I need serious help with FF. For an idiot like me this isn't so intuitive really. Help section is nice but I need someone to hold my hand ..bleeech. Don't get me wrong I am sorry I was reluctant to try FF before
- cheapsuits
I blame Scoble. It's always his fault :-)
- Keith Barrett
but how am I going to tell the world I need a cup of tea???? nooooooo
- Rachel Clarke
Giorgio - I'm seeing some activity through the Twitter API, too (that's what TweetDeck uses, I believe); not a lot, but some
- Robert J Taylor
I thought it was just my connection. ;-) I'm also having problems with Facebook today.
- Timothy Federwitz
yeah, it seems the web interface is down but the api is working..
- Giorgio
I think the social media experts are going to spend the next hour talking about Twitter being down
- Keith Barrett
Scoble's followers where the glue keeping Twitter together! now that he's 'pulled the pin' and released them all, Twitter has fallen down and can't get up.
- MikeAmundsen
Seems to me like some sort of an (DDoS) attack on Twitter and Facebook.
- Jari Hakkarainen
I'm so lost this morning without my cup-o-Twitter
- frank barry
You broke it Bob! All this follow/unfollow madness.
- ZuDfunck
They'll comment on it, much like I just did.
- Marlin Forbes
Yiorgas: read a book for a change? I do that anyway, but only about 10/month. need more twitter time to balance it out
- Rachel Clarke
Facebook is copying twitter too closely...even to going down at the same time
- Robert Littlejohn
Does Twitter have what it takes to be a big player? We've been working with their API on a project and every time there is something out of whack. Anyone else have the same issues?
- Chris Nadeau
twitter is really down, I think twitter itself should have a site that tweets when it's down :)
- Ata İsmet Özçelik
They will use FF to inform their friend that twitter is down
- Didier Girard
This is very interesting that it is impacting more than one social network ... can't even speculate what the cause is yet. Not getting much work done today I'm afraid, going to be following these conversations..
- Joe Magennis
I haven't been on twitter for days. I guess I picked the wrong morning to jump back in.
- Jeff Stannard
Robert: The most important question>> How many new sign-ups for FF today?
- K.N. Ajit Narayan
GUILTY ! I have had a FF account for awhile just never used it--
- cheapsuits
What the celebrities like you do. Talk about it on Twitter.
- Tad Chef
This actually made me laugh out loud, because I was thinking the same thing!
- Dan
This kind of reminds me of a line from Office Space: "I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail."
- Jari Hakkarainen
Could this mean that CNBC was right??? Nooooooooooo!
- Travis Koger
I was planning to unfollow a bunch of followers due to Twitter's follow limit rule kicking in at the ~#2000 user level. I have to wait with that then... ;)
- Martin Lindeskog
Twitter being down is a a relief to me this morning! Now I can stay OFF it rather than fitting it into every 30 second change of task! n
- Arleen Anderson
at this rate they will have to start sending out junk mail via the post office again... oh the humanity
- Terry Bruce
I feel like we are all stranded on a tropical Island together
- Jeff Wiant
was afraid for a moment that out IT blocked all social networks or something horrible like that. Thank god FF came back up quickly. This might have gotten me to use FF more. I often neglect it.
- Ryan Cummins
Wondered why tweetdeck wasn't loading anything. actually got some programming work done. lol
- Justin Long
twits will move, but only until twitter is back online, then there will be a mass exodus. Remember during all of the 2007/2008 fail whales users still flocked back to it regardless.
- Travis Koger
Twitter, Facebook, now Posterous... 4chan organize an attack or something?
- Sam Harrelson
from IM
took inordinate amount of time to get into ff today as well
- A Zmaj
Hmmm DoS attack...someone wanting a ransom from Twitter?
- Mike Gargano
Guess they'll have to either pick up the phone or do some work :)
- Graham Bunting
Can someone with 94k followers really mock the the celebs and experts devoid of Twitter?
- Augie Ray
Hey, no bogus follow messages in my inbox for a while! ;-)
- Julie Barrett
from twhirl
This is teaching us something about the framework of the current Internet traffic patterns. We're watching cascade scale problems from one major Internet program going down.
- Melanie Reed
Facebook is giving up the ol', "Transport error (#1001) while retrieving data from endpoint `/ajax/inline_comments.php': A network error occurred. Check that you are connected to the internet" message now.
- 3Cinteractive, L.L.C.
from twhirl
I think this is bigger than Twitter and FB... I think it's some interweb routes or something. I had a VoIP call going with a party local to me and two across the country and I lost the two across the country, but maintained the local party. And others are commenting on other sites showing signs of outages.
- Timothy Federwitz
from Alert Thingy
Yeah, had all the characteristics of a DDoS attack. What do perpetrators of such attacks get from doing that, I've never understood.
- Jari Hakkarainen
The real bummer for me is, now I actually have to listen to the radio to get the word of the day!
- Travis Owen
is twitter connected with FB or Friendfeed? I am having page errors with both, Ajax issues with FB intermittently , I am no tech geek so I have no clue whats up and come here to learn
- lisa coultrup
Maybe Ev's interview on the BBC last night didn't go down well with the Iranians!
