Nicholas James - Likes

FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more »

DeWitt Clinton

FriendFeed on the Kindle

February 25 - Comment - Like - Share

Sheila Taylor, Stanislas Jourdan, metalerik and 113 other people liked this

FriendFeed, Kindle, Bret Taylor, and even a hint of Obama. Pure "like" bait for sure. : ) - DeWitt Clinton

19 more comments

I have been baited :) - Bret Taylor

No CSS on the Kindle? - Paul Buchheit

The regular user pages weren't rendering at all, so I switched to /iphone/ and it worked. Wait, does no one in FFWHQ have a Kindle 2? - DeWitt Clinton

I thought Tudor was getting one... - EricaJoy

For browser compatibility testing purposes, of course. - DeWitt Clinton

Turns out there was a Kindle 1 and a Kindle 2 in the office. All work has now ceased. - Casey Muller

lol - j1m

Get some colour and come graphics in there. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Does that case come with the Kindle? Looks nice. - Benjamin Golub

Pure pleather-like goodness: http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-.... The case has a clever little hook mechanism that makes it easy to pop the Kindle in and out, but you can definitely use the Kindle with the case on. Feels and looks more like a book with the case on, plus it protects the screen. They say it is real leather, which is a shame, as it feels like pleather and frankly I'd rather it was fake. - DeWitt Clinton

Can you please check if it shows UTF-8 characters? Like my name? - Vinay | विनय

I am starting to get pretty excited about those... was pretty skeptical at first, but that is going to be a game changer. - Susan Beebe

WOW - zizukabi

Bump. Almost a year into the Kindle 2 and it is still going strong. Nothing worth replacing it with on the market yet. - DeWitt Clinton

FriendFeed hasn't been one-upped yet either. - DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt, any opinions on the upcoming Android-based enTourage eDGe (other than the idiotic capitalization)?: http://friendfeed.com/webmave... - Michael R. Bernstein

@Michael - I had never heard of it. But I'll admit that, off all the things I wished my Kindle could do, fold in half was not one of them. And this may sound like heresy, but I'm not sure the high-level OS stack is the limiting factor in of ebook readers. Give me more surface area (Kindle DX size), a thinner bezel, higher resolution and maybe color, ditch the keyboard (okay, so maybe an touchscreen IME would help), a brushed aluminum body, and keep the thickness and weight constant, and you have an upgrade. - DeWitt Clinton

and the battery life - Deepak Singh

Ugh. It's like 1993 all over again. Whoever can figure out how to make high resolution, eInk screens in color, not necessarily with a rapid refresh rate, will pretty much own this device space for a while. - Bill Strathearn

I don't need color in my books so I don't miss it on the Kindle. - m9m, Crone of FriendFeed

Robert Scoble

Mirror mirror on the wall, who has the best Twitter lists of them all? http://listorious.com/tags... Oh hai! :-)

Sunday from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Baard @ Pixum, Nicholas James, Bob DeMarco and 2 other people liked this

Best? Certainly the most popular and specifically the most popular 'technology' list, however they define that. And is the 16,668 followers for all the list or just one in particular? - Kol Tregaskes

Kol: Thats the total followers of Robert's lists. - Nicholas James

Johnny Worthington

Why I'll Have A FriendFeed Christmas

August 15 - Comment - Like - Share

Giancarlo Caparo, Ciaoenrico, Jeff P. Henderson and 53 other people liked this

FriendFeed for the time being is not going anywhere. For the past week the lack of information has troubled and angered me, especially in regards to the termination date for the service. Now, almost a week on, the lack of information now gives me comfort. - Johnny Worthington

27 more comments

When ever you here about a take over of a car company or any business merger, the plans for both sides are well documented and everyone involved knows the road map ahead. So far, no one knows what will happen to friendfeed.com and I believe that is because either that hasn't been decided or there is no immediate plans to throw the switch. - Johnny Worthington

