and then I will comment on whoever follows me here...
- Alpay Erturkmen
Louis, I recently got the "high five" DM spam, too. So off-putting!
- Robert J Taylor
from iPhone
I just need to spend more time setting up FF so it is my friend that intercepts all my social media content but only from who I want to read!
- Pentaxfan
Friend feed seems like mainstream to most serious ones?
- jibzy
Friendfeed has it's strengths once you get it setup
- Chris Lindhartsen
@robert whether or not FF is technically better than <insertsocialnetwork> its really a question of said network reach
- Sean Scott
Once a week I go through my followers and delete most/all of the spammers, but I only have like 50-60 so it's not hard to do.
- Allison Warnock
Let's hope the spammers and bots and etc don't attack us here on FriendFeed next. I won't tell them if you don't.
- Louis Trapani
from iPhone
Sean: well, FF has better search, grouping, real time, a better community, and more.
- Robert Scoble
In two years on Twitter I have never used any bots nor even tried to sell anything. I always look at profiles personally before following anyone and have never been concerned with how many are following me.
- Gord Young
See, cross posting that offer to Twitter is misleading
- Kevin Krewell
It is fun to watch my follower ## on Twitter go between 200 and 230 it is a constant battle to see what I post. Just not that interesting at times!
- Pentaxfan
Interesting project! Please follow us @streamfile :)
- Kimmo Gläborg
Checking in here...hope we continue to follow each other, Robert!
- Cathryn Hrudicka
I'm pretty sure I've commented here before Robert, but you don't follow me here or on Twitter. Not that I want you to under just for the sake of it...
- Gurpreet
Today's secret password is "cheese".
- Andrew Smith
...only if you actually find my tweets interesting enough.
- Gurpreet
It's Unfollow Sunday. Just purged all the bots, spammers, SEO/social media types from my own Twitter account. I never autofollow. Still got the "high five" DM spam, though...
- Dennis Jernberg
Nice when you integrate Facebook and twitter and multiple accounts so you can read all at one place. I have to say I use Seesmic to read posts more than FF.
- Pentaxfan
bit bucket... here i come :) ps: scoble, what if we just "like" your post ;)
- simran
@pentaxfan of course. not wanting to start a FF vs Twitter debate. just saying the glasses through which we judge better or superior are diff based on our interests. Plus in the end FB will take it all :P
- Sean Scott
This is a sly way to get us to sign up for FF :)
- valb00
According to my following list, Scoble was the second person I followed after joining Twitter. A long time ago that was.
- Stephen Sclafani
UX tip for FF. Be nice to be able to click on the comment link at the end of a comment stream. Having to scroll back up on these long threads breaks flow.
- Sean Scott
Kimber: wait and watch http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... and see if I like any of your posts. I read a LOT and if you are posting interesting stuff I'll probably like it.
- Robert Scoble
Sean: click twice on the time stamp and you'll get a window of just this chat and you'll see a comment entry area at the bottom.
- Robert Scoble
You will end up following me anyway. They all will. :)
- Matt G
But you're already following me here on Friendfeed, Robert. How is Twitter going to be different?
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
FriendFeed is better, deeper, yet Twitter works better on the go
- Majento
There's a lot to like about FF, except it needs a bigger community. Twitter is like the iPhone - for iPhone it's all the applications, with Twitter (and Facebook) it's all about the number of poeple.
- Kevin Krewell
@Sean, that is why we are always looking for new and improved apps to operate at a better level with more consistency. Take it easy! I'm off to bed for my 5 hours of mediocre horizontal time out.
- Pentaxfan
Hi Robert, you are obviously going to be following a lot more people. Thanks.
- Rob Zachritz
And I return. (Just cleared my account so I can start afresh with friend lists) :)
- BeauGiles
Robert, you have lost a lot of followers. I have been watching all night.
- TheHenry
I don't get the appeal of auto-following. I for one would not want thousands of updates showing up in my timeline.
- Alex Knight
Twitter -ly ♪ and FriendFeed -ly ♪ livin' in perfect har-mony ♪♪♪ LOL Why can't we be friends ♪♪♪
- RetiredTeacherD
Just created a corporate FF account so you can follow our corporate Twitter at http:/www.twitter.com/senderok - Plug-in with anti-phishing icons for the inbox and photo business cards in the header pane
- SenderOK
I'm here I'm here! :D just curious, what do you have against SEO and Social Media experts?
- Celia
Really? BTW I'm just a regular geeky gal.
