“I am watching CNN and seeing bad employment numbers from US auto industry. Interesting, though, here in China US brands, like Buick, are very popular.”
Toyota own's here in Uganda, American cars are very hard to find. - Jon Gosier
via feedalizr
It's likely that in China US brands are popular because they're an import and therefore a status symbol. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
US brands like Buick are actually made in China. They're popular because historically before China was communist, Buick was a very popular brand. So when GM entered the market in the 90s, they thought they'd begin by bringing a well recognized brand back. It worked. Became status symbol for all government officials and wealthy folks. Now they're introducing other GM lines like Cadillac etc. - Christine Lu
Interesting about the Buick "brand's" adoption. When I visited (Guangzhou) China in 1987, Mercedes seemed to be the popular auto (and truck) there (aside from waves of bicycles). - Jim Courtney
Buick seemed very popular 2+ years ago, when it was primarily the only car on the road, but now don't see it that often in Shenzhen or Songjiang. (there are few re-branded cars there sold as Buicks, like the Suzuki) Buicks in the US use Chinese engines, but the cars I think are made in the US(though it is cheaper to replace the whole engine nowadays then to fix parts). You will notice slight refinement differnces; such as how much better a German VW is made VS a Shanghai VW. - clarke thomas
I read an article, I'm pretty sure it was about Buick, how they designed a model in a Chinese design shop specifically to appeal to the Chinese market. - mikepk
And at Ford, we've seen profitable results this quarter in South America and Europe, where the Blue Oval is particularly popular. - Scott Monty
detroit .. 30 years of ignoring reality .. hard to have sympathy for them - Gregory Lent
All the western brands are majority-owned joint-ventures by Chinese. Mercedes is still the most prestigious brand for government officials, and Audi for the richest in China. - Joshua Allen
@Christine Lu: That's very interesting. Though I did guess they were produced in China. I wonder if there is ANY real goods import from the US to China. - Amit Morson
Maybe China can bailout the US auto industry instead of taxpayers. Well, I guess if they keep buying treasuries, it's roughly the same thing except that we're on the line to pay the debt back. - Chris White
"There were some bright spots around the globe for GM. It saw a solid 4.3% jump in sales in China, even as industrywide sales there declined, allowing it to pick up market share. China has become an increasingly important market for GM, one which accounts for more than one in ten vehicles it sells worldwide." - http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/2... - Steve Wilhelm
the auto industry has been have problems for a long long time, just ask anyone who lives in the state of Michigan which has been in a one-state recession for almost 5 years - Jonathan Jesse
The problem is that money is sitting offshore. Corporations aren't going to bring it back into the US just to lose 35% to taxes. - Chris Mayer
No, actually I think the problem is that American cars suck. Make something people want to buy. It might be too late now, because we're going through a period where consumers won't want to buy anything. But why would you buy some old PCs, to use an analogy, when there are new cool Macs coming in the future? I'd wait for the electric/hybrids with cool body styles, handling, and interiors like Porsche, Audi, and BMW. - Chris White
Agreed, Chris. That's why potential auto manuf. bailouts are disgusting to me. They made their beds by just moving junk metal and pumping up stock returns, instead of focusing on making a good product matching customer desires and making profits through customer satisfaction. Hope China can learn lessons from us. - Kevin Leroux
That's interesting. It would be great if Obama comes through on the green cars promise. Good for us in Canada as well (we have an enormous auto manufacturing sector that serves mostly the US giants). - V for Veselka
I don't know if its wise to save the big three. Capitalism is about renewing the old and I cant see Ford, GM, and Jeep changing anytime soon. What if we let them fail. Doesn't that give companies like Tesla a real chance of changing cars in this country? - Erik Weese
president-elect obama will bail out the big three, think about he has massive support from the unions and also has governor granholm (of michiga) on his economic transition team. we definitely see an economic bailout for the big 3. also i doubt very little limits on these companies as any more would put even more constraints on them and more job loss/facotry closure, less union employees, etc - Jonathan Jesse
Erik... are you saying if we lose Ford GM and Jeep then we'll all be able to afford Tesla cars? How's that work, exactly? - Michael Markman
