Tony Jones - Comments

Scoble says blog = resume. I say resumes are, were and always have been the WORST possible way to select employees. Your online presence is replacing your resume and is an order of magnitude better way for employers to discover YOU and decide if YOU fit. Am I wrong?

January 13 - Comment - Like - Share

Kelli Schmith, Dimitar Vesselinov, Alex Robar and 34 other people liked this

Unfortunately, the world is revolving and your online presence does become a part of your resume... - Mona Nomura

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ding ding ding - andy brudtkuhl

Mona - I'd say replacing, not revolving. Why do you need my resume? Check linkedin, my blog, facebook, etc... what else do you want to know? - Brian Roy

The problem with Scoble's idea is that not everyone is a good writer and not every good candidate cares about personal brand and self-promotion through blogs. A great software engineer might not blog about technology and instead might write about food or model trains or anything other than what he does at his job. How would this blog-centric vetting work for him? - Akiva Moskovitz

I guess one way to resolve this is by using a site that develops a resume for you and provides you a link to give to potential employers. JobFox is pretty good. - Shevonne

Shevonne - Forget about a resume... what is the hangup with that ANCIENT way of doing things. They need to know stuff about you (more than experience, education and certifications)... where is that stuff? For me it is LinkedIn, my Blog, Facebook, etc... what is the point of the old form piece of paper? - Brian Roy

I say it completely depends on the job you want. There are a lot of jobs where they want a real, regular resume and don't care at all about your online presence, and jobs where your online presence may actually hurt your chances. - Nine

Another thing I don't like about this idea is that you're essentially 'on the clock' 24/7 if everything you do online reflects you as a potential employee. The Internet is escapism for me and I do some extremely goofy things on it for amusement. Sure, some sites, such as LinkedIn, are job-oriented but FriendFeed? Hell, no. I come here to enjoy myself, not to impress employers looking for programmers. In fact, I rarely talk about my field here. - Akiva Moskovitz

And here is the secret: companies don't hire you for what is on your resume... they are looking for "fit". You need to fit in. If the company values consensus and you are a rebel - you don't fit. If the company values "just get it done" and you want to make everyone happy before getting it done... you don't fit. - Brian Roy

I'm pretty sure I got my job because of my resume and the interview, not beceause of who I am online. - Nine

I agree with Ninth's first comment. That's true for the majority of non-geek oriented jobs, although I have to assume that Scoble is talking about all employees in geek fields, not all employees for all types of jobs. - Rochelle

You got the interview based on your resume... you got the job because of the interview... what do you think they were evaluating in the interview? - Brian Roy

Well they weren't evaluating my online presence, I know that much. - Nine

Brian, we all know how the interview process works. You haven't uncovered some secret here. - Akiva Moskovitz

Your online presence is an extension of you. A reflection of who you are, how you operate, how you think, solve problems, interact with others, etc. That is what they were evaluating in the interview... no? - Brian Roy

Akiva - I'm not suggesting I have... I'm suggesting that your online presence is a better representation of you and what you bring to the table than a resume (or potentially even a resume + interview). Sorry for the leading question... - Brian Roy

Brian, no. They weren't. They were interviewing ME. They saw nothing of my online presence. Even if they ran searches (and I'm sure they did), work-me is not online-me. - Nine

Brian, sure, but, as I wrote above, not everyone's online presence is built to groom them for an interview. A lot of people use the Internet as a diversion, not to build up popularity. If they were to look at my online presence, they'd be hard pressed to even figure out that I wrote code for a living or that I've been doing it for nearly ten years. My Internet presence (if I even have one) is not an extension of me as a potential employee. - Akiva Moskovitz

Just want to point out for many management and executive level jobs, having a personal blog might be held against you. Non-disclosure and corporate discretion covers most of what you do, and blathering about your work online would be bad form indeed. - Nadine Schaeffer

Akiva - I just flipped you your feed on FF and it is abundantly clear to me that you both write code and have been doing it for quite some time. I can also discern that you not only write code but get some juice from helping others write better code... and you are not pushy about it... you offer encouraging advice... Now I may not be 100% right... because I only looked at the first page for like 45 seconds... - Brian Roy

That's only because I just so happened to be talking about C# yesterday. I often go days and weeks without mentioning coding at all. You're right about your assessment, though. But, yesterday was a bit of a fluke. - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva - but I can search for you + C# + Java + dot net - And the context... how you drop it in casually and aren't obsessed with JUST THAT tells me you are multi-dimensional, not obsessed with coding (in other words you are capable of a healthy balance), etc. - If you are looking to hire aren't all of these things exactly what you want to know? I know I do... - Brian Roy

the problem with resumes is many employers/hr managers are so narrow minded that they ignore them all together and are much more interested in you filling out a bunch of blanks on a piece of paper and judging you from that. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Akiva - check this out :) http://friendfeed.com/search... - Brian Roy

Jason - I can tell you from experience... they (we) skim them and look for "check boxes" to divide them up into "interview" and "no interview" piles. That is pretty much it. Oh yeah and if I can't find everything I need checked off in about 4 minutes... it is going in the "no interview" pile. - Brian Roy

Brian, cut that out! I guess what I'm really trying to say is that if you extend the hiring process to stuff like my FriendFeed, it puts pressure on me to be on my best behavior at all times. I'm fine with dovetailing my personality with my job but not when I'm goofing off on the Internet. I would hate to think that I always have to censor myself here on FriendFeed because some employer might judge me poorly over what I do here in my spare time. - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva, that's my feeling exactly. It's why I don't use my real name for places like this or LiveJournal... or even my blog. - Nine

Don't you want to hire people who have the capacity to "goof off" - Especially developers... I mean if I have to work with you for 18 hours straight to meet a code complete deadline and you are anti-social and BORING I might have to find a bridge to jump off of. Again... goes back to "fit". - Brian Roy

I agree with Akiva that spare time and work time should remain separate. Unless my spare-time actions are likely to bring my employer/business/clients into disrepute, then it should be off-limits. No-one, but no-one is 100% on best behaviour all the time in any case. That would make life very boring indeed. - Ian May

