damn! i'm all over trying to come up with a comedy answer and Johnny beats me to it again! drat!
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
The statement reminds me of this:"It feels good to have strong opinions, because it sustains the illusion that one’s thoughts might actually matter in the grand scheme of things, rather than just being transient chemical reactions in the nervous tissue of a barely sentient creature in one obscure corner of an essentially chaotic cosmos." from http://secondlifeshrink.com/2009...
- SuezanneC Baskerville
I can't believe Johnny doesn't consider Tony Danza to be vitally important to the course of history. Johnny, have you EVEN SEEN "Who's The Boss?"!!!
- Mark "DerBingle" J
Mark... Yes... Use to be one of my favorite shows... Which is why NOW I answer thusly :P
- Johnny Worthington
It's interesting that so many are guessing people who really _were_ important to the course of history, like Hitler, Stalin, and Tony Danza. The truth of course is that we are all important to the course of history, but the tv show was talking about the unibomber (and apparently felt that he wasn't important).
- Paul Buchheit
Aha... Paul, I did not see that one coming. Johnny, my apologies. I mistook your tone of adoration as one of sarcasm... I don't know what came over me.
- Mark "DerBingle" J
That's funny that they say he was not important, when he obviously is.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
what a way to kill innovation. thanks Facebook.
- Edgar Rodríguez
The number of 1/2 word comments is hilarious in and of itself.
- JonathanJoseph
I'm gonna miss FF when it's gone, but I like the idea of FF's awesomeness bringing Facebook's UI along a bit. I wonder how much time Paul et al will owe to FB before we see them back on the market with a new product?
- Daniel J. Pritchett
this is just one of those "bad dreams" like on the TV shows, right?
- Al Degutis
You're kidding. Say it ain't so....... Light the pitchforks, we're matchng to the castle......
- Roberto Bonini
Wow! & I just tweeted abt FriendFeed being Next.Big.Thing. 5 minutes ago! Beginning of the end for Twitter!
- Lawrence Liu
There goes the open web's alternative to the closed Facebook news feed heh
- Chris Saad
How ironic. That tweet I ref'd didn't get submitted cuz bit.ly had "a problem accessing Twitter." Posted now at http://twitter.com/LLiu...
- Lawrence Liu
'Stay classy, Fox News guests: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States." WHAT?! Come again?' - http://origin.reddit.com/r...
The reddit comments are kind of amusing: "I'm really really hesitant to blame another person's political views on psychological problems, but that's the only conclusion I can reach with these guys. When you've come to the point where you are actually saying "I want people to die, so that I can be proved right that if we don't do something, people will die" this is now a mental illness....
more...
- Paul Buchheit
Anytime someone uses the phrase, "Stay classy", I automatically have to like it. It's like in my biology.
- Derrick
Somewhat more seriously, I think there are some people who believe in the necessity of perpetual war, and for those people an attack on the US (such as a city getting nuked) would obviously be a good thing. I remember at the end of the cold war these same people were fretting about the need for a new enemy. Luckily for them, they found/created one.
- Paul Buchheit
Holy crap. That guy's talking out of his ass!
- Joey Gibson
A vulnerable country > the country they want. (That's even if I accepted that the country would be less vulnerable under them, which I don't)
- Matthew DeVries
Wow....I thought the democrats were the ones who want the turrists to win.
- EricaJoy
'9/11 ended up making this country safer then ever. The only way to make it more safe would be to undergo another attack.' That's basically what he's saying, right?
- Kevin Fox
"...an attack on the US (such as a city getting nuked) would obviously be a good thing." Can we pick the city?
- Chris Sparno
Yeah, how are we ever going to get rid of all these pesky freedoms if we don't have a big war? It's like these guys thought 1984 was an instruction manual.
- Paul Buchheit
@Paul, We have always been at war with East Asia. || We have always been at war with Eurasia. (Orwell, 1984)
- Joey Gibson
Being liberal is unpatriotic? Compared to that I'm a freaking nationalist!
- Heather
the scary thing, really, is not that someone would say this in public, or that Glenn Beck found someone to say crazy things on his show, but that the person saying it is *Michael Scheuer,* who was chief of the bin Laden desk at the CIA. he is a best-selling author, and currently a news analyst for CBS News. he's somebody who has the ear of government officials and the media. he is not just some loon Beck picked off the street, and that is cause for concern.
- Karim
My favorite reddit comment: "I was just stunned. I asked, "You hope Americans die by the thousands so that you can prove to me that we need FISA-less searches of everyone???" He answered with a straight face, "Yes". I tried to explain to him how he and Osama bin Laden had reached a point of consensus in wishing the United States harm, but he would have none of it. "It's all for the greater good of America!", was all he said."
- Gabe
one hopes Scheuer will claim he "misspoke" and does not really wish harm. or, it could be that he is Cap'n Ahab and bin Laden is his Great White Whale, and the failed pursuit is driving him crazy. and you thought "war is peace" was satire...
- Karim
I am going to have to add, that while Glenn Beck is a loony, treasonous sellout, Michael Scheuer is most definitely not some off-the-deep-end right wing, Fox shill. That guy is 100% legit and knows what he is talking about. I thhink that clip might be taken slightly out of context, but if Scheuer is concerned, so am I. But I already know too much about the shortcomings of our Federal Government...
- JonathanJoseph
@Kevin. ..9/11, per irrefutable scientific evidence, was an inside job, a controlled demolition. ..is there somebody here who still doesn't see this? ..... its the biggest story of our time .. itl bring very grave consequences for the country ..and yes, another war , attack would keep the bad empire of war within America in power, unchallenged, undiscovered, unremoved, untoppled and uncollapsed - its the old thing, when in trouble, bring on war .............. http://ae911truth.org
- Petr Buben
The only chance we have as a country is for blowhards to stop starting wars with other countries so that we can pretend that we don't have problems of our own.
- Jennifer Dittrich
Yeah, Kevin, irrefutable scientific evidence!
- Gabe
no ..JUST LOOK how they fell ....are we all idiots? ... 10 floors per second pulverized ....they exploded and pulverized into pyroclastic cloud. http://911Blogger.com - http://911truth.org ....
- Petr Buben
@Jennifer .. As a country, we have thousands of chances, and choices .. all have truth, peace, justice spelled in them ... insohenceforth, the possibilities and the future of America will are to be unlimited .. just like of any other democratic, peaceful country ... now lets face the facts ... and yes, bad empires do fall ..we have seen it before // other question might be, if official media wont touch 911, should techno geek websites do it ??.. who will break it to the open sunshine day light, officially ?
- Petr Buben
9/11 was an inside job? Yea, right, and we all know steel doesn't melt, right ROSIE?? What ba bunch of clowns, ha, ha, ha!
- Don Smith
Stay classy? Right. It's REALLY showing a lot of class when you can't make a point without dropping the "F" word ... really classy, Buchheit!
- Don Smith
I didn't know that Fox was now the "F" word.
- Gabe
Sorry Paul, I should have credited your quote to Reddit! I apologize for that.
- Don Smith
Leo, just curious ... why do you think Rush and Glen are "treasonous"? I like Rush, but Glen IS sorta "out there" sometimes. I stopped listening to and watching him quite a while ago. I don't, however, see how either could be considered treasonous. Just sayin' ...
- Don Smith
Don, I don't know if you're trolling... but, if my friends wants me to die so that our enemy cannot kill me, I think my friend clearly betrays me.
- Jérôme Flipo
"They are not saying they want it to happen"? I quote Michael: "the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama Bin Laden to detonate (...)". I'm not a native English speaker, but come on! Also, can you guys keep the discussion respectful?
- Jérôme Flipo
Seems like Munchausen Syndrome. Sad.
