Jeff Vreeland - Likes

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I'd like to reiterate my call for Facebook to open source the Friendfeed codebase (as AOL did when it bought Netscape). A federated OpenFriendfeed is the best for users - and fits Facebook's move toward an open social platform. I'll pay to run a server. Would you?

August 11 - Comment - Like - Share

Brian Hendrickson, helpmeguru, Justin Bradshaw and 222 other people liked this

I agree with this fully. - Akiva Moskovitz

76 more comments

I can't imagine that the terms of the acquisition would permit this to happen. Oh, wait... Facebook take FriendFeed open source? Maybe in two or three years after they squeeze every bit of life out of it, ala Google/Jaiku - Ken Sheppardson

Would that mean there would be dozens of Friendfeeds all trying to get us to come to them? - Mark

I support this fully - Ryan

yes what about a free GAE - abdellah

Oh I agree. But with Facebook's record? HAHAH! Oh god, I need a mint. - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

I'll file this away under "Never Gonna Happen"... - Andrew Terry

Jaiku is not dead. It was bought for a reason, and yes, it will resurface soon. you just wait n see. - binmugahid

yes - andy brudtkuhl

I agree with Andrew... - Suril Amin

I don't think I'd pay, but I'd love to have it open source - Jake Anderson

Worked for AOL. We got Mozilla and they got a much improved Netscape. - Leo Laporte

Leo, I think you have a little too much "hope" on this. Maybe you're just thinking if Facebook was smart, then they'd do that. - Mark

Facebook is much smarter than you're giving them credit for. I think. - Leo Laporte

great idea Leo, i'm 'cautiously optimistic' at this point in time about the future of FriendFeed... lets hope for the best people - Chris Heath

There is no value in that to them. Why open source something that give them a competitive edge. - binmugahid

I do not agree. It destroyed netscape. let Facebook use the best features of FriendFeed in it. Keep the talent like the four ex-google founders. Open source is not the answer to everything. sometimes Closed Source is better for the users as well. Just keep the innovations coming and it will be fine - hasanahmad

They've got the Friendfeed team. That's probably what they really wanted. Getting the open source community working on the FF codebase and contributing it back to Facebook is a win for everyone. - Leo Laporte

On the other hand, I ike to see Laconica (identi.ca) getting more like ff. - Chanux

Wow did this just happen today? - bravestface

yesterday - Chris Heath

Open-sourcing Communicator may have ultimately destroyed Netscape as a brand but without that move, I suspect we'd all still be developing for IE6. Great call, Leo. - Jared Smith

Excellent idea Leo. - Adi

I just can't stand Facebook. To many people I let in from my youth that I don;t want to see - bravestface

Yes. - .LAG liked that

You're assuming that Facebook bought the company JUST to get the developers, and not because they want to integrate many/most of the features into their service. If they want the features, they don't want a bunch of clones competing with them. - Joel Bennett

I'll send you a hefty donation for that Leo. - jcunwired

bravestface: That's not FB's fault you let them in. sheesh. - Gus

when will twitter be back up any 1 know - daveccorey

There already is an open source clone of twitter - see identi.ca and laconia or whatever it's called - Doug Holton

True. very True Gus. My own fault. Perhaps I need to setup an Alias account that encompasses what i really want - bravestface

I already run a Laconica server at http://army.twit.tv - I don't think we need another Twitter clone. We need something more like Friendfeed. Or maybe Wave will be the answer. - Leo Laporte

hay hay hay, sin duda un tema un tanto escabrozo, pero entre Facebook y Google, esto no lleva a nada bueno.. i'ts a hard theme, no doubt about that, but between facebook and google we are going to hell !!!!!! - Đoи яамoη

Or Pushbutton? - bravestface

This would be amazing. - Adam Teece

The Wave *protocal* might be a part of the answer... or just giving yourself over to whatever Google wants you to use might work (i.e. Wave, Reader, Gtalk, etc.)... but I don't really see Wave asdirect 1-for-1 FF replacement. - Ken Sheppardson

Too many systems in place - bravestface

They open sourced the Facebook code base (fbopen)... the license is very restrictive, however. FB owns all code modifications. Probably be the same license for FF. - Kurt

