"As a devoted FriendFeed user, I have tried to convince all of my friends and family to join the site, but a handful of them never quite got their accounts set up properly. With our new Recommend friends feature, I can fix their FriendFeed experience by recommending subscriptions to them." Try it out at http://friendfeed.com/friends...
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
What am I supposed to get when I click the 'recommend friends' link on someone's pop-up? Currently, the popup just goes away and I don't get directed anywhere else.
- FFing Enigma
Fred: yah, unfortunately, you can only recommend people who you are subscribed you and who are also subscribed back to you.
- Bret Taylor
Mark, I didn't submit a bug report since what is supposed to happen wasn't actually spelled out on the blog post or here; this might be the intended functionality... I hope not, but it's possible.
- FFing Enigma
Tina: it is supposed to pop up a dialog. Sorry for the trouble - we will look into it.
- Bret Taylor
At first I did not understand this, but now that I am checking it out, it is brilliant and addresses much of what we have complained about. NOW what will we complain about?
- Liza + = ?
Just to confirm Bret, the first image in the blog post is what the pop up is supposed to look like, right? Because that's nothing like what the ff.com/recommend page looks like....
- FFing Enigma
I notice that new subscriptions are automatically added to one's home feed. I consider that kind of a bug.
- Meryn Stol
Tina: yes, that is correct. The http://friendfeed.com/friends... page is just a list of people that we think could use some friend recommendations since they have few subscriptions. If you click on any of the "Recommend" links on that page, you will see the same, standard "Recommend friends" dialog.
- Bret Taylor
Where would we find recommendations that others suggest to us?
- Fred Yankowski
@Bret, who receive the recommandation see also who is the recommender?
- Roberto
Fred: You will receive an email as well as a notification on the top of your feed.
- Ross Miller
Roberto: yes, they see who recommended
- Bret Taylor
Bret, if I recommend friends to people who haven't signed in for a long time, will they get email? A lot of my bored friends are not active FF users I think. (quite logical)
- Meryn Stol
Not getting the pop-over when I click 'recommend' on the friendfeed.com/friends/recommend page either... FFox 3.0.12 if it's relevant.
- FFing Enigma
and can I see who has accepted my recommendation?
- Roberto
Roberto: You won't be notified if they accept/deny as the recommender.
- Ross Miller
Ross: Ah, it just appeared on my feed. Cool. (And thanks Meryn)
- Fred Yankowski
Meryn: yes, they will get an email with your recommendations
- Bret Taylor
from email
Bret, I accidently just received an email with previous recommendations. I had already viewed them through the web-interface. But indeed, it's there. Email looks good too, as I expected of course. :)
- Meryn Stol
hey Robert Scoble....I have a trade proposal....you send my name to all your friends...i send your name to all of my friends for the rest of my life....
- Bob DeMarco
I would like that deal, too, Scoble. I like this a lot.
- Ben Hanten
Bob: I charge $1 per friend. :-) just kidding, but the UI makes it so hard to send you to more than a few people.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Bret: You guys rock! This is so much better than FollowFriday, which I recommended just a while back. Now, I'm waiting for some recommendation emails! :)
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
If there’s something about friends and family not having their account set up properly, I’d prefer a way to recommend them the streams they forgot to add. For example, I could tell them “You forgot to add your Digg stream and your fourth and eight blog. Here’s the link.” Then he could just click the recommendation and had it set up easily.
- Natsuki Seika
As I have lots of subscriptions the pop-up window is *really* slow and always has been since the new UI (same thing for amending friends lists). :-( I like the feature though, so I could make a new friends list of my most recommended users and use that each time for each user?
- Kol Tregaskes
Kevin - that is an awesome logo!!!!!
- Susan Beebe
+102 for Bill Waterson references in picture Kevin or words Sinterclas
- SteVe C
cute but what happened to festivus this year?
- Laura Norvig
Merry Christmas to the FriendFeed team. You guys rock! FriendFeed reacts quickly and you're adding wonderful features all the time (Thanks soooo much for the "edit" feature.)
- Mitchell Tsai
Happy Holidays FF crue -- you've made this an excellent and memorable year for many of us. Facebook couldn't have done it without you! :)
- Christopher Galtenberg
w00t you gave me the best online year in 15 years!!! ;p Thanks a lot, everyone, for what you've done here XD
- Zu from AOD
Sigh. Sometimes it is the little touches, like seasonal logos or easter eggs, that mark a site as a living project, and that you really miss when the developers have all moved on to something else.
- Michael R. Bernstein
Because just like in high school, sometimes the sweaty jock who doesn't wash his hands after using the john still gets the best girl - while those of us who carried her books and wrote her poetic love letters and timed our walking to go by her locker at just the right time find ourselves on the outside looking in again." You nailed it Louis!
- DJ Stevie Steve
Nice post, Louis. Was waiting to see what you'd write. :)
- Kali
My immediate reaction was Facebook will push ads onto their users. I think FriendFeed could be seriously screwed up with live moving ads, so that's hopefully out of the picture from a purely usability view. Friendfeed is all about realtime web information. I then wonder how in that case will the monetise the relationship. My guess? Facebook will show live conversations and hopefully they will rip out the poor IM implementation in Facebook. The purchase may be nothing more sinister, I hope...
- Mark Aitken
Well said Louis. This is the big question.
- Mark Krynsky
Okay, so now I'm ready to cry. Excellent post, Louis. Thank you!
- Ladyepiphanybug
Excellent, you've captured my sentiment very well. Mark - I disagree. FF is an excellent platform for floating ads based upon our behavior, and it is just about the only platform in existence where the algorithms for ad placement could have been done right - and welcomed.
- JCunwired
Louis's reaction is the one I most wanted to see. Thanks for not disappointing us, man!
- Daniel J. Pritchett
"FriendFeed is the one that has a 4.0 GPA and had big dreams of an Ivy League diploma. And yet, she ends up with you - the Silicon Valley equivalent of your local state school. When you come rolling in with your heavy car, big wheels and pumping bass, we don't care how much money you say you're worth - we still don't trust your grin when you open the door and say "hop in"."
- anna sauce
I'm *loving* the high school stereotypes as metaphor, btw.
- anna sauce
jcunwired - I hope it's unobtrusive, don't mind people making money, but lets hope it's sensible. My worst fear is FF is seen as a threat and silenced, but I'd doubt Zuckerberg would be so brash..
- Mark Aitken
Brilliantly said. Don't think it could have been said better!
- Matthew Horton
from iPhone
I just learned about this minutes ago. Louis it's not 4 big companies. there will only be three after Microsoft merges/acquires Facebook and Google buys Twitter. This move makes perfect sense for Facebook and it's what their SocialTV initiative needed to really work. I see big things for it in Facebook's future. I don't know how I feel about it though!
- Michael Fidler
Somebody wrote that this is just about getting FF's tech talent. Don't you love how all these social networks conveniently forget who it is who makes them valuable?
- Dawn
That was a very enjoyable read :) And the point about bright startups having dim perspectives at the end is alas the truth at the moment: you have to be able to bootstrap your finance, have revenue from the start (membership, affiliates, whatever) that funds your growth. Or find a way to get sold to the big boys (although there are big boys outside the immediate industry that might...
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- Iphigenie
Good post and commented on your blog. I need to get back into that habit. :-)
- Mathew A. Koeneker
yes, your comments are treasured on my blog, they will not be sold :)
- Valeria Maltoni
Really great post, Louis.. We all will be watching to see what happens. Interesting if it goes the same way google's acquisitions all have. Seems like when they started buying up apps, they killed them. And so it goes....
- Sheryl
Louis - that post is awesome... I just laughed out load with that one... nice!!!
- Susan Beebe
I had suggested facebook to buy friendfeed in one my blog post.
- Madhav Tripathi
Terrific article Louis, best I have read on this deal so far.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
Life streaming via Friendfeed I always felt like a kind of a partner investing something of me in something greater... Now I discover that this investment counts for nothing. No one was or is committed to keep the style and special features that made Friendfeed attractive in the first place. No one is committed or loyal to the user base and the investment of life talent and prestige...
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- Spaceweaver
We've been acquired by Facebook! We are really excited about joining the Facebook team. (Note: FriendFeed will continue to operate - see the blog post for details)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
"FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team." Those are NOT encouraging things to read as a FF user.
- S of 2C
Sniff... not sure if I'm excited about this. But I have enormous respect for the FriendFeed team... so, I assume they believe in the move as more than an exit strategy.
- Michael Leggett
Coolest web 2.0 site I've ever seen & used. I hope things don't derail. Ads will be coming soon, which is fine, but.... then what 's next? Please no quizzes!
- Ben Hanten
Who would have thought that after Facebook were shamelessly being "inspired" by FriendFeed, the inevitable would have happened?
- Tyson Key
Hey guys, keep in mind that Facebook is blocked in workplaces across the nation. 250 million casual users commenting about last night's party does not intelligent conversation make.
- Hector
yes you have just failed at failing, no it is not a double negative.
- Bahriye
I really can't see how FB would buy FF only to shut it down. There are way too many innovations and features FF has that FB honestly needs. I'm looking forward.
- Harry Wolff
Oh, this does not make me happy. Not at all! I've stayed off of Facebook intentionally and FriendFeed is my favorite social network. This is like when the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. :>(
- Larry Hawes
i have stopped using FB for the most part and liked FF alot more. now FF will go the way of FB. screwed again.
- Joe The Sausage
Berge Gazen beat your score in Mafia Wars
- Berge Gazen
Enjoy your fat paychecks, guys. You've sold us out.
- Akiva
Bravo Bret! Been following your successes ever since we had the opportunity to work together on the YellowPages.ca / Google Maps Canada deal. Congrats!
- Sebastien
I wished it was Google or even Yahoo!, instead...
- Tyson Key
i really hope ff stays as it is. fb is kinder carder while ff is a great tool.
- jkkmobile
Not sure what to make of this. It could eiter be a big win or a huge fail.
- dorn
It could have been Microsoft, which would have been worse for everyone. :(
- Tyson Key
Can I take this opportunity to say I HATE facebook?
- Alex Scrivener
seems the only ppl happy here are the ones in the biz or who stand to profit from the merger.
- Joe The Sausage
I guess we should get ready to get poked by our supposed friends and have various shit thrown at us? Plus 5,000 requests by apps that nearly all suck.
- Joey Gibson
Painful. And apparently I completely misunderstood what FF was trying to accomplish both technically and as an organization. I guess Facebook must have dangled a pretty big bag of money in front of them.
- Ken Sheppardson
FriendFeed is Dead! Long Live FriendFeed! :/
- Tyson Key
I will reserve judgement, i don't like or use FB but if FF maintains it's current goodness i don't care who cuts the checks.
- SteVe C
I hope this doesn't turn into an APP filled hunk of crap. I love FriendFeed, it was the untouched gem of microblogging. I don't want Mafia Wars invited in my FriendFeed!!! Congrats on the sale though.
- Jay 'Farmington'
@Philipp: until the new masters start flexing their muscles and bringing in their own people to enforce their own vision.
- Joe The Sausage
I read the blog post and one statement stands out to me "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being." The time being. This is not just bad, I think it may be #FAIL
- berchman
Facebook obviously liked FriendFeed a long time ago. Why would they have copied so many features (feed item comments and the "Like" action, to name a couple) otherwise? It was only logical for this to happen eventually. Doesn't mean I like it, but acquisition is part of the game. I have the same feeling I did when SocialThing! was acquired by AOL, though.