- Teresa O
TheHenry: and I will lose even more this week. No biggie. I don't define myself by who follows me, especially if they are there just to get a follow back.
- Robert Scoble
We're already facebook friends. And I think friendfeed friends too. But FF just hasn't hit critical mass yet. It'll be cool when it does. Nice job throwing another rock at the hornet's nest! :-)
- Dan Becker
Rory: the catch is I might like one of your posts and then you'll have to deal with my other friends. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I'm glad to know that you are still interested in hearing from us :), I'm @tsudo
- Keith - @tsudo
Robin: I have only seen a handful of spams here. They are easily blocked and there are other defenses against them that I won't talk about here.
- Robert Scoble
Are we not allowed to comment if you are already following us?
- RobinDotNet
Are all those SEO types you're unfollowing now following me?!
- Dennis Jernberg
Thing I don't like is that FF doesn't have a very good topic when the primary line is directed at twitter. There may or may not be a link to something after FF part. Which means FF becomes a bit of a treasure hunt. I like FF for commentary but I hate the initial post.
- Justin Howard
Robert: Thanks mate, interesting and probably efficient idea. I'll do the same for quality content, tired of those "I just used whateveryoucallit.com to gain 300 new followers right now!".
- Nir Ben Yona
Hi Robert, I had to do the exact same thing to nail all the twit spam I was getting. Hope you get it all sorted!
- James Brown
Even as we sit here, my iPhone dings with new follow e-mails from spam/marketing people. Sigh.
- RobinDotNet
Stephane: LOL, probably. I took this line from Chris Brogan's "Twitter Etiquette Guide".
- Nir Ben Yona
The joys of not being internet famous means I can check out followers personally, block where required and I've only ever got about 2 DM spam. But with the volumes that Robert gets, it's obviously not possible.
- Rachel Clarke
I think Twitter needs something like captcha to keep the bots to a minimum, IMHO.
- Dennis Jernberg
Robert -- yes, on twitter. It seems the more you tweet, and the more people you communicate with, the more spammers follow you. Hoping for auto-follows I guess (I disappoint them in that regard.)
- RobinDotNet
Good way to filter, you know the spammers don't actually read anything or participate
- Justin Luey
What is the utility of being "followed" by someone who doesn't tweet and who follows thousands? What do they do, sit at their terminal and watch the tweets go by all day long?
- RobinDotNet
First day on Friend Feed and Robert Scoble is available. What a welcome.... Carey@holisticdds
- Carey O'Rielly
What will you do when the spammers/SEOs infest Friendfeed, as they will, or do you believe this is better crowdsourced and will be able to hold against the hordes?
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Rachel -- But numbers alone don't mean anything. Are they that shallow? That must be a stupid question.
- RobinDotNet
Is this going to be the 'most-commented-ever' post on Friendfeed? 240+ already!
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Aaman: FriendFeed is FAR more defendable against spam than Twitter is.
- Robert Scoble
and how would this benefit people who follow Robert Scoble?
- Seyfi Erol
That seems like a good idea, but I think you're already following a lot of these people
- Carlton Prest
Seyfi: why don't you follow me and see how it goes?
- Robert Scoble
I've gotten 4 follow e-mails since my first post here from people I don't want to follow. Do the bots start running right around midnight?
- RobinDotNet
Mahendra, you're not following the threads in Russian (that's my only hint) :D
- Micah
Robin: oh yes. But I'm never sure what's worse. the people who just want to talk about the numbers or the people they may be able to impress.
- Rachel Clarke
Aaman - Friendfeed doesn't make link-tracking easy, so it's less interesting for spammers to infest.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Is this a test of interaction or more likely a sort of audience verification?
- Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh: it is what you want it to be. For me I followed you.
- Robert Scoble
If twitter is noise, and FriendFeed is conversation, Robert Scoble followers are their own discussion. It's like using an entirely different website.
- Carlton Prest
Rachel, that's a good point. Is Facebook the same way? I joined that and suddenly got all these people I've nothing in common with who want to be my friend. Creepy.
- RobinDotNet
Derek: heh, yeah, I am watching this, among other things running across my screen.
- Robert Scoble
Robin: Facebook is the same but I think to a lesser extent - it's harder to find people I think. But still got a load of friend requests that I ignore as I don't know them
- Rachel Clarke
I already do. what i mean is if we don't keep FF, Twitter limited to our interests, wouldn't it be garbage we already try hard to get rid of. Or how far can we extend our interests in life or amount of information we consume?
- Seyfi Erol
Derek -- I mean people I really have NO connection with at all. I've only friended a couple of people I work with, and 2 other real friends. I'm getting friend requests from people I don't know at all.
