"If your application uses the FriendFeed API, you can now show FriendFeed updates to your users in real-time using the new FriendFeed Real-time API. We're providing access to the same underlying technology that's used by the real-time view on FriendFeed to all FriendFeed developers." - Bret Taylor
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This is the gamechanger for FriendFeed - just wait and see - Ed Dale
sure it is! but hope friendfeed can scale better than twitter... - Aziz
Bret, IMHO, instead of providing such "fantasy" features for the API, you should raise the limits you told me that you weren't able to raise some months ago... But, heh, you decide :) - directeur
via NoiseRiver
Nice work guys. Keep up the innovation and stay focused. - Louis Gray
directeur: mind sending an mail to api@friendfeed.com detailing what limits you are referring to? Sorry if we dropped something - it was likely just forgotten due to something else, but we can address your problem now with all the details. - Bret Taylor
Nice job. I would have preferred that the term "Real-Time" be reserved for an XMPP like implementation. As of now this feature is great but it is not exactly real-time. It is polling after all. This is a massive improvement though. Great work FF crew. Keep pushing the envelope. Don't fear the fire hose! - Rolf Schewe
Bret: Thanks for the answer, I'll send you an email ASAP with the details! Again thanks for the attention - directeur
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Rolf, this API supports "long polling" -- it's every bit as realtime as XMPP. - Paul Buchheit
@Rolf: with long polling, you get updates as soon as we have them, so it is as real-time as XMPP, just a different delivery mechanism. - Bret Taylor
Bret, what's real-time in the case of Friendfeed? Really? I still have the picture of an axajy widget that refreshes and sends queries... It's pulling from the server, not the other way, right? - directeur
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Gentlemen, Friendfeed 1.0 is a cool service. With RealTime API, I think we're looking at "killer app" with a huge breadth of applications. Well done. - John Craft
So it is also dependent on the delivery on the other end I suppose. I just don't get why I get some content fast such as Twitter and some after a long delay such as Google Reader shared items. - Rolf Schewe
Google Reader shared items are definitely not real-time. - Rolf Schewe
From a community building perspective - this real-time is more than enough. If your a programmer designing an app with the API - here is the NUMBER 1 request - Make sure your app doesn't jump out of the stream when you comment or like something - Ed Dale
I added Facebook today and tested to see the delay. The status message came through 1 hour later. I actually timed it. - Rolf Schewe
@rolf: ff servers have to decide how often to crawl the feeds; they don't have the luxury of a realtime api to all of those services. if you post something to ff directly, however, you'll notice it show up immediately - Karl Rosaen
Rolf- As Karl says, for incoming content we're at the mercy of the external providers. Our proposal for solving that side of the problem is called SUP: http://blog.friendfeed.com/200... - Casey Muller
Casey, suppose I write an entry and delete it just after. Will it still be in the ral-time view for other users? - directeur
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it will increasingly be helpful to know which feeds FF does have realtime access to - Steve Gillmor
So in essence the real-time feature is in some terms conditional on the outside services. Kind-of real-time. - Rolf Schewe
help us to put pressure on them by listing those who have XMPP pipes in - Steve Gillmor
directeur- Yes. Anybody (including API clients) monitoring the real-time feed will already have received the entry before you deleted it - Casey Muller
casey can you guys publish a list of inputs with polling frequency please - Steve Gillmor
The real innovation (sorry to insist on this) will be to process feeds on the user's level. Attention is the keyword. I DEFINITELY don't care about real-time. I want intersting stuff not fastly delivered ones... just sayin' :) - directeur
via NoiseRiver
Steve, Twitter is the only service that sends updates by XMPP. All other services (except things posted directly on FriendFeed or via the API) arrive via RSS/Atom feeds, which are generally checked once every 1/2 hour. However, we also monitor several pinging services and utilize SUP to discover feed updates much faster and can often get new entries within a minute or two. - Paul Buchheit
out of curiosity, what does the ff realtime view set the timeout to? (i should clarify: I'm talking about calls from the client JS to the realtime APIs; what's the timeout of those requests) - Karl Rosaen
Karl, it's currently about 60 sec, but that's mainly due to concern about browser and proxy timeouts. The server responds as soon as there is an update, so there's no disadvantage to using a larger timeout. - Paul Buchheit
