Great post, Dave, but ask yourself this: might a neocon in phony progressive clothing be more dangerous than an overt neocon? Obama would have more political juice than McCain to press on with neocon schemes for Mideast military aggression and domestic police state programs. I no longer have any confidence in my understanding of who Obama really is. - Sean McBride
I have never seen a lucid explanation of why Obama voted this way. What does he hope to gain? - Brian Sullivan
The general consensus I've read is that now that Obama's facing the general election, he's playing toward the middle to get more votes. A lot of his hard-left progressive supporters are freaking out. - Akiva Moskovitz
I too lost a lot of (maybe all) respect for Obama when I heard about his FISA vote.. Even Hillary voted against it. - Tim
Also.. There is no "compromise" when it comes to the Constitution and liberty. You're either for liberty/privacy/freedom or you're not. The real bummer is that the Libertarian party has opted to endorse a Republican (Bob Barr) this time around.. I'm running out of candidates here.. :( - Tim
Akiva -- the pro-FISA position is hard neocon right, not "the middle." Most Americans are disenchanted with and strongly oppose most neocon policies, including the Iraq War and the mad neocon scramble to expand the Iraq War to Iran. If Obama loses his base, the steam will go out of his campaign with a great rush. There are strong indications that this has already happened. (Hillary Clinton lost the nomination largely because she moved too far to the neocon right, under the prodding of Mark Penn.) - Sean McBride
People who see this as a right-left thing are not paying attention. The Constitution is what all Americans agree on, and it's what each of these people, Senators, Presidents etc, swear to uphold. It's an honor and trust thing in addition to being a freedom thing. Any conservative who isn't pissed off by this isn't actually a conservative at all. It's about the most conservative issue there is. - Dave Winer
@Akiva I agree, but now he has to contend with charged of being a flip flopper (and I personally see him as one now). He went from saying he would filibuster the bill to voting yes. @Tim I completely agree. Obama is just another crappy politician in my book now. - JP Landry
Democrats have been beat up on national security for so long that they seem to have internalized the criticism - kind of a political version of battered wife syndrome. Obama offers some improvement over this, but obviously he still believes this as well. In any case, Larry Lessig has the best breakdown of this that I've so far seen: http://lessig.org/blog/2008/07... - Eric
Dave is right. When I visited Washington DC I had both Democrats and Republicans say they supported FISA. Why? Because inside the beltway they are really freaked out about terrorists. Remember, Flight 93 was aimed at them. Listen to our interviews with Congressman John Culberson and you'll hear a pretty good defense of FISA. I'll go get you the URL. - Robert Scoble
Here's the Culberson interview, filmed by Andrew Feinberg: http://qik.com/video/112754 -- I'll try to find the place where he talked about FISA. - Robert Scoble
Must read in Salon: http://tinyurl.com/6kgs48 "But was Obama's position on FISA really a matter of political calculation? If so, he needs to check his math. By almost any measure, political passions on this issue are heavily concentrated among the FISA bill's opponents. There was no real voter pressure on Obama to support the bill. Public opinion polls have consistently shown the bill generally and telecomm community in particular aren't very popular (see this Glenn Greenwald summary of early polling about FISA and an ACLU poll taken in January of this year). " - Sean McBride
In a word ; disappointment I was stunned on how little this got covered. Passing that act was an historic embarrassment to our beautiful idea of an nation. - mediaeater
Sean, exactly -- that's why I said it was a fight he should have welcomed. Finally an election issue that's worth debating, not just in stupid ads, but among the electorate. Let's have a referendum on whether we believe in the Constitution. - Dave Winer
Even Hillary voted against it. I, too, am disappointed in Obama. - Doug Kaye
He starts getting interesting at about 13 minutes left in the conversation. Says he wants government out of our lives. At 7 minutes left in the conversation he says he looked to what Matt Thornberry told him. You really should listen to this video at this point. - Robert Scoble
