That would be an minor understatement :) - Paul OFlaherty
LOL, too true :) I have found myself that even if actual writing takes, say, 1 hour, I will finish it in 2 hours because of distractions like FriendFeed. Trying to enforce a schedule :) - Svetlana Gladkova
I really don't know how much easier / cheaper iTunes can be. They have my account / CC info. Launch iTunes, search for a song, click buy. For me it's more effort to get a cup of coffee - I have to get in a car, drive to a starbucks, wait in line, hope the barrista doesn't screw it up, and then add sugar. - Jason Kaneshiro
and how would you suggest doing this without a credit card? or a US based debit card? - Steven Hodson
Simply meet the incoming U.S. troops with a smile and a wave, Steven. ;) - Cyndy
Steven, call up Apple and ask them if they'll accept your cowry shells and beads. - Jason Carreira
Steven you know you're in the minority when it comes to that. Meanwhile, iTunes makes a crapload of money - 2nd biggest music retailer. A lot of people are finding it really easy to purchase music online, easier than piracy. Isn't that what we want? - Jason Kaneshiro
Last comment before I start to do real work at 1:30 AM. EVERYONE should check out Steven's 'new look' at WinExtra and if you have bucks, sponsor him! He'll may even get less grumpy - Charlie Anzman
There's no pirating involved in copying digital files which are left unsecured about the internet. - Tad - the Meme Maker
@Jason I hate to break it to you bud but I am not in a minority - Steven Hodson
@Charlie .. I appreciate the good words :) - Steven Hodson
74% of the US population has at least one credit card. Lots of college students have 'em too - based on the American way of getting kids in debt as soon as possible. - Jason Kaneshiro
I can crawl inside Mark Krynsky’s head. I can see what music he’s listening to, what he’s reading and watching, who his friends are, where he’s at, what he’s doing. I’ve never met Mark, but I know he listens to U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers. - Mitchell Tsai
via Bookmarklet
Krynsky, who lives near Los Angeles, is an early adopter of “lifestreaming,” which is a record of everything he does online, all in real time. “The cool thing about lifestreaming is you get to gaze into people to learn a lot that you might not otherwise know about them,” Krynsky told me. “You get an idea about what’s going with their lives in a way that you don’t have to interact, but you build all this knowledge and information.” - Mitchell Tsai
See Scott Rubel's FF post (6/14/08) http://friendfeed.com/e/851fa0... where Mark says "
I spent 40 minutes with Gina on the phone for that interview and did some Scobletastic pimping of FF of my own." - Mitchell Tsai
An extreme example of lifestreaming popped up last year when Justin Kan attached a webcam to his hat and decided that he would wear the camera at all times, with streaming live video and audio, attracting the attention of news outlets like the Today Show and NPR. The experiment morphed into Justin.tv, which is a network of streaming video channels (many of which are lifecasts); it also allows chat at the same time. - Mitchell Tsai
“One thing we’ve discovered is that email is not the perfect medium for every kind of conversation,” said Paul Buchheit, a co-founder of FriendFeed. “If you are sharing funny links of good videos or an interesting article, email turns out not to be the best way to share those…it can pile up and you start to feel guilty and anxious and not sure if you’re ever going to catch up.” - Mitchell Tsai
Turning people off—or at least certain aspects of what they put online—will likely become essential in social networking’s future. As sites like FriendFeed make it easy to blast out anything that interests you, the volume of material from people you know could be daunting. - Mitchell Tsai
Electronic communication has lowered the “cost” of finding out what’s going on with those you know, said Kevin Lim, a tech blogger who is a doctoral student in communications at the University of Buffalo in New York. Some will call very few people in their social network but are interested to find out what’s going on with a lot of people if it’s easy enough, he said. - Mitchell Tsai
We may simply have acquaintances who we don’t want to have access to everything we do. A year after Reichelt wrote about ambient intimacy, she adjusted her views: The longer someone uses a social network, the more it gets populated with those from different aspects of our lives—like bosses or colleagues—that we may not want listening to all of our inner thoughts. So having the same level of intimacy with people we want to stay close with risks some exposure, Reichelt wrote in April. - Mitchell Tsai
Adam Kazwell is a 28-year-old FriendFeed aficionado, but [his] attempts to get his girlfriend or parents to use the service haven’t worked. And he doesn’t expect them adopt the habit anytime soon. But he thinks that as more people use services like Facebook and technology like camera phones, that will change. - Mitchell Tsai
does that mean lifestreaming has gone mainstream :-) - ben rogers
via twhirl
Nope... Almost none of my friends has Twitter yet. Even Facebook (90 million+ users) only reaches.... ~5-10% of my friends. - Mitchell Tsai
When I saw this picture, I wanted to be able to interact with it. Hover to see bigger pic, click to see their latest shared item, etc. - Alan Le
Love the article, but not sure about their term for individual FF items: "blasts"?! - David Young
Alan: FriendFeed Grid http://blogoscoped.com/friendf... is a random grid of FriendFeed people which you can play with (mouse-over highlights, click-thru to their account) ! - Mitchell Tsai
thanks mitchell! FriendFeed Grid is interesting. - Alan Le
Today, I'm with Robert. I'm over the attacks. But it's been a long, long week. - Erin Kotecki Vest
Um. Okay, I understand his annoyance... but honestly? There's no "right way" to use a service. By this logic, those who are using Twitter to do anything other than alert the world to "what they are doing" are poseurs. - Lucretia Pruitt