- RobinDotNet
Seyfi: you haven't discovered FriendFeed's groups and lists yet, have you?
- Robert Scoble
I got a Russian-speaking follower on Twitter. I didn't follow him because I don't understand a word he tweets.
- Dennis Jernberg
Did you know that Facebook has started selling parts of itself to the Russians? At end of May, they sold 1.96% stake of Facebook to Russia's Digital Sky Technologies for $200M.
- RobinDotNet
Robert: I shouldn't have underestimated you. You probably have started much longer comment threads on Friendfeed before.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Mahendra, Robert, I agree, FF has been very good at keeping out junk
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Mahendra: I have. I gave away $5,000 once and got more than 1,000 comments on that. But that cost me a lot of cash. Can't afford to do that again.
- Robert Scoble
DST is run by Alisher Usmanov who is closely tied with Putin. You feel ok to that, but re-read the company's user agreement where it says it can share all of your info with third parties. Of course, it's irrelevant to this thread, but I thought it was interesting.
- RobinDotNet
FF is interesting assuming the topic is FF... and/or Scoble's next devilishly clever stunt to generate FF comments
- John Hardy
John: there are lots of interesting topics here on FriendFeed. Did you know you could search by them based on number of likes? Click "Advanced Search" and try.
- Robert Scoble
Yo Robert: a man has to do what a man has to do, so one surfer to another: go for it!
- Geer
Here here! A good cleansing is good, now and then... Starting fresh is the way to go, get all of that nonsense out and maintain a core group of people for solid conversation!
- Brian Partridge
Great taking the tour w/ you, Levar Burton & @VegasBill during CES 09 at the Atomic Testing Museum. I would appreciate the follow back. Thanks Robert!
- Chris R
Thanks for following back on Twitter Robert. Cheers from Las Vegas!
- Vegas Bill
I'm pretty sure we're friends here, only just wish there was a easy way to check... and if there is, that some one will let me know....
- Grant Bierman
Just out of curiousity, why are there fewer spammers and bots on FF compared with Twiitter? Is it because they haven't discovered FF yet?
- Sally Church
from iPhone
there are occasionally spammers on FF but I think they mostly get handled quickly vs Twitter where more than occasionally clusters of spammers just follow each other...
- Shannon Clark
Sally: I don't explain spam defenses in public. I don't want spammers to figure them out. But there are quite a few defenses against spam here.
- Robert Scoble
I was surprised about the spammer comments, until I started getting female nude model followers and I'm a women. Maybe a nude male model but not Sparkle or Hootie McBoob
- Corrine Pearce
Corrine: hope you don't see that here on FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
Why are you doing this? You have one of the best listening audiences on twitter! Is there a point to prove that we will post here or go to wefollow?
- David Cole
David: and I can prove that. Twitter's audience has become less and less engaged lately.
- Robert Scoble
Wow, powerful shift by Robert Scoble, I'm really interested in seeing how this works for you Scoble. I slept through all the big news here tonight.
- Jimminy IS Everybody
Interesting experiment. This is probably one the most commented feedfriend threads in history!
- Menno te Koppele
Plus, David, if you all are listening, you are listening because of my ability to find cool stuff. Mostly that's been because of FriendFeed over the past 18 months. Now I've seen how ascerbic Twitter's spammers have gotten on my accounts.
- Robert Scoble
Interesting. This is going to boost 1000 egos for sure :-)
- Freddie Benjamin
So will it be a matter of just trying to say ahead of the spammers by jumping from one early adopted social network to another?
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
JP: no. I am not leaving Twitter. I AM, however, deleting all their accounts so I will no longer be passing them juice.
- Robert Scoble
I wonder how will your FF homepage look like after this.
- ahmet bulent
Does this make you anti-social media?
- Cory Brown
To follow commenters from here on Twitter will be a lot of work for you Robert. Or do you have some magic tool that helps?
- Tibor Holoda
Robert, how many of the 100k do you think you'll still be following when you are done?
- RobinDotNet
~~~> Robert!! Follow me back again. [a] I'm a real fan of the @Scobleizer... and [b] I'm much nicer than some of these sassy bloofers. ;)
- Kim Sherrell
So what if you have all 58k + comment on here? And you have to keep everyone! And your plan is foiled, sir. Okay give or take 10k for the neglected abandoned twitters and the spammers. Btw, you're already following me on both twitter and here. But come on, you're not really. : /
- Lise
That's cool. I am finding the spammers too much to manage these days myself.
