“I'm really not into "U" for "you", "ur" for "you're", and "r" for "are". Maybe if you have a dumbphone and are texting, but otherwise, spend the extra .02 seconds to make it right. Kthxbai.”
I kinda left that in to be MYSTERIOUS. *raises one eyebrow* - Steve Isaacs
Hear. All my friends use the shortcuts, which might be okay for texting but FREAKIN IM? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEIR MINDS? - Yuvi
Vowels in SMS are like dealing with pennies. It all adds up. - Ken Sheppardson
omg wth idk y u r so y2k bc abbrevs r gr8, lol...sok, i gtg but we r still bff, cu l8r! - Hao Chen
As someone who has been a Prince fan for most of her life, I must D-b8 wit U. - MiniMage
Thanks Hao, you made me feel old. I really can't understand wtf you're saying. - Marcos Marado
I feel sad - I can actually understand Hao Chen's message :( - Yuvi
Who still carries around a dumbphone these days? Most people I know have a smartphone or Internet access somehow. - Matt Donders
I'm guilty as charged for using these abbreviations on Twitter. But for good reason! Character conservation. - Andrew Dobrow
I want a Like button on comments for Hao's comment - kthnxbai - Mike Doeff
@Matt: The US isn't the only country in the planet! :) - Yuvi
ahmm @Matt.. sorry.. but "dumbphones" are the majority (significantly) - Naor
@Yuvi - I know its not, just seems like a lot of people are carrying are smartphones everywhere.
@Naor - Haha, I know I guess sarcasm is hard over the Internet. - Matt Donders
WTF? for brief typing, especially in character limited situations, it's a necessity. So I wouldn't write a formal letter/article that way, but it's just the new form of shorthand. - clarke thomas
yeah, Im with Andrew on this - I dont think the 140 character limitation on twittr is helping your cause. - sedgewick
Clarke - that's exactly my problem with it, I don't think it should be cool to use as shorthand away from a non-qwerty phone. It's lazy. - Steve Isaacs
Steve - it's lazy to do between qwerty devices, but you don't always know that someone you're SMSing to has qwerty or not. I have run into the situation where I've received the 2nd half of the SMS prior to the 1st, thus I end up replying to something previously covered. I would say I use shorthand in IM, twitter(when I need the extra space), and actually e-mails when I single handed typing. - clarke thomas
lol ok @Matt , I just had a meeting today explaining the same thing to a very nice young guy (but he was serious) :) - Naor
But but but - I just saw you use "cya" in the Comic Con room! ;) - Heather Cee
I kinda see cya in the same way as online speak, not text speak. Almost LOL-ey. A fine line. - Steve Isaacs
well l33t vs IRC vs TXT speak comes into play - clarke thomas
_Exactly_ - Skip the short-hand, people, we're only talking two-hundredths of a second. It doesn't mean the difference between an Olympic medal or not that often http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f... ... <playing devil's advocate and slathering on the ironic, but single-letter abbreviation should be used as last resort - drives me nuts when gratuitous> - Micah Wittman
With anything public, like Twitter, I spell everything out. I think people who know how to spell are a dying breed and I don't want to be lumped in with the people who don't know how to spell. (Sometimes I wonder how some of my co-workers became managers!) But with private text messages, I'll take a few shortcuts because, even though I have a Treo, some of my friends don't and I'd rather have my message show up on one screen and on one text, especially when some people pay for each message. - Oliver Ortega Chua
Mark - this is completely different. The one you linked to discusses the right panel that's not a default so-to-speak. This analysis today is based on the defaults that FF is providing to 9 people. It's not the same and I don't believe in linkbaiting. - Allen Stern
This is important and should be fixed. The decision was probably made to help entice A-listers to the service, but that's no longer necessary. Thanks, Allen. - Sprague D
The real problem is these services are really lame if you have no friends. This was an attempt to fix that problem. I agree though that FF should only recommend participants on the first few screens. If you aren't participating why would FF want to feature you? - Robert Scoble
Great video -- and yea definitely not the same post. I would see this an expansion into the topic and showing the results of tracking the patterns of a new user signup experience... - Gary Bacon II