- Andrew
from iPod
Tracing route to twitter.com [168.143.162.100] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 172.16.1.1 2 25 ms 29 ms 28 ms lo1.br57.fra.de.hansenet.net [213.191.64.45] 3 24 ms 24 ms 23 ms ae1-252.prju01.fra.de.hansenet.net [62.109.64.13 7] 4 24 ms 23 ms 24 ms fra32-hansenet-3.fra.seabone.net [89.221.34.61] 5 120 ms 119 ms 195 ms ash1-new50-racc1.ash.seabone.net [195.22.206.2] 6 125 ms...
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- Zalt Woo
Ev coming onto the BBC last night and saying that they were asked by the US Goverment to keep Twitter up and running during the Iranian protests cannot have gone down well in Tehran!
- Andrew
from iPod
DoS on large portions of the internet. Is this 4Chan... Chinese... N. Korea... durkadurkastan...
- Ryan Cummins
now having trouble getting to Friendfeed
- Justin Long
look, few days ago Clinton back home with two imprisoned american journalists from North Korea and today Korea is attacking twitter? it is revenge)))
- obolonskyi
maybe Robert's great unFollowing crashed the servers... no loss! Go FF
- Jay Shapiro
from BuddyFeed
As I said, I predict a baby-boom in 9 months... wait and see!
- Jordi Soler
SEO Experts can analyze their charts, celebrities and wannabe's can entertain us with video (maybe some cool Twitter Whore like stuff) , and social media experts can quickly become Fail Whale Experts.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
@Lee Provost don't you thing you're going to be a little apocaliptic ? :-)
- Filippo Ronco
Twitter downing has to be a lesson for all of us. if sometimes gmail or even google will be down. what we all are going to do in that situation???
- obolonskyi
@Filippo i've been suprised many times that reality is often more wacked up than the conspiracy theories of geeks :-p
- Lee Provoost
I'm hoping the social media experts go away and do something useful.
- Parvez Halim
@Jordi LOL, considering that there are a vast amount of single male computer geeks out there in the twitter community, baby boom effect might be negligible :-D
- Lee Provoost
what is bad here? here doesnt exist reply button =(
- obolonskyi
The realtime updates of the comments is great. FF rulez. Would be better though to have the comment link not on top
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
@Lee single male computer geeks - LOL))
- obolonskyi
AAANND.. it's back. At least for a moment I guess..
- Alex Schleber
AAANND it's GONE! ..Again. At least I managed to send out a quick FriendFeed SOS, as in: "Still think you shouldn't have all of your favorite tweeps in a "backup system" on FriendFeed? Join here: www.friendfeed.com/alexschleber "
- Alex Schleber
Either collapse or back to use their phones in voice only mode, do some shopping, get eye to eye contact ... Blame god, and then. Give a serious try on FF ;p
- Marco ILLESCAS
from iPhone
They will still be able to Tweet to themselves - not sure if they will realize it is down until it comes back up.
- Phil Harrison
What will the blackhat SEO experts, the SM spammers, and the social media experts do during a widespread outage? The answer is obvious: While sitting out the crisis they're fine-tuning their methodology. Seriously, your question offends me. There's a gazillion of SEO experts out there who do not abuse social media.
- Sebastian
Sebastian there can't be a gazillion SEO experts! What's 10,000 keywords times 20?? (and that's being generous!)
- Arleen Anderson
Would a social media expert consider it to be a crisis? If they rely so heavily on just one or two tools that it's enough to throw them into a tizzy, their expert status would seem to me to be ... questionable, at best.
- Gord McLeod
Arleen, 10,000 keyword phrases times 20 is a tiny fraction of the search terms that are worth optimizing for. Think of the long tail. Also, consider lots of webmasters and even publishers / site owners / bloggers / Web developers ... SEO experts who are able to optimize their stuff quite successfully but don't sell or publish their expertise. Many of them, and even many SEO consultants, do make sensible use of social media, as plain users.
- Sebastian
Gord, in a social media spammer's book 2 hours of outage, IOW 2 hours w/o sales from sneakily distributed links to questionable sales pitches, can sum up to way more than a good day's beer money. ;) However, "crisis" might be a term too strong for this potential loss.
- Sebastian
Arleen: yes, reading this is fun. Sebastien SEO types are so easy to wind up. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Gotta love it... @RobCairns says "come to Friend Feed? Not" and then his page shows ONE POST from Twitter in the past 18 hours! And that one talks about how Twitter seems to be slowing down again! (Sorry Rob, but that's just too good to let pass!)
- Mark "DerBingle" J
Robert, admit it, you broke Twitter by massively unfollowing people. The DDoS attack reports have just been a ruse to cover up the fact that you were the backbone of Twitter all this time.
- Louis Trapani
Keep running into the wall a few times then find alternate outlets such as ff, linkedIn, etc...