Dave, yes -- what is so disappointing about this is that Obama missed a golden opportunity to cement his reputation as a candidate with strong principles and backbone. His campaign would have been elevated and energized by doing the right thing. Instead, now survey the ruin among his base and his declining contributions. (Btw, I define myself as a "progressive libertarian" -- I support liberals and conservatives who value the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and government accountability and transparency. I am allergic to authoritarians on the right and left. As you remarked, this is not a left or right issue.) - Sean McBride
As a longtime McCain supporter (and supporter of this tremendously unpopular surveillance program), its interesting to see the disappointment and disenfranchisement people feel over Obama's position. I understand that most people here disagree with both myself and Obama on this matter, and that's fine. But I think its pretty naive to expect a politician (and make no mistake, Obama is and always has been a consummate politician) to not do something like this. (cont'd) - Curtis Schweitzer
(cont'd from above) People on the right have long been making the case that, based on his past, Obama is not an "agent of change" and that his image as a political outsider isn't based in reality. This, I think, proves that point. Perhaps its politically unwise for me, a McCain supporter to say this, but maybe a better route is not to stop supporting Obama financially, but rather to try to change his mind, even after the fact. (cont'd) - Curtis Schweitzer
The latest poll which came out today shows that McCain and Obama are now within 3 points of each other, and that Obama lost something like 12 points. The only explanation I have for this is his vote on FISA. Why did he vote yes on this when he could have just abstained? I believe that he thinks with all the problems the US is confronting and all the reforms he wants to do, he needs all the executive power he can get. This is not about liberal/conservative, it's about concentration of power. - Paul Denlinger
(cont'd from above) What is most certainly unwise is pretending that Obama is somehow "above" the political process or that he really means what he says about reforming it. Because he isn't above it, and he can't possibly follow through on his promises of reform. And that's ok. He's a politician that you agree with on most things-- it is unrealistic and frankly a little thickheaded to cease supporting him simply because of a disagreement. He's going to do what it takes to get elected, and sometimes (cont'd) - Curtis Schweitzer
(cont'd from above)...sometimes that means doing things that you may not agree with. It will happen. (McCain and I disagree on a great many number of things, but that doesn't mean I will stop donating to his campaign). So keep donating to the causes you believe in, and fight even those politicians you support when you think they're wrong. That's what the American political process is all about. - Curtis Schweitzer
I'm not so disturbed nor so fickle. 1. Obama voted to amend the immunity out of the bill. They couldn't get the votes, which means they couldn't over-ride a promised veto either. 2. Other parts of the bill put in restraints that are important to have, and Bush had promised to sign it. 3: A parliamentary device is important - only those on the prevailing side can introduce reconsideration later, though I don't know how much of a factor that is here. In any case, this does not tell me that Obama is unprincipled. Stopping the executive-branch behavior seems preferable to suing Telcos, if we only get to choose one. - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
@Dennis: +5. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Politics is not about perfection. Work to change your candidate's platform, not against your candidate. Seriously folks, you have friends, family and spouses who do things you don't agree with but we don't cut ourselves off from them or file for a divorce. - AJ Kohn
I don't see what the big deal is about telecom immunity. You can't ask a public company to say no to the NSA, it'd be a moral victory which they wouldn't be able to tell anyone about because of the secrecy involved and a potential hassle with the federal government. No upside, only downside. AT&T shouldn't have been asked to do it at all, which is what the FISA bill is about. - Nicholas Molnar
Here's the rub: Congress is totally freaking worthless and has been for a few decades now. It's a total fire sale and the highest bidder runs the country for awhile. If you hate Bush, then you haven't been paying attention to what the Congress has been doing for the past 20+ years (R's and D's, doesn't matter). Anyone who thinks that voting a senator into the White House will solve anything is fooling themselves. They're the ones responsible for the sorry state of things! Throw the bums out! - Chad Myers
Just a comment on the "even Hillary voted against it" thing. Clinton is no longer running for president. I seriously doubt she would have voted against the bill if she was the candidate. - Didi Chanoch
