Lawrence Liu - Comments

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Ok, so Friendfeed has basically flat growth for the last year, and those brainiacs are worth $50M? http://kara.allthingsd.com/2009081...

August 10 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Just shows that success takes much more than gr8 tech. Simplicity seems to trump everything else these days. - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Facebook Buys FriendFeed for $50M (~$15M cash & rest in stock) [Not bad for ~2yrs of work & just 12 employees.] - http://online.wsj.com/article...

August 10 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

"Facebook paid nearly $50 million for the company, in a combination cash and stock offer, according to people familiar with the matter. The company paid roughly $15 million in cash, with the rest in Facebook stock that vests over several years and would be worth roughly $32.5 million based on the $6.5 billion common valuation..." - Lawrence Liu from Bookmarklet

Bwana ☠

16,195 comments, 2,143 likes, and an untold amount of posts, are now in jeopardy. And I'm overreacting? Puhlease.

August 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Ahsan Ali aka. Slick, Ethan, Mark Krynsky and 31 other people liked this

This is cause for concern and not a kneejerk - Bwana ☠

26 more comments

If you disagree, you don't value your data as much as I do - Bwana ☠

I don't want to hand that over to Facebook. - Bwana ☠

I would hope that the guys at FF allow us a way to export the conversations. - EricaJoy

Agree, I don't want to move over to FB. :-( - Kol Tregaskes

+100 Bwana - vijay

I'm pretty sure it's all there and accessible via the API. Maybe it's time to get cracking on some robust export tools... - Ken Sheppardson

That's what I posted on my blog. I'm very concerned about my content. That's my #1 focus right now. All the stuff I've shared from FF to my blog, the comments...where does that go? - Admiral Anika

You export them, and then what? What do you do with them? I still have my exported Pownce posts somewhere in my hard drive, collecting dust as a massive XML file. - Guillermo Esteves

I search them of course. I repost them. I use them. - Bwana ☠

If someone tries to misquote me in the future, I'll have the real data - Bwana ☠

I would think FF -> Posterous, Tumblr, Wordpress, static HTML would all be reasonable options. - Ken Sheppardson

And yeah, I know, Facebook could buy Posterous tomorrow and this would start again. That's a bridge for another day. - Ken Sheppardson

Thanks Ken for ruining my brain - Bwana ☠

I never thought FB could buy Posterous until you just said it :( - Bwana ☠

Facebook is a great company. And maybe they will add some great features we've never thought about having and make the experience better for the users - Seckoa from iPod

If we had wanted to post stuff on FB, they would have been posted over there surely? I use FB for connecting with far away family and friends; they don't want to see my science and cancer links, it's way over their head. Posterous is nice but it's like commenting on lots of disjointed blogs; there's no easy way to see conversations other than in isolation. - Sally Church

the prob with facebook is it has too many features, worthless features. friend feed is very tuned. - Marco

The possible feature changes, integrations and whatnot, I can get over. What I can't and won't get over is my data belonging to Facebook. That's where I draw the line. - Bwana ☠

+100 Bwana! Why are people not thinking about their data!? Features? UI? SECONDARY! data is PRIMARY! - vijay

Exactly. I have so much stored here, liked here, and commented on here that it would be impossible to back it all up for reuse. I, you, we helped build FF to be what it is - with our collective content. So sad. - jcunwired

On 2nd thought, maybe I should be more cautious abt making the jump from Twitter to FF as my primary Status Stream. - Lawrence Liu

Bwana, rest assured, its not going away immediately. From Bret: "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" https://friendfeed.com/friendf... I sure feel reassured, don't you? :P - jcunwired

Hah! good find. - Bwana ☠

I'll remember that - Bwana ☠

lmorchard already created one in php IIRC -- http://github.com/lmorcha... - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Thanks bear, I'll be shopping for more later - Bwana ☠

I may be a no body in St Augustine, FL, but my content is my content. I hate investing time in something just to loose it. That's how this feels. - tomit

MG Siegler

BOOM Facebook Acquires FriendFeed http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

August 10 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes, imabonehead, K.D. and 30 other people liked this

NOOOOO!!!! - Kevin Mohr

43 more comments

This is a joke, right? Ha ha ha - LANjackal

say it ain't so!!!! - Joe Magennis

oh dear - Craig Eddy

I'm out of here! - Joshua Schnell

I guess this would explain Paul's ":)" earlier on, preceded by a complaint about lack of sleep - LANjackal

wat - Mark Trapp

Wait...no - Bwana ☠

What? - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

blah - Jenny Morman

WOW - Mistletoe Glen

Wow - Rodfather

What?! - Jeff

This cant be good, I just started to understand friendfeed. - Jordan Patterson

Can this be true? - Kevin Whalen

Well, its an exit. Probably a good exit. - DGentry

nooooo - holly

Must be HUGE celebrations @microsoft, they're @facebook's biggest $ backer. Big win vs. @google - LANjackal

I'm going to need a few hours to soak this in - Bwana ☠

:'( - Ryan

Unbelievable, and yet believable. I guess the copycatting can stop now. - Kenley Neufeld

Oh no :( - Patrik Arwengrim

It's like 100k geeks screamed at once and then were suddenly silenced... - Jemm from fftogo

sigh - BCK

Well that came out of nowhere. Honestly, I don't like it if it's true. - Adam Reyher from Alert Thingy

Sad news. - Shannon

I'm so confused right now. - Harry Wolff

what a way to kill innovation. thanks Facebook. - Edgar Rodríguez

The number of 1/2 word comments is hilarious in and of itself. - JonathanJoseph

I'm gonna miss FF when it's gone, but I like the idea of FF's awesomeness bringing Facebook's UI along a bit. I wonder how much time Paul et al will owe to FB before we see them back on the market with a new product? - Daniel J. Pritchett

Wow - Mike Doeff from iPhone

This is nuts - Chris Saad

I guess all we can wait for now is another Facebook UI overhaul followed by a month of complaints followed by complacency again... - Harry Wolff

crazy news, what a great move for facebook, but what about us :( - sean percival

Until we hear from FF offically, I'm not trusting TC. - Kevin Whalen

Is it true? Paul? - Stephen Foskett

holy majoly - anna sauce

So that means Facebook now owns all of our aggregated content? - jcunwired

Ok, so I wasn't dreaming - Bwana ☠

Did we just got sold down the river? - Willem (@wim66) ☠

this is just one of those "bad dreams" like on the TV shows, right? - Al Degutis

You're kidding. Say it ain't so....... Light the pitchforks, we're matchng to the castle...... - Roberto Bonini

Wow! & I just tweeted abt FriendFeed being Next.Big.Thing. 5 minutes ago! Beginning of the end for Twitter! - Lawrence Liu

There goes the open web's alternative to the closed Facebook news feed heh - Chris Saad

How ironic. That tweet I ref'd didn't get submitted cuz bit.ly had "a problem accessing Twitter." Posted now at http://twitter.com/LLiu... - Lawrence Liu

Robert Scoble

Is a Twitter retweet or a Facebook/FriendFeed "like" better. My answer my surprise you:

August 3 - Comment - Like - Share

kensuke, Iván Abrego, Mitchell Tsai and 63 other people liked this

The retweet is better. Why? - Robert Scoble

82 more comments

1. The retweet shows up as a top level item here in FriendFeed. Which gets you more branding. - Robert Scoble

Yes, but your tweet got me to FriendFeed for the first time in months. So now I'm totally confused. - Jennifer Leggio

Facebooks like system is pointless. - Simon Wicks

2. A retweet usually gets retweeted, a lot. I retweeted a guy this morning saying that Eric Schmidt had resigned from Apple's board. That got retweeted a lot. - Robert Scoble

Likes, just "bump" content, while a retweet duplicates the content and potentially gets shared several times. - Rob Diana

I like retweet better. But if facebook had a dislike button, I would be equally happy! - Dakota O'Neill

like is only promoting to shared friends where are retweet is promoting to everyone. No? - Edwin Khodabakchian

3. A retweet gets you credit, while "likes" just get you buried and no one is sure why they got lots of engagement. - Robert Scoble

Facebook is a joke. Like on friendfeed is pretty simple too. A retweet say a lot about your content but I think generating an actual discussion in friendfeed is the most powerful - Johnny

The retweet also directly acknowledges the original author, building relationship. FF Likes on Twitter have no such attribution. - Peter Kelley

Johnny: A retweet will get more conversation going and get you branded more than clicking like will. - Robert Scoble

That said, I love likes. You can check my likes out at http://www.friendfeed.com/scoblei... -- that's something that's hard to do with a retweet. I've done 21,000 likes so far. I don't know of a way to count how many retweets I've done. - Robert Scoble

Robert: I agree. I was saying that generating a conversation (like this one) is more powerful than likes and retweets. - Johnny