i´m just subscribed to robert - for me the other 8 people have no value in their content and i wondered all the time why they are there... but robert should be default ;) - Dieter Schwarz
Robert's point is fair. The defaults shouldn't be a random selection of users, but a few of the most dedicated participants. I look forward to seeing edythe replace Arrington. ;-) - Sprague D
Great post Allen, FF is also VERY susceptible to bots doing mass adding. I haven't really seen any one take advantage of this yet. Then again, its not easy to see a users followers/following stats. - sean percival
i only saw this as a problem if you tend to be a sheep and just subscribe because a service recommends someone vs default which to me implies they auto subscribed you when you start which they did not, i'm only subscribed to a few of these 9 folks, very similar to who i've sub'd to in other services - this seem a bit of a mountain out of a mole hill to me folks - mike "glemak" dunn
Great post. In order for FriendFeed to become mainstream they should watch this video! Otherwise FF will risk being a web 2.0 only social network. I understand why FF is by default adding Scoble and other early adopters though...word of mouth! It's to attract the fast followers.... like us.....creating the herd effect so to speak. I would suggest that FF still have these guys as a default(maybe under the category web 2.0 thought leaders?) but add a default page based on interest areas as well. - Chris Herbert
Great job on researching. I definitely realized that FF was not nearly doing the job Facebook does when looking for friends you may know or recommendations. - Adam Helweh
This isn't cool. In my book, this is kissing up to the big guys so they'll talk about you and get you exposure. Whether they know it or not still doesn't make it okay. - Raoul Pop
@mike, if you want to know why what is presented to the "sheep" is important, check out Chris's reference to "herding". Chris, if they want to become mainstream they need to change the target of their marketing from "fast followers" to common users, who would also like the chance at building an audience. A good way to do that would be by randomly presenting dedicated users. - Sprague D
Maybe I am not getting it but I do not see the appeal in having many strangers follow you just for the sake of following you. I mean, I see Robert Scoble with 20,000+ followers but he could not know 1/10th of them even if he wanted to. Maybe I am missing something. - Paul L. McCord Jr.
I thought this might be the way for FriendFeed to gain popularity as well. Get some of the most active internet peeps on Friend Feed, make them feel that their subscribers are coming in droves, and the rest will follow. Yes, no? - Adam Helweh
Paul: I actually agree. Who is following you is not important. Who you are following is VERY important. I'm following about 3,000 people right now on FriendFeed, all hand added (I just added you for making a good point). - Robert Scoble
Raoul: when I joined FriendFeed I wasn't on the list. I moved up the list because I brought a lot of people into FriendFeed from my popular Twitter and blog. Live isn't fair sometimes. You might notice that FriendFeed is at the top of TechMeme right now and that FriendFeed is growing very rapidly. But I'm writing a blot post about the "Participation Premium." If life is unfair, why are 5,000 more people following me than Mike Arrington? After all, his blog is more popular than mine is... - Robert Scoble
But Robert, why are that many people following him at all when until recently he didn't even participate here other than posting his feeds? - Cyndy
Robert: people follow you because you follow them and pass along the conversations so others can enjoy too. Mike A. doesn't include everyone.. - LPH
Sprague: what I would do if I were FF is this: I'd have config options based on interest areas, top FriendFeeders, recommended FriendFeeders, and "randomizer" (as you suggested), and most popular FriedFeeders. - Chris Herbert
It's not the same 9 people everytime. It depends on who you subscribe to. There is a short list of prominent people on FF that get recommended, but in order for them to be recommended they have to be a contact of one of your existing contacts. The list is in alphabetical order by first name. If you don't have any contacts FF won't recommend anyone to you. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas: not true. I just signed up a new account and it recommended users to me. - Robert Scoble
cyndy: ff primarily is a very valid presence aggregater - whether someone then chooses to interact in ff via comment/like is secondary to me - mike "glemak" dunn