In know people that have replaced their email with Twitter....that just isn't right...we need one locator that many systems can reach - bravestface

Great idea Leo. Now let's see what they do, if they're listening. - Kelly Mitchell

Leo - your last comment is why I think Facebook bought Friendfeed: "We need something more like Friendfeed. Or maybe Wave will be the answer." This is going to be a product they will launch in opposition of Google Wave. It will surface Q1 of 2010 and will have some of the same features that Wave has - but be closed sourced to Facebook. - Jeff Vreeland

I see what you mean. Facebook and Google though don't really open source their web apps - Doug Holton

Facebook doesn't seem to have a good reputation with those kind of thing. Facebook promised to open their chat/IM system via XMPP. More than a year has passed since they announced this XMPP system it still did not happen. We still have to rely on screen-scraping methods to implement Facebook chat on third-party IM systems (like the 3rd party Facebook chat plugin for pidgin called pidgin-facebook). - Gideon Guillen

I would love to see friendfeed become opensource. Mostly as a developer I would love to see the code. See how friendfeed works. - mikemcmullan

An "open FriendFeed" could be Facebook's chance to get something lined up to compete with Google Wave. Without it, Google and Twitter are going to own the real-time communication space. - Derek Gathright

Completly agree! - Jamie-Lee Mclean-Davis from Nambu

Open source is the way to so that "The poeple" can do what they want or to a program. E.I. www.Openssourcemaps.com - D Lets from iPhone

Absolutely. - Ian Littman

OS FF would be awesome, but making it a federated service is an entirely different ball of wax. Just ask the Wave guys. They said during the original IO presentation that federation was one of the harder parts (though FF would be easier w/o the real time editing piece, but still). - Patrick Sullivan

OS FF - Malcolm Bastien

I think a integrated RSS/FB/FF/GW/Twitter client will be an interesting real time inflection point - Jim Posner

I totally agree Leo. I can't help but think that this deal is going to be a massive success or a massive flop - nothing in the middle! It's simple things like opening the FF source that can help make it a massive success IMHO. - Chris Cathcart

correction: Http://www.openstreetmap.org - D Lets from iPhone

I would just like to see the real-time commenting open-sourced. - patrick

wow Leo you sure know how to get a topic started - Joe Geeting

I would. It is hard using Friendfeed now not knowing its fate. - Hunt from BuddyFeed

I actually was hoping Twitter would be the one to grab it up. Seems like a natural progression for Twitter to make. I just hope Facebook doesn't bury it and they actually use it. As far as open source it? Could be interesting. - Michael Bower

In a secure and closed environment it could be a powerful communication/collaboration tool for businesses. Features of a chat, but persistent. Ability to share photos & files... - Ken Bauer

definently - Ryan Peach

Right-o - Myrddin Emrys

I would love for this to happen. Federated Friendfeed servers would be quite fun and is the logical step for a great Internet service which aggregates disparate information from all over. - rob friedman

You know what, Jaiku was open sourced. And nobody uses it anymore. The fact that "it" (FB open sourcing FF) will happen or not is completely irrelevant. Because you will all be hopping on the next early adopter miracle train (read:service) anyway. So stop whining and move on. Federated this, federated that. identi.ca tried that. Again, no users. It's nice to talk the talk. Especially at times like this. You just gotta walk the darn walk afterwards. Which people usually forget to do. - Vlad Bobleanta

Whoa... you should enhance your calm. Communities are finicky things and sources like Microsoft that are poo-pooing Open Source IMHO is the real problem. Me thinks that a better source of education to dissipate the FUD floating in the global porcelain bowel instead of modern political tactics are are needed to solve real problems. - Myrddin Emrys

very good proposition, i'd pay - Brian Appleby

Leo, like this idea. - Kol Tregaskes

adoption of open standards such as OMB, which is used by laconica, would allow federation among servers - Mike Chelen

It will one hell of a start, I doubt it though... - Dobromir Hadzhiev

It would be a good thing, but not sure it it will ever happen - Thomas Lee

I support this as well. - Carlos Ayala

Now this is something I would fly out to support at the launch... - Johnny Worthington

