I get this all the time out in public. I wonder if anyone ever comes up to him and says "you look a lot like this geek I know."
- Robert Scoble
Robert - you should try to meet him and found out! that would be neat!
- Susan Beebe
Absolutely. @Robert: Have you reached out to Hoffman? I mean, he seems a fairly interesting guy. Scobelizer interviews Philip Seymour Hoffman. You should do it.
- AJ Kohn
Are we sure they're actually two *different* people? Has anyone actually seen them in the same room at the same time?
- Sam
AJ: nope, never have reached out to him. Might be fun to do, but I'm hoping it happens organically, if it happens at all.
- Robert Scoble
Gingo's! maybe seperated at birth? There is a story here...
- wayne Mulqueen
@Robert: Organically would be nice. I'm a bit surprised fans (yours) haven't taken it upon themselves to lobby Hoffman. I'll definitely tune in for that episode.
- AJ Kohn
I totally do! Thought the EXACT same thing a fewweeks ago! Too bad they don't SOUND alike.
- Jeff McCord
from twhirl
I like silicon beach, although it sounds Silicon Valley try hard.
- Mick Liubinskas
Well arn't we trying to leverage the spirit in the valley in Australia? Who cares if it's try hard - we just need a name, we need consistency, and what really matters is what we do going forward. A consistent brand will help build the community, because it gives it a common rallying point.
- Elias Bizannes
Rai: consensus, not really. The closest I've seen it people trying to pull the title for their own city; although about a year ago, I just made a decision in response to the chatter to not label any city silicon beach but instead the island continent of Australia. Since then, I haven't really heard anything
- Elias Bizannes
What about "New Valley" (like when in futuristic sci-fi shows and they rename cities on new planets based on old famous towns. i guess it's always been done like that eg New York based on Old York)... [i'll just get my coat...]
- Kain Tietzel
the one thing Twitter has it is that it was first before FF in that space. And that brings name recognition to the "masses" and a large inertia that you have to overcome before you can become a true replacement, no matter what technical advantages you bring to the table. I have 5 times more followers in Twitter than FF, and sadly a mass migration doesn't seem to be happening for these folks.
- Daniel Robitaille
Your post to a given site takes on more life when it hits the pages of friendfeed. It's almost like you weigh where you want to "release" a post first knowing that it will get "picked up" by friendfeed.
- todddoubleu
I do not think Twitter will survive as CMS systems that run into message bus systems are the hardest to scale on ruby on rails nd they do not have the money to fight two fronts ruby on rails scalability and new features to stave off competition.
- Fred Grott
good link, allen. some additional default choices would be fantastic. read: better discovery mechanisms. having only members of the echo chamber as default choices makes for a duller feed. no offense to present company. ;)
- Brooks Bayne
I think all this FF > Twitter discourse is seriously, seriously underestimating the power of Twitter's unparalleled portability. It's 100% usable through SMS and has an iPod-esque ecosystem of third party tools and add-ons that hook into it. These things brought Twitter to its throne, and now you guys aren't even factoring them into the equation because of a little downtime.
- David Chartier
i'll post some thoughts on my blog, but one thing that is still annoying is represented in this post... where your friendfeed shows all aggregated iterations of this post here on ff and it just feels silly as i can choose which iteration to leave a comment on. that's an issue. maybe you should turn comments off on the other instances. except that you cannot because its not a feature. also, check out http://friendfeed.com/frendfe... to see some aggregation bugs.
- sull
Jason, that's a brilliant "There Will Be Blood" reference. And so true. I'm afraid that Twitter is just a couple of weeks from being bludgeoned with a bowling pin by FF.
- Frank Roche
I think the removal of a character limit would hurt twitter more than help it. Twitter was never meant as a conversation platform. I think keeping it small and simple makes it much easier for people to use. One of it's biggest strengths is that it's a short form messaging service, and to take that away would make it something that isn't twitter.
- Austin Brown
Jason, I fully agree with what you say here.
- Steve Rubel
I love the fact that there is no premium linked with the number of connections you have. In twitter the greater the number of connections, the higher you appear in the "following" list of your follower. That has become a reason of spam, lowering the quality of the twitter network. Plus, FF works.
- Marcello Del Bono
I can see how Twitter is useful for people who post via SMS, but while Im at the computer FF is far more useful and also more fun to use
- Jeff Hoard
from twhirl
I could offer my agreement here on your entry's content, but I'd rather tell you how much I dug the entry's title.
- Donna Mugavero
I'll put it this way, i never used twitter because I'm not part of the technorati community, but I do use Friendfeed because it allows me to bring together all my online content and then share it with the people I want. That alone is enough for FF to beat out Twitter for me.
- Alfredo Padilla
I think one of the things we have missed carries forward or plays forward a Robert Scoble post, see : http://scobleizer.com/2008... ..let me put it in non tech terms as it pertains to start-ups. FOUNDERS MUST PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITIES THAT FROM AROUND THEIR PRODUCTS! When I state founders I mean also the ones building the product.
