I agree on everything except the battery life and the 3G network. Mine performs just fine as long as I only turn the 3G on on an as-needed basis. As far as the 3G speed, in NYC it's A-O-K. I get anywhere from 450-600 kilobits depending on where in the city I am, so I think that's more of a Bay Area issue than an AT&T or iPhone issue. - Vincent Ferrari
OMG this guy totally fell for the loser salesguy ...how sad! - Susan Beebe
hiring decisions can kill your firm - Bill Sodeman
Really enjoyed this, though felt bad of course for the author. Really shows that doing as much legwork/homework/digging up front as possible is a good thing and well worth the time put in - Eric Berlin
While reading this, I kept thinking about your job titles "senior executive vice director of VP coordination & vision".... funny - but sad article. - Erin
Similar experience: My employer hired a supposed "expert" from a BIG 5 consulting firm. This person was a Global Manager and was going to come to our 30 person IT shop and do us right! Boy, that hiring manager was sooo excited! I about died when I learned that person was coming on board to be my new boss. Long story short: She left 90 days later with her tail between her legs when it was abundantly clear that she completely lacked requisite skills for her position. Couldn't even use PPT or email! - Susan Beebe
we need a salesperson for our business and this is exactly why we haven't hired anyone over the past 4 years. we're terror-frozen. - faboo mama
Interesting story. Thanks for sharing Paul. The hardest thing for an entrepreneur is to ask the hard questions. - Edwin Khodabakchian
Lesson 5: A turkey was chatting with a bull. 'I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree' sighed the turkey, 'but I haven't got the energy.' 'Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?' replied the bull. They're packed with nutrients.' The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree. He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree. Moral of the story: Bull Shit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.. - Alan Cheslow
This is why I'm not usually impressed by resumes/titles. I want to see real work. Then I'm impressed. It can be a catch-22 though hiring people (for a guy, like getting a date with a beautiful lady - how do you have conversations, until you've had some). "Consultant" can be for real...or mean that someone is "out of work". - Mitchell Tsai
As a 19-yr-old college grad, how did we get clients that $500 million companies couldn't get? Well, the experienced CEOs know that McKinsey and other consultants just hire sharp (but inexperienced) people from Harvard, Stanford, etc..., and it's a total crap-shoot who you get (for $500-1,000/hr). If we did a good job for CEO of X company, he told VP friend at Y company, and we got the work. There are so many fly-by-nights in this world. Experience isn't worth much if it's "bad experience". - Mitchell Tsai
Another example of how people with great charisma but no skills can be promoted far beyond where they should be. Another great example is a guy who will be leaving his current job on Jan. 20th. - Robert Felty
This is really sad isn't it. So difficult to get it right, yet it is the most important success/fail factor for any company. It starts with great people. - Alexander van Elsas
Dang, that story was rough. I mean did you even proof read it? (LOL) - Drew Lucas
man, this could've been taken straight out of the E-myth revisited. Definitely a book that guy should read. - Vincent van Wylick
i just wish i couldn't tell so many similar stories of hiring senior execs w/ great looking experience, resumes, and references who turned out to be completely incompetent - Deva Hazarika
Actually he was lucky that the guy was so obviously lame and came clean in the end, and that his business wasn't destroyed. What's far worse is a somewhat competent person with great political skills. Much harder to detect and so they have time to do a lot more subtle and potentially fatal damage to the fabric of an company. - Robin Barooah
"$25K in stuff he said we absolutely needed -- slick brochures, sponsor some conference, ads in the trade journal, coffee mugs, pens with our logo -- I readily paid for." This entrepreneur should have been tipped off right then. Mugs? Brochures? Everyone knows you close the most business with T-shirts. - Ginger Makela
It raises an important question... how long do you need to wait for your hire to deliver. This guy had to wait for an year, since most startup founders dont have time to baby-sit their employees... how long do they wait before concluding, that they have a bad-hire. Is it 1 month, 3 months, 6 months ( sounds too much for a startup ) - Krishna Gade