Retweet overall but both have benefits - Travis Tasset from iPhone

I think that you're right, Robert. The Twitter retweet is better because there's some action behind it. In my opinion, the Facebook "like" feature really doesn't do much. It's more of a placebo than anything. Facebook's like is just a "slap on the wrist" letting the author know that it's "approved" by other people who come to the site. There's no reward for getting the most "likes" - it's like Digg but more retarded and something you wish you could euthanize already. - Kenneth

A like is just FB's way of trying to copy twitter and facebook, but I guess google reader has the same thing now - Billy Fung

Also, here, likes can be used to search. You can tell FriendFeed's search engine "show me all items about Google that Scoble has liked." - Robert Scoble

I think likes are great, but FriendFeed should also work on its presentation of reshares. I'd extend the datamodel to support an optional "originating item" for each item. The text (via: [url]) looks a bit messy. - Meryn Stol

your #1 reason for why RT is better than something is because it ends up in friendfeed??? not much of an incentive for the ~44 million twitter users really, is it? - Jeremy Toeman

With a retweet, it can be shared with multiple friends across MULTIPLE networks - my tweets can be posted onto Twitter, FriendFeed and even Facebook. Where does the Facebook "like" come into play? No where! Tweet away! - Kenneth

Exactly my thoughts too Meryn. Twitter should implement that as well. The original source gets lost after a couple of RTs. - Sumanth Kolar

Kenneth: you can send your likes on FF to Twitter, I do - Peter Kelley

Too much noise on Facebook, I still keep RTs in high regard. - Amy Chorew

Jeremy: a large percentage of my Facebook friends are sending their Tweets over there. Facebook has a similar liking system. I guarantee you that there's more than 44 million on Facebook (last number I heard was 250 million). And I'm getting WAY MORE engagement here on FriendFeed than I am on Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Twitter's reach is the key -- added to FriendFeed's real-time conversation, it's a powerful combo. Facebook is still too much of a walled garden. - Don Tamihere

Peter: good point. I think I was dragging on Facebook's "like" and not FF. Now if you want to compare FriendFeed's likes with Facebook's...that's another can of worms I don't wanna go into. - Kenneth

The database guy in me (my left elbow) is screaming that re-tweets duplicate data in a way that isn't easy to track. The social effects are nice, but can't this be replicated in a way that's a lot cleaner and more useful? - Ryan Massie

but ya said friendfeed, not facebook. :) - Jeremy Toeman

Jeremy: read the headline again. I specifically mentioned Facebook. And, anyway, we're all here on FriendFeed. How did THAT happen? - Robert Scoble

well i came here because i wanted to see what you were up to and since you don't blog anymore... ;) - Jeremy Toeman

Jeremy: heh, why blog when I can have engagement with you here? - Robert Scoble

RT as it feels like more of a commitment to the content rather than a passive vote - Daniel W. Rasmus

because you need to keep up your overall internet presence. doing it here is not in your best interests. IMHO that is. :) - Jeremy Toeman

On a side note: currently Google Reader "likes" are worthless as you can´t even subscribe to someone else´s like-stream. It´s even hard to find a way to see your own like-stream in Google Reader (although there /are/ at least 4 ways...) - peter huesken

Yeah, duh, likes aren't viral! - James Watters

Re-Tweets have this very natural word-of-mouth feel, but I'm concerned that you loose metadata by doing it the way twitter does. Instead of taking the firehose data to re-assemble this metadata after the fact, shouldn't the platform build the metadata as part of the process? I'm not saying that the word-of-mouth feel should go away by any means, but how accurate are the re-tweet counts that I have been seeing on sites recently? - Ryan Massie

James: They're more viral on FriendFeed due to the friend-of-a-friend views than they are on Facebook. But you're right, it's nothing like twitter. - Ryan Massie

Also Re-Tweeting has another problem: How do you retweet a tweet of more than 133 chars without paraphrasing at least part of it? - peter huesken

FriendFeed Likes are much more elegant than a retweet - the Grey Poupon of SM. :) - Nick in Manila

Why does one have to be "better" than the other? They are two different apps for sharing thoughts about content. The RT works well on Twitter, you just RT anything you like (and feel other might find interesting). When you like someone's content on FB, you give it a vote and everyone who is a friend can see it. If you want to add a comment you comment. If you want to share it, you use the share function. Now you can share tweets RTs on Facebook anyway, I'm not sure why it even matters which is better. - nicky jameson

A retweet takes more time to do and shows more interest. - Randy Allen Bishop

This is wrong. A retweet is copying someone's work and trying to drive traffic towards yourself using it. A like and/or a comment is much better as you are acknowledging the work of the author. Retweeting is parasitic. Liking is symbiotic. - Alex Scoble

Alex: that's interesting. As a content owner I'd rather you retweet, though. Why? Gets my ideas greater distribution. - Robert Scoble

What Randy said. A "like" means different things to different people. To me it might mean, "the title of this sounds good, the topic interests me, but I don't have time to read it." I would "Like" something like that, but I would *never* retweet something without visiting the link first and at least scanning it, preferably reading the whole thing. Also, Alex, I don't think a retweet is an attempt to drive traffic towards yourself. How do you figure? - Laura Norvig

Because when people see the retweet they are seeing what you wrote. It's the same as if I copied a blog post from Robert and put it on my blog with attribution to him. I'm doing this to get people to read my blog, I'm not doing it to help him. If I really wanted to help him, I would link to his blog post and write something about why I agree or disagree with that. A retweet is parasitic... more... - Alex Scoble

Alex: first of all, nothing you write in 140 characters is going to have much value, and certainly won't be enough value to charge for it. Second of all, if you RT: properly you also link to the source person or URL. Third of all, it's nothing even close to copying an entire blog post, but that really is sweet that you think Tweeting is blogging. They both have the same attributes, I... more... - Robert Scoble

RT's on Twitter are more manual and take a little more engagement then Like unless you are using SW to manage your tweets - RT duplicates... - Robert Freeze

Alex, your logic is twisted, no? RT is intended to share with your followers something someone else said or found, who they might not already be following. If traffic is driving anywhere it's to them; those reading your RT are already following you. Your point also assumes everyone's playing the numbers game. - Jim Barry

@Scobleizer It looks like you RT % is 1.85, of total tweets. Data from: http://tweetstats.com/graphs... - David Damore

First off, I don't write in 140 characters, because I do all my posting from friendfeed. 140 character limit is whack, but that's another argument. Second, nothing about Twitter really builds participation. It's all about islands versus on friendfeed, which is why reposting (I hate the "tweet" non-word) is even necessary. The fact that it's necessary is a symptom of the problems of the... more... - Alex Scoble

They serve different purposes. FB/FF like is just a quick shared bookmark. Twitter has a Favorite option that's similar, but it's geared toward recall more so than sharing/recommending. Retweet is not even a built-in Twitter feature, but many Twitter apps have the feature and people use it to share/recommend other people's tweets. - Lawrence Liu from twhirl

Alex: if you visit my blog you'll notice that my like feed isn't showing up in the FriendFeed widget there, while my retweets are. That's a huge problem and one I don't know how to solve. - Robert Scoble

How about the share option in FF, then change the FWD: to RT? - Lee

I will like things here when I don't want to comment, but I hadn't thought of it as a proxy for RT. Now you have me thinking about forwarding my likes here twitter. - dthree

You could combine the feeds using Yahoo Pipes. It's a bit messy, but here's my combined posts, comments, and likes: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes... - Ryan Massie

Isn't this just like a Scobelizer chat room? - Peter Mullen

I think I'm going to take the core of your question Robert and post it to my Facebook non-social media friends and see if they can even parse the question. I'd expect some funny "uh...what?" responses. - Elliott Ng

the like SHOULD be much better. this is a voting system. FF needs to help you filter content this way however. retweets just confuse things even more and create even more noise. FF should have default searches that are all your friends with 2+ likes...this is your personal best of the day. if FF does not make use of these advantages, then it will continue to muddle about. - lew

Here's why Robert and I disagree. He sees these spaces as primarily a marketing tool for building a brand and getting his media out to eyeballs. Reposts work great for that because it's like a ball thrown in to a room of mousetraps. I mostly want to have conversations and am here for fun. Reposts suck for that because they fragment conversations. I don't like that...AT all. :) That's why both services can coexist. - Alex Scoble

++ Alex... services like this don't succeed because they are good marketing platforms, they succeed because regular people like to use them. - LogEx

as soon as we have threaded conversations on twitter, i suspect you will hate conversation being distributed on duplicates (retweets). My vote is for likes on ff. - Sajida H Khan

when i like something it gets tweeted... so it's like a retweet for friendfeed content... it doesn't come back over here as my own, but that's okay with me - Chris Heath

