No freaking kidding... The most vocal group opposing women's right to choose is the gender that doesn't have to endure pregnancy, labor and delivery or even stick around for the next 18 years to financially and mentally support the child while putting aside their own life goals. It seems very hypocritical to me.
- Her Lindsay-ness
+Anne--Right about the time I forget about this, it shows up again. Too funny.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
interesting. I've tried a few times to get animated images to work on FF without success.. I guess piping it through twitpic might be the answer!
- veo
veo, yeah Twitpic, RSS (MediaRSS), Delicious, Tumblr all seem to work. There are more than that but those come to mind.
- Josh Haley
Just one question, Josh: are you by chance spinning on 9 different Aeron chairs that were a steal after the first dot-com bubble burst? The future of the internets: you're looking at it =)
- Micah Wittman
could anybody describe how to create such a picture? thx
- Arnaud Fischer
Arnaud, see http://friendfeed.com/mokarga... for tips. And Josh correct me if I'm wrong, he uploaded to Twitpic the same animated GIF 9 times, then created a friendfeed post and attached all 9 images by URL (instead of choosing images from his hard drive). Images coming from twitpic, soup.io, etc will animate, but photos hosted by friendfeed itself won't.
- Micah Wittman
Did not sleep well with all the spinning. :p
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
It's infinitely more amusing when they don't all load at the same time. Spinning chaos!!!
- CAJ, somewhere else
Why the friendfeed limitation on animated .gifs? It seems arbitrary and odd to me. I could see wanting to limit filesize (animated .gifs can get large) but you can upload huge .jpgs without any trouble.
- veo
Mesmerizing like a lava lamp. Hey! You are a 'Lame-o Lamp'! And you might want to call the folks in the makeup department and get that forehead de-sheened. Remember, your forehead is an alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle - And you don't want to blind the crew on their final approach, do you? :-)
- Morgan Haley
Good luck trying to land anything on that while it's moving. :p I can always count on my brother.
- Josh Haley
OMG! That should be the next installment at some fluecy deucy art museum!!! AWESOME. :) It's like whack-a-mole... I keep trying to figure out which one will show your face next and for some reason I'm always wrong.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Thanks, Lindsay! :) I think that's the first time someone described wanting to systematically hit me on the head repeatedly, yet have it come off as a compliment. I would love to take credit like I was Andy Warhol or something, but alas I was just tired and felt like doing something silly. :p
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
yep, what Lindsay said. That was one of the first bona-fide instances I've seen of using Friendfeed as a medium for net art. You could get in the Whitney & stuff. GOOD JOB
- Kamilah Gill
LOL! I actually didn't mean it the way it came out (the hitting you on the head part, the compliment part is ok ;)). But I'm in tears laughing when I read your reply. Whack-a-mole always frustrated the heck out of me... I did a lot more staring than hitting when I tried to play. It was mesmerizing.
- Her Lindsay-ness
you wait - the scary part of this comes when one of these ffoodoo heads stops turning, starts grimmacing and talking to you ..... have you seen one of these heads actually get up off the chair and curse the world??? ... the seeming dissynchronicity, the haphazard discord with which these dollheads turn might drive you ...nuts
- Petr Buben
Anybody who knows the Family Guy's kind of content shouldn't be surprised... I, for one, was surprised to hear about the deal in the first place... what would be interesting is if they get Apple for the new sponsor.
- Chris Heath
Sounds like he was hoping for the divorce from the start, or has the type of sense of humor that knows nothing of appropriateness. Either way, it bothers me that society still sees this type of nonsense as 'news' - and I hate myself for being curious enough about it to have even commented.
- midnightgolfer
It's comforting to know that the Saudis are like the rest of us, after all.
- Donald C. Lindsay
Understood, Akiva. Sometimes the big plans we all hoped for don't come to pass. It's no coincidence I'm still in Vegas writing that. It sure would have been nice to have some other hopes come true this week!
- Louis Gray
True enough. I just hope that Robert's also right about these other awesome features that Twitter plans on introducing. I just can't get past the 140-character limitation as always crippling the long-term experience there.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I think Robert's right, as usual. Friendfeed is still insanely useful for me during our shows (see the TWiT-Conversations room) and I hope I can continue to use that functionality here or somewhere, but I find myself no longer using it all the time. Twitter is back, alas.
- Leo Laporte
Akiva: there are lots of ways around the 140-character limitation. I actually like it because it enables mobile phone usage. FriendFeed is very hard to use on my iPhone compared to, say, Tweetie.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, what do you think about a 140-character truncation hiding a longer post?
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva: it doesn't bother me. There are already post shortening services like that that work with Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
If you could just auto-add every twitterer you follow as a "ghost friend", Friendfeed becomes a superset of twitter...