I think in limited areas, that may be true, but let's put it into perspective. There are 150+ million US workers; FF has way less than 1% of that number and Facebook is less than 10%. How is a blog/online presense a reasonable factor for hiring outside of tech or like fields? It's not. A resume should, and can, act as a simple descriptor of your skill set; an employer can and should... more... - Bob M. Montgomery from twhirl

Further to that. I am me. If 'me' doesn't fit with what someone is looking for to fill a position, or if I am expected to radically change to 'fit' in with that position, then, it's the wrong position for me. - Ian May

In my opinion, this is the equivalent of the lawyer always being asked for legal advice at a cocktail party or family reunion, or the IT guy being asked over to dinner to fix someone's computer before dessert. Everyone deserves a little downtime, even on the internet. - Trish R

Brian, just to be clear, I keep interviews on even footing once I'm on the phone or, especially, once I'm in the room. I don't pretend to be someone else in an interview and I let my personality show. I show up dressed as how I expect to dress each day for work. At the same time, I am evaluating them. I've ended interviews early when I realized that they weren't a match for me. - Akiva Moskovitz

So Ian - you are not going to socialize with the people you work with? You won't discuss what you do in your "spare-time" around the office? You made my "fit" point for me... you don't want to work somewhere that forces you to subvert your personality... and they don't want you to work there... - Brian Roy

Bob - Agree, we are not there yet... but we are headed there. And I can't think of a single problem with it. - Brian Roy

And your blog isn't your online presence? It definitely is part of it. It's not the whole picture, but most people will look at your blog and then do a background check on you to assess your online presence. - Tamar Weinberg

Nadine - just saw your comment. Yes, it will be held against you from time to time (the simple fact that you have a blog). And you will have to observe the companies blogging/social media policy. But if they don't want you BECAUSE you have a blog... do you want to work there? What does that say about the culture and their approach - transparency, etc? - Brian Roy

Tamar - agree. In fact my about page is just links to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. - Brian Roy

Brian: I am just pointing out that for different jobs, different rules apply. Also, by way of example, designers are still judged more by their portfolios than aught else. A blog is just not a one size fits all solution for job applications. - Nadine Schaeffer

Perhaps one's online presence can work alongside a résumé in helping an employer get a better handle on you as a person but I don't think that it should completely supplant a résumé. - Akiva Moskovitz

Could not agree more, a resume is over simplified and static for todays world. Problem is getting "old guard" to throw it out and look for the new solution - Tony Jones from twhirl

So... if they are going to review your LinkedIn, Blog, FF, Twitter (etc) - what exactly is the point of the resume... doesn't it become a fancy way to say "I'd like to be considered"? @Peter - I can sort just as (or more) quickly based on LinkedIn - Brian Roy

I wonder if it might be a violation of hiring practices to review a person's blog? Sure the person is making the information public, but aren't companies restricted from trying to ascertain some of that personal info? If I mention to you in an interview that I read your blog and your blog mentions that you have a disability, and I don't hire you, could you sue my company over unfair hiring practices? - Kevin Goldsmith from twhirl

Kevin, a disability is different. There are laws that protect that. If you blog about loving cats and your potential employer hates cats so they don't hire you, I don't think you'd have a chance in terms of a lawsuit. There's no law protecting people who like cats. - Rochelle

In some cases you are not allowed to blog about your work experiences, or strongly discouraged from doing so. There maybe be NDAs in effect, and you could get in trouble for releasing company IP. I choose not to blog about my current projects with employers (or even mention where I work) because I don't want to have to put a disclaimer on my blog about the fact that everything is my... more... - Her Lindsay-ness

Although a blog can't always show your skills. Unless you show your work there or something along those lines. But, I can see looking at someone's blog or online presence to see what kind of person they may be or what their personality is like. - Mathew™ one of a kind

Rochelle - and there should be :) - Brian Roy

Lindsay - agree. I don't (ok.. I just did recently but only after having been gone for 8 months) talk about my previous employer - just to avoid the impression of impropriety. That being said.. if you go to linked in you can see who it was so... Regarding NDA/etc - you will have to adhere to the companies blogging/Social Media policy (you'd be surprised how many have them now). - Brian Roy

So if a blog is a reflection of who you are, can it be used in a personality assessment or profile? - Trish R

Again, I think in certain environments, especially places with offices, this might be the case. However, if I'm hiring a fireman, I really don't care about your addiction to LOLCats and Scoble's twitter feed up front; what a resume affords me, as an employer, is the ability to quickly determine if you have the required training/skills to be a fireman—that's the purpose of a resume. I think this is the case for most jobs, and again, the numbers simply don't bear out Scoble's assertion. - Bob M. Montgomery

As an aside, I actually think this is a valuable discussion, and resumes will move to and evolve on the Web. I just don't think we're anywhere near that now. - Bob M. Montgomery

Kevin, if it's public you can't stop them... and it would be difficult to prove that they reviewed your blog and that was the factor in why you weren't interviewed. If it's easy to find in a Google Search it's potentially a liability for you. That's why there are all these services sprung up recently to help you "clean up your reputation" online. There's a fine line we walk between privacy and participation... it's too bad there's no way to have contexts on the web so you can control your information. - Her Lindsay-ness

Bob - A resume just tells me you can make a convincing case you have those skills. And if that fireman/woman is working 3 on 2 off and lives in the firehouse for 3 days you can bet your <well you know> that I want to assess his/her personality and determine if he/she will fit in. And I still agree we are not there yet... but moving in that direction rapidly. - Brian Roy

Bob, how about for fields with little/no technology component? 100% non-geek jobs? Will those resumes go completely web-based too? - Rochelle

I am sure both matter. I used resumes to get an overview of experience, then checked web presence to see if it was consistent. - Karoli

I'm down with common sense. I've been on a few hiring committees for selecting student programmers to help us out. It's probably not a good idea to mention a blog at all because I'd probably visit it. If you mention spending your free time playing WoW with fat does of Twitter, you better believe a few red flags will go off in my head. This is one reason why I don't use my full name here. One google search with me making a stupid comment (which happens often) may have some serious results. - Rodfather

