See how it redirects to www.google.com/reader?
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, my point is Louis's stats mean as much as mine do - there are way more factors that go into this, I agree
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, without demeaning you personally, this is false and ridiculous. FriendFeed is a domain, a specific one, and I chose the primary domain. Google Reader is a subdomain or directory, and you chose the one that, as you show, nobody uses. The Alexa data you showed for FriendFeed illustrated something that nobody is experiencing. This isn't gamesmanship. It's just wrong, again.
- Louis Gray
I have a hard time understanding the fights and points Jesse chooses to get into.....just baffling.
- Matthew DeVries
Jason - considering some use FriendFeed as a replacement for Google Reader it's not apples and oranges - they're competition.
- Jesse Stay
Really? Why on earth would anyone use FF over Reader? FF complements Reader but shouldn't supplant it. Is there really a constructive way to read rss feeds here?
- Jason Williams
Jason, many people do that - it always comes out when Scoble is threatening to leave Reader. It's also why your FriendFeed stats now show up with your Feedburner stats.
- Jesse Stay
looks like we gotta get louis to work more hours to get that chart moving in the right direction!
- Allen Stern
Amen Allen (that's the spirit)! I'd love to see more stability and more focus on core functionality, not the social features. More stats, more organizational tools, more sharing tools. Better UI. Less bugs. I would use it more if that were the case.
- Jesse Stay
Give me a better way to manage thousands of items a day and I'll read thousands of items a day. For now I've had to reduce my use due to how bulky and hard-to-manage it all is.
- Jesse Stay
for the record i rarely to never use google reader.
- Allen Stern
when friendfeed shows me full content RSS feeds instead of just title links, let me know. until then, I'll keep using Google Reader. that's the same notion that twitter is a replacement for it. I get it but it doesn't work for me.
- Bill Kinney
Jesse knows that I read more than 1,000 items per day and am connected to more than 1,000 people via shared item feeds. The graph above is not valid. Google Reader is a great complement to FriendFeed, and always has been. It's the vast majority of my feed. Reader is also, very flexibly, able to share to different sites, including Twitter and Facebook.
- Louis Gray
Yes, Bill. Jesse is just grumpy today. :) He knows better than to post data without any substance and try and get a faux argument going. He also is tempting me to post a SocialToo traffic chart and compare it to Twitter. :)
- Louis Gray
i think that louis and jesse need a "time out" - both of you to your respective corners for a juice box
- Allen Stern
No way, Allen! Not when there are great injustices in this world! :)
- Louis Gray
louis i just sat through 4 hrs of city council hearings at city hall - not once did google reader or friendfeed come up :)
- Allen Stern
Jesse, the difference is that Readers traffic isn't dependent on who else is also using it. As much as Google would like it to be, it's not a social tool. I can get my FF feed in Reader but not vice versa. Do you really get your "news" from FF? It's the same thing with Twitter. People try to make it a RSS replacement but it isn't no matter how much you want it to be. 140 characters might be ok for links and quick social commentary but in depth news, not so much.
- Jason Williams
Allen, but they did mention a series of tubes, at least in passing I'm sure :)
- Micah Wittman
*thinks of how to talk Jesse down from the ledge...* Jesse, Hi :) At best you are criticizing conventional wisdom web statistics in general and mixing it with a clearly flawed swipe at Reader. ### Now, carefully, come back from the precipice and live to fight another day.
- Micah Wittman
You guys are all proving my point - that this argument is just as crazy a claim as this one is here: http://friendfeed.com/louisgr... - you can't trust stats
- Jesse Stay
I use Feedly, which is off the back of Google Reader
- Ian May
Jesse, nobody has proven your point. The only point that has been made is that you made a mistake and tried to draw a parallel, and you failed.
- Louis Gray
Of course you can trust stats, Jesse. You just have to understand how they were collected, what they mean, and not try to use them to support some completely unrelated hypothesis. I've seen two graphs of US and global FriendFeed visitor stats that support two different statements... that US usage is down and global usage is up, respectively. The graph you've created for reader.google.com is irrelevant and immaterial, for reasons given above.
