Agree on the whole. I always find these categories a little artificial: Really "Forrester-speak". :) I think the recommendations are the most interesting. I'd make a separate post out of that.
- Meryn Stol
You say it yourself: "What’s interesting isn’t this vision for the future, but what it holds in store for brands, " . I'd like these recommendations to be fleshed out with concrete first steps to take. Doesn't have to be more than links to relevant resources.
- Meryn Stol
Meryn The recommendations are fleshed out in the actual reports. Our clients (brands) have access to see them.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Hmm ok... Then I'll need to get the details elsewhere I guess. :)
- Meryn Stol
Interesting categorization of the development into eras. Any consideration to the impact of scale on the 5th era? Just as a recent example with Facebook, their format evolution was not well received by what is not an insignificant number of members, and yet the reality is - that change - negative impact not withstanding is not rolling back.
- Patrick Boegel
There will be a give and take between communities and brands. The thing is, Facebook doesn't have a competitive alternative that users could go to. In my report, we suggest that active communities could define specs for products, and bid MULTIPLE companies to build it.
- Jeremiah Owyang
I completely understand that Jeremiah, just wondering if the nature of scale impacted or perhaps better said impacts the thought process for very complex long term brand relationships, ie Health Insurance, Financial Services, a college/university choice, where consversation and user invovlement can be complicated. Very interested in the full report either way. Thx.
- Patrick Boegel
good stuff Jeremiah, enjoyed and some good thought provokers there for the future
- Richard Binhammer
Nice paper but really expensive for young people. $750 means $41 for page.
- Alp
Great information, understanding the future's potential is more important than ever on the social web.
- Maria Reyes-McDavis
Interesting, but very general and hard to apply. I see companies more as å provide of tools/stage for conversation, aka the gold rush mining vs selling tools
- Anders Dahlberg
Alp, Many of Forrester's clients are large brands who have a subscription. We're still sharing a great deal on this blog, and have given the report to bloggers to cover, so there's value to be had there.
- Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremiah (and the team), a great piece of work and, I imagine, a labour of both love and loathing at times! I have been very interested in this area as I have looked at the shift in skills to deliver social media activity changes from one of basic coding knowledge to much more human, interactive skills.
- Paul Fabretti
Fantastic article! I found it SO intriguing that I've even printed it out!
- J. D. Ebberly
"How Brands Should Prepare" is a great bit of information. Jeremiah, it would be nice (i'd be reading) if you expanded in future blog posts about the "How Brands Should Prepare".
- frank barry
That's likely to be a research report I'm thinking about writing Frank
- Jeremiah Owyang
Probably correct in assuming that most online social networks will neither spawn nor solidify to the point of being considered ‘affinity groups’ with the level of cohesion, unified budgetary authority or organized implementation capability of NGOs, churches, or employee aggregations. Even in the era of social commerce. I hope I’m wrong.
- A Mitchell
Great post, understanding the future's potential is more important than ever on the social web.
- Vlad Hrouda
The high-speed fibre optic cable has actually already been switched on providing a massive cost saving to the service providers but NONE of this has been passed onto the consumer strangling the growth of business in this country. For more details on the fiasco check out http://www.facebook.com/search...
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
Hello Jason. I'm just reading a few thousand feeds I'm behind on.
- Linda Lorie
I am part of the planning committee for www.latwestival.com if you are in LA next Sunday would love you to join us if not if you can give some RT love that would be awesome
- Marla Schulman
Lets all make sure that we've connected.. if ur here at this chat then please send a comment out with your twitter page so that everyone can follow u!
- Jason Pollock
if you follow me, be sure give me an @ to tell me that jason sent ya
- heykim
Hi Jason! Good idea. Used to be a (French) producer and wanna know much about your work (just by personal interest) could you tell me where?
- Véronique Rabuteau
im having the same issue with my tv show...just waiting for the right partner
- Zachary Adam Cohen
i need donations on my bday ( 9/29) to go from miami to san fran to do the Nike Marathon for leukemia and lymphoma-if any of you can help, thatd be awesome! :)
- Meesh
ok jason if you could be someone for a day who would it be and why???
- kari ann alcala
jason.. is there a way for u to make ur tweets dif colour?
- heykim
douglas: its not released yet... hopefully soon!
- Jason Pollock
i want to be like you - sounds corny - i really want to make a difference in the world and feel helpless where I am at right now to do any of that.
- Douglas Lancaster
id love to be the president for a day to give a lot of the country's $$ to poor people.. if u were president for a day then there would be no accountability.. u could do the right things and not have to worry about what your poll numbers will be.. that would b cool.
- Jason Pollock
& we can bop to the music in our heads : )
- pepamint83
we can all make a difference in something that we have a passion for. It doesn't have to be in a great scale, if you want to give to the poor, give a little if that's what u can afford. Just do it! :)
- Simple Sally
that was a good answer jason i liked it :)
- kari ann alcala
gotcha...I've seen FriendFeeds attached to tweets, but this is my 1st to see a chat like this. gotta give you snaps for keeping things fresh :)
- Doris Jean Brown
i think one of the reasons that social media is exploding right now is becuz everyone is out of work and has more time on their hands.
- Jason Pollock
It's given me a chance to learn the ins and outs though!
- Teri Gidwitz
yeah lost my job, health went to sh*t, no health coverage, SHITTY year here, but after a few fires burn out here personally - I am moving and want to get involved in change. Somehow. Somewhere. I want to learn. educated. Make one or million lives better.
- Douglas Lancaster
i am 35 - and just now want to learn more about LIFE, not just mine but the world within too. spent too many years selfish - ready to move forward
- Douglas Lancaster
Some of Scoble's threads get over 1500 comments.. we are a ways to go.
- Jason Pollock
Nicole: Yeah, that was really disturbing. Of course, I'm writing a novel with evil mad scientists like that among the villains, so I had to bookmark it...
- Dennis Jernberg
I dont know if she was abused tho becuz no charges were brought against him... if he did something then he'd b in jail.. like chris brown was.
- Jason Pollock
Mustn't forget: there's an easy way to subscribe to FF feeds. Hover over a name in the chat, let the balloon show, then click "Subscribe".
- Dennis Jernberg
i kept hearing about twitter and then i saw people tweeting about my film from a sneak peak that i had back in december 08 and when i saw that then i knew i had to see what was going on.
- Jason Pollock
I was told outright- "resistance is futile"
- PookyMedia
i use it on the web not on phone, sometimes on my ipod touch and since i am home all day righ tnow i tweet way too much but i am random as hell
- Douglas Lancaster
I joined twitter in February 2009 and only have 361 followers :(
- Bryan Lagos
Me, I joined in June because of a thread on the forum at http://5090.fawm.org (50 Songs in 90 Days -- I only have 6 so far, none unlocked... :( )
- Dennis Jernberg
bryan: dont be so sad. that a lot of followers... keep connecting and that number will grow.
- Jason Pollock
I joined twitter in may 2008 .. and now I have 1052 followers :)
- FFTornado
i saw Inglourious Basterds today Zach-Loved it :)
- Meesh
Yes, I try to post questions, links, news, gossip, updates on my blog and random A.D.D. moments
- Douglas Lancaster
That is, I joined Twitter in June. I joined FF exactly one month ago when Robert Scoble led all his followers here.
- Dennis Jernberg
www.twitter.com/heykim add me.. nite yall see you on twitter ;)
- heykim
In the short time that I've been tweeting, it's been a far greater tool for connecting people with my show than other means of communication. Also helps with actually connecting with fans, and awesome peeps like Mr. Jason Pollock himself.