- Rick Cogley
I'm giving this thread the *facepalm* award for attribution errors, conspiracy theories, and trollish commentary. Not to mention the Fox "news" segment that festers beneath :) http://friendfeed.com/ffacepa...
- Richard ¿digame? Walker
I love how you all hate Fox New but never watch it. You are told to hate it so you do, but you will watch the piece of crap network MSNBC and CNN.
- Ryan Ellerbe
Ryan: I love you you purport to know what I watch because you disagree with my views.
- Kevin Fox
Fox News is an oxymoron. That is my story and I am sticking to it!
- Martha
Related: How much of something do you have to watch before you can decide you hate it without being accused of letting other people make up your mind for you?
- Kevin Fox
I thought we all agreed we were going to write it Fox News (R)
- Matthew DeVries
so basically what this guy is wishing for is for 100's even thousands of american to be hurt and wounded just so he can say told you so, wow what an egotistical jerk
- Kim Landwehr
Once again He was saying Osama would be stupid to do it right now. Our elected class is doing a good job destroying the USA and if he attacked us now we would be united as one. We would then stand up to the elected class and tell no more. Again I ask you to all crawl out of your holes and wake up. Its common sense people.
- Ryan Ellerbe
Ryan: Why is Osama our only chance? Why can't the CIA do it like they did on 9/11?
- Gabe
LOL the last time they attacked we galvanized around the idiots and gave them cart blanche, thus if they attacked again, it would solidify us around our leaders again. LOL I love people who observe data and conclude that if the same thing happened again, the exact opposite would happen. LOL LOL LOL LOL Do you forget the Patriot Act? Wireless Wiretapping? It's because we gave a bunch of dipshits a blank check cause we were skeered.
- Matthew DeVries
HAHAHA under your logic, we would have impeached Bush and Cheney right after 9/11
- Matthew DeVries
WHHHAAAAAAAA???!!! That is sooo stoooopid I can't believe we have idiots like this in US ...augh!!
- Susan Beebe
Jérôme: I never said I agreed or disagreed with Scheuer. The only things I've disagreed with are that Beck and Rush are "treasonous" talk show hosts and that 9/11 was an "inside job." The only other point I've even hinted at is that anyone who has to resort to profanity to make a point is just showing their own ignorance and immorality -- and the pattern here is that they all seem to be liberals. If we can't disagree without cursing and calling each other names, we're definitely in a world of hurt, folks!
- Don Smith
So in order to defeat terrorists, one must welcome terrorism??
- Mo Kargas
More like, in order for everyone to like Republicans, one must welcome terrorism.
- Rob Haas
Need to keep the fear machine well oiled.
- Will Higgins™
Yeah we have a lot of idiots. Idiots who voted for Hope and Change from Obama. All we have so far is more and more debt and no change. Well we have change for the worse.
- Ryan Ellerbe
I just do not understand how people can defend Fox News. I mean do you really like to be lied to? Do you really think that statement that the Fox News guests is appropriate? How do you defend that one?
- PC Easy
from twhirl
Mainstream media is ALL the same. A bunch of idiots trolling and egging on their competitors. As long as there is government, there will always be a created enemy to allow excessive force. Open your eyes people, there is only one political party in this country......Corporations/Banks.
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
And who knew, all this time the ANTS were taking over the world! Welcome to our new ANT overlords!
- Richard ¿digame? Walker
What I really liked was what came after that line. We're safe from OBL's attacks because he already thinks we're melting down just fine as we are, thank you very much.
- Andrew Skretvedt
""I was just stunned. I asked, "You hope Americans die by the thousands so that you can prove to me that we need FISA-less searches of everyone???" He answered with a straight face, "Yes"" So why are some people still stone deaf to those who point out the clear evidence that Sept. 11th 2001 was a false flag attack?
- Marg Uerite
Then you ask why the rest of the world thinks Americans are stupid. You keep the smart ones quiet and give airtime to idiots. That "person" should be sued for inciting to violence and betrayal to the country.That's what would happen if the guy was a Democrat...
- Alexandre Gamela
from twhirl
Newsmax, a leading neoconservative propaganda outlet, has been seeding and cultivating the notion for several years now that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are going to detonate a nuclear weapon on American soil. Think about it. Newsmax has also been in the forefront in exploiting 9/11 to push forward the neoconservative agenda. Two words: watch out.
- Sean McBride
This kind of thing gets me very worried. VERY. What is wrong with people?
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
no, Im not ...we don't know who did it - The Biggest Story of The Century - .... we don't know who did it yet, but we know for fact that it was an explosives aided controlled demolition
- Petr Buben
Petr, why explosives? I know that some explosives were detonated at/near the base. But I believe the speed of disintegration and the absence of a realistic remnant pile obviously imply something other than just explosives.
- Marg Uerite
Anyone who thinks it was kerosene fuel (jet fuel) from a "commercial plane entered the building" on a top floor, really has to "look closer." As far a Michael Scheur, It's called "revelation of the method" You're being told straight to your face and if you don't get it, you're nothing but complicit. He was "chief of the [']bin Laden['] desk at the CIA he is a best-selling author, and...
more...
- Marg Uerite
"9/11" = Murderous Hoax, "War of the Worlds" = Hoax, "Project Northwoods" = Leaked Plans for Similar intelligence operation. Why people have no imagination for this? = "Big Lie" cf "Mein Kampf"
- Marg Uerite
@ Marg ..it was a high tech high explosive nanothermite. per conclusive evidence. you can paint this stuff on the walls. it will bring down a building in a nice controlled demolition ... but maybe also something else, some other explosive ... but not nuclear weapon or fusion explosion .. there is no evidence of that ... http://ae911truth.org - http://911blogger.com ...... /funny, recently, vice pres Joe Biden was handed papers in Los Angeles with this evidence, and asked about controlled demolition
- Petr Buben
"Actually, I was noticing that since moving to Techcrunch you are not only regularly cranking out posts but that they have been nothing but meaty, insightful and appropriately direct. And the Yahoo post was right on...I am sure Arrington loves that you are calling it as it should be."
- JonathanJoseph
maybe, but I'm kind of down on him for the cowardly way he's dealing with the marijuana legalization issue.
- Thomas Hawk
+1 Thomas. If he doesnt go for it fine, but he is way too smart to be mocking it.
- JonathanJoseph
the only thing that that proves is that the majority of Americans don't have a knowledgeable opinion of economic theory...Obama's actions are too polarizing to receive 2/3 approval.
- arthur park
@Robert Facebook connects you to your friends. That is a basic need. Friendfeed connects you to content, not interesting for many (non-tech) people ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Facebook was not that complicated when it was gone mainstream imho, now its still mainstream as people pull more people :)
- Yunus Tunak
Alexander: are you saying you're not my friend? Damn, ruined my whole day. I thought friendfeed was about reading smart stuff from the people I know.
- Robert Scoble
Also - I agree with Robert. Facebook is waaaaay more complicated than FF
- andy brudtkuhl
Really, I am surprised you think that. I really like FF and would use it more then Twitter but I have found if I tweet from FF I don't get as many followers per day.
- John Flynn
I found facebook and myspace to be lightyears more complex than FF and Twitter, that's my Facebook is little more than a landing pad for people to find me, but otherwise unused.
- Matthew DeVries
Disagree. Facebook has the most horrid UI right now and each iteration gets worse. FriendFeed has a clean UI and is iterating to get better. The real issue here is that the amount of information can be overwhelming ... at first. Weren't these the same things said about ... TV channels ... the Internet ... or blogs in their infancy? In addition, why put the 'social' blinders on? FF is a data flow. Non-linear learning is the future and FF is a gold mine for anyone willing to invest a little time.
- AJ Kohn
>> for anyone willing to invest a little time. key words here. You really don't see the problem?