- Ken Sheppardson
I could be wrong, but a certain someone who pronounced FF as dead cited that new features in GR were going to kill it. Just sayin'. Also just sayin' - I'm with Louis on this one. The combination of Google Reader and Friendfeed have changed the game for me, bigtime.
- jcunwired
I'm probably in the minority but I have replaced Google Reader with FriendFeed. Pretty much for discussions like this one. I'm not sure I find the same value in Reader, I tend to bookmark and re-visit the same sites anyway. FriendFeed brings something to the table that a bookmark just doesn't. Reader, not so much. At least not for me.
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
We need a UFC match between Louis Gray and Jesse Stay. The 9-lettered names of mayhem!
- beersage
I'd like to append my last post with, I still scan GR, so the previous comments about using GR and FF together as a powerful combination--in practice, if not in heart--I'm in agreement with.
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
See what happens when I stayed in GReader (and some Twitter) all day, I missed a good thread. I read/skim a little over 1,000 posts a day, I'm not sure if I read more than Louis (42,597 items in last 30 days) but it's my information center. Friendfeed use to be my place for discussions around the news, since engagement has dropped here (for me at least), I've moved back to Twitter for a fraction of that engagement (FB for friends/coworkers/family).
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I never knew there was a reader.google.com
- Richard Lawler
Almost all of Google's (non-acquired) properties can do both whatever.google.com and google.com/whatever which is very smart actually.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
On the subject, I must thank Louis, Jesse and many others that act as filters on GReader BTW. When I don't have time to go through the bulk, these guys help bring the cream to the top. I try to do my part in filtering for others but I feel that it's a team effort to bring the signal to others as automated filters aren't smart enough (yet).
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Funny, I cut back on my usage of both services and the graph goes down. You can blame Scoble now. I don't use Google Reader anymore.
- Robert Scoble
Don't talk about yourself in the third person.
- Mark
Namely, why is it all of a sudden shocking that people are showing other people their naughty bits? Its been going on since the beginning of time but all of a sudden it a Problem that must have a Name and be Dealt With.
- EricaJoy
Yeah, underage kids getting arrested for basically 'playing doctor' is just not OK.
- Michael R. Bernstein
I take issue with the fact that the media keeps acting like only teens are doing this. Have we not learned from our omnipresent celebrities? Lots of people are taking pictures of themselves, not just teens. Old behaviors are just adapting to newly available tech.
- EricaJoy
I didn't think pictures were even involved. I thought it was like phonesex but with text messages.
- Rodfather
I personally think it comes down to shitty parenting. Parents need to take more responsibility for teaching their kids right from wrong, how to stay out of trouble and then hold them to it. If your kid has a cell phone that you pay for, and they show their cooter to their boyfriend when they are 13, you take away the phone. Don't be a chickenshit wimp parent that is afraid to say 'no'. Just my thoughts....thank you...goodnight
- Morgan Haley
Number 1) I have not heard the word cooter since I was 9. I appreciate you bringing that back. Number 2) I 100% agree with you. :)
- EricaJoy
from IM
I think the problem is that while kids played "doctor" and did all sorts of things like that, pictures circulating on the internet is a completely different story. If Johnny saw Jill's "cooter", he was the only one to see it and likely Jill consented. 2009 Johnny however, takes a picture, or Jill takes it for him and sends it to him. As soon as Jill sends it, she ceases to have control...
more...
- Kenton
I know kids that do this. Not related to me or anything, but there are definitely pictures involved that I have declined from seeing (they seem to forget how old I am sometimes). I guess there are parents that are in over their heads with all this technology stuff, but that should give them pause in giving their kids access to that technology. Also, ignoring the technology aspect completely, I agree with Morgan. It's basically shitty parenting.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Kenton makes the point I was going to make. In 1980, when two little kids showed each other their "naughty bits", that was the end of it (sure, there might have been talk, but that was all). Now, it circulates around, becomes available to the world and results in child pornography. Even if two kids are the same age, and they participate in "sexting" the one who receives the photos can be (and in some cases has been) charged with child porn and be labeled for life as a sex offender.