Another reason why Leo kicks ass - Mo Kargas

If FriendFeed went open source identi.ca / lamonica would be dealt a serious blow. FriendFeed could become even more powerful if the people could tinker with the code and add many features that remain missing, or strengthen features that currently are weak. It will be interesting to se how FB utilizes their newest acquisition... - Randy Shapiro

FYI, there's already an open source alternative: http://www.fftogo.com/e... - Marcos Marado from fftogo

absolutley ;) - Kenneth Reitz

i would pay - cheapsuits

ive all ready got a amp for 5 bucks 4 twitter that was suspsose to help twitter run better guess what it dont - daveccorey

no definitely not. it would shift everything to Chinese government... Damn, millions would have their rest life in prisons. - xiawinter

http://kennethreitz.com/blog... - Kenneth Reitz

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

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

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

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

Leo Laporte

We launch a new TWiT show @ 3p today: TWig - This Week in google - with Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani. Google and cloud computing the topics.

August 1 - Comment - Like - Share

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looking forward to subscribing to the podcast. will be up in Sierra's without bandwidth to watch live today - kent williams

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Really looking forward to this show. - Jari Hakkarainen

Sounds like a really nice addition to the TWiT network. Can't wait! - Jonathan Grenier

Looking forward to it also - Claes Krantz

hoping it will be up on itunes today, since i won't be able to watch it live. Can't wait to listen - John Fogarty from twhirl

Sounds interesting! - Dean

I like the idea, but not the name. Seems kind of bias right off the bat. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the innovation that Google brings to the table, but to name the freakin' show after Google?? Can you tell that I am a big fan of Dvorak :) - rodney.franklin

i look forward to listening to it! - Aaron

Great! Was waiting for it since the pre-announcement in TWIT. - Alexey Klyukin

Interested and looking forward to it! May have to listen to podcast though. Will be out on a boat this afternoon. - Suzi Kilgo from iPhone

Why is google in the name when all the big companies are embracing the cloud ? - Mark from iPhone

Looking forward to a new show, - rudedog

Can't wait to listen! - Tom Webster

Think it was a big mistake to put the name "google" in the title, but will probably be a great show anyways. - Steven Legault

this is great, so much to talk about, and so much to learn. I think most people have no idea the range of services that are emerging from both Google and Amazon related to cloud services that will be invaluable for the small or start-up business as well as consumers.... - Howie Schechtman

Can't wait! A new and exciting podcast for a new and exciting era of computing! - Josh Rosen

yeah, a new era of computing, say's it all! - Howie Schechtman

Great idea Leo. @gregorymurray - Gregg

looking forward to it already - Kevin Porteous

Oh no!!! Not more Leo Podcasts!!! :-) Sure I'll be there! - Richard Bitting

Can't wait, Leo! I'll subscribe immediately. This is an excellent topic and I'm really glad to see the best podcast network on the Internet jumping right in to cover it. - Eric Geller

I'm really interested to see how this show goes. This is a big topic heading into our future. - Mike Nayyar

when will it be on itunes? i wonder - Aaron

Where can I subscribe for iTunes? - Ben

I'm not fond of the "Google" in the name either, it's like calling a car show "This Week in Gerneral Motors". But I'll try to listen in to the taping anyways, should be funny & knowledgable with the three of you. - Martin

is that pacific time? look forward to it! - Susan Ettenheim

And that album art need work, IMO. The "computing in the" is hardly legible. - Martin

I actually didn't like the artwork so I tried a different one myself. Here it is; http://img149.imageshack.us/img149... - Can Sağlam

This sounds like a good show, and nice graphics! But how do you have time leo?! Sometimes during somewhat slow news weeks there is some overlap in news like macbreak and twit which can sometimes be annoying but still great shows as I'm sure this one will be as well. WIll jeff and gina always be there or more of a twit interchangeable style? - Denis Dervisevic

Looking forward to it, I love your other shows and Gina Trapani is great. - Brandon Eaker

All things Google. Not all things Twitter? LOL Should be interesting. I was listening when you spoke of this show as a, maybe. I'll be there. - D Lets