Thomas is referring to the "Recommended" link on the friend settings tab; Allen's video is about the sign up process. - Sprague D
It seems to me, with all the social aggregation, FriendFeed should be able to discern your interests and participation among other networks and provide an appropriate set of defaults at signup. TweetStats.com can show who I most actively talk to on Twitter, for instance, and as one element of an algo maybe that data can provide a better cross-section of suggested followers. - Aaron Brazell
You may be interested in a little personal research I've done to find out the social weight of FF users and the number of followers: http://user21.com/2008/07/04/f... - atzmon
I'd call these defaults an excellent marketing campaign from FF's standpoint. Those default FF users pretty much represent the same echo-chamber 'attractors' in the technology/web space. I think it's a little disingenuous when you ask how those people became popular FF users. It's obviously a well calculated way to market to the major technology attractors; or was that comment meant to be tongue in cheek? - Jim McCusker
hmmm Robert, I signed up a new account as well and found that under the "Recommended" link it wouldn't recommend anyone to me unless I first added at least one person as a contact. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas - what I am discussing is the people you are presented with when you create a brand new account - not on the right side - Allen Stern
Thomas, check out Allen's video, it's cool. - Sprague D
@atzmon, your list ranking users by #subscribers shows (for the top 10) almost perfect correlation with the "defaults" presented to new users. If Allen needed any more proof of his thesis, there it is. - Sprague D
So........ why is it a big deal to have so many followers on FF? Is it worth it? Is it beneficial? Why is everyone trying to have so many followers? - ChaCha Fance via Alert Thingy
Why do all the interesting posts seem to happen on Sunday when I've got family things to do?! I appreciate the recommend list because I'm relatively new to all of this. Scoble and Lois Gray are a good "in" to all of the noise (good human filters). - James Hull
@James, I think Allen's original motive for posting was that there are *many* excellent "human filters" available here, but because of a marketing decision by FF, only a certain few are provided as default recommendations when new users sign up. - Sprague D
My main complaint with your video is that you printed out the pages from FriendFeed. Who uses printers anymore? Couldn't you have taken screen grabs? - Ben Kessler
I wonder if they will make the suggested changes - and if that would help people find new folks to follow. - Eric
this is the top story on Techmeme right now. - Thomas Hawk
“Lily Sutton Sjogreen was born at 5:05pm on July 4th. She is 9 pounds 8 ounces and 21.5 inches long. She is of course the cutest little girl in the world. Pics to come!”
I'd use them more if feedly annotations ended up in some social stream system such as friendfeed. Unless i'm wrong, using them restrict the audience to your feedly-using friends ... - Erwan Arzur
Oh yes ! it didn't take more than 5 min to be proved wrong :-) thank you Louis ! - Erwan Arzur
Thanks Louis! Erwan: you are right that we need to do a better job at pushing the annotations out of the feedly walls (I know that this is something you raised a long time ago). The friendfeed integration is a step in that direction. Email+annotations is another step. We are currenlty working on similar integrations with tumblr and wordpress. Thanks for the feedback/suggestions!!! - Edwin Khodabakchian
Slick. Looking forward to the additional integration. :-) - Chris Baskind
I don't find it so bad now with the iphone. In the UK, orange used to have a service where a human operator would take a message and txt it to you. That was great. - Robin Barooah via MojiPage Bot
It all just rolls to my email inbox (and my mobile), so still has value. - Norman Guadagno
It's a must for me. I spend too much time in meetings not to have it since I'm an IT Consultant/Systems Integrator. For some people, I suppose it's not really useful anymore though. - Jason Huebel
only use it as an answering machine now... email has crushed it as a medium for group informing IMO - Tim Elliott via twhirl
I use YouMail, which sends me an email, sms and transcribes it. Yes, I use it. - Vince DeGeorge
Anymore? I have successfully avoided using it for many years. I never liked it to begin with. - Tom Harrison