I wonder how Rockefellers feel about this? - Igor The Troll
Why are the news stories on this all focusing on the solar aspect? The breakthrough doesn't have anything to do with solar per se, as near as I can tell. Nocera's just come up with a cheap, easy (possibly highly efficient) way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. That hydrogen can go straight into your electric fuel cell vehicle. - Karim
Probably because it mates with PV so well. But -- yes -- it could supply any kind of fuel cell. I wanna hear more about this. - Chris Baskind
Seems like batteries and ultracapacitors would be better for storing charge if that's all you want to do... but since they haven't announced the efficiency of the new process, it's hard to say. "We don't need gasoline anymore" sounds like a less misleading headline than "Solar energy might just work now" ;-) - Karim
I believe that investing in innovation of alternative energies and other sustainability factors will help bring the US back to #1 (if it's not already there) in terms of technology. - imabonehead
Hydrogen is going to be a more stable energy storage and transport medium than batteries and transmission lines. The reason everyone is mentioning solar energy is that this could be a way to get around transmission line bottlenecks. Store hydrogen at the massive solar power plant in the desert, transport it to your home fuel cell (and fill up your hydrogen car while you're at it). And of course, if you're in a sunny place, you can skip several of the intermediate steps I just mentioned. - Jason Wehmhoener
Great quote - "It's very, very difficult to wear both the developer and the evangelist hats at the same time: being a developer requires that you be very pessimistic, so you can see and fix all the problems in your design, while being an evangelist requires that you be very optimistic, so others can feed off your passion. I suspect that if I tried to do both, the cost would be my sanity" - Eric Kerr
"Linux started as a terminal emulator".. !!!? Or not. - Nick Lothian
Definitely a lot of points that rang true for me, especially the "Chicken and Egg" point. - Adam Thorsen
I myself have worked on two start-up concepts and a revitalization effort, each of which bombed, but each one taught me something different. I finally threw in the towel on my last start-up and picked up a full-time day-job because I couldn't find anyone willing to share hats. We were already incorporated, so I was the CEO, book keeper, technology evangelist, sales guy, support tech, development lead, and development team. Needless to say I fried myself within a year and nearly went off the deep end. On a happy note, I'm loving my work now and haven't given up the entrepreneurial bug yet; I'm preparing myself to be the best co-founder in the world, knowing that the time will be right when the right team comes together to solve the right problem. - Chris Stewart via twhirl
Haven't read the article yet, Nick, but Linux didn't start out as a terminal emulator. Linus Torvalds deliberately started working on implementing a "practice OS" called "Minix" from a book, and it grew from there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... - Phil (scribkin)
OK... I'm going to say this and then I'll duck.... But I had to really search around on the networks to find news of Carlin's death when you couldn't avoid news about the passing of Tim Russert. Now I'm a big Russert fan as well, but I would argue that Carlin's death was felt by far more people than Russert's was.... Self-serving media? Discus...... - Chris Reed
Well, they were mourning an active member of the news and politics community. Someone they all knew and interacted with on a regular basis. Sure, it was still self-serving but it's understandable, because it hit close to home. - Ňicķ
But they're not supposed to be self-serving. It's tough, but journalists need to be practically Vulcan-like in putting their own emotions and feelings aside. We have unfortunately, very much lost that. How would we have been served if instead of their calm delivery of a national tragedy on 9/11, folks like Aaron Brown, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw came on the yelling, "It's the end of the world! Run for your lives!" - Chris Reed