- dgw
"Relationship Status: It's complicated" comes to mind. ;)
- Tyson Key
Wow, I finally sign up, and read this. This could end up being a very bad thing for FF fans: "Your FriendFeed friend just signed up on this poll, would you like to too?"
- Brian Bommarito
Does this mean that we'll be seeing an influx of webcam spammers, a la Twitter? Along with abolishment of the rooms feature, crappification of the search feature, and more "privacy features" that really just put more nails in the openness coffin?
- Tyson Key
Some people will do whatever their friends request........
- Michael Muller
I really don't see why people would be anything but excited about this Facebook freindfeed deal. Great news as far as I am concerned. The Friend feed team is going to go over facebook and make it that much easier to connect, share... isn't that what the social web is about?
- Kevin Murray
I know a lot of people who use Facebook and enjoy it and that's fair enough. It's just not my cup of tea. The chaps from Friendfeed will get rich and the technology will get absorbed in Facebook but I can't see Friendfeed continuing in anything like it's present form.
- Paul Nash
Don't be so negative, something good might eventually come of this...
- Tarmo Aidantausta
Congrats! I know you all must be crazy excited right now.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
chance for FriendFeed to become more mainstream... congrats FriendFeed team!
- Jeroen De Miranda
Nothing could make me happier than if they integrated the good tools from FriendFeed into Facebook, which is where all my friends are. So a big "yay!" from me.
- Ian Betteridge
happy for you guys, but not for all of us
- Flavio
congratulations. this is going to be interesting.
- Dave Beckett
I think I preferred the non-mainstream version of FriendFeed...
- Tyson Key
I'm turning on my black shirt, my black trouser, my black socks, my black shoes. Although I probably must be happy for you.
- Ton Zijp
NASTY NASTY BAD BAD. But we'll see...
- Daniel Morgan
I don't know, Like it? or dislike it?
- Ömer Balamir
What happens to all the content that we've created and imported here, and the associated metadata? Will all that disappear into the ether?
- Tyson Key
If the FriendFeed guys can make FaceBook useful and responsive again, this seems like a pretty positive step!
- Robin Barooah
I have big loss of data concerns. See http://ff.im/6pHjo Is there any way to archive all my FriendFeed posts, likes, comments, and pictures (friendfeed-media.com) off-line? Can some Archive.org-like snapshots of FriendFeed be made (Once a month starting Sept 2009)? I'd like to see the cross-links between my posts & other people's posts, even in 2020. -
- Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell: the FriendFeed site is not shutting down. Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users.
- Bret Taylor
I just overheard a coworker mention FriendFeed. This is how the world ends...
- CannonGod
Then provide us with a way to easily make a back-up of all of our posts and all of the posts we have Liked and Commented on.
- Akiva
Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want it to be handed off to Facebook.
- zio bonino
I don't see good things coming from this. Although I like Facebook, I liked Friendfeed more. Partly because of the environment and the smallness of it. That is now going to be ruined. So, 10-1 odds that Friendfeed will be no more within a year after it gets intergrated into Facebook?
- Mathew™ aka Youngblood
I doubt it Robin. Bret can only give us assurances about the "near future." Here's what I think will happen. Just like Twitter acquired Rael Dornfest and his awesome web services, Stikkit and I Want Sandy vanished (and so did he), Facebook will acquire all the talent from Friendfeed, shut this service down and Facebook will continue to suck.
- Vicarbott
Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want anything to be handed off to Facebook. And I don't want to lose anything.
- zio bonino
Congrats obviously, but im not sure about the feeling,, different user groups which can not integrate but collide.. hope there wont be an huge integration in the future.
- Yunus Tunak
I'm happy for FriendFeed! But, at the same time a bit worried about the future. Hope you guys convince FB to not be evil too.
- Vishal Verma
I can't believe it! damn! facebook tos will apply to friendfeed too? should i start to move to another service? why anyone would think that facebook public is friendfeed public?! damn! friedfeed was my favorite! I can't understand this move! they want to kill friendfeed or what?
- paula simoes ☃
"I bet I can find 1.000.0000 people who dislike this deal."...Welcome to FriendBook.
- Jacque
Well, huge congraulations to you and your team, you deserve every success. To be honest I had presumed this would happen sooner or later - the only business model cool little startups have is to hope they get bought by someone bigger for their brains and technology. I'm going to be in San Francisco in a couple of weeks and was going to stop by your office to bring you a cake and thank you for a great product - maybe I still will if you're still there and there's still a FriendFeed!
- Alex Lomas
"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" There's a bit of a contradiction in your statement, Bret. Nice try though.
- JCunwired
Grats Bret and the rest of FF. To all the naysayers... Lets see what happens before we start bitching....
- Rasmus Lauridsen
Just great. I'm certainly not very happy about this. Let's just hope FB doesn't ruin FF. Ugh.
- axolote
Who cares? Nothing's gonna change in our pitiful lifes.
- bluretina
This ties in nicely with the fact that you soon will have the opportunity to make your Facebook profiles public and get followers there.
- Michael Netsch
I don't mean to be negative but there's got to be a win-win logic to each merger&acquisiton. Audience high in only quantity is clearly not a win for friendfeed in the long term by considering its unique selling points. Let's wait and see who will benefit from friendfeed's death now.
- ayca
Seriously, what is this? It's like Bret just announced that he's killed all your mothers or something. It could turn out good, it could turn out bad, but at the end of the day, who cares, it's just a website (I mean honestly, come on). I could see it going either way, but in the near term, this is a pretty big win for the FF team, so congrats guys.
- Chieze Okoye
To be honest, my heart sank a little but I am happy to congratulate you and the team for building such a good brand. Well done.
- Kevin J Hatton
Wow, I specifically use friendfeed b/c it is not facebook. Sounds great for the friendfeed team, but not necessarily for friendfeed users.
- Evan Parker
Born to be sold, like in the old "new economy" era. Remember the late nineties?
- Federico Bolsoman
Sudden desire to check out Strands again... but hey, kudos on the incoming $$ for FF team
- Leslie Poston
This is wisdom. Bracing for Google Wave is a good idea.............
- Kevin J Hatton
this is clearly a talent aquisition... why am i not excited about this? could it be because facebook has been blatantly stealing features from friendfeed shamelessly. Likes were clearly not an original facebook idea...realtime feeds is another i could go on...
- Tate
While I'm sad, because I suspect this means the best things about FF will disappear or I'll be forced to use FB in some way, if the buyout was for some awesome amount of money, I can't say I blame 'em for taking an offer -- I would.
- Andy Bakun
I came to FriendFeed because I don't like facebook. Now the question is, will facebook become more like friend feed? or will they just take friend feed and turn it into facebook?
- Tom Ray
FF could be a good R&D arm for facebook.
- Andy Bakun
Fucking morons. FriendFeed is doomed now. Think logically. Facebook has NO REASON to keep FriendFeed alive. It will simply take FF's best features, suck the life of out of it, then trash FF. Way to go, FirnedFeed, damn.
- Jeremy Buff
This announcement should have been held off until the plans for Friendfeed were known. Regardless, this is *bad* for FF users. Best case: it continues on, but with stagnated feature development. Worst case: it's gone.
- tollie williams
I don't want my FF feed on Facebook :( I use both, but maintain both profiles separate
- Leandro Ardissone ⍨
Sigh... Happy for the team if this is what they want, but baffled by the move. The users that are going to leave because of this will make FF a graveyard and the users it gains, well... Hello spam? Sorry, but I don't like it.
- Vince DeGeorge
from iPhone
Dang, and just as I was starting to get used to how FF works. FF is useful on it's own. I hope this only improves FF's system, rather than having it disappear into Facebook's wake.
- Don Faulkner
My big question to everybody here is this: What are the potential downsides / upsides to this acquisition? I mean on paper I just don't see what the pros OR cons are. I don't care for Facebook but I don't see how them acquiring FF is going to change everything.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
furthermore they are 2 different things: I follow a lot of people here that are not in my facebook list, which is for IRL friends!
- Flavio
I don't know where to go next either. I had just settled down to make imaginary friends for all my non-FF tweeps, etc. now, I'm not sure if I should bother.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
I hope friendfeed continues to operate normally but it does not look good.
- Ashish
integrate best features of ff to fb, then try to innovate in fb if possible, then kill ff... that's it, cheers, all the best. grrrr...
- Kemal Y.
niczak has good points. FF & FB aren't exactly competitors, but they aren't orthogonal either. Let's hope FB's smart enough to see the difference and improve both platforms.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Nicholas: The upside for Facebook is they just bought an engineering team that's built many of the feature's Facebook's going to need to stay competitive. The upside for FriendFeed's engineering team is $$$ and the ability to build system for a wider audience. FriendFeed's user base is small enough that it'll either get absorbed into Facebook or move on, and FF will become a footnote on the Internet timeline.
- Ken Sheppardson
first tr.im (heard about it yesterday), now this. I wasn't a heavy tr.im user (yet), but sad to see it go, even if I think url shortening is silly.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
As FB said they're interested in the people and not in the site, what if the community will keep running FF without its current staff?
- Flavio
I'll have to go with Flavio's position too. Given this news (plus tr.im and who knows who's next), I'd tend to favor community supported or federated services for things like this in the future.
- Don Faulkner
from IM
I am purposely not on facebook because I don't really want to talk to people I have not talked to in 20 years.
- Andy Bakun
trouble is (from my perspective), that the philosophies of the two platforms are at odds. FB wants to bring people to the site and keep them there, while FF is a hub, bringing people in and then sending them back out. (That's part of why it's hard for the newcomer to understand, IMHO.)
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Quote «Taylor and Cox say that the Friendfeed product will live on independently, and eventually Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook. But the Friendfeed team is not being kept whole. Some employees will now report to Cox, others to engineering head Mike Schroepfer. In my opinion that means, long term, the Friendfeed product itself is unlikely to be a big priority.¶ But Facebook is...
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- Philipp Lenssen
+1 Kol for the techcrunch article!
- Don Faulkner
from IM
techcrunch: "Cox agreed, noting that Facebook is focused on being a platform and a service, and not just a destination site." I certainly hope so!
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Brilliant move by both Facebook and friendfeed. Congratulations!!! I have theories of what they have planned, but I doubt you would verify any of them. This is going to go so well with their SocialTV which they have been developing. I'm so happy for you!
- Michael Fidler
I don't see what's so bad about it since no one knows right now what the outcome will be, everyone is just making assumptions that could possibly be wrong..... Might help just sitting back and seeing what happens first before complaining.
- ChaCha Fance
Nooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrghh! I´ve resisted getting a facebook acct for so long...
- ɯɥøq sɐɯoɥʇ
I wonder how the discussion over on facebook would compare to this?
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Congrats, FF! I'm approaching the situation with cautious optimism. A lot of my friends only share stuff via the Facebook wall/feed, so if Facebook is able to make their feed more like the FF feed (i.e. good, instead of sucktacular) through this acquisition, it's mostly a win for me in the end.
- Brian Chang
/me pokes Rutger. (just getting in practice. ;)
- Don Faulkner
from IM
Where will we go for the FFunderCats, bacon memes, and angry artists fighting over photo reshares now? ;)
- Tyson Key
If anybody has doubts as to what happens to the FriendFeed community or our stored information here, read this statement from Bret (in this thread) "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users". Now maybe you can see "whats so bad about it" and curb your optimism. Not good.