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
Because I can't keep myself from doing math, that's 1.1%.
- RobinDotNet
Lise: I see you a few times a day, but you're right. Heheh.
- Robert Scoble
Are you trying to make a point about FF v Twitter? I have spammy things to say about my amateur photography, potential homelessness, and run-ins with public-run health system in the US. Isn't all Twitter spam--just spam you want? :)
- Dean Hall
the auto-refresh on this thread is mind-blowing, fun to watch
- nchenga
Do you ever worry about SM burnout Robert? How do you pace your self?
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
Interesting to note many of most commented threads are in languages other than English. Can we suggest FF has a better international appeal than Twitter?
- Kaan Bingol
Good idea, as you say, stop juicing up the spammers - it'll be interesting to see the stats once you've finished.
- Andrew Piggott
Dean: your Tweets aren't spam. I might keep you. Heheh.
- Robert Scoble
I only followed people who were interesting to me, otherwise it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack of brain dumps.
- Daniel Durrans
Exactly. So I expect to be cut. And considering I'm in a crowd of close to 60k, it'll be the same thing.
- Lise
There should be a counter in front of the comments...
- Willem Karssenberg
Lise: and because FriendFeed's search engine is better here too.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, yeah I know. Thought you might have meant for your secretscoble twitter account ;)
- travispuk
It's kind of like a giant SM break up Robert. *Oh the hearts you are breaking...*
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
I'm fairly selective about who I follow and I follow so maybe you will follow me back!
- Richard Cunningham
from iPod
Robert, care to explain how you use groups in this kind of context? Because I don't get the point of following people who are then placed into a "I don't read this much" kind of group. How do you use groups so that you're (1) not overwhealmed, and (2) actually read what people are saying?
- Ian Betteridge
How many people do you expect to end up with, Robert? What is a reasonable number?
- Lise
You don't have to follow me on Twitter. I think the FriendFeed party palace is mighty fine.
- Josette
from fftogo
(Not that I'll probably see your response, btw - something at the bottom of 350+ responses is effectively buried until FF has better threading tools. Which I'm sure it will, some day.)
- Ian Betteridge
@Daniel - ditto, and for me it is generally development related also. Robert - I know you have to try and keep up with everything going on in the social media space, but I'm always surprised when people follow so many others as it must be extremely difficult to find the wheat in amongst all the chaff.
- Donald Matheson
Robert: I did not know about that search trick. Thanks!
- Menno te Koppele
Ian: a "I don't read this much" kind of group is awesome for serrendipity. Also, anyone who I find there who is high value gets quickly moved to a smaller group.
- Robert Scoble
What? Are you saying you're not following me already...? ;-)
- Jarno Peschier
Lise: on Twitter? Less than 2,000. I can't follow more.
- Robert Scoble
Jamo: I am already following you. Scott: why not? I am already following you too.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, it might be a problem for me re-gaining your following as my tweets are not 100% English only (whether that means trying to speak English or no English at all ;). How do you deal with occasional non-English tweeters? As that's clearly a noise for you.
- Tibor Holoda
if only twitter were as engaging as FriendFeed has become, and as instantaneous as things like this comment thread, then maybe I would use it more. Hence why I'm all for unfollowing who you conceive as uninteresting; and if that includes me, then so be it!
- Nick Soden
Tibor: I just skip over most of them. Sometimes I translate them to see if I was right.
- Robert Scoble
It is my hope that I provide you with something as interesting as what you provide me with. Either way, I will continue to peruse your posts with interest.
- Absentee
Hi, I'm still newish to this social media thang - but good on you for taking a stand.
- Jus
Do you prefer night owls? Because what about all the poor people in SV who went to bed at a decent hour and missed your post? Bummer for them, huh?
- RobinDotNet
I'm back from picking my wife up at the airport and ran across this on my way back to sleep.
- nuBound CEO - Mark
The wild and woolly blogosphere is replete with all sorts of good stuff. Hard to follow 500 people, let alone 1000. I applaud you for trying to take the reins.
- Jack B
It funny you put spammers, SEO experts, bots, social media experts all in one bucket. What are you implying? Btw, I'm none of these...
- Peter Chee
.. and it works!! Just got a mail saying Robert is following me now... :)
- Sudar
Peter: I did that to piss off the SEO experts. :-)
- Robert Scoble
This makes me realise that posting from Twitter as opposed to "to twitter from FF" allows the Twitter stream to grow on the back of FF comments ! otherwise not : as in my case - what do you think Robert ? FF to Twitter ? Or FF aggregating all your tweets ?
