From the page: "The problem is my friends are spread across dozens of different sites - Picasa, Pownce, Plurk, Pandora, Polyvore - and that's just the Ps. Most of them publish to two or three sites at minimum. Figuring out how to navigate each site is more work than I have time for. My fellow tech pundit Robert Scoble posts movies, photos, and text to more than a dozen sites. Can't I just get one page that lists everything Scoble did today? I can! A bunch of former Google employees - techies who worked on Gmail and Google Maps - quit their jobs to start FriendFeed, a site that rolls up the output of 43 Web 2.0 services onto one auto-generated page." - William Harryman
Haha nice. It seems pretty inevitable, which is both exciting and scary :/ - Dion Almaer
There's a lot of misinformation about what "singulatarians" actually believe. Not everyone agrees with Ray Kurzweil's notions that he'll live long enough to upload his consciousness. The best resource I've found is Michael Annissmov's Accelerating Future blog: http://www.acceleratingfuture.... - Dan Kaplan
I'm all for it, only I say let Kurzweil go first when comes to the first downloading of brain contents. That way if something is missing, we'll know pretty quick ;-) - Dean Terry
Interesting, we were just talking about this last night: http://friendfeed.com/e/b3ce29... Doing a quick search, looks like singularity is on the brain of Friendfeed lately. Ooooooeeeeeoooo. - Mark Trapp
As long as more and more people spend all their time on FriendFeed, there won't be too much AI technology being developed. :) - Chris White
i think its at least a few years off, so you can relax, plenty of time for you to get used to it before it happens :P - bob
It's just amazing that I haven't seen any of the movies where this happens (Terminator, iRobot, etc.). What else are people working on from within the FriendFeed headquarters that can kill me? :) - Ana
I took Computer Ethics at SDSU (where Vinge taught) and one of our assignments was to compare Vinge's singularity essay to Ted Kaczynski's "Unabomber Manifesto." The similarities are rather striking. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it is extremely fascinating the differing approach people take to similar topics. - Brooks Bishop
to counterbalance computers that are super smart, we need humans who are freakishly strong. - eviltom
I always thought the first sign of the singularity was twitter. sigh - Elad
Thanks for posting that link to Vinge's essay, Michael. You're right - a mind-boggling read on a fascinating subject that hadn't really crossed my radar until reading this terrific thread. Makes me appreciate FF all the more for putting it in front of me. Could its increasing popularity be another of the early signs indicating the onset of the Singularity? I think we should be told. - Bob Kingsley
movies are pretty bad at showing the future; they tend to show things that *look* cool - Amit Patel
@nick: Thanks for that wired link. Thanks to all for discussing this topic - very interesting. - nadim
Since there seems to be interest, most of the best reading on this is SciFi. Vinge's "Rainbow End" and Stross's "Accelerando" are probably the best "What happens when (if) the Singularity happens" books. (Interesting to note that Vinge is an ex CompSci professor and Stross is an ex-perl hacker). If you want to get scared by the singularity read "A Fire Upon the Deep", though. - Nick Lothian
@Nick: thanks for the link to the Bill Joy essay. Another fascinating, absorbing read. - Bob Kingsley
Ana, you should keep your eyes out for human sized bugs, among other things. - Clare Dibble
I'm a singularity skeptic - increasing compute power doesn't solve basic problems like global warming. - Piaw Na
Will the Singularity happen? Never say never, although I am a skeptic. I do think most Singularitarians completely underestimate the complexity of human biology and by orders of magnitude - Deepak
That's actually a pretty common response. Interesting side: I knew my wife was a keeper when she instantly took to the idea, not frightened or put off at all. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@Deepak agreed, and there's also the matter of assuming that they've figured out and are right about basic metaphysical issues argued for centuries. As we've learned in recent years, certainty can be dangerous. Like I said above: Kurzweil goes first! - Dean Terry
I've said this before, I really like and agree with Kurzwiel but I have issues with the diet of 100s of pills a day (to make it to the singularity) and the very odd alter ego his future self becomes. I'm also troubled by the poor graphics on his site :) They really need some of that exponential love. - Doug Brooks