- Richard Lawler
How FriendFeed is complicated? Anyone who has a blog and Facebook and Twitter and Flickr and delicious and StumbleUpon and digg and YouTube and Google Reader and LinkedIn and Vimeo .... Can easily understand everything about FriendFeed!!!
- Amit Morson
@Richard: No. I don't. How long does it take to start a blog? Or create a MySpace account? Or build your Facebook friends? Or get followers on Twitter? Like *anything* you need to invest a modicum of time to get the most out of a tool.
- AJ Kohn
I actually don't agree. Why do people generally think that "mainstream" means dumbest users? We have a great diversity of people here, and they're not all tech' geeks. It's all in the UI. And imho the UI is nice enough, even the URLs (which are a part of the UI) are designed in a beautiful and simple way. It took me some weeks of using FriendFeed to develop NoiseRiver (another very complex UI for FriendFeed) though I've been what could called "mainstream". Also, FB is more complicated for me than FF.
- directeur
The thing is Facebook has all sorts of social hacks to draw users in. For instance, I know someone who was drawn into Facebook because of "relationship status." His girlfriend created a page for him so that she would have someone to be related to. He realized he better take control of that page. Bing, another user of Facebook.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert, I'd be honored to be your friend, but I doubt that would have anything to do with me writing 'smart stuff' ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
I feel like people need to grok Twitter before they end up grokking Friendfeed. And you have to grok Facebook (and status updates) before you can grok Twitter. Of course, it's probably just be sampling bias, but that's how my friends who have made those jumps seem to progress.
- Victor Ganata
Well, over on Facebook we can poke each other and I can send you baby photos. Here? All we have is conversations. No toys. No poking.
- Robert Scoble
Precisely Robert - we all like to to talk about GUI and Usability and complexity... but mainstream denotes people feel a compelling need (reason) to use something. My take is that people know why they will/are signing up on Facebook... but have no idea why they would use FF. That can (and will IMHO) change... but only when we can articulate the value in concrete terms like "managing relationship status" or "staying connected with old friends".
- Brian Roy
2Robert "from the people I know": I think, we are also reading the thoughts of people who we don't know but we want to meet with or be friend in real life or give value to their posts, comments and likes.
- Ömer Faruk Kurt
Friendfeed is identical to many many message boards out there. That's all social networks at their core truly are. It'll take a long time for mass market users to migrate to formats of this nature but it's really more about training user and visibility than anything else. So, it could happen but probably won't. But there is nothing novel to the message board.
- Patricia
Brian Roy - Facebook has added lifestreaming to achieve "staying connected with friends".
- Hutch Carpenter
@directeur it is not about mainstream users being 'dumb'. It's about developers not understanding that mainstream users are not looking for the coolest technological tricks but a service that provides them direct value. UI is definitely a huge factor. Geek desire to add more controls and possibilities than the human mind could care about is another ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Omer: stick around here for a few minutes and I'll bet I'll know more about you than my next-door neighbor. That is a sad commentary on human life now, but it's true.
- Robert Scoble
Hutch - and your point is? There is a BIG difference between why I use something and HOW that something accomplishes what I want done. Some tool can implement the HOW far better than any other... but if I don't know why I'm using it who cares?
- Brian Roy
AJ, clearly you've never sat down and watched someone start a facebook page or myspace account. Within a couple of minutes you've gotten all the feedback necessary to get most people hooked. That's not the case on friendfeed for non geeks.
- Richard Lawler
FF needs pictures and a pretty interface, the mainstream like this! Take a look at this page - not very pretty. Facebook has more bells and whistles for the average person.
- Chris Frost
Brian Roy - My point is that Facebook starts with friend connections, then adds lifestreaming. FriendFeed starts with lifestreaming, and we find friends. The latter model takes some coaxing to get people over here.
- Hutch Carpenter
I'd suggest that for most end users, it's almost impossible to stand at the top of the learning curve and see why others can't get up it.
- Ken Sheppardson
@Robert glad you can't poke me here. That would definitely be a friendship killer. BTW getting blackmailed into Facebook is a tactics I have witnessed before too. People take Facebook way to serious.
- Alexander van Elsas
I always thought of myself as hard core and thanks to Jeremiah it's been proven. :)
- Jason Shultz
from twhirl
Hutch - Ah! Ok... got it. So facebook has a compelling mainstream message about WHY you would use it (connect with friends) and good tools to help you do that. FF has great tools with (perhaps) an absence of a compelling mainstream message about WHY you would use it. I'd buy that.
- Brian Roy
I think the most important disadvantage for Friendfeed is that I have to scroll all the way up to be able to add a comment at the bottom. Major UI bummer! ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
Sure Robert, We want it to be like that. We are broadcasting ourselves to remove the borders. People wonder what his friends are doing, so we are following facebook. People wonder what are the people are reading and thinking so we are following ff. People don't want to be lonely :) want to talk and share.
- Ömer Faruk Kurt
@Richard: Okay, show me the proof. Where's the data? Where are the comparative UI stats on MySpace versus Facebook versus Twitter versus WordPress versus FriendFeed? Sorry, but YMMV and from the rate of FriendFeed growth I'd say there isn't nearly the problem with UI that many claim.
- AJ Kohn
Ken hits it on the head. It's the same reason why people who prefer a command line interface can't understand why other people can't live without a GUI.
- Victor Ganata
@AJ let's take out Twitter as a stream for FF. I'd like to knw how fast FF is growing then? Aren't they simply lifting of Twitter traffic (just wondering)?
- Alexander van Elsas
FF wants you to use all kinds of web tools(flickr, twitter, reader etc.) and use as many as you can, thats by definition not mainstream.
- Yunus Tunak
Sorry AJ, I left my Facebook powerpoint in my other Internets. I don't need a number to tell me what an afternoon spent at a library can easily make clear.
- Richard Lawler
And FF UI is messy too, i am using Stylish with my own codes to tweak FF interface.. Many people do.
- Yunus Tunak
I think it's not complicated. it's just practically impossible to keep up with the content flood if you have a life :D
- Roland Hesz
I think ff is a specialized version of a forum. FF changed forum concept a little bit and now we can subscribe what people are saying. Also, we have a homepage filled with the posts of our subscriptions.
- Ömer Faruk Kurt
I felt the same way initially but when they added the "real time" feature and the ability to create lists (filtering) it provided me with some of the features that Twitter Indian-gave us oh so long ago. The ability to thread and to have our life streams merge from other services is a plus not a minus.
- Aron Michalski
from fftogo
Bluntly, those of you who judge FriendFeed by how early adopters choose to use it, lack imagination. Picture someone who simply follows a few friends, clicks "Like" on stuff, and occasionally shares a message, photo or link.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
@Alexander: Twitter as a % of the content is an interesting topic. I don't know but I don't think they're leveraging the *traffic* per se, but if Twitter were to shut off the ability to feed Tweets into FF ... that would be interesting and likely bad for both services.
- AJ Kohn
Bruce, you haven't explained why that person would leave the facebook account they already have.
- Richard Lawler
@Richard: That's your opinion and you're welcome to it. And qualitative research is wonderful. But ... Library users, that's a unique segment isn't it? And what part of the country did you do that? Urban or Rural? That's a good deal of bias. It's a fine opinion, but right now in year one, FriendFeed growth is strong based on the numbers.
- AJ Kohn
Richard, I was addressing people who say FriendFeed is too complicated, not people who say Facebook is too adequate. I don't think FriendFeed is going to beat Facebook in 2009 or 2010, but I do think FriendFeed has great long-term potential. The untapped market is bigger than Facebook's userbase.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
AJ, the library point is an example, there is no doubt that you can go to a library near you today and watch someone casually using setting up a page on myspace or facebook. They way that person reacts to their first few minutes and the way they'd react to the information friendfeed presents are entirely different. A year one growth number tells me nothing about friendfeed's mainstream potential. Actual user experiences tell a lot.