d profile and free hosting are valuable, as are community benefits like being part of a group of similarly passionate bloggers, contests and channel events and ongoing training programs. - Ken Burbary
ncremental value for other channel members." In other words: the internet lets us know more about each others' needs and thus see opportunities to fill them. Very few things are as helpful in learning about how people are doing business as the easy publishing of blogs and blog comments. - Ken Burbary
Closed-loop marketing has several benefits, including these: * Ensuring that prospective customers understand the marketing message by monitoring their responses - Ken Burbary
t to mention some tight links with tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator that are useful for application design. And since Internet users relatively swiftly update their Flash software to the latest version, it's a much more stable and consistent programming foundation. It's clear no single technology will dominate in the near future at least--each camp's advocates acknowledge their rivals' advantages. But some see the situation - Ken Burbary
These are some great tips, Steve. I'm thinking of banning myself from using FF inside work hours (especially after lunch). There are so many things I find very interesting, and that can eat away at my working day. - Chris Nixon
Great post Steve! Along the lines of tracking your online time: I was using Wakoopa, but it became pointless during my client application boycott. Was telling me that I was using Firefox 99% of the time, which I already knew. Check out MeeTimer: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... - Kevin C. Tofel
Really great post. I'm curious to see how FF will evolve into your ever-efficient workflow. - David Weiner
thanks for the link Steve, enjoyed your article :) - Shey
Great post - if only I had the will power to ask the tough question...but I'm afraid the answer would be, "Stop reading and get to work!!" - George Smith
These are really nice hacks, must be very useful when social media is part of one's job - unfortunately hardly when social media IS one's job. I am actually afraid of even attempting to track my social media activities on a calendar as I'm sure the results will be terrifying and I'll have to figure out what I will do once FriendFeed and Twitter are both down :) - Svetlana Gladkova
Congrats Steve on the guest post on Lifehacker... neat! - Susan Beebe
Technorati was your favorite productivity tool, why don't you mention it anymore? - paul mooney
I agree with setting time for social media. I check FF, Twitter and Feedly with my morning coffee, lunch time and then after 5. Congrats on the post! - Jill Howard Allen
I hope it will be only Friendfeed soon. Doesn't anybody else get tired of all these different kind of networks? Sometimes monopoly is a good thing. Let's all head over to MSN ;-) - Rutger Blom
via twhirl
mine is a little more extreme - friendfeed mostly & twitter rarely - i do push my ff's to twitter & i check my twitter replies & dm sometimes - i would like to get to the point where all my friends are in friendfeed and i no longer need to go to twitter at all - i used to like whales ;) - mike "glemak" dunn
Agree. They are different and both ueful in different ways. I see no need to choose between them just yet. I'm using Plurk too, which is different again - very informal conversation. - jjprojects
Disagree. Reason? Time. I don't have time for multiple services. For me, right now at least, it's FF. - Steve Rubel
You don't need one to use the other but they sure are handy to use together - JohnBfromMemphis
via twhirl
Haven't maid up my mind yet, but it seems that the different services and their approaches fill different needs. Undecided for now! - tekspectator
Exactly! Why does it have to be "either" "or"? - Steve
I definitely agree. It is frustrating to have people insist one is better than the other. Two totally different beasts. - Shawn Farner
via twhirl
could not agree more. probably the best twitter, FF comment in a long time. - Bastian
Agree! At this point, FF's comment functionality isn't good enough to replace Twitter for me. With Twhirl, it doesn't seem like tool overload to use both. - jen robinson
via twhirl
Apart from twitter's SMS interface.. what is missing (for you) in FF? @ ? - Kishore Balakrishnan
Its FF only. reaons against Twitter : (a) Twitter whaling to often (b) not easy to track/thread twitter replies together. FOR FF (1) FF stable (2) FF Conov enabler/agggreagator (3) I like it better :)- - Peter Dawson
An integrated solution with both would be best. Twittering out of FriendFeed - that's my dream! - Matthias Schwenk
Oh definitely agree. They are symbiotic beasts - Deepak
Agree absolutely, when social media tools complement, the sum become greater than the parts - Charlie Hope
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@ Matthias you can comment back from FF in Twitter already... - Charlie Hope
via twhirl
and, and, and... there's Utterz, Flickr, blog, etc. etc. etc. -- so, yes. It all goes together. FriendFeed has a chance to become a hub (the way Twitter is foe me now, but more so), if it can somehow tame itself - Doug Haslam