NO ONE IS DOING FRIENDFEED *WRONG* UNLESS THEY ARE SPAMMING. Sorry, but this is the fourth time I've seen this post come up in my feed here and I'm just getting bent. Stop telling people how they can use things. - Cyndy
agreed, robert. and also agreed with lucretia and cyndy and erin. - edythe
I really don't see the big deal about how people use anything. Free world and all that. - JMakesAwesomeSauce
Let me chime in. Okay, I agree with most of the comments here, there's no "Right Way" to use a service such as this. You can't use FF or twitter or pownce or whatever...wrong. That's obvious, I think. But there is an interesting point about "not listening" that is causing me to think about how I use FF. - vidsaw
I can't believe that post is generating as much conversation as it is. How a person chooses to use a service is up to them. Calling them a "poser" is childish. - David Risley
Robert, I'm a fan, but I gotta agree with most of the folks here. People will use a service to however it suits their needs. Nothing "poseur" about it. I've also had my accout for over 2 months now, but I haven't really gotten into reading my subs/fiends, primarily because I haven't gotten around to / had time to figure out the filtering options. It's just a lifesstream rss feed for me to use on my other sites. Would this make me a poseur? A narcissist, perhaps. A poseur, no. - Mavericky Awesomesausages
via twhirl
Isn't it possible to make the same point without pointing fingers? - Ro (Lilyhill)
I am a Poser. I use FF to aggregate services. - Jay Cruz
I use it. I only use Twitter to spread my friendfeed-RSS via Twitterfeed. - Ryo
I use it but am still learning it's real value. - David Ward
I'm getting into it as a sort of Facebook-except-you-use-your-own-services-and-not-be-locked-into-ours with a lot of nice extras (imaginary friends, FF comments, etc). I only wish there was a proper way to access FriendFeed via mobile platforms (client, or a proper site. FFtoGo.com is crap). It's not easy to use FriendFeed when your laptop is in the shop. - Ivan
I like the simplicity of Twitter, but the added features of Friendfeed. Trying to get used to their layout though... - bryan broughton
What if I'm neither a FF user, nor a poser and I just want to see if it brings me any value (to be read filter out the noise)? What if I just like to see new apps and just play? Is there something wrong? - Alex Popescu
via twhirl
Uh. I'm just going to nope this whole thing and move along. - Akiva Moskovitz
FF works for me, I'm a passive twitterer/blogger. I just can't see the value in alerting everyone of every small detail in my daily life so I rarely post. But FF gives me a platform to comment on a subject to a larger audience, and slowly but surely my own audience builds up. A far more organic social network growth curve - Cains
Sorry I missed all the discussion over here. To Robert, since you didn't reply on my blog: Are you tired of MY attacks on 'people' or on negativity surrounding FriendFeed and Twitter in general? Because if it is the former, let me ask you.. how many articles have I written that are negative about FriendFeed OR Twitter? To everyone who says it is wrong to criticize how you use FriendFeed: Where in my article did I say there is a right way to use FriendFeed? All I said is that I think that, in my example, influential people (whom I picked on one in particular) who just use FriendFeed as a vehicle to increase their personal brand without having any interest in the service for the community, are not right. - Phil Glockner
I promise this is my last comment about this whole thing: to David, I can't believe how much discussion my post has generated too, both on my site and on FriendFeed. Frankly, this is my first brush with finding a powder keg, and it's been an interesting experience. I think if people were truly over the echo chamber, my post would have been mostly ignored. - Phil Glockner
J. Phil, my comment was mostly directed at Scoble, but why is that not right? Why is that not okay? People set up imaginary friends here for people they want to follow who aren't even signed up on FF, so why shouldn't people do it and save others the work? It's not spamming, and no one is forced to subscribe to them, so why should anyone say they aren't "right" in their use of FF as an extention of a brand? - Cyndy
Cyndy - Honestly, what annoyed me when I was writing the article, was that there were long, great conversations that were happening as a result of single-sentence tweets from Steve. People started following him because of his name or the recommendation page (he's on the first page), and all this great dialog was happening, and he was missing it. But, now, 48 hours later, I guess I'm no longer annoyed -- I see now the value was gained in the conversation, no matter what the seed was originally. - Phil Glockner
I feel as though some people are good at comments, others are good at providing good content. Just cause someone doesn't use the service to its full potential doesn't mean that they are a "poser". It just means they choose to use the service in question in a manner that best fits their needs. - Andy Breeding
I only use friendfeed to follow a few select and mainly to get all my activity on my facebook page. I think because someone uses friendfeed just for distrobution thats not necessarily making them a poser. If anything they are just helping users who wish to follow them without having to keeping track of all their different services. - MattRandles
via twhirl
"The hi-res JPG file (4500x3000 pixels) of the World of Web 2.0 logo collage poster (screenshots below) can be yours if you want to print it on your own." - Steve Rubel
via Bookmarklet
“Microsoft is making it as difficult as possible to cancel Xbox Live. We started the process this morning and STILL can't get it cancelled after many callbacks. Apple needs to make a console.”