- Richard Lawler
Bruce, what untapped market? How many people are out there who don't have facebook pages, but are at all interested in the features presented by friendfeed?
- Richard Lawler
The market is everybody who currently uses email to share photos, messages, and things they find on the web. I wrote more about it here: http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Since I wrote that, Facebook did go ahead and implement half of FriendFeed's "Like" feature, bolstering their adequacy, but there's still a long way to go.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Bruce - Those people have facebook pages. If they don't, they don't want to, and they don't want friendfeed either. The assumption that people will use the hide feature to make friendfeed palatable is ignoring how people use these services. You can look at the complaints about facebook to see most people don't understand or use filters well already.
- Richard Lawler
Honestly . . . if this is a bit much for people then I weep for the internet.
- Lindsey is Fierce!
I'm so down with that, Jeremiah. Most people don't WANT all the info FF makes available
- Francine Hardaway
from twhirl
Who WANTS frf to become mainstream? I don't. All people who are here are pretty cool and we almost don't have ghost accounts, no jerks, no advertisers. Conversations and posts are awesome. Why invite 175 millions?
- Sasha Kovaliov(.com)
I agree. I don't want FF to become like Usenet did in the 90s.
- Jason Shultz
from twhirl
FF may not go (public) mainstream anytime soon, but I think it could be widely adopted across enterprises within the year. Wonderful opportunities exist with FF.
- Mark Evans
Hi guys! What would you think about a one-week-user-generated campaign to promote FF? We're enough FF lovers to spread our message all over the Internets. If we make this our challenge, we could make FF mainstream in 15d.
- Jérôme Flipo
Mark, frf on enterprise level any soon - I doubt it. Most of them still not ready for social software. Look at SharePoint - is it a bit social? SAP is integrating twitter and Lotus notes have got linkedin support and we are in 2009. I think it will happen but not that soon and not in the way it exists now.
- Sasha Kovaliov(.com)
Let's create a FF room to organize this campaign, get @Jeremiah and @Robert inside and the web is ours!
- Jérôme Flipo
I think once you resign yourself to the fact that there is just too much "stuff" being posted for you to see every thing, and start using list to decide what you are going to read and when you are going to read it, FF becomes much more manageable. As far as FF going mainstream, all it will take is for (the management team of) some pop star or movie star to start pushing out tweets or the rss feed of their site and the rest will come running...
- J. Abdul-Qahhar
In some ways I agree with Jeremiah because I can't get a lot of my Twitter and Facebook friends over here. They're comfortable with what they have and feel connected with their friends in each place, they also get content which they feel they're in control of in the sense the sense they are sharing with only people they choose to connect to. Friendfeed is still mostly a tech or geek playground by comparison. Which means I have to spend time at the other places if I want to play with friends, sigh.
- Sally Church
I love how easy it is to post something I found online on ff. I wish all blogging tools had the same feature! I would write stuff all the time and probably be annoying - but it is such a hassle to grab images and upload them. That feels very ol skool.
- JoEllen
Does it really matter whether this goes mainstream or not? Not.
- tony
Jeremiah: Ha ha. No. FriendFeed has one of the nicest, cleanest, interfaces around. Once you learn how to filter and set up lists, the interface gets even easier and nicer. As with so many other things technical, it all comes down to RTFM.
- Steven Perez
Agreed, so FF needs to make sure that it doesn't get more complicated and leave the mainstream behind. Unless they only care about early adopters, which I doubt.
- Jeremy Campbell
from twhirl
What is currenly "complicated" in FriendFeed? Really, I don't see anything wrong with its UI, maybe some enhancements are welcome, but it's really very usable. Kevin did a great job!
- directeur
Agreed. It's powerful, but needs a much me simple interface.
- Ian Betteridge
from twhirl
Facebook is the most damned complicated interface they could have dreamed up once you've spent a day with it. Same with My Space, who can find anything on those pages. Twitter is simple, but you have to subscribe to 200 people before you start to get anything good going. I only really like the FF interface. It's very functional, fast, let's me spend plenty of time here. On Facebook I update my status and them I'm out.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
I cannot understand why people think FB is LESS complicated than FF. Absolutely ridiculous
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Who said Facebook and FriendFeed are competing for the same thing? I use both and they are two seperate things entirely. And that's ok. Why do we have to have a winner? I don't hang out with my different sets of friends all at the same time. And also, why the rush to get mainstream? You don't tile the roof before laying the foundation </get off my lawn>
- Johnny Worthington
FriendFeed is less complicated than Facebook, and if used for the same purpose (connecting with existing friends), then it has got something going for it. At least FriendFeed users are not bombarded by silly application requests.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
So maybe there could be an option to use a basic or advanced UI for FF. I do lament the lack of mainstream appeal, but I love the power and flexibility it gives users.
- Tom Landini
Yes, Friendfeed is really complicated for people to understand. My dad (who I think is fairly wise) is just catching on to everything - Facebook was the easiest for him to join. Twitter second. FriendFeed? Confusing.
- Tabz
I don't believe it is more complicated, just offers you with a different way of gaining and disseminating information. Not complicated though once you have your FriendFeed groove going, it's pretty easy.
- Sharon Dexter
When I first started using FB it felt complicated as hell, now it's second nature. FF doesn't have a great flow but as more people use it, that should change.
- Nathan Wooding
I don't think that Friendfeed itself is terribly complicated - one could even call it elegant - but the problems that it addresses tend to be those experienced by complicated people - people with lots of social media outlets and not always good ways to aggregate them or to comment on them with a close network of trusted peers. If I were Friendfeed I'd stick with the elegant solution for the geeks and look at how all of its content can be aggregated more effectively for non-geeks.
- John Blossom
I agree. Friendfeed has a lot going on that make it a valuable tool, but it's a bit overwhelming when you first start navigating it.
- Trish Ridgway
I don't think FF is complicated it's just hard for some people to manage so much information
- Mihai Secasiu
It's not mainstream because not everyone is into reading and filtering a stream of information/conversations. Yes, a lot of people are interested in this, but not the mainstream, IMHO. Another argument could be said that we can do most of what FF does inside Facebook now, if we chose to (import feeds, blog posts, tweets, conversation streams, "likes", etc). But do we all (on FF) do it? Probably not. Some people like specialized tools for each job - others like a universal tool for everything (ie FB).
- Brian
Friendfeed is still early in its development cycle: It is one of the cleanest platform available and has captured a great core. It now needs to find a set of killer apps which will allow them to clear the chasm. And when they do, they will put a lot of pressure on both twitter and facebook because they have a much more open and cleaner foundation. The only piece that is missing at this point is an addressable user namespace. That is what creates the power social dynamics on twitter and is sometimes missing.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Jeremiah, I've been saying this for ages. It is a promotional content tool that 99.95% of the population have no use for. It's more like a medium for PR. That Robert thinks this is where the conversation happens is not true.
- Bob Sonin
For me FF is about pushing life stream to Facebook. Only the social media crowd reads FF, but everyone I know sees that same info on Facebook. I installed the FF app on Facebook that feeds all the FF activity into Facebook. I really appreciate that FF has gone out and done the work to connect all of my social tools into one place. Great tool.
- Travis Murdock
Like Francine, I think it's more about the information. I don't particular think FF is hard to get, it just takes more work to strike up conversations with people than it does on Twitter or FB. The thing about FB is that everyone I went to MS, HS, and college with is on there. But those people are not over here. That's why people might think FB is easier. The "average person" is not going to use FF--I don't think, ever.
