Paul Metcalfe › Likes

How can't they? Being able to more or less spy on, observe, and participate in multiple "around the watercooler" conversations about news stories regarding a brand is valuable market research. It's one thing to see how journalists are reporting about your brand (vis a vis blogs and news outlets), it's another thing to see how regular people are reacting to those stories. - Mark Trapp

I think there's a pushback to that, Daniel: it's akin to astroturfing. But it does provide enough research to change your marketing moving forward. Do people think your service is unreliable? Change your marketing to focus on how reliable you actually are. Do people think you're a ripoff? Change your marketing to highlight the value of your service. - Mark Trapp

Tracking/measurement is obviously beneficial, but brands can also jump in to correct misperceptions, which invariably crop up in conversations you don't moderate - Daniel Feygin

Are the rules different than business blogging here in Friendfeed? I don't think so. - Jeremiah Owyang

Brands should search FriendFeed just like they search Twitter and others, so they can respond to users quickly. - Louis Gray

Jeremiah, I don't think so either, but with one possibly major difference: with blogs, it's all about what the blogger said. With Friendfeed, it's all about what the people who read the blog said and how they react. There is much more emphasis on the comments than the story. - Mark Trapp

Jeremiah, I'm lacking data. I know everyone raves about Zappos on Twitter, but everyone raves about Zappos in general. Comcast seems to have more ranters than ravers. How do you measure the meaningfulness of Comcast being on Twitter? What are the metrics for measuring that from Comcast's perspective? - Robert Seidman

Mark, doesn't astroturfing involve disguise? I am not suggesting that at all. - Daniel Feygin

How do you take all this lovely data from ff or other and convert it into a marketing strategy? - Paul Metcalfe

If companies look at FF or Twitter or any of the newer communication channels with marketing glasses on, they'll be missing out on a lot of opportunities to really connect with a lot of people. Lets look at Twitter and their recent transparency regarding what's happening over there. Even though they have their own communication platform, they themselves waited far too long to actually communicate. Now, instead of communicating they're in damage control mode and reacting. - Paul Short

continuing - Yes, they're communicating with users but some would say it's too little too late. If other companies want to expose their brands and get all they can out of these new services, become early adopters and make friends in the way regular people do. That's how to benefit - be one of us, not just use our blabbering to gain intelligence or monitor what we're talking about. - Paul Short

I understand. But I still ask how you get this compelling info/data into something that will help create a strategy. I'm thinking blue-chip and not start-up. - Paul Metcalfe

Paul is right, engaging with users is more than PR/marketing activity, so speaking strictly of brands in this context is limiting. Executive, product management, account management, customer service, etc have a lot to gain from both monitoring and entering into these conversations. And PR should stay away from being the gatekeeper. - Daniel Feygin

if they can have an actual person interacting with friendfeeders, truly participating in the community, then I wouldn't mind. if they are not going to do that, I don't think I'd want to see or hear them. - edythe

I agree with Julian. Since brands are looking to engage customers on so many digital media channels from YouTube, to Facebook, to blogs, to Twitter it only makes sense to point your customers in the direction of something that doesn't have them running around all over the place and where you can be sure that every last bit of marketing material that you put out there is directed to the... more... - Devlin Dunsmore

Actually in the case of Facebook since they are now allowing imports of thrid party site data into the news feed you could use a similar strategy for that as well. However given the controls of the mini feed right now it would be much easier to manage the content through FriendFeed. - Devlin Dunsmore from twhirl

I agree with edythe. - Ginger Makela Riker

Brand awareness through engagement. Brands who are part of the conversation improve their overall standing, think Microsoft's blogging strategy - Duncan Riley

brands are screwed here unless they can manage the massese of "noise" Get that right and... - Paul Metcalfe

@Robert: the plain fact that you're talking about Comcast (a horrible company that I still do business with) means they've succeeded on some level - primarily marketing. Positive branding? Not sure. But do you think of Comcast as being more cutting edge then they were? Probably. - AJ Kohn

ahem. OneNote. - Chris Hollander

Chris: that's great. But Shel uses a Mac. - Robert Scoble

Ah Word. I can't do without ppt/keynote and excel, but Word is long gone - Deepak Singh

Deepak: wait until you see SlideRocket. - Robert Scoble

ahem: parallels. :D - Chris Hollander

nothing equals good ol' text files anywhere, everywhere, anytime! :) - directeur

At our office the developers collaborate with Google Docs and Spreadsheets all the time. Today the account managers were passing around word docs and excel spreadsheets to team members via e-mail and network shares and all I could think about was how inefficient it was. - Ralph Whitbeck