@Paul, thanks, i was wondering for a comparison to the timeout you'd need to use if supporting such an api from an app engine app (where you have to respond within 10 seconds or so I think) - Karl Rosaen
Thanks for the feedback and the links. It helped a lot. Maybe down the line we will be able to get RSS data in a little faster. The Google Reader floods can get a little heavy with the current polling interval. - Rolf Schewe
Paul would other sources who provide XMPP be accepted? Or is Twitter exclusive? - Steve Gillmor
Steve: We would be happy to support more XMPP services depending on the ease of implementation. It is certainly not exclusive to Twitter. - Bret Taylor
Hmmm... the results for Taylor (my maiden name) weren't very surprising (except, perhaps, for the high concentration of Taylors in Australia-- hi Australian distant cousins!). But I wonder if they are using stats from the whole world. Jimenez shows a high concentration in Spain and Argentina (expected), but nothing in the rest of Latin America. Are there really more people named Jimenez in New Zealand than Guatemala (where my name comes from)? Doubtful. - Shannon Jiménez
OK, just saw on the FAQ that they only have data for 26 countries. - Shannon Jiménez
They pull the data from: "The database holds the names of 300 million people in 26 different countries, representing one billion of the population which is approximately one-sixth of the entire world." ...doesn't say where and how they collected it. I may have to do some more research, but thought it was a pretty neat tool. :) - Mona N.
Lool... Every result I get is strikingly similar. - Brandon
Sharon, phew. It was an epic fail for my husband's last name. :) - Cyndy
Ireland #1, which I suspected. But Belgium and New Zealand beat out USA? I had no idea. - tj hanton
typically we are in Italy, America, and Argentina. Let's see how accurate it is. - Pete Delucchi
They definitely don't have information for some countries that don't use Cyrillic symbols officially - my last name is mostly popular in New Zealand (understandably, lots of Russian live there now) but is not even present in Russia itself. - Svetlana Gladkova
Svetlana: The site just launched and has collective data from 26 countries... unfortunately Russia isn't one of them. :\ Perhaps I should've put a disclaimer in the headline. ;) - Mona N.
Apparently Carlill is very popular in the UK. I find this hard to believe, because I've never come across a single person outside my family with that name. - Alexander Carlill
Mona, thanks for explaining, I think I should have searched for it deeper myself :( It's obvious that Russia is not on the priority list of any startup so I should have known better before trying, just wanted to see if the guesses that it must not have all the countries supported were true or not. - Svetlana Gladkova
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Strange, but it seems my last name does not exist... :/ - Sasha Kovaliov
Thanks for this Mona. I found this site a few weeks ago. Very interesting. My surname is mainly in the UK but there are a few in the US. Interestingly it tells me there is a low figure in India, Canada, most parts of Europe, Argentina, Japan, NZ and Australia. - Kol Tregaskes
Mine is more prevalent in the UK and New Zealand than it is here in the states... Interesting... - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
boy, it was ... mmmm... not-so-surprising... most probably written by yet another American thinking that Latin is most used alphabet in world :-/ - silpol
@nlupus I guess you have to use surname Smith -- you will get much better response then , lmao - silpol
Hmm, apparently my surname is Greek, and the concentration is ultra low across the world, mostly in Belgium. For the record though, there is no Greek in my family at all, or Belgians. It's a mystery - Mo Kargas
Mine checks out fairly accurate: Netherlands, USA and Australia. - Mark VandenBerg
trying *traditional* Finnish surname Virtanen - it makes me rotflmao: says it is Finnish but then also says it is used mostly in Sweden... this guys definitely had some stuff sniffed before they designed & implemented service :) - silpol
Yeah, this is off... Carreira is a Portuguese name (the "ei" gives it away) but it shows it as Spanish and doesn't even have Portugal or Brazil on the list. FAIL - Jason Carreira
pretty kool but from others comments it sounds not to be 100% correct :) - (jeff)isageek
mine was very accurate given what I know about my family history - Deborah Carraro
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Current surname: Spain and Argentina outweigh anywhere else. Maiden name: Ireland, Australia, UK, USA and New Zealand. Both make sense. - Carmen
More of my name in New Zealand it seems... - Richard Peat
Maiden name: Ortega. Not surprising: Spain, Argentina, and United States. Surprising: France, Switzerland, and Canada Shocking: Australia, Belgium, Norway, and Austria. Hi super distant cousins! :D - zoblue (Zulema)
Not very accurate. It claims the top country for my surname is Japan. Umm no. - Jauder Ho
From NewsGrange: "Yesterday, people posted screenshots of their desktops – the day before – pictures of themselves – tomorrow, it’s going to be a picture of their feet.
