paul mooney - Likes - FriendFeed

Congrats Robert... best wishes to all - Rhys Amos

320 more comments

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

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 :))))) - C o n f o r m i s t

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 - C o n f o r m i s t

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 :) - کلیشه

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. - O.C.S.A

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

WoW,Congratulations! - atalmatal from MojiPage

Congrats on the blessed event! Welcome to the world, Ryan - Jazz Baker

Congratulations! - Jim Hearts FF

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 :-) - Glen Mistletoe

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;) - الی

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 (Curmudgeon 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

http://www.youtube.com/watch... - kevin fitts

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! - Hamid Reza

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

We came in this morning for an aversion proceedure (turn the baby into position). They were expecting to induce if they could get him aimed the right way. Five minutes before they were supposed to do the procedure he turned the right way by himself. Then 20 minutes later he turned again. Drat. Anyway, now they are in the process of inducing and watching. Won't know for sure what's going on until later tonight. - - Robert Scoble

48 more comments

Right now we're just resting and waiting for the inducing agents to start their jobs. It's still possible that we might have to have a caesarian section, because little Ryan isn't in the right position. More probably later this evening, for now I get to geek out while Maryam takes a nap. - Robert Scoble

Sending lots of beams to Maryam (and you too!) I am out of the loop. I had no idea that the family was growing (and tell M, I'm going to be a grammy come March 1) - Nancy White

Fingers crossed for a natural delivery... unless Maryam would prefer a c-section ;) Good Luck. - Travis Koger

What a handsome name you've chosen ;) - Ryan Whitwam

Robert: I wish you and your wife the safest and best possible birth experience! Here's to a healthy baby boy and Mom!! Keeping you in my thoughts. Leslie - Leslie Carothers

Congrats, Robert. Can't wait to meet the newest Scoble :-) - Daniel Brusilovsky from iPhone

sending good thoughts for the easiest possible delivery, for both Ryan and Maryam - B.L. - B.L. Ochman

Best wishes, Robert. - Raju Vegesna

Are his initials really going to be R.S.S.? - Carlton Prest

Thinking good thoughts for your wife and the baby - Sherrie Belken

Carlton: yes. His name will be Ryan Soroush Scoble. Thanks everyone. - Robert Scoble

Wishing you both well, hoping it all goes to plan - Rachel Clarke

Fingers crossed for a smooth delivery and sending congratulations on your new son! - Jennifer Leggio

All the best, Scoble family! :) - Micah Wittman

bit of a pretentious name, named after one of the wisest Iranian thinkers of the last century. - David Lloyd

Good luck to you & yours :) - Blue_cat_online

Good luck to you both; hope all goes smoothly & swiftly. - Rachel Luxemburg

Nothing but good and positive wishes to Maryam and you and that RSS will come out the second to prettiest baby ever (naturally ours is the prettiest) *wink* - Rene Wirtz

David: my other son, Patrick, was named for a saint and Milan was named for one of the best writers ever. So there. - Robert Scoble

Best wishes, Robert! - Mike Hussein Cohen

Good luck to Robert and Maryam. A big week ahead. - Louis Gray

Thanks Louis and Mike. - Robert Scoble

Robert!!!!! What great news; it will be early. Why did they induce if the due date was the 25th, or was I wrong? - Francine Hardaway

wishing you the best. we have a girl due in a few months :) - Stalyn☂

Francine: because hospitals like to schedule babies, is my guess (Sequoia is like a hotel). But he was breech and they wanted to get him into position, now that she's here they are doing the induction thing. - Robert Scoble

Good wishes to all. I've never met you and even I'm nervous. - Amyloo

Good luck with everything, Robert!!! Very exciting! I hope everything turns out perfect in the end!! - Lindsay

Best wishes Scobs! This must be a very exiting day! - Jadito

All the best, Robert. This is Realtime Scoble Scoop (RSS)! - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

Good luck, everyone! - Glen Mistletoe

Good luck, Robert, Maryam, and Baby Scoble! - Michael R. Bernstein

So the doctor said that Ryan is one of the five most active babies she has seen in her practice which is why they didn't let us go home. Usually babies at this stage stay heads down. Ryan isn't. I think we have a wild one! :-) - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Congratulation and best wishes! - Heather Solos

5 is an odd number to recall. Good luck, best wishes. - Benjamin Taylor

Guarantee he gets a best friend named Adam. - Vezquex: God of FF

Congratulations and good luck. - Luiz Fuzaro

So exciting! Congrats, and good luck Robert! Enjoy the geek out time - that's always one of my favorite parts of having a baby. :-) - Jesse Stay

Very happy for you! Best of luck and hope everyone stays happy and healthy! - Martha

Robert wishing you and your wife a speedy delivery. May you have a happy, healthy baby. - Paul Blasman from iPhone

conggrats! - Alrady

Congrats Scoble! Wishing you , the wife and baby the best of early life. - Nakeva Corothers

Best wishes for this exciting event! - Anne Bouey

Sending good thoughts to your family. Good luck and congrats! - Alex Hellstrom from iPod

Congrats and best wishes - Love the name - you must have made Dave Winer's year with that one! - Steve Lacey from iPhone

Ahh, so looks like I haven't missed anything Robert as its now morning here...hurrah! - Sandra Large

Congratulations Robert and Welcome Ryan! - Martha

Congratulations :) xx - Joe Dawson

Congrats! Everybody doing ok? - Patrick Mackaaij

Robert, we're thinking best thoughts for you, Maryam and R.S.S. (cool initials for the new baby!) Congratulations!!! - Cathryn Hrudicka

Awesome Congrats! - Jessica Stevens

6 more comments

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 think most mean it's not as comfortable as FriendFeed. - Amit Morson

141 more comments

I think some of the stuff I'm reading about Facebook is laughable. Really? I went over and used it tonight and the news feed is very similar to FriendFeed. The technology from here will fit right in. - Robert Scoble

Actually, Robert's right. FriendFeed's basically a superior version of the Facebook news feed. - Dennis Jernberg

I wish Friend Feed was keyboard navigatable though. Google Reader and GMail have spoiled me; making me think that web apps can be usable as well. I don't like using the mouse so much. - Travis B. Hartwell

It's gotten a bit easier since they started copying Twitter/Friendfeed...but its the third-party silly stuff that puts me off. Serious stuff was always better here in Friendfeed. - George Hall (Australia)

we are compatable, hell the wedding is over put the shotguns down and lets all party like geeks. go to bed. love you all. you may friend me at any one of these places as lisbethwest. gnite! - lisbethwest

George: I ignore all that stuff, it never bothered me. - Robert Scoble

When do do we get hear what the plan actually is? I have used the FF app in facebook from time to time. But the problem is facebook is clunky due to it's massive membership so I tend click back to here. Is FB really going to get faster? It be smart to have both running in tandem methinks no? - BairdWilliamson