@soulhuntre: there's version control in Google Docs - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

thanks Tom! - Loic Le Meur

I know something - Seesmic is good product, but Loic is a success story. Please signalize the difference! ; ) Loves Loic - to the next big dash! - Erhan Erdogan

that wouldn't work well fiscally speaking for facebook... which itself has yet to prove profit revenue. but it sure would help twitter's tech problem. twitter is great with PR, but bad with technology and administration - Noah David Simon

they can acquire Twitter or Digg if they want. I just hope they don't acquire FF. - Thomas Hawk

@chris, LOL - Tyler Gillies

It would help them to agglomerate further user data, as with FriendFeed especially, almost all web activity of its users could be accessed via facebook which would make them hold on to the web identity of the users. - Martin Spindler

someone should acquire Twitter some help, in a big way...B-) - Shawn L. Morrissey

um, acquisitions will only ruin good services- if facebook wants to get better, then they need to make changes to their services that reflect the leading edge of social services, so that they can get leap the gap. - Nathan Eckenrode

friendfeed makes business sense, others are just show......via feedalizr - bvs

facebook buying digg, don't see how that would help - Dobromir Hadzhiev

who knows, a few years down the line and friendfeed makes a bid on facebook!...via feedalizr - bvs

@etherjammer - LMAO - Jeff Quinton

Great 404. - Courtstarr Runner

hmm.. and i thought the 404 is when it works :) - Naor Mark

When I was writing a blog post about SEO, I thought it would be great to have this guy saying "Leave SEO Alone!!" "Stop Keyword Stuffing!!" - Bill Stevens

That's almost the funniest thing that I've ever seen ... almost - John Blanton from Alert Thingy

John, then I guess you haven't seen this :-) http://friendfeed.com/e... - Andrew Dobrow

lol alright...via feedalizr - James Andreasen

I want to publish that too :-) - Florin Grozea

Sure it has a block command - by site. Click on hide. - Steve Rubel

Friending isn't a two way street? If I don't acknowledge I shouldn't see postings from them? - Paul W. Swansen

I think the problem is more that anyone can comment on any posting, and you can't block seeing them. - Phil G

Phil said it. - Dave Winer

The other problem is, if I only comment in Chinese, or other language, can the conversation still go on? i know normally, people do not do that~ but there are so many multinations here. - K.D.

So a "hide" function by person would solve the problem? - Brian Sullivan

There's a troll problem already? Guess I'm lucky that I haven't encountered that yet. - Akiva Moskovitz

Even if you unfriend someone on FriendFeed to spare yourself the spam, they still can show up as a friend of a friend. - Michael Markman

是啊，朋友的朋友的更新还是回跑到你那里～ - K.D.

Too many trolls, not enough bridges. Sorry, I'm not helping. - Phil G

Calling all Trolls! LOL - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

hide aint block. we need a function to report misuse - kosmar

http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/itsAbou... - Dave Winer

Block command? sounds more and more like IM, and isn't Twitter on Twhirl like IM with subscription? - Bob Ngu

Parvez, you do not seem to understand what is Social Media 2.0 SM is open platform. If we start blocking users it will go back to Web 1.0 and the forum dome. - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

In any case, unless they give us tools to quiet the trolls, most conversations here are going to end up like this. 1. You're an idiot. 2. No you're an idiot. 3. Am not. 4. Are so. We've been down this road so many times. They've set up a mail list environment. They're always great until the trolls show up. - Dave Winer

I agree with Parvez here. A block command, IMO should be implemented so that it only filters out said blocked person from YOUR view (including commentary on any post), not from everybody's. Just like hide, but more complete. - Phil G

This is Social Defragmentation! But of course, you held power in the past so you want to keep it, instead of sharing with others! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

We need to identify real Spammers not block controversial users. - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

To be honest I find the hide feature of friendfeed much more flexible than the block feature on twitter... which I use a LOT - Gerard van Schip

The other side of this is there's no way to block Dave Winer (or me). But, I've found FriendFeed very effective in dealing with trolls. First, you can unsubscribe from them. That ensures you won't see the trolls' top-level items. Second, you can "hide" their items and tell FriendFeed to not show you their items, even if commented on, or liked. Third, if you started the item, you can delete their comments if they show up on your items, so your friends are safe. This pretty cleanly hides trolls. - Robert Scoble