- JCunwired
@josh: do you think FB will throw away all the crap people use? various quiz, pick 5 and so on?
- Flavio
@jc: our data will not go away in the near future. what will be in few months? in a year?
- Flavio
Let's see if you can do a bit better than just not being evil this time around.
- Tim Tyler
Wooohooo!!, seems like we are being sent back to "good" old Facebook. Congrats Bret!!
- DanDan
Looks like I'm going to repeat the same thing many others did. My first reaction was "Oh my..." I have refused to join Facebook due to its philosophy while I have been with FriendFeed from the beginning for its. I'm sad and somewhat apprehensive.
- Sean Leather
Please say that facebook.com will be shutting down, and the combined company will still be called FriendFeed... I bet it won't happen, though.
- Tyson Key
"Regarding FB/FF - Here's how it's [probably] going to work. You will most likely have an account merge, all of the services FriendFeed supports will now be aggregated on Facebook, and all of your FriendFeed friends will be in a "list" on Facebook. The FF Groups will become Facebook Groups. The FF lists will become Facebook Lists." http://ff.im/6pNxq
- Ozgur Uckan
Nothing like an early retirement payout :)
- Owen Greaves
Congratulations Bret. For me this merger makes a lot of sense. Facebook will provide the "quantity" of users, which friendfeed deserves :).
- Karthick R
FriendFeed + Facebook... Oh noes FriendFace is coming (http://www.youtube.com/watch...)! Now sorry for that link, and seriously, thanks for your work, guys. Please don't let the spirit of FriendFeed to be blown away =)
- Anton
hey, that is great guys! interested to see how you integrate.
- Brian Walsh
Mind blown. Never expected this. I'm also disappointed, yet optimistic at the same time.
- Angus Burton
Kinda curious to see how this will all pan out...although i wouldnt want the friendfeed stuff just integrated into facebook. I feel like im among a group of people who i genuinely share interests with here...dont want to lost that.
- Cass
Best case: Facebook will continue to support and develop FriendFeed. Worst case: this is great news for Amplifeeder.
- David Gaw
Well done, well deserved, I hope FB's means and infrastructures empower your guys to even better things. But if quizzes appear in "my" friendfeed, evil things will haunt you and your descendents for 3 generations.
- Iphigenie
♪ ♪ This is the end.... beautiful friends ♪ ♪
- All for design
Well, I don't see the point of sticking around here if I have accounts in both and this is going to get swallowed whole into Facebook anyways. Put simply, goodbye.
- Micah Collard
The social community that has been behind FriendFeed creators have built a wonderful product. Only problem is, we don't have Zuck's checkbook :(
- JCunwired
friendfeed is a beautiful product, only god knows what facebrook will do to it. Hopefully the ability to upload files (such as mp3s) will not be removed. Zuck is a tool.
- Nibi
Congratulations. I'm sorry to say that I don't plan to move with you.
- Lars Juhl Jensen
Facebook is lucky to have such a talented group of people ... Congratulations FriendFeed!
- Rob Kurrus
doesn't look like a bad joke, better be for the good then, but... Well congrats anyway guys, you did something AWESOME now let's see where Mark takes it
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
That's too bad. Liked the openness if FriendFeed, and the lack crap that is on Facebook. Once FriendFeed dies, it will be Twitter only.
- Mike D.
Congrats, but concerned that FriendFeed and its tools may disappear. Merging the tools with Facebook seems impossible.
- Mike Reynolds
So, what does the acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook mean to us, users of both websites: Can I make a friend request from FriendFeed, and be approved for both, on one click
- Reyna Carlos
Exciting news guys. I am actually looking forward to your collaboration with / work for FB. No matter what people may or may not like about FB, it does succeed in reaching a more "diverse" audience compared to most other Web 2.0/social web companies. Paired with your team's excellence in realizing features that succeed in pleasing the geekiest of Web 2.0 affine individuals, I think you are steering towards exciting waters :)
- Mustafa K. Isik
*heart sinks* actually a bit of shock - I think that Facebook will leave Friendfeed as-is but I don't think there is hope for future innovation in Friendfeed since their best superstar team members will be pulled onto 'more important' Facebook issues...
- Pon
:-) + :-( very happy for the team, huge achievement, hoping to see export of innovation but not a shut down of this unique community and location
- Majento
Congratulations, and best wishes for your future together! :-)
- Ruchira S. Datta
Wow, I was beginning to use Friendfeed as my defacto social site...Facebook is more for real life friends. They'll just take what makes Friendfeed great, add it to Facebook and slowly kill this site.
- Manuel Mas
What is the big deal? I think it'll make FF bigger and better. You should be happy about that!
- orionstarr
I am disappointed. I don't want to have to go to Facebook to do what i do here. I can not imagine they will port over all the features we enjoy here. We lose a lot for only a slight benefit to Facebook.
- Robert
It could be worse, myspace could've bought them lol...
- orionstarr
Awful news for users but congratulations to you guys. Ideally, FB will run FF as a distinct service but I'm not hopeful. I don't want the diversity and noise that facebook brings - people doing quizzes on which movie star they resemble and playing silly games. I also wanted to keep my day to day social activity distinct from the targeted information and discussion I use FF for.
- Rajit
Only just started taking a serious look at FF after hearing acquisition by FB. Sounds like I'm laggard rather than a leader in use of web 2.0
- ManojRanaweera
I think how Pon said it is what I'm feeling: *heart sinks*.
- Andy Bakun
Congratulations, i am really happy for you guys!! :)
- Mona Nomura
I'm not a Facebook fan, but can't begrudge the FF gang their chance to reap the rewards for all their hard work. However, it would be a shame if FB ruins the good thing we all have going here.
- Ken Morley
Congrats to the FF team... I hope the service doesn't disappear into a fold of light and heat.
- Brandon
if all the things that make FF great are brought to FB then I'll be happy to use it
- Mike Chelen
The community won't be there. Been on FB longer than any other, don't have nearly the relationship or sense of community there that I do here or on Twitter.
- Karoli
Karoli: that is due to the effectiveness of the FF platform and interface, which help to join conversations and find interesting people more so than FB does
- Mike Chelen
Mike: I suspect that FB wants FF for the search possibilities, not the community-building aspects. But we'll see.
- Karoli
i guess congrats are in order, but I'm going to now go and remove everything I have that feeds into FF, and I have to ask -- do I have any rights over my archive? I have a private feed, and I have no interest in offering up my lifestream to the FaceBook data-miners. I hope the FF folks get what they hope for out of the deal, but my FriendFeed experience has been effectively killed.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I just learned about the FF acquisition by Facebook - WOW~! Congratulations Bret, Paul and FF team!! holy cow ........Mooooooooo! Where's the FF Acquisition Party? :)
- Susan Beebe
RT @alirizaesin FriendFeed, R.I.P. Home tweet home!..
- Ozgur Uckan
Congrats to facebook. Now, Twitter is the best.
- miocaro
Congratulations to the FriendFeed guys on the Facebook Acquisition. Not a big fan of Facebook, so I hope my favorite Uber Aggregator, Realtime Social, Microblogging site of awesomeness is not entirely absorbed into the Facebook infrastructure. I wait with baited breath to hear what "normally for the time being" means ;).
- Tom Horn
Can I now have comments propagate in both directions as far as Facebook/Friendfeed is concerned?
- Piaw Na
*checks date*. Damn .. not April 1st, must be for real. While I'm happy for the FF team, since I guess this is what they wanted (congrats guys!), I can't help but think this is the beginning of the end for a great service and a vibrant community. There are reasons I don't spend any time on Facebook and do spend lots of time on FF, and some kind of "FF integrated into Facebook" just won't cut it. I hope this service will live on for at least a few more years.
- Andrew Perry
Gratz to the FF team but as a user I'm not completely happy. In short, I like the FF team/product much more than I like the FB team/product. Best of luck to all.
- timepilot
Dang! I've killed another site! Sorry guys... FF was doing fine until I started coming here again! Same with Pownce! Went there and liked it... went underground for a spell... came back and still liked it, so I stayed. A few months later... BOOM! I have the touch! (I'm thinking I'll start devoting a lot of time to Twitter... maybe I can kill that one, too!)
- Mark J
Bret, congrats on the acquisition. You guys put in a lot of hard work to create this community. I just hope you learned the mistakes Pownce made, Jaiku etc, and ensured that you didn't sell out your community, but that you helped it evolve into something as great as this into something better. Good luck in future endeavors!
- Mike Lewis
Yay for you guys, I mean that seriously, I 'like' what this means for you personally, but -1000000 cool points for doing it with FB. Sad day.
- Threepwood
Karoli: FF search is so useful because it is integrated with all the other great features that help to find relevant content. if FB wants to have a similar capability, they must also develop the underlying architecture.
- Mike Chelen
from IM
shakeel, the reasons for friendfeed to join facebook are probably about other things besides money, since many of the FF staff left high-paying jobs to join in the first place
- Mike Chelen
from IM
Congrats, team! It's bittersweet, though.
- Anne Bouey
So now we will have FriendFeed blocked at work too. Darn.
- Mark Scrimshire
"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future" is not exactly inspiring for the long term for those of us who came here to escape Facebook for a) it's walled garden and b) privacy concerns. Nice for the Founders to make a pile of cash but for the many of us, it feels like we got sold down the river. Sad.
- Sally Church
cacarr: updates for FB have progressed rapidly in the past, count how many months since new features such as api calls and site redesigns have have been implemented
- Mike Chelen
from IM
Congratulation to the FF team! You guys deserves this. I just hope that Facebook does not change the directions of FF.
- Vinko
I hope this means better integration: liking here will auto-like on fb and such :D if that's the case, I won't mind the ads *wink* *wink*
- Friendfeed's Francisco
Franc, cant stand facebook ads in their current format, hope they will be fixed eventually :P
- Mike Chelen
from IM
Grats, dont spend it all in one place.....
- Robert Higgins
congrads. I think it will be good for BOTH companies.
- Logan Lindquist
Congratulations to all the FriendFeed team. I hope you'll be able to keep the FriendFeed spirit up at Facebook. Kudos for all the great work you've been doing.
- Paul Papadimitriou
I use FriendFeed and Facebook so it would be awesome to see FF features in Facebook. Congratulations!
- krzychukula
from IM
judging by the nearly 600 comments as i type this, including my own earlier one, FF could use a Don't Like button as well. or would, if we were going to be using it much longer.
- kelly
Nice, i like to wish you all the best for your new job (and it's really hard, i know). I'm happy, but... don't let die FF!!
- ''Ignobile''
Hope FriendFeed remains open. Love the spirit of FF
- Bernaldo Barrena
Seriously, what a coincidence! Just on Saturday I claimed to be both twitter- and facebook-free. I loved FF product and personally helped to bring at least a dozen of my friends into the community. I'll stick around for a while though.
- ✔ ǝuǝƃnǝ
This deal makes sense, now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask! Congrats facebook and ff!
- Garin Kilpatrick
I suppose Facebook had to do it, with Twitter and Google Wave as competitor...
- Alexander Kruel
I am noticing a lot of people going to re-esumate their lifestream.fm account now!
- Flavio
I don't think FB acquiring FF is bad. But I don't think it's good either. We'll see. :-) In the meantime, keep up the good work!
- Alexander Gieg
How long until ex-FriendFeed employees start jumping ship from Facebook? I wonder...
