Jeremy Chone - Likes

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Twitter Closing New Venture Round At $1 Billion Valuation http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... this is why Ron Conway said thanks to me yesterday. Wild.

September 16 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

metalerik, Ankush Narula, Mitch Baldwin and 5 other people liked this

yes but thats 80% less than the $5billion you said it was worth! - Mark

Stephan Osmont

Today I was listening to an amazing talk on NPR by author Bill McKibben. It was so interesting that I stayed 30 mn my car listening to it (after I parked), because I did not want to miss a second of it. This talk is probably the most important I heard in many years, it was inspiring and scary at the same time. I bought the MP3 transcript and...

August 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone liked this

The audio transcript is at http://bit.ly/2gJv5d - Stephan Osmont

Robert Scoble

New blog post: you are SO unfollowed! http://scobleizer.com/2009... I'll follow on FriendFeed anyone who comments here:

August 5 - Comments disabled - Like - Share

Ozer Wrzl (EN), Jens Christian Freund, Harold Cabezas and 157 other people liked this

Follow me! - TheHenry

427 more comments

TheHenry: I already am! :-) - Robert Scoble

Please don't unfollow me!! :) - Carlo Nasuti

oh yeah! I forgot! lol! #fail - TheHenry

Very interesting approach Robert. If it is working for you that is awesome though. Hope all is well. Give Roc a big hug for me. - C.C. Chapman

Yo... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Not too much unfollowing please. - Tim

i'm in - Tai Hsia

Can you follow me? - Giorgio

ok I'll allow you - Derry O Donnell

What's going on here? - Andru Edwards

I think you're already following me Robert. - Andrew Leahey

well ok ) - Denverken

Lead, follow, or get out of the way. - Robert Kenney

* - Michael J. Carrasquillo

[comments here] - Nick Humphries

I will comment here! :) - John Ptacek

Great blog appreciate all of your "likes" that I would not have noticed before. Thanks for all the time you spend educating us. - Gary Prechtel

auto-follow always seemed like a bad idea. people can always msg you but your stream will get totally cluttered if you dont do a little bit of housekeeping. - William Kapes

"baby I'm a star" -Prince (off purple rain) - Michael J. Carrasquillo

novel approach, seems sound - Danny Ayers

Consider me available for following. :-) - Eric D. Wilson

Okay, I'll bite.. - Tanya

Bring it Scobleizer. - Todd Pringle

I agree, Twitter is much better this way. - Ryan W

I appreciate your work, and your passion for social media. - Evan Travers

sounds simple... - Mateo Yadarola

Scoble follow me baby - Jadito

Oh you are getting quite a response here!!!! I'm commenting so you'll follow me but the thing is you're going to LIKE following me because you'll learn all about Sedona through tons of videos and you'll love it so much you'll want to pack your camera and head out here! =) - SedonaTV

Thanks for the mentions, Robert (and you know I'm not commenting just for the follow - I just like to follow you, which is what counts!) - Jesse Stay

Guess I might as well delete that overpriced twitter app I bought last week. - Shea from iPhone

Actually Robert, now I've seen you've tidied up your twitter, I'll probably follow you there again too. :-) - Tim

hey follow me scoble - Andy Jenks

Meh, who cares really, not like you read everyone you followed. Plus unfollowed you anyways, not like you have to say that's interestined except friendfeed spam. - Steve

joining the crowd - good move Robert. - Adam

follow me - Tai Hsia

welcome to Boulder - Andrew Hyde

@scobleizer just created the most important tech follow list on Twitter. - Christian Anderson

aww shucks, and here I was thinking it was just me who you unfollowed. - Jess Sloss

I underwent the same situation, Robert - I unfollowed almost everybody on Twitter who duplicated their accounts here on FrF. I got a tempest of fury for this action. web3 is too personal still )) - massagin

Scoble in Boulder = Trouble. - Jim Halligan @jim

I feel fortunate that you're still subbed to me on FF. I haven't even noticed whether you unfollowed me on Twitter. But you following me, still hasn't gotten me the chicks. :P Always fun seeing your posts, long as you don't block me, it doesn't matter if you follow me or not. :) - Arlan Koizumi

I did the same thing some weeks ago after avoiding twitter because it got too noisy. It was instantly better. But in the mean time I started to use FF more and I like it better here so I hardly go near twitter now. - Murray Barton

You already follow me here on ff, which i use more than twitter. - dthree

What's up? - Kevin Whalen from iPhone

Hey Robert, so for following >1,600 is it that right way taken by Philtro and Filttr? - Martin Adamek

I'm glad you mentioned Loic, he caught a lot of flack for doing this earlier. - Steven Cains

Hey Robert - fight the tweetspam ! - Michael Neale

Don't think you are following me on Twitter anymore..please do and best regards - Karma Martell

I'm still trying to figure out the following... so I'm watching how you do it scoble. - Matthew Schrock

Good plan. I'm looking forward to your results. I'm trying to figure out all these social media elements. I would appreciate your Twitter follow. - David Stanley

hope this new approach works for you! - timepilot

Oh, so now you are only easy on FF. - James Watters

Odd internal response, I don't follow everyone who follows me cuz of the very noise you talk about. And, there's no good reason for you to follow me since I'm unlikely to deliver news of interest to you. And yet, here I am, posting on FriendFeed so you have the OPTION of following me, a stranger who is not the same kind of SMART as you. Who'd have thought... - Della Mauler

Interesting statement about original content value of FF independent of twitter. Twitter is where you keep your noise level down... - James Watters

This seems like asking for trouble to me, Scoble. But, it's your time and bandwith to do with what you will. Since only a handful of people (by that I think I mean just one) follow me on Twitter, it's pretty easy for me to weed out the bots. The people I follow are my internet nerds (mostly the Rev 3 crew) so I know their interests are in line with mine. Hit me up for some edifying conversations about Lost and video games, Robert. - Jeremiah Green

Here you go Robert! [also via twitter: @Scobleizer Therefore: only approx. 1.7 million "active" human @Twitter users contribute 50%+ of all activity, right? #engagement] Regards, @AAinslie - Alexander Ainslie

The green avatar is so disturbing mate. :) - Jordan Windebank

I'll lead, you follow. So where are we going? - Tom Sheppard

I was sad to see you unfollowed me, but now you may follow me again, so all will be well in the world. - Jodi

following the leader... - John Munro

You're still following me - does that mean I'm a smart feller? ;) - Brett Kelly

so glad I mail Robert a business card every month :) - Christian Anderson

Della: the thing is here I can follow you and put you into a list and watch you less frequently than some of my other people. So everyone wins. But only here on FriendFeed. :-) - Robert Scoble

Some of us have been doing this from our start. Kind of cool, eh? But our numbers don't grow quickly so we were tagged as "slow." Nice to see you catch up with us! Also, this may shock you, there sre folks who follow and communicate with only 3 folks on twitter and they are HAPPY! Imagine.... - lynda spangler

Yay. Now he will follow a librarian. - Joe

Follow this dot!!! . - Bwana ☠

I've long thought the entire Twitter "etiquette" of always following who follows you to be a bit of a folly. I'm following 114 at the moment, and the stream still moves too fast for me to keep up with. - Darren Landrum

Comment! - anna sauce

ok - Vasu Srinivasan

Good test, count me in... I don't follow tons of people, I follow a few prolific Scoble-types and the rest are more focused in areas I'm interested in. - David Ziembicki

I'm not following tons of people, just a select few. More to follow on FB when facebook has completely integrated Friendfeed-funcionality. ;-) - Wolfgang G. Wettach

I only follow people I know or have something interesting to say, did you really have 160000 people that said something worthwhile??? - Gerard van Schip

Well I commented via your Blog so instead of repeating myself I'll link to comment http://disq.us/1ms9 - Keith - @tsudo

Gerard: everyone says something worthwhile once in a while. The trick is to see it when it happens. Here on FriendFeed, by the way, you have a better shot because good stuff usually gets liked and commented on, so it pulls up higher into my view. - Robert Scoble

come join us here folks http://ff.im/6dUHN xxx - Mark

Okay. But will you read and comment on my stuff? - Mellissa

Robert, I posted this after Loic's decision and it looks like it will need another update. http://www.knowthenetwork.com/blog... I think there is value in stating your follow policy. - Keith - @tsudo

cool - Zach Cheatham

Hello? - Vicky

following all the discussion of you unfollowing everyone on twitter has made me think about doing the same thing and starting fresh. - (jeff)isageek

not unless we beat you in the Ashes - Mark

Nice post Robert, and no surprise it's an improvement. ;o) I have seen it for me too. - Rob Sellen :o)

1 thing I find Robert still worth following @Scobleizer when I am not on friendfeed & on my Hootsuite or PeopleBrowsr. therefore not much affected, not much 2 bother me, ego not gone at all. luv your post Robert it is a frank posting - polou/indigo_bow

Follow me Robert, I promise I'm not annoying. :) @cluteman - Greg Clute from iPhone

You've piqued my curiosity. - Kathy

Robert, thank you! I follow you and enjoy your "likes" and your energetic takes. I also enjoy your Building43 interviews! I am a constant FriendFeed user now. Thank you! - Tobin Truog

This made me realise I must be more active on FF and comment/post more :-). - Mats Pettersson

I think I'll give FriendFeed a go! Never tried it, but looks easy and I need to understand the interwebs better. @CodeSamurai_Com - CodeSamurai

butt-kissing is not a prerequisite for being followed, he will follow you anyways :D - Mark

Count me in! (Please??) - Ricky Maveety

lol @mark. ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

You can follow me, but since you follow a lot of people, you probably can't pay attention to the stream of tweets. - Alex Knight

Alex..that's the WHOLE point he did this... ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

IMHO 1,647 is still way too many people to follow. - Alex Knight

I will NOT get baited into ... ah CRAP. I follow very few people on twitter, mainly only to find info from Android developers (my topic of choice). If you mention anything about the food you are currently eating, etc.. you will probably not be followed. If you post 80,000 times a day, you will not be followed, since Twitters interface sucks (not so for FF). Also, no offense to other social users, but if you resend your FF/FB/<insert other social site here> entries to twitter, I probably won't follow. - Tim Hoeck

http://socialspark.com/blogs... Chris Pirillo is Scum. - Mark

good move IMO - Joanna Nicol

Love the post, love the response. - Chris Rogers from BuddyFeed

nice hanging out at with beach w/ you last week! follow moi!!! - Raina Lee

I always feel like scoble's following me - Rodney J Woodruff from iPhone

Don't forget your Dunbar number, Scoble! There are only so many people you can have meaningfully connect with online. - Steve Lynch from twhirl

Mark is right. No butt kissing. Ew. - Robert Scoble

"I always feel like, somebody's watching me..." - Wizetux

Comment!!!! Ohh wait but you already follow me... - Amit Nangare

Follow me, if you aren't already....please. Thanks, - Steve de Mena

here is my comment ZOL - Shane Gibson

Comment? What kind of coomment, Robert? :-) - Mitch Featherston

Whoop there it is! On Twitter @jimgoldstein - Jim Goldstein from iPhone

Oh..Oh... Mr. Kotter...Mr Kotter..follow me! - Scott Booher

Glad to see you're writing more than 140 characters on that blog. Doesn't that feel liberating? Maybe we should be allowed character# based on your metric for powerful/smart/newsmaker - Noah Bloom

You already follow me here on FF, for which I thank you. So, I'll just say thanks for the phone call the other day. :) - Jeff Harbert

I'll take a follow! - Jeff Weber

@shaunhess - Shaun Hess

Ok, so follow me again and I will follow you back. Thanks! - Audrey

Robert - I fail on most of your criteria so I'm not expecting you to follow me. The thing is I don't care if you follow me back - this is social media and everyone has their own choice. I choose to follow you because you entertain and inform me. The relationship is 100% one way and I am more than happy with that! - Pon

Robert - Last night at GDGT Party the person at the Blackberry booth said: 1) She had 'heard of Twitter, never friend feed' uses neither 2) Is SCOBLE is coming tonight 3) Wow, your Blackberry is really "archaic" and find out when contract lets you upgrade. F-D UP? Booth babes need primers. - Liza

Interesting theory... people who comment more apt to contribute? - Mark Philpot

I know someone else who tried this strategy last year, with similar results. I've been debating it. Once I got over 3K followers on Twitter life just got weird. Started to spend X amount of time every day blocking porn spam. - Patricia F. Anderson

Liza: yeah, sorry for not coming to the party. I went and saw Obama's CTO instead. - Robert Scoble

Steve Lynch: my Dunbar number is higher than yours is. :-) - Robert Scoble

Nice summary Robert on the whole Unfollow thing, but would it be too repetitive if I re-post on my FF? - Keith Rowland

What is the best friend feed aggregation strategy of non-friend streams (eg RSS, twitter, etc)? Imaginary friend per service, then add to lists? Multiple services per imaginary friend or 1 to 1? Or add the services to a group? What are the considerations? - John Brown

Keith: you can repost anywhere you like, thanks! - Robert Scoble

I'm in! - Craig Shipp

still wondering how you are able to handle such a big load of subscribers here and e.g. so many followers with twitter o_0. I am already (sometimes) lost with the few i got till now. Lately with one sweep almost 40 to 50 contacts in twitter disappeard and i have no clue why ... boah, how are you handling the noise? Hell, with so many ppl in, you might have a terrific noise? Or you wear just good headphones ;)? - Ronald

I very much agree that being choosy is the key to Twitter. I'm not nearly on the scale that you are, but in my experience, freely following people (whetther they follow me or not) and then mercilessly cutting back on them over and over again results in a kind of darwinianly better and better signal to noise ratio. - Tim Maly

Touche! - Steve Lynch from twhirl

Count me in - Johnny

Hi Robert - Randy Allen Bishop

Liked the blog post and totally agree. I've been meaning to do something similar. What I do is occasionally prune and then add some "better" replacements, so my total is always 2000 follows. - Bora Zivkovic

I don't see how anyone can manage so many users without groups. Then again, with groups you could just make an "ignore" group. - Oscar M. Cantu from iPhone

Great blog post. I totally agree on the noise level. I figure I have blocked a few hundred accounts on Twitter, and my noise level has dropped dramatically. Thanks for the follow! - Tony "Frosty" Welch

Hello Hello! - Sam Goldfield

Robert - I figured you were in DC from FF, but she had NO IDEA what a CTO is. Point is, she was eager to give you a Blackberry, but not me, and I wish I had a Scoble costume to pretend for 5 minutes. - Liza

@Robert I think you are starting another mass follow again. - Steve Chou from fftogo

Steve: that's not the problem. As long as spam doesn't enter the system I can deal. Keep in mind here I can choose how I follow. I can put you all in a folder that I never look at, if I wanted to. - Robert Scoble

my feelings were hurt that you unsubscribed to me on twitter, but i agree with your methods - Brian Appleby

I'm in! - Chris Rossini

Brian, yeah, but I follow you here. So there. - Robert Scoble

really doesn't matter as long as i can follow you, that's the beauty of these services - Brian Appleby

How did you come to follow so many to begin with? I get annoyed with ppl and unfollowing is easier than sifting through their garbage constantly. - R1CC1

Autofollow was a horrible idea to begin with. - David Chieng

I kind of tired to keep an eye on who follows me now,the ones I'm following is much more important.:-) - Steve Chou from fftogo

Whoa lots of comments I'm following you longtime lol - Edgar Rodríguez from iPhone

Robert: we need more intelligent spam-follower-filtering on Twitter! We need to fix this. - Steve Lynch from twhirl

@David +1 I think auto follow is such a bad idea to begin with,and people like Robert now even need to pay to unfollow these people. - Steve Chou from IM

How much did SocialToo charge for running the unfollow script? - Shane

I'm in! - rich brant from iPhone

I heard its 25 dollars. - Steve Chou from IM

I've always been very picky in who I follow on twitter. I follow 40 people, and I can't guarantee that I see every single tweet. I don't scroll back usually, unless it's my "Real Life" column in Tweetdeck that couldn't fit on my screen. - Tom Ribbens

My birthday is also January 18th, therefore you must follow me Robert! ;) - Chris Luckhardt from BuddyFeed

Thanks Steve! $25 is pretty reasonable. Wonder if anyone else will be jumping on the bandwagon - Shane

Haha....I also threw the devil horns for Scobleizer...that should count for something. ;) http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Chris Luckhardt from BuddyFeed

OK, let's try it! And what about Twitter? - Alexei Zheglov

Thanks for your post. Last time I checked you follow me here on FriendFeed. OK not to follow me on Twitter. - Pilgrim Five

Smart way to clean house. - Jeremy Chone

u have already subscribing me although i am just a-staying-at-home mum =)). thanx scoble. u are really a nice geek. haha! - zʍıɔ