Facebook either doesn't want it or simply doesn't care. They got the talent and that is what they were after. FriendFeed posed no real threat to them and a great majority double fisted the sites anyway. So, since it is not an issue to them... it's not an issue to them. The site can continue to function as normal, with pace of updates and servicing slowing as time moves forwards... but it's not going away. - Johnny Worthington

It would be nice to get some form of notification but until told otherwise, it's business as usual. Even more so, if some form of monetization strategy is implemented, say with adds or even a premium subscription base, the FriendFeed service could not only continue long term but become a profitable venture. Now I'm not saying it's going to make Diddy-style dollars but Sanjya still eats well. - Johnny Worthington

Am I naive? Probably. Do I have any basis for my prediction? None other than rampant fanboy love.... but I tell you what... on the morning of December 25th, 2009, I plan to make my post wishing you all a Merry Christmas, toast the FriendFeed team and enjoy the day with my family and friends, digital or otherwise... - Johnny Worthington

Cough. http://www.louisgray.com/live... - Louis Gray

You know what? When I get home overstuffed from the annual family Christmas dinner, you can bet I'll get right back on FriendFeed. - Dennis Jernberg

Christmas?? Did I miss a few months somewhere? - Fa La La La Lindsay

Louis... I can never hope to drop science like you sir... but then again... I not only used the phrase 'Diddy-style Dollars' but threw in a 'double fisted' for good measure :P - Johnny Worthington

When it's Christmas, there's cold weather involved - I'm not a fan of that! - Drew

Lindsey, agreed, but what do they gain by not telling us that information if they know it? FriendFeed makes no money, no refunds need be paid and no customers are being hurt. In the cold hard truth, the team has cashed out and now have a bigger fish to fry. If they switch it off tomorrow, will you stop using Facebook because they now work there? No PR worries at all. It makes no sense for them to keep it quiet so, sense being the only thing I can go on, I must believe the information is not at hand. - Johnny Worthington

So, in other words... no ice bergs ahead at this stage. That means, crew of the good ship FriendFeed, I'm gonna keep pushing this site hard, promoting it and the community like I have a heater strapped to the front of the boat. - Johnny Worthington

Johnny, there is quite a bit of sense as to everyone keeping quiet about what is going to happen. Facebook have just bought themselves a competitive advantage and they are not about to give away that advantage by saying what it is that they will be doing now are they? - Travis Koger from iPhone

Other than releasing Facebook real-time search, buying FriendFeed and launching the Facebook Lite beta all withing 48 hours... yeah, they are keeping their cards close to their chest :P - Johnny Worthington

Yeah but all of the FB announcements not relating to FF were already complete with the FF team. Therefore you can only expect that the FF team will be working on some things that a VERY different. I also read that the FF team were actually being broken up an duferemt people were going to be in different areas at FB. - Travis Koger from iPhone

I hope that I'm able to celebrate Christmas on FriendFeed too:) - Patrik Johansson

Patrick... we will :) - Johnny Worthington

... made it :) - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

Merry Christmas, JoWo. :) - LB - not an idiot

I wasn't aware that FriendFeed was going to get closed down. I thought Friendfeed would continue on, but just owned by Facebook. - Colide81 (James)

Merry Christmas Johnny. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

James, this was written in the wake of the sale... We didn't know anything :) - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

Yay! Happy FF Christmas, one and all! - WorldofHiglet

Having a Merry Friendfeed Christmas! :-) - Mathew A. Koeneker

Merry Christmas, indeed! - Fa La La La Lindsay

So FriendFeed is safe then? - Colide81 (James)

Safe? It depends what you mean by safe...! They mostly come out at night....Mostly. - WorldofHiglet

They used the logo you made! - Raphael, Raphael

More correctly, Johnny used the logo that they made. - Louis Gray

Steve Gillmor

NewsGang Live test: requires Silverlight and FriendFeed http://beta.newsgang.net/...

