My brain just exploded. - Veronica

Wow. Just wow. - Leo Laporte

I want to see this on Diggnation next week. Srsly. - Lee Adkins

Now was that back in the day when being described as a 'Computer Programmer' still got you wedgied? - John Worthington

haha that was great. - Ralph Whitbeck

I remember Alex on Beat the Geeks, but this was, wow. - Joe Pierce

What would the world be like if Alex won that day? Ahhh bizzaro! - Vincent Guerrero

Yeah, I get "playing around" with it. I do that with everything too. But after playing around with it it just seems like Twitter, unless I'm missing something. If I'm going to invest time in something it needs to be a step forward, not backwards. Feels like a step backwards to me from FriendFeed. - Thomas Hawk

the open sourced potential distributed hosting nature of it is whats interesting to me thomas - not a replacement for friendfeed which is conversation & discovery central for me but it could be an interesting experiment in what a short msg'g platform could be if architecturally done right - very early though - mike "glemak" dunn

It is an interesting point and brings up the question of how viable an open source FriendFeed clone would be. The primary motivation for the Twitter clones has been performance, but perhaps there would be other advantages? Just a thought. - Ray Grieselhuber

We like the concept as you can tell.. Just like twitter but not buggy!!!!!!! - JegerPhil - Phil

@thomas: what about http://utterz.com/ ?? - mhmazidi

Actually, now that I think about it, identi.ca will never be a real player until FriendFeed starts working with it. - Akiva Moskovitz

I see no point to go backwards, of course first you have to try it if you want to compare it. http://ubervu.com/ this is what I wanna try when will be public. - dan

I signed, but will use twitter for post feed distribution and the occasional chat, but i agree that this platform is where we should spend most of our time, when we are not creating content. - Mário Pires

i keep my ff twitter free! micro-blogging belongs to twitter and co - Dieter Schwarz

I second utterz, also left a message asking to intergrate its cross posting with FF, this way we can select if we want some or all messages input to FF. - Tony C.

Damn, I wish you could "like" comments, because what Winer said here is exactly what I'm feeling, even if I'm not a developer. - Mike McCallister via NoiseRiver

I agree and I still find that I post to twitter. My network on FF is really limited and I get absolutely no feedback here. So until more people i know get on board or I become more interesting I post on Twitter and look enviously at people who can get feedback here. Either way, I've signed up for identi.ca but I'm not using it. - Jeremy Kunz via twhirl

People want all these new things because it's "trendy" to have a bajillion social networking tools. I have trouble keeping up with the ones I have, but then that's the product of a 9+ hour workday coupled with a 3+ hour round trip commute and finding time to spend with the family. - jerry

Great dialog Thomas. Think most of us would agree that FF and Twitter are essentially two different avenues and that if a SOLID replacement to Twitter came along (with an importer) before they fix it .... could (will) see an exodus of a lot of users. - Charlie Anzman

Amen to that! FF is a winner, hands down in my opinion! - Jason C.

Hi Thomas. You make me wonder where are Pownce, Twine, and the whole. of course it's definitely the triumph of less is more: less functions, more community, that's why we're still twitting - - Alberto D'Ottavi

FF will be the clear winner of this all when it gains SMS functionality - Glenn Batuyong via twhirl

I second Glenn Batuyong, SMS support is really a selling point for twitter IMO - Jeremy Kunz via twhirl

@Glenn that would be a great feature! - Joe Dawson

twitter (when it works) is still better at being distributed and easy to understand - Samuel Bostock

What's great about Indenti.ca is that IT IS a Twitter clone. No need to make it "fancier" or "Feature-packed", and what was great about Twitter is that it did ONE thing well (when it's available). FF is only useful for people like you, Winer and Scoble who have followers commenting on YOUR posts. For me, with 0 followers, I rely on my "friends" timeline to read what you guys are writing, and there's WAY too much noise. Especially the most annoying feature the "friend of a friend" posts. - Terry

Of course, I just realized you hit "hide", then "see more options...", then "hide all friends-of-friends". That's a big fail in my book. - Terry

Terry (and everyone else pissed off about noise), protip: if you don't like noise, don't start using a service only following A-listers. Those people are interacting with hundreds to thousands of people, and will introduce you to a huge amount of noise, even on Twitter. If you can't find people to follow that aren't A-listers, maybe being on that service isn't the best thing for you at this time. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. - Mark Trapp

The stole the whole thing from Zobzee.com anyway. - Jim Kukral via twhirl

You know if they were an EXACT clone of Twitter (minus the downtime) I think they'd do very well. - Leo Laporte