- Undergrad Records
i really dugg inglorious basterds...but then again i am a total tarantino nerd
- Zachary Adam Cohen
I saw District 9 and Inglorious Basterds and enjoyed both immensely
- Jason Pollock
I saw Halloween 2 and Inglourious Bastards last weekend. Loved Bastards!
- Douglas Lancaster
I'm watching "Hoarders" on A&E U know its bad when shyte in ur fridge is moving on its own!! OYE!!
- LILCHICKENPOO
Twitter is actually a great tool to blog out what you have to say and its very convenient and no hassle. I'm glad im in this generation where twitter was invented LOL.
- HANNA ANG
I dont watch alot of movies or TV. I would rather be listenig to music.
- Rob Madden
i think i have followed everyone, it's tough to keep up. OMG Hoarders is such an eye opener so is Intervention and Obsessed
- Douglas Lancaster
One of my fave movies of all time : Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
- Meesh
Hi Jason & Friends ~ I also just followed @Zacharycohen too:)
- Dave
from BuddyFeed
I am a music fanatic, it's my inspriation, soul and self therapy, i have like 30,000 songs backed up.
- Douglas Lancaster
Haven't seen District 9 or Inglourious Basterds yet (or Ponyo, unfortunately); with my restricted professional slacker's budget, I'll probably have to wait for the DVDs...
- Dennis Jernberg
People who use (ffolllo.com) I guess you guys subscribed to 200+ FriendFeeders ! AWARE
- FFTornado
I just watched "Little Ashes" last night here in bed. Amazing movie, in my eyes.
- Douglas Lancaster
Jason, ya didn't answer my ?--U R so quick with your responses, & at some length at times--are you traditionally "typing" or do you just peck really fast? Do they even teach Typing in school anymore? lol
- Doris Jean Brown
For being a movie whore I have never seen Eternal Sunshine. I need to get on it.
- Douglas Lancaster
I agree Spam is crappy but one man's spam may be anothers resource. That's why I love Twitter, if it's too much spam, I just don't follow anymore. :) LOVE IT!
- Simple Sally
i should go through my followers to get rid of spam, so stupid some of the crap that comes up from my tweets then five second later i get a follower from spam
- Douglas Lancaster
i joined just to make some ppl smile during a rough day
- pepamint83
nicole thats awesome! twitter rocks, its taught me so much, and JASON has taught me so much, he is one of those that "gets it" and "it" being this real time experiment we are all engaging in RIGHT NoW! WOWIE!
- Zachary Adam Cohen
For all the newbies here, don't forget that you can pop out the chat window by clicking on the time stamp at the top of the post.
- Steve
following u Peppamint on Twitter! :)
- Simple Sally
Meesh: thats ridiculous that no one has made a twitter app for the G1!
- Jason Pollock
Jason - The social media effect on television, such as the Fringe experiments with Twitter. Any thoughts?
- Undergrad Records
my tweetdeck wasnt working so i removed it now it wont let me get it back into my computer i miss the ping noise but in a way its better cause i dont run to my comp everytime i hear the ping lol
- pepamint83
I gotta go. Working on something. But, will be on Twitter on & off as I will be on the computer. Have a great night Jason! Have a great night everyone! @niclone http://twitter.com/niclone
- Nicole
JASOOOOOOOOON this is a great post about you (Director Jason Pollock discusses 'The Youngest Candidate' )
- FFTornado
Jason-not an efficient one! I have tried two that just stink! and the ones you "pay" for have bad reviews. I find myself manually putting in twitter.com and doing tweets from there
- Meesh
well, quite honestly, there ain't much on TV at all these days!!
- Doris Jean Brown
I can't miss my Ellen!!!! Dailly wakeup call for me!!
- LILCHICKENPOO
tv has changed so much - i have a few fave shows but not obsesed like back in the day.
- Douglas Lancaster
well I am making TV and films- just released a killer music video- "I'm Too Busy To Date Your Avatar"
- PookyMedia
I think twitter should use a txt message to phone authentication for twitter accounts to help fight the spam accounts created
- Mickey Frklic
So if someone were to try to develop a show, would it benefit better being developed and hosted on the web, or should it still try to be developed for TV?
- Undergrad Records
i dont even watch conan as much as I used to..and I would stay uo when he was at 12:30 to watch him all the time..now....I always forget he's on.
- Meesh
I agree...on Demand, Netflix, online...there's no need to follow their schedules anymore...unless you need to engage in water cooler conversation the next AM...
- Doris Jean Brown
what happened with the Twitter TV Show
- Bryan Lagos
I'm going to an Invitational Scoble meet tomorrow at the country club..
- Doris Jean Brown
also love my blackberry... im much better at thumb typing then touch screen. Altho they are releasing plants vs zombies game for the iphone... so im more jealous
- Mickey Frklic
Thanks again to everyeone who is here right now.. this has been a great chat tonight!
- Jason Pollock
already following u perramint83!! and ya momma!! Happy b-day was sung to her earlier before I tucked her in!! all good!! ;)
- LILCHICKENPOO
I think its amazing that scoble has so many people following him on friendfeed that if he clicks a LIKE on your post that other people click LIKE immediately! its so crazy.. people are following his LIKES that closely! Scoble is the King of Friendfeed.
- Jason Pollock
Jason, this is going to be another big night! Keep it rockin!
- Simple Sally
mmmmm I woudl rather use Scoble like Wolframs AlphaMan
- PookyMedia
YES U ROCK LILL CHICKEN U ALL MADE MY MOTHERS NIGHT @gingeybear ITS HER BDAY TODAY
- pepamint83
im 28/f/Chicago... new to friendfeed. hey this is really cool if everyone knew how cool this was they would totally do it!!! im sure...
- Natalie Keefe
I joined Twitter cuz I heard it was cool. Same for Facebook, MySpace, myYearbook, and Choir in high school. I even started smoking cuz people said it was cool. Now, Jason Pollack has forced me to jump on the FriendFeed bandwagon. Thanks, peer pressure!
- Diane M
720+ comments so far . heading heading heading heading heading
- FFTornado
lol im just off to pack up the house will be back later Lilchickenpoo :0)
- Sam Young
Dougles: Scoble is a Jedi in the world of Social Media.. A lot of people claim to be social media experts but there are only a handful who truly are.. Robert Scoble is one of the first pioneers of social media... and we're honored to have him here tonight!
- Jason Pollock
Hover over him lightly at nightly and be tightly in your comments
- PookyMedia
How about a Pulitzer prize for best TWEET - the 140 characters that changed the WORLD
- PookyMedia
well, personally i dont follow Perezizzle or anything, but... i found the whole Demi vs. PH thing interesting. i think they should share a kiss at the Oscars.
- Natalie Keefe
So is there a particular topic of discussion, or just anything goes?
- Lisa Dee
Jason, I think Alyssa Milano is smart - maybe not the smartest, but for the way she uses twitter.
- Lisa Dee
um... did anyone think the whole Demi-calling-PH-a-pornographer controversy was like when Sarah Palin accused David Letterman of statutory rape?
- Natalie Keefe
um, @aplusk is probably the best... he has the most followers, i think that says a lot. i mean, he caught on to twitter before it got "big" and i mean now it is not even as big as facebook, so...
- Natalie Keefe
Forgive me, anyone who follows me, but I don't automatically follow back. I use Twitter for the content, so I only follow those who Tweet about things that interest me.
- Diane M
well... i think value is wat counts, D
- Natalie Keefe
We're only 30 or so comments away from my thread record so Im sure we're going to break that... this is the biggest thread I've ever created on friendfeed! thanks to u all for being here!!!!:)
- Jason Pollock
this should b color coded like Jason is red so we know its him : )
- pepamint83
i guess Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods is also coming out with a new show called Bizarre World... where he travels. looking forward to that...