- Curtiss Grymala
I treat everything I put on the internet as public, nothing is private.
- Daniel Hull
I was preparing myself to mentally blast your post because of the presuppositions contained in your title but was ultimately foiled due to the accuracy you delivered in the post itself.
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
Ignore my last comment. Great post, Jason. Well said and accurate.
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
"This isn’t the place I’m planning to social network, because I just can’t expend the time to decide what I might be sharing, might not be sharing, what my friends might share, what friends of friends might share and then recheck all those settings every six months when Facebook does something different."
- Matt Cutts
from Bookmarklet
Figures. FF may have jumped the shark when it sold out to Facebook. But at least we diehards continue to stick around...
- Dennis Jernberg
my feed is jumping more than ever. something in those stats must be broken or skewed.
- Joe Silence is not dead
"... this is when we opened the real time beta and when the beta rolled out to the main site... oh and this is when we announced the Facebook aquisition..."
- KyleHase
Everyone's experience is different, Joe. I believe, in aggregate, that these numbers are correct. That doesn't impact my own behavior, of course.
- Louis Gray
I've been getting a rather healthy influx of new subscribers.
- Mark Davidson
Yes but I think the quality of information here is much better. The people that left were producing noise. Thank god Scoble took them with him..
- CW™
it's not dying, Igor, it's just losing the "flavour of the month" people who like to talk to the mirror.
- Joe Silence is not dead
lol...ty Louis...after I typed it I said ....Ooooh god...I'm an ass...no one needs to agree...
- Bill Heslin
I've been hit with a bunch of new followers lately. I'm still doing the same ole thing, I think. Plus, I found the librarians (or maybe they found me?).
- Derrick
Well, FF is probably the best of the last round of linear conversation and aggregation tools, largely thanks to the lack of overhead and fluff (the users contribute plenty). Whether you use it in a bare-bones, flat way -- or have mastered an elaborate orchestration of API hooks and fiddlizations -- there is plenty of value to be had in the way FF handles its business and lets the user handle theirs.
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
This matches my observations as well and is a major reason why I've spent less time here. Chris: the problem is that most people tell me that Facebook has enough conversations for them. One of Zuckerberg's items a week ago had many thousands of comments.
- Robert Scoble
That still doesn't mean anything for me - it's still a very productive tool. I'm at an advantage by using it.
- Jesse Stay
Compete is about as wrong as Alexa was in the old days. Seriously, I have numerous benchmarks where I *know* the traffic and Compete is often off by serious margins. Instead, I'd use Quantcast which shows a major drop off in September, but with the bottom falling out the numbers have started to trend back up again. http://www.quantcast.com/friendf...
- AJ Kohn
I agree only Quantcast is accurate-ish.
- Thomas Power
@Thomas: Yes, I'm not saying Quantcast is always right, but it's usually more right than the others.
- AJ Kohn
Thomas, that looks pretty up and to the right to me, in a long-term sense. It's fun to look at the short-term, but we're seeing no sense on a long-term scale of FriendFeed losing traffic. Great point on the Alexa and Quantcast (assuming we even need traffic graphs to keep us on here)
- Jesse Stay
@Robert, I'll never argue that Facebook isn't more popular. All the cute that it offers (which isn't nearly as bad as it could be) seems to make it approachable enough to a much wider audience than a tool like FF. I get that you can filter out the fluff and minimize the Facebookishness of it, but then you're stuck with their interface and color scheme (unless I'm missing something). I guess I really see them as being different corners at the same party.