Ready to listen to the big three Windows Weekly, MacBreak Weekly and This Week in Google...TWiT is in a class by itself. - Christopher Knopick

Windows Weekly is the best because Paul does something 90% of the TWiT network hosts don't do: RESEARCH! - Mark

Should call it "this week in the clouds"  - Stan from iPhone

Looking forward to it Leo! - Cody Clark

gonna check this one out - (jeff)isageek

TWiG is better than TWiC (This Week in [the] Cloud) for those saying he shouldn't have put Google in the name. - Marcus Boyce

Alright. Very cool - Dylan Richardson

Looking forward to it. - archaictree

Jeff is a great choice for this. WWGD - Rob Truman from fftogo

What's in a name? ;-) I look forward to this new addition to the TWiT network! - Joe Gilbert

Great.. looking forward to it... - Shoukat Dharani

this is hilarious with hindsight http://www.appleinsider.com/article... - Mark

Gina is great, as is Jeff. I really look forward to seeing how this show develops. - Lori Todd

Google is taking over the world. Chrome OS = Android 2.0 for large laptop screens, Google Voice on Android and White Spaces will kill the $1 Trillion Telecom and ISP industry, you should talk about those ARM processor based netbooks that are coming out with Chrome browser in the next few months, they will take over the whole laptop market and start costing $150 with no contracts. - Charbax

Great show Leo. Great way to kick off Sunday morning. will try with hangover next week - guydownunder from iPhone

TWiG was great! It really makes me want to dive into the cloud. :) - Curt Tweedle

Loved the show! - Krista House

Great show! I will be a regular weekly viewer & I want to be a part of the Wave you set up. - Don Struble

Can't find this show on itunes :( - Richard

There is one This Week in Google podcast in iTunes, but it's not this one ;) - Reijo

Someone else already took the name? Naughty Leo for not checking lol - Mark from iPhone

Mark, they did one episode and it was 2 years ago. I don't think they'll have any issues with the president of the internet using the same title... - MλTT

It would be ironic if it was the twitvid folks who made the podcast hehe. Leos show was much better anyways - Mark from iPhone

I have been looking forward to this show since you first announced it. Thanks! - Bruce Vittetoe

Gina T. mentioned y'day it wasn't up on iTunes yet, but they were working on it. Sounds like another TWiT winner! - Rob Greco from email

Great what a good idea since Google seems to run the show/ - Rob Cairns

Is TWig on iTunes yet? - Devon Govett

Gina's great, glad to hear about it, Leo, thanks. - randulo

Looking for it on iTunes here too, nothing yet. - Andrew Leahey

Take a while to appear on iTunes. Meanwhile you can add it manually to iTunes with the following URL: http://leo.am/podcasts/twig Thanks for listening! - Leo Laporte

Can't wait to subscribe! - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

What was that thing that Jeff Jarvis brought up at about 46:00 and it sounded like; Prezee or Prez-e? I have looked on Google and I found nothing. - AquaGeneral

I think it was Prezi, http://prezi.com/ - Brandon Eaker

i thinks is very important the post - amadeu.karen

Fantastic show... great topic. I found it on iTunes. - Denise Deverelle Crown

Veronica

One day home in SF tomorrow, and then off to Japan for a week of @Qore shoots. Sometimes I forget where I am when I get off a plane.

July 2 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Sounds like a Tyler Durden moment. :) - Bryan Zirkel

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Im sure all that traveling inst fun sometimes, but i hope you have good time in Japan! - Fee501st

You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? - Mike Chelen

There are only 2 rules to Geek Club.... - Dave Friedel

rules 1 and 10? - Mike Chelen

So Veronica and Patrick the same person? - Fee501st

Veronica and Serafina are the same person. Think about it. Have you ever *seen* Serafina... we only hear about her. - Dave Friedel

True! Obviously this is a photoshop http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Fee501st

There is an App for that! :) - Jeff Vreeland

Cote'

IT Managemenr & Cloud podcast #46 (http://www.redmonk.com/cote...) - Is "private cloud" a good idea? ...& more IT Management/cloud news and views

July 2 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Leo Laporte

Video: What’s in Sarah’s purse? (via aaroNiGHTS) http://leo.tumblr.com/post...

