Q: Does it need to be flying? You may be restricting your responders to a smaller subset of all people not giving said "fcuk" (flying or non-flying) about Facebook. - Phil Crissman
Okay I see your point. It doesn't have to fly. A regular old fcuk will do. :-) - Dave Winer
I have to give one, it's the only social network that my friends belong to!!! - Chris Rivait
You do care, otherwise you would not say that - Gabriel
@chris, I have a lot of friends who are only on FB as well. But admitting something has functionality is not necessarily the same as _caring_ about it... if Facebook ceased to exist, said friends would find accounts on some other social network. Ergo, I really don't care much about Facebook... :-) - Phil Crissman
Some of my friends are only on Facebook too. - Morton Fox
+1... though throwing a flying fcuk on the Super Poking application may be a huge hit! - Mona N.
Every time they make headlines I kind of glance at those headlines cringingly from the corner of my eye -- I don't care, and I don't want to care, but I do worry that they might get up to something that will require me to care. - Tegan Dowling
facebook's strength is in connecting you to people you know, whereas friendfeed/twitter connect you to people you dont know. - Aziz Poonawalla
Never even been to the site. Just do not care. - Evangeline
no, facebook and myspace are both going downhill. Making it have too much, or atleast trying to. - Squid
I still really enjoy Facebook, not really over made up with the changes but I think they are foundations for something bigger! - Joe Dawson
Facebook is for all the people in theory you know to act like dicks and brag about their shit and here is for meeting cool people who if are dicks you hide - Cecil Sandus
There are braggers everywhere in all walks of life, every friend I have there is close or someone I respect! Well close as in they were a part of my life! - Joe Dawson
No, even though I got an account s while back, I feel the same way as well... - Queco Jones
I have way more 'friends' on Facebook than any other network, but I spend less time there, and engage in fewer meaningful interactions, by an order of magnitude. So, yeah, pencil me in for a failure to give a fcuk. - Derrick Burns
We're the wrong age group. Seems like the teenagers and even some of my young software engineers use it more (and in place of) email. I certainly don't understand it, but it seems true. - Bill Rice via twhirl
All of my friends use it as well (it's that age group that Bill is talking about) and it's pretty much impossible to escape. The weird thing is, teens/young-adults are quick to use tools like Facebook and Myspace but rarely branch off of those large networks and venture into things like Twitter, Friendfeed, and the cooler, smaller apps. - Brandon Titus
Nope. It's been blah since it was opened up to everyone and all those crappy applications starting appearing. Who cares who I virtually poke, super-hug, moon, or <insert verb here>? Total ridiculousness... I use it a bit for messaging friends who aren't on Twitter or FriendFeed. - James Williams
I've visited Facebook twice this year, mostly to accept all my queued up friend requests. I'm finding that FriendFeed has really let me focus back on the true distributed nature of social apps, so I'm commenting more on blogs, tweeting, blogging myself, etc. - Patrick Lightbody
No Dave. The marketing is in full effect. I'm not a fan on the new UI and I think they are overvalued. I do however, think they are loaded with talented people. - Ryan
No one seems to use the social features much, except for the wall. The sharing stuff seems to be one-to-one, it's never a conversation :-/ - Rudolf Olah
against the tide facebook is a solid platform for storing lots of user generated content ... personal preference versus using several specialized services (youtube, flickr, etc.) - facebook is akin to a content management dashboard -especially if all the 3rd party apps are ignored. that said it is not particularly text/blog-centric ... - Scott Moskowitz
add another one to the don't care for it list. i don't have anything against it other than my slight dislike of facebook "fanboys" and zuckerberg worshippers, but i don't see it benefiting me in any way - Cee Bee
Wow, I guess I didn't realize how anti-facebook a lot of the community is... Facebook was introduced my freshman year of college, so it played a big part of my undergrad experience. It's been great to keep in touch with friends since graduation. As for the conversational piece, I think the "problem" is that most of the userbase are average users. not techno-centric. if you took the whole facebook community and stuck them on ff, the conversations wouldn't happen here either. The paradigm isn't there yet imo. - Frankie Warren
Never created an account with FB, probably never will. Did get notice from a professional contact that he'd tried to find me there but it still did not incent me to sign up. I created a MySpace account ages ago as it was the only place some of my personal contacts were, but unless I get notification one of them has sent me a message I never log in. - Sally Robinson