Rodfather - What is wrong with a stupid comment? Are you suggesting you would NEVER make one at work? I'm sure an employer would be very interested NOT in the comment - but how you deal with it. Are you defensive? Do you evade the issue when called on it? Do you proactively apologize? Those are what matter... not the stupid comment, we all do that. - Brian Roy

Rochelle, I do think the day is coming when everyone will have a Web presense, and part of that will be a type of resume that details your employable specs: degree, skills, work history, etc. That's still a resume, even if it's not a paper one submitted with a cover letter. There will probably always be fields where it's not important, but not many. - Bob M. Montgomery

Brian, I think we're talking in circles, though. In my example, I specified 'up front' and that's the key. There has to be a basic threshold of qualifications for a position, especially something technical; a simple, practical resume fits that bill, whether it's printed out or online. It's not making a case, it should be a simple, factual list to help me determine if you can do what I need done, technically. After that, then I want to know about your LOLCats obsession :) - Bob M. Montgomery

BTW, the only reason the fireman thing comes to mind is because my cousin is the local fire chief :) - Bob M. Montgomery

The problem is that not many companies are looking at LinkedIn, or similar sites, to find employees. These sites work fine for self-employed or high tech individuals. However, like Ninth said, many other areas still use a resume and don't care much about your online presence. - Shevonne

the resume is dead, i get my jobs via friends and my good looks these days. cheers - sean percival

Oohhhh Sean, lucky you. =) - Shevonne

RE: Only tech companies use LinkedIn - check this out: http://www.linkedin.com/company... Construction has more than 25 pages of companies listed. - Brian Roy

RE: Only a small number of companies use LinkedIn - check this out: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008... - they had 160,000 at LAUNCH in March... can't find numbers for how many now. - Brian Roy

Brian, yes companies do use LinkedIn, but I think it will be a few years when they start using it to find employees. The only people who use LinkedIn for that are recruiters. - Shevonne

@Akiva Moskowitz: good point about being on the clock 24/7. - edythe

justine

match.com ads freak me out.

January 13 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Alex liked this

almost as much as those xbox 360 ads - Tony Jones from twhirl

Most dating site ads freak me out. - Alex

James Furlo

Downloaded and listening to SimCity soundtrack. I love the music. So relaxing and memories are flooding back. http://simcity.ea.com/coolstu....

January 9 from Facebook - Comment - Like - Share

Tony Jones liked this

that's hilarious any other game soundtracks out there worth download? - Tony Jones from twhirl

Robert Scoble

Nine ways Twitter could make money:

January 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Mike Coulter, Bertrand Doux, Bart Muskala - AdNerd Sr. and 88 other people liked this

1. Look for affiliate revenues - Robert Scoble

95 more comments

2. Exploit the spaces between content - Robert Scoble

3. Adopt a freemium model - Robert Scoble

4. Add Virtual Goods - Robert Scoble

5. Get recurring revenue, er, find a way to charge for subscriptions. - Robert Scoble

6. If you’re going to do advertising, get into creating ads that are viral and interactive. - Robert Scoble

7. Create “frequent tweeting” programs - Robert Scoble

8. Look for support, or tips, from your users. - Robert Scoble

9. Get outside your website. Try to sell schwag. Do events. Etc. - Robert Scoble

Pro features at some point would be nice. An enterprise version could work as well. - Mike Fruchter

Inserting geo-targetted ads on Tweets. - Mike Fruchter

Got any others? - Robert Scoble

what about truncated, collapsable/expandable threading? - David Lloyd

And maybe "Nine ways Friendfeed could make money" hehe - David Lloyd

Twitter should license their technology to companies for intranets. - Michael Gaines

TweetSense. Ad Tweets served BY Twitter, who has the best idea of your Tweet volume and subject matter. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/tweetse... Lowest hanging fruit, contextual ads on the Twitter Search page. - AJ Kohn

What about platform support via dev tools? Encourage the ecosystem and make money at the same time? (Apologies, Robert, I replied on Twitter first.) - Tim Beyers

premium blogger services. Cool site integration tools with metrics. - Chris Baskind

10. add premium support for app developers. - Darren Stuart

Considering they have had 100% uptime for a few months, you have to think stability is fine now and they have their engineers beavering away on new features. Of course digg has 80 engineers and hardly ever seems to launch anything :p - David Lloyd

Thanks for this article Robert - bcultral

11. sell inhouse or managed solutions to companies for their own uses internally and sell federation CAL's so they can connect the internal solution to the wider twitter network so that specific users can tweet to the public. - alphaxion

Sell the entire background page to brands by the hour/day with some of the area being made available for discounts/offers. (You need something to benefit users too, not just Twitter.) ;-p - mtlb

I'm a little scared of the day all these FREE Social Networking sites CLOSE THE DOOR ON FREE, with all my data inside. - PaulFrankRizzo

good point..what is the answer Robert? - bcultral

Paul: I don't think free is going away. But I sure would pay for decent DM features, for instance. Lots of companies would pay for custom skinning features. - Robert Scoble

By following a brand's advertising account you consent to receiving ads from them. Add some profiling info to this and it could be a powerful tool to receive adverts on a users terms. - John Galpin

7.1> Post ad-tweets every half an hour from twitter account, which every twitter user will follow by default (have to follow by default). Make changes to API, so that people can't work around it and dodge this tweet. - | Balu |

freemium is definitely the way, one flavor or another. you don't want to kill the value of the network - quantity and quality - by driving away elements of it. plus for every paying site, there will always be a new free site up in less time it takes to say "bob's my uncle" - Pascal Bouvier

Create daily reports for similar types of tweets and licence that data to various companies, this will be user generated marketing report. - Shanthala Balagopal

Chris: in that case I hope they do all nine! Just kidding, but, seriously, these sites need to find a way to make some revenues or they'll go away. If you don't want them to find a revenue model you are NOT a good user of these systems. - Robert Scoble

ugh, can we please look at ways for twitter to make money without resorting to adverts? I'm pretty sure there's loads of ways, I've mentioned the one I have been bleeting on about for months now. How about you? Can you come up with ways to make money without going cap in hand to advertisers? - alphaxion

