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paul mooney › Comments
The Private Web - http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009...
Denise Howell, Daniel Rowley, Robert Scoble and 8 other people liked this
In our day we had our Home phone and it was private if you could close the door
- paul mooney
this is our day and there are other alternatives now
- Steve Gillmor
In our day you could have an affair and your GPS coordinates couldn't be traced
- Francine Hardaway
maybe you could
- Steve Gillmor
Steve - Fabulous post! I love the deep level of investigation, research and analysis in this well-thought out and artfully crafted piece. Well done my friend! (Francine LOL)
- Susan Beebe
Welcome Ryan!
Yunus Yalçınkaya, Debra Moore, Free will and 573 other people liked this
Congrats Robert... best wishes to all
- Rhys Amos
Congrats. Now the fun begins!!!
- Mike Shields
Awesome!
- dstamand
Congratulations!
- Stephan Planken
Congratulations! Welcome, Ryan!
- Lance M. Brown
Awesome
- RetiredTeacherD
Yay! Congratulations!
- Jesse Stay
YAYAYAYAYAY! Congrats to you and Maryam!@#!@#!
- drew olanoff
congrats Robert and Maryam, Welcome Ryan.
- rick
Welcome to the world.
- Dave Mora
Congratulations!!!
- Mike Doeff
!!!
- sean percival
Born 11:32.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
LOL He was keepin ya'll on yer toes. CONGRATS!
- Danny Minick
Yay! Congratulations to you and your wife! Now off to buy RSS and iPhone
- Lise
Congrats!!!!!
- Mark Evans
Congratulations!
- Kenneth
I hope you're well rested, Robert ... ;-)
- Hieronymus Murphy
Congrats Robert!
- Charlie Anzman
Congratulations!
- 321
He looks like you.
- Cjay
Congratulations!
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Congrats to you all
- JanLawrence
Congrats Robert and welcome RSS!
- Robb Brock
Congratulations! Happy Birthday Ryan! Lots of love to the whole family.
- Jodi Church
SUBSCRIBED!
- drew olanoff
Hello World!
- CannonGod
Congratulations!! Welcome to the world Ryan!! :)
- Laura Zickus
<rss> awesome! </rss>
- sean percival
welcome to the new world little one! all hail our pink squirming screaming overlord!
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
LOL at CannonGod's comment. It's like he started a Wordpress blog. XD
- Danny Minick
When does he start micro blogging?
- Cjay
20.5 inches long. 7 lbs. 13 oz.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
nice alpha version. welcome RSS !
- Kaïs Miled
congrats!! welcome rss!
- barbarars
Ryan is no longer in beta! LOL :D Congrats, Scoble!
- Danny Minick
Congratulations :)
- امیرعباس
RSS is finally here! Congrats Robert & Maryam
- Dennis Jernberg
Congrats Robert... best wishes to all
- joupy
Congratulations!
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Blessings, and the best Robert!
- Nakeva Corothers
Cute!
- Charlie Anzman
مبارک باشه Congratulations
- هامد - Just Like that
Congrats!!!
- Jim Williams
Grats!
- Denverken
مبارکه رفیق رابرت . خدا حفظش کنه
- جـوان ایرانی
If Dave Winer comes on here and claims to have invented RSS I will smack him.
- drew olanoff
Congratulations!
- joey
Congratulations and all the best.
- Bryce Roney
Welcome Ryan!!!
- Phil
Welcome Ryan :)
- giuseppe c. | markgreene
Awesome. Congratulations!
- John McCrea
Congratulations :-)
- ѕнαнιη
Congratulations!
- anna sauce
Congratulations :) Welcome Ryan :)
- Mohamed Marwen Meddah
Congrats, Imagine where RSS and the web will be when he turns 30!
- James Watters
Congratulations to you both.
- Don McAllister
congrats Robert and Maryam :)))))
- Conformist / Unforgiven
congrats to the family!!
- erik yuzwa
Welcome to RSS in Pubsubhub mode :)
- Ouriel Ohayon
Congrats to you all!! We had our second child, a boy, on Tuesday. Enjoy!!
- Alex Cordiner
from iPhone
Yay! Congrats to you, but mostly congrats to your wife for doing all of the hard work. ;-) xo
- Jennifer Leggio
Mazel Tov!
- Robb Vaules
Congrats Robert....wishing all the best to your family....
- Carlos
Congratulations! Wow! Seems like we were there just the other day! Looking forward to your late-night feeds and tweets and blog posts!
- Louis Gray
You rock! Congrats. Thanks for sharing. How's mum doing?
- Steve Lacey
from iPhone
congrats! and welcome ryan
- Daniel Levine
Congrats Robert - It is a fine family....
- Simarprit Singh
"beautiful new baby" by Robert Scoble, photojournalist. I stepped away for coffee and bang! RSS
- Brian Hendrickson
nice!
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
Thank you so much for sharing
- Sherrie Belken
:) congrats
- Shandiz
Born on Talk like a Pirate Day, too! Yarrrr!
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
congrads ms & mr scoble, :)
- chaz2b
Thanks to the good Docs!
- Keith Rowland
congrats!! ^_^
- Christine Lu
Congrats!
- Mycaptain
Steve: mum is sleeping but got to hold Ryan. Instant love!
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Welcome, Guest dear to our world / Now the world is on your own
- Conformist / Unforgiven
that feels good
- Brian Hendrickson
Gonna have to learn to operate that iPhone with one hand.
- Keith Rowland
Congratulations!
- Parth Awasthi
Congratulations. Hope Maryam iis doing well
- Rachel Clarke
Congratulations! Wish him all the best!
- philos
Welcome Baby Ryan!!! My baby Ryan (17 years!) and I are honored to welcome another superstar to our planet! Love, hugs, and lots of kisses to Baby Ryan, Mommy Maryam, Dad Robert and big brothers Milan & Patrick and of course Grandma!!! My guess on Ryan's arrival (predication) was only 23 hours off. I thought he would arrive on Friday, Sept. 18th at 11:45 pm. Love to all, Kelly & Ryan Kim
- Kelly S. Kim
Congrats, Robert and Maryam.
- Derrick
Congratulations Robert, and well done Maryam! You are truly blessed :)
- Nicola Quinn
So happy for you Robert and Maryam. Yeay...another FF baby!
- Mark Krynsky
Congratulations!
- Surachart Opun
What a moment, eh? I remember when my daughter came into this world, it was so exciting there were no words for it. Congrats on your wonderful baby boy!
- Michael J. Carrasquillo
Congratulations
- testbeta
Congratulations! Welcome to the world, Ryan. :-)
- Yvette Ferry
Congratulations Robert and Maryam! And welcome Ryan. If I was having a baby today, I'd begin a blog for him/her straight away as an online diary they could look back on when grown up.
- Sandra Large
he's so cute...
- Sinem Vural
Robert, Congratulations to you and Maryamie!
- Mike Fruchter
Wow, congrats to all of you!
- Paul Salzman
Congratulations to you both!
- Forrest W. Kobayashi
Great news guys! All the best!
- Chris Nixon
الهــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــی چقده ناز نازیه.اینو فارسی نوشتم مریم جان بخونن ....راستی به باباش که نرفته:)) خوشگلتره:)) پس به شما رفته
- joupy
congratulations!!
- Jeroen De Miranda
Congratulations to you and your wife Robert!
- Randy
Congrats Robert!
- Terry Jones
congratz and welcome RSS!
- Jon Winters
Congrats Maryam :-)
- Terry Jones
Felicitations and humble prayers for your new son.
- Victor Panlilio
congrats and best wishes!
- Mike Chelen
Congratulations Robert! Welcome Ryan!
- Jeff P. Henderson
Congrats!!
- Tan Kaiquan
congrats and best wishes to all. :)
- Naor Mark
Congratulations
- Meral Alabaz
I was a c-section six week preemie in an era when that was seriously life-threatening, they didn't know if I would make for the first week. It always gets me a see a c-section / preemie come howling into the world. Welcome, little guy!
- Bob Morris (polizeros)
from iPhone
Beautiful baby! Congratulations daddy man :)
- Gary
:) Congrats Robert... best wishes to your family! Get her name in twitter and ff!
- Business Blogger【ツ】™
Congratulations to you and Maryam!
- Elwin Witzke
AmazinG!! congratulations :)
- Nakul
cutie pie baby
- Debby Bruck
Congratulations :)
- Baard @ Pixum
Ryan, good to see you.
- Burçak Çubukçu
تولدش مبارک ^_^ Congratulations!
- Emad
Warm wishes and congratulations. Love that you posted him crying.
- Irene Koehler
Congratulation to all of you! All the best for baby ryan!!!
- Arne Krueger
Congrats to both of you :)
- zephyrlily
Congratulation....best wishes to all
- Opium
woooow like :)
- کلـیـشه
Congrats M. & R.
- Giuseppe M.
ووووی مبارکه، به مریم خانوم هم تبریک ما رو بگو
- Zahra (raoros)
Congrats Robert and Maryam, Welcome to geekdom Ryan!
- Andrew Wardlaw
Contrats!!! I'm so excited!!
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
Congrats.That pic brings back memories of my own baby's birth only ten months ago. C-section baby boys rock!
- Georgiana Comsa
Mazel Tov to you and Maryam.
- Michael Markman
Congrats... a few more Scobles make the world a better place ;-)
- Aad 't Hart
Congrats!
- George Mitsopoulos
Congrats... and Welcome Ryan. Good to have you among us.
- fatima
Congratulations! I
- Michael Fidler
Wonderful news. Congrats.
- Keri
Congrats Robert, and the best to you, Maryam, and of course Ryan!
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Congratulations Congratulations !!
- Farzad
Congrats
- Sandeep Swaminathan
looking to to the same in 3 weeks
- ROBIN SMITH
Congrats on the blessed event! :D
- Joel Lovato
Congrats Robert and Maryam. Welcome Ryan !!!!!!!!!
- Nir Ben Yona
Congratulations, Robert!
- Mark Trapp
Congratulations to Robert and Maryam.
- George Hall (Australia)
Right ON! I am so happy for you. I have 4 kids of my own and they are my greatest joys. Take care and I hope all goes so smooth for him and mom.
- Robert Anderson
Congratulations!
- J. Abdul-Qahhar
Daddy Scobleizer!!!!!!!!!! First things first....when will he be signed up for Twitter and FF?
- krystyl
Congrats!!!
- eric susch
welcome Ryan, it's a beautiful world
- Michele Costabile
Congrats!!
- Olivia Lovag
Congrats to the Scoble family from South Africa! Welcome to the world @RSS
- Shaun Trennery
Good luck beatiful baby.
- Oğulcan Selçuk Akbulut
Congrats, Robert! :-D
- Kol Tregaskes
Congratulations Robert, and welcome Ryan!
- Giorgio Zarrelli
Congratulations Robert and R.S.S.: "Hello World" Cheers!
- Louis Trapani
warmest congratulations
- Peter Holland
what a beautiful baby=)Congratulations=)
- Candan Celik
Such a miracle and a blessing - Congratulations to you and Maryam and "big" brothers!
- Marla Schulman
Congrats, Robert. Amazing pictures!
- Jordi Soler
Congratulations to all of your family! Enjoy!
- Ed Richardson
Congratulations ... enjoy!
- Hitesh Parashar
Congratulations!!!! He's beautiful! Welcome little one! I'm proud to share a birthday with you!
- Martha
Congratulations Robert and Maryam! Welcome to the world Ryan :-)
- Rasmus Lauridsen
happy birthday BABY
- ≤ M@RzI
Best congratulations!!!! :)
- CantorJF
Congrat Robert. It is wonderful what this new media could do to share your joy!
- Gianto Widianto
congrats!
- Pradhap Nirmal Natarajan
Congratulations!
- Steve Garfield
به به . قدم نو رسیده مبارک مریم جان . خیلی نازه :)
- RokhSaare
Hope the baby and mum are well. Congratz. Happy Ied Mubarak =)
- zʍıɔ
Congrats on the blessed event! Welcome to the world, Ryan
- Jazz Baker
Congratulations!
- Jim Will Miss SP
appena nato e già dal dentista?
- paolo beneforti
Congrats :)
- Maryam Ardakani
from FreshFeed
He was delivered by a Blue Man?
- paul mooney
Congrats Robert. It's allways a special moment. I still have my child birth in my memory!
- Rui
What a happy day! A healthy new Scoble and mom.
- Dave Winer
آخي ، بچته ؟؟؟ مبارك باشه تو روز به اين عزيزي به دنيا اومده ، بت نميخوره بچه انقدري داشته باشي شيطون
- mohammad
My goodness, congratulations!
- DGentry
Congrats!
- Ivo Mortani
Congratulations!! and best wishes
- Johni Fisher
congrats!
- masstrovato
Congratulations! I hope everyone's ok?!
- Holger Eilhard
حاجي خانومت ايرانيه جدي ؟؟؟ پس خيلي مباركه ديگه
- mohammad
Congratulations, Scoble family!
- Bill Scherer
wonderfull
- braciolanet
from BuddyFeed
Congratulations to you and your family Robert! A very handsome baby boy! Cant wait to see more pictures!
- TiffanyCarr
Congratulations, Robert.
- motownmutt
Congratulations!
- :: Kim Sherrell ::::
congrats :)
- £lham
مبارکه :)
- خیزران kheyzaran
Congrats!
- Roozbeh
Congrats to Robert and Maryam!
- Bec Rowe @d0tski
WooHoo! My best to the whole family. I hope Maryam is getting some rest after all that hard work!
- Robert Couture
Congrats to you and your fam, Robert :)
- LANjackal
Ryan was born when the Berlin Marathon was finishing. Perhaps he'll be a long-distance runner. Congrats.
- Carl Jacobsen
Congratulations to you and the wife, Robert! Job well done. I see he is gonna take after his Daddy! ;-0 ,hehe:-)
- Duliece
One more congrats won't hurt, right? Thanks for sharing the pics.
- Kevin Sablan
Congratulations :)
- A35G
Congrats - Exciting & now the fun begins :-)
- PXLated
Wishing you and yours the best on this wonderful day! Congratulations!
- Steve
Congrats on the RSS feed update :) I hope you've pinged both rsscloud and pubsubhubbahubba !
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
Starting today. Sleep will be nothing more than a fond memory. :) Congrats.
- Richard
Congrats!
- Herb Hernandez
from iPhone
Congrats!
- YusufOzanTasdemir
Congrats Robert!!
- Taehoon Kim
Congratulations!
- Thomas Hawk
Congratulations to you both :)
- 1x29
Congratulations to all!
- malackey
fantastic !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- michele ficara
Awe!! Congrats =)
- Brodie Beta
Congratulazioni!! ^______^
- Andrea | amnesiak1978
congrats!!
- Clarita
Congratulations to your whole family, Robert :-)
- Mistletoe Glen
Welcome Ryan! Congratulations Robert and family!
- Tim Probst
from iPhone
Congratulations!!! God bless....
- Bob DeMarco
Congrats!
- Jason Williams
from iPhone
Congratulations Robert, Maryam and Milan! All the best to the four of you.
- Eiso Kant
Congratulations :-)
- Jalada
Congrats! Enjoy.
- Jim Peake
Congrats
- BeeLing
Congratulations!!
- Paolo Leonardi
Congratulations, Robert and Maryam!
- Helen Sventitsky
Congratulations!
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
Congratulations.
- ashish
Congrats
- Brian Appleby
oooww wonderfulll :))
- Ucandepik
Well done, my son's name as well.
- Robert Kenney
Congratulations
- Caleb Scribner
Congrats
- Manuel Mas
Congrats! Best wishes to you, Ryan and all your family!
- Lenny Post
congrats ^_^
- Furkan Tunalı
Conga Rats!
- Michael R. Bernstein
Wonderful! Enjoy!
- Alan Morris
Hello!
- N.G. Gordon - RadarSync
Absolutely wonderful. Welcome to the world Ryan!
- Loren Heiny
from iPhone
Congrats :)
- Hasan Al Shehabi
Congratulations to both of you.
- Roberto Bonini
OMG Congrats to both of you, he looks healthy and promising.
- Jeunelle Foster
Congratulations to everyone! He looks healthy! I am sure you must all be very happy! ;)
- Altan Khendup
Congratulations! May your tribe ever increase in happiness, joy, and fulfilment.
- trey pennington
Congrats!
- Ben Parr
what would be ryan's reaction when he would read this post someday, so many folks who knew dad congratulating him!
- testbeta
Congratulations!
- Anne Bouey
hiya RSS!
- Laura Norvig
Yah!! Congratulations.
- Micah Wittman
Congratulations to the whole Scoble family!
- WorldofHiglet
Congratulations to the whole family! Enjoy these most precious times.
- Marylene Delbourg-Delphis
best wishes to all
- Hamza Şamlıoğlu @TEAkolik
congrats Robert and Maryam
- Kevin Tunis
Congratulations, Robert!
- Sabri Küstür
from FreshFeed
Wonderful. Best wishes to Ryan...
- Mitchell Tsai
Congratulations to the whole family :)
- Chris Saad
Congratulations
- Samaneh
Congratulations. cute :)
- FFTornado
Congratulations. First picture on twitter!
- Cindy Makonin
I just came to make sure you were getting a proper congratulations
- Sherrie Belken
Welcome :)))
- Flynn (Michael A. Volz)
congrats;)
- خاتون
Congratulations to the Scobles!
- Carlton Prest
Congrats Robert!
- Jorge Escobar
congratulations, Robert and Maryam.
- Valeria Maltoni
congrats!
- Daniel Brusilovsky
WOW - what a miracle - congrats!
- Mark Harai
Congratulations Robert & Maryam!
- Rodrigo Jaroszewski
Congrats from Italy, Ryan!
- Federico Bolsoman
from iPhone
Congratulations Robert and sorry for delay, Best wishes
- erfan
He is crying: "I want an iPhone". Felicitations!
- William Mougayar
May he be blessed throughout his life! God bless you, Robert and Maryam!
- Melanie Reed
CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!
- Greg Ness
congrats :)
- Erdinc [bilimdiyari.com]
Congrats Robert & your family :)
- Sampad Swain
what a beautiful little guy! congratulations! rock on!
- B.L. Ochman
great day, congrats
- imran
Wow congratulations to both you and Maryam you must be so proud :)
- David Richardson
from Android
Congratulations
- Eric Logan
Wow, Congratulations, Robert and Maryam!! Ryan looks beautiful.:-)
- Cathryn Hrudicka
Congrats man. That's so awesome.
- Give 'Em DBizness
Happy Babbie Day!
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
Congrats!
- Zachary TG
Congrats! I wish a long and healthy life.
- Muammer Okumuş
Robert, you newest addition is too freaking adorable. I hope you and Maryam are doing well. Congratulations! Here's to a long, prosperous future!
- Mike Nayyar
Welcome, Ryan - you picked a good family!
- Matthew Blaisdell
congrats to you and Maryam! And welcome, RSS!
- Joshua Allen
from fftogo
congrats!!! Welcome to Ryan
- Dario Salvelli
Congratulations to you and Maryam! E benvenuto Ryan!
- Marco Fabbri
Congrats! :)
- Emmanuel Anumonwo
Congratulations!
- mlazopoulou
Such auspicious times... Welcome, Ryan!
- Red Label
O HAI, Ryan! Congratulations to Daddy and Mommy, too!
- Ladybug Heather
What's Ryan's Twitter address?
- MVB (Grinch of FF)
from iPod
قدم نو رسیده مبارک!congratulations
- Jan Valjan
Congrats, best wishes. :)
- Hunt
حوزه جان بیا در گوشش اذان بگو
- مـــــــــمد
woohoo! congrats!
- Tyson
That is a wonderful moment! All the best to momma, baby and the family!
- Mary Gilmour
Congrats Robert! Welcome Ryan!
- Garin Kilpatrick
Awesome, Congratulations Robert and Maryam! And welcome to the world Ryan.
- Mitch Baldwin
Happy parenting! Congrats!
- Natallini
Groovy + one geek on the planet
- Yann Ropars
Congrats!!! Robert
- Steve Chou
To the proud Papa.....Congratulations!!
- Bonnie Foster
Congratulations Team Scoble. Best of good wishes to all of you.
- Morrie Johnston
Congrats Robert and family!!! Welcome Ryan :)
- buvanesh
congrats Robert!
- Joshua Guffey
Congratulations! RS
- Sean Kelly
Congrats :D
- Emre Misvaklı
Congratulations. he's so cute :)
- Armando Grati
Beautiful!
- Ryan Sholin
Congratulations
- Kreg Steppe
Congratulations!
- Gordon Saunders
Congratulations!
- موسوی Hamid Reza میر
Congrats Robert....How amny more before you have your baseball team :-)
- Alex Marrow
Seriously, Best whishes.............God Bless......
- Alex Marrow
Mazal Tov!
- Raanan Avidor
All the best! Fun Times!!!!
- Jim Turner
congrads now the fun starts, beautiful baby
- Debra Moore
congrads !
- ★ Soner Gönül
Congrats and Best Wishes!
- Tracy Benham
Looks like the baby's first trip to the dentist
- Steve Borgman
Welcome, Ryan! Congrats, Robert!
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
davewiner: @scobleizer is camped out at Sequoia Hospital awaiting the birth of his third son, Ryan S. Scoble. Let's name a format after the kid! :-) - http://twitter.com/davewin...
Kol Tregaskes, Andrew Terry, Billy Warhol and 9 other people liked this
Awesome Congrats!
- Jessica Stevens
congratulations ...rob and family best wishes
- johnpiercy
agreed congrat's my friend - good wishes to your ever growing family :)
- mike "glemak" dunn
How's Maryam doing?
- paul mooney
I'm surprised Techcrunch didn't brake this BIG Story
- paul mooney
good luck!
- Thomas Hawk
No offense to Dave, but P.U.B.S.U.B.H.U.B.B.U.B. is too many initials... :)
- John E. Bredehoft
Thomas: I was just looking back at the photos you shot after Milan was born. What a gift that was!
- Robert Scoble
I just wrote about Twitter's Platform Shortcomings: http://scobleizer.com/2009... am I nuts or right?
Captain Jack, Muhammad Ijlal Hasnain, Jeunelle Foster and 32 other people liked this
Not getting to old tweets is a serious issue. Do you think there is a market for archiving old tweets, FF posts, etc.?
- τorƍue
I think the cost for archiving everything is huge. But a backup service for all your Social Media Stuff, like an application that downloads all data with help of the APIs and save it to an external harddrive would make total sense. Maybe Timemaschine on a Mac could do that haha.
- Max Schulze
from fftogo
Max: at least 75% of the value in social media is the searchability and connectability. As I learned when I couldn't get to my Flickr photos the other day because my Pro account had lapsed.
- Robert Scoble
If twitter have all this shortcomings, why do you think developer flock to them?
- Fajar Nurdiansyah
It is naive to think that we will be able to archive our lives online, especially when it's free.
- Mitch
We have had some pleasant experiences with Twitter. They have been helpful.
- K N Ajit Narayan
we need a mashup where comments "like'd" enough times are thrown into persistant storage for the benefit of humanity
- erik yuzwa
You are 100% right. That's why I said Twitter Search is very, very broken a few months back, and that was just scraping the surface.
- Louis Gray
I don't think it is just a platform issue, the whole debacle about the recent DDOS and their blanket ban on all semi high-traffic 3rd party sites (such as my own - twollo, I have been issuing refunds all weekend).
- Paul Kinlan
Perhaps Twitter should be regulated as a utility. I'd prefer an alternative that gives me control, perhaps an Push Button Web alternative, open source and federated.
- Dominic Jones
Nicely summed up. I "solved" the history of tweets with Twitter Tools plugin for blog which pulls out weekly summaries of what I tweet (I intentionally left out the @replies). The archive is being build on my blog (http://twistedfirestarter.cz/categor...) and it's banned from showing on the home page of the blog, because I don't do much posting :). Picking the winners got...
more...
- Dušan Šimonovič
Twitter want to be the communications platform for the 21 century, even now they are like the postal service, when they go down I can't do business, I can't communicate with my customers.... A lot of people on the development list were saying "Don't build your business on Twitter", but that is what Twitter want you to do, they want to get you to the point where you are so reliant on Twitter that you have no alternative.
- Paul Kinlan
I'm going to frame Louis' comment. :-)
- Robert Scoble
The 100% right comment? :)
- Paul Kinlan
Fajar: developers liked Twitter for a couple of reasons. 1. All their friends were on it and still are. I watch early adopter behavior (even to the point of unfollowing and refollowing to clean up my list) and the developers are still pretty active on Twitter and so are their friends. Unless everyone leaves together that won't change. 2. The growth on Twitter has been STUNNING. So there...
more...
- Robert Scoble
It feels like the more that we base our online lives on someone elses server the more we will ultimately lose in time. Facebook is a huge black hole which sucks in so much of our lives, and if it disappears next year -- what then? We've lost 5 years of our lives. Photos, conversations, etc. Not like there's solution in sight either.
- Kevin Francis
Kevin: Thats why the DISo projects are important - shame it is so hard to get adoption
- Paul Kinlan
Paul: yeah, the 100% right one. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert: to be fair it was his only comment on this entry :) just thought I would re-enforce the point :)
- Paul Kinlan
Robert: Your best post in a long time.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: it's my only post in a long time! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert: That's what I meant we need a searchable and connectable backup solution that pulls our data for offline use, like google gears but with access to my raw data. Imagine you could still access everything even if the service is down, you would kind of have an archive of everything you ever did or posted. Your Maschine or a Service just needs to pull it once and then update everytime you post something.
- Max Schulze
It's not so much the platform but what the guys behind the service are trying to do with it. That said, I'm still pissed off that their filtering me from search is still unresolved after a month and a half. If only Seesmic Desktop had FF and Blellow support... if it did, I'd be an ex-Twitter user.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Chris, I have not been in search for about 2 months (@PaulKinlan)
- Paul Kinlan
Twitter needs to be redesigned from the ground up, from scratch, from square one. All the arguments you bring up are spot on, but the issue isn't necessarily the platform itself. It's that the original purpose of Twitter does not in any way, shape, or form cater to what Twitter has become, and the developers have effectively been having a blank stare, completely clueless as to what to do about it.
- Adam Reyher
from Alert Thingy
I agree Adam but we don't need to worry because we all have FF
- Thomas Power
Robert, I think I've mentioned heaps of times the search problem where you can't access stuff past a few weeks. You can't really expect Twitter to be called the next big thing in search while it's that limited.
- George Hall (Australia)
There's also an ongoing discussion I have with a friend majoring in old languages. Ancient records were great because the materials stood the test of time. Digital information, though, is dependent on electricity and still being able to read a storage medium. If everything were online, and an electro-magnetic pulse hit...bye-bye all human knowledge at once...extreme scenario I admit, but very possible.
- George Hall (Australia)
I still think I should be chiselling my best tweets in stone...
- George Hall (Australia)
Similar thing happened with syncplicity: a great synchronizing tool, been using it for about 1 year. They just stopped Mac client beta: "Unfortunately what we found is that the fixes entail almost a rewrite in many cases — a process that would take many months to a year." http://blog.syncplicity.com/2009...
- Lucian Nicolescu
Kudos on this article Robert. Glad somebody with your following wrote this piece, else it might have been missed. As somebody who has invested resources in exploring Twitter based products, I couldn't agree more.
- Abhimanyu Chirimar
Nambu is a Social Messaging Trainwreck and the only way they can come-up with to make money from Twitter is a tr.im extortion play
- paul mooney
Robert: That's some honesty fo' yo' ass!
- © b e e n s w a n k
And Twitter's down again! :( Seriously folks, what are we waiting for to implement an open, federated statstream protocol that's not dependent on one company?
- Grey Drane
@grey see xmpp. it's the basis for jabber and google wave.
- Steve Wilhelm
Yeah, I've heard of it before, but never really checked it out. I'm not quite that much of a techie, but I'll give it another shot. ;)
- Grey Drane
from IM
Identi.ca, Grey. It's an open, federated twitter-API compatible service. Based on laconi.ca, which is free software, so you can set up your own server today.
- Ken Kennedy
OK, but isn't it still sort of dependent on level of adoption? If too few are using identi.ca [http://identi.ca] or a specific laconi.ca [http://laconi.ca] installation, is it worth it? Or what am I missing?
- Grey Drane
from IM
Or is it (will it be) like Google Wave (as I understood it from the presentation video) where different implementations of the protocol work together more or less seemlessly as one big distributed platform?
- Grey Drane
I have said before that twitters days are numbered. Then with all the media attention that I was thinking of back tracking on my comment. Now with the buy out of FF and the many faults of twitter that I would be shocked if twitter survived the social networking race. I really had hoped and ultimate SN app would come out of all this. Twitter is to basic and FaceBook to complicated (also...
more...
- Captain Jack
Talk about Facebook buying FriendFeed here (on FriendFeed, of course):
HealingBrush, Chris Martin, lolise and 164 other people liked this
I'm not sure what it means, but I hope the goodness of Friendfeed stays intact.
- Tom Landini
I guess Facebook just got real time search engine!
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
What do facebook get out of it?
- Ruchit Garg
Fact or fiction?
- Jason Cronkhite
from iPhone
I haven't seen likes and comments stream real-time this fast before.
- ydfeed
It depends on who lays claim to our posted and aggregated material.
- jcunwired
it could work. if Friendfeed completely replaces Facebook
- Edgar Rodríguez
I think it's a brilliant move, although bringing this into the Facebook walled garden would ruin it.
- Derek Shanahan
how much for?
- Ruchit Garg
Is it true Robert?
- Kevin Whalen
BAD 'n SAD :((
- sid 【ツ】
Great match to take on the Twitter machine.
- Ryan Cummins
what is next..facebook killing twitter integration...SCORE....??
- Denis
++Edgar
- Ryan
Presumably a technology acquisition then, Facebook is buying the team and the tech.
- DGentry
Good for Facebook, BAD for us. NOOOOOOOOOOOO
- Nir Ben Yona
I don't like it
- Jason Hargrove
Bad news, if true.
- LogEx
Just because Facebook bought Friendfeed, doesn't necessarily mean they will do anything with the service. At least maybe not right away. People need to chill out.
- Alex Knight
hope it doesn't mess w/ twitter integration
- Ken Seto
makes a lot of sense - f.b. now has a power house of real-time all-stars. fixes many of the feature 'wish' lists for f.b. - actually a major positive sign for innovation. congrats to the F.F. team.
- michael sean wright
How can i shut down my ff account?
- Fotis Alexandrou
I need a few hours and possibly large amounts of chocolate
- Bwana ☠
If you are right, that "Facebook just got real time search engine", that is good - as FB really, really needed it for a long time.
- Bora Zivkovic
:(
- Sinem Co
yes, this is fast. Reminds me of a few hours ago when I was on Freenode
- Ian Tindale
There goes your data.
- Jason Hargrove
This will probably be bad. like all purchases, it will be an "afterthought" and never be fully allowed to develop and flourish.
- Ryan Jones
Man this is really SUCKS!! :((( we all know Facebook strategies on the web :(( Whey will drive FriendFeed to the helll and I'm pretty sure of this :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( BAD SUCKS SAD :(((
- FFTornado
Funny thing is, if you posted about this on Facebook, 99.9999% of it's users would go "huh, what's FriendFeed anyway?"
- Richard Matthias
It almost seemed inevitable since Facebook has been copying so much of Friendfeed in recent months. It's good for the founders of FF and may benefit those of us who use both on a regular basis. Maybe they'll just leave FF alone?
- Kenley Neufeld
someone tell me what they will do with it? Nothing maybe? Kill it, maybe?