- Kevan Emmott
Robert, true, but those links take you outside of Twitter where there is no guarantee of the target site being mobile-friendly or even up and available. And this doesn't even get into the fact that it's impossible to have discussions there.
- Akiva Moskovitz
And by there I mean Twitter and not a particular target site.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Btw, Arrington was right. Scoble was wrong.
- Dawn
This saddens me too. I keep trying to like Twitter, but it just doesn't have the engagement Friendfeed has/had. Will stay cautiously optimistic about new features.
- Martha
Kevan, you've always have been able to do that and in May or June, it was made easier to add people you follow on Twitter, Facebook or Gmail.
- Anika
Wish things were different, but that's a solid write-up, Robert. +1 Akiva for all your points above.
- Micah Wittman
Dawn, you may have correctly prognosticated the impending demise of FriendFeed but you did so using all the wrong reasons.
- Akiva Moskovitz
why is 140 limit of twitter been so hated? i think it is the reason for twitter's popularity
- ffcode
No, I mean auto-create *ghost users* for people who don't have Friendfeed accounts who you follow in Twitter. You can easily add the ones that have accounts - I've already done that - and you can create ghost users, but that's a bit of a pain.
- Kevan Emmott
ffcode, just because something's popular doesn't make it good. It's tough to have a real conversation about anything on Twitter because of that limit. Try having a conversation with more than one or two people at once. Each @reply eats up some of that precious space.
- Akiva Moskovitz
friendfeed is a great place for discussions better than forums/blogs/wave
- ffcode
Akiva: agree with you on that, but as a nibble logger it is still a great place
- ffcode
'Nibble logger'. Well, that's something I'm going to be repeating constantly for the next few days.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I can speak that from personal experience, during an acquisition it is the most important thing to keep the team acquired in place. Some acquisitions are made purely for the product or technology. Others might be arguably for the customer base. However, successful acquisitions always focus on 1) successfully keeping the core leadership and customer-touching teams in place, 2) augmenting...
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- Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
Akiva, the essential reason FF is failing is because it's always been too much like Twitter, even when it was "better" than Twitter. FF needed to differentiate themselves in a remarkable, unique way, and they failed to do that. Twitter had already won the public's imagination in this space, so the window of opportunity for FF as a real competitor was closed a long time ago. That you and Scoble and others are just now waking up to the symptoms doesn't mean I'm wrong about the cause.
- Dawn
I don't think any of us are just now waking up. Most of us came to terms with it in the wake of the Facebook buy-out. And I still believe it is that that spelled FriendFeed's doom and not the change to the UI.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Dawn: I have talked with hundreds of people about Twitter and FriendFeed and NONE came to that conclusion but it doesn't matter.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Sadly, I have to agree with everything Robert's said (which is slightly painful). I love this place, but Friendfeed's going nowhere. That is, unless something BIG happens and happens quickly.
- Jim Connolly
I just have to say that I incorporated FF into my Introduction to Sociology courses, with over 120 students, and it has been quite useful, dare I say extraordinary. It is an extremely useful "aggregator" of sorts, and a fantastic organizational tool for me as instructor. I can do some pretty cool, nearly real time integration of information with my students with my iPhone, Google Reader, Twitter, my blog, etc...and FriendFeed.
- Chad Gesser
It seems to me that the integration of information into FriendFeed has been incredibly overlooked and undervalued. It remains to be seen what kind of impact Wave will have in pulling people back to their laptop/desktops, but there is an interesting trend of the use of mobile devices for learning, and FF has made that possible in ways for me this semester that I have never thought. Granted my iPhone is a very important part of the capabilities.
- Chad Gesser
Am happy for you guys mine is like hell
- Pam Gwenzi
Ken Stewart: Another reason to do acquisitions is to just kill a competitor. Since apparently FB didn't lock in the FF engineers you have to wonder about their motivations. It will be ironic if the FF acquisition just strengthens Twitter, FB's biggest competitor, which is mostly what it seems to be doing. If I was on the FF team and FB didn't lock me in, I would take whatever they got out of the deal, leave and start a new FF, under a new name, assuming there isn't a no compete.
- Ed Millard
I sure would like to read the contract for the FF/FB deal. It seems.... odd.
- Ed Millard
Chad: FriendFeed might turn into the equivalent of Notepad. Useful for some things but no one ever talks about how cool Notepad is. It hasn't gotten many new features in decades, but it still is used every day by probably thousands of people, maybe even millions. If FriendFeed turns into that I'll be happy, and FriendFeed will indeed see a second life as a lightweight conversation tool. Google Wave sure shows what happens when you get a ton of features. Yuch.