December 18 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, Nicholas James, Eric Logan and 8 other people liked this

Seems interesting but what am I entering my FF credentials into Steve? Not going to enter them into something I have heard nothing about.. - Bill Heslin

48 more comments

ok - Steve Gillmor

So is this an extension of Gillmor Gang, some new newsy thing that fits in there? I'll beta test..just want some more info? - Bill Heslin

bill, it's the remote key not your password... read up here https://friendfeed.com/account... - Chris Heath

thanks Chris ..will do - Bill Heslin

Oh yes Chris I understand the remote key...but just wondering what it's all about. That's all. - Bill Heslin

we're testing a vanilla onboard, Bill. I can explain more once you're in. - Steve Gillmor

I'm in - Bill Heslin

Wow...very cool... - Bill Heslin

Ok, I am partway there - Christian Burns

also, steve... the css isn't fluid and looks like this to me (chrome 3 on windows xp) http://img39.imageshack.us/img39... - also i think the silverlight was bogging down my old P4 system - Chris Heath

Mine looks like Chris' in Chrome on Vista, but I haven't been able to load the newest Silverlight in Chrome (unless it carried over from my install of it in IE8 last night). - Robert G. Male

Firefox is probably a better bet on Vista. - Cliff Gerrish

I have double sidebars when I view it from beta.newsgang.net - Karoli

Karoli...take off the beer goggles...LOL...Hiya! - Bill Heslin

Yeah, usually NGL itself isn't the focus of NGL. You get a little video feedback when that happens. - Cliff Gerrish

Silverlight doesn't work on Safari running on Windows = Fail! - Michael Pinto

Yes, it does. I tested that earlier today. - Cliff Gerrish

Requirements: Silverlight, FriendFeed, $5 pay-per-view next? - James Robertson

Silverlight and Flash will never run as well as HTML5 on constrained mobile devices. If they run as stand-alone apps then they will have to compete with the functionality of browsers. If they run within browsers they suck up additional memory and processor cycles and play poorly. Developers are not going to invest in optimizing their Flash/Silverlight apps to run on both the desktop and on mobile devices with a variety of screen resolutions, etc. Give up on this fantasy Steve. - scott anderson

Adam Bosworth told me a long time ago that Moore's Law trumps these issues, as it did with RSS's supposed verbosity and everything else XMLish since. Hybrid browser/rich apps will continue to win while moving the market closer to so called HTML 5ish standards. I'd give up on the rhetoric Scott if I were you. - Steve Gillmor

HTML 5, Silverlight, Flash, Pen and Paper. No one cares if something is good and useful. They'll dowload the plugin or fill the inkwells if that's what they need to do. - Matt Terenzio

exactly, Matt - Steve Gillmor

in the past (it seems to me) enterprise seems to drive software while hardware has been driven by gamers/gaming ... 1) what do you think about that? 2) what about going forward? 3) and what about mobile, will it drive anything - or is it creating a class of it's own? (app store markets?) - Chris Heath

You can call it rhetoric if you like but if it costs more for consumers to purchase mobile phones that run technologies like Flash and Silverlight that consume more memory, processor cycles, battery life, etc. and it costs developers more resources to build these "rich" experiences and make them compatible then it won't happen. The benefits do not outweigh the costs. - scott anderson

phones are razors and history (iPhone) shows this does in fact happen. Flash is not off the iPhone for technical reasons but economics, and Gphone is about to make that irrelevant. - Steve Gillmor

is gPhone making Flash, the iPhone, or the economics irrelevant? - Chris Heath

flash is silverlight is HTML 5 eventually. Gphone allows Flash and other plugins. Moonlight decompiling strategy closes loop to iPhone - Steve Gillmor

What are the benefits that Flash and Silverlight add to the user experience that cannot be duplicated in HTML5, especially when the nature of UI on mobile devices lends itself to simplicity? - scott anderson

if you see no benefits, then why pitch your theory. It's like the Republicans reading the bill out to slow down reality - Steve Gillmor