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
whatever it is.friendfeed still has it's unique user group's. i am happy to be here
- İbrahim Ot
I see more interaction on my items now than in the pre-Facebook days, but I may be an outlier.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
from iPod
Well, I don't care what the numbers say. I get much more out of Friendfeed (in terms of discovery, engagement *and* enjoyment) than I ever have from Facebook - and I should point out that, with 2 or 3 exceptions, I've met everyone on my Facebook friends list.. Friendfeed demonstrates that it doesn't require a cast of 350 million to make a great community.
- Andrew Terry
To get a good experience, friendfeed has always required you to put in a lot of time. So many active users comment on a thread and Hide it when they no longer have anything to say, if you come by a few hours later to comment you're just talking to a wall. friendfeed has never been very rewarding for casual use, in my experience, and that is doubly true now.
- DGentry
You can't argue with Metrics, but my own feed is very active
- RAPatton
from iPhone
What RAP says. I don't think this could ever be determined, but I wonder if certain language groups have dropped off their use while other language groups have maintained?
- Rochelle
You can Hide Stories? Really? Well, damn, so you can.
- Jason Hill
*yikes* that explains the lethargic Home Feed; less users = less interaction/activity = the lethargic(boring) feed
- sofarsoShawn
I check FF as much as I ever did (though I should prolly post more)
- Iain Baker
*quoting mode on* Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -- Albert Einstein.
- Citronella
Traffic Statistics: fascinating if you like numbers; otherwise it's just classic ePenis-waving, pointing, and gloating, and not really important if you're happy.
- Mark H
That's a shame seeing as FF is better than all the other social sites. I'll continue to use it until I can't.
- Araceli
All you frowny faces need to go read through the thread - FriendFeed's just fine - up and to the right even. I'm not sure why Louis felt the need to post this. See this thread, much more accurate: http://friendfeed.com/jessest...
- Jesse Stay
Note that November was the month Scoble announced publicly he was leaving Friendfeed (FTMP)
- Jesse Stay
T. Brent, FriendFeed doesn't need to make money (although I'm sure they will) - they're owned by Facebook, which is already profitable and cash-flow positive
- Jesse Stay
Yet, keep in mind FriendFeed is part of Google's deal for real-time content :-) I bet there was money there.
- Jesse Stay
"Q: Why doesn’t Compete’s estimate of site visitors match my local analytics (e.g. Google Analytics, Omniture)? ... A: ... Compete measures only US activity." -- http://www.compete.com/resourc..., while the Alexa chart Jesse posted in his thread showing up-and-to-the-right growth reflects global activity. There's no real disconnect between the two charts. Which one you think matters more probably depends on what argument you're trying to support.
- Ken Sheppardson
veo: the matrix. you're in it. you just don't know it.
- Itachi
Interesting. I was just thinking that FF has started to die. The activity amongst my friends and friends of friends has decreased considerably in recent weeks.
- Jason Toney
successful exists do not always equal successful products once acquisiiton is complete.
- susan mernit
...still here. Still like it. Still find it useful on many levels. The thing about FF is that even at its peak, its traffic and usage wasn't even in the same league as Facebook, Twitter, or even MySpace in steep decline. The raw user numbers never (or should I say, optimistically, haven't) reached any kind of critical mass. Outside of the early-adopter and sophisticated info junkie/informavore crowds, Friendfeed, just isn't that relevant.
- .LAG liked that
Quoting Jeniffer Aniston: This is so uncool. :-(
- Olivia Lovag
why I should trust only compete's data? where is guarantee they are not biased due to some unknown reason? now if you would go to e.g. quantcast for another opinion http://www.quantcast.com/friendf... and switch between 3m, 6m, 1yr and "all"... do you see difference? yes, I know quantcast doesn't have access to data, only estimate, yet... Ok, let's try alexa.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinf... - and they also show compeletly different trend... so, WHY we should trust compete's graphs?
- A.T.
How many people here use FF for work / project dev - or do you use it for just link sharing with friends?
