I'm just playing with it now but it looks like its a good aggregation hub for "updates" on your blogs and what you are doing and thinking. It has promise. - Chris Herbert
Actually I use friendfeed and twitter for discussion based on who I'm talking with. If I know their stream is noisy (like Robert's) than FriendFeed leaves the comment out longer so he can see it. Twitter is better for following large groups and a back channel for a smaller subset. Friendfeed is far more open-ended. - Andrew Feinberg
Anything with a well implemented public API isn't really a silo IMO. - Phil Glockner
It's not a silo. Anyone can pull (just about all, from what I've seen) the data out via the API. It just needs more apps built on the API. - J. McConnell
It is both an aggregator and a silo which encourages scattered conversations - I am unlikely to never come back to this conversation after I leave the comment, the RSS feed doesn't even seem to work http://friendfeed.com/e/57de4d... - Andy Beard
The "like" feature allows me to track a conversation if I'm interested in following it. - Chris Herbert
This problem isn't an inherent one. FriendFeed could fix this relatively easily by allowing the starter of the conversation to link to another FF post. E.g. Robert, since he started both this and the other conversation you commented on, could "link" the two together and then FF could intelligently splice the two conversations together. - J. McConnell
A third party could provide similar behavior via the API by noticing, e.g., that Robert posted a link to this conversation in the middle of another, or by following some other convention. However, it would be nice for FF to provide something like this so all users and API clients could benefit from the spliced coversation. - J. McConnell
I think FriendFeed is not intended to be used as a silo. As mentioned before by previous commenters, it's an agregator with a feel of a discussion forum/mailing list with "karma point"-like feature. - imabonehead
J. McConnell certainly it is possible, there has been talk of clustering before, but it would need to cluster all the stumbles, Diggs, shares etc - it would be great to stumble something, and then discover a whole linked conversation from many sources - Andy Beard
Andy Beard, good to hear that it has been discussed. This reminds me that I did hear mention of it when the FF founders were on the Gillmor Gang. Their argument for not having it yet, I believe, was that the separate conversations are a feature in that they allow separate social groups to interact more naturally, openly, without feeling that their comments are completely public. - J. McConnell
However, it seems that there is support for that kind of private interaction already with rooms. As long as room conversations about a URL aren't clustered with other conversations about a URL, I would think everyone would be happy. Either way, allowing a poster, like Robert in this case, to explicitly link two entries seems to be different and much more conservative than algorithmic clustering. - J. McConnell
It's funny that at a cocktail party there's tons of conversations that happen between small groups in a semi-public manner, but that we don't want to allow that to happen here. - Robert Scoble
FF = aggregator. I find FF far more useful than Twitter. - Bill Sodeman
via fftogo
Don't think it is a Silo. But eventually Its all about the intent and the usage. - Parth Awasthi
A silo is something that allows things in but not out, so technically FF is mostly a silo right now. I prefer to think of it as an aggregator. - Sally Church
Sally: if this is a silo how can Google get into it and index it? Also, how can you pull these conversations into RSS? Hmmm. - Robert Scoble
Robert, cocktail party conversations are (typically) not recorded, archived, searchable, etc. Also, the number of people that can overhear them are usually limited to the 5 or so people in the immediate vicinity. On FF, the number of people that can "overhear" is essentially limitless. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for heavy, intelligent clustering on FF and much open discourse. I had to point out the difference here, though. I can understand and respect some people's desire for more privacy. - J. McConnell
J.: you gotta come to the cocktail parties I go to. Almost everything is recorded. :-) - Robert Scoble
Robert and J. McConnell, you can delete your comment if you want. Hey, cocktail party...who's mixing drinks?! - Chris Herbert