- Kirsten Mitchell
from iPhone
Looks like the devious plan to move everyone to FF is working well. LOL :)
- Geer
Ha! The whole Facebook Twitter slowdown may have been just people clicking on spam (not a DDoS botnet). How funny! Manual DDoS. See Bill Woodcock's theory at CNet, AP, SF Gate, and The Register http://ff.im/6gLmO
- Mitchell Tsai
There you go again implying the only ones that use twitter is SEO experts, the celebrities, the spammers, the bots, and the social media experts - This is definitely SPIN. Perhaps you should join CNN also LOL
- RetiredTeacherD
Ironic, given your status as a celebrity social media expert who constantly spams about bots... :-P
- David Kettler
Now they'll have time to shower and do their laundry!
- Ron Hagenhoff
This was a brochure for college students back in 1992 that advertised the Mac IIci and one of the first PowerBooks. Yes, I used to be an Apple shill! :-)
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
WOW! That's hilarious! What a cool thing to have.
- James Hull
Ah. 1992. I would love to go back in time to 1992 with a Macbook Pro or something, and show you some tech from the future and then take it off you and bugger off back to the future.
- Mark
You were a girl in 1992? Oh wait - you mean you were the guy on the LEFT! :) :)
- Lee Drake
You never know what the future will bring...
- Seth Eagelfeld
Woz and I talked later about the Mac IIcx's. They were so easy to upgrade. I miss that era of computers.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I remember attending Apple's IIci announcement at the Universal Ampitheater in October 1990? Later in the day I met with Guy Kawasaki and discussed his ideas for a board game. I ordered a IIci on the developer's discount at just over $4600. I still have it and the copy of the check I used to pay for it.
- Mike Shulman
Like the ad. I was testing FF email feature yesterday. Did you send from your phone or desktop?
- Nakeva Corothers
Interesting how Apple has always worked so hard going after the college/university student market, especially in the context of the way they dominate sales of computers over the $1000 mark now. It's not only targeting young minds, it's also targeting young minds that are disproportionately likely to be wealthier than average in their careers and invest in themselves.
- Jed White
This is great. I love the come-hither pose.
- Mike Doeff
from iPhone
Biz writes, "Every time someone wrote a reply Twitter had to check and see what each of their followers' reply setting was and then manifest that tweet accordingly in their timeline—this was the most expensive work the database was doing and it was causing other features to degrade."
- Louis Gray
But on FriendFeed, every time you see an update, FriendFeed checks if you subscribe to someone, and if you have hidden any service, or even any specific blog from any service.
- Louis Gray
FriendFeed knows when you post an update who can see it and who can't see it, based on who is following, and what services they have opted into or out of. And when you think of how many different ways the database has to be set, the unlimited power is very impressive.
- Louis Gray
FriendFeed checks by list, by service, by name of service, and can even check by if something is liked or not, how many times, has comments, and how many, and who from, if you use the search. There is a ton of data behind the data.
- Louis Gray
Math is hard </barbie>. Sorry, but this seems like a serious cop out to me. If FF can design the DB to function as quickly as it does with as many selection parameters, surely Twitter could do the same (if, that is, they have the proper backend platform to do so, and it doesn't look like they do).
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
And yet, FriendFeed continues to add features and have near-flawless uptime without slowness.
- Louis Gray
I agree...it is a major copout. We have been using that technique in online chat systems since the early 1980's. It is not difficult and does not take as much power as @biz seems to be implying.
- Semipro
"near-flawless uptime without slowness"? You can't be serious…
- Mistletoe Glen
I am serious. They had downtime last week, and that was a blip. And what slowness, Glen? (Referring to FriendFeed)
- Louis Gray
Their whole feed was delayed several hours last night!
- Mistletoe Glen
my bad — I thought you were talking about Twitter
- Mistletoe Glen
My comments should have run together. Tina helpfully interrupted. :)
- Louis Gray
Yeah, the "And yet, they continue..." sorta started down the road to Ambiguity.
- Ken Sheppardson
Please accept my abject apology and a free libation of your choice at our next (first?) meeting
- Mistletoe Glen
(Edited for clarity) and Glen, look forward to that happening.
- Louis Gray
@ in the middle must be a lot less frequent than @ at the beginning thus saving processing power
- Matsis
But a beginning @ is index 0, there's no seek time compared to an any position @.
- Micah Wittman
also I believe a fair comparison would be twitter removing the @ replies to all (lame) with FF removing FoaF entries from lists other than the home feed. And twitter search is real time - that's probably eating up processing power
- Matsis
Good point re: Friend of a Friend, Matsis. FriendFeed already has to check if you have it enabled or not, and then if you have it enabled for a specific friend or not, and then, execute. I neglected to mention that.