- Lynne d Johnson
gotta jump on the bandwagon here: facebook is really more complicated than friendfeed. and i'd also like to posit that "complicated" is not always a deterrent - in many cases it is the extra features that lead the more hardcore users to flock to these services. either way, i agree that friendfeed isn't yet mainstream, but it took twitter several years to hit that level too (or facebook for that matter).
- mike fabio
Wow. Big discussion. Just skimmed some of the comments. I think it not that it's inherently complicated, but that (as already said by some people) the core value add is not big enough for most people. Looking at the success of Twitter and Facebook vs FriendFeed's limited growth (even though it offers most of the features that the whole body of Twitter users in aggregate is asking for) is an interesting lesson in product development. So I guess the next question is, where does FF go from here?
- Andrew Shuttleworth
The thing is its not complicated to use, but to understand its value, and to get value from it, is complicated enough that most people will never want to use it.
- Richard Lawler
@Bob Sonin: Nearly 100 comments on this *one* thread alone seems to prove that conversations *do* take place on FF.
- AJ Kohn
"Why would I need 500 channels of television?! It's too much to deal with!" Sound familiar? A lot of 'social media' folks seem stuck in thinking FF has to deliver the same things or act the same way as other services. That's just not true. Nor has it ever been true in the evolution of any medium.
- AJ Kohn
I still think that for most people, the value of brief posts from people in a social network is not immediately obvious. Even in FB, most people take a little while to understand the purpose of status updates/posted items/walls/the newsfeed, and only a fraction of FB's users actually use them, and only a fraction of that use them actively. In FF, its analogous functions are basically what it's all about!
- Victor Ganata
Like any other product, survey clients and give the customers what they want, pretty simple.
- Jim Peake
AJ - for every "500 channels of television" "no one will ever need a computer with more than xx MB of RAM" there's a thousand products that don't catch on with the mainstream. You've got to do better than that.
- Richard Lawler
Complicated does not mean not useful. At a certain point the growth of a communication tool limits it's utility for anything other than selling soap. I use IRC semi-daily because it's easier to get in front of the people who know about what I want to discuss. As long as FriendFeed makes it easier to find conversations about things you're interested in it will be useful. Confusing newbies is just a side benefit.
- Sam Levine
depends on what mainstream really ultimately is, facebook is technically mainstream, but a slice of users are hard core and others dabble currently, ff in this new beta is looking like an extremely powerful aggregator and discussion tool compared to even several weeks ago
- Patrick Boegel
"While I may be missing something in translation, I think Fred may be missing the forest for the trees a little here. Anyone who has an understanding of the venture capital business knows that there is already too much money in the venture capital asset class chasing too few exits...but I do not think that is what Friedman meant. I think Friedman is advocating putting capital in the hands of entrepreneurs (not necessarily VCs) instead of putting it in the hands of GM, where we all know it will be lost. As Jon Callaghan astutely noted, the seed stage market is extremely quiet right now and has a dearth of appropriately capitalized institutional investors playing it in that space even in better times. If the government pumped $1B into the hands of entrepreneurs it would in no way increase the number of exits, but it would create work and increase the pace of the creative destruction so desperately needed in media, clean-tech and the auto industry. The only losers in that equation are the..."
- JonathanJoseph
Like is definitely not representative of my actual response. More like cry.
- JonathanJoseph
Definitely a great article but, but I do agree "like" is probably not the best link title for this :)
- Manuel
Japan's problems were small compared to the current situation US and they were able to stumble along for far too long. The good news is the US won't. The bad news: in its very swiftness, quite apart from all the other reasons.....the impact will be global.
- David HC Soul
"Great stuff, as always. The round peg-square hole analogy is great. Most existing VC funds were raised before the new economics were clearly understood and are still targeting exit opportunities that are unlikely to work out given the move from product->service businesses. The new economics can support plenty of exits at good multiples as long as the economics/expectations are well understood and that will happen when we start hearing about Dogster as the Web2.0 posterchild rather than DIgg."
- JonathanJoseph
"First of all, it doesn't really matter if people trust the cloud or not. What matters is whether they use it or not. The average person doesn't trust computers, automobile mechanics or lawyers yet they use them anyway. Given the massive adoption of the Web from search engines and e-commerce sites to Web-based email and social networking services, it is clear that the average computer person trusts the cloud enough to part with their personal information and their money." Nice.
- Paul Buchheit
We don't actually trust horseless carriages: That's why we have insurance, and roadside repair, and so on. The question is whether, in moving to the cloud (which, by and large, we aren't at the moment - at least outside of mainstream geekery) we have enough insurance.
- Ian Betteridge
I think Dare's point is that we may not trust them completely, but we use them and they work well for us. The same as "computers and ... lawyers" from the article.
- Matt Cutts
i expect our data and applications will move to the cloud, then maybe hardware advances will bring the data and applications back to us when capabilities allow and then ultimately out to the cloud because at that point the real time information created by each individual will probably be too much.
- Iggy Mwangi
The problem with this cloud stuff - it's counter to human nature. That nature that tells us to stock up when we see bargains, preventing us from pick up milk in a supermarket, walking out with only milk. That forces netbook shoppers to demand roomy hard drives, clunky operating systems, bigger screens & even dvd burners just to use firefox. That causes people to ignore the 8GB iPhone because there's bigger and you might need that storage. That drives consumers to bigger Mpx cameras with increased features.
- Ian Tindale
And that nature that tells us to download and squirrel away multimedia instead of trusting to merely experiencing it streamed. If it's 'only' streamed, I don't get to hold it in my hands like an album cover. If I store it on my increasing collection of hard drives, well, it's mine, now, innit?
- Ian Tindale
Umm.. loser? I love my team (which happens to be the Eagles -- the one he's upset about) but I'll be damned if you caught me crying after they lost to the Cardinals in the NFC championship -- LOSER.
- Shmoe
Depends on who you're following as to what's in your best of day. Plus it's about ratio: there were maybe a hundred 25 things posts and they each got a lot of likes because there was a very finite number. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Obama posts: they probably got just as many likes in aggregate, but fewer likes per post.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Friendfeeds biggest weakness is that it has a little Digg in the community here. I have a few 25 things meme entries and a shocking amount of entries about the FF/Twitter integration. Like Digg, the community here is a little too into itself to be useful to those outside of the echo chamber. Its a good thing for the FF team, though.
- JonathanJoseph
I haven't liked any of these things. Friendfeed does have a problem. Not sure how to fix it.
- Robert Scoble
I hate these memes, sorry. Especially on a day when there's so much to talk about that's meaningful.
- Steve Rubel
Steve, part of why the political posts have died down today is that some of them got extremely heated and resulted in multiple blocks and some people leaving FF either permanently or temporarily. After that type of situation people tend to 1) avoid the posts in question and 2) hold back on similar posts. And Robert: best of day is based on the people you follow, not your personal likes. But I think you knew that...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Both comments and likes enter into "best" and these items always have at least 25 comments.
- Bruce Lewis
The best of section is my least favorite thing about Friend Feed.
- MarkCarras
@Tina, still seems like there would be more about Obama in the mix given my volume and the fact that I follow hundreds of people here.
- Steve Rubel
I know that but it is based on how many likes and comments things get. One other thing is there was so much on Obama that most of those didn't have a chance to get comments or likes. We dramatically need track.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert, still don't understand why that meme took off today though.
- Steve Rubel
I've been hiding the 25 things meme all day.
- Ryan Kuder
Not crazy about some of the memes, especially this one. I don't participate in them often. I'm still seeing enough about Obama, though. The persistence of the meme isn't killing me *shrug*.
- Kamilah Gill
Until late afternoon EDT my best of was filled with Obama all day. This evening it's more mixed as people are chilling out. Guess it depends on who you follow.