Phase 1: Twitter Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit! - Alastair Montgomery

alphaxion: most of these are not about advertising. - Robert Scoble

Every local government needs to be on twitter, on their own twitter - and so does every state and federal government, police and emergency service - operated privately and 'independently' from the main twitter stream. - Chris Loft

care to comment about Obama and his 8 million strong email database taken into the Govt side? I am a community organizer and feel that email list belongs to the people - bcultral

Create a premium 'breaking news' service from data mining existing content and sell it to the old media. - Andrew Leyden

apart from 6 ;) Tho I'm addressing the others who are commenting rather than your suggestions. Trying to tease a bit of creative thinking out of people. I think it is a very healthy activity to get people working on ideas for how to make money and excluding the advertisers at the same time. - alphaxion

Chris: friendfeed has the same business model choices ahead of them to make too. - Robert Scoble

Selling my email address is NOT a way to make money. People will lose faith and/or start using phony emails for signups. - Michael Gaines

Alphaxion: #6 is actually about Context Optional, a company that creates very creative, viral ads. If you're going to do ads, that's the way to do it. - Robert Scoble

squeeze the advertisers...users should not have to pay for service ..other then paying to put up with advertisers and regulating and demanding subtlety - bcultral

Chris: hah! Actually most of the dating services are going to free models so they'll need to use some of these 9 too. - Robert Scoble

Robin: problem is that advertisers are going away. TechCrunch is hearing that this year could see some sites have 50% fewer ad revenues than before. So, you'll see more sites use these nine business models on you. - Robert Scoble

point taken - bcultral

How many users on FF at this point? - bravestface

Have Twitter subscribers pick a few products to "endorse", and have ads with their Twitter names attached to them. Then, give those users a discount based on # of clicks. - Michael Gaines

Robert: not forgetting that comps can simply sing up with an account and tweet updates from there, which is where inhouse and federation can be handy. New version release? An auto tweet to the public can be done - alphaxion

Chris: adsense is shit. Pays low CPMs. HotorNot makes $10 by selling virtual flowers. I'd love to be able to put a flower on your comments. Or something else. :-) - Robert Scoble

Turn "following" into a Multi-Level Marketing pyramid! - Rick Tuttle

very interesting discussion, robert. thank you! after 2 months of running Magpie (http://be-a-magpie.com), I can resume that #2 from your list works really well for both tweeps (they earn) and advertisers. - Jan Schulz-Hofen

the sale of commercial API keys so that software such as starteam or sourceforge could tweet out info automatically based on trigger events to both private and public twitter networks. - alphaxion

:) - bcultral

Charge for Groups feature ala Yammer - Sajida H Khan

They should Plax-ify Twitter and create a premium service to share and update full contact details between followers. - matt howard

Rick: I thought following already was a multi-level marketing pyramid! You should have seen my son on Sunday when we were on Leo Laporte's show. He told his 2,000 live listeners that they had to follow my son. He got 100 new followers in a couple of minutes. - Robert Scoble

I think you forgot data mining (which links directly into advertising model, and buzz campaign monitoring). In a nutshell they should have a look at us ;-) (heck, we already do #2 and what I mentionned above!) - twitscoop

bravestface: there are about 250,000 registered users of friendfeed (it's a guess based on available data). - Robert Scoble

cant we think SMS as a strong income model? - Sinan Ata

If you're a company trying sell/advertise via Twitter...I would expect them to pay. That way it doesn't piss off your standard user. The key is charging less than other competing PR firms. - CannonGod

How about a search engine. Soon there will be so many people and companies on Twitter (and similar sites) that people will want to search for those like they do for web sites. It's already frustrating trying to find people now as the current search is very limited. Add to that a similar model to AdWords that could generate money. Would be interested to see what other people think of this idea! - Joanna Butler

A variant on #5 - develop tools for professional/advanced use of twitter and charge for that level of service. Search / stats / archival tools. - Patrick Pushor

Joanna: http://search.twitter.com has tons of places to monetize. I'd pay $5 a month to be listed on top or have a "pro" icon next to my name, for instance. - Robert Scoble

Chris: there are quite a few that I don't even track. Hi-5, for instance. - Robert Scoble

Emphasis on 'could' - AJ Kohn

Robert: I'm with you on that! Once companies are using Twitter, they'd easily see the benefits of a pro listing. I have several clients who'd at least be willing to experiment that. - Joanna Butler

The key is for Twitter to charge advertisers and not users. For example, they could make a mint by placing sidebar ads (a la FB) and justifying $ rates relative to the most popular people followed - such as you, @LeoLaporte, @guykawasaki, oh, and 'That One.' - Jim Mitchem

@jim they would make orders of magnitudes more by selling their software, support of the software and access to their software instead of limiting themselves so badly with conventional advertising. - alphaxion

If you tell Toyota or Coke that their constituency is online with Twitter and they're following specific people, or trending topics - you know they'd pay through the nose for those precious few seconds. It's push vs. pull. - Jim Mitchem

@chris - that's cool, just don't snort coke and drive Trish in a Toyota concurrently. - Jim Mitchem

@chris their software is a product they can sell, the userbase is a compelling feature of that product.. "pay for our commerical API to add twitter support to your product and add the ability of your customers to share their going-ons with the network and stoke demand and interest"... - alphaxion

Chris: exactly. Done right, who wouldn't pay? - Joanna Butler

What's the source of the current online culture of entitlement? Users don't want paid subscriptions nor to suffer ads. The same view that powers online piracy. Shouldn't creative professionals and those who fund them be compensated? If not, there will eventually be a big drop in production. Ps- few companies even use internal IM or digital BBS to share institutional knowledge, I don't see enterprise Twitted as being very lucrative. - Colin Hessel

