I didn't see this segment, but I was watching this special in my hotel room when I was at the society of rheology conference. It made me think that I need a high speed camera. For science, of course ;)
- Clare Dibble
This is very cool. I'd like to see it with other liquids, and water with different this mixed in. Like soap for instance, which messes with the surface tension...what happens then?
- Bill Scherer
Are there any liquids that don't have surface tension?
- Gabe
My husband and I are addicted to the show Time Warp: random things done in front of high speed cameras. The oldies but goodies like popping a water balloon are stil my favorite...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
That's amazing, which is why science rocks! :)
- imabonehead
Love it! I want to have 2000 fps water drops as my screensaver.
- EricaJoy
Amazing! He tried one like that at Match point in the fourth set of the 2005 Australian Open final against Safin - it didn't work, and he went on to lose the match in the fifth set...
- Michael Nielsen
I only saw it because I tuned in for 60 Minutes early. Not really a tennis fan, but I can certainly appreciate that shot.
- Tom Landini
awesome match. I've seen federer put a few of these winners in before, so awesome.
- Art
Obviously I can't provide a lot of detailed plans and guarantees, but I can tell you that I'll do my personal best to ensure that the FriendFeed users and community are treated right. I love this product too, and don't want to see it disappear.
FriendFeed lets me use people as filters to turn data into information. Facebook doesn't. Until it does, please, Please, PLEASE keep FriendFeed as a destination alive.
- AJ Kohn
congrats guys! facebook needs what you got!
- Lorna Herf
I'm sorry that I haven't said more about this. As you can imagine, it has been an extraordinarily busy day (and I've barely slept in the past week).
- Paul Buchheit
I'll add my plea to the chorus: Please don't take FriendFeed away from us. And don't make us go to Facebook (because we won't). FriendFeed means a lot to a lot of people and the thought that it will dry up and blow away shortly is very disturbing.
- Fa La La La Lindsay
It's still great to hear from you Paul. Congrats on that new swimming pool full of cash. :D
- Chrimmus Tad
Simply glad you're here now. You've always been a very responsive and transparent team. As much as I cringe at the thought of FF going away, I *am* happy for you and the team.
- AJ Kohn
I request you make it to the next scheduled FFundercats podcast to talk to the community. This announcement deserves a live appearance to the community.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
Have been dealing unsucessfully with Twitter for two days, trying to get logged in...Their password reset page says"Snap we can't find you." I keep writing to Tech Support at Twitter and get their helpful auto-generated Twitter Trouble shooting email. My problem is not there. =( Hope FriendFeed does not get that blaise about helping users. @EV
- SashaKane
If FB can't keep the service running, would you consider open-sourcing the thing, so we can?
- Christopher Galtenberg
from iPhone
Hi Paul, thanks for the assurances. In the future, I would highly suggest that you make this sort of statement shortly after the initial merger release. Thanks again.
- Alex Scoble
I would like to give you a hug right now Paul. However, that would be awkward and April might beat me up so I will just say thank you and press the like button.
- EricaJoy
Thank you for affirming that. Much appreciated.
- Karoli
A few more points that would be nice to have addressed soon. Ability to export data, tool to import friends to Facebook, and will ff.im urls continue to function?
- Mark Krynsky
Those that like friendfeed as is should be most pleased with this statement, as it probably means maintenance to keep the current system as is, without as much attention to new features. It's also good news for all those who like both friendfeed and facebook, as facebook will likely adopt the better features from friendfeed
- Ivan Kirigin
Thanks for making FriendFeed what it is, and lets hope it stays that way, though there's slim chance of that
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Now that I think about it: are you kidding me? They've already stated that FriendFeed's going to be absorbed into Facebook. What kind of sleight-of-hand are you trying to pull now, Paul?
- Akiva Moskovitz
@EricaJoy: I have nothing against hugs. :)
- April Buchheit
Thanks, Paul. I've been getting more and more depressed thinking about the bad ways this could go. The reassurances help a bit, at least. In fact, just hearing you speak on the point is encouraging - the open lines of communication between the FriendFeed team and its users has always been one of the great things about FriendFeed that I'm afraid will be lost with the Facebook buyout. And yes, a FFundercats appearance would be a great idea.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
I don't want to read too much into this reassurance but the "personal best" remark made me think like there is not a united FF anymore and that it's up to your personal efforts to prevent it from being eaten by FB :)
- Turker Keskinpala
you can sell the tech but the community can not be bought sold transferred or merged
- Robert Higgins
from f2p
Turker, I do believe that this deal was the right decision -- I'll write a bit more about that when I get a chance. I say that I'll do my "personal best" because I will -- it would be misleading to make promises on other's behalf :)
- Paul Buchheit
Paul: I'm hopeful that this will be the best for both Facebook and Friendfeed. What you and the staff at FF have done is amazing, with only 12 people! I love the service here. I also enjoy Facebook (one I ignore all quizzes and stupid apps), but in a different way. Hoping some coolness can be brought to both. Good luck to you and your team!
- Travis B. Hartwell
this echoes star wars galaxies, incredible unique community. but they upgraded it to be like world of warcraft. this is a replay of the devs soothing messages. the forums were livid the community evaporated.
- Robert Higgins
from f2p
When socialmedian was acquired by Xing they left it alone. I hope the same happens here. I'm sure you will do your best though!
- Michael Fidler
On behalf of the Dutch citizens our Queen wants to let you know: Thx Paul.
- Ton Zijp
Don't know what to say, so lets start with big congrats! from one hand, as an early member of Friendfeed I think we've created here a very cool, collaborative and tech-savvy/passionate community of great people that all probably wish to stick around as much as possible. From the other hand, I know how corporates work and it takes one small decision of share holders to close Friendfeed...
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- Nir Ben Yona
My first reaction is disappointment. I don't believe big corporations do better than small ones. Facebook is inferior to FriendFeed, although it's user base is much larger. Clearly FriendFeed won't survive in the long term, unless it is open sourced. Why not open up and embrace the wonders of the GPL instead of joining forces with the Walled Garden no #1? Facebook don't even operate with permalinks,.
- Morten Blaabjerg
Thanks for the explanation Paul. Of course, I congratulate you guys. I think anyone would do the same thing if they were in your shoes :)
- Turker Keskinpala
Ryo: if you delete your account everything goes away. I totally disagree with you about Facebook, but that's OK.
- Robert Scoble
Good to hear. Unfortunately I think Facebook are going to download the brains of all FriendFeed staff then kill FF.
- Michael McGimpsey
but Paul it is going to disappear - Facebook bought FF not for the site but for you guys. So obviously once its integrated into Facebook, development on FF will stop
- Anthony Feint
If FriendFeed and all of it's functionality get integrated into Facebook I'm all for it.
- Hugh Isaacs II
Paul - that's great news. It surely can't cost a lot to keep this place running and it's a good place to try out ideas before they move to FB.
- Martin Bryant
what about improving the product and making sure it gets more users, not only supports those who stay?
- Ihar Mahaniok
Ihar - unlikely. Facebook bought FF for the developer talent, not for FriendFeed itself.
- Martin Bryant
from iPhone
Martin - I also think so, and it is most likely. But I could still have a hope
- Ihar Mahaniok
Paul, please - underpromise & overdeliver...they say it works.
- A.T.
Nice to hear. Too bad you don't call the shots anymore.
- jcunwired
FriendFeed is Dead! Long Live FriendFeed! (nice name for Facebook skunkworks) I'm sure everyone would love to see FriendFeed itself stay around, even if the innovations that happen are geared towards implementation at Facebook. Thanks for this note Paul! :)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
There are a few promises and guarantees that you SHOULD be able to provide. Like, that our network of friends will remain intact and that the features that make this site great will remain. If you can't make those promises, then you shouldn't have done the deal. I sure do hope that the real-time search engine wasn't the centerpiece of this deal (it probably was), because that certainly...
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- Brad Williamson
Paul you did such a nice job with friendfeed, and I so want to believe you, but I'm not sure I can. Not because of you, but because of your new employer. Because your new employer is no longer you, and while I have kind of come to trust you, I do not trust your new boss. Not at all. Please prove me wrong, if they'll let you.
- Jim: Dead Like FF
Paul - thanks for that reassurance. PLEASE stick to that! I was in the middle of reading and participating in a lengthy discussion off of a Robert Scoble post yesterday ... then I came up for air and saw your news. Congratulations - I have no idea what that feels like or how pumped you must be. There are so many things FF does that I LOVE...I know you know that. Please Please PLease dont' go away! Thanks!
- Tobin Truog
Thank you, I think everyone here loves Friendfeed. :)
- Hunt
from BuddyFeed
This is nice to hear, and I really hope that FriendFeed will keep on living. I still have some pain in my stomach because of this :/
- Patrik Johansson
First zombie/mafia request and we're all outta here....
- Fossil Huntress
+1 Fossil Huntress The partitioning of the networks between friendfeed and facebook was a major feature that many people made use of, lacking appropriate controls for who sees what. Merging the two groups of friends isn't going to work, at all.
- Mr. Gunn
we all know what needs to happen. the question is, where? ... FB needs, - apart from being/it is, a large, general, open application platform, - 1. Smart keyboard shortkatze - and Im a kbsCzar to go to, 2. Aggregating facilities, smart /RSS/ .. 3. Full blogging facilities, capabilities, not 140 chars. 4. Full real time comments facilities, capabilities. 5. Real time, live, but ALSO...
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- Petr Buben
I hope you're being open and honest with us. This time. :(
- Kamilah Gill
Thank you! I am sure you will do great things at FB. I just hope that the great app you built here isn't destroyed. I don't know of any other aggregation app that I can embed into my site like this one!
- beersage
Congratulations on your successes, best wishes for more. And thanks for continuing to look out for us loyal, addicted FFanatics!
- Rob Schieber
I hope it continues, i'm a new user and absolutely love it (wish i knew the value of it before)! Congrats!
- Luis D. Santos
As nice as it sounds I'm sorry to say that as a, now, Facebook's employee I'm afraid you'll have to comply to whatever your new boss tells you. Didn't MZ make it clear?
- lelapin
and let me add second, obvious, "Facebook needs" - Friendfeed bookmarklet, and Friendfeed tools - widgets, embedding - real time and not - of posts, and groups ...to embedd, to inject oneself into this thing called Internet ..... so, if FB listens to FF engineering long enough, they are going to get it .. right
- Petr Buben
Paul, what I am worried is not that you're brainwashed, but that there's simply no business need for Facebook to improve FriendFeed from now on, period.
- Ihar Mahaniok
I have confidence Paul. While some of the comments were probably uncalled for, covering an investment (of time and money) in these times to move on and hopefully provide even 'better stuff' makes sense to me. It's pretty obvious there are a LOT of people that don't want to 'lose' Friendfeed. (I wouldn't hold a town hall for a few weeks though :)
- Charlie Anzman
Congrats, Paul. It's sad that people have to make these uncalled for hatred comments about Facebook though. Why can't both sites work together. I think Facebook will do better with FF and vise versa. Take the good features of both services. Don't boycott FB, enjoy it. I'm sick of the negative comments going on, that's all. :(
- Molly, "sorry"
Molly: What makes you think there's going to be a "vise versa?"
- Christopher A Carr
Because I don't think Paul and the other FF developers would allow FB to do anything. I'm sorry, I am not going to think negative here like some here are. I guess I'm a fangirl for FB.
- Molly, "sorry"
Finally something about the changes on the horizon that isn't all d0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0om and whining. Thank you, Paul! :D
- Christian (Simply X)
The time to think about how you could do your 'personal best' to ensure FriendFeed continues to exist was prior to the discussions with Facebook. Not after.
- Andy C
Paul, what about the content scam that FB T&C is, does it apply to Friendfeed now? Should we all start writing scripts to retroactively delete all content ever uploaded to Friendfeed? Elaborated a bit here - http://friendfeed.com/mbravo...
- Michael Bravo
We know you'll try your best, Paul. But sometimes, you just can't win the dark side...
- Winston Teo
Thanks Paul for all your efforts. Founders often want the best, but acquiring companies often have people with political/power issues or different/limited visions.
- Mitchell Tsai
*throws a sheep at Paul* is that a good thing?
- Joe
from iPod
yes, thank you, Sergeant Paul ... well, good to hear we go on ... because if not, how about starting www.anotherFeed.com ... or, www.Letsgofeed.com ...... anyway, lets boost blogging capabilities, post more than current amount of chars, lets have TOP POSTS / clicks count list at the head of each group, some stats, lets index group headers, lets have MORE keyboard shortcuts .. - now ......
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- Petr Buben
+1 Mel - I am gutted and don't know what to do if the main FF site closes
- Matt Hooper
Why would I leave friendfeed? This place works well enough for me.
- Talon Lardner
Manuel: back to my blog and Twitter, probably. I'm playing around with Facebook but it doesn't quite do it for me.
- Robert Scoble
I'm sticking around unless there's some sort of mass exodus which I don't see an immediate reason for.
- Mike Elliott
Not leaving 'til it closes, and I'm certainly not going to facebook or twitter even then.
- Jim: Dead Like FF
I'm sad, but I'm sticking around. I'm hoping others do to. At some point, the fuss will die down.
- Helen Sventitsky
Mike: because I expect it will get shut down eventually if it doesn't get invested in, and if it gets no new features it will fall behind Google Wave and other projects.
- Robert Scoble
This feels like that HBO Documentary about Brooklyn Dodgers going to LA haha.
- Manuel Mas
And, actually, Google Wave seems to be the most obvious thing for me to try out from now on.
- Robert Scoble
I will stick around until they move the features I like from friendfeed onto facebook.
- Bryan Lee
Isn't it a bit early to make decisions? Has there been an announcement that I missed that FF is going away? Even if it isn't where else is better at this point?
- Chrimmus Tad
I'm not going anywhere Helen...When it goes it goes...I'm sitting tight on the ship
- Bill Heslin
there used to be a kind of message board system ages back with FB. disppeared one day never to return, lets hope this will bring something of that back, who knows..
- Terry O'Fee
Waiting and watching. Robert, I know you have a discussion tab on FB but its not the same. ;)
- Melanie Reed
How soon before google wave becomes available to the early adopters/public?
- Bryan Lee
Mashable just published a How To Take Advantage of FriendFeed's Unique Features. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. A little late for that, no?
- Stephen Pickering
didn't you just just say "FriendFeed is dead. I will keep using it until Paul unplugs the last server, which could be years" ? or i'm missing something
- Liviu Barbat
I'll stick around to the bitter end.