June 27 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Great Stuff! - Jeff Vreeland

Robert Scoble

There are lots of Windows haters. I run Windows 7 on my Mac and it is great.

June 18 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Micah Wittman, Didier Girard, Adi and 43 other people liked this

so do i and love it. - Carlos Ayala

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I'd say mac osx and 7 are tie - Tyler Gillies

Windows 7 is fantastic. I am waiting for the RTM to upgrade from XP - Kashif Khan

It works much better on my Mac than it does on my PC. It keeps crashing on my PC. Vista never crashed on my PC. - Jesse Stay

I haven't used Windows since, 2000. - Matt Ruiz

i still use win xp and content with that. will check out windows 7 when it launches - Raymond M. Kristiansen

as a Mac user I noticed a lot of Mac haters as well ;) - Khaled A

Windows 7 is definitely breathing new life into old PC's too. - Rodfather

Win7 is awesome. It runs on 512MB ram + 16MB video mem in a VirtualBox VM on a winXP (try doing that with even Ubuntu - Gnome) - Shivanand Velmurugan

I'd do the same (with virtual box), but I can't get W7 to download from the MS site. - Jason Miller

will Microsoft ever restructure the control panel so it could make sense? I'm tired of digging through countless windows just to change power settings. While they are at it, add network profiles :) - Khaled A

Jason: I got it when they released the first beta. Haven't done anything recently though - Shivanand Velmurugan

I run Win 7 in Boot Camp/VM Fusion, too, and it's rock solid. Great way for doing F# development. - Akiva Moskovitz

I wonder if MS are planning on win7 support for natal. If so, makes you wonder how game changing that would be in the consumer OS market. Could imagine natal embedded into laptops. It'll never fully replace keyboard and mouse, but could be an interesting compliment to them. - alphaxion

Can you run Windows 7 fully on your Mac? I tried installing via VMWare with my new 2009 iMac and it says it doesn't recognize the graphics card, so I have to run it in a dumbed down mode. No fancy Aero or anything. Hard to judge an OS like that. - Josh McConnell

Josh, Aero doesn't work for anyone in VMWare [yet]. - Akiva Moskovitz

It requires hardware virtualization so thats why it doesnt work in vmware . But according to this http://blogs.msdn.com/richard... it can run under virtual pc - Kashif Khan

I'd like to try W7 on my MacBookPro. Is it better to download W7 using Mac/Safari or Parrallels/Vista/Mac/Firefox from my Mac? Should it make any difference? - 1x29

its a multi GB iso file, make sure you use a download manager - Khaled A

It is not so much a matter of hating Windows as it is of prefering another OS. - Michael Tefft

Adrian: always prefered VirtualBox to VmWare. check out http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki.... It's free and is really fast (support 3D acceleration among other really neat features, also is scriptable). - Shivanand Velmurugan

The one thing I'd miss in VirtualBox is Unity mode. I can live without Aero. - Akiva Moskovitz

Shivanand: The problem I'm getting is that when I try and download the Microsoft TechNet page just hangs for ages. I'm not sure if it's because I'm trying to do it through non windows environment? - 1x29

Adrian: could be. I used IE to download it (it's crap, and cumbersome, but it works) :) - Shivanand Velmurugan

I'm trying at the moment but it's been hanging for a good 10 minutes. I'll boot up Vista via Parallels and try it with IE. - 1x29

I run it in VMWare on a Mac as well, and like it too. - Patrick Jordan

both mac and windows suck and I am not talking about GUIs installation etc. but the internals like no fork on windows or "broken" /dev/shm on macosx - marcin

Tired of the os wars. Why should anyone care what i use? - dthree

I love my windows 7. It is the only operating system on my computer at the moment. - John Ford

I'm a real OS whore, with XP installed in a VM on two of my Linux installations, Vista/Win7/Linux tri-boot on my main PC, OSX/Linux dual-boot on an older PC, and Win7 on my netbook (where previously I had been tri-booting Leopard/Win7/Linux Mint). OSX is probably my least favorite due to certain practices of Apple, but I still find much to recommend there. - Christopher A Carr