Let's do it. - Kate

this is like an awesome commentfest - Edgar Rodríguez

You can follow me, but I never say anything. Oh.. wait.... - James Macgill

follow me! - Tate DA FF MVP from BuddyFeed

Sometimes the tortoise beats the hare after all... building organically based on getting to know people and interactions tends to avoid the ghastly spammers, seo peeps and bots - Sally Church

Tap, tap... is this thing on? - Yanik Falardeau

This is the best place to follow you. On twitter you only see post headlines, but friendfeed is where the conversation takes place. - Michael Fidler

Ah crap. You're already following me :) - Jason Nunnelley

I'm outside your sphere, but bootstrapping is bootstrapping right? - Travis Bedard

Tuesday night for the first time in 2 months I UNfollowed everyone on Twitter who wasn't following me. Since you had UNfollowed me, yup I unfollowed you. My Twitter account is so /FUBARed! It only goes to page 506 to show who I'm following and after that it is BLANK! I don't even know if they show in my Home stream. So Robert, I value what you say. Know I can tweet profusely - but it's as @replies to others with the occasional micro-blog thrown in. Question, what DID I do to cause you to UNfollow me? - Arleen Boyd

I hope you'll follow me... - Shane Tilton

Follow me, eh? - Joey Gibson

Trying to fill out those dropped Twitter follows? - Jamie Elgie

Scoble: Have you convinced Guy Kawasaki against his "follow everyone that follows you" mentality? - Kevin Pruett

please do what you must to have the most effecient feed mr scoble, the random will still creep through the cracks, ;) - chaz2b

I still haven't really adopted FriendFeed, but I will get interesting here in time if you follow me. - Lance M. Brown

How are your cleanup efforts coming along? - Jennifer Ruggiero

Oops - I also meant to ask, Robert: how are you managing to follow the couple thousand that you are now re-following on Twitter? You must be using groups, I guess...any other methods? I find ~500 people to be a near max in terms of how many folks I can fully read. - Lance M. Brown

Following your inspiration, I unfollowed almost 100 people last night and blocked about 1000 spammers, cam girls, MLM marketers, and the like. Twitter is more like it was a year ago, its almost like I gave my Twitter account an enema and it worked. Thanks for the original idea. - Mark Edwards

Excellent! - Don Strickland

Robert, I started out only following those I know and those I am genuinely interested in. I've only followed back a few of the people who've followed me. I have a second account that I decided to experiment with. I followed about 700 people on there. It has had about double the followers of my main account consistently. I am about to try some new tricks there with an auto-follow script I'm writing but I think I will stay the course with my main account. - Paul The Raven

Robert, I tried the "follow everyone" (almost) method for a short time - then I'd unfollow about once-a-week. Now I try to schedule a "follow new" once a week. TweetDeck's group feature makes following lots of folks bearable. So does FF, but you've been saying that for-ever! - Kathy E Gill

I am just taking it slow. - Rick Cogley from iPhone

Hey. - Kreg Steppe

I will follow you if you follow me (Genesis) - Keith Barrett

I may not be smart, but I'm smart enough to follow you! - John Pfaff

It occurred to me (and surely to someone before me), that different definitions of "following" might be a big factor here. If I'm following someone, it means I'm following along with their updates. But others might see themselves more as becoming part of a person's "following". Not that they are necessarily reading the person's stuff, but they are willing to be considered part of that person's inflated Twitter posse, as part of the influence-trading aspect of Twitter. - Lance M. Brown

Robert, I think that the biggest thing that changed is not that you were "wrong" (to follow everyone) before but that the Twitter population has changed so much. A year ago, pretty much everyone on Twitter was real, and interesting - now there's so much automated gaming the system going on that the signal to noise ratio has gotten unbearable. So I think anyone who cares about more than... more... - Matthew Blaisdell

I can't imagine how it would happen technologically, but it would be great if there was a way to ditch followers who weren't actually reading your tweets. - Lance M. Brown

Enjoyed recent posts and look forward to more from you! Keep it up. - One Degree Connected

I don't want to be left out please!! - Jannifer @wordsforliving

All right, I'll bite :) - although I'll say that I did the mass-unfollow-thing months ago - long before it was cool. - Justin from Nambu

Your most active followers are on FF. No loss.If you really wanted to make a bold statement you ought to have blocked all of your followers and started from scratch. - Benjamin Taylor

Been a while since I put you and Shel On the record...Online - Eric Schwartzman

blah. - imabonehead

Good article Robert. I honestly enjoyed the perspective. I found the same to be true, but on a much lower scale, of course ;-) - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

i'm in! - Criz

I don't get it - so now you are using Twitter kinda like a normal person, and its some kind of miracle that it works better? - Nick Lothian

I'm impressed you can keep up with 1600 people. I have trouble enough with the little amount I have. I did find that making FriendFeed imaginary friends and putting them in groups for those I'd like to read occasionally (but not on a regular basis) has helped a lot - Tamara

Follow....how about some promotion! - Bob DeMarco

i'm in - Joshua Smith from twhirl

9/11 Was an Inside Job - bill giltner

Stop it, or I will have to get a restraining order. - Sriks7

Hey, Robert! - tomit from iPhone

In my mind I'm important enough to follow ;-) - Jonathan Callahan

Hello Robert....Whatever your favorite genre is...http://listen.grooveshark.com/#... - Michele Lorito-Chase

Looks like you have a lot of work to do following everybody. - Corbett Barr

now i'll have to write something interesting... - Robert Littlejohn

me! i offer nothing but the warm feeling of having accepted a ff reject. - Marco

ok. so how will you filter the noise now - Kfir Pravda

Ooo, I've won the lottery. You'll follow me now. Wheeee! (how do you have the time to go through all of the names by hand? VA assistance?) - Peggy Dolane

Great :) - Baard @ Pixum

Interesting trend on twitter - I always wondered what sense it made to follow tens of thousands of people, too much noise. I'm finding it hard enough to follow 2900 (looking to cull even that down as I mostly tweet about 30 people!) - Tia Singh, Life Coach

211th comment: WTF - Geer

Good :) - ★ Soner Gönül

I like your ability to influence so many people. I'm following you (mostly here - on FriendFeed) because it's one of the ways to learn how you do it (but, please, do not follow me if you do not see anything you could learn from me :-). - Hanna Wiszniewska

I would come up w/ a better vetting process. - Joe

why would you do that? - james

got to get a pic up so i can fit the criteria, I only follow 45 people and some of them are on thin ice ( Im lookin at you Scoble) - James Hunter

"Where in The Net is Robert San Diego?" (cit.) :-) - Luca Perugini from iPhone

I'm not kissing your arse,but i do learn a lot listening to you. - Paul Downing

@scobleizer why would you randomly follow people who comment in this post when you just got done knocking FFollo and having to unfollow a gazillion people on Twitter? - Bryan Zirkel

Bryan: because I'm following people one by one and putting them into lists on my screen. Autofollowing means you aren't doing ANY of that thinking. Also, autofollowing will get you spammers, if they ever show up (and they will). - Robert Scoble

@Robert: Read your blogpost and that's indeed what I look at to follow people too. No autofollow and even close friends have to tell something interesting for me to (keep) following. Friends who are new to Twitter (no tweets yet) get the benefit of doubt. - Patrick Mackaaij

If you follow me, great, but if you don't I'll understand. :) And I ought to do some pruning myself... - Grant Bierman

Let's give it a try. :0) - Toma Kazakov

I still don't understand how you want to follow someone who just writes a comment over here. Well, this is not the first time. I did not understand why and how you followed 100k people. I find it hard to properly follow 100 people. - Sumanth Kolar

Sumanth: obviously there are degrees of "following." When you read the New York Times, do you read the entire paper word for word? I don't. Same when I'm following. I only get random slices of some of my lists. Others, which have 500 people on them, get 100% read. - Robert Scoble

I'm still here . . . although tired after teaching all day. Louis Gray came to my PR class at SFSU and WOWED the 50 students [except for one who thinks we are making too much of social media] We won't be following him. - Shari Weiss

I like cheese! - Paul Puri

really? - clockwise from iPhone

Shari: Louis wows me too. Glad to see the class is getting into it. - Robert Scoble

He he :) - Richard Holas

I still like the "stranger stream" of Twitter vs "friend feed" of other applications. I don't feel the need to read all tweets from everybody - and tools let me check my fave tweeples. I think mass unfollowing destroys some of the social contract - Robert you are lucky because you are well liked and can do some risky things but companies for example (not Brands of One) would be in... more... - Laurel Papworth

As @charleneli predicted back in January, 2009 will be the year of de-friending on social networks. It's here. - Mark Evans

Laurel: yeah, you have to navigate these waters carefully if you are representing a brand, that's for sure! - Robert Scoble

you can put me on your boring list... - Charles Tanton

i will not get followed back: not powerful, don't have a brand, not a news maker... but i kinda understand the reasons - Dani Martínez

I still think it all goes into how you use twitter. If your using it as a communication tool it depends on if you are looking for broadcast or 2 way. Its interesting to watch as some of the bigger names turn back from the broadcast and go back to the 2 way. - Luke Kilpatrick

@Robert so when you're taking in information from FF do you have a feed of several dozen/hundred "key" people and then categorize the rest, or are you mainly searching? Do you utilize groups at all or mainly just rely on what comes across your feeds? I guess I'm curious as to how you're using FF to collect information. - Bryan Zirkel

I have found Twitter becomes noise rather than a conversation once the following/follower thing gets over a certain mark. I think this is the dirty little secret of Twitter - if it just turns into white noise, rather than a filter, then it becomes less than useful. - Michael Liss

I'm interested in how we'll all feel over the next few years as social networks continue to change and more people and organizations get on them. Obviously, many of us are getting fed up with spammers and are unfollowing them on Twitter and Facebook. I am also having a hard time keeping up with new subscribers on FriendFeed because I know less about them from their profiles and have to... more... - Cathryn Hrudicka

BTW, I feel like I'm finding lots of interesting new people to follow from these discussions that Robert and others are holding on FF. Cool! - Cathryn Hrudicka

Am I too late to comment and get followed? - Hichame Assi

I'm definitely around :) - KyNam Doan

Aren't you following me already? If not, you should be! LoL - Thomas Ward

I'm definitely late to be followed. :D - Faraz Mullick

I don't get it but ok :) - Parvez Halim

LOL! I follow those I find interesting and which can give me useful information. And hope someone follows me for the same reasons. - Flavio

Very interesting post - I've always thought that you guys who follow loads of people must get completely swamped by noise! Like you, I've found it useful to follow companies I use that have interesting products like Zoho and Evernote as a way of keeping up to date with their latest innovations. Excellent idea spelling out your "follow criteria" - it needs to become standard etiquette for social networks so that people don't get offended when they aren't followed back :) . - David Meredith

aren't you doing the same thing here, that you did in Twitter? Choose carefully who you follow, filling your brain with pollution doesn't make you smarter - Allison

Just finished reading the Mashable post on your unfollow exercise. It's attracting attention from all the other big names now. - George Hall (Australia)

Very interesting indeed, I only to unfollow a few, cause I just never had auto follow on.. So now I just unfollow the ones I'm bored of.. - Jaap Willem

Seems like a good idea. Although Louis Gray also has a few valid points on his latest blog post why it might be a mistake http://bit.ly/19UKxk - Silver Hage

I've never understood the auto-follow procedure on any social network. Even on Facebook, where it is obligatory, one can still lower the noise by simply hiding the updates of those who want to follow you, but perhaps also have little personal connection and therefore can be hidden. - Noah Gray

It seems like the unfollowing was the easy part. Choosing who to follow again must have been a chore. I think it is crucial in twitter (and FriendFeed for that matter) to have a clear out every six months or so otherwise you get bogged down in an information feed you don't really care about. - Chris Nixon

I can totally understand why you had to do this. I'm following 2700-ish folks on Twitter and I need 3 groups to manage it (using TweetDeck). I feel I am keeping up with most of my local community and the general tech community at large though I'm sure I'm still missing quite a bit of stuff from people who are not in the 3 groups. I also wonder how much more I can actually handle. - Ken Seto

Um... well, I made something of myself, but then I didn't like what I made, so now I'm doing it all over again. Not sure how that fits with your criteria! Plus, I really don't have a brand or any influence to speak of. I do look great in boxers, however. - Mark "Godt Nyt Ǻr"

OK, OK, changed my picture. Instead of a green clock (a clock is my personal brand) I put a picture of myself. A lot of people told me to do that.... - Bora Zivkovic

I am still looking for info on holographic technology being used for news delivery. Perhaps it's a technology that hasn't even been invented yet or is sitting on a shelf somewhere. What say you? http://specialdee.wordpress.com/2009... - Denise

Hoping your new look account has had the desired effect. No need to follow me, I'm not the interesting type, I'll just be glad if your insights, links & content continues. Congrats & good luck - JanLawrence

Here's what's interesting, Robert, I've noticed an uptick in followers even if you reply or RT or like someone's tweet, not just if you follow that person. Then again, perhaps that's the intent - if you like or RT someone's idea, that's a kind of stamp of approval. - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Hej hej! - Peter

The Scoble Pendulum.. How long till we go back to FOLLOW!! FOLLOW!!! FOLLOW!!!! ? :) - Adrian Scicluna

I did a purge on Facebook for the same reasons a few months ago. It's under 300 and it's people I actually care about. I've come "this close" to running a purge on Twitter but haven't yet. Maybe this will spark me to do it. I've kept FF tight from the beginning. - Rob Williams

moving from FB to FF ... fewer, longer, more meaningful threads. welcoming your follow. cheers - marc calamia

ok, you´re following me already :-) - Torsten Eckert

alright - follow me... - thx in advance Robert Scoble... - Nilesh

All that commenting in the past counts for nothing? - Kevin Gamble

Hey Robert... Great post... On FriendFeed, I increasingly put people without meaningful and valuable content on a separate feed that I rarely check... Its a more "sensible" way to unfollow, i think... I only unsubscribe if I get pissed at someone etc. I wish, FF gave users the option to only unsubscribe from comments and likes (but keep the main feed). This would be a good tool to control the noise... - Onur Kabadayi

I agree with Robert (duh!). I very briefly made the effort of checking out the new follows and deciding whether to follow back. I think once I hit a thousand I shifted to a model of occasionally saying, "If you want me to follow you, talk to me." Hit two thousand and quit saying anything or checking followers. I don't care if they follow me as long as they either say useful things like real people or don't talk at all. I've never autofollowed back. This strategy works for me. - Patricia F. Anderson

I have a large difference between people I follow (around 2000) and people who follow me (around 1800) - I choose people who are important sources of information. People choose me if they think I am an important source of information to them. I never thought it would have to be a one-to-one relationship as to who is useful to whom: some are informative, others are good listeners and learners. I learn from people I follow and I hope my followers learn from me. - Bora Zivkovic

I also think that those of us who follow larger numbers of people don't use the stream in the same way. It is more dipping in and out of the stream, trusting that the important stuff will be repeated enough to float to the top, engaging with conversations of the moment. I wrote a blogpost on this earlier this year: http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2009... - Patricia F. Anderson

Someone told me twitter can be separated into two types. (id say at least two) - Kay Proskin

Scoble, I am beginning to think you are a cult leader :). Look at all these comments! I am using FF more and more these days... Useful for eGuiders.com that's for sure. - Marc Ostrick

I'm not sure your following me. - Amit Morson

Hey Scobie :D Follow me ! - paniaguai

I like Robert. He was one of the first people I followed on Twitter and brought me to FF. But I don't understand why people are desperate to have him follow them. Status? Some kind of virtual autograph? - Tech Introvert

What the heck. Follow me if you like. I'll be as entertaining & informative as I can. - Aaron Schaub from iPod

Been considering doing the same. Your post just might be the flame that lights a fire you-know-where to get it done. - @katebuckjr

I only follow a few people and keep losing track so lord only knows how you managed to even begin to keep track of a conversation before friendfeed came along - Iain from BuddyFeed

Well done! Who need followers that aren't reading your tweets anyway. - Sean Rasmussen

I just want a toaster! - ZuDfunck

I'm considering doing same once I'm more confident in my use of FriendFeed. I RT'd this and it resonated with at least one of my followers. - Tony Hollingsworth

'Hand-crafted personal network' is the meme of the moment, and whilst I can see the workmanship, where's the value going to be for you, Robert, in following this rag-tag (no offence people :) ) of folks from a gazillion different verticals. (OK, so they're mostly life scientists). - Andrew Spong

I use to want to be Bob Dylan. Now I am not so sure. - ZuDfunck

um..... - Spencer

My take: you can't be an authentic, credible voice to your community if you let 'sex & dollars' spammers hang on to your coattails. Spam followers matter.... in a bad way. Allowing them to be associated with you diminishes your potential value to genuine followers. It's a pain. It takes time. It's worth doing. More on this, if interested: http://tr.im/vJwb - Andrew Spong