- Tyson Key
Thomas Power still believes that Facebook/FF/Linkedin (2010) will be acquired by Apple (2011) and this is a transitional acquisition in the SN market cycle. The world is shifting to Mac, iTunes, iPhones and FB own the next generation. Apple have $29bn of cash on deposit price is not an issue. Google must jump for twitter while MS fiddle in the sticks with Yahoo. BillG will be back at the MS helm 2012.
- Penny Power
:( Happy for FF people, sad for the service. Was going to move from fb to ff this week..
- Martynas
Flavio: never heard of lifestream.fm before, but I'm going to go check it out. I'll reiterate, though, that I'm now shy of any service like this, since it can disappear just as it's getting good. I heard about sweetcron.com last night (via http://ff.im/6pR2w). Maybe it's time to move from centralized to distributed again.
- Don Faulkner
Just finished setting up my lifestream.fm at http://lifestream.fm/dfaulkner. Lifestream does what it says, and no more. FF's search blows lifestream away. FF is more flexible about adding source feeds, but lifestream does fine without the flexibility I suppose. FF still wins, or would, if I thought it would be sticking around. :P
- Don Faulkner
I also hate facebook, not because of their silly quizzes and pokes, but because I suspect they would like to maintain massive user base as the determining factor in choosing a social network. I would love to switch to orkut as I use so many other google services, but I can't because nobody else does. That should not be my criteria.... I thought friendfeed would try to make social networks work together.
- Ru Viljoen
I don't understand why everyone is so negative about the situation?
- orionstarr
@orionstarr - it's like Starbucks buying your neighborhood coffee shop and saying it still cares about the customers. You know it's just not going to be the same as what you've come to love.
- Robin Barooah
Presumably FF will go on the back burner - and the team will try and "fix" Facebook.
- Tim Tyler
I've watched Facebook morph from a relatively organised and well implemented social networking tool into the hulking mess it is now - and I really, really hope that a similar thing doesn't happen here with the inevitable changes this will bring about.
- Leslie Moore
Come on guys, out with the long-term game plan, this is tedious.
- Andrew Eglinton
Teach Facebook how to be FriendFeed. Let the small but fast teach the big but slow. Don't forget what Paul says - don’t be evil.
- whatidiscover
Friendfeed is not as huge as Facebook but you're doing such terrible work on it. Friendfeed is facing so many many problems these days though facebook doesn't seem to have one. Why?
- Sing For Absolution
Just because Facebook bought Friendfeed, doesn't necessarily mean they will do anything with the service. At least maybe not right away. People need to chill out.
- Alex Knight
hope it doesn't mess w/ twitter integration
- Ken Seto
makes a lot of sense - f.b. now has a power house of real-time all-stars. fixes many of the feature 'wish' lists for f.b. - actually a major positive sign for innovation. congrats to the F.F. team.
- michael sean wright
This will probably be bad. like all purchases, it will be an "afterthought" and never be fully allowed to develop and flourish.
- Ryan Jones
Funny thing is, if you posted about this on Facebook, 99.9999% of it's users would go "huh, what's FriendFeed anyway?"
- Richard Matthias
It almost seemed inevitable since Facebook has been copying so much of Friendfeed in recent months. It's good for the founders of FF and may benefit those of us who use both on a regular basis. Maybe they'll just leave FF alone?
- Kenley Neufeld
someone tell me what they will do with it? Nothing maybe? Kill it, maybe?
- Francine Hardaway
Buy as is use it's IP and close it down or run as separate business? Either way, didn't see that coming.
- Keith Bennett
from BuddyFeed
It was bound to go down. Like we used to say on the block shootin' dice "Big Bank Take Little Bank"
- professor daddyo
I do, however, wish tha tmore sites would implement this commenting engine.
- Ryan Jones
Fotis: haha, wait too long, and you'll never be able to close your FF account ;)
- Jason Hargrove
not believing it until another source confirms...
- Benton
Congrats to the friendfeed team. Worried about the future though.
- Andy Roth
It looks like a defensive move. I think it's better fro FB to acquire FF than incorporating twitter functionalities in their status feature.
- Pablo Paniagua
Congrats to ff team...but how does this work? I have 2 different accounts...and I like it that way...I don't want to share/spam my friends on facebook with what I have here...
- brainno722 (Peter)
Originally posted this to your other FF/FB post before you astarted this one: I don't see the point of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. They are pretty much identical services (well, FF represents just the News Feed portion of Facebook) I don't see how they can incorporate FriendFeed into Facebook. If they really did buy it, then I see this as them going for programming talent more so...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
I think this is more of a "send the friendfeed traffic to facebook" than any kind of technical leverage. My biggest concern here: in order to exchange dialogue with people on facebook I need to be friends with them vs. being able to do it on friendfeed without having to friend them up. I find this valuable as there may be a topic or 5 that I want to engage with user "X" on, but I don't...
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- Erik Boles
I am disappointed by this news... I don't like Facebook at all... And I'm afraid they will just kill FriendFeed with their awful cluttered interface...
- Lindsay
It depends on how they integrate it. Did they buy it for the search engine, or did they buy it as a potential for extending the reach of Facebook into real time conversations? It's all about the life stream now right? So probably Facebook's attempt to stake a claim there.
- Tony "Frosty" Welch
Fotis, why do you want to shut down our FF account?
- Alex Knight
Bad bad bad bad bad bad ::runs screaming down the hall::
- mary
First of all, I love the name "Facefeed." ROFL Second, this is business boys. Happens all the time. Why do you think innovation keeps happening. FB will integrate or kill off FF, and something else will happen. It's a natural cycle.
- Francine Hardaway
wondering if i should continue aggregating all my online activity in frienfeed now that facebook owns it!!
- Gtp19
I can't begin to process this right now. Too much work to focus on. Later when I read this 10,000 mile long thread and have a glass of Cab in hand.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
Not feeling real good about this, hope fully Facebook will do right by the FF community, but I'm not holding my breath. Glad for the FF team though
- Kim Landwehr
if you look closely at FF the large majority of FF posts are twitter posts, so there was not that much original content on FF in the first place...
- Ingmar
So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter..
- Nick Halstead
Makes a lot of sense for Facebook. And we find this very healthy ^^
- twitscoop
People need to stop freaking out. The Facebook/Friendfeed buy out was just announced. Wait for details people.
- Alex Knight
It could be bad, it could be good. As long as Facebook doesn't try to port their functionality over, I'm fine with it being a financial acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
Great, why did I bother creating an account here? I could have held out.
- desinole
if this is true, for the love of god, please don't Facebook go and mess up FriendFeed as they have their own system, Facebook is a mess these days, Friendfeed is one of the 2.0 sites that actually has concentrated on doing a few things well, complete opposite to Facebook.
- Carl Grint
Cuz we all know that facebook doesn't respect user's privacy and you've got basically everything on ff, youtube, twitter, digg whatever you do
- Fotis Alexandrou
If they keep FriendFeed as a separate site, and still upgrade regularly, this is fine. If FriendFeed winds up in the dead pool, then it sucks.
- Steve Sill
I was just thinking how Friendfeed had stayed out of recent takeovers, mergers and hence cyber attacks. Will Friendfeed now be taken over by celebs and spammers too?
- Nils Geylen
Not sure why this news makes me nervous. Please tell me it's going to be ok Scoble...
- Lucas
FF has been FB's incubator for awhile.
- Peter Warnock
How can I spam on this thread please ? Any idea ?
- Toucouleur
Facebook has ZERO respect for users' wishes... Friendfeed is incompatible with that. Friendfeed will be going away. :( Their blog post says as much: "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally **for the time being**. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product"
- tollie williams
Ideally, FB will leave FF to do the sweet innovating they are doing and just take the awesome features and put them into FB
- Ryan
This is the first time I've used Friendfeed in a year. Good move on their part.
- chantelle
FriendFeed functionality on Facebook would be nice. The reverse, not so much. They're trying to address two entirely separate purposes and as such, need to remain completely separate.
- Adam Reyher
Stay here until FB does something dumb with FF
- Ryan
The rhetoric seems a bit too "Facebook will do what they want with us" and not "we will remain FF and continue forward". Seems as if FB went for the tech and we could lose FF as a seperate entity. Boo.
- Derek Shanahan
confirmed by facebook press release.
- Zac Bowling
Love 'em or hate 'em....Facebook made a phenomenal purchase.
- Kevin Pruett
I see a ton of Wall Spam. Facebook users just don't get it when you port your twitter updates over. There is too much for them to wrap their heads around. This will be a hard transition.
- Ryan Cummins
And I was REALLY getting fond of FriendFeed. From now on only downhill applicationwise?
- Bart
Not happy about this. I use Facebook, but don't like it. It reminds me of AOL from 10 years ago.
- David Sharpe
I agree that I don't want FB to mess up FF, but this will also give FF a higher profile and bring in many more users...which we may or may not like, judging by what happened on Twitter. I hope FF doesn't die off like Jaiku because I really think FF offers a more valuable and useful interface.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
One thing to consider is this: If we have "trusted" the FriendFeed people not to screw things up, hopefully we can trust them to make sure they're still in control in the terms of the acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
I hope this is a joke.. Damn it, I dont like Facebook now there is nowhere to go... F***
- Jacque
I am trying to imagine how this will be a good thing for existing FF users. It feels so right and so wrong all at once!...Maybe at least my kids and wife will finally get what I've been ignoring them for over the past year.
- Thom Kennon
Is that means we're going to see more extremist groups around, now that FB has acquired FF?
- Nir Ben Yona
so where do all the cool kids go now? we need another startup, stat!
- h1ro
I am afraid... what johnny2009 have said can really be the future... soon friendfeed will = Jaiku
- Ahmed Mubbashir Khan
Damn,I've just"got friendfeed,and i love it.I definately don't like facebook.What does it mean for twitter?
- Paul Downing
Any investors want to predict the buyout price?
- Kevin Pruett
am gonna wait for google wave... coz in facebook, i cant access the complete stream for a month ago, the site goes down very often while browsing, and privacy issues galore!! congratulations for friendfeed but its jus me!!!
- Gtp19
Maybe we´re seeing here one of FriendFeeds biggest discusions ever. I´m sceptic about the future of FF as a standlone service...
- Torsten Eckert
What concerns me most is what happens to my friends here (and that I have to interact with my friends THERE). Will we have to be friends to interact in the same way we have the last couple of years?
- JCunwired
This is very good for FriendFeed as long as Facebook doesn't corrupt them. I would have preferred to see Google buy FF but I know with their focus on Wave I don't think it would have been a good fit. I like the Facebook platform, but they have done too many shady things in the past for me to trust them.
- Adam Teece
all of the conversation is happening on FriendFeed and Twitter - nothing on Facebook. Think we'd scare away Facebook if everyone starts having lots of conversations there - like on Scoble's fan page?
- Stuart Miniman
They can or don't have to fix FF's FB app now.
- ydfeed
Ha Stuart - great point *Facebookers take cover*
- Kimberle Kelly
All I can think of is now a lot of people can feel the pain the dedicated Pownce community felt, but at least you're not getting shut down, just yet.
- Mike Lewis
I'm not a big facebook user, but my gut feeling is that like twitter buying summize, it will mark the end of major innovations. I hope I'm wrong. But they should totally go with the facefeed mashup name.
- motownmutt
I dont see any potential for competition with twitter FB and Twitter serve different purposes as does FriendFeed
- iluvblackwomen
Sorry but renaming Facebook to 'Facefeed' is utterly stupid.