Maybe he's just another triangulating Slick Willie. But he's quite correct. The Left will vote for him anyway. And I'll take a Slick Willie over the neocons any day. Sigh. - polizeros
Well said Mr. Winer - I still can believe Sullivan's altogether lazie-fair attitude towards all of this. Surprising to say the least. - Will DeLuca
Good comments above. One point that was missed was that you need to differentiate between conservatives (think Goldwater) and neoconservatives (think GW Bush). - Ontario Emperor via fftogo
Ontario Emperor: neoconservatives are anti-conservative, anti-liberal, anti-libertarian and anti-American (thus the assault on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights). They are a strange mix of Trotskyism and Judeo-Christian fascism and have glommed on to the conservative movement and turned it upside down and inside out. They are operating out of the 20th century authoritarian/totalitarian tradition. - Sean McBride
Ontario Emperor & Sean McBride: both great comments. It's sad that this distinction isn't made more publicly. - Zach Underwood
It's sad to see any politician or elected official sell our freedoms for any reason. It especially hurts when you see someone, like Obama, profess change and professing to being of the people, "change" his message. - Dennis Hays
With one exception, the FISA compromise does what Democrats wanted, and what most people thought the law was and should be. Telecom immunity was a tough sell, and it seems pretty understandable the Obama ultimately was not willing to kill the bill for it. I thought his explanation: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... captured the issues fairly well. - Kevin Miller
But there's a larger issue. It's hard for me to reconcile the Dave Winer who wrote this: http://www.scripting.com/daven... with the one who wrote the post here. Politicians make shitty software, too, and it's equally as immature to ascribe evil purposes to Obama as to those who write software with bugs in it. Taken in full, Obama is the most promising politician in a generation, and this is a moment when we need every bit of political skill he can bring to the table. - Kevin Miller
Dave, I agree with you about FISA. It feels like the wrong decision by Obama. It also feels wrong that you would stop $$ support based on the FISA decsion. Assuming $$ is important to Obama's campaign your decision makes it more likely that McCain is elected. Regardless of the FISA vote, is that what you want? - Linc Holland
Linc and Kevin: Obama's base is sending him a powerful message: if you deviate too much from the positions you claimed to hold before being nominated, if you morph into a Joseph Lieberman clone, we will pull the rug out from under you so fast that it will make your head spin. Isn't that a message that Obama needs to hear loud and clear? - Sean McBride
Sean: I agree that that's a good message to send. But do you really see Obama morphing into a Joe Lieberman clone? I don't think that's what's going on here. He accepted a compromise that many of us wouldn't have. Maybe I wouldn't have, either. But once the House passed this new compromise, it was either going to be this bill or nothing, and I can understand that decision. - Kevin Miller
Kevin - I am still holding out hope that Obama will remain true to most of the policy positions he espoused this last spring. I don't think it does any harm to remind him and his top advisers that his base is paying very close attention to these matters. (And there is no conceivable way that I could vote for John McCain.) - Sean McBride
If you read Obama's policy statements from before he won the primaries you'll see he hasn't really changed his position at all. He was always further to the right than Hillary Clinton on issues such as energy, climate change, universal health care. - Paul Guinnessy
Summary: The social networking and search mashup is big and extremely monetizable. It will create a business around social contextual advertising. Will Friendfeed be able to scale? Time will tell but someone will make this work - Friendfeed, Facebook or maybe even Google. - Steve Rubel
"complements aggregated content from friends" as in ranked by likes/ comments from friends? Or even by favorable or unfavorable comments? Interesting post. - Roberto Bonini
Steve Rubel's summary is precisely the kind of valuable comment I would like to like. - Sean McBride
Steve, you have hit the nail on the head. Watch how the "best of" feature of FF morphs into search over time. FF is essentially using social media to rank stories, articles, posts, etc. It's the social search promise that Yahoo never delieverd. The question in my mind ultimately be will Yahoo try and sue them over this. http://tinyurl.com/uljes - Thomas Hawk