I'll have mine to go. - ZuDfunck

Hope to see more "old fashioned blogging", like it better than tweets. Tweets are bound to disappear into oblivion the moment they're posted. - Willem (@wim66) ☠

"Spam followers matter.... in a bad way." - I certainly agree with this. I block pornbots just as quickly as they follow me. I'm less vigilant about the commercial follows, but usually they go away by themselves after a while. - John Craft

You're already following me here (don't care about twitter tough), so i just hope you don't un-follow, even though you probably don't understand what i'm talking about most of the time, since it's in portuguese. - Diego Sana

So what happened to the advantages to following so many people you always talked about? - Bas

Thanks for connecting here, still learning all the advantages of FF - carece

@Andrew Regarding spam followers and the idea that allowing them to follow you somehow dilutes your credibility, I just have to disagree. To me that places the burden on the wrong person. I don't have time to waste pruning those who follow me, unless they are overtly annoying.My stream is public, they can follow me anyway. What matters to me is that the spammers leave me alone. If they don't, I block them. If they keep quiet, I don't care. - Patricia F. Anderson

What is important is not who follows me, but who *I* follow. - Patricia F. Anderson

Follow me if you want, but I gotta warn ya, it's scintillating stuff! - Pierce Presley

Funny my twitter feed is much noisier but I have been very selective on who I follow. I have tried to make the feed relevant and actionable. At times I post things that seem out of the norm on my twitter feed but that is mainly for the few people who follow me that don't get it but I am trying to keep up their interest level. I also control who follows me, yes this breaks the model but I think the follow everyone model was broken and reckless - Richard Gallo

Am I interesting? Dunno. I'm often controversial, tho. ;) BTW, we met in person at a Pittsburgh Blogfest, but I really don't expect you to remember that. - Eric Williams

Enjoyed the post. I just started Twitter a few days ago to get away from Facebook. I like friendfeed the best - can't wait until it becomes more mainstream. - Robby Parker

Awesome move. Consider that my comment please :) - Charlotte Barker

friendfeed is definitively more evolved that Twitter. Conversely, user bases of Twitter is still its real (and unique) point of strenght... - Marco Castellani

Don't want you to follow me (unless you find my stream of interest) but it's quite interesting the number of people that comment to get you to follow! - Ben Drury

Hey Robert! So, I would like to talk to you about a social media company I'm working with right now. They launched a few months ago and their trajectory and momentum is pretty amazing. Oh, and I started unfollowing the noise in my Twitter after I commented on your blog post. - Gregg Le Blanc

Great ideas. I've been selective (though it fluctuates) about following people/accounts on Twitter since I joined about 2 years ago. I can't take too much noise. - Joe Lance from twhirl

I'm asking the same thing Bas asked... what about your video on the benefits of following so many people? I took a stab at that method of madness by starting to follow all kinds of people, and following anyone that followed me... but I always felt like I was missing good content from good people because of all the "spam". I started to use TweetDeck to create groups/columns for... more... - Timothy Federwitz

@Patricia - reminds me that I should probably review all my twitter followers and thin things down. :) - JA Castillo

thanks - Keith

I like conversing with interesting people. Sometimes that means commenting to get followed, @cogiva. ;) - Eric Williams

Hi Scoble! - Pete Gilbert

I did almost the same thing - unfollowed about 1000 from my 1500, no attention is way better - Maarten den Braber

Couldn't agree more. It's about time we all grew up. BTW Don't follow me. :-) - Gee Ranasinha

Robert what's the deal with Twitter? - stockmanmarc

Your post makes good sense. I didn't auto-follow & still find folks to unfollow because their noise gets too loud. - Debra Ellis

Very clever. I imagine the signal to noise is sooooo much better. - Chris Brogan

I've been thinking about unfollowing a bunch twitter folks as well. I'll look at SocialToo again. My initial experience with SocialToo wasn't good. However, it was during their infancy. - Ron Hudson

I don't blame you at all. Leo was all over that yesterday. - Daniel B. Honigman

why would simply leaving a comment prompt you to follow me? - David Wescott

You're not going to change your mind and mass unfollow us are you? - walidmREALTOR

Sup! :-) - Jon Winters

I suspect it identifies you as a real person interested in dialog, David. - Eric Williams

Followers are currency and you have plenty to spend - Lee Odden

Bob, did you do anything on Twitter recently ? Did you massively refollow people ? Seems like you screwed up Twitter : down for a while... ;-) - Enikao

Follow me! @carloscomputers - carloscomputers

very cool timing with just before twitter goes down hard! well done Robert! @crbrowning - Colin

@davidorban - David Orban

I've followed you and have really enjoyed your posts. I think I would miss that - Tom

Good to hear that your experiment has stopped the spam @lindsaydavies - Lindsay Davies

ciao Robert! - alex

Your ego is amazing. You make it seem like it is a special deal to be followed by you. I'm glad there are many very bright, talented people here who follow others, regardless of class, education, social status and not based on some snobbish criteria. - RuthNH

DON'T follow me! I write in Italian :-) - Lorenzo Strambi

Here I be - Robert

Wow, this is a lot of comments. And kudos for following Followable people who have something interesting to contribute to your day. I'm glad you did it, because that means you'll find AND share more interesting things. This, in turn, makes you more followable too. Thanks for seeing the light, so to speak. - ax0n

You killed twitter. - Melissa Pierce

and now with twitter down, many will flock to here! - Mark V. Fusco

I love rob - Mark from iPhone

Did this take down Twitter this morning Robert? - frank barry

That must of taken a long time :-) I've always been a fan of twitter, but I must say they have struggled in the last few weeks. We are working with their API on a project and their seems to be an issue every other day that causes problems. Do they have what it takes? - Chris Nadeau

I follow under 200 people and it's great. I can't imagine 1k+ . I add about three or four a month. - Mike Janicke

I unfollow people when I find I ignore their tweets/updates. After reading your blog, I think we ALL need to be more judicious. - Janet Barker-Evans

Is this why Twitter is down? LOL! Can't check to see if you unfollowed me. Hope not. You, Shel Israel, and Jeremiah Owyang were some of the very first people I followed way back before Twitter even had 100,000 people on the service. -- It's been a fun ride but, of course, the spammers always show up to make things difficult. - Brenda Young

How do you really know if you should be following someone until you follow them for a while? Sometimes I don't start talking to someone until I see a common interest, then I tweet back and we start talking, but that could be months later. I don't follow everyone back, but I follow back those that interact. I will unfollow once I see that won't happen, or I don't like their tweets. - Nadine Gilden

Twitter is victime of it own success, they have to re learn how to scal better, but more important they have to learn to share better. - abdellah

looks like you'll need to follow at least 343 people LOL - Shari Weiss

Friendfeed takes over for twitter finally? - Thomas Resing

@Patricia I don't want potential followers to be put off by who is following me. I wouldn't want them to think I care more about have n+1 followers than I do about what they're going to see if they review who I've allowed to follow me. Not to cull spammers suggests I care more about my experience than theirs. To a great extent, the quality of their experience will determine the quality... more... - Andrew Spong

1600 ... isn't that a big number too? It could be you'll think again before you follow every one here :) - Mario Gastaldi

Hi... do I get a follow? - Jason Mayoff

If you are already following me. Will you double follow me? :) - Brady

Hi Robert!! :) - Zaneology from Nambu

Still waiting for my Building 43 t-shirt. Not that I'm bitter or anything. ;-) - Donna Tuttle

Be sure to come by Dallas when you swing through Texas! - Zaneology from Nambu

Respect your opinion Robert but we'll have to agree to disagree. Yes I despise all the FakePornSpamBots who follow me. I block as many as I can, but can't keep up. Our views differ regarding what is important to SEE! I treasure home Home stream! I read it, refresh, read, refresh and in minutes I have the pulse of the world... at least MY world! EVERYONE has something of value to share at some point. If I UNfollow tens of thousands, I will miss so much worthy of consideration. - Arleen Boyd

Just another reason why it's good to diversify, I can still read your posts here. :) - Luis Sandoval

Cheers! - Jeff Wiant

Funny. I was catching up on news on Friendfeed for some odd reason. Great post; plenty for new and long-time users alike to consider there. - Alex Howard

I'm still waiting for the ultimate tool to manage my followings - I can only manage to keep up with about 1/3 of those following me. I'd love to see something that can tell me what friends of mine also follow those that I am or those that are following me. Maybe it's out there and I missed it? - TheDiva Rockin

Anyone interested in assessing the quality of their followers should check http://tweetblocker.com. It's pretty chastening. I aim to improve on my C rating. http://www.buzzom.com is a fun, fast way of decoupling yourself from non-reciprocal followers. You can select individuals to purge, or flush 50 random non-reciprocal followers at a time. - Andrew Spong

Robert, your timing could not be better. ;-) - Dave Martin

Great post, with perfect timing! Dang it, Dave Martin just took it off my lips. - Vadim Lavrusik

I hereby rename this comment thread neoTwitter <waves at followers> - Andrew Spong

/me waves - Kevin Johnson from iPhone

Awww, you gotta admit, saturation, the level of influence that you have, because of your high follower, count, is a tool of mass destruction. Seriously, did you think if you recommend an online service that people would not try it out? Was this an asassination attempt - Peter Murphy

I'm glad i'm not the only one who misses /me actions from IRC, Kevin. ;) - Eric Williams

With today's Twitter outage your timing is pretty stinking good, Robert. :) - Chris Cree

Now to get the rest of the world to follow that same logic when it comes to follow/unfollow! I only started being more selective as Twitter (and everyone else) started getting aggressive with spammers or anyone that even remotely did a single spammy tweet. Now if only there were the same contact management tools available for the other social networks as with Twitter. No matter what though, I'll continue updating my status when I eat a peanut butter sandwich! (With Fluff of course!). - Paul Monaco

Twitter couldn't handle the mass unfollow load, blew up... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I've been followed by Robert Scoble :-) - David Finch

Follow iPolitics - Jacob Kobi Gamliel

Now I think that it is time to think about a way to make money using Twitter. - abdellah

@Mark, +1. When in doubt, the default delegation of blame goes to Robert. - Dave Martin

what is critical mass for twitter? Too few and nobody interacts, Too many and spam bots overwhelm, Is it 1K or 2K needed to get a real experience? - WarLord

Hmm can you unsubscribe from "comment notification via e-mail" in FF on a *specific* topic? This one :-) - Patrick Mackaaij

Of course I thonk it is a different experience if you hand follow reading each bio from the beginning then these mass purges are unnecessary - WarLord

I thought you already followed me. lol - Duane-PreppyDude

Not sure if you do, but here I am... - Aron Michalski

I am intrigued how RT addict will RT now?!! (ps: FF please don't post this to my twitter) - abdellah

I have been keeping my twitter account private a majority of the time lately b/c I am going through a divorce, but I really kinda like it. Have been reducing followers as well as the number I follow. - Jackson Miller

You should follow me here in FF and on Twitter too! - Karthi

hopefully most of us have proven our worth beyond commenting on this single thread - andy brudtkuhl

I like the way you operate, Scoble. Thanks in advance for the follow! - Dr. Frank Ramblings, Ph.D

Nice way of doing it... - Charles

No need to follow me unless you are actually going to engage in conversation with me. - Jeff Hurt

If you're already following and we comment, will you unfollow? *wink Hoping all is well your way! - Dayngr

4&5 are my favorite! Those are big reasons I decide to follow someone too. - Kelly Mitton

I'm lucky. Have never had Twitter spam. But then again I'm no Scoble either :) - Lori Reed

I am the peanut butter eating bot - Benjamin Spector

If you are already following me on ff does that mean I get a cookie or something? ;-) - Tomy Thomson

I'll add my name to the list. I came back to FF after the Twitter DoS outage. Maybe Scoble broke Twitter by all his unfollowing. He was the "glue" holding Twitter together. :-) - Tom Newman

Robert: Here's the bit you missed off the end of your title here: .... and put them in that group I don't read :-) - Jim Connolly

Hi Robert, greetings from germany. - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

add me for your social media and the practice of law news! - Rex Gradeless

Great post. I'm sure that some people might say that this kind of mass unfollowing will hurt Twitter, but I think it's just the opposite. Users who are following people they have no interest in just to pad their own numbers are diminishing the meaning of "following." - Mark Denton

@Ulrichmargarita - Ulrichmargarita

To stave off being unfollowed we need to comment here ya say? - Jason

you are already following me here... perhaps you'll consider re-following me on twitter too - t i n y m

I don't know how you ever did it the other way. I am not in the tech world near as much as I used to be, which wasn't a whole lot. I just followed some random people I saw on SMugMug-related people on here when I started. You were one of them. I had no idea who you were (and still don't :-), but you talked about Twitter a lot too, which got me on there as well. Both services have really... more... - James Schipper

Follow away! - Ferdinand Perez

ok 400 jackpot - abdellah

Quality over quantity in all things, including (perhaps especially) Twitter. Loved your friending methodology -- those are the same rules I've applied since being on Twitter. Posted them onto Posterous to share the love with credit to you: http://lorilaurentsmith.posterous.com/ - Lori Laurent Smith

it's not about unfollowing, it's about filtering... - Barak Hachamov

I started out following everyone on Twitter.Then I got wise. When someone's stream becomes more noise than signal, that's when I consider unfollowing. I realize that threshhold is different for everyone, but I'll take "what I had for lunch" over a dozen bogus "marketing tips" any day. - Julie Barrett from twhirl

Well, I am trying to use FriendFeed more after watching Scoble's video on all those monitors he had up. I'm not a big consumer of information and don't own a TV but this online social stuff has been a perfect fit into my life because I can connect with people who are fountains of knowledge on a specific subject or are "human mashups". I like both! - Adria Richards

Why !? - Bertrand Soulier from iPhone

I've been reading al of this unfollow bits, and this point of yours: - Donna

Hey, I think that today you might make your point about FriendFeed being more interesting than Twitter. Hope you are well. Talked with @fransteps this morning and she is excited to work with you at Rackspace. - Kami Huyse

hi - George Desmyter

I would appreciate the follow, thanks! - Jeff Reisdorfer

I've been reading all of this un-follow posts lately, and this point of yours in WHY you unfollowed: "#2 Because I personally care about everyone I am following their noise level is a LOT lower. ." Is exactly what I do. And now I am starting to understand Friendfeed more. and using posterous to do aggregate posts. So is this overload making more people sit up and think first? I think so. At least the intelligent ones. - Donna

I love you Scoble! ;) - Carol Levesque

with all due sycophantism :) - jeff hammond

This is a great move, Robert. It's also a lot more human...I was almost convinced that you were the only person who could actually drink from the fire hose without choking. - Steffan Antonas

That sounds fair. After this morning, I've renewed my love for FriendFeed and Tweetworks. Until the next DDos attacks, of course. I will miss the fake porn stars, but I did when I moved from L.A. - Scott Pierce

Steffan; I agree...there is no way anyone else could do what Robert S. does. It's good to see him become human. - Robert Jones

This has been my problem for about the past six months. I routinely go in and unfollow, get the noise level down to where I want it, and then end up following back a bunch of new people, some of whom I'm incredibly grateful to get to know. When I had track, it was a whole lot easier to manage the stream, but I suspect even that tool would now be out of hand. I have a set of rules for... more... - Karoli

hee hee. i am commenting not so much to beg your follow but what a clever pitch:) - Tresha Thorsen

Robert - I have not read all 416 comments so if this was asked and you answered forgive me. What was the all of a sudden revelation that caused you to reverse stance on Twitter Followers? - Jeff Vreeland

It's difficult to maintain and filter a list on all the social networking sites. I cannot even imagine maintaining the kinds of lists you must deal with, Robert. - Jeremy Brooks

Dude, you broke Twitter! When you unfollowed all of your 100,000 the other day you pulled the rug right out from under it, so it fell down and now it can't reach its beer. :-) - Robert Morrison

Actually I felt rather sad being fav'ed by you on FriendFeed then dumped.. But again. I get more from you from FriendFeed, so oh well, stop talking about Following and Get on more with Tech! :P - Du Senyao Peter

Me Me! lol! - Bill McGehee

i like the idea of importing favorite tweets into friendfeed. i haven't used that favorite feature much because i haven't seen any real use in it. thanks! - Jonathan Blundell

When twitter is down I always wish I could tweet: checkout friendfeed. Nevertheless, how will following folk that leave a message here really improve the quality of your input? While I don't want to judge many of the fine folk on this thread, are they all that interesting? In other words, isn't this the start of the same problem you had on Twitter... - Jon Mountjoy

what like here? this is a comment :) - michelle harris

Barak - isn't filtering just unfollowing while pretending you're still following? ;) - Matthew Blaisdell

Well to bounce back on your Twitter is down comment I think it is time to watch this video again http://www.youtube.com/watch... Hilarious! - 77Agency