- Dave Metzener
Robert: Earlier in the day you were excited for both FriendFeed & Facebook. It didn't sound like you were leaving FriendFeed. What changed? Why not stick around to see what happens?
- Jill Elswick
Bryan: I heard they weren't handing out beta access to non-developers until September. Cold be wrong but that's what I heard
- Mike Elliott
I'm in wait and see mode. It would have to be absolutely sucked in by FB for me to leave it completely.
- pea
Robert, if you believe this is a good deal for both FF and FB - why are you leaving?
- George F. Snell III
When should we cue in Titanic's last song by the band as FF sinks below leaving us all behind?
- Manuel Mas
Why leave now? Until it is changed or killed, it still works just the same.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Same assessment as you, I'll stick around but I need to find an option B now. I guess I'll go wherever Louis Gray recommends
- Alberto Saavedra
I plan on sticking around for a little while longer. Not ready to jump ship yet.
- David Finch
Melanie: yeah, real time really has me going. I will wait until I get a better sense from the FriendFeed team about what will be done here. I just am not getting the right signals from the team that there will be any investment in this. If that's the case, I'd rather invest my time somewhere else. Google Wave. Ning. Vanilla on Building43. Twitter, now that I got rid of the spammers. Etc.
- Robert Scoble
I'll watch and see what happens. IF I feel that it would be useless to stay, I'll leave the site.
- TeraDyne Azurepaw
I think the features of FF will be incorporated into FB (guilt free) and FB profiles will be more tied into FF. That's about all we'll see...
- Gus
Manuel: hey, Pirillo is over there. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I'm staying here until something else catches up.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, I can definitely see the value of your invested time on any service, but for the average user, what is the downside of sticking around here as long as the site still exists?
- Jeff P. Henderson
@Scobleizer: The big crowd is not even at Friendfeed yet and you are already leaving? Someone will be by in a few minutes with a drink. Please help yourself and stick around for the conversation. You will be greatly missed should you choose to leave so soon.
- David Damore
Social Media is a set of tools--I appreciate the connections I make, but I'm not getting too emotionally worked-up about the tools changing. FF probablywon't function as my Social Media hub much longer.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
I like it here, so I'll hang out as long as possible.
- sean percival
Not making any set plans yet, but keeping my eyes and ears open.
- Martha
And when Google buys Twitter, won't that be interesting
- Stephen Pickering
Bruce: have you played with Wave yet? I'm wondering how good that is? I gotta get an invite. Off to beg someone cooler than me. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I will continue to use it until it closes down in its current form.
- ashish
I'm a little pissed that we haven't heard much from our other "rock stars". Where the hell are they? This concerns them, yet I can hear a pin drop. I think there secretly plotting. Roflmao
- Jeunelle Foster
I don't want to but if it eventually goes down the way everybody's predicting it will then i'll have to look for alternatives :( .......by the way where do i beg for Wave invites :)
- Bhowmik Shah
I'd bet Microsoft buys Twitter before Google does.
- Gus
I haven't played with wave yet, but from what I've seen it's got potential. FriendFeed's got polish.
- Bruce Lewis
I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but I guess I'll be spending more time on Social Median. Perhaps someone should start putting together a decent buddypress site?
- Aram Zucker-Scharff
I might leave only because I quit facebook - I hate the mindset, the shallowness, and am afraid (make that certain) those people will come here
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Gus: Microsoft and Twitter deserve each other. They are both somewhat buggy and don't come up with new features very often. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I think I'll be heading back to Twitter until Google Wave is publicly available
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Robert: Since at the end of the day all these platforms are businesses and have to eventually make money does it make sense to keep investing time and effort into building communities on them when they can sell/merge at any time and dismantle the tools that keep the community in place? it seems like the portable community concept of something like Google FriendConnect now makes more...
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- Mike Elliott
The other rock stars are drinking. :-)
- Robert Scoble
If Facebook had an easier way of connecting with people but not showing them all the personal stuff I'm willing to show to my close friends (and the stuff my friends post about me), I don't think I'd need anything like FriendFeed or Twitter.
- Edward Coffey
Robert: I've played with Wave and I wouldn't really put it in the same category as FriendFeed at the moment. It's not really about sharing and conversing in mass form IMO. Its really conversation with maybe 20 people or so but its much more difficult to focus conversations about shared content. Let everybody know when you get an invite and your address so we can add you! :)
- Brandon Titus
It kinda proves a theory I have about us all being reduced (if I can use that word) to channels. I don't think social networking will go away, but as the internet and deals increase, so does the noise. Don't worry Scobe, you still show up in our Google reader every morning!!
- professor daddyo
Man, what are we going to do without these discussions like this?
- Stephen Pickering
Mike: No community is permanent. It's worthwhile to participate even if it's temporary.
- Bruce Lewis
@Gus, Well MS has large stake in FB so I'm not sure about that. I'll stick around here till it peters out. The tech news rooms here are top notch.
- Adi
I don't use FF much other than for private rooms, so I'll stay for those. Whatever other activity I have (which is sporadic and generally not personal) will also remain.
- Cheryl
I'll stick around until they pull the plug.
- Morton Fox
Leave friendfeed? what's the alternative I'd really like to know. Is it facebook?
- Tate DA FF MVP
I'll stick with it as long as it's here and people are still active. FF4L!!
- Cassidy
What is the next thing? Where do we go now? Not FB! But where?
- Michael Liss
I won't be deleting my account, but signing in and commenting? No. No real point to continue putting data into a service that is gonna get unplugged anyway. Guess we just have to return to blogs and twitter.
- BCK
what? leave and create a better version of Twitter? or start FriendsterFeed?
- Andy Sternberg
The downside for me? I invest time in things that WILL BE not that are. That's always been what keeps my interest and now that I know that FriendFeed probably will not be, even if it takes five years to totally die, I've lost a great deal of interest in it.
- Robert Scoble
Michael: I don't think anyone knows today where to go next, because there's no good substitute out there. We can only hope that the next destination will be obvious before they pull the plug.
- Bruce Lewis
With the price of bandwith/computing halving every year, there will be a new one of these popping up pretty quick
- Stephen Pickering
I'll just go to twitter. I have a facebook account but I hate it. Facebook is the walmart of the web.
- Darrel Davis
yeah~ definitly! @Jeunelle foster please come down,
- harri78son
I see now...This whole thing was a ploy to get everyone visiting Robert's blog! I am outraged! :P
- Brandon Titus
Brandon: OK, we can go over to YOUR blog. Got Echo? :-)
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: Very true. I've tried to get into FaceBook but it's hard to get the clean conversation feed along with lifestreaming content. It just seems to be full of distracting noise even with the ability to filter with lists.
- Mike Elliott
Robert, the same could be said about Flickr, they haven't had much inovation since Yahoo bought them, but people still use the service in droves.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Don't worry Kelly, a new one of these will pop quickly, if they kill this
- Stephen Pickering
Kelly: we don't need to leave tonight. Let's trash the house first! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Brandon, that's funny. At the Boston FriendFeed meetup, everybody else had learned about FriendFeed through Scobleizer. I was the only one who found him through FriendFeed.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm leaving my account here for now but I'll be removing all my feeds.
- Got80s
Anyway, for the rest of today at-least I reckon I'll be off FriendFeed - real conversation is being drowned out by the echoes of this deal.
- Edward Coffey
I'm staying here until there is a reason to leave. Though I don't hold out hope they'll keep the service alive forever... obviously, I'm always enjoysthin.gs too, but it's not quite the same. I REALLY can't see myself using facebook as much as FF though.
- Ted Roden
I need an adult beverage. then I'll trash the place...
- Kelly Mitchell
I despise FB. Please let them not just trash FF.
- Adam Webb
Considering the free Google Wave protocol implementation and ejabbered work together, it shouldn't be too hard to quickly build a FF type service that's scalable. Combine that with EC2 and S3 and you could probably get a lot of runway before funding is needed. Robert, I think the next service you switch to should be part owned by you, considering I bet a lot of the traffic here was originated from you evangelizing.
- Chip Ramsey
Bryan: it's worse than that. I'm hearing that Facebook bought FriendFeed for its team. Google Superstars. Makes Zuckerberg get out his wallet.
- Robert Scoble
Where will be the next pasture Mr. Scoble?
- Rami Taibah
Stephen: lol. Yes, the 50 million dollar man. But seriously, there's no doubt what they really want is the tallent.
- Brandon Titus
I'm gutted about this, but I knew that Virb account would come in handy eventually... sorta... maybe...
- Linda Mills
Holden, yeah, but it doesn't make sense to invest energy here when its eventually going to die anyway
- Stephen Pickering
I'm new on FF so I wonder, are people leaving FF because you'll have to use FB to participate?
- Christopher Doiron
Stephen: not only for Paul. The guy who started Google Talk is at FriendFeed. So is the guy who started Google Maps.
- Robert Scoble
Robert your not processing anything from what I see..Your just gonna dump it...thanks...makes us All feel so much better....Salt in a wound?
- Bill Heslin
Christopher, it's that the FriendFeed team's new bosses will turn priorities away from the site we love.
- Bruce Lewis
They'll probably cannibalize FriendFeed... nom nom
- Kelly Mitchell
funny how many people are joining friend feed on the news of this acquisition. i'm seeing lots of my twitter followers starting to join.
- mark silva
I say its WAAAYYY too early to speculate what will happen to friendfeed next. Let the drama of today die down.
- Bryan Lee
Yeah lets all get drunk and start a fight. This whole thing is hilarious to me. Funny how media can start a panic. I ain't goin no where, I like to coloring.
- Jeunelle Foster
Bill: I said I won't leave until I hear more from the team. Why must you always be a drama queen?
- Robert Scoble
Kelly, I wish they would absorb FriendFeed, but despite the talk I don't think openness and Facebook are compatible.
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, Ex-Google Superstars is how I see it too. I don't see big plans for FF the sense was we were the last thing on their minds.
- Melanie Reed
Can't help being an attention whore, its what I'm good at :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Okay so we sit tight and wait and drink. lol
- Kelly Mitchell
but there is no time to wait a special direction on internet, It's too fast!!
- harri78son
Kelly: My analogy for this is like the female praying mantis luring the male for sex, then it bites its head off. You can see the pic in my story http://bryansays.com
- Bryan Lee
I'm in the eyewear business and so I always know how to make a spectacle of myself :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Bruce: I agree. Wouldn't it be feasible for them to simply keep the two properties separate then? FriendFeed would be the open/public portion of Facebook and Facebook could stay closed and keep its current private user base.
- Brandon Titus
Bryan, pretty graphic and right on the money.
- Kelly Mitchell
Why shouldn't he pull out his wallet. FB needs to monetize. The ex Google Rockstars know just how to do that
- Stephen Pickering
I'll stick around and see what happens, but might not bother so much with another 'social' web site again.
- Grant Bierman
:) I am what I am Robert...I'm A DRAMA QUEEN? LOL that's funny....even though I'm a much better queen than you I still wuvs ya...Still processing all this as everyone else is...Sorry...might be shooting from the hip and I shouldn't
- Bill Heslin
Am I the only one excited to see how Facebook integrates FF? I have hundreds of FB friends that I know personally, yet know nobody that I am "friends" with on FF or Twitter. FB has my friends but I'd love FF's functionality.
- Chris Nunz
There's this optimistic talk about keeping FriendFeed around as R&D. I'm skeptical about it.
- Bruce Lewis
I'll leave FriendFeed as soon as there's somewhere to go to; currently, I'm not convinced there is.
- Tristan Seligmann
Also when you are hanging with the Master of the Universe for four hours, its sort of like Bill Clinton going to Korea. Kind of influences you.
- Stephen Pickering
Rami: I don't know. That's why I'm talking with you. I just know I won't continue to invest my time in something that will soon get no more investment. That's not who I am. I will hang out with Louis Gray until he finds something cool. By the way, someone gave me Google Wave already, thanks!
- Robert Scoble
This should be a reality television show. This is where the real drama queens will come out to play.
- Jeunelle Foster
Bruce: I disagree with you about Facebook and openness. They are a lot more open than they used to be and are MUCH more professional and friendly than, say, Twitter is.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I look forward to your review of Wave.
- Bruce Lewis
Openness and Facebook are not one and the same.... polar opposites. Bah humbug.
- Kelly Mitchell
Yup the big dogs are sitting back laughing at this whole thing
- Jeunelle Foster
It doesn't necessarily have to be "R&D" but really a completely separate product. Something like YouTube is to Google. Although that's a terrible analogy...I guess the products are too similar to keep separate.
- Brandon Titus
I'd pay-per-view to see Scoble and Sebastian Bach fight
- Mattb4rd
The Chinese government is much more open than it used to be. It still doesn't meet my standards.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: also, Zuckerberg is seeing the real money is in search. So he HAS to be open to really do great there.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Any chance you could share your Wave address?
- Brandon Titus
Did anyone get a chance to see Youtube HTML 5 Demo?
- Stephen Pickering
Brandon: I don't have my own address. Someone gave me theirs so can't share.
- Robert Scoble
Zuckerberg doesn't make money from other companies' search engines, so he's still limiting what data can go out. I see FB getting more open about what data they take in.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: Wave is very geeky. I think the UI has a lot of FriendFeed's problems x10. We'll see how that first impression sticks.
- Robert Scoble
And Wave will only be as good as how many users it has
- Stephen Pickering
I guess what I'm trying to say is even if you don't think your time here is an not an investment ;anymore in anything Robert...We still, or at least I do, consider your input valuable. And if you were to jump ship too soon, I think we would all lose something. So, even if things don't look good...please hang around..That's what I meant to say...
- Bill Heslin
Where will I go? Probably no where. Friendfeed was the first time I really got to feel like I found a home. Other places don't interact and blend multiple social services like Friendfeed does/did. Just as plenty of other people have said, I'm waiting for Google Wave at this point. I'm already a Google whore, might as well wait for the Wave to come through.
- Matthew Horton
Bruce: data that goes out can be embedded on blogs and websites and interact with things. Also, if you get into Google's search engine you can get a LOT of traffic, which then you can monetize on your own service.
- Robert Scoble
Not necessarily nailing the coffin shut yet here. Going to hang around and see what develops....what seems likely at the moment may be a totally different thing tommorow :O)
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
I am leaving at midnight. 2 accounts will be deleted, mine and one I manage for another site.