- Alex Knight
does making google reader more social has anything to do with this buyout??!
- Gtp19
yeah this was good for facebook. bad for anyone who liked friendfeed.
- Liz
FriendFeed is very good, a better way to use Twitter & etc. Knowing this, I still rarely use FF. Not going to start using Facebook more.
- Nicole
Actually, this could be death for Twitter when you think about it. The people I know who are in FB are not likely to add TWO more nets to their lifestream. FriendFeed makes more sense for them. Maybe Twitter just stays as the dumb pipe it's become for many of us here.
- Thom Kennon
Good for FB UI and search, questionable for the FF community and its independent spirit ...
- Bo Stern
The main reason why I came to FF was because when I tried to treat FB the same as FF, i was talking to a wall. At least people interact here. At FB, it's all about the cheesy games/apps.
- Matthew Horton
from iPhone
Just like most acquisitions, it could be good and it could be bad. I trust that FriendFeed will live on as FriendFeed, only sharing their tech with Facebook. Possibly more integration between the two sites. If you were FF/FB, what would you do?
- Nick Humphries
Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook are three entirely different animals. Facebook eats Friendfeed and poops out little bits of content that once belonged to us. Twitter continues to thrive as the broadcast conversation-wannabe that it always was.
- JCunwired
Nick - think again. Its going to go away - read the tea leaves in this statement: "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" - Bret Taylor in this post https://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- JCunwired
Facebook must want real time soc-net search badly...
- martin smith
The biggest thing here, at least within the Twitter context, is that this merger will combine 'verified' identity (in terms of Facebook user ID being slightly more 'real' than Twitter) with real time status updates.
- Dan Patterson
I'm looking forward to what this brings to Facebook. I have enjoyed both networks but wondered when FriendFeed/Facebook would face-off and/or be absorbed by the other. I think FriendFeed's tech will improve the Facebook experience.
- Jacob Sloan
FriendFeed + Twitter = disruptive. FriendFeed + Facebook = one more app for FB . Facebookers dont know the power of FriendFeed. I agree with : "" So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter.. - Nick Halstead ""
- Rocky
Most likely scenario is Facebook assimilates the FriendFeed guys, has them work on improving Facebook newsfeed/realtime/status, and lets FriendFeed die a slow unmaintained death.
- Richard Akerman
Robert, it means all the time you invested building friends lists and updates there will go to Facebook :-)
- Loic Le Meur
could someone start to develop a Frienfeed clon , please ? ASAP !
- Rocky
Seems bloody terrible from this users perspective. Good for Friendfeed the company though.
- Quasar
Given Facebook's past, this could be really bad. Given FriendFeed's past, this could be really good. No real way to speculate without talking to the FF crew.
- xero
+3273 Quasar! (one for each of my Likes, already on a death march)
- JCunwired
Robert, do you know if Facebook is going to put on limits here at FF??? Oh crikey... so much for our citizen journalism here.... Admittedly I am bummed. Uber bummed.
- Arleen Boyd
your blog is the most important thing you can own on the web. these sites can come and go. it's a great social point but true friends you've made here you talk outside of ff, right?
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
It's a good time to sell to Facebook, cause Google Wave is imminent and is going to destroy all of Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. I think FriendFeed employees might even go back to Google eventually as soon as their contracts with Facebook are up.
- Charbax
Robert - wow. just wow I am stunned. Sorta sad actually. I love FF innovation and don't want to see that stop !!!!!
- Susan Beebe
the free ride couldn't last forever. I know it sucks that things will change, but they've got a lot more sense than Twitter has about these things..
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
You must all assimilate to the new FaceFeed
- Jonathan.Rivera
If you ignore all the crappy apps and just comment and post photos, your main feed on Facebook is fundamentally a pretty similar experience to FriendFeed - people post stuff, people comment on it. That is, at-least, the way my network tends to use Facebook. The main difference is that Facebook defaults to being very closed and private while FriendFeed defaults to being very open and...
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- Edward Coffey
edward - pretty much. it's FF for the layman. remember back in the day they used to have forums too?
- Terry O'Fee
friendfeed is very cliquey. you have your group of people who usually gather round for conversations. now imagine some of this friendfeed stuff in facebook. done right it will help them a lot.
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
I don't think I am liking this but FB does need to add the "edit" feature like on here.
- Marika Dye
FF acquisition is expected. But, as a user, I would be bumned, if FF would become a feature of FB. As, I tend to use Twitter as my social network and not FB.
- Vasu Srinivasan
I would love it if Facebook integrated the FriendFeed features. I would love it if Facebook had FriendFeed's flexibility with Facebook's privacy control. It sucks that the world may lose FriendFeed, but it is great the Facebook will likely get better.
- Andrew
Andrew, Facebook will get better - over time. There won't be any Vulcan website meld of FB and FF overnight.
- Bill Sodeman
thank god someone understands that, andrew. it's like "i liked this band better before they went to a major label!" ;)
- Terry O'Fee
Bill - But we can dream, can't we? :) I mean, what I love about Facebook is that I'm interacting with my friends as my friends, not as usernames and avatars. But I hate their bookmarklet, the weird delays when I post anything, the comment system, and I hate the Photo gallery tech. I love the FriendFeed community, but would love bringing the FriendFeed technology over to Facebook even more. If only Facebook could buy Flickr next...
- Andrew
as long as fb start thinking in creative commons terms... one day ..
- Terry O'Fee
they are both great services I think will be a good thing
- Logan Lindquist
oh NO! I don't spend much time at FB (everybody there's too busy playing stupid games, at least in my little network), and besides it's more private unlike FF. And now they've gone and bought FF? And I just joined! I guess I won't be around here for long, since FF won't...
- Dennis Jernberg
No mention of Yahoo. Totally irrelevant these days. Sad.
- Scott Schnaars
This deal makes sense! Now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask!
- Garin Kilpatrick
One of my facebook accounts got closed up. Into this account I fed my friendfeed. And into friendfeed I fed for example my socialmedian shares, diggs, stumbles etc.
- Wilhelm Bauer
Time for the next generation app. *Taps foot impatiently for Google Wave*
- Karen Masullo
I don't think it's about getting Friendfeed it's self; but having the developers and the information about real-time search.
- Chris Martin
pretty soon it'll be time for someone to start another FF-like service. This is BS. I really hope they don't delete ff.com and integrate it with facebook.
- Kevin Winn
Aw, I thought you were talking about Body Count's hit song
- Rodfather
Rodfather: 1UP for Body Count. I may still have that CD somewhere.
- ha3rvey (Hugs 50% off!)
just as i was caught up in reading the great conversation from robert scoble re: friendfeed...i come up for air and see this announcement. color me nervous for FriendFeed.
- Tobin Truog
Maybe I'm naive, but I'm not understanding how this news is either good or bad.
- Dave Roth
From a customer perspective, Dave, it's needless change that clouds the future of the service. And have you been on Facebook lately? They aren't exactly responsive to their customers, nor do they care much about privacy/content rights of their customers.
- Scoble, Alex Scoble
from IM
also, you'd better delete any content (photos for instance) you posted in your feed that you don't want FB to own when they get their claws in.
- Joe The Sausage
So it's kind of like the old axiom: Black people invent something cool, white people adopt it, white people ruin it. FriendFeed is black people.
- Dave Roth
from iPhone
so, so sad. I like(d) Friendfeed much more than facebook
- Francisco Kemeny
home run for FF.. Facebook will be able to give developers a treasure trove of data one thing that Twitter is dominating on right now. Twitter has a huge developer community but isn't managing that. Here FB is poised to be huge
- John Furrier
So classic that Robert has the first interview about this...Where's Louis? :)
- Anthony Farrior
How do they plan to mix the teenagers with the geeks?
- Jordi Soler
Amani: I am excited! Facebook has 800 employees and 300 million users. This makes both companies much more important.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
here was a comment on SiliconANGLE blog .. very funny .. "Hey, since we've copied almost every innovation you've had, guess you might as well play on the company softball team!"
- John Furrier
Nice strategic move - Interesting to see how this will integrate and looks in 12 months
- Alex Vermeule (@alexve)
to be honnest I was predicting google offer, then facebook preceed google on this, they are doing well, now rarding FF this is great, the sucess is to know when to pass to something else, the future will make the abtle wave, facebook rude for all geek it is time to code.
- abdellah
You rascal Robert, bet you had wind about FriendFeed and FaceBook merger before today? Yes? Have not used either SM apps. much UNTIL Twitter locked my account. May have been a fortunate mishap as it turns out. Getting to know the beauties of both apps. =)
- SashaKane
do you have a small amount of FriendFeed shares Robert?
- Torsten Eckert
NOOOOOOO. Damnit! I am praying that Facebook doesn't wall up Friendfeed. I was starting to build a site around Friendfeed :(
- beersage
beersage: as Facebook is trying to break their users into a more public world, I doubt that you really have anything to worry about there.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Starting to listen to this now. Hoping you are right, Rob.
- beersage
I hope so to. But regardless, I think that it was in reality necessary for FriendFeed to sell to really put the technology in front of a sufficient number of eyeballs. Facebook is probably the best acquirer that FriendFeed could have. (I would have not felt the same had FF been acquired by Google)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
The thing with Friendfeed though is how I can share things outside of a 'wall.' I prominently feature the FF widget on my site. I'm just concerned of losing that capability as I was tinkering with delivering a new site w/ content primarily running through my Friendfeed account. I am to this day unable to do much outside of the wall. I am unable to subscribe to Fan Page updates in Google reader for instance. That is what concerns me about FB acquiring FF given my goals.
- beersage
Robert sounded quite breathless in that interview. Thanks Robert.
- Roberto Bonini
Wow! I'm in shock. I can't wait to hear this interview.
- Micah
from iPhone
This deal was about getting Paul and the team and nothing else
- Stephen Pickering
@stephan, are you serious? FB is buying a concept, a technoloie, a structure, a content and a user list
- abdellah
now how could a team that left google resist under a unique perception system, where the leader vision is upon any thing
- abdellah
Unconvincing Paul Buchheit, the team is more exited of being part of bigger story - logical for them to move on
- patrickdh
They want a way to turn their white pages into a yellow pages and the only guy on Earth who knows how to do it, is Paul
- Stephen Pickering
It was only about the technology and the people. Most people are on also FB anyway.
- James Myatt
My guess is that Paul got a tooooooooon of options and will soon be the No.2 guy at Facebook
- Stephen Pickering
Glossing over of that "short term" question by the FF boys. It just seems more about the individuals at FF than it does the users of FF. "Their (Facebook) long term goals" Nice interview, Robert!
- Melanie Reed
Well, it looks as if pass-through of FriendFeed Likes, Comments, etc. to Twitter is down. Will it be for good? Did Twitter do this in response to the acquisition? Or is it just a regular (though curiously timed) hiccup?
- Alex Schleber
this is why your own personal website is always more important than friendfeed, Twitter and all the rest. that's never going anywhere
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
Now if they can just fix the speed issues of Google Reader's web client itself
- Jesse Stay
I shared this very item from Reader about 4 minutes ago. It has not shown up.
- DGentry
Weird, isn't working for me either...
- Jorge Escobar
Jorge: Your FriendFeed profile is configed to take in FF links through the feedbuster thingy, so you won't get this behavior. If you use FF's built-in handling of Google Reader shared items, it'll work.