I pay for reliability and accountability - a free service owes me nothing, they can lose my data overnight, be unavailable whenever, disappear. A service I pay for comes with an SLA, some guarantees, etc. Plus, if you don't pay for it, or donate to it, one day it will be gone and you might feel sorry. - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

I would pay for additional features = pro account (stability, groups, counter, threads etc in one interface)... but I am just an ordinary user... - Hanna Wiszniewska

ok, so maybe Toyota was a bad example http://tinyurl.com/99gkj7 - Jim Mitchem

enterprise version already exists look at http://www.yammer.com - Andrew Mueller

Great ideas Robert. Twitter execs will appreciate it but I still think no business model will exist until they are acquired. - Jeremy Campbell from twhirl

yes, i think acquisition was their business model - but the economic crisis did dash hopes of a gold-plated one so they are thinking about value added services now (through the buy-in of sandy it seems "concierge" style message parsing is one option they are looking at. If you can buy, book, plan, coordinate things semi automatically via twitter there is value in there) - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

content partnerships, - imran

Following on from the discussion re FF UI - this discussion shows a BIG issue - I had to expand 95 comments to see Robert's original 9 (and was that the best way to publish the list?) and now I can't compress them! - Mark Warren

Mark: if you refresh the page they will be compressed again. - Robert Scoble

At the very least, show Google Ads on search - Varun Mahajan

I like the idea of selling aspects of the API as a SaaS. Also think they could very easily start charging consumers for Track and SMS. - Clay Newton

They would do well to add the ability to do very robust data mining. You can imagine providing a set of business intelligence dashboards to track and analyze customer sentiment as well as real time trend analysis. - Clay Newton

Virtual goods are a really solid idea as well. Look at what they are doing at Mahalo Answers. Mixes virtual $$ and real $. Twitter could easily implement a number of different levels here. They could also open up the API to provide even greater levels of functionality for app developers, essentially building a tiny-app framework. - Clay Newton

they should sell market info from mining their data, It's a great source of customer data - Tony Jones from twhirl

tony: you then get into the murkey problem of is it their data? By the same standard your ISP could sell their data on your usage. Is it ethical and would your customer base accept it? - alphaxion

I just posted the Social Networking Monetization Golden Goose idea yesterday at http://www.growmap.com/monetiz... - Internet Strategist

@alphaxion - Advertisers will always be in the mix and are inevitable, they should do just in a way that doesn’t interfere with individual tweets/updates. Unless Twitter has an endless supply of financing, they’ll have to go to outside sources, (like subscribers/advertisers). I don’t see Twitter though offering so much value as to make it worth paying for. Not enough features. (ESPN.com has its insider pay service and still runs a ton of ads on the site, so having one rev. stream doesn’t eliminate another.) - mtlb

Someone also mentioned a pay service for exclusive/breaking news on Twitter. First, I have Drudge for breaking news, but more importantly, part of the appeal of Twitter is that people like to feel they broke the news themselves. Why should Twitter or a select few decide what's breaking and what’s not and exclude the rest of the users from contributing to that? - mtlb

I would pay good money for the ability to punch people over the internet. - stretta

Make people pay to block other users! They'll get rich. - Rae21

I was reading this long list of comments and then the system did its hiccup/update thing and it all went away and I had to spend time looking for the damn thread again. Freaking annoying! - Rae21

@twitscoop Twitter data mining (strangely over looked) seems less like a business model then and more like a feature of the social network: transforming the data flow of one's social graph into usable information is why we stick around in the first place. Oh, I guess that does count as a business model. - Brad Kligerman

I've noticed a couple companies contacting me directly via Twitter when I have made noise about their products. Obviously, people say a lot of things on Twitter about products they use... I agree with Patrick Pushor; "develop tools for professional/advanced use of twitter and charge for that level of service". Twitter should send a rep. to companies to show them how to use Twitter to improve their own products and service, by using Twitter Search to find out what consumers are saying about their products. - Colleen

I wrote an article about twitter's fundamental problem yesterday. Essentially, all communication networks move toward being free. www.zachlandes.com - Zach Landes

Robert Scoble

Twitter is a data black hole. Quick, pull out all Tweets that contained words Obama and McCain on election night. I can't do it.

December 19 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Jesper Lind, John D Reasor and 10 other people liked this

FriendFeed is no better, by the way. - Robert Scoble

22 more comments

Life is transitory - Phil Boiarski

Sanat: that's interesting, but why doesn't it show how many tweets are there? - Robert Scoble

I think not all the data makes sense to replicate. Eventually, information on these systems is not new information. It is present over there somewhere on the internet. There is information that I just don't care about in retrospect; I don't see myself looking up all the lolcats that were shared or all the personal opinions on Bacon. I think there is some value to selective content, but how do we dig it up? - Parth Awasthi

What I mean to say is: Would we be asking the question: "What did Robert say about Obama winning the election in 2008 Nov?" We don't know. So what do we choose the content we should archive? Maybe there should be the capacity for users to 'Archive' things they think they may want to refer in the future. At this moment I don't see value in cumulative archiving since very clearly, what will be useful for one, may be useless to another. - Parth Awasthi

The thing is, would it even matter if it -was- replicated. Storage is cheap. What we need is better filtering in search. FF already does it with duplicate entry detection, we are gonna see more of that. - Robert

This Google search would get you some results (although incomplete and not 100% accurate): http://www.google.com/search... - Tony Ruscoe

Is there any service that can handle this type of request? Even the mighty Google does not do well with this kind of query. - Rob Diana

http://search.twitter.com/operato... - Andre

Advanced Search makes it easy: http://search.twitter.com/advance... - james rock

Has anyone managed to get Twitter data returned from before 11 Jul 2008? Newer dates return results, but earlier than 11 Jul 2008 just gives me "The page you were looking for doesn't exist." I have tried with a range of user names and always get the same result. - Gordon Saunders

This is a suggestion - why not hive off the data into a database and then data mine it? It would be simple to do. - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Business model - Christopher Galtenberg

How many of us 500K ego-maniacs would want a full historical record of what we've done - yeah, cha ching :) - Christopher Galtenberg