Don't they kind of deserve it Mike. I mean when one of the "innovators" (Joshua) that you've hired says that his experience there was extremely frustrating and blames management when he leaves that says a lot. Stewart couched it much more eloquently but kinda said the same thing in his resignation letter. For execs to trash a company on the way out tells you that it must be really, really, bad there for innovation. Shouldn't pressure be applied to fix that if Yang won't do it on his own? - Thomas Hawk
I'm not saying they don't have problems. They do. But I think the reporting that is going on right now is way overdone, especially by TechCrunch. I use a LOT of Yahoo services and I'm very satisfied with them. They're never down and I'm happy with the features. Regarding the frustrations of the founders of the companies that they bought - I'm surprised that they lasted as long as they did. Good for them for cashing out and moving on to do something brilliant somewhere else. - Mike Doeff
And I firmly believe that a Yahoo/Microsoft merger would have been a disaster on the same level as AOL / Time Warner or AOL / Netscape. Companies CAN turn around. Just look at where Apple was in the late 90's and where they are now. - Mike Doeff
They lasted as long as they did because they had lock ups and were financially incented not to leave. This was Yahoo's opportunity to convince them that they were serious about innovating. Instead Terry Semel was more concerned with convincing a patsy board to make him the highest paid CEO in America in 2006. They deserve every bit of negative fallout that they are getting now. Hopefully it produces change which results in all your favorite Yahoo services actually improving. - Thomas Hawk
What bothers me Thomas is that Google does not have a perfect track record when it comes to acquiring innovative start-up's and keeping the founders happy. Dodgeball was a disaster. Take a look at this photo by the founders who quit Google last year http://flickr.com/photos/dpsty... Why does Google get a pass on stories like that and Yahoo gets crucified? - Mike Doeff
Mike: there's a huge brain drain going on at Google too. Lots of "famous geeks" are leaving Google to start new companies, or take time off to enjoy their new wealth. I think that Google gets a pass because it's a company that tons of people still want to work at. Yahoo? Not nearly as interesting a company. The general belief in the valley is that Google is moving up and Yahoo is moving down. That explains a ton of why each company gets the press it does. - Robert Scoble
Google buys the wrong innovating companies for God only knows what reason. Dodgeball? Jaiku? Picasa? These companies had no chance in the first place. Google gets a pass though because they still innovate there and still do develop kick ass products in house, not the least of which has been the best search engine on the internet for the past few years. - Thomas Hawk
Robert, I agree with you on these companies going in different directions right now. I also think that Google's brain drain will start to bite them in the not too distant future. Plus they've hired a LOT of people in the last year. That is going to catch up to them as well with more red tape, disorganization, turf wars, politics, etc. It could become another Yahoo if they're not careful. - Mike Doeff
@Thomas I guess Google wanted to develope services like Jaiku or Picasa from the start but instead of investing so much money on research and developement they have probably realised it would be cheaper to buy an existing company who already created a good product and go on with it. - Nir Ben Yona via twhirl
Google buys the wrong companies? I don't agree - but they do seriously f#$k them up rendering them useless. The need a major policy change here - DC Crowley
DC: companies often buy other companies, not for the products those companies make, but for the people who work there. And, anyway, when a starving startup employee gets to a big company there's a period of just getting used to not having to starve for resources anymore. When I got to Microsoft I remember just watching the live streaming video for a while. It was amazing the kinds of things you get when you work at a huge company. - Robert Scoble
One last thing before I hit the sack... I don't get the sense that every high-profile person who has left Yahoo had a terrible experience there. Read this blog post from Bradley Horowitz (former head of their Advanced Development Division: http://snurl.com/2lljj I'm sure that part of that is just being diplomatic but he seemed to genuinely enjoy his time there. - Mike Doeff
This is a great conversation. Needless to say it could never have happened on Twitter. Thanks guys. - Ole Begemann