- Brett Slatkin
BUT -- will the images show? No. Argh. Middle ground.
- Jorge Escobar
You'll have to follow up with the FF guys when it comes to images. Sounds like a feature request!
- Brett Slatkin
from email
Or the Google Reader guys. If Google Reader just produced their Feeds in MediaRSS format the feeds would be automatically imported into FF with images.
- Jesse Stay
I got this working with Google Reader but it was not all that easy to find the URL for sharing. Even with the hint from FF, I had to poke around in Google Reader to locate the right address. Maybe a small usability point here but it could make a difference in use of this with Google Reader.
- Hans Eisenman
+1000 Jesse - YES, MediaRSS format would be the way to go.
- Susan Beebe
This is the beginning of something really good.
- sean808080
@Jorge - Whoops, sorry 'bout that. I'm working on getting feed-buster to play nice with PSHB :).
- Ivan Zuzak
@Brett - I'm actually working on porting feedbuster to PSHB using superfeedr and some of the open-source code from the reference hub implementation. I've exchanged a few e-mail with Julien (from Superfeedr) about the larger issue behind this - RSS/ATOM/PSHB architecture does not support end-user defined insertion of feed processing services (e.g. feed-buster) into the flow of delivering...
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- Ivan Zuzak
Hey Ivan! That sounds like a great topic to research. Would love to have a wiki page devoted to this concept. The idea of composition and filtering works like this: 1) Feedbuster provides a virtual feed which advertises itself as a Hub, 2) User adds the "busted" URL to FriendFeed, 3) FriendFeed requests a subscription for the feed from Feedbuster, 4) feedbuster pulls the original feed,...
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- Brett Slatkin
@Brett - thanks! I'm glad you think there's something *there*. I'm definitely up for writing a wiki for the concept. :) Also, what you outlined is actually exactly what my idea is for the new feed-buster prototype and what I'm in the process of implementing. Though, what I was trying to stress is - doesn't it seem like a lot of overhead for a conceptually simple thing? Developing a...
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- Ivan Zuzak
I think it would be a reasonable extension to the protocol, but one of our goals here is to keep the core protocol as simple as possible. I'm working on a way to formalize these protocol extensions and keep a catalog of them, as well as discovery.
- Brett Slatkin
@Julien - that's a cool idea - hooks-within-hooks. So, in case of FriendFeed and feedbuster, what would be the callback (http://final_client.com/) where the notifications would be sent? Is it the Friendfeed URL for receiving PSHB notifications?
- Ivan Zuzak
Hum, that is not very clear to me what you're trying to do. Do you want to post some content to friendfeed through feedbuster?
- Julien
@Julien - I'm sorry, let me clarify. Let's say a FF user wants to use feed-buster as a filter in the way you described - she wants to import a feedbuster-processed feed into FriendFeed with pshb support. In order to import a feed, FF asks the user to enter the feed URL, and my question was - what would that full URL be?
- Ivan Zuzak
hum... it should be something like http://feedbuster.com/... In this case you wouldn't need the callback, because you can't "control" FF's abililty to receive pings. However, if you add the <atom rel="hub"> link at the top of this generated feed, FF should take that into account and fetch the content right after they receive a notification. (please let's continue this chat somewhere else, since I always forget to come here;))
- Julien
@Julien - agreed. Let's continue this off FF.
- Ivan Zuzak
"At this point, often in part due to favorable feedback from the service's authors, the early adopter feels a sense of entitlement, that the product absolutely must be architected in the way they say so, even if to move in that direction wouldn't serve the larger installed base. Now, instead of suggesting quick ways the service could update, the calls are more like ultimatums, and if not quickly seeing a response, the early adopter can get extremely frustrated, at times, seeing this annoyance bubble up to the same degree their first comments on the product reeked of praise."
- Louis Gray
from Bookmarklet
I get the feeling the Robert has jumped the shark a little bit here. I hope he apologizes to Kevin for his uncalled for ad hominem.
- Brian Sullivan
This is great, but I think it ALSO applies to less than diplomatic responses from early adopters that I go back to Twitter, ha. I don't take it personally, but your point is a nice reminder that it is not about me.
- Liza + = ?
Ever since I posted this, I'm self-aware about potentially slipping from a 3 to a 4, so I think twice about posting criticism without knowing the deciding factors.
- Louis Gray
I feel entitled to type in this box and push the button named "comment." Sorry, I thought that was what FriendFeed was designed for.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I don't know that entitlement is the right word. For me, at least, it's more frustration. Here you have this great product. I want more people to know about it, but I'm having issues, be it my tech, user error or just loss of features, it's frustrating. If I'm having these issues, then there's no way I'll be able to explain to my friends and family why things are why they are. When you...
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- Anika
One point to the one above. I know that many companies who offer free service will or should charge for use at some point. I'm okay with that, but when they mess with functionality it's hard to justify paying for it. When your users are asking for the same thing over and over again, especially when you're in beta, don't give them a useless feature that offers nothing much to usability. At that point, it's hard to justify the ongoing use of something, let alone paying for it in the future.
- Anika
Is it entitlement or ownership? People support what they help build, right? So maybe it is partly a sense of ownership...
- Liza + = ?
Great conversation thread... Rule #1 if you do not own it, then do not falsely allow yourself to believe your vote will ever - or should ever - count. Sometimes the developers listen to your sound words of device, but in my humble findings often this waxes and wanes. Rule #2 is that step 5 is your alternative. Rule #3 is always see Rule #1 when you begin to think your opinion matters ;-)
- Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
Robert. No harm, no foul. :) I'm just glad I wrote this one already last year, so I don't have to do it again.
- Louis Gray
its a pretty graph and perhaps it is true, i have experienced it myself through mmos, beta testing, but did you actually have numbers or is this just instinct?
- Robert Higgins
By the way, I'm ACTIVELY still in the promotion phase. I'm showing FriendFeed to EVERYONE as everyone I met in Boulder last week can attest to. That's one thing that Louis' graph doesn't understand. I go through all of these phases IN PARALLEL. Not serially. So, deal with it. :-)
- Robert Scoble
The graph is simple. People are not simple. :) The downside to acting like a #4 is dorks looking for an excuse tend to use it as an excuse. Just wait. (Not even Scoble likes FriendFeed any more... he says... "x") So don't give the bastards any ammo. :)
- Louis Gray
Louis what is the oldest service that you still use that you didn't migrate from and why?
- Robert Higgins
Interestingly, those seeking to distill life into simplistic terms can be dangerous. Like those dorks who spout off non-sensical rules ;-)
- Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
I do think it is used as ammo, which stinks, b/c a discussion we should have (UI on FF) becomes a territorial battle. There were great points made, but also a lot of juvenile comments which I hope are ignored. As I learned in my first online attack, "don't feed the trolls". They are everywhere and not unique to specific networks.
- Liza + = ?
for me the oldest service i still use is hotmail.
- Robert Higgins
Robert: you didn't ask me, but I'll answer anyway: Outlook/Exchange. Although that has changed a lot over the years but I first started using whatever Microsoft called it (MSMail?) back in 1993. Regarding newer web services? Flickr. Wordpress. Google Reader are probably the ones that have had the longest staying power.
- Robert Scoble
Louis: yeah, but if I worried about what dorks think I would just stay off the Internet. :-)
- Robert Scoble
thought about why and the stages of the graph. while i still use hotmail, for family and things i have migrated to gmail mostly. I personally never did step 4 with hotmail, but i did get buddies on it a long time ago before they even had their own computers. It was cool to promote hotmail and messenger in the 90's felt hip to chat with people in China when I lived in USA. I still like sky-drive for the free 25 gigabytes of online storage, so will probably never migrate.
- Robert Higgins
Robert, I still use .Mac mail, and have for a very long time. (Some day I may move to GMail, but not yet). I have stuck with Mac OS through all its iterations from System 6 or so, so I assume that counts. I've been on FriendFeed longer than Twitter, and Facebook longer than FriendFeed and Google Reader longer than Facebook.
- Louis Gray
thats interesting, but in term of early adopter and stages where are you now with Mac OS for example.
- Robert Higgins
I would say Stage 3 with Mac OS. I don't feel like they need to change anything to reward me for my loyalty. I've never been a Stage 2 user for Twitter, so I hang out in Stage 3 or 4, it's just a utility, as is Facebook. I am Stage 2 and 3 with FriendFeed and Google Reader. I will always push FriendFeed and Google Reader, even if I know they could improve, because I get great value from both and trust the teams.
- Louis Gray
Louis: I was through all five stages with the MacOS by 1993. Started over again in 2003. Heheh. I forgot that I still use Hotmail and have for a long time (I remember waiting in line for StarWars #4 overnight with the Hotmail founders and thinking they were pretty cool).
- Robert Scoble
you are such a geek scoble waiting in line overnight for Star Wars #4 with hotmail founder
- Robert Higgins
Robert: that is true, but, as waiting overnight for the iPhone proved, the line itself was more fun than seeing the movie or getting the phone. In Silicon Valley these things turn into impromptu barcamps. Several companies had tents and it was an all-night party. My son did both with us and they were among the best things I've ever done with him. Good bonding time. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Higgins: if I remember right one company even paid for a T-1 line so they could provide wifi to everyone. In Silicon Valley we take these things seriously! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Nice bell curve, this typically represents most things - I can be in different stages at different times! - for example - different features of the product (ie I can discover a feature, then promote, etc). Not sure about Migration phase, I would prefer to call it Withdrawal
- Geer
I think this post was bad form. I have experienced the same problems with admiring the power and brilliance of the features and simultaneously being confused by their counter intuitiveness. In any case if the graph is accurate Robert's activity would have already slowed and will continue to slow down until migration. The bad form is explicitly referencing Robert.
- Ru Viljoen
Ru: thank you. Truth is in just the past week I was in all five phases of FriendFeed and even Twitter. I never liked this post by Louis' even though there's some truth to it and I'm still trying to figure out why.
- Robert Scoble
Ru, I know FriendFeed is not perfect. But pound for pound, they have the best talent in the business. I also read and enjoyed the exchange in Robert's piece, but didn't "like" it, as he says he didn't this one. Robert and I have a long history of agreeing 95% of the time, and have a mutual respect that lets us exchange ideas this way. I personally would not have approached the issues in the way he did, explicitly referencing Kevin, for example.
- Louis Gray
Louis: Kevin runs design at FriendFeed and he's a guy I've judged that is able to take a huge amount of criticism (earned or unearned) and keep his cool and tell you why he's doing what he's doing. Like you said, they have the best talent in the business. Kevin proved it again yesterday.
- Robert Scoble
My 2 cents about FriendFeed interface design: Overloading/hiding of controls is often used to present a simpler UI. It's difficult to find a balance, and often testing things on novice users is better than on veteran users to get a fresh response. One difficult example (which I don't know if I could improve) is Canon's cameras (of which I've used 4 cameras). Canon had a standard way of...
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- Mitchell Tsai
Sometimes interface design can be complicated with people at various stages of behavior. Yahoo! tried to change their interface after a few years and got a "New Coke" response (e.g. focus groups, testing, etc... before release). The new interface worked better & made more sense, but they got 1,000s of e-mail complaints from older experienced users - ended up staying with the old...