- Natalie Keefe
Jason, when all today's teens grow up, it'll B interesting 2 C what's available for them, huh!
- Lisa Dee
Jason, I see your face staring at me. It's making it hard to be witty. Ohhh the pressure!
- Diane M
HAHA i like the idea where they all dance Pooky!!
- HANNA ANG
yea, we'll be reading the internet on the front page of our newspapers... there's a video about that that parodies Microsoft. some of it is funny... and some of it is just plain ... well, prophetic.
- Natalie Keefe
there will be a USB device to put in your right ear & download the contents of your mind and a plug into your friends computer to download it
- PookyMedia
1000!!!!! amazing! I've seen bigger threads tho .. Scoble has had threads with over 1500.. i bet there have been even bigger... but 1000 is HUGE!! we're blowing friendfeed up right now. lets keep this chat going! tweet this link out again from your pages = http://ff.im/7M8iq
- Jason Pollock
actually theres a friend of mine whose username is partywith ... and then her name
- Natalie Keefe
every time she comes on i say, "wherez the party at"? lol
- Natalie Keefe
One of the coolest friendfeed features is real time search click this link to watch how many people are posting in threads related to Obama right now http://friendfeed.com/search...
- Steve
Not even sure how I learned bout Jason ...seems he was always right there!
- Kirk
kirk me too he was like im following my initial followers then unfollowed everyone and deleted the tweet
- pepamint83
my first tweet sucked. it was something like... "if a tweet were heard in the forest, and there was no on there to hear it, would it still make a sound?"
- Natalie Keefe
Perhaps all the kewl ppl were following TheJason ...
- Kirk
I'd LOVE to hear where everyone's from - that's what's so COOL about this!!
- Lisa Dee
@Danny_DiVito (with an "i") is a fake. The real one is @Danny_DeVito (with an "e"), and he's hardly following anybody.
- Dennis Jernberg
@Jason I had taken time to watch on YouTube, read more about you and pass the word to some french producers. Great job of yours! Going back to RL. See You.
- Véronique Rabuteau
BTW: Glad you're here, Khayyam! I just subscribed.
- Dennis Jernberg
When Jason start a talk.. You will never be able to watch your FF lifestream ...... ROCKS
- FFTornado
thats a cool name... Veronique. ill have to use it in one of my books for sure
- Natalie Keefe
ya, i am a writer... i published a book on Lulu.com
- Natalie Keefe
u heard of me? sweet. cuz ive only sold 3 copies and they were all to myself.
- Natalie Keefe
im confused cause i looked it up on seach danny devito is the one with the pic with him holding a sign with his twitter name the one Jason tweeted http://twitter.com/Danny_D... REAL OR FAKE???
- pepamint83
Ok Everyone, I have to go to sleep.. you all rock and you should all feel free to stay here anc chat for as long as u want.. i will wake up and check this thread first to see how long everyone stayed.. hehe.. thanks again! u all rock:)
- Jason Pollock
funny *youve* heard of me. im so not famous i havent even heard of me yet. ha.
- Natalie Keefe
what's the pitfall, everyone looking for love has one. ;)
- Simple Sally
Yep! Hanna's link's got it right: @Danny_DeVito (with the "e") is the REAL Danny DeVito! The impostor's got the "Verified" logo in his background image.
- Dennis Jernberg
Chicago - thanks, Natalie. I'm in San Diego. Yeah, tell us about ur book!
- Lisa Dee
ya, it didnt really go over well with literary agents so... well... trying to market a first-time novella writer's chick lit book... like zero sales appeal. i guess.
- Natalie Keefe
Hey Natalie, Kirk, Lisa, Dennis & Hanna - Nice to hollar with y'all. Hit me up Twitter with an @ so I can make sure I add all y'all :)
- iamkhayyam
Fake danny just tweeted about Jason lol
- pepamint83
so anything else you want to know about the book?
- Natalie Keefe
@jason_pollock :) Thanks for the warm welcome. Quite the scene you've got going on here. Quote commendable use of resources I must say! I'd tell everyone to follow you, but I'm pretty sure everyone here is :) lol
- iamkhayyam
aren't u kewl dude with gr8 content, in Vanc?
- Kirk
kind of like Sex & the City without all the sex... *snooze* ha
- Natalie Keefe
Khayyam, I checked on Grader, and you are indeed following me.
- Dennis Jernberg
@iamkhayyam, I'm @LisaDee123 on Twitter.
- Lisa Dee
I hate fake ppl ...ppl pretending to be celebrated ppl is a new kinda low
- Kirk
twitter.com/account/profile_image/Danny_DiVito?hreflang=en I love how he photoshopped the verified into the background lol
- Rob Madden
Is the fake Divito watching this chat feed right now?
- Mickey Frklic
wats celebrated ppl? oh u mean fake twitter accounts?
- Natalie Keefe
i guess its bound to happen... kinda like fake myspace pages.
- Natalie Keefe
Natalie - did u read Nanny Diaries? Your book sounds good to me!
- Lisa Dee
Oh hey! @LisaDee123!! Thanks for all the love today! Much appreciated :)
- iamkhayyam
i will be honest, i think my book is like a bad first draft. i mean... maybe someday people will buy it when they actually know & like my future work. then again, i didnt really do a whole d*mm lot to try to market the book either.
- Natalie Keefe
I think Jason went to go for a bathroom break. heheheh!!
- HANNA ANG
yea, my book is actually meant to be a comedy. & theres this guy im collaborating with on a screenplay... i basically wrote it, i sent it to him to edit because i adapted it from the book and there were too many voiceovers...
- Natalie Keefe
i am outta here, going ot lie down, been here since the first minute, great turn out, much love to ya jason, i tried to follow everyone i am @ http://www.twitter.com/dml174 - see ya next time! <hugs to all>
- Douglas Lancaster
Natalie: You don't have to use a URL shortener on FF. It shortens the link in the feed, but the full URL's still there (check your status bar) and whoever clicks it will go to the right site.
- Dennis Jernberg
But I wish when we clicked on a link here it opened in a different window. That would be so much better.
- Lisa Dee
have faved the page Natalie...loving the title, will read soon :0)
- Sam Young
if you guys haven'ts checked www.twaxed.com yet your missing out
- Mike Dammann
SORRY I MISSED THE TAIL END OF THE CHAT...WAS LOOKING FOR THE "NAKED DANNY DEVITO" THOUGHT I HEARD SOMETHING AND SMELLED SOMETHING FUNNY!!
- LILCHICKENPOO
applied for a place a week ago, still no word
- Sam Young
NO WAY! How cool is that? See - I knew you were awesome!
- Lisa Dee
scrolling and scrolling.. here i am. i think i will read all those replies after my baby goes to sleep,, hehehe. btw,, hello jason!! am i late?hehe...
- zʍıɔ
Sam - what kind of nurse are you, and how long have you been in nursing?
- Lisa Dee
Im an endorsed enrolled nurse meaning I can give all meds except addiction ones couple of years except Im getting out and studying teaching....
- Sam Young
anyways gtg pack another box or two ciao :0)
- Sam Young
Wow, I thought about teaching too. After I've been a nurse for a while first though. If I get tired of it.
- Lisa Dee
Bye Sam! Nice meeting you! I'm following you on twitter, so that way when I need help packing...lol
- Lisa Dee
I have learned that when a popular person starts a discussion, tired people forsake sleep to participate.
- Mike Dammann
Anybody else still out there? There you are, Mike. That's true, isn't it!
- Lisa Dee
Dictionary.com defines "meme" as "a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes." Basically, the cultural equivalent of genes. They can mutate and evolve faster, of course. Since I'm working on a couple novels, I like to call myself a memetic engineer.
