Dobromir, several people have told me that before as well, and seeing the stats from Louis was eye-opening.
- Rob Diana
I was pretty sure of that, I get the same treatment...
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
what do you think is more effective rob : 1) subscribing to your google reader feed OR 2) subscribing to your friendfeed feed?
- Kevin Pruett
Kevin, it depends on your purpose. If you want a source for news, subscribing to google reader is much more effective. If you like the stuff that I share, but the news is not overly important, then friendfeed is better.
- Rob Diana
Why did I become a librarian when I could've become a boobie bandit? My college advisor totally held out on me with that info!
- josh neff, Fun Dip of FF
Also, tubetops aren't all that attractive. They tend to look skanky at the best of times. If I were a girl, I'd avoid wearing them.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Hmm, 'tube tops', bandeau, strapless tops are pretty much the only type of casual top I own. Not once in 30 years have I had a boobie bandit problem.
- Jess
Seems like people who wear them are always yanking them up as they start to droop. Who needs boobie bandits when they fall down on their own?
- Jen (SquirrelGirl)
Tube tops are made of pure titillation power. Why? Because they might droop down or the boobie bandit might appear. Even if they aren't flattering the figure and cover more skin than an equivalent properly secured top. OTOH, even though a sizable chunk of tube top viewers wish they could be the boobie bandit, there's a thing called self control that even impulsive folks have some...
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- Wirehead
( I don't have too strong of opinions in reality on the subject, I was just looking for an excuse to use terms like "boobie bandit" )
- Wirehead
I might actually use friendfeed if the conversation was connected to the source (though not just my blog, but moreso to all the feeds ff picks up from across the web.
- Teel McClanahan III
Looks like it doesn't want to grab info both ways, or there's some asynchronicity in the system. :(
- Teel McClanahan III
I wonder what the timing is on ff updating comments back to the blog.
- Teel McClanahan III
But I don't care enough to go *read* something and find out how it works and why. bleh.
- Teel McClanahan III
Alright, between the Tweetbacks plugin and the Friendfeed comments plugin, my blog's failure to inspire conversation now includes all three major places such conversations fail to take place.
- Teel McClanahan III
Thanks for sharing your experiences with Smashwods. The idea that the meatgrinder would rather have a .doc file than an HTML file is a bit worrisome. I haven't owned Word since whatever version was released the same time as Win95.
- Jason Penney
I think it's more related to Word being the industry standard - Mark even recommended that I use OpenOffice and just have it save as a .doc file, so he's at least aware that there are alternatives out there.
- Teel McClanahan III
Loaded! Looking forward to listening to it tonight.
- Kamath (नमः)
I look forward to listening to this as soon as I can get my iPod and download my Podcasts, thanks, Leo
- Eevee
Excellent holiday repartee! Great smiling material. Also thanks for you cable TV show in Australia "Call For Help" which I used to get here in Cooktown north Queensland a while ago. I now have your TWiT.TV as a google gadget on my desktop. You give us computer inepts great stuff. I have used a lot of infromation from your show to teach myself computing! I am now teaching my 73 year old mother and she is doing great.
- Faye
I don't mind as much but then again if the content is brief then I am less likely to click through anyway whereas a full text feed will more likely get read. Ads in full text feeds are the way to go as long as the ads aren't too obtrusive.
- Peter Kelley
Unfortunately I don't think this is possible in Joomla if one uses "Read More" breaks in articles for appearance purposes in a template. It goes into the RSS feed excerpted.
- Glenn Batuyong
I also prefer reading full RSS feeds instead of partial ones. The worst? As you point out: title-only feeds. I usually unsubscribe to these. I also hate when a post is really way too long on the feed. Complicated am I? :-) Now, I must admit that, as one that needs his blog for income, I see the reason behind the partial feeds.
- Paul Papadimitriou
100% agree. I won't click through or share. Steven wins.
- Louis Gray
I agree & applaud the Guardian newspaper here in UK for changing to full feeds. Can't believe BBC still stuck on partial.
- Richard McKay
I only subscribe to one partial feed blog (that of a friend) for exactly this reason. Hope those partial feeders out there can tell me why they think that I would use their RSS link to import in my Reader, and then have to continue clicking though someplace outside of it? *sigh*
- Victoria Plautia
I usually skip through the partial feeds myself.
- Adriana
I prefer partial feeds for newspapers and magazines, full feeds for blogs.
- Mitch Wagner
So if nobody goes to a site because they can view all the content in a feed, how does one make money?