Who is the archive/scribe guru who's on TWiT from time to time? He's the wayback machine either buisness guy or code guy. He goes on TWiT every once in a while to talk about like library and fair use laws, and starts pontificating about archiving and when he does it sounds like the most interesting and rewarding calling ever. Ask that guy what he thinks about this. I'll believe him vote for his plan. - Matthew DeVries

For the most part yes, but still, I view the news/opinions I get from Twitter as very valuable. You just need to parse through the noise. - Alex Wilhelm (FF BLOWS)

I'm sure you could pay someone for that type of analysis :). Twitter could probably fund themselves solely on twitter data mining. - Tony Jones from twhirl

Although I thought the same thing as digg. They could sell their service as a research tool - Tony Jones from twhirl

Scoble without search = lost - Josh Haley

Tony: you bet. Anything would let me use Twitter more effectively would cause me to pull our the wallet. - Alex Wilhelm (FF BLOWS)

Josh: What do you mean lost? - Alex Wilhelm (FF BLOWS)

Suppose you had FriendFeed sending activity to email (like gmail)? Setup a filter to autoarchive (and possibly label it) and then it's searchable. - You.

Def that, Dave. Everyone who cares about a historical archive should add their Me RSS (comments and likes) to Google Reader - Christopher Galtenberg

How many word have been spoken never to be heard again? How many words can you find in a google search you wish you could remove from spoken history? These words may well be among them. - John D Reasor

Veronica

Clif Bars are the most unsatisfying breakfast ever, but they get the job done. I just try to not look at them too much while I'm eating.

December 17 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

AJ Kohn, Sylvain Nadeau, Fee501st and 5 other people liked this

So true, i also found out that they dont make good on mountain snowboarding food since they get very hard when they get cold. - Allen

2 more comments

You ever made Bacon Breakfast Cookies? - Fee501st

and, Clif Bar just lost a few sales, :) - Tony Jones from twhirl

man if Clif Bar has any social media folk, this wold be a great chance to jump in. or develop a better breakfast option/ something that works in cold weather. - Tony Jones from twhirl

James Furlo

HP and ASU demo bendable, unbreakable electronic displays - http://www.engadget.com/2008...

December 10, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Tony Jones liked this

Pretty darn cool. - James Furlo

way to go HP getting that I back in IPG! - Tony Jones from twhirl

Tony Jones

Dirty Bathwater - http://digg.com/people...

December 5, 2008 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

"Kids are the grossest!" - Tony Jones

David Parry

Where is everybody?

December 4, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

right here! - Tony Jones from twhirl

Kevin Rose

PBS invited me to co-host a cooking show (odd)... going to shoot it live this wed, I'm bringing my forman grill (not even kidding)

December 1, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Tom Davies, Mark Kaplan, Michelle Darnell and 8 other people liked this

Forman Grill = FTW! - Tony

7 more comments

Scary :) - Charlie Anzman

Maybe the confused you with Alex? - Tony Jones from twhirl

Thats...interesting. - Mathew™ one of a kind

Sweet deal; George Foreman grill is amazing. - John Bellone

My wife uses the G.Foreman to cook whole fish. She just throws them on there, squishes them and grills away. She says it tastes really good. - Andrew Leyden

We used ours once and it sits in the closet. Maybe it was a pain to clean. Can't remember. - Michael Pardee

AWESOME! - Head Ov Metal

Michael, the ones with the grill plates that come off for cleaning are the best. I put them in the dishwasher. - Ladybug Heather

Kevin Rose

Pownce is shutting down, with the technology/team being acquired by @sixapart - details here: http://digg.com/tech_ne...

December 1, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Chris Nixon, David Recordon, Brendon Wadey and 5 other people liked this

Are/Were you part of the team ? - Thomas Bøhm

8 more comments

obviously seeing your next tweet.... - Thomas Bøhm

The interwebosphere is taking it hard. At least you know you had an audience that cared. - Jesse Hattabaugh

So you tweet it? I have officially lost all respect and am wondering why I didn't do so sooner. - Mike Lewis

Agree with Mike L, this is ridiculous Kevin, after you telling us all on Diggnation how company's should respect their customers - Yatin Vadhia

You guys are complaining over nothing. - Brendon Wadey

Brendon, I doubt you were part of any community at Pownce, to the people that were, that's complaining about something. I think we're allowed. - Mike Lewis

My comment was to the "So you tweet it" comment. - Brendon Wadey

The announcement have been on both company sites most of the day. I think Kevin was just following up on that. This is not the only announcement - Tony Jones from twhirl

Leo Laporte

I ♥ Foxmarks. http://www.foxmarks.com/ Just another reason to use Firefox everywhere.

November 14, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

sofarsoShawn, Eric Geller, Ton Zijp and 3 other people liked this

Not only it syncs bookmarks it also syncs passwords. Essential. - Pedro Fonseca

4 more comments

+1 for Foxmarks! - Ward Seward

Agreed, great for setting up a new computer. - Andrew Wilson

I LOVE Foxmarks. I use Foxmarks and LastPass in combination for all 3 computers (2 PCs and 1 Mac) - Grant Gochnauer

why not just use delicious? - Tony Jones from twhirl

@Tony Jones: Because I have about a dozen sites I regularly visit (FF, twitter, facebook,...) and don't want to load up delicious every time I want to visit one (or type in the URLs). Too slow. I also have a folder with 3 news sites that I can ctrl-click on, in the morning, and they all open at once into tabs. Oh yeah, a few Bookmarklets too. With Foxmarks installed on all my browsers my regular sites are all there... in the same order even. However, all of my other bookmarks go into Delicious. - Ward Seward

Robert Scoble

I might buy a netbook today. I looked at Asus, Samsung. I hear the HP one is best. What do you think?