Facebook is like the social housing estate next door. There are some decent people living there, and there are some pockets of nobs who will steal the hubcaps off your car and throw them through your windows while trying to sell some dodgy dvd's on the street corners. - Gilbert Harding

PS yoono makes it groovy and friendbar keeps it happy - lisbethwest

Almost everyone I know IRL uses Facebook, but increasingly grudgingly. - LogEx

I know millions of people who use four remote controls to watch TV. - Luca Sofri

It is not usable in the way that friendfeed is (I know there are problems) - Paul Kinlan

but facebook is soo complicated - Paul Kinlan

I'll go with the train. If the train heads to Facebook I suppose thats where I need to go as well :) I'm absolute certain that FF staff will have a great impact on the user experience of FB. Trying to be positive I also think it's a great thing that FB still strive to evolve. - Patrik Arwengrim

Facebook is ugly, looks like a corporate site and very slow and clunky, like a busy factory with adds at every corner - Thierry Lhôte

Baird: software takes months. Paul is right. But Paul, you can just ignore a lot of the complexity there. - Robert Scoble

hhahaha, sth. like that i thought this second too, Luca :) - Ronald

Facebook is unusable to do the things that FriendFeed can do - Anthony Feint

lol, the #1 excuse I hear for people migrating from FriendFeed to Facebook is the annoying applications on the home feed. You can edit those out of your view you know. Same for people you don't want to converse with (privacy settings). - Hugh Isaacs II

@Robert - I find Facebook extremely useful... for playing Mafia and FarmTown style games. Engagement is just difficult there. I'm not sure if it's the UI, the crowd I have there, or what, but I just don't get into a comfortable conversational groove there on FB the way I do on Twitter or here. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

in fact, the four founders of Friendfeed recieved a trader bonus, for doing real-time search on Facebook, not changing Facebook to become Friendfeed - Thierry Lhôte

Robert - you're confusing number of users with ease of use. Millions of people of all ages used to be happy with their cellphones, but it wasn't until the iPhone came along that those people saw how usable a phone *could* be. - Andrew Terry

Anthony: like start a mob war? :-) - Robert Scoble

robert: I think it is hard to ignore the complexity, it took me ages to upload a phote once (or even find where to do it) - Paul Kinlan

robert: and there is no discovery... I love ff for its friend of a friend features and best of the day.... oh and my discussions. - Paul Kinlan

On Facebook i really only have my closest friends and family as "friends". I think i will not change that. I believe i am not the only one - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

I think someone hit the nail on the head. The one thing really missing from the Facebook experience is the sort of engagement we have here at Friendfeed. - George Hall (Australia)

exactly - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

robert: no sharing content is what im talking about. I actually don't personally know the people I follow on FriendFeed. many are influencers like yourself. This is where I get my news. On Facebook you have Friends not Followers - Anthony Feint

anyway, the key way to tell something is not friendly to someone, it is listening to that someone. That someone says it's not. You can't go and tell him he's wrong in what he doesn't like. - Luca Sofri

Anthony: that's changing and quickly. My Facebook looks exactly like FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble

Why are you using FF and Twitter and not FB then? Besides, they totally hid the applications so anything not out of the box is hard to get to. Advanced functionalities are hard to get to. It's the only site I can think of that I had to use the Help section to find stuff... - Eran Kampf from iPhone

@Anthony Actually Facebook has a following feature http://startupmeme.com/faceboo.... - Hugh Isaacs II

That and facebook is full of punk teenagers that I don't want to talk to ;) - Paul Kinlan

@Paul, Then delete them from your friends list, or don't add them. - Hugh Isaacs II

You choose your own friends on facebook, right? - TobiasVerhoog.com

also I do believe the UI on Facebook is terrible. It took me 5 attempts to try and create a page on Facebook and I still have to do a search for it when I want to view it - Anthony Feint

Robert, its all the poking and quizzes and other jejune stuff on Facebook - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Of course Facebook is usable. The point is what do you want to use it for. It was the one place where I could have family and close friends in a CLOSED network. I don't want the world and his missus to see my birthday party - sorry. Friendfeed is a completely different thing. Use it as a lifestream - have all sorts of friends/ acquiaintances/ whatever on there. They are not one and the same and I don't see how they can be. - sofiagk

@Aaman, block the quizzes from your home feed. - Hugh Isaacs II

Aaman: I've been on Facebook for a long time and I just ignore that stuff. No harm to me. - Robert Scoble

Facebook is cluttered. It's not a platform for sharing information and discussion. They're intended for two entirely separate purposes. That being said, I definitely am looking forward to what the FriendFeed team can do with Facebook. If real-time search is where they stop, it'll be hell. - Adam Reyher from Alert Thingy

On Facebook you choose your friends, just like here. Some differences, plus over there you have to decide whether you're going to be public or private up front. - Robert Scoble

So why you were then one of the sincerest ambassadors for FF and NOT FB? But taste changes... - Ronald

@Hugh what I was implying was that FF is open participation, so I am talking to you, I might not be following you but I am still talking to you; FB is open to 300 million users most of which I couldn't stop talking to me even if I wanted. Usage wise (from my perception) FB is closed to your personal groups, FF is discovery, the twain shall never mesh - Paul Kinlan

Robert Scoble was more interesting when he actually had a defensible opinion, rather than just went along with whatever the industry seemed to be doing and worked to egg people on. We remember those times, don't we? - Andy Bakun

I always laugh at people saying "what's the problem? Just do this, and it is ok". But the reason we use computers and software is we don't want to do this. We want to have things exactly the way we need them, not the way we need them if we just do this and this. - Luca Sofri

Facebook is not designed to be a public tool - think back to its roots. It's more of a private thing. If I am forced to use it like Friendfeed then I am deleting at least 80% of my info - sofiagk

@Paul, I think that's going to change with the FriendFeed acquisition. Facebook's aiming more for the public stuff instead of only focusing on close relationships now. - Hugh Isaacs II

cool, I used the word twain (evern if it is wrong) - Paul Kinlan

@sofiagk that´s exactly my point - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

@sofiagk, Everything on Facebook is choice, I doubt they'll force you to be public, it'll probably be very tightly controlled. - Hugh Isaacs II

Think of the privacy settings. - Hugh Isaacs II

@Hugh, I would love FB to change to be more like FF but I can't see it happening, I would love to get to see the real-time search (someone said they just released it). - Paul Kinlan

sofiagk: I completely agree - Facebook was built for closed and private networks. Which is the complete opposite of FF. I don't want to setup complex privacy settings becasue I don't want my family to be inundated with php and coding articles. - Anthony Feint

If we are talking about privacy settings you might want to check out my FB app http://www.knowyourprivacy.com - Paul Kinlan

do i really want to search facebook? really? - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

FB's great strength was for the private stuff. If I'm forced to choose between public and private, I'm going to stay private, because that's where my IRL friends are. Sorry, FFers. - James Myatt