Robert, I'm glad you decided to stop auto-follow (finally). :) - Veronica Sopher

I'm in - Jeroen Sangers from Nambu

works for mw - Brendan Jackson from twhirl

Robert, but why clutter your FriendFeed stream? This comment is not to get you to courtesy follow me on FriendFeed, think you've established you've changed your thinking. :) - L.P. NEENZ FALEAFINE

OK, I have enough people to follow so I will close the comments on this thread. Thank you everyone, I will try to get to everyone today. - Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble

I am tracking people on Twitter's SUL like @timoreilly. They can't get people to follow them on Facebook or FriendFeed. Here's analysis:

June 22 - Comment - Like - Share

Steffan Antonas, LouCypher, Andreas Edler and 73 other people liked this

Tim has 617,000 followers on Twitter -- almost all gained because he is on the suggested user list. But he only has 10,000 followers on FriendFeed. TechCrunch has almost the same pattern. Why is this? - Robert Scoble

217 more comments

They can't get people to follow them because the people who added them are not really listening and impressionable. - Louis Gray

You have to be engaged and interactive to have influence. - Louis Gray

It's what I was hinting at this morning. Most of the users on Twitter don't actually take action or DO anything. They aren't followers. They aren't listening. They aren't engaged. So these audiences can't be transfered anywhere else. - Robert Scoble

Twitter is Revolution! Yay Twitter! - Steven E. Streight

This is Twitter's true lock in. - Robert Scoble

Could it also be that they never talk about Friendfeed or Facebook while on Twitter and therefore no one knows that they're actually here? - Kenton

Yeah, Twitter has turned into more micro-rss for me versus conversational. - Tony

Why would any freedom loving person NOT have a green avatar? - Steven E. Streight

617,000, but how many of those are active users? I'd imagine 50% or more are one time users, dead accounts - sean percival

It's all about narcissism for most people unfortunately. - Steven E. Streight

It's impossible for anybody to have 617,000 followers on Friendfeed, because that's about double the active network size. ;) - Shéa Bennett

LOL - Steven E. Streight

Shea: very funny! - Robert Scoble

Kenton, That's it for me. I follow Tim on Twitter, actually find him very engaged there, but didn't automatically assume he was on FB and FF. Now I will - Francine Hardaway

I hate FaceBook - Steven E. Streight

also the chance of someone responding on a sul is higher on friendfeed that is on twitter - Kashif Khan

Shea: the problem with your thesis is that it holds true on Facebook. I have more fans there than TechCrunch does. - Robert Scoble

Also, if you only ever re-tweet instead of putting up original content your followers are going to tend to be more passive. - Kenton

how about them dopey Positive Affirmation tweeters? Ugh! - Steven E. Streight

If I want inspirational quotes, I'll open a Bible thank you. - Steven E. Streight

Like prob all of you I am on numerous social websites, twitter is not great at all unless you like the constant stream of tweet torrents - it is quick to interact with, that's why I use it the most right now. - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Kenton: that's true too, but TechCrunch puts up original content and he has fewer followers on Facebook than I do (and I post almost NOTHING on Facebook). - Robert Scoble

This is the very basic definition of following, you don't act, you follow. If you want to engage people, you need a community, which twitter can help you to manage but won't do for you. @loic can make many people do something, he has influence, because he built a community, not because he has followers. - Jonathan Belgourari

Jonathan: yup and Guy Kawasaki has a lot more influence than I do and he neither is on Twitter's SUL and he doesn't even write all his own Tweets (he admits he has a team writing them). - Robert Scoble

twitter is also great to find out about people in a quick way, you otherwise wold never engage with. the next step blog, friendfeed, fb or email is just as easy. - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

if you have a lot of followers interaction is very limited. You miss out on so much when you hit the refresh page when you have followers . Im guessing after many attempts of trying to communicate and not receiving anything back ppl quit - Kashif Khan

Jonathan: I call that a "reader" or a "consumer" then, not a follower. Followers do what you ask them to do. :-) - Robert Scoble

Went and looked for him on FB. Not even a photo? Does he hang out there? - Francine Hardaway

on a much smaller scale I've looked at overlaps between my twitter (3000) fb (900) ff (800); there seems to be about 300 people who are common to all three, the rest choose where and how to interact with me. I tend to think of the 300 as my "digital dunbar number". - JP Rangaswami

Kashif: I interact here with almost everyone and I have 42,000 followers here. - Robert Scoble

good point Robert, I don't really consider Facebook a place to go for information like that so I had only really considered Friendfeed. - Kenton

Robert Scoble you are insane that does not count:) - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Twitter is a different medium to the others, Robert. It's a lot less of a commitment to follow somebody on that network. FF has a relatively tiny user base so a comparison there is apples and oranges. Facebook for the majority is still less about following *anybody* and more about following people you know and trust. Why? Because you're giving away a lot of yourself each time you add... more... - Shéa Bennett

Alex: heheh. I'm not the only insane one. - Robert Scoble

but where is interacting easier , twitter or friendfeed ? - Kashif Khan

haha... - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Shea: the truth about Twitter is that many people check it out for a few minutes and then never return to the service. Or if they do return, they do so very sporadically. Over here or on Facebook the audiences are much more engaged. - Robert Scoble

I agree with Louis. you have to interact and participate. - Johnny from BuddyFeed

imagine having to track this same conversation using twitters web interface and not having tweetdeck or seismic to help you out - Kashif Khan

Robert: I keep hearing that but I'm very engaged with my network. And I regularly remove the people who I feel don't make any kind of an effort. It's all about keeping things relative. - Shéa Bennett

I am still scared to contact anybody on Facebook, because I don't know if the want to stay private/real friends, or if they like me joining their conversation = I never send friend requests - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Shea: the other truth about the Suggested User List is these are not organic followers. They are people who opened an account and clicked "add all the suggested users." Before Tim and Mashable and TechCrunch were added to that list I had more followers on Twitter. So did Leo Laporte. So did Guy Kawasaki. So, most of those newer followers that Tim and Mike got by being on the SUL aren't strong followers. That's why they aren't very engaged. - Robert Scoble

I agree re: Twitter - they check it out and then leave - the follow and forget methodology. I guess the real measure of how interactive his followers are would be to request that they do something (click a link, etc.) In reality, if he got 1/10 of 1% to do anything, I'd be impressed. - Jeff Pomeroy

You also have to remember that the majority of FB's 200 million users are non-techy people, many of whom see FB *as* the internet, not just a product of it. I think Twitter's audience is maturer (in terms of average age, as well as content) and less interesting in bells and whistles (videos, music etc). - Shéa Bennett

Jeff: what got Twitter to be so cool is engagedment USED to be a lot higher than 1/10th of 1% for everyone. Now it has gone down. - Robert Scoble

I have no disagreement at all about the SUL. I've written several articles about it on Twittercism. It needs to be scrapped or totally revamped. And yeah, a lot of the followers folk get from being on the SUL are very casual users, assuming they return at all. - Shéa Bennett

Shea: I totally disagree with that thesis. I did a survey of 600 Web innovators, influencers, and press. About 85% are on all three social networks (Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook). And many of those are participating more on Facebook than on Twitter lately. Why is that? - Robert Scoble

Robert, my 'suggested user list' was full of esoteric treehuggers and feelgood-psychos. I am a software architect and astrophysics hugger instead. Facebook hooks me up with really strange algorithms - meh.. - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

"you reached level 14 in #spymaster" - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

:) - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Alex: I blocked spymaster. :-) - Robert Scoble

I would too, like many other things, but than I want diversity. I want a lot of different people and opinions to challenge my thinking. - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Maybe they are participating on Facebook more because they can truly control who sees what when they have their discussions. Twitter allows a lot of 'noise' to occur from unknown followers when these people are trying to communicate amongst themselves. Maybe Facebook or Friendfeed is just the better medium for those types of interactions. - Jeff Pomeroy

Robert: Which thesis? Blasted Friendfeed and its lack of threaded comments. ;) - Shéa Bennett

even on FB its easier to track conversations - Kashif Khan

Jeff, I agree. And I also think 'older people are more comfortable with FB. The 'older folks' on twitter are broadcasting their wisdoms and not interacting - most of them... - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

great listening to you guys - friendfeed proves something right here;) see ya. i'm out... - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

As for why your list are involved more on FB than Twitter, I have no idea. But 600 from either network is still a very small sample. I'm confused how these folk are actually "participating" on FB, too. Specifically, what does that word mean on that network? What do they do? My experience is that over half of my followers go ballistic if I update my status on FB more than about 15-20 times per day. And I'm *very* selective to make sure it's only the good stuff. :) - Shéa Bennett

It is personality vs brand. You Robert, Jason Calacanis, Leo Lapporte, are personalities before brand. We talk to you as real people. O'riley is brand before personality. We are not used to talking back to a brand unless we're miffed about something. It is just not normal. For instance today when you asked my question at the #hpreveal thing it cought them off guard and totally blew me... more... - Ron Hudson

Ron: good point. The real answer is that Twitter totally messed with the system by choosing its own "stars" instead of letting the real stars organically bubble up to the top. Since O'Reilly and Arrington are "chosen stars" their followers aren't strong followers like the ones that they got organically. Even Arrington admits this in analysis. - Robert Scoble

I totally agree with Ron about that. That's what I love about FF and Twitter - it's the first time that we've had anything like a level playing field for discourse. And the ones who don't engage now stand out like sore thumbs. - Shéa Bennett

I always love it when somebody has 40,000 followers but is following 40 people. What a waste. Why even engage? You, Robert have almost as many followers as followees. - Curt Mercadante

for me it seems that given his lopsided ratio, it gives the impression that he is not truly interactive but rather broadcasting and waiting for feedback. - Eran Even-Kesef

An engaged audience is built slowly, not quickly - Jesse Stay

So now when a new user gets on Twitter they see the same reinforced message from everywhere else. "These are people/brands you should LISTEN to" It is not "These are people to get to know and have conversation with" - Ron Hudson

Robert, wouldn't the organic SUL just be the top 100 most-followed? Which even before the SUL got going wasn't exactly a bastion of quality. All Twitter needs to do is mix things up - when I sign up (or check the SUL at any time), the service should give me X of its own recommendations, and the same amount that are tailored to me by my own interests. Of course, for this to really work... more... - Shéa Bennett

Curt: lots of people use these things for broadcasting. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I do prefer to follow people who engage. - Robert Scoble

Hey Louis Gray are you anti-SUL like many of us in this thread? - Mark

I followed @timoreilly for a while on twitter, but didn't find him interesting enough to keep following. It's true that @GuyKawasaki doesn't write all his own tweets, but I like them and look forward to them (if one of his ladies have written the tweet they will have their initials at the end of it.) I follow you, Robert, because I like your tweets too. I will follow anyone who follows... more... - Andrew Jordan

Shea: I can see about 100 ways to build a useful SUL. The current SUL just serves @ev and @biz 's own egos and purposes. - Robert Scoble

Mark: just remember that Twitter has signaled to the world that anyone who begs to be on, or complains about the SUL will never get onto it. - Robert Scoble

Robert: I agree. Between us, if they added you overnight, would you ask to be removed? I suspect you would, and I know at least one other has. - Shéa Bennett

Robert: Why do you think you are not on the Twitter SUL? iJustine was on it (til she was removed) - yet no Scobleizer - It makes zero sense. - Jim Connolly

Shea: yes, I will ask to be removed. I know one person who removed himself too. (Jay Rosen, journalism professor). Why would I ask to be removed? Because it's a huge gift and one that I would feel I need to disclose every time I talk about Twitter. Look at how many times I'm asked whether I'm paid by FriendFeed. Well, everyone on the Suggested User List is being paid by Twitter. - Robert Scoble

This feels like irc without the useful tools like tab-auto-complete. I keep wanting to ssh out and open irssi. . . - Ron Hudson

Aw man, I miss IRC. - Jason Nunnelley

There's a group of people I follow on twitter not to be part of their conversation but to inform conversations I have with people I know. My friends/acquaintances don't use friendfeed so I have little use for it. Facebook I leave for friends/family and twitter/web forums are for acquaintances. - Jonathan

Jim: three reasons I have never been on Twitter's Suggested User List: 1. Technically I was difficult to put on the list before they got rid of the @ reply functionality (I was one of the 3% who turned that feature on). 2. I talk about FriendFeed all the time (I wouldn't add someone who talked about a competitor all the time to my service either). 3. I have had days when I'm too noisy... more... - Robert Scoble

Does anyone know or have links to comments made by people on the SUL about the issue? - Mark

Robert: Thats a very honest and almost certainly accurate answer. - Jim Connolly

Mark: I've had some contact with @adventuregirl. - Shéa Bennett

There is a risk here of course regarding complaining about the SUL that one could easily be accused of sour grapes; that is, along the lines of, "How did THEY get on there, and not me?" Although I also suspect that the majority (the masses, if you will) on Twitter don't really care at all about things like the SUL, and are fairly blasé to the criticisms about it. I sincerely believe... more... - Shéa Bennett

Mark: honestly I've been following the SUL and other than when Veronica ripped me a new one for asking whether there was some sort of corruption to get on the list (big brands get on the list, for instance, and this list is totally corruptible because it is NOT a meritocracy) I can't remember ever hearing someone on the SUL discussing it in public. They know better because they are being gifted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of followers and they don't want to be removed. - Robert Scoble

Mark: It's REALLY hard getting answers from people like Veronica Belmont or Pete Cashmore. They are both really cool people, but neither have replied to anything I have asked them, in relation to their SUL places. It's like they have been gagged. - Jim Connolly

Mark: It's here http://www.thetechnewsblog.com/2009... - Jim Connolly

Shea: most people will not care, that's right, until they figure out they are peasants in a royalty system. Then they will seek out systems that are meritocracies. The tide is already moving. - Robert Scoble

Robert: To your earlier point re: Tim O'Reilly - if the SUL system is broken and really just a method whereby new twitter users follow & forget, are these people truly "being gifted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of followers"? - Jeff Pomeroy

I'm sure most of them don't wanna look a gift horse in the mouth. Is that the right metaphor? hehe - Mark

Hmm, I'm not sure Robert. Nobody seemed to leave FB when they were at risk of being sold out - the numbers just went up and up. I think the people who truly fight for this stuff are always in a real minority - they seem more prevalent because they're loud! :) I think most people drift away from social networks when they seem to have run their course, like MySpace. - Shéa Bennett

Jeff: yes, they are because they are now owning the top of lists at http://www.wefollow.com and other places. Also they are getting PR on TV shows worth many thousands of dollars (journalists love picking sources with huge numbers after their names). Finally: SOME of these followers DO engage. - Robert Scoble

Maybe Tim is too focused? he is not a chit chat BS guy enough to interest large amounts of people... Focus gives value but value that is high and very specific to certain (few) people. As you hinted Robert, value is not a matter of # of followers but of real impact /traction. People will listen and act more upon what is said on FF. FF is more value than traffic. - Harscoat

Maybe if a few dozen of us from this thread @reply the big players asking for a statement on their placw on SUL they will respond? - Mark

Scoble: I'm not sure they/we will seek out meritocracies. Like I said before it is not expected. I can go to crackberry forums or IRC if I want to be respected in a niche I think Facebook is more likely to draw people who want to be heard by their peers, because generally it is people you already have an established hierarchy of popularity with. It's high-school all over again. We tend to hang with our group and don't expect to be heard in others. - Ron Hudson

Don't get me wrong - folk will put their name on lists, and that kind of non-committal stuff. But when it comes to the crunch and, you know, actually quitting over change, they rarely do. - Shéa Bennett

Jeff: Yes they are, because most of them are selling some kind of advertising on their sites / blogs / podcasts etc. These are often sold on volume of eyeballs, and these will have increased by tens of thousands of percent after gaining all those Twitter followers. - Jim Connolly

"you did receive a gift. Advertising is sold by 1,000 viewers. Ask Ryan how much 1,000 people are worth. You did NOT earn that gift by any objective measure." - Rob Scoble, Feb 2009 - Mark

Mark: Unlikely. I think Robert is right - far too much to lose. Man, if they added me to the list, this time next week I'd be a millionaire! ;) - Shéa Bennett

Calacanis was widely quoted as saying a slot on the SUL was worth $250,000 US. - Jim Connolly

Robert: keep those threads coming, I get to follow good people on real-time, it's better than any Twitter SUL :) - Nir Ben Yona

Harscoat: I don't disagree a bit. Ron: good point about people not seeking out meritocracies. It does pollute the community, though, and people do figure that out eventually. If anything Facebook went the other way by limiting EVERYONE to 5,000. That brings celebrities down to everyone else's level, which builds good feelings and keeps marketers out. - Robert Scoble

It seems like the tech celebrity all seems to treat these systems the same, as places where they can acquire a mass following. I view myself as an average everday user of these systems, and view all three differently. And as they evolve, they all have different and divergent uses for me. It's not apples to apples... (also, tiring of SUL) - Bill Kinney