social context and search definitely provides a different perspective than google. - Rob Diana
@Thomas Hawk - I can't belive they would patent "interestingness". Interest is subjective rather than objective. Now I havent read the full patent (its enough to give me a heachache just looking at it), but it seems to me that it is specifically talking about ranks, tags and other metadata associated with somthing. FF is, in this context, more of a discussion board. Digg, Technorati, geotagging photos, PageRank ,etc seem to fit the description of metadata more than FF. Anyone got a lawyers opinion on this?? - Roberto Bonini
@Roberto, you'd think. But the patent filed by Yahoo is amazingly broad covering not just photos but the broad category of "media," and FF is using comments, likes, etc. to gauge relevance, same as Flickr to rank media. Apply it to search and who knows. I've always wanted an attorney's opinion on this patent as I've always opposed its filing personally. - Thomas Hawk
it is already starting to reshape marketing. this is another beast out of the box that pr just can't contain or ignore. ;) - Rodney Rumford
Thomas Hawk: A really powerful signal in the noise -- could this patent be one? It bears close reading. One is always looking for the successor to Brin's and Page's "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" http://tinyurl.com/y98mbt for world revolutionary potential. - Sean McBride
@SteveRubel your use of a summary is going into my FF best practices for blog posts on FF - Christian Anderson
@thomas hawk - except that "interestingness" is really just regurgitating the a-listers' content... i maintain that friendfeed has "potential" and thats about as far as I'll take it right now. - Jeremy Toeman
I disagree Jeremy. Interestingness done correctly is not at all about regurgitating a-lister's content. But to really do it right, FF should introduce a "ratings" option for users. A subjective score from 1-100 that you could enter for contacts to determine relevance. This way your brother or mom or best friend could get a 99 score while a casual acquaintance could get a 5. Relevance could then be reshuffled and presented in highlights, search, etc. highly personal and very powerful. - Thomas Hawk
Sean, that interestingness patent from Yahoo is the biggest BS ever to come out of that company. I'd be embarrassed to have my name associated with it. It's the patent definition of patent abuse. I wish I knew the status on its progress and would love to hear an attorney's opinion on it. - Thomas Hawk
@Thomas - I would avoid physical ratings at this point as it tends to lend itself to gaming. @Jeremy - FF is only as interesting as who you follow. If you follow mostly a-listers and like a-listers, then that is the content you find. If you follow a diverse set of people, you get a much different list. - Rob Diana
I haven't changed my list of followeds but today is more eclectic than any in the past. Not sure if it is the beginning of a trend or not. Hope so! - Brian Sullivan
I have to agree with @Rob Diana. The more people you subscribe to the more diverse you feed is going to be and the more intersting it gets. Not to mention the "Friend of a Friend" feaature that makes it even better. I don think we want to see FF adopting a Digg style ratings system. The fact that people post items ( by whatever means) in here is indicative enough of the items importance. - Roberto Bonini
@rob diana - thats missing the point. I am friends with Robert Scoble, so I follow him. BUT, due to the FF algorithm, his overwhelming popularity with *others* impacts his interestingness here above and beyond his interestingness to any one individual... - Jeremy Toeman
jeremy: Aren't you and Rob saying the same thing basically? If you follow a diverse group of interesting people (who are likely to have interesting "friends") you will get an interesting feed - Brian Sullivan
@brian - well, I follow >200 people, and my 'interesting' stuff today is from a very small group of them, and guess what, they all have the most followers. so i'm sure i could be wrong on this, but it appears that the algorithm takes into account the quantity of followers, regardless of discussion or "interestingness". - Jeremy Toeman
Steve, just read your post and it is a good one. Is it friendfeed that you think is the trend or the concept friendfeed of FF as a piece of software. Could facebook copy ff and put on the news feed? - Laurent Courtines via twhirl
Interesting stuff, particularly about the influence of peers: i've always thought of FF as a P2P network in the very truest sense.... - Iain Baker
FF is already changing things and fast. It would be nice if comments and FF could trackback to source docs & vice versa. Maybe Disquis for now. You're right on, FF can disrupt search & reshape advertising. Is this the point where semantic web really need to come in? Or are we going to just go insane? (I like the noise, but could use a melody now and again.) - phil baumann