Robert: Google can index it because it's essentially an open, not closed silo. I was thinking more of the commenting on items coming in - they don't always go back to the source, so if you're not on FF you could miss a whole load of discussions on your original post/item. For me, it's semantics - I like both Twitter and FF for different reasons. - Sally Church
Robert, I'd love to go to some of the cocktail parties you go to :) I did have you, specifically, in mind when I threw in the "typically". I knew you'd say that, haha! - J. McConnell
via fftogo
Chris Herbert, a) not from Google's cache, b) the privacy-sensitive people I have in mind don't want to delete their comments, they just want to limit the scope of their comments. And to be clear, these are hypothetical people I'm talking about, so maybe the argument isn't worth making. - J. McConnell
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just check this http://quotably.com/scobleizer and compare the conversation and the amount of tweets vs. ff. i cant see a significant one, if any. - kosmar
What some people call noise, others call content. I know lots and lots of folks who consider all the A-list tech blog stuff "noise" and wonder where the "real" content is on the web as a whole. Perspective is crucial. - Soulhuntre
Robert the FF guys (Paul I think it was) also brought out a similar arguement about watching a film with friends and then discussing it after - that conversation is somewhere linked to his blog post - Andy Beard
But then I have seen threads of 15+ comments on someone's stumble of one of my posts, and no comments on the original post. Robert "liked" one of my ePerks articles, but that was in the social media room posted by Igor - Andy Beard
I have contemplated using a FF widget or Wordpress Plugin on my blog to display FF conversations, but those will only pick up a fraction of the conversation around an article. It might be better to create a custom search feed for each article - Andy Beard
just 3 years old, but older ones look up to you, nice one kiddo - Dobromir Hadzhiev
~~~~~~ CONGRATULATIONS MIKE and TEAM !!! ~~~~~~ Excellent coverage and down to earth analysis... keep it up! (remember your famous "twitter" post??) I loved that post man! such in-depth analysis! wow! - Susan Beebe
WTG techcrunch. You have changed the game. now get some sleep! - Laurent Courtines
via twhirl
Congratulations - Keep up the awesome reporting - Josh Smith
Only three years? I remember when Dave Winer did a podcast warning you that advertising was going to really hurt TechCrunch. Keep up the good work. You are always a go to source. - Christian Burns
Online storage is back. Last September, EMC bought online storage startup Mozy for $76 million. Last week, Symantec signed a deal brewing since ... - Brad Feld
and when you post you're fairly certain it's going to show up :) - John Duff
I'm definitely becoming a huge FriendFeed fan, but not everyone is here, so I think Twitter will remain essential. Plus, how complex would FriendFeed have to get to be configurable to the point where I could get chat or IM updates for only certain kinds of feeds for only certain users (and be able to reply appropriately) and have that tie in with my hiding filters? - £ogical €xtremes
Interesting, so you want to get friendfeed through IM and be able to interact with the posts (replies or comments) with IM as well? You can already configure things so you're only getting posts you want from each user, the api respects those choices (afik). So building an IM bot for friendfeed is what you want to do, Jabber based IM probably wouldn't be too hard to get the feed. Difficult part would be posting a comment to a friendfeed post. Very cool idea. - John Duff
@John -- there already is a bot to do most of this, the Mojipage bot. - Trent Olson
And then of course SMS is the next step (but as we dumb down to more compact protocols, usability decreases). Or maybe SMS will be so 2007 when the iPhone supports chat native ;-) - £ogical €xtremes
I'm not into FF nor Plurk, yet, but it seems like they offer an easier way to thread conversations that twitter doesn't have. - Mario Sundar
@Mario...I'd recommend spending some time with ff, but steering clear of Plurk - Trent Olson
I am liking the comments threading on Friend Feed, but it feels like conversations get lost somehow too. - John F Morton
I've noticed that, despite having 500 followers on Twitter, no-one responds to anything I say!! But here on Friendfeed, I get instant replies - and quality replies (which is important). Twitter has too much noise. - Mark O'Neill
I think that FriendFeed and Twitter were both built for different purposes. A lot of people use Twitter so they can keep in touch with friends. On FriendFeed, I think it's more of a website where you share and discuss content. - possible248