"Complaints are mounting among iPhone users about the quality and consistency of AT&T's 3G data network." - tech.newsjunk.com
I have complaint enough with their EDGE network. It was great when the iPhone originally launched by has gotten increasingly slower. - Akiva Moskovitz
Well, i have a Blackberry Curve and an iPhone 3G, both on AT&T. Standing side by side, one had 5 bars, the other had 1 little one. Seems to me either the a) BBerry is getting preferential treatment, b) the BBerry was lucky, or c) the iPhones 3G implementation has a few kinks to work out. I would vote for choice c, with a potential for choice B. - Greg
cool tool to mass-spread your home tours and other videos. can even watermark the videos to build your brand directly through the service - Mark Eckenrode via Bookmarklet
That's ridiculous. These photos were taken days apart, so the ONLY logical explanation is that Martians in hiding figured out when the camera shutter was going to open. They had days to remove the chunks from the shot. Sheesh! - Kevin C. Tofel
I want to be able to 'like' a comment. Very funny Kevin. - John Frost
Thanks John. My other explanation is that said Martians have been monitoring Twitter and are pulling a fast one on us. ;) Seriously, I love science and this is great news. Hope it pans out.... - Kevin C. Tofel
It's actually Vanilla Ice's long forgotten career that was discovered. - Eddie Codel
Oh, no. Global Warming has hit Mars too!!!!! - John Frost
Oh please! It's obviously just the bare floor of the sound stage. - Kevin D. White
Rachel and I are going there for our Honeymoon!!! Staying for a few days before taking a cruise along the coast up to Venice. These photos are amazing. - Kevin Fox
Thanks :) The city is so picturesque that there is a photo to be taken regardless of where a camera is pointed! Kevin, you'll have a fantastic time. It's a great that you are going to stay for a few days since you can then visit the old town at times other than the afternoon and avoid the crowds from the cruise ships. - Simon
Damn these are awesome. My favorite is the harbor. Serious kudos. - Jim Stanger
Very special, out of the ordinary photos -- love the blue tints. I want to visit this place. - Sean McBride
Hi Simon, I'd be interested in a comment on your selection of Smugmug over Flickr. - Stuart Forsyth
Stuart, I just prefer SmugMug because of the UI from the visitor point of view. I think it makes browsing a little simpler and more intuitive for the occasional visitor, and I think it looks a bit more elegant than the Flickr interface. I have thought about moving over to Flickr though. - Simon
wow please let me know if you do so i can see your uploads more regularly. - Mrsth
Simon, Stuart: I agree, Smugmug is far easier for the casual user. Flickr is a community site through and through. Would be cool if they incroporated some gallery features. But then, one could of course develop something like a Smugmug interface for Flickr with the API and maybe have the best of both worlds. Do you get a lot of views/interaction from the Smugmug community or do you use is mostly as a gallery site for "external" visitors, Simon? - Ole Begemann
Simon, you need not dedicate yourself to one online gallery. They're not mutually exclusive. Why not use them for different purposes? Also, see http://tabblo.com and http://zooomr.com. - John Lam
Simon, did you set your camera to Greenwich Mean Time? All photos seem 2 hours later than as reported. - John Lam
John, I used to have accounts at multiple providers but converged to one out of laziness and convenience. All the times are GMT. Local time was GMT+2. I find it easier to sync with my GPS tracklog when everything is GMT, particularly when I happen to be travelling to multiple countries and timezones (although this vacation was just to Croatia). Ole, about 98% of the visits to my SmugMug site are from non-SmugMug referrers. - Simon
I actually print out FriendFeed pages. I'm the only one? - l0ckergn0me
@Chris Pirillo I have someone read it to me every night. - Steve Rubel
Holy Cow - I wish I could go mostly digital, but until I can buy digital books with the same DRM as meatspace books I'm sticking with dead trees. I should be able to resell, trade and borrow books. As for magazines, if Zinio would just add some more titles I could be 100% digital in that realm. - Tad Donaghe
90% when at work or home, 70% when traveling - Ontario Emperor
The only non-digital media I consume now is non-technical books (still prefer reading good hardcover books and magazines (business week, HBR) when I fly. - Deepak
Easily 95% I don't buy/read newspapers. By the time it hits the page, it's old news. Plus, they've chosen the stories for me and I cannot engage or interact with that content. Most of our major print papers in Canada are owned by a couple of private corporations. These corporations are tied to the conservative party. Their content reflects a conservative/corporate bias. If I want to find quality balanced journalism I'm going to look online - and I'm going to look at many, many, many, many different sites. - melmcbride