- Nicholas Paul Gordon
from iPhone
Nicholas: shhhh, you are discovering my secrets! I'm doing more and more from FriendFeed lately.
- Robert Scoble
I comment and you follow me. Its totally worth it
- Arvind
Arvind: even better I was following you before. Mobilepax: no. I really don't care about followers. Inbound is more important than who is listening to you.
- Robert Scoble
and does that mean I have to write in English from now on :)
- Mobilepax
Nice one - it's cool that you give friendfeed (and all the commenters of course ;-) much kudos.
- Alex Vermeule (@alexve)
If you just follow everyone in this thread, won't you just wind up with noise from 'engaged' people. I mean, does this solve the problem?
- Christopher Harper
Good thing its 4am and my car alarm went off, otherwise you wouldnt follow me! I had to look up a video online how to break the key fob apart becuase aparently its battery leaked and was self activating the panic switch. Damn VWs! a replacement key is only like 150 bucks!!
- Charlieray
Missionary: no. You have not discovered that FriendFeed has groups and MUCH BETTER search.
- Robert Scoble
Its funny that if you say "SEO" on twitter its an instant 10 followers
- Charlieray
I'd rather follow you on Friendfeed, Robert. Your tweets get cross posted here anyway, and there's a much greater sense of engagement in that conversation than there is over at Twitter.
- Andrew Terry
Everyone that "follows" you really does know you love FF. So did you build a tool to follow everyone back that comments on here or are you seriously going to manually follow people back?
- Peter Chee
Theres 451+ comment here, do you really follow *everyone*?
- Fajar Nurdiansyah
Because I am up at 1:20 a.m. PT, why not... I must be your target audience then.
- Georgiana Comsa
It must show you how many people enjoy engaging with you Robert, with the number of people posting here.
- Steve Farnworth
Amazing to see the comment thread to this entry expand constantly in real time.
- Christian Bolstad
Peter: I've manually followed everyone on this thread so far.
- Robert Scoble
Peter: although to be fair I've already followed quite a few people who have commented here.
- Robert Scoble
Hi, you are already following me. My solution to get rid of spammers on Twitter is to block them, that is what I do. If everyone started blocking them, I think things would improve
- Asgeir
What about the SEO experts who accidentally find this feed?
- phil baumann
Robert, but you're following commenters here, not on Twitter, right? Not that i care about Twitter that much, as for me it's just a pipeline. FF and FB are conversational platforms for me, or the places i hang out these days.
- Tibor Holoda
Aaman: Sleep? some of us are just starting the day. We're waiting for the US to go to sleep so we can talk about you ;-)
- Rachel Clarke
Spammers being blocked doesnt do anything as they are hoping for that 1 in 100 hit of someone clicking that link, eventually they get banned and create a new account.
- Charlieray
the term SEO expert is a crock of shit
- Charlieray
Marko: not true. It's better because it has very little spam. It's better because it has a better search engine. It's better because it has comments and likes. It's better because it's an aggregator. And more.
- Robert Scoble
you don't have to follow back. but i'll take the chance to say great work with building 43.
- Alexandre Gamela
from twhirl
Massimo: right up top. Heheh. Alexandre: thank you!
- Robert Scoble
After 6 months out of the social media loop I came back to a whole bunch of follows that I either couldn't remember who they were or why I had followed them - how can that be relevent? So, I culled my follows back to less than 200. I'm now just looking to find the signal amongst the noise.
- Colin Walker
What about FriendFeed? Is there any @notsecretscoble too?
- Ludwik C. Siadlak
Friendfeeding for Scoble to follow me while on vacation in Montauk. There is something wrong with me.
- Mitchell Schneider
Mitchell -- you just don't want to miss the fun.
- RobinDotNet
robkeynes -- nice to see you up and about
- RobinDotNet
Ludwik: no, because here I can just start a new list of users.
- Robert Scoble
Well, this has been fun to watch, but it's almost 2 a.m. and I have to be very smart tomorrow morning, which is easier when I'm not too tired, so everyone have a great [whatever comes next in your time zone].
- RobinDotNet
Robert, I'm trying to understand this follow/unfollow strategy you are applying as Napoleon Bonaparte on a battle field ;) Interested to know the result
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
I really do think the way Twitter has changed in the last few months, with all the media attention, certainly begs for it to be used differently now.
- Nicola Quinn
Wow that's a whole lot of people commenting in the last 2 hours, Rob - How many of the new people you are following from this list are NEW to friendfeed? (estimate?)