- Sally Church
I hear you but I'd rather hear people talk about themselves and learn about the people I interact with on a daily basis then have my day ruined by bickering. Even on inauguration day, people get NASTY. I hear Wonkette is a good political hang out place. :)
- Mona Nomura
all FriendFeed needs to do is add the "best of day, week, month" button to search and you'd have exactly what you are looking for.
- Thomas Hawk
This has been a recurring theme for me today, glad I'm not the only one. I've been tweaking lists, deleting lists, hiding entry types, pretty much doing whatever I can. I can't use IM or twhirl until I've figured this out.
- coldbrew
I've found a great deal of meaningful stuff in the 25 things meme. A great deal. Perhaps you could try reading some of them. Here's one I recommend: http://friendfeed.com/e... -- Things like this are precisely why I am on here. I am probably not alone, which would account for this showing up in best of day.
- Jim Hearts FF
I liked it the meme. It gave us all a chance (this who wanted to) to learn a little more about each other and hopefully give some context to peoples backgrounds. Once you know a person, then you can understand more where they are coming from. It's like getting out and meeting your neighbours. Wasn't that a message in Obama's speech. Plus if you want an Obamathon, turn on the tv... (that could be the other reason it took off). It's ok not to like it but sometimes FF won't just be all about the day's issue
- Johnny Worthington
I meant filtering, in general, not with regard to some specific topic.
- coldbrew
Because the FriendFeed crowd immersed itself in the campaign. We've hashed it out. The election is complete. Some cheered, others kicked the dirt in disgust. The inauguration is window dressing and hoopla at the end of the day. We're paying attention but it's not really news. First State of the Union - I think we'll see something very different. Rubber to road. Inauguration is cotton candy
- AJ Kohn
Excellent comment AJ. I completely concur.
- Keith - @tsudo
Well, there was this meme, and everybody was "liking" everybody. I put a like just for people I know and gave up from joining in to the game. And there was a lot of angry comments in topics about Obama and the inauguration, and there wasn't a "like" consensus about it, which is really sad.
- Bibi
BTW, your forgot the angry republicans and some not happy democrats, which didn't like those Obama topics. And those which truly don't care for what it's going on outside their own country. I also saw topics with trolls and nasty comments about the inauguration.
- Bibi
Did you post a '25 things' Steve? (It's mandatory)
- Charlie Anzman
Is there really any more to say about Obama at this point?
- Dawn
Of course, it depends on who ones friends are. Mainly the bulk of friend is all about trivia.
- bill giltner
would it still be a waste if the Utes end up with the national championship? :)
- Adam Ostrow
Hey, it's millions of dollars going to the BCS schools that could be propping up your higher educational systems. You may as well get a piece.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Not only is BCS illegal but incredibly shortsighted. Please send my alma mater the $10M they stole from us 10 yrs ago.
- JonathanJoseph
I, for one, welcome our new BCS overlords
- Jesse Stay
"According to the NBA, about half the teams are using the video game [EA Sports NBA] as part of personnel evaluation." - http://www.latimes.com/sports...
This is really stupid. Baseball is a game based on averages and statistics, basketball and football are team sports that cannot be understood the same way. Thats like saying you can evaluate a potential spouse by using their avatar in the SIMS world and thats also how the 49ers ended up with Alex Smith.
- JonathanJoseph
ok, the option of watching other people's streams just ROCKS o_O
- George Tziralis
I know that I'm one of them but OMG how can you stand this?!
- Orli Yakuel
Orli: I LOVE this. But usually I don't watch it live like that, but just refresh often.
- Robert Scoble
still unfamiliar with FF. mostly on twitter as @2healthguru. thanks for invite and keep up the videos!!
- Gregg
I'm curious about what are your lists looks like? Do you use lists?
- İbrahim Uzun [ j ]
What i keep thinking about when i see this is how can this be used to show others the power of Social Networking (FF and Twitter in particular). Good example Robert.
- David Bisset (sn)
I usually drop into real time mode for a quick peek at what's happening *NOW* and then retreat back to the main FF UI and my custom lists. Good stuff though Robert. Always interesting to see your view of the noise as it flys by.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Jared: now you see what I mean by "the World Wide Talk Show." 24 hours a day. It's crazy! And I'm only following 1/10th to 1/100th of those on FriendFeed (and that's a small number compared to Twitter and Twitter is a small number compared to bloggers and bloggers are a small number compared to humans). Now you understand why the value is going to be in the filtering systems that the geeks make for us.
- Robert Scoble
Brian: real time really rocks during news events like #mumbai or Election Night. Watching what you all were saying in real time then is a lot of fun.
- Robert Scoble
watching it must cause FriendFeed quite a bit of traffic... :) btw, being smart is actually bad, most people don't like you being smarter than them (talking out of experience here, so better don't waste your time to argue...)
- Dorian Muthig
This is crazy! Just crazy stuff! I sometimes can't even follow my own feed of 63! How does RS ever respond to any of our comments?
- jamesdkirk
jamesdkirk: I really only look at real time feed during news events like Election Night or earthquakes or #mumbai. It's easier to interact just by refreshing the browser and clicking "Comment".
- Robert Scoble
Strangely enough it doesn't really seem that much worse than mine with a lot less subscriptions. I really don't like or use the real time view though so maybe my feeling isn't really accurate.
- Brian Sullivan
Looks at how good his AI is. He detected my comment and had and instant response. How could a human do that while that firehose of a feed he got is scrolling by?
- Rolf Schewe
Rolf: one thing about human beings: they are far more efficient at pattern recognition than machines are. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Arghhh ...I couldn't stand looking at that for too long!
- Peter Cattell
Robert: Until your model. You almost had me there.
- Rolf Schewe
This is phenomenal for the first 10 sec. But ultimately overwhelming.
- Eric Thompson
Eric, it is pretty crazy, isn't it? It's fun to put it up on a second monitor so you can peek over at it once in a while. It's the ultimate attention diffuser, though. Impossible to do anything else but watch it.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, yes I think there's something intriguing about Friendfeed. I'm amazed that my 16 & 17 yr old daughters haven't found this yet. But they will. They're still texting at the rate of 3000/month. This isn't that different from watching thousands of feeds scroll by.
- Eric Thompson
Jonathan: I disagree. But, that's why you can choose your own editor(s) here (the people you follow become editors and are "picking" things for you to see by clicking "Like" and commenting on them )and why I say that it's far more important to follow carefully than who follows you. The best FriendFeeders bring you high value stuff and low noise. I'm following 200 of such people in a list. But that doesn't mean there's no value to a high flow list either.
- Robert Scoble
I find the live feed fascinating. Pattern recognition yes, cellular automaton too.
- Nicola Quinn
@Robert. I agree with that, but the realtime stream is far too much to be filtered in any relevant way. FF is great if you use it right (like creating lists) but simply folliowing 4500 in realtime makes it worthless imo.
- JonathanJoseph
Jonathan: there is a TON of filtering still to come to RealTime streams. For instance, I filter mine by making a list, which has its own RealTime stream (only 200 people, all hand selected, are on that). Also, in future you'll be able to filter by talking to the stream. For instance, say you have too much. What if you could say "please only show me items with likes." Still too much? "Show me only items with four likes and at least two comments." And there's lots more, too.
- Robert Scoble
What if you could say "show me only items with 'Mumbai' in them?" Or, show me only items from people who Tim O'Reilly is also following? Or, what if you could say "show me only items from people located in India?" Can you start to see how your RealTime stream could be filtered?
- Robert Scoble
that was actually not as fast as I thought it would be (except when Chris P.'s coupons showed up). Very interesting. I found someone new to subscribe to.
- Laura Norvig
waves! Hi Mom! Hello feed! Umm is this thing on? ;-)
- Tim
It's a sad state of affairs that 50-100 people whining about nothing becomes a major PR incident. The myopia in this space is so telling by the coverage of those in it and their inability to actually look outside the space
Hey, I know, let's have 5-10 people spend the day blogging about how the Motrin Mom folks are wasting time and effort and just have it echo around for another "news cycle".