I had the same experience trying to cancel my paid Hotmail account - they delighted in making it as difficult as possible to cancel - Sally Church
via Alert Thingy
I haven't used it in about 6 months so it was a waste of money (I was paying monthly) - Bwana McCall
I'll ask around and see if there is an escalation contact for you. - Bruce Williams
That's weird. I canceled mine a month or so ago when I traded my 360 in for a PS3. Got it handled in about 20 minutes (most of that was on hold, mind you.) - Evan Sims
To help me follow up inside Microsoft, could you give me some more details? Have you called the xbox support number 1-800-4-MY-XBOX? Do you have a support number of some kind? - Bruce Williams
My wife called the 800 number, not sure which it was. We ended up getting it canceled about 5 or 6 PM I believe. We called early this afternoon and the guy told us to call back in 4 hours because the system was down. But after all that, we have to call back on Monday to get our money refunded. Ticket(s) #1070739994/#1070741163 - Bwana McCall
I'm glad you finally got it through, and I'm really sorry it was such a crappy experience. I'm not close to that part of the org, but I hope that your story is the exception, not the norm. - Bruce Williams
Still doesn't allow you to hide all twitters without comments for everyone. - Chris White
Chris, it should. Just click on "more hide options" and the last one is what you want. - Paul Buchheit
very nice!!! Being able to hide all twitter posts make a huge difference. - Edwin Khodabakchian
Great really great joke : ) I want something really, Paul. A dislike smiley?! It will be interesting, i think. - Erhan Erdogan
Paul, okay, the verbage confuses me. It says "Hide ALL FriendFeed entries, which sounds scary. Also, I don't know if it applies to all of a particular person's posts, or to a particular type of posts. Also, it's bad when you hide the thing you're trying to comment on. :D - Chris White
"Advanced super hide" then - great work! - Todd McKinney
Smart move. That's proven to be a popular feature in Plaxo Pulse. :) - John McCrea
Hmmm. And also. I want to make a comment, to comments directly. This new comments may be under directly comments. In a different color or a little line space. ?! - Erhan Erdogan
Great functionality, but in general I'm pretty happy reading whatever my friends post. - Mike Reynolds
I was thinking the same thing as Chris was. Maybe "internal entries" would work better? - Michael Ryan
Very nice. Very nice indeed. I'm sure we all thank you for this one. Now can we have it on the "everyone" tab, which I do scan thru from time to time? :-) - Slippy Lane
Nice work. Aside: I have inadvertently hidden a stream from an acquaintance. How do I check it this is indeed the case (maybe she's just sulking) and unhide, if necessary ? - Andy C
Andy, go to the bottom of the page and click on 'show hidden entries' to see what would have been on the page but isn't due to hiding. From there you can 'unhide'. - Kevin Fox
You're right Chris, it's kind of confusing when the service is Friendfeed. Fortunately, nobody would ever want to hide those :) - Paul Buchheit
@Andy: That means that no items on that page were hidden. It's not a guarantee that you don't have any 'hide' settings, but that none came in to play on that page. Try paging back a few pages and see if any of them have something hidden, or search for your friend and see if that friend's posted anything in the last few days. - Kevin Fox
So with Super-Hide here, when is the port of Super Poke? - Louis Gray
OK so I can hide 'Janet's Blog entries' but Janet has 3 blogs and I am interested in 2 but not her retro musical tastes. What to do ? - Andy C
Tell Janet to stop posting about retro musical. It's in all of our best interests. :) - Chris White
@Chris White: You're right. Plus it always ends up with some talentless 80's British crooner singing 'Never gonna give you up'. I know she's pledging her undying love for me but, frankly, I'm sick of it. - Andy C
And there was much rejoicing. Thanks, Paul. :) - engtech
Hey I noticed if you go into hide and then cancel the hide option is no longer availabe on that post. I guess it doesn't matter since you can do whatever you need from another entry, just thought it was strange. - Devin Anderson