- Louis Gray
Leather: When the "see all @ replies" was an option, Twitter had to decide how to handle @ replies (whether to propagate the tweet to you or to hide it, depending on your setting), which is expensive to the database. So, either they make everybody see all @ replies (which changes the setting of 98% of the users), or they sacrifice the 2%
- Andre P. Siregar
Micah I think twitter's point was that they didn't want to go check the setting (too much work for them) so they removed it. We b*itched and moaned so they gave back something less than what was. Or in other words, if the feature is available, and Oprah has a back and forth with aplusk (say replies 10-15 times), twitter dies. Also what Andre said :)
- Matsis
This is a good lesson for all comp sci students. The @-reply was not a feature Twitter had when they first launched. It's sort of a hack from the community that later got incorporated. But the architecture didn't anticipate this feature. And now it's hard to change the foundation when the house has been built
- Andre P. Siregar
Andre, I also think it's fair to say (many have stated this many times) that the whole of twitter's original architecture wasn't built with the anticipation of its current use.
- Micah Wittman
I think it all has to do with the schema-less design on top of MySQL FriendFeed is using. They're simply making smarter choices ahead of time, rather than reactive choices.
- Jesse Stay
So, by the presumed logic, no one's going to a see any new features that involves a follower dependent setting regarding anything tweet in stream. Well, ok then.
- Micah Wittman
Jesse, I have no doubt Friendfeed made smarter design decisions. When Twitter started the whole micro-blogging thing nobody really knew back then how it was going to grow and be used (now Twitter is much more than just about "I'm having lunch"). So when Friendfeed started, I'm sure they took some lessons learned from Twitter and others
- Andre P. Siregar
Micah, yes regarding Twitter's original architecture. IIRC, Digg went through the same re-architecting exercise a few years back when their users started to skyrocket.
- Andre P. Siregar
It's typical to have to re-architect a system once you realize how much the userbase is skyrocketing. Ideally you've constructed it in such a way so that you can rip out modular pieces and replace them as necessary. It seems to me that the whole of Twitter's backend is a much more serially constructed system, which is why they have to have complete system outages still now at three...
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- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
And though I wasn't on Twitter to see it, Robert suggests that they've been seeing these problems since he had about 1500 followers.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: that's absolutely true. Twitter was crashing even back in 2006. The architecture they chose was always horrid. It's getting better, actually, but still is having sizeable problems. Friendfeed has been down twice, once for an hour, and once for more than an hour because of a power failure that took down the entire data center. (At least that I remember). Twitter seems like it was down every day in 2008 and even this week has been down more than friendfeed has ever been down.
- Robert Scoble
It's hard to compare the two systems DB functionality because of the lower traffic FriendFeed has compared to Twitter.
- Rick Cogley
Rick, you can compare them based on the time of their lifespan though, and FriendFeed is doing much, much better. See the interview Scoble and I did with them last year when they had a very similar user-base to FriendFeed's.
- Jesse Stay
Rick: absolutely NOT true. Friendfeed today has MUCH higher traffic than Twitter did two years ago.
- Robert Scoble
It is easy to look at the total user base and make excuses for Twitter, but what I'm talking about is the fact that FriendFeed is accomplishing much more complex tasks, and not missing a beat. Even when they are 10 times bigger than they are today, I expect they will scale smoothly, because of their talent and their track record.
- Louis Gray
Leather: I'm assuming the difference is with the amount of WRITE operation in the database (which is much more expensive than parsing)
- Andre P. Siregar
I would love to read how friendfeed has architected itself to avoid the problems twitter is having.
- ian kennedy
Traffic may be one thing, but I would venture to guess the activity in the database is higher in FF than in Twitter for the same number of users
- Andre P. Siregar
ian: on friendfeed there is more metadata to study and filter with. I can say "show me all items that mention Obama" on both services, but only on friendfeed can I also say "and display only those items that have a like or more." That is how friendfeed can remove a major amount of spam (and I use it all the time). Spam doesn't get likes. Another way?
- Robert Scoble
On friendfeed I can delete any comment underneath one of my items. So I can help keep my corner of friendfeed clean. And if I see any underneath, say, your items, I can let you know about it. But what about on Twitter? We can't do shit about spam except report it and hope that @biz or someone gets to it.
- Robert Scoble
Leather: Twitter is more than three years old. Friendfeed is just about 1.5 years old. You aren't factoring that in. Go and compare the two services all along at the same age. I don't compare my 1.5 year old to a three year old, and neither should you. That's a HUGE mistake you are making.
- Robert Scoble
When Twitter was 1.5 years old it had fewer users than friendfeed and was FAR LESS COMPLEX yet it was going down about 100 times more often than friendfeed is today. Twitter's architecture was NEVER thought out very well and we're still seeing the artifacts of that.
- Robert Scoble
Leather: I'm comparing friendfeed today to where Twitter was 1.5 years ago.
- Robert Scoble
Leather: true, but friendfeed is a LOT more complex than Twitter ever was and it also has more users than Twitter did when Twitter was 1.5 years old.
- Robert Scoble
Leather: then what are you arguing with me about? Heheh.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble, yes the filtering on advanced searches is impressive (it even supports simple exclusions). I am impressed that they can keep it all running with every page updating in*real*time. Is each page an open session?
- ian kennedy
ian: I believe it is. Leather: go to compete.com or any traffic site and compare. But adjust the dates.