- Dennis Jernberg
this hillarious i got the fake danny devito following me
- Rob Madden
participating in a reforestation project with a Dutch company, right now the forest fires are getting bad though. I won't be able to get outta here any time soon :)
- Mike Dammann
I've actually got two dead people following me: Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary. I think Jesus is gone, though; he was following me for a while...
- Dennis Jernberg
Dennis - Seriously? That's funny! Dead people on twitter!
- Lisa Dee
According to legend, the actor walked into the audition, script in hand, and yelled, "Who wrote this shit?!" Jim Brooks hired him on the spot.
- Mike Dammann
Did Dennis fall asleep at the keyboard?
- Lisa Dee
working to make shorter.... will post here first for your express approval
- Tanya
"I follow dead people before following fakes, less walking for me" Danny
- Mike Dammann
If you have to, make it 2 tweets - use ellipsis at the end, like this "Taxi..." and then start the next tweet with the ellipsis again: ...I just yelled (etc)
- Lisa Dee
No, I'm still around. Just multitasking some. Right now I'm reading about fake Twitter accounts. ;)
- Dennis Jernberg
Robert: what are viewing FF with via your iPhone? Web?
- Matt Martin
I'd switch over to Posterous in a second if I could just get rid of their logo in the header of my site there, tweak the CSS a bit, and use a third party comment system.
- Ken Sheppardson
Will today be the day Robert discovers Weblogging? Enquiring minds want to know. But seriously, it's just another weblogging system, with a different tagline. You can post to your weblog via e-mail from all kinds of different systems. What makes Posterious different? Does it offer something the others don't? You're also very limited by them, at last check, you can't post to your own...
more...
- Rob Fahrni
Theming is imminent. One of their investors had a completely different theme on his posterous. Also there have been screenshots of the posterous theming FAQ floating around. There will be themes and also full customization.
- Kahlil Lechelt
You can even post to your WP blog via posterous
- Kahlil Lechelt
Will today be the day that Scoble becomes the Posterous prophet? At one time it was / is Friendfeed, but maybe Scoble is ready for a new product to promote.
- Ben Hanten
@Kahlil, that's good, didn't know that. Thanks for the correction, that's a very good thing. How about customizing the look, so you can't tell it's a Posterious weblog? Also, can I post to it from my favorite desktop weblog client, MarsEdit?
- Rob Fahrni
Posterous is just a great hub to send your content out to the world. to your WP blog, youtube, flickr, twitter, fb and more and they keep adding services. At the same time you have all your content backed up in your GMail
- Kahlil Lechelt
Posterous is so flexible and how they handle media files is just killer. It can be simple or more complex depending on your needs. Love it.
- Gus
@Rob theming and customization is imminent. Not live yet though. They have people beta testing it though
- Kahlil Lechelt
I've been playing with Posterous a bit lately since they released the iPhone app. It's limited but will explore further.
- Kenley Neufeld
@Kahlil, is it safe to say Posterous is limited to posting via e-mail? That's what it looks like via the FAQ. That's why people are raving about it. It's VERY easy to post to your weblog from any e-mail service/client. That's nice. So what besides that makes it better than Blogger, WordPress, or many of the other established leading weblog publishing systems? That's the question that...
more...
- Rob Fahrni
So how goes the posterous vs tumblr competition? I haven't seen the draw of poseterous yet, although I like Steve's usage.
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
@rob you can post via email, web or bookmarklet. once your post is posted you can edit it again on the web. it all very straight fwd and easy. I dont think that they generate static html. You gotta ask them help@posterous.com Their customer service is very good and they mostly respond within hours.
- Kahlil Lechelt
@rob just write an email to post@posterous.com and try it out! Play around with it.
- Kahlil Lechelt
@Mark: re: posterous vs. tumblr. basically it comes down to what you prefer. Personal taste. Posterouses focus is to make blogging and distributing content as easy as possible and they achieve that through email and sending the content out through all APIs available. Also what I find killer is that if you put a link to a youtube vid in the email it embeds that automatically same with many other videosites.
- Kahlil Lechelt
love the new Pic Posterous app for Iphone
- johnpiercy
I love Posterous I chose it over tumblr because I liked the design much better and the ease of use and the focus on distributing content. Posterous also has a very interesting community that shares great content including a lot of beautiful pictures.
- Kahlil Lechelt
I love posterous too, so simple to use. Robert I'm surprised that you weren't already on posterous!
- Tomy Thomson
re: "The world's biggest Posterous evangelist is coming over for lunch" - You're having lunch with @lewmoorman? (Just kidding, Lew!)
- Robert J Taylor
Posterous is amazing. I don't need an app like Marsedit anymore. I just use Gmail to compose my posts.
- Alex Knight
love posterous. just miss some custom design features and analytics
- Ouriel Ohayon
@Ouriel do you know you can use Google Analytics with your Posterous? Custom design is in beta testing now.
- Kahlil Lechelt
@Robert Scoble: You cant do everything but Posterous can do everything for you. They even distribute to Friendfeed and Facebook Pages.
- Kahlil Lechelt
PicPosterous lets you share video that's longer than the email limit. That's handy.
- Tom Landini
Tom: Good point! Posterous hosted videos play directly on the web page on the iPhone. Thats also awesome.
- Kahlil Lechelt
Posterous for a private site is where it really shines. I have both, public and private, and the private one is amazing. Try it.
- Dominic Jones
Ended up ditching my personal WP site for posterous & loving it. @Rob the ease of posting and tweaking how things are disbursed is incredible. You can pick and choose per post which other sites you would like updated. The multiple photo upload is sweetomatic and they embed just about anything in a snap. I'm a fan and I thought I would live and die by WP.
- suecosby
Right now, Posterous = email in + tumblr-like blog + ping.fm-like out (duplicated content I actually find annoying). With more ways to automatically import, better support for discussions, and truly custom themes that I could host on my own subdomain (with my own HTML/CSS/JavaScript), it would have a lot of potential.
- LogEx
LogEx: Yes I would also love to see better support for discussions. For now I am using Backtype. You can host your posterous under your own subdomain already though.
- Kahlil Lechelt
Posterous is fantastic, Tumblr too but one is mad to give up a self hosted blog in place those services. Respectively of course Steve Rubel.
- Benjamin Taylor
I understand if you want to host your blog yourself if you are a brand or a company. But for your personal blog? I don't see any value in selfhosting when you have Posterous.
- Kahlil Lechelt
I've found that views on my Posterous posts have dropped like a ton of bricks. At first (a few weeks ago) I was getting 400-600 views per post. Last week it was more like 100 per post, now I'm hardly going over 10. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
@kol interesting that your view plunged like that. mine are fairly constant and slowly growing. are you using analytics to analyze your traffic?
- Kahlil Lechelt
We are actually crowd-sourcing our blog on Mugasha. Mugasha Aux is hosted on Posterous with custom theme (still in private beta). The cool thing about this blog is that the community and the Artists can post content on the blog. Artists can promote their music and events and fans can post stores about events or other music related things. We are terrible bloggers here at Mugasha so we decided why not ask the community to help us out. Posterous is setup really well to hand this. http://aux.mugasha.com/
- Akshay Dodeja
Akshay: Wow that is awesome!!! Kiler use of posterous. Nice!
- Kahlil Lechelt
So you can created themes for Posterous?
- Kol Tregaskes
@Kol: Yes theming for Posterous is coming soon. It is in beta and only for a limited amount of users
- Kahlil Lechelt
Posterous is great - I use it all the time for feeding FF and facebook with pictures - the iPhone "picture album" app is a winner too - can't find anything wrong with posterous myself - I love it
- Nicholas Paul Gordon
from iPhone
That's definitely cool... but if they're still going to have that white block in the header with the Posterous logo that http://aux.mugasha.com has, looks like Tumblr will still have them beat in that area.