- Francine Hardaway
Wonder how they'll integrate, separate services with more interaction or FF swallowed by Facebook.
- Steven Cains
Buy as is use it's IP and close it down or run as separate business? Either way, didn't see that coming.
- Keith Bennett
from BuddyFeed
It was bound to go down. Like we used to say on the block shootin' dice "Big Bank Take Little Bank"
- professor daddyo
I do, however, wish tha tmore sites would implement this commenting engine.
- Ryan Jones
Fotis: haha, wait too long, and you'll never be able to close your FF account ;)
- Jason Hargrove
not believing it until another source confirms...
- Benton
Congrats to the friendfeed team. Worried about the future though.
- Andy Roth
Whats FriendFeed anyways?
- Marco Horta
so that Facebook can maybe copyright the "Like" button? lol
- Than R
How are we going to abbreviate it now? FBFF? FFFB? F^3B ?
- Harry Wolff
I receive the breaking news via BNO News at this moment: Facebook acquires FriedFeed...
- Torsten Eckert
haha you're right Richard
- Ken Seto
Wow
- Rodfather
I am stuck in Texas and have not confirmed myself.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
OMG.
- Nathan Chase
It looks like a defensive move. I think it's better fro FB to acquire FF than incorporating twitter functionalities in their status feature.
- Pablo Paniagua
maybe they can implement threads?
- Jeremy Toeman
double wow.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Friendbook? Facefeed?
- Jeff Harbert
If it's true, I suspect FriendFeed as we know it will be gone, but Facebook will be greatly improved.
- Costa Walcott
bah. i will go do something else. this news isn't helping
- Edgar Rodríguez
trying to look on the bright side - maybe we'll get those iPhone/Blackberry apps for better access to FriendFeed
- Stuart Miniman
But if it isn't true we would have heard by now.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
apprehensive about this
- Liz Polay-Wettengel
Official: http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- Brandon Titus
I want to hear the $$$ number
- moo yu
Congrats to ff team...but how does this work? I have 2 different accounts...and I like it that way...I don't want to share/spam my friends on facebook with what I have here...
- brainno722 (Peter)
@robert no we wouldnt have
- Jeremy Toeman
It's official: http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009...
- Costa Walcott
Originally posted this to your other FF/FB post before you astarted this one: I don't see the point of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. They are pretty much identical services (well, FF represents just the News Feed portion of Facebook) I don't see how they can incorporate FriendFeed into Facebook. If they really did buy it, then I see this as them going for programming talent more so...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
From FF blog http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009...
- Tom Landini
I'm hoping this improves Facebook (just like everyone else). Facebook has gotten horrible stale for me of late.
- Harry Wolff
This stream itself is the evidence of WHY Facebook bought FF.
- Steven Walling
What's looking shiny and new now? :-)
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
I've been needing a reason to get re-interested in Facebook, this could be it.
- JonInteractive
Friend management will need to be enhanced/overhauled. Otherwise, the noise will make the combined product unusable.
- Peter Ghosh
No! I am going to cry! I HATE FACEBOOK! I have a Facebook account, but FriendFeed is way better. Life is over! Apocalypse.
- Zachary TG
Seriously, how can i shut it down?
- Fotis Alexandrou
We'll have to wait for more details to see exactly what Facebook is planning to do with FF.
- 321
Bodes badly for FriendFeed. --rj
- Roger Jennings
I think this is more of a "send the friendfeed traffic to facebook" than any kind of technical leverage. My biggest concern here: in order to exchange dialogue with people on facebook I need to be friends with them vs. being able to do it on friendfeed without having to friend them up. I find this valuable as there may be a topic or 5 that I want to engage with user "X" on, but I don't...
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- Erik Boles
I am disappointed by this news... I don't like Facebook at all... And I'm afraid they will just kill FriendFeed with their awful cluttered interface...
- Fa La La La Lindsay
It depends on how they integrate it. Did they buy it for the search engine, or did they buy it as a potential for extending the reach of Facebook into real time conversations? It's all about the life stream now right? So probably Facebook's attempt to stake a claim there.
- Tony "Frosty" Welch
bad days are coming
- Ahmet Soyata
Fotis, why do you want to shut down our FF account?
- Alex Knight
This is bad news for Yahoo 360°. Oh wait, too late.
- Ian Tindale
Bad bad bad bad bad bad ::runs screaming down the hall::
- mary
Crap!
- Zachary TG
This is disgusting.
- Zachary TG
First of all, I love the name "Facefeed." ROFL Second, this is business boys. Happens all the time. Why do you think innovation keeps happening. FB will integrate or kill off FF, and something else will happen. It's a natural cycle.
- Francine Hardaway
For a second I thought it was a joke, but then I checked Friendfeed's Blog. http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... Damn it.
- Alejandro
Nir Ben Yona +1
- Muge Cerman
Turmoil
- Ian Tindale
wondering if i should continue aggregating all my online activity in frienfeed now that facebook owns it!!
- Gtp19
I can't begin to process this right now. Too much work to focus on. Later when I read this 10,000 mile long thread and have a glass of Cab in hand.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
Geeks and fb not a good mach
- thomas elton
from iPhone
We fear change
- Ian Tindale
Not feeling real good about this, hope fully Facebook will do right by the FF community, but I'm not holding my breath. Glad for the FF team though
- Kim Landwehr
Twitter dissed again.
- JonInteractive
if you look closely at FF the large majority of FF posts are twitter posts, so there was not that much original content on FF in the first place...
- Ingmar
So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter..
- Nick Halstead
Makes a lot of sense for Facebook. And we find this very healthy ^^
- twitscoop
People need to stop freaking out. The Facebook/Friendfeed buy out was just announced. Wait for details people.
- Alex Knight
It could be bad, it could be good. As long as Facebook doesn't try to port their functionality over, I'm fine with it being a financial acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
Crap, its official !
- Peter Dawson
This is really bad... a wonderful tool based on killer technology will go over into this mass market teeny poking culture. Bah!
- Markus Tressl
then again it is great for linking FB, TW, flickr and so on
- Ingmar
Here is the FF post on the acquisition: http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009...
- Mrinal Desai
Great, why did I bother creating an account here? I could have held out.
- desinole
if this is true, for the love of god, please don't Facebook go and mess up FriendFeed as they have their own system, Facebook is a mess these days, Friendfeed is one of the 2.0 sites that actually has concentrated on doing a few things well, complete opposite to Facebook.
- Carl Grint
I suppose Friendfeed was considerably lacking in LOLcats.
- Ian Tindale
Cuz we all know that facebook doesn't respect user's privacy and you've got basically everything on ff, youtube, twitter, digg whatever you do
- Fotis Alexandrou
Paul Buckheit will now be a house husband:-)
- Francine Hardaway
Confirmed by FF http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009...
- David Peacock
Smart for Facebook but I prefer Friendfeed the way it is.What, we'll be throwing rabbits next?
- Janet Fouts
FriendFeed listens to the community. Facebook doesn't. Not to mention they're ENTIRELY different communities.
- Adam Reyher
If true, congrats to the FF Founders!
- Jason Cronkhite
from iPhone
If they keep FriendFeed as a separate site, and still upgrade regularly, this is fine. If FriendFeed winds up in the dead pool, then it sucks.
- Steve Sill
Maybe I should rediscover my Orkut account.
- Ian Tindale
I was just thinking how Friendfeed had stayed out of recent takeovers, mergers and hence cyber attacks. Will Friendfeed now be taken over by celebs and spammers too?
- Nils Geylen
Not sure why this news makes me nervous. Please tell me it's going to be ok Scoble...
- Lucas
FF has been FB's incubator for awhile.
- Peter Warnock
it's true damn!!!!
- Edgar Rodríguez
How can I spam on this thread please ? Any idea ?
- Toucouleur
Facebook has ZERO respect for users' wishes... Friendfeed is incompatible with that. Friendfeed will be going away. :( Their blog post says as much: "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally **for the time being**. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product"
- tollie williams
Quickest/Biggest thread ever
- Ian Tindale
Ideally, FB will leave FF to do the sweet innovating they are doing and just take the awesome features and put them into FB
- Ryan
This is the first time I've used Friendfeed in a year. Good move on their part.
- chantelle
How Much ? $$$ ;-)
- Jacopo Gio
I'm heading back to Jaiku where it's nice and quiet
- Ian Tindale
So, where do we migrate to now?
- Byron McCollum
FriendFeed functionality on Facebook would be nice. The reverse, not so much. They're trying to address two entirely separate purposes and as such, need to remain completely separate.
- Adam Reyher
back to the twitter
- emresezgin
I want numbers. how much did facebook pay?
- Zac Bowling
soon friendfeed will = Jaiku
- johnny2009
Hum...let's see what happens.
- Chip Hanna
Stay here until FB does something dumb with FF
- Ryan
The rhetoric seems a bit too "Facebook will do what they want with us" and not "we will remain FF and continue forward". Seems as if FB went for the tech and we could lose FF as a seperate entity. Boo.
- Derek Shanahan
confirmed by facebook press release.
- Zac Bowling
Love 'em or hate 'em....Facebook made a phenomenal purchase.
- Kevin Pruett
I see a ton of Wall Spam. Facebook users just don't get it when you port your twitter updates over. There is too much for them to wrap their heads around. This will be a hard transition.
- Ryan Cummins
And I was REALLY getting fond of FriendFeed. From now on only downhill applicationwise?
- Bart
Not happy about this. I use Facebook, but don't like it. It reminds me of AOL from 10 years ago.
- David Sharpe
I agree that I don't want FB to mess up FF, but this will also give FF a higher profile and bring in many more users...which we may or may not like, judging by what happened on Twitter. I hope FF doesn't die off like Jaiku because I really think FF offers a more valuable and useful interface.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
One thing to consider is this: If we have "trusted" the FriendFeed people not to screw things up, hopefully we can trust them to make sure they're still in control in the terms of the acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
What's it going to be called? Failbook?
- Ian Tindale
Its going to be called Facebook.
- DGentry
I hope this is a joke.. Damn it, I dont like Facebook now there is nowhere to go... F***
- Jacque
I am trying to imagine how this will be a good thing for existing FF users. It feels so right and so wrong all at once!...Maybe at least my kids and wife will finally get what I've been ignoring them for over the past year.
- Thom Kennon
FeedFace
- Ian Tindale
Is that means we're going to see more extremist groups around, now that FB has acquired FF?
- Nir Ben Yona
so where do all the cool kids go now? we need another startup, stat!
- h1ro
I am afraid... what johnny2009 have said can really be the future... soon friendfeed will = Jaiku
- Ahmed Mubbashir Khan
Damn,I've just"got friendfeed,and i love it.I definately don't like facebook.What does it mean for twitter?
- Paul Downing
Any investors want to predict the buyout price?
- Kevin Pruett
am gonna wait for google wave... coz in facebook, i cant access the complete stream for a month ago, the site goes down very often while browsing, and privacy issues galore!! congratulations for friendfeed but its jus me!!!
- Gtp19
Maybe we´re seeing here one of FriendFeeds biggest discusions ever. I´m sceptic about the future of FF as a standlone service...
- Torsten Eckert
What concerns me most is what happens to my friends here (and that I have to interact with my friends THERE). Will we have to be friends to interact in the same way we have the last couple of years?
- jcunwired
This is very good for FriendFeed as long as Facebook doesn't corrupt them. I would have preferred to see Google buy FF but I know with their focus on Wave I don't think it would have been a good fit. I like the Facebook platform, but they have done too many shady things in the past for me to trust them.
- Adam Teece
all of the conversation is happening on FriendFeed and Twitter - nothing on Facebook. Think we'd scare away Facebook if everyone starts having lots of conversations there - like on Scoble's fan page?
- Stuart Miniman
They can or don't have to fix FF's FB app now.
- ydfeed
Is Twitter going to buy Myspace?
- marcus bösch
Ha Stuart - great point *Facebookers take cover*
- Kimberle Kelly
That does it. I'm going back to usenet.
- Ian Tindale
What's next- Macy's buying Gimble's?
- Thom Kennon
Apple buys China
- Ian Tindale
what do you think Robert?
- courtney benson
All I can think of is now a lot of people can feel the pain the dedicated Pownce community felt, but at least you're not getting shut down, just yet.
- Mike Lewis
I'm not a big facebook user, but my gut feeling is that like twitter buying summize, it will mark the end of major innovations. I hope I'm wrong. But they should totally go with the facefeed mashup name.
- motownmutt
I dont see any potential for competition with twitter FB and Twitter serve different purposes as does FriendFeed
- iluvblackwomen
Sorry but renaming Facebook to 'Facefeed' is utterly stupid.
- Alex Knight
It'll be called ScobleFeed
- Ian Tindale
does making google reader more social has anything to do with this buyout??!
- Gtp19
yeah this was good for facebook. bad for anyone who liked friendfeed.
- Liz
FriendFeed is very good, a better way to use Twitter & etc. Knowing this, I still rarely use FF. Not going to start using Facebook more.
- Nicole
Actually, this could be death for Twitter when you think about it. The people I know who are in FB are not likely to add TWO more nets to their lifestream. FriendFeed makes more sense for them. Maybe Twitter just stays as the dumb pipe it's become for many of us here.
- Thom Kennon
Echoing what others have said - My guess: Facebook will get better, Friendfeed will get worse, Twitter will matter a lot less.
- Matthew Blaisdell
Good for FB UI and search, questionable for the FF community and its independent spirit ...
- Bo Stern
last comment 2 hours ago on FF by Paul Buchheit, FF CEO, was just " :)" http://friendfeed.com/paul #friendbook
- Jacopo Gio
The main reason why I came to FF was because when I tried to treat FB the same as FF, i was talking to a wall. At least people interact here. At FB, it's all about the cheesy games/apps.
- Matthew Horton
from iPhone
Just like most acquisitions, it could be good and it could be bad. I trust that FriendFeed will live on as FriendFeed, only sharing their tech with Facebook. Possibly more integration between the two sites. If you were FF/FB, what would you do?
- Nick Humphries
Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook are three entirely different animals. Facebook eats Friendfeed and poops out little bits of content that once belonged to us. Twitter continues to thrive as the broadcast conversation-wannabe that it always was.
- jcunwired
Nick - think again. Its going to go away - read the tea leaves in this statement: "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" - Bret Taylor in this post https://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- jcunwired
Please no. I don't like FaceBook...
- Svartling
Facebook must want real time soc-net search badly...
- martin smith
The biggest thing here, at least within the Twitter context, is that this merger will combine 'verified' identity (in terms of Facebook user ID being slightly more 'real' than Twitter) with real time status updates.
- Dan Patterson
I'm looking forward to what this brings to Facebook. I have enjoyed both networks but wondered when FriendFeed/Facebook would face-off and/or be absorbed by the other. I think FriendFeed's tech will improve the Facebook experience.
- Jacob Sloan
FriendFeed + Twitter = disruptive. FriendFeed + Facebook = one more app for FB . Facebookers dont know the power of FriendFeed. I agree with : "" So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter.. - Nick Halstead ""
- Rocky
Most likely scenario is Facebook assimilates the FriendFeed guys, has them work on improving Facebook newsfeed/realtime/status, and lets FriendFeed die a slow unmaintained death.
- Richard Akerman
Well, my friends on FB doesn't give a damn about sharing links, news, pics, vids etc. So I'm not sure how I will use FB+FF now. I don't think FriendFeed will exist, just implemented in Facebook. The name FriendFeed will die. And: on FB you don't want the whole world to see everything you're doing, just your friends. And it will stay this way. So the question is: Who will build the new FriendFeed?
- Patrik Johansson
Do this mean, by the way, that we (the FriendFeed users) should start to connect with each other on FB? How will they like that? People who get's 2-3 maybe 4000 connections?
- Patrik Johansson
Robert, it means all the time you invested building friends lists and updates there will go to Facebook :-)
- Loic Le Meur
could someone start to develop a Frienfeed clon , please ? ASAP !
- Rocky
Seems bloody terrible from this users perspective. Good for Friendfeed the company though.
- Quasar
Given Facebook's past, this could be really bad. Given FriendFeed's past, this could be really good. No real way to speculate without talking to the FF crew.
- xero
+3273 Quasar! (one for each of my Likes, already on a death march)
- jcunwired
Robert, do you know if Facebook is going to put on limits here at FF??? Oh crikey... so much for our citizen journalism here.... Admittedly I am bummed. Uber bummed.
- Arleen Anderson
EndFeed.
- Alex Schleber
your blog is the most important thing you can own on the web. these sites can come and go. it's a great social point but true friends you've made here you talk outside of ff, right?
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
It's a good time to sell to Facebook, cause Google Wave is imminent and is going to destroy all of Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. I think FriendFeed employees might even go back to Google eventually as soon as their contracts with Facebook are up.
- Charbax
Robert - wow. just wow I am stunned. Sorta sad actually. I love FF innovation and don't want to see that stop !!!!!
- Susan Beebe
(RE: Your tweet earlier) When you say the minor league team going to the majors, I don't always feel that this is a positive thing. As in this case, it's like Ferrari being acquired by Ford. I don't think I like this acquisition.
- Richard Merritt
the free ride couldn't last forever. I know it sucks that things will change, but they've got a lot more sense than Twitter has about these things..
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
You must all assimilate to the new FaceFeed
- Jonathan.Rivera
From what I'm gathering, this acquisition is more about FB acquiring the talented engineers of FF than it is about the FF software itself. A smart play by FB. Unfortunate for us that value FF. I personally feel that FB is just slowly becoming the new Myspace. Which I don't think I need to explain how lame that is.
- Richard Merritt
According to WSJ — FB paid $50 million — a mix of cash and stocks. http://bit.ly/SVTA5
- Richard Merritt
If you ignore all the crappy apps and just comment and post photos, your main feed on Facebook is fundamentally a pretty similar experience to FriendFeed - people post stuff, people comment on it. That is, at-least, the way my network tends to use Facebook. The main difference is that Facebook defaults to being very closed and private while FriendFeed defaults to being very open and...
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- Edward Coffey
edward - pretty much. it's FF for the layman. remember back in the day they used to have forums too?
- Terry O'Fee
friendfeed is very cliquey. you have your group of people who usually gather round for conversations. now imagine some of this friendfeed stuff in facebook. done right it will help them a lot.
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
I don't think I am liking this but FB does need to add the "edit" feature like on here.
- Marika Dye
FriendFeed is Facebooks Summize. It’s All About Search. http://bit.ly/11ZW6l
- paul mooney
Thinking Out Loud: Echo issues during a high profile tech show http://www.talkshoe.com/talksho...
- Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic
FF acquisition is expected. But, as a user, I would be bumned, if FF would become a feature of FB. As, I tend to use Twitter as my social network and not FB.
- Vasu Srinivasan
It doesn't make much sense talking about 'Facefeed" and 'Friendbook'... Facebook simply bought a cool 12-people company called Friendfeed for its great search technology paying 15M plus some shares, which is really very cheap in this context, given the value of FF's technology (as it is perceived by us). They are also hiring the talented FF team, which makes the deal even more interesting for FB. Probably there are also some deeper hidden motives and implications that I am not able to get.
- Liviu Barbat
I would love it if Facebook integrated the FriendFeed features. I would love it if Facebook had FriendFeed's flexibility with Facebook's privacy control. It sucks that the world may lose FriendFeed, but it is great the Facebook will likely get better.
- Andrew
Andrew, Facebook will get better - over time. There won't be any Vulcan website meld of FB and FF overnight.
- Bill Sodeman
thank god someone understands that, andrew. it's like "i liked this band better before they went to a major label!" ;)
- Terry O'Fee
Bill - But we can dream, can't we? :) I mean, what I love about Facebook is that I'm interacting with my friends as my friends, not as usernames and avatars. But I hate their bookmarklet, the weird delays when I post anything, the comment system, and I hate the Photo gallery tech. I love the FriendFeed community, but would love bringing the FriendFeed technology over to Facebook even more. If only Facebook could buy Flickr next...
- Andrew
as long as fb start thinking in creative commons terms... one day ..
- Terry O'Fee
they are both great services I think will be a good thing
- Logan Lindquist
oh NO! I don't spend much time at FB (everybody there's too busy playing stupid games, at least in my little network), and besides it's more private unlike FF. And now they've gone and bought FF? And I just joined! I guess I won't be around here for long, since FF won't...
- Dennis Jernberg
I don't like it...
- Harry Mahardhika
No mention of Yahoo. Totally irrelevant these days. Sad.
- Scott Schnaars
This deal makes sense! Now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask!
- Garin Kilpatrick
One of my facebook accounts got closed up. Into this account I fed my friendfeed. And into friendfeed I fed for example my socialmedian shares, diggs, stumbles etc.
- Wilhelm Bauer
Time for the next generation app. *Taps foot impatiently for Google Wave*
- Karen Masullo
I don't think it's about getting Friendfeed it's self; but having the developers and the information about real-time search.
- Chris Martin
Join me, Louis Gray, and others on a live call starting in three minutes: live at 4:30 PDT w/ @Scobleizer @louisgray @nicefishfilms @rizzn & @michellegreer talking FriendFeed + Facebook - http://www.talkshoe.com/talksho...
Daniel Rowley, phil baumann, Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic and 20 other people liked this
I'd love to but I'm done for today with this stuff. It's too dispiriting.
- Jim Will Miss SP
Jim: I understand. We're on now.
- Robert Scoble
Isn't this open for everyone to listen to? Looks like I have to login?
- Panayotis Vryonis
I was going to watch it but it says we have to log in. I guess I will pass.
- Paul L. McCord Jr.
Working BugMeNot Login - donny75 / donny75. Its way too choppy either way.
- Joshua
Is anyone watching the chat that's on the call?
- Jesse Stay
ahhh. the audio is driving me crazy. sorry guys. too hard to follow. @Jesse - Louis is.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
FriendFeed is Facebooks Summize. It’s All About Search. http://bit.ly/11ZW6l
- paul mooney
Where's the Facebook link for live chat of the call? :-P
- jcunwired
I dont think that FB will close FF not now and not in few years ...FF is a great site and will stay pls dont be negative :-))
- Johni Fisher
cool
- Allen Stern
Don't hold your breath there Johni, the door's going to slam shut. Otherwise Paul, Bret & Co. would already have let us know. Instead, there are only vague references that its not going away immediately.
- jcunwired
:-)) lets see
- Johni Fisher
Disturbing point about smaller companies getting gobbled up and eventually it is going to be only four major entry points: (1) Google (2) Apple (3) Facebook and (4) Microsoft
- James Clark
the sound is finally ok - good talk. Insightful.
- Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic
yeah, it's finally working.
- Robert Scoble
thanks for arranging this call guys... I am on there with my old internet ID "smbeebe"
- Susan Beebe
So are we FriendFeed enthusiasts so out of the loop what the average user wants? Friendfeed was for me the best of two worlds, between Twitter and Facebook. I thought FF has the best tech. Does this mean we here don't understand the average consumer?
- Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic
Robert - the sound is great .. and u do respond to yr mails :-)))
- Johni Fisher
Social network sites are more like restaurants than century lasting institutions. People will enjoy each in diff ways & eventually move on.
paul mooney liked this
Some friends still use AOL
- Rodfather
I've always said they are like TV shows, they get popular for a few years and then go into syndication
- paul mooney
Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News) - http://www.scripting.com/stories...
John Furrier, paul mooney, Martynas and Rob Diana liked this
"Dave, I just wrote about Twitter's Platform Shortcomings here: http://scobleizer.com/2009......"
- Robert Scoble
http://tweetmeme.com/about... shows how bit.ly (as default twitter shortener) makes it a market leader in url shorteners with 80% share. Compare with stats from 3 months ago http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Atul Arora
Hmm, what if bit.ly dies like tr.im just announced it is going to do? Short links need life insurance. Now there's a business idea.
- Dominic Jones
Nambu is a Social Messaging Trainwreck and the only way they can come-up with to make money from Twitter is a tr.im extortion play
- paul mooney
Twitter’s platform shortcomings - http://www.facebook.com/note...
Grey Drane liked this
I really don't think that @ev or @biz care that Twitter lacks a resilient communications infrastructure.
- Bernie Goldbach
Isn't this what Marc canter said about Twitter two years ago?
- paul mooney
Hanging out in Golden Gate Park with my iPhone lovers (my sons). It sure is colder here than LA. Anyone want to get together? +1-425-205-1921
Bret Rowe, Luis Lleonart, ashish and 3 other people liked this
It's a beautiful day in NJ, ask Patrick what's up with Google Voice?
- paul mooney
Aren't you afraid someone will use your number malicously?
- Californian
No
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
425? isn't that an LA area code? Make that SEA?
- Bret Rowe
DARN, I would have done it if I hadn't been gardening at home!
- Shari Weiss
@Bret - technically 425 is the eastern suburbs of Seattle: Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, etc.
- Aaron Brethorst
Twitter Clips Hundreds of Followers from High Profile Accounts - http://www.steverubel.com/twitter...
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Daniel Rowley, Amir, paul mooney and 11 other people liked this
Probably 10% of the Twitter Spam that's out there - I'd expect more drops to follow if Twitter is trying to combat this growing problem.
- AJ Kohn
My guess is they just removed a bunch of suspended accounts. This happens occasionally - it just looks more with larger accounts. Also, the API is often incorrect for higher profile accounts - often very incorrect. I've had to disable auto-unfollow for our higher-profile users because of this.
- Jesse Stay
I lost 250, if you see them send them back to me
- paul mooney
I've found that most Twitter users with TinyURL links in their bio are 99% spammers. From my experience.
- Amir
there was a press release on that. they are cleaning dead and spam accounts. basically they corrected the statistics....
- christoph richter
Timestamp: I'm going for a walk, and when I come back will measure how many people are still clueless about realtime
Denise Howell, Mark Hadley, Kol Tregaskes and 18 other people liked this
You're going to run out of fingers and toes
- paul mooney
Don't forget to count me!
- Dave Slusher
andrew keen is 1st
- Steve Gillmor
you mean i'm first to be clueless?
- andrewkeen
yes
- Steve Gillmor
Professional clueless
- paul mooney
:-)
- Johni Fisher
I'm in the cult of the amateur clueless
- Dave Slusher
Don't forget to take your real watch..
- Dale
Back: everybody is. thanks for playing.
- Steve Gillmor
oh gee. the one day I turn everything off because I'm trying to get work done that actually pays and you play this game. LOL
- Karoli
no, feldman is exempt
- Steve Gillmor
FF needs Like blocking capability
- Steve Gillmor
btw, I saw this on Facebook.
- Karoli
I hate Facebook.
- Nattjenta Moon
turns out Keen is the only one who doesn't get it. Guessed that, but data confirms it.
- Steve Gillmor
Natjenta, me too. was there to approve a friend request, steve's message was at the top of the news feed. LOL
- Karoli
The new Steve is cracking me up in real time.
- Louis Gray
I'm not in real time. I was at the Sonos event listening to music and saw this two hours after it was posted.
- Robert Scoble
Did someone delete some comments here? Demonstrates if you don't watch in real time you might miss all the fun. Sigh.
- Robert Scoble
The Apple ad I was in in 1992
2Picture, Kirb, Dan Hsiao and 122 other people liked this
I resent this to test out FriendFeed's email feature.
- Robert Scoble
from email
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
awesome! thanks for sharing LOL
- Susan Beebe
My son was amazed. He didn't know about it. But then he was born in 1994.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Lol, that's awesome Scoble...
- Colin
you look like you were about 12 ....
- angela penny
haha easy to upgrade mac's. oh how times have changed, not that i'm complaining.
- Yaniel Cantelar
nothing comes between you and your calvins, er, i mean macintosh.
- Greg Verdino
Angela: it was when I was in college. 17 years ago. Yikes.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
That's really fun! You've lived an interesting life
- Andrew
that's pretty awful rob. As Bender would say: "You come a long way, baby"
- Mark
I like how you cited your reason for buying a Mac as being "expandable". My, how times have changed.
- Hunt
LOL. you look too young, not 17:))
- Oğuz Serdar
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
Lee, I was thinking the same thing. :)
- Jimminy Fuller
Tiger Beat pose FTW
- Jay Cuthrell
Prasoon: Microsoft made the best Macintosh software back then. I worked at Microsoft from 2003-2006.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I was an Apple fanboi long before I was a Microsoft one. Funny that in 1993 I started switching to Windows.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
look at you robert! cool stuff.
- sean percival
lovely (and it doesn't look as if so many years have passed by the way)
- sofiagk
I rotated it for you. http://images.scripting.com/archive...
- Dave Winer
1 sexy pose
- polou/indigo_bow
Hmm....Hey RObert....I still have a photo of you in the Norseman that I'm sure will get a bigger reaction than this one! Think graba$$.
- Nick
Nick: those photos would be quite amusing! (Nick was on newspaper staff when we attended community college together).
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
OMG how cool is that?
- BEX
Not cool at all really....
- Joe
My son thinks it is cool.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
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
nice picture Robert!
- Jeremiah Owyang
Barbara Kruger style ...
- \(*_*)/
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
WOW! 4-8MB is standard...
- Joe
Michael Dell started his company in his collage dorm room
- paul mooney
Ok, you asked for it. I am going to scan them in and post them somewhere harmful! lol.
- Nick
Just remember Nick I have a few of you too! :-)
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Almost the same.. almost :) http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-cont...
- Diego Barros
Cute!
- Kathy Fitch
I've opened up my "secret" Twitter account: @notsecretscoble Why? Because who it is following is interesting, not who is following it.
Sheree Motiska, Nicholas James, (jeff)isageek and 46 other people liked this
you don't need to open it up for us to see that...
- Mike White
Why not do that with your normal Twitter? I don't understand the philosophy of courtesy re-follows at all.
- Trent Hamm
Trent: you can't DM me if I don't follow you.
- Robert Scoble
Can you follow me on your other account?
- Zachary TG
Zachary: no. I will only follow people I know and can tell a story about (that I've met face-to-face).
- Robert Scoble
And even then I'm not going to follow everyone. I want to keep the numbers of people I'm following with that account way down.
- Robert Scoble
@notsecretscoble's bio says "...but he's not going to be very picky...". I think thats a typo, should be "...but he's going to be very picky..."
- DGentry
DGentry: yeah, what you said! :-)
- Robert Scoble
I think that is interesting about any account and how I end up following a lot of the time.
- David Gross
I thought you disliked DMs Robert. Have you changed your position on this? Curious. ps - remember that one time at Moscone when we all mounted cameras on our heads and walked around like crazy people? Those were the days :)
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Courtesy refollows allows someone who follows you to DM you if they need to - Its just courtious
- Nicholas Paul Gordon
from iPhone
Robert: Yeah, you should keep the numbers low our else you will be getting a lot of the junky tweets. Keep it to a minimum so you can get all the good stuff.
- Amir
I'm sure Robert will follow as many as he wants or doesn't want.. I do similar, but for me it is facebook where I have the few friends I know better.
- David Gross
Why not just follow the people you want on FF? the twitter integration works very well, now, IMO
- adam garrett
now Scoble its no longer a secret lol
- polou/indigo_bow
Adam: because not everyone I want to follow is on FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
Hey, aren't you that guy who follows the whole internet? =)
- Jered Hofker
Glad @SecretScoble is following me, I made the "interesting" cut - Yay!
- Susan Beebe
Jered - Scoble does NOT follow trolls, jerks or assholes, just to be clear ;P
- Susan Beebe
@Susan did you meet him personally? That's what he keeps telling me as the reason that he doesn't follow me on his secret account
- Jorge Escobar
Jorge: there are a few exceptions to that rule.
- Robert Scoble
I get it.