The ReTweet is -sometimes- better as it keeps track of the last RTers. - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Once again, FriendFeed and Twitter are complementary: it's better when a FF 'like' is ReTweeted again and again. Facebook's like.. huh.. it's.. different (?) - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Retweeting on twitter is equlivent to "share" on friendfeed. Retweet and like are uncomparable, in the same way that twitter's favorite and ff's like are uncomparable. - Andy Bakun from Android

the spammers are here - how do we report the guy above? - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Taken care of - boom! Like That! - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Robert, I think you're completely wrong. FriendFeed ranking is poo. A retweet is mostly poo --- depends on the context of your Twitter experience, and your POV. Is your POV "Is it better to BE retweeted? Or liked as a status update on FaceBook" ? or "Is it better to retweet someone ELSE'S Tweet or to Like someone else's FaceBook update?" I'd argue in both cases, the retweet sucks.... more... - Gib

Gib: where do you get the poo from? Sigh. - Robert Scoble

Robert: OMG! you're like the fasted gun in the west! By poo I mean, as a person without your scaling issues, if someone Retweets any random Tweet of mine, I'm like, "huh? THAT'S what you want to repeat to your following?" For mortals, viral stuff isn't everyday occurrence. On the other hand, as a mortal, on FaceBook, when a few people like a photo or update or comment, my other friends... more... - Gib

I agree with Andy that a Twitter retweet is more like a FF share than a like. "Retweet", in my opinion, is simply Twitter-speak for "share". - Dennis Jernberg

On the moment itself an RT is better, but a 'like' has a longer life, since it can be used in FF search queries. - nooble

RT was a community generated method, and can easily be done in friendfeed or facebook - Mark Essel from iPhone

I think we can expect Google Reader and Facebook, among others, to emulate FriendFeed's useful "Like" system in more ways, including likes in feeds, as a search filter, etc. SOON. - Ryan Sholin

+Alex. I agree much more with his sentiments than Robert's; likes are a much better way of showing appreciation for a post. 1. I don't care about building my brand. 2. Why wouldn't likes propagate just as well as RTs? They both show up in my FF stream. 3. See 1. Don't worry, Robert will come around eventually, just like he did with following people on Twitter. - Niklas Morberg

I guess I'm against the grain on the RT versus Like feature. I don't hate RT but I think they can become Spam noise in some ways. If you follow several people who follow the same people, you get an endless flow of the same tweet for a while with no extra value. Whereas a "Like" (in FriendFeed) bumps the conversation back into many peoples focus. In both FF and FB, the "like" also tags it to your attention when future comments are made. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

If you use Feedly in Conjunction with Retweets and Tweets you can kind of follow your Karma and get feedback on how they are dynamic and changing - Robert Higgins

RTs are better so I can continue to play with extracting valuable trends from them on my little experiment http://www.retweetradar.com! - Ben Hedrington

We all know Twitter is the front-end & FriendFeed is the back-end ;) Hype builds quicker on Twitter, FriendFeed hosts the discussion. - CannonGod

You can add ur own opinion on a RT if space permits. with ff its commenting and liking which are 2 different things. U can comment and not 'like' the post. - Freddie Benjamin

Very good point Freddie but that usually gives you no room when you include the "RT @username" or the new person alters the original tweet (I hate this). RT is to Like as @ reply is to commenting. Both serve close to the same purpose but work very different. FF's direction keeps everything tighter coupled while Twitter is very loosely coupled in the approach. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

This one is worth a retweet in itself: That said, I love likes. You can check my likes out at http://www.friendfeed.com/scoblei... -- that's something that's hard to do with a retweet. I've done 21,000 likes so far. I don't know of a way to count how many retweets I've done. - Robert Scoble - Riaz Kanani

Facebook is closed, essentially, as I will always only ever see a "like" from either someone who is already my friend or a friend of a friend. Twitter is open, in that when someone I'm following retweets (from either someone they're following --- a 1st gen RT --- or a 2nd/3rd gen RT of someone they're following is also following or exposed to...whew!...) well, then I am exposed to a... more... - Thom Kennon

Lawrence Liu

@nigel_ht Koi Palace in San Bruno CA has great deco & exceptional highend real Chinese food that just can't be franchised.

July 27 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

hope I get to check it out. Sounds like a foodie destination - Karma Martell

Bring ur appetite & ur wallet! :-) Try the 2-course dungeness crab (lightly fried w/ salt&pepper; mixed w/ scallops), 2-course Peking duck, and steamed young coconut (for dessert). - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

"Community site built 100% w/ SharePoint?" -no but at least I tried: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepo... :-) FYI @seanodmvp @jshuey @joannjen

June 5 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

uh http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepo... = "The requested feed url does not exist." 8 times" - Christian Vanderbeck

Heh, looks like the RSS feeds have changed, but no one has either noticed or bothered to update the RSS Viewer Web Parts. Sigh... - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Re: As Marketing Shifts Back to the Everyman - http://www.chrisbrogan.com/as-mark...

May 21 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"IMHO, paying for Sponsored Conversations is just a cop-out for not cultivating your brand's own influencers and champions. It's a tactical short-cut to generate some quick buzz, but it's not strategically sustainable." - Lawrence Liu

Arnaldo M Pereira to Arnaldo's feed, All Things Google

Wolfram Alpha: Wikipedia killer? | Education IT | ZDNet.com - http://education.zdnet.com/...

May 18 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Hüseyin Mert, Nicholas James and 9 other people liked this

"It seems that most people who have had the chance to use Wolfram Alpha (myself included) agree that it will do a few things to Google: it will drive it to innovate in semantic search and it will complement its high-volume search capabilities quite nicely. It will not, however, kill Google." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

13 more comments

It's more a Wikipedia than a Google killer. Either way, it's brilliant! :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Even if naked girls baffle it - Matthew DeVries

I think Wolfram Alpha is fairly hyped up. Anything other than a relatively precise query leaves you with no results at all, and you have to keep guessing how to phrase certain queries to get results you want. Pretty clunky. It's good for math and scientific info, but that's about it. - Daniel Bruce

I don't think you're going to see this kill wikipedia either: people may turn to Wolfram Alpha when they need computations or calculations about things: comparisons of populations, hard data about scientific measurements, etc., but it's not a general knowledge source... - Joel Bennett

Agreed with all comments, I also don't think it'll kill anything. - Arnaldo M Pereira

wolfram|alpha is made by a mathematician so it will primarily serve numbers. I see it as niche search engine. - ashish

wikipedia killer? totally different beast. wolframalpha is a computational engine. OK, so you're wolfram research. You have years of technology in mathematica. The natural impulse is to put mathematic 'on the web' so to speak. The next logical action is to give it access to computationally formatted data. Huge task, but it makes sense. Then, add a natural language interface and you're... more... - stretta from twhirl

Wikipedia is more verbose, Wolfram only has a brief answer to your questions. - TrafficBug

Besides, wikipedia is more collaborative. - Arnaldo M Pereira

My 1st #wolframalpha Q: "what is 1000000th decimal digit of pi" http://bit.ly/dK4h4 -not exactly result I wanted. Google: http://bit.ly/vE6pZ. - Lawrence Liu

My 2nd #wolframalpha Q: "temperature of sun" http://bit.ly/VimsC -much better, but besides intellectual masturbation, what's this good for? :-) - Lawrence Liu

Wish #wolframalpha would tell me: "Ppl who asked this Q also asked these Qs" so I can do anonymous intellectual circle jerk w/ other geeks. - Lawrence Liu

#wolframalpha missing huge opportunity to enable users to learn from each other. To bad Dr. Wolfram wants 2b HAL9000 instead of Ghandi 2.0. - Lawrence Liu

By now, it'd be useless. Too few people know how to use it, so the suggestions would probably not be of much help. - Arnaldo M Pereira

Lawrence Liu

Re: Why Didn't PubSub Become Twitter? - http://www.windley.com/archive...

May 13 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"RSS is one-way. Twitter API is two-way. People prefer conversations more than just listening/reading. RSS missed the boat by sticking with simplicity rather than provide a lightweight version of NNTP. To me, Twitter API is really not much more than a Web 2.0 version of NNTP." - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Re: http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcol... - http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcol...

May 8 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Excellent points, Dion. Very insightful as usual. I posted a few quick thoughts (don't have time to elaborate right now) on my blog at http://tinyurl.com/p9h544" - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

The FASTForward Blog : Should Enterprise 2.0 Software Vendors Provide Professional Services? - http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2009...