Deepak - BusinessWeek is available via Zinio - I subscribed a while back and I've been loving reading it on my computer. - Tad Donaghe
books are all that's left for me too. and i dont think they count for 5%. i read half a book or more daily (if you add up all webreading). - Ruben Llibre
@Tad I like the Web version of Zinio. - Steve Rubel
Don't know about a percentage, but the only non-electronic medium for me is books. Everything else is digital. - Zio Bonino
better question might be how often do you consume non electronic media. I do that every day and would really miss the newspaper if I didn't have it at least once a week. I also like pottery and theater, two other media :) But 95% electronic is probably a low estimate. - Marshall Kirkpatrick
I work completely online so I comsume most media electronically, but I spend an hour in the morning with the papers and at least two hours reading per day. Except during the NBA finals. - Ralph Poole via twhirl
I agree, I'd say at least 75% in my case, and most of my print media consumption is due to my work or a few pubs. that still don't have great online content yet. - Cathryn Hrudicka
I like my mp3's, but I love my vinyl. I like sitting in front of my laptop skimming various things from FF, but i love reading a great book at the end of the day.For me, it's not about percentages, it's about the differing emotional impact of the two sides of the equation. - Iain Baker
Probably 90%, I read a bunch of magazines, and constantly have a pen and paper handy, but the amount of magazines I read is dwarfed by the amount of reading I do on the computer (~20gb of e-books, ~50gb of music, granted flac's take up much more space than mp3s); Side note, gotta agree with melmcbride (~10 above me) and say that the newspaper is short, uninformative, and worst of all, old news nowadays (At least in a magazine an article can be expanded on to complete the idea). - Mike Seman
Still a lot of books and magazines but I'd say about 70% - Andrew Smith
99% for me. Sunday paper is the last non-electronic media bit. - Kevin C. Tofel
For me, 95% electronic. That would cover internet & computer, TV, radio, etc. The other 5% for me is books, newspapers, and a couple dead-tree magazines I still subscribe to. - Paul Short
about 85% (15% 10min newspaper a day and one magazin left per month, sometimes books, but most of them audiobooks these days) - Wolfgang Luenenbuerger
i'm at about 95 percent too but i'm not sure how proud i am of that fact. - sean808080 via twhirl
Probably about 75% - still read a LOT of books in print (tho' have a kindle) and newspapers & tons of print magazines. Increasingly digital on the magazines since some are just starting to offer them. But books to me will be both digital, but always room for a real in print physical version. I love them. I'd rather fall asleep with a book than a kindle or mp3 player on my lap! - Paul Greenberg
85 percent. I skim the real WSJ and KC star daily, but for anything I truly commit to reading, is through my reader. I do, however, get a chunk of NPR in during the morning commute. - Jarrod Morgenstern
I don't think there's anything to be ashamed about reading some stuff in print. For some material, print can't be beat. - J. McConnell
I'd put it at 85-90%, given the amount of books and mags I try to consume. Curious how the digital breaks down for the 95%ers: TV v Computer v Mobile. - sawinkler
I'd say 75%. But that's because I can't give up the books! - Simon Bisson via twhirl
I'm 80% digital: 65 computer, 10 radio, 10 books, 5 Blackberry/txt, 5 TV, 5 newspaper/magazine. (I'm counting satellite radio as digital.) TV, newspapers and magazines are time-killers, though - not must-do's. - Sarah Morgan
Online: World News: 90%. Local News, 5%, Industry News, 85%. Sitting down with a book or magazine feels like a holiday. Comprehension and absorption are higher with print, however. - Dana Lookadoo
95% Only dead tree stuff is books and the occasional magazine that isn't otherwise online. - Jim Graham
I don't think that I could ever give up print media entirely, unless that is eventually made mandatory by the death of print media itself (knock on wood), so I still consume a vast variety of books, newspapers, and magazines on a daily basis in addition to my consumption of electronic media. I'd say my percentage is around 65%. - Atherton Bartelby
60% - i started to read more dead tree stuff again lately. - derlinzer
Gee, friendfeed commenters are more digital than traditional... Chalk me up as not surprised. To contribute to the noise, 95% internet media: free weekly newspapers are way more valuable for most local events than online media. - Bjorn Stromberg
I avoid paper like the plague, but I do read the occasional recommended book. - Rahsheen Porter