- Jorge Escobar
Scoble: So are you saying that tools like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop are not good enough filters?
- Mike Bracco
Mike: right. Who you follow decides your inbound. If you follow 100,000 you still can't filter it down enough. There is value to following 100,000, though. Serendipity, for instance.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble: Gotcha. I wrote a blog post a little while back calling for a group twitter framework to be developed (http://thenextweb.com/2009...) which could solve some of the filtering issues.
- Mike Bracco
Mike: groups are going to be invaluable in the future for searching.
- Robert Scoble
Groups is EVERYTHING for listening, engaging and building your network
- Susan Beebe
There are lots of startups working on mass follow/unfollow frameworks and spam blocking. Filters, indeed.
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
Yes - groups are really valuable to if easily created and then disposed of after they are needed. (IE a conference for example). Imagine if when you signed up for a conference your twitter handle was added to the conference group (which you could subscribe to and then unsubscribe after the conference was over). That would be cool.
- Mike Bracco
Your own suggested users list. Cool.
- Jason Nunnelley
Hey -- what Twitter grouping/filtering services do people find most interesting?
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
Steve: none. I'm waiting for Twitter to do it. Jason: yeah, imagine that those 500 people were at a conference together. What a conference!
- Robert Scoble
robert would you add notsecretscoble to your FF account so we don't have to create YAIF
- Steve Gillmor
Steve: sure!
- Robert Scoble
This is the real scoble graph.
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
Bah! like Groucho Marx said: "I'd never follow anyone who'd be willing to follow me". Or something like that.
- BryanSchuetz
Christian: I don't think even this is the real Scoble graph. The real Scoble graph, the people whose judgements he trusts and is willing to depend upon, has to be even smaller than @notsecretscoble. The human brain just doesn't work that way, 500 people is an entire village not a circle of close friends. @notsecretscoble is a certainly a group of people to whom he feels a closer...
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- DGentry
So are you going to follow anyone you have met and hung out with? And is if I ask to be followed by you does that mean that I am disqualified :)
- Christian Burns
from iPhone
You should probably still grab @secretscoble given that it was linked from a few blogs and sites before someone else abuses it.
- Tony Ruscoe
Christian: nope. But people I've met face-to-face definitely are in a different group than people I haven't met yet.
- Robert Scoble
But just because I've met you doesn't mean I'll follow you on this Twitter account.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: one twitter question please. Best twitter application for the Jesus Phone ?
- Mark
Mark: Safari.
- Robert Scoble
thank you my dear
- Mark
So, if I ever get to buy Robert a beer, he'll follow me? It's good to know the rules, lol. (And I will buy you one Robert, if you're ever in my neighborhood.)
- Kathy Fitch
Kathy: maybe. :-)
- Robert Scoble
You should have named your secret account 'Scobert Roble.'
- Tomy Thomson
I was Following Secretscoble, what ever happened to him?
- paul mooney
I changed Secretscoble to notscretscoble
- Robert Scoble
Oh, so it has to be something *better* than beer. Picky, picky. Still, I'd think about it. My husband is about the world's best party bartender. He knows how to put some wrist into the thing. A few of those, and I'd be in, fer shure . . .<grin> (Also, I'm a fabulously engaging and enlightening conversationalist, plus just self-effacing enough to be charming. Just ask me . . .)
- Kathy Fitch
Thank you for this, more signal to the noise
- Aaman (Clone of FF)
Wow, It would be nice to meet more people from here face to face, but so far I‘ve only met a dozen in person.. It would be nice to meet you in person some time as well. I followed your new account by mistake, so don't take it the wrong way if I unfollow you now. I didn't understand what you were doing with the account initially. It's a great idea for you though and I hope you enjoy it.. I'll have to check the comments and see if there's a feed I can follow here.
- Michael Fidler
Michael: it's not important who follows you. It's important who you are following. You should only follow me if I'm providing value to you, no other reason. If you're following me because you think I'll be nice to you, or follow you back, or include you in some sort of list or group, you're following for the wrong reason.
- Robert Scoble
On the other side, I will follow people for lots of different reasons and I have lots of different ways of following people. On some accounts I follow everyone. On others I have stupid, lame, reasons for following who I am following. The best account to follow me on, though, is my Likes Feed here on FriendFeed. http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... -- it shows ONLY OTHER PEOPLE that I like.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, if I could "like" that last comment, I would. Wish folks would get that.
- Karoli
Yeah, Karoli, too many people follow for stupid reasons and try to make it into a contest. It's interesting that following fewer people is actually far better than following more. But you have to pick the right people for that to be the case.
- Robert Scoble
I agree with your last comment Robert but of course if there were folders in Twitter, I could follow people in a much more organized way like in FF.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Manielse: yeah, I agree. I just run two different Twitter accounts on two different computers.
- Robert Scoble
I was just hoping to be able to do it from here. I follow a ton of people who don't follow back; because I find their feeds valuable. Honestly, I could care less who follows me back. I didn't see a feed here, so it will stay as is.
- Michael Fidler
It's just a shame you need to do that. Live multiple lives in Twitter for a simple feature missing...
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Michael: if you hang out here for even 20 seconds you'll know I spend most of my time here, so following me here is far better than following my Twitter accounts. Anyway, I see you're following me, and I'm following you, so no worries!
- Robert Scoble
Exactly!
- Michael Fidler
I'm happy you've done this, I've long thought your main Twitter account must be impossible to read because of how many people you've followed on it.
- Colin
I find it so interesting that this now means you have a 'stance' on DMs or other SM phenomena. I see this as a human trying to navigate the insanity that technology is affording us. How can you NOT experiment. Scoble does it in front of us, but I feel as if everyone should be trying to make this stuff more useful and rewarding.
- Derek Shanahan
Good point Derek, for example I use PowerTwitter in Firefox "Top Friends" feature to do the same thing without needing multiple accounts. We all tackle the "make stuff more useful" in different ways...
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Great point. I've always found Scoble's dedication to FriendFeed a bit mysterious, although I also see him using it for more personal interaction than he could ever use the main twitter account for. A second twitter account, to me, isn't a statement of fact as to "How To Use Twitter"; it's a representation of the drive to figure out how these tools actually make all of our unique lives better. Plenty...PLENTY...of people only need one tool. Many of us are building our perfect buffets.
- Derek Shanahan
I think it's only a matter of time before Twitter has to add server side support for 'groups' as a feature.
- Alex Knight
@alex - I kind of thought the hacked twitter docs would reveal more in the way of group functionality, but it seems they have more pressing issues.
- Derek Shanahan
I'm wary of notions like "the right people." That can become quite the echo chamber. It's very fun and edifying to discover a new voice with a unique angle. Of course, it's a matter of taste. One person's "right people" list is another person's poison.
- Kathy Fitch
@kathy I agree...and I don't think Scoble finding a way to make a 'wanted list' makes it anyone's wanted list other than his own.
- Derek Shanahan
Kathy: echo chambers can be quite good. Why? There's a reason you're listening to those people: they have something to say that's interesting to you.
- Robert Scoble
Possibly, Derek. Of course, his sharing it makes it public, and gives it weight in the public domain.
- Kathy Fitch
If you're only following people you've met face to face, Scoble, then I will have to arrange a beer the next time you are in the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia area. Bring that brother of yours along, too.
- Mike Nayyar
@kathy but that's only when you choose to decide that RS's list means more than your own! And I'll admit that I think at time RS thinks his list means more than anyone elses, but I also think he's mostly interested in making all this stuff useful. Making the best list isn't useful. Making a tool make more sense is useful.
- Derek Shanahan
Robert, I don't agree, or at least not entirely. Anyone's "wanted" list is of course valuable to them personally, but when I say "echo chamber" I mean that the ultimate effect is often like the RT phenomenon writ even larger. It's the same weakness that the old "blog roll" notion brought into play. If I'm seeing the same darned roll everywhere, after awhile it gets to be a bit inbred, and that's not useful. Nothing fresh there. See what I mean? Echo, echo, echo.
- Kathy Fitch
Derek: actually that's not true. I've discovered that some people are 100x times more able to get you tech news than others. Some are even 10,000x more able (like Mashable or GigaOm or TechCrunch). So, if you have a list of the right people who have proven expertise in a certain area that list itself will have huge value. At least to me.
- Robert Scoble
I was just checking out your likes feed, and there’s a lot of great stuff there. It’s amazing how you’ve been able to find all that great content from this: http://friendfeed.com/scoblei.... Although I’m following many of the same people, I just noticed how much I’ve been missing here. Thanks for sharing it. I realize now that it’s time for me to start separating my feed into...
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- Michael Fidler
Derek--oh, please. As far as reach and weight go, his *does* mean more than mine, and way more. I don't feel at all bad about that, but it does seem inescapably so. Just a fact of life, and one he's worked hard on making a fact. That doesn't make my little collection of favorites less valuable to me, it just makes it something quite entirely different.
- Kathy Fitch
michael, i bet robert uses lists more than anyone else - and for good reason too! i have a few lists, but spend most of my time in the home feed
- Chris Heath
Kathy: after looking through 100,000 people I've learned there's a reason that certain people get paid attention to. Most are not providing value.
- Robert Scoble
Michael, yeah, my likes feed at http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... is fun to compare to my inbound feed, which you posted. That's a good example of how few people provide what I'm looking for. I need to do the Kyte video over again because the UI has changed so much on FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
Can't disagree with you there, Robert. There's a whole lotta fluff going on. Then again, there's a great deal of insight that goes untapped. I will always follow some of the a-list folks that I find truly valuable, but some part of me (big slice) will forever be in "go west" mode, too--looking for the new twist, the fresh insight, the uncharted territory, the bold disagreement with the in crowd. It's the academic in me, I suppose.
- Kathy Fitch
Chris, I have varied interest, and I think I might benefit from creating a few of them. For example; I would like to have one for the people I like to check in on daily. It would be more organized then trying to remember them every day. Robert, it was a great video. I think It would help a lot of people out if you did it again.
- Michael Fidler
@kathy I don't mean to underweight the value of the insight that someone like RS can afford us. @RS, you are right in pushing the idea that certain 'likes' matter than others...I've seen your position that further evolution of these mediums will place more value on the attention of the people who actually have authority or value in a space. I don't dispute that, and I guess I've...
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- Derek Shanahan
re: friendfeed lists - I have one for reading blogs, one for locals to me (carolinas counts), one for devs, one for my ego, one for the ff-team, one for ff centric groups (spam, feedback), one for funny pics and videos type groups, one for netcasts, one for 'back home' people, one for all the groups i've sub'd to, one for all the people subd to me, one for my twitter imports, and one...
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- Chris Heath
those are all lists btw, if that's not clear (i've edited to make sure it is)
- Chris Heath
Chris you are incredibly organized! Wow!
- Kathy Fitch
Thrill the world, make it a better place, for you and for me & the entire Twitterverse...
- Majento
Kathy: that's why I still follow 100,000 too, just to make sure I'm seeing a broad range of people, not just the ones who did something cool yesterday.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Do you think the tool (Twitter) requires both tactics to be optimally useful? How does FriendFeed equate to your desire to follow the conversation in the way you want to follow it?
- Derek Shanahan
Derek: yes. FriendFeed lets you choose a variety of models due to lists built in (and you can use lists to filter your searches!!!)
- Robert Scoble
Yes, it's the constant push-me, pull-you thing. I want to reach, explore, fly high, discover new things, but not make things so dilute that they're worthless, or so vast that they're impossible to absorb in any meaningful way.
- Kathy Fitch
And I think RS feels that FriendFeed gives you the ability to segregate your stream so that a vast reach is possible and dilution isn't necessary. I won't argue with that.
- Derek Shanahan
Robert; I found, "20 things". It wasn't easy with the ambiguous title. If the update turns out as good as the original, (but hopefully it will be better), it should be posted on the sign up page for all new users to see. But, that's just my opinion:)
- Michael Fidler
When did you meet Tom Hanks? What was he like?
- Shari Weiss
Michael, I think I'm biased in favor of beginnings. In those moments, most of those we are keeping company with are still unknown quantities, drawn together only by a shared interest in beginnings. "Beta-fishers" is how I think of them, but not in the anxious, over-the-top, I-must-win-the-race twitterville way--just a genuine and shared love of exploration. I've met some of the people I love best that way, and have yet to meet most of them in person. Harder to do, now? Hmm.
- Kathy Fitch
I met you face-to-face last Christmas, did you go back to that restaurant with the Travelling Geeks?
- Joe Dawson
I thought there was an embargo on this ??
- Charlie Anzman
Scoble has a secret account, huh? You know you want to follow me. C'mon, you can't deny it, I'm geektastic too. You know you love crazy redheads who can't behave like civilized Tweeple. You're an outlier too. MMMMWAH!
- Sheree Motiska
@wbaustin When was the last time your Doctor made a house call?
Kathy Fitch liked this
There are some doc/nurse mobiles around here. Excellent idea it is, too.
- Kathy Fitch
When I was a young boy my Doctor used to stop by our house just to see how I was doing
- paul mooney
Yeah. Now, I feel special and cared for when I have a doc that just calls on the phone. Those are keepers. Unfortunately, most home health care now seems to be focused on end of life care.
- Kathy Fitch
My Mom and Dad out lived their Doctor
- paul mooney
All of my docs are now wayyyyy younger than me. They look positively adolescent! It's a strange shift of perspective.
- Kathy Fitch
Wait a second the whole Amazon Kindle thing yesterday was ABOUT STOLEN property! That changes ALL the anti-Amazon arguments. More:
Marko Saric, RAD Moose, John Wang and 21 other people liked this
Those books were stolen property. Amazon had every right to delete them. Police will come into your house and take your TV if it was stolen.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Amazon had no right to sell those books to you in the first place.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
If that's the case, I agree. And if you buy stolen goods, the cops don't refund your money.
- Chris Baskind
Interesting to see who was anti-Arrington and anti-Amazon too.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
We sure knee-jerk online, don't we?
- Chris Baskind
If you are anti-arrington you must be pro Amazon today.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Chris: yeah.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
About a month ago, I put a 3 x 5 index card on the board behind my computer. It says WAIT. I think it has helped. ;-)
- Chris Baskind
The stolen TV analogy only goes so far since it was Amazon that was selling the stolen merchandise in the first place. I wonder how this has affected Kindle sales.
- Justin Doub
If a printing company illegally produced copies of your book, you could rightly expect the rights-holder to go after them and even demand that unsold copies be destroyed but they certainly wouldn't demand to burn all copies sold to customers. See my comments here: http://www.torgo.com/blog...
- Daniel Appelquist
You guys need to go to law school. If you buy stolen property from a store, you are the rightful owner of the goods. The police won't bother you.
- Ward Mundy
Ward: is that true? I always thought that receiving stolen goods would get them taken from you.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
That's not to say Amazon wouldn't be liable for damages to the legitimate copyright holder. Just not the buyer in the ordinary course of business.
- Ward Mundy
I disagree. Amazon should have found a way to work it out with the publisher (i.e. write a check). You should NEVER do what Amazon did. Pull it from the store, don't sell any new copies, fine. Don't yank content from a consumer's device. Ever.
- Brian Baggett
Amazon is still at fault here, by the way. For selling something it didn't have the legal right to sell.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
We can all agree on that. :-)
- Ward Mundy
George Orwell is rolling over in his grave. http://nerdvittles.com
- Ward Mundy
Brian: I agree, and it looks like Amazon agrees now too but those arguments have less teeth today. By the way did you argue for or against TechCrunch publishing the stolen Twitter documents?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Amazon should have communicated to their customers before taking any action. Amazon = Fail
- paul mooney
Ward: Orwell has lots of reasons to roll over in his grave.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Paul: agreed.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Paul: I completely agree. Their actions caused uproar that could have been avoided by sending a clear message before preforming the pull.
- Joshua
Amen, Big Bro.
- Ward Mundy
Seeing the Twitter docs pop up over at Techcrunch felt ... "dirty". Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
- Brian Baggett
I was also under the impression that stolen goods are subject to seizure. But I've no interest in law school. ;-)
- Chris Baskind
Brian: lots of journalism is done with stolen info.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
It depends upon where you purchased the stolen goods.
- Ward Mundy
Ward: even from a second hand store?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Absolutely Brian, starting to read that I felt as if I were a part of some sort of espionage... I stopped reading. I think I may be done with Arrington/TechCrunch... :(
- Trae Ruge
The real root of the anti-Amazon, anti-whoever, sentiment is that we all know copyright is broken and that these books SHOULD be free.
- tollie williams
If the store is in the business of selling the type of goods you buy, then you are a buyer in the ordinary course and are protected.
- Ward Mundy
Yeah, I realize that. The difference is when it's something like Watergate or exposing massive corporate fraud, that's one thing ... when it's exposing the inner thoughts of a company that's yet to make a dime ... it just seems senseless. Know what I mean?
- Brian Baggett
Not to be pedantic, but it's important...it's not stolen property. It's a work under copyright sold w/o a license. There's a difference. "STOLEN PROPERTY" (in caps, no less) means you don't have the property anymore. That isn't the case here. It's still wrong, no question, and Amazon is in the process of working through this. But it's different, and it's complicated. All caps doesn't help.
- Ken Kennedy
Robert re:"lots of journalism is done with stolen info." http://kara.allthingsd.com/2009071...
- Ian Paul
Robert: Amazon isn't the police; remember the analogy; if Books Inc sold me an illicit copy of 1984, they have no right to come into my house to get it back; they'd have to follow a legal process to do that.
- Stuart Liroff
Wouldn't the police need a warrant to come into my house and get the stolen property. I mean they couldn't just break into and then leave. That's what makes Amazon's action so bad, they made no attempt to inform the consumer of what they were doing. After all the consumer didn't know the item was stolen and had no reasonable expectation it was stolen.
- Kim Landwehr
Oops...I capped the whole thing "ABOUT STOLEN". Sorry. I'll not edit above, but consider this my oopsie acknowledgement.
- Ken Kennedy
Ken Kennedy: Excellent point and that isn't pedantic at all.
- Brian Baggett
Ward, if you buy my stolen t.v. I have every right to get it back. Your money is gone and you could face charges for receiving stolen property, depending on the circumstances.
- Kimber Scott
from BuddyFeed
Ian: Kara is wrong there.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Ken: so if this isn't "stolen property" but content sold without out a license, doesn't that mean it was illegally obtained--at least by Amazon if not the end user?
- Ian Paul
The end user asserted to Amazon that they had the rights to publish the work.
- Ken Kennedy
I wonder if Amazon will ever start removing books from the kindle that you got from somewhere else, i.e. pirated content.
- RobinDotNet
Robin: I doubt that.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
If somone took one of David Pogue's (the NYT writer that one of of the first to write about this), OCR'd it, put it up on Amazon via the Kindle's small authors publishing programs, and sold a couple thousand copies at $0.10 before Pogue figured out what was going on, what do you think he'd want to do? Leave them out there, or make Amazon take them back?? (I'm willing to bet $20 right here on the latter).
- Ken Kennedy
Robert: I don't want to go too far off topic here, but why don't you buy the argument that there's a difference between taking company documents in the name of the public good versus a hacker doing a cyber B 'n' E? Wasn't the whole Twitter affair basically a case of prurient (okay, prurient isn't the right word here, but you get my drift) interest for the reading public?
- Ian Paul
@Robin. There's no technological way to make sure that you don't have the right to that work. I think Amazon would be crazy to even try.
- Ken Kennedy
Scoble: I absolutely believe the content providers won't put pressure on Amazon & Apple eventually to do just that ...
- Brian Baggett
Robert i think you're conflating things again, maybe just to be a gadfly or "start a conversation," but you're equating things that aren't equal. Amazon thought they had the right to sell the book -- they didn't not *knowingly and wilfully* violate copyright. morally speaking, that is not the same kind of "crime" as buying something you KNOW is stolen from a self-admitted thief.
- Karim
I misspoke. I meant to say "I absolutely believe the content providers will put pressure on Amazon & Apple eventually to do just that"
- Brian Baggett
Ian: My public interest is your purient interest.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Amazon's already said: "“We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances". Props for that...probably. But what happens when someone scarfs the next "Harry Potter-alike", uploads it with a slightly different name a day before release, sells TENS of thousands of copies before they're caught (because I bet lots of...
more...
- Ken Kennedy
Amazon made a mistake that had no financial benefit for the receiver of the goods. Arrington received stuff he *knew* was stolen and used it for page views. HUGE moral difference.
- Karim
So they only remove content that *they* allow you to put on there illegally? That's good, bec. if Amazon did that, think what Apple could do to people's iPods...
- RobinDotNet
Robert: Amazon had the right to _lawfully_ request the 1984 copies to be returned. They didn't have the right to commit a felony by "breaking and entering" in order to retrieve the property: Definition: "Entering can involve either physical entry by a person or the insertion of an instrument with which to remove property. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Stuart Liroff
Robert: maybe I don't see it the same because I am not a journalist, but I am a banker. If your information is stolen and sent to Tech Crunch et al. you would not want to see it posted I would imagine. Perhaps this isn't similar, but posting anything privat be it account balances, personal info, loan committee minutes, business dealings etc. they are all private information...
- Trae Ruge
KenKennedy -- they could compare title against copyright availability.
- RobinDotNet
I'm still dismayed about the reports that some books can only be downloaded a specific number of times, and that's not documented. Anybody had any problems downloading books repeatedly? (I have 2 kindles, and use iPhone kindle app too).
- RobinDotNet
Robert: I think we'd need a new thread to keep this discussion going. I just can't believe that the Twitter info was in the public interest.
- Ian Paul
Robin: Why would you want to download books repeatedly anyway?
- Ian Paul
@Stuart: C'mon. This wasn't a masked Amazon employee in your bedroom. It's a wireless device that you authorize (and in fact expect them) to move stuff around on. You agree to a lengthy terms at purchase. Amazon can't agree to give you rights to a permanent copy of something that they don't have the rights to give you period.
- Ken Kennedy
IanPaul: I might want to download it to multiple kindles. But sometimes I download a book, read it, and remove it, so my list isn't so cluttered, since they don't let you folder them.
- RobinDotNet
Robin's comment brings up a good point: http://medialoper.com/hot-top...
- Brian Baggett
Isn't it ironic that the books by Orwell were deleted. "He who controls the past, controls the future" is the party slogan of the govt. in 1984. Maybe Amazon thought they could go back and change history too.
- Robert
BrianBaggett -- I agree, they should disclose it. I feel like I need to back up the files from my kindle to my PC just in case. Because you CAN copy them off, then copy them back on there, yourself.
- RobinDotNet
Oh, the Orwell irony I think is "great" (note the quotes). It's part of what gave this story legs, IMO.
- Ken Kennedy
Ken: If the perception is you're buying something from Amazon rather than renting it, then it is unreasonable. Obviously, they just made clear to anyone who wasn't sure that you own nothing on the device; you're just renting.
- Brian Baggett
Robin: I see. Can the Kindle sync with your computer or a memory card and you can put them on your hard drive instead? I don't have a Kindle, just interested to hear how it works .
- Ian Paul
@Brian @Robert I wholeheartedly agree...back up your files. It's trivial.
- Ken Kennedy
Robert -- It would have been ironic if it happened with Fahrenheit 451 !!
- RobinDotNet
IanPaul -- you can connect it to your compute and see the files, and just copy them off to your PC or wherever.
- RobinDotNet
From my attorney (just a quickie, simplistic answer): "Yes, stolen property is generally subject to seizure. The buyer would have recourse against the vendor." And Ken is right: It's the Orwell angle that gave this story da sexy.
- Chris Baskind
@Brian The Ars Technica article is good on this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... Amazon does consider that you have a permanent license; it's no "rental". But...(and there's always a but in contracts), it can't give you a license to something it doesn't have rights to license! That's what happened.
- Ken Kennedy
They can reclaim stolen property, but they would tell you, they wouldn't just steal it back from you secretly.
- RobinDotNet
Whoever said stolen property can't be taken away is wrong. In California, receiving stolen property is punishable by the law and often includes jail time. Even if you didn't know it was stolen and paid for the item. It can and will be taken by the law and held as evidence until a hearing or trial.
- Marc Flores
It's NOT stolen property. It's unlicensed property. And the short answer is Amazon should have bought a license for the number of copies they already had sold.
- Ward Mundy
If you buy a book from a book store, you have an absolute right to keep the book whether it was originally stolen or not.
- Ward Mundy
If you buy a stolen book from somebody on the street corner, you do not have a right to keep the book.
- Ward Mundy
Ken, Amazon's License and Terms of Use clearly gives the purchaser the non-exclusive rights to keep a permanent copy of the digital content on your device; nowhere does it give Amazon the right to delete it. http://www.amazon.com/gp...
- Stuart Liroff
Why worry about the stolen property statues of 50 states? This isn't a big-screen TV! @Ward, that's not a bad idea (short answer), except a) what if I don't WANT to license my work, for any price. You can't make me. b) after the fact, maybe I am willing to license to Amazon...for $100,000 a pop.
- Ken Kennedy
@Stuart: I know, since I quoted that about 2 minutes ago. *grin* But they can't license stuff they don't have a license to license!
- Ken Kennedy
"Copies of copyrighted works CANNOT BE REGARDED AS STOLEN PROPERTY for the purposes of a prosecution under a statute criminalizing the interstate transportation of such property." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Karim
You might also search for Buyer in Ordinary Course under UCC which applies in most states. http://bit.ly/49QRid
- Ward Mundy
So do those who bought 1984 have the legal standing to launch a class action suit against Amazon? A case that like that could have some serious implications for the future treatment of digital content.
- Ian Paul
Depends if you can make a case that the users suffered damage, I would think.
- Chris Baskind
What if you bought a car and the maker decided they didn't like how they designed the dashboard. Would it be ok for them to come take your car back that you already paid for?
- Bradley Farless
from iPhone
shandel, the police can't enter your home to retrieve stolen goods without 1) your permission, or 2) a search warrant issued by a court. So what Amazon did was purely breaking and entering, unless their TOS said they could do so.
- Jeff P. Henderson
I think the point is that if it was a real book they couldn't do anything about it. In this case they can. This situation won't be the last since music and dvd's are also going digital
- brendaries
You do not own the kindle downloads. Amazon licenses them to you.
- russellcoleman
Yes, you own a license to the books. Where is it stated that Amazon has a right to yank your license?
- Jeff P. Henderson
@Jeff: That's the point; you own a bogus license...what does that give you? Amazon didn't have a legitimate license. Orwell's estate pointed that out; they had no choice but to stop selling. I imagine Amazon's interpretation of the TOS is that you never had a legitimate license either. They appear to be changing that interpretation now, based on feedback.
- Ken Kennedy
Ken, there is something called due process that should have been used in order to right the wrong. Amazon should not have 'broken in' and taken the books back. They should have used the proper legal procedures for doing so if that was their best resolution to the problem.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Disagree Scoble. This is not about STOLEN property. This is about censorship and the rights of individuals. This is about TYRANNY pure and simple.
- Richard
The Kindle is a nascent, emerging technology (sure e-book readers have been around for years, but like the iPod was to MP3 players, this is to e-books) and Amazon should do everything in their power to not leave a bad taste in consumer's mouths. Period. That 'kill switch' should be for viruses or malicious trojans or something that is really a problem.
- Brian Baggett
In a case like this, the publisher should've worked behind the scenes with Amazon to license the books. If the publisher wouldn't budge, Amazon could've had the courtesy to email or post a notice on what the publisher was asking them to do. The widespread ill-will would've shifted from Amazon in a heartbeat. They could've spun this blunder into a PR opportunity if they were smart ("The big bad publisher wants us to delete your content, but we said no ...")
- Brian Baggett
@Brian --- It's not any of my (or Amazon's) business why Orwell's estate (or anyone else) does or doesn't want to license electronic distribution. I personally think it's short-sighted for people not to do so, but that doesn't mean I think leaning on them the way you're describing is a good idea. Heck, I'd be MORE pissed w/ Amazon if they sent a letter like that. That's them using mob...
more...
- Ken Kennedy
@Brian -- there are lots of (academic, for example) works that I'd like to see on the Kindle that aren't there. I unfailingly click the "I'd like to see the on the Kindle" button, and I hope Amazon does something with it. I've even emailed authors and publishers directly. But I DON'T hope that someone rips them off and publishes things illegally, giving Amazon leverage to send "big bad publisher" letters.
- Ken Kennedy
The whole debate raises a question about tightly controlled platforms such as the Kindle and iPhone, versus their ancestors that you could load with anything you liked...
- Jonathan Beckett
@Ken - Had Amazon *intentionally* sold something it wasn't licensed to sell, sure they should be held accountable. However, a publisher they deal with sold Amazon something that *they* didn't own. That's not Amazon's fault; the ill will should be focused at the publisher who sold it to Amazon rather than Amazon playing copyright-cop.
- Brian Baggett
"MobileReference, the publisher in question, formats and sells public domain books on Amazon. The only problem is that George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 are not yet in the public domain, at least not in the US. According to Amazon's statement to Ars Technica, "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books." -- http://bit.ly/Depgj
- Brian Baggett
I really think Amazon's learnt a very important lesson today. I guess the kindle marketplace is a nascent one, and a new foray for Amazon into DRM-encumbered file distribution. One would assume this will not happen again.
- Bryce Roney
from iPod
Do I have to be anti either?
- Jesse Stay
from iPhone
Robert Scoble 2009: "Wait a second the whole Amazon Kindle thing yesterday was ABOUT STOLEN property! That changes ALL the anti-Amazon arguments." Philip Mauro, 1906: "All talk about dishonesty and theft in this connection from however high a source is the merest claptrap for there exists no property in ideas musical, literary or artistic except as defined by statute."
- Loryn Jenkins
Another point: this story has nothing in particular to do w/ the DRM on Kindle files. The "big deal" is the always-on (by default) connection that you don't often think about, since you don't pay monthly for it. WhisperNet is convenient, but that convenience has a downside. File DRM isn't the issue is b/c Amazon can and does sell ebooks w/o DRM; I bought a Kindle copy Mur Lafferty's...
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- Ken Kennedy
DRM isn't exclusive to a file; DRM can be an aspect of the hardware.
- Brian Baggett
Valid point, Brian. But the Kindle isn't really DRM'd in a direct hardware sense...it mounts as a drive if you connect it to a USB port, and you can drag off the files. Most people don't, but there's absolutely nothing stopping you. I backup all my purchases (and yes, that includes stripping the encryption; I have unencrypted backups of all my books). If Amazon made it impossible for...
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- Ken Kennedy
@Brian...just saw your earlier comment: "the ill will should be focused at the publisher who sold it to Amazon". I agree 110%; sorry if it seemed otherwise. There's an argument that could be made that the complicated nature of copyright makes this stuff confusing (ie, the fact that these books are in the public domain in Canada, Australia, and Russia already), but that's no excuse. If...
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- Ken Kennedy
Amazon clearly violated federal "computer tampering" laws. See http://cid-c072ace4f752027c.sp...
- Brian K. Stanley, Att'y
The one year old A's fan twins are at their first regular season game this year.
|
Yolanda, Brent - Loving Life, Anne Bouey and 15 other people liked this
Will we see you at the new Yankee Stadium this week?
- paul mooney
TOO. FREAKING. PRECIOUS. How long until they're rocking...umm...Eric Chavez jerseys? Billy Beane stares of anger?
- Mike Nayyar
It would have been wildly poetic if you had been residents of Minnesota.
- Brett Kelly
from iPhone
Whatever happened to the other gal who used to do videos with IJustine?
She got a life
- paul mooney
She was the Art Garfunkle of YouTube?