I pitch my theories so that they can be debunked by others. I am a mobile app developer with limited resources and want to be smart in my investments in tools and infrastructure. - scott anderson

well, then you should talk to .Net devs and see if they meet your needs. Sounds like you are happy in HTML5 land. - Steve Gillmor

Why hasn't Flash taken over web pages designed for desktop browsers and why hasn't Adobe Air been successful on the desktop? If they cannot succeed on the desktop then I have no hope for these technologies succeeding on mobile phones. I'm not talking about video players but applications written in Flash or Silverlight. I would not need .Net to simply support playing video. I am happy in GWT land and see more robust apps being possible with SVG + WebGL + Javascript along with the media tags in HTML5. - scott anderson

Just an FYI: remote keys are a poor user experience. OAuth is preferred. And when you use OAuth limits are applied to the user instead of the IP address making the call, making it easier to grow your application (assuming you call the API from your server). Read more here: http://friendfeed.com/api... - Benjamin Golub

yes benjamin we are moving to Oauth before we come out of beta. And can you fill us in on what's going on last 24 hours with Twitter feed. - Steve Gillmor

Scott Flash is dominant on browsers for video. Air sucks but it provides experiences SIlverlight improves on. ask Seesmic why they've ported to WIndows and then to SIlverlight. - Steve Gillmor

You're assuming that Seesmic is making intelligent development decisions by investing in Windows and Silverlight. That remains to be seen. - scott anderson

no I am assuming a rationale for assigning resources that makes sense with what I think is going on. How it impacts on individual developers has more to do with their products and the full range of technologies they support. They also produced an Android version before iPhone. Unlike you, they support both models. - Steve Gillmor

Leveraging Flash or Silverlight for simply playing videos is overkill. The video decoder royalty issues will be worked out. I can see Google donating the assets they recently got from their acquisition of On2. - scott anderson

Steve: what do you mean by "what's going on last 24 hours with Twitter feed"? We had a small hiccup with the crawl (not Twitter specific, the entire crawl) but things should be moving again. - Benjamin Golub

ben the twitter feed resumed about an hour ago and has been adding items from both yesterday and up to an hour ago. It was dead as a doornail last night. And I assume the firehose issues remain unresolved by the delta between timestamps even now - Steve Gillmor

scott: we'll see. meantime there are plenty of reasons why SIlverlight is a big deal, and worth some people's time. - Steve Gillmor

I am developing an application framework for Android that leverages web panes within native apps. I use native infrastructure where it makes sense and web standards for the content related pieces. - scott anderson

yeah I get it, but this is a back and forth without meaningful progress. let's move on - Steve Gillmor

Silverlight and Flash do have one potentially critical advantage over HTML5 ... DRM. In my opinion publishers should have a mechanism to protect their content from piracy. If Jobs succeeds in blocking both Flash and Silverlight runtimes from the iPhone, it will be interesting to see what kind of DRM solution Apple establishes with their new video streaming technology and how tightly... more... - scott anderson

This is interesting. Will it work with moonligjt on linux? - Alfred C. Ingram

at some point - Steve Gillmor

I've said it before: Silverlight - the OS/2 of RIAs - Nick Lothian

Chrome might require the IEtab extension to use silverlight, - Alfred C. Ingram

Nope Alfred. And merry Christmas everybody! - Chris Heath from iPhone

Dow Guessing Game: Alex Scoble

So far the winners are: MVB, April Russo(app103), CW, Davis Freeberg, Scott of Two Countries, MVB, Alex Scoble, Scott of Two Countries, LogEx, Glen Campbell, John Flynn, Chris Greene, Alex Scoble, Imabonehead, Veƶqueӽ: Blank of FF, Jimminy Fuller, John Flynn, Imabonehead, GENiE (Mohomed Abdullahi AKA genieyclo), Nicholas James...