November 11, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Jon Price, Steve Lowe, Chris Rivait and 14 other people liked this

I like the Dell Mini best - nice 8.9" display & keyboard just a eensy bit small. - Cartwright Reed

12 more comments

You might enjoy the MSI Macbook Nano http://gizmodo.com/5082004... - Christopher Galtenberg

...wow twhirl did a number on that comment. Samsung NC10 or Asus 1000H are the best bets right now... from what I know - Enrique Gutierrez from twhirl

Our thoughts/reviews from the past year: http://www.jkontherun.com/mininot... After using several and running Linux, XP, Vista, OS X and 7 on them, the differences between most are subtle. However, they are key. Example: I need a full sized, correctly placed Right Shift key. That leaves the MSI Wind (which I bought), the Dell, the HP and the Samsung for me. Most all share 95% of the same components. - Kevin C. Tofel

I ave the Asus EEE 901. It is nice to upgrade, but the touch pad is crap. - CW™

Asus - mhmazidi

my wife loves her acer but my son is liking an asus - if you use glue you can see both models via my likes (can post them later) - mike "glemak" dunn

HP the linux splash OS is a great additoin especially for a netbook - Tony Jones from twhirl

If you value media size get one with big hdd, if you need big keyboard get a 10 incher. If you need battery life get one with 6 cell battery. If your main need is mobility and small size, get Eee 901. If you don't really know what you want but just want a netbook, start with easy ones with big kb,hdd and 6cell battery. - jkkmobile

.. and forget HP 2133.. get something with Atom cpu.. HP 2133 uses VIA. - jkkmobile

try this one if you get a chance - Samsung NC10-14GB - mike "glemak" dunn

I love my acer netbook. - BCK from twhirl

i love my Acer for the usable keyboard, good linux distro, price. Asus wins for battery life, but the new HP mini looks promising (not the 2133). The HP has an awesome keyboard, but you want the new iteration for a better processor among other things. - Katherine Druckman from twhirl

here's our review of the Acer http://www.linuxjournal.com/video... the other netbooks are around the site as well - Katherine Druckman from twhirl

Kevin Rose

REVISION3 ANNOUNCES RECORD RESULTS FOR 2008 - http://revision3.com/blog...

November 11, 2008 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

Jonathan Fusellier, Tony Jones and nesman89 liked this

and yet there are layoffs and cancellations? - mike fabio from twhirl

3 more comments

@revrev, when you have to answer to investors they demand certain returns. the downside of VC funding... just a guess though. - Tony Jones from twhirl

yay but :( - Josh Haley

Bet this news makes Sarah and Martin ECSTATIC! Same old story, layoffs lead to windfalls - Glad R3 did well but SUCKS that 2 of the best had to go to make it possible! - Jeff Garlick

Huh. Imagine that. Too bad you had to can good people to make it happen. Seems like this announcement is just poor taste after laying people off. - Vermyndax from twhirl

Jennifer Leggio

Plurk dissolves into social networking ghost town - http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds...

October 30, 2008 from Feeds - Comment - Like - Share

Roney Smith, tony vaio, Andy Beard and 25 other people liked this

I think their mistake was form over function, the UI is a little "look what I can do!" - Tony Jones from twhirl

11 more comments

Totally agree - Jennifer Leggio

my problem with plurk is that it punishes you when you take that break that we all need to take from social networking. Once you're away for a bit it's hard to get back into it (I touched on this here http://seanreiser.com/node...) - Bastard Operator From FF

Hasn't it been a ghost town from day 1? -

That doesn't really say why it's a ghost town. I guess you had to constantly use it, as I do. For me, it was never about the karma. I dumped people who obsessed over their karma. Then I went from 178 "friends" down to 38 and while my timeline got quieter, it was a much more fulfilling experience. As the election got heated people got crazy. The Republicans spam everyone's plurks with crap and gang up on those who differ. There's 2 gangs of them that just troll. - Anika

As I've said before I'll never understand people who complain about the timeline. It's simple and easier to search than any other service. Some people complained about the plurkimals, but that's lame. They just want a reason to hate. I get that. I think that after the election will be a better way to see if it's a ghost town. I know that my private plurks are more active than ever. - Anika

You can't really make an assumption of why people don't like the "plurkimals." Design wise, a site it supposed to endear its users, not confuse them, or put them off like it's some deranged sesame street. It's a valid concern. If you find something unappealing, why use it? Plurk just seems like the MySpace of microblogging. It could be successful if it targets a demographic with perhaps a lower communication standard. It's just not sustainable nor does it offer a valuable service beyond what other sites can - Jennifer Leggio

I disagree on the plurkimals, only because I think what your content is should distract from it. I didn't even notice it until about a month after I signed on and others started complaining. As for what it offers: I can send a group of people a private plurk, which definitely something I can not do on any other site and what I use it for mostly. To me, that's worth it's weight in gold. - Anika

The karma points bothered me in that you lost features if you weren't constantly mindful of what your status was. I liked the smileys but I disliked that I had to worry about losing them. Bottom line is that I stopped using it because the folks with whom I interact on a regular basis have not budged from Twitter and now they're here on FF. What does it matter that I preferred Plurk's features over Twitter's if I was basically talking to myself? :D - ♥patricia♥

Apples and oranges on Twitter. You're comparing a mature service in that chart with a new one. I'd be willing to bet that Twitter went through highs and lows in its early days as well. Second, using Compete: it only measures US traffic, and even then not very well. I'll concede that the interest had dropped off though...definitely, but don't count them out yet - Duncan Riley

Plurk never had a chance. They only had their 15mins. of fame because of the stability problems that Twitter was having. - Chris Rodgers

then by the same standard, friendfeed is also a ghost town then =). http://i35.tinypic.com/j9avc1... http://trends.google.com/website... - lihush

plurk sucks - tony vaio

Veronica

It's not every day that someone you don't know walks up to your desk and hands you chocolate ice cream cake. Today is that day!!!

October 30, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Sylvain Nadeau, Yolanda, Mattie Kenny and 2 other people liked this

Sounds like the good kind of day. Unless it's a trap.....make them take a bite first! - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

the cake is a lie! - Tony Jones from twhirl

Veronica

New blog post: 80's videos, much improved! http://www.veronicabelmont.com/2008...