I think yesterdays coverage of WWDC here on FF pretty much rubber stamped FF's position, no? - Roberto Bonini
ff feels like a mashup of pownce functionality with the benefit of aggregating lots of other streams. I think it misses some of the conversation with the cloud aspects of twitter. As for everyone not being here - that's part of the reason there is more response, you can actually notice when someone says something not just watch the stream go by in a blur. - Phillip J. Zannini
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friend feed has design quality plus delivers content that is also visually pleasant ! - marshal sandler
via Alert Thingy
I would rather not use FF messages for Twitter-like statuses. If I stick to Twitter for status messages, then other FF users can choose to block those if they want. - Morton Fox
@John - The Mojipage Bot allows you to select noise level, enter different discuss rooms and posting to FF.The Mojipage widget also have the 'like' and 'comment' feature for posting FF too! For more informations you can go to http://mojipage.com/pages/bot/ - Aelvin Han
Steve - discussions are much easier to follow and come back to later on on FF; its one major reason why I'm becoming a more dedicated FF user - Ron Emrick
via Alert Thingy
100% agree. Twitter represents a great initial idea that resulted in an effective one-way loop. FriendFeed is poised to be the fruition of the RESPONSE to all those posted thoughts. An actual discussion. A true loop. Potentially also FF might just be a service to corner the market on all web discussion. Jus' sayin. - Steve Isaacs
I was a late joiner to twitter- fellow marketer turned me onto it, and I enjoyed it, but never got the large discussions that happened here *immediately*- and realy enjoy the filtering and weighting that goes on. - anna awesomesauce
FF definitely has more info and less extraneous stuff. Information content vs chatter. - Robin Whitson
I'm pulling for FF to do well, but I've spent time on twitter and I know the people there. hard to leave it. - Rob Williams
Like Morton, I'm still inclined to post status messages to ff from another source so they can be parsed/blocked, but I'm trying out gTalk to replace tweets. Thinking the only con to doing that is twitter habits I can quickly get over. - Dan Covington
The signal-to-noise ratio at FF is heaps higher than Twitter, and it is a good balance between having temporal conversations (late-breaking news, etc.) vs. information worth archiving.. - Wil
We need to start FriendFeed meetups now to take the place of TUB meetups :-) - Duncan Riley
Yesterday during the keynote was a lot of fun. Hopefully more events (big and small) will be spread via FriendFeed Rooms. - Delete Me
agree - and it's the threading, searching, flexibility that makes FF a winner for me - Anthony Citrano
out of interest steve, what client do you use for FF? still finding alertthingy too chatty on the UI side - steve clayton
via twhirl
So what kind of luck have you had motivating your Twitter followers to come to FF Steve? Not that I have that many, but around 4000 people follow me on Twitter. I have a whopping 227 following me on FF. - ScottBourne
@Scott I have 3200 following me here and another 1500 via RSS. On Twitter I have north of 7000 followers. So you are right this is an issue. One possible idea is to run the whole lifestream or just the FF portion (http://friendfeed.com/steverub...) through Twitterfeed. That way people can follow my stuff there if they want to. - Steve Rubel
I understand what you're saying, Steve, but I still think FF needs an easier interface. Checking the website all the time is a drag. - Ed Healy
That's interesting. The comment threads are definitely easier to read on FriendFeed though. - GerryBot
@Steve, I'm with you, but even RSS can't compensate for Twitter's ease of use. There is something to be said for the ability to get short IM-like messages in a timeline, rather than threaded vis-a-vis FF. If FF had a twhirl-like client interface it would be an easy substitution. Right now, it's not. - Ed Healy
Twitter seems to be more a right now kind of service, where FF brings all recent content into view. I guess they both have their uses, but which is more ideal is anyone's guess - Derek Schauland
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I like that I can look here & see what all the comments are at once. It makes it much easier to meet new people or find out a general 'take' on the topic. - Sheryl Loch
If you don't know who Julia Allison is then it's way less funny, however the unfortunate camera angle is funny in it's own right. She seriously brought this dog to a club. WTF? - Jason Shellen