April 2 from Intense Debate - Comment - Like - Share

"I agree with Thomas's comment over at Stewart Mader's blog entry that there is no one size fits all answer. Nevertheless, I believe that software vendors need to strike a careful balance between using PS to ensure that the software is successfully implemented and adopted vs. trying to make significant profit from PS. For a vendor that is truly focused on advancing its software, PS should have a supplementary role within the org rather than a dominant one. Moreover, the vendor should have key PS partners, who are focused on business solutions and have vertical industry expertise because the vendor's own PS will be much more software centric. In many cases, the best approach is to have a 3 way joint effort between the software vendor's PS, an industry focused PS firm, and the customer." - Lawrence Liu

Robert Scoble

Homework project: how many followers on social networks are "real?" My initial findings are astounding, participate here as we discover what's going on:

February 23 - Comment - Like - Share

polymath22, Nicholas James, Lorin Olsen and 115 other people liked this

Visit http://twitter.com/TechCru... and now click on each follower. How many messages have they written? I just visited about 100 and only two had written more than a single message. - Robert Scoble

134 more comments

Now you know why I say followers don't matter. If I fake 100,000 accounts and follow myself with them do those accounts matter to anything? No. - Robert Scoble

But I didn't understand just how bad the spam account problem is. On friendfeed I only follow accounts that are putting content into the system. I am only putting people into my ultra special lists (ie, the ones I read first thing in the morning) if they participate. Those are the high value accounts that make being part of this fun. But how many of those accounts do each social network have? That's what matters, not whether a blank account was produced. - Robert Scoble

Who is a bigger fan of you then yourself. :) So if your not following yourself then why provide any content? :P </sarcasm> - Santa CW™

They matter because other twitter users think that you are popular because you have been followed by 100,000 users. Thus, in result will entice new followers. - charles

this is in line with participation stats from other communities like Open Source or UGC - online a thin minority contribute (in the 5%/15% range) - but it doesn't mean they're fake - just shy or dumb - Marc Brandsma

Beau: I wish I had a tool to delete everyone who hasn't posted at least 10 Tweets from the list of people I'm following. - Robert Scoble

I have found that a lot of people who are on social networks like Facebook or Twitter are not really there to participate but to be the voyeur (to borrow a term). They are more interested in what others are doing but rather not share their selves. It is not an uncommon social trait to be curious to what others are doing but not want them knowing what you are doing. It's small town living on the internet as I like to say. - Christopher Mercer

Marc: I don't agree. After visiting a few hundred of these accounts now, they sure look fake and "spammy" to me. - Robert Scoble

Christopher: that's interesting, but is very weird. Why would you want to watch what people are saying if you don't want to participate? I wonder if anyone will cop to having such an account here? - Robert Scoble

What's your definition of 'real'? There's a difference between spam accounts (let's say created for SOE or to get you to click on a link to just 'blast' marketing) and passive accounts, where someone is happy listening. They don't *have* to participate, most are perfectly happy just watching. - Rachel Clarke

There are 3 types of followers - real people, PR accounts and special like you :-). On my personal twitter ( http://twitter.com/michalblaha ) I prefer real people. On my project's twitter ( http://twitter.com/ontheroadto ) I prefer mix of them. I got severel very usefull contacts for http://www.ontheroad.to from my twitter followers . Its reason why I never (rather) block any of my followers. - News from ontheroad.to

Rachel: you make a good point, but lots of these have weird names, look like spammers, and don't participate. What value are they? - Robert Scoble

I don't know if I really understand the problem here. Granted, if you have a lot of fake followers that makes you look bigger than you are. But otherwise, who cares? I personally follow (and follow back) people based on the quality of their posts, not on how many followers they have. - Matthias Catón

Special followers like you are real people with unbelievable number of accounts they follow - not for PR, not for spam, but to be informed. Strange think on it (for me) is how you can handle so much unstructured information together. You know some magic which I don't know ;-) - News from ontheroad.to

Interestingly, the few I've found so far that have posted real content have had photos on their bios/accounts. I think that's a good way to filter out spammers. "No photo, no friend." :-) - Robert Scoble

I think the major difference between me and TechCrunch would be the people who look for me and whom I add on facebook are people I actually know. I have some very close friends who are not active users of social networking sites but use them to keep up on their active user friends. As for twitter, yes a lot of accounts follow for the purpose getting follow backs. I subscribe to the the idea that just because you followed me does not mean I will follow you. - Christopher Mercer

There are a lot of people, at least in India, who are in strict readonly mode. A lot of them just follow interesting people and read their tweets and shares. Its almost like a substitute for Google Reader. So judging by just the tweet count would be unfair. If there were a last login time in the twitter api, it would make more sense. - Ritesh

Matthias: well, I have been getting more and more spam into my DM column, so there's the danger of that. Yeah, there really isn't too much harm other than if you are in this to just game your follower count that people will figure out that you really don't have an engaged audience there. That will catch up with you eventually. I know I'm more likely to follow someone who has a really great set of friends/followers. I'm sure I'm not the only one. - Robert Scoble

I think that you are most likely to follow a person who is in the field of your interest, much the same way you subscribe to a feed. I, for one, follow many of the social media geeks since the subject interests me, but I very rarely participate in discussions. I enjoy reading what others are saying and shared news and links. So I guess I am a social network voyeur (@Mercer) :) - "Jazzperous" Isaksson

Robert - agree with you about the spammers. I block them all. I also block those who aren't automated spammers but still doing the same behaviour. They have no value for you, or me. I'm wondering what value they have for themselves, if they are like spam email where they get enough interaction to make it worthwhile. - Rachel Clarke

I was followed last night by someone, who it took me 6 pages of back tweets to find 3 actual tweets that did not say 'thanks you for following me' targeted at followers, looks like a real person, but boy so little content, not worth following back. - Carl Grint

I think its the amount of posts is the give away. Even if people are just taking it in I do not like the idea of passive tweeters. You have to get in and get your hands dirty. - Sam Philp

Techcrunch has a lot of inactive followers recently because they're listed in the recommendation box for every new Twitter user. But I agree with other commenters, who follows you and how active they are is irrelevant. The real power of Twitter and all social media is in the conversation, not in the lurking. - Stuart Dallas

On twitter I always page back through recent tweets before following someone back. Generally speaking if I find at least one message or link that's interesting I follow them. I'm not hugely bothered if I'm not followed back. It's not always bidirectional, what you get out doesn't always correspond to what you put in and that's why I find it useful. - John Samuelson from BuddyFeed

I think reasons to why I don't interact more, is that 1) my English is limited 2) I feel I don't know enough about the subject, but still have a great interest in it 3) I am a quiet person... Would you guys block me? - "Jazzperous" Isaksson

"No Photo, No Friend" Sounds like a good qualifier. I can't help thinking though that there is a ton of people who try something like twitter just to see what it is, don't get it in the first 3 minutes and then give up. Shame. - Jay McCormack

I try to participate as much as possible but being just a happily married regular "Joe" with a nuclear family may not be very interesting to most. That said, I have received benefits in the form of personal and professional growth as a direct result of participation in social networks. - Mattb4rd

Sam, Stuart, John, Carl, bing, bing, bing. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Interesting how you can classify users based on who they are following and who is following them. The amount of interaction I'm getting here and on Twitter about this (despite it being 3 a.m. in the morning) tells me that people are finding this a real problem. - Robert Scoble

A bunch of ghost followers can make the difference, that's for sure. Stupid as it may seem, as a presentation card when you first check someone's tweets, it works. You say, hey this guy has 10000, 20000, 60000 followers so that must be for a certain reason spammers included. But still I wonder what the use is except for a bunch of extra work. It is clear that many will hold on to your tail just to feed on the hosting tweeter but they count too. I suppose that a proper balance is ok. - Carlos Lorenzo

Jeppe: I think it is a mixture of things. On facebook you'd never get friended because I use it for friends and family. On twitter you just would not get a follow back. Since everyone uses these applications differently it is really a contextual issue. Following me is much different than following Robert, Mike A, Doc Searls, etc. - Christopher Mercer

Mattb4rd makes an interesting point... problem is I don't think there's such a thing as a regular 'Joe'. Everyone has something to share, a passion, a hobby, a special knowledge of some sort. It's getting beyond the 'what i had for breakfast' posts that provide the real value. - Jay McCormack

Christoper: Yes, think you are right. - "Jazzperous" Isaksson

Carlos: well, now that the number of followers people have has no integrity I am looking under other rocks too and finding no integrity elsewhere. Some people really try to keep their accounts clean. Others, including me, let all sorts of muck in. I think I will clean that out. Why? Because now that I'm looking at other people's followers I see that having lame followers around isn't good at all. - Robert Scoble

Christopher: it's interesting, now that I stuck my foot in my mouth over the weekend on the Twitter suggested friends issue people who work for big brands have been talking to me about what they want on social networks. "Real" is a word I hear over and over again. Why? Because users who participate and push the brands are much more important than users who sit there and do nothing. They've already learned that, so why do we feel so compelled to gather up do nothing followers? I'm going to change that. - Robert Scoble

John: That's exactly the approach I use. Someone follows me? I will check out his tweets to see if there's at least a few that interest me - then I will follow back. The number of followers is of secondary concern to me. As for the number of tweets, I go for the opposite: I prefer less. - Matthias Catón

I don't follow anyone new back. Too many of them were flooding my timeline with no participation. If you want to follow me that's fine, but it's only with @ replies that you'll get me to pay attention to what you're doing. I might however drop by the blog. - Richard A.