October 15, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Peter Yan, Sylvain Nadeau, Jorge Escobar and 3 other people liked this

I've always wondered why they would make us follow two different stories. If the lyrics are not good enough to translate into a music video than why make a video in the first place. - Sylvain Nadeau

2 more comments

Business in Front Party in Back!! - jamar78

Love to see this for Devo - Whip it! - Tony Jones from twhirl

Funny crap -- These were two of my favorite videos back then -- now they seem cheesy - Jorge Escobar

James Furlo

Big News: Expanding & Growing Digg - http://blog.digg.com/?p=256

September 24, 2008 from Digg - Comment - Like - Share

Tony Jones liked this

But when are they going to be able to pay their own bills? - Tony Jones from twhirl

Kevin Rose

NYTimes has the best graphics 'a year of heavy losses' - http://digg.com/busines...

September 17, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Derek Coatney, Eric Bangerter, Tsega Dinka and 2 other people liked this

That chart has a "semantic" quality to it. I been trying some stuff out at freebase like that. - Michael Fidler from twhirl

Mekko charts like this are great to communicate this type of info. I bet if Microsoft actually let you make them in Excel these would be used a lot more. - Tony Jones from twhirl

Tony Jones

Gmaps Pedometer - http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/

September 8, 2008 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

google maps pedometer - Tony Jones

Tony Jones

Twittertise: Advertise on Twitter - http://twittertise.com/

September 6, 2008 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

advertising on twitter? - Tony Jones

Tony Jones

Weka 3 - Data Mining with Open Source Machine Learning Software in Java - http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml...

August 31, 2008 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Weka DL - Tony Jones

Tony Jones

Learn to Read at Starfall - teaching comprehension and phonics - http://www.starfall.com/

August 31, 2008 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Great free source to teach your kids the alphabet and reading - Tony Jones

Tony Jones

How to Find Statistics on Social Media - http://mashable.com/2008...

August 28, 2008 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

James Furlo liked this

good notes on where to get data on how to build cred for web 2.0 in large business - Tony Jones

FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Calling all followers! I wanna know what timezone you're in: I've got a geeky itch to make a graph out of it. Please respond with your time zone in the format of + or - from GMT.

August 27, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

edythe, Glenn Batuyong, dkb and 3 other people liked this

+10 - Johnny Worthington

70 more comments

-5 or is it -4 with daylight savings? I get confused. - Michael W. May from twhirl

+2, Istanbul - Erhan Erdogan

-7 - Helen Sventitsky from fftogo

Michael: -4. I'm -4 here, too. - Mark Trapp

-5.00 (EST) - Czar

-5 EDT - Shey, Jamaican of FF

+5:30 IST (Indian Standard Time) - Rahul Das

-6 until November 2, then -7 - Jeremy Kunz

-4 at the moment. -5 in the fall. - James (@willia4)

-5.00 (EST) - JA Castillo

I'm in Berlin Germany. I have no idea what GMT zone that is. - Robert Scoble

-5 GMT (Eastern US time) - Nine

gmt+2 - Nicole Simon

UTC/GMT +10 hours down in syd australia - Jay

est time us - orionstarr

GMT+10 (Sydney, Australia). - Andrew Trinh

-5 GMT - William Spaetzel

-6 GMT - Adam Turetzky

-6 Here in Dallas, I think. - Abstinence-only works!

GMT -8 - Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)

+1 but only because we're on BST (British Summer Time) at the moment. - Graeme Shaw

-5 on a usual day, but currently -4 because of DST. How will you graph this one? :P - Long Nguyen

-5 - MiniMage, sheeple of FF from NoiseRiver

GMT - Joe Dawson

Central. Not doing math this morning. - Josh Haley

+8 - Aether

+0530 - Yuvi

-5EST - Imabug

+2 - Boubacar Balde from twhirl

+0 GMT - dkb from Alert Thingy

Usually -8 but -7 with daylight savings. (PDT) - AJ Kohn

+8 - Justin Long

+5 - Raza from Alert Thingy

-5 GMT - Bartek Ciszkowski

I can never remember, but same as you - David Knight

+1 or +2 depending on daylight savings - Olivier

+5 - Jason Theodor

+2 - Migger

GMT -5, aka US Central Daylight Time - Pat Rice

GMT -4 (EDT) - Ian May

MDT - Eric @ CS Techcast

GMT+1 - Tibor Holoda

EST - Denise

UTC -8 - Glenn Batuyong

Standard time zone: UTC/GMT -5 hours Daylight saving time: +1 hour Current time zone offset: UTC/GMT -4 hours Time zone abbreviation: EDT - Eastern Daylight Time - Carmen

Awesome, I'm at 48 comments on this! Anyone else care to contribute? - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

-6 - teh Dork Knight

GMT +8 :) - Chris Chua

-5 - Ryan Keiser from twhirl

GMT -8 - Tony Jones from twhirl

+8, Hong Kong - Marcel Ekkel

-6 GMT. Central Time represent, woot woot! Okay, i'm done. - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

-5 Eastern(whateveritisnow)Time - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Im frum teh futar. - teh Dork Knight

-6 GMT like MC Haggis up there. :) - Yolanda

-5 EST (Toronto) - Chris Luckhardt

-6 GMT, CST in the USA - Barbara K. Iverson from twhirl

-5 EDT - Mitchell Tsai

San Jose, CA PDT = UTC -7 = GMT -7 - Jeff P. Henderson

-10 GMT, HST - Tyler Gillies

+10 - Gordon Smith

British Summer Time here - GMT +1 - Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane

+1 GMT Copenhagen - Lars Rune Jensen

-4 right now -5 in a little while. - Amber, Random Time Lord

-8 - edythe

GMT +9:30 (Adelaide, Australia) - Mo Kargas

-5 - Russellreno

GMT +4 hours,Moscow time - Igor Poltavskiy

-5 EDT - RAPatton

-5 - Mattb4rd

EDT/EST - Morton Fox

Tony Jones

AudioBooksForFree.Com More information about mp3 book - 20000 Leagues Under The Sea - http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/downloa...

April 26, 2005 from StumbleUpon - Comment - Like - Share

free books! kinda - Tony Jones

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