- Roy Herrod
Does this constitute a comment or are you looking for some insightful commentary on the state of new media? ;)
- Iwan
40%? This must have turned out to be one of the biggest promotions in FF history, even if it wasn't intended that way. BTW, I'm new to FF too.
- Dennis Jernberg
guess it's good to clean up the list once in a while.
- Yan PHUN
Ha ha, nice.... So any major ramifications from the mass unfollow?
- Alistair (alpinefolk)
Alistair: other than losing about 1,000 followers so far? No major ramifications.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I'm coming out with a project in the Continuing Medical Education field in the next weeks so if you are interested, I wouldn't mind if you will follow me :-)
- Marco Fabbri
Won't tell anybody, specially Seo people, ssshhhh.....
- Giorgio Burlini
from iPhone
You had me at don't tell the spammers...
- Sean Kelly
I think it's a hoot. Now I'm wondering whether to reverse my recent move towards following more, not less. I do believe that from my experience so far FF is more attuned to building/maintaining community than is Twitter.
- Des Walsh
Des: on FriendFeed you can do both strategies at the same time. You can follow a lot more in one list while following even fewer in another.
- Robert Scoble
Des - Once more people re-engage in the conversation here, they'll realize the continuing outright potential of Friendfeed. I still some here before I read my e-mail
- Charlie Anzman
Hi Mr Scoble, I'm with you (but on a smaller scale) I unfollowed about 150 users on Friday, felt good! I pretty much hang out in FF now at my home page and my groups
- Lee
from iPod
wow...just wow :) Robert, you have many fans !!
- Hayk
Good luck on hiding from the bots, they have ways of finding people.... :)
- Chris Holm
well, who am I to refuse such a nice offer? here I am!!!
- niccolò vecchia
Good to hear! I have only ~2000 followers, but I can't follow more at the moment due to Twitter's follow limit rule.
- Martin Lindeskog
Great way to test the chemistry between FF and Twitter. I like it.
- E-Advocate Network
Robert - I'am definitely not a spammer when it comes to broadcasting anything to people, who doesn't want to hear it :) but I do sometimes respond (mostly on twitter so @reply) to some tweets not aimed on me, but that's what everybody actually asks for when publicly broadcasting anything.
- Dušan Šimonovič
Shhh...don't tell anyone but I'm neither of those (the spammers, SEO experts, the bots, or the social media experts,) though, I like the heck out of the concept of this thread...
- Vincent Wright
Good idea about the unfollow. It was an interesting experiment whilst it lasted but given your lifestyle I'm sure most Twitter messages just passed you by. I never DM'd you however, it was nice to think that I had the option if I wanted to. Anyway I've been on FF for ages now, and what I need is a good FF app (for pc), any ideas anyone?
- Nick Bristow
Nick: I just use a browser with FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
Only 530 comments so far? Come on people you are not even trying.
- John Cooper
@Rob Sellen, did you see the comments on the most recent ffundercats podcast entry. http://friendfeed.com/ffunder... Over 1000 in a very short period of time. Although I expect that this post will also get up to those levels.
- travispuk
NOTICE: I am closing comments here because I gotta get some sleep. I'll consider doing this again sometime. Sorry if you didn't get in, but see you tomorrow night.
- Robert Scoble
Yahoo. Microsoft. Google. Why haven't you bought this Cambridge, UK company yet? Check out how they improve search! - http://www.building43.com/videos...
When I heard that PrismaStar has helped several retailers greatly increase their sales, I had to see just how their search technology did that. After seeing it I wonder why they haven't been purchased yet by one of the big search companies.
- Robert Scoble
from Bookmarklet
More like, Amazon, why haven't you bought this company yet?
- blake
its like asking why thye did not buy Like.com.. where is the ROI's ?
- Peter Dawson
blake: yeah, that would be an obvious company to buy them too, but the patent they own could help a bigger engine even more.
- Robert Scoble
Peter: what's the ROI of Bing.com taking another percent of market share?
- Robert Scoble
Yeah, great video as always, an app like that applied to the web or search engine would be real innovation the kind that would get so much press you wouldn't need to spend hundreds of millions to advertise
- Stephen Pickering
Google is more into replicating things at their end rather than spending money on buying. MS and Yahoo struggling with fixing the search, rather than improving it.
- Veetrag
Robert, as a compliment, The video camera angles are working much better now.