I found a new algorithm: the quality of your follower count is totally dependent on how many accounts have non-default pictures. The problem is that if you actually wrote that algorithm and implemented it then the spammers would quickly figure out they better put a new photo on the account. - Robert Scoble

Robert: In my case I work according to a different algorithm. I unfollow anyone that hasn't replies a single time. I don't follow anyone new until they've exchange a few messages with me. If I want to listen to a monologue I simply go to their blog ;-) - Richard A.

Robert: This 'particular' influx of masses of spam accounts into Twitter is relatively new. Leo Laporte spoke about it recently. As Twitter gains more and more media coverage, it becomes a more attractive place for people to produce these spam accounts. I got an email through http://thetechnewsblog.com from one of my readers, to say she had been told that they controlled my a few users, who are planning some kind of mass attack on Twitter. Who knows? - Jim Connolly

Robert: I have been slowly coming to the same conclusion; it is not enough to be careful who you follow, you should also care about who follows you... But doesn't this mean Twitter should change the behavior of the Follow button to Ask Permission To Follow ? (or at least provide it as an option for those who want to filter their followers) - Antoine Bertier

Does it matter whether it's a picture (like of a human) or just non-default? - Jay McCormack

Twitter should forget about celebrity accounts and encourage dialogue. What makes any social network work is dialogue. Without conversation twitter would be gathering dust as a home server somewhere. - Richard A.

Robert, I think in your case the nothing followers are people who have decided to user twitter (in the example of twitter) to follow your activities. In my case they likely just want to spam me (hoping I follow back) and in the one case someone used @<username> to spam me, I blocked them. - Christopher Mercer

Jim: but look at the accounts that are following TechCrunch. Then compare to the accounts that are following me. Mine have pictures on them. Techcrunch's don't. Mine are participants who Tweet. TechCrunch's are not. It's very strange. - Robert Scoble

Christopher: I disagree. Some accounts are gathering a lot of these "fake" accounts than my account is, for instance. Why is that? - Robert Scoble

Robert: That's because Michael doesn't speak with his followers - just broadcasts TC posts. It's easy for spammers to 'follow' him without him noticing. You would notice it AND make some noise. - Jim Connolly

Jim: maybe, I'm not sure that's true. But it does seem to have something to do with the new Twitter suggested friends list. - Robert Scoble

A lot of posts are very helpful links to interesting things - which I appreciate. However it's seems really difficult to engage anyone in a real conversation or get an answer to a question. - Breck Stewart

Robert: If a spammer follows one of those 'suggested friends', they get MORE followers themselves. These accounts are super-active right now. By being seen on those follower lists, people follow the spammers too. It's only a small percentage, but if Veronica or Michael can get 60k new followers in 14 days, the numbers these spammers can get is higher, than if they followed me. On my list, very few people would 'see' them. - Jim Connolly

Finally some traction on this as I only brought it up on the 14th Feb ;) http://twitter.com/styleti... , as I commented on thetechnewsblog its not just about the fact they are fake and bolstering the numbers think what chaos or hram these 10's of 1000's could do to Twitter if they all started spamming or tweeting at once!? - roger byrne

You know, there is a website that lets you unfollow inactive users and users that never posted a tweet. Twitter Karma! http://dossy.org/twitter... - Gloson Teh

and if you look into it further the 'Norm' for these accounts is one update and all following 20-22 of Twitters suggested followers! - roger byrne

what Christopher Mercer said, on my personal id I only follow people who I think have something interesting to say or whose info I want to see, this also includes friends and family. On my projects id I look at every follower and as long as I don't think its a spam follower I follow them also, but I don't read the posts apart from the first page when I first sign in. There I'm providing info for others. I will reply to any questions of course. - Tina Clarke

Beau: no, thanks, I hadn't seen that yet. @ev is full of crap. These accounts are totally different than the average Twitter account. Look at my followers. Then go and look at the followers on any of the top 20 accounts. Totally different behavior (no icons, no posts). Personally I don't mind. Twitter has now corrupted itself and I really have lost all caring I used to have over that service. It's why I'm putting my friendfeed likes into Twitter now. I really have no incentive not to push everyone here. - Robert Scoble

I bet that by the end of March that Twitter goes through and deletes all sorts of accounts. Just watch. These accounts don't help the system out. They look lame because they are lame. - Robert Scoble

I'm real. I may be boring, but I'm real. ;) I block spammers and I don't automatically follow non-spammers back. I only follow people I am already friends with or new people I find interesting. A particular pet peeve of mine is being followed by self-gurus and social network marketing "experts". Ironically, after complaining about these "Tony Robbins types" on Twitter I was followed by the director of Robbins' films. ;) - Eric Williams

Eric: no doubt YOU are real. But here's one of the lame accounts: http://twitter.com/Serious... -- following only 20 people. No followers. No messages. Only standard icon. This was created by a computer, not by a human being. Now, go through any of the 20 people he's following and look at the follower accounts. They are all lame! I love it, create tons of fake accounts and make your numbers higher and higher. - Robert Scoble

"This was created by a computer, not by a human being." - As a categorical statement, I think this goes too far. It could easily be the equivalent of discussion forum lurking. - John Craft

John: sorry, I disagree. The pattern is out of wack. I'm sure there might be a few people who exhibit this pattern, but not thousands among thousands. Also, the pattern changed a few weeks ago. Explain that. - Robert Scoble

@john craft Bull and you know it ;) check through pages of followers in fact pick page 200 of any of the ppl and you can see how many accounts this really is that we are discussing here, you ever saw 100,000 lurkers before because this is what this amounts to! Now opposite to Robert I believe these people have no responsibility for this but also the fact there has been no action against it beggars belief why? This could seriously screw up their service! - roger byrne

And, John, let's say you are right, that these are real humans who created on their own the same kind of account. Follow just the same 20 people. Don't change your icon. Don't post a Tweet. Etc. Etc. Are they as valuable as, say, the people who are following me who actually post, actually have attractive icons, actually follow more than just the defaults? No way, no how. They aren't "real" to advertisers. Why not? Because they exhibit no behavior that will turn into sales. THAT is what advertisers want. - Robert Scoble

the pattern changed for all accounts at the same time chk twitter counter its 9th -11th of Feb for all these accounts... - roger byrne

"They aren't "real" to advertisers." That, I agree with. - John Craft

Roger: Twitter is now corrupted and we are just starting to understand the beginnings of what happens when you corrupt your community. Luckily we have a non-corrupted community here to contrast with Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Thank Robert I love Twitter and it HAS changed my life so I have no plans to leave or to accuse people of wrong doing but if it was my baby I sure would be taking care of it much more! - roger byrne

roger: me too, but they don't listen to their real users. I guess I should have just been a user like TechCrunch. In fact, I'm starting to understand just how right Mike Arrington is when he pointed out to me that I should blog more on a service that I can control. - Robert Scoble

This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. If I'm twittering a robot then I'm wasting my time! - Captain Jack

Captain: nah, I've learned over and over again that blogging/twittering into the wind actually can be useful. I've Twittered things just to get them off my chest, for instance. I've also blogged things just to get them into Google so I can pull them out later. On Twitter I could get readers just by having fun with http://search.twitter.com -- no followers needed. - Robert Scoble

Captain: it's a serious issue because this, and the very lamely developed suggested friends feature, demonstrate that there's something Rotten in the State of Denmark. But we already knew that because of how many times we have seen the fail whale over past two years. - Robert Scoble

I find myself checking to see if someone has a blog in their profile also. So for me it's photo+blog=friend. - Jay McCormack

As the government is so keen to do when there is wrong doing, they call for an investigation. I think its time to call for an investigation and demand answers. I for one don't want to use a system that inflates its number for personal gain. I have discovered that having control is better when social networking. Twitter reminds me of those networking lunches where everyone is expected to give 2 referrals. - Russ Jackson

And all of these "followers" follow exactly 20 people... I'm enlightened. I was wondering what was happening to my modest Twitter account when it suddenly started attracting all kinds of unlikely followers recently - but it's probably the same thing, machines, and not a sudden burst in popularity. Oh, well. Thanks for reminding me of my FriendFeed account via Twitter. - Terje Fjelde

Jay: that certainly works for me. Russ: I don't worry too much about it. If I can figure this out with 15 minutes of poking around so can everyone else. I am sure a bunch of these accounts will disappear soon. Twitter doesn't want to be embarrassed by this because it won't help them monetize anyway. Unless they are charging per thousand views and then advertisers will figure out the accounts aren't real very quickly anyway. - Robert Scoble

Playing devil's advocate: Isn't it also possible that many of these "lame" accounts belong to people who just recently joined? They haven't spruced up their profiles, haven't had the courage to tweet, only follow recommended twits, and are generally feeling their way around the service before getting fruitfully involved. Of those, I bet a large number decide Twitter isn't for them and leave their accounts dormant. - Eric Williams