Almost 100% email - why leave a voicemail when most people are instantly connected to email throughout the day. - Wayne Schulz
Voice mail is essential, because the most useful feature of a cell phone is the OFF button. - Dewald Pretorius
I find it most useful when I'm out and about in an area of poor coverage - Robin Barooah via MojiPage Bot
I have a friend who has forwarded his phone to his wife and lets her be his voicemail. He has done this more than once for weeks at a time, and loves it very much. - Tim Wright
@Dewald I couldn't agree more with you. Cellphones are electronic leeches. Voicemail allows us to disconnect ourselves from them when necessary. - Jason Huebel
I use it on my mobile phone. We don't have landlines at the office anymore. I also have it on my home landline, but that's hardly ever used now. People know the best way to get me is via mobile - voice or text, or even twitter DM, which goes to sms anyway. IM is another good way to get my attention. - jjprojects
completely turned it off and I tell people not to leave me a voice mail. been like this for years. - Loic Le Meur
does YouMail have ads or anything? I have a account but not sure if I want to switch?? - Aaron Myers
Coverage is so bad in south Louisiana that I can't go without it or I'd miss too much. - Garrett Guillotte
i use spinvox, i believe you covered it - converts voicemail to text messages & email - Zee from WeDoCreative
Visual Voicemail has made it bearable again but generally I try to avoid it all together. - David Recordon
Call my phone and you will get your answer: I hate voice mail. - Robert Scoble
I hope all the voice mail naysayers aren't the same rude people taking calls in the middle of a face to face conversation, or in a restaurant or any of the other places where calls annoy everybody around? - Brian Sullivan
my voice mail tells you to send me an email. :-) - Robert Scoble
I don't usually use the word 'never', so we'll just say that I 'hardly ever' listen to vm. - Sonciary Honnoll
No one actually calls me, although I might add that I don't personally like leaving voicemail messages. I e-mail people and people e-mail me - so much easier. - Cyvros/fyc
It gets emailed to me as an mp3. If I don't have your number in my phone, or you use Skype that comes up Unknown Numer or 0000012345 - you go to VM and I'll get an mp3 a minute later. - Aaron Brazell
Love YouMail. Let's you customize message to specific caller, as well as choose from many vanity messages, also selectable by caller. I spend at least 50% of my work day in meetings or conference calls so I have to have VM. - Kevin Shannon
You people are sad ;) Don't you have family members that call you? Doctors confirming appointments? The car repair place? The kids' school? I mean really, I'd prefer to talk to my grandparents on the phone, and if I didn't have voicemail (or if they didn't), I'd miss a lot of things... - Gabe Wachob via twhirl
@Aaron, there is a small ad with the email and transcript - at least I think - it's small enough or non-intrusive enough that I couldn't say for sure. For the voicemail portion, there are no ads that I've ever "heard." I've always been 100% satisfied with it - though please stay away from the corny greetings they offer and do your own. - Vince DeGeorge
Gabe if one of those people calls I call them back. No VM needed. - Robert Scoble
@Vince Some of the vanity messages are OK. I'm partial to the one with Pam and Michael from "The Office". I was considering the one that says "Due to the recent earthquake this call can not be completed", but it might scare the cr@p out of my mother.. - Kevin Shannon
We don't have a concept of voicemail in India.. and I hope VM doesn't catch up here. - Muthu Ramadoss
Of course I use voicemail. It's becuase I don't pick up the phone. - Gerard Barberi via twhirl
Text messages. They are faster and I get them when I'm in meetings. - Travis Murdock
I do have voicemail on my phone but everyone knows I never check it. They text or e-mail me if they really need me. I think I check my voicemail when I realize that I have about 10. - Candace Holly
I use email but a few of my clients still use my Grand Central number. - kre8 via twhirl
I don't mind voicemail, most people don't bother and text me. Trick is to stay on top of it and not let them pile up, unified messaging is nice. Visual Voicemail is one iPhone feature I did appreciate, when it worked. - Andrew Feinberg
I am completely off of voicemail at work and home, but still access it on my mobile, of course - John McCrea
I use youmail for my cell phone. I would use GrandCentral more if more people called me. - Christian Burns