Jim: It's worth far more than that. Mashable is close to 1 million followers. The account tweets about 15-20 times per day, most back to their own site. That network size is worth millions. TC isn't far behind, and is already saying Twitter is about 10% of their traffic. Jason's semi-serious offer was probably high at the time, but I think a spot on that list now over 12 months is worth easily a million bucks to a brand or power-blog. - Shéa Bennett

Bill: yup. Today I was talking with Alexander. He says that people will continue seeking out "smaller" spaces. My wife likes Facebook better than FriendFeed or Twitter for that reason: she feels it's the place where she can talk with just her circle of friends. - Robert Scoble

tidbit of info: spoke to someone last night (who shall remain nameless) that said they went up by >10k followers per day when they were put on the SUL. They still consider that their real follower numbers are closer to their organic growth rate. - Bill Sanders

I hope all the big players move to FF soon so I can stop visiting twitter.com altogether. - Mark

I mean, $1/user that you can hit 15-20 times per day, 365 days a year, and if they unfollow, you're going to get another 40-50,000/week because you're on the SUL? I cannot believe Twitter doesn't monetize this feature. - Shéa Bennett

Shea: I think you are probably right - the numbers are insane and the SUL system is totally corrupt. - Jim Connolly

Robert, saying that people like me "can't build a following on Friendfeed" is silly. There are only so many networks that you can put time into. For whatever reason, I've chosen Twitter. You've chosen FriendFeed. The fact that I have 10,000 followers on FriendFeed is good news, given that I don't spend time here. Heck, I had 5,000 on Twitter when I started paying attention and using the service. - Tim O'Reilly

Thanks for coming Tim, do you agree with Robert that your SUL status is a "gift" and one in which makes it difficult for you to report on twitter honestly? - Mark

And for what it's worth, the SUL isn't very useful except for bragging rights. I had about 60K twitter followers when I went on the SUL; my peak click through-rate has perhaps doubled now that I have 10 times as many. Organic followers are what matters, except, as I say, for the media credibility that you get from people who don't know any better. - Tim O'Reilly

After all, the SUL is giving you lots of clicks, and clicks = page views and page views = dollars? - Mark

Tim: this post isn't only about you. But you must admit that you had fewer followers on Twitter than I did before you got added to the Suggested User List. You are getting gifted hundreds of thousands of followers per month. They aren't engaged. They won't do what you ask them to. Have you studied the hit rates the things you retweet are getting before and after getting on teh SUL? - Robert Scoble

Tim: You deserve to be on the SUL, but many of your SUL buddies don't. It really stinks, the way some of those names were added, and people like Leo Laporte and Scoble were blanked. - Jim Connolly

Totally, I only open up my facebook to those I have established relationship with - my choice to do so. I publish and share things of a more intimate nature there that I won't share on other services where my profile is more public. Facebook works quite well for that. I almost laugh at those that say that facebook has to match what twitter is doing or face extinction (and I've heard various arguments to that effect), that the "walled garden" will be their downfall eventually. I don't agree. - Bill Kinney

Mark - being on the Twitter SUL has absolutely no influence on what I do or do not report about Twitter. - Tim O'Reilly

Ahh, I see you have studied the hit rates and your observations match mine. These aren't "real" followers and they aren't engaged. Twitter did that to remove people they don't like from the top of the leaderboards (like Calacanis, Laporte, and me). - Robert Scoble

Thanks, Tim x - Mark

Is this about numbers (i.e. ratings and money) or is this about engagement? - SawyerTraining, Inc.

Incidentally, was iJustine removed from the SUL for something she said? Just wondering. I'd be interested to see if somebody on that list could be very critical about Twitter and stay on it. - Shéa Bennett

Tim is unsurprisingly savvy on the matter: "my peak click through-rate has perhaps doubled now that I have 10 times as many. Organic followers are what matters, except, as I say, for the media credibility that you get from people who don't know any better." In other words, organic followers are worth 10x more clicks/$$ than SUL followers. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Robert, did you recently share a Whisky with @Ev? What are the twitter bosses saying about the SUL and yoru complaints? - Mark

Tim: how do we know that, though? If you paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars per year I would need to disclose that to my audience and it would be very tough not to be influenced by that money you're paying me. Twitter is paying you a huge sum of money in followers and yet you say it has no influence on you. - Robert Scoble

Mark: I didn't bring it up with @ev (other than to make a small joke that he was building his own celebrities with the SUL, which he nervously smiled at). Why? Because I'd rather have these discussions out in public where you can see them and know that I'm not playing "footsie" with Twitter to get onto the list. - Robert Scoble

That's just like the Robert we have known for a long time... - Amit Nangare

Sure it changes Tim's experience of the service and (at the least) doubles his direct financial rewards from the service but he's presumably not working on a word of mouth contract with them. The only way to be *completely* sure there's no conflict of interest would be for oreilly.com to block/redirect all direct or indirect clickthroughs from Twitter and I'm sure we can all agree that's not feasible. - Daniel J. Pritchett

If this is about engagement consider that for me most of my engagement is "downstream" with my followers (who are few but important to me) rather than "upstream" where I look for trends, leads, and insights. I only interact upstream on rare occasions when I feel I might have something to add (and this may not be one of those times). - SawyerTraining, Inc.

Tim: It is impossible for you to be totally unbiased regarding Twitter, surely? - Jim Connolly

I like to think that after Robert had that whisky from Ev, his life spiralled out of control, a bit like something in Michael Douglas' The Game. Three days disappeared in a blur, and when he woke up, the only working login he had left was on Plurk. ;) - Shéa Bennett

It's impossible for any business to be completely unbiased regarding media outlets that cover/enable them, Jim. The best we can hope for is full disclosure, published conduct guidelines, and ombudsmen. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Mark: also that wasn't an appropriate time socially. His wife was there, it wasn't an on the record type event, and it's not nice to be a jerk on a Saturday night. - Robert Scoble

Well I suppose twitter sends money to the SUL via followers, how is it it any different than Dell sending money to you via free laptops? - Mark

Daniel: We are talking about a 6 figure 'gift' from a company, to a group of people who write about that company. This is a really big deal. - Jim Connolly

@Shéa Bennett: Ijustine - man did that get old fast. That's what happens after 100 episodes of the same "yeah, yeah, you can ask ij" - Asgeir

Daniel: it's pretty hard to figure out that people are on the SUL. You have to have a new account and look every few days. Some people are building tracking systems to watch who is added and who is taken off (iJustine was on for a while but isn't anymore and she now is losing followers, if you watch the charts). Disclosure? People who are on this list don't see it as a gift. - Robert Scoble

Fair point, Rob x - Mark

It's simply a matter of scale, Jim. There is no realistic way for Tim to remain completely objective aside from eschewing Twitter altogether. As long as he is above board re: his dealings with Twitter that's really all that anyone can expect of him. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Mark: if I take gifts I disclose it. I'd rather have the followers the SUL gives someone than a free laptop. A laptop is only worth $2,000. Getting on the SUL is worth many many more times that. - Robert Scoble

when i said "you", i didnt mean any of you in particular with the laptops - Mark

"you" just sounds better than "one" - how english of me - Mark

Good point, Robert. Perhaps Twitter should make it super obvious that people are on the SUL. It *would* be nice if text from SUL tweeters was visually distinguishable from regular tweeters so that we could know to (not) pay attention to it as per our preferences. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

One respectfully disagrees :) - Ian Betteridge

Regarding iJustine, I'm guessing she was pulled from the SUL early May? Check the chart: http://twittercounter.com/compare... If that date correlates, that probably says all we need to know about the benefits. - Shéa Bennett

Robert - do you think all Twitter-related content published by SULers should include a boilerplate disclaimer such as "BTW I get zillions of clicks through Twitter's preferential treatment" at the top of every story? - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Daniel: at Steve Broback's Twitter Conference the Twitter employees were visibly uncomfortable talking about the SUL. It's interesting that they added a "verified" icon to my account but they aren't identifying who is on the SUL. - Robert Scoble

Whoa, Shéa - Mark

It was cool of Tim to 'almost' talk about the SUL here. The guy's a tech legend and is there on merit - I just wish the list was balanced so others who equally deserve a slot had one. - Jim Connolly

Daniel: yes. If the New York Times journalists were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company they cover, wouldn't you expect them to disclose that? - Robert Scoble

I won't argue with you there at all, Robert. I would be happy seeing disclaimers and graphics denoting SUL status. I was thinking the problem was more Twitter's than Tim's but I suppose it's both. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

That graphic blew my mind, Shea. Thanks! - Daniel J. Pritchett

how about twitter sul = 300.000+$/month want it? buy it. full disclosure=? - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

Are most professional journalists doing online content paid based on page views? - Mark

or is it pay per article? - Mark

Jim: I wish the list was a meritocracy and based on your actual usage and value you add to Twitter. Personally I wish we had a list a lot more like wefollow.com or alltop.com than what Twitter came up with. Mark: yes. - Robert Scoble

Robert: EXACTLY! - Jim Connolly

Mark: Journalism companies get paid by 1000 page views. That's called CPM. They then usually pay their reporters per article, or per word, or they are salaried. - Robert Scoble

One reason is FriendFeed lacks a way of linking to other users in a post. On Twitter you can @timoreilly or @TechCrunch and I'd click on them and see if they are worth following. Since you can't do that on FriendFeed I don't bother to look to see if they are worth following. - ChiliMac

Jim: I find it insulting that Oprah was added to the Suggested User List after doing only a dozen or so entries on Twitter. How did they know she would be a good Twitterer after only that few? How insulting is that to all the other people who put tons more work into the system? - Robert Scoble

I don't think this SUL thing is about numbers, it's about ego and personality. Can you live without expressing your personal believes and have PR people do your job or say what you have to say out loud on public and give up the courtesy and goodies. Why is it about personality? Example: When Scoble came to visit my country (Israel) everyone could have a talk with him directly without... more... - Nir Ben Yona

ChiliMac: funny, I found you just fine and subscribed to you here. It's a different way, though. Here you put full URLs into the message. Like "hey, everyone, follow ChiliMac here: http://friendfeed.com/chilimac " - Robert Scoble

Robert: If being on the list has negligible value as you proposed (and Tim essentially confirmed) in terms of click-throughs, are we perhaps being overly concerned with its 'benefits'? If Tim's network has gone x10 and his clicks are x2, it's likely that his gain is from a lot of people who followed him organically (i.e., normal network growth). - Shéa Bennett

Robert: The Oprah situation took the SUL issue and exposed it for what it is; a 'buddy list.' Not based on merit or value. I only heard of Twitter because of you and Leo. There are hundreds of thousands of early users who only discovered Twitter off you and Leo's mentions. How soon they forget! - Jim Connolly

Shea: perhaps we are overly concerned. But I notice that people don't often remove themselves from this list, and even when they do (like in Jay Rosen's case) it's only after really thinking through the ethical responsibility of taking a huge gift from a corporation that they potentially cover. - Robert Scoble

Jim: exactly. I really hate it when companies love you when they are getting started because they need a few evangelistic users (ICQ started with only 40 users, so that's all you really need) but then they stab you in the back once they don't need you anymore. That's why more than a few bloggers now ask for stock or fees to cover their companies. Me? I will continue being a sucker for an entrepreneur with a great product or service. - Robert Scoble

I'd prefer an tiny audience that listened and commented, than a huge audience that ignored me - Mark Essel

value is the way and not arbitrary will from kings (ev and biz eg)... so this thread opens one's eyes to the not so fair and ego driven aspect of twitter as a cy ( I still remember @ev with the Trump daughter in front of the white house ;) - SUL = buddy list of @ev and @biz... liked Jim suggestion - Harscoat

I agree about Oprah but Twitter wants names on there - people that the 180 million Facebook users they don't have on Twitter right now will recognise. Everybody knows Oprah. It isn't about being a 'good Twitterer' (which is of course a relative term - one man's P. Diddy is another man's Jack Schofield) - it's about new users going, "Hey, I know this person." and that validates the... more... - Shéa Bennett

I wish Twitter wold make it easier to connect with people that has same interests. wefollow is on the right track, but people add themselves to categories they don't belong in. The one with most follower under #photo has, as far as I can tell, never written anything about photos, or photo related news - Asgeir

Engagement has value, but I understand most folks just like to read. I'm fine with that but engagement helps me improve my perspective while blogging - Mark Essel

social networks is about money not about us or social or socialism;) which brings me back to the point: the sul list is pure advertising and should be treated as that. Put a logo next to it: Advertisement: we recommend these ppl - done. 'We' will find each other anyways and the big old economy corps will always bully Robert or Leo out of their way:( - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

there are the "cooperators" and "free riders/defectors" in life (in evo psy terms) - Robert is a cooperator (interested in the overall value for the group rather than his own personal interest)! pointing at entrepreneurs with great product and services for the community. Do not change - Harscoat

Twitter is really just a broadcast medium, you can be influential and be on the SUL, but it's more likely you just have a bunch of people checking out the service once and never looking again. FF allows you to build value and relationships around conversations. Take this very thread. Which is more monetizable in the long run? I think twitter will just become another protocol, FF provides a far more valuable service. But that's just my opinion really, and it all depends on how YOU define "useful" - John

I try to participate, but I have anywhere from 60 to 80 hours of work a week, and adding Twitter and FF to the list increased my hours. So I can't always participate even though I want to. - RobinDotNet

Robert, I'm intrigued by your success and focus on this subject. I wonder, how do you think a group fairs compared to a single personality? At the moment, you're the king of social media in my opinion because of your engagement. The attention you command is ten fold the value of Ashton's million plus drive-by fans. But, could 10 top-notch social folks stuck to a brand (like Mashable's core Twitter brand) out-perform a single guy's personal touch? [Sorry, I did go a bit OT] - Jason Nunnelley

The truth is the SUL list on Twitter falsely inflates everyone numbers who are on it, I suspect if Tim O'Reilly wasn't on the list his numbers percentage wise would be just about the same whether we are talking Twitter or FF. I also think that since FF doesn't have an auto follow method, like twitter, their is more thought put into who someone is going to follow. - Kim Landwehr

Kim: That's true, but it's not just a question of auto-follow. One, Facebook doesn't allow one-way following - you have to be 'friends'. Two, for most people, letting somebody friend them on FB is a fairly big deal as that person then has access to a lot of your life (personal details, photos, etc - it AMAZES me how many people put their cellphone number on Facebook, and then just... more... - Shéa Bennett

I agree SUL is billboard advertising. Essel-i support that 'just like to read' is fine for some. That's how I participate with Wikipedia and I can see some on twitter will simply be there looking for new eddies in the river of news. FriendFeed and Facebook lead for those of us wanting greater depth: No matter if you are a platform or a "personality" how is quality engagement promoted... more... - Lane Rapp

Jason: I am often at a disadvantage competing against brands with many people employed like TechCrunch and Mashable. What was interesting was that I (and others like Leo Laporte, Calacanis, Kawasaki, et al) was able to compete before the SUL propelled them above me and into a different league. At least on Twitter. Everywhere else I'm still kicking their behinds. Which is worth studying,... more... - Robert Scoble

I am not on the Twitter SUL. I have 15,000 on Twitter and 2,700 on FF. Could it be that there are fewer peeps on FF? - Beth Kanter

Beth: that's a pretty common ratio, but doesn't match anyone's who is on the SUL. But, you miss my point. On Facebook (which has far far far more people than Twitter) TechCrunch has far fewer fans than I do but on Twitter he has far more, all artificially gained. If TechCrunch were smart he'd have those people also follow his fan page on Facebook. - Robert Scoble

But you bring up an interesting point, Beth, for another thread. Why aren't your followers good followers of yours? I imagine you've told them about friendfeed. Why don't your followers listen to you? I thought it was just me. - Robert Scoble

I just don't use facebook at all like i do FriendFeed or Twitter. - Geoff Schultz

What about the shear time to keep up with the topics of the day? For me twitter is all about reading quick short headlines, getting a pulse on what's going on, and then making a decision on what topics are important enough to engage deeper on. FF, FC, blogs, etc are the place to go deeper into the conversation. If you buy off on that, then the math comes into play,Twitter is the grand... more... - Robert Wilkins

Oprah, by the way, has 1,619,000 on Twitter and 760,000 on Facebook. I wonder how many followers Oprah was gifted by being on the recommended follower list, but you can see why Twitter is doing this. The higher Oprah's numbers are on Twitter the cooler Twitter seems and the more hype it gets and the more celebrities want to chase Oprah, even if they are for fake followers who don't mean that much. Brilliant strategy on Twitter's part. - Robert Scoble

yea, oprah=cool. you toting your camera maybe not so much to mainstream, glad to see the new hulk photo ;-) - Lane Rapp

Lane: Oprah is cool? Have you seen her Tweets? Not cool at all. - Robert Scoble

I have very different uses for each: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed... - Kelly A Nelson