- Robert Scoble
Leather: keep in mind I've been on Twitter 907 days and I'm not going to do your homework for you. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Louis, you're absolutely correct about FF accomplishing much more complex tasks much more effortlessly. Overall the leaders of this team are more effective. We had a saying back when I was consulting ISP startups "The network IS the business plan" In an online business that depends entirely on its systems for potential revenues, the architecture of the network becomes a model for the...
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- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Leather: believe me, Twitter didn't grow that fast until the last year. The first two years Twitter grew slower than friendfeed did and had a TON more problems (and was even less complex).
- Robert Scoble
Leather: 900 != 700. Heheh. That's a huge number of days in this world. And, anyway, both traffic and complexity are higher on friendfeed and amount of time down is MUCH lower here. So, by either metric friendfeed is winning HUGE.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, here's the screen capture from Compete.com: http://twitpic.com/57bgl Y'all seem to be forgetting about non-Twitter-account web traffic. FF is flat; Twitter skyrockets. And yes, FF is "younger" but is built on top of Twitter so it did not start from the same "zero" point -- nor does it have as many API calls -- nor is it as accessible off-the-laptop (iPhones excepted).
- Kathy E Gill
Kathy: you have NOT shifted the graph to show equivilent times. At 4/2009 Friendfeed is STILL far younger than Twitter was at 4/2008. Shift the graphs and come back. Also, at 1.5 years into its life Twitter didn't have that many apps either and Twitter's API is far more simplistic than friendfeed's is. Twitter didn't take off until after it was two years old. Friendfeed is already growing faster. And who cares what it is built on top of? Twitter was built on top of blogs and we don't hold that against it.
- Robert Scoble
Kathy: Benjamin Golub of FF wrote fftogo.com. FriendFeed on any phone.
- Johnny Worthington
Twitter started March 21, 2006. Friendfeed started October 1, 2007. You must shift the charts to compare apples to apples.
- Robert Scoble
I just don't understand why it's so hard to compare apples to apples. If you want to compare the two companies, you have to compare them at similar stages in their lifecycles. it's really simple.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: because our tools make it hard to do the comparison. But I was there and saw how Twitter grew. Twitter was crashing before it even got to the famous SXSW and I only had something like 1000 followers then (and that was in March of 2007).
- Robert Scoble
I use fftogo almost every day. and I use the IM on the other days (twitter isn't really even sophisticated enough to keep their IM service running)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I don't know about that Robert. We can grok how to compare money from today to money in 1920. We should be able to adjust stats about companies in our brains. We don't compare the revenues of a 3yo company to the revenues of a 30yo company, right (unless the 3yo is performing Outrageously). I haven't heard a single person disagree with what you've said about "the old days" of twitter either. So I can only assume that it must be true. These problems don't sneak up on a company.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: Twitter's management will admit they've always had technical problems. Remember, their architect was fired (Blair) and @ev admitted that it was a test project that they never expected to get so big.
- Robert Scoble
Ok, well the first step to getting well is admitting you have a problem, right? Never expecting a thing to get so big is a lack of vision, and not a very good quality for a management team IMO. Since they never expected it, and now that it is, they should be stepping aside as they are certainly no longer qualified to lead it. And THAT is the true sign of success of management teams....
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- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Choose Success, not failure. But, it's interesting to note that "fail whale" and twitter are synonymous. Fail is practically in the name. And that needs to be corrected. It affects team spirit and morale, and causes it to become a vicious cycle.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: you have to go back in @ev's history, though. Remember when he started Pyra? They made Blogger. Remember how often it was down? A lot, just like Twitter. How slow it was? Very. How much spam it had? A lot, just like Twitter. Yet it made Ev a lot of money, just like Twitter will. So, since he's been down this path before, why not repeat? It actually doesn't make sense to over...
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- Robert Scoble
And that's where I come back to the lack of vision. If you "aren't sure" then you don't have the vision. You're right that it doesn't make sense to over engineer something if you have doubts, but if you have doubts, why jack with it? But in some sense it does make sense to over engineer things, because in a pinch you can often sell the company for the technology that's running it to someone who has a different vision for it, someone who knows what to do with what you've built.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Robert, I was talking about now, but I see your point about comparing two years ago. However, it's still hard to compare two different systems, different db's, different programming languages, different ways of indexing data, etc, in my opinion. It's pretty apparent that FF has been very stable, comparatively, however.
- Rick Cogley
lots of testosterone on this thread, did we at least all agree that twitter's "organic architecture" sucks now just like it did from inception & friendfeeds "designed architecture" should scale nicely just like it has from inception?
- mike "glemak" dunn
Not a clone, but they've been moving the chess pieces around for awhile now, adding bits to each service to tie it all together and grow it socially. The most popular search engine, and a free (email) account are the foundations.
- LogEx
they need it imho to clearify their social graph informations they have due to the google accounts (and mail)
- Andreas Klinger
and as the future social network is called internet they dont need to clone fb - just to have the correct socialgraph info (all imho)
- Andreas Klinger
So my blog is attached to my google voice and my google check out, plus I use the gmail service all the time, and sometimes use the google docs, but do have some organizations that use the google apps. Now if all these things were brought together in one big web app.. oh lets say.. igoogle.com where I can add apps and tools and such, wow.. all I need now is to get updates on others in the google system.