FriendFeed (or at least the part that I am subscribed to) is becoming a completely self-referential community that creates less and less value for me." - Louis Gray
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Agree? Disagree? Let them know in the comments. (And no, this is not my site or opinion) - Louis Gray
It's a little harsh, although I do accept that there has been a serious shift with FF. Where as it was once primarily a secondary discussion around posts, today it's a full blown social network in its own right. And I might add, it's a network I'm happy to be part of, and unlike facebook, it's one I'm happy to spend time in - Duncan Riley
It's impossible to create aggregator that shows exactly the content you want. FF can be fine-tuned with lists and hides to filter, but it can't be perfect, either. I think all the meme's etc bring the community together and makes them more likely to add more useful content, too :) - Jemm
They should subscribe to fewer people. My tech list doesn't participate in most of the memes and I don't click like on many of them either. - Robert Scoble
So come on, who's going to start the "Photo of my feet" meme? - Bec Rowe
I think tagging / categorizing would bring more value as I want to add both fun and tech content. Tags would help filtering data for my followers from my end. - Jemm
use the lists feature, which i find to be a great sorting tool on FF, and adjust your filtering strategy. personally, i don't mind the pictures of people, and their feet... it brings a little bit of humanity to what is an essentially unnatural activity...sitting in front of a computer, that is... - .LAG
FF needs to step up its filtering. None of the noise referenced on Newsgrange -- a nearly naked site, by the way -- would be evident if the author could exclude posts containing the word "meme" in the title. Beyond that: boo-hoo. Sorry to track our muddy feet across your pristine, sterile, unsocial network. People are noisy, and people have arrived.Figure out how to see what you want or move on to the next Pure Land. - Chris Baskind
I would have to disagree. Maybe its just the people but I honestly didn't see many post about the list at all. And also, sure there are many useless memes, but I see may great photos, news stories, personal stories, funny things, etc throughout the day. I don't know what Friendfeed your referring to, but its not the one I'm a part of. - Mathew Ballard
if you're only getting your feet wet with Friendfeed and playing around in the home feed, then yeah, I agree it's convoluted (although, personally that works for me). However, with just a little tuning of the rooms and lists, you can avoid most of that stuff, if you really wanted to. For me, I'm only peripherally interested in the tech news, it's everything else that goes on here that really strikes my fancy. - Pete Delucchi
Chill out dudes, it's not that serious bisnes. It's funny and nice to see what people has :) - Kristian Salonen
ff key: separate signal from growing noise - Igor Poltavskiy
I for one appreciate the non-tech posts, just as much as the tech posts. Friendfeed isn't just for discussing OAuth... - Matt Harwood
I agree, this isn't Techfeed or Oneparticularsubjectfeed, this is Friendfeed which means that pretty much anything and everything can be shared. That is why you can connect so many different services to Friendfeed and why you have rooms based on different topics. Yes, there are some instances of noise. But, I must say that even as I've subscribed to more and more people I'm not really encountering any noise. And the only things I find myself hiding are post in languages other then English. - Mathew Ballard
on the topic, i think duncan said it well early in the thread & louis what sort of site have you linked to, its a void except for this mindless "hating" ff now that its diverse post - that's not like you... - mike "glemak" dunn