It's just another tube that feeds into FriendFeed, to me. - Josh Bancroft

their IM works, me and another were having a convo through indenti.ca with IM which i miss with twitter. i just like playing around with new things as well, that and "reserve" my username on the new launches, just in case. - Chris Harris

@Leo Yeah, They just have to do all the same features, and then we will just need a skin on it that makes it look 'exactly' like Twitter. Fail-Whale and everything :P Honestly, I've kinda moved away from the conversation on Twitter and Identi.ca. I mainly post on it with Ping.fm, but I don't really look at replies that much until I get a app. I don't know why, but I really just need something that will Pop Up, tell me what happened, then fade into the background. Browser won't do that - Chacha

Mark, I'm one of those very very few people then. Already talking to a developer about adding identi.ca's platform to The China Business Network's re-launch. Let the hacking for niche communities begin. :) - Christine Lu

Christine, don't get me wrong: that's really, really cool. And I'm sure there are going to be others like you that find uses for laconi.ca. There's this notion that open source = perfect software, and it's really being pushed today and yesterday with identi.ca. It's not a game changer. The "it has potential" argument only goes so far. Many, many, many projects have potential. It's what an enterprising person or group of people do with it that matters. - Mark Trapp

@chacha - you want Twhirl - Leo Laporte

@thomas hawk. you nailed it - rob zand

hopefully as identi.ca comes along they will become more feature rich and faster. I for one like their support of open standards. And the fact that they are hosted outside the U.S. and thus perhaps subject different laws - Freemor

I couldn't agree more. Why have a new service that is just a clone of another? Unless identi.ca can do something that Twitter can't, then thanks but no thanks. - Brandon Wood

@Mark Trapp I totally understand about the A-lister noise, but up to certain point I LIKE the noise. I don't really care that one of my friends is about to take his dog for a walk, but I AM interested in Dave Winer's thoughts on whatever-new web app. Twitter for me is the perfect blend of quasi-feedreader and cult of personality. FF seems to be "everything that everyone's doing everywhere and sometimes more than once". Plus, I like the @ reply system. - Terry

@leo, but it won't work; also friendfeed I think is more prone to take over a huge chunk of say what facebook does, rather than a huge chunk of what twitter/etc does. you still need the pipes to feed into the main. I'd also add that a more dynamic/distributed way to have a microblogging like community flow between IRC style chats and twitter like status blogging, so sort of the way to go... - tycho garen

Let me just say, for once, I am enjoying my FriendFeed experience. Maybe it's all about participation. On Twitter, I can just read what others are saying and make an occasional stupid post... but here, it seems more enjoyable if you're actually INVOLVED in the conversation. - Terry

Looked at Indenti.ca and could say, for the moment, it wasn't my thing. Besides, it's all I can do to stay current on FF and Twitter (when I actually go to twitter, which hasn't been for the past few days). - Les

SMS support isn't important to me. I prefer managing my interaction with a microblogging site myself rather than be interrupted. For me, and I may be unique here as a photographer, photos are also extremely important. That's why I liked Pownce a lot more than Twitter when it came out. But FF has them all beat hands down, so I'm still not sure why I'd invest time in something like identi.ca now. - Thomas Hawk

I would have to agree with you on identi.ca. If twitter has this many problems already, would identi have the same issues as well. I really like FF much better then twitter or identi. - Jeff Chilton

I'm with Thomas Hawk on SMS, too. I can just open up IE on my WM5 phone and hit Twitter or FriendFeed just fine. - DeathByNinja

"open sourced potential distributed hosting nature," that sounds cool and all but it reminds me too much of stuff like OpenID or Ubuntu, or whatever it's called. Sounds really good but wayyyy too geeky to ever get broader adoption which is what makes a community site work best. FF has the traction at this point and a nucleus of interesting people sourcing interesting content filtered through social interactivity. Beats anything else out there at present. - Thomas Hawk

I hope that things like this with their mobile extensions will see the end of the rip off that is SMS. - John Cooper

I'm finding FF/Twitter great, but am exploring identi.ca - Chris

It could be that folks are just looking (desperately) for something that will be more stable than Twitter, while having all the interesting people on it. - Randy Hall

Sign-up is down, Twitter Part Deux - Ryan Taylor

@leolaporte said it all. I get all of the luminaries tallkng to me in real time, and that reaks of awesome. AIR might just be the killer app of the year. - Adam Garrett via twhirl