- Santa CW™
It's not a Facebook clone, it's a killer. One social network to rule them all!
- Derek Pangallo
it's about time they get a decent, real, uberFriendFeed social, ... other than the old http://Orkut.com, popular namely in Brasil .. they have audience, visitors, and that is what really counts ...
- Petr Buben
My only concern is that my profile name would be the same as my email address. But I do agree, this could possibly make Google the 1 ton gorilla in the room, as if it wasn't content with being the 800lb gorilla in the room.
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
yeo Facebook clone, it is what yahoo wanted to do in turning their email into a social network but never did, Google thing is gona be much more it is gona be location aware using google latitude, plus friend connect.
- Gaith
@derek they will, but proceeding in a very misterious way... i wrote about it yesterday, in last months seems like: 1) All Social Network have his final plan and a lot of pieces come together piece by piece OR 2) They run, copy and try to take best of competitor without a global vision of the future .....
- CantorJF
@Mike Yeah that bothered me too, having my Gmail address as the profile name.
- Sally Church
Lol, i just tweeted you about a post i did about this. "Google are building a social network under our very noses. It could be bigger and better than Facebook." http://is.gd/syn9
- Zee.
Forcing me to use my gmail username as my profile name is irritating.
- Tech Introvert
It's opt-in, so nobody is forced to do anything, and GOOG won't do anything if you do not condone it. How many profiles does one need?
- coldbrew
Google is an extremely cold blooded competitor. They would build the most powerful strategic nuclear weapon and you wouldn't even know till it hits you with one.
- Arvind
C'mon Robert, I told you what we're working on - open standards for making the web social. These are the same profiles used in Friend Connect, they just now have nicer URLs than before. Read http://bit.ly/OSqa for an overview
- Kevin Marks
Chris Messina had a great article up about it all, comparing the two. Check out http://factoryjoe.com for his comparison
- Jesse Stay
Kevin: I know that. I just wanted to have a conversation about this. The fact that you added onto it is EXACTLY why I started it. So people could hear directly from Google about it and now your answer will always be in the search engine here too. :-)
- Robert Scoble
"what is Google going to do with my profile info?" - They turned mine into a newt, but it got better.
- John Craft
I guess its quite a move for their mission to organize the worlds information. Ie people search or recommending stuff based on your profile. They could do that without a google profile of course.
- Michiel Sikkes
So, Scoble, you are orchestrating 'conversations'? Sounds kind of manipulative, but at least your upfront about it. [EDIT: Do you always have ulterior motives?]
- coldbrew
havn't read the whole thread, but Google isn't after Facebook, Google will spend money to buy FF cause FF is more open, and more compliant with Greader and Gprofile (notice that Google profile gather service like FF), you can add your service in your google profile, the second step will be to agregate those service, in Greader sharing and comment on feed is there , so there is 80% that google will make a bid on FF before the end of the year. (but will FF sell to google?) I may say No.
- abdellah
Conversation baiting lol :) I agree that's a pretty fine line to walk. I think abdellah's point is an interesting one. not sure if it makes sense in the timeline that you gave, but perhaps eventually. have the friendfeed founders ever addressed the potential for being acquired?
- Frankie Warren
coldbrew: my goal for life is to have an interesting conversation every day. By doing it here it brings out all the data about a topic that one needs to search for it later on, too. I see my role as sort of a talk show host. abdellah: I believe friendfeed and facebook are on a collision course. Why? Because the money is in search. Friendfeed has a much better search engine, facebook has the users. Which service will have the users AND the search engine first? Facebook. But if Google bought friendfeed ...
- Robert Scoble
THAT would be very interesting indeed! Because Google has the users, too.
- Robert Scoble
I would prefer that google bought Friendfeed instead of Twitter. :)
- Frode Stenstrøm
Robert: Right, but as a "talk show host" i don't think your goal should be to sensationalize to spark conversation... granted you wouldnt have had a response from someone within google setting the record straight, but i dont think you want to sacrifice credibility in the process, right? just my opinion.
- Frankie Warren
Frankie: it's not sensational at all. It's a legitimate question which deserves conversation. How is Google going to get into Facebook/friendfeed is a REAL question for our industry.
- Robert Scoble
Frode: me too. Plus Google would get four of its superstars back that way. Twitter's technology isn't good enough, either. It'd need to be rewritten from scratch for Google. Friendfeed's is a much better code base. Of course since it was written by ex-Google superstars it'll fit right into Google's infrastructure.
- Robert Scoble
Of course. Since Yahoo already tried the same thing....
- Mike Shields
Robert: i agree, but i dont think you believed they were building "a facebok clone" as kevin marks previously told you what they were attempting to accomplish? maybe im overreacting or just don't know the way things work quite yet :)
- Frankie Warren
imagine this: Google + Friendfeed vs Twitter + facebook + Microsoft :) that would be a battle.