- April Russo (app103)
Robert: Hope you enjoy Wave! The UI is definitely way off for content sharing (at least in my first impression) and more suited for group communication for the very scenarios they threw out in the demos. Get much beyond that, or have too many people and the system starts to break down. Obviously, the underlying Wave infrastructure could be used to create something similar to and better than Friendfeed.
- Brandon Titus
Yeah, the cool thing about Wave is the problem they solved with the protocol. Not really their UI implementation. I think there are huge opportunities with both Open Social and the Wave protocol.
- Chip Ramsey
OK, I have been out of touch and I guess I missed something. I see nothing wrong with staying with all the feeds I am tied to!
- Dave Sickmeier
April, please don't delete your account. We lose interesting history when people do that.
- Bruce Lewis
There is no Facebook and no FriendFeed, it is now called TwoFacedFriend...
- Kelly Mitchell
Bill: I'll be around but probably a lot less. Actually I was thinking that this was good timing. We have a new baby due in September and my other son is just starting to learn to talk, so want to spend more time hanging around with the family.
- Robert Scoble
I am gonna wait it out. If the community as a whole migrates I will go with them, but I don't want to overreact.
- Neal Jansons
it's time to have another serious look at Plaxo. There are some very clever people there too, I believe?!
- Matt Hooper
Truth is, being addicted to FriendFeed isn't a good lifestyle.
- Robert Scoble
April: why so sudden and why delete accounts? I don't get that.
- Robert Scoble
As you should. Family is much more important than any of this. And now I have to go fix my wig! LOL
- Bill Heslin
depends what they do with the service - I like friendfeed and facebook so I think it will probably work okay for me
- Nick Stone
Brandon: oh, oh. You said it "Wave doesn't scale." Not good.
- Robert Scoble
FF also has good tools for using it in moderation -- best of day, week, which you can get by email. Lists help.
- Bruce Lewis
I have been spending most of my time on Brightkite. It's a smaller community and more fun. A better alternative than twitter or facebook.
- John C Ferron
Robert, and yes when he does that (Money in Search), it will change the playing field in lateral ways across the Internet, especially in ePortfolios and other like applications that don't need to be walled gardens
- Melanie Reed
Your right, Robert, but you would eventually learn to moderate your use, and a service like this is going to be needed
- Stephen Pickering
And Leo and Dick Debartolo are on the wine train, missing all this...I envy them...lol
- Bill Heslin
Will there ever be an app that just leaves facebook out of the equation - we could only dream
- Ryan Gerritsen
i'm leaving, watching from twitter would be a better option for me.
- rama mamuaya
I am not likely to invest time in another community that I don't have a stake in. If I contribute it will be because I have a personal interest and am part of the team that runs the show. That is the only way I will feel comfortable investing my time & energy into it.
- April Russo (app103)
If we could get the other "Rock Stars" who are obviously having a "virtual prayer meeting" somewhere to get together and talk about what changes they wish to see and what they would like to see develop for social media, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and now this Google Wave, we would probably all feel a little better as we might be able to see down the dark cold tunnel but they're out...
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- Jeunelle Foster
i think that I'll keep posting to friendfeed until it fully integrates with facebook
- Carlos Leiva Burotto
Man, I can understand Louis' feelings. Look how much he and Scoble have put into this
- Stephen Pickering
I'll continue to use FF until there's reason not to. I'm patient enough to see what happens to it. What's the hurry?
- Cathryn Hrudicka
I just started on Friendfeed. It can't go away!
- Paul McElligott
Lets start FeedFriend - the Bizaro friendfeed minus Facebook integration
- Ryan Gerritsen
Well, I was rather hoping for some sort of joint deal between Twitter & FF... I'm not sure if I'll stick around in FF or not. I'm definitely not a fan of Facebook
- Tim Bergman
Paul, that's what so frustrating. Just given time, we know it would have caught on
- Stephen Pickering
This really SUCKS because when you don't have great "developers" to put something together like FriendFeed, you're really just gonna have to either take it up the ass or commit suicide. I'll hang myself 1st with all my clothes on :)
- Jeunelle Foster
I'm wherever good, smart peeps are ('cuz I'm not smart enough). I don't invest much in tools - it's the people I care for. I'm not gonna abandon FF now but I understand that we'll need a way to foster the kind of community that got fostered here. Nothing lasts forever - and that's mostly a good thing in the long run.
- phil baumann
from Android
i'll be here until either the bitter end or something else comes along ... i'm really hoping that the ff-team will turn facebook into more of what it was before the apps came along... i think that's when FB really took a downward turn for me
- Chris Heath
Venues like this will come and go, the whole social media landscape is in a constant state of flux I don't see why so many are up in arms. The life cycle of all the current venues are short and most of the leaders are nearing the end of their lives as we know it. But fear not, many new shiny toys will be bestowed upon us to play with. Now let's be social again! (ps. I'm sure we've seen NOTHING yet!)
- Paul Monaco
Tweet: the cheese is in Zuckerberg's office! :-)
- Robert Scoble
And for anyone that wants to know why I am deleting my account and not just moving away and leaving it to rot like i would normally do...just read the policies of facebook. Anywhere I have an account with data I don't want to be exploited commercially, in a way that exploits me personally, I'd delete it just as fast if the service were bought by facebook.
- April Russo (app103)
Zuckerberg is Master of the Universe. He spent 4 hours with Paul Friday. That would have an effect on anyone
- Stephen Pickering
I know I am able to post status updates in Facebook to "Everyone" now, but when will we be able to search these open status updates?
- Kevin Whalen
from iPhone
I can't wait till my mom gets one of my "Queenie" updates....that's gonna b fun...lol..
- Bill Heslin
Kevin, when God, ie Mark Zuckerberg, says you can
- Stephen Pickering
I love FF but I think this is a great move. If FB takes the best ideas from FF and they open it up theres is so much potential for a great community.
- Gary Gannon
Definitely see what happens... Not looking forward to Facebook turning this into a free-for-all like Facebook :-)
- Maria Reyes-McDavis
Gary a potential for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
- Stephen Pickering
Not going anywhere for the time being. I'm not a big Twitter fan, and unless FB makes some big time changes, it just doesn't do it for me. Will be listening for any other social media that might come round the bend.
- Bonnie Foster
We are getting tired of all those constant platform changes, aren't we?
- Harald Felgner
Herald and Stephen, Yes! More and different is not always better, just more and different.
- Melanie Reed
I can't leave Facebook. I have too much built up there. And that won't do anything anways. It will just be a small blip to them.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
so what content aggregator in the absence of FF?
- WarLord
My apologies if this has already been asked, but Robert you are very close the FF team. You had no idea this was coming?
- Ben Hanten
I'm not leaving. I like FriendFeed and Facebook.
- Kimber Scott
Ben: not one iota. I did sense that they were struggling to figure out how to compete, but didn't think they would sell. Paul always told me he didn't want to sell.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I'm confused - on the one hand you've said this is such a great thing for FF as well as FB - but on the other hand you also say you're leaving FF because of of it. Why - if this is such a great thing for FF?
- Matthew Blaisdell
WarLord: there isn't a good aggregator. That's why it's stupid to delete your feeds.
- Robert Scoble
OK, a friend talked me down. He told me I'd be saying sorry for starting this post by the 400th comment. He's usually right. So, instead of saying sorry, I'm going drinking. See ya in the lobby in 10 minutes!
- Robert Scoble
I may be dense about this, but why would you leave until you saw which way it was going?
- Jerry Kidd
Good question, Jerry. I wanna know this, too.
- Brad Williamson
Robert, I think he struggled with it, but 4 Hours with Mark is a big persuasion
- Stephen Pickering
Matthew: I expect that the engineers will get put onto Facebook. So, if the smartest people are working on Facebook and not on FriendFeed, why would I stay here? Why wouldn't I start moving my work and social graph and all that over to Facebook?
- Robert Scoble
LOL...there ya go Robert...I knew you would come around...Drink Drink!!! have a really nice cocktail...
- Bill Heslin
The people I've come to know on FriendFeed are what I'd miss though, so I'd like to take my social graph with me wherever I might end up next. There's a business opportunity right there.
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
When I think about it - I found your post as well as the TechCrunch article via Google Friend Connect. So maybe it is time to join that Wave!?
- Harald Felgner
Jerry: I said I was going to wait until I talk with the team more, but the things I'm hearing tell me they've already been bought to work on Facebook proper. So, unless someone tells me that's wrong, that tells me I should spend more and more of my time over on Facebook and not here. But my friend convinced me I'm being hasty and emotional. :-O
- Robert Scoble
Mathew: Scoble said early on in this thread that he invests his time into emerging networks, not things that "are already here" I think thats why he will be moving on to the next big thing, like google wave or watchever new social network emerges out of this. I suspect that another startup will emerge to try and fill the shoes left behind by friendfeed. This is always the case. When napster left, you had morpheus and kazaa, then bit torrents.
- Bryan Lee
Robert - Makes sense - except that it still doesn't seem like a great day for Friendfeed - if it just gets abandoned (by FB as well as by leaders like you...)
- Matthew Blaisdell
Matthew: FriendFeed=Facebook. It's a great day for both. Cause I'll end up at Facebook either way! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Anyway, these are just the emotional ramblings of someone trying to figure out how the world shifted today. Have fun!
- Robert Scoble
clue to the denouement: where is the most valuable processing of this event. Right here.
- Steve Gillmor
I'm just curious what new startup will roll into the limelight because of this announcement?
- Bryan Lee
Robert, FriendFeed != Facebook - look at the quality of commentary/people here
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
FriendFeed can stop improving right now, and I'll still stick around until something else catches up. Maybe that something else will be Facebook. I'll wait and see.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm probably out. Back to open source for me at this point. Time to take another look and see how things have progressed with Laconica, JaikuEngine, NoseRub, and some of the other secondary options. I may also go crawling back to Twitter. Given a choice between Twitter and Facebook... sigh...
- Ken Sheppardson
Monique: It's not about rapid change, it's about where to invest effort. I don't really have any interest in investing my time and energy on Facebook... so why wait?
- Ken Sheppardson
Steve: Yeah, you're probably right. I appreciate the work Bret, Paul, Benjamin, et al have done, and I was really looking forward to where they were taking things... before they were taking it to Facebook.
- Ken Sheppardson
I think I will just stay on twitter, because I can't stand facebook.
- Tomy Thomson
Stephen: FF has died? Well, then, how am I typing to you?
- Robert Scoble
Tomy, why change? You can listen to the Beatles and the Stones!
- Stephen Pickering
Ken: it's all good. they're moving to a radically larger playground, and they can't afford to abandon those who appreciate them
- Steve Gillmor
They will keep FF just will make it better
- Johni Fisher
I'll wait to learn more before making any decisions
- Herb Hernandez
Robert, well, metaphorically. Whether its a few months or a year
- Stephen Pickering
Tomy: Twitter is like Facebook but without likes and comments. Oh, wait, Facebook is a lot like FriendFeed already. I just commented on Louis Gray's item there. Oh, and there's applications. We can play games! :-) Herb: I'll try to go see the team next week. I'm also interviewing Yelp.
- Robert Scoble
But Steve, what if the larger "playground" turns out to be very different from the one pitched to them? What if the FF team finds that their vision isn't shared after all?
- Bruce Lewis
Robert, ok maybe you are right. Maybe it will be like the R&D. That would be great!
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen: are you trying to get on the Gillmor Gang? We seem to kill things before they are really dead there too.
- Robert Scoble
Hey Robert , you make friendfeed slower ! I guess you should leave here really x)
- Melissa Taylor
Anyway, I'm going drinking. For real this time.
- Robert Scoble
I'm planning on easing out of Friendfeed in the next couple of days, so I can get the contacts of people I know on here and who's opinions I value.
- Jon, the Chilled Beartato
Steve, oh yes, If I were him, I would pull out all stops to get this team. I totally understand from a business perspective, all perspectives
- Stephen Pickering
@Steve @Bruce, here's the post http://jungleg.com/2009... -- it's a crazy idea but GR could make an extra effort and put up a better web experience
- Jorge Escobar
I like FriendFeed, a lot, but too few of my friends use the service to make it really useful. So I guess I'll leave.
- Adam Washington
Adam, stay, if even only for the aggregating features
- Stephen Pickering
YES he's sitting in the back laughing while drinking Peppermint Schnaps
- Jeunelle Foster
Scobles outta here. He went to get a life! hehehehehehehe
- Stephen Pickering
totally staying....this really is just the beginning....and, i just built FF into all of my Intro to Soc sections!!!!
- Chad Gesser
I thought you said you'd hand in there until they turn the last server off. What changed your mind?
- Paul Chaney
Speaking of Google. What was the point of them buying Jaiku and doing nothing with it?
- Bryan Lee
I'll at least stay for aggregation and extending 140 character tweets, and pray maybe it will become Facebooks R&D, but I know that's a longshot
- Stephen Pickering
I should get a life too but alas the temptation is too great for "attention whoring"
- Jeunelle Foster
Regarding the "team's plans", I really don't expect to hear anything from Bret, Paul, et al. At this point I'm happy to let the Facebook (i.e. the non-FriendFeed) folks try to convince me that they're ready to do things differently. That involves more than just hiring a team.
- Ken Sheppardson
Well, maybe Paul can influence Mark not "to be evil"
- Stephen Pickering
those who think FB has any choice but to go down the FF road are not thinking this through
- Steve Gillmor
@Stephen, I was alternating between friendfeed and twitter (stones and beatles, respectively :P) but I don't see the point in staying with a dying technology, which unfortunately is where friendfeed is headed. The tech of friendfeed itself will hopefully live on in facebook. I really think facebook has become a slightly less obnoxious version of myspace, and that's being nice.
- Tomy Thomson
Steve, Oh, I totally understand. It was genius of them. Proves how Mark is indeed Master of the Universe
- Stephen Pickering
Steve, self-interest does not guarantee anything. People and companies can act irrationally.
- Bruce Lewis
So Steve, do you see two separate properties indefinitely? Or does Facebook just slowly start too look more FF-like, then one day they redirect friendfeed.com to facebook.com?
- Ken Sheppardson
*eye roll* thread is getting to the point where it's too long and people are now asking questions that have been answered thrice.....Lock down time.
- Matthew DeVries
ff was the important value, not twitter
- Steve Gillmor
Steve, why didn't Ff take over FB? Yeah Facebook has the money, but it's the inferior product.