- Ken Sheppardson
@Ken: True. That thing will mostly not mix with a custom design. It's like two brand competing on a site which is always a bad idea. Also the links and the tags and so forth on the left look a little clumsy.
- Kahlil Lechelt
@Ken Actually we decided to leave The Posterous bar on top to give them credit :) You can totally style that in any way you want.
- Akshay Dodeja
Nice, Akshay. Good to hear. Looking forward to seeing them go live with customization.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, Akshay, Kahlil -- we've got a revision to that top bar coming. You can expect as good an experience with Posterous as with Tumblr for full customization. Better, if we do it right. Thanks for all your support.
- Garry Tan
Hey Akshay, Garry: thanks for the info. I would never expect less than a good experience with Posterous :)
- Kahlil Lechelt
I started on posterous thanks to being talked into it (http://pingmicro.com/postero...). Hilariously, so far I don't see it as a challenger to tumblr at all. For me Tumblr is about fragments, scrapbooking, and its "genre" posting styles help with this. Posterous for me is an engine to conventionally blog (as opposed to microblog) to multiple sites, and...
more...
- Paul Greer
Posterous is only about 14 months old. It has a small, ambitious and responsive team. This service is only going to get better. The unique email posting/auto posting is the key to it. Early days for a service on the cusp.
- Judd6149
This works GREAT! Now if I could only select *which* FF entries I want to ship to Facebook, I'd be all set.
- Phil G
I agree with Phil.. even if I could tag things with #FB it would help. My friends are already overwhelmed with my geekness, flooding them with ALL of my FF content would seal the deal!!
- Chris Myles
Ben: I am only getting one-liners what else do I have change - a privacy setting somewhere?
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
I've tried this several times without success, will try again... Thanks, Ben.
- Kol Tregaskes
it will post to facebook..but does not show pics if it has them in it.
- (jeff)isageek
Woohoo! Thanks for getting this working! :)
- Keith Bourgoin
Still doesn't work for me I'm afraid. It stopped posting a few weeks back and no amount of removing/readding/checking settings helps. Not even your awesome link :(
- Alex Lomas
Alex: has just stopped working for me too! Everything is fine with the application ie it shows up on the tab but does not publish into the news feed... interesting...
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
@Benjamin: Thanks for the tip - it always used to be set and I've double checked via your link and it still is. How long should things take to show up?
- Alex Lomas
Thanks Ben this was not set on my side about to check, thanks for the help!
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
hey its working for me now!!! rock on. pic and all!
- (jeff)isageek
Hm. The pics I just posted to FF never showed up in FB. Anyone know if this should be working?
- Keith Bourgoin
from IM
@Benjamin - Wow, thanks for looking into that. Still not showing up on my wall, so I guess it must be something else :(
- Alex Lomas
@Benjamin - Woohoo! They've appeared! But the stories were way down the bottom of the wall amongst posts from early this morning so I didn't initially see them. Maybe something to do with time zones (I'm in the UK)?
- Alex Lomas
Ben: that solved it for me too! Pics also showing! Thanks for the help! 1 quick question for you :) when do you think we will be able to add the FF app to Facebook Public Profiles because that would be awesome!
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
I wish Twitter would sell to Google so it would die like Jaiku and Dodgeball. But I won't post this over on Twitter. I really don't have much love for the service, even though I know I'll be stuck using it for the indefinite future. Jesse Stay has it figured out. It's a horrid place to try to communicate anything other than a bit of self pimping.
Here I can write the equivilent of an entire blog post. And even make changes. And even have a conversation. And use it as many times an hour as I want (Twitter rate limits my apps after a while cause I'm too heavy of a user).
- Robert Scoble
I can sense already that FriendFeed is slowing down now that it is joining Facebook, while Twitter still has the best flow (and best system for following people and best mobile clients). So, we're stuck with Twitter, which is too bad, because the technology here is a ton better.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter is a piece of crap - BUT it's where the audience is (currently).
- Jim Connolly
Now it is starting to feel like FF again with you bigging it up again Robert ;)
- Travis Koger
Maybe google wave will change the way we use twitter, etc. again. Haven't tried it yet, but it might succeed where friendfeed "failed" - getting enough people to use it.
- Frank S.
Travis: I had to go and clean out my Twitter and Facebook accounts and spread out my usage.
- Robert Scoble
Agreed! - Friendfeed is so much better (for as long as it really lasts in Facebook world...)
- Matthew Blaisdell
from iPhone
Robert: I'm thinking of setting up a facebook account for my Marketing blog - what do you think?
- Jim Connolly
@Scobleizer I don't think Friendfeed would be quite so popular if it weren't for twitter
- Prolific Programmer
from IM
Twitter is the new Myspace - HAHA - this quote made my day. For me it is just becoming a multiplicator for my friendfeed but it is important for that!
- Sascha Pallenberg
Prolific: I'm not so sure. Blogs made Twitter. So, what if there were no Twitter? We would still talk up something else. But maybe FriendFeed wouldn't have thrived anyway. Twitter hit a sweet spot with its easy to program API, it's easy to use interface, and its cute name and branding.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter works extremely well on mobile devices. I constantly see people tweeting whereas it's more difficult to do with FriendFeed's interface for a typical user.
- imabonehead
Really think that Twitter is annoying it's users too much. There's some problems out there that are really being ignored. Here's an example of a problem that could be solved very simply, but no action is being taken (if it was solved it'd create a lot of goodwill) http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter...
- Edd McArdle
Robert, now that FriendFeed's people are working for Facebook, and since Facebook has already been making changes to make it more "open socially", do you think eventually that Facebook will become the best place to have serious conversations?
- Carlton Hackett
I've been thinking so too. Although, I wonder how the non-Soc/net junkies will respond to that?
- Carlton Hackett
Robert, two thoughts. #1 - do you think Google really would let it die? Acquiring Twitter would be more like its YouTube acquisition than Jaiku (in terms of price and # of users). Secondly, what would Twitter have to change for you to change your opinion?
- Ben Parr
I really, really, really want Twitter to work out is the thing. It's just a pain in the neck to communicate without either losing the conversation or spamming useless banter over multiple Tweets because you can't fit it in 140 characters. That's just my experience. Those still spending most their time there don't mind it I guess.
- Jesse Stay
I like Twitter. The conversation flows pretty well for me, and to be fair, I get more @replies there than I get replies here to my posts.
- Chris Nixon
I think a combination of the Retweet API and a true threaded replies architecture and UI could change some of my opinion on that though if they do it.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: It's NOT just your experience. Twitter is getting less valuable the bigger it gets. The spam / porn / bots issue is insane and ruining the experience.
- Jim Connolly
Chris: I have a twitter account with over 20,000 followers and get ten times as many replies here as I get there. Here I only have a small following. The calibre of people I connect with here is better too.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse, have Twitter improved their communication with developers since you wrote about it in April?
- Edd McArdle
Edd, over the last week I have noticed a difference, yes, but it's hard to tell if it will remain that way. They now seem to have a project manager over the API dev team (Ryan Sarver). He seems to be putting a filter on some things and keeping devs updated elsewhere. They're still learning though, much slower than FB or FriendFeed.
- Jesse Stay
agree on spam and bots, but it still is a nice little thing, if it remains what it was made for! marketing and reviewing thing isn't/shouldn't be there, true friendfeed is more effective as a tool for sending your message across, it is simple and strong
- testbeta
Jim, Jesse, Robert: Value varies. For me, Twitter value continues to increase. I use it to find out what's happening, meet up with people, get random insights into how people are doing, find new people. It all works well. There are many different use cases and one tool does not have to do them all.