Right now, Indenti.ca is Twitter, minus a bunch of things. Comparing Twitter and FriendFeed has always been an apple and oranges comparison anyway—one isn't better than the other, since they do different things. Twitter is essentially in beta right now; things should get interesting when Twitter is completely back with XMPP, track, etc. - Albert Willis

@thomas Hawk and @deathbyninja Being someone with an unlimited data plan, I have to say that the usefulness of SMS should not be overlooked. Not everyone has unlimited data, and in some cases, that data is a walked garden (like T-Zones). Plus not everyone has a smartphone, and in some cases, it's just easier to slam out a text message (especially when in an area with crappy data coverage). I find myself jumping between mobile web, Twibble, and SMS (most often the latter two). Any service that lacks a mobile application or SMS tends to see less use by me (see Pownce, FriendFeed seems to be the exception though). - Ivan via fftogo

@Thomas Yes, I agree "open source, decentralized" sounds very geeky, but all that techie talk will be TRANSPARENT for ALL users once it all just works! http://is.gd/LlY - Hao Chen

i agree. Fun to try different systems! - Harry Myhre

Spam is a non-issue for most users...It's the ISPs that I have sympathy for. - Hal Rottenberg via twhirl

@Leo: I suppose JCD has a point then when ragging on you about your rather frivolous service registration obsession :) - Quintis Venter

I've been running my email through a Google Accounts email and forwarded to gmail for about 2 years and I get maybe 1 spam email though each day. I've had the same public email address since 1995, so I could only imagine the amount of spam that gets sent. - Larry Latouf via Alert Thingy

Dude should talk to Dvorak. - Adam

That's one message every 2 seconds every day! "You've got mail! You've got mail! You've got mail! ..." - will killian

Scary doesn't begin to cover it. - Darcy via twhirl

How does that actually prove anything, anyhow? - Ian May via twhirl

All it proves is that "they" being the movie studio's can do pretty much anything they want. - Darcy via twhirl

I thought the judiciary was supposed to be restrained by the constitution, not ignore it at will. Whatever happened to checks and balances? - Robert Hafer via fftogo

And what exactly are the constitutional issues you are worried about? Because I don't remember any right to privacy being signed when I went to youtube and watched that music video - Michael W. May via twhirl

From the page "On the radio: a look at the year ahead, Office 97 is here and so are the bugs, why Command & Conquer has conquered my heart, and why you shouldn't download Netscape Communicator..." http://web.archive.org/web/199... - Mark Krynsky

frankohara.com; May 10, 2000; http://web.archive.org/web/200... - edythe

Check out edythe with the <blink> tag.....aww yea. And City Lights is awesome. Bukowski is my favorite poet. - Mark Krynsky

bhc3.wordpress.com, Feb 9, 2008, http://bhc3.wordpress.com/ (I'm still pretty n00b) - Hutch Carpenter

My old site at ocf.berkeley.edu/~kfox predated web.archive.org by three years, but I have a copy from 1995 here: http://fury.com/archive/fury1/ My earliest stuff on wayback is here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/h... - Kevin Fox

Not sure this was my first, but it's the only URL I could remember... michaelhocter.com 11/05/1999 http://web.archive.org/web/199... - Michael Hocter

Hutch, you might be a n00b but your blog is great. Keep it up. - Mark Krynsky

a site for my first band, The Savoys, circa 1999 -> http://web.archive.org/web/199... - Nathan Chase

Wow Kevin...that site really takes me back in time. Very cool, I especially like "This page is intended for use with Netscape 1.1 Use it for full effect". - Mark Krynsky

It just didn't look right in Netscape 1.0. I don't think it supported gif transparency or the 'align' image attribute or something. Don't even get me started on NCSA Mosaic. - Kevin Fox

Not in Web Archive. First web site was 2/2005. - Cyndy

My first client site: thomas-york.com / 1996-08-08 / http://tinyurl.com/5g6uoh (Want to know how much things have changed? Molly Holzschlag contacted me in late '96 or early '97 to say how much she liked that monstrosity.) - Roger Benningfield

The second iteration of my personal site. (The first is lost to history.) agincourtmedia.com / 1997-02-05 / http://tinyurl.com/59qruy - Roger Benningfield

My first domain was datacommerce.com, 12/12/98, http://tinyurl.com/68xzu4 and my first blog was cheslow.com, 9/13/02, http://tinyurl.com/5palqb - Alan Cheslow