- Mark Davidson
from BuddyFeed
There's a reason I follow 100,000 on Twitter and 25,000 on friendfeed: I get to see patterns no one else is seeing. Here's some:
zxspectrum, Fashion Picture, Jeroen De Miranda and 189 other people liked this
I saw the Chinese earthquake while it was happening. 45 minutes before CNN.
- Robert Scoble
I see that Bing is gaining steam today.
- Robert Scoble
I saw that people were frustrated on Saturday with CNN.
- Robert Scoble
The Matrix?
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew: in a way, yes.
- Robert Scoble
I see new software, services, ideas before most other people.
- Robert Scoble
How do you deal with the noise?
- Kevin Lim
How do you filter out all the noise? I find myself constantly unfollowing people to make Twitter more relevant.
- Michelle
I've noticed this effect in just following 40 or 50 more people on Twitter.
- Bill Kinney
And I get to see how they react to news, like Opera's new browser this morning.
- Robert Scoble
The Robert Scoble version of "Google Earth"
- Pete Blackshaw
Big Brother style
- Richard Lai
So that's like "Scoble trends" :) Like Twitter trends, but for emerging events.
- Kirill Petrovsky
Jinx.
- Michelle
Michelle: noise is like the lawn. It lets you see the flowers.
- Robert Scoble
So effectively you start a topic on Twitter, and then use friendfeed as a chat room?
- Richard Lai
i follow almost 60,000 on twitter now and love it. totally agree scoble.
- Jason Pollock
Hoping for some improvements to Tweetdeck groups - just not enough yet
- Kirsten Hamstra
yeah but how do you SEE the patterns, you cannot read them all do you?
- Hans Mestrum
You should be talking about all the spammers on Twitter because that is the trend
- paul mooney
Robert is our filter, we follow robert who sees the patterns and reports it back.
- Ray Slakinski
Here's a hint: I don't always follow 125,000 people. In friendfeed I have lists of only 150 people. THEY HAVE VERY LITTLE NOISE.
- Robert Scoble
He has a socket in the back of his head ;-)
- Richard H
Also, in friendfeed I can remove noise by displaying only items that have gotten a like. Like this: http://friendfeed.com/search...
- Robert Scoble
Thank goodness we have you, Robert, to do that, so we don't have to.
- Jason Mayoff
make sense following "likes"
- Hans Mestrum
paul: spammers don't bother me. They add about as much value as people who tell me they had a jelly sandwich for lunch.
- Robert Scoble
Jeff Pulver Followers every p0rn site and spammer who Follows him, check his Following list
- paul mooney
paul: here's a little trick: I do most of my following in friendfeed. Why? Better friend management.
- Robert Scoble
I also have issues bc what I have to follow for work is very different from what I want to follow, but that is another issue.
- Michelle
Twitter has gone the way of email, that's why Twitter Search doesn't work - the system is overwellemed!
- paul mooney
Bill: actually you only need to follow a few people to get a pretty good look at the good stuff. Why? If something is good everyone talks about it.
- Robert Scoble
Michelle - same issue here! work vs. professional following and juggling multiple accts
- Kirsten Hamstra
paul: it still works for me. I just skip over the spam. My mind likes seeing spam and noise. It helps me see the news.
- Robert Scoble
For the rest of us - just friend Scoble -- you might hear about stuff delayed 5 minutes or so.
- Brian Sullivan
Where do I get one of these neat sockets in the back of my head, I get dizzy just trying to follow 2K people.
- dabitch
All the Twitter marketers are auto-Following the spammers, it's a perfect storm
- paul mooney
paul: in email I don't care about the spam either. I can always scan a page of spam and find my boss' emails for some reason.
- Robert Scoble
reminds me of roy - I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate.
- mike "glemak" dunn
Brian: that is true. My like feed at http://www.friendfeed.com/scoblei... is pretty good.
- Robert Scoble
That's why people who don't follow others on Twitter are kinda of missing the point, aren't they? I love seeing when people are being followed by 30,000 people but following 2.
- Curt Mercadante
BTW Robert, props on following the Iran elections. Hopefully this will open our eyes to what has been happening in Egypt, Russia, Pakistan and a host of other countries for decades. If Benezir Bhutto were alive and had been elected like she would have been, we'd live in a different world.
- Michelle
so robert - could you be an android ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
Robert: so in a way, if you follows all that people, we actually needs to follow only one person, which is you. here's why: it is most likely that you'll post about the major stuff that you read about in your friends stream - which make you a better filter than any other service around :) (I'm following lots of people too because I simply like to find and read about new and exciting things)
- Orli Yakuel
I totally agree with you Robert. It's like holding your hand into a jet of water and drinking from time to time.
- nik
you need to have the spirit of sharing good stuffs to others, or the good only reaches you but does not spread out.
- K.D.
I cannot get people to join FriendFeed. I even did a video showing them how great it is. I cannot seem to follow that many more on Twitter than 200 and keep up with them. I tried Tweetdeck, but it just used too much RAM for me.
- Hummie
The REAL trick here is that you have a natural gift for scanning with your eyes. I would follow many more people if I could scan (and absorb) information as quickly as you do. Since I don't, I follow you. You are among my first line of defense.
- Bettina Tizzy
All these fortune cookie Tweets are the work of spammers, sooner or later comes the link to the get-rich-quick site
- paul mooney
Robert you are awesome! ★
- weirdchina
@scobleizer I want to see the matrix also... still several K from where you are.
- Robert Freeze
Robert, do you read http://friendfeed.com/public also?
- bnoise
i follow more on ff
- junrxu
Sounds a little like Joey Osmond - Robert I see patterns Scoble? Definitely agree though - there is useful information that can be pulled from the right people's twitter/friendfeed that gives trends developing real time, as long as sea changes over longer periods
- Tom Tubbs
Hmmm, why is http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... faster than http://friendfeed.com/public ?
- Greg Byrne
holy shit robert... i just had my mind blown watching your live friendfeed. this whole time i've been trying to control the chaos... keep people organized into neat piles. wow... wowow
- Eric Nakagawa
You are so right!
- Thomas Chai
@Hummie: I had the same problem with TweetDeck. Try SeesmicDesktop, it has similar functionality but less RAM-greedy
- Ashalynd
Robert do you have a link to the video you did showing 'how' you manage all this information flow? I would enjoy watching it again.
- Matt Perry
here's another interesting search which will show all scoble's friends' items that have at least 1 like: http://friendfeed.com/search... only wish this were realtime
- Mike Chelen
Robert - cool post, excellent comments - same exact reason I embraced FF in early days and stayed here!! Love it
- Susan Beebe
Robert since I have been following you I have done a complete 180 on how I felt about social networking before. I mean the media is fast but social networking works at the speed of thought. Now if I could only figure out how to interact behind the Army & Airforce firewall... I felt lost today at work... LOL
- Nathan McClain
Matt, I think that video is this one: HOw I Read Tweets: http://www.kyte.tv/scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
Orli the problem with only following me is that I need to sleep once in a while and I also might not follow people you care about. For instance, if you are into celebrities and not technology I totally wouldn't be good for you to follow.
- Robert Scoble
we know what I care about and I'm glad that I'm following you! but I got the point, and I agree of course. I was just kidding I guess..
- Orli Yakuel
Great video. Watching it again now...
- Matt Perry
Yeah some wild connections are made by watching a lot more than a few friends. Wonder why most people don't "get" that? Researchers should follow a ton of people and sources.
- Jack Humphrey
Jack: actually, people should do BOTH follow a ton of people and sources as well as follow just a very select group of people. I wish I could share my groups (er, lists of friends) with you all. THEY are going to be the secret to filtering in the future.
- Robert Scoble
I'm lazy. I use your feed as my pre-filtered source of good/interesting general information. Thanks for doing a lot of the hard work for us (or at least me).
- John Meagher
Robert I think you are 100% correct, but it touches on what people should have already been doing, and that's getting as much information as they can from as many sources as they can and putting the facts together for themselves. I think traditional media's days of fact-less reporting are thankfully numbered. This is truly Fair and Balanced!!!
- Nathan McClain
Robert: People still won't get it. Seeing patterns is a talent or a skill. You can aid it, however, by showing or demonstrating how you filter for patterns. How do you scan messages and discern a pattern? How do you focus on a few without missing the patterns of the many? Might make a good presentation/blog. You probably already did it, right?
- Alan Eggleston
I don't think it requires following 125,000 people to be aware of the same trends.
- stretta
stretta: it does not, but I get to see small things that many people don't.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - and I appreciate those "small things" :) --- they look like startups! and new bright shiny tech toys!
- Susan Beebe
imagine an AI system that can analyze all that data for you and generate illuminating reports...
- Matt Jaunich
Matt: I can and lots of geeks are working on building just that.
- Robert Scoble
Thanks for the post. I immediately added the "like" search to my saved searches.
- Sean Powell
I follow 60,000 and I see a white light at the end of a tunnel. It's getting closer...
- Rick
You must do this by o s m o s i s....no other way? Intuition and speeed reading.
- Ziona Etzion
Yeah. Robert, I don't read your stuff and I don't know if you're going to read this. But regardless, I know you're well famed and this is the first thing I skimmed across of yours that would indicate that it's deserved. I follow options in the same way., eg almost literally. I have TD StrategyDesk open right now, ThinkOrSwim, Power E*Trade Pro, OptionsXPress, and the regular TD Ameritrade website open as well. Doing this allows me to view and be ware of data and turning points in many views and levels
- Matt Kaufman
Robert: If you could follow all 100,000+ people from Twitter in real time within friendfeed would you?
- Garin Kilpatrick
Twitter is a helpful automatized hammer for the main engine, which is friendfeed ;
- ewing2001akaNicomedy2010
I don't see why you couldn't just save a search on everybody's posts with likes on FF though and still follow only those you actually read daily + any protected accts? Even build smarter searches than that. You increase the number of people following you by lots more your way of course.
- Thomas Bøhm
from BuddyFeed
Sorry. The trend watching and analytical part would be the same, wouldn´t it, except that I now see that the saved searches don´t update in realtime. Yet.
- Thomas Bøhm
from BuddyFeed
No doubt...
- Thor
Nice post :-) Two questions though:
- Patrick Mackaaij
1. What sets apart the 100,000 people you "follow" to glance at once in a while from the everyone feed?
- Patrick Mackaaij
2. (a Friendfeed question): Do you still read this since I posted this comment a few hours after the initial conversation.
- Patrick Mackaaij
How did you find so many people to follow? How does an average user find so many to follow?
- Bas
Patrick: I was on stage and couldn't be on friendfeed.
- Robert Scoble
Patrick: the people I follow are usually much more tech interested and demonstrate early adopted behavior than the larger public audience.
- Robert Scoble
Never mind all this. How's Opera? Got a link this morning and thought I might try it (what a surprise, me trying something).
- Francine Hardaway
This is how I tell other people about Robert: http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009... and it's how I'm slowly patterning web learning (when I have time to interact and learn)
- Mark Essel
Scoble Earth(TM), Pete Blackshaw? ;)
- Tyson Key
Robert: Is this a Mandelbrot pattern? The chaos has a look, a feel and a taste, as in the jet of water analogy. You're the freakin' hydrologist with the dousing rod.
- Phil Boiarski
Robert: I was not expecting a real time response but was wondering how you keep track of all conversations you engaged with on FF. How can you see where comments are added?
- Patrick Mackaaij
I'm with Robert, just not with such a big of a scale. My point: I am noise and you are noise. Let's not forget there's a baby in that bathwater before one takes a blanket anti social network view of social networking!
- Mike Lewis
Robert, you are a living, breathing supernode, and I thank you for it :-) (Supernodes: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-95...)
- Andy Bold
makes sense 2 me
- Ron Hagenhoff
OMG Robert I agree 100% BEFORE Twitter screwed with the @replies censoring us from seeing all that people tweeted... I could scroll through my home page and get the pulse of the world on Twitter! A beautiful site! Comparatively now: Twitter is silent.
- Arleen Anderson
Robert, I'm having a jelly sandwich for lunch tomorrow. ;-)
- Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
All major television networks/news outlets should hire Scoble and heed this advice based on this weekends events in Iran. They need to learn how to listen, filter and understand how social media can deliver real-time information around the world.
- E-Advocate Network
böring
- yazarcizer
What tools are you using to keep track of the all that flows past?
- Inbox2 Team
Yeah, Robert is an Androïd! Each time I'm gotta 'like' 1 of his entries, comment, or visit links, I ask myself if I'm doing this because he is Scoble! Of course not: it's just because he's always pointing on valuable infos. And this is good for IT stuffs, for early adopters, for business.
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
So, Scoble proves that the best search & filter engine is Human. (Nah.. I'm not a 'groupie', never will ;-))
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
Curt, pple who don't follow others and hope to be followed & heard are obviously wrong. Social Media is not "Ego Media" ;)
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
Patrick, IMO Robert uses FriendFeed's search to find infos, & FF's email features to keep track of conversations & updates
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
or maybe you also miss some important ones because of the noise: like the patterns known by 99% of the users that have less than 1000 followers? does that make sense?
- Ouriel Ohayon
isn't that a little too much? do you even have time for anything else? Is it worth knowing about an earthquake some 30-40 minutes earlier than most people than spending some time with your real life friends?
- stefan
Stefan, the point is: if you want to spend as much time as possible with your real life friends, you have to be as efficient as possible during the time you spend in front of the computer. The more information you drink in a short time, the faster you can identify patterns.
- Brome
Best answer I've heard for why I'm also ok with following and listening to a ton of people on various platforms: "noise is like the lawn. It lets you see the flowers. - Robert Scoble"
- Leslie Poston
Wow, that's a clever use of the platforms!
- gareth【ツ】
We need information so we can decide while staying in touch with reality. -> Filtering skills, Good Human filter, Good filter tool (FriendFeed).
- Thierry R. Andriamirado
from email
Thierry: thanks I was looking for that indeed! Have changed my settings to see how e-mail works out there but I thought maybe there would be an easier way...
- Patrick Mackaaij
hey it was great to finally personally meeting you and hung out at the diner ; my weblog about the evening now at http://ff.im/45HR3 plus infos about WE LIVE IN PUBLIC premiering now in L.A. and my new video "PERU" @ http://www.youtube.com/watch... ; all the best for the conference today and building43 ;
- ewing2001akaNicomedy2010
Another FF question: I was under the assumption FF would merge duplicate imports so that conversations like these would remain in one place. If I do a search on a tending topic of today this does not seem to be the case: http://friendfeed.com/search...
- Patrick Mackaaij
Patrick, the imports may be duplicate URLs or pictures or whatever, but the conversation around them could be different. I see this as a good thing, and it show me two things. (1) it is an intersection of the different groups and types of people that I subscribe to. (2) it can be different nationalities in different timezones. Ie, of a more global interest. Bothe are good pieces of data for me.
- Andy Bold
from email
@Brom, yes. but there is only so much information one can absorb at a time. 100.000 twitters and 25 FFs? Even half of it is too much for a normal person to take in that fast. Robert MUST be a robot O_O
- stefan
@Andy: I'd rather not see any duplicate URL's and have the conversation take place in one thread. Google Translate can solve the language problem. But my question at the moment was what the current status is. I see it's already discussed here: http://friendfeed.com/susanbe...
- Patrick Mackaaij
how do I follow thousands of people without clicking follow over and over
- Kyle Weller
Kyle: Use friendfeed and click "subscribe"
- Garin Kilpatrick
Kyle: its still required to click subscribe for each user, but those clicks are well spent, and FF also will show posts from friends-of-friends. another good option is to join some groups for subjects that interest you
- Mike Chelen
If it wasn't for an idiotic government I would never have met my wife, Maryam. Her family moved her out of Iran to escape the thugs. More:
Daniel Rowley, Robyn Hawk, Kol Tregaskes and 50 other people liked this
I thank the Iranian government every day for pushing her family to move her out of Iran.
- Robert Scoble
The stories she tells of dealing with government officials reminds me every day that I'm glad to be an American.
- Robert Scoble
Likewise, I would never have been born. My father moved here from Iran back in the 70s and met my mom.
- Soso Sazesh
Especially one living in Silicon Valley where more than 10,000 have decided to settle. There are SOME upsides to having crappy governments around the world. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I wanted to ask you if she still have family over there..
- glfceo
the shah was worse, which is why my grandfather left for England in 1925, unfortunately he passed on in 1978, but had returned to Iran towards the end of life.
- Prolific Programmer
from IM
makes me want to hear more of your perspective on this stuff, Robert
- Matt Searles
One of the thugs stopped her in the street when she was 13 and said "why are you smiling" and threatened her with caning if she kept it up. Her friend was caned for simply sitting in a car with a boy she wasn't married to (the boy was caned too).
- Robert Scoble
So glad I am a Briton and live in the finest country in the world :)
- David Lloyd
the shah killed my father's uncle in 1953
- Prolific Programmer
from IM
Mark: I'll be there in July. Hope to meet you.
- Robert Scoble
I had an Iranian girl friend named Layla, but she was from Paris. There's a very large Iranian community in Paris and most of them dream of returning to Iran
- paul mooney
Lots of fun things in Silicon Valley were built by Iranians, including eBay. Imagine if @pierre had stayed in Iran and had built eBay there?
- Robert Scoble
Paul: Maryam wants to visit Iran with me. I don't think that would be a good idea. I would be too tempted to tweet a photo of their nuclear plant or something like that.
- Robert Scoble
yep eBay in Iran - :)) - but I love Persian food - does your wife make kebabs and pilaves?
- glfceo
Do not go to that horrible place. You will regret it. There are reasons that everybody tries to get the hell out of there.
- Eric Sabban
Robert - where do you get your 10,000 Persians in Silicon Valley number? Just curious.
- Soso Sazesh
Every Iranian I've met who was born and raised there dreams of returning some day, but so long as the country is dominated by these horrible regimes (first the Shah, and now the "Islamic Republic") I doubt any of them will return any time soon, if ever. Which is sad, because they do miss their homeland. I'd feel the same way if I had to flee Canada.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Just go, I saw a Rick Steves travel show the other night and he went to Iran and it was wonderful
- paul mooney
I had an engineering associate / friend in the late '70s whose family moved from Iran under the shah. He even changed his name to disasscoiate his past and heritage.
- Ron Hixson
Soso: every year for New Years they get together at local parks and there's thousands of them. I assume that not every one shows up at the park so I'm doing a little counting and a little inferring. I might be off a little.
- Robert Scoble
Eric: The government is horrible. The country is beautiful.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
paul: you'll notice how careful he was to not piss off the government types who were following him around. I'm used to that too, I have to deal with PR people at almost every company, but they don't carry guns. :-)
- Robert Scoble
@Scobleizer @pierre came to the US from Europe, IIRC.
- Prolific Programmer
@Mark agreed, Britain is the finest country on Earth! :)
- Prolific Programmer
i am following this election by reading news from Azerbaijan - Musavi is an ethnic Azeri...
- glfceo
We survived Bush and Chaney, the Iranian people will endure
- paul mooney
Robert - I was just curious. I am half Persian and know a lot of Persians here as well and have always wondered the number.
- Soso Sazesh
Same exact story for me with my Persian wife, Negar. I am a lucky man to have her.
- Dean Kakridas
while i was trying to look up the number of Persians in a valley i came across: Shirindokht Nourmanesh San Jose Persian Community Examiner - http://www.examiner.com/x-6568-...
- glfceo
And I would never have met my BFF and her family. Iranians are wonderful, generous, creative, resilient people. They'll get through this, but I hope for the young people (and for world relations) that the outcome is as they wish.
- Ayşe E.
I don't see anything wrong with Ahmedinejad... his comments re Zionism were spot on -- it does need to be wiped from this world
- Prolific Programmer
from IM
I too have made great friends that I love dearly from Iran. Iranians are the most wonderful people
- courtney benson
With all thats been going on in Iran since the election and for decades before it, I just hope that the Iranian people will one day find peace and happiness
- goutham
Goutham: you are so right - people have just one life and its sad to see them suffering instead of enjoying..
- glfceo
FYI: RT @michaelgregg, @stephenfry [Iranians] can access Twitter from 148.233.239.24 port 80 in Tehran—can avoid govt. filters. #IranElection via @jackyan (via Twitter)
- polou/indigo_bow
I think a lot of us with friends/loved ones of Iranian heritage think the same way.
- jcunwired
I like this thread Robert! You do know that you were 'supposed' to meet!
- Myrna
Good on you Robert. Sheryl and I changed our location to Tehran on Latitude, Twitter, Brightkite, etc.. Let the government try to hunt every one of us. And avatar pics are going green everywhere as well.
- Ken Camp
amazing to see all you sheeps!!!! come on guys... learn to think for yourselves... get over this superiority complex that states "we are better than them" with every word you speak and every action you make... that's exactly what makes getting along harder... try to understand their morals and their principles... they don't have to be the same as yours to be "right"!!! if iranians are evil, american's are dumb!!!!!!, and i'm not sure which is worse!
- simran
Saturday, May 23, 2009 6:14 PM - http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/dave...
Daniel Rowley, Ivan Zuzak, Caroline and 15 other people liked this
it's cool that a lot of this show is happening through Friendfeed
- Matthew
Gillmor Gang original discussion: http://friendfeed.com/twit-co...
- Jérôme Flipo
I agree with you totally, get on the show and argue your corner!
- Chris Lloyd
This is Friend-FEED we're all using
- paul mooney
"They don't let me talk in their little podcast thing[...] " I'm sure Leo would love to have you on the show. I wish you'll take the time to use your Right of reply in his show (he is a journalist after all)
- TunisianGuy
Unrelated Question: How do you attach a mp3 file in freindfeed like Dave did?
- Kevin Murray
@Kevin... I suspect it's a media enclosure in a feed... IOW, RSS ...( not unrelated and goes to Dave's Point)
- Bastard Operator From FF
Kevin: The easiest way I've found is this http://feed-buster.appspot.com/mediaIn... -Easier for me than figuringout how to make my blog do MediaRSS
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Dave: Leo and Steve did say that you'd be welcome on the show. It would be good to have you on. There were kind words after part of this was played on the air today.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Thank you for the info!
- Kevin Murray
"The Twitter Book" implies Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki tweet too much per day, saying Dan Zarrella says 22 tweets per day is optimal. True?
Rick Turoczy, LPH™ and his dog P™, Andre P. Siregar and aerobroken liked this
I think "optimal" is subjective...both for people like Scoble & Kawasaki and their followers. Personally, if I think someone is interesting, the more tweets the better...Trying to pick an exact number doesn't really fly with me.
- Chris Rossini
That is so ridiculous. WHo arrives at this number? Doesn't it matter whether you have things of value to say?
- Francine Hardaway
Its not a book I would learn something from, I suspect. Is there a reason to criticize by name?
- jcunwired
It is subjective. I have found people that get upset with 10 per day.
- Paul L. McCord Jr.
I'm lucky if I do 22 per month.
- K. Brent Church
It depends on who your followers are. If they're actually interested in reading all of your tweets, tweet away. I suppose one could find their optimal number by looking at the tweeting rates of other popular Twitter users among one's followers.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
Robert doesn't Tweet that often anymore, but Guy Kawasaki is a Spamurai http://neuronspark.com/videos...
- paul mooney
best new word of the day "Spamurai" thanks Paul!
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
Paul, Guy also is one of the most-followed users on Twitter not on the featured users list. How is he a spammer? 130,000 people on Twitter seem to think he isn't. (or they're all idiots for following him)
- Jesse Stay
Watch the video where Guy will explain how to spam Twitter, Anyone who doesn't read Tweets is there only to spam
- paul mooney
Paul, I talk to Guy all the time on Twitter. He talks to others all the time too. He reads Tweets. He doesn't read all of them though - does anyone? I still don't get how he's spamming.
- Jesse Stay
Watch the video he'll tell ya.
- paul mooney
Discussions like this make people think that twitter is worthless and stupid. Pick your own order.
- Bruce Lerner
Guy isn't spamming -- nobody is forced to follow. Same goes with Scoble. Love the term "Spamurai," though.
- Chris Baskind
Paul Guy's told me in person - based on your definition he's a spammer. Who is setting the rules here though? There are 130,000 people following him that don't think he's a spammer. I think that says something personally. Do I care? Not at all, and frankly neither does Guy, which is why he has so many followers despite the criticism he's had. If we go by vote on who's a spammer though, I think Guy wins.
- Jesse Stay
How many of 130,000 people following Guy signed-up Followed him, he Followed back and then they never log-on again?
- paul mooney
Paul, I don't know - how many?
- Jesse Stay
You don't know much and you only had to watch one video to learn something tonight
- paul mooney
Paul I've seen it and I think the response was unwarranted. What is it I don't know again?
- Jesse Stay
How many of 130,000 people following Guy signed-up Followed him, he Followed back and then they never log-on again. Yet you use that number to back-up your believe in Guy
- paul mooney
Paul you don't know that either. How many people following you signed up, followed you, and never logged-in again? I don't see how that factor is relevant if it applies to everyone.
- Jesse Stay
How many Guy Kawasaki tweets have you saved as Favorites?
- paul mooney
Paul, my last conversation with Guy was yesterday in fact. I don't save anyone's Tweets as favorites. I've retweeted several of Guy's Tweets though.
- Jesse Stay
What is it I'm trying to prove here again?
- Jesse Stay
Seth Godin is the top social media blogger? Give me a break. He doesn't participate. Chris Brogan wins in my view. - http://www.noop.nl/2009...
James Williams, Mitchell Tsai, Gary Edgar and 143 other people liked this
I think that Seth is the top marketer blogger.
- Apostolos Papadopoulos
from IM
although as you said he doesn't participate.
- Apostolos Papadopoulos
from IM
i think its based on a number of stats Scoble, rather than participation. But of course, i'm just pleased we're in the top 20 of the list :)
- Zee.
Zee: stats are lies.
- Robert Scoble
well they make me feel good :)
- Zee.
Zee: Seth Godin is a great guy, great author, great speaker, very well known, etc. But no way is he the top social media blogger.
- Robert Scoble
Agreed. Like Godin's insight but he isnt regular enough. Also really like Jeremiah!
- Richard Zeidel
I subscribe to Seth's blog and have yet to figure out why there is such a fuss about him. Chris seems to put more effort into his posts and write things of significance.
- Chris Luckhardt
lol but what do u mean with the stats zee?
- Apostolos Papadopoulos
from IM
Often attributed to Mark Twain: "There are lies, damn lies and statistics."
- CAJ, somewhere else
have you subscribed to us yet Scoble? Would love you to give us a chance for a couple of weeks. Think you'll be highly impressed
- Zee.
Seth is good for those little sparks that get your own thinking going. But yeah, wouldn't put him in the top SM blogger category.
- Virante
Richard: yeah, Jeremiah should be in top two or three yet. Zee: I'm following you here on friendfeed, is that what you mean?
- Robert Scoble
sorry i mean at TheNextWeb.com - check out our recent content, i'm sure you'll be impressed.
- Zee.
Zee: what's the friendfeed URL?
- Robert Scoble
If you turn off comments (engagement) and blog about engagement (with comments off) then you get lots of linketylinks (Google love) in. Helps with those stats :)
- Laurel Papworth
@virante agree with you. I think Seth is more intellectual from Brogan and he is not social media blogger. And I don't say that Brogan isn't great! In fact, he is!
- Apostolos Papadopoulos
from IM
Love your post. I stopped following Seth a while ago for the same reason. He does not participate in the conversation. He writes posts high above from the mountain of Social Media Gods (SMG).
- John Flynn
http://friendfeed.com/thenext... and we have a group with content from all over here: http://friendfeed.com/the-nex... (nearly 6000 members)
- Zee.
The # of people he follows and learns from is an indicator as to his view of his role in the conversation...I mean monologue,
- Kevin Murray
In fact, thinking about it, it is hard to pick between Brogan and Owyang. I should have named both.
- Robert Scoble
Agreed. Great stuff, but Seth's not interested in conversation. Since that's the case, how can he possibly rate high in the social media space?
- Leo Bottary
I like the perspective Seth brings to Social Media, but I agree that he's not participating as much as others. How are we defining "top"?
- Joel Zehring
I think the behaviors of many people claiming to be the "best" of something will be monitored more closely now that FF is around ... I watch the number of people "these bloggers" subscribe to and watch for their participation ...
- LPH™ and his dog P™
methinks that Seth is not blogging about Social Media, but about marketing.
- Apostolos Papadopoulos
from IM
That list doesn't seem particularly focused. Bunch of great sites there that don't seem SM to me. I can't believe they didn't run them past me first. ;-)
- Chris Baskind
Joel: the blog that made this list is using popularity ranking algorithms. Judging people by popularity will take you down a bad path.
- Robert Scoble
Seth is like God. He disappears for a long time then pops up with the old miracle. He's a good helicopter view of what's going on whilst people like Scobles and Chris Brogran are the day to day practioneers. You need both.
- Ross McMinn
Definitely Brogan is much better. I think Godin is miscategorized here. That said he's not conversing much in any space, just thinking out loud, which is great, but not so much social.
- Bailey McCann
I think we need universal portable influence metric - something peer mediated - micro celebrities need community validation.
- Richard Zeidel
Zee would be in the conversation. At least if I were having the conversation.
- Matthew DeVries
I don't even know Chris Brogan - maybe I should..
- Arnaldo M Pereira
I like it that Seth doesn't participate in everything. It makes it easier to follow him. Has anyone tried to email him or connect through his "Tribes" projects?
- Joel Zehring
what apostolos said. seth is marketing, not social media.
- James
Joel, that's like saying Chuck Nevitt is the best basketball player, because he's so easy to follow, cause most of the time he's on the bench, and the 3 minutes a season he got to play, he moved very slowly.
- Matthew DeVries
Arnaldo M Pereira: Check out Chris here ==> http://friendfeed.com/chrisbr... He's very active.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Exactly, Social Media and Seth Godin? WTF? And how come RWW team is not in the 1st three?
- Sasha Kovaliov(.com)
lol +1 to Matthew
- Bailey McCann
I'd say Amber Mac would be up there, but I guess she's more like the little girl who gets every freakin new toy on the planet the day it comes out, tells everyone it's a great toy, then tosses it aside, and goes back to playing with movable type.
- Matthew DeVries
Good guy, but last I checked Seth doesn't even tweet!
- Ryan Miller
from Nambu
Ryan: we were on a radio show together and he told me he doesn't Tweet. I tried to get him on friendfeed and he didn't have any part of that.
- Robert Scoble
Seth is tops in several areas....just not social media; not even close..I'm sure he would agree
- Daniel Kenney
agreed scoble.
- Ted Bradford II
Seth is definitely a top blogger..but because social media is about conversation, then you're right...others have a right to that honor.
- Bill Reichart
Seth is a snake oil salesman, but Chris Brogan sees him as a role model. I've predicted that Chris will be the first to Tweet from the Lincoln bedroom in the White House.
- paul mooney
Maybe they should call him the top social media spammer. He's broadcast-only. Woot for Chris Brogan though.
- Dave Saunders
+1 with taryn930
- Apostolos Papadopoulos
from IM
Seth Godin uses email primarily to respond to people - he doesnt believe in the other media and he has explained that in some of his interviews. Chris Brogan on the other hand uses social media channels extensively and in my opinion should rank higher as a social media exponent.
- Mahesh Patwardhan
blogger or not.. moot question... is seth a good "social network" or "web2.0" (as much as i dislike that term!!!) media personality... *no* he's hardly a participant - he's more a "dictactor" - one way communication (mostly)... still worth reading i guess if you're into that sort of marketing guffy stuff (i'm only into technical stuff :) ...