I see the point but it's simply a matter of subscribing to the people who interest you/who post articles/shares you are interested in. I don't get it. Doesn't this person know how to do this? Was FF created for tech news only? The name certainly doesn't suggest that. You can share what you like, if the reader doesn't like it then they can unsubscribe or create a friend list tailored to their needs. - Kol Tregaskes
Great buttons on FF.. Hide, Unsubscribe & Block. Don't like what someone says, just hit one of those buttons. Problem solved. :) Wish I had them in real life. Granted I probably would be as alone as Wil Smith in I Am Legend. - Chris W
After joining FF, my activity on all other sites has not slightly decreased, but I am happy with FF cos' now I don't have to login to all those sites just to see what others have posted. I log into them only if I want to post something. Otherwise I carry on discussion only on FF. In simple words, I love FriendFeed! - kunwar
Mike, I saw the site left a trackback on Robert's list. It does seem to be a bit of a hit and run. - Louis Gray
Bah, whinging because of FF's increasing variety and diversity - it's still social media, so there will be social aspects. FF's slowly diverging from it's original tech bias, deal. Use the tools provided, block, unsubscribe, or use lists to remove what you don't like or simply be more discerning in subscriptions. - Mo Kargas
Talk about linkbait... well, he got what he wanted. - Sprague D
I don't find anything wrong with a random meme when you are still contributing to the tech community. If the early adopters would like a tech list to dabble in information create a room and hang out in it! I happen to like a bit of diversity on FF... it adds to the value for me. Isn't too much of a photo meme the same as me getting pissed off on the 30000 Google Chrome posts? Or the iPhone App posts that litter my home feed? You can get tired of stupid, funny postings. You can get tired of random noise and - Kyle Lacy
chatter. The last thing you need to do is get tired of FriendFeed. If you are tired of personality and a community of diversity, go quarantine yourself in Strandz. :-) This is what social media is all about. Have a good day everyone! - Kyle Lacy
Definitely Kyle, once again on the ball mate - Mo Kargas
Louis, and all, I did stop by and thank the author for sharing his/her opinion. I have no worries with listening to the opinion and am not offended. Robert is fairly accurate in his assessment, as is Mathew (and many others). I have come for conversation on all manner of topics. I am interested in more than simply tech, and I hope that my likes and comments reflect that. I have begun to really enjoy the oddball humor and many interesting recommendations that come from everyone I subscribe to. Keep it up. - ChangeForge | Ken Stewart
I don't understand why any of you who are involved in tech and promoting new applications would feel like the growing popularity of Friendfeed is a bad thing. Why would anyone publicly discourage the growth and development of any application in the mainstream? Is it only a great application when it's shiny and new and yet undiscovered by the masses? Personally, I get tired of reading the same tech posts linked by 20 different people. - Trish R
This happens to every social site - as the community grows, it tends to trend towards the kind of stuff that a large community can agree on, which tends to be funny pictures and dumb memes more than thoughtful commentary. Bolstering the rooms feature for more topical discussion would help greatly with this; in the meantime I'd suggest just culling your friends list. - Eric P
You can't tell people what to do or share. You can just filter the people you find interesting, and make good use of the rooms and lists features. - Alejandro S.