- Robert Scoble
I would be *very* happy if FriendFeed lasts as long as notepad. The main reason I started posting stuff on FriendFeed was to make an on-line notebook where I can search for previously found items. Along the way I surprisingly found that some people actually like looking at what I post. I miss the more active FriendFeed days, but I would be ok if the activity moves to Facebook etc...,...
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- Mitchell Tsai
+1 Chad: "integration of information into FriendFeed has been incredibly overlooked and undervalued". I continue to get high value for that reason.
- Hutch Carpenter
I do think FF will get its "second life", probably soon. I still think it's the best social media aggregator by far. It's what I use to bring all my social media stuff together. I even use it as my preferred Twitter client when I'm not on the Twitter website. Still, I don't think Facebook realize what they've got here other than just another competitor to squash, Yahoo/Google-style...
- Dennis Jernberg
Robert, then nobody in Silicon Valley understands mainstream dynamics. What a surprise. :)
- Dawn
*raises hand* doesn't this beg the question why the hell's he been on FF all day? I can recall a time when Twitter was vile & corrupt according to Scoble, so he must've misread those chicken entrails as he's back cheaping cheaping away like Tweeting was life giving air
- sofarsoShawn
Sofar: Twitter is still corrupt. But it is where the things and people I want to read are.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I laughed at the "Interesting Comments Thread From a Porn Site" (because it's true).
- Josette Torres
Amusing. Only a downer if you mistakenly thought Digg was the future of news.
- Leo Laporte
It's funny because it's true. Sites like Digg are not good sources for hard journalism and news, because they operate on "what's the most popular" basis. Hard journalism is necessary, but never popular.
- Otto
I think it's funny, and sad. I know a few folks who think Digg is revolutionizing journalism by allowing hte individual user to be their own editor, to determine the headlines. But what I think they're missing is that online social sites have a group think- well modeled by the headline, "100 sexiest geek girls" that tilts any kind of utopian vision of an individualized paper.
- anna sauce
I didn't find it amusing, exactly, but it is indicative of why I've migrated away from "digging" to "tweeting" as I find those that I follow are better filters and markers of good information than Digg. In return, I hope I do the same for others. It's also why I am selective about whom I follow and unfollow those who post drivel.
- Chip Roberson
Agree with Anika... Not a downer - but just not very well done. The unfortunate thing is that the design is not that far off from their design... I swear that on their home page I'm counting like 20 different Fonts....
- Rob Rose
Deserved. (For your efforts towards Health Care reform)
- Garin Kilpatrick
..and please. a Nobel Peace Prize to anybody for a new successful independent investigation of who and how did 9/11 controlled demolition attacks. We have irrefutable scientific evidence thereof, equal unequivocally to a suspicion of high crimes having been committed. The nation is awaiting your action, Mr President. :]
- Petr Buben
I voted for Pres. O so don't misunderstand; I think SNL had it right. He received the Nobel for not being George W. Bush.
- Tim Albright
@Tim Albright - Sadly I think that is true. I hold out a small hope that it is because they see potential for change with the new administration but so far Pres. Obama hasn't followed his change of tone with action
- Ryan Tiffany
Many people fail to see the courage and depth that it takes to not act in a situation; and how here it has been even more profound, by 10 fold, when weighed against the decision to wage a phony, greedy, ignorant war, killing thousands of innocent people. So fuck yeah & congratulations to you on your brilliance in deciding not act in a stupid way seen for the oh last 8 years or so.
- sofarsoShawn
Nobel nominations were due by Feb 1, 2009, after just 11 days in office, what did Obama do?
- Steve Dickey
..negotiated a withdrawal from Iraq genocidal occupation war, 1-3 million civilian Iraqis dead, country devastated,.. war costing over $600 bill of tax money going to war companies ....started instead to invest in America, stimulus, roads, trains, healthcare .. this all will make America better and more productive
- Petr Buben
Wow this is great! Hey wait, what if we hate both CNN and Twitter?
- Cristo
I think it's a tad ludicrous to compare millions of users to two products and services as wildly different as CNN and Twitter and declare "old media" dead. And how exactly is CNN "old" media these days? They're partly responsible for bringing Twitter to the mainstream; they were one of the pioneers using it to interact with their audience in real time. They're complementary, at least in some ways. Neither will destroy the other.
- David Chartier
from iPhone
Cristo - haha funny dude! too bad LOL :D
- Susan Beebe
Zee - yea, I was pretty stoked by that chart, WOW
- Susan Beebe
CNN is old media to me - established news outlet publishing news vs. news published by tweet model :P
- Susan Beebe
I love charts like these....... I wonder what happened around November last year..... hmmm
- Johnny Worthington
I also wonder what happened around the middle of January.... hmmmmm
- Johnny Worthington
Johnny - great questions! (November last year = Obama :)
- Susan Beebe
January 20th (despite being my birthday) was the inauguration...