You can "Hide everything from user" by first clicking Hide on something of their's and then clicking on "See options for hiding other items like this", in there it will allow you to hide everything from said person and a few other options. - cmiper

@Scobleizer it would be nice if we can Hide You! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Scoble, there's something I didn't know -- the originator of an item can delete comments? That changes things. But how do you do it? - Dave Winer

Igor: and likewise. I have yet to see you actually add anything useful to a conversation. - Robert Scoble

Dave: you're free to delete either me or Igor to try it out. Just click on the "More" menu and choose "moderate comments." - Robert Scoble

here this is a test for you Dave. Delete this: Obama is going to lose. - Noah David Simon

Dave: did you test it out yet? - Robert Scoble

What happened? I have to say something "REAL" offensive to get deleted around here? Come on... ok try again.... "CHILD PORNOGRAPHY is healthy" - Noah David Simon

@K.D. google could help translate - Raphael, Raphael

I think folks are confusing "hide" with "block" - it's the commenting function that is going to need a block function. - Lucretia Pruitt

What about a Digg-style comment moderation where the community can bury nasty comments? It's too bad that we already need this type of moderation here. - Mike Doeff

Let's not criticize criticism.. Just learn from it.... That said, when I read the initial post, I was hearing Fred Thompson on the deck of the aircraft carrier yelling "This will get out of control. It will get out of control and we're gonna have to live in it." - Chris Reed

I hate to say this, Dave, but maybe it's you. - Adam Lasnik

People will complain to the point it will be added ..when that's going to be who knows.. - John Blanton from Alert Thingy

@Vezquex Oh, really, don't think google is that good so far, the translation of my previous sentence is "Yes ah, friends of friends to update or where you went to the", do you understand? Then try this "这tm和泡坛子有啥区别啊". - K.D.

Plus there's a lot of hiding going on -- who knows how much of that is actually getting seen. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I actually hide the twitter traffic entirely. I use twitterfox to stay on top of it because there was too much twitter on friendfeed. - Rob Diana

You can check the stats at www.friendfeedstat.com. Can't see what's hidden, but that is an individual choice. FF still has to deal with everything that is aggregated. - Alexander van Elsas

And it looks like twitter is down again. - Rob Diana

ontario emperor left a great comment about how MSM may take this even further - really something to think about - Colin Walker

indeed it is http://friendfeed.com/e... - Shey, Jamaican of FF

@Shey @Rob I hide everything from Twitter that doesn't have Comments or Likes. Then again, I still have Twitter open (I use Twhirl for both). So, I agree with both of you. - elroy

Must admit, I haven't started hiding anything yet - don't know if it's because I'm not follow as many folks on FF as others. - Colin Walker

@Colin, I started hiding twitter because I follow Scoble. Nothing against his tweets, but keeping that separate has helped my experience tremendously. - Rob Diana

I only see Scoble's liked tweets - Shey, Jamaican of FF

See: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r... - Louis Gray

Seems so. - Jacob Nahin

Holy cats, I'm in love. What a great idea! - Carla Thompson

Ah...thanks Louis. Gotta stay on top of the FriendFeed blog! And yup Vince - I missed something! - Hutch Carpenter

Clocked it a little while ago. Anyone using it yet? - Paul Metcalfe

I think of it as sharing, but I wish I could just mark an item so that I could look at it again later. With the tweets back on (and the work interruptions), it's getting hard to follow. - ha3rvey (Ho)^3

My friends will like what I like. :) - Morton Fox

Yeah - I'm conscious of it. There's times I personally like something that I've got a sense others won't care about. But I want to let the originator know that I liked it. My compass isn't always true. There are times I like or comment on something I think is uninteresting to others and a good discussion ends up following. Shows you how much I know. - Hutch Carpenter

i do "like" something to share it. it's pretty useful, i don't have to follow 100 people to see what they submit. i just follow some key players and once and awhile if they comment or like something I see it. if it wasn't for ha3rvey commenting on this i wouldn't have seen it. - Chris Harris

Given what the "like" feature really does, I've tended to use it more like a "share" button than anything. That's basically what it is. - lilbyrdie