Eric: it's possible, but very unlikely (it's also possible I could win the lottery four times in a row). After all, this was NOT the behavior of lurkers BEFORE Feb. 6. Why would it change on that date? You really think there are lurkers out there who'll behave exactly the same in groups of thousands? I don't. Not possible, because of how people get pulled into Twitter. You get pulled in by your friends. So, there will be some variability there. - Robert Scoble

Robert I agree if you can figure it out in 15 minutes than everyone else can too. I was saying it tongue and cheek. It says something about those who have to inflate there numbers though. Perhaps they are lacking in something or in an area. LOL - Russ Jackson

Sounds like you're really letting this nonsense get to you. Relax. The free market of ideas that is the net will sort it out before long. If Twitter sucks, it won't survive. Then again, I'd have expected MySpace to die a horrible death long ago. Hmm...maybe Twitter won't die, but it'll become an internet ghetto for the terminally lame (like AOL). ;) - Eric Williams

my app works on its own as well as as the frontend for the twitter team themselves. Instead of having to report @spam and then go through all your friends to find the bastard to block.... it would auto-parse out 'potential and known' spammers into a group.. one click and your account is clean, meanwhile any new ones are sent off to a convenient way for the twitter team to once-over the account to see if its legit or if its spam. - Brent Terrazas

Eric: online communities have been getting to me since 1985. You're right, just because something sucks doesn't guarantee its death. In fact, it can easily get much more popular, even with these flaws. That said, now I have something new to think about. It's not the end of the world. Just the end of the importance of followers. :-) - Robert Scoble

In the last month there have actually been close to 7 full blown twitter mass account creation and/or twitter mass account spammer apps released. Some cost over $200. Regardless, everyone i Affiliate marketing is going ga-ga over this... this is literally the beginning of a new era of twitter spam.. - Brent Terrazas

I never gave a rat's ass how many people followed me anyway. As long as I have enough followers to maintain interesting conversations, I'm happy. :) - Eric Williams

Eric: you don't need any followers to have interesting conversations. Friendfeed proves that. :-) - Robert Scoble

This is my first real FriendFeed convo. I'm still not entirely comfortable here. Keeping track of conversations feels like too much work. Either I have to visit the web page and manually reload or use something like Twhirl and drown in a flood of data. Am I just really dense? Is there an easier way to keep up without being overwhelmed that I just don't know? Is the learning curve less steep than I think? - Eric Williams

Are followers following someone else's follows just because they deem that person to be an influential tweeter? - Mark Fletcher

Eric: I just use the web page and refresh. - Robert Scoble

Mark: I don't think so. Three weeks ago I was on Twitter's top 10 list, so should be getting nailed if that's the case. I'm not getting nailed that way. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Excuse my ignorance, but surely you know someone with connections at Twitter? Ask them. There's something seriously weird going on. - Jim Connolly

Jim: I'll ask Biz when I wake up. - Robert Scoble

Still trying to get my head round friend feed. as far a Twitter goes, I follow a few "celebrities" and interesting people but most of my actual "tweets" are intended for my family and real life friends. I guess most people who don't know me personally won't be interested that I've just walked the dogs or I'm going to bed, but friends and family will be as they will know if it is ok to phone or visit me. My facebook is really only intended for my family. - Andy

Robert, you and I think a lot alike so there's really nothing more I can add. It. would be nice to have some sort of threshhold setting that a person has to have nnn posts before you can follow them. But then, that could be gamed also. - Keith Barrett

they're building them like you build blog farms.... at first while amassing quantity, you don't spam outsiders, u link up and spit out aggregated comments, then at somme point boom.. all 5k go off and spam.... onto the next 5k...etc..friending a top 10 would=ban - Brent Terrazas

I don't twitter a lot but that is because who would find my changing nappies and going to pick up the kids from school interesting? Okay maybe one day of that but everyday the same tweets? I'm one of the ones that find other lives more interesting than my own at the moment until things start to get interesting in my own!!!! and no I'm not embarrassed to admit that. - May

A large chunk are just people that are hoarding contacts. - Gerard van Schip

Beau: the main goal of a private account seems to be to make the tweets private (they are do not appear in everyone, or in search for instance). The interesting side effect is that you get to filter your followers, but there is no reason to limit this feature to private accounts. The issue is not to prevent valueless accounts to get my updates (since they are meant to be public) it is rather to prevent them from polluting the list of followers that appear on my profile. - Antoine Bertier

Almost every time I "tweet" I get several notices that so and so is now following me. when I go through to their accounts, twitter have usually deleted them or they have nonsense tweets about this or that product that i "need" to enhance my life - Andy

What is real? I have to remind you, Robert, that we met online. And now we are real. I met @stevegillmor, @karoli, @mobilejones, and so many more people online and they are as real to me as @chelseahardaway, my daughter, who is now also my online friend. It' a blur. I know tons of my Twitter and FB friends personally. - Francine Hardaway from twhirl

Where's the white paper on this? You should be writing it. - Francine Hardaway from twhirl

I seem to have added about 50-60 followers in the last day or on Twitter, which is unusual for me. Honestly, I wonder why as I am not a heavyweight twitterer...nor do I think I post anything particularly profound or even useful. The only things I changed recently were putting a bio, blog link and headshot in, so I assume that this is what many people look for...I think the human factor is sometimes lost with the proliferation of social networking. - John Samuelson

I have a number of accounts in places where I participate by observation. Seriously. We all pick and choose what we do with limited time and endless choices of what to do with that time. I've only been "twitter-active" for the last week or so, "twitter-dormant" for a year or two. The point is that I don't recommend writing off the silent majority as spammers or of no use. They contribute by being the audience for much of what goes on, via Twitter and other channels. - Colin Wheeler

Are you going to blog your numbers? That would be cool if you did. - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Also, an analogy I like using - swimming in the sea; some folk are OK to jump in where it's deep, others want to slowly inch their way into the waves, others will stand still and wait until the tide reaches their chest ... but they are all getting wet! And probably all will end up swimming to one degree or another. Well, it sort of explains my point ;-) - Colin Wheeler

It's amazing how many fake accounts I see trying to connect with me. I'm still a small Twitter user and getting everyday a couple of spams, is way too much. - Zack Brandit

Robert, are you trying to fight with Turing test? :) - A.T.

Speaking only for myself: I follow a lot of people because in my position (someone who teaches new media journalism) it is a potentially valuable way of keeping up with thought leaders (like you, Robert!) ... and is increasingly replacing my use of RSS feeds. While I would also like to accumulate my own cadre of followers, at this point in time I still prefer to spend my time on longer, more thoughtful items (i.e., blog posts) than tweets. That may change in the future. - Rich Gordon

i'm real.... just real quiet :) - todd

I am a human :) - Joe Dawson

I like to follow Twitter conversations from my iPhone but often don't like to type out a response if I'm away from a keyboard. And it just feels odd responding to a tweet that's been up for a while. So not sure if that makes me one of the odd ones that watches more than comments, but it works for me :) - craterdweller

Have you seen Brooks Bayne's post on this subject: http://brooksbayne.com/post... - seems to confirm what you're saying Robert. I've been thinking of zeroing my twitter followers and asking the real people to re-follow. Bet I'd lose 50% or more. - Leo Laporte

Maybe I should start working again on my little web app, that lists your followers and the date of their most recent tweet. I guess it's also possible to get the number of updates along with this time/date... - Holger Eilhard

Last summer I took a look at the full feed from Identi.ca, and found that around 25% of all registered users had posted only once. Only half had posted more than 5 times, and IIRC, the 80/20 "rule" applied and ~80% of the traffic came from the top 20% of users. I'd be surprised if Twitter's stats were much different (chart: http://kshep.posterous.com/more-id...) - Ken Sheppardson

I think there's a lot of dormant accounts. Join, use the service for a bit, then fade away. Takes too much work to maintain a lot of networking sites. - Barry Biddlecomb from twhirl

I think there are only 5 real people out there. :) - mikepk

I think real <> volume. Isn't the value of this technology many frequent intersections on many different threads...Is there a map that shows the frequency of those people's interactions elsewhere? We (I) don't all have time to trawl through the feeds alll the time. It's an attention economy and we (I) split it between about 7 sources on average every day..? - dromologue

mikepk: I'm convinced there are ~101,000 real people, as I've seen that many in one place at one time in person (Michigan Stadium.. Go Blue). The rest is all CGI. Of course there's no reason you should believe me, as I'm just part of the plot to deceive you. - Ken Sheppardson

I'm real . Blip beep zip <CR> <LF> - Ken Pruett

I'm real, at least I'm pretty sure I'm real. - Aram Zucker-Scharff from twhirl

Far better of an argument is how much traffic is truly real. - Patricia

I think active users who are authentic = real. I have been getting lots of phonies following me lately. Get real! - Jeremy Campbell from twhirl

wow, such a long and winded thread discussing phenomena of followers and following. it is very simple, really. follow whom you think is interesting to you and with whom there might be possible exchange of information and life experience. I do find Robert and some of his friends quite intersting. I do however not follow the A-lister bloggers or entrepreneurs whose feeds are prevalently twitter insider info. Fake followers? That happens, it is inevitable with FF- and Twitter-like architecture. Live with it. - Hayk H.