- simran
I like Chris Brogan and Perry Belcher too!
- Vicki Z Lauter
I agree that Seth, smart as he is, is not representative of social media blogging. Having said that, what makes us so sure Chris Brogan, and I love Chris, Or Jeremiah, who I also love, are more engaged than Susie from Detroit? Because their numbers are higher hence the stats ranking. Why are their numbers higher? Because they're sort of viral. I often wonder how people become popular....
more...
- Sheryl
Chris Brogan I know about and I follow on Twitter and FF, I just Googled Seth Godin, wasn't sure who he was....
- Mike Nencetti
I don't feel like I should weigh in or anything, but I wanted you to know I'm listening and I'm here. I really love what Seth does. I read him religiously. He's NOT a social media blogger. He writes about marketing. That said, he writes about the part of social media that matters to me: how humans can be more human. So, to me, he's still #1, because he's writing about humans, and that's...
more...
- Chris Brogan
see what I was tolding ya? 1) Seth is not a social media blogger 2) both Chris and Seth are the best on what they do ;-)
- Apostolos Papadopoulos
from IM
For the record, Wolverine is the best at what he does. I'm just a working schlub.
- Chris Brogan
I like and respect what both Chris and Seth have to say tremendously. Not sure I care that much about who is the "top" blogger or whatever because either way I'm gonna keep reading their stuff and learning.
- Miguel Rodriguez
I do appreciate that Chris is present here (hi Chris!) and feel that his participation in "the discussion" adds another dimension to his insights. I wonder sometimes why Seth limits his interaction. When he's on camera being interviewed, such as by @loic most recently, he seems quite comfortable.. why that comfort doesn't extend to places like FF and twitter I am still scratching my head over.
- Miguel Rodriguez
Seth reminds me of Yoda, Chris reminds me of Obiwan. First one's cool, simple, philosophical, and ass-kicking. Second one's down to earth, practical, trained in highly useful Jedi stabs for day to day fights. Follow both, learn from both.
- waraney rawung
How would you classify Gary Vaynerchuck in the Marketing/Social Media environments?
- Owen Greaves
I watched a video of Seth essentially saying that much of social networking is superficial. http://blog.angelaconnor.com/2009...
- Angela
waraney - I think you nailed it :-)
- PXLated
I had an interesting connection w/ Seth. Back when I was doing Biznik Live interviews, Seth's answer was to ask about our listener numbers. ("10k gets my attention"...Understandable from a guy who is #5 in Google out of 3 billion hits for "blog") However, when I sent him a video of Bizniks discussing Tribes, he liked that & agreed to an interview. It was an experimental brady-bunch style video interview on the importance of Tribes in business. Edited version: http://tinyurl.com/r9f9qz
- Leif Hansen
@ChrisBrogan I bet being compared to ObiWan just made your day ;) I think I'm probably more like Luke -whiny guy with father-figure issues who gradually grows into his vocation through the grace/luck of the force and of friends and some serious hard knocks with his own dark side. Though I've got plenty of Solo juice flowing through my veins as well :)
- Leif Hansen
I agree with Chris, but Chris and Jeremiah are still up there IMO, especially when it comes to Social Media specifically.
- Jesse Stay
Apart from the fact Chris Brogan is hardly even here lol
- Rob Sellen :o)
Is Gary V. on that list?
- Jesse Stay
That's my point...shouldn't he be on the list?
- Owen Greaves
But seriously, oranges are so much better than apples. Come on guys...
- Leif Hansen
We know Scoble doesn't like lists. He really doesn't like those where it's easy to find holes in the lists. If this were written as "200 Social Media Blogs" with stats, and without rankings, it'd be easier. I was just surprised to see I was included at all.
- Louis Gray
But Louis, You are a legend here :)
- Owen Greaves
Great point about Godin not participating. In my niche there are some "experts" who have huge following numbers, but follow very few themselves. If you don't interact with your followers are you really participating in the conversation?
- Richard Byrne
Godin doesn't need to participate... he has sneezers. :o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
@Rob Sellen - Yeah, I'm not really deep into FriendFeed. I use it, and try to stay on top, and I get that lots of people say it's a big next stage. This is where Seth and I agree and are somewhat alike: we both believe you don't have to be present at EVERY conversation at every touchpoint. He picks his places; I pick mine. I just find the velocity of the social web to be more my speed. He likes email. No foul.
- Chris Brogan
Nothing wrong with that... ;o) .. just thought it odd for someone to say somone is the top social media blogger and not be in the social media sites itself... after all, that's exactly what scoble has said in the title here ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
concur - chris brogan is the man
- mike "glemak" dunn
Why Mike, do you think that? what is it that Chris does that's so different to anyone else?
- Rob Sellen :o)
Not a chance. And Seth doesn't make it as top marketing blogger either.
- AJ Kohn
@Rob - oh, I'm in tons of social media sites. I just don't spend all 14 of my working hours in each one. I don't use Utterli, Plurk, Jaiku, Hyves, Orkut, Digg, Sphinn, and 300 other folks either.
- Chris Brogan
like scoble you mean? or was that 7 hours lol? I never said you weren't in any, just that scoble posted that here... and you are not here as much, nor is seth.. so scoble to me was just replacing one for another, if that makes any sense? :o/
- Rob Sellen :o)
Woot woot "Seth Godin is the top social media blogger?" - nawwwwww.. he's the world's biggest liar.. hey after all he did write "all marketers are liars" !! He connectes with people because of his views and he also disconnects to people b'coz of that too.. As for interaction and collobrative particiaption.. hes got his nose still stuck n da air.. yeah Chris wins hands down !
- Peter Dawson
One thing I will say about Seth, ha can say a lot in few words... other times he says things that are a bit broad... but if it makes you think, that is the point. :o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
So Scoble chose FriendFeed. I've chosen Twitter. He also really loved the hell out of Facebook and used it up. I didn't. Which tools you use doesn't make you a better or worse social media person. How you get the job done counts the most to me.
- Chris Brogan
I agree... just thought it odd in the context of friendfeed you know. ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
Agree Chris. Darth Maul's double-edged sabre is as useful as Yoda's tiny one. I'm a beginner at social media, and trying to keep in touch with what's new and what's useful. You, Scoble, Seth and many others have been very helpful for a rookie like me.
- waraney rawung
What is a social media blogger, and why don't I get on this list? I've been doing this longer and better than any of you guys. Geez Louise what's a guy gotta do to get a little recognition.
- Dave Winer
Which reminds me, a lot of early adopters in Indonesia are using FriendFeed, but they're not really into discussions in FF. On the contrary, geeks in Indonesia love and are very active in Twitter and Plurk (sometimes behaving differently in each site), with Facebook as their personal online central nerve.
- waraney rawung
It's all subjective anyway. ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
@DaveWiner - here here. You're who *I* read, anyhow. : )
- Chris Brogan
shouldn't that be "hear hear" sorry... lol. that's coming from a deaf bloke! ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
@Rob - Beats me... what do I know? : )
- Chris Brogan
I wouldn't even call Seth a top marketing blogger, jeez
- Sally Church
lol... I see that alot, and wonder if it should really be hear hear... makes more sense that would. ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
I think it probably is. Like "hear hear" me?
- Chris Brogan
yeah, what I was thinking...even if I can't "hear hear"" lol... . ah well. we learn sommat new everyday...
- Rob Sellen :o)
Gotta run, Rob. Thanks for the chat hidden in Robert's rant. : )
- Chris Brogan
lol.. welcome mate.... hang on.. does Robert NOT rant? ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
The 'what tools you use' debate is interesting. While I agree that, as long as you get the job done, the tools don't matter, there's also the ability to understand new paradigms. It's difficult to talk about and grok something without really immersing yourself in it. I didn't get blogging until I really did it. Ditto Twitter. Certainly FriendFeed. They *are* different ... meaningful...
more...
- AJ Kohn
I really like the comment on social media being about connection vs. the technology that allows it to take place. That is one reason I enjoy friendfeed so much more than twitter & even facebook. Much easier to connect and join conversations with people. I find myself looking at stats of who I am listening to much less in here than twitter. The result, better conversations, more...
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- Kevin Murray
I think Seth is great at what he does, I'm just not sure "Social Media Blogger" is the right description. Perhaps evidence that that's not his focus is that a conversation of this magnitude can go on without his commenting/participating. For anyone interested, here's a post from my blog about something recent I have disagreed with Godin about: http://tinyurl.com/po62js
- Brian Broveleit
Chris Brogan rocks!
- Morten Blaabjerg
thats ok Morten..as long as it's not while sat in the corner on his own ;o)
- Rob Sellen :o)
lol - what's so impressive about @chrisbrogan is that he responds - or at least gives the impression that he does. He works like a maniac. And he _gets_ what _it_ is. This makes his posts small gems of insights, even the less revolutionary ones.
- Morten Blaabjerg
lol "gives the impression that he does" - what does that even mean morten?
- mike "glemak" dunn
Agreed that Chis walks the talk and puts out great stuff.
- John Blossom
Seth Godin is practical and sees through the hype - something that most social media commentators are guilty of.
- BLOGBloke
Social Networking/Media Sites Staying Relevant: (humor) http://www.youtube.com/watch...&
- Kevin Murray
Seth may be an expert in his own realm. Social media is certainly not it, but I have heard Seth make some valuable points about how to not use social media. Obviously Chris is doing something right, as evidenced by showing up to speak him mind, and pay Seth some respect. You gotta respect guys like Chris, Robert, Dave, and Louis (who are the ones on the tip of my tongue right now) -...
more...
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Ditto Robert! What is it with the "online marketing copywriters" all wanting to act like they're the top social media bloggers now? Oh... that's right... social media is the hip thing! Thus they flock to it. I respect Seth for particular forms of copy writing, but lots of better social media bloggers... like Chris Brogan, like Leslie Poston, like you, and others.
- Arleen Anderson
I agree Robert. (And thank you, Arleen *blushes*) Mahalo
- Leslie Poston
Amen x heaps! Seth is a genius... but certainly doesn't spring to mind in the context of "top" in social media. Chris is for sure in my top 5!!
- Mari Smith
Chris Brogan is the best example of what bloggers should try to achieve, IMO. Like any great writer, his stuff is worth reading even if you are not close tot he subject of a particular post. That means a lot.
- randulo
Agreed. Seth stuff is good, but he does he even get social media?
- Warren Whitlock
@glemak There are limits to one's attention span when you've got a lot around your ears (like Chris has) but it means a lot that you give the impression that you're listening and responding, even though you may not always be on your high marks. Noone can be. It's only human. But appearances still matter and are greatly appreciated. Chris is good at that too.
- Morten Blaabjerg
gotcha - level of attention
- mike "glemak" dunn
Thanks to those who mentioned me. Scoble is for sure one I looked up to and still do.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremiah isnt the best at what he does - he's just the only one who does it! ;) - let's not be exclusionary - thank you to all the top minds for sharing.
- Richard Zeidel
I think Chris Brogan is THE man. Many of the social media experts are now engaging only with those who are also 'experts' and not with the new comers or followers. Brogan, on the other hand, very rarely to missed a conversation. As for marketing bloggers, I still stand behind Kyle Lacy as the best one.
- Gambit Fauri
Seth "gets" social media tools but he is not the top participant--where Chris is. I am dubious, however, of claims that Seth is not a conversationalist. Have you ever sent him an email? He personally takes time to respond to every email thoughtfully and quickly, which is more than I can say for a number of social media stars (or even myself).
- Jeremy Floyd
Lately I have been reading more of Chris has to say, that said does it really matter who is the top?
- Chet Woodside
SCOBLEIZER - Do you grant variance from the "No deleting your comments and altering the thread mother fuckers" rule if you're doing it simply to kill a thread from your "My Discussions" filter so it stops popping like popcorn on your notifier?
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew: that is an interesting problem. I wish clicking "hide" were good enough for that.
- Robert Scoble
As do I.
- Matthew DeVries
Godin doesn't allow 2-way participation, thus negating the openness principle of social media (no replies on his blog, not on twitter). He's just repurposed the blog to act as a writing platform for material for his books. He's very tactic based and without a huge depth of substance, but that's what people like; though it's not necessarily good for them.
- Aaron Shields
as a technologist, focused on emerging media yet appreciating the fine art of marketing - i learn little from seth (noise) and tons from chris (signal) - that's my experience of course, your mileage may vary ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
Our flying Dutchman makes the Reich Museum look like a tourist trap. Should be on the top 5 things to do when you are in Amsterdam. Very bright, clear thinker. If you ever get fired for being "too open with your ideas" Chris you can work for me!
- Chad Harris
Agreed, Brogan all the way.
- Jim Gaudet
Brogan is amazing
- Peter Efland
Chris Brogan is an active interlocutor in ways Godin isn't. Still, who is #1 isn't as important as who is providing content that you need. I respect Godin. Have read lot of his books. But still, Brogan is my fav.
- Prof. Pamela Hood
Seth is a pure-play Social Media thought leader. Chris participates in the SM stream so he gets my respect for walking the walk and talking the talk.
- Michael McDermott
I'll give props to Chris Brogan in this so-called "social media" space, insightful, valuable, interesting. And I will give a lifetime achievement award to Dave Winer, I was reading Scripting News BEFORE the word "blog" was coined by EvHead and MegNut. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Winer "teach" you how to blog Scoble? One thing that continues to exist that I wish would go away, but probably never will is this whole "leaderboard" mentality... is there some contest? <sigh>
- .LAG liked that
I agree with Scoble, Chris is here in the trenches and impressively dedicated.
- anthonycospito
Methinks Brogan is sending his cousins over here. :-)
- BLOGBloke
In my view the better a Blogger is the more comments they will receive. Seth Godin does not even have comments enabled on his blog.
- Garin Kilpatrick
Shows how "social" he is at the very least. I don't completely agree that a blogger needs to receive comments to be "better" - but you can't really be a "social" media blogger without being "social".
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
The American Press on Suicide Watch http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
Let’s deplore the tabloid journalism that, like the cockroach, will always be with us.
- paul mooney
Special Gillmor Gang Monday at 4 pm Pacific Time from Facebook's headquarters as they make their announcements. Actual Gang will start at 5.
Daniel Rowley, Atul Arora, Chris Pugh and 9 other people liked this
Layoffs?
- paul mooney
Paul: no, Facebook is doing pretty well.
- Robert Scoble
Will this be live broadcast on Leo's Bitgravity or even live streamed audio from somewhere?
- Stephen Pickering
Stephen: yeah, it should be on http://live.twit.tv tomorrow. Timing might be a bit rough depending on how things go at Facebook.
- Robert Scoble
Will you be filming?
- Diego Barros
Thanks, Robert. You're right. This real time rocks. To get an answer in Real Time! I'm still trying to get my head around it. I keep defaulting to the old friendfeed, but I knew if went to beta, I'd see your response immediately
- Stephen Pickering
Some of you need followers to get people to engage on your thoughts. Beg for followers here and explain WHY we should follow:
'Like' robot (frɐnc), Kathleen Capps, GeekDads.TV and 129 other people liked this
I'm @scobleizer and you should follow me if you want tons of interesting tech news. I watch thousands of friendfeeders and Twitterers and am always looking for the most interesting stuff before @techmeme gets it. (UPDATE: I AM FOLLOWING EVERYONE ON THIS THREAD)
- Robert Scoble
Isn't a better way to get followers by engaging on their thoughts and getting attention through engagement? I NEVER follow anyone who begs the way you describe.
- Ken Camp
That's an example of what I'd like you to do. I will follow anyone who answers on this thread.
- Robert Scoble
Well because we cannot compete with Scobleizer...and we are desperate for a following to launch our own blogs. :-)
- Tarun Chachra
Ken: the problem is that on friendfeed and Twitter you need some seed followers.
- Robert Scoble
I agree with Ken - I make a point of not following people who ask for followers (and ESPECIALLY not if they call themselves "social media experts" or "SEO experts"... retch)
- Chris Taylor
I'm not sure about begging but it's difficult, especially when you're overwhelmed by inspiration about what you're working, to feel like you're not connecting with enough people. Then again, I don't want a bunch of robo-followers, but people who I can engage and engage with me. Twitter is weird.
- Remote Revolution
@Chris, you should follow Mike Nayyar then: http://beta.friendfeed.com/mikenay...
- Daniel J. Pritchett
A friend of mine joined Twitter a month ago and he already has more Followers then I gathered in two years!! Please Help! thank-you very much @moon http://twitter.com/moon
- paul mooney
Hmm, I thought who you followed was more important....
- Scott Breakall
I guess getting on with some friends on Twitter is most important. They already know people. This adds to better quality content as opposed to just random following people which most of the time creates noise. I however love it that @scobleizer creates is great in creating a stage for interesting people :)
- Michiel Sikkes
I personally don't need THAT much but I desperately need FOLLOWERS for XDBE project, to spread the idea behind it! To bring the Internet to the next level together! Global Social Graphing http://xdbe.com/faq/
- Elmira Gazizova
If you don't follow me my gf will lock me in the basement without food and water.
- rob
Only follow me if you like tech AND religion . A dangerous combination!
- Dan Walters
begging is annoying. I guess you have to engage by following and slowly build an audience. A lot of my followers ( though not much ) has been by engaging on other tweets etc . Good use of hashtags doesnt hurt either
- Kashif Khan
I rarely have anything to say myself that doesn't require engaging in conversations with others, so I don't want ANY followers. I follow those who I believe I may want to engage in conversation with, or those whom I desire to know more about.
- Larry
@jpelegrin. When I do say something on Twitter, it's usually very insightful. O.K., not really, but I need some peeps. This is embarrassing!
- Jeremy Pelegrin
i ain't going to beg, but i will make a note that those interested in computers, programming, science, and humor might find FriendFeed just a little bit more enjoyable if you follow me.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
Breakall: It's a moving target. Whatever serves the purpose of the conversation at hand. For the real story: most ppl care, including Scoble.
- coldbrew
you should follow @unmarketing cause I sang about Scoble http://www.ReTweetMeVideo.com
- Scott Stratten
I agree you need seed followers. I just think the way to gain them is by engaging people who interest you. Be proactive. To me,this approach sounds, not disengaged, but not terribly engaging or proactive. I realize I'm an engagement fanatic, but if someone wants me to follow, a witty response to something I've said will lure me in, especially if there's an interesting interchange. Someone who follows me and has a post like you describe, I simply ignore (or block if appropriate for me).
- Ken Camp
Hmm, you should follow me if you'd like to keep a pulse on grassroots tech organizing going on locally to nationally, and because I'm looking for more #scifi fans to chat with. (@deannecuellar)
- DeAnne Cuellar
Quite simply this is all an exchange of ideas, thoughts and information. I want to follow and be followed by those whom I can learn from, as well as to receive input/advice/insight from.
- Ted Bradford II
I'm actually culling what few followers I do have to get to a conversation that makes sense for our "marketing" business. Um, yea, guess that's not a "pitch".
- Glen Group
Ken: this is my way of finding interesting new people to follow who I might otherwise not know about. Also, anyone who answers here IS engaging.
- Robert Scoble
you should only follow me if you like Star Wars, baby photos, web design, gadgets, random weirdness, memes, and music that makes you nod your head to the beat
- Nathan Chase
@coldbrew You're exactly right, they do care. Just a little reminder of advice that's come before when OTHERS were trying to ratchet up the follower numbers. /cold brew coffee rawks
- Scott Breakall
follow me, because i would get more active with more followers. :)
- Alexander Rode
I try to be interesting, but really we are starting 2 new businesses here and I could use as many followers as possible. And I follow back.
- Audrey
Nathan: if anyone ANDs that list you won't get any followers! I choose to OR it and am now following.
- Chris Taylor
@Wordful: [I'm not above begging, so please oh please follow me.] Follow me because I'm someone who can help you understand and implement an editorial strategy on your blog. I'm also a no-BS deep thinker who doesn't like to conform.
- Charles
You can follow me - @michiels on twitter - if you're interested on how a European internet startup works and what differences there are with for example SV startups. Also how Dutch schools combine entrepreneurship and studying.
- Michiel Sikkes
if the follow isn't two-way, well it's not much of a conversation is it?
- Sean O'Brien
@Alexander, sounds like chicken and egg problem. Do the followers come before the comments and content or after? :)
- Paul Wade
The problem here on FF is that the majority of potential subscribers are in the USA so the site is most active when I'm in bed here in the UK! I think the key to getting subscribers is to engage with others' content and make sure you share interesting things yourself. That way you become a 'valued' member of the community. You have to put some 'work' in though.
- Martin Bryant
I'm an average, non-techy person.
- Nurse Katie
so are we begging you? watch for awhile and see if you like :) @rveep
- reed price
Thomas Hawk follows me and since you don't you obviously are behind the times :)
- Kevin Kuphal
Nathan: I "AND" the list, and followed.
- Larry
Getting that starting mass is an absolute nightmare. I think i hace about 9 followers and all but 4 of those are spammers. I haven't been that prolific so far but i'm trying and will hopefully trigger some interesting thoughts in your head
- Jamie Vidamour
Rather than begging for followers, I'd like to tell you all how I've learned to use Twitter to engage like minded aviation related folks in a time when my industry (business aviation) is under fire from all sides. Twitter has allowed me to build meaningful relationships with those that write about and/or care about the future of our industry. Follow @BizAv if you're interested in joining the conversation or check out http://tinyurl.com/GJetTwitter for other business aviation related Twitters.
- Mike Mikolay
I've actually noticed I've had a few more followers lately than I've had before. Hopefully they're getting some interesting tidbits from me.
- Paul Wade
audrey, i personally believe in quality over quantity. one needs numbers of course to get the message out (when you aren't giving of course. i.e., signal to noise) but I find no benefit in having 5000 followers if 4000 of them have nothing in common with me/my business/my interests etc.
- Ted Bradford II
@Chris - right, it was a little tounge-in-cheek, but that's the majority of subject matter you'll see crawl across my feed
- Nathan Chase
I don't beg for followers. If you want to follow there is a 98% chance I will follow back. I like to think I bring interesting news to the table.
- John Flynn
The whole idea of "followers" plays to our inherent need of not being alone or feeling important. Gaining followers is like gaining money. You find the excitement of gaining followers and once you are loaded with "followers" so what? It doesn't make you happier, doesn't make you more successful. What's 25 thousand followers if your conversation on twitter is about how many beers you are drinking on happy hour? I find that people who are very zealous about gaining followers have EMPTY conversations.
- Bo Lora
You should follow @jeremybogdan for thoughts on the latest gaming and tech/social media news, in addition to updates on the gaming podcast I run and daily observations. I think that wraps things up in a nice package, but honestly, I enjoy the conversations most. Really more "followers" would just make it possible to carry on conversation and meet people I might have never been able to talk to/meet otherwise.
- Jack Bogdan
Beg for followers, Robert? :(
- Mona Nomura
Every so often, the world changes, sometimes quickly,sometimes very slowly but sometimes unnoticeably fast. Change is constant and constantly changing. There is no timetable and you cannot predict or trend the unknown but you can change with it as quickly as it evolves. That's what my blog is about..its located at http://newnewstory.blogspot.com
- Iggy Kin
Ok...so I'm here and I absolutely want people to follow me, but why should I have to beg to be followed? I'm doing great work, just like the interview I did with you Robert, and have other cool guests slated to join me. Begging makes me feel dirty somehow. I'd rather have followers slowly work their way into my life than to have them show up en masse one day simply because I begged here. I'm with my pard. Ken. Begging? DO NOT LIKE.
- Sheryl
Mona: I'm looking for new people to follow and there's a lot of newbies here, so figured I'd help.
- Robert Scoble
I'll do it! I provide a weekly podcast for IT pros which provides interviews, views, and tech tips. You can listen to it here even. I also post self amusing thoughts and comments that are only funny and witty to me. Follow me and have a richer life :) If you are interesting I'll find you here too.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
After helping @scobleizer find a bike, Google thinks I pose "a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers": http://bit.ly/177PTK #TrueStory
- Walt Ruppar
I'm John Wright and I'm building web applications under the name Wright Labs (@wrightlabs). You should follow me if you want to be the first to know about new apps I've built or updates to existing ones.
- John Wright
Read 'Beg for followers' as 'Market yourself'.
- Kiran Patchigolla
Sheryl: sometimes you have to promote yourself. I used the word "beg" to get a conversation going.
- Robert Scoble
Kiran: right.
- Robert Scoble
If I'm followed by those who follow in huge numbers(e.g. @scobleizer), I'd like to be included in one of their "special" friend list or filter. It sucks to have your voice drowned out by the masses. I guess there's always DM. But that works only if the recipient is following you. OK, just follow me already :)
- Edmund Tay
I've already tried to get my current high profile followers engaged in a conversation here: http://friendfeed.com/shaynor... with my GAME which was actually going to provide a fun way for me to gather some usage data to elaborate on a point for further discussion here.....NO COMMENTS from my FF peeps!!!!!
- shayne catrett
also this can relate to the fresh blood tech bloggers discussion a while back
- Kashif Khan
I am @harscoat and this is a test ;) on the Scoble power!! - I am on friendfeed thanks to him to be honest and thanks to friendfeed & Brett Taylor feed I discovered SANTIGOLD (Lights Out in particular) and in the end this feed/twitter thing and collaboration led to value for my ears :) so this feed thing works for me
- Harscoat
Follow me because I'm just too awesome! :P But, in all seriousness if people think I'm interesting then they should follow me. I'm not going to beg for followers. They have to decide on their own if they want to follow me or not.
- Mathew™ one of a kind
I get followers when they see me post on topics they search for; I get the most interaction that way too. So maybe if one wants more followers, one should talk about stuff people care about :-) Other than that sometimes folks I actually know comment on my tweets.
- Emil Sit
Follow me for the occasional humorous comment and pretty photo. And maybe because you got curious, looked at my profile, and figured that, yeah, I'd like to follow that guy. (And I'll do the same for you.) PS: Nice way to kickstart newbies like me into following others.
- Andy Bold
Robert - promoting and begging strike me differently. VERY differently. Promoting myself is easy. I think I'm a fabulous podcaster, fabulous interviewer. I Would LIKE to interview YOU again and want you to let me know when you have something really cool to talk to about, ie Building 43. That's self promotion. Are you buying it? :)
- Sheryl
PLEASE follow me. My mom is the only one commenting on my stuff and it's making me look like a dweeb.
- Christina Henderson
Sheryl: I was already following you! :-)
- Robert Scoble
@chrisquick LOL, that made me laugh.
- Paul Wade
lol Christina. On another note, do not follow me, I cannot handle the responsibility.
- Christian Collins
Wow this feed has just started and already produced a wide variety of comments. Desperate for followers or power of FriendFeed ;-)
- Michiel Sikkes
Me @smohkim.. why? just to get a bit more than just regular tech news
- Sardar Mohkim Khan
I'm pretty new to FF, so I'm not sure my content is worth following. But I'm trying to learn socmedia while working on video game news at gamingangels.com. So, yeah. :)
- Elizabeth Parmeter
Yes Robert didn't mean beg literally, follow his example which is his first comment. He's really asking a for a concise answer to the question "Why should we follow you?"
- John Wright
I want people who are worth following back. I really could use some interesting thought provoking input.
- Mary Wehrle
Speaking of follower numbers, what's the minimum to shoot for before decent engagement can start to happen?
- Edmund Tay
Edmund: four.
- Robert Scoble
Robert you make me LAUGH! WTG! And to all my NEW followers, thanks :-)
- Sheryl
I follow back on Twitter @nencetti - to get followers I follow people and wait. (i guess that is sorta begging) to lose followers i tweet too much. I am starting to use FriendFeed, it grows on you, like a fungus...
- Mike Nencetti
Ha, funny Christina! I just jumped into the follow-a-thon here. I want everyone here to follow me because I want to learn from you and hope I share some knowledge to enlighten you some day :-)
- Jason Cronkhite
Robert: Is that based on the assumption that all 4 followers share a common interest in what you have to say or share?
- Edmund Tay
Edmund: yeah. But all you really need is one with other followers who also like what you have to say. The second I post a comment or "like" one of your items it gets shown to thousands of people.
- Robert Scoble
Please, please, please. Why? Because I'm begging.
- Willem (@wim66) ☠
I do hope we can get you along to a #tuttle the next time your in London. In the mean time feel free to follow me @robocallaghan
- Robert O'Callaghan
Robert: I'll be in London in early July!
- Robert Scoble
Willem: you link to cool applications. You should have both begged and explained that.
- Robert Scoble
Wow, that is fast!
- Willem (@wim66) ☠
Take a look at my current FF homepage and if any of the entries engage you on an emotional or intellectual level, then follow!
- Sam Grover
i am begging for followers here for two reasons. 1) my money was wasted in trying to get 19,000 followers in five days and the free snuggie 2) If I get each of my followers to donate one dime to me, i can easily afford the big green hands like scoble has, then EVERYONE would follow me.
- Ted Bradford II
You're already following me Robert - please, only follow me if you want good content. That's the secret to gaining quality followers. I do like to follow others with good content though.
- Jesse Stay
I started with this social networking thing because I miss discussions with fellow scientist when I was one. Not all conversations here are so "eggheaded" but engaging. With more followers I could start more conversations.
- Robert Hafer
samgrover anyone who puts Upcoming.org geeky events in here is good enough for me (like you do).
- Robert Scoble
I see this as a community service thread - no problemo rs :)
- mike "glemak" dunn
i lack focus. my links lack focus. i am the hybrid vigour in your friendlist.
- dromologue
No begging. Look at my feed and subscribe if you like it. It's a mixed bag of tech, marketing, politics, business, food and humor. http://beta.friendfeed.com/ajkohn
- AJ Kohn
Jesse: actually I've gotten quite a few good quality followers by doing crappy content. It's true. The stuff I think is good quality content often doesn't get people to follow, even the smart ones. Of course I learned that by using your tool! :-)
- Robert Scoble
dromologue: you linked to treehugger.com. You can't be half bad.
- Robert Scoble
i am in the same boat. I would love to have followers but i don't have time to focus in on one topic.
- Zach Scott
You should follow me because I enjoy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches http://preview.tinyurl.com/dxvejm
- Jon
Jon: my brother will probably enjoy talking to you then!
- Robert Scoble
I probably wont ever beat you or @techmeme. I'm a pretty nice guy though. Plus, I promise to only post a few pictures of cats a month- none of which with be tagged with Obama!
- metalerik
U will be giving us "lurkers" a voice.
- Frank Sant'Agata
You SHOULDN'T follow me (@supermoose37) because I don't want you to. Anyone currently following me, should stop right now. Follow me, and you'll regret it.
- Marcus Beagley
I can't imagine being interesting enough to follow.
- Peter Kruit
metalerik: I liked the Google Mars images you had up.
- Robert Scoble
Ooos, I forgot to beg and give a reason why I'm begging. So here goes: Follow me because I try to post and share items that I think will be of interest to some if not all of my followers. That and I will also follow you back :)
- Edmund Tay
Probably shouldn't follow me ... [ http://bit.ly/a8eqT ]
- Craig Brownell
Peter: you are running the iPhone 3.0 beta. That makes you interesting, didn't you know?
- Robert Scoble
Usually I'll browse the other FF'ers shares and discussions to get a feel for that person's share/insights. I tend to follow people who have an equal number of interesting ORIGINAL items/posts rather than just retweets/reshares. I admit, I'm one of those people who doesn't get a lot of Likes *sad* or Comments
- Glenn Batuyong
PBJ is pretty compelling, and dromlogue's hybrid vigor comment cracked me up. This thread is making me laugh, and keeping me busy!