98% or more, including technical books, technical papers, popular fiction, magazine and newspaper articles, etc. I used to be drowning in paper documents -- now my space is nearly paper free, and I love it. I currently have a few hundred ebooks stored on my Samsung Blackjack, including weighty tomes on linguistics and suspense novels. - Sean McBride
Still read print newspapers and weeklies, paperbacks for the commute, and dusty old books in the smoking room. But I have enough feeds to make that teetering pile small and have to go with 90% ... - Ashton
I too read books on my commute so maybe 20% books, 80% electronic. I very rarely read print magazines or newspapers anymore. I live in Google Reader. - Wm Morris
I still read books... but I think I would read them faster if they were an etext - Noah David Simon
About 50%. I will love holding broadsheets like the IHT, Financial Times, Guardian, Weekly Telegraph. Long form copy doesn't lend well on the Web - when I want short and sweet, I go online; otherwise, I read papers and pubs. - Darcy
Very accurate and insightful - I resemble many of these behaviors. - Dan Nimtz
Spot on. Looking back at my own behavior, this process takes about a year. I can only handle a few services at any one time. I used to love digg and Twitter and use them daily, now not at all. The only companies I've had any loyalty to past a year in this current Web 2.0 business cycle is Apple and Google (and I make no apologies for this behavior). - Jason Kaneshiro
You can see this happening with twitter right now. The BIG early adopters are now using twitter to market Plurk and FriendFeed. most of the traffic on Plurk and FriendFeed seems to be about that service... Very interesting thought provoking post! - Brad
I agree with this post. What happens after #5? I find I just fall into being a user if something survives that long. - Robert Scoble
I think folks are underestimating the games market, personally. There will be plenty of free apps, certainly, but there are also going to be some games that will certainly create major revenue, even at very low per user prices. - Jeff Turner via twhirl
A minor nit to pick with the post though. You make the early adopter process seem very negative. Essentially, the reasoning being the early adopter gets "tired" of the site or its users. I can understand the decreasing excitement as you start using something more and it goes more mainstream, but part of that is due to the site not "needing" the early adopter as much. - Rob Diana
Love the writing, love the wit. An excellent post! - Stephen Foskett
@ Rob Diana- The question is wether this really is a negative process or not? Its negative because the service in question might be brilliant in and of itself but still be left in the dust by the early adopter. The point should be that early adopters are focused not on the staying power of the service but on its geekiness. Those that follow join not because of its geek cred, but because they find it useful based on said reviews by the early adopted crowd. - Roberto Bonini
In my mind, it's not intended to be a negative process. But you can see the word FriendFeed throughout the post without having to say it, right? I often read here that XX% of all content on FriendFeed is about FriendFeed. So if you look at these five stages, you can see stages 2 and 3 for sure. Do I feel the need to announce FriendFeed Rooms or Personalization or Search? No. People already know I'm here. But others (Rubel, Loic, Thomas Hawk, Hutch, Jeremiah, Scoble) are still banging the drum. - Louis Gray
I hope this doesn't mean that you're moving on to stages 4 or 5 Louis... - Paul Buchheit
I don't think this is a negative post. But it is certainly accurate. - Francine Hardaway via twhirl
@Paul, I'm not planning on it. Given that this was a broader piece, you can see others who exhibit the behavior seen in 3 and 4, making "demands" more than requests, or trying to make FriendFeed something it's not. I've found FriendFeed to be a great addition to my information workflow, and the site's been good to me too. What I also should have mentioned is that some sites have the potential to be a permanent 3. That challenge is yours for the taking. - Louis Gray
We're doing our best to be a permanent 3 :) - Paul Buchheit
dude. This is fantastic. We are often thinking through the progress of the user base and shifts that occur as we (and they age). Brad Feld has a great post called: http://www.feld.com/blog/archi.... I think yours a great compliment to this concept. - Micah Baldwin
I think the 5 stages of Death applies here as well. example (where X is some new service, gadget, etc.) 1) DENIAL: "I don't next X. X is lame. X still has issues." 2) ANGER: "What do you mean 'it's a closed beta?' How come so-and-so got one?" 3) BARGAINING: "Someone please send me an X invite/beta/demo unit!" 4) DEPRESSION: "Is that all there is? Shouldn't there be more to life than this?" 5) ACCEPTANCE: "I occasionally use X, but not every day. Meh." - Karim