Robert, Oprah's tweets are indeed superficial. Totally not engaged. She would do well to use twitter to engage both her audience and her causes between seasons. My joke was framed sarcastically enuff, but was to support your entire discussion here, that the SUL is rigged for twitter and celeb marketing. - Lane Rapp

Meh. all these celebs taking twitter away from us geeks :( its ours :( - Mark

Ellen Degeneres does a good job in my opinion - Lane Rapp

Mark, give twitter to the masses, sometimes I get the feeling FF wants to remain a niche. I can't say I would be disappointed as long as the lights stay on. We can contribute like we do on NPR. - Lane Rapp

Lane: they said that about Twitter two years ago. The thing is here that FriendFeed has nooks and crannies that can let us hide from the masses a lot better than we can hide on Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Beth, I think the difference between Twitter and FF is two fold, compounded and a big indicator as to why Robert may fair so much better here and FB. Twitter simplifies the competition (if there is such a thing, though people perceive it's real, so it is). It's all about followers and extremely competitive to gain them. FriendFeed is culturally different, and conversational. This kind... more... - Jason Nunnelley

Yes we can hide away in little corners, and even go private rooms if we want a little insider chat. Friendfeed is our underground movement! - Mark

Something Robert has done that works best in more conversational SM is brand himself as an all around cool guy. He's not "Robert Scoble the tech guru." Mashable and Techcrunch are very limited in their scope, so readers are likely to read their blip about their preferred technology and move on. Robert engages his readers on a multitude of topics, much more conversational. He'll actually... more... - Jason Nunnelley

Robert, thanks I'll do my part to welcome the masses while I learn more about the nooks and crannies. I noticed how all the FF user help rooms are active, but the Facebook user groups have limited discussion. - Lane Rapp

Lane (WARNING: shameless promotion) I'd be happy to host more conversations in newb regarding Facebook if you like, post tutorials, videos, etc. Are you more often a question source or an answer source? <edit> Meaning, I'd like to have someone else post help there if I start pushing my readers to the group. - Jason Nunnelley

Anyone heard any news about new friendfeed features? Sure would be cool to be able to post images and things in the discussion thread. - Mark

I hate to hit and run, but 90% of the people I follow I follow because I've seen them say interesting things and participate here. - Steve Lowe

Steve, why is that Hit and Run? - Jason Nunnelley

Is the FriendFeed back-end on Scala already? :) - The Pageman

Jason, I'd like that and think the rural, the elder, the poor, the disabled, and much of africa who get better high speed net access will as well. As fast as these platforms are growing the users have to help out with the concierge desk. I've got questions and I'm still newb enuff to answer some with empathy - Lane Rapp

Lower counts on friendfeed IMHO is due to the fact FF lacks the sexyness of Facebook. The FF User Interface is cleaner, simpler but lacks eye candy, of the FB I do think UI is better than Twitter, but lacks the 3rd party apps which promote usage. The 2 ff aps on the iPhone are #horriblizers ( original word from @lovinkat) - derikp

If more people used clients that don't require following people to group them and/or see their tweets, the followers would n't be half as relevant on Twitter. I converse with lots of people I don't follow on facebook and FriendFeed. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Robert, the bottom line is people follow people for three reasons: content, content and content. The question is what difference does the SUL on Twitter make if most people just ignore boring content and move on? - Jason Nunnelley

My mom joined Twitter today (that tells me its not Myspace, so much for my original thesis) but she didn't necessarily want to follow this suggested list, but from talking to her, it sounded like it was "fostered" onto her. I don't know what the steps look like since I joined a long time ago, but it sounds like for a newbie you are pretty much going to auto follow these people - Stephen Pickering

I have more friends/followers on Friendfeed than I do on any other site - Joe Dawson

the followers picked up from SUL are folks who are getting started -- it's like the old PCH magazine subs: renewals and engagemt were horrible but the audience inflation paid back in ad dollars. The social web is about "finding" an audience, just like the old days before you could use web clout to open the spigot and drive a massive audience. The SUL is a Web 1.0 artifact, like cutting... more... - Dan McCarthy from BuddyFeed

Robert, et al: There was some important information shared in this thread yesterday, and I've put a lot of it together in a post for Twittercism, focusing on comparisons between the follower counts of Tim, Robert and iJustine. Appreciate your thoughts. Cheers. http://twittercism.com/suggest... - Shéa Bennett

isn't 10000 followers on friendfeed just about the same percentage of the community as 600000 on twitter? - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Stephen, you have to unclick the people you don't want to follow in the SUL. - Jason Nunnelley

Great thread. Thanks Robert. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

Thanks for sharing - great info Robert!! - Laurie DesAutels

If what you say is true, then the terms need to be changed. As for them not transferring to any other social network, why is that even necessary? There's a great study out there that states 90% of your network will be lurkers anyway. You'll never know that they exist, however, it's still comforting to know they're there.... - Mike Shields

Robert: Now that you mention it, I will tell them about FriendFeed. - Beth Kanter

Robert: I hate it when there's a "food fight" over ideas. Please remember that Twitter is still trying to find a business model. These $100,000 gifts are basically Calacanis "Bucks"... you can't actually buy anything with them except the promise of VC investment. VC investment is simply mortgaging your future. - davem51

Was it wrong with Radio from UserLand had some suggested feeds to follow? No. It was a smart business idea and Adam Curry invested to get more readers. Smart attempt to save Userland from failing. - davem51

I met Tim O'Reilly in 1990 working the O'Reilly booth at Usenix. It was one of the most interesting conversations I have ever had at a conference... Tim knows how to present idea but more importantly he has the biggest ears in tech. He's got an Open Source Mind. - davem51

am i on twittr? - j edmonds

Atul Arora

Microsoft's Browser Comparison Chart - http://blogoscoped.com/archive...

June 18 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

payalnik, Simon, Я б в стагнации помéрла and 9 other people liked this

"As you can see, Internet Explorer has security, privacy, and ease of use, whereas Firefox and Chrome don’t have those. Gotta love some old-fashioned propaganda." - Atul Arora from Bookmarklet

4 more comments

They are so funny. - Jeremy Chone

LMAO! - vijay

If there's one thing that makes Firefox difficult to use it's the lack of 'Accelerators' :-) - Alex Gawley

This is ridiculous. Funny but ridiculous. Come on MS, just let the browser stand on its merits (however many there are) and stop making stuff up. - Chieze Okoye

HAHAHA, check out what they say about Performance: "Knowing the top speed of a car doesn't tell you how fast you can drive in rush hour. To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video. This one’s also a tie." lol, give me a break! - Chieze Okoye

Louis Gray

My Drama Failure - http://www.bitsandbuzz.com/article...

June 16 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone liked this

Loic Le Meur

Professional management tools for Twitter: HootSuite and CoTweet | Webware - CNET - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17...

June 11 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone, Altan Khendup, Robert Scoble and Walt Ruppar liked this

Dave Winer

As someone who has been mercilessly preyed on by @arrington, watching @leolaporte tell him off was a supreme moment of schadenfreude glee.

June 8 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Mel Buckpitt, Kol Tregaskes, Alan Le and 9 other people liked this

I've never had any direct contact with Arrington, but it does seem as if he is at the center of a lot of controversies and drama. - Kevin Pedraja

3 more comments

Mike should do a TV show where people tell him off for an hour in ever-more-creative ways. Funny thing is I think everyone would enjoy it, including Mike. :-) - Dave Winer

Would this be like the weekly British House of Lords thing where they all get to give the Prime Minister what for? - Matthew DeVries

BTW, when I commented back and got censored. I said this: http://friendfeed.com/jeremyc... - Jeremy Chone

I agree that censoring people who disagree with him is non-ethical and a serious step to the dark side. TC is expected to raise the standards, not the other way around. - Stephan Osmont

Loic Le Meur

We used to say to friends "see you soon" now I always say "see you online" after meeting them, instead.

June 7 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone and Gordon Saunders liked this

Robert Scoble

Ouch - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

June 6 from Backtype - Comment - Like - Share

Norman Savigar, Susan Beebe, Brian Hill and 49 other people liked this

"Disclosure: when I got back from Virginia this morning a Palm Pre was waiting for me. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t know it was coming. It is only for seven days (I have to send it back). Now, that said, I think it’s a valid question to wonder what Mike is wondering. It’s something I always ask myself when I get goodies from the industry. Did I get these because I’m too nice? I used to be on the inside with the Amazon Kindle team, for instance, then did a nasty review of the unit, and I haven’t been given a review unit since. I did give the Palm Pre a nice review back in January at CES and have generally been pushing it pretty nicely for them since. I think it’s a great device and the first one I’ve seen that comes up to Apple’s standards for fit and finish. Getting the review unit today doesn’t change my feelings about that. As for questioning Leo’s ethics, I’ve seen many times that his ethics are above question and I agree that getting your ethics questioned isn’t fun and isn’t..." - Robert Scoble

24 more comments

well said!!! - Calvin Ayre

The topic certainly could have been raised more respectfully and diplomatically. It's a concern that could have been addressed then the conversation could have moved on. - Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)

Just read this, and after reading the negative comments given by people after Leo had closed the Gilmore Gang episode. I tend to have mixed thoughts. - Matt Ruiz

quick question - instead of suggesting foul play and questioning reviewers ethics, did arrington ever think it might be his promise to never honor an embargo that meant they didn't get one? - Richard Lawler

wondering how u get product(s) 2 be reviewed Robert? I am new in reviewing tech products. - polou/indigo_bow

I guess Leo likes everybody except Bob Parsons and Michael Arrington. Thank You Terry Baldwin MILL ROSE INN LUXURY GARDEN SUITES <http://www.millroseinn.com/> http://www.millroseinn.com Classic European Elegance By The Sea 615 Mill Street, Half Moon Bay CA 94019-1726 Phone: (650) 726-8750 800-900-ROSE (7673) Fax: (650) 726-3031 Email: tb@millroseinn.com - Terry Baldwin from email

polou: PR people make lists of people with large or interesting audiences (to them). How they do that? A variety of ways. - Robert Scoble

Leo actually is given suprisingly little access to new products, this one quite rare - David Lloyd

Polou: There's a pitch scoble group http://friendfeed.com/pitchsc... - theres an explation why its best to pitch him there too: http://friendfeed.com/pitchsc... ;) - Nicholas James

Both Leo and Michael are out of line here: Leo for blowing his top, and Michael for not letting Leo even begin his statement/review. I'd like to see some sort of public making-up on this issue. I would hate to believe that a little piece of plastic would engender such hostility between two grown men. Makes me sad ;_; - Carlton Prest

Carlton: The Gilmor Gang are going to finish off the show now - Leo is heading back to the studio. I guess we'll could probably see a making-up on the show too. - Nicholas James

Leo apologized to Mike on Techcrunch. - Russellreno

Cristo: I laughed at this. I'm sorry but that's Hilarious. - Matt Ruiz

The Gang has never been "family friendly", it's just recently Leo has heavily moderated the discussion, and kept things going out of control. - Greg Byrne

I think Canter's marijuana buds maybe were medicinal marijuana? - Thomas Hawk

no but the peace offering and apologies accepted on the site in public is excellent, nice to see that right on the same page for a change. - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Leo said on Windows Weekly 2 weeks ago that he was getting a PRE and that it was a review unit and he had to send it back. - Chris Patterson

Christo, I know the feeling. - Thomas Hawk

Ryo: You REALLY need to listen to the 2nd version of the Gillmor Gang AND see the Techcrunch post - Nicholas James

Isn't that kind of attack-approach exactly how Techcrunch gets much of its traffic? They understand how to make a buzz. Reading Mike Arrington swearing at people on the comments for that post, shows this attack-approach (what Leo called Trollishness) in action. I'm not a fan of Mike Arrington, but when it comes to getting noticed, the guy's a master. He has the traffic results to prove it. - Jim Connolly

For the whole story, both parts are here: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/TheGill... - Jack

"The topic certainly could have been raised more respectfully and diplomatically." The words "respect" and "diplomatic" do not exist, in my estimation, in Mike Arrington's vocabulary. This from a guy who whines that his job is so hard he has to take a month or two off from the stress every year. Stop being such a giant blowjob critic, and you'll still get bj's. Act like a cretin the way... more... - Dave Martin

Ok, so I commented on @Techcrunch article and I got censored (and banned). Here is what I said (in a polite and respectful. Basically I said that "I think that @Arrington asked a leading question and insinuated that the Leo's opinion was not going to be honest because he got a review unit. Leo overreacted, but Michael was not innocent either. I think that @Arrington would not have asked... more... - Jeremy Chone

i love friendfeed.. threads like this are only here.. ppl on twitter are totally unaware of what is going on here.... thanks scoble! - Jason Pollock

I thought this was hilarious. I don't know much about either of them but Laporte seems to have exaggerated quite a bit. Maybe there is history between them but it was a completely valid question/point. They have apologized to each-other now though so it's all fine... but a good viral video they created there hehe - Marko Saric

Robert Scoble

Heheh @guykawasaki looks so hot holding a gun. Doesn't he? More #nimitz photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos... - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

Heheh @guykawasaki looks so hot holding a gun. Doesn't he? More #nimitz photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/sets/

May 30 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

mbtemiz, John Connor, Owen Greaves and 21 other people liked this

I just uploaded more than 100 photos from the blogger embark on the USS #nimitz -- videos to come after dinner. - Robert Scoble from Bookmarklet

13 more comments

It's a step up from Michael Dukakis in the military helmet. - V Mary Abraham

I guess it's appropriate to say, Alltop Gun. - Mark Evans

More videos and photos to come from bloggers. A taste is already up at http://search.twitter.com/search... -- I will build a page here in friendfeed later. - Robert Scoble

hey scoble! check out this thread i just started on friendfeed.. we're up to 150 comments now! http://ff.im/3pYjK - Jason Pollock

ive never started a thread that has had there kind of legs.. it really shows u the power of friendfeed compared to twitter - Jason Pollock

these realtime comments are awesome.. i cant wait to see WAVE where u can see the other person typing in realtime. - Jason Pollock

Jason: mayb its because Twitter is down?! - Elliott Ng

elliot, ur def right.. that is why the thread started.. but twitter had been back up for a bit and the thread is till going.. i think this demonstrates how people stay with the big threads on friendfeed.. the users find the action... its pretty cool. - Jason Pollock

terminator - Rachael Depp

really, really scary Guy! - Sam Levin

Since when does Jackie Chan use guns? :) - Robert J Taylor

That grin is really a grimace. those things are *heavy* - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Is that the kind of gun you'd shoot a pirate with? - Richard Matthias

Yar! - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Chris Messina

RT @davemorin: Announcing the new Facebook App Directory and Verified Apps. Find new apps you will love and trust: http://www.facebook.com/apps...

May 20 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Andrew, Russ Jackson, Jeremy Chone and Robert Scoble liked this

I wish this included a setting to auto-hide application notifications in my 'news' stream. I really don't care what kind of kitchen utensil or Desperate Housewives character any of my friends are. I know I can hide them one-by-one, but that doesn't stop the stream of new ones cluttering up my FB page. - mark

Robert Scoble

Another way you can stalk me? Watch what I use on my computer here: http://wakoopa.com/Scobleizer

May 19 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, abdelhalim, Jeremy Chone and 13 other people liked this

You'll see that I use friendfeed a lot. :-) - Robert Scoble

18 more comments

PR people should use this to see where they'll most likely get a response from the people they are trying to pitch. - Robert Scoble

scobes, how often does this update? signed up a few days ago per your request and it was pretty noisy. do you push this app to twitter as well? - Kevin Murray

"So far Scobleizer has used 53 different applications for 24 hours in total" wow, that's a lot of appz in just 24h but i guess it would be pretty much the same with me. - Sascha Pallenberg

Funny thing is, Robert, you have made yourself so accessible by posting you email addresses and phone number countless times is it even possible to stalk you? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF) from fftogo

MVB: yes, it is, but be warned, I get to stalk back! :-) - Robert Scoble

Sounds like a new podcast: "Stalk Back! with Robert Scoble" - invariant - farewell FF

Already stalking you... then it was easy and I hope you appreciate it ! ;-) - Benoit Cazenave

Hahaha... Stalk me all you want. I'll be home this week and either NYC or BFE, AL next week depending. Yuo also have my number and my email addy... Want a street address? =o:) - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF) from fftogo

Kevin: I'm not sure, I believe it updates anytime you use something new. I do not push it to Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Really friendfeed? You don't say... - sofarsoShawn

MVB, I would never stalk Robert via email or phone :) Would just pop into his IM or just post something incredibly interesting here. Btw, I've used 456 applications - I even not sure I actually did :) - Sasha Kovaliov(.com)

What I want to know is what kind of Google doc you were working on for 40 seconds. - Davis Freeberg

Davis: I am not sure. I have a bunch of things in Google Docs. - Robert Scoble

Scoble I see Outlook on your list. Thought you were a mac user? - Ryan Stanley

Created a Wakoopa account, still need to install the tracker on my mac. - Kevin Whalen

In the .com era those were called spyware, in the Web 2.0 it is called social software discovering. Man, Web 2.0 is the biggest spin machine ever invented ;) - Jeremy Chone

Jeremy: the difference between spyware and this stuff is I get something in return for sharing my data and it's also voluntary and transparent. Everyone can see I'm doing it. Spyware was put on machines without users' consent and sent data to secret places for harmful reasons. - Robert Scoble

I started using Wakoopa recently and found my software usage pattern which i never thought of looking at before. - ashish

Robert: Agree, I was just being sarcastic (my French half). I can see the use of this for people that like to share (I don't, my French half again ;). - Jeremy Chone

Louis Gray

A quick difference between Twitter's architecture and that of FriendFeed pointed out by @biz's post from today...