@Michael A. "Flynn" Volz +1 - sofiagk

@Paul, I don't think Facebook plans to continue as just a closed network anymore, I think their goal is to cover all types of social interactions on the web so it's very likely they'll have FriendFeed like features. - Hugh Isaacs II

We use each tool to our own purposes but that doesn't mean that each tool is not better suited to a type of use. - sofiagk

@sofiagk, What's to say Facebook can't act as two tools instead of one? - Hugh Isaacs II

@hugh, the had better change their API to support that type activity then. - Paul Kinlan

@Paul, They already did. - Hugh Isaacs II

Hugh, I'm sure it can, but it's going to be really awkward. Like using a Swiss army knife to put shelves together and then skin a rabbit. - James Myatt

@James, Yea, I can't defend that, lol. - Hugh Isaacs II

@Hugh Isaacs II well if they are planning to open up then half of the apps are more or less redundant I would guess. You spend all of your time becoming something and then strip down to become something else? What's the point? I'm sorry I just don't understand what is the point with competing with twitter. Facebook vs Twitter is just a silly question, how would you compare them? Using some ff feature to make the stream on facebook better - sure I get that. - sofiagk

I think Facebook really need to sketch out what they're going to do with Friendfeed, and that might help people adapt to the idea better. At the moment, too much speculation and people really have no idea what to expect of this. - George Hall (Australia)

I've never beeon a big user of FF. I still don't quite get it. I use FB to keep in touch with people I know. As far as I can see FF is more for discovering stuff and discussing it with people I don't. Or have I missed the point? - Marc A. Price

@sofiagk, When you look at what Facebooks done so far, it seems like they just want all of the internets social interactions in one place. I mean it does sound silly but sticking to one thing is what killed off Friendster, Classmates, MySpace and so on. - Hugh Isaacs II

Marc, I think that is exactly the point - James Myatt

Being on FF is like publishing only things you want. With advanced privacy settings, you can just filter what to share on FB. BUT (a big but) I don't trust Facebook and I've seen it enabling stuff like alerts and configuration settings just because they had some error in their system. I don't share my private life on FF but I share family pictures, my personal details like my cell phone because I only allow people I know personally on FB. - Burak "cyrus" Bayburtlu

My biggest problems with using Facebook like Friendfeed are lack of friend-of-friend content (if someone else likes / comments on something, I don't get that in my feed), barriers to engagement (subscribing to someone you don't really "know" on FF is fine; sending a friend request to someone you don't really "know" on FB is not cool), and the fact that stuff falls down the feed too quickly because likes / comments don't bump it to the top again. - Tristan Seligmann

@hugh, they haven't changed their api at all, the status stream is a bit of a joke. - Paul Kinlan

@Hugh Isaacs II if they want to get all of social interaction in one place they have grossly misunderstood the nature of social interaction generally. People do not have ONE identity which they use to interact with EVERYONE. Rather we have MULTIPLE. I don't talk to my boss the same way as I talk to my friend. That's why I need multiple tools. So if there is only one on offer I will not use it. - sofiagk

@sofiagk i totally agree with that - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

@sofiagk, that's what the privacy settings are for. In real life you don't take on multiple personas (well at least I don't think you do) so why do it on the internet? And in real life certain conversations are private, kept from others. You shouldn't require separate identities for that. - Hugh Isaacs II

And you can't expect them to know the perfect network for human interaction. The fact that they're trying gives me confidence though. It's like Googles goal to store all of the worlds information in one place, it won't happen but it definitely made some great products. - Hugh Isaacs II

@Hugh Isaacs II do you really trust facebook with the complicated settings and permissions and groups. I don't. I will agree with what @Burak "cyrus" Bayburtlu said above. I get what you are saying about trying. But at the end of the day Google has multiple product offerings. Facebook doesn't (for now). - sofiagk

Hugh, you do need separate places for that so that there's no risk of being overheard accidentally. - James Myatt

@sofiagk, I don't honestly. I'm defending them based off of idealism not favoritism. And yea, handling all of that stuff will probably end up in a million mistakes but it's a product, that happens. Also what's to say Facebook can't have multiple products? (That could be apart of this whole FriendFeed thing) - Hugh Isaacs II

@Hugh Isaacs II well - let's see what's gonna happen. Btw thanks for the lively chat a blog post is being drafted in my head as I type :-) - sofiagk

multiple products, like google does, that would be a really good idea. rename friendfeed and go on - Flynn (Michael A. Volz)

Your welcome, also if it's of any help, the maker of FriendFeed posted up something of reassurance http://friendfeed.com/paul... - Hugh Isaacs II

I think it makes more sense to have multiple "spaces" (work / private / whatever) in the same tool than arbitrarily dividing those up across multiple tools. - Tristan Seligmann

For example, most people would probably not create a Yahoo email account for emailing some people, and a GMail account for emailing others; they would just create two GMail accounts. - Tristan Seligmann

@Tristan, It's funny alot of people on FriendFeed are talking about migrating to Google Wave because of the whole Facebook thing, and in reality that's what Wave is going to do. - Hugh Isaacs II

All of the big companies whether open or not are aiming at owning your internet identity, they don't want separate identities because it doesn't define everything correctly. That's why Google has their profiles feature, why so many companies support OpenID, etc... It may not be something you're used to but over time it will just be one account per person, based on how social networking evolves. - Hugh Isaacs II

I bet even FriendFeed had that idea (Hint: Google, Facebook and Twitter log in feature). - Hugh Isaacs II

Carefully observe how someone communicates on phone call versus a face-to-face conversation. It's different—for one thing speaking in a louder volume on the phone. The medium influences the communication itself (but don't get me started on McLuhan ;) So multiple tools can help achieve a certain dynamic that would not have happened just by using another feature inside a single service/construct. That's certainly been my experience on FriendFeed. - Micah Wittman

@Micah Wittman +1 - sofiagk

@Micah, Wouldn't Facebook count as multiple tools in itself. You can have a toolbox, that doesn't mean all of it's contents equal one tool. - Hugh Isaacs II

Well, I guess this is more of a Swiss Army knife, but the analogy still applies. - Hugh Isaacs II

Hugh, typically, the same culture/available resources produce stuff under a certain paradigm. - Micah Wittman

@Micah, I doubt they'd just stuff all of your social interactions under one blanket. - Hugh Isaacs II

They've already separated all of my friends by relation. - Hugh Isaacs II

I mean, look at FriendFeed, I used the Facebook Connect feature to log in, but I don't interact on here as I would with my friends - Hugh Isaacs II

The last post I see from Robert on his FB Fan page is June 4th. Being a fan on FB is certainly not the same as subscribing here. If you tried to post all these comments on FB, they would take up 4-5 times more screen space. Like others, I use FB for private family and friends, and FF for subscribing to other public feeds. I like the differences. - Keith Rowland

Facebook is just really cluttered, and it's UI looses focus on so many fronts. Take the start page - i've missed events, birthdays and other stuff because its burried with a million things on one page. But that's where the people are. I - Shawn Roos