- Matthew DeVries
Oh sure, who do you want in your office, Ev or Paul Bucheit? Paulllllll!
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen, didn't the TechCrunch article say that the FF team would be split between two bosses, neither of which was Mark?
- Bruce Lewis
That's right. Paul may end up running that thing, or at least be No.2
- Stephen Pickering
@ Robert: The majority of apps on FB are useless imo. Every time I log on I get bombarded by 'add your relative' and 'blackjack' app requests. And don't get my started on the quizzes and other BS. Ah well, I will join your fan page on facebook!
- Tomy Thomson
Wow - isn't this jumping to conclusions? No one has said anything's going away, nor do we know what they're doing to do with it. Stick around, wait to see what happens, then jump. Nothing's happened yet - I think it will all be for the better in the end and you'll know where to go when the FF Team says Jump.
- Jesse Stay
Kurt, he's gonna sit on it for a while, see what shakes out
- Stephen Pickering
jesse skip to the bottom for the apology
- Steve Gillmor
The FF Team hasn't let us down yet, have they? I still trust them - only when they break that trust do we jump.
- Jesse Stay
@Scobleizer I've been on Google Wave for about a week working on an interesting idea I have for it. It's very promising but its very alpha right now. You won't find it worth your time just yet.
- Noah White
Ah - sorry Robert - didn't see the clarification towards the bottom. Thanks Steve.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, you still in the Boston area?
- Bruce Lewis
Why rush to judgment? Even if the "team's plans" are off-base, what's the base? And what's off? Experience, resourcefulness, respect for users and smarts under fire all matter more than "plans." Wait & keep seeing.
- Doc
What the hell? Just because someone buys FriendFeed everyone has to ditch it? ABORT SHIP, ABORT SHIP! Doesn't really make sense so soon. Has anything changed yet? Is it the end of the world? Don't just leave because everyone says they will either. Stick around, the ship is still afloat.
- Nick Humphries
But, if they did pull the plug, with bandwidth and computing halving every year, there would be another one of these pop up in no time
- Stephen Pickering
I don't see a point in leaving Friendfeed until the doors close on us... if and when that happens.
- Alex Knight
Actually facebook is the most popular rss reader of all time :)
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
Bruce, we just left today. I'm actually in Niagara Falls, NY right now. Just finished watching a beautiful view of the Falls at night.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, if anybody can persuade me (us?) that Facebook is going to be good for the FF team it's you. Maybe write a blog post or something.
- Bruce Lewis
I'm in it to win it. FF isn't shutting down tomorrow or next week. But it's funny to me that so many dicuss the content... It's the connections made with others that are in jeopardy, not the LOLCat photos...
- MVB (Grinch of FF)
from fftogo
Because of Quantum Wave effects there are an infinite number of Universes, some of which The Gillmor Gang is still broadcasting
- Stephen Pickering
Bruce, I'll be working on a post really soon. Also, Louis Gray and I are going to record a phone call about it tomorrow, which I think should prove useful. I've got a lot of knowledge about Facebook, and he does about FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
Kurt, oh yeah, I totally get that and so does Scoble, but you've got to understand his short term hurt. Look at how much energy he put into this thing, and what did he get? Nuttin
- Stephen Pickering
You mean McLuhan is in Scoble's body? He's in the movie Being Robert Scoble?
- Doc
Nonsense Stephen he gets paid in attention every single time
- Steve Gillmor
I was wondering how long this would take to happen. Soon as I saw FF being purchased by Facebook I knew you would bolt. Not 100% surprising.
- Christopher Mercer
Part of beauty of FF: all their shows are taped. And yet open ended.
- Nick in Manila
It depends how much FF changes. No reason to leave until and unless it gets annoying.
- Igor Goldkind
It's "I'll respect you in the morning."
- Sean Gallagher
Oh, I'm not leaving. Hell, I even still have a myspace account. It's just a question of engagement
- Stephen Pickering
Good night all. Tip for Jeunelle: You get more attention if you make your feed public. Make a group for your private stuff.
- Bruce Lewis
they'll have to scrub this one pretty good before they shut it down
- Steve Gillmor
@scobleizer that means half of the total activity on friendfeed will be reduced
- Sidharth Dassani
Maybe if Facebook hadn't stolen all Scoble's data, he'd stop worrying and learn to love them.
- Sean Gallagher
Actually even os Brasileiros are coming over to FB
- Stephen Pickering
My mother is on Facebook. The end is nigh.
- Sean Gallagher
"Maybe Jeunelle doesn't want attention" - says who? I only stepped away to pour me a nice glass of Sauvengion Blanc", and thank you Bruce for the advice I'll look into that tomorrow. After all tomorrow is another day. Twiddly Dee
- Jeunelle Foster
there is no reason to leave. I seriously doubt facebook will kill it.
- Logan Lindquist
Maybe if I blog my twitter of Scoble's FriendFeed and then link it from Facebook via a Digg of a del.icio.us bookmark, it will create a singularity and this thread will have never happened.
- Sean Gallagher
Can someone comment on what April Russo said about Facebook content policy? Seems like a very important piece of the puzzle.
- metalerik
I wouldn't worry about it. The markets will take care of it. If Facebook becomes evil, the masses will fork somewhere else. We're in the age of Openness
- Stephen Pickering
I will only leave friend feed if it becomes a facebook clone. I can't stand facebook but I still use it cause my friends and family use it, but if friendfeed becomes annoying like face book then I see no point in staying here.
- Colide81 (James)
from iPhone
You know Sean maybe smarter than he looks....hmmmmm :) and what's with that bird head?
- Jeunelle Foster
Quote of the Day: "Microsoft and Twitter deserve each other. They are both somewhat buggy and don't come up with new features very often. ;-)" - Robert Scoble
- Diego Barros
It's a starling fledgeling. The perfect symbol for social networking-- it eats whatever you give it, then poops on you.
- Sean Gallagher
That's what I want to reincarnate as....an angry poopin bird
- Jeunelle Foster
Just reading all the news about FF and FB. Disapoints me personally, biz wise nice job. Um not a huge FB user so I don't know what my plans are yet. Like you wait a bit and see....
- Bryan Thatcher
from iPhone
I hope FF doesn't go away and fold in to FB. I don't need FB. It's like bringing a machine gun to a knife fight.
- Diego Barros
I won't leave FF until they make me or there's no community left. Whichever comes first.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Well, it's made me think twice about vesting too much into any one service (so has the demise of tr.im). I use Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, and FF all pretty equally, so I guess I'm not feeling this as much as some.
- Bill Kinney
Jannifer, Yes we will on his JS-Kit Echo commenting system he will put on his blog. It's real time like this
- Stephen Pickering
I'm leaving. Google Wave, Twitter, Reader will plenty suffice now. Farewell, former friend.
- Californian
Oh Stephen - I'm not sure what that is... but it won't be like Friendfeed. :-(
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
At some point I imagine I will. I have no interest in joining facebook. When I do depends on what facebook does with ff.
- Quasar
I'm sticking around till FB screws it up. But I was keeping FF separate from FB because most of my FB friends are my born-again Christian relatives who won't like the controversial stuff of mine that makes it onto FF's news feed. Still, I'm going to look for other similar sites. Posterous is one.
- Dennis Jernberg
I'm not leaving but I'm not moving to Facebook. The main thing for me is to keep the contacts I've gained from FriendFeed and hope we all can meet on another similar service somewhere somehow.
- Kol Tregaskes
Maybe. But i really want Google Wave invite.
- ★ Soner Gönül
It's hard to say at this point. The only thing that's changed is who pays the server bill. Ask me in a week. And yes, a Google Wave invite would sure go a long way to make this better for me.
- Dale
Leaving a favorite site isn't always a conscious decision for me. The cool site loses its cool and you just kind of drift off.
- Dale
from email
Oh yeah, and I added my Posterous blog to my FriendFeed feed, so you'll be seeing whatever I post there in your home feed here. That is, if you subscribe to me here, or if one of your subscribers likes or comments. Me, leave? Not yet! ;)
- Dennis Jernberg
I'm loyal until they make it worth me leaving.
- Jesse Stay
I'm here until they slam the gates shut. But I am hiding all your BS posts about it being a good thing :)
- jcunwired
If you want to be sure that I quit Friendfeed you have to see my burial. I will never quit while being alive! :-)
- Kolja
I'm staying but it's like when you know that the company you work for has been bought by someone else and might close it, you lose motivation and start looking for another job, it's hard to invest time and energy if there might be no future. Not that the future of FF was guaranteed before but now it does not look good at all.
- M F
I'm heading to Plurk! who's with me? *tumbleweed*
- Iain Baker
Friendfeed is two totally different things: the original RSS aggregation service, and a social network service/community. Lifestream.fm is a reasonable replacement for the former. As to the latter, it's the people, not the tech they're using, that makes FF special. I've benefited greatly as a 'consumer' here, reading posts - if that continues on Facebook, it will probably get me to...
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- SteamCentral
i'll be around until it becomes unbearable, probly until it's been damaged badly by FB style feature creep and riddled with ads and spammers. oh, and absolutely stupid censorship policies. that'll be a real killer.
- Joe Silence is not Santa
The CloneFeed group has given me some interest. It gives some hope in case FF really goes away or merges badly with FB. I like FB but just don't want to fully mix the two activities/audiences.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I'd rather keep my Friendfeed as my "professional aggregation" and Facebook as personal stuff. I blog, tweet, etc. stuff that a lot of my friends could care less about. And I post stuff to Facebook that isn't interesting or relevant to clients / followers.
- Gregg Le Blanc
Google Wave is what I am looking for. The problem with moving to Facebook is that I use it for close friends and family so things like comments and pics etc that I post to it I would not want to have available to all of the contacts I have on FF at the moment. Mainly because I like to separate those I know from those that I converse with if that makes sense. I loved that on FF I could...
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- Travis Koger
Whilst I am not 'leaving' FF, I will not be investing anywhere near the type of interaction I have done previous to yesterday's announcement as I just see it as wasted time.
- Travis Koger
I have to wait & see what, I don't want to lose the community; where do I go? This feels like Pownce all over!
- clarke thomas
Nope, not yet. I still dream about FF and FB to coexist. I think Facebook is even more boring now, after this announcement. Anyone else feels this way?
- Patrik Johansson
Not me. I will be glad when all the people who say they are leaving do so my feed won't be full of people saying they are leaving.
- Alan Simpson
FF is my first big social networking investment (or time) - I'll stay and then move, if forced. I'll certainly investigate other tools in an effort to fill any gap left by FaceFeed.
- Jason Miller
I just saw that a woman's twittering her childbirth made the front page of BBC's world news webpage. I don't know to make of it, but I don't want to hang out at Twitter much anymore.
- Mitch
Mitch: we Twittered our childbirth in 2007 and we will again in September, but probably not on our main account.
- Robert Scoble
won´t leave!!! i LOVE friendfeed. @Mitch i know what you mean. So many stories and this is the one they picked?
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
i think i'm stayin, and wait what's goin on facebook. i will feel upset if they dont allow the users to make their choice of using one or other site, but looks like they gonna force to use FB instead of FF :(
- Dani Martínez
Not sure how on board with FriendFeed I ever was to begin with to be honest...
- Gurpreet
FriendFeed will be fine - FaceBook is fine - and so is Twitter - I might check out AmpliFeeder, I suspect quite a few FriendFeeders will migrate there as the days go by.
- Chris Loft
Not leaving FF but I can't wait till it's properly integrated with Facebook. Interesting thing: Wave's API is open so there's nothing to stop Facebook creating an app to make Facebook & Wave work great together. Not so much either/or as and... and..!
- Matt Moran
Has anyone tried amplifeeder? edit: so far don't see any friending abilities though
- metalerik
Why leave? But will be open to see other options - facebook doesn't (currently) provide to me what I get here.
- amygeek
OH NO, I just finish moving all my stuff HERE!
- Terence
Robert: I closed down my embeds today. Sad for my blog.
- Mark Essel
I stay on FriendFeed, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc.
- Emmanuel Gadenne
I won't delete my account, but as FF morphs into the ball of confusion that is Facebook, I won't be very active.
- Jeremy Brooks
I will. No point sticking around when you know it is going to die sooner or later. With twitter you still have the hope....
- Davide D'Incau
I'll leave Facebook if FF gets harmed. And go back to Identi.ca... ;-)
- Torrid Luna
Yeah, I'll probably leave Facebook too. If they're going to "steal" the FriendFeed functions and just let FF die, I will not have any sympathies left for Facebook. I'll go "all Google" or something.
- Patrik Johansson
I'll stay on FF, FB and T, and BK, and other, BrightKite is not well utilised, is good even on beta.
- Andy Ghozali
I joined posterous for blogging/lifestreaming and will continue to use twitter. I might go on facebook once in a while, which is what I was doing anyway.
- Tomy Thomson
Robert: If you're looking for an awesome real-time discussion platform, you should migrate to Fluther. http://www.fluther.com
- Ben
I'm staying put and watching the ship sink. I'd really like to believe that FriendFeed will have some longevity, but I won't hedge my bets.
- Tyson Key
Steve Gillmor said "clue to the denouement: where is the most valuable processing of this event. Right here." so for now, FF looks like the space.
- Barbara K. Iverson
I intend to stick around to see what Facebook have planned. I think the takeover has everything to do with the direction FB's been heading in lately, what with their open challenge to Twitter
- Dennis Jernberg
I don't see it as leaving, but rather seeing the possibility that it might leave us. FF was and still is just about my favorite site and uberaggregatorthing that I ever saw....
- Rob Schieber
Nope... I'll stay, even if I ride it to a bitter end.
- Mark "DerBingle" J
depends. if they stay seperate services, i wont like the acquisition,but i'll stay. if they become 1 service, i'm out. and where is every1 going from friend feed anyhow. what else is there?
- echostreamer
Will wait and see what happens with FB
- Ted Kinzer
fb ruins everything. Have the Privacy policy "not "changed since fb came into the pic? Can they not build their own ideas instead of buying everyone else's? leave us geeks to play in our playground and stay in yours. greedy buggers. The second they pull a skanky fb move i'm out. bitches.
- seastarerrin
Leaving no. Checking out other venues yes.
- Martha
Just maybe Facebook will listen to the Friendfeed engineers in charge of user interface/usability starting with the type size and fonts. Not all marriages are made in heaven. Culture clashes are sure to pop up.