May 14 - Comment - Like - Share

minitoka, Mohammad Abdurraafay, Michael Parekh and 106 other people liked this

Biz writes, "Every time someone wrote a reply Twitter had to check and see what each of their followers' reply setting was and then manifest that tweet accordingly in their timeline—this was the most expensive work the database was doing and it was causing other features to degrade." - Louis Gray

69 more comments

But on FriendFeed, every time you see an update, FriendFeed checks if you subscribe to someone, and if you have hidden any service, or even any specific blog from any service. - Louis Gray

FriendFeed knows when you post an update who can see it and who can't see it, based on who is following, and what services they have opted into or out of. And when you think of how many different ways the database has to be set, the unlimited power is very impressive. - Louis Gray

FriendFeed checks by list, by service, by name of service, and can even check by if something is liked or not, how many times, has comments, and how many, and who from, if you use the search. There is a ton of data behind the data. - Louis Gray

Math is hard </barbie>. Sorry, but this seems like a serious cop out to me. If FF can design the DB to function as quickly as it does with as many selection parameters, surely Twitter could do the same (if, that is, they have the proper backend platform to do so, and it doesn't look like they do). - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

And yet, FriendFeed continues to add features and have near-flawless uptime without slowness. - Louis Gray

I agree...it is a major copout. We have been using that technique in online chat systems since the early 1980's. It is not difficult and does not take as much power as @biz seems to be implying. - Semipro

"near-flawless uptime without slowness"? You can't be serious… - Glen, Bespectacled Elder

I am serious. They had downtime last week, and that was a blip. And what slowness, Glen? (Referring to FriendFeed) - Louis Gray

Their whole feed was delayed several hours last night! - Glen, Bespectacled Elder

Twitter's was. Not FriendFeed's. - Louis Gray

my bad — I thought you were talking about Twitter - Glen, Bespectacled Elder

My comments should have run together. Tina helpfully interrupted. :) - Louis Gray

Yeah, the "And yet, they continue..." sorta started down the road to Ambiguity. - Ken Sheppardson

Please accept my abject apology and a free libation of your choice at our next (first?) meeting - Glen, Bespectacled Elder

(Edited for clarity) and Glen, look forward to that happening. - Louis Gray

@ in the middle must be a lot less frequent than @ at the beginning thus saving processing power - Matsis

But a beginning @ is index 0, there's no seek time compared to an any position @. - Micah Wittman

also I believe a fair comparison would be twitter removing the @ replies to all (lame) with FF removing FoaF entries from lists other than the home feed. And twitter search is real time - that's probably eating up processing power - Matsis

Good point re: Friend of a Friend, Matsis. FriendFeed already has to check if you have it enabled or not, and then if you have it enabled for a specific friend or not, and then, execute. I neglected to mention that. - Louis Gray

Leather: When the "see all @ replies" was an option, Twitter had to decide how to handle @ replies (whether to propagate the tweet to you or to hide it, depending on your setting), which is expensive to the database. So, either they make everybody see all @ replies (which changes the setting of 98% of the users), or they sacrifice the 2% - Andre P. Siregar

Micah I think twitter's point was that they didn't want to go check the setting (too much work for them) so they removed it. We b*itched and moaned so they gave back something less than what was. Or in other words, if the feature is available, and Oprah has a back and forth with aplusk (say replies 10-15 times), twitter dies. Also what Andre said :) - Matsis

This is a good lesson for all comp sci students. The @-reply was not a feature Twitter had when they first launched. It's sort of a hack from the community that later got incorporated. But the architecture didn't anticipate this feature. And now it's hard to change the foundation when the house has been built - Andre P. Siregar

Andre, I also think it's fair to say (many have stated this many times) that the whole of twitter's original architecture wasn't built with the anticipation of its current use. - Micah Wittman

I think it all has to do with the schema-less design on top of MySQL FriendFeed is using. They're simply making smarter choices ahead of time, rather than reactive choices. - Jesse Stay

So, by the presumed logic, no one's going to a see any new features that involves a follower dependent setting regarding anything tweet in stream. Well, ok then. - Micah Wittman

Jesse, I have no doubt Friendfeed made smarter design decisions. When Twitter started the whole micro-blogging thing nobody really knew back then how it was going to grow and be used (now Twitter is much more than just about "I'm having lunch"). So when Friendfeed started, I'm sure they took some lessons learned from Twitter and others - Andre P. Siregar

Micah, yes regarding Twitter's original architecture. IIRC, Digg went through the same re-architecting exercise a few years back when their users started to skyrocket. - Andre P. Siregar

It's typical to have to re-architect a system once you realize how much the userbase is skyrocketing. Ideally you've constructed it in such a way so that you can rip out modular pieces and replace them as necessary. It seems to me that the whole of Twitter's backend is a much more serially constructed system, which is why they have to have complete system outages still now at three... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Leather, here is what Bret talked about for their MySQL implementation: http://bret.appspot.com/entry... - Louis Gray

This thread is fascinating. I'm learning. - joey

And though I wasn't on Twitter to see it, Robert suggests that they've been seeing these problems since he had about 1500 followers. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: that's absolutely true. Twitter was crashing even back in 2006. The architecture they chose was always horrid. It's getting better, actually, but still is having sizeable problems. Friendfeed has been down twice, once for an hour, and once for more than an hour because of a power failure that took down the entire data center. (At least that I remember). Twitter seems like it was down every day in 2008 and even this week has been down more than friendfeed has ever been down. - Robert Scoble

It's hard to compare the two systems DB functionality because of the lower traffic FriendFeed has compared to Twitter. - Rick Cogley

Rick, you can compare them based on the time of their lifespan though, and FriendFeed is doing much, much better. See the interview Scoble and I did with them last year when they had a very similar user-base to FriendFeed's. - Jesse Stay

Rick: absolutely NOT true. Friendfeed today has MUCH higher traffic than Twitter did two years ago. - Robert Scoble

It is easy to look at the total user base and make excuses for Twitter, but what I'm talking about is the fact that FriendFeed is accomplishing much more complex tasks, and not missing a beat. Even when they are 10 times bigger than they are today, I expect they will scale smoothly, because of their talent and their track record. - Louis Gray

Leather: I'm assuming the difference is with the amount of WRITE operation in the database (which is much more expensive than parsing) - Andre P. Siregar

I would love to read how friendfeed has architected itself to avoid the problems twitter is having. - ian kennedy

Traffic may be one thing, but I would venture to guess the activity in the database is higher in FF than in Twitter for the same number of users - Andre P. Siregar

ian: on friendfeed there is more metadata to study and filter with. I can say "show me all items that mention Obama" on both services, but only on friendfeed can I also say "and display only those items that have a like or more." That is how friendfeed can remove a major amount of spam (and I use it all the time). Spam doesn't get likes. Another way? - Robert Scoble

On friendfeed I can delete any comment underneath one of my items. So I can help keep my corner of friendfeed clean. And if I see any underneath, say, your items, I can let you know about it. But what about on Twitter? We can't do shit about spam except report it and hope that @biz or someone gets to it. - Robert Scoble

Leather: Twitter is more than three years old. Friendfeed is just about 1.5 years old. You aren't factoring that in. Go and compare the two services all along at the same age. I don't compare my 1.5 year old to a three year old, and neither should you. That's a HUGE mistake you are making. - Robert Scoble

When Twitter was 1.5 years old it had fewer users than friendfeed and was FAR LESS COMPLEX yet it was going down about 100 times more often than friendfeed is today. Twitter's architecture was NEVER thought out very well and we're still seeing the artifacts of that. - Robert Scoble

Leather: I'm comparing friendfeed today to where Twitter was 1.5 years ago. - Robert Scoble

Leather: true, but friendfeed is a LOT more complex than Twitter ever was and it also has more users than Twitter did when Twitter was 1.5 years old. - Robert Scoble

Leather: then what are you arguing with me about? Heheh. - Robert Scoble

Scoble, yes the filtering on advanced searches is impressive (it even supports simple exclusions). I am impressed that they can keep it all running with every page updating in*real*time. Is each page an open session? - ian kennedy

ian: I believe it is. Leather: go to compete.com or any traffic site and compare. But adjust the dates. - Robert Scoble

Leather: keep in mind I've been on Twitter 907 days and I'm not going to do your homework for you. :-) - Robert Scoble

Louis, you're absolutely correct about FF accomplishing much more complex tasks much more effortlessly. Overall the leaders of this team are more effective. We had a saying back when I was consulting ISP startups "The network IS the business plan" In an online business that depends entirely on its systems for potential revenues, the architecture of the network becomes a model for the... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Leather: believe me, Twitter didn't grow that fast until the last year. The first two years Twitter grew slower than friendfeed did and had a TON more problems (and was even less complex). - Robert Scoble

Leather: 900 != 700. Heheh. That's a huge number of days in this world. And, anyway, both traffic and complexity are higher on friendfeed and amount of time down is MUCH lower here. So, by either metric friendfeed is winning HUGE. - Robert Scoble

Robert, here's the screen capture from Compete.com: http://twitpic.com/57bgl Y'all seem to be forgetting about non-Twitter-account web traffic. FF is flat; Twitter skyrockets. And yes, FF is "younger" but is built on top of Twitter so it did not start from the same "zero" point -- nor does it have as many API calls -- nor is it as accessible off-the-laptop (iPhones excepted). - Kathy E Gill

Kathy: you have NOT shifted the graph to show equivilent times. At 4/2009 Friendfeed is STILL far younger than Twitter was at 4/2008. Shift the graphs and come back. Also, at 1.5 years into its life Twitter didn't have that many apps either and Twitter's API is far more simplistic than friendfeed's is. Twitter didn't take off until after it was two years old. Friendfeed is already growing faster. And who cares what it is built on top of? Twitter was built on top of blogs and we don't hold that against it. - Robert Scoble

Kathy: Benjamin Golub of FF wrote fftogo.com. FriendFeed on any phone. - Johnny Worthington

Twitter started March 21, 2006. Friendfeed started October 1, 2007. You must shift the charts to compare apples to apples. - Robert Scoble

I just don't understand why it's so hard to compare apples to apples. If you want to compare the two companies, you have to compare them at similar stages in their lifecycles. it's really simple. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: because our tools make it hard to do the comparison. But I was there and saw how Twitter grew. Twitter was crashing before it even got to the famous SXSW and I only had something like 1000 followers then (and that was in March of 2007). - Robert Scoble

I use fftogo almost every day. and I use the IM on the other days (twitter isn't really even sophisticated enough to keep their IM service running) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Not to mention email - Johnny Worthington

I don't know about that Robert. We can grok how to compare money from today to money in 1920. We should be able to adjust stats about companies in our brains. We don't compare the revenues of a 3yo company to the revenues of a 30yo company, right (unless the 3yo is performing Outrageously). I haven't heard a single person disagree with what you've said about "the old days" of twitter either. So I can only assume that it must be true. These problems don't sneak up on a company. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: Twitter's management will admit they've always had technical problems. Remember, their architect was fired (Blair) and @ev admitted that it was a test project that they never expected to get so big. - Robert Scoble

Ok, well the first step to getting well is admitting you have a problem, right? Never expecting a thing to get so big is a lack of vision, and not a very good quality for a management team IMO. Since they never expected it, and now that it is, they should be stepping aside as they are certainly no longer qualified to lead it. And THAT is the true sign of success of management teams.... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Choose Success, not failure. But, it's interesting to note that "fail whale" and twitter are synonymous. Fail is practically in the name. And that needs to be corrected. It affects team spirit and morale, and causes it to become a vicious cycle. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: you have to go back in @ev's history, though. Remember when he started Pyra? They made Blogger. Remember how often it was down? A lot, just like Twitter. How slow it was? Very. How much spam it had? A lot, just like Twitter. Yet it made Ev a lot of money, just like Twitter will. So, since he's been down this path before, why not repeat? It actually doesn't make sense to over... more... - Robert Scoble

And that's where I come back to the lack of vision. If you "aren't sure" then you don't have the vision. You're right that it doesn't make sense to over engineer something if you have doubts, but if you have doubts, why jack with it? But in some sense it does make sense to over engineer things, because in a pinch you can often sell the company for the technology that's running it to someone who has a different vision for it, someone who knows what to do with what you've built. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Robert, I was talking about now, but I see your point about comparing two years ago. However, it's still hard to compare two different systems, different db's, different programming languages, different ways of indexing data, etc, in my opinion. It's pretty apparent that FF has been very stable, comparatively, however. - Rick Cogley

lots of testosterone on this thread, did we at least all agree that twitter's "organic architecture" sucks now just like it did from inception & friendfeeds "designed architecture" should scale nicely just like it has from inception? - mike "glemak" dunn

Mike, yes, agreed on that. ;-) - Rick Cogley

FriendFeed enthusiasts in Scoble's network agree that it's better than Twitter! Film at 11. - Christian Crumlish

Eugene Lee

RT @Socialtext: "Finally! Practical Tips to Get Rid of E-Mail" by @Ross. Digg away! http://ow.ly/6tOa

May 12 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone liked this

@Socialtext haaaaaa, please, do not get ride of email today, I still have couple to send. Tx. - Jeremy Chone

Stephan Osmont

Done with revamping and deploying Proximic's corporate web site http://www.proximic.com/

May 7 - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone liked this

Looks great! - Jeremy Chone

Robert Scoble

I just spent a lot of time in Facebook. It's amazing that so few journalists include their phone numbers. Lots of others do, though. How are they supposed to get tips? I'm thinking about other things I'm learning by visiting hundreds of my friends in Facebook.

May 5 - Comment - Like - Share

Peter Efland, Chris Luckhardt, Kashif Khan and 24 other people liked this

The more I study the other systems the more I think friendfeed is onto something. :-) - Robert Scoble

28 more comments

But Facebook sure has a TON of metadata about everyone. Far more than any other system. - Robert Scoble

Some people just aren't open enough to give out their phone numbers. I've regretted giving out mine on several occasions (thanks to Twitter). - Michael Forian

Michael: why, what happened? - Robert Scoble

By the way, Safari 4 sucks. It freezes, and crashes if you open too many windows (on both Windows and Mac). - Robert Scoble

When Google Voice goes public I would suspect more phone numbers will go live since its easy to block those that you don't want to hear from. - CW™

So: how to combine the metadata of FB with the openness of FF? - phil baumann

I just always hated the phone as a communications device, thus only very few people have my number. I give out my e-mail address readily (and blog URL, Twitter, FF and FB etc. accounts, etc.) - Bora Zivkovic

Robert: just watch this, be warned, it ain't pretty and DEFINITELY NSFW: http://seesmic.com/videos... - Michael Forian

Safari 4 does suck. It does weird things. It wouldn't even open my Gmail for the first couple of weeks it was out, and it does other weird things like I can't see Leo's calendar on live.twit, etc and other weird things. I think FF is taking off. I'm getting 20-30 new subs in my inbox everyday, and that wasn't happening a month ago. It's numbers have to be skyrocketing if my anectdotal evidence is any indication. - Stephen Pickering

Getting an unwanted email is much less annoying and easier to deal with than an unwanted phone call. - Barak B

Michael: that's not nice and that voice mail is not safe for work. Even when I work at home. - Robert Scoble

Phil: Good point. Openness and personal metadata don't usually go hand in hand. But if one were provided a choice to opt-in, I guess it can be all right. - Alexander Grundner

Regarding FF being onto something, my new criteria for how well I think a new internet service will do is how useful it is without a web interface. - Chip Ramsey

God, Micheal, that is scary. Can someone be prosecuted for something like that. They certainly should be. I put my number on my blog, but I'm not a public figure. I always thought it was cool that Scoble did. I certainly wouldn't call him or anyone else unless I had something very important pertaining to their field that for some reason required a phone call instead of a DM, but I can't think of any. - Stephen Pickering

I can't seem to share my phone number or email with "Everyone" on FB, even if I wanted to. (which I don't mind with at least the email, and my GoogleVoice number) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Maybe it would be nice if I could store more profile data on FriendFeed? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Rob: I think friendfeed realizes they can't compete with Google and Google is doing profiles. So, why not just use Google's profiles here? Or Facebook's? Facebook is massively ahead in that area. - Robert Scoble