Confirming Devin's report, though I found it disorienting to have the option disappear. It happened on this entry, and I thought that someone on the back-end had disabled hiding of the super-hide announcement. :D ¶ Lacking the ability to put in a line break to separate points, I think we need a control panel that summarizes all of our hidden content and allows deleting those settings without finding a page that has one of those items on it. Adding from such a page would be nice as well. ¶ - Voyagerfan5761
Why does there have to be a "more hide options", why can't you just offer us all 3 options in the first place? - j1m
Jim: because the operations beneath the "More hide options" link are extremely dramatic (you could select that option, a new friend signs up, and you would never see their entries because of your previous hide operation). Since the options aren't likely necessary for most situations, so we didn't want to make it too tempting. - Bret Taylor
The hide option shouldn't be disappearing. What browser are you using Devin and Voyagerfan? - Paul Buchheit
@Paul: FF 2.0.0.13. Just tried it again, though, and it stuck around. Devin, still having the problem? - Voyagerfan5761
How to post a message with a pic like this one? - Lizunlong
This'll work, thanks for satisfying one of the top requested features (in my community fragment anyway ;) ). PS: Not to be an interface astronaut, but "More -> Unsubscribe from Paul Buchheit" seems to be somewhat related to the Hide function, and perhaps could be integrated into what's currently called the Hide dialog. It's a very similar user intent; some fragment here is creating too much noise and the user wants to take action. But perhaps unverbose the dialog if it's ever gonna be expanded. - Philipp Lenssen
Good idea Philipp. I'll add that to my list. - Paul Buchheit
It's like you read my mind, thank you. An improvement for me would be "Hide [specific type] entries from friends of friends". I thought I also ran into the hide-option disappearing issue, but then realized that it only shows up in the main feed, and not when looking at a specific person's feed. Confusing? - emilie
nice ^__^. it wolud be great to have something like "reblog this" (republish this entry in my feed) option also... - minus-one
Just had an thought as i went through and hid Scoble's twitters. I chose hide his twitter unless there is a like or a comment. i figure I'll let the community decide if his ramblings are interesting. Then I thought - what would happen if everyone did that... - Alex Gawley
@minus-one: that happens if you 'like' something... - Alex Gawley
@paul - should liked or commented entries show up in the 'me' tab? i'd like them to. - Alex Gawley
I think the Hide All option is extremely broad. I would probably use it only when (if?) some people grouping feature is introduced (ie. white list) - Aviv
@Paul I'm using Firefox 2 but after logging back in this morning the hide option is back for this post. - Devin Anderson
Can you include "hide" links on user pages as well? I'd like to click on someone's page, see that their tweets are all uninteresting, and then hide them from there. - engtech
I am sorry ...but I amunable to locate the feature on friendfeed .... - viki saigal
Can you put the Hide link on user pages? like if I go to http://friendfeed.com/engtech -- I should see hide links under the entries. Quite often I'll look at friends pages to cull the services they use that I'm not interested in. - engtech
And other weird stuff I'd like. Instead of just having a &service parameter, I'd like to be able to do an array of services, and be able to do "notservice". Sometimes I want to view everything BUT twitter, other times not. - engtech
For some reason superhide doesn't work for me — tried to hide Disqus stuff from certain user but no luck — it still appears in the feed, instead of being hid above the paging links. :( - Urbansheep
i am happy that it also fixed the positioning problem as in when you where too low on that page; now it pops in the middle. - Nicole Simon
I think this is the origin of story!! March 26 was when I added the bot to my gTalk..!! - Jigar Mehta
I like having each service as an individual contact. Much easier. Can we see the same for Pownce? - ◄ Chris Nixon ►
Well, IMified has taken bot to a next level.. I even created a customized option to check my google calendar appointments for today (a quick schedule for today) by interacting with bot! Not sure, if they have one for Pownce.. - Jigar Mehta
via bTT