- Kathy Fitch
I like pictures and stylish things and these you will find in my feed. I usually follow back and I comment too (I know!), especially if I don't have to be serious about it.
- Mark H
Follow @frodeste for tweets on tech, crm, project management and life :)
- Frode Stenstrøm
FF and others have given me the opportunity to engage with people from all over the world from my quaint little town
- Steve
Follow @keithbarrett - I've been in IT for 30 yrs and am just as excited by the possibilities today. I've been involved in all aspects of applying technology to business from software coding to infrastructure design/support. Past employers include DEC, IBM, Red Hat & Disney. Living though the computer->Internet->Social Media changes helps me see a bigger picture of how we got here & where we might go. Like @scobleizer I read TONs of news regularly and share the more interesting bits when he's late :)
- Keith Barrett
Robert: Ideally I like to do at least one of those a week :)
- Sam Grover
Steve: what little town? Update: looks like it's Billings Montana, right? Love that town!
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Good point.
- Peter Kruit
Lyons CO
- Steve
And for those that don't get it - Robert is creating significant content about the people he is engaging. This makes you more than a number or a bio. I should have said follow me because I'm not an SEO or marketer :)
- Keith Barrett
Well, boo. Why isn't the pop out page working for me?
- Kathy Fitch
Ah, there it went. Better!
- Kathy Fitch
Kathy: friendfeed is behaving a little slowly for me right now. I think they might be pushing out new code.
- Robert Scoble
Must be it, Robert--I like the fast and furious view best!
- Kathy Fitch
great exercise bro! and illustrates why i am selective about who I follow and who is allowed to follow.
- Ted Bradford II
please follow me, please please please
- Adrian
Makes sense for me to comment here, so that I can get Robert's attention when I need it in future. Plus I follow him anyway.
- Ashish Rangole
Adrian: I'm already following you. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I'm @thepuck. You should follow me for a mix of tech news, stuff on coding, social media, and writing, plus whatever fun stuff catches my fancy. I sift through tons of content each day and share and publicize the best of it (IMHO). I also have lots of awesome friends who you can meet through me. Thanks for the opportunity, Robert!
- Neal Jansons
You should follow me if you want to live a truly boring life vicariously thru me. :D Serious;y, I am the worlds most boring tech enthusiast.
- Gunny doesn't side-hug™
Robert: What are you favorite filters these days? :/
- Christian Collins
OK, on a more serious note, you should follow me (@supermoose37) if you are a fan of either "Transformers" OR "Doctor Who"
- Marcus Beagley
Christian: I have a filter that shows me all items with one like. That's my most used one.
- Robert Scoble
I won't beg for followers but if you are interested in social media, security technology, networking technology, politics, or economics I'm sure we would have alot to share together. I'm on twitter as @tsudo but prefer conversations on Friendfeed.
- Keith - @tsudo
Robert: Sounds like a fire hose!
- Christian Collins
Marcus--How about VR-5? Anyone remember that one?
- Kathy Fitch
When I'm not trying to corral my 2 little boys (4 & 1) I hop on FF to keep my sanity!!
- Kevin Whalen
Christian: it's not that bad, actually. I am building more and more filters, though, on companies in tech industry and terms I see get popular here.
- Robert Scoble
You should follow me because I know where the main cable is for the whole internet and have a saw. I also adore tech, don't own an iphone but would like a Segway. Hopefully enough said :)
- tech pops
If you don't follow me, how else are you going to know which Air Force 1's I like the best? This knowledge could come in handy in the future, you never know.
- Richard Lawler
"I also have lots of awesome friends who you can meet through me." - Gee I'd like to be able to say that someday! Can I meet some? :-)
- Keith Barrett
Kathy: Sorry, the only thing I watched with VR in the title was "VR Troopers"
- Marcus Beagley
Okey doke--now following tech pops, strictly for self-preservation, dontcha know.
- Kathy Fitch
I'm kuckoo for Co-co Puffs and have a few screws loose, so sort of like that box of chocolates: you just never know what you're gonna get tweet-wise (@tweric) or ff-wise. But, man, do I spell good.
- Eric Matas
I noticed some people are actually recommending people in this thread to follow. There's a room you can do that ;) http://beta.friendfeed.com/ff-subs... Although if you want to follow me - feel free I follow 11.6k people and have a river of noise following through constantly so I can find the latest goings on ;)
- Nicholas James
Sigh, it's hell being old. I also loved that short-lived horror dealie, "The Others" I have a tendency only to watch tv that all others apparently (and oh so wrongly) hate.
- Kathy Fitch
DeAnne: I'm following, though for the #nptech, alas not for the scifi!
- Eric Johnson
Follow me because I just came back to FF from a social media vacation, and I have just had time to read some really good (dead wood) media I want to put to good use in future comments and posts:)
- Thomas Bøhm
Robert, point well taken - I guess I'm still trying to figure out why I have gotten the followers I have then. I don't think I've ever begged for followers. Maybe my content is crappy? ;-) I guess most of my audience is probably SocialToo users, which may have something to do with it.
- Jesse Stay
Now I'm wishing it wouldn't default to top of page after every follow. How spoiled am I?
- Kathy Fitch
My little brother just signed up for Twitter (http://twitter.com/aaronmatas) and I'd love for legions of people to follow him just to scare the sh*# out of him...by showing him the POWER of the social web. Bru-ha-ha-ha-haaa. Oh yeah, he's a TV sports journalist, so he kinda needs to know. Thanks -- please tell others!
- Eric Matas
Follow me for tech info related to graphics, web programming, browsers, iPhones, and natural language processing. And, maybe I'll fill you in on my next big project :-)
- Charles Ying
Charles: your page is the most interesting I've seen yet (to me).
- Robert Scoble
Follow me for site feedback ideas (and thoughts about UI in general), programing advice (to come), an introduction to the game of Go (to come, in a separate feed), (re)shares of interesting and/or depressing political blog articles (note: I brand myself "moderate socialist" policitally, though I'm assuredly not opposed to meritocracy), and random philosophical musings.
- Karl Knechtel
Well, my knee-jerk reaction to "beg" lingo notwithstanding (you'd think my knee would learn to behave after all this time), this is a fun follow party. I'll be back later to see who I missed. (Because, here, you *can* come back later, which is awfully nice.)
- Kathy Fitch
Oh yeah also, you should follow me because I'm an application developer and ultimately I want to build what YOU want and what YOU will use. (and I need your feedback to do that :) )
- John Wright
Because I just started FF when the beta came, and needs a kick to get started :)
- Erik Gulliksen
I like to express and pass on info about: Tech, Flyfishing, Architecture and remodeling construction. I am a freelance Architect Draftsman in Wisconsin.
- Frank Sant'Agata
Robert: thanks!
- Charles Ying
I'm IT hitman working in The Bahamas. I tend to follow Foreign Policy/Defense Blogs and dabble in political satire.
- Adi
Frank: What areas of Tech do you tend to talk about most? Do you photograph Architecture too? You need some feeds into your FF my friend.
- Paul Wade
Though I don't post a lot of native FF entries, I like likes and comments as a way of filtering stuff. I'll share with you; you share with me. And I love FF's real time features, particularly when combined with live video.
- Tom Landini
I have a hard time begging for anything :-)
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
Thanks Paul I will update, I just stated FF
- Frank Sant'Agata
weedmonk: Wait, you're a hitman?
- Paul Wade
Ah, I'm a mom, so I'm used to the wide-eyed beg. Dogs and kids--there's some real smarts there that we could all learn from. Besides, this whole thread made me laugh out loud right at my keyboard more than I have in a long while.
- Kathy Fitch
beg is an odd thing. Yes - I want followers - not for the sense of feeling oddly popular - but like @scobleizer I like being able to search through massive amounts of data that users create, and without followers, i'm limited.
- Courtney Engle
<--cracking up. This couldn't possibly have been a less subjugating experience for anyone. The "beg" term got hackles up, but also grabbed perfect gobs of attention, so there you go. It's a fun and funny thing, and my bberry, for one, is all abuzz about it! (Humming a Temptations tune and smiling, here.)
- Kathy Fitch
Wow, amazed at the semantics debate over "beg". Report just in... all net oriented sarcasm/tongue-in-cheek/parody must come with obligatory semi-colon parenthesis to indicate jest (even if to a minor degree). ;-) Would much appreciate the follow Robert, I always enjoy your posts. As a consultant I work on finding simple solutions to complex problems... my tweets are all over the place.
- SAM
I have about 280 "hand picked" followers. That might not be all that impressive, but I have a quality stream at least.
- Rutger Blom
Rutger: I find that the best quality you can get is to stick to under 200 people you're following. I do that with Friendfeed's lists.
- Robert Scoble
Back so soon :-) The London #tuttle is on a friday at the moment 10-12 at the ica in London.
- Robert O'Callaghan
Because I only joined Ff because of Scobelizer, therefore he should have to watch me flounder around trying to do something unique.
- Gregg Le Blanc
1up Scott, Begging has the well deserved connotation of supplication. Hence, the semantics. I would like to find more people that are interested in the Semantic web. Wordpress hacks and plug-in development, Designers, Coders, Innovators that need Beta testers. Companies with products that I may be interested in. My interest's are becoming more diverse as a result of my participation here. TY
- Eric Logan
I talk about library stuff, volunteer and service stuff, social media stuff, and Drupal as a versatile platform. If you're interested in any of that, you'll be interested in me. I also like food and kids.
- Laura Norvig
I am sort of feeling like Oliver asking for more gruel, May I please have more followers sir, I promise if your not educated at least you will be entertained and amused.
- Kim Landwehr
Well, sure, but I'm thinking back to the days when the listserv was a main mode of discussion. The subscribers were a kind of built in audience that posters to the lists didn't really have to fight for (though list founders had some work to do)--the challenge (and the fun) was in engaging people *despite* not having a handpicked audience. Some self-selection because of list themes, of course, but the audience was there, and anyone could join. Some of the best discussions actually flowed from difference.
- Kathy Fitch
Because I want to become more involved and participate as a connector.
- Trish Ridgway
just need followers
- Bill Majkowski
Bill: followers are overrated. But I'm following you now.
- Robert Scoble
Are you testing whether there's a limit to the number of comments in FF? ;)
- Janek Mann
I'm trying to straddle journalism, tech and sports all at once (can you straddle three things, by the way?). Looking for ideas and feedback ... @jondenunzio
- Jon DeNunzio
Forget followers, I would like just ONE comment on my FF! (BTW, your already following me Robert)
- David
I have nothing for you to read of any importance just random thoughts.LOl just wanted to throw my two cents in for what it is worth.
- stan fogo
Follow me if you like games and insights about game studies. I'm a game designer studying how to use game design to improve the experience of web applications. @kurai
- Federico [Kurai]
Not sure there are any limits on number of comments in a thread. Ffundercats used Friendfeed as live chat while recording an episode and got over 1500 http://beta.friendfeed.com/ffunder...
- Tom Landini
David - you should import more things then just Twitter then ;)
- Nicholas James
I drink http://friendfeed.com/public for dinner.
- Steve "Daddy do it!" Lacy
Best advice to those perusing this thread who are new to FriendFeed? Follow these folks: http://ffholic.com/Users...
- Nathan Chase
Oh, and today's my birthday, so follow me!
- Steve "Daddy do it!" Lacy
Someone should follow because of an affinity for either the subject matter, interests, or attitude someone else shows in other comments. I don't see it as a need, so much as a desire for company, interested in similar pursuits but different viewpoints and perspectives to contribute. I have been in tech for 30 plus years, yet have published my poems & fiction for just as long. I always have an articulate opinion and love to chat. I don't have as much time as I'd like 2 come to FF to engage with others.
- Phil Boiarski
My views are different than everyone else’s, that is the only good reason to follow anyone at all.
- John D Reasor
Another good reason to follow me: I don't use Facebook. How 'bout that?
- Steve "Daddy do it!" Lacy
Hi, i'm a french student in management. I'm mostly interested in IT, media, newspaper crisis and other stuffs (sometimes in french :s). I intend to be more and more active on FF in the future, so one day to another, you might have to follow me. Why wait ? :P
- Stanislas Jourdan
Interesting. I'm not sure that I'm a high contributor. I follow to feed on information. In doing so, I find people to engage.
- Valley
OK, I'm throwing my hat in. I've started contributing by linking all my accounts, and finally having a reason to use the share feature of Google Reader. It's awesome to add my voice to the conversation. But after a while, when none of my posts get any likes or comments, it can feel like you have to be super popular to get in on this. I'm a relatively new user, but it would be nice to have a few more followers at least.
- Matthew
beg? seriously? I'd rather not engage people If it requires begging. Well I see you used "beg" to spur engagement.. But I still don't like the word even if it resulted in the desired effect. I guess I'm just not that desirous of conversation simply for the sake of it but rather to expand my thought processes and to alleviate my biases
- Bill Rawlinson
Cuz I'm the last and newest person to post a comment here. Bananers.
- Harry Wolff
I tell it as it is. ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
This reminds me of back when torrents first came out and I'd post stuff to see if anyone would download it. We're throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if any sticks. Friendfeed is a useful addiction.
- Matthew
LOL! Amazing how many people take offense to the words "beg" and "need" -I "need" more people to engage my thoughts. (What a great way of putting that) It would be nice if more people would see the things I post and comment on so that I would get out more from this little (but expanding) corner of FriendFeed. I have plenty to say, but only a handful of active people to critique it. Tech, SM, Dogs, humor. #funhashtags. Please help Robert, Louis and Jesse take a break from me ;) Introduce me to your friends!
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I am far less interesting than @scobleizer... I am an early adopter with a private-beta-testing-program addiction. I offer loads of insight to developers, designers (and users at large alike) on this new stuff. I'm the one you want testing your app, service, nifty super cool product of the now. Follow me pretty please with microchips on top, I'm @tinym
- t i n y m
I don't want more followers, I want more engagement from existing followers. More subscribers is great and all - but if they're not going to engage, it doesn't excite me at all.
- Anthony Citrano
Nice idea! I'm not one to beg, but seeing as I could do with some more engaging followers, this is a bit of an experiment. Follow @daveinthecloud for predominantly tech, Apple and science-based updates.
- Dave
I use FriendFeed more to read interesting things I wouldn't normally see. I'm not always around and I don't always participate. Does that make me a bad person? (@elroy)
- elroy
Fun post! Lots of cool people to follow. Marketing and tech geek who happens to make wine in her basement. @bsmntbootlegger
- Karrie Sullivan
An impressive list of comments already. And I have found a few interesting people to follow here already. I guess it is all about "give and take".
- Mike Hellers
Ok, I'll bite: Why should you follow me? Because I post about science, math, music, programming and geek stuff with wit, style and panache.
- Chris Taylor
lol! I was making wine in my backpack on my bike trip this summer :)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Follow me. Help make media history by reaching the first 10 million follows. ... Well I guess that won't work anymore.
- Keith Barrett
Mike: same here
- Frank Sant'Agata
There is a lot of talk in the comments about "audience", "SEO" & the "need" for followers, this all appears very $ orientated to me, maybe someone "influential" should start a conversation along the lines of "how can I make you happy on friendfeed"?
- William
if you are a geek into getting stories related to social media, geeky stories, pics, videos, tech related stuff, like bacon or lego or star wars. you will probably like my stuff. check it out....and hope to see you soon!
- (jeff)isageek
Unless you like NSFW stuff and LOLCats stuff, really nothing to see with following me. :P
- Christian (Simply X)
I'm game for more followers. I run research boats for a living and sometimes like to blog about that, my bad ass dog Jake (Silky Terrier) and other things I find interesting...tech, cool photos, hikes, etc...on my personal Posterous blog. I've been active on twitter for quite awhile but am fairly new to Friend Feed. I get a real kick out of most members of the Gillmor Gang and like following their conversations...maybe I'll start to engage more.
- Scott Schanke
William: I think ur missing the point, it's about being new to ff and having a voice.
- Frank Sant'Agata
Praise @Scoble for once again "starting" a conversation
- William
For me, the whole tech deal has always been a love of the game issue. It's like writing, that way, and teaching, too. Interesting how perspectives differ. I just thought of this as fun, and as an opportunity to learn and connect. Also, my inner English prof always thinks of "audience" as a matter of rhetoric first. A thing like this, for instance http://tinyurl.com/cxkzpo is its own reward: great chance to meet people, and it made me *really* hungry.
- Kathy Fitch
Lindsey - surely meeting more serial killers is not the answer. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
See, there? Lindsey not only spells her name correctly, but also likes horror! Lindsey, I spent quite a few years teaching horror film! (The *best* students in those classes, oh my gosh--such an interesting mix.)
- Kathy Fitch
Dying (editorial aside: ah, that's strictly metaphorical) laughing, here.
- Kathy Fitch
I just subscribed to everyone in this thread that I wasn't already subscribed to. Why? I love participation. People commenting here participate.
- Thomas Hawk
Good plan Thomas I think I will do the same.
- Brian Sullivan
Hi. I'm Simon, i post a mashup of stuff from all sorts or genres. Photo's, art, tech, videos, games. I'm a bit of a 'i like everything' kind of guy. I try to get in on lots on convo's, and i never really leave FF, sometimes i just sit here idle and watch the world pass me by :)
- Simon Wicks
"That's an example of what I'd like you to do. I will follow anyone who answers on this thread" is that a promise robert ? :)
- goutham
that are some interesting question to address here...will people be more likely to get into friendfeed if more people follow them? or are people more keen on just sharing their thoughts and feelings with a select few? should there be a way to algorithmically increase the visibility of a post ? is that "fair" ?
- goutham
You should follow Pax Stereo Tv (www.paxstereo.tv) because we represent something NEW and DIFFERENT! While we lack the full sophistication of a traditional network, our "NeoUrban Internet Television" network is at least original and edgy, and we are streaming live Monday through Thursday every week! All this with only 3 full time staff! We represent YOU, the new breed! We are not perfect, but we keep it coming, and we are getting better. Peace. - Mario Hemsley CEO
- Pax Stereo Tv
What's the easiest way to go through and follow everyone here? I don't really have to go down the list one by one do I? I started to but thought there must be an easier way...
- Scott Schanke
Initiatives to free the world economy in ways that benefit the poor @openworld
- Mark Frazier
Scott: I had to add each one of my 14,377 subscriptions by hand, so so do you. Sorry, there isn't a way to "follow all" here. Which is a good thing, in my view.
- Robert Scoble
goutham: I am following everyone who has participated with a comment in this thread. Scott: you can see if you are following someone already by looking at the little icon to the left of their comment. If you are already following them, it'll be bluish. If you aren't, it'll be white.
- Robert Scoble
always be closing mario ;)
- mike "glemak" dunn
Ok thanks Robert...I'm just a bit frustrated that it keeps collapsing the conversation after each follow and therefore I have to find where the hell I left off...I'm plodding along though.
- Scott Schanke
Scott: I have this thread running in a popup Window. Here's how to do that. First, open this item up into its own Window by clicking here: http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... Then click the time stamp (it says "5 hours ago" right now) and then it'll open up its own little Window. That makes it "live" and like a chat room. Scroll to the bottom and watch new items pop in.
- Robert Scoble
I follow smart, funny people, and I post/pass along all kinds of stuff. I never know what I'll come across next, anything from the effects of cancer treatment on IQ scores, to vintage cocktails, to news on weird fiction writers, to updates on the latest and greatest zombie games, to random questions and ideas that occur to me in the wee hours. I'm always looking for posts that have me saying, "Hmmmm, that's interesting...and here's why..."
- Heather
I'm not sure begging for followers is in our self interest, Robert. I find that the people who hawk themselves loudest aren't the people I make the best connection with. And it's that connection that matters whether it's a personal or professional.
- Susan Reynolds
Not sure if I need any followers, but I think people follow me because I'm so freakin awesome. Oh, you haven't heard of me? Find me on The Google. :)
- Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah
Oooooo.. Choose me. Choose me. Choose me. Oh wait. You already follow me. But anyone else is welcome to read my nonsense about whatever is on my mind. Lately - dissertation, teaching chemistry, thinking about some technology, and just fun family items (mainly my dog)
- LPH™ and his dog P™
i vote for LPH!
- michael sean wright
Susan: that's fair. But in friendfeed you can put people into lists. So you can subscribe to all the "beggers" and put them into "begged for follow" list. That way it won't mess up your other followers.
- Robert Scoble
LOL nicefishfilms ..
- LPH™ and his dog P™
nicefishfilms: I'm already following LPH. Weird, I've met both him and you in real life, too!
- Robert Scoble
I'd rather people follow me because I said something or posted something interesting.
- CAJ, somewhere else
Rahsheen: if you are on "the Google" then you MUST be awesome! I'm on "the Google" too. Search for "Robert." :-)
- Robert Scoble
Yep - I'm being followed - (looking behind me) - wait - why are you always in front of me then Robert?
- LPH™ and his dog P™
Alan: you must have posted something interesting, because I'm following you. Either that or I thought you were that country singer! :-)
- Robert Scoble
LPH: you actually passed chemistry on the first try. I did not. ;-)
- Robert Scoble
Any interest in visiting Alaska? Find out why you should plan a trip to Fairbanks @insidealaska
- Inside Alaska
Robert: You're the first to mention it, actually. I wondered if the same thing was happening on Twitter. ;)
- CAJ, somewhere else
Inside Alaska: that's always been one of my life-long dreams. Interesting, I'm noticing more marketers setting up shop in friendfeed. Next come the celebrities! Alan: heh, probably!
- Robert Scoble
Here's why people follow me: http://beta.friendfeed.com/glenc...
- Mistletoe Glen
this thread is officially to long to follow on an iphone
- mike "glemak" dunn
mike: it's too long to follow on a 24-inch Apple display, too! :-)
- Robert Scoble
We are always striving to be the best. @abounding
- Abounding Media
Thanks for the "Hot Tip" Robert!! Much easier.
- Scott Schanke
Follow me for posts about social media, the publishing industry, online communities, funny pictures, and my coffee addiction. Oh, and babies. I run a baby site and have a baby so...expect some babies. I also enjoy swearing so there may be some of that.
- Kate
Follow me (@abbashaiderali) if you like a mix of tech, finance, cars, random, and personal content. Variety keeps me interested & you're cut from the same cloth, we'll get along just fine :)
- Abbas Haider Ali
You can't be shy. You need to have a voice and use it.
- Russ Jackson
I promote the issues that are important to those I follow. But follow me because I took the time to read through ALL of these responses... :) @rbucich
- Rick Bucich
I dunno about begging but new followers are always nice
- Angela P.
I will have to say, I found several new people this way, so thanks Robert. I know I need to get better at finding more people myself, a la the FFundercats podcast Louis Gray discussion.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
you better be following me .. Im a fireman and I haz an axe ..
- johnpiercy
I don't want 'followers' - vanity is my least favourite sin. I want stimulating conversations & interesting stuff to read/watch/etc.
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
I'm @ryandadey and I love the internet and would like to be more engaged with people who feel the same. I like to share through FriendFeed and Twitter interesting tech, science and environment articles from Google Reader, as well some of my own thoughts. It would be more fun if I knew people were seeing my stream!
- Ryan Dadey
I'm just this guy whose life has been revolutionized by the social web. I'm no "guru" or "expert," but because I live here so much, many people and even companies and organizations have asked me to guide them into this landscape, a responsibility that both scares and energizes me. Because of that, I seek to share, give, and help anywhere possible. Trying to make tons of connections; if you want to be one, thanks!
- Mark Traphagen
You should follow me so you can point out where I could use some help on things, because I'm an interesting person, and because you like a bit of the crazy in the folks you follow. I'm Chris Charabaruk and I approve this beg for readers. http://beta.friendfeed.com/coldaci... http://coldacid.net http://twitter.com/coldacid
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Beg, droool, beg :)
- Susan Beebe
Martin Bryant is right - now that the US is asleep, this thread has died down. Onward Europe, Middle-east, Asia ! :)
- Ahsan Ali aka. Slick
Thanks for the offer to follow us commenters Robert. I subscribe to all friendfeeders who leave comments as well. It's a great way to get to the heart of who's really participating in the trenches here on FF. BTW about me.. I started writing and acting when I was seven. I'm a musician/singer/songwriter and freelance writer/journo. I help others use the web to build an audience for their passion.
- Jesse Newhart
hmm, so it is quiet when the US are offline! Too bad, I'd love some more people to follow, be followed and have conversations with from the rest of the sphere. Widen the horizon.
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
nice idea - unfortunately friendfeed gets unreadable with so much comments. btw: i'm friendfeeding mainly about technology, consulting, personal productivity, gtd...
- Alexander Benker
You should follow me because I tend to find interesting programming articles on the topics of: Django, Python, key-value stores, and more.
- Eric Florenzano
I don't care if people follow me or not. I've been writing online (Usenet) since 1989, before the web, but Google's index only seems to go back to 1992. Most of my stuff isn't even on my blog, it's in email lists and discussion threads such as http://tinyurl.com/df5kc2 and http://tinyurl.com/3gfqzj (better than anything I've written here). A sample will give you some idea: "By what...
more...
- Victor Panlilio
I like talking to people and having conversations. It's no fun being on the social web if I'm not engaging anybody, and I need followers and people to follow to do that.
- Jon, the Chilled Beartato
No question about it, people should at least attempt to read new and different drummers daily because following the followed will always leave you in the follower camp. They laughed at Bob Dylan, they laughed at Gary Vaynerchuck, where are *they* now?
- randulo
I tend to follow the people that interact with me on my imported items, if I am not already following you I apologies. Just drop me a DM and I will happily subscribe to your feed :)
- Joe Dawson
That's a tough one, Joe -- you can only DM folks who have subscribed to you...
- Eric Johnson
I don't give a crap about the other comments here - I need to make sure I have the Scobles following me. I mean, I think they are already. But still. Gotta cover my bases. As to WHY anyone should follow me: I like to think I take a humorous outlook on things, and can make you giggle at least once per day. Snark is my tool. Also, I'm earnest and naive, and I'll treat you with the respect you expect and deserve from the Internet. Also, cats flushing toilets: http://bit.ly/2Lx2w
- Mike Nayyar
A retail designer by day (mainly customer experiences for consumer electronics shoppers) and a geek by night. If you want to brainstorm about how you'd like to shop and find cool new products, I'd love to hear from you.
- Jason Goldberg
Hi, @cantor there, i'm an It Systems Specialist and a student (Computer Engineering in Pisa). I think you can follow me because i have ideas and opinions and i want to express them, i like to find & share and I'll do the best in "extreme multitasking mode" :P.
- CantorJF
follow me because scoble told me to beg =P
- Zafarali
@robbell You should follow me because you lack the motivation to follow more inspiring individuals :)
- Rob Bell
I just started on FF and find it very interesting because of the focus on interaction arround subjects... FB is mostly talk about nothing, and I'm the only one in my friend group posting articles that interest me. Follow if u like... that will kindda help out on the interaction part!
- Kevin Nordmand
Over 280 comments. Advantage of FriendFeed. Nice. Follow me for some interesting stuff online and offline. Geeky and non-geeky
- Kannan
I am @alexisbellido and you should follow me to find more about teleworking, the Web and online businesses. I recently started using social media to support good causes and make your opinion matter. Currently supporting fight against hemophilia
- Alexis Bellido
People should follow other people because something is said that rings true. Not because someone BEGS for it. Please don't take this comment as an invitation to follow me, thanks.
- Vincent van Wylick
@Vincent: Well said. Truth is like gravity: you can pretend it doesn't exist, but you can't ultimately escape from it.
- Victor Panlilio
cool self help group here! social media anonymous! :D
- Dieter Schwarz
Great idea Robert :)
- Zee.
Nearing 300 comments, the Scoble Effect indeed. Is that FF comment raffle over by the way?
- Adi
For me at least, it's not as important that you follow me as it is that I follow you. You are very likely not to be interested in the stuff in my feed (and that's ok with me, please don't follow me unless you really find my crap, interesting), but you might like me commenting in your threads, which is where I get the most enjoyment from friendfeed..in the conversations on other people's posts. I am not that good of a conversation starter, but I am very good at jumping in when someone else does the starting.
- April Russo (app103)
Follow me because I find unique interesting content before most people, I read allot and am subscribed to allot of popular and interesting feeds not many people know about!
- Kyle Weller
Most of my feed activity revolves around various creative, social, and mobile technologies. Usually my own ideas and experiences with my own projects, and not so much link sharing. I like to think of myself as a quality over quantity kind of guy, so I won't overload your stream. I plan on hiking the Appalachian Trail next year and documenting it on the web as I go, so that should be interesting. I'm 5'9'' and I weigh... wait... what is this for again?
- Daniel Sims
I often hear I am hard to follow. Maybe it's the Dutch. Maybe my wandering spirit.
- Ruud van Wijngaarden
Ruud: That's why I don't twitter in Dutch. In fact we should just all talk English ;)
- Peter Kruit
Well I already follow the green guy (Scobelizer) on Twitter and FriendFeed and he follows me. But since I'm just an average guy, working in the Nonprofit field, I've found it a bit difficult to acquire followers on FriendFeed (not nearly as difficult on Twitter). So if anyone is interested in following someone who shares an eclectic mix of thoughts and interests, please feel free.
- John A. Taylor
It does feel good to have activity on your feed. Makes me feel like someone is listening to me.
- Christian Burns
I'm just getting started with friendfeed and already find the discussions great. I'm looking forward to being able to contribute some of my own thoughts to the conversations. After all, there are a lot of great things happening based off the idea of a person and the energy of a group.
- John Spyers
I'd love to connect with more marketers here on FriendFeed - not just social media types, but business and marketing strategy peoples... Small business owners would be great, too.
- Dennis O'Neil
I don't beg either, but since you asked...I'm good for some silliness, the occasional deep thought, encouragement of discussion of any kind (mostly political), and a good song or two. I'd like some musicians and poets to get on board as well.
- Helen Sventitsky
I like art, music, 3D, electric guitar, analgog synths, puppets, making stuff, my family, metaplace. I blog about artsy process and put up sweet flickr images.
- sergiooo
I have 9 followers, one is Robert, but virtually no discussion. I'm one of the few people on FF that works with the government, works in a non-IT startup, and will recommend great economics and sustainability items.
- Chris Stevenson
I just don't buy it yet. There is still way too much noise, and I'm not one of those guys with the time to go through posts with 300 (mostly uninteresting) comments. I have to filter extensively to get just a simdgeon of the interesting articles I pull off of GReader with Feedly and comments from the blogs themselves. Friendfeed would be great with Real Life connections, but they are all on Facebook. Friendfeed has a major uphill battle ahead of them, despite their superior interface and technology.
- Phil Ashman
FF is a good twitter client though..;)...
- Phil Ashman
Begging time. Follow me and SherylBreuker here (@kencamp & @SherylBreuker on Twitter. Please follow us and check this post Sheryl & Ken: Project Denmark (for 48 hours) #48hoursindk at http://stardustglobalventures.com/2009... We'll take you on the road to Denmark via social media. Help us win!
- Ken Camp
Great thread! Found some goodies in here (and some crazies)
- Daniel Morgan
Hey, I'm in. You go, Robert!
- John Gerstner
Because no matter who you are, it takes followers to get followers. You have to start somewhere...
- GeekDads.TV
You hungry?
- Myrna
Arrington and I disagree on future http://m.kyte.tv/ch...
Cedric Chee, John Downey, Dadah and 78 other people liked this
word up.
- john erik metcalf
I'm writing a post about this. Arrington believes that Twitter has won and that this is a winner take all market (the microblogging world, that is). I explain why this game has only just started.