- Frankie Warren
i dont want one more social network or conglomeration of social networks what i want is some kind of wallet for them like friendfeed meets flock. some where to edit all of them in one place, and keep up to date like google reader.
- Nicholas
major bummer for me is that i use a google domain. the public gmail account has the shorturl i want to use on my g-domain profile and i can't use it. essentially, the gmail account is "squatting" on my shorturl and there's no way to stop that. makes the google profile kinda worthless for me.
- MikeAmundsen
Their email client is already LIKE a twitter anyway...
- tojfs7931
I really like this idea: I already use GMail, GReader, Picasa, etc. so it makes sense to have all of those services baked into my online presence. Facebook still has the bells in whistles (gah! - I don't care which 5 items you wouldn't leave the house without) but so didn't MySpace back a few years ago -- remember myspace??
- Brian Graves
nicholas - what we need is something like FriendFeed + SocialThing +Ping.FM and you'd have your google reader for social networks.
- Bill Rawlinson
Googles purchase of Friendfeed would save the service I think. Twitter is now beeing mentioned in newspapers and TV everyday here, and is getting the kind of publicity that facebook got at the beginning. No one I speak to have heard about Friendfeed, but everyone that I show it to loves it. I think Twitter can stand on its own, but Friendfeed needs a larger userbase. I fear what Facebook would do to Friendfeed if they got hold of the company,.
- Frode Stenstrøm
Most overnight successes take an Alaskan winter.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Great post, Paul. One of the running themes of a lot of the posts yesterday seemed to come from "well, it's been a year: FriendFeed should be in a much different place," but great things take time to do.
- Mark Trapp
Scott Berkun wrote a really fine book entitled "the myths of innovaiton" (http://www.amazon.com/Myths-I...). He points out that perhaps the greatest myth of innovation is that the innovation arrives in it's entirety in a single moment in time. Essentially that the innovation was a single flash of insight and execution. The reality is it comes piecemeal over time.
- Brian Roy
Nice Paul, there are a whole boatload of startup / project myths I wish we could bust. The "overnight success" is one of the worst.
- mikepk
Brain, exactly, and the myth there is the "one idea" that precipitates success drives me crazy too. I wrote a post (and reposted it a few months ago) about this one. http://mikepk.com/2008...
- mikepk
excellent Paul and while I have expressed my thoughts before I just may take you up on the "post your ideas"
- Steven Hodson
Amen!! Peeps tend to see "web celebs," for example, once they're up there ... but no one sees the *years* of hard work prior! I like to say I'm an overnight success 10 years in the making!! :)
- Mari Smith
Another interesting effect is that the VC cycle is predicated on hyper growth and 2 to 5 year return on investment. That helps push some ideas to failure even though, if given a more natural growth curve, they might have succeeded.
- mikepk
+1 Mikepk - VC funding creates a hyper-focus on geometric growth instead of creating a sustainable company... Those two are NOT the same thing.
- Brian Roy
Hyper-growth is dangerous because it forces a lot of short term moves, such as hiring the wrong people because you need them _now_. I suspect that better companies come out of busts than booms because they are able to grow at a reasonable pace.
- Paul Buchheit
Epitome of why I love, trust, and believe in FriendFeed. Classy, Paul and thank you for sharing with the community.
- Mona Nomura
Tell me about it. I got the arrows in my back to prove it. :-)
- Dave Winer
Nice summary, Paul. As I mentioned in a comment on the post, it's clear you understand we care, and that we didn't intend to open the door for those clamoring for you to fail - but it was a natural result.
- Louis Gray
"Once we launched, the response was surprisingly positive, except from the people who hated it for a variety of reasons. "
- Clare Dibble
Although I have a love-hate affair with FriendFeed and my interest periodically peaks and wanes, Confucius says 'never trust a man who wears a beret the wrong way round'.
- Andy C
@Paul - "Yes, technically you're doing my work for me, but it's mutually beneficial because we'll do our best to create a product that you like". Was this supposed to be an indirect response to Dave W asking you to pay him consulting for his ideas?
- kartik vaithyanathan
So true. People think that from registering a domain to becoming a millonaire takes 1 idea and a couple of months. It took our company 10-years to do something "successful".
- Martin Añazco
Been around this block a few times myself Paul. There is a pheneomenon out there around second ventures after the first was a winner. Let's have a talk about this over a beer after the outcome of FF is known. And also, I wouldn't necessarily count on the experience of selling a "product" inside a juggernaut like Google as being the same thing as making something work in the blogosphere or where ever it is FF is supposed to be planted.
- Dave Winer
One more thing -- you're a very good writer -- but there's something else that isn't in your post. The odds against all startups are overwhelmingly against them. Ask Ev about Odeo someday. Your post is remarkably like the things he was writing about that product. And like the stuff I was saying after my company's IPO and was starting my second company. Unfortunately this was before blogs, so you'll have to take my word for it. I didn't really consider the possibility of failure. And of course we did fail.
- Dave Winer
Great post Paul. Too many companies (see Webvan and slew of others) thought rapid growth was enough. But good businesses grow slowly, even on the Internet.