- Rachel Clarke
Rachel: "It all works well"? Really? Twitter?
- Jim Connolly
Rachel, I agree with you. I just don't think Twitter works well for conversations, that's all. I use FriendFeed and Facebook for that. I use Twitter for different purposes, and I agree it does still have value.
- Jesse Stay
sometimes i think of Automattic's intense debate, but well friendfeed is intense debate, such a experience was never had on blogs, the commenting, liking, and so fast it propagates, even disqus commenting systems can't achieve what we have here on friendfeed, but i can't just throw away twitter, twitter still is good, true for the serious types it's word limit, reply system is a bit of...
more...
- testbeta
I would love to have FriendFeed as the commenting system on my blog.
- Chris Nixon
Chris, there are a few plugins that do that. I haven't tried them though.
- Jesse Stay
Chris: Check out what Scoble's doing with FF on building43.com
- Jim Connolly
Jim: yes. It works well for what I want it to do (I'm ignoring the ongoing issues with the DDOS). It's a free tool that adds far more value than it costs me to wait for odd outage.
- Rachel Clarke
Just checked your Twitter account and now understand exactly what you are saying.
- Jim Connolly
Jesse: agree, I use Facebook, Friendfeed, blogs, comments etc, all for different things. I even use the phone as a phone occasionally to talk with people ;-) But the assumption that one tool/service can do everything - and should do everything - is something I have a problem with. If something does not work for a person, don't use it.
- Rachel Clarke
The twitter ecoverse is cool, can do Psychological Profiles, can do Social Network Analysis. All those services that spawned as a result are amazing. I am also amazed at how dense Asians Languages are on Twitter, think about it they get about 60% more per tweet.
- Robert Higgins
Ben: at this point I am not sure what Twitter could do to win back my love. I will use it just like I use AT&T and United Airlines. I have very little love for those even though I use them frequently. Twitter wins because it is simple and flat and has great clients. I wouldn't cry if it disappeared, though.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
You are a hypocrite! I remember you use to sing the praises of Twitter all the time. Another toy comes along and you start bashing it. If I was Friendfeed management I would cancel your account now before you start bashing them. Robert Scoble is nothing but a follower of crowds anyway.
- Paul L. McCord Jr.
You want it to die? Such an odd statement. I have met so many great people through Twitter, and the news information I can find through search or news agencies or even people who are newshounds are amazing. I know it's not perfect and the last few weeks have definately proved that, and the spam is just awful. But to want to kill it, what a strong statement.
- PC Easy
from twhirl
Twitter is not abot writing blog posts or having conversations, its about small pieces of information being communicated to anyone who wants to listen. You do not have to listen, if you want a conversation use a forum or FriendFeed, use WordPress for blog posts. Stop trying to make Twitter into something it is not designed to be.
- Darren Rollett
I really used to like Twitter, still do sometimes. What I don't like is the Twitter hype. I don't seem able to turn on any media channel these days without reading/hearing or watching about it. Even the BBC reported that Twitter was under attack recently on the main BBC news. FFS come on, there must be more happening in the world than a micro blogging site with a few million users...
more...
- Nick Bristow
If you owned twitter would you sell to google?
- cheapsuits
from iPhone
Robert, Atleast something positive could come out of it. If Twitter sells to Google they might(though its not guaranteed) make it opensource and then a federation of twitter server(ala wave servers) can co-exist happily and that way we'll own our stuff(as Anil Dash and other points out). Or they might integrate it in Wave framework. Not that people are not gonna complain about it but thats a different topic.
- Abhishek
Surely an improvement in the service would be a more positive wish?
- Chris Nixon
Say what you want but something with the architecture of friendfeed is far more conversational then twitter could ever be.
- cheapsuits
I don't know why people think Twitter is the place to converse. It's really not built for that. I find myself enjoying the flow of conversations more on Facebook and FriendFeed.
- Naomi Williams
Self pimping? Hmmm... Perhaps not for all of us. And besides, self-pimping isn't limited to twitter.
- @JonAston
PS - Maybe it's just me, but you seem bitter lately. Hope you turn that around for yourself.
- @JonAston
Jon: You are right. People pimp on FriendFeed too; as I say in my new book.... :-)
- Jim Connolly
@jim, they will do anywhere, this is human nature, they do even in real life, so why not in virtual one?
- abdellah
"(Twitter) It's a horrid place to try to communicate anything other than a bit of self pimping." AMEN
- Alejandro
Personally I wish Google would buy both Facebook and Twitter so they could both die.
- Brian Sullivan
@brian, hey where could I read to you then?!!
- abdellah
@Frank S. Google Wave will only be valid if you actually have other friends/collegues who use Google Wave. Otherwise you'll be using it with the *crickets*
- Naomi Williams
Oh yeah -- forgot that due to circumstances beyond our control FF is now Facebook. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
oh yeah , they share the same vision, they got the same perception...
- abdellah
It's the ff interface (developers) that make it great, but it's really you guys and gals, the people friendfeed attracted that make it valuable to me. Let's consider a real migration to a more reliable long term social media. It has to be open (data portable, unsellable) to get my trust
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I hope the FaceBook people will take comments like these to heart. I do like twitter but the functionality FriendFeed brought was the next generation in stream notification.
- Chris Jackson
Ohh time to pimp Jim's new book on Twitter ;)
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Mark: Yeah - all I need is a title. Oh, and a book....and the time to write one....then I will be pimping like a pro!
- Jim Connolly
Wow Robert, I was thinking this the past few days and could never bring it to words...well done
- Braden Douglass
Jim: I'm time bankrupt but love sharing and collaborating. Let's hire a ghostwriter to capture our best ideas in an intelligible manner :). Joking of course, there's no easy way to spread our thoughts but doing it ourselves
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
I was gonna call the Funky Phantom. (That really dates me.)
- Jim Connolly
Robert, I challenge you to stop using Twitter for a month and then blog about the experience. And that includes hiding all Tweets in FF.
- Mike Doeff
from iPhone
Lets face it, Twitter was built as an update service - a big Internet megaphone. The natural transition has been from update service to marketing service. Big Internet Megaphone. It's good at that, but it's not at conversations nor at discovery. The larger problem is people still approach Twitter like a true social engagement tool - and it's simply not. The disconnect between perception and reality results in the poor adoption numbers and other soft metrics.
- AJ Kohn
twitter is noise. filter it and you can find some gold. imho, that's beyond mere self-pimpage
- Rob Schieber
Agreed Rob. I'd prefer semantic algorithms applied to all tweets. I'm interested in real time search and datamining. And semantic extraction on all status would allow for real time "sorting"
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
i'd love to meetup with fellows and see what api scraping is going on - know where threads are for that?
- Rob Schieber
Idk, This seems so much better then twitter.
- SeanParnell
It does have a lot of noise, granted - but if it went away now, I'm not sure where everyone would run to. Facebook is too silly, Linkedin is too stolid, and everything else is too fractured for me to communicate with all the people I want to in a single shot. Guess I'd end up doing everything through ping.fm after all.
- Ciaoenrico
Wow, Isn't online chit-chat such a fuss? :)
- SeanParnell
Robert, just a week or two you were saying that Twitter is beating FriendFeed because of scanability http://friendfeed.com/scoblei.... And you had lots of complaints about the FriendFeed user interface. You also talked about how Twitter was much better after you un-followed everyone and hand picked who you're following. I have to ask, what has changed in the past few days to make you say that the service should die? Feels like you're flip flopping.