Or you are SO wrong here. People pretend they are using it - then their wife asks - btw, honey, how did you create that fan page about me? And he says - WTF? :) - Sasha Kovaliov(.com)

Apostol, lol :) The idea is that usability could have been much-much better! Right now it's a total mess and there is a lot of room for improvement. Yes, people use it everyday, but do they use all of it? - Sasha Kovaliov(.com)

@Sasha, do you use all of FriendFeed? (Example: Last.Fm, Brightkite, desktop notifications, google talk integration, etc...) - Hugh Isaacs II

Then why use people not using all of Facebook as an argument? - Hugh Isaacs II from iPod

FB is not unusable, but it is bloated. Tough to set things up the way that I want. Too many new toys/apps popping up almost in every second. I'm tired of hiding this, hiding that from the feeds - ilter

It's still pretty simple and pleasant to use provided you don't install any applications IMO :P. - James Stephenson

James: what about not being able to stop some favorite friends from installing any applications? :) - ilter

ilter: Ummm ... I guess you could start selecting your friends based on their Facebook Applications :P? That would be a sad, sad day... - James Stephenson

Maybe we need a seperate facebook application. Wait... are there ANY facebook desktop applications? AIR-free preferred (for now) :) - ilter

Throws a sheep at Robert. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

Hat tip to this discussion and to @Hugh Isaacs II - I explain my point on facents and identities better here http://www.digital-era.org/renditi... (I know this is a shameless plug - Robert fee free to delete, I just thought it is relevant) - sofiagk

@sofiagk, I read your blog post and understand your argument but the same rule still stands. You only have one body. As with the friend list feature on Facebook you have social barriers that keep some people away from what others may see. I know it sounds foolish to push all of your social interactions under one service, but if that service can recreate the same personas you use in real life, the only argument against it would be ease of use, comfort and bugs. - Hugh Isaacs II

@Hugh Isaacs II with you all the way if we can find some way to meaningfuly separate functions and feeds - to actually control what info we send to whom. - sofiagk

@sofiagk, that's what I've been getting at this whole time. I mean I know Facebook in it's current state doesn't do a great job of controlling who sees what, but I'm sure they've been working on that. The FriendFeed acquisition is probably to cater to that. - Hugh Isaacs II

Facebook has lots of usability issue. For example, they hid all the apps in that ridiculous bottom toolbar making them less accessible. It took me a while to find that my events are now there... If you want to do anything a bit more advanced than the basic functions then you'll probably lost without their help site (took me a while to figure out how to set permissions to different groups... ). Facebook should be way easier to use... - Eran Kampf

@Eran, Windows does the same thing. Hides all of the apps in that ridiculous bottom toolbar. ^_^ - Hugh Isaacs II

scobble: it's close to unusable. - Gal Granov גל גרנוב

If its so good and usable... why do you use FriendFeed\Twitter? - Eran Kampf

@Eran, Facebook doesn't let me hold public conversations like the one we're currently having (which I think is bound to change). - Hugh Isaacs II

It's not unusable... it's TOO usable. Too easily gamed by spam apps, too visible to employers who want to block it, too easy for advertisers to target your feed and use your stuff. And way, way too cluttered. It's like the boardwalk in Atlantic City... I avoid it if I can but every so often I make the mistake of going and find that it hasn't changed. Friendfeed on the other hand has none of the crap, while it does have a boatload of interesting, engaged people. - Jim Hearts FF

well said Jim.... +1 - Kim

++++jim - BEX from iPhone

I totally (!) agree with Jim *thumbs up* - Ronald

@Jim, you know you can actually filter out the applications from your view, even keep them from posting on your wall. - Hugh Isaacs II

You are spot on, Robert. The proof is in the pudding. - thinkQuick

Hugh... yes, I know. But while facebook is very easy to begin using it requires a fair amount of effort to set up all that stuff and get the look/feel you want. For all the talk I've heard about how Friendfeed is difficult to figure out, I've never had that problem here. - Jim Hearts FF

@Jim, yea but FriendFeed is a very young website. I'm not content just knowing that I can't filter out which of my friends can see what. If FriendFeed lasted longer it would've probably gotten more complex and you would've lost interest, or it would've stayed the same and you would've lost interest. Either way judging from your comment I think you would've moved on to something new at some point (this is Facebooks attempt at being relevant to you). - Hugh Isaacs II

Hugh... I guess you missed the part of my comment that spoke about interesting, engaged people. I will not be losing interest in them anytime soon. In fact, I've been (and still am) on facebook longer than I've been here. I've never been that interested in facebook and still am not. It was just the opposite on FF. I was skeptical and used it very little at first but as the service (for... more... - Jim Hearts FF

Slow... Bogged down with apps... And who wants to refresh a page or discussion manually? Although it does allow me to stay connected with people I would have otherwise lost touch with. - Walt Ruppar from iPhone

@Walt, Facebook + Realtime experts = Facebook in Realtime. It's an assumption but not one without merit. - Hugh Isaacs II

Good to connect with friends of friends but do not like the stupid apps - Randy Allen Bishop

people who barely know the net are ALL on facebook. you know what i would like? friend group settings. think about it. post photos to your personal group, your online friends or something else entirely. and WHO KNOWS - with the smart people working for the boogie men, it might happen too! - Terry O'Fee

@Hugh yes I know it is coming... Just wanted to share my top three issues with #facebook and why I use it to help this wonderful R&D discussion... :) - Walt Ruppar from iPhone

I think Facebook is perfectly usable. I just can't use it for the same sort of things. Honestly, most people think Facebook is unusable because of all the applications that their friends use, and which those people are too lazy to block. There are some legit problems though, like the quiz applications which, literally, make new applications, so that they show up and you have to block... more... - Otto

Logging into Facebook means a 10-12 minute commitment just to catch up on a half-day's worth of communication. By contrast, I can get in and out of Twitter or Friendfeed in a minute or two if that's all I have. Facebook is just...heavy. - Ed Moltzen

I know people that work at Facebook. They're good people. But I have serious doubts about their abilities to make an interface that doesn't totally suck. Face facts, Facebook's interface absolutely blows. It is very difficult to do anything that you actually need to do. A good friend of mine is a teacher, and she stopped using Facebook because she didn't want to reject her students on... more... - Otto

I think FB is/has reached a level of importance as SOFTWARE that there needs to be detailed guides/documentation/tutorials. Think about it, most of FB's functionality is simply put out there for people to discover. When you sign up you aren't introduced to a 1/4 of what is available or provided any kind of best practices guidance. Software we buy for our systems generally comes with some type of manual or instruction. Most webapps like FB do not, you have to go to the community or hunt through the interface - Martin Johnson

It's not unusable but it is quite a challenge to new users. I wrote this post about how Twitter is the gateway drug to social networking. http://blog.adam-jackson.net/2009... - Adam Jackson