Right before I left GM back in the summer of 2006, one of my colleagues and I visited Google and the same day went over to Yahoo. As relatively important customers (GM at that time was bidding on over a million keywords) of course we met with key execs at both companies. The juxtaposition couldn't have been more startling. The Google execs were all about listening and helping formulate solutions for our needs and our vision. Yahoo, on the other hand, were arrogant and dismissive. To me, that says it all. - Michael Wiley
Mike, you can't really be pointing to Bradley Horowitz's resignation post as proof that Yahoo embraces innovation can you? First off, Horowitz is one of the most savvy *business executives* out there. Horowitz would *never* do something as personally reckless as calling Yahoo execs out like Joshua just did at TechCrunch. That post of his was very carefully crafted business speak. 2nd. Notice how many innovators at Yahoo he thanked in it -- many which are no longer there. - Thomas Hawk
Flickr still rocks, the world still spins. - Ross Hill
Flickr, delicious, upcoming, these innovative sites and technologies *could* not only be better today, but along with say a buy of digg and maybe a few other properties, Yahoo could have effectively created something amazing *and* owned social search, which is significant. Instead Yahoo bungled social search, didn't know what to do with these properties and got in the way of innovation, mostly, I'm guessing by pure management ineptitude. - Thomas Hawk
Of all the "big" internet companies out there, which ones have even attempted to embrace social technologies? I can count on one hand. Yahoo is one of them. They'll get my respect for not sitting back like a LOT of other companies did for a long time. Sure they're having tons of management problems now, but I'm not going to knock their services that I use and enjoy today. Playing coulda, shoulda, woulda is a waste of time in my book. Especially when you have a company as big as they are. - Bwana McCall
I fault Microsoft for missed opportunities moreso than Yahoo. IE6. Sourcesafe. Office. Sharepoint. Vista. Zune. Windows Media Player. PlaysForSure. They screwed up so many times it's hard to digest at times. No company is perfect, and I think Yahoo does have its issues that we should report on. Personally, I'm not going forget what they did right for me, since the early 90s. Management is only part of a company. Their output still earns my respect, which a lot of hard working people put forward. - Bwana McCall
While I make my Yahoo jokes about management, I'm not going to forget how their tools enhanced my online experience. The talent at that company is astounding, and a majority of it is NOT at the executive level. So sure, bash management, I don't care. Flickr, Yahoo mail, Yahoo games, Yahoo pipes, My Yahoo, Yahoo UI, Yahoo Instant Messenger, these I do care about and I don't want them to go away because of replaceable management. - Bwana McCall
Weird, doesn't seem to work in Fluid. Clicking the link quickly shows the loading circle on the right, then does nothing. Works fine in Safari 3.1, though. - Mark Trapp
Liked just so people see my name when they test it out. - DeWitt Clinton
I notice another change. "You" is the first name listed for all the things I've liked in the past. Even those where I haven't clicked on the expand Likes link. This wasn't previously the case. A bit of work on the Likes sort methodology? - Hutch Carpenter
Noticed that too, Hutch: do you think it's sorting based on order of likes now? Obviously, with "You" always being first and outside the order. - Mark Trapp
Mark - definitely putting "you" out front is a change. I still don't know the basis for ranking the other Likes. Maybe the guys will comment here. Or blog it. - Hutch Carpenter
I like this addition. Clean, intuitive, simple, perfect. - Tsega Dinka
a long list of names isn't too useful; why dont you bold the ones that are my friends? - peter
peter: all your friends are listed first. - Bret Taylor
More recent likes come first, so as new friends "Like" things, you see them. - Bret Taylor
Peter, bolding is a great idea, not just here, but in general. It would be an easy way to find friends that you have not yet subscribed to. - Scott Beale
+1 for bolding names that I'm already subscribed to. - Mike Doeff
I tweaked the sort order to put "you" first, but apparently I forgot to tell Bret. - Jim Norris