I find twitter is just a entertainment tool. It's better served for popular people to make fans feel like they have a live channel to their idol. Marina of hotforword.com uses twitter for such purpose. She doesn't even follow me on twr and I'm her assistant on her website. Micro blogging just waste too much time when one could spend it on adding more content to your master blog. - Captain Jack

I'm real. But I must admit that I do a lot more following on twitter (and here) than posting. And I only follow informed people. Don't care for the silly stuff. - lolise

I just got a bunch of new Twitter followers with obviously computer generated names like e3fG4q etc. - KyleHase from twhirl

This thread proves one thing, Robert: your friendfeed followers certainly are "real." :) The number of comments on this thread are a bit overwhelming. - Steve Lynch from twhirl

It's not about "how many" - it's who, in what context, and by what percentage. Check out http://twitter-friends.com for a glimpse of the social network analytics that addresses these questions. - Lawrence Liu

Greetings Robert, some of us use the social channel as our news source. We do not input a lot however we are consumers of the feed. Does that make us not real? - James Tallman

James: you're real, I wouldn't worry. Here's the deal, though. "Real" people always exhibit random behavior. Always. Whenever you see 10,000 people who sign in, add the same people, don't do any posts, don't customize their icon, don't add any random friends, that can be demonstrated to be fake. Why? Cause everyone hears about Twitter from someone else and there's variability in the friends they add. At least there was before February 6. What happened after that date? Twitter's community was corrupted. - Robert Scoble

I'd say based on recent twitter experience about 25%. I'm a relative nobody, and my followers quadrupled. My guess is they are all REAL nobodies. - jcunwired

The challenge is that many tools use the number of followers to "rank" you and make you an influencer. Is it right? No, but we have to play with the rules we have. - Julio F ~ @SocialJulio

For us newbies on twitter and friendfeed, it's pretty challenging navigating all the comments. A lot of interesting stuff out there but it moves so fast you almost have to be plugged in 24/7 to catch the conversation that most interests you. That's tough when we all have lives outside the Internet ;-) I'm wondering if there are unwritten "rules" I missed somewhere...How long can we be silent (attending to other business) and still be considered "real" followers? - Donna Horne

Julio: bing. Which is why the integrity of Twitter is now gone. Advertisers might be fooled, but not for long. This world passes info around so fast it'll make your head spin so anyone who buys advertising (or hands out access or something else like review units) based on Twitters follower numbers is lame and deserves to be ripped off. - Robert Scoble

I believe twitters integrity is being challenged by its own success and spamming, hopefully this opens up the market for friendsfeed and 3rd party filtering applications. - Carl Plant

Carl: Twitter's integrity is being challenged by its own stupid decisions and lame algorithms. But they probably will just arrogantly write off this as the ranting of someone who was punished by them. Which is true. - Robert Scoble

Robert - bingo! - Susan Beebe

I'll only follow if people have made the effort to upload a photo, sent at least a few messages to show me they're going to give me something to follow and most of all - dont proclaim they are the best at anything / use their twitter account as a billboard.. - Matt Randles

also, a tool to go through existing contacts and see those who have less than 10 updates or say no updates in the last 90 days ... with intention of removing would be cool, unfortunatly the twitter api limits mean running it would have to be low process and could take a long time.. - Matt Randles

Stowe Boyd

Halle Berry’s ass, in Last Boy Scout - http://ambivalence.tumblr.com/post...

February 21 from /ambivalence - Comment - Like - Share

MVB (Grinch of FF) liked this

Halle Berry's brests, in Swordfish: http://www.metacafe.com/watch... - Lawrence Liu

Lordy... - Hutch Carpenter

Lawrence Liu

"Why Intel is investing in Social Computing" http://communities.intel.com/openpor... & leveraging Telligent platform to do so. V-exciting things to come!

February 13 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jeroen De Miranda, Nicholas James, Jeremiah Owyang and 7 other people liked this

The "islands" of social software apps is a growing theme. Information Silos 2.0, good to see Intel tackling it (and nice for you Lawrence!). - Hutch Carpenter

What excites me most about Intel is that they are extremely analytical about determining the benefits of social computing. They measure and analyze as many factors as they can. They understand that Social Media != Social Networking. They recognize the ongoing importance of email. They know that E2.0 isn't just about shiny UI and social apps. Working with them, we hope to establish baseline metrics that can be used as benchmarks for other companies. - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

planetrussell.net - Conversations at the Corrossroads Social Media & Emerging Technologies : Can There Ever be "Too Many Notes?" - http://planetrussell.net/blog...

February 6 from Intense Debate - Comment - Like - Share

"Unstructured content (which includes social media) is increasing exponentially. Analytics/reporting is key to reveal/track/correlate emergent signals. I'm proud to say that Telligent has invested early to tackle this (huge) problem. You can read more about what we're doing on my blog: http://communityzenmaster.com/blogs......" - Lawrence Liu

Robert Scoble

My computing shrine:

January 19, 2009 from email - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, MicahBear78, Daniele Di Gregorio and 64 other people liked this

I spent a lot of time over the past week organizing my office and getting everything neat in preparation for building a live studio. It isn't quite as cool yet as Laporte's or Pirillo's but it is getting there. What does your office look like? - Robert Scoble from email

31 more comments

Office looks great! ^__^ - Nia

Those laptops are just in the right height for the little guy in the picture :) - Jemm

Oh, my office is so not ready for the public. I have papers everywhere. I'll just go with a description. I have two massive corner desks, each with computers. Wedged between them is a drafting desk. Before the wall of desks is my 6ft worktable, and behind that various odds and ends I've never organized. - xero

Reworking the workspace was one of my holiday projects that kind of went belly-up in a sea of laziness. Hoping to revisit that soon. It's too variable right now. - Jared Smith

You don't want to see my office. Looks like a bomb went off. My camera is safe inside a Pelican case and I'm not worried unless a bear attacks it, a shark bites it, or a child under 5 touches it. - Anthony Thompson

My office: a Dell widescreen laptop and a pot of coffee. And a lamp. - Will Conley

wait..are there not child labor laws> How much are you paying your admin in this photo? - Kevin Murray

@RealtyMan's "Command Central" looks like this http://twitpic.com/ttlo - Gerry Realtyman Bourgeois

Looks like serious carbon footprint :-) - Majento

WoW!! something to aspire.. - Prakash

The geek room in the basement of my office is going to be my studio, but I need to dig out the functional silicon based life forms that inhabit that space. - Greg Birch

Gerry: I like yours better! - Robert Scoble

like you can use more than three of those computers at the same time for something useful, tha'ts not video encoding rendering or clustering (for the latter laptop don't make sense at all, by the way, they have screens drawing unused power) - Dorian Muthig

That looks like an ADD nightmare. - Dean Clark

I usually only usetso computers at any one time. Some of these are for testing stuff out. The Sonos and Samsung are on loan. Gotta give those back in February. - Robert Scoble

Agree with Dean - way too many screens. I have two 21" widescreens, and it's just right. - Lawrence Liu

No TV's in there? I wonder how you have your gameroom set up. - Amani

all you really need is a 12" Thinkpad X61s - think environment, guys! - Migger

I have the same screen-count but one of them is an old Atari ST :-) - Frank Rennemann

Eunuchs waiting on you and everything!!! But wait till you see mine... - sofarsoShawn

Ok I give in. Will buy this http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/emperor... - Migger

You can't really be using *all* of those laptops...? - Charles Bihis

Nah, actually right now I'm using the Dell and the Mac Mini. - Robert Scoble

Looks like a real TweetDeck central. ;-) - Rutger Blom

My project over the summer as well. No shelves-messy desks - lots of cumputers.. - Roberto Bonini

Nice setup you have there - Onur Gündüz

Ever determine what this does to your power bill, Robert? - David Bisset (sn)

Robert, I don't think you have enough computers there. - Steven Perez

Wish I had the space... I have that many and more in half of that. - Ian D. Nock from twhirl

What? No Commodore 64? :P - Johnny Worthington

Here is my techy corner in my appartment: http://i.friendfeed.com/370e18f... - Qbat

Like it. Gotta do a little straightening up, then I'll post my studio area. - Dave Curlee

Lawrence Liu

The FASTForward Blog : Is it time for Social Media to grow up? - http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2009...

January 14, 2009 from Intense Debate - Comment - Like - Share

"Sure is taking a long while. I'm waiting anxiously for my comment from last night to show back up, so I can reference it on another blog's comment that I'm about to post. :-)" - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Re: Forrester Research Wave Report Evaluates Online Community Technology Platforms - http://www.attentionmax.com/blog...