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- Mitchell Tsai
Oldest services I still use: MS-DOS (1981), Unix (1982), Mac OS (1984), MS Word (1984), MS Excel (1985), MS Powerpoint (1987), MS Windows (1987), HTML (1993), Yahoo! (1995), PriceWatch (1995), Post.Harvard.edu (1995), Slashdot (1996), MapQuest (1996), Google (1997), Amazon (1998), MS Outlook (1998), Internet Explorer (1998), PriceGrabber (1999), SECInfo (2000), Network Solutions (2000),...
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- Mitchell Tsai
Thomas - It's interesting to see what "stands the test of time". Used HotBot for search 1996-2000, but Google's cache won me. MS Multiplan was my 1st spreadsheet (not a Lotus 1-2-3 fan), but Excel beat out many better spreadsheets. MS Outlook won me with color e-mails, shared calendars, & event coordination. Google Maps still hasn't beat MapQuest IMO. I'm still resistant to using GMail...
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- Mitchell Tsai
Considering I'm on stage 4 right now, I wonder how much I stand to make from the sale of Friendfeed?
- Andrew Smith
Louis, Robert: It makes sense to me that a service would be forced to field speculative criticism and that the criticism should be answered on the merits of the argument. In this instance I thought that Robert insightfully pointed out the problem with the UI and then must have been totally side swiped by an unrelated personal criticism from someone who is well regarded. I hate to see...
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- Ru Viljoen
It's Interesting that you posted this last night, before the friendfeed/FaceBook announcement! Good intuition!
- Michael Fidler
"The study revealed that a good portion of this group admits to feeling more comfortable sharing and communicating with friends online than they do when logged out of cyberspace."
- danblank
wah!? The timing would be interesting for me because I just had a big "discussion" with a friend last week about how I won't join Facebook because it's not open like FriendFeed.
- Ben Reierson
Well considering FriendFeed had investment rounds aroung $5m (If I remember correctly) a 20x return would put it around 100m, so that would be a good guess.
- mikepk
Maybe I don't know enough about FF, but what is everyone so bummed about?
- Katie Wynne
^Exactly. The purchase in and of itself doesn't mean anything. Personally I'm happy, FB probably saved FF's ass financially speaking in the long run
- LANjackal
from IM
I think some think that it's a bad idea Tsega because FF represents a *vastly* superior content platform than Facebook and some might be concerned that Facebook would end up killing FF as we know it and trying to assimilate us all into their inferior product.
- Thomas Hawk
there was no "long run" to save FF from financially. It's Founders are loaded. They had the luxury of ample financial backing to run it for a long, long time. It will be interesting to see their reasoning on why they did this if in fact it is true.
- Thomas Hawk
For me, FF and FB have two separate purposes: FB is for communicating with my IRL friends and FF is for consuming and sharing content with everyone else, but then I've been on FB since it was select universities only, so maybe I have an outdated opinion of what FB is. They need to keep both products.
- James Myatt
once upon a time it was "don't be evil"..
- Cristian Conti
Seriously, Is this true? OMG this would be the worst thing ever!!! This is a joke RIGHT??!!
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
chances are FF will be nuked. There's not much in it for Facebook to run two separate networks. The wording that Bret chose to use on the blog pretty much paints that case in my opinion. FF is worth so much more for it's potential than for it's users and I think Facebook wouldn't care if they lost 100% of the current users if they get unfettered access to implement the best tech ideas into their current product.
- Thomas Hawk
yeah, the phrase "for the time being" is a scary one.
- Ryan - @magicofpi
As in, "Friendfeed will continue to operate for the time being."
- Ryan - @magicofpi
The team will probably be locked into a 2 year employment with Facebook while their equity fully vests and then will end up jumping ship. This acquisition will likely make Facebook a little bit better, but we probably lose FF in the process which is too bad.
- Thomas Hawk
I was kinda hopin FriendFeed would open source some of their sauce but I guess now that's even less of a probability.
- matthew john ernisse
I don't have a good feeling about this. :-( Why have two services with so many overlaps. FF will be integrated into FB in the long term.
- Kol Tregaskes
gee, i step away from my desk for an hour and all heck breaks loose
- Imabug
you'd better delete any content (photos for instance) you posted in your feed that you don't want FB to own when they get their claws in.
- Joe The Sausage
When I look at how I used FB and how I use FF (which I am still new to) FBs purchase would actually suck in my world. I only use FB to keep up with my fam and friends and I don't do that very well because I loathe the interface. FF is fresh for a newer user like me. Adds a lot of value in terms of the knowledge sharing that goes on here. To think that this service would get sucked up by...
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- Michelle
Agree with many of the comments on here. I'm concerned Facebook will basically just take all of FriendFeed's great properties and fold it in the large kingdom that is Facebook. A great service, FriendFeed may just become FB's Twitter. (Funny, too, that we're mourning the potential demise of FriendFeed on FriendFeed. Kind of like the newspaper biz writing 1000s of articles about its own demise in its papers.
- Keith Trivitt
But all my extended family is on FaceBook! Where do I hide now?
- Ted Gilchrist
Keith - well, now we know what happens when Facebook gets jealous...
- Ryan - @magicofpi
Is it easier to talk to your online buddies than your friends out there in the "real world?" Do you feel like you know more about what's happening in the lives of your Facebook and MySpace friends than with those who don't have accounts or don't bother to update them? According to a recent UK MySpace study of over 16,000 social network users, these sorts of feelings are common among today's younger generation.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
The MySpace study asked social networking users between the ages of 14 and 21 (aka "Generation Y") questions about their interactions both on social networks and in their real life, too. Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology. This group also felt that...
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- Mitchell Tsai
Outside of the social networking sites, the survey respondents overwhelmingly felt ill-at-ease in social groups. A whopping 72% said they felt "left out" and didn't think they fit into any particular group. More than four-fifths (82%) said they moved between four or more different groups of friends in an effort to find acceptance.
- Mitchell Tsai
See http://ff.im/3s7I2 Myers-Briggs personality types on FriendFeed are REALLY different that the general public (June 1 response to Polly's Myers-Briggs post http://ff.im/3jzaM ).
- Mitchell Tsai
Myers-Briggs Rationals (NT) 20, Idealists (NF) 17, ST 4, SF 2 - "Rationals are very scarce, comprising as little as 5 to 10 percent of the population. http://friendfeed.com/mitchel... Idealists are relatively rare, making up no more than 15 to 20 percent of the population. http://friendfeed.com/mitchel... Yet, they (NT & NF) are the bulk (84%) of FriendFeed users.
- Mitchell Tsai
“Studies have found that in general, the optimal temperature for sleep is quite cool, around 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. For some, temperatures that fall too far below or above this range can lead to restlessness.”
- Anthony Citrano
from Bookmarklet
I can believe this. I much prefer a cool room, whatever the season.
- John (bird whisperer)
Definitely have to have a cool room to sleep properly. Few things worse than waking up in the middle of the night sweating (and no, not in a good way...)
- FFing Enigma
I don't want to be baking hot, but I can't sleep if I'm too cold. I get cold easily, and then my hands and feet go dead and white.
- Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)
I was just talking about this to a friend who asked me to split the cost of a hotel room. I had to explain how I always keep the room cool, while bundled under the blankets.
- Anika
Side benefit of sleeping in a cold room: Wife is much much much cuddlier.
- Wirehead
For those who, as I did, wondered how cold you feel at 60-68° F : its's a temeprature between 16° Celsius and 20° Celsius.
- Zackatoustra
Yes! I love sleeping at about 65/66 degrees. Like LLL, I like to use the big comforter. I feel more comfortable and relaxed if I can breathe the cooler air.
- Katy S
Sent this story to my wife, who likes it a bit warmer for the kids.
- Hutch Carpenter
I thought it was just me. My sleep is much worse at 76-80+ temperatures. Normally I like 72-73 indoors, so 60-68 seems cool. Maybe it is better for sleep. :-)
- Mitchell Tsai
Hmmm,I normally keep my house around 68 but then I'm British and used to cold old drafty houses
- Sally Church
i think there is also cultural preferences/biases. when we lived in the UK we were amazed at how almost everyone turned their heat off completely at nite, thru-out the winter. when we came back, we began sleeping cooler, and love it.
- Thom Kennon
Good point Thom, I find American houses far too warm and stuffy in the winter.
- Sally Church
Sally, I'm with you: 68 is good, but 65 in the winter is AOK for me as well. I can wear socks and a snuggly shirt for less than I can heat the house to 70.
- FFing Enigma
So there is a reason I use my ceiling fan at full speed at night. Interesting.
- Ryan Massie
Ryan - indeed. love a good sleepybreeze. although your comment reminds me of how many hotel rooms and other rooms I go into where the ceiling fans are set incorrectly... I used to work in a lighting store so I notice such things. ;) [it's supposed to blow DOWN during the summer and UP during the winter]
- Anthony Citrano
I'm always frustrated by the fact that hotel rooms do not have ceiling fans. I have trouble sleeping without the breeze.
- Dennis O'Neil
I seem to be at the 68 degree end of the range, while my wife seems to be closer to the 60 degree end of the range for our optimal sleeping temperatures. :)
- S of 2C
LOL, silly Scott! In summer, the thermostat goes to 74 at night. In winter, I usually set it for about 67 during the day and 65-66 at night. Bundling up in blankets and comforter FTW!
- Ladyepiphanybug
I'm currently drinking what The Most Interesting Man In The World drinks, Dos Equis. Usually I drink what's within arm's length. What does that say about me?
- MoTO Bott
@Barry I think it means your an American Gigolo
- Shevonne
from fftogo
PBR is the beer of a hipster? Really?!? Wow.
- Ladyepiphanybug
@Shevonne, my wife says I'm just "a beer ho"
- MoTO Bott
Erhm... Bud/Bud Light is really more of the bear those with no taste or money drink. You only drink 'Natty Light' if you don't have a tongue, I'm a college male and a member of a fraternity and we ban it from all our parties... there's cheap beer and then there's trash. If you drink Blue Moon you don't like drinking. I'm pretty sure that Heineken would be the jetset beer, as it is the only beer you can find pretty much anywhere. I'd agree that Pabst is the hipster beer though. :P
- Aram Zucker-Scharff
from twhirl
I like drinking and I like Blue Moon and I'm not trying to be trendy. It's the dessert of beers though. Probably my last drink of the night if I'm at a bar.
- Rob H.
from iPhone
And I only drink Bud Light if the only other choice is Budweiser. It does nothing for me; it might as well be Sprite.
- Rob H.
from iPhone
Wow. I didn't know there was a place to 'step up' from to Bud Light.
- stretta
from twhirl
like Ladybug, I too am bemused that the beer my father drinks is a hipster brew. When he finds out he'll probably change brands.
- Vicarbott
I always thought that since I like grabbin' a Hiene or two said it all... :-P
- JR
from iPhone
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
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
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
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
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 K.
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
Hey Robert, so for following >1,600 is it that right way taken by Philtro and Filttr?
- Martin Adamek
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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'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
Thanks Steve! $25 is pretty reasonable. Wonder if anyone else will be jumping on the bandwagon
- Shane
Thanks for your post. Last time I checked you follow me here on FriendFeed. OK not to follow me on Twitter.
- Pilgrim Five
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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 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...
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- 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
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...
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- 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
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 J
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)
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
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
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'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
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
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...
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- Timothy Federwitz
@Patricia - reminds me that I should probably review all my twitter followers and thin things down. :)
- JA Castillo
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
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
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
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
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...
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- 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
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
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
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
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 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'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
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
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...
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- James Schipper
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
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
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
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...