I just upgraded from XP to win7 RC Yesterday and holy crap, what a difference! I never used vista, so leapfrogging into a fully modern OS is quite an eye opener. My laptop's crappy 32mb directX8 video card can't do Aero, but even without the "pretty" it's still a great OS. - veo

69% of the way through downloading W7 and going strong. Mac/Parallels/Vista/IE seems to be working :) Thanks, Shivanand :) - 1x29

W7 is dreadfully slow on parallels on my mac... - Che Hodgins

I have run it on my Mac as well. I don't prefer it and don't really run any windows apps - but what I saw was fast, light and seemed really nice. - Tony

I love Windows, I just hate that Microsoft tries to dominate the entire PC experience instead of leaving it to smaller and more innovative companies. - Davis Freeberg

Che: Something isn't set up right, then... - Christopher A Carr

You couldn't just call it a night huh :) - Aviv

@Adrian try downloading it in Firefox with downthemall(a plugin/excellent download manager). I was able to download Win 7 x64(3.15 gb) in 2-3 hrs on 3 mbps connection. And no problem with Technet(atleast it worked for me). - Abhishek

I've got every box here using the RC now. Lots of hidden (and not so hidden) cool stuff (and improvements). - Charlie Anzman

I run Win7 on my Macbook and its great! - Spirit 2.0 from Viigo

For any1 on this thread who is mentioning the Aero Theme in Vista/Win7, it's a massive resource hog on ANY platform. It slowed a very workable Vista HP Laptop (2GB RAM) to a near crawl, when I finally figured out that it was Aero causing this and took it off, the machine easily ran 4 times faster. Imagine the extra video calculations wasted on that stupid glass effect. Once you take it... more... - Alex Schleber

Alex - Have you tried it on that same laptop in 7? I've been running it on a "Vista Capable" laptop with 1gb of RAM and its smooth, in windows 7. - Richard Lawler

Interesting that you say that, Shivanand. Last time I tried the Windows 7 beta in VirtualBox or VMware Player, it wouldn't even friggin' boot fully the first time round - it took an insane amount RAM assigned to the virtual machine (over 700MB, if I remember correctly), just to get as far as the "Install Now" screen with a cursor that moved a few pixels every 2 minutes. That's on a laptop with 1GB of RAM and a 2GHz Celeron 575... - Tyson Key

Windows 7 has been fantastic so far. Even got it running on an old P4 desktop with a half a gig of memory. - Adi

seth

@jvreeland good point, and no. this way i get to work in my PJ's and earn my keep AND still get my 3gs in the comfort of my own home.

June 19 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

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Leo Laporte

Cell Phone Execs Will Face Questions On Text Messaging Price Hikes | NEWS JUNKIE - http://mynewsjunkie.com/2009...

June 16 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

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Those cell phone companies will have a lot of explaining to do Tuesday when they testify at a U.S. Senate committee hearing on rising text messaging costs. Representatives from Verizon, AT&T, and Cricket will be faced with questions on why those short 160 character SMS messages are costing the consumer too much. - Leo Laporte

26 more comments

Leo, I believe it was you who reported that based on AT&T's text messaging fee SMS messages cost consumers somewhere around $1500 per MB of data? - jcunwired

The painful pricing structure of these companies is why I don't really use my cell phone for anything more than the occasional call. I'm not prepared to risk the assorted extra charges that come with SMS, or web use. - Eoghann Irving

any guesses on what they say will be the reason for these prices ? - Kashif Khan

http://mobilejones.com/2007... My article on SMS charging hit the front page of digg in 2007. The high cost of SMS has been a known in the mobile industry for a long time. I remember being shocked that many of my web friends hadn't thought of the costs per MB, - Debi Jones

Not only do they charge absurd prices, but most don't even include texting in the unlimited data plans. I pay 30 dollars a month for iPhone data and pay 15 more on top of that for 1500 texts. THat is outrageous. - Grant

Interesting that they are questioning Cricket at the same time as the larger carriers. We have Cricket here and they offer unlimited calling including unlimited text messaging for only $40/month. Maybe they want to know why Cricket can offer reasonable pricing while the larger, national carriers continue to gouge their customers. - Joshua Blevins