I may have to have two accounts on FB, one private and one public - outofmyarse

It might come as a shock to the designers out there but usability is not the most important aspect of an application. Facebook's success in the face of its sucky usability proves that. People are on facebook, and other on-line social networks, because they want to interact with the other members, not because of usability. - sjjh

Unnecessary to chew gum. But it's called billion dolar industry. - Burçak Çubukçu

The selling point of friendfeed is that it's a social interface utterly different from facebook. The default is open, shareable, aggregrates, and the UI isn't overridden with crud. - Mark Essel

there are more stranger things that people do, not everything could be explained, asked a wrong question. like say if there aren't any ghosts why more than half the world believe, if there is any god or isn't why are people theist/atheist. why men cut their hair both head/facial when they are there for sexual and heat exchange purposes at first places, you asked it out of your sentiment for facebook and i wrote it because i don't like facebook ;) - testbeta

I personally prefer intensedebate to disqus... I don't know that disqus is far and away the leader?? - Justin Long

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Justin - I think Intense Debate is a fine product but they don't excel at extending and gathering conversations. - Keith - @tsudo

Apostol - You've identified my major issue with Facebook. It is a one way street leading to a walled garden - Keith - @tsudo

I've tried all three of these. I found Disqus incredibly difficult to use and set up, and Intense Debate marginally less so. But the problem with both of these is that really, your comments are no longer your own. That is to say, when somebody comments on your blog post using these two comment systems, the comments are not on your site anymore, they're on this third parties site. Sure,... more... - Otto

Honestly I've never gotten this control issue. My website sits on server that doesn't reside in my home or use my internet connection. My email, my RSS, everything is relying on someoneelse's system. I just don't get the mindset of hoarding comments. The reward for using one of the platforms is just to great to miss - Keith - @tsudo

Yes, my email and my website and everything else is indeed relying on somebody else's system. I pay them for that service, in fact. However, my content remains under my control. Comments I display on my sites are my content as well. Why would I want to give up any form of control over them for some "bling" that in the end doesn't seem all that useful. Better to take the useful bits I do find and reproduce them on my own site. - Otto

Unrelated, but similar, example of why maintaining control over your own data is so important: http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... - Otto

I don't really see the comment's as my property. If anyone property they are that of the person who left the comment. - Keith - @tsudo

It's not about "property". It's about control over what I display and where my working data resides. Why should I trust a company with my data? Why should I trust these companies with my data? Why should I give them that trust in exchange for just minor bits of functionality? - Otto

What is the down side of releasing control when there is so much to gain? - Keith - @tsudo

So much? No, I see it as so little, actually. What these services provide is minor functionality, at best. With just a few hours work, one could replicate the best parts he's discussing on their own site with minimal effort. Facebook Connect, Twitter integration, FriendFeed, etc, these can be easily done without that type of thing. If you run a common blog platform like WordPress, there's plugins for that. - Otto

Ok, well I guess I'll just have to agree to disagree. I'm a big fan of Disqus and different opinions make the world go round. Thanks for conversation - Keith - @tsudo

Side note: If you were using BackType Connect, this conversation we're having right here, on FriendFeed, would show up on your site. Discus and Intense Debate can't do that. - Otto

Backtype is too noisy for me. - Keith - @tsudo

Samuel, that's not true. Disqus would show it on your site. - Admiral Anika

Anika: Well, it's not working then, because this conversation is not showing up on his site. - Otto

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about comments not being on your site. IntenseDebate automatically mirrors the comments back to your wordpress blog so that if you should disable it, all your comments are there. I think Disqus does the same thing, because when I moved from Disqus to ID all of the comments on my blog were automatically migrated to ID. - Justin Long

How does the new Echo platform from the JS-Kit people compare to Disqus or Intense Debate? I'm interested in getting one of those integrated with my blog soon. - Travis B. Hartwell

@Justin Long: Yes, they do, but the problem with that is that the functionality to do that mirroring is buggy as all hell. Last time I tried Disqus, I ended up with a horked up database that had to be manually repaired (not to mention that it duplicated every single comment on the site). Intense Debate has had similar problems. The fact that it has to mirror the comments at all is the main problem, the comments should not need mirroring. Let them live where they belong: on the site itself. - Otto

Samuel - I realize things go fubar but I've never had any trouble with Disqus and comment mirroring. Perhaps it was the exception and not the rule. Good point Justin - Keith - @tsudo

"Dave, I just wrote about Twitter's Platform Shortcomings here: http://scobleizer.com/2009......" - Robert Scoble

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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

It's a beautiful day in NJ, ask Patrick what's up with Google Voice? - paul mooney

5 more comments

"hi, who are you?" - Mark from iPhone

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

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

3 more comments

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

I used to talk about Twitter every day to my blog readers back in 2007 (and Facebook too). That's what I do. I tell you what the best new stuff in my life is, and I get passionate about it. Today FriendFeed's technology is WAY better than Twitter's for a whole lot of reasons. So, I will talk about it now and I really don't care that you don't like it. - Robert Scoble

Where's Dvorak lol don't mention Twitter around him - Robert Burgin

Tomorrow if something else even better comes out, I will talk about that as well, to the chagrin of my FriendFeed followers who will quickly get sick of hearing about it thanks to the aggregating feature here. - Robert Scoble

It's the cycle of life. I always push the best of breed. If you can't handle the best of breed, don't follow me. It'll just frustrate you. - Robert Scoble

I learned how to post to my feed and groups and cc Twitter recently. I think Im posting 90% of the time here instead of Twitter now. - beersage

Selling my i phone 3gs Just send me a e mail at thorntec@gmail.com - Aaron Thorn

but I like just arguing about your latest fad with you!!!! - Rachel Clarke

Aaron: you've been warned. If you post off topic in my items again you'll get blocked. - Robert Scoble

Rachel: yes, well, arguing is fun! It's how people figure out the truth. - Robert Scoble

Scobes: how do we get more people onto Friendfeed then? I wanted to share a wine article but couldn't find a decent active wine group on here. Need more people to FF to flourish. - beersage

beersage: yeah, that takes time. Build a room. Bring good wine content into it, and slowly the people will show up. I still need to get GaryVee into here. Getting people to change behavior is VERY difficult. That's why I think Facebook is going to win this battle. - Robert Scoble

At least until FriendFeed finds a way to change the game in a way that Facebook isn't willing to replicate. - Robert Scoble

I can't see Gary not trying this he is so pumped to try new things to drive his business - Robert Burgin

Do you think friendfeed will overtake twitter and then facebook? My money is on friendfeed! - Craig Shipp

Craig: nope, not with its current form. They need to do some serious stuff that's different than Facebook and Twitter. I think the themes are a very serious hint of what's to come. - Robert Scoble

I resisted using twitter for a year before I finally succumbed - because of its 'silly' name - I was lost for three weeks when I first signed up nearly two years ago - now one of my twitter accounts is taking over my life - and it's all your fault Robert Scoble. - Chris Loft