I like friendfeed as it has become. its a community of different people and different ideas. to qoute public enemy "bring the noise!" :) - (jeff)isageek
This is what turned me off FriendFeed for awhile, and after trying to come back the same thing. I'm not going to call out any names but I got tired of seeing FUNNY PICS and just silly things that isn't new, just midly interesting, and most of it I had seen before on sites like Reddit, Digg, etc. .. My goal of FriendFeed was to be able to connect to people of like-mindedness on things I am interested in. Perhaps it's the people I'm subscribed to but even searches for things I'm interested in don't turn... - Bartek Gniado
(Continued comment) .. up very intriguing results. I've participated in one or two memes because I was bored but the FriendFeed problem is the same as any social-based network: You have your star players, they get all the attention, they post most of the links, and it becomes centered around them. It's too much effort to block/unsubscribe and filter it all out so now I'm stuck thinking how I can make FriendFeed useful for me. - Bartek Gniado
I know how you feel.. I can post a link and it'll get ignored. Someone else with a higher profile will post the same thing and it'll generate a load of activity. This is a central problem I notice across the net - it's billed as the great equaliser but it isn't, people don't have a fair shout because of human nature and its tendancy to coaless around "prominent personalities" and cliquish behaviours. I doubt this is a "problem" that can be fixed by technology as it sits much deeper. - alphaxion
@alphaxion I've had that happen a few times. At first I was kinda miffed that I'd posted something topical and relevant and got no response, and then someone else had posted the same link a couple of hours later and got 30-40 comments. Still, I still post stuff I find interesting, and that I hope others will too. If we don't post links, because we think that it will always only be the high-profilers ones that get read, then it WILL always only be theirs that get read! - Ian May
Kyle, you said "I don't find anything wrong with a random meme when you are still contributing to the tech community." The problem is when a bunch of people participate in every meme: those people stop functioning productively in the tech community. P.S. I'm glad my month-long curmudgeonry about MemeFeed has finally gotten mainstream! - Mark Trapp
There's something productive about the contributions of the tech community? News to me - a thousand people going "ZOMG Google Chrome!!!" and "Dude check out my iPhone!" strike me as being about as useful as lolcats but less interesting. - Eric P
There's a tech community on FriendFeed? Where? I see a lot of talk about Web 2.0 sites and using webapps, but very very little about tech. - Jason Carreira
@Mark What is a productive tech community? - Kyle Lacy
@ian I know, I have the same philosophy with everything - I post to my site even though no-one goes to it, I produce podcasts that no-one will see nor hear. I don't care about any lack of traffic, I do it cause I want to. If someone else picks up on it, ok. If I change one persons opinion, fantasic job done. @jason we are there, it's just we don't have many subscribers to hear it ;) - alphaxion
It was just Sunday night - everyone is more relaxed over the weekend. - Jesse Stay
Agreed to a certain point. (I still like having fun with you all.) I will do my best to be more informative instead of entertaining. I will go for being 80% informative and 20% entertaining/fun. I don't want to treat FriendFeed like a Face Book or MySpace application or see it become one. I originally came to FF to follow some of the greatest tech minds ever and learn from them. I’m not apologizing for following the meme’s, but I will cut back from some of them. - David Cook
at this point, for most people (ie not tech bloggers who have a vested interest in staying on the cutting edge) fun and cutting up has more value than more information. I lost interest in friendfeed when it was the opposite -- when all my FOAFs became saturated with attention whores whoring after the attention of my early adopter friends with floods of links and already beaten-to-death analysis of the latest tech news quantum. I'm not including L.G. in this, but -- I'll take thedesktops and picture memes. - Jeremy Raines
I still find it to be pretty useful. I don't check it everyday mostly because it requires more time to dig through everything and involve myself in some discussions that interest me. Yes there is a lot of noise but that unless your FOF is completely unmanageable there you can often find some great stuff buried in all that noise. - Devlin Dunsmore
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Looks like people have made the comment I was going to make already. Namely - people will share whatever they choose on their feed. We have our own choice as to *if* and *how* we consume this. - Flippity
The problem I'm seeing is that people spend more and more of their time on the silly memes - which I suspect leaves little or no time to read worthy articles that are shared (often by less-popular users), and certainly almost no time to comment on them, especially considering how quickly they get buried by the meme entries. FF will need to overcome this. - Aviv