- Johnny Worthington
Funny, the only time I hear about Twitter is when I'm not on Twitter. Oh wait, that's all the time.
- Cristo
Johnny - ah, good call on the Jan spike!
- Susan Beebe
Until Twitter starts funding a world-wide team of journalists, some of whom risk life and limb to report from some of the most dangerous parts of the world, let's not gleefully cheer the demise of "old" media.
- Carter Rabasa
I am definitely not someone who "gleefully cheer the demise of 'old' media." I am nonetheless aware and impacted by the shift in web traffic, as evidenced here by the graph
- Susan Beebe
I shouldn't have implied that you're gleeful, but many are. It's become somewhat of a game to point these things out. But where would the non-creators of content (Google, Twitter, Facebook) be with nothing to crawl, nothing to RT, and nothing to share? It just worries me, because you're right, "old" media is suffering. The NYT could go broke. Can Twitter supplant them if they go?
- Carter Rabasa
Carter - thanks for the reply. NYT times going broke would be a tragedy and NO twitter could not supplant them. Twitter is a micro-blogging service, not a mature company like NYT that delivers high quality journalism / news. Heck, twitter can barely keep the lights on (i.e. twitter has weak infrastructure, hence the "fail whale" issues).
- Susan Beebe
Agreed. But we're going to look back in 2012 at all these crashing graphs (http://trends.google.com/website...) and wonder how we could have avoided this mess. Because all the solutions suck (charging for content, mega-mergers for scale, selling-out editorial independence).
- Carter Rabasa
look what happens when you compare the BBC News site instead of CNN - http://trends.google.com/website... - CNN is just not that popular outside of the US
- James
James, it's not the absolute numbers, it's the *trend*. Plot CNN and BBC and it's the same graph, just shifted up a bit.
- Carter Rabasa
Ian - wow, that is stunning (facebook really steals the show doesn't it?!)
- Susan Beebe
James - interesting, the BBC vs twitter graph has a similar trend as the CNN vs twitter graph ...hmmm
- Susan Beebe
Just amazing.Useful informations.....
- Brook White
this makes Rupert Murdoch's recent rant at a conference in China even funnier: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-phi... He (and the other members of the Old Media guard like CNN, etc.) really thinks he can take the Web back to a for-pay basis. He doesn't get that 98% of the content his minions are producing is so fungible that the...
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- Alex Schleber
What I find interesting, and disturbing is that not only are Twitters stats going up, but CNNs are going down. Given the self selecting nature of Twitter, that probably means people are exposing themselves to a much narrower range of opinion and information.
- Eoghann Irving
Please don't dance on the grave of print journalism. Yes, newpapers are dinosaurs. And yes, to their detriment, they resisted change in delivery models for too long -- mostly due to the fact that they were making so much money 15 years ago. BUT, without them, there will be a void in investigative journalism that cannot be filled. Politicians still read the big papers to see what's going on in their own government and to see who's investigating whom.
- rowlikeagirl, hecho en eu
@Row, I seriously don't want to, but Old Media's wounds are entirely self-inflicted. There will always be investigative journalism, it's just that it needs to be paid for by newer/smarter monetization models. And the pay-wall ain't it.. Murdoch is entirely out of his gourd on this one, and that's not a political statement in this case.
- Alex Schleber
Or the create companies like Facebook, Apple, Twitter, eBay, etc
- George Mag
from iPhone
Both good and bad people. Same can be said of Hitler/Stalin, too, eh?
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
It sounds nice but let's face it: how many crazies REALLY change the world? Crazy IMO should be changed with Sociopathic. (How many Psychopaths get that far?)
- Fake Name
"NPR has received $3 million in funding to launch a new journalism project that will focus on providing in-depth, hyper-local coverage on community-specific issues on an online platform. NPR received $2 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and $1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The new funding will allow a pilot group of a dozen NPR stations with the resources to provide in-depth, hyper-local news on a topic that is most relevant to the community where the station is located. The grants also allow the stations to hire new “journalist bloggers,” who will focus exclusively on reporting and aggregating news about a topic relevant to that city. The pilot radio and TV stations have not been chosen yet."
- Will Sullivan
He called for tolerance on each anniversary of the 1943 uprising, the first big Jewish revolt against the Nazis. After World War II, he became a cardiologist and fought communism in Poland. Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the ill-fated 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt against the Nazis, died Friday in Warsaw. He was 90.
He called for tolerance on each anniversary of the 1943 uprising, the first big Jewish revolt against the Nazis. After World War II, he became a cardiologist and fought communism in Poland. Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the ill-fated 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt against the Nazis, died Friday in Warsaw. He was 90.