- Fred Grott
What it comes down to me is *noise*. FriendFeed is just noisy, what with content from all my social media friends all being dumped into one stream with no organization whatsoever. I look at my FF friends page and I can't make any rhyme or reason to what I'm seeing, even with little favicons to identify which service I'm reading from. Twitter, is clean and organized.
- Stephen Lopez
School of ALL CAPS is a little loud... ;-)
- Mitchell Tsai
I think Center Networks (Allen) has an interesting analysis. I'll be curious to see if the high profile FF users are as interested in commenting on other people's feeds as having their own words commented upon. Twitter just seems like a more democratic forum to me. Personally, I don't care if it is down a couple hours a week. FF only supplements it, it is not an adequate replacement. And I like to write more than 140 characters! Still Twitter is my first choice.
- Liz
PS... Because I use the Flock browser, I get all my social media updates right from the Media Bar and People Sidebar, without ever having to open Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Pownce, Digg, etc... Everything I want is right there at the click of an icon. Flock > FF.
- Stephen Lopez
I wouldn't underestimate twitter's connection through sms. It makes it the first legit mobile social network, and that is significant for mass adoption and use. Most people don't have internet on their phone to use a web app (iPhone Facebook, Tumblr, etc.) or internet (twitpic, friendfeed, etc.) to send email to update or submit to services. But they are very likely to have sms service, and are used to using it.
- Tony
my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
- Tyler Gillies
I agree to what you say but besides Twitter reliability, its major flaw is really the reply (or conversation) system which is close to be useless. I guess FriendFeed gained a lot of people (at least myself) because of its efficient conversation system.
- fbrunel
Jason, I agree with you a lot of the time but not in this case. I think it would be suicide for Twitter to get into a features arms race with FriendFeed. They would lose that battle. Twitter needs to focus on keeping it simple, getting stable, and becoming a short messaging infrastructure - not a destination.
- Mike Doeff
Mike, I think you're right on. Twitter would do better to solidify its differentiation.
- Clay Newton
Agreed. I have flip flopped a couple of times on which service I prefer, but FriendFeed is clearly in the lead. If they launch a great iPhone app next Friday it could be thing that pushes them over the hump.
- Scott Watermasysk
FF's iPhone web app is fun and all, but a native app could offer a lot more functionality without having to wait for page loads and other clunkiness. I'm hoping for a native app too.
- David Chartier
Twitter has become a victim of the success it created for itself. As Twitter gained popularity it naturally creates a market for competition. Its poor performance allowed FF to grow. Many of Twitters power users have begun to migrate communication, and followers to FF wanted to see what it is all about. Twitter has lost its first movers advantage. I would not have been able to even make this post on Twitter. FF invites conversation and dialogue. Sorry Bezos, you may have made the wrong investment.
- Fred Neil
I would love it if FF came out with a native iPhone app that took advantage of push notifications by alerting me based on certain criteria.
- Granteezy
Agree. Twitter just isn't built for the type of robust sharing and conversations that make FF really interesting. Twitter is like shouting into a canyon, FF is like being at a noisy bar. Sorry, but too many Tweets are just status updates: You're going to Subway for lunch, whoopee! FF gets a lot better when you hide non-commented on Tweets. As for FF enhancements, I'd like a merge function so the same content from various people/feeds are collapsed into one master. That way I can see all comment streams.
- AJ Kohn
Keep in mind that twitter was not initially made for replies, the whole @ sign reply came from users wanting a way to reply and Twitter then started to support the method
- Ray Slakinski
from twhirl
Looks like Twitter has lost the first mover advantage, and now FF has the first mover advantage with its features. Though since Twitter was the first mover in the beginning it still has a bunch of people who are on it and not on other sites and also has a familiar interface and more third party applications that are compatible with it than Twitter does. Favorite thing so far about FF is the new Seesmic feature to reply to a seesmic post from within FF, really killer.
- Andrew Fielding
I'm still one of the few that want's Jaiku to get back in the game! Google is dropping the ball there!!!
- tomit
Ok, as much as I *hate* linking to Valleywag, if in fact they have the legitimate Stewart Butterfield resignation, it's pure gold. http://valleywag.com/5017424...
He should only blame himself for selling out to Yahoo in the first place.
- TranceMist
The letter was brilliant, the comments were idiotic. I think the comments on Digg have more value that the comments to a Valleywag post.
- Tac Anderson
@Trancemist Yeah, I'm sure he's blaming himself. All the way to the bank, via his penthouse apartment, no doubt.
- Ian Betteridge
selling to Yahoo was the right thing to do. There are few things in life more important than personal financial freedom. But Yahoo *could* have used Flickr to be the springboard to truly dominate social search and they bungled that. Could have bought digg, could have tied it all together. With Yahoo's bungling social search, FF remains the most viable candidate to succeed at social search here and now today.
- Thomas Hawk