- Alan Morris
I was about to focus a little more on FF but since I heard about the purchase and read rumors about FF being integrated in FB and being shutdown and all this, I'm getting a little ... well.. undecided.. Just checked Streamy, didn't like it. If a.tinythread.com get's more development, this might be the next thing to migrate to. I'm sure not moving to FaceBook. I have my account, I have...
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- Dan van Moll
Not interested in being part of Facebook. Goodbye, FriendFeed. :-(
- TranceMist
I wish more folks would see the big picture. We need to focus on independent projects that are NOT part of the Google-Yahoo-Microsoft borg. As soon as a site gets absorbed it is time to find another independent site. Yes, I do realize that some may have actually been part all along and only pretending they were independent in the first place - especially if they were founded by...
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- Internet Strategist
Why FriendFeed's designer, Kevin Fox, is to blame for FriendFeed being too difficult to use: he f**ks with affordances. (UPDATE: he answers me toward the end of the comments with a GREAT set of answers).
Affordances. They are important. What does that mean? A door knob "affords" being turned. It almost demands it. Yet FriendFeed is screwing with things like links. Here, click on "hide." That should just hide one item, right? That's the affordance. Yet you'll soon find there's a whole world stuck under that little link. You can hide Tweets. You can hide me. You can hide all sorts of stuff.
- Robert Scoble
i heard larry wall once say about perl "make simple things simple, and hard things possible"... the simple things are definitely *not* simple in ff, increasing the learning curve right at the start... i rekon if they fix that... they have it made! :)
- simran
Ooooo. One does not often see Robert swear. He's really worked up about it. Care to respond Kevin??
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
#2 Look at the time stamp. Did you know that's also a link? Where's the affordance? Not there. Yet did you know you can click that and that is your permalink? Many people have trouble figuring this out. But here's an ultra affordance killer. Did you know you can click it twice and get a popout menu? Not many people do. Kevin has overloaded links with too many features and he has broken the affordances of what links usually do.
- Robert Scoble
Orli: actually, yes, it's difficult to use.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble: You may be right now that I read what you had to say. I don't think there is a proper FAQ/guide for all the little details hidden in FF.
- Manuel Mas
And noses were designed to support eye glasses.
- Todd Hoff
well I just managed to wipe out my entire friend feed account when I was trying to add a new one for a different twitter account
- NW Angel
I agree - too many possible results from a given action. Manuel, no one reads FAQs and if you need to, the app is DOA
- Sameer
Well, I don't see it as difficult to use. Its more that there are many things in here hidden that would aid users if there were more upfront.
- Manuel Mas
Most of us get basic functionality out of the site with how things are at the moment.
- Manuel Mas
Look at this complaint too about FriendFeed being difficult to figure out: http://twitter.com/sethgol... Seth Goldstein runs a tech company. He's a geek. Adverse to more pain than a lot of us. Yet he can't figure out how to delete a list. He's not the only one to tell me that FriendFeed is too difficult to figure out. FriendFeed still needs a design rethink to make these issues go away.
- Robert Scoble
Valid points, Robert, but a complex interface, once learned, becomes simple, too - although that's not the best design philosophy for a massively public website.
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Its the visual impact of seeing too many options even if you dont use them. V. overwhelming for the try and buy new comer
- Sameer
I think it is one of the worst UIs on the web today. Which is why I hardly use it. It violates all the rules of good design. Stuff is not obvious, it is not easy and it is not even quickly learn-able. I've spent years in product management and really, this is one of the worst.
- Shripriya
I think the issue here is Discoverability. There are a lot of little hidden secrets to FriendFeed that become obvious only after you've figured them out. They're not very obvious on their own. Personally, it doesn't bother me but that's because I know it. If I were a new user, I'd be at a loss as well. It seems to me that the primary design goal at FriendFeed is a minimal UI (perhaps at all costs).
- Akiva Moskovitz
Roberto: I can't think of another web app that messes with link affordances the way that FriendFeed does. Can you think of one?
- Robert Scoble
People who figure out how to use a system are often the last ones to recognize how difficult it is to use. It's a self selection thing.
- Ken Sheppardson
But affordances are subjective and reliant on the end-user. Take the @ sign or hashtags for instance. Unless you're talking about Apple, it's hard to blame a designer for affordance rule enforcement.
- Sam Harrelson
There is a balance with "affordances" though -- if you have a very complex set of features you could have a knob/button/link for every feature but that would not work either
- Brian Sullivan
@Robert, do you think FF need More Icon?
- abdellah
Sam: we've all clicked on hundreds of thousands of links. We all have an idea of what happens when you click a link.
- Robert Scoble
Sam, the @sign in Twitter was emergent - something users created.
- Sameer
Sure, but I've seen lots of platforms use the date function as a permalink enabler.
- Sam Harrelson
Manuel, agree. Robert, I wouldn't say it's difficult, but confusing (or useless sometimes). I'm not sure it's a design problem though.
- Orli Yakuel
abellah: an icon is probably better than a link, yes. I know that Kevin (from an interview I did with him more than a year ago) likes sparse UIs. He is of the school that you just watch where people trip over themselves and then build UI for that. I think that's smart, but I wish that FriendFeed would iterate its UI faster to pave paths where people are having troubles.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, sorry, but you're late on this trend too :) First, being not to follow everyone on Twitter. FF ui has always been terrible. Most tech people I know don't understand how to use it. And I think I use less than 10% of the available features.
- Shripriya
I like FriendFeed as it is. It's obviously a power users tool as is, but then I wouldn't want it stupid simple reminiscent of installing a Windows OS. There just needs to be a decent screencast on the home page explaining all the features. No one reads FAQs these days. Video Game designers just turn the first level into a tutorial for 99% who won't read the manual and I don't mind. Maybe FF needs a tutorial when you first sign up?
- CannonGod
Think about the affordances of FF and compare them with Twitter. Then compare the relative effectiveness of desktop / mobile applications developed for both. There is not a one good app for FriendFeed. This is because of the MANY "extra shite" links and an overly complex API, not because of popularity differences in the services.
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Great designs shouldn't need tutorials.
- Manuel Mas
@Sameer right, but we created the @ sign to do a certain feature. Folks on identi.ca have their own signifiers. That will inevitably happen here as well as folks grow comfortable with this platform.
- Sam Harrelson
Shripriya - I think most people who come back dont find it confusion. Its the first timers that run away - and thats FFs biggest problem.
- Sameer
Needless to say, we all love Friendfeed, but we also need a Greasemonkey script to learn which service was posting into the time-line, and the entire issue of groups/rooms really needs a rethink because it's so hard to find any, especially If you're a newcomer..
- Nir Ben Yona
TV ads (at least in australia) are considered misleading if "a person of slightly less than average intelligence" misinterprets them... i think you will find that it takes "smart techies" a while to figure out the nuances of ff, not saying everything should be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, but the defaults that way would give everyone a great start... especially when introducing innovative stuff (like "the live web") :)
- simran
Scoble: That Google real time thing is even more impressive than this discussion!
- Manuel Mas
Manuel - Yes. I like to say that if you need to write a manual for your product, it's too complicated.
- Jeff Harbert
Shripriya: I've been complaining about this stuff both in public and in private for a long time. And I wasn't behind in following everyone on Twitter. Come and study how I use FriendFeed to follow small groups of people closely, especially for Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Wow, this did get into Google fast.
- phil baumann
Robert: Holy shit, that's impressive - http://www.google.com/search... - sod Twitter I say, if you're in marketing then you need to get on FriendFeed for instant Google indexing of a subject!
- CannonGod
@Manuel there will be always a need to manual and tutorial, people have to sell or to promote so event if you have to explain a basic evidence, write a document make it in pdf format, sell it or share it, but for the sake of simplicity please never ever do FB style document.
- abdellah
UI design is a very difficult thing to do because so many people have different ways they use things. However, I do agree with you Robert that FF does need a redesign to make more of the feature more user-intuitive.
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
Sameer - I've been back many times, I still barely use it. All the stuff Robert mentions, I had no clue. And its not worth my the time investment.
- Shripriya
Robert - the twitter thing (ie. unsubscribing and not following everyone) was a bit of a joke. But on FF, you are the biggest proponent. If you can't get them to change, no one can.
- Shripriya
Phil: THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT GOOGLE REAL-TIME INDEXING! XD
- CannonGod
Agree Sam, but Twitter nor identi.ca expose a gazillion features in the core app.. Its about managing the "first impression is the lasting impression" thing
- Sameer
Here's the interview I did with Kevin last year: http://qik.com/video/73962 Shripriya: yeah, I keep hearing that from other people I try to evangelize FriendFeed to. One guy, who is a tech advisor to celebrities in Hollywood told me they will never use it because it's too hard to figure out and because there aren't good mobile clients for it, like there are for Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
@Sameer That's true for a certain demographic, but I look at sites my 8th graders frequent often and I have no idea how they put up with the features. Or take an xBox 360 controller... lots of buttons that do way too many things for my old 30 year-old mind, but my students find it intuitive.
- Sam Harrelson
Shripriya- thats ok. Plenty of people I personally know that have signed up for Twitter and never come back because they couldn't find a use case. No app is for everyone. Its about appealing to a large number of folks that see relevance.
- Sameer
Wow, not only is this indexed in Google, but the Likes are getting indexed as well. Don't see the comments indexed yet, tho.
- Sam Harrelson
Maybe FF will always be the power aggregation tool online that only a few use. But is the "few" large enough? I wonder.
- Shripriya
47 emails in my gmail inbox already from this thread (as i commented and said follow updates on twitter)... surely they can batch them at least by the minute... after all... email isn't realtime :)
- simran
Mark: you took me out of context. I said it both sucks AND is brilliant. That is true. Even today.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert, can I add that UI is so clean that functionality are just a part of the design, they need to make more light on them (hey they are all blue link the same sized blue link) :)
- abdellah
The missing mobile client certainly is a downer. I love a lot about FriendFeed, but lack of a *good* mobile client, and other minor annoyances may keep me from staying here. Sure I know I will come back from time to time (and I haven't left yet), but not sure I can live here on a daily basis like I can with Twitter because of the great clients for my desktop and phone, like TweetDeck.
- Timothy Federwitz
Sam, the feature laden apps you mention that your students use, have intent built in them. The purpose is known before you came. XBox = don't do homework. Hell, Id learn how to use very button too :)
- Sameer
I think FF is a different beast altogether and not as easy to create a mobile app for, based solely on service functionality and what we actually do here.
- Manuel Mas
Tim: that's why I like the IM integration wtih GTalk. Gets around the site UI and works great on the mobile as well.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Scoble: I think this was a pretty rude way of giving your feedback. Why are you being so provocative lately?
- Eric Florenzano
from iPhone
difficult for who? the basics are easy....getting the most out of all the tools available is a different story but at least the tools are there. Not so in twitter
- Craig Shipp
Sameer: Yep, good point. Similarly, I see FriendFeed having a very useful apparatus in my work/personal flow as a news/twitter/info client. I mostly use it via IM but also find the site pretty intuitive for how I use it and prefer it over Twitter, etc.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Eric: because no one engages unless you make a strong point and I sure wish Kevin would fix this stuff so I can evangelize FriendFeed better.
- Robert Scoble
Craig: I have shown FriendFeed to many hundreds of people over the past year and I keep getting this complaint over and over.
- Robert Scoble
I disagree with that approach Robert. A strong point is not always necessary. Most times it's a turn off and sets the wrong tone. Sure you get a lively discussion, but half of it is trying to explain you're not reallllly upset about it.
- Bwana ☠
It's fine to complain but I don't see any useful suggestions here from Robert or any other commenters. A problem without a proposed solution is essentially a whine.
- Brian Sullivan
Bwana: we've been complaining about these issues for more than a year. And I am upset about it. It keeps me from having a good time evangelizing FriendFeed. Just search here for how many people don't get FriendFeed. And those are the ones who'll tell you in public.
- Robert Scoble
Just reading this, I have learned 4 things I DID NOT KNOW about friendfeed functionality.
- Liza
Robert: I couldn't disagree more. Please don't fall into that Arrington/Loren Feldman trap. People engage in a more constructive way when the topic is interesting. Just look at Leo's shows for proof that I'm right.
- Eric Florenzano
from iPhone
I didn't say this wasn't a case for a strong point, I'm simply stating it's not always necessary per your statement "no one engages unless you make a strong point"
- Bwana ☠
Liza: that's another reason I did it in a strong way. I knew it would get engagement. WHen you get engagement your item gets spread to more and more people and that helps out the community overall.
- Robert Scoble
Timestamp? Click, double click? Permalink? I wish I knew all of this before.
- Liza
Ultimately the best thing to happen to FriendFeed would be the mass proliferation of 3rd party apps that offer a better user experience overall. Let the market sort out best functional IxD. How many highly active Twitter users use Twitter.com regularly? Not many, because there are several Twitter apps that afford a more active Twitter experience. Without them, Twitter would be news from 2006.
- Laura Scott (@lauras)
I disagree. I came here because I agree with the point (as I stated in another thread), not because of the strongness. You may attract certain types with that, but not moi.
- Bwana ☠
I also show twitter and friendfeed to a lot of new Internet users and they get confused easily. I think the only solution is to show one simple process and then after they master that for a week or so then show them another feature.
- Craig Shipp
The best level of engagement that I've seen regarding Leo Laporte is when Arrington called him out openly and there was the big fuss of him getting thrown off the show. Just saying.
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Eric: OK, heard and understood. But name another designer who does stuff with links that Kevin does. That needs to be pointed out strongly, I think. But then I get crazy about design, especially when people keep telling me over and over that FriendFeed is too hard to use and figure out. Even Liza, who has been here a lot, didn't know all that stuff was "hidden" under the affordance of the link.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I appreciate your sharing this info, but it feels strange that all of this seems like a secret. Intention is bizarre.
- Liza
So Robert, do you really think Kevin and FF are actively ignoring this issue?
- Bwana ☠
Bwana: yes. Why? Because it's been like this for 18 months.
- Robert Scoble
As a user, I do feel like it is intentionally hidden.
- Liza
And I am tech savvy, not an idiot, but the argument is, oh, you just aren't enough of a techie to get it.
- Liza
I think the beauty of friendfeed is the fact that it can be used as a very basic tool but also has the power to do much more in the right hands
- Craig Shipp
And once these get fixed, the real thing that people can't figure out is what is new. On every other website there's an affordance for that. Even in SimplyTweet new Tweets are green. Quick, figure out what is new here that you haven't seen from the last time you were here. You can't.