I am a media nobody but managed to drive comments on guardian.co.uk and their twitter-story. Guardian-Readers complaining about the Guradian's coverage of Twitter. Funny old people;) - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

I see Twitter's popularity increasing based on Mobile exposure .,, recently kevin spacey on Letterman pulls out the BB and sends a Tweet . I think Friendfeed needs to make its Mobile experience easier to understand/use for the everyday joe ... - johnpiercy

johnpiercy: that's what I've said many times here. The FriendFeed mobile experience is non-existent. I know Robert likes their iPhone mobile web page. But I'm sorry, when you're used to superior custom apps for Twitter and then you look at that joke of a mobile web page, no wonder people walk away. Now, this is a bit of a chicken & egg situation. Getting developers to make a kick-arse... more... - Christopher A. Wichura

Now, as to FriendFeed taking on Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is really a very different beast than FriendFeed. I don't see that happening. Twitter, on the other hand, is ripe to be destroyed. It's overrun by spambots these days. It's extremely frustrating to actually converse with people there due to the 140 character limit and lack of proper conversation flows. And it just overall... more... - Christopher A. Wichura

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

I resent this to test out FriendFeed's email feature. - Robert Scoble from email

41 more comments

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

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 ... - Onur Gündüz

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 is...

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

you don't need to open it up for us to see that... - Mike White

97 more comments

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... more... - 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... more... - 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... more... - 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... more... - 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

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

108 more comments

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

They can reclaim stolen property, but they would tell you, they wouldn't just steal it back from you secretly. - RobinDotNet

@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

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

I still don't see why Amazon deleted the books from the Kindle. Apple doesn't do the same thing for their apps. Kindle may be okay, but I'm sticking with Stanza on the iPhone for now. - darnell from BuddyFeed

So wait. I unknowingly buy a book from a store that doesn't know it's stolen. The store owner realizes it was stolen, comes to my house, breaks in and takes the book back? Since when does he have the right to do that? The police, probably. The store owner? Definitely not. - shandel from iPhone

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... more... - 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... more... - 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... more... - Ken Kennedy

Amazon clearly violated federal "computer tampering" laws. See http://cid-c072ace4f752027c.sp... - Brian K. Stanley, Att'y

http://www.nasa.gov/centers... - Robert Scoble from iPhone

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Chief research scientist. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Anyone want to know something about Mars? You have three minutes to ask. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Dr. Tore Straume - OakleighVermont

Do Martians really talk like Marvin? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

He says we have to go to the moon first. Moon by 2020. Mars by 2030. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

what evidence is their from Mars that it once had a dense atmosphere? - Mark

"It is only 10 years!" - Robert Scoble from iPhone

i want to know the 3 biggest contributions of nasa in the last 10 years. is the US getting a return on its investment? - lew

Moon as a test-run? There's almost nothing there worth anything - KyNam Doan

KyNam: the moon will be a way station. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

What does he think of the mars biosphere guys in the arctic. Cooks, or science that Nasa actually pays attention to? - Jay Shapiro from iPhone

But his bio doesn't say anything about Mars. Says he worked on the effects of radiation exposure. Japan, not Mars. - Kirk Biglione

can Mars be terraformed? - Bob Blunk

Turn on http://www.Qik.com/scobleizer and we will try live video. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Lew - Return on investment? Knowledge! - KyNam Doan

Bummer can't do live video. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

If we can't colonize the moon, there's no way we'll be able to colonize Mars. And it'll be a lot easier to rescue a failed colony on the moon. - Victor Ganata

Ask him what's the most interesting thing he can tell us about Mars. - Bruce Lewis

Can you ask him if we can send Astronauts to Mars before Obama's first term is up, and if current technology will protect the astronauts enough from the radiation - Charbax

Bob he says that is a big job with many uncertainties. He says some don't want us to do that. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Will magnetic bubbles really be sufficient to protect explorers from radiation? - Todd Hoff

Charbox: no. Current plan is 2019 for next human mission to moon. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

I believe NASA should send Astrunauts to Mars as soon as possible. Skip the whole Moon thing and cancel ISS and the Shuttle. Priority should be a world collaboration project using Russian heavy lift rockets and going direct to Mars for $30 Billion before Obama's first term is up - Charbax

Does he use Wolfram Alpha? - Benjamin Taylor

The argument is that we are much closer to having the technology to go to Mars today then we were to going to the Moon when Kennedy did the speech in 1961 So why not focus the world space efforts on fitting the Humans to Mars mission in the relatively still recent 1988 Heavy lift Russian Energia rocket technology - Charbax

Will we use nuclear energy on Mars? - Bob Blunk

Todd: he gave me a long answer but yes but it will need a lot of power. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

I have to go. I will answer rest when I get to London. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Charbax 3 years is an unrealistic timeframe for a safe and prolonged mission to Mars - KyNam Doan

we need to find ways of creating various things - space borne farms, various stations in between Earth, moon and mars. The more humans we can ship off this planet, the greater the impact we will have upon it and the greater amount of goods we can produce to support this number of us. - alphaxion

KyNam: ok, i want to know what knowledge that has had a big impact. everything is a trade. i am not doubting it, but i think NASA has a marketing problem in that I cannot tell you the key knowledge we have gained and its impact. should we spend the next $ on space or sea exploration? and that is just one option - lew

How far ahead is NASA planning? Is anyone thinking about trying to reach any of the exoplanets? Generation ships? A little closer to home, are they sending any probes out to the Kuiper belt to study any of the new dwarf planets? Any missions to the Oort cloud? - Victor Ganata

Cool, thanks Robert. It seems like high magic to me. - Todd Hoff

Basic science is never sexy. If we based all our research targets on market value, we may never have figured out how to make fire. - Victor Ganata

You should definitely try to get a Wimbledon tennis final ticket for Sunday. It'd be really nice to see some live real-time blogging from there. And IBM has TONS of awesome new technologies they are showcasing at Wimbledon, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch... IBM Seer is the best Android application ever made, one of the most impressive mobile phone applications - Charbax

Victor nobody would invest in fire. Too risky. They would invest in a new rock that was more accurate in flight because the was just an incremental technology leap. Low risk high reward. - Todd Hoff

Robert, this is excellent thanks. I'm sure he's a bit shocked - Jay Shapiro from iPhone

KyNam Doan, Obama can announce the Mission to Mars for within his second term then. And the safety should not be the absolute priority. We are 6 billion people waiting for scientific results and there are thousands of Astronauts who would line up to go on a Mission to Mars even if it was very dangerous. - Charbax

Charbax, the thing is, if we sent a mission to Mars and it failed, would we even have any hope of attempting a second venture? - Victor Ganata

There are Astronauts that have been irradiated for years on Mir and on ISS already. So I wonder how much worse the irradiation can be for the Humans to Mars program. As long as the Astronauts can make it through the 6 months journey there, and eventually the 2.5 year journey if they have to come back. - Charbax

We should send at least 4 teams of 4 Astronauts up to Mars at the same time, to multiply the chances of success. - Charbax