- Kreg Steppe
Veetrag, exactly, "Don't Solve Problems. Pursue Opportunities"
- Stephen Pickering
Veetrag: that's not true. Microsoft has gone ahead of Google in quite a few areas with Bing. And Microsoft purchased several companies to do that (Powerset, Farecast, etc)
- Robert Scoble
the CAPEX on bing has already been consumed (MSFT way) - so how can they divisfy ? at least MSFT . As for GOOG's . why assimulate something which really has services which is cross docking with Amazon ??
- Peter Dawson
I think its sick that they can patent this sort of thing. I bet there is prior art out there.
- Luke™
Besides its utility, people want something to play with. The public would go crazy over those little sliders. it's like going to the fair or something
- Stephen Pickering
Kreg: that's Rocky Barbanica, Building43 producer. By the way, this video is one of the most expensive we've ever done. Took us a week in UK to find this company and get excited enough to pull out our two HD camcorders.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: I agree Powerset and few other purchases have been really good move but have those turned out well for MS. I would be happy to see some of powerset kind of features in Bing soon.
- Veetrag
Apostol: we carry two $6,000 Panasonic camcorders. A lot more expensive than $200 Flips.
- Robert Scoble
Veetrag: yes, those acquisitions have worked out very well. Search at Microsoft is finally gaining share and is impressing people. Have you used it? Video, shopping, and travel are all best of breed now (among the big search companies).
- Robert Scoble
Apostol: well, when you see the full resolution you'll see I don't agree at all. But we get better compression on the expensive videos because they are cleaner to start with. Also, by using two cameras you can edit and give a much more professional look. Believe me, I love low-cost video too (most of my career has been made with cheap cameras) but there's a place for the expensive stuff too.
- Robert Scoble
@scoble I use bing regularly and for few days I switched my default to bing. Its very impressive and sure, would gain popularity too.
- Veetrag
from what its shown in the video, its not a technological breakthrough, but using common search technologies to come up with custom solution for dedicated clients. Bing, Google are operating on all together different bigger space i.e. generic search.
- Ruchit Garg
Another factor I like about Bing is, the traffic it is sending to my site. For an infrequent blogger like me, only source of traffic was Google. But Bing being able to index it proves that the cralwer is much better, indexing is better and thus results are better.
- Veetrag
Ruchit: you didn't watch enough of the video. See how it could improve traditional search.
- Robert Scoble
Ruchit: and, even if you were correct, the high value search customers are those who are buying things. It certainly could be used to improve the shopping areas on search engines, which would improve their profitability and usability.
- Robert Scoble
I'm sure everyone who has commented here has also spent hours searching and re-searching through shopping and retail sites, and felt that growing sense of frustration that it's taking too long to find what you're looking for. If this gets implemented at *some* sites, those *without* it will certainly suffer.. I'd love to see this on Amazon...
- Andrew Terry
@Scoble this app is kinda similar even if its only got one slider.. http://examples.adobe.com/flex2... I bet there are a bunch of flex apps with multiple "interdependent" sliders.
- Luke™
Luke: if it only has one slider it isn't the same. :-)
- Robert Scoble
@Apolsotol looks like lots of sliders there.
- Luke™
with regard to the sliders on keyword searches, it would be super-cool if (on searches of, say 3 - 4 terms) it looked at the frequency of other keywords within your results and offered those related keywords up for you depending on your slider settings so that you further narrow or expand your searches.
- Andrew Terry
I agree that this kind of weighted multi-parameter search specification and the monitoring that they provide is a major advance in search technology. Not sure whether anyone is already doing it, but the patent grant is a very good sign!
- John W Lewis
It seems that http://www.Laptop.Bg is not the same. It looks as though it filters (on or off) on multiple parameters, but is not providing sequencing based on weighting of relative importance of those parameters.
- John W Lewis
I don't understand why he's claiming that nobody else in the world can search/sort on multiple dimensions. I do that every day when writing SQL, using our in-house dev tools, when browsing newegg, ebay, mint, etc. They should NOT have been granted that patent.
- xero
Does SQL alone allow sequencing based on weighted contributions from the values of multiple fields?
- John W Lewis
@scoble I agree with your second comment that "the high value search customers are those who are buying things. It certainly could be used to improve the shopping areas on search engines, which would improve their profitability and usability". I just dont see why bing and google cannot do it using what they have today!.
- Ruchit Garg
xero: the patent is for using two connected sliders. I don't remember seeing sliders in SQL Server. I don't remember seeing that UI used anywhere else on the Internet, either, but who knows? I'm not a patent attorney.
- Robert Scoble
Speaking of new cool things, when is that new Dell coming?
- Mark
I should apply for a patent on multiple checkboxes. !