Indeed Shey, http://ffapps.com/showlikes/ is no longer required. Seeing a list of people who liked a particular entry is a great way to explore and discover users who share similar interests. - Aviv
چه قدر سریع,ایده اش همین صبح مطرح شد,اسمایلی جیمبووووووووووووووووووو:))ه - shandiz
Expanding shows a lot of Likes up in this post! - Joe Dawson
Great news! The only reason I've held onto my blackberry is because pre-native app iphones couldn't store RSS feeds on disk for offline access. - Brian Chaikelson
Man, I keep criticizing Microsoft for offering their executive board's appearances on some proprietary formats as AVI, Silverlight, whatever. But Apple is no better. Struggling with QuickTime though it is installed on my PC. Steve, please open up to viral marketing and set up a YouTube channel for the Rest of Us! - Harald Felgner
i agree. actually, the apps--the centralized store, games, customized for enterprise, etc. was as important as the 3G announcement (maybe over time more important). 3G was inevitable. the apps are the game changer. - Pokai
The IPhone is the first platform that is more computer like than phone like. The simplicity and now flexibility breaks with the other phone based platforms. With the 3G iPhone we are at the cusp of a new revolution like Windows 3.0 or the original Mac. There is more to come than we can imagine.... - Robin Whitson
I too am watching the impacts about Friendfeed, but for every new tool that comes around, we claim it's a game changer, in reality, it's just evolutionary, and sometimes we even devolve. Do we have to go through this exercise yet again? - Jeremiah Owyang
Surely it's up to us technologists to provide tools that integrate with whatever the current vogue in social apps happens to be, non-tech PR people shouldn't need to stay on top of what's cool in the geekosphere just in case it breaks through into the mainstream. - Dave Kinsella
Actually I said it could fade. However what it has birthed is a game changer. Stay tuned! - Steve Rubel via fftogo
Also didn't say it would fade marketing and PR. In fact I think it amplifies it. - Steve Rubel via fftogo
@jer, i like how you sent the permalink of the discussion. for me it makes it more interactive if i don't have any other noise on the screen instead of the conversation at hand. it has its own tab and i'm more likely to come back and add more to the conversation. - Tyler Gillies
I'm enjoying FriendFeed too, but as a marketing strategist I don't believe it's a big deal yet. Maybe one day, but not yet. - Jeremy Toeman
my friend uses friendfeed, we live on an island in the middle of the ocean. i didn't tell him about it. so i consider it officially mainstream - Tyler Gillies
Obviously the genre that FriendFeed fits in is here to stay, like blogging. However, which one of these presence/microblogging/etc. services (friendfeed, twitter, jaiku, pownce, plurk, or YOUR COMPANY HERE) will be the john the baptist of the new genre is TBA. - Leif Hansen
people are often afraid of what they don't understand ..i think that steve didn't mean that exactly..i see some very cool apps for friendfeed that haven't been built yet.. noice level is high but tools and filters *will* come me thinks.. - John Furrier
One of the questions, possibly, is what kind of second order knowledge can we derive from the use of the new tool. Web pages gave us 'relevance' based search, blogs and comments gave us 'authoritative' conversation snippets. What is going to be the new concept introducedby microblogging tools is not clear yet. Lifestreaming needs to find its own utility function, and only than it will be able to maximize it. - David Orban
The fate of FF in the long-run is irrelevant. I think the important thing is that people will crave some type of life stream in order to be able to keep up. Just as people crave a Twitter alternative when it's down. I can follow FF alone and still catch most of the latest news/info I'm interested in. I barely touch my RSS reader anymore. - Rahsheen(isSoAwesome)
@STEVERUBEL I think the big game changer is we can do away with the Social Media Press Release now. - Jeremiah Owyang
@rahsheen, friendfeed _is_ my rss reader now - Tyler Gillies
Can we keep the SMR if it incorporates FriendFeed? Just been at a seminar this morning where we had to explain blogs to PR people as a precursor to SMRs - Dave Kinsella
the big game changer would be if any of this stuff matterred. It doesn't - Dennis Howlett via twhirl
At Forrester we define a Groundswell as: A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. - Jeremiah Owyang