January 14, 2009 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Yes, it's possible to integrate Disqus or other 3rd party commenting systems (like JS-Kit) into Community Server. Ping me at LLiu[at]Telligent.com, and I'll get you connected w/ the right people to help." - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Re: Forrester Research Wave Report Evaluates Online Community Technology Platforms - http://www.attentionmax.com/blog...

January 13, 2009 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Yes, Max, we're definitely listening. :-) Thank you for your affirmation that Telligent is truly a platform vendor and your feedback re: open source. As Telligent's Director of Platform Strategy, I am responsible for keeping the company on track as an industry leader in having the most robust and extensible platform. And I fully appreciate that in today's competitive landscape, no software platform can be strategically viable without a vibrant community of developers and a diverse ecosystem of solution provider partners. We have some exciting plans for 2009, but I'm not quite ready to provide details just yet. Please don't hesitate to ping me with any questions or ideas. Lawrence Liu http://twitter.com/lliu" - Lawrence Liu

Robert Worstell

Untitled - http://www.buzzstream.com/blog...

November 4, 2008 from StumbleUpon - Comment - Like - Share

Yes, metrics that indicate the quality of conversations are important and, yes, people should get more out social media participation than financial gain. Frankly, I don't think you can be successful without these things. But at the end of the day, if participation isn't going to result in revenue for the business, the initiatives aren't going to get funded and it's all for naught. Marketers can get away with this now because we're still deep in the early adopter phase, but this won't last long. Particularly in this economic environment, companies are going to move quickly from exclusively measuring things that indicate level of participation to measurements that tie to revenue. You can't determine the right metric without first identifying the goals - Robert Worstell

Agreed. But we will continue to invest heavily in social analytics for our platform. Here's a bit more info: http://communityzenmaster.com/blogs... - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Re: Defrag08 Presentation - http://theappslab.com/2008...

November 4, 2008 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Paul, per our post-session chat, we actually have much of this worked out and productized. More details on my blog post: http://communityzenmaster.com/blogs....... I look forward to chatting a lot more about this important/exciting topic with you in the future." - Lawrence Liu

Joining Dots

RIP: ROI :: Blog :: Headshift - http://www.headshift.com/blog...

November 3, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Disagree! See my thoughts at http://communityzenmaster.com/blogs... - Lawrence Liu from twhirl

Gary Burd

AOL Mail Blog - An Open Letter to Gmail: Happy Halloween! We love your costume! - http://mailblog.aol.com/2008...

October 31, 2008 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Philip John, Varun "Maverick" Pitale, Ekin Acar and 6 other people liked this

"They say imitation is the best form of flattery, so Gmail, we thank you and we are indeed very flattered." - Gary Burd from Bookmarklet

16 more comments

Wow. I can't believe they would post something like this. - Paul Buchheit

Yah, I can't believe this would slip by their PR/marketing departments. So resentful and weird. - Bret Taylor

Written like a true has-been. - Dan Hsiao

Came across as bitter and resentful. Kinda like the second most popular girl in college getting turned down for harvard ( Legally Blonde Style). - Roberto Bonini

It's interesting that GMail then pulled the SMS gateway for technical reasons, I'm sure some conspiracy theories will be advanced - Casey Muller

Well, it *is* Halloween afterall. How about some sense of humor, guys? - Lawrence Liu

They seem to focus on features. With most products I want, usability > features. - Amit Patel

Consider: Halloween + Friday + a few drinks = "Oh no they did NOT just announce SMS messaging! We've had that for like a year! I'm totally blogging about this shit. Screw PR." - Andrew Bonventre

Aw, lighten up you guys. I think it's awesome that they're speaking their true feelings without a PR filter. And funny, if a bit sad. Plus, you know, many a famous comic has been no less bitter. - j1m

It's funny, but not in the way they intended :) - Paul Buchheit

I remember a year ago when AOL completely ripped off the Yahoo! frontpage. What hypocrites. - Aaron Krug

♫ Never gonna give you up/ never gonna stop those bills/ never gonna run around with your search logs (ok sometimes) ♪ - Philipp Lenssen

AOL has webmail? - Kevin Fox

Seriously though, check out the comments on that post. I think they'll get the message that their tone didn't quite hit the mark. - Kevin Fox

What a dick move, and from a search partner no less. - Josh Wills

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That's the only response I can come up with. (said with a big L finger on my forehead) - Trish R

Sad. - abacab

Lawrence Liu

Re: in.Telligent Day -2 : Simpable - http://simpable.com/busines...

October 18, 2008 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Wait .. there's makeup involved? What kinda conference is this anyway? :-)" - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Re: in.Telligent Day -2 : Simpable - http://simpable.com/busines...

October 18, 2008 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"Per my announcement a couple of weeks ago, my last day at Microsoft is October 10th. I will be joining Telligent<http://www.telligent.com/> as Director of Platform Strategy on October 13th. My new e-mail address will be LLiu@telligent.com<mailto:LLiu@telligent.com>. My new blog address will be http://CommunityZenMaster.com/blogs.... You can continue to keep track of me via Twitter at http://twitter.com/lliu or FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/lliu. For technical information on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, go first to http://MSSharePointCommunity.com. For any further questions or escalations, please contact Arpan Shah via ArpanS@microsoft.com<mailto:ArpanS@microsoft.com>. Thanks and have a great day! And I hope that our paths will cross again in the future. Lawrence Liu "Be the Change you wish to see in the world!" -- Gandhi" - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing : Start a company in a recession? Absolutely! - http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_nex...

October 17, 2008 from Intense Debate - Comment - Like - Share

"Heh, this is only a good time to start a company if you have a great idea that you're truly passionate about and are willing to commit to it for at least 2-3 years. And definitely try to avoid VC money for as long as you possibly can." - Lawrence Liu

Lawrence Liu

Re: Blogging From Word : Simpable - http://simpable.com/softwar...

October 11, 2008 from Disqus - Comment - Like - Share

"I can see the post just fine. AFAIK, Word 2007 supports the Metaweblog API, which Graffiti, Community Server, and even SharePoint uses to handle blog posting from a client." - Lawrence Liu

Jeremiah Owyang

im burning out.

September 25, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Lu Tao, peter corbett, Roberto Bonini and 7 other people liked this

feeling the same way but must keep on like @garyvee said at web 2.0 keynote ....passion - Wayne Sutton

11 more comments

rest...rest...rest - Susan Beebe

I have pushed through the burn out phase about 3 times, I just kept pushing. It's hard though. I Sympathize with you - Josh from twhirl

Take Friday off. - Louis Gray

Reduce your Twitter and FriendFeed usage, and engage more at that trampolin place in Santa Clara. - imabonehead

Yup...been there. With my bipolar, I see hardcore burnout about every two years. - Stephen Pierzchala

hmm I think i need to clarify my comment, I mean on the specific project I am working on now, not in my entire life, but seriously everyone needs a night off from time to time. Tonight I'm watching season 2 of Heros and eating some tres leches cake. It's my wind down time. - Josh from twhirl

imabonehead. I have, look at my activity and on my blog --I'm barely here compared to previous - Jeremiah Owyang

Definitely can relate. Do what Louis said! Heck I just might! - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Twitter-free Fridays, man - Jesse Stay

Been there. Done that. Many times over. You really need to stop and take a break for at least 3 days being totally disconnected. The world will still be around when you return. :-) - Lawrence Liu

I am in the opposite rhythm. I am working my butt off but having a ton of fun with new ideas that - if I can execute - will really have an impact. - Steve Rubel

It depends on what part of what you do, but usually burn out comes when reward doesn't outweigh the work. Maybe you're secretly not happy with something? Or something is too much? Take a day and talk with a good trusted advisor or friend. It'll help. - Patricia

Lawrence Liu

ZOMG!!! Live Mesh kicks ass!!! What's public now is only the tip of the iceberg! Amazingly good $h!+ that's Ray's brainchild. Wow!!!

September 18, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Dillon TenBrink, Jeff Sandquist, adolfo foronda and 7 other people liked this

The whole "file synchronization is just the tip of the Live Mesh iceberg" thing is getting old. Until the 'softies ship something that isn't file synchronization, the Live Mesh iceberg is just an ice cube. - Pat Rice

4 more comments

This would sound less like crap if you weren't the sharepoint product manager. Meaningless fanboy talk sounds pretty shrill from a corporate shill. - Kevin Goldsmith from twhirl

You'll see a bit more than "just file sync" within the next month, especially at PDC. :-) - Lawrence Liu from twhirl

honestly I like Live Mesh but it will truely wow me when I can integrate more devices to my mesh. I know it's coming, just a matter of when. - Bryan

Kevin, so is his opinion invalid because he works for Microsoft? Or is it only valid if he's *condemning* the product? Or is he supposed to append a legal disclaimer to every single tweet stating that he works for Microsoft and therefore his opinions might be horribly, horribly tainted? :-D - Karim

And Kevin, while we're being all transparent 'n shit, maybe you could go into a little more detail as to your relationship with Adobe Systems Inc.? ;-) - Karim

Lawrence Liu › Comments