Absolutely for "likes" not so much for comments. - Cyndy

Agreed, liking is flagging it as interesting which is bound to get your followers looking. With regards to GR if I like something but don't think it share worthy I'll just favourite it for my own reference. - Colin Walker

interesting point. I have found myself trying to be a little more discriminating in things that I publish to other sites knowing that they will show up here. It's not my primary consideration, but it definitely does cross my mind that something I fave in Flickr or digg on digg, for instance will show up here. - Thomas Hawk

I recognize that when I make a comment or "like" something, it has a chain reaction. It's very interesting to see how that simple step can greatly increase a item's visibility. - Louis Gray

I "like" things for bookmarking and to tell the world that I like it. The sort of people that I would like to follow me would be the sort that would also like it, though having a lot of different opinions stimulate debate, so it would be interesting to have one third of my followers not like the stuff that I like. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

I "like" something because it is interesting and I'd like to share it with the people subscribed to me. - acedanger from twhirl

All of the above. - Clay Newton

I "like" purely for the selfish reason that I actually like the post (a vote for it) or to bookmark it so I can remember it later. I haven't given much thought to whether that bothers my followers. Do we really want to have to take responsibility and effort of internal mental debate about whether our liking something might bother other people? Am I just rude for not really caring if someone else might like what I do (or not)? It's hard enough to please myself, much less all my followers. - Fa La La La Lindsay

@Louis - especially when people hide things that don't have likes. With this selective viewing we ARE forcing things in to peoples streams - Colin Walker

Lindsay, I'd argue the follower/followed relationship is a social contract between two people: you do have an obligation to provide to your followers content that lives up to the reason you were followed. The consequence of neglecting that contract usually just means losing that follower, and you may not care about that, but then what's the point of interacting in social media? - Mark Trapp

Going to invoke the Lord Gary Vee as a supporting point: http://garyvaynerchuk.com/2008... - Mark Trapp

Good point Mark, but people follow you without your consent. They follow you because they liked your pattern of social interaction in the first place, but that doesn't mean you should be locked into a box or try to please them, unless your goal is simply to build a huge following. I think that's too much pressure to perform. I just want to participate in the conversation, not necessarily be an A-lister. But I'll give you that it's easier to converse when there are lots of listeners! - Fa La La La Lindsay

Lindsay, I think there's a tacit buy-in to social networks that you are going to, in fact, be social in a few pre-defined ways; that you'll participate and share things that interest you, and that you'll follow and get followed by people that find you interesting. You don't have to strive to be a Robert Scoble or a Louis Gray, but to not want to interact on any level with your followers and the people you follow is the other opposite extreme. - Mark Trapp

I 'like' stuff just so it goes into the separate feed in Google Reader, from where I add it to delicious (when I remember)... - Andy Davies

I think at least some active thought about why people thought you to be interesting enough to follow is good for everyone involved. I dunno, maybe I'm just actively trying to avoid being that guy who makes his name in one field, then pulls the switcheroo to talking about my radical agenda involving vegan gun right to life ownership. People didn't follow me for that, and I ought to try to minimize that. - Mark Trapp

@ha3rvey: FF needs a "starred" feature like Google Reader. - CJ

@Mark - gimme some of that "vegan gun right to life ownership"! - Hutch Carpenter

@ha3rvey - you're basically describing a "Later" button (see basic implementation at http://ffapps.com/readlater/). There are many ways to introduce it on FF - from a simple "Archive" button to quick color-based flagging functionality (with out without 'Labels'). - Aviv

@CJ Kloote, @ha3rvey: You can get a list of your "likes" from your "me" tab though. - Morton Fox

Matt it's like WOMM'ing something. I think it's not under control. - Erhan Erdogan

I think at this point using the "Like" button as a simple personal bookmarking feature is okay and still maintainable, but there are certainly instances where you do want to keep tabs on a particular entry, but would prefer if it wasn't "made public" (ie. tracking competition, ego-bookmarks) - Aviv

There was another similar thread about needing something other than like a week or so back - http://friendfeed.com/e... - Andy Davies

@Mark, I never said I didn't want to interact with my followers. I said my goal is to participate in the conversation, which is definitely an interaction. I just don't want to have to change my habits or initial instincts about whether to bookmark or vote for something because someone started following me and it might displease them. The other extreme is polling followers to find out what they want from you. Then interaction becomes a job. This wouldn't be an issue if we had filters, but c'est la vie. - Fa La La La Lindsay