- Mark Trapp
@Mark: Good posts makes me click on full feeds when I want to see possible comments or join discussion (which shows how important they are, too)
- Jemm
You make money by not being lame and relying on adverts.. it's not a real revenue stream and we're fucking ourselves by using them. Try a donate button at the bottom of every post or offer some form of subscription. You will always have a certain percentage that won't pay no matter what you do, but some will. Try to come up with exclusive content for subscribers only. I think the next big change for the net will be the implosion of the ad market.
- alphaxion
agreed 110%. It shows respect to your readers first and foremost. If your content is good they'll click on to your site
- Duncan Riley
Isn't FriendFeed one giant aggregation of partial feeds? I don't see any full articles here, just titles, image grabs and commentary by my friends, yet it's the only feed I am glued to for hours a day.
- Bill Strathearn
Agree: No Click Through for partial feeds for blogs. However, most newspapers are still only partial feeds - so its kinda har with them. Agree with alphaxion on the "donate" button - for blogs.... but again I'll find that unlikely for newspapers.
- Peter Efland
Doesn't it all depend on how well written the first paragraph is? I can't say that I don't read 100% of my parcial feeds. Some of them are interesting enough to make me click it.
- Nuno Curado
from twhirl
Yes partial feeds are silly when you can advertise directly in the feed
- sean
I don't understand the hostility towards partial feeds. If it looks interesting, I'll click through. Why wouldn't I? Why am I supposed to be so vehemently opposed to the idea of the author wanting me to go to their website?
- DGentry
@Bill Strathem - the difference with FriendFeed is that it is just an aggregator of post headlines and that is the expectation. FriendFeed being an aggregator does promote click through to the story. That doesn't mean I don't have a problem with it - as the conversations here I as a blogger would prefer on the blog but I'm just happy to have people clicking through to read. With headline or partial feeds there isn't that same click through. Too many thoughts to try and fit in here so maybe [...]
- Steven Hodson
[..] I'll write my thoughts up on the difference later
- Steven Hodson
@Nuno I have yet to see a compelling enough first paragraph on a partial feed yet that makes me click through.
- Steven Hodson
@Denton I guess it boils down to available time. If I have feeds that are full text they are saving me time. with partial feeds I have to first read the partial text - gauge whether it is interesting enough - then click through .. wait for the page to load .. either re-read what I have already read to find where to pick up or skim over until I find that spot. With full text in a way I guess it is like the author is appreciative of your time. It may not seem that important but maybe more of an unconscious...
- Steven Hodson
@Gregory .. that is a very fair point and one I think that a lot of bloggers wrestle with - I now I do with every long post. *I think* it boils down to a couple of things - aesthetics - a page of long posts get's unwieldy and lopsided. the other thing is that given the amount of traffic that comes into blogs from either direct links and/or search the front page is in someways secondary. So rather than deal with page load times with full text post on the main page make sure long posts don't add to the prob.
- Steven Hodson
Mark, you could include nonobtrusive ads at the end of your full feed posts.
- Philipp Lenssen
I want this posted on my wall, in supersize proportion, hehe! :)
- Danielle Closs
I'm with Danielle. Massive poster of this. And one for each of my coworkers as well, but more as an admonishment than anything else...
- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
What I would like to see is an auto reply that directed the sender to your preferred method of communication. I also REALLY like what BlackBerry does on their OS where all Instant Messages and all emails (from up to 10 accounts) come to one in box so I don't have to jump from IM client to IM client. I hope BlackBerry greatly expands that concept to include Twitter and FaceBook. It's the only mobile OS that I've seen that consolidates messages in the default (ie not 3rd party) inbox.
- Wayne Schulz
I agree with most of the reasons - but, sometimes I like when people make it short and to the point. if they had the ability to write more than 140 characters, they probably would have sent loooong, bothersome email instead.
- Orli Yakuel
Actually, there is this great solution to the problem. I think it is called "e-mail". It is really fascinating stuff. I am not sure why people insist on DMs.
- Rob Diana
Rob: most people are lazy and aren't willing to look for an email link if one isn't provided.
- Robert Scoble
@Rob - posting your email address as-is on the internet is just inviting a ton of spam. It's hard enough dealing with my daily influx of mail as it is.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Lindsay: my email has been on my blog for eight years and I don't get that much spam. That's what Gmail is good at: blocking it.
- Robert Scoble
I had commented on the blog directly, but why is it so hard for Twitter/FriendFeed/etc to provide an email user link? That seems like a simple solution to the problem.
- Rob Diana
the way I see it, Twitter's DM isn't a replacement of email, altough Facebook's messaging might.