- AJ Kohn
Nice post and great perspective. Nice position to be able to compare your own gmail experience to your FF experience.
- Bankwatch
The comments on your blog are awesome, e.g. "Gmail would be a lot better if it allowed registration of usernames < 6 characters wide." Proposed reply, "Oh, you can, but every single one has already been taken"
- j1m
I commented in the post, but I saw a comment in FriendFeed that noted how another well-known service had a well-executed marketing introduction, followed by rapid growth, followed by severe technical failures. Not to imply that one growth model is always right and another one is always wrong (plus, that company solved its technical issues).
- Ontario Emperor
from fftogo
Paul, keep up the good fight to properly manage FF for optimal growth, scalability and integration of features. Rushed products typically fail. However, a healthy burn rate is good too. Release timely updates in response to user demand. There are some important UIX features that should be released soon as users are clamoring for ease of use features and FF could risk losing more users if these basic UI features are not implemented within a reasonable amount of time. Good Luck! :)
- Susan Beebe
I commented over at the post. Really nice entry, with great perspective.
- Martha
Paul: I've read this post three times and it's a work of art. Thank you and thank you for creating a service that has addicted me for almost a year now.
- Robert Scoble
Not to one up Scoble, but it's the service itself that is the work of art.
- Jim Is Not Smart
i appreciate this blended perspective. today i am dealing with the often elusive "balancing" objective, i.e., what is an acceptable pace towards those "goals posts", while honoring the organic nature of the quest!
- Gregg
Paul, I think FriendFeed is the best thing that I saw in 2008 on the web. It is still rough and needs to figure out how to best reel in the casual user, but there is so much promise in this service. The core of it is so powerful really and you guys are months if not years ahead of anyone else working in this area right now. Good luck to you and your team!
- Thomas Hawk
+1 Thomas! Couldn't agree more... keep up great work FF team!! :)
- Susan Beebe
"Nobody should count out FF. The obvious technical excellence of the team and the very impressive pace of innovation you guys have already demonstrated make that clear. But I think people are alarmed that so many people have tried the site and then abandoned it (or at least that's how it appears). I personally think the way commenting and liking works has created incentives for the wrong kind of behavior, and you might be stuck in a kind of local maximum as far as uptake until you really shake things up. But what do I know? Anyway, good luck, I'll use FF regardless (though I don't comment any more...)."
- Gabe Rivera
Search is a huge feature, bravo. Speaking of FF as destination, anyone planning a Firefox, delicious-style Add On that allows me to share something without coming back here?
- Jake Kuramoto
Excellent, I like magically appearing features. Now, about those bacon cookies . . .
- Jake Kuramoto
For some reason Firefox doesn't install the bookmarklet feature for me. Can't drop it on a toolbar? Any suggestions?
- Alexander van Elsas
Our wording is imperfect. don't drag it on to a (Google, Alexa, Yahoo, et.c) toolbar. Drag it to your bookmark bar, if you have the bookmark bar displayed. Otherwise bookmark and invoke it via menubar.
- Kevin Fox
This is seriously great thing! Thanks for adding search to FriendFeed as it makes this service much more usable and allows us finally search all those Twitter messages. ;)
- Daniel Schildt
Why isnt the share bookmark available on the settings page?
- Shakeel Mahate
In the spirit of celebrating the 'Don't Be Evil' phenome I propose the following 'mantra port' to this platform. "Godspeed Friendfeed"
- #alaskareport
Paul: I always parsed "don't be evil" as "don't piss off the customers or the users." :-)
- Robert Scoble
Such impact out of 3 such simple words. Incredible. And so much better than the corporate versions.
- Alexander van Elsas
Is Google sharing your information with US govt? http://www.zdnet.com.au/news... I personally think they might be, im not a google insider but according to www.googlewatch.com they have spooks working for them
- Kyle Weller
Googlewatch is not a credible source.
- Paul Buchheit
Terrific post, Chris. Thanks for taking the time.
- Michael Parekh
I'm a big fan of Archive on Gmail. My friend Randy Dean is a professional email consultant (self-proclaimed "The Totally Obsessed Time Management/PDA Guy"). He has some videos at http://www.youtube.com/profile...
- Mike Reynolds
In the last few days (thanks to posts by myself and some other) a bunch of folks I know who are not on Twitter, but active on the blogosphere (mostly informatics types) have started using FriendFeed. The growth in usage and interaction is noticeable.
- Deepak Singh
FriendFeed "tipped" today? Is that the equivalent of jumping the shark?
- Louis Gray
Thanks, Gabe! Always nice to get tech compliments from someone so technically accomplished.
- Bret Taylor
Louis, I think Gabe means in the Gladwell sense. But we should ask @sleuth since he's having lunch with Malcolm today.
- Kevin Fox
Friend Feed tipping...more fun than cow-tipping!
- Christopher Black
@Kevin, sounds like another book I need to buy. Thanks for the intro.
- Louis Gray
Another oddity. Comments from Black, then Gray then White and then Gray.
- Louis Gray