These are great folks. I enjoy going back in the web time machine. Keep 'em coming. - Mark Krynsky

http://paperfrog.com August 20, 2002 http://web.archive.org/web/*/h... - Chris Baskind

personal home page, 1/16/99: http://web.archive.org/web/199... and today: http://www.talisman.org/~ratso... ... yep. Hasn't changed in.. wow, almost 10 years. - J. Phil

Most interesting item I've learned so far? Kevin Fox, J.Phil and I all write poetry. You can find mine here: http://krynsky.com/category/po... - Mark Krynsky

Haha...that Cnet page is so funny now. I especially like the IE3 ad banner. - Mark Krynsky

Oh boy.. my poetry is crap, sorry about that. - J. Phil

http://www.crl.com/~laporte I think. Circa 1994. No wayback exists, alas. - Leo Laporte

It was 3 years old when the first shot was taken, and please don't hold the content against me, I'm a reformed conservative :-) http://web.archive.org/web/199... (and it was christmas when the shot was taken, hence the logo) There was another site older than this but I cant remember the exact URL. - Duncan Riley

Mark, sorry, I decided pulling up random sites in wayback machine was better in a different thread... so I pulled my comment about cnet. - J. Phil

Wow Duncan, fan of the animated gif back then? Me too, actually.. - J. Phil

J. Phil, geocities address as well :-) Back in the days where a .com cost $200 and hosting was prohibitively expensive for most...well for me anyway at the time :-) - Duncan Riley

Duncan - I was lucky that one of my good friends got a portable class C domain back in 1990 before network solutions decided to start reserving them for bigger customers. That became (and still is) talisman.org, 255 fixed IPs of real estate. - J. Phil

My blog has been on soulhuntre.com from the start, the first entry is still online at http://www.soulhuntre.com/2000... . This FF led me to post about this, and the wayback links are included there. http://www.soulhuntre.com/2008... - Soulhuntre

I have Twitter, Pownce, Plurk and Brightkite. Nobody wants to see the same message more than once here. - jjprojects

I'd love a pie and peas right now thanks :) - jjprojects

....that's why I don't use ping.fm, socialthing, etc =\ - Mona N

JJ, I've found the need to mix them up, I also don't import everything everywhere as well - Duncan Riley

I was fretting about that the other day. I've already unplugged SU. I think I'm going to cut it down to only the sites on which i originate content, plus de.licio.us, Google shares, and YouTube. - Chris Baskind

I crosspost on Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku (using Twhirl) but only feed Twitter into FF. - Leo Laporte

Was this a microblogging presence baiting trick post? :D - Mark Forman

Mark, no it wasn't :P - jjprojects

smart... which ones are you excluding - specifically? if identi.ca is added... no change right? - Susan Beebe

Duncan, that's what I've been thinking too. When I want to be very informal, I'll post to plurk, when I want to share files I should do it on Pownce or plurk. Sometimes it's hard to decide. I think 2 is ok, but anymore than that becomes spam for subscribers really. - jjprojects

I'm using FF - loving it - it is plurk'ish in the replies but far more content generated. But the conversations with "share something" posts are awesome. I am sold - if I could migrate everything - including the community it would be FF - Dave Gray via twhirl

Just disconnected Disqus, Reddit, and Digg. - Chris Baskind

Here is my quandry - I use twitterfeed to add blog and tumblog posts to Twitter but I have both those feeding FF as well. I also have unique status updates on Twitter. Should I disable the Twitter-to-FF updates? Or just depend on folks to block my Twitter content? - tsudohnimh

I have FF as my inbox and ping.fm as my outbox. So when I have something to say then I shout it on all my SNS via ping.fm. If someone has something to say to me then I check my twitter replies, FF, occasionally I check Plurk. I am also using a greasemonky script that has created a group of people I usually am interested in what they have to say. Another script allows me to filter via service on FF so that I can keep everything plugged into my FF. - Dedric

Actually now that I think about it, without the greasemonkey scripts, FF turns into a dogs breakfast - Dedric

tsudohimh, Yes you can get a kind of a loop going with these things. I don't really use auto-updaters for this reason. I do crosspost image from Brightkite to twitter which both feed into ff. I should fix that I think. There's a certain amount of duplication that's unavoidable I guess if you want to crosspost at all. - jjprojects

Dedric, I've been taking the update all approach for a while, up until now. I realise it doesn't make for a good aggregation here, I think. - jjprojects

yes as I recall the Matrix was filmed in Australia (whatever the frack that means).... - Mark Forman

Dave, yes Plurk seems to be more for very casual conversation, which is good I think. If the same sort of conversations were going on in each network, there would be no reason to use all of them. - jjprojects