- gabo
Maybe an option to accept or not DMs (account-wide) will do the work for all who like them or not imho :)
- George Tziralis
I'm working on an extended profile on http://twitwall.com as a way to try to steer people towards communicating with me more efficiently. I'm always trying to figure out a way to do things the most productive way possible.
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
I think we found this weekend's bitchmeme!
- Rob Diana
If Twitter added RSS to the direct messages page, you would be able to read them on your Google Reader and add tags over there the same way you do on gMail in order to priotize. Responding would require you to click to the Twitter page and respond, even with a longer text because you installed the Twitzer firefox plugin first that enables you to have longer twitter messages on Twitter....
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- Bart Muskala - AdNerd Sr.
from twhirl
If people were trying to use DMs as email to reach me... yeah I'd hate them too! I think all of your points are very valid ones. But as the feature is called 'direct message', which could also be 'instant message', it's for something quick that requires a response that is as equally short and sweet. I don't hate the feature. But in your shoes, I would hate how people are using it.
- Wendy Peters
from twhirl
DM's were not intended to replace email but its usage is currently very similar to it.
- Jay
wow! when you put it like that, 'why DM sucks' makes sense. i have less that 100 DMs on TT so i've never had to consider the issue of scaling up to deal with 1000s of messages.
- .LAG liked that
dm's for me are a hitelisted SMS that doesn't leak my phone number. Extremely useful. Scoble following the entire universe spoils the whitelist. Twitter dropping SMS support for DMs outside the US made this less useful, as getting DMs on my UK phone was very handy
- Kevin Marks
from twhirl
My wife and I often use Twitter DM's when she's at work. She doesn't always hear text messages to her cellphone, and she runs Tweetdeck on her desktop there in any case. More to the point, as Twitter is seamless between desktop and cellphone, it doesn't matter if she's in or out of the office. She also points out that she prefers Twitter when she's in the office to SMS, as it's easier to type on her PC keyboard.
- Ian May
The solution seems simple to me... Twitter DM, Facebook Messages, LinkedIn messages, etc should be sent to my email.. I should be able to reply to the message from email and have the service treat it as a DM / Message. This way I can still treat it as I do my email while the sender can protect their email address.
- Bastard Operator From FF
What I don't get is why people respond to my public tweets with DMs, thus forcing a conversation that I WANTED public into being private. And 99% of the time this happens to me, it's not anything that needs to be private. I'd just respond back with an @ reply, but the public conversation is already broken.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Sean, that is what I have been trying to say. I do not understand why it is such a problem.
- Rob Diana
Rob: the problem is one of revenue, I'm sure. If facebook (for example) sent messages to my email and let me reply there, I wouldn't log into facebook, see their ads, etc. It's a standard Walled Garden problem driving traffic is more important then the service
- Bastard Operator From FF
Sean: I understand that, but if Facebook, etc. made the ability to respond via email something you had to opt-into (not the ability to be responded to in this way, mind, since the email will be transformed back into whatever service it originated from) with the understanding that the email notifications would have their ads in them I'd be fine with that.
- Jason Penney
I don't understand: Twitter DM, Facebook Messages, LinkedIn Messages, all end up in my email Inbox. That doesn't happen with you?
- Glen Campbell
Glen: the issue is that you either can't read the whole message or you can't reply to them via email. Twitter would be the one I'd see difficulty responding to via email due to the 140 character limit. As a user of Basecamp, I've seen what happens with reply-by-email: 90% of the time, the signature gets added to the reply because reply-by-email parsers are pretty bad.
- Mark Trapp
And there are limited options as to what goes to your inbox.
- Chris Baskind
Thought Bart Muskala made a good point. I guess many people here more or less live in their GReader. If twitter included RSS on DMs then with the better GReader lifehacker scripts you could easily view DM page without leaving GReader, as well as tag and sort and search them.
- Peter Efland
Wayne and Jannifer are on the right track. Has anyone come up with a process for managing what they do online yet? I'd love to read it. I would be in favor of an independent place where we could set our preferences for where replies and contacts are sent. By independent I mean Open Source with the data protected from Corporate or Government access other than to feed date IN and get limited data OUT. It would take someone with far more developed skills at privacy and security to know what would be required.
- Internet Strategist
There is so much room for improvement in the way Twitter works. I look forward to seeing Jennifer's work in action and I believe that Internet Strategist and Wayne are putting up great thoughts and ideas.
- Robert Miller
I prefer DMs to @s any day. I hate making my Twitter feed noisy for a response that is only intended for one person.
- Tamar Weinberg