Charbax, Of course I'm concerned for the lives of the astronauts, but safety refers also to the integrity of the mission itself. 6 months transit time each way + playtime is a lot of time for things to go wrong and blow billions of dollars into space. - KyNam Doan

Yeah, obviously, I don't want anyone killed, but like KyNam Doan, I'm thinking that a failed mission to the Moon would be far less costly than a failed mission to Mars. And we'll definitely learn things about colonizing planets just by going to the Moon. - Victor Ganata

The argument of the Mars Direct mission is of course it's advanced technology and we need to spend $30 Billion developing and building it, but the basic technology of building those Humans to Mars lander and return vehicles (that could also generate fuel for the return vehicles mixing Hydrogen with the Methane on Mars), those technologies are not _that_ much different then the technologies we had in the 70ies for Appollo or the technologies we have with Shuttle and the ISS - Charbax

ask him what he thinks of the Navy's SPAWAR lab finding fast neutrons in their Cold Fusion experiments. :-) - Karim

Going back to the Moon, unless we want to somehow Mine it for some type of ressource, I think would be a total waste of time! we can get 1000x more science out of going to Mars, and it is _not_ much more expensive. Sending a vehicle to Mars is not much different than the one sent to the Moon, it's just a different trajectory and 6 months instead of 3 days of travel. - Charbax

Make it a one-way flight. That should cut down on the weight for fuel and increase the amount of equipment they have to create a base on Mars. Land them at the pole so they have a chance of extracting water and oxygen from the atmosphere and with enough supplies to last years on the surface while they try and figure out how we will survive there. As unlikely the success of such a venture would be you will still get people signing up for it and you know that necessity is the mother of invention. - Sam Pullara

There are astronauts living on ISS for more than 6 months already, they eat and have a fine time up there. So why not simply put them on a trajectory to Mars and that's it. - Charbax

Yeah, but once they're out of Earth orbit, they won't be getting those shuttle visits to resupply and repair stuff. - Victor Ganata

Sam Pullara, what you can easilly do is send more empty ships up there. One other ship could have a lot of Hydrogen, it would mix with the Methane on mars to generate enough fuel to launch the Astronauts back to Earth 1.5 years after they land. You can if you want, land another ship close by with extra food and tools. You simply launch several ships at the same time. - Charbax

I'm all for taking it straight to Mars, was just skeptical about such a short time frame. The one-way trip Sam suggested may be the best bet for "success." Sans family et al + spaceskills, I'd sign up :P - KyNam Doan

Well the Mars Direct plan is essentially a one way trip, until you walk or drive over to the Earth-return vehicle that was sent before or at the same time. Also, you can send the Astronauts now, and figure out later how to send them back. In the US, there are millions of people that have to stay in small prison cells for years and years. Why can't we have a few volunteer scientists up there for at least 1.5 years and maybe more, this shouldn't take 20 years to find a solution before something is done. - Charbax

Does NASA only take flight surgeons/aerospace medicine-boarded physicians? - Victor Ganata

I think NASA should take video-bloggers and broadcast the whole thing live in HD, it'd be the Mars HD channel. Over the years of the project, just ad revenue could finance perhaps as much as half the $30 Billion Humans to Mars project cost. - Charbax

How about robotic collaboration? Why not send the robots first to build some infrastructure collect, process resources. Once we have a very high probability that there are enough resources to build and return humans the humans land in a plush, and luxurious mars pad? Basically, I am strongly in favor of Human - Mars, but dont see it as the rush, we should have some time to do it in style. - Robert Higgins

Prasoon: when he says they have to go to the moon first, he means they need to establish a base on the moon as a jumping off point for Mars. So, if your goal is Mars, you gotta go to the moon first. - Robert Scoble

It was an incredible 10 hours. We tasted wine, talked about philosophy, talked about radiation and how they are building new sensors to sense increases in radiation due to random sun activity so that people in space can seek shelter in time, talked about why humans explore (he thinks we're programmed to explore by evolution), and a bunch of other things. - Robert Scoble

All you need to explore I think is mobility + curiosity + irrationality. Those drives make for explorers. - Todd Hoff

my faovorite NASA JPL geek is my Dad http://www.nasa.gov/offices.... - Sonya

Agree that humans are hard-wired to explore, but desire to build a way-station on Mars will build as people understand that we live on an unpredictable and active planet in an active solar system with an active sun in an active galaxy. The sci-fi movies are right; we are always close to disaster of some sort. Thus, the need for shelter elsewhere. - Brenda Young

put simply, until we have colonies on other planets, our species is already dead. Just a matter of time. - alphaxion

The best way to search it: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble from Bookmarklet

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Here's the main conference URL: http://parnassusgroup.com/twitter... - Robert Scoble

I will be live blogging the conference here. - Robert Scoble

No video feeds? - Simon Wicks

Right now I'm sitting next to Steve Broback, who runs the conference. It sold out, by the way. - Robert Scoble

It's the only conference (TechCrunch reported that there's actually six Twitter conferences) that Twitter is semi officially supporting. Alex Payne, API Lead at Twitter, is speaking this morning. - Robert Scoble

I am watching the live stream coming from the conference and will click "like" on any Tweet that has a really great point. That way you can see the stream with less noise than you'll see in the search above. Here's a search for #140tc but with display set to only show Tweets and other items with one like or more: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Just how many people are there also blogging or tweeting the conference? - Robert Freeze

The first speech, by Alex Payne, Twitter's API lead, starts at 9 a.m. Pacific Time, which is about one and a half hours from now. - Robert Scoble

I want to swim in the pool instead of tweeting - Jacque

Are you only talking about a live stream of twitter and friendfeed messages? Or is there an actual live video stream going to be available from somewhere? If someone would post a live ustream, kyte or such stream from the conference, that would be cool! - Charbax

Robert Freeze: there are more than 300 people here (or will be in about an hour). I'd expect most of them to be Twittering the conference, so anything that Alex Payne says will probably be repeated many many times. Having filters is going to be very important to be able to find the "needles" in the haystack that is headed our way in real time. - Robert Scoble

Charbax: Andru Edwards is shooting video of the sessions but we're not sure it'll be streamed live. I'll try to turn on my Kyte cam if they don't, at least for Alex Payne's speech. - Robert Scoble

There's an article about Twitter on the front page of USA Today, by the way.The article is at http://www.usatoday.com/tech... - Robert Scoble

Thanks for doing this, Robert! I hope some cool stuff is talked about and shared :) - Sam Houston

I'm with Sam - thanks - I wish I was there. - Robert Freeze

Excellent day is done here so can follow this undisturbed :) I am seriously interested in hearing if Alex Payne says anything about their spam issues. Tx Robert looking forward to updates - Peter du Toit (S.Africa)

Peter: I'm sure that will come up. - Robert Scoble

Robert: quick question before the action starts here. You covering Google I/O from tomorrow? - Peter du Toit (S.Africa)