- zeroinfluencer
@zeroinfluencer I use it for conversations, along shared links and not necessarily bound for them. I can't discuss my work in public at all, apart from very generic details, hence question about using it for work/project _is_ irrelevant for me. But rest is just goes here - twitter is very far behind friendfeed for me. And facebook complements friendfeed pushing it even further.
- A.T.
@AT @Jessy - I use FF a lot for project dev with distributed teams - the mix of chat and sharing in private groups has proved amazing. Even team members who have never used FF before have been going "wow" why the hell haven't we used this before?
- zeroinfluencer
To my point - FF has not really been presented as more than a Twitter style app - it's far more than that IMHO. It's a swiss army knife for the web.
- zeroinfluencer
I am new so this read well. I am one of those - why the hell wasn't I here before now. I used to Icq a LONG time ago. Then did nothing for a while. Joined a fan site - LonghornNation.com and met tons of people that many are still very important friends to me - I blogged, read and interacted on forums, met tons of people at real life events. Then that site was shut down and some moved to...
more...
- Paulette Garcia Morris
Dearest FriendFeed Team, I know I shouldn't expect new features, but a retweet on Twitter every time I like a person's Tweet (from Twitter) on FriendFeed would be awesome.
yeah, and being able to interface with twitter lists too, that would be nice... for instance if i could create a room that is fed by one of scobleizer's lists that would be cool... i can do it now, but it's not as elegant and smooth as it could be if it were part of friendfeed
- Chris Heath
all that being said... i'm not going to hold my breath, and it's not that big of a deal
- Chris Heath
I wouldn't want it to be a retweet. A favorite, perhaps.
- Otto
Yeah, otto, a favorite makes more sense with a like than a retweet does (even though lots of people say that the new retweet is the old like)... whatev
- Chris Heath
A like isn't really a "favorite". I often like things even though they're not my favorite posts on FriendFeed. I "like" things because I want to participate in the conversation or I want to bring them to the attention of those following me. In this respect it is more like the new retweet feature for Twitter.
- Jesse Stay
Fulaan, of course - I'm not suggesting it be a default, but I want the option so long as I can already post to Twitter from FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
On the flipside, for me a like is exactly a favorite. I "like" things in order to add them to my own personal stream of "my discussions". Don't care if other people see it or not. Same with favorites, I do it to have a place to remember tweets for later. But Twitter retweets I do specifically to bring it to other people's attention, which is not what I use FF "likes" for at all. People use the same features in different ways.
- Otto
Otto is there any conversation you agree with on here? ;-)
- Jesse Stay
jesse, and otto... i dip into both those styles of behavior... a like is a way for me to bring something to peoples attention (here and on twitter) and it's also bookmarking for personal use (and these are social behaviors that i didn't have before i used friendfeed - now there's something to think about)
- Chris Heath
Loren should include himself on "Monday Matters". Talk about unwatchable... It's also a good indicator not to follow someone who decides to follow a common squirrel.
- Jude
But but Loren is the most insightful and intelligent person in creation-just ask him and he'll tell ya.
- Dave Saunders
from iPhone
Was Twitter bought by China, or can he still express his own opinion?
- Fleagle
Just don't see the point in calling him out for an opinion. But I guess that's what people do. All part of the system.
- Fleagle
Bah. I wrote "We all can, Fleagle. What's your point?" then thought better of stirring the pot and deleted the comment... but not before you responded.... so yeah, that's what people do. Loren calls out Jeff/Fry, Leo calls out Loren, you call out Leo, I call out you etc. ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
@Fleagle Looks to me as Loren expressed a very negative opinion which led Leo to defend his friends. Wouldn't you do the same? Loren could have expressed his opinion in a more constructive manner.
- Jude
been at school all day sorry i haven't updated! but after my classes my sister SENT ME a wonder GIFT ..she used my idea for her kids (my sister works at an after school program for inner city children) I CALL IT THE GLITTER BOX!! [i did it in my kindergarten class and i told her over thanksgiving]