- Robert Scoble
Craig: That's the biggest copout I've ever heard. Maybe Kevin needs to go bak and read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug.
- Michael Owens
from iPhone
Liza: people like me who click on everything looking for secret features. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert: but even Wordpress.com uses the date affordance as a permalink. http://bit.ly/Dwnm6 I understand the concerns about the mass of feature clarity here, but I don't see that particular date/link function as a standard bearer.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Scoble: OK point taken. So let's make this constructive: what should they do to fix it? For the timestamp, my suggestion is to make it bluer and underlined--which everyone associates with links. Do you agree? How can they fix the hide functionality, though? I'm struggling to think of a way.
- Eric Florenzano
from iPhone
Liza: I found a lot of bugs in WIndows 95 by unplugging my mouse and trying to use the entire UI via the keyboard. But then I'm weird. Most people will never try anything. In fact, Google's own research shows that fewer than 1% will click on "advanced search." These weird affordances are even harder than THAT to figure out.
- Robert Scoble
So if this doesn't change, FF may not get as wide of an adoption that it deserves. Hide, permalinks, and little things make a huge difference. The technology is too good for this to be its downfall.
- Bwana ☠
Not having older items shaded or otherwise marked as old does effectively contribute to noise.
- phil baumann
I'm not saying friendfeed can't be made better. I'm just saying it can be used from a basic level with little training.
- Craig Shipp
I was accused of working for Friendfeed at an event 2 nights ago, for being an evangelist, and I still know very little about the functionality. AND I do like to think, I do click on a lot, but I also appreciate the intention of inclusion.
- Liza
Eric: I would NOT put two hidden features under one link. They need a tab of "customizations and secret features" and put all that stuff there.
- Robert Scoble
I'm not sure it's ever going to change at this point... which is sad
- Bwana ☠
Liza: everyone knows I'm so excited about FriendFeed that they whine when I don't bring it up. Seriously. It's funny.
- Robert Scoble
Whoops sorry Michael, didn't see yours. But it is a good book. Affordances is a bit abstract. He does a good job making the idea concrete.
- Todd Hoff
better UI!! ask myspace ugly by purpose.
- abdellah
The problem is w/o knowing the affordances, Newbies create too much noise, feel embarassed and retreat - felt that but did not retreat
- Liza
Facebook used to have a great UI imho. It's changed so much, now I can't find anything
- Bwana ☠
FF has the better UI would be my guess. But better is such a subjective word.
- Brian Sullivan
K.N. define "best." It's certainly easier to understand than FriendFeed is. Especially if you use a great client like SimplyTweet on my iPhone or Seesmic on my desktop.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble: I'm not sure about the tab idea. It would add a lot of visual load on ever pageview. Instead, I'm thinking maybe if hide was a hover dropdown. When you hover over it, it says "Hide just this item", and "Hide all items like these" so that you know what you're getting into. This could work just like the top subnavigation items in many websites, which people are familiar with. Thoughts?
- Eric Florenzano
Agree Twitter's UI is great - was in a studygroup of power users - most of us use web interface with multiple browsers rather than Tweetdeck, b/c simplicity is preferred.
- Liza
Eric: this is why I'm not a UI designer. I like your solution better.
- Robert Scoble
Hover is an evil thing in a real-time interface
- Bwana ☠
I may repeat it but contextuel menu, yes do it well, that all , FF have to do that , twitter have done it.
- abdellah
I don't know if I will be able to handle a better FF
- Craig Shipp
I went to grab a glass of water, and have no clue what is going on now - see what I mean?
- Liza
@Craig Oh for sure you can remember the alpha version and when beta come.
- abdellah
Maybe using IM is best, don't know, but, for now, I find it labor intensive vs. Twitter. I like BOTH, and I will continue to use BOTH, but that does not mean there are not simple fixes to improve the UI.
- Liza
@liza no you know for sure what is going on , you know that this thread is about "....", you remmeber what you have said before, you remember the person for whome you talked so for sure you know were you are at the discussion.
- abdellah
It would be nice to see some of the FF team on this discussion, Kevin Fox in particular.
- phil baumann
I want to reply to indiv comments, it is impossible unless I say @robert or HEY BWANA, that is silly, crappy design. Am I missing something? Plus, everyone calls me LISA not LIZA, so I can hardly answer the questions directed at me without looking for both.
- Liza
Robert should have cc'd the FriendFeed feedback room
- Bwana ☠
Phil: it is Sunday and they do need some time off of their work. Hopefully Kevin will show up tonight or tomorrow.
- Robert Scoble
Liz: yep, I love FF's IM integration. I've got a popout window open on the side of my desktop and can keep up with things (from this thread and everything I monitor on FF) much more easily.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Glen, yep, that's where discoverability comes in. Things should be easy to discover based on visual cues. It shouldn't be like playing a game of Myst.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Robert - yeah, even if they read this tomorrow, there's good stuff here that's important if the service it to grow in use.
- phil baumann
Say it with me folks : User-friendly-ability. We HAZ NONE here.
- Sean
Robert - now that you are here, I also think it is a mistake to expect users to choose FF or Twitter - recently you have backed off and choose to use both, BUT many of your "followers" are testy with those of us who use both. Until FF is easier to use, I will use both. That is my choice. Positioning FF as Twitter hating is bad move, ppl.
- Liza
Who is positioning FF as a Twitter hater? Some people hate Twitter (I personally think Twitter is a waste of mindwidth). How does that have anything to do with FF other than the fact that they post on FF?
- Brian Sullivan
Brian, do a search, you will find MANY ppl are positioning FF as anti-twitter, and I don't agree with the approach. I personally get a LOT of grief from both sides of the fence for using both, and I am not going to pick a side just b/c others tell me I should.
- Liza
Annoyance: There's no comment, like, etc link at the bottom of the comments. So... I read 160+ comments and have to scroll back to the top to comment? WTF?
- Kevin Donahue
Kevin - yes, that is a frustration.
- phil baumann
Kevin, totally agreed with that comment, especially when using via the iPhone. It's nice to see comments per OP, but the UI for managing things is horrible and wastes a lot of time, denting my enthusiasm for more participation.
- Sally Church
Officially PISSED OFF - using IM FAIL. Opens new page for every feed. Then I respond in Gtalk and get unknown command. F this. Time to breath deep and try not to explode.
- Liza
Liza, type in "help" for the list of commands in IM or there's a list on the site. Not sure about the page thing... I don't get that in GTalk.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Liza: consistently when people meet me they ask "what is next after Twitter?" I don't answer FriendFeed, I wish I could.
- Robert Scoble
I don't like help menus or reading instructions. I appreciate your efforts, but I am just pissed off in general b/c I like to figure things out on my own. I can't spend yrs clicking on FF for hidden treasures.
- Liza
People always ask me why should they use FriendFeed over Twitter.... it gets old after a while
- Bwana ☠
Robert - exactly, if we knew what was next, it would be dull. Beauty in playing, mashing, exploring.
- Liza
Wow Robert, way throw out an HCI term! Are we going to discuss GOMS or Fitts' Law next? :-)
- Bill Welense
from iPhone
Robert - nice comment. Would love to tweet it to share, but don't know how to isolate it on this f-d up interface.
- Liza
Liza - I'd like to be able to tweet comments they way Disqus allows it.
- phil baumann
This is Liza frustrated and cranky, sorry for letting my evil twin out, but this feed triggered it. #blamescoble
- Liza
I'm wondering if FriendFeed will remain the domain of us geeks. Is that a BIG enough market for their business model though?
- Jim Connolly
I secretly hope so, Jim. Twitter was great in 2006 B.K. (Before Kutchner) when it was populated only by geeks :)
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Holden: Well, I'm pretty sure someone hopes to make some money from FF.
- Jim Connolly
Sam: I have to admit, I would hate to see FF flooded like Twitter is.
- Jim Connolly
The fact is Robert that These problems have never crossed my mind. Actually, come to think of it. A unified settings page would be nice. However. Just becuae the UI is unconventional, going against the grain, does not mean it's a bad UI. I'd love to see a mockup of how you would do it better.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Holden: I didn't say it wasn't great. I still use and love Twitter. I just miss the good ole days.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Don't even get me started with a wish list of options.
- Liza
CONFESSION: I did not know until now about double clicking on the time-link to get a pop-out window.
- Jim Connolly
Holden: Twitter's a spam-filled hunk of crap.
- Jim Connolly
Holden: You may not automatically see a business model, but they would have had to produce something to get $$$ funding. BTW: Twitter's got the audience, though. It's where the people are. Only reason I use it.
- Jim Connolly
Friendfeed is not difficult to use. It is so intuitive. I love that I can easily block certain things, search for items that have a specific number of likes, see a user's likes, etc. It's wayyyyyyy easy.
- Ben Hanten
Ben: A lot of new users tell me they can't figure it out.
- Jim Connolly
If this was put up to a vote, I would vote to have a better FAQ, but I would definitely keep the design as free of extra buttons as possible.
- Ben Hanten
Hmm, wow, lots of comments fast on this post. Too bad it's a Sunday, I imagine Kevin is up to other things right this second...
- Jason Wehmhoener
Can someone help me find the link to create imaginary friend?
- Krishnamoorthy
Holden, well that's their loss if they can't 'get it' - friendfeed is simple and IMHO if you can't 'get it' then that's your problem, not friendfeed's
- Chris Heath
the Imaginary Friend function is now a part of Groups. for example, I created a private "group" with my wife's name and brought in all of her feeds since she's not on FriendFeed.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Ok, the imaginary friend thing is a different story. Awesome concept; but way too much work to add a bunch of users.
- Ben Hanten
I think a good start would be to have a totally different "entry point" for setting up hiding rules. Also, defaults might need to be reconsidered. Is it the best to always start off by showing everything from a user? FF already asks you to select your "top five" feeds you want to show off in your profile... Could it make sense to only show stuff from people's top five by default, so one needs to opt-in to get any more of their feeds?
- Meryn Stol
Perhaps a big, dedicated "mute Twitter" (though I'd prefer "Kill Twitter" ;)) button would also make sense. After all, Twitter is in itself responsible for most items - and thus most potential "noise" - on FriendFeed.
- Meryn Stol
you can still quickly create an imaginary friend (as Sam said it's part of groups now) but if you don't want to choose the private group setting yourself just go here http://friendfeed.com/setting...
- Chris Heath
maybe i'm wrong and an imaginary friend is different than a private group, but the functionality seems the same - there was a discussion a few months ago about this: http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- Chris Heath
Imaginary friends are easy to setup, but... you really should be able to do a whole batch of them.
- Ben Hanten
Ben, it's rather janky, but my students have private Twitter accts for labs in my class that I read and interact with using the Imaginary Friends + private Groups feature. Plus, I have a nice archive of all student activity that I can search through. Not a great solution, but a good workaround for my extreme case.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
there's a lot on the friendfeed roadmap, and i think that's one of the items... if you participate in the friendfeed feedback room you can get lots of answers to these types of questions http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- Chris Heath
Interesting topic. For me personally I use FF for reading rather than contributing or commenting, and via mobile more than the web, but I do agree the UI isn't the best. I would like a google reader or better still, a Feedly style interface. I want to know about what I haven't seen that's in my groups or feeds. And I want that simple and easy with no hidden features or maybe simple and expert interfaces.
- Keith Bennett
from BuddyFeed
It's not the UI that's keeping the mainstream from using the site. This is akin to asking why the mainstream has yet to discover the wonders of traditional message boards. Fact of the matter is most people don't have the desire (not to mention spare time) to continually engage with a stream full of random social media tidbits on a regular basis. But if that's your cup of tea, I think the UI is excellent for sharing, discovering, and keeping up with the real-time chatter.
- Aviv
ANNOYANCE: Why is it so difficult to find a list of just my "likes"? I can't find it at all. I can only find my likes through the "My discussions" link. Ugh.
- Kevin Donahue
Has Kevin Fox responded to this thread?
- Manuel Mas
Not sure he should -- seems like Robert made vicious and personal attack -- and a lack of response might be appropriate and classy.
- Brian Sullivan
I certainly wouldn't join into this pile-on if I were Kevin. "Oh hey, I noticed you all were kicking me while I was trying to have a weekend, here I am now, go ahead for another round!"
- Jason Wehmhoener
On the bright side, you know your service is about to hit mainstream when your biggest cheerleader starts to hate it (see Twitter).
- Aviv
Aviv: nah, that's not a good predictor.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Have you noticed that the time stamp behavior of acting like a permalink is pretty much the norm across many sites? Check facebook and twitter for example.
- Tsega Dinka
One thing I would like to know is, where is the link in friendfeed to the application key? I always have to search it from google.
- Ru Viljoen
it's unnecessary to be brutally rude RB but these comments are valuable, we are expecting alot from 12 FF supergeeks, they cannot be perfect but they are incredibly good already.
- Thomas Power
I think "hide" was perfectly designed. The user doesn't get smacked in the face immediately upon loading a page in friendfeed that resembles the control panel of an old fashioned telephone switchboard. One simple hide link, that the user will click when they want to hide something, that then asks what you want to hide. It's called not overwhelming the user with too much info at once,...
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- April Russo (app103)
April: they can put a lot of functionality into "settings" that would also do the same thing as hide does today. Most people don't figure out that the hide link has extra functionality.
- Robert Scoble
It's better than what facebook does, which is to hide their multi-function hide button, until you hover over the item. I'd rather have it the friendfeed way and at least know it's there by looking and not by having to play "find the invisible features" game by moving my mouse all over the page waiting for all the little facebook easter eggs to make themselves known. You have no idea how...
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- April Russo (app103)
And I don't understand how any twitter user could possibly not know that the timestamp is a permalink. Timestamps on twitter are permalinks too. Ok, the clicking again thing was a bit of an easter egg, but how else could you add a nifty little feature like that without adding any clutter? Even if you gave a full tutorial FAQ, how on earth could you present all these little extras in a way that doesn't overwhelm a newbie and make them run away without reading the huge FAQ?
- April Russo (app103)
Missing the point, not about geeks vs non-geeks, even geeks disagree on UI issues,and it is dismissive and insulting to act as if mainstream is not geeky enough to understand crappy UI. My opinion matters, and it was not until a fellow geek, Scoble, brought it up that anyone acknowledged that there may be some UI issues.