Kurtzweils accelerated returns theory is probably true and implies an upcoming singularity event. But the singularity is crucially dependent on the computing-biology interface and I agree with @Deepak and @Dean terry that biology is the limiting factor and that biomedicine is not in the steep part of the S-curve, - yet.......The singularity must come at some point however, and unlike @Amit Patel, I believe it will look extremely cool.... - Nils Reinton
@Deepak etc I'm also a skeptic. There was a good podcast from ITConversations about some of the barriers to the singularity - I can't remember who it was by or even what conference it was from, though. - Nick Lothian
I'm not sure about an ITConversations podcast, but there's a 2004 Long Now talk from Bruce Sterling where he explains why he's skeptical: http://www.longnow.org/project... - Jen Dodd
@Piaw, it does if the Singularity decimates or destroys humans and our demand for housing, transportation, food, and other global warming activity. - John Lam
btw you should read the gentle seduction by seigler - arjun
can you think of a single other example of a site/service/product/company so broken re: the core of its offering, yet continues to be the hottest thing in town that users give chance after chance after chance to? i've been unable to think of another. - Deva Hazarika
@mark: tivo, really? i was a very early adopter and it always worked great for me. - Deva Hazarika
@Morton: people still give chances to IE? Everyone I know gave up years ago - Trent Olson
via Alert Thingy
I'm kinda agreeing with Jeremiah. It also gives an opportunity to regroup - Dennis Howlett
via twhirl
I'm thinking more from a business model standpoint. Has Tivo ever had a profitable quarter? But feel free to take it off my list: you have more than enough examples :-) - Mark Trapp
@louis: solid answer. so part ii is, what sort of switching cost for people is recreating their network of followers elsewhere? i think the switching cost for twitter is closer to friendster than windows - Deva Hazarika
Twitter will probably keep on stressing until they've replaced their architecture. I'm not giving up on Twitter because it's an awesome service. - Dewald Pretorius
Appropriately timed for this discussion: "Twitter is over capacity.
Too many tweets! We'll try to lighten the load and have things back to normal soon." - Deva Hazarika
Andy, it's easy, I just tweet "follow me on Friendfeed" Many of those twitter followers came from my blog, where I did the same thing. - Jeremiah Owyang
From a designer's perspective, IE7 isn't so bad. IE6 is the real problem. - Shey
@Andy C - I would think a series of tweets would work. Tell 'em that you're over on FriendFeed, to sign up if they haven't already and provide your FriendFeed URL so they can subscribe easily. - Hutch Carpenter
reason i asked my q above was that twitter seems to be defying all the rules when it comes to customer retention (and definitely for a startup) - Deva Hazarika
was gonna move my network over here as well, but twitter's down and i can't access my followed/followers lists, so i guess i'll stay with twitter. brilliant lock-in strategy imo! - Deva Hazarika
@Deva - you're right. You're asking a great question It reminds me of why AOL survived its breakdowns in the late 90's. You had your email with AOL, and getting everyone to switch to a new email was painful. AOL was also a great experience at the time for a lot of folks, much like (when working) Twitter is today. - Hutch Carpenter
I think that you should copy your network here instead. moving implies you put all your confidence in this ff. if you value your community, don't fence it in. - william douglas watson
via twhirl
I think that you should copy your network here instead. moving implies you put all your confidence in this ff. if you value your community, don't fence it in. - william douglas watson
via twhirl
Word, this is really starting to get old. - Joshua James
i wonder if the majority of twitter users use it simply for sending and receiving asynchronous updates and never for interactive conversations. if they do that and use a client other than the twitter website, most times they would have no idea there were ever any problems - Deva Hazarika
jesus, will someone PLEASE just put twitter out of its (and our) misery? really. - rambn
aggregation. that is twitter and friendfeed and greader's greatest asset and the reason why it is so hard to turn them off. if it was this easy to get everyone reading & commenting (discussing) on your blog, it would be the preferred solution. - Chris Rechtsteiner
via twhirl
@Jeremiah come on IN...the water's fine! FriendFeed is like an "intimate" hot tub while Twitter is like a crowded pool: NOT nearly as pleasant! - Thomas Ho