via twhirl
Funny how this comes to my attention now as Twitter is not updating for me, but FF is. I love how I can reply to FF via @Twhirl. That is a dynamic combintion. - Tracy Lee Carroll
via twhirl
@Matthias I wonder if someone has created a tool that takes your own FF posts and makes a tweet from it? You'd need to turn off tweets in FF otherwise there would be a feedback loop that would eventually destroy the universe. - Elliot Tucker
elliot: twitterfeed does that, put in your ff atom feed and remove your twitter feed from ff - mike "glemak" dunn
Agree....finally somebody comes out and says it as it should be said :) - Arjun
it's both right now - if you have group of people in Twitter then it is both - otherwise the conversation is moving more into friendfeed on a greater range of topics so for those not so tied to twitter it is twitter or friendfeed - riaz
Disagree. Twitter has crossed the line. It is dead to me and too much of the time it is dead to everyone. - Dave Slusher
I kind of agree. There's too much noise on FriendFeed to have simple, conversational, exchanges. - Bill Bittner
If Twitter doesn't get its act together, it will be FriendFeed and no Twitter. I'm revisiting FriendFeed today after a nice hiatus - Michael Koby
via Alert Thingy
This is be being real: I love Twitter, and don't get me wrong, I think FriendFeed is cool, too.. but I think Facebook will ultimately adopt the killer features of both and wipe them out. - Shawn Farner
via twhirl
Elliot, you can try feeding your FF entries feed into Twitterfeed.com. - Dewald Pretorius
And probably many other services we'll adopt - Sally Robinson
Agreed. FF, to me, is more of a reading rather than authoring experience - Michael Lehman
Agree. Friend Feed is my Twitter extension for comments and groups - Jon Bishop
Agree; tell me though, does Pownce = Twitter + FriendFeed [or vice-versa] or am I just being thick? Twhirl posts to Pownce for me as well, but taking Rafe Needleman's advice and not tracking multiple communities. FF good for posts too long for Twitter - Justin Guy Souter
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FriendFeed > Twitter for me. I feel more value when I post here first. - Steve Isaacs
agree, and, in between Twitter and Friendfeed , many other indispensible things are included. - Nikos Anagnostou
Both - but grudgingly. Honestly? The only reason I go to FF is because some of my Twitterpals migrated here and won't come back. Twitter is my main gal - FF is my Friday night stand-in. If I could do away with FF I would. - Lucretia Pruitt
Twitter is too myopic to last much longer. Our online lives are a lot more complicated than 140 characters. - David Weiner
How much time to we all have?? There are use cases for both twitter and friend feed. Some people WILL choose one or the other. There are functional aspects that i like about both. For me it is both. - Rodney Rumford
Its neither - it's what fits your structure and how you want to connect. If you want actual conversations and build on relationpships, IMO, Plurk is good at that. FF seems too cluttered but aggregates a lot information together. Twitter is still good for me and is a great broadcast tool, some communication, and a lot of industry heads that you can learn from. - Sonny Gill
What the heck, throw in Plurk and you got a deal. - Rick Wolff
It's becoming less and less so. I'd much rather have one service I can do it all on and FriendFeed satisfies that much better. Twitter still has things FF doesn't though so for what FF doesn't satisfy, I will continue to use Twitter for. - Jesse Stay
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I suppose I could go with the AND if FF offered a pure stream like twitter. I really don't like the threaded conversation presentation ... but maybe that's because I mostly use twirl? - Clint
You're almost right. I get what you're getting at. But the two are different and will grow separate paths with some common features. - phil baumann
phil, if they do grow in separate paths, that's great! I'll continue using both! However, I will not continue to use both for the same reasons. I'm removing the duplicate effort lately and consolodating what I can over to FriendFeed, leaving the remaining effort to Twitter. - Jesse Stay
via twhirl
My other concern is that Twitter just doesn't have the expertise up high to make it a successful service. You will see the FF founders frequently engaged in conversations about FF on their service. I have yet to see a single Twitter founder engage in any of the critiques or compliments about their service on Twitter. - Jesse Stay
via twhirl
FF ideal for social discovery as long as folks hooking up enough of their services. I like the "noise" of FF. - Stephen Francoeur
...and Plurk, and Facebook, and Pownce, and Jaiku, and more to come. Twitter for its simplicity and all the add-on apps and all the others for conversations or smaller groups with specific interests. - Brenda Young