He says "It's a recommendation engine that surfaces content (both pro and amateur) via your peers." It provides me a level of connection and insight (depth and breadth) that is the next step in instantaneous, open conversation. - This coming from a relative amateur - Paul Jonas
strikes me this is just another medium for PR/marketing - I can't see PR/marketing going away as long as companies need to get their products/services in front of people. - riaz
What Twitter, FF and others offer is simultaneously incredibly retro and oddly futuristic: word of mouth advocacy that can be instantly verified. When I hear about a new product or service from a trusted person on Twitter or FF, I can Google it and see how well it fits my needs. The role of advertising and PR is somewhat diminished, but fundamentally unchanged. The job is to coax people into making quick, emotional decisions *without* much due diligence, because they trust the brand. - Tom Cunniff
It took Steve a while before he made a post like this. He tends to be careful. I was happy to see it - Charlie Anzman
Tom Cunnif: "The job is to coax people into making quick, emotional decisions *without* much due diligence" -#ethics? - Leif Hansen
Absolutely fantabulous linkbait. You're just grumpy you didn't think of it first. ;-) - Chris Baskind
I'm tending to side with Dennis Howlett today, he's bigger --and grumpier, then most, that's why we love him. - Jeremiah Owyang
After all the discussion I've seen in the blogosphere about FriendFeed, I decided to check it out finally. I'm still getting the hang of it--if at all-- but I'm willing to guess that as with all other social media platforms, FF might take some time before its use for marketing and PR is fully determined. They've not mastered social media quite yet, after all, and FF is only an avenue where all forms of social media congregate. - Evette
Leif Hansen - Ethics are very important to me, as I'm sure they are to you. IMHO, there is no ethical boundary being crossed here. Advertising and PR are both sales functions. The job of a salesperson is to make the most compelling case possible for the product he or she is selling. He or she is not obligated to provide an objective summary of all possible alternatives. As long as the sales info provided is truthful about what the product or service will actually deliver, I don't see an ethical problem. - Tom Cunniff
Yeah yeah. Being online didn't matter much in 1985, and the web wasn't wide spread in 1995. But a lot of us were praising the virtues. I agree it doesn't matter today. But like Steve, I believe that receiving info/communicating in this style will matter a lot in 10 years. I could be wrong :-) - Robert Seidman
@Evette, not even all forms, yet. There are other aggregators that offer more complete coverage but haven't gotten as much of a boost from the A-listers - Steve Lynch via Alert Thingy
Tom Cunniff -Thanks for the come back. I guess its hard for me to see the compatibility of the objectives of providing "truthful sales info" and "coaxing people into making quick, emotional decisions without much due diligence" Hopefully tools like friendfeed actually empower deeper investigation and public accountability into the claims made by various marketeers... - Leif Hansen
Leif Hansen - I agree it's a difficult balance to maintain. Most companies who have millions to spend on advertising consistently make very good, worthy products. But, it's a competitive world, and so it's impossible to *always* have the very best product with the very best reviews. You still gotta sell what you made, though. You have to make the best claims you can, and position it in a way so that the customer who buys it feels good about the purchase. There's no long-term business in lying to people. - Tom Cunniff
I think every generation of kids thinks they invented sex. Bloviating about every new web 2.0 gimmick is no different. It reminds me of Lewis Grizzard's quote about being a newspaper columnist. "Being a newspaper columnist is like being married to a nymphomaniac. It’s great for the first two weeks." Twitter, Friendfeed, and whatever gets thrown at us tomorrow are fun while the "cool kids" are there and just another roiling pot of spamvertisements when everyone else finally arrives. - Phil Yanov
I love this: "Tamagotchi effect: If you take care of your users, the right investors will rally around you and talented hackers will line up to work for you." Graham +1 ;-) - Erhan Erdogan