On FriendFeed, we're all TV channels http://tinyurl.com/5ju9av - Hutch Carpenter

Although this has been beaten into the ground a bit, I think 'liking' something is a way of upping the visibility of the item without necessarily having something to add to it in the comments section. - Ryne Nelson

@bart I set it up on the blackberry browser and it worked just fine. Did nt try it on my Opera browser - Jon Erickson from twhirl

@Jon Yah, creator said it's going up/down at the moment. Public listing now works in Opera but not my "Friends" page. In time :) - Bartek Ciszkowski

It won't let me login on my BlackBerry 8130, and it's also giving me a 500 error. :( - Zach Flauaus

So even Twit-Out didn't help Twitter make through a day without locking up. Not good. - Capn' One Eye - adrift

so does MG Siegler, Hutch..:) - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I can't believe how much worse it's getting. Success is killing them. - Hutch Carpenter

Well, at least now they can't blame me for taking it down anymore. - Robert Scoble

You gotta be kidding :) - Charlie Anzman

why does anyone even care anymore? just post through friend feed... - John Duff from Alert Thingy

@Robert - that's true. What are you, like 25% of the volume there? :-) - Hutch Carpenter

Lol it's down here - Rosana Kooymans

Robert hasn't been on all day and we've had plenty of conversation, it's been great. (Not the Robert hasn't been on all day part) :D - Shey, Jamaican of FF

can FF update facebook status? that's why i like twitter and why it's annoying when it goes down - Paul Metcalfe

Twitter's been one site that I could always count on. One day I thought my internet might have been down, but I checked Twitter, because they're a surefire check. Now that we know that they can go down, I don't know which way is up. {% endsarcasm %} - Eric Florenzano

Ping.fm and HelloTXT can update Facebook statusses... Don't really know about FriendFeed. I guess not? - Rosana Kooymans

Provided that you write something worthy of mention. Then there are others of us: http://techmeme.com/search... :) - Ontario Emperor

I've been on techmeme but don't show up in the search - hey ho - Colin Walker

Yep. Better to put "Louis Gray" in quotes though. - Gabe Rivera

Same thing here Colin. Scoble had my name in his Google news/noise post that was on Techmeme this weekend. But it doesn't show up in the Techmeme search. So be it. - Hutch Carpenter

So for the rest of us who will probably never make Techmeme, how will this benefit us? - Bwana ☠

Bwana: http://techmeme.com/search... - Gabe Rivera

Gabe, that's not an ego search - Bwana ☠

Nice! Though I would like it better if I could see my articles that headline through a search for my name. - Corvida

Colin: http://techmeme.com/search... - Gabe Rivera

AH, I was searching by name not url - thx Gabe - Colin Walker

OK. I figured this thing out. Need to uncheck the title/summary limit to the search. Duh. - Hutch Carpenter

Still thoroughly under the Techmeme radar. Meh! Who needs ego! - Phil G

Alex, Techmeme favors news and launches over commentary. Louis and his bitchmemes are the exception. ;) - Cyndy

My ego isn't big enough to make it to Techmeme, that's why like Summize :) - Mike Reynolds

Oh Cyndy... there's a whole new opportunity for discussion in there. I'm not biting. :-) - Louis Gray

Haha, you're right Louis! He's a genius! - Fa La La La Lindsay

Talk about setting yourself up for success...LOL - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah from twhirl

I think you should both kiss and get it over with @LouisGray ;-P - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge from twhirl

It will go mainstream. In fact I have seen people from real estate using it - Varun Mahajan

I like FF ( and no, that is not FireFox) more and more every day - Denis

To answer the question about bloggers' conversations occurring on FF instead of their comments: you could just post a link at the end of your blog post to the FriendFeed page for that post (once it's available) and say something like "to comment on this post, go here". I'd like to see someone try that out. - Nathaniel Payne

There is already a plugin to pull the comments from ff and stick them on your WP Blog. Sounds like we are not that far off. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah from twhirl

+1 for Brandon - Varun Mahajan

I think us bloggers are going to have to learn to accept that conversations about our content will occur outside our blogs. People are able to talk about religion without having to go to a church to do it; people who want to complain about Katie Couric aren't expected to make their statements only to CBSNews.com. What we'll benefit most from are discovery tools to find out where people are talking about us and what they're saying - Summize, etc. - Todd Mundt

@Nathaniel - just started doing that exact thing! See for yourself on my blog http://bhc3.wordpress.com - Hutch Carpenter