The conversation a couple of weeks ago about decentralising twitter, and the various ones earlier about how to scale twitter missed this point entirely. Twitter should be 'architected' (what a horrible word!!) as multiple indexes against a table of messages - martin english
I don't think you guys understood the discussion -- the question was how do we communicate when Twitter is down. If you have a solution that doesn't involve decentralizing off Twitter, I'd love to hear it. "Wait until we get our act together" isn't a good answer, btw. - Dave Winer
Now, we have friendfeed :) Seriously, fixing twitter won't prevent EVERY failure, but it will prevent some of the more obvious problems with response and missing tweets. But I just thouight of an interesting question.... There may be opportunity costs to not using twitter (everyone else is and thats where the buzz is), there's no outlay to twitter - What right do we have to demand an answer from THEM (twitter, i mean) ? - martin english
Exactly right. We don't have the right to make demands. That's the problem. We shouldn't ever be in a situation where we are captive to a single company. That's why the Internet boomed in the first place, because the companies that held users captive didn't understand, care about, or listen to their users. This is a classic case. Oh the users don't understand. But wait a minute, yes we do. - Dave Winer
and then there's the whole Ariel Waldman thing which has nothing to do with architecture. - Thomas Hawk
Microblogging is not the same as messaging. Even the @ links, being seen by friends, are different from messaging. Twitter is something new. That's why we care. - Jonathan Leavitt
I'm just glad it's being talked about as much it is. I expect great things to come out of these conversations. - Bwana McCall
Twitter provides contact, which I have in email and IM. Friendfeed provides conversation, which is less common. Especially considering the quality of conversation I'm privvy to in FF. - Jack Carlson
I find it amusing that there is not a single comment (at this time) on Fred's blog but 9 comments on FriendFeed already. - Jauder Ho
I'm telling ya, this place is great for discussions! - Bwana McCall
I honestly don't think it would be that hard to teach the Twitter clients to rollover to using FriendFeed when Twitter goes down. - Dave Winer
blog comments are dead. The real conversations are happening here. I'd like to turn my entire comment system on my blog over to the friendfeed link that accompanies it there. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas, I don't doubt that FriendFeed will, at some point, provide a Disqus-like interface. But comments are not dead, at all. They're thriving. It doesn't matter "where" -- there is no where. This is on a hard disk somewhere in some colo. Who cares where it is. Here we are. That's all that matters. :-) - Dave Winer
Geez I'm starting to sound like Scoble. - Dave Winer
What I would like to see is for FF to group conversations together when multiple people post the same link. Right now I'm seeing more than one thread pop up. - Jauder Ho
Dave, I agree with you. I meant to say comments on blog silos directly are dead. They will still happen sure, but the conversations here are much more engaging and interactive. I get 5 comments here for every 1 I get on my blog. Plus with my blog I have to moderate to prevent spammers who spam my blog with hundreds of spam comments a day. A FF plug in for my blog comments would be ideal in my opinon. - Thomas Hawk
@jauderho FriendFeed should automatically post a blog comment when you post a FriendFeed comment under a link to a blog post. - Bruce Williams
@ThomasHawk you don't think the spammers will come here once this site gets popular? - Bruce Williams
@Jim: that was what I compared Twitter to today! - edythe
could we all ask FF to send these comments to me via Disqus. i wouldn't have even known about this discussion if dave winer hadn't pointed to it on his blog. not everyone uses FF. that's the point. some read blogs, some use Twitter, some use FF. they have to work together. i like the discussion of my blog posts to at least be available to the people who prefer to follow the discussion on my blog - Fred Wilson
I think there's a bit of hand waving going on when we talk about a decentralized "message buffer" to layer on twitter for when it's down. What percentage of the twitter population needs to be on it for it to be worthwhile? 10%? 50%? If the primary benefit of using Twitter is the audience that follows you, when Twitter goes down and 80% of the audience vanishes, what's the benefit of continuing the discussion? (Although posting on twitter does feel like talking to yourself sometimes) - Michael Kowalchik