- Ken Sheppardson
Wow. No wonder women complain about men's cultural blinders. Men can whine and piss and moan about stuff that is silly and it passes for good debate. When the issue touches on something that requires an X chromosone to be directly affected by it, men dismiss it.
- Rod Bauer
Rod, your comment is beyond sexist and where do I start. Believe it or not men use slings as well and this isn't the 19th century, it's the 21st, and in my house I do the traditional "mom" thing. This isn't about women, this is about a gross over-reaction because a handful of people couldn't relate. I've spoken to plenty of women already who could relate to the message
- Duncan Riley
oh, yeah, and I could relate to it because slings HURT MY BACK.
- Duncan Riley
Ditto on that. There is a condition known as widow's back or something like that caused by carrying your child on one side of your body and causing strain. At last my 8-year old is too big now to want to be carried all the time. When she was younger I probably could have used one of those slings and saved my back a little. And I don't think I'll say anything else on the subject.
- Chris Loft
Duncan, the ad was aimed at women. My comment referred to how women and men have responded to the targeting and tone of the ad and had nothing to do with who uses slings.
- Rod Bauer
Rod, you're presuming that all women find the ad offensive, they don't. A few, likely less than 100, even as low as 50, got vocal about it. The common thread is they couldn't relate to it. Walk out your door and ask other women if they could...many will. Resorting to making this a sexist thing simply belittles your argument Rod, it's not.
- Duncan Riley
Why is this getting so much attention? Can we drop it and move on?
- Bwana ☠
Duncan. My interest was and is how many men have responded to the women who have complained about the ad. I've seen many men dismiss their concerns. I think a lot of women will see in that a continuation of a pattern to belittle women's concerns when they attempt to dialog in social media about issues relating to women, and this issue did begin that way as Motrin targeted women in their ad.
- Rod Bauer
Rod, no one is belittling their concerns because they are women. I fully respect that some people felt this way, I have ZERO respect for the way they reacted.
- Duncan Riley
Those 50 - 100 people speak for many thousands more. The fact that some babywearing Mommy bloggers are vocal and have visibility is what it is. If a celebrity were to say that they found that ad offensive, that would receive press coverage. Mommy bloggers using Twitter (which is in the mainstream press' eye to some extent) to make a statement becomes news and has influence. That particular ad, as someone else noted, may appeal to a certain demographic. It didn't appeal to crunchy babywearers.
- Laura Norvig
no Laura, it didn't appeal to SOME babywearers, not all. You're confusing the vocal minority with the majority. Myopia.
- Duncan Riley
I hear more people wining the other way... but frankly I think it is because the fascists elected Obama president and now no one has anything to complain about
- Noah David Simon
background: these guys have a weekly segment on australian TV, always to do with something real; I think this one is referring to this oil spill http://www.amsa.gov.au/marine_...
- Rob Schonberger
I hate it when it turns out I was right about economic downturn. Consumers are hoarding and hoarding in ways we didn't forsee. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap...
I also remember lots of people jumping on me for being too negative. Sorry, you guys were wrong. I study human behavior. This is going to be long and deep.
- Robert Scoble
The concern though is whether or not it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Would there be as much hoarding if the media hadn't warned over and over that it would happen, making the consumers think they should probably do so.
- xero
xero: I'm sure there is some effect there as well, but I'd rather just tell the truth and let the coins fall where they may rather than try to cheerlead.
- Robert Scoble
I didn't jump on you for being negative... I simply stated that I'm not hoarding and that hoarding magnifies the issue. ;)
- Kevin C. Tofel
But if the problem has been that we've been telling people to spend and incurr debt to do so for so long, it seems natural that most would rather save, pay off debt and be liquid. You can't prop up too much debt with more debt and that's what we've done for a while
- Matt Van Winkle
Kevin: retail sales demonstrate that someone is hoarding. Same with auto industry sales. Same with Chinese economic slowdown. I certainly am hoarding, preparing for tough times ahead.
- Robert Scoble
Matt: I think the problem is worse than that. Tons of people in the media business have gotten laid off. More layoffs are coming. So, we're preparing for a really bad time, not just paying off credit cards.
- Robert Scoble
I don't fault you for telling the truth and airing your concerns, I'm glad you do that, wish more media did. I did get on to you once or twice though about repeatedly flooding us with despair-laden articles without the occasional hopeful or inspirational one to help the situation.
- xero
And media business isn't even the one that's been hardest hit so far. Finance, autos, manufacturing are getting hard hit.
- Robert Scoble
xero: there wasn't much hope back then. Still isn't much today. If there's one bright spot it's that startups keep getting funded, although even there fewer are getting funded today than were getting funded a year ago. That said, I see the factories in China are still very busy (and they don't build stuff if they don't have orders).
- Robert Scoble
Robert: but you're not just telling the truth and letting the coins fall where they may. You keep saying "long and deep." That is opinion. An educated opinion maybe, but opinion none the less. I have to agree with @xero. Economies rise and fall on public opinion as well as fact.
- Howard Keziah
Robert, I'm not in disagreement about the fact that consumers/businesses are hoarding. You're right. The reports and the economy show that. I get it. I'm simply pointing out (using my undergrad and grad studies in Econ) that hoarding makes the economic issues worse for the aggregate. Individually, consumers might feel better by hoarding, but that hurts the economy at large through the multiplier effect. That's all I'm saying. :)
- Kevin C. Tofel
Robert from what I've seen in the games industry isn't necassarily hoarding (though it is the case for some), but the willingness to spend is still there but in many cases product costs rose at the same time a person's personal expenses (i.e. food, gas, rent, and accumulation of bills) increased it forced people to cut back on non-essentials. Since wage isn't really increasing at any rate to combat the climb most around me have no choice but to avoid spending.
- Bryan
I should note I'm talking about the card, board, and table-top game market, I have nothing i can say from the video game market at this time.
- Bryan
Bryan: that's why this wasn't very influenced by media. Gas prices really hurt a lot of people's budgets. My brother says his bar's business has come back a bit since gas prices went back down.
- Robert Scoble
Howard: yeah, that's opinion, but one that is backed up by a variety of facts. First of all, it's the opinion of other smarter people. Most of the VC's I've talked to tell me it's going to be long and deep. The market itself demonstrates that it's going to be long and deep. But, the banking system itself is behind this and economists told me that they had gotten far more skittish about loaning money out, both to consumers and to businesses. That is why experts predicted it'd be long and deep.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, it's not just credit cards - it's debt in general. We have too much of it as individuals, as a society and our government lives off it. The bigger problem is that every time the economy tries to make a natural downturn we try to prevent it through lower Fed interest rates, etc. We are just delaying the inevitable and making it worse. Yeah, it's going to be bad out there, but it should. The natural markets all need to correct.
- Matt Van Winkle
If by "hoarding" you mean people have decided that maybe they shouldn't buy things until they actually have the money to buy them, then yes... I suppose people are indeed "hoarding"
- Ken Sheppardson
It might be long and deep but it will recovery and be stronger. Many current sectors may have to partially shut down, but new sectors are emerging, many of which will need those exact same people. The ubiquity of the Internet and the newly catching trends in minimal self-employment may actually work in favor of those seeking a new job to improve their lifestyle. You should at least have 6 months worth of current-lifestyle expenses in savings. Maybe now is the time start hoarding up to 8-12 months though?
- xero
Ken: I have money to spend on lots of things. But I'm not spending. I'm expecting I'll need that money in future if I get laid off. It's all fear, but it's rational fear. Many of my coworkers (and competitors) got laid off already.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Calling it "hoarding" just strikes me as putting a negative spin on something that's what personal finance advisors have *always* recommended: pay off your credit cards every month, keep a ~3-6 month supply of cash on hand, save for retirement, etc. We're going through an adjustment period in the economy that will likely be better for everyone involved, other than folks who sell...