That's an idea, Nathaniel, but the problem is that the conversation becomes splintered. It won't stay on that discussion thread alone. Someone will tweet about the post and it'll continue there. Someone will share it in Google Reader and it'll continue there. The conversations aren't tied to just one place, they're everywhere. - Shawn Farner from twhirl

Multiple discussions occuring in different places about the content you created. This used to be a Positive for marketing... - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah from twhirl

@Shawn - from my perspective, comments are great for discussing ideas, wherever they occur. In adding FriendFeed links to my blog posts, I actually included some to another person's Google Reader share of my blog post. Why? The conversations were better there. So someone else gets the comment action. Not a problem. I can always find it via searching FriendFeed. - Hutch Carpenter

@Rahsheen - a positive for marketing buzz, but a negative for brand management - I can see bloggers' concern, but like Todd Mundt just said, we have to accept that conversations are allowed to exist beyond our blogs and that we can't contain it all - why bother trying? - Nathaniel Payne

Exactly, Rahsheen. I don't get why people are so resistant to discussions happening in more than one place. - Brent Newhall

I've even had conversations about blogs with people offline and neglected to post transcripts back into the stream. So, maybe they don't even exist. - Michael Markman

if the discussion takes place away from the blog, it reduces the page views and consequently the potential ad revenue - Paul Metcalfe

That sounds logical, Paul. But I think this argument is akin to the music industry saying they lose money when ppl d/l mp3's - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah from twhirl

Cliffnotes of Part I: "Normal people (ie, those who aren’t on Twitter 18 hours a day) don’t like noise." Seriously, I think that sentence is really the key point and largely crystallizes your whole argument. - Deva Hazarika

Paul: A discussion on FriendFeed may generate *more* page views (and thus ad revenue) on the blog because of people seeing the FF discussion and clicking through to the blog. The more discussions that happen around the web, the more popular the blog's going to be. Surely it's better to have lots of different discussions happening all around the web about your blog, right? - Brent Newhall

Personally, if it were discussion about something I wrote, I'd like to at least be able to take part in the discussion and that's the problem I see with FF. The fragmented conversation. If the conversation takes place in the blog comments, it's much easier for me to follow. If people spin off into their own conversation and you aren't following them, you'd have no idea. If there was a way to keep everything under the umbrella of the original discussion, FF would be even more powerful. - Shawn Farner

I think their needs to be some type of cooperation between content creators and friendfeed. If you know your convo may move to ff, move it there yourself, plug ff directly into your blog with a plugin or something. Embrace it. It could only help. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I just realized I wish FF had a save or tag-like function Sometimes I see conversations that I'd love to come back and re-read later. I've been saving a link to some of them, but since moving to del.icio.us, I barely bookmark anything. Web 2.0 stuff is making me lazy. :) - ha3rvey (Ho)^3

But, what is it that FeedFriend do that can't be done by anyone else? Where is the sustainable advantage to this system? - Bob Wyman

There lots of reason it won't go, but the IU issues will get resolved and the watch out. - Russellreno

bob, you're here. That was such a Microsoft response. Sigh. - Robert Scoble

already is main stream my man - Travis Cooper

All I know is, ff did something that I was looking for and no one else had done. That by itself makes it sustainable unless someone attempts to do it better. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah from twhirl

But the discussion is ALREADY fragmented? Why is this new? If you write an article and I blog about it, the discussion among my blog's readers will occur on my blog? Sure, I might send your blog a trackback, but I find that so many of my trackbacks are spam that I don't even bother looking at them anymore. - Mitch Wagner

Posting a comment here does not allow me to also post to my Twitter account unless the original post was generated by Twitter (the checkbox doesn't appear below this textbox). Even when I can simultaneously post, my twittering is associated with FF, but not the URI. Any gratuitous @ symbols I throw in are associated with the username's comments which may have nothing to do with the context of the message. - RandaL Hicks

IMHO FF should always allow an option to cross-post and enable linking back to the conversation. FF would send a tinyURL (generated from the URI) along with the message to Twitter. Twitter would display the message, and at the bottom list FF as the client, but the 'in reply to:Username' field would be In Reply to: http://tinyurl.com/4yjmce ...In the meantime we'll have to clue our friends in manually, all concerns about fragmented conversations aside. - RandaL Hicks

hello - arash

I agree, FriendFeed will go mainstream if people start using more of these online services - Justin Yost