Robert (and Sam) I'd be perfectly stoked to see my Google or Facebook Profile brought into a profile link here. Sam, I don't really care to set up another profile, but, I want it to be convenient for the people I want to connect with. I send them mostly to FriendFeed for links to other connections. I'd be happier with the Google profile, because it has all of the social links that I... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Sam: Judging from the FF mobile apps, widgets, desktop apps, etc. out there now, I would say they don't rate very well. However, if Twitter is an aggregated SMS utility, then FF is an aggregated MMS utility. I haven't played with their API, but after reading about their work with mysql, I have respect for their technological prowess and ability to scale. I would bet the FF service will eventually lead to some extremely useful non-web apps. - Chip Ramsey

BTW, what's interesting about FF and mysql is not that they use mysql, but how they use it like a key-value pair DB. UPDATE: Here is the link to a post about how they use it http://bret.appspot.com/entry... - Chip Ramsey

You're a better man than I Robert. I can barely stand to go over there. If it weren't for some old friends that I have no other way to contact, I would shut down my account in a heartbeat. - Jim in Real Time

yes, but what about the stalkers. then again, if your friends are stalking you, what does that say about your judgment (in friends) - JD Howard

Social networking convergency is a wonderful thing......if we could get it. The successful player will be the one that can bring this to Market successfully (and not necessarily the first). Facebook has the biggest number of users (>200million), but that doesn't necesarily mean that they will be the winner in the end. We are also looking for the player to be dynamic as well, things change rapidly and consumers (us) are looking to be part of the sooner rather than later. - Clifford Kennedy

Sam: Primarily what I mean by "profile" is contact information. When I want someone to learn what I am all about, I direct them to find me Here on FriendFeed, and to a lesser extent on Facebook. FriendFeed would be the one stop shop if it included all of my "profile" information (like is found on the Facebook "Info" page or Google profile). I think you can see from that I value the... more... - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

That's a good question, at least include their 'work' number. I'm on the edge about Facebook, I don't know what to use it for, work, family, friends or a combo? I can see if Journalists wants to keep their profile completely private and simply use it as a place to hang out with their friends and not think about work, even though it would limit them in their job. I like to use friends lists, that way I can show separate info to friends and keep some of the more personal stuff hidden from 'strangers'. - Kasper Sorensen

This is a good way to learn what others are doing - prince

I'm sorry, what ever happened to email or DM via Tw???? - Bryan Vartabedian

@That was replaced by Facebook which has now been replaced by FF .. next week it will be something new :) - Steven Hodson

Aww, can we be facebook friends too? :) - Daynah

Dave Winer

RSS readers modeled after email clients are fundamentally broken. http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog...

May 5 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

timepilot, Kol Tregaskes, Atul Arora and 33 other people liked this

The fear of missing some really good tidbit of info keeps me hooked on Google Reader. Very hard to break myself of that. - Tech Introvert

34 more comments

I wrote a very similar post a few months ago: http://mikepk.com/2009... - mikepk

It's not a problem with the reader, it's a function of what feeds you bring into it. Don't go crazy importing every Atom/RSS feed you can find into Google Reader, just bring in the feeds where you care about seeing every post, or with a signal-to-noise ratio favorable enough that you're willing to hit "j" a few times to skip over stuff you don't care about. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, I originally started with that model, stream the larger content flow and sub in a feed reader to only the ones I wanted to absolutely catch every item. The truth is, over time, I totally abandoned the subscription model. I found the more content I consumed, the less I needed to absolutely catch everything, even in the smaller subset. YMMV of course. - mikepk

Three kinds of feeds: Blog-like, interesting news & discussion that I want to skim/share/search. Flashes that I should only pay attention to if I see them as soon as posted. Important things I cannot miss. So, why not deal with each in its own way? - Don Faulkner

This will make your toes curl then: Guy trying to use RSS reader as a twitter client. http://blogs.openforum.com/2009... - zeroinfluencer

Mike: I think the big distinction is whether you just care about the information or you want to hear a specific writer's opinion. It's a bit like the combination those folks who want "Track" back toss around: follow + track. Google Reader is "follow", while just trying to mine content you care about out of the stream as it flows by requires tools like track and collaborative filtering using Likes and comments. - Ken Sheppardson

Let's face it. The reason many haven't abandoned manual management of some portion of their news consumption is that we haven't gotten a good enough algorithm that we trust. We are very close though. - Matt Terenzio

The feeds I sub to are pretty tightly focused, infrequent, and I've generally never seen them pop up in the stream as it flows by, e.g. the feeds from people I know like http://metajack.im, http://www.stevekrause.org, or niche sites like http://smartfootball.blogspot.com or http://flowingdata.com - Ken Sheppardson

Matt: Sure, we need better tools... and some significant refactoring of the tools we're currently using is certainly in order... but I think some folks are doing some baby+bathwater throwing. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: What I found worked for me was to create multiple streams, each of different "flow volume". As long as you keep the source count low, lower flow volume streams allow you to catch nearly everything of your "want to see everything" authors, and high flow streams can be used for quick skimming news snapshots. I also create topic specific streams, so sci/tech, interesting people, us... more... - mikepk

That seems like more work than hitting "j" a few times. - Ken Sheppardson

I've got some new ideas and a plan... I don't think new algorithms are the answer. It's still unclear if it will be possible, but I may be 'rebooting' Grazr soon with some of these new ideas. - mikepk

We need a squelch knob. - Matt Terenzio

Ken, to each their own :). I just know many people complain about having "1000's" of unread items. Then there's the added moral weight of marking 'mark as read' as if you've *failed* somehow when you need to reset. The fact that people continue to complain about it (and I recognize the feeling) and that I no longer have that feeling to me is an interesting phenomenon. The constant... more... - mikepk

The other point, is that those number of contextualized streams means that, if described as "subscriptions" I'm "subscribed" to several thousand (maybe tens of thousands of) feeds. That's just not possible/practical with a feed reader. They're just different consumption models. - mikepk

Mike: "to each their own" sums it up, I'd say. ;-) Dare's premise is "RSS readers modeled after email clients are fundamentally broken" and my point really just that no, no they're not. - Ken Sheppardson

The fact that you can't build a house with no tools other than a table saw doesn't mean there's something wrong with the saw. - Ken Sheppardson

I think they're flawed in that to many people RSS == rss reader reading model. That's the flaw I see in them. - mikepk

Ken, yes exactly! :) For a lot of people they think RSS readers are the only tool to consume feeds. - mikepk

I think the point in my blog post was that all these declarations of "RSS bankruptcy" are really signs that we need to evolve our consumption models, not signs that content syndication is somehow fundamentally flawed. - mikepk

Been saying this for years - glad it's finally catching on - Chris Saad

Chris, you and me both. :) Although I'm still not convinced it's catching on. People are highly resistant to changing their mental model of what feeds *are*. - mikepk

What -- no mention of Feedly on this topic? For me, Feedly is the current state-of-the-art in feed reading. Sophisticated news recommender systems are the future of feed reading, with stories being displayed in whatever form you find most appealing. Feedly doesn't look at all like a mail reader, but it provides all the functionality that is available in mail readers. - Sean McBride

The key for me is "casual content." I don't really read digg etc anymore as I assume the interesting stuff will show up somewhere. What RSS readers are good for are non-casual feeds. Very specific subjects that you are interested in but few other people are. I don't know I would follow these at all without RSS and a reader. - Todd Hoff

I'll second the Feedly recommendation. It's changed how I read RSS and broken me of the "must read everything" mode and moved me into reading what filters to the top by how often it is shared as well as looking for what is linked to FriendFeed to see the discussion around the story. - Kevin Kuphal

My initial impression of Feedly was positive, but it makes Firefox even slower to open (fires a bunch of web requests before FFX opens, even if your default home page is blank). - Tech Introvert

+1 on Feedly here, too. And I'm with Kevin on the "must read everything" thing. Was just thinking the same thing today. I do wish the Twitter trending topics thing was customizable, though. I mean, I rarely care about any of the absolute top 9 things (not to mention the fact that it's usually more like "top 4 or 5" when you cancel out the duplicates). How about the top 9 among friends and FOAFs? Or get smart and give me the top 9 that are also found in my feeds. - Grey Drane

Tech Introvert. You are correct: feedly generates a set of HTTP requests the very first time you start firefox to sync its state. But we recently changed its behavior so that feedly does not longer impact the performance of firefox after the very first start. see http://blog.feedly.com/2009... - Edwin Khodabakchian

Thanks for the update Edwin! I'll have to give it another go. - Tech Introvert

Grey Dane -- I am hoping that Feedly develops some powerful recommender algorithms for sorting out one's incoming Twitter stream by personal relevance and global importance. - Sean McBride

Sean -- Yep. There's tons of potential there, I'd think. See what's trending on Twitter **that we care about**, and then use that info to recommend articles from our feeds (and beyond) to read. - Grey Drane

In addition to the the queue vs. stream discussion, the thing that always pulls me back into Google Reader is the fact that's it's probably the most efficient method to actually READ the articles everyone's pointing at. I only subscribe to full text feeds, and basically never visit the sites whose feeds I'm subscribed to. Sure, there's content I skip over, but 10 minutes of hitting the "j" key is a whole lot easier than clicking on links to articles people have "Liked" all day long. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, I use our feed engine Grazr, mostly for reading. It's a stream + full content. Here's an example of one of my streams: http://grazr.com/gzpanel... I've got several of these (which is what I was talking about earlier) that I usually pop open in the FireFox sidebar when I want to check news. - mikepk

I know I'm biased since it's partly my company and I wrote a lot of the code for it, but I do really think RoN's are a better way to go. You'll also notice that one of the side effects of not using a read/unread paradigm is, being stateless, that I can share my list with anyone that wants to read it. - mikepk

I think FF is a great consumer for feeds. Winer wrote a great post that I think partially describes FF 3 years ago, "What is a 'River of News' style aggregator?": http://www.reallysimplesyndica... [EDIT: I thought this entry was the Gilmor post that sucked, sorry] - coldbrew

Dave Cheong

Are You a Seesmic or Balsamiq Entrepreneur? | Bits And Buzz, by Jeremy Chone - http://www.bitsandbuzz.com/article...

March 20 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone liked this

Share your Google Reader!

Are You a Seesmic or Balsamiq Entrepreneur? - http://www.bitsandbuzz.com/article...

March 19 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone liked this

Sarah Perez

Microsoft Web Technology Announcements from MIX09 - http://on10.net/blogs...

March 18 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Jeremy Chone, Robb Brock and 7 other people liked this

Louis Gray

Safari 4 Beta's Top Sites Function Is Very Cool and Fluid. Should We Call This the Chrome Wars?

February 24 - Comment - Like - Share

guilherme, 【无声胜有声】, vijay and 37 other people liked this

Louis, I think that can be it. Only thing left is that 'milestone' for Google to have. Else, yeah, Chrome as the browser's window decorations and its perfectly suited. - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

14 more comments

I'm digging the Top Sites, but what does the little blue star page-pullback denote? - Steve Isaacs

Steve, I am not sure. Maybe it means "updated since last visit"? I will look. - Louis Gray

Steve, new content. - Akiva Moskovitz

detachable tabs as well, very much like Chrome. The war is on, but this time, Microsoft is sitting on the bench. - Jeremy Chone

Microsoft has always been a follower on the browser front since day one (yes, remember NCSA Mosaic that they hacked to build IE) - Stephan Osmont

Browser Wars - The Next Generation! - Seriously, has anybody clicked the RSS feed button when they're visiting a site yet? Gorgeous Feed display! - David Silvernail

@Stephan -- that is so far outside of reality. Microsoft broke a ton of ground in IE4 and IE5. Innovations include the modern DHTML DOM (including the idea of universally tweakable properties) and XMLHTTP. These are the building blocks of all modern AJAX web apps today. What did netscape have at the time? Lame layers. And, for the record, it was only IE3 that was built on the Mosaic code. IE4+ was a completely, from scratch, rendering engine that was *years* ahead of everything else at the time. - Joe Beda ()

++Joe Beda: true, that version that came with Win98 was the bomb, never seen it run like that after that, it was amazing even if coded inside and with the OS. That made me remind about one video on the evolution of Firefox, a proposal made some time ago: check it out on Vimeo, tell me what y'all think: oops: wrong link, here it is: http://vimeo.com/1466664 - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

@jbeda Hum Netscape 1.0 did not have XMLHTTP indeed but it changed the world. Netscape's browser is called Firefox today, the leading browser in the world with 45.5% market share. On the plus side, this war has fostered innovation and we're all enjoying the fruits of this competition. - Stephan Osmont

I just had to uninstall the new beta... completely non-functional under 10.4.11 on my PPC machine. Could be just too old to run it. What I got working looked neat. - Bob M. Montgomery from twhirl

Browsers get a fancy version of MRU and it's considered innovation. - Hayes Haugen

It's not really MRU, so much as Most Often Used or Most Likely to Use now. At least in Chrome, that's the intent. - Chieze Okoye

You can't really say Google has beaten Apple at its own game yet since Chrome hasn't been released on Mac OS X. I really would love to try Chrome someday. Someday. - Victor Ganata

I get that, but it still feels like an iteration on Windows 3.1 MDI. Isn't that "tile windows"? Apple has added coverflow to viewing history - "cascade windows"? OK, I'm grumbling, but all in all it doesn't ring of innovation to me. - Hayes Haugen

I'm mesmerized by "Show Top Sites." Seems like it needs either a keyboard shortcut or a pop-up contextual menu accessible via right-click/CTRL-click so I can get to the "Edit" functions easier, though. - Victor Ganata

Dave Winer

FreiedFeed ought to give @scobleizer stock, his Twitter feed is 97.4% links into FF-space.

February 24 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Sumit Chachra, Justin, ming yeow and 17 other people liked this

That's not true. It's only 88.6%. But my blog used to be mostly links to Twitter and I didn't get paid for those, so it's all fair. - Robert Scoble

8 more comments

so does Scobie need ff because of the other 2.6%. Is that not an awful lot of echo :p - DC Crowley from twhirl

OKItake it back... kind of :) - DC Crowley from twhirl

In fact, Dave, how did Twitter pay me back for bringing all those users to Twitter by talking about it on my blog and demoing it in all my speeches all around the world? They give all my friends tens of thousands of visitors. Two weeks ago I had way more followers than Mike Arrington. Then Twitter decided to make him a suggested friend to all new users and he quickly passed me by. So, why shouldn't I tell all my friends on Twitter about friendfeed? At least I'm treated the same as everyone else here. - Robert Scoble

Should I give up with FF and use Freiedfeed? ;) - Jérôme Flipo

For free, Twitter has given you more than you gave them. Period. Treated like everyone else here on friendfeed? o.O - Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct

I got a real kick out of the first comment on Scoble's "Twitter is broken" post. The commenter wants people like Scoble to bring people from Twitter to FriendFeed. I had to smile because it is not like he hasn't been trying. @scobleizer I've always agreed that FF is a nicer experience http://friendfeed.com/e... - Bill

Ed: really? Explain what Twitter has done for me. And someday you'll understand that when communities get broken because companies reward people in them subjectively, rather than objectively that they get destroyed. I've been doing online communities since 1985 and have seen this pattern over and over. In a year you'll all be agreeing with me. The damage is not in your face yet. It will be. - Robert Scoble

Scoble! I didn't say you did anything wrong. I think Twitter is behaving like a bunch of assholes to their friends. They should be ashamed. They don't reward loyalty. But then none of these guys do. Ultimately I think it's a bad strategy, they should try to disconnect from making editorial decisions like this. But so grossly distorting the ecosystem -- eeech -- it shows they don't understand what Twitter is. - Dave Winer

i am really quite puzzled at Twitter's features and poor communications. - ming yeow

Loic Le Meur

Max Levchin - http://www.seesmic.com/video...

January 30, 2009 from Seesmic - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Jeremy Chone, Robert Scoble and Igor Poltavskiy liked this

Louis Gray

PR 2.0: Is FriendFeed the Next Conversation Platform? - http://www.briansolis.com/2009...

January 26, 2009 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes, Philip Lei, Mike Fruchter and 7 other people liked this

Loic Le Meur

Mickey in the snow - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

January 27, 2009 from Flickr - Comment - Like - Share

Jeremy Chone liked this

Cold - Thomas Power

Kara

Should Facebook–or Someone Else–Take Another Run at Twitter? - http://kara.allthingsd.com/2009012...

January 26, 2009 from BoomTown - Comment - Like - Share

Sarah Perez, Kevin Whalen, Rob Diana and 4 other people liked this

BTW, I find it ironic that Twitter turned down Facebook's offer because most of the value was based on Facebook's stock. In a way, it means that Twitter did not believe in Facebook's valuation and indirectly in the business value of social networking in general. . - Jeremy Chone