable through SMS and has an iPod-esque ecosystem of third party tools and add-ons that hook into it. These things brought Twitter to its throne, and now you guys aren't even factoring them into the equation because of a little downtime. - David Chartier

i'll post some thoughts on my blog, but one thing that is still annoying is represented in this post... where your friendfeed shows all aggregated iterations of this post here on ff and it just feels silly as i can choose which iteration to leave a comment on. that's an issue. maybe you should turn comments off on the other instances. except that you cannot because its not a feature. also, check out http://friendfeed.com/frendfe... to see some aggregation bugs. - sull

Jason, that's a brilliant "There Will Be Blood" reference. And so true. I'm afraid that Twitter is just a couple of weeks from being bludgeoned with a bowling pin by FF. - Frank Roche

I think the removal of a character limit would hurt twitter more than help it. Twitter was never meant as a conversation platform. I think keeping it small and simple makes it much easier for people to use. One of it's biggest strengths is that it's a short form messaging service, and to take that away would make it something that isn't twitter. - Austin Brown

Jason, I fully agree with what you say here. - Steve Rubel

I love the fact that there is no premium linked with the number of connections you have. In twitter the greater the number of connections, the higher you appear in the "following" list of your follower. That has become a reason of spam, lowering the quality of the twitter network. Plus, FF works. - Marcello Del Bono

http://sull.outputs.it/post... - sull

I can see how Twitter is useful for people who post via SMS, but while Im at the computer FF is far more useful and also more fun to use - Jeff Hoard from twhirl

I could offer my agreement here on your entry's content, but I'd rather tell you how much I dug the entry's title. - Donna Mugavero

I'll put it this way, i never used twitter because I'm not part of the technorati community, but I do use Friendfeed because it allows me to bring together all my online content and then share it with the people I want. That alone is enough for FF to beat out Twitter for me. - Alfredo Padilla

I think one of the things we have missed carries forward or plays forward a Robert Scoble post, see : http://scobleizer.com/2008... ..let me put it in non tech terms as it pertains to start-ups. FOUNDERS MUST PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITIES THAT FROM AROUND THEIR PRODUCTS! When I state founders I mean also the ones building the product. - Fred Grott

What it comes down to me is *noise*. FriendFeed is just noisy, what with content from all my social media friends all being dumped into one stream with no organization whatsoever. I look at my FF friends page and I can't make any rhyme or reason to what I'm seeing, even with little favicons to identify which service I'm reading from. Twitter, is clean and organized. - Stephen Lopez

School of ALL CAPS is a little loud... ;-) - Mitchell Tsai

I think Center Networks (Allen) has an interesting analysis. I'll be curious to see if the high profile FF users are as interested in commenting on other people's feeds as having their own words commented upon. Twitter just seems like a more democratic forum to me. Personally, I don't care if it is down a couple hours a week. FF only supplements it, it is not an adequate replacement. And I like to write more than 140 characters! Still Twitter is my first choice. - Liz

PS... Because I use the Flock browser, I get all my social media updates right from the Media Bar and People Sidebar, without ever having to open Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Pownce, Digg, etc... Everything I want is right there at the click of an icon. Flock > FF. - Stephen Lopez

I wouldn't underestimate twitter's connection through sms. It makes it the first legit mobile social network, and that is significant for mass adoption and use. Most people don't have internet on their phone to use a web app (iPhone Facebook, Tumblr, etc.) or internet (twitpic, friendfeed, etc.) to send email to update or submit to services. But they are very likely to have sms service, and are used to using it. - Tony

Liz I comment on tons of feeds. - Robert Scoble

Robert, but you seem to be the exception rather than the rule. - Robert Seidman

Jason, good post. I made some comments regarding your five questions here http://seriousaboutcamo.typepad.com/posts... - Clay Newton

my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard - Tyler Gillies

I agree to what you say but besides Twitter reliability, its major flaw is really the reply (or conversation) system which is close to be useless. I guess FriendFeed gained a lot of people (at least myself) because of its efficient conversation system. - fbrunel

Jason, I agree with you a lot of the time but not in this case. I think it would be suicide for Twitter to get into a features arms race with FriendFeed. They would lose that battle. Twitter needs to focus on keeping it simple, getting stable, and becoming a short messaging infrastructure - not a destination. - Mike Doeff

Mike, I think you're right on. Twitter would do better to solidify its differentiation. - Clay Newton

Agreed. I have flip flopped a couple of times on which service I prefer, but FriendFeed is clearly in the lead. If they launch a great iPhone app next Friday it could be thing that pushes them over the hump. - Scott Watermasysk

Scott: FriendFeed already has a great iPhone app. http://www.friendfeed.com/iphone - Robert Scoble

FF's iPhone web app is fun and all, but a native app could offer a lot more functionality without having to wait for page loads and other clunkiness. I'm hoping for a native app too. - David Chartier

Twitter has become a victim of the success it created for itself. As Twitter gained popularity it naturally creates a market for competition. Its poor performance allowed FF to grow. Many of Twitters power users have begun to migrate communication, and followers to FF wanted to see what it is all about. Twitter has lost its first movers advantage. I would not have been able to even make this post on Twitter. FF invites conversation and dialogue. Sorry Bezos, you may have made the wrong investment. - Fred Neil

Agree. Twitter just isn't built for the type of robust sharing and conversations that make FF really interesting. Twitter is like shouting into a canyon, FF is like being at a noisy bar. Sorry, but too many Tweets are just status updates: You're going to Subway for lunch, whoopee! FF gets a lot better when you hide non-commented on Tweets. As for FF enhancements, I'd like a merge function so the same content from various people/feeds are collapsed into one master. That way I can see all comment streams. - AJ Kohn

I agree. Great post. - jonn

Keep in mind that twitter was not initially made for replies, the whole @ sign reply came from users wanting a way to reply and Twitter then started to support the method - Ray Slakinski from twhirl

Nice way to put it! - ChaCha Fance

Looks like Twitter has lost the first mover advantage, and now FF has the first mover advantage with its features. Though since Twitter was the first mover in the beginning it still has a bunch of people who are on it and not on other sites and also has a familiar interface and more third party applications that are compatible with it than Twitter does. Favorite thing so far about FF is the new Seesmic feature to reply to a seesmic post from within FF, really killer. - Andrew Fielding

I'm still one of the few that want's Jaiku to get back in the game! Google is dropping the ball there!!! - tomit