Robert has said he will cover Google I/O, I can't wait. It's the point Google is going to launch a Twitter/friendfeed killer app, an Intel/Microsoft killer Android OS for netbooks, a TV/Cinema killer Youtube HD monetization plan, a hosting provider killer in PHP support for Google App Engine, a Facebook killer in updated Google Friend Connect and Google Open Social and an iphone/nokia killer in Android 2.0 - Charbax

Looks like we're in for an exciting two days then! - Peter du Toit (S.Africa)

Peter: I should be there in the morning, but won't be covering everything. You will have TONS of news from there. I am sure it'll be hard to avoid for the next two days. :-) - Robert Scoble

Steve Broback just opened the conference here. So will have more soon. - Robert Scoble

Alex Payne is showing off the early days and explaining how he got to Twitter. The stories are all out there, unfortunately not enough bandwidth here for live video streaming. Sigh. - Robert Scoble

Oh well, we trust you to bring us the best stuff :) - Simon Wicks

no updates in a hour Robert? - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Sorry Capn: you should have watched the search. I live reported here http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... - Robert Scoble

no worries - I found it! - Capn' One Eye - adrift

140tc through Robert's eyes: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

Is twitter going to support OpenMicroBlogging protocol? There should be public pressure for them to adopt this, and adopt federation with other OMB capable services - Jon

here's another proposal, quit enabling url shortening. This trend is breaking the web, and it sets users up for a bad experience. There are two options that come to mind, either take URL data out of the message and into a separate structured data field just for URL data, or just get rid of the arbitrary 140 character limit. - Jon

I'll take Door #1, Jon! - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

while they're at it, they can add data fields for just about anything, such as location or hashtags. these really don't belong in the message do they? - Jon

To clarify, people who are interacting with Twitter via an SMS-only interface have no use for links anyway, why not strip them out and only make them available as supplementary metadata for API/web clients - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

or http://140tc.tweetmeme.com - for the best stories, videos and pictures from the conference - Nick Halstead

In case you're curious, that's "Nick Halstead of TweetMeme". http://blog.tweetmeme.com/2009... - Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel, correct! :) - Nick Halstead

Go get 'em CL! - Fred Garrett

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sue him for bad naming an awesome company (with just a bad website) - sadiq kassamali

That is insane... CL knows that they have done nothing wrong and the AG is just trying to scare them. Cmon... - Manny

I read this post on TC last Tuesday. I found the comments quite entertaining, though ;) - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... - Gambit Fauri

I've been following this story, its one of the more entertaining items in the news in a long time, albeit with some very serious consequences depending on how the saga ends. - jcunwired

Good ol' South Carolina. They still don't allow sorority houses at universities on the grounds that six or more women in a residence constitutes a brothel. - charlestm

charlestm, et al.: I know this is off-topic and further that SC isn't the most advanced of states but: USC at least has a Greek Village with 9 sorority houses and 11 fraternity houses. The land belongs to the university, though the houses are privately owned. Are you referring to house ownership particularly? - Steve Lowe

Hill Billy Barristeers at their best! So glad I live in California where the politicians at least pretend to understand tech! - Sonya

I just find sentiments over North and South between Northerners and Southerners very entertaining. Isn't the civil war over - really over?! Try living in different countries and I guarantee one will have a bigger picture of the world, not regions of US! :) - Moushumi Kabir

I think that Seth is the top marketer blogger. - Apostolos Papadopoulos from IM

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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... more... - 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)

Layoffs? - paul mooney

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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

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

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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. - Katie: Whelmed Overly

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

@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

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

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

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

Kiran: right. - Robert Scoble

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 - Kurai (ff)

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

Best advice to those perusing this thread who are new to FriendFeed? Follow these folks: http://ffholic.com/Users... - Nathan Chase

I drink http://friendfeed.com/public for dinner. - Steve "Daddy do it!" Lacy

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 - Michelle

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

I'm Mark. I'm fascinated with Greenland. I enjoy teasing animals, banlon, and seeing people run for the lives. I love throwing garbage out the window, yet I'm extremely dainty. I also enjoy gas masks, octopus porn, throwing tridents, and stockpiling my own blood. - Mark Wilson

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... - Glen Mistletoe

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 Beartato of FF

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

And this is how you get to the mainstream. Repeat 40,000 times. :-) - Robert Scoble from Bookmarklet

I assume this was was a joke. The FT does not even allow users to view the full story without registering(Free, but still very old-school) Why should I even care about their perspective of the Real-Time web? - Steven (optionshiftk)

Steve: a lot of people still read the Financial Times. If you want to go mainstream you still gotta get CNN, FT, NYT, and a bunch of others to talk about you over and over and over and over and over. This is happening to Twitter right now. It happened to Facebook over past two years. If friendfeed is to be seen as a great business, it must happen to it too. - Robert Scoble

Going mainstream seems to be what everyone is after, but it sort of destroys the fun of it all. If all of these dopey mainstream news organizations adopt friendfeed(like they are now with twitter) then there will be much less quality content and a lot of PR fluff. I suppose it is inevitable though. - Steven (optionshiftk)

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

253 more comments

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

#hashtagsaredead - Ryan Kuder

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

Sweet sweet the live view works on the iPhone! - Bryan Lee

Wrong: I like making up really fun & zany ones: #robertscobleshotshit!WHoo!!!!!YEAH!!!!!!WootWOOT!!!!!!!! - sofarsoShawn

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

Ha! #ScobleizerIsFunny - Brent Logan

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

Meh. #scoblesayingitdoesntmakeittrue - Suburban Oblivion

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

Robert, your "foopoo" example IS a tag without a designator as tag. The purpose of a #tag isn't to FIND, but to TELL others where something is to be found. It's an ad hoc channel, not a query. - Shoq

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)

Tags define a community. Those #Tcot and #teaparty and #idol people cannot be served by an arbitrary "track" query. They are both tools with very different uses. - Shoq

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

Matt: we need you in the #hashtagmafia #natualhashman #jointhefun - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

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

http://hashtags.org are not dead. Far from it. Happy #followfriday!! - Garin Kilpatrick

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

Coroner's office? Hope that's not an omen. - John E. Bredehoft

8 more comments

Cheap rent? - Michael Krigsman

what goes around comes around :) - Peter Urban

I'm sure that a lot of commercial rent rates have declined. - John E. Bredehoft

It's smart to get cheap rent - Michael Krigsman

The office is haunted. Heather says she hasn't seen the ghost yet. - Robert Scoble

I forget, do you need a special camera to shoot ghosts? I haven't seen the Ghostbusters movie in a while. - Bruce Lewis

Other fun fact: If you go on the right day, you can score free pizza, pet his dog, ride the Segway and see Scoble and Calacanis. - Louis Gray

Talk about getting the place for cheap! Or maybe some ghosts from future tipped them the idea of the Cpad too - Sardar Mohkim Khan

Good old FTP; isn't that where you found your bride? - RAPatton

paul mooney › Likes