- Mike Doeff
I noticed that in the past two weeks, the tweet intensity has greatly decreased from all my follows in Twitter. Granted, I'm not following too many, but the ones I do follow have traditionally tweeted a lot each day. Is this a trend (has Twitter become a has been) or is this simply a coincidental anomaly?
- Jeff Sayre
Robert I find myself on friendfeed more these days
- (jeff)isageek
@brian would you consider myspace if both facebook and twitter die?!!(ps: sorry I forget the LOL)
- abdellah
Myspace -- don't know. I haven't really tried or paid attention to it. But probably not -- isn't it Facebook like? Maybe usenet? ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
brian, let forget all those techie and go irc :)
- abdellah
IMO, people who don't like the limitations of Twitter and whine about it hampering them are using it wrong. Twitter is not a place to pimp your blog or drive traffic to your site. It is not an SEO tool. It's not a place for you to compete in order to get more 'followers'. If you've ever tried to do any of these things, or if you ever followed more than a few hundred people, then yes, no...
more...
- Otto
Jesse Stay: you should stop complaining so much about twitter when you build an entire business based on their lack of functionality and other issues.
- Mihai Secasiu
Mihai, I'm not complaining - they can do what they want. As I said I really want them to succeed. It's a matter of fact that they do have their flaws - I'm hoping to help them fix those, assuming they're listening at all. What are you doing to help Twitter get better?
- Jesse Stay
it is like twitter if for what,where, when and friendfeed is for why, how
- testbeta
Mike: just because I use a service doesn't mean I love it. I use ATT and United all the time and they suck too.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
And yes Twitter has some good things about it. Doesn't mean it is all good. Personally it is overused and overhyped and YES I am partially responsible.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Apostol I get value out of Twitter. You aren't listening. I get value out of AT&T too but it COULD be so much more. Chris I tried to be positive but Twitter just doesn't respond to positivity. Plus they are cynical AT BEST about their users. Read the Twittergate documents to see just how cynical they are.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Twitter was just there at the right time. It's not the best solution to the problem (microblogging), but it's good ~enough~.
- Trent Hamm
You seriously think Twitter will die once it gets bought by a 'bigger' company?
- Mike Shields
Mike: do you use Dodgeball? It was bought by Google. So was Jaiku.
- Robert Scoble
Trent: did you just call Twitter the Microsoft of microblogging? Yeah, that's sorta what I was trying to say too! ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I just find it amazing that all the early adopters get really snobby about Twitter now it is getting more mainstream. There is something snobby about people's attitude to Facebook as well. I'm not a fan of Facebook but I know more people who use Facebook than use Twitter or Friendfeed combined. Even my mum has a Facebook account but she'd never be on Twitter or Friendfeed. Twitter...
more...
- Paul Nash
I liked Pownce. I wonder what SixApart has cooking up for them. So there's really no chance for Plurk to make a comeback and take back the community? With all the outage problems Twitter has, I would think Plurk would try to capitalize on that. Guess not.
- John Wang
now if the Google Reader team could just get their new commenting system streamlined and real-time ... :)
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
Paul: it's not hard to understand if you are in our shoes. Here's why. When a company is young and struggling to get noticed, they love having early adopters. After all, that's the ONLY WAY a company gets to the next stage. I've never seen a company go straight to Oprah stage without getting early adopters excited. Then once the company gets enough traction they usually start mistreating the early adopters. In this case Twitter stabbed them in the back. Leo Laporte, for instance ...
- Robert Scoble
...got me excited about Twitter and was THE REASON it was the big huge deal at that 2007 SXSW. He had more followers than Mashable last year. But did he get put on the Suggested User List? No. So now Mashable has more than a million and Leo has a knife in his back. And you think it's amazing that early adopters turn their backs on Twitter? Really now.
- Robert Scoble
I don't see how Leo has a knife in his back. There was no preconceived notion that anyone would be added to that list. Who cares? He was fine before that list was created, and he can be just as fine now, and just as engaging.
- Andru Edwards
Andru: when he was hyping up the service and telling his users to use it, he was getting something in return: being at the top of the follower lists. When Twitter artificially put its own people at the top of the follower lists, and handed out grants of followers (worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars, by the way -- Mashable has changed its entire business to be Twitter centric) they specifically dissed Leo and many others. Most of whom won't point it out in public.
- Robert Scoble
Sadly true. I'm in much the same boat -- Twitter is a necessity for professionals and bloggers to stay on top of things, but other socialnets like Brightkite and FF are light years beyond it, which doesn't look to be changing any time soon. Don't even get me started on the spammers and the get-rich-quick'ers.
- Ryan Meader
But before the SUL was released, didn't Leo abandon Twitter in favor of Jaiku, due to Twitter having "Twit" as part of its name? Just saying, if I owned a list that I had complete control over, and someone showed that behavior towards me (whether it was right or wrong, I am not judging), I would think twice before putting them on a list that will result in many people seeing they they...
more...
- Andru Edwards
I can't agree with you more, Robert.
- Jon Ursenbach
Scobe: I very much disagree that it is about self pimping. Perhaps your senses are mush because you follow too many? I absolutely love getting that link to a new article or research, or to get a tweet from that celeb that makes me think and provides insight into a new world. I also use it as a research tool, for exploratory purposes. Twitter, as you know very well, is about what you make it, and that is a tenuous notion that really is influenced by who you follow.
- Chad Gesser
Andru: again, the list did NOT exist in the days when we were hyping up Twitter. So, there was a "promise" to early adopters that if they invested time in the service they could be at the top of the follower lists. Sort of how PlayFoursquare is today promising users that they can become mayors of places they frequent more than anyone else. What Twitter did was the equivilent of PlayFoursquare telling everyone that their "mayorship" doesn't matter anymore and that Oprah is now mayor of everywhere.
- Robert Scoble
Chad: one thing you have to remember about me is that I see that Twitter has 1,001 uses. Stop seeing the world as black and white. This is one post I'm making about Twitter among thousands. Translation: I already agreed with you. But you have to admit that many people use Twitter for self promotion.
- Robert Scoble
Andru: and anyway, the SUL is hardly the only reason to diss Twitter. Twitter still goes down all the time, it still has stupid rate limits. It still can't block spam effectively. It still has no friend management. It still has no features that didn't exist a year ago. And it is, in many respects, behaving worse. I'm hearing from developers that Twitter is becoming more closed, not more open (to monetize) and we're seeing them pick winners before the marketplace is done (bit.ly anyone?)
- Robert Scoble
The nice thing about Twitter is that it keeps your message short and to the point. Friendfeed is great but it doesn't lend itself well to an external app out of the browser. Also FriendFeed and any of these services you don't own your content
- Seth Goldstein
Seth: bing! So, back to the blog we will go. Except, why are we still here? ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I like friendfeed because of its realtimeyness, but I like twitter because it requires you to be concise. I have seen some brilliant tweets done in 140 characters or less. I think that's always been the allure of twitter, its sheer simplicity. How many features can you add to twitter without actually changing the core of what twitter is?
- Tomy Thomson
Robert: But what do you want from these companies ? Chaps like you give them the oxygen of publicity they need and they court you and then when they become successful you suddenly start to criticise them. Friendfeed has become successful (in great part to your endless plugging of it) and the founders will now go on to make money through their company being taken over by Facebook. You,...
more...
- Paul Nash
Scoble: no doubt....I can deal with the self promotion, the e marketing and spam garbage though to me is what has gooootttt to go
- Chad Gesser
Paul: my role in life is to use what will be, not what is. I don't turn on many companies, but Twitter isn't one that dealt with early adopters on good faith.
- Robert Scoble
Is there a "social media" company that has dealt with early adopters in "good faith"? Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr I suspect don't qualify ? Any that do?