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- Ken Sheppardson
Ken: sorry, the changes we're seeing in the economy aren't due to "good personal finance" behaviors. I was already practicing those. But now that we're afraid (or, worse, laid off already) we are radically changing our buying behavior. We are putting off stuff that needs to be done (in my case, fixing a shower) that would be done in a normal time. That deepens downturns and is still happening. People who are laid off don't worry about the stuff you are talking about. They worry about survival.
- Robert Scoble
Ken: the market works on disposable income. If people fear they do not have any disposable income, they stop buying, businesses fail, people lose their jobs, and perpetuate their inability to buy. It's a simple universalization: if everyone stops buying because they're saving their money and paying down debt, who's left to buy things? People need to buy things they don't need: it's what keeps a capitalistic system from failing.
- Mark Trapp
Robert: I guess if you want to generalize about what 300mil people are doing based on your own situationn I can't stop you ;-), but considering the ~1trillion in outstanding unsecured revolving personal debt in the US, and the numbers RE people who bought homes they were just hoping/wishing they'd be able to afford, I'd say there are plenty of people who aren't practicing good personal...
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- Ken Sheppardson
Robert, please see this, that I linked to a little while ago, we have known that MOST of america is in major debt for a long time and done nothing. you are an exception to the norm in terms of saving money - http://friendfeed.com/e...
- mjc
and yes the article is old but that is the whole point, it rings truer now than it did then
- mjc
This holiday season will be interesting to watch for sure, if consumers expenses can stay lower this winter then we will see a rebound in sales. I read an MSNBC article that a number of banks are putting forth initiatives to rework loan terms to get people paying again and resume some cash flow rather than deal with the vast numbers of defaults they currently have. This could also have a positive impact on the spending fear.
- Bryan
Are we going to have a saving Vs hoarding debate again? :P Dips in consumer spending aren't always down to people hoarding, sometimes they simply have no money ;)
- Steven Cains
This downturn in our economy has marked a fundamental shift in how I personally view the world. I doubt I will ever spend money the way that I've done in the past for the rest of my life. I think that for many of us this downturn will in the end affect us in many of the same ways that the Great Depression affected our grandparents.
- Thomas Hawk
@thomashawk before the economy turned down, we were pretty careful. What frustrates me now with this downturn is having to make deep cuts into what I consider necessary expenditures (like office space, for example). Where there was little padding before, there is none now. I can't help but feel punished at the hands of greedy bankers and CEOs, and I don't much like it. :(
- Karoli
from IM
+1 Thomas - same here. I have zero debt and have put off our kitchen remodel. Just did some "home handywork" myself and I have a very good income, but I am saving my cash. Just re-financed my auto loan as rates are good.
- Susan Beebe
Michael - true, I should have clarified that... zero credit card debt; just mortgage and cars
- Susan Beebe
Robert, I also fear a long/deep recession, but I also remember when you had a similar sentiment about the election. I recognize this different and share your fears, but like with the election there are still too many variables and unknowns. Hoping inauguration has a big psychological boost...
- JonathanJoseph
It's not hoarding - it's SAVING and living within means, a concept that many people seem to have forgotten about in the past decade.
- Aviv
Aviv, sorry, what I'm doing is not saving. Saving is putting 10% aside every month. This is the cessation of all non-essential spending to super save and hoard resources for a long downturn.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, and that is exactly what happens when you live off of easy credit for years and put nothing aside. People with savings can still afford to take a vacation (hey, it's super-cheap these days), buy a car (hey, it's super-cheap these days with $5000000 cashbacks) and treat themselves to a $6 latte. The problem is that many people used to pay for that latte using a home equity line of credit.
- Aviv
"Roger, Having graduated from Tulane in 98, I have been following RichRod closely for 10 years now and am sure the pain will only last 1 year. The data for the RR transition at Clemson and West Virginia make that clear. As a startup CEO I would kill for that kind of visibility into the economic recovery."
- JonathanJoseph
me either. Just goes to show that there is always something we can agree with everyone. The key is to find it.
- CW™
I find myself agreeing with Newt more often than I would ever think. He is by far the smartest of the GOP and he understands the Interwebs.
- JonathanJoseph
SOX has problems, but you can't just go back to pre-Enron accounting regulations. Saying that it didn't prevent the collapse of Lehman is missing the point: no, SOX can't prevent businesses from failing, but it aims to prevent them from lying egregiously about what they're doing.
- ⓞnor
@nor - despite its good intentions, SOX doesn't actually promote transparency. In fact, there's a mounting body of evidence that SOX and other like-minded regulations are keeping companies from coming public, at least here in the U.S., which reduces the societal advantages of public equity markets. SOX has accomplished woefully little that it set out to, whilst destroying a great deal in the process...
- Forrest Cox
Keeping companies private also has advantages to the economy as well. I think being public tends to make companies focus on the wrong things in service to stock price instead of focusing on product and the means to make it better (employees).
- Alex Scoble
@Alex - I agree. Also, the broader discussion you bring up is a really interesting one. I've always felt somewhere deep down that many public offerings were lazy ways to manage capitalization, and that the majority of the headaches suffered by all stakeholders thereafter were simply a "penance" of sorts for that lazy decision. There's got to be a better model that properly aligns incentives and provides for equity-based wealth creation.
- Forrest Cox
"I am currently talking to companies with complementary technologies to work on some distribution partnerships. Any suggestions for other kinds of distribution strategies for vertical apps?"
- JonathanJoseph
"I was really looking forward to your thoughts on this particular topic given that this is precisely something I am working through right now, but I found little other than your point that vertical products have a harder time getting that viral-type of rapid growth. I think the recent economic developments and the associated the early stage fundraising climate are going to make the horizontal viral success stories harder and harder to come by. The very nature that makes them viral--- horizontal, simple and mostly free are typical of the Web2.0 features that may be unable to become products or companies, with Twitter being the most obvious example. Vertical applications are much easier to monetize, both through advertising as well as via more traditional business models and are much more likely to be the focus of whoever is left among the early stage consumer internet investors. And because distribution strategies are harder for all the reasons you mentioned, a good discussion around..."
- JonathanJoseph
Both Obama and McCain killed at the Al Smith Dinner. They should have done this instead of the debate last night. It would have given everyone in the country a laugh and helped us understand these two men much better than the debate did.
I actually thought McCain was funnier than Obama! Better sense of timing. Bill Maher had a good comment, though. Whenever McCain jabbed at Obama, Obama had this huge movie-star smile. in the reverse situation mcCain looked like kind of verklempt
- anna sauce
If McCain had that type of speeches all through out his campaign, he wouldn't be so far behind.
- CW™
really enjoyed those videos, thx duncan
- sean percival
mccain definitely had the crowd laughing more. i thought both did well.
- Brooks Bayne
Agreed - much better than the debate. Not living in the US I did not get all jokes referring to people I've never heard of, but I don't get to vote either so fair do's.
- ickledot
@Christopher Welle - he tried the Gene Simmons thing at the debate (http://friendfeed.com/e...) ... he should do comedy the rest of the campaign. If the polls are to be believed, he's got little to lose.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Really? I thught Obama looked stiff and as if he was reading a foregin script. McCain's a little more practiced at these roasts. But we all liked it because it wasn't vicious.
- Francine Hardaway
I agree. Obama did not do as well as McCain. McCain was funnier and Obama has some points where no one laughed and he laughed at his own jokes. This will have no effect on the election and it was kind of boring overall. The formal attire reminded me of Bush in that infamous video where he says "...I call you my base."
- Rolf Schewe