I stll have it on cell and office but office forwards to email. Cell vm, I forget to check so most people don't bother. - Karen Swim via Alert Thingy
Using PhoneTag (was Simulscribe) so just get emails and sms with transcript. Hardly ever need to listen to them and they just come in with the rest of my comms. Saves a heap of time. - Jed White
Likewise - Rolls to my inbox. Instantly screened .... delete ... delete .... :) - Charlie Anzman
I hate hate hate voicemail. Waste of time. Interface sucks. - Andy Wibbels
I get voice mail now and then and it sort of annoys me. I find email so much better for leaving messages. There's a place for phone conversations but voicemail ... I dunno. - AJ Kohn
I am trying to push people towards sending me text, but - Gabe Wachob via twhirl
Rarely does anything go to voice mail any more. Reading these comments makes me wonder why mine are note forwarded to my inbox. I need to do that. - Sal Distefano
I HATE voicemail, but it is a necessary evil for me. Visual Voicemail on the iPhone 3G should make things easier to manage for me, but I look forward to a voicemail-free future someday soon. - Granteezy
I don't use voice mail, I have a hearing difficulty... - Jack
I use voicemail but simply for work purposes! - Joe Dawson
i hate voicemail - why can´t people just send me an email? - Dieter Schwarz
i find it very useful with skype and also enjoy my cellular provider's free vm service. let's my buddies async messages pretty much like e-mail. greatly reduces callbacks on missed calls. time and money saver for me. - Berk D. Demir via twhirl
I use VM at work so little that I have to "refresh" my memory of the system. Consequently, I usually have about 18 or so messages in the hopper. Anyone important emails me. Most of the VM are from sales or recruiters - Robb via twhirl
if a person is not reachable, send SMS/email.. never felt the need for voicemail! - Rakesh
All my voicemail messages ask people to email me, as I'll be slow in responding to email. - Jeremiah Owyang
haha jeremiah - re-read what you wrote :) - Allen Stern
It sounds like Jeremiah is telling callers/emailers -- "Piss off I don't want to talk to you" ? or is it a typo ;-) - Brian Sullivan
all my friends know not to leave a msg and just hang up. We can see who called and if we want to know why, we will call back. - Jack Scalfani
iPhone and SpinVox are both great solutions. but truthfully I hate voicemail. - Sam Pullara
GrandCentral was a great concept but Google doesn't seem to have done anything with it since they bought it. A combination of their web-based voicemail and iphone-style voicemail would be ideal. - Charlie via twhirl
I use GrandCentral with email notifications that someone called me. If they're in my address book, it tells me who it was and I just call them back. I rarely actually log in to listen to the voicemails! - Kenneth LeFebvre
Come to think of it, I haven't used voicemail in months. - Carolyn
Visual Voicemail on the iPhone actually makes it very efficient for me. - James
for years now I have switched off voice mail and asked everybody I know to so the same, for two reasons: (1) it always ends up making users pay for more phone time: leaving the message + reading the message + calling back. Also, when a friend calls you and you are using voicemail, they are transferred to voicemail: more money for the phone company, less for your friend. And (2) with the existance of email and (if you want to pay extra) SMS, it just doesn't make sense to use voicemail anyway . - µnauta
voicemail *is* dead. just send me a txt or wait for me to call back. - Jon Price
I had to go through a torturous process to get my cell provider to switch off voice mail - voice mail while overseas is annoying and expensive, should be just an option on the phone itself - Chris Garrett
Now that is something we all need to keep in mind when communicating through words only - Julian Baldwin
As a Vonnegut fanboy -- and _Cat's Cradle_ superfanboy -- I'm compelled to add: "Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn’t explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan." - Kirk Kittell
brilliant quote! I printed it out and crop it for inspiration so that I can communicate better. - Alan Le
Looks a lot like the FriendFeed iPhone interface; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? - Benjamin Golub via mail2ff
The only difference is the images don't link to the actual account; they link to a filtered view of just that service. - Benjamin Golub
Well done Ben! i'll port this to NoiseRiver too :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