- Liza
I know of a site that has worse issues, for example, clicking the RSS icon on a page takes you to a forum thread with a gazillion posts explaining how to subscribe to the content you want, using all the custom crap they have. You basically have to learn how to build your own RSS url before you can subscribe. And don't click the "Mark" button on a forum thread there unless you want to...
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- April Russo (app103)
FF may be messing with affordances, but I don't see it as f*cling with them. I see it as an attempt to innovate. The 'nonintuitive' behavior is a bit of a PITA, but it adds richness to the app. It is also innovation in action. The most painful upshot of suck innovation ia the fet associated with playing with a UI's functionality - you might end up breaking something really important or...
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- Jason Miller
from iPhone
JCUnwired That is not helpful or constructive. Stick to one-sided debates.
- Liza
Funny thing is though... I have used Excel and Word without ever reading a manual. Now I'm pretty ninja at both but never had any formal training. Neither has about 95% of the people I know how use it, yet everyone I know has worked it out enough to use it well. See, they have these things up the top like File, Edit etc that hold the functions. Those things are not always required and...
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- Johnny Worthington
Which social app has the best interface? Easy Facebook.
- John Hardy
As far as I can tell "affordance" and "discoverability" are different ways of looking at the same concept. And I've been complaining about the timestamp thing for a long time.
- Karl Knechtel
I've been complaining about FF's ease of use since I started using it. I'm glad there's some traction on it. ridiculous that the time stamp is not displayed as a (permanent) link.
- jbrotherlove
Never mind that the timestamp isn't displayed as a link. The problem is that it makes no sense for the timestamp to be the thing that is clicked.
- Karl Knechtel
I like it, its a nice gate. It keeps FF tech based. It keeps things relevant. Its an Acid Test. There are plenty of alternatives. And those alternatives that cater to everyone, are full of Blither Blather. If you pass the gate, and pass the Acid Test, you learn about the community and the discussion. With a robust Community and Discussion, Self Policing and Spammers are annihilated. Self Healing Robust System.
- Robert Higgins
I totally agree with Robert HIggins & Johnny Worthington's recent comments
- Chris Heath
Robert, thanks for your thoughts. Three quick responses: affordances aren't something that someone fucks with, they're something that a designer gives to a design and it's fine to say that you don't think I'm designing a product with proper affordances or strong enough affordances, but the implication that I fucked them up is that I took the gestalt natural affordances of something and...
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- Kevin Fox
The above distinction is important because the argument then becomes one of whether or not FriendFeed has been imbued with proper affordances or not. Now naturally the answer varies from person to person, as it does with any UI for any product. FriendFeed is trying to balance functionality with simplicity and, as is the case for any product with that task, any point on the spectrum could be criticized for either hiding too much of the complexity or showing too much, even at the same by different people.
- Kevin Fox
So the strategy then becomes, as has been mentioned here, one of making the simple things easy and the complex things possible. The most common tactic to enable that strategy, and one we rely upon a lot at FriendFeed, is that of progressive disclosure. This works for some people and not for others, but it's usually an excellent way to make a UI that's not intimidating to a new user, and...
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- Kevin Fox
As for the timestamp also acting as the permalink: Well, you're absolutely right. This is a completely improper affordance that only makes sense if you happen to be familiar with blogs that use the same convention. Fixing this (with something less heavy-handed than a link that says 'link' or 'permalink' or (gasp) an icon of two links in a chain) is high on our list and I want to fold it...
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- Kevin Fox
When we get that worked out in a way we're happy with then we'll roll it out. Until then, it's also important to consider user confidence, and that tweaking a UI too often when trying to find the right answer makes users less comfortable with the design and their ability to manipulate it, even if they don't consciously notice any change. For this reason a few things stay rough a little longer until we have what we think is the right answer, not just a stopgap one.
- Kevin Fox
As always, thanks for the feedback, and for trying to make FriendFeed a better place.
- Kevin Fox
I'm liking this article simply because of Kevin's explanation of why things are the way they are here on friendfeed. He knocked that one out of the park.
- Alex Scoble
Kevins camp. In Japanese there is one word for beauty. Kirei. Actually, it is the same word for Clean Kirei. 奇麗 FF for me is clean and beautiful. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" Leonardo daVinci
- Robert Higgins
So if we're going to change the time stamp from being a permalink, can we use it to sort posts chronologically? That is the one affordance no one can discover.
- Andrew Smith
I didn't read the full thread, but reading the top and (what is at this point) the bottom really helps me understand what the UI people do. Thanks Robert and Kevin!
- Andrew
Kevin rocks. Even on a Sunday night. They pay me to say stuff like that at work. The thought of having to step up to the plate anytime 24/7 with that level of professionalism is daunting, to say the least. So yah, big props to Kevin Fox.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I actually like the current UI. I like the feature set. I agree it DOES need a more intuitive and quicker way to know about and learn the deeper features.
- George Hall (Australia)
There is something to be said for having the conversation first - then Kevin calmly explaining his pts. It gives others a chance to respond honestly, and then Kevin gets far more valuable feedback. Selifishly, I also like the fact that I can see others' views - many who did not address UI issues but showed a defensive sense of entitlement (see Louis's chart on new adopters)...Robert,...
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- Liza
Great responses Kevin. For the record, I'm a fan of the "progressive disclosure" approach.
- Mike Doeff
from iPhone
Really great points, Robert. I've learned some things because of this discussion. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
- Brian Adrian
One answer to Kevin. Blogs, since the beginning of when I started to use them used the "permalink" or "#" convention. I guess the thing is that in FriendFeed the CSS here is hiding the blue underline, so people don't know that the time stamp is a link. It's tough designing for the web, I know. That's why I don't do it. At least very often. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Twitter uses a time stamp as a perma-link as well. </fuel to fire>
- Bwana ☠
Yeah. I just tweeted about that myself. </more fuel to fire>
- Dennis Jernberg
Fascinating. Didn't know about the timestamp as permalink, but I didn't suffer from unnatural affordance issues prior to reading this discussion either. Not an ubergeek, but I don't suffer. So, maybe FF is not "above the heads" of the average, but merely yields enough at any level to meet whatever the particular need might be, wacky affordances or not. And people who avoid it because it is "too hard" need to toughen up a bit. This is 2009 and the Internet, after all.
- Martha
Also, the "Share" link exposes the permalink as well which I think was a great addition to alleviate the time stamp confusion.
- Bwana ☠
Wow. How did Kevin get those 5 paragraphs contiguously posted? Copy-paste-post. Copy-paste-post? Or is there some other secret weapon not yet released?
- Nick in Manila
Nick - I'd bet 1000 gil on Notepad/Textedit :)
- Bwana ☠
I'm waiting for the twitter theme for friendfeed, to show people exactly how easy FF is to use considering its features and exactly how braindead twitter's UI is.
- Andy Bakun
Nick & Bwana: Textedit and copy/paste/post. As I was c/p/p-ing I thought about how I could make a tool using the API to allow for this kind of thing, then envisioned how that would break FriendFeed and banished the thought. (and then I just commented about it anyhow. Oh what have I wrought? I am become death, destroyer of words.)
- Kevin Fox
Bwana: hey, at least FriendFeed's designer listens and answers back. That might get more mud thrown his way, but a whole lot of love too. Personally Twitter's design isn't very good, but everyone thinks it is because it doesn't have many features so they perceive that as simplicity. I perceive it as inferior but that really pisses off the Twitter types and they start arguing with me about stuff like the above.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - I was just thinking that. We would NEVER get this kind of interaction with a Twitter dev on a work day.
- Bwana ☠
Part of me knew Kevin would address this at some point. It was merely a matter of when.
- Bwana ☠
I hope this thread/conversation doesn't end any time soon, either here on this post or elsewhere. I want FF to be the best it can.
- phil baumann
I think FF is waaaaaay easier to use than Twitter and recently started using FF to follow my twitter feeds. Images and videos are inline and comments are threaded (no silly @ replies). I only wish more of my friends were on it!! (also, it would be nice if comments were formatted with the commenters name first which seems to be the convention on most sites i.e. "May: blah blah blah").
- May
To go back to the top a little bit: does anyone think it ISN'T weird that not all the links on FF are blue? Not just the time stamp: the service your content was imported from, your name at the top of your profile, and the time stamp are all non-blue links. Is there a logical reason for those inconsistencies? I've never understood that.
- Andrew
Awesome explanation by Kevin. I happen to love FF's progressive disclosure. I think the 'hide' feature is a great example of this. You could argue that they might make the second stage a bit more obvious, but it's still a lot better than a huge drop down menu at the start.
- Ben Reierson
Even Twitter has a ramp up time. It took me about a month of working it to get comfortable with it. Only slightly longer than it took me with Twitter. And it is light years better in most every way. I agree with Robert's desire to enforce change through public criticism, but I think it important to keep it in perspective: FF is generally a better experience on all fronts. Kudos to Kevin Fox and the rest of the team. I feel confident they are more than capable of seeing issues and resolving them.
- Martha
i never really had a problem with that Andrew, and I never had the problem with the permalink either... if your mouse changes from pointer to finger, then it's a link and you can see the destination in the status bar
- Chris Heath
Andrew: I actually hate blue underlines. Designers have hated that affordance for years. They look ugly. They make text harder to read. I'm in Kevin Fox's camp on that one. Get rid of underlines! Just make affordances that people can figure out without being told about (like clicking twice on hide or clicking twice on the time stamps).
- Robert Scoble
robert, i don't get your clicking twice on hide problem... hide seems fine, and while i don't use it much i don't recall clicking twice, like with the timestamp
- Chris Heath
Chris: normal people don't mouse over every word in a UI to discover whether there is a secret link there. Also, explain how hovering over "hide" would tell a user that there's different functionality there if you click twice on that word?
- Robert Scoble
Chris: if you click twice on the word "hide" you will get different UI that will give you different choices. If you click twice on the time stamp you will get a popout window. Not intuitive at all.
- Robert Scoble
when i click hide i get an undo and hide options links, that seems the correct UI - i agree with you on the timestamp, but the hide thing isn't the same
- Chris Heath
Chris: Hide does act differently, I agree, but most people, in my experience, don't look at the second page because they don't expect to see more options. Remember 99% of people never click on Google's Advanced Options. Do you REALLY expect people to click twice on Hide? I don't. And even if they did, shouldn't those features be in settings too? Where people expect to find them?
- Robert Scoble
i don't buy your beef w/ hide, but i agree on the timestamp - i also agree with you on not having to hover everything to see if it's click-able and also don't like underlining, so there needs to be some other visual cue of the link/feature
- Chris Heath
sometimes features do need to be learned/taught and everything can't be intuitive... i think we might be overshooting our ideals for usability. remember the days of three ring binders and books and manuals for using any given system or software package? we've come a long way, but users do have to learn some things. i think friendfeed has done a good job of making the site usable for the...
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- Chris Heath
Given a top complaint about FriendFeed is too much noise, Hide needs to be more intuitive.
- Bwana ☠
Since I still get the dumb blonde / not techie treatment from many, I am going to go w/ it and say that even I figured out hide early on. The timestamp stuff was news to me.
- Liza
I'd wager at least half of FriendFeed doesn't know about the second page of hide options. I've had to explain it countless times and a ton of people didn't even know you could selectively hide services based on comment/like behavior, etc
- Bwana ☠
Kevin, Thanks for listening and major props for taking your time to listen to constructive critisicm.
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
9/10 of the folks that use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc don't know all the features and functions. Having every single function be completely intuitive and/or labeled is not needed for mainstream acceptance or usage if that's what we're all worried about here.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Every single function, I agree. Hide, needs to be more intuitive.
- Bwana ☠
Bwana, I agree as a power-user, but how many folks would actually use "Hide"? It's an edge-case function that will/would never catch on with the mainstream. I just don't get these complaints.
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
Sam: you're right. But I didn't get this kind of pushback when I evangelized Twitter and Facebook had many more hooks to get people into their system than FriendFeed does (and keep them there) and even Facebook doesn't have a lot of the weird affordances that FriendFeed does even though it's more complex. The complaints I get consistently on FriendFeed (a lot of which have to do with...
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- Robert Scoble
Oh, and the number of comments here tells me a lot of people feel very passionately about FriendFeed and want it to be better, even if they are telling me I'm full of it.
- Robert Scoble
The complaint is noise. There's too much. There's too many duplicates. I don't want to see "X". These are complaints I see and answer often. The solution is hide and they don't know about them. It's not a power user function imho.
- Bwana ☠
FF lost a lot of users during the initial launch because people didn't know about or want to properly hide unwanted stuff.
- Bwana ☠
"FriendFeed is full of baby photos" Classic complaint. Solved by hide.
- Bwana ☠
Robert, I got on Twitter around Thanksgiving of '06 b/c of your evangelicalism (thank you/curse you btw!). But the concept there was/is much more easy to grok. Of course folks are going to think FF is hard b/c it is hard. But to bastardize JFK, "we choose to go to the moon and do these other things in this decade not b/c they are easy but b/c they are hard!"
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
friendfeed isn't hard...unless you think a blank piece of paper is hard.
- Alex Scoble
Depends on your definition of hard. Some people think complicated or inconvenient is hard.
- Bwana ☠
Alex, have you ever written a book for a publisher that loaned you money and expects the money back? A blank piece of paper is incredibly hard!
- Sam Harrelson
Look at lists. Very powerful tool of FriendFeed, but for some, it's too much work. Some may call it hard, some may call it.... too much work :)
- Bwana ☠
Sam: but this blank piece of paper can write itself thanks to the integration with other sites :)
- Andrew
I know in the apps I've tested, if the UI was difficult for the end user, they would avoid using it.
- Bwana ☠
Andrew, you are completely right. Good point. I'm thinking from a contributing point of view (b/c I'm a teacher and I always want to influence, etc) but you're right.
- Sam Harrelson
Alex: is blank paper sort of like a blank Wordpress entry screen? I get it then.
- Robert Scoble
Seeing a real-time stream of the full conversation is highly desirable and one of the best features of the service. I design and use software all the time and didn't know about the time stamp link until someone told me about it. Robert is doing them (another) favor by using controversial language to bring attention to the issue. I bet we see an update in a week or two and the service will be better for it.
- Chip Ramsey
I can see it now: if entry["from"]["id"] == "scobelizer": theme = "lots-o-links"
- DGentry
either that, or entry["body"] = pigLatinize(entry["body"])
- DGentry
Wow ... Great dialog. Kudos to Kevin for his comments! I have demo'd Friendfeed for more people than I can count. Most of the issue has to do with people's time vs value (or just fun). Is it harder than Facebook? NO! Nobody says you have to use it all and 9 out of 10 people I've demo'd Facebook for have NO IDEA what a permission is (Think about that ... and the defaults?!). Twitter has...