- Luke™
Mark: I bought it yesterday at Best Buy. I am loading it up now.
- Robert Scoble
I meant that secret dell you blogged about last month
- Mark
The patent is just for using linked sliders? The way he talked it sounded like it was the algorithm to search/sort on multiple dimensions, not that the mechanism of doing that with slider controls. That said, Mint.com has had that for a long time, and I know I used it at some point before 2000, I just don't remember what desktop app it was. Games have used connected sliders for settings, but that's not to filter search results.
- xero
The scheduling software my employer writes does very complex "sequencing based on weighted contributions from the values of multiple fields". And has been since 1997 I think. But, we don't have it displayed in linked sliders. In fact, all scheduling software does that, even Microsoft Project. Just no sliders. I will refuse to pay them royalties for a basic UI element for sorting data...
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- xero
The problem with searching for retail products is rarely with the ability to filter and sort, it's with the dimensions they provide for doing so and the inclusion of duplicates. In the video you could filter on thickness. That means someone had to enter the thickness into the database as a dimension. Newegg suffers from this problem all the time. They have great search tools but you...
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- xero
Holy crap, Robert, you're right. I watched the video and one of those companies should definitely buy them. Now. Honestly, it's simple and immediately intuitive and exactly mirrors our natural selection process. Crazy.
- Chieze Okoye
Video doesn't seem to want to load for me :(
- Steve Farnworth
Also, gotta love the armchair patent-lawyering going on in here. Does anyone have the actual patent number?
- Chieze Okoye
Xero - in reply to your comment "I don't understand why he's claiming that nobody else in the world can search/sort on multiple dimensions." I agree with you - the patent cannot be about that - it exists and is FREE- it's just that this guy clearly has no idea what the rest of the World are up to! also - Robert - I challenge you to get any statistics on the claimed 30% increase in...
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- Jelly Roll Morton
REAL sales Conversion Rate (C.R.) data: 1-month trailing C.R. pre-selector - 1.25%; 1-month trailing C.R. post-selector - 2.15%. 72% documented increase in C.R. for users who used the selector. Over 700,000 live users during the 2-month the test period. Contact PrismaStar and they will provide documentation to prove it if you sign their NDA.
- jzt
A quick lesson on patent law: Ice cream on a stick -- not patentable. Chocolate over ice cream -- not patentable. Ice cream on a stick dipped in chocolate -- patentable (well, in this precise example ice cream on a stick already exists in the public domain, so it wouldn't be patentable, but hopefully you get the idea). PrismaStar won this patent because nobody ever COMBINED interdependent sliders relating to multiple search attributes WITH dynamically-sorting results. Clear now?
- jzt
Another real example: CTR before AnswerOil: 2.5%. CTR after AnswerOil: 8.9%. Again, sign an NDA and PrismaStar will show you the data, although you can also read about this example here: http://www.iea.cz/index... PrismaStar won a very prestigious award in the Czech Republic for this, beating-out name brand websites such as T-Mobile, Volkswagen, and Vodafone. THANK YOU, Robert, for doing your research! ;)
- jzt
There is an amazing example of this fantastic technology here at D-Link, although it's by http://www.easy2.com a USA company - Click "Find your router" http://www.dlink.com/categor... These guys will send you Customer White Papers without having to sign an NDA and they have over 15 examples and plenty of testimonials on their website.
- Jelly Roll Morton
Well whatever CTR is .....it ain't conversion rate is it?
- Jelly Roll Morton
Warner: nope, sorry. I couldn't do more video, was out of memory space! :-)
- Robert Scoble
It's clear to me that I only touched the surface of what's new in the new suite.
- Robert Scoble
"...you may want to pause..." though flipping between sheets was fast.
- Joel
Do they show it using IE. I would think if its very JS heavy it will quite a bit slower.
- Luke™
@Scobleizer great videos. love the screenshot ability in office 2010.. innovation indeed. simple process, surprised no one else did it yet
- Vid Luther
Luke: who uses IE anymore? ;-) Yeah, they showed it on several different browsers, seemed to run just fine, but slow on starting up.
- Robert Scoble
I would think a lot of Office users use IE. Just a guess, I wouldn't know.
- Luke™
Luke: I was being facetious. Of course IE is still used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. I did find it funny that they started the demo out on Firefox.
- Robert Scoble
I'm still getting to grips with Office 2007 :) And my uni has just STARTED deploying it to the student labs. Oh the irony :)
- Roberto Bonini
maybe they'll actually make IE a web browser this time. ;)
- SolidSmack