The past 2-3 weeks have seen a huge upsurge in FF photo traffic, which is a direct result of the new photo feature being so easy to use now after the recent FF beta went into production (some of us were aware of how to use mail2ff app (which I think FF later acquired). So, I was expecting this increase; however, it certainly went viral when all these "meme" photos popped up. Early on, I suggested a MEME Room to contain all the madness so folks could manage their preferences to opt in/out. Cont'd....... - Susan Beebe
Cont'd....... Also, I think we're seeing a genuine interest in folks getting to know each other better. This generated the whole photos idea, which seems to have cemented new online friendships and opened the door to a plethora of new "memes" thereafter. I still think we need a "meme room" to filter in/out this new content type. In the end, this all may be just a short-lived trend. - Susan Beebe
as for the "silly meme" trend on ff, i don't mind them but haven't really participated much (i have very little time) - i have created a specialty list called "high volume" that gets most of these out of my primary feed/lists, it has cut down the noise but i still can go scan through them when time allows - works for me... - mike "glemak" dunn
Gang, is FriendFeed specifically geared towards tech, or was it simply the early adopters that found and spread the concept of "life streaming"? - ChangeForge | Ken Stewart
If Newsgrange doesn't like what the people they follow are posting, they can simply change who they follow. To whine about this is a total waste of their time! Talk about ironic and not having a clue. - Dread Pirate PJ
I think FriendFeed is becoming more than just a place for tech. Depending on the people you subscribe to, you could have a nature feed, you could have a geeky feed, you could have a tech feed and so on. I think FriendFeed is able to grow along with the diverse users. FriendFeed has the power to become a strong and powerful resource for anyone. Period. Regardless of anything, literally. - Amir H.
it'd definitely going to take me a while to get to a million. I'm publishing about 200 photos to flickr a week right now and at this pace it will take 92 years to get there. I'll get the pace up to 400-500 a week in the future though. Better technology should make processing easier and someday my kids will be grown and I'll be able to quit my day job and focus on this even more. The best photos have yet to be taken. - Thomas Hawk
When I think about this I realize your best days are ahead of you. - Russellreno
What's your shot/publish ratio? I mean, on average how many shots do you take to produce those you publish? - Yuval Atzmon
atzmon, I probably average about 2,000 shots a week that I shoot. And I'm probably processing 300 or so of those a week at present, so I'm probably keeping about 15%. The other 85% never get processed and are kept in my archives. I'm trying only to process and publish the shots that I think meet a certain quality criteria. - Thomas Hawk
You upload a lot more than I do. I have about 40,000 pictures but only about 2000 uploaded. Mostly because I have not gotten around to processing more. =) - Jauder Ho
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Jauder, the good news is that processing will only get easier in the future. I've watched it get better with each successive Adobe release. Lightroom 2.0 is the best processing tool yet. It's not necessarily faster per se though because with more tools there are yet even more ways to tweak a photo hence even more time. But the tools to speed things up are coming too. auto geotagging, better anti dust tech, faster processing speeds, easier online tools with faster broadband are all around the corner. - Thomas Hawk
16,000 ?? Yikes. Cool number. Congrats. - Charlie Anzman
This photo is total awesome. It is made even more awesome by the knowledge that there are 15,999 more photos just as awesome as this one. EDIT: This photo is now my desktop background. :) - possible248
“Population of Alaska = 683,478. Population of Santa Clara county = 1,837,075. Number of people employed by Walmart = 2,100,000. Things I learned on Wikipedia today.”
Random I was just checking out clips on YouTube of moose attacking cars hahaha!! - Joe Dawson (beta)
Moose burgers are really good. So is caribou stew and reindeer sausage. *mouth waters* - Jill, Superhero Librarian
It may look funny, but moose can be really mean. And they are really big. People get hurt in AK every year by moose stomping. Don't get between a mama moose and her calf. - Jill, Superhero Librarian
"Unfortunately, we're not cool enough to run on your OS yet. We really wish we had a version of Photosynth that worked cross platform, but for now it only runs on Windows." - l0ckergn0me
via Bookmarklet
@mattmusgrave, and then combine with 3-d printing and free-standing holograms ... get it to scale, viola, a new world. just like the old world - Gregory Lent
I'm liking this for the comment thread, too. 8^D - Chieze Okoye