- Brian Sullivan
all platforms seem to have self pimpering styles, why so passionate against twitter? Objectional question, not one of rhetoric.
- nick tadd
Brian: I didn't know that any of those have actively dissed their best early adopters. Facebook kicked me off, but only because I broke the TOS. It's always been straight up with me. Same with Flickr, although I do watch Thomas Hawk's talk about their censorship.
- Robert Scoble
none as brian says, they all deal with them, and "the earlier adopter" contribute to their evolution until they sell (sorry)
- abdellah
nick: because it's so prevalent there. "Look at my blog post about xxx" is almost a staple on Twitter. It's a new RSS reader. Which is fine, I use it too for that! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I think you may have the makings for one of your future blogs here. Perhaps you do it for that reason? ;) The thing about Twitter is always going to be its LBE. It's a mainstream LBE to Social Media. For that very reason its perfect for business, government, and non profit to take public temperature and promote. The other "noise" is the "MV", the "mainstream voice". The conversation is 4 way.(and yes sometimes only 1 way) but there it is and its not going to go away any time soon.
- Melanie Reed
Yes, indeed, Twitter is the Microsoft of microblogging. It's good enough, but not the best - but it has the huge advantage that everyone is using it, so you have to use it for compatibility reasons.
- Trent Hamm
I still use Twitter for more than just updates. I converse, I crowdsource, and I read through to see what other people are thinking and talking about. FriendFeed is the one that I have a difficult time finding use for, but I'm trying.
- Dave Huston
DAMN Robert I HATE that you are right on this one!!!!!
- Arleen Anderson
Hopefully you use it for positive self pimping and not for negative pimping... which is inevitable
- Kevin Burrell
If FF would have taken mobile seriously, the game might look different right now
- Alex C. Williams
Alex, they are taking mobile seriously - they sold to Facebook. :-)
- Jesse Stay
I can't see how Twitter can survive Facebook now. FB will bring Twitter down, the only chance they got is to sell to Google.
- Patrik Johansson
What makes people think Facebook or Twitter is all-conquering? There's a new generation coming through, and they aren't using these services. It's very important not to get sucked in by the hype of a service you use. Fanboys will talk up the positives and ignore the negatives, giving you a skewed message. The truth is somewhere in the massive grey area in between.
- Chris Nixon
The new generation uses Facebook a lot, but not Twitter.
- Steph (sh_skew)
from email
Let me say that it is not twitter per se. It is the population of twitter to make it the place it is at the moment. Whenever there is a (free entrance) place crowded of people, there will be spambots to pollute it.
- funkyboy
from Posty
Twitter is just a temporary solution for a quick mixture of instant messaging + status updates + chat forum.
- Bora Wiemann
Just having a discussion today that Twitter will eventually go bankrupt when the hype is over
- Khuram Hussain
I don't agree with you Robert. Twitter is easy to use, succinct and versatile. I've made multiple very meaningful connections through my use of twitter. I do like friendfeed's threaded conversations which are great but in a way it only helps those who have big followings like yourself, because people are more apt to comment on your thread than say mine because they know the conversation...
more...
- Lon Cohen
For example - how do I message you directly so you know I'm speaking to you (i.e. Twitter @ reply) but all your followers and my followers know that we're having a conversation in Twitter back and forth so that they can follow and interject when they want. Everytime we do that we have to start a brand new discussion thread and I have to "tell" you somehow that I'm talking to you. Twitter is like email/phone conversations and friendfeed is like collective blogging/commenting.
- Lon Cohen
This raises larger questions about social networking, particularly when part of your job is to network with other people. What's the line between personal and professional when you're using tools that don't clearly separate the two? LinkedIn gets bagged on for not adding more third party tools and not taking the Facebook path, but I think they understand the value of keeping boundaries around networking in order to keep it effective.
- Erik Schmidt
Do you mean you are un-friending people on FB? Or just "hiding" them. When my FB friends annoy me with too many stupid quizzes, I just "Hide" them for awhile and then they don't show up in my feed until I'm want to see them.
- thegeniusfiles
I am unfollowing/unfriending most people on Facebook. Already everything about my experience is getting better.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Yeah, life is SO much easier when other people aren't involved ;)
- LogEx
Dude you should've done your un-friending when you could have got a Whopper for it. Timing is everything :-0
- thegeniusfiles
I actually just completed a Twitter purge this morning. Makes the stream a lot easier to follow. Regarding FB, that's why you should only friend people you actually know. I started with FB when it first launch my soph. year of college. Limited it to close friends only. My rule on FB is if we haven't gotten drunk together, you aren't going to be my Facebook friend.
- Steven Melfi
Unfollowing isn't even slightly rude. It's an entirely personal decision that should be absolutely free of controversy. We follow for many reasons, all of them personal, none of them are broadcast. Unfollowing is the same.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason: unfollowing me is rude! :-) but, seriously, a lot of people get upset when you unfollow them.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Unfollowing is not rude at all, IMO. Unfriending can be, which is why Facebook doesn't notify the other party that they've been defriended. They'd have to notice by seeing that they can't see your page or posts and such anymore.
- Otto
I unfollowed some people in the past, and even blocked some. I think what we often miss about Social Media is that it doesn't take from us the opportunity to control our privacy etc. Instead, precisely by giving us the opportunity to share whatever we want, it gives us the chance to think, if we really want to share something. I am naturally private, although not too private, but when it comes to deciding whether or not I want someone to "follow" me, I'm glad to say that I was able to make a decision.
- Julia
Can't you have a global "allow anyone to comment" setting? Groups can be a hassle when you have a large contact list.
- thegeniusfiles
My 60+ reader friends are all named "Unnamed contact". Does Google want me to click each of their Profile link to name them properly? :(
- Jérôme Flipo
Thanks Mahendra. After I wrote it I realized I probably got the idea from Louis Gray and his Facebook/FriendFeed post.
- Rob Diana
By the way, I totally agree that the centralization of settings and removal of duplicate shares is really important. The duplication can be solved by grouping the items, similar to what FriendFeed did ages ago.
- Rob Diana
thanks for this Rob! Played in GR most of the weekend and they have a way to go I think, but the really great thing is the GR team are here on FF and have been picking up on some of the issues will be great to see suggestions implemented!
- Peter du Toit (S.Africa)
Groups would make a lot of sense if I had the options to share an item only to a particular group. For instance, I'm UK based and I don't like to annoy people living in other parts of the world by sharing articles that are only interesting to UK people. Therefore groups where I could place people according to the common interest or language etc (and people can be put in more that one group anyway) would be very handy. As they are now they don't make sense to me.
- M F
MF, that is what FriendFeed did with the update where you could post to multiple feeds/groups at once (and DM was in there as well I think). That is a significantly advanced feature, so we will probably need to give Reader some time to work towards that.
- Rob Diana
I'm in no hurry, I use and enjoy Google Reader as it is and I'm not complaining. It looks like they are going in the right direction but I can't help feeling that we have some not fully functional features at the moment that might only make sense and be useful once we get the bigger picture.
- M F
Rob: Can't they borrow grouping from Google News? Just a thought.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
MF: That's one of the things I've written about. Sharing specific folders with specific groups makes the most sense.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
I'm not sure Google wants me to put people into nice little groups. I did it several times, but they're all disappearing from the groups after some time. Greader and Contacts give me different info on witch people are in the groups
- Willem (@wim66) ☠
Willem- we do frontend filtering in reader to only show you people in your groups that have shared items (people you are following) in reader or can see yours (people following you). If anyone you've put into a group suddenly starts sharing or consuming in Reader, they will appear in your Reader list.
- Jenna Bilotta