I like that :). And I appreciated this paragraph in particular: "The curious thing is, this elixir is freely available to any other company. Anyone can adopt 'Don't be evil.' The catch is that people will hold you to it." Friendfeed, clearly, has opened up with clear expectations to "be good." People will hold it (and them, the employees) to that standard, and I think that's awesome :) - Adam Lasnik
I wish more nonprofits operated using the Tamagotchi effect as a basic operating principle. - Allan Benamer via twhirl
Be good! Reminds me of E.T, good post I also like their transparency it gives me confidence in their vision and objectives! - Joe Dawson
Take care of this user please and make it so when I jump from the normal search to the advanced search, my search query won't be lost :) [also, please give me the link "Search all of FriendFeed »" even when the other search found some results] - Philipp Lenssen
do you guys need a marketer? Or does that not fall into 'be good" ar ar - anna
@Philipp The Friendfeed Feedback room is your friend :) - Erica Baker
@Paul: Invent a new slogan for FF. You 'll be needing that in future. - Varun Mahajan
"Be Good" produces "make really Good" software applications! woo hoo! Neat article. Very inspiring to see someone take a stand on "Do No Evil" and then go one step further and commit to "Be Good"! - love it! excellent example and role model for aspiring Web App Devs!! Keep up the "good" work!! :-) - Susan Beebe
I don't know why, but when they described PB as "cherubic" I just had to laugh. It was so cute! - April Buchheit
@April - same here! when they described PB as "cherubic" - awesome! angel face!! ha, ha!! - Susan Beebe
I find it fascinating that there are no comments on the actual Times Blog post but plenty o' comments here and acknowledgement by well over 100 people. Friendfeed power right there. - Jason Toney
Jason, good point, one of the things I value most about FF is this interactivity. - susan mernit
I finally read this. Nice article, Paul. Good luck. - Robert Konigsberg
That Paul Graham's article is one of his best - so true and succinct. I guess, the more social the online world becomes, the better (as in "less evil") will companies need to be. - Nenad Nikolic
A great, extremely detailed article Q&A with Kevin. Stop what you're doing and read this now. I don't want to see any comments for another 15 minutes until you've read this unless you can prove previous comprehension from having already seen it. - Louis Gray
"A site that visibly promotes how many ’friends’ you have turns friends into commodities, creating an economy where you are motivated to make as many friends as you can. " There goes all my feature requests for a more robust stats section of the site. - Mark Trapp
Mark, I have that very quote in my clipboard, but I admit, I was going to say it's one of my favourite things about FF. :) - felix
All right, after reading it fully, I never realized Kevin Fox was like the Jonathan Ive of Google Apps. What a loss for Google. I enjoyed the rationale behind why labels exist: never thought of it like that. Most people explain it as "It's better than folders. Now be quiet!" - Mark Trapp
Love the old Google logos! Sounds like FriendFeed has a very promising UI guy on the team. Yay... The "You said earlier you found 6 types of users for Gmail. What were those? .... No comment. ;-)" is remnants of a less-open philosophy though. - Mitchell Tsai
"People talking to people facilitated by computers." I believe that about sums up this whole social networking thing ;-) - Paul Short
Sprague, but it could definitely be applied to things like Twitter, where people subscribe to thousands of others in hopes that they get a reciprocal follower count bump, and let's not forget about Jason Calacanis vying for top spot on twitter follower activity. The ability to get into follower competitions is facilitated by seemingly benign statistics about follower counts. - Mark Trapp
@Kevin: Great interview, though the pic above looks like a promo for "Kevin Fox's Chiller Theatre Macabre 3000" :-) - Chris Reed
Mark: When looking at Jason Calacanis's stats this morning http://friendfeed.com/e/bf02d8..., I was surprised to find that almost 45-50% of his readers are age 3-17, VERY different from Robert Scoble and Leo Laporte's age demographics. Is that because of how Jason went about gathering followers? Through the MySpace and Facebook communities maybe? - Mitchell Tsai
I like the flat hierarchy of titles @ friendfeed, I'm a UI Designer, so of course I look up to kevin's work. Any user experience person should be as flexible and willing to contribute more than interaction sketches. I super like, super karma, super kudos this entry if friendfeed had those UI elements :) -