I just keep the site open and refresh a lot. - Robert Scoble

That was an awesome and relevant post! Thanks Rob! - Drew Lucas

I use twhirl for updates - Aura Mae from twhirl

I use twhirl, but it keeps moving the screen while I'm typing if there is an update. Hence these random bits of comment you get sometimes... - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah from twhirl

Using twhirl also. Just not enough screen space there, and things to roll off. Web page is easier. - Todd Jordan

Well said Robert, good article on why FriendFeed will go mainstream. - Mike Reynolds

FF is definitely gonna need a better interface if it IS going to be useable by non-geeks - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I was thinking the same thing, Jason. I don't think my mom would ever be able to handle FF, but I'm sure most geeks/social media addicts will love it and it will be a success - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

my mom is not a good design test case i doubt anyone's mom is- the person who wants to be highly digitally connected, is. - Nathan Eckenrode

Robert, I know you didn't intend it, but your two part piece is a great friendfeed newbie tutorial. Thanks. Also, again don't know if it was intentional, but you forgot to include this friendfeed user: http://friendfeed.com/hillary ;-) - Robert Stevens

Robert Stevens that user needs to engage people with the tools as adults who vote not speakat them like children who must be contained. - Nathan Eckenrode

Well, my mom is a programmer and uses online communications to coordinate her team, so I guess she is not the most common "mom" example :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah from twhirl

Nathan Eckenrode absolutely right about that user needing to engage. Check her friendfeed page. Not a single subscription. - Robert Stevens

and not everyone's mom is theprototypical bumbler that frequently gets assigned t that architypical user group - Nathan Eckenrode

it does make a good friendfeed tutorial, but I don't think it's going mainstream without a serious interface improvement. Its ass ugly! - Justin Flood @justinflood from twhirl

It's not even that it's ugly, it's that it's not really useable. I think it was created to provide as much as possible, but with the understanding that someone would create decent filters/clients for it for regular consumption. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I this that whether FF goes mainstream depends mostly on us. - funkyboy

My thoughts - http://www.toddrjordan.com/thebroa... - Todd Jordan

@PatrickJordan - using Twhirl client. - Todd Jordan

Well said. Not entirely certain I agree or disagree with your thoughts, but either way you do present a compelling argument for FF. I think the number one reason that will hold back adoption of a mainstream FF is the benefit to the average user. Unless that is articulated so the *average user* can understand, they will not see the desire to attach themselves to another service. The question at this point is what can, or should, FF do to attract average users? - Scott Jarkoff

@ScottJarkoff - well, partnerships would help. When you sign up for a service, if that service had a check box to add that feed to Friendfeed, it'd be a done deal. - Todd Jordan

@Todd: Agreed. But that begs the question, how would such a partnership benefit the service you're signing up for? There has to be some mutual benefit to a partnership like that. The obvious benefit is for FF, but what does everyone else gain through such an arrangement? - Scott Jarkoff

Scott: I'm not so sure that FriendFeed should worry TOO much about that right now. Instead, make the system of great utility to advanced users like me and you. If they make it easy for me to get rid of the noise and present it to everyone else, then it'll take off. - Robert Scoble

Why FriendFeed WON'T Go Mainstream: 1.) in the mainstream, people don't want to be THIS informed. That's probably equally good for them, and good for those of us who do want to be this informed! 2.) Steve Case subscribed, friended some people and then...didn't engage at all. He's my go-to guy for what the mainstream will eat up like ice cream. - Robert Seidman

Robert: But how does such usage translate over to the average user? Just because us mega-geeks can use FF, and more importantly we can understand it, does not mean that the average user will comprehend why it is useful to them. _Something_ needs to bridge that gap, no? - Scott Jarkoff

Last night I tried to explain FriendFeed and even Twitter to my friend the cop. While he has a Facebook profile, He Just. Didn't. Get It. The harder I tried to explain, the more he just looked at me like I just landed from Venus. - Capn' One Eye - adrift

FF can't go mainstream and I said as much in my comment on your blog post, which is awaiting moderation I guess :(. Main point - I could never explain FF to any of my non techy friends...never - Jennifer Van Grove from twhirl

Alert Thingy helps with the interface 'issues'. I think it has really helped with adoption / holding onto users - John Duff from Alert Thingy

@Geoff Longman - we are from Venus! ;-) welcome to my planet! - Susan Beebe

No doubt FF will go mainstream. It must over come the too many sites back lash, but over time this is a winner. - Russellreno