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- Charlie Anzman
Then ... The Friendfeed Browser and OS!
- Charlie Anzman
Robert, given Kevin's responses, you might want to edit/tweak the Original Post/headline. I wish there was a way to promote the comments so they were 'pinned' to the OP
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Oh, thank goodness. I was wondering what an OP was, and feeling dumb that I didn't know. I didn't want to have to read 328 comments to find out.
- Mistletoe Glen
Yes, the Original Post - I wasn't familiar with the term myself, and saw it first on this very thread, then googled it. (It can also mean Original Poster)
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Glen: I'm not scared of feeling dumb. I feel dumb every day given the quality of the people I hang out with.
- Robert Scoble
@Kevin: wondering if there could be a link that would take you to a page that would show what features have been added, disabled, or removed.
- Harold
Robert, you should lock comments, so it's immortalized properly at Kevin's reply
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew: you make sense. I've locked the comments here so you can see Kevin Fox's reply without digging back too far.
- Robert Scoble
I wish we could make FriendFeed into JUST an aggregator.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I think a simple switch that let you turn off FoaF completely, and/or only show FoaF for comments, not likes, would go a long way to cleaning things up.
- Ken Sheppardson
Even though there is conversation on FF, we can't have proper threaded conversation and that results in noise.
- Veetrag
I mean the options are there to turn off FoaF once you "Hide" an item, but they're buried.
- Ken Sheppardson
Robert: so, you're not interested in having an open conversation on friendfeed anymore? That surprises me.
- Joel
Ken: you can turn off FOAF: click on hide twice.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I noticed you're not following me but I didn't take it personal. I'm still following you, I learn a lot from you so keep smiling buddy. I still think you're the shit. :)
- Jeunelle Foster
Couldn't agree more~~ Just too much information to handle by a human beings
- Yunkwan Chen
from feedalizr
@Scoble one response on twitter shows that, people like to see what others are replying too. We can't see that on Twitter.
- Veetrag
Robert, you can easily turn FF into just an aggregator. Feed your services in and don't interact. The only thing missing is an account setting to automatically disabnle comments on all of your posts, which can easily be requested in the Feedback room. Or, make your feed private so no one can see items to commeent upoon them.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
from fftogo
Robert - So, how does this insight affect your view of FF now?
- phil baumann
Phil: it makes me want better display options in FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
This real-time group discussion on FriendFeed is totally different from Twitter but I can't help but feel if you spend your time here, you might miss out on the general Twitter feed.
- Ken Seto
Ken: What is the advantage of general twitter feed, if all the twitter feed is anyways directed to FF?
- Veetrag
Robert - what kinds of additional options would you like rolled out?
- phil baumann
Well I'm not seeing anything happening on FriendFeed other than comments in this discussion
- Ken Seto
Phil: it also makes me want real mobile clients.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Robert, do you think to get 'real' feed mobiles have to support flash. because i believe with heavy JS would be unstable on mobile platforms.
- Veetrag
Robert, the way I see it, everyone's definition of "social media" is different. Some people will tolerate a little higher noise in their S/N ratio to glean extra information from open conversations on FF/Twitter. Others may want to eliminate the noise and just focus on a few select feeds. That's the beauty of social media, you can (within limitations of the software you use) determine your own level of interaction.
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
Will take a look at PeopleBrowsr, thanks
- Ken Seto
Phil: I want to see a TRUE river of news. No popping up of things that get engagement. I want to see NO comments exposed. I want a REAL best of day (the ones I currently get show me old items. That is a start.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Jack: that is true which is why we need better display options.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Robert - so perhaps an option to for a collapsed view (text only - sort of like a reader) with options to define what comes up in the view. (I guess that would bring us back to some sort of modified social RSS :)
- phil baumann
Phil : We would also need a way in which we can like/unlike comments too. That will help us read only priority content. It can be one way around smaller screens.
- Veetrag
Robert - this somewhat reminds me of Muhammad Saleem's post comparing FriendFeed and SocialThing from March 2008. His goal was an aggregator, not another social network: http://muhammadsaleem.com/2008...
- Hutch Carpenter
But wouldn't using FF as an aggregator just make it more like a social RSS feed service? For my personal social media paradigm I would miss out on the conversation part of FF. Of course your paradigm may be different :O)
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
Jack: I would keep that option on FOR ME but tons of others tell me they hate coming here because of the noise. I totally grok that now.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I'll use Twitter and FriendFeed though, both were just great.
- Vince Ong
Understood. I appreciate that Robert. One of the things that initially drew me to FF was the ability to interact with people such as yourself. I would truly hate if we lost that ability, Of course I am sure your noise is a whole heck of a lot louder than mine :O)
- Jack Wilson, K4SAC
Until FriendFeed makes hide even easier, this will continue to happen. People are generally too lazy to use hide to the fullest. I don't know if it's a design issue or a user issue, but people don't like to use it.
- Bwana ☠
I think it is a design issue. There are too many features stuck under the hide link.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Good point Robert. But where else do you put those links??
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
I've been loudly raising precisely the issues which Robert Scoble mentions in this post for over a year -- with zero feedback from Friendfeed developers. This is why Friendfeed's growth has been flat and will continue to remain flat. (But Friendfeed is still a great platform, even in its imperfect and much too noisy state.)
- Sean McBride
It amazes me that as of August 9, 2009, Friendfeed's developers, who seem to be brilliant in most respects, still have no appreciation of the importance of elementary design features like list view and the separation of unread from read items. The mind boggles. I really don't get it. And they don't seem to be interested in the hottest field in news reading and management: smart news recommender systems.
- Sean McBride
A fact that seems relevant to this thread: I discovered this post in the FFHolic Most Discussed feed in the Featured Sources box on Feedly's My Digest page. I stopped trying to read the chaotic torrent on Friendfeed's home page a long time ago -- a poor investment of one's time and energy. Without Feedly's elegant user interface, I wouldn't have seen this post.
- Sean McBride
I think the second thing i did on FriendFeed was to remove friends-of-friends because of you.
- Sam Pullara
The only problem that it is Java based and their installation dos not work on Windows 7 (old Java run time). Didn't try when it failed the first time. Best luck.
- Nitin Nanivadekar
I haven't tried it on Windows 7. Works great on XP systems and Macs. How about Vista?
- Steve Rubel
from email
Cloud based tools such as MindMeister or MindMapping have worked well for me. What benefit in installing an app on my machine(s)?
- Dave Ploch
I like Mindmeister a lot (and use it for my Mashable pieces) but some stuff I want just to work with locally since it's confidential.
- Steve Rubel
from email
They won't even let you download without registering an XMind account. Even when logging in with OpenID, you still need an XMind account? Hmph.
- Sean O
@Sean, I found that frustrating as well.
- Steve Rubel
from email
I found XMind a little sluggish on my linux machine ... but then it's java ...
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
Is this really better than FreeMind? If I'm happy with Freemind, will I be happier with XMind?
- François Dongier
I haven't tried Freemind. On my list...
- Steve Rubel
from email
Give yourself a gift this holiday season - create a FriendFeed List that contains key FriendFeed searches. Just pipe your FriendFeed search URL's into a public Google Reader tag/folder. Then create an imaginary friend in FF and use the tag/folder URL as "Blog". Then dump into your FF List.
Indeed, trickery. The cool thing is that adding new keywords only involves adding the FriendFeed search results URL to the proper Google Reader tag/folder. Results then automagically appear back on FF.
- Mike Reynolds
Good idea Mike, I was trying to figure out how to bring ff searches into a list, but of course, they don't allow their own feeds to be put into rooms/lists. This should solve the problem! The ff search is very powerful.
- Kelly Johns
Yes, the benefit is having key searches available with one click.
- Mike Reynolds
I did that for FOOD - my own "search" dumps as an imaginary friend - my "food" buddy --- dumps into a ROOM....yummy place
- Susan Beebe
Clever, Mike. I've been searching for something like this.
- Sean McBride
Don't feel bad Gregory. While I generally understand why something would be useful, I wish I were geek enough to do actually implement these fancy things myself. http://www.growmap.com/can-a-q...
- Internet Strategist
Thanks for this Mike. Works well. I'm trying Google Alerts as well.
- Kol Tregaskes
Chris - I'm tracking hundreds of things via Google Reader. Good for trend spotting. One thing I track is the theme park industry trends given that I work for Disney Parks, with Twitter being the ultimate resource. In economics, I like to track "gdp projections", "inflation" and "deflation". And how about you?
- Mike Reynolds
Nice. "You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra boring. For the next couple days it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang than women who create sites to get hired by Twitter."
- Paul Buchheit
I was highly amused by pg's followup comment about overliteral genies.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
don't recognise any of the names here, blasted newbies diluting the quality of ideas & iq. one of the reasons I stopped participating
- Peter Renshaw
Well, pg suggested making HN extra boring, because he wants to reduce the number of visitors! But HN is down now - at least for me. Can you access it? :(
- Daddddd
Heheh, and after picking the locks he's faced with a very large hound looking him straight in the eyes and a terrier jumping for his b$lls... Somehow I think the locks are the least of his worries.
- Henk de Kruyff
from twhirl
Lock picking tools are illegal?? What about crowbars and bolt cutters?
- Paul Grav
All burglary tools are illegal. If they think you are carrying crowbars and bolt cutters to break in somewhere, they can arrest you. Of course, there are legitimate purposes for those tools, too. Lock picks are just for picking locks, so you better have a really good reason for carrying them if caught (e.g., you are a locksmith).
- Brian Hawthorne
lockpicking tools are illegal because it's so damn easy to open for expamle a samsonite suitcase or a bicicle lock. - and the guy in the video is really well trained, a newby takes 3 to 5 minutes to open his first lock.
- pm10
I always wanted a set of those tools when I was a kid watching private eyes breaking into bad guys' houses. :)
- Steve Lowe
Carrying bolt cutters is a little more obvious than these few tools. He should throw in a third minute showing the liquid nitrogen trick and the bic-pen bike lock trick.
- Indio Apache
from twhirl
Wow, this makes picking a lock look far too easy... He even picked a combination lock?!?!?!
- Walt Ruppar
Just confirms... locks are for honest people. :-(
- TranceMist
I saw him pick Loch Ness. Now that was effin' wild! Then he picked his nose and that was kinda gross.
- Christopher Harley
this is really pretty appalling to watch. i assume standard dial combo locks are harder to pick. as for the tools, meh. making them illegal is hardly sufficient to protecting users w/ these types of locks.
- MikeAmundsen
Why aren't guns illegal then? It's absurd that lock-picking tools are illegal. Mere possession shouldn't prove you're ready to break the law.
- thepete
The combination lock was the easiest. Under one second. The last one required three tools and was a little more fiddly than the rest, which were all done in a couple seconds. Scary. In other words, you can't really put your trust in locks. Makes you wonder what kind of locks you _can_ trust, if any.
- Rick Cogley
@Rick: first lock was a keyed 'door'-style lock, not a combination lock.
- MikeAmundsen
The phone booth and the hamster trail ones look awesome. The desk would be awesome in theory, but the humming would drive you nuts! That first one breaks my rule of not having the water above your head where a little bit of stressed glass could ruin your day or..you know, kill you.
- Joe Pierce
For the first aquarium, I would want a large chair in the middle and nothing else. It looks very....Death Starry.
- Mike Lewis
"In early 2009, Bill Gates will send out his first annual letter, a candid look at the issues at the forefront of the foundations work. Sign up to be one of the first to receive the annual letter, as well as other news and information from us." http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages...
- Loren Heiny
Technorati tells us there are 97 million blogs, but most were updated three times and forgoten and many more are spammers.....the same thing can happen here.
- paul mooney
Hmmm, wondering if you had anything to do with getting new members. We all know how much you *heart* friendfeed = :-) When you give your "thumbs up" on something, people really listen. Congrats to Friendfeed.
- Carmen S. Villadar
3 clicks to read the article Robert is referring to. One to get from Twitter to here. One from here to scobleizer.com. One from there to TC.
- Terry Jones
the # is a little misleading a lot of the growth is from new subscribers just adding in their twitter accounts & nothing more
- sofarsoShawn
But are most of those people just feeding content into friendfeed without ever dropping by?
- Richard A.
Carmen: That was the problem with Jaiku for the most part, lot's of people join, non used it though.
- Richard A.
@Brian: No, not really. @shawn and richard: True, but Twitter numbers are even more inflated via users with multiple accounts, orphaned accounts and increasing numbers of spam accounts.
- AJ Kohn
Yeah, the single data point "number of users" is meaningless. We need "number of users" and "percentage active".
- Andy Bakun
Even if people are just feeding content into friendfeed and get a few followers, the chances are greater that my friendfeed (and Internet) experience will be enriched for being able to find their content. If someone is stronger at creating content (however you define that -- which may just be picking good mp3 playlists or adding interesting things to their amazon wishlist) than continuous interaction here on FF, I say let them do that and feed into friendfeed. So many people's interestingness is isolated.
- Andy Bakun
Amen Andy. I much prefer to follow people on FF even if they never poke their heads in here. I can still comment on their items and bring them to the attention of others.
- Nick in Manila
Agreed, NIck. FF is a very lightweight way of "following" people who create a stream, even if they're not that engaged with creating content here directly.
- Ken Kennedy
And the best thing is you can filter out things you don't want. For example, I filter out Robert's Twitters (I already read them on Twitter, rather than here).
- Ian Betteridge
LOL and I do the opposite & follow Robert here as I use twitter less
- sofarsoShawn
TechCrunch said a million visitors, they never said a million members. That is different.
- Laura Norvig
This is a good example of the telephone game. TC reported that one service said FF had 1M unique visitors, which got translated to unique members. I strongly doubt 1M unique accounts.
- Louis Gray
This actually relates to Mona's recent interest in how quickly false news disseminates via social media. With Scoble's reach, his careless reporting here could misinform tens of thousands of people.
- Laura Norvig
Yup. I made a major mistake here and have corrected the post.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - no worries. I think most FF "members" would quickly recognize that number was unique visitors, not actual members. Nice post, and update :)
- Susan Beebe
It's cool, Robert. The important thing is you were continuing to evangelize Friendfeed - our favorite startup of 2008!
- Laura Norvig