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- 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
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
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
I've always wondered why zombies gun for brains... how could a high protein diet be beneficial to them? Surely they should gun for carbs and fatty things, but then that'd turn most of the films into pornos as they try to go for every breast jiggling their way - hmmm, I wonder what the market is like for "zombi-splotation films" ;)
- alphaxion
@alphaxion I wondered that too. Why the brain? Hmmmmm
- Shevonne
The brain is chock full of cholesterol, so maybe they really are going for fatty things.
- FFing Enigma
Wow Tina - never knew that: "Twenty-five percent of cholesterol within the body is found in brain cells, where it seems to perform many important roles" - I am so glad I don't include brain in my diet, my doctor would fiercely scold me!
- Dean "Karnatos" Michaud
Alphaxion: Not very big. I'm only familiar with one zombie porn flick. :P
- Tanath
But the only issue is why don't they eat animals? They have brains too.
- Shevonne
Is it cause the rest of the animal kingdom isn't as dumb as humans and so require a far greater investment of energy in order to acquire sustenance?
- alphaxion
Dean: it's because cholesterol makes up the myelinated sheath around neural cells. Anywhere there are neurons, there's a crapload of cholesterol.
- FFing Enigma
@alphaxion I guess it depends on which zombies. If they are the old school zombies, who are super slow, then you might be right. However, the new zombies can run like vigilantes, and they still have no interest in animals. I think the only time I saw that they were eating animals was in the book "World War Z"
- Shevonne
My birthday's coming up people, these would be terribly appropriate
- SteVe C
"They're cheezy-poofs: deep fried powdered corn/potato snacks, dusted with "powdered carrots." They are not, in fact, carrots. They're not even food."
- Gilbert Harding
from Bookmarklet
"I expect many of you already were aware of this, but I can imagine at least some of you aren’t yet, so here goes: apparently you can lift the usage restrictions from Adobe PDF files by simply forwarding them as attachments to your Gmail account and opening them in HTML mode right from your inbox. That way, you can copy whatever the ’secured’ PDF contains to a text editing program and do whatever you want with it."
- ovigia
from Bookmarklet
The nice question here is: if an American uses this, who's infringing DMCA: the user or Google? Why?
- Marcos Marado
from fftogo
well i believe the user is only using a service, probably without even know what is DMCA!
- ovigia
Not knowing the law doesn't give anyone the right to break it... So the question really was: who's breaking the law here, Google or the user?
- Marcos Marado
from fftogo
if you have no knowledge of the law how can you be accused of breaking it? this is why the law has to be simple, logic and made with common sense. Imagine that you go to some place and in that place there is a dum law that makes no sense, are you suppose to accept being arrested because you don't know there is such a stupid law? if you think that i'm joking please see this http://www.dumblaws.com/
- ovigia
here's an example of a stupid law - "No one may step on any of the nation’s currency." Dumb Laws in Thailand
- ovigia
here's another one, this one from USA - "It is illegal to impersonate a person of the clergy."
- ovigia
If it is I would be very shocked. But many of the same San Francisco "cool kids" who got me into Twitter are using Four Square.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Mike: I agree with you. Everytime I try to check in it reminds me I am not in an official place.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I've been trying to check in to Foursquare for the past two hours and it's not working. That's a huge aversion to making me want to use the app.
- Derrick
I love Foursquare. Sometimes it's slow on 3G, but they can fix those problems.
- Eric Florenzano
Mike: I totally agree. I would accept it only if most of my friends were using it and it is has been adopted by many of the big names.
- wiredgnome
from iPod
If Facebook bought Foursquare or provided the same type of service - then that would be really cool! No one wants another platform. It's Facebook, Twitter (and hopefully FF). I don't give much hope to anyone else at this point who is trying to build an app based on mass adoption. In my mind, Facebook is the new Microsoft. It is the next generation OS in a way - one that revolves around connection with others. Like the traditional OS market has shown, only two players can really be viable.
- Mike Bracco
Speaking personally, Facebook has been great for connecting with people I know, while Twitter has been great for connecting with strangers/biz contacts (some of whom I've ended up moving into my Facebook line-up). I work at home and so many of the people I mingle with regularly live inside my computer, and I've wished for a while for a widely-adopted platform that would allow my online...
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- Lisa Norman
They'll have to add more European Countries than just Amsterdam - it's pretty useless to me in the UK right now
- Rob Bell
I agree with you, that Posterous will become a major player, but right now I don't like how a lot of people use it. For a lot of people Posterous seems to be just a plain hub for all their multimedia activities (picture/audio/video sharing) but nothing else. There should be more behind it (IMHO). I like your approach to Posterous, this is the way it should be.
- Georg Mahr
The only feature Posterous really needs to become "the next big platform" is a Backtype-like integration of external comments, esp. from Friendfeed and Twitter.
- Rubin Sfadj
I have to sign up for this. I think i could use it well.
- Amani
I started on Saturday and I really love the feel of it. I think it'll become popular.
- Gus
I'm rooting for posterous because they validate what I think is a big space between media sharing and blogging, a space I'm working to be in too.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Thanks for posting Steve, and I agree with one of the comments that Posterous should add some sort of social commenting.
- Wayne Sutton
I'm right there with you, Steve. It is refreshing to focus on content. Sure, I miss my Wordpress blog at times, but as a designer, I know that beautiful things come from exercising creativity within parameters: twitter capped us at 140 char, and posterous gives us all the same gallery space to make our own, without all the anxiety for the extraneous (putting a widget for here, writing a...
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- Vincent Gallegos
I should get over there and see what all the buzz is about. Is it like Tumbler??
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Yes, but in other ways better. In some ways worse.
- Steve Rubel
from email
Theming is coming. I am in the beta but haven't applied a theme yet.
- Steve Rubel
from email
geez, i hope so, as I grabbed rex.posterus.com before you started hyping it. Of course, when I get around to doing anything with it, you'll be on to the next shiny next big platform
- Rex Hammock
What are the differences between posterous and tumblr ?
- archi_bald
Awesome service. And you can even post on the go via email!
- wiredgnome
I honestly believe Posterous CAN be at least ONE of the next big platforms. We (us, are they still saying techies?) love to talk the talk about web 2.0 and worlds of Google's Wave, but if anybody benefits from Google, it'll be bloggers who post directly from Gmail to Posterous. We often boast these days that "content is key" is passe, and new language is needed. But the bare bones of it...
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- professor daddyo
nah. Posterous is great and fun, and I´m a fan. But when it comes down to it its all about the quality of your content, not about how fast you can get your content out to various micro-services or if you can post from your Iphone. I think (or hope) we will see a reaction where bloggers go back old school and actually think through what they write, that would be a welcome change... well, good old quality vs quantity I guess.
- Peter Efland
That's just it. Technology moves forward, and if the old school way was flawless, mico-blogs would have been stillborn. The opposite has happened, babies everywhere, and Posterous might be Bam Bam.
- professor daddyo
I like Posterous a lot, but I'm not sure it brings enough to the table to get me off of Tumblr.
- Brett Kelly
I signed up some time ago then I've not been using it. I love tumblr and I see duplicated features. Anyway people using a social network drives its success, not features!
- Federico Bolsoman
posterous rocks and i like it...i use it to blog through my blackberry when i'm mobile.
- Jim Gray
I created one a few days ago and I can't stop posting to it! It's so easy!
- Jennifer Stocks
It's taken me a while to get round to using Posterous after setting up an account ages ago. We have started using it at work to log docs and messages in a big cross team project. It really comes into it's own as a collaboration tool. I have since started using my own one and it's pretty addictive! http://yellowbag.posterous.com/
- Jonathan Tanner
Yes, which is why I said it was "very, very broken".
- Louis Gray
Yeah, FF is my default search engine for all previous social media activity across all accounts
- Mike Bracco
I've started using it with blog posts to show in real time the buzz around a specific post.
- Jesse Stay
I've taken to using FF to archive all my social media doings – it's great when I can remember reading/watching something but can't remember where it was. Best part? It doesn't matter if I digg, delicious, tumblr, whatever – it's always on friendfeed.
- Joey Baker
that's a great find, Jeremiah, thanks!
- tony felice
I am so sad I was a Republican for 12 years. Someday I will hopefully make up for that idiocy.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Robert, sadly, Democrats are just as bad. And don't worry about making up for the idiocy, there's far worse things in the world. At least you aren't one of the politicians :P
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
Well I hear less of this kind of idiocy from Democrats. Might have something to do with Fox and Rush having such a big impact on politics in last 15 years.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
The birth certificate is not a real issue. Stanley Fish offers an astute insight into possible motivations of those who are requesting the proof of Obama's citizenship over and over again: " It isn’t the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate that’s the problem for the birthers. The problem is again the legitimacy of a black man living in a big house, especially when it’s the White...
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- jacek
Look he was born in Kenya and then tunneled as a baby to Hawaii, where he cleverly posted his OWN birth notice in the newspaper since he KNEW ahead of time that he'd be running for president and this would come up. Now come on. Is that not brilliant or what?
- Richard Bitting
Question is not whether he is a citizen, but a natural-born citizen (the qualification to be president). I don't know why they don't just settle this though. All this mess just to see a piece of paper. Seems like the money could be better spent elsewhere (on both sides).
- Brian Milby
They HAVE settled it. The state of Hawaii has released a certified copy of his birth certificate. The conservatives then claimed that the certificate was bogus because of some issue with the fonts and layout of the certificate, even though it was issued by the state.
- Trent Hamm
I think he was born in Hawaii but I don't know what is being hidden. Two men had their orders to deploy revoked so that they would not have standing in a lawsuit questioning Obama's qualifications to be president. So basicly any soldier that does not want to be deployed just has to claim to be a Birther.
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
I don't get what all the fuss is about. Even if he was born overseas, his *mother* was an American citizen and that automatically makes him one, no matter where he was born. -- "Congress first recognized the citizenship of children born to U.S. parents overseas on March 26, 1790, stating that "the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the...
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- daNanner
the real irony is john mccain was born in panama. on a military base, yes, but this is not settled law. amazing how this was never mentioned.
- lew
"The multifunctional Hall, which sits as the centre point of the complex, was designed as a solar-heated, naturally ventilated sub-climatic area, removing the normal requirements for building heating and ventilation. Instead, a natural air supply is generated by thermal currents, wind pressure and turbulences when air accumulates in the area of the façade and roof projection. Air intake and outflow take place through automatically controlled and strategically placed vents providing the Hall with all its air needs."
- xero
from Bookmarklet
"american designer pete oyler a recent graduate of the rhode island school of design has sent us images of his project 'stretch shelf'. the shelves are made of cast rubber and machined aluminum and are, essentially, giant rubberbands that function as wall shelves."
- Demetrios the Traveller
from Bookmarklet
I was in a coffee shop in a mall a few years ago and they had a cup about that size sitting on the counter as their "tip jar". (it was solid white, though)
- April
I have almost the same pic! Garden center at WalMart
- Courtney Engle
from iPhone
yep that is where it was at Courtney :)
- (jeff)isageek
Doc recommended to limit tea drinking to only one cup a day?
- Jemm
HA! I've seen this teacup planter thing at a local store (was it Wal-Mart?), and joked that we should get it and serve someone coffee in it. :)
- Cheryl Jones
Being a hopeless social media geek, I'm going to have to give this a go. Here's hoping that it's more socially hip than my Mafia Wars habit on Facebook...
- John Kreicbergs