They should also be grilled about the cost of data plans. - Kashif Khan

I don't use text messaging, so I don't have it on my iPhone. That saves me $20 every month. A small victory! - Paul Ring

I don't have texting either, but got stuck paying 60 cents for two porn spam messages! - Sandy Curry

I could be wrong, but I thought the reason SMS was so expensive was because they want to discourage people from using it, since texts can saturate the network. You can't really compare it to email, because SMS works like a phone call and doesn't use the data connection. - Daniel Sims

SMS does use the control channel, but that's it. It doesn't really saturate the network since it doesn't create a connection like an actual phone call. It's a 1-way message and it's not a guaranteed receipt either. Oh, and those that actually look at the cost per MB are incorrect since it's that channel itself isn't used in the same fashion as data connections. SMS uses control channel... more... - Ben Hwang

You have to pay to receive SMS? Which Dodo brain though of that one? There would be a revolt in Europe if they tried that! - David Wright from twhirl

New Zealand has two networks, one gives 500/1000 texts 'free' for $10. the other gives free weekends if you spend a certain amount during the week. - Robbie Steele

actually there are that kind of things in Europe. Some service providers (ringtones for example) may charge your phone bill by sending SMS. You can for exmple have a monthly subscription for ringtones and they are charging you by sending two SMSes. This is ofcourse problematic, as the consumer can not easily deny from paying and in a case of dispute the operator stands in between. - Jani Kenttälä from IM

True, but those are subscription services, not "normal" SMS messages. - David Wright from twhirl

@Ben: If the SMS uses the control channel, which is in use and always active anyway, why should there even be a charge for SMS? The network infrastructure is already there, so really the extra data does not make an impact. - Nils Sandin

On an additional point, as mentioned above, regular incoming SMS are not charged in Europe (unless roaming abroad), and outbound SMS can cost as little as 0.09€ (13 cents) on a pre-paid plan (w/o commitment for 500 or 1000 messages you might never use). - Nils Sandin

It's called Capitalism. No government intervention necessary. If the consumer doesn't like it, they should stop paying for it. In other words, move to a company that doesn't charge so much or stop using the service. The market will then be forced to change. - Chad McCoskey

Chad, because of that system we also have the most primitive cell phone networks and system in the 1st world. Unfettered capitalism isn't always what's best. - Tad from fftogo

I think that's part of the problem -- they've all raised their prices at once, so there's no alternative provider. I used to have a sensible option in the US which didn't charge me for incoming messages, but that's been long gone. - John Flinchbaugh from IM

I mentioned the Pre but I think I got away with it! - Kevin J Hatton

Chad, since the government sells the spectrum licences, they can put some restrictions. Do you remember that http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007...? - Jérôme Flipo

Tad, so what? We forget that cell service and a whole host of other things we take for granted now are luxuries not necessities. I love my iPhone but if I felt the prices weren't acceptable or if another option was better either a phone or pricing plan, I'd go there. My point is that it's all well and good to complain, but protest with what companies value most: your money. - Chad McCoskey

Chad, can you list necessities, beyond air, water, food and security? The issues at stake are the four characteristics of the market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... and the government role in preventing tacit collusion. Also, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.... - Jérôme Flipo

Jerome, you're right about the necessities which is exactly my point. We don't all "deserve" high quality cell service for free and in the case of a non necessity, if all companies offering that product charge the same amount then maybe the populace should decide if they should really spend their money on it. If you don't like the cost of text messages then don't use the service and if the majority of people does that companies will either stop the service or lower prices. - Chad McCoskey

I have an iPhone with no text plan because they are obscenely priced. I'm not happy about $25/mo for unlimited data but I'm doing my best to get my money's worth. I'll just call or send an email rather than pay $.50 for a text - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Daniel, thank you for proving my point. More people should follow suit if they don't like the cost. By the way, I have text on my phone and make sure I don't go over my limit. - Chad McCoskey

Ike Pigott

The 2-billionth Tweet is likely to be sent before midnight. Coincidentally, we'll also see the 2-billionth posting of useless quiz results on Facebook.

June 1 from Facebook - Comment - Like - Share

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