- Robert Scoble
Gillmor Gang:http://gillmorgang.techcrunch.com/2009... Arrington's points here have me disagreeing with him.
- Robert Scoble
Re: Arrington et al http://www.zefrank.com/theshow...
- Matthew DeVries
Agree a lot...want will be needed is to have the babble of all real-time web information being filtered by a core set of people that I trust...I need a service that says..."from all the noise that is out there right now..the people that you trust think the following is important...the following is funny...the following is bunk etc...
- Mike Aikins
if you can't dominate the market, redefine it.
- MikeAmundsen
The majority of the "big bloggers" that I've read over the past week (esp re: FF beta) I think that most of these guy have got the whole thing wrong. The tech market is never a "winner take all" thing. It a winner takes the current level, but then we bring it all up to the next level There was IBM, then Mircosoft, then Google, now (Twitter, FB, FF?) -But what's after that? And like Microsoft grew from the relationship w/IBM who grows from this market?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Mike, can't you do that now: e.g. friends:justinlong likes:20 or some such?
- Justin Long
I agree Robert. The argument Arrington is proposing is similar to the search engine wars of the mid-90s, with prognosticators stating that Altavista was the search engine.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
I honestly can't remember the last time I heard anybody agree with anything Michael Arrington said. He seems to be quite out of touch with the "community" and his credibility / level of influence are on a steady decline.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
Nicholas, I wouldn't count him out yet. For me personally his credibility / level of influence is rebounding. And it doesn't matter so much if his opinion is wrong. A-listers don't need to be right from the start. They just need to start conversations.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: Arrington once told me he's an entertainer. As long as everyone is paying attention to him he's going to do just fine.
- Robert Scoble
While I started out in micro-blogging on Twitter and also found it a great service during Australia's recent bushfires for volunteering, I wouldn't call it the be-all-and-end-all. After all, one period of unexpected downtime on twitter had me looking at the new beta here on FF. And this morning, I'm even looking at jaiku and identi.ca. Who says Twitter's won?
- George Hall (Australia)
I stopped paying attention to Arrington last year, but I'm starting to pay attention again now. Something good happened in Hawaii.
- Bruce Lewis
we all here?
- Nick
Nick, I'm here.
- Robert Scoble
Ah. Peace and quiet.
- Andrew Fowler
That picture is priceless.
- Pat Hawks
well hi, then. I don't think ppl will move to ff the same way they didn't pick up on pownce, which (a year ago) was (already) better than twitter in terms of feature-set — it had photos, content, an air app, etc.
- Nick
the key for the survival of sites like Friendfeed is not try to compete with Twitter, but to do things that Twitter doesn't. This is not a winner take all situation.
- Kim Landwehr
sorry, i missed that (on kyte). how do you use office w/ google docs?
- Nick
Nick: if someone sends a Word Doc to my Gmail address I can open it up in Google Docs.
- Robert Scoble
John: sounds a lot like Twitter/friendfeed, huh?
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Unless its a .docx format....?
- Justin Long
I'm sure the issue for FF isn't search. Search isn't the first reason for users to get their friends in a specific service. People go to Twitter because Twitter is the place to go. People went to Hotmail because others were on Hotmail. Now, and only now, people realize that Gmail is better. Unfortunately, it took years for Gmail to emerge. I guess people will learn how to use the real time web on Twitter and 5 years later, they try to optimize their usage with FF. Years.
- Jérôme Flipo
Justin: probably not, but those should be even easier for Google to read.
- Robert Scoble
Wouldn't you think people would go where the majority of their friends are? I'm kind of divided between FB and Twitter. I wish more of my friends used FF but...
- Justin Long
Robert: 1) I agree totally w/ twitter being an entirely useless way of finding ppl of value — ie it's good for following existing celebrities, and may even be O.K. for finding local randomers, but no good for finding services of value (those most likely to advertise in a highly targeted online setting!) 2) I take ALL my school notes on gdocs and i wish i could mass export just to be safe
- Nick
Jerome: right. But now friendfeed will be the place to go. Why? Because I can send you a link to something of great value.
- Robert Scoble
If I look at my geeky friends, they all try to "manage" Twitter, and still refuse to get lost on FF (the Twitter for "advanced" users).
- Jérôme Flipo
Jerome: two years ago all my friends told me that Twitter was the lamest thing they'd ever seen.
- Robert Scoble
Then they all shifted when more of their friends got onto it.
- Robert Scoble
See, that's what I think: the center of gravity isn't features, but friends. You have to have people in order to have substantive conversations. You go where you have a preexisting pool of sharers.
- Justin Long
Unless you have enough "pull" to be able to go into a new service and bring a bunch of people with you... like Scoble...?
- Justin Long
Robert: so they should have left Hotmail for Gmail once they knew Gmail had big storage, good search, threads, etc. My friends and family all know that Gmail is better, but making the change is psychologically hard. Now, the problem in social networks is that leaving Twitter or adopting FF means you've to move your friends with you. That's not the case for webmail and that's why I'm concerned about FF's future. People may admit that FF is better, but it will take years before they move.
- Jérôme Flipo
Scoble: do you think it is meaningful to compare the live feed on YOUR account to that of the average user? I dont think ANYONE else has numbers similar to yours in terms of updates/minute (or even /second)
- Nick
Wish there was a way to better integrate Twitter's stream into Friendfeed... so that you could see both streams and update them... that would make it easier to migrate to FF! Maybe so you could see your twitter stream but no one else could unless you happened to comment on something or like it??
- Justin Long
Jerome: right. This is why Twitter has won. The first inning of this game.
- Robert Scoble
Nick: I used to be the only one following 1,000 people on Twitter and everyone made fun of me. Now that is a common thing to see.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: but Twitter is your friends' first Twitter-like service. People are still learning how to use it. I'm sure FF may be the next winner, but in years. And in months, Twitter will probably have launch likes and comments. Then, what would be FF's raison d'être? Why do you think you'll want to stay on FF? You've already said that you go where your audience is...
- Jérôme Flipo
I didn't realize how bad Twitter was at searching until recently. That's why I've migrated to FriendFeed as well. The 140-character message is similar to the traditional Unix bias toward flat files. It works for simple uses, but if you need metadata, you have to use more elaborate methods. FriendFeed is analogous to a relational database.
- David Delony
Jerome it took Twitter three years to get to 20 million and be considered a "mainstream success."
- Robert Scoble
FriendFeed has a character limit, too. It's just more than 140 is all. I would have predicted the "Disqus" and "Intense Debate" type service would be dominating the borader conversation by now... I would have been wrong.
- Matt Shaulis
Matt: metadata on friendfeed does NOT take away from friendfeed's size, though. On Twitter typing "RT: " takes away four characters and typing tags takes away even more.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: It's good for everyone though. It prevents rambling, hyperbole, and bloat. It has not prevented text messaging from becoming a global craze...
- Matt Shaulis
Why is Twitter a mainstream success? Because of how it was used in certain cases and what sort of publicity it got by those cases. Mumbai, the Hudson River plane, Australian bushfires. FriendFeed can get the same sort of thing, all it needs is imaginitive use of FriendFeed capabilities in a crunch. The added bonuse of aggregation greatly enhances its use in such cases, too. Do it properly, Friendfeed will hold its own.
- George Hall (Australia)
What takes more time and resource: implement FF's features in Twitter or gain Twitter's number of users? I love FF, but without a big promotion push from its community, I fear that FF will never go mainstream.
- Jérôme Flipo
George: But FriendFeed lacks a cute name meaning the "bubble headed bleach blondes" will not like saying in on the air. ;) hehehe
- Matt Shaulis
Jerome: I guarantee that in two years (Twitter is two years older than friendfeed) we'll be talking about friendfeed and not Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
I agree something like Friendfeed will be more interesting, certainly.
- Dominick Brady
what makes twitter a mainstream succes is the cases that goerge mentions PLUS the mobile aspect FF weill never get there until I can have it on EVERY mobile devices
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
How boring is it to say "I posted a FriendFeed message" versus "I Tweeted" .... Come on... it might sound silly, but it's marketing 101. The media and the glitterati will not adopt FriendFeed because it's not "fun" to talk about. (Not to mention, it is confusing to average people and will only get moreso.)
- Matt Shaulis
It's like no one watched the film in my link. You'd all understand Arrington if you did, and we wouldn't have to have a giant ass thread to explore it.
- Matthew DeVries
guruvan: what if every mobile device becomes a clone of the iPhone? That's where it's headed.
- Robert Scoble
I tend to agree. I am already really into this new version- even being in beta.
- Chris Parton
Matt, all its missing is a cute little mascot. The name's good enough...and cute enough...but it needs something visual. Mascot, visually identifiable immediately. Something that stands out in the minds of a bubble-headed bleach blond. Hmm, do bleach-blonds HAVE minds?
- George Hall (Australia)
Matt: fair enough. Twitter has a fun attitude.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: don't you think there's going to be legacy TXT for a while though?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
WOW, scoble. that's a bold statement. i have a hard time believing that. they just dont have the brand equity
- john erik metcalf
but yes the clone of the iphone is for real
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
George: yes yes yes.. the mascot too.. all the way. Great point as well.
- Matt Shaulis
John: so did MySpace two years ago.
- Robert Scoble
twitter is becoming a household name.
- john erik metcalf
@Matt and George. Marketing is FF problem right now. Media coverage, for sure, name maybe.
- Jérôme Flipo
John: so was MySpace two years ago. Twitter is only used by 10 to 20 million. Facebook is 200 million. If Twitter's success means anything then it shouldn't even exist.
- Robert Scoble
Medai coverage + Name + Mascot + Etc. == Marketing
- Matt Shaulis
Matt: Financial Times is writing about friendfeed on Monday. And so it starts.
- Robert Scoble
friendfeed could easily become a household name too if there were 50 different clients to meet everyone's different wants and needs for friendfeed
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: friendfeed is simplifying its API to get more people to be able to write for it. Twitter's API is so simple even I could write an app for it. Friendfeed's API is far more complex.
- Robert Scoble
Even google figured out android needed a visual mascot. It's worked, too, for linux, having Tux the penguin. Twitter has the bird and the fail whale. At the moment, we have the incredible Scoble, but due to similarities with the Hulk, we have copyright and trademark issues there. Other suggestions?
- George Hall (Australia)
Robert: LOL @ Financial times.... hehehe... I suppose it is a start... but it's no Tonight Show with Jay Leno. :-D
- Matt Shaulis
Ellen and Jay talked about Twitter for a good 2.5 minutes
- Matt Shaulis
Matt: In a year Ellen and Jay will need to talk about something else.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: my gut tells me that if that is true, it won't be FF. It will be something newer. But yes... Google will soon buy Twitter which means it is getting shelved and we will all have to move on.
- Matt Shaulis
The clip, look at the clip, all will be answered in the clip all will be answered in the clip. When you hear "Yellow swim trunks" think "Arrington" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew broke FF.
- Rochelle
Speaking of third-party stuff and API's, the iphone clients for Friendfeed need some work. Too much crashing in motherfeed and and Nambu
- George Hall (Australia)
Robert: agreed re: twitter api simplicity...I think I could do it too. Eager to see easier ff api and more clients esp mobile ones....then I can get tons of people to take it everywhere they go....then people will really be engrossed in their phones walking thru traffic ;)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Matt: there will probably be something new that +I+ will be onto, but I usually look for the newest and best way to do something.
- Robert Scoble
Well, Jive.ly's certainly not it!
- Chris Parton
Chris: when I see it I'll probably talk about it here all day long and get everyone pissed at me. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Facebook seems to be doing alright without a cute name or mascot.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: so does Microsoft and Google and Amazon.
- Robert Scoble
And Seesmic seems to fail with a good name AND a cute ratoon :)
- Jérôme Flipo
You sure Microsoft's success isn't because of Clippy? :-)
- Bruce Lewis
And remember Microsoft's Windows emblem? That's practically a mascot/trademark instantly identifying it
- George Hall (Australia)
Google has also its Clippy, it was for Google Docs, to make it mainstream :D http://blogoscoped.com/archive...
- Jérôme Flipo
I try to jump out on Seesmic every now and then; I want to get into the video interaction but it always seems like the same 15 people are out there. Like a big video conference on odd topics
- Lou Paglia
seesmic is certainly trying to branch out and make more interaction happen
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
winners be damned this is good discussion, but while I really like FF twitter has a considerable league up on general cache and public sphere already. General adoption is going to be that much more challenging for every platform just from social app fatigue
- Patrick Boegel
Hey, i started on Seesmic this week...it's actually quite good. I like it more than Tweetdeck. It's only let down in one area, the userlists. As groupings, they're too static. Tweetdeck lets grouped friends be a column that's actively updated. Other than that, it's superior to Tweetdeck.
- George Hall (Australia)
Patrick: thats actually why I like FF so much...as I get better and better at it it relieves the fatigue by aggregating my content and republishing it for me
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
George: I am a huge fan of peoplebrowsr ....way more powerful than anything I've used ....better than tweetdeck for sure
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: I agree, for me I like the aggregation. But the less voracious social app users? We will see
- Patrick Boegel
I think the aggregation makes people more voracious -especially when they see how it reposts to where THEIR friends are. If friendfeed were to be able to repost stuff to Facebook as well as twitter it would be a SMASH hit
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I think that, as I grow more and more into social apps, FF grows at a comfortable pace with me. But that's just me +shrug+
- Chris Parton
Chris: good point...I think people are generally comfortable with the pace on facebook (and myspace and similar) and they're just becoming comfortable with the pace on twitter - the pace on friendfeed is a little more hectic even still (omg with the realtime feed even more so) and will take some getting used to for people, but they will.. Especially if FF develops the outbound feeds...out to twitter is good, but it needs to go to where the people have their friends ....whereever that is
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I don't know my history too well, but in my limited time following you, you guys don't totally agree too often :)
- Bwana ☠
Very good points. I feel as though I have outgrown many of the other services and am ready for a fluid and fast-paced real-time entity. Also, my FF doesn't seem to be posting to Twitter haha!
- Chris Parton
100% agree - if everything feeds into everything else, in the end it may just be a question of interface / controls. Friend Feed is well on its way to being a streamlined interface for both Twitter and Facebook at the same time with all the relevant meta data. An interface, that I personally prefer. But, ultimately, agreed we are in the stone age and this is barely started much less over! P.S. Love the edit feature : )
- JP Maxwell
Chris: I bet if you tried to hit their website youd get you a failwhale...doubt its on FF's end ;) -----and I agree about out growing the others...but my friends have not, so I still use them...but more and more, as a way to get stuff into FF
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Robert's goin' Green! Ahhhhh!
- Charlie Anzman
Bwana: lol! probably not, but which guys are you referring to?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
And how fun would the discussion be if everyone agreed on it all....little mutual lovefest and that's it heh.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I was referring to Arrington and Scoble
- Bwana ☠
My extended family is set up to get a weekly FriendFeed summary by email. It doesn't get more comfortably paced than that.
- Bruce Lewis
Again, just so right on w/ Twitter being just the beginning. When you introduce something new to a group of people previously not exposed to it, often the simplest thing wins at first. It is only once the adoption has occurred that people start wanting more. The simplicity becomes limiting and people demand this or that, but you never could have started out with it all.
- JP Maxwell
And the internet itself is founded upon the idea of using the simplest thing as the base layer and then building onto that base....FF build well onto the simplest layers like twitter - being able to like and comment on tweets over here is a great addition...but still leaves twitter as an important piece
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Laying down the gauntlet. The drama!!!
- sofarsoShawn
Robert, true, the game has just started and we do need better filters, but there is nothing stopping Twitter from implementing some of the same features we see on Friendfeed, Facebook and more. Threaded conversations and a like button do not constitute barriers to entry.
- Erick Schonfeld
Can someone please tell me how either of these startups are going to make money? Please?
- Bwana ☠
which startups?
- Spotcher
Erick - twitter has only just got its service engineered to handle it's existing features, whereas FriendFeed has been built as a well maintained scalable infrastructure right from the start. I wouldn't underestimate FriendFeed's technical lead - it may be larger than Twitter's user-base lead. Not to mention the fact they'd have to lead their user-base perhaps unwillingly.
- Robin Barooah
google wasn't first, but they had a great idea and incredible execution. FF might have the same effect on soc-net.
- MikeAmundsen
Robert I agree with you 100% on the value of the "meta data" aspect of FF. I'm not so sure that advertising isnt already viable on twitter. Google adwords functionality integrated into the side bar of twitter would be much more targeted than the google content network. So even on a basic level it is viable. I agree that it could be much more. Google can just sit back and integrate into any or all existing social networks. The myspace deal paid of in much the same way.
- James Ketchell
Ewww, Cheyenne yo you do know he's married.
- sofarsoShawn
That is true.
- sofarsoShawn
correct...current state of information is chaos, jumbled mess...need organization...ff is a start
- Michael
Why the concentration on selling adverts? I mean, advertising is dead. I don't want to be bombarded with adverts any more. I'd pay a subscription to Google so I no longer have to see Google Adsense, either on their home page or anywhere else on the web. I'd pay a subscription to Twitter to continue to use the platform and not be bombarded with Ads. Can we go back to selling people things, services, instead of using adverts for things to support things and services? Pretty please...?
- Alasdair Allan
Alasdair: advertising is a $300 billion a year business. THAT is why I concentrate on it.
- Robert Scoble
nice - the difference between *THE* answer and many solutions. It's just what solutions dominate, what ends up being a robust niches and what dies (and it's an ever shifting playing field in this case).
- Stuart Miniman
FF FTW!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Advertising might be a $300 billion a year business, but it's not really very interesting, is it?
- Alasdair Allan
the metadata angle to the discussion on twitter versus FF/FB is an interesting one. for first time users harder to grasp; on the other hand richer metadata structures make it indeed much easier to really filter the information; not only for directly using FF, but also for third party engines building on top of FF API's
- Jeroen De Miranda
Alasdair: Advertising is far from dead. Just because you're not a fan doesn't mean the rest of us are not. The truth is advertising is prevalent in our society because we need it. You need to know where those people, things, services and such are. The best of anything goes to waste if no one knows about it. The key to advertising, though, is to deliver it to you in such a way that you like it, and is relevant to you. Most current media doesn't allow for that. Social medial advertising does offer potential.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Who cares what Arringtoin says? Last week he said Google was buying Twitter
- paul mooney
I think twitter has much more metadata capability than we see on the surface. A good search correlation algorithm could take temporal and spatial metadata as weighting vectors; more weighting vectors: indexing + analyzing link targets (and their metadata), retweets, replies, follows, tweets sources, and the kicker indexed RSS feeds from the top N news/info/media web sites, etc. Correlate a search term against these vectors and self-tune using user rating. $.02
- Ankush Narula
I disagree with you on so many things, Robert, but I watched this video, and you make excellent points. I do believe you're right.
- Stan Scott
Get arrington to set up a realtime private room for techcrunch staff
- Christian Burns
This is the future speaking: you are both wrong.
- Todd Hoff
The meta data and "likes" you are describing that is the advantage of friend feed is reminding me of what Plurk is trying to do. I don't like it over there, and I'm trying to figure it out over here on Friendfeed. Maybe when you have 19,000 subscriptions FF makes sense, but for the little guys, it's not so transparent.
- Peggy Dolane
Twitter's victory will be short-lived and potentially Pyrrhic. It's a cool toy everybody can play with but not a great tool for serious users. I still can't see it paying for itself over the long run unless as a data collecting device for Google. And the best point: all the metadata is currently within the 140 characters. And apps not limited to 140 characters are so obviously more useful.
- The Web's Wendell Wittler
Definitely love Robert's calling out of Mike at the end. They're both nice, smart guys, and I'm glad we have a system (the Internet) where they can discuss this for all of us to see, and discuss with them/each other as well.
- Tyler Hayes
hint you on the next challenge: Servers will distributed into multi-region server farms management that somehow will focus on local activities but still synchronized with primary server farm.... That would be how megatons of meta data will be delivered seamlessly without causing too much traffic collision and bandwidth waste... I think..
- Pico Seno
I finally understand the value Robert gets out of FF, and it's because he can easily pool lots of useful metadata (likes, links, comments) to each of his own posts out of the vast trove of friends. For the rest of us, there's the live feed, which works better on Twitter than FF. I still think that in the future, we will all be Scoble though and have gadzillion more friends.
- Prokofy Neva
I just realized hash tags are dead, er, less relevant than they were last week. #hashtagsaredead I gotta write up a blog post about why. Or you could speculate here:
Donovan Watts, Jamie, Haim Schlesinger and 92 other people liked this
Hashtags are used to group things of common interest. Like all items from a conference. But, do we really need them now in an age of great grouping and filtering like we have here on friendfeed?
- Robert Scoble
They've been dead for some time. Track makes them unnecessary
- Ken Sheppardson
Dead? I think they're around on Twitter not as often, but they're still alive!
- Shane Adams
Shane: first thing you gotta realize when a pundit says something is "dead" is that it doesn't mean they go away, just that thing become less relevant than they are today.
- Robert Scoble
They are generally not needed. Just search on the same term and save a character.
- xero
Yes, because more people are on Twitter and Facebook - for now
- Steve Rubel
I know for me personally after I post an update I am like crap I should have #hashed xyz. It is not an involuntary action yet. It may never.
- Michael woodard
were they ever really alive to begin with? Nobody can decide on which tag to use for a concept half the time, so you end up with multiple tags for the same thing, which sort of defeats it ...
- Michele Neylon
Yeah, they are useful for comedic effect, but not much else. At least not on friendfeed.
- Alex Scoble
If Yahoo would get off it's duff and imbue Delicious with some statusness and conversationalizingness, we wouldn't need to hack Twitter with hastags. Then again, if Twitter would separate out tags and links from 140 characters, we wouldn't need Delicious.
- Kawika Holbrook
Steve: right, but I bet that Twitter gets conversation threading eventually and Facebook already has better ways to tag content.
- Robert Scoble
And, anyway, since friendfeed is an addon to Twitter, in this respect (this post went to Twitter) we get grouping of common items here. No hashtag needed. Oh, and you can search on any word in any of these comments and find this thread.
- Robert Scoble
what is the percentage of 100% accuracy with hash tags? how many people who do know the hash actually use it? for me 'concept' filter, zeroing in on the sweet spot is best (for me) take #swf09 - how many people who were twittering about the Skoll World Forum 09 actually got it, used it most of the time? some of the time? only once? Skoll seems pretty right on to me, so i just filter Skoll - unique enough to pluck it out of the stream. Gets much more difficult with wider targets but can be done with + or -
- michael sean wright
Don't count Twitter hashtags out yet...they came in handy in our local situation here in Australia. We did have one slight problem with some teenage bright spark hijacking the #bushfires stuff to a @bushfires group. Otherwise it was still very active for us back in February. Hashtags highly relevant in emergency situations. How they work on FriendFeed, someone else will have to tell me about.
- George Hall (Australia)
"user tagging" will keep being relevant until machines can infer these tags themselves. They really can't at this moment. Normal search engines are still doing keyword-matching.
- Meryn Stol
#bitchtlips will live forever
- sofarsoShawn
So you're at a conference where you've never met half of the folks there. Sure you know your friends at table and have access to their feeds, but what about the table two over? If they don't use the name of the conference, your name, the name of the speaker or something that orients the feed toward the common experience, how will you know what's being said? The hashtag still seems relevant in that context.
- Michael Sommermeyer
Did they ever have value? Twitter Search is certainly set up not to need them so long as you just use a common identifier term.
- Pete Mortensen
# not dead until I can click on any word in a post and get the search results. only hash'd words are clickable.
- John Treadway
They are dead because they were always stupid and because people make them up and other people can never find them I HOPE they are dead.
- Francine Hardaway
Pete: yeah, they did, especially for events. That way everyone would see you are explicitly wanting to join the tag for that event.
- Robert Scoble
Used to be a good way of 'tagging' keywords for easy search. But if the common subject is mentioned clearly in a conversation (eg. 'social media' vs #socialmedia) then agree, its days are numbered. Particularly the trend as online conversationalists move beyond Twitter.
- schmediachick
I just lost a fight with Twitter search and http://tr.im today, trying in vain to locate an old link I forgot to ALSO save on Delicious. Even FriendFeed is fallow when it comes to historical organization. I miss Swurl's calendar-based timelines. This is so "in the moment" that there doesn't seem to be as much attention paid to "where's that link from that thing that happened last month that I now need for something coming up this very moment."
- Kawika Holbrook
Kawika how do you use delicious in junction with Twitter?
- Bryan Lee
Michael: conferences in the future will embed a friendfeed thread in their sites. Look at how many comments are here. Watch this live. It's amazing.
- Robert Scoble
There's still some use of hashtags on Twitter and a few other services. Others have something similar to hashtags, which you might consider the same. But for the most part, I have to agree: hashtags are dying, and the reason for that is because we're getting much better with searching and filtering content.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei... Here's the permalink for this item. Once you have that you can watch all the comments flow in live and you do NOT need hashtags anymore.
- Robert Scoble
Hash tags enable intelligent indexing of Twitter. And (not so) subtle humor. #ScobleIsWrongAgain :-)
- Brent Logan
Brent: Twitter is dead. Because if you want REAL indexing in live time of a conversation about a social object this is WAY BETTER than Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Keyword matching on the message is really not up to par with what's possible with tagging.
- Meryn Stol
Meryn: you are absolutely wrong. Here, search on this in the next minute or so: foopoo
- Robert Scoble
foopoo is already indexed in search. Wow. http://beta.friendfeed.com/search...
- Robert Scoble
Hashtags dead because no clearinghouse on what they mean. They get co-opted and perverted to generate follows and reads. And Twitter search tools have improved massively in short time. Readable tags take up too much of my 140. Short ones are not obvious.
- Wilford
Hashtags are now most likely used just to get more followers in same interest if that even!. I have seen people misuse hashtags , for example "I Love my dog #iphone" wtf has dog to do with an iphone or how much you love your dog.... you know what I mean? Anyways i use tweetgrid.com for clearing things out and don't pay attention to tweetdeck or so to say twitscoop anymore.
- Live Crunch Blog
What a cool way to get help writing your blog post... where were you earlier today when I was having brainfreeze?
- Kathy Colaiacovo
Well I think the foopoo example sorta ended this argument
- Matsis
Yes, that's keyword matching. So what's the big deal? Hashtags are merely a way to add keywords to a piece of content the "#" denotes that it should not be read as part of a sentence, but that they are just some extra keywords.
- Meryn Stol
So using Friendfeed with twitter eliminates the need for hashtags, essentially?
- Derek Schauland
Kathy: everything changes now that we have live display.
- Robert Scoble
God, does it ever!
- Kathy Colaiacovo
Kathy: everything changes now that we have live indexing.
- Robert Scoble
Derek: yes.
- Robert Scoble
Matsis: foopoo was indexed in less than five seconds. It used to take a minute for the indexer to work. Freaking amazing.
- Robert Scoble
but this requires a single source? hashtags come from lots of places.
- Jonathan Hopkins
Live / non-live is a separate issue. Hash-tags might not be real-time also...
- Meryn Stol
and you get so used to it! I was on a live chat (supposedly) last week - but they were moderating the comments... and the delay was so annoying to most of the participants. It's an on-demand world now
- Kathy Colaiacovo
Meryn: you aren't getting it. If you want to create a tag, you can do it here. I just created foopoo and now search works on that. No need to create an ugly tag.
- Robert Scoble
Hashtags are pretty much just tags for your tweets
- Chris Martin
Wrong: I like making up really fun & zany ones: #robertscobleshotshit!WHoo!!!!!YEAH!!!!!!WootWOOT!!!!!!!!
- sofarsoShawn
Sweet sweet the live view works on the iPhone!
- Bryan Lee
There's only one reason for hashtags now: To mark something as being related to something else not explicitly mentioned in a post, and point out that marking.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
And, because our conversation here is grouped all together you don't need a hashtag to create a thread.
- Robert Scoble
I hate this "this is dead, that is dead" crap. They work for some things, for others they don't. Move along people there's nothing to see here.
- Jeremy Armer
Twitter does real-time search just fine. Anything you type in a tweet, including "foopoo" can be searched on.
- Meryn Stol
I do agree though - searches have changed and the # seems irrelevant now.
- Kathy Colaiacovo
If you can work in what you'd tag as context into your actual post, you don't need hashtags.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Robert, "Twitter is dead" is a different argument than hash tags are dead. FriendFeed is a different animal with it's own advantages and disadvantages, but as long as Twitter is alive, so will be hash tags.
- Brent Logan
By the way I still am wondering why Gabe Rivera didn't add LC for aggregation on techmeme, even tho atul and other ppl are sending tips to #techmeme
- Live Crunch Blog
Brent: Not true. Twitter's real-time search means hash tags aren't needed for Twitter either.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
hashtags are a hack. I've been saying this forever: http://staynalive.com/article...
- Jesse Stay
Brent: Twitter will copy friendfeed. Mark my words. If they don't, Twitter is dead.
- Robert Scoble
The concept is good (esp. for event listings) - but there needs to be ONE place to go to register them so you don't end up with 10 other ppl using yours. But it is out of control on Twitter - some people have 3 in every post - where is the content?
- Robyn Hawk
jeremy: saying something is "dead" causes you to pay attention. Sorry, but this is provable and is why this technique is used so often.
- Robert Scoble
Here in the Portland Oregon areas we use #pdxtst (Portland Twitter Storm Team) to tweet about weather conditions. No form of search can replace it.
- Brent Logan
Hashtags served their purpose early on and were the tool of Twitterati in the know. It's like anything that trends... It's cool until the grown-ups arrive. And now with Twitter's growth, the grown-ups have indeed arrived. Once the grown-ups arrive and start using something to forward an agenda it dies.
- matt
Brent: you could just include pdxtst in a message. you can find it by doing a search for it.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I hope Twitter does adopt FriendFeed style conversations. I still see value in hash tags.
- Brent Logan
http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... Here's all items with pdxtst included in them.
- Robert Scoble
http://beta.friendfeed.com/filter... pdxtst filter
- Christian Burns
Hashtags are machine language which is unnecessary. I talked about it last week. http://www.louisgray.com/live...
- Louis Gray
Robert, in other words, you'd prefer I embedded gibberish in my messages for search purposes, just don't prepend them with a hash?
- Brent Logan
now you tell me...
- Ecosaveology
Excellent point John - it is convenient to be able to click on the hashtag words!
- Robyn Hawk
Hashtags can be useful if everyone in the group that uses them agrees on a single tag. Poeplebrowsr makes interesting use of them by making groups ot of the people that use them. But, as said above #mosthastagsaresilly just ask the #hashtagmafia ;) #jesseisrighttheyareahack
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Brent: tell me how this would be improved if everyone had to post #hashtagdiscussion to join in this comment thread? Note that you don't need to do that anymore to have your comment grouped with other people's on a common topic.
- Robert Scoble
I think hashtags must be ironic #butyouknewthat
- Alan Thornton
Scoble but the search results doesn't have a live view or doesn't poll like Twitter search.
- Bryan Lee
Bryan: yeah, I know. That's getting fixed by the friendfeed team. We asked about that last week at the press conference.
- Robert Scoble
Also once someone has entered the tag into a discussion, and then I comment or like it, It's part of my discussions page
- Christian Burns
Bryan Lee, I attempt to tag articles I like for posterity in Delicious and then -- if they may be of interest to others -- share them in Twitter. The former is indexed storage and the latter is quick conversation. I stills struggle with Twitter and FriendFeed as a repository of knowledge and sentiment. Hashtags were meant to give some structure to Twitter. Ultimately, however, it still feels like the Wild West.