It looks good. How different can it really look you know? - Julian Baldwin
Just realized that i can replace the official FF Google Gadget with fftogo in an iframe and i get a whole chunck more functionality for free. sweet. - Alex Gawley
and here is the first comment from my new iGoogle gadget... - Alex Gawley via fftogo
@Shey Centennial actually. Just all the people I know who went to Ryerson write so well and speak so highly of the experience. Enjoy being an alum! :) - Abby
@Caleb I love the Google Reader Bookmarklet. I think I'm not using it as much as feedly but I need more friends. On the other hand, Feedly really plays havoc with my google reader tags...I'm not to crazy about that. - Michelle Miller
hey, I could use a Toluu invite if anyone can help ;) paulwhit@gmail.com. Also, anybody else turned off by Feedly being Firefox only? - Paul Whitaker
Michelle did you try the fixes for, er, fixing the google reader screw up issues withfeedly? - Michael W. May via twhirl
Correcting: Toluu + Feedly + Google Reader = My choice - Igor Poltavskiy
Both! I support all products that debut on louisgray.com <ducks> - Louis Gray
So far, Feedly > Toluu > gReader (in taht order) Michelle: Thank you - Mona N
@michael I fixed my tag manually. Not the best way I know but it seemed to work. I see what they were trying to do with my feeds. Maybe I'm just OCD ;) - Michelle Miller
Feedly is a good way to ruin (temporarily) your GReader feeds - Jorge Morgenstern
Can anybody spare a toluu invite to toluu@kshep.net? Thanks! - Ken Sheppardson
Both! Oh my goodness both so hard it hurts. - Bwana McCall
@Jorge damn you we not kidding; hopefully I'll keep using Feedly, so far not loving it, rather have my Google Reader. As per the original question, Toluu all the way, but like Caleb stated, they are not really after the same thing. - Snay Trivedi
Quick note: in feedly 1.0b3 you can undo all the feedly changes. see: http://edwink.devhd.com/2008/0... If you are a google reader user and try feedly, it is recommended not to import any additional sources in the welcome wizard. - Edwin Khodabakchian
@Michelle You are a social media junkie, OCD on some level is prerequisite, methinks - Michael W. May via twhirl
i love the google reader + toluu bookmarklet makes it easier - fotographic
I wish they were integrated... can't read my feeds without feedly, but I wish Toluu's social aspects were accessible within feedly. :) As a provider of information, I annotate and share via Twitter, FriendFeed, and Email, depending on my intended audience, and nothing gets that job done better than feedly. But as a consumer of information, love the matching of Toluu. - Kenneth LeFebvre
toluu actually got me to use google reader which strips all the ads off blogs and eliminates the need to perform next pages and going to various sites...love toluu - Pokai
Feed Allyance:FriendFeed+Google Reader+Toluu+Feedly - Igor Poltavskiy
I have 2 toluu invites ,, up for grabs ,, tweet me @fotographic - fotographic
Great to see all of these fantastic points, we work with all feed readers because we don't want to have to convince people to switch to a new reader or loose focus on the discovery and social aspects that are core to Toluu. - Caleb Elston
“sign of FriendFeed addiction: you type friendfeed.com when you're going to type in another URL that starts with F, like I just did when I was wanting to type in Feedburner.com :-)”
Haha yes, I'm not alone! See, the problem with these shows is that they instill the idea that I can do that, and that I'd want to do that. Alex is my hero! - Mark Trapp
I never seem to catch Ax Men; I'm sure it's awesome. Deadliest Catch is a bit too surly for me: everyone angry at everyone else, the weather, crabs, you name it. - Mark Trapp
@mark - it is a little intense, but I like it because it shows you how hard it is to get something - crab - that a lot of people take for granted. - Sean Dunn
I really enjoyed this show... of course, I used to drive a truck, just not under such extremes! - Kenneth LeFebvre
How do you get into trucking, Kenneth? That's on my list of jobs to do before I die. - Mark Trapp
"3-D printing has been out of reach for most of us. Now thanks to do-it-yourself types all that has started to change" - Jason Wehmhoener via Bookmarklet
I hadn't heard of the CompuCarve, that's interesting. Reminds me of my Modela, though it appears to be ac
![Five Ways to Print Your Own 3-D Objects [Slide Show]: Scientific American Slideshow](http://friendfeed.s3.amazonaws.com/8f4e5dae4c506024123a241f19fac94940dcbf43 "Five Ways to Print Your Own 3-D Objects [Slide Show]: Scientific American Slideshow")