- Kawika Holbrook
Imagine if every post on here had to include #hashtagsRdead
- Christian Burns
Robert, you're missing my point. Tags are very useful for searching topics, even in the absence of a continuing conversation. It's author-intended indexing. Blog posts use tags. They just have a special field for doing it. If FriendFeed or Twitter allowed for a special tag field, I'd love it. It would be prettier than hash tags. But it hasn't happened yet, so calling hash tags dead is premature.
- Brent Logan
Brent: yes, but see I would only have to put a hashtag at the top node, and everyone does NOT need to include the hashtag individually anymore to join in.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I agree. Hash tags are ugly for enabling conversations. That's not their only purpose, though.
- Brent Logan
Brent: I just changed the headline that started this to include a hashtag.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: or someone could insert the hashtag into just one of the comments
- Christian Burns
Sorry, I'm a little confused. This is like a chat room. A hashtag on Twitter is aggregating independent thoughts, no? Apples and oranges?
- Catherine Ventura
The one purpose they really do server at this point, Robert is to make a searchable term out of a more commonly used word so that search does NOT pull up unintended tweets.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
kawika never thought to share my delicious links on Twitter. I just have friendfeed handle that.
- Bryan Lee
Here's the search that pulls up all items with the tag #hashtagsaredead http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... See, now no body needs to include that hashtag in their comment to be grouped in here. On Twitter they'd still need to use the hashtag. Oh, and notice how I can add a tag AFTER the fact to make something more searchable here!
- Robert Scoble
Wait... hashtags are dead? What about !groups and @#tagfamilies??
- Ken Sheppardson
Never used them or liked them. Get more results searching for normal words because no one actually remembers to add the hashtag
- BCK
Hashtags are very useful in lots of different contexts (local, relevance, mimicking behavior), but they are not the sole method and definitely not intuitive enough for mass adoption
- Tiffany Winman
Robert, imagine a TV channel wants to start a live discussion on twitter. It says: "guys, use the hashtag #xxx". Now, it can watch only updates with this hashtag; making just a live search for "xxx" would be false - there would be so much noise.
- Konstantin
Ken LOL
- Jesse Stay
They're not dead. Yea, you could save a character by not using the # sign, but that could lead to confusion depending on what the tag is. Same with not using @ before someone's username... fine if you're @Scobleizer, not so fine if you're @John. On Laconi.ca, you can subscribe to hashtags (different from subscribing to a keyword), which is convenient for event attendees.
- Marina Martin
Catherine: Twitter is a chat room too. Just because it doesn't look like one doesn't mean it isn't. It's been a chat room for me for years.
- Robert Scoble
Marina, you can use ! to exclude items I believe
- Jesse Stay
Marina: OK, they are dead for a lot of things that they are being used for today, but not totally dead. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Dead or dying? I'm usually late to most trends so if I haven't started yet it's probably not dead. Maybe.
- CAJ, somewhere else
Marina: notice how i changed the headline here to be more accurate. That's something you can't do on Twitter, either. (refresh this page).
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Touche! But its a very big room... and this is a dedicated closet
- Catherine Ventura
Robert I don't understand this. maybe it's late and I'm being silly but hashtags are to bring together lots of people in one place. this is a single thread, started by you.
- Jonathan Hopkins
Catherine: Oh, we can start lots of offshoots.
- Robert Scoble
Jonathan: this is lots of people "in one place." No difference. This is like me saying "here's a hashtag" let's talk.
- Robert Scoble
Posted my thoughts on this: http://coldacid.net/blog... (Did I beat you to it, Robert?)
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
It's machine language. Don't understand why people use it -- Twitter's trend algorithm catches keywords with or without hashtags. I just do it because it's funny. #WhoCares. :)
- Mona Nomura
but it's a place created by one person. hashtags help create a single place, created by lots of people no?
- Jonathan Hopkins
I'm digging this live view can't wait till it's out of beta!
- Bryan Lee
Jonathan: OK, I get that. So, go start another thread on friendfeed and post the URL here. Now we'll have two places all tied together. No hashtag needed.
- Robert Scoble
I agree w/ Brent that Twitter should just include a field for 2 or 3 tags and not count it toward the 140 char limit. I guess this would break the SMS functionality though. Then again, they're not clickable in text messages so they're just taking up space in most SMS messages anyway.
- Jeremy Armer
Chris: you beat me. I might not even do a blog post. :-) Maybe blogs are dead too! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Since we ARE talking hashtags, one thing I WOULD like to see is something in the Twitter system NOT reading anything hashtagged as part of the 140-character limit. Again, where that helps is in emergency uses of Twitter and other micro-blogging apps. More room for the real information, and meaning you could use more than one hashtag. Anyone thought of that before today?
- George Hall (Australia)
Jeremy: Twitter will never do THAT. Why? Because it makes Twitter far more complex.
- Robert Scoble
George: that would be a cool way to handle hashtags. Too bad that Twitter is still chasing scaling problems and not able to use its developers for building new features. They will fix that eventually, though.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Agreed, simplicity is Twitter's "killer app".
- Jeremy Armer
Robert: Blogs aren't dead, yet. Wait for FriendFeed to uncap the length of a post and add inline links and images. :D
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
;-) For sure - but then I have to post the URL back in here - a hashtag does that automatically. with or without the # - having one word to unify distributed content is useful right? focus should be on search and the language we are creating together on here. friendfeed, twitter, whatever - this is all the groundwork for the language of the live web, no? PS good chat, loving this view on FF
- Jonathan Hopkins
ROBERT! LOL!!
- Mona Nomura
Robert: And I'd suggest write up a post anyway. You do a much better job at blogging than I do, and probably have a different viewpoint. Even if it's only a little different, it helps expand everyone's view of the matter.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Robert, you hit the nail on the head. Anytime Twitter is used for anything other than sending and replying to messages, it complicates the intended simplicity. I've only seen hashtags work great in intimate settings, but on bigger scales, it loses it's desired effects.
- Mike Lewis
Jonathan: You have a point there. The "@user" convention has spread far beyond Twitter.
- Jeremy Armer
Hash tags are still useful on Twitter because not all posts concerning a particular subject contain the subject in question. Not everybody follows everybody on Twitter so using hash tags is a good way to find those subjects. Smaller groups use hash tags to coordinate their conversations and make search easier.
- Aulia Masna
Hash tags aren't dead. If anything I think they are growing. I've seen more people using them since the election that before.
- ChiliMac
Chris: you tease you. I can't wait for the day I can put a 4,000-word blob up into friendfeed. Jonathan: you really don't need to even put the URL back in here. You just need to use the same word or set of words in the top level to join them together. For instance, why write #w2e when you really just mean "I'm attending the Web 2.0 Expo." Here, search on Web 2.0 Expo now and see what happens.
- Robert Scoble
Here's a search for "Web 2.0 Expo." http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... Notice that I didn't need to use a lame ass hashtag to join together lots of conversations.
- Robert Scoble
fundamentally a hashtag eliminates more than it adds. using #wine eliminates confusing a convo about wines with "love the new wine colored lipstick"
- Catherine Ventura
Hashtags were always a kluge. Threading + fabulous search makes them unnecessary.
- Eric Johnson
uhhh... what's a kluge?
- Catherine Ventura
While I'm in a talkative mood today...giving the Australian bushfires back in February as an example, we utilized hashtags thusly: #bushfires for main general information. #vicfires and #nswfires for the information relevant to the two states which had bushfires at that time, Victoria and New South Wales. #fireupdates for more specific types of info. #firecomments for condolence messages, keeeping them off the main hashtags. We tended to treat the hashtags more like channels back then.
- George Hall (Australia)
Catherine: that's a good point. But if you are talking about wine, you probably have some modifiers that make sense. So if I search for "wine and merlot" I bet I will only get back discussions about wine, not about lipstick. Also, friendfeed lets you search for "wine" and then subtract out anything that mentions lipstick.
- Robert Scoble
OK thanks! - bit clearer now. Twitter does the same thing without #tags but crucial difference is the presentation of results as individual tweets versus conversation threads you can jump into.
- Jonathan Hopkins
Catherine: here's a search for all items that include the word "wine" but that do NOT include the word "lipstick." http://beta.friendfeed.com/search...
- Robert Scoble
Kluge = a clunky work-around. A hack. But there's still so much blurt going on on Twitter that hashtags will be with us for some time yet, I'll bet.
- Eric Johnson
In fact, this item is NOT included in that search because it includes the word "lipstick." Friendfeed filtering really rocks and we haven't even started using it yet.
- Robert Scoble
BUT - using a #tag is a way of someone labeling their content because they want it to be found, rather than letting someone just find it. Plus - it helps fuel pre-filtered (to some extent, minus the spam/opportunists) feeds to be mashed up with other stuff
- Jonathan Hopkins
Shoq: I sort of got that. Which is why I included an official hashtag in my headline above. That way you can see that we're specifically going to tag things here. Also, it will let Twitterers use that tag and join in the conversation.
- Robert Scoble
By the way, Robert, I claim first dibs the idea on having hashtags outside the 140-character limit.
- George Hall (Australia)
Robert: nice, but identical to google, fundamentally, and we have to anticipate that wine is a fashion forward lipstick color. But what if it's your street name? Or your last name? Or you are mispelling the sound your children make when they want to watch TV? I wouldn't write off the power of the "secret decoder ring" magic of a hashtag just yet...
- Catherine Ventura
Jonathan: if I want you to find a conversation about wine I bet it will be found if I just discuss wine. Here, let's see if this works. Damn, it does work: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search...
- Robert Scoble
so wine is the hashtag (just without the #) ;) . . . . .
- Jonathan Hopkins
Catherine: well, if I do a search for wine and find lipstick I know something is wrong and Google has already trained me to try a different search. :-) How many people know how Google works? Billions. How many people know about hashtags? Maybe 20 million.
- Robert Scoble
And thanks for saying "doesn't mean it's dead." But anyway, so if the tag does dual duty, it's not dead, but merely being reassigned to a more useful and formalized role.
- Shoq
Jonathan: now you're getting why I realized that hashtags are dead, or at least, a whole lot less relevant from now on. I still might use them here and there, but I am not forced to, like I am on Twitter, to join a conversation together.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: pretty good. only anomaly was an appliance list by stephanie with a "wine cooler"
- Catherine Ventura
Catherine: here, let's get rid of the cooler: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search...
- Robert Scoble
Robert: pretty good but there were some crystal wine glasses. Still, impressive...
- Catherine Ventura
Um, sort of . . . i think though there will always be a 'word' that people agree to use to lump content together and help each other identify it without question from other content that *might* be relevant. But, yep -=reckon we agree that there's no real need for the # anymore. so, it comes down to tags then - which is all over the web and that comes back to my thoughts re the fact we are just creating a live web language together here. And well done you for getting conversations like this going . . . !
- Jonathan Hopkins
I think #hashtags, like Tweets, are amorphous and will be used by people how they need/want to use them.
- Jeremy Armer
Maybe it's not death but evolution? Hashtags were useful in the way they were used in Twitter (and well before that). Technology and knowhow have improved to practically make a tagless hash. I could search for the word "the" if I wanted to. Or perhaps "teh" but who would ever think to hashtag that?
- CAJ, somewhere else
Jeremy: That's exactly what I think
- Chris Martin
Chris: you can edit comments (or delete them) if you make a mistake. I can delete them too, under items that I started. So, I'll delete your extra one in a few seconds if you don't.
- Robert Scoble
Okay, now what about getting a specific date range in FF searches? Specific format?
- George Hall (Australia)
Oh, THAT is another reason why hashtags are dead: they will be used by spammers. But HERE we can delete and block spammers.
- Robert Scoble
Wait. Robert are you saying you can censor the comments you don't like? Interesting!
- CAJ, somewhere else
Shoq: good point. Alan: yes, I can. But I won't. Can you guess why I won't censor your comments?
- Robert Scoble
Cuz you like people's opinions, even if they're different? Because you're not China? I give.
- CAJ, somewhere else
Robert: Because he would start a "Scoble censors FF comments!" thread?
- Jeremy Armer
At least we've lost the old IRC commands, like /join #Scoble
- Catherine Ventura
hashtags are often misused or abused
- Kim Landwehr
Hashtags are great when you are having a conversation on Twitter on a topic. Dead? Hardly. Lots of people are just figuring them out. And while plenty of techies know how to filter and use friend feed for conversations, face it, it's the minority of users.
- Peggy Dolane
You can also "censor" out/block spammers in Twitter, too. It's only on your particular computer, so everyone else still sees the annoyances.
- George Hall (Australia)
Jeremy is right: http://beta.friendfeed.com/scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
i never know what are the right hashtags to use
- Nicholas
The spam issue is probably the best argument against them. I can block spammers on Twitter but I can't stop them from littering all over tags I watch. Nick: I never know the right ones either.
- Jeremy Armer
I can see Robert's point, though. One of the things that killed off Yahoo Groups was the fact they eventually filled with spambots, etc. Now that's all you ever find in a Yahoo chat room
- George Hall (Australia)
Another advantage of the known tag signifier is that people can decide on the fly what attentions they want to route an item to without an interface.
- Shoq
right. the yahoo groups were fixed. less flexible. We can still, in effect, say, "quick, go to channel 3"...
- Catherine Ventura
the point about spammers spoiling hash tags is valid -- however they only seem to be a real problem for trending topics, smaller group conversations appear to be immune thus far in my experience.
- Peggy Dolane
George, that is true about chat, but the follow concept alters that paradigm significantly. You can determine who is in the flow, to some extent, and even enough extent for many people (as some like the noise seepage that gets in.)
- Shoq
so what about 'invisible #tags' that don't form part of your 140? much like tags in blog posts only even less visible without clicking through. Other stuff could be added . . . location, mood, timezone, authority, etc etc - all improving search results using the meta data manually/automatically assigned to your tweets/comments/threads whatever
- Jonathan Hopkins
Jonathan: I think the main issue w/ that is the 140 character simplicity is what makes it so customizable. I can make a Twitter app that works any way I want. When features get added, it complicates the process and narrows the possibilities.
- Jeremy Armer
Jonathan, all true, but not while anyone is pretending to live within the 160 SMS limitation (twitter reserves 20 for name). That's the problem there.
- Shoq
Jeremy: for sure. Simplicity is key - it's what it doesn't do etc . . . but I reckon there's a few things that will need to be done to deal with the scale and maintain value for everyone.
- Jonathan Hopkins
That proves the power of a thread. It's getting interestingly long. In my view, hashtags are cool, but they're represented here as the post's thread itself (that could've been with some tagging-system prior to filtering). The hashtag could've been treated as a shortener, as "This post went to FF #ff51x32" but FriendFeed went for that by linking to the discussion itself so. Hashtags are nice to explore the twitter world as you can find, I'm sure, any of those used words for any case.
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
Jonathan: it's like back in the day when you called someone collect and they refused to pay. It was a free call to signal something. With an 'invisible' hashtag, I could technically write a very long tweet. #sothisishowtogetaroundthelimitof140characterstakethattwitter. :)
- CAJ, somewhere else
Shoq: definitely Alan: ;-)
- Jonathan Hopkins
Alan, I'd really love to see that long a hashtag actually work in a Twitter client...
- George Hall (Australia)
Everyone wants the 140 do more. I think they're great. They force concision, point to payload, and all but crush feature-creep. We shouldn't call them "updates." They're "headers."
- Shoq
Well, I tried #testtoseehowlongahashtagcanbeandificanactuallyuseupallthecharactersthatareallowedwillnotusepunctuationtobreakanythingupjustincaseicannot and it allowed it. Of course...I used up my character limit.
- CAJ, somewhere else
twirl, btw. Jus' sayin'.
- CAJ, somewhere else
Doesn't really matter if things are hashtagged or not in the grand scheme of searching capabilities.
- Elizabeth Parmeter
I liked how you got that #hashtagfromhellandback to go outside the lines Alan. #nicework #deservesprize
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Shoq: I agree, w/o the 140 character limit most Tweets would be as boring as most blogs are.
- Jeremy Armer
Rob: That was surprisingly hard to type. I'm WAY too used to proper punctuation, spacing, etc. No wonder I'm enjoying FF!
- CAJ, somewhere else
I'm still noticing one thing with the FriendFeed searches...if I want a set of feeds from a specific date, I'm still scratching my head on how to do that. Merely inputing one single time like "Feb. 7 only brings up anything with that date in the title or text, not what I specifically want, which is all feeds in that search ON or between certain dates.
- George Hall (Australia)
George: that's a good feature request.
- Robert Scoble
Egad, my second bright idea of the day...
- George Hall (Australia)
But it's a clear need. Can't find anything in the FriendFeed search that helps pin down specific periods. If I want to look back over feeds from all the first week of February, at present it's go through heaps of back pages or hit and miss. That's a much-need feature.
- George Hall (Australia)
George: It is indeed. Suggest it in friendfeed-feedback and friendfeed-beta, hopefully Paul & co. will add it (and sooner rather than later).
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Alan: I totally understand. I have a hard time with just tweets, because I like to be clear, and as well "spoken" as possible, and like to use punctuation to provide emphasis that would be the if I spoke what I wrote. But I do appreciate how character limits get me to think in shorter, more powerful phrases. (LinkedIn profile was WAY hard to do!)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
To Chris...suggested it in Feedback. Done.
- George Hall (Australia)
#hashtags are inanimate objects. how can they be dead... or alive? ;-P
- .LAG liked that
George: Awesome! LAG: Oh, you... :D
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Hash Tags will continue to be useful for groups of people
- paul mooney
Adequate search capabilities make any form of tagging irrelevant.
- rob friedman
keyword is "adequate." I find that unless a search facility can take into account synonyms (as Google's can) it's probably not going to be adequate. My biggest problem: searching for "mission" and coming up with diplomatic missions, or searching for "missionary" and NOT coming up with religious work, but something vastly different!
- Justin Long
Well only the smart people it seems know to quantify their search by using the primary search term, and then 2-4 or more words which help narrow things down. Let's not search for root latin words in google.
- rob friedman
from twhirl
A generic search will yield a generic result. A more thought out search query is likely to yield something specific or nothing at all.
- rob friedman
from twhirl
Are there any hard numbers on the use of hashtags on Twitter over the last twelve months? A simple trendline graph?
- Sean McBride
Fascinating that something "dead" can inspire such a discussion! ;) Srsly though, when I came up with hashtags (http://tr.im/fj_hashtags) they were proposed as a way to provide on-the-go context with zero overhead. If your tag got picked up and used, great! If not, welcome to the longtail! I find hashtags useful in heterogeneous/cross-network situations --or via SMS when conference wifi sucks. They were never intended as a final solution, but as a convenient, transparent stop-gap, still find them useful.
- Chris Messina
Also, consider how #pman was used to stage protests in Maldova: http://tr.im/maldova. They didn't use FriendFeed groups for that.
- Chris Messina
I'm quite happy to do a search w/o hash tags. Sometimes, I have to OR several possible terms, but it doesn't particularly bother me.
- Seth Greenblatt
Hashtags can be useful for including descriptive metadata about text which is not evident in the text itself. There are many valuable uses that should be evident if one gives the matter a moment's thought.
- Sean McBride
By the way, where's that guy who thought nobody uses FriendFeed? He's proven wrong again. Do we have a hashtag for him?
- George Hall (Australia)
George: #arringtonyoufool :D
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
The best reason to use hashtags are for sarcastic remarks #Icantfindmysockssoitmustbemonday
- Matthew Sauer
Chris Messina--thanks for jumping in with some sanity. ;-). Trying to make a call on what's dead is dead, so lets stop. As long as 140-character text messages continue to dominate and grow, hashtags will always be around. Folks like to annotate (that is, add metadata) things and hashtags are a lightweight, simple way to do that. If anything, Maldova should be a wake-up call regarding this. Hey--what about best practices about how, when and when not to use hashtags?
- Albert Willis
Whoa! Slow down the # hate train! While I acknowledge that its a lazy way of finding and grouping content for human search and consumption, I use them extensively within the enterprise to aggregate content for knowledge management purposes. Lets not start the "just say no" campaign just yet.
- jcunwired
It's not about #hashtags, it's about structured metadata for the Semantic Web, of which hashtags are just a small subset and primitive type. Why Robert Scoble is probably wrong about this: let him name a search engine which can identify and separate the pro-hashtag from the anti-hashtag comments in this discussion. #hashtags+
- Sean McBride
Ok so if they're dead then why are people still using them? And is there really a replacement that can work just as well? (No, friendfreed groups don't count since it's outside of Twitter). Twitter Search does to some degree, but hashtags are great to group content that may not have mentioned a searchable term otherwise.
- R. Alexander Spoerer
I think short and useful hashtags will be great for taxonomy of microblogging.
- Alp
I think hashtags are what FF needs to incorporate to make the filters truly useful. Allow community tagging (with approval) and you get more useful organizing of data. Search for Roku vs. #Roku to get an idea.
- Kevin Kuphal
"Rooms" can be used for tagging. Any message can be addressed to one or more rooms as well as your public feed. FriendFeed is different from Twitter in the sense that you can post messages to rooms without posting it your own feed. On Twitter, everything appears in your own feed. It's a must.
- Meryn Stol
sms compatible public micromessages are the tightest, most basic communications platform we have. it is only going to become more ubiquitous. in-line tags indicate relevance, and allow for permission-less participation in something while you are typing. they are human-prefiltering and they can be used anywhere you type. this is only going to become more important overtime. this is standards level not service level issue. search and in-line tags will co-exist and integrate together.
- Michael Lewkowitz
Excellent analysis by Michael Lewkowitz. Robert needs to reexamine this subject.
- Sean McBride
oh I thought hashtags were being celebrated in growing semantic web - is that not the case any more? #hashtagsaredead
- Julian Edward
Julian -- Robert had a sudden gust of "inspiration." :)
- Sean McBride
I didn't know people were using hashtags for conversations. What I like tags for is so you can browse a pre-existing taxonomy of what people find important at a concept level. Tag clouds. You can't do a general word cloud because there's too many and it takes too much semantic knowledge to map to equivalence classes. By a community using RoR, for example, as a tag then you can browse and easily find all Ruby on Rails posts without already having to know all possible forms of RoR.
- Todd Hoff
I think its on the way but we're not there yet. If you search for a term on twitter and dont use a hash, then you will get thousands of minor relevant terms. Using hash tags at least lets the educated user let you know the central theme of the tweet. (i really do hate that term, so i must be getting old). Sites like friendfeed are setting the standard for true real time search...
more...
- James Ketchell
Hashtags cut through a massive amount of irrelevant clutter.
- Sean McBride
In an extremely inefficient way that also looses a lot of relevant items.
- JP Maxwell
It doesn't lose any relevant items -- one is free to search on the full text of documents in tandem with metadata.
- Sean McBride
Hashtags aren't necessary in a world of full-text indexing, but they impose a small amount of keyword discipline. And they make it a lot easier to track a multi-part conversation. I think as Twitter grows they become much more useful.
- Jeff Newfeld
So I guess what we're agreeing here is that hashtags are de-hashed, we use tags or keywords. Just like we did before Twitter appeared.
- Jon Lebkowsky
I agree with jeff. It differentiates text search from what the actual content is about. I don't wanna search all text, justbyhose conversations that are relvant to this subject. And follow Friday is an excellent example of this.
- Roberto Bonini
To many people are looking at hashtags in the context of a a FriendFeed user. But hashtags are only relevant in the Twitter world. A # tag give a 1 charecter symbol letting whom ever is reading the tweet that the following charracters represent a search/subject term. This prevents confusion. Look at it this way if I ending a tweet with "Robert Scoble" people might thing I'm directing my...
more...
- ChiliMac
Wow so much to sort through however I have to completely disagree in the context of Twitter usage. IMO, hashtags are not dead. Their use and purpose has just evolved. They are no longer relevant for search however are a mechanism for grouping. Pitch a topic and a hashtag will naturally form to focus the topic and keep conversation on point.
- Rob Jensen
I think they just help people search. Click on the hashtag and see the search. Otherwise keywords are searchable in any event with the hashtag.
- Bill Romanos
tags won't die. hashtags might, tho.
- MikeAmundsen
I keep forgetting to use hashtags. People should just search for keywords of interest to them.
- Morton Fox
A recent hashtag, #iagaymarriage, is being used effectively for information exchange, meetings, etc. Here, it's very efficient to agree on a single term for this purpose.
- Stan Scott
I never really used them.
- Ernie Oporto
If everyone comes to a spontaneous consensus about a hashtag (e.g. #followfriday), it works. Hashtags start out used by a few and get adopted by more...if it's useful and makes sense.
- CAJ, somewhere else
Hash tags are speaking machine language
- Jeremiah Owyang
germans still love them
- kosmar
Tagging tweets has for a long time been something I thought would add value to Twitter. Hashtags may be a convenient solution for some to organize conversations, but they're 1) ugly and 2) take up space. Being able to tag tweets would empower Search.Twitter. Many users may think hashtags are the same as tags, but tags offer true metadata. It would be in Twitter's interest to roll out tagging sooner rather than later imo.
- phil baumann
hashtags should be dead. they're space-consuming and redundant.
- Karoli
Not to mention the work that goes into making them uniform for a particular event. Small I know, but still an issue.
- Angela
yeah, I've never really been able to get into 'em... the #followfriday one is the only one I've been able to ever type...
- Krikit Media
I still think people are too lazy to remember to work their keyword into a post on Twitter and while this feed stream is cool, I don't see how every event will remember to create a FF stream on their website. Plus, how do I pick up on that if I'm sitting in room with only my BlackBerry or iPhone? It's kind of essential to be able to use these tools in the form their were intended at the moment. Twitter is SMS. FF is a web stream. #BlackBerry #iPhone #FF #Twitter #socialmedia #haveipissedyouoffyet?
- Michael Sommermeyer
Robert, PLEASE write up a post on this and deflect some of this criticism that keeps getting heaped on me. I don't think I explained it well enough and my misinterpretations seems to have gotten a lot of peoples' knives out. :(
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Chris If you get people to take their knives out then you got a reaction. That's the most any writer can hope for.
- MarkCarras
a) Threaded convos like this can be too much. This is what I expect to see when I visit a hashtag page, blog, or forum. The rest of the time, I'm content to see thoughts of people I sub to. b) These judgments seem to be based on twitter implementation. hashes ~link~ in identica. if one is used, you can click it, skim what others are saying, then return to your stream. They also build clouds: Public Clouds, Profile Clouds, & Group Clouds. One glance gives an instant feel for what's on peoples' minds.
- exador23
c) I believe hashtags are just a step toward semantic linking. The !bangtag (for identica groups) takes another small step: as used, it's essentially a ~subscribeable~ hashtag, delivered real-time to your personal stream when used. Eventually I hope the # & ! will be hidden. It's the ~link~ that's important, the char is for SW. Hopefully the final step will be the SW links for you. My 2c. peace.
- exador23
sorry. figured I should give an example. Imagine the ! and #'s are gone & you just have the links: http://identi.ca/notice... And how useful is it to have metadata like this when considering if you want to follow someone: http://pikchur.com/iso Note these clouds evolve continually & each tag is a link.
- exador23
Curious. Considering Jeremiah's point about writing machine language and Robert's suggestion that hashtags are dead (in the context of search), should @replies also be killed off? I mean, the @username convention is useful, but super nerdy. Shouldn't we just move to full/real names?
- Chris Messina
but both # and @ tags both show intention, which natural language doesn't.
- ryan
No @drylight my friendfeed video is embargoed until either @techcrunch breaks the embargo or 9 a.m. Monday morning, whichever comes first.
Will DeLuca, paisano, Bluesun 2600 and 27 other people liked this
TechCrunch hasn't broken the embargo yet even though I thought I heard Mike say he was going to post his screenshots up before the embargo. I think it's nice that he has not yet.
- Thomas Hawk
I think Mike went home and decided to post about Twitter/Google instead to take his mind off FriendFeed.
- Ken Sheppardson
I am sure there will be plenty of buzz tomorrow when the news breaks officially. Enough buzz for everyone.
- Paul Jacobson
I'll be at work when the embargo is over so I wont be able to play until night.
- LPH™ and his dog P™
I'll be on an airplane when the embargo is lifted. I'll have to post via magic.
- Louis Gray
@Louis Or you could change your flight to Virgin and tweetblog it out from 33k feet! Just sayin.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
boy thomas isn't that sad that you have to say "i think its nice that he has not yet"?
- Allen Stern
Brian, Louis doesn't need to do that - he has little twin babies doing his work for him. It's magic.
- Jesse Stay
Wait, is there still time for me to make something in Photoshop so I can "scoop" everybody else, even though what actually gets released has nothing in common with my Photoshop mockup? :D
- Wirehead
I bet Louis will have it up 1st using his magic.. FTW
- Wayne Sutton
Wayne, assuming I write anything (which I haven't yet), I would have to save it as a draft and beg Jesse to post it for me. :)
- Louis Gray
Louis, you can set the post to show at 9am ;)
- Nicholas James
Nicholas, I have one post set for 9 and one for 10 so far. More coming.
- Louis Gray
I am in Holland on business and the time difference has me all screwy. I've been patiently waiting, but have another five hours :-\ back to work...
- AJK
Some of us are up at 6 and will not be able to see video later (alas, the firewalls in healthcare are challenging to say the least)
- Loretta Donovan
a little more than 3 hours to go
- AJK
tick, tock. tick, tock. tick, tock.
- Matt Soreco
I'm expecting we'll see a change here on Friendfeed and not need to read the overconfident techchruncher's tabloid
- paul mooney
The videos are five parts, are about 5 gigs to upload, will take 120 minutes to upload. I just started uploading them.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Wow! That has to be lot of detail about the new UI. I'm excited.
- Anthony K. Valley ©
from fftogo
Hi Robert, will the videos only be available in full HD or will be more bandwidth friendly versions available?
- Paul Jacobson
Paul: they will be up on my Blip channel at http://scobleizer.blip.tv -- can you see those there?
- Robert Scoble
Too bad Louis is on a plane and missed the new embargo time.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Louis has posts scheduled to go up at 9, 10, and I think 11.
- Ken Sheppardson
Dan - I agree, I miss Louis' input and enthusiasm.
- Susan Beebe
so Robert what about that video. how long will it take to upload?
- Alexander Kucera
I'm having a LOT of troubles with Blip. The file sizes are too big. I'm having to make them lower quality. This really sucks, sorry.
- Robert Scoble
I see. Bummer. Well, we will have to wait then. No problem.
- Alexander Kucera
I guess we know which one came first. :)
- Sarah Perez
sarah was the embargo broken? (i was outside)
- Allen Stern
Will we be able to see the FF show soon on scobleizer or on listen on gillmor gang?
- JRblog
ok which thread is friendfeed watching where we put a summary of comments???
- Damian Holmes
Damian: They are filtering on "friendfeed" so will see your comment. (I'm doing the same, which is how I saw this one).
- Robert Scoble
has it slowed down for you guys since pre-9am
- Andy Fox
Andy: the feed is going WAY faster as everyone discovers a "new shiny thing." But the speed of reloading pages has gone down as traffic here has gone up.
- Robert Scoble
The Friendlist/Followers Manifesto - http://edadkins.com/the-fri...
Rob, Keith Barrett, Nicholas James and 19 other people liked this
Even if you unFollow someone on FriendFeed, if your Following one of their friends you'll still get their feed - Haha
- paul mooney
Waiting for scoble to "like this activity"
- Adam Jackson
Adam I liked it before you commented on it.
- Robert Scoble
Scoble is the fastest dude on FF :)
- Susan Beebe
i wanted to super-like this, so i submitted it to digg: http://digg.com/arts_cu...
- Chris Heath
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