March 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Itachi, Uncle CW™, imabonehead and 5 other people liked this

Dave - SustainedEuphoria, Davis Freeberg, jcunwired, Davis Freeberg, Mohomed Abdullahi, Mike Reynolds, Alex Scoble, Dave - SustainedEuphoria, John Flynn, jcunwired, David HC Soul, John Flynn, Shey, Mike Reynolds, Nicholas James, Mike Reynolds, Jason T Fleming, John Flynn, Vezquez, John Flynn, Andrew, Steven Perez, Aviv and David HC Soul. - Alex Scoble

9 more comments

Bump! - Alex Scoble

Cheers Mohomed :) - Nicholas James

Bumping for the memories.... - David HC Soul

Heh, right now you are the alpha and the omega, eh, David? - Alex Scoble

Doesn't happen often ;) note the date on this post.... I was at front and back on March 6; now its official on May 15. - David HC Soul

Now on week 43. - Alex Scoble

Finally on a list of WINNERS! WOO HOO! I'm scrapbooking this! - Uncle CW™

April Russo(app103) wins for week 43(Alex will have to update this list.) - Jimminy Fuller

MVB wins for week 44 - Jimminy Fuller

Davis Freeburg wins for week 45. - Jimminy Fuller

Leo Laporte

Now, Foursquare! Now, Gowalla! Now, Cliqset and Blippy! On, Flickr, On Smugmug, On, yFrog and Vidly. To the top of the stats, to the top of Street Wall. Plurk away, Pownce away, tweet away all.

December 23 from Cliqset - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Tim, Jenthemum and 17 other people liked this

omg - Charlie Anzman

4 more comments

Leo must be into the EggNog early - johnpiercy

I wonder if Santa has Ford Sync - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

pownce is no longer - sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq

I still have no idea how this FriendFeed works. What is it? A Twitter clone? - Kevin

Nicely put! - laosan

Paul Buchheit

The realtime connection from Twitter to FriendFeed is back! (thanks to Twitter's "birddog" api)

December 22 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Garin Kilpatrick, (1)Bebekvegebelik and 151 other people liked this

Awesome news! - Jorge Escobar

45 more comments

Very good! - Kurt Starnes

Sweetness! - Alex Scrivener

34 secs flat for my latest tweet. Thanks Paul and team for this! - Jorge Escobar

wow, that makes actually want to use Twitter. I may just go tweet something. - Mike Nencetti

It should be even faster than that Jorge, but our systems are getting near their limit. I hope to have it down to 1 sec sometime next month. - Paul Buchheit

Thank god! - Miguel Caetano

@Paul, believe me, 34 secs is a charm compared to what we had before! - Jorge Escobar

Great news! - Rasmus Lauridsen

Is the birddog api open to all developers, or is it only to you guys? - Jorge Escobar

Jorge, everyone can access the streaming api, but you need an agreement to follow a large number of ids. See http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Streami... - Paul Buchheit

Thanks Paul. - Roberto Bonini

that cool. Thanks Paul - Peter Dawson

Yay! That's fantastic! I was getting really bored of manually refreshing it every time I tweeted. Especially from my phone. :) - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Does this mean that Scoble can get smarter on FriendFeed again? - Crutis

NICE! - Jason Huebel

Thanks Paul, nice work :) - LANjackal

wow no posts on the majors yet - usually within mere moments of an announcement we'd have posts. - Allen Stern

Thank God. - Ahmet Alp Balkan

cool! - barbarars

What was the problem? - Ozkan Altuner

Now....if you could just get rid of the @ replies again. I would be very happy. - Chris Nixon

relief ! :) - asli subasi

You are still working on Frienfeed (: how nice ! - Murat Can Demir

^ That's probably the best part of this announcement, TBH. Good point - LANjackal from IM

whoa, it took less than a minute. i accdently tested it but it's great :) thnx - asli subasi

awesome, keep it up guys, i knew you would not let us down - Iggy Mwangi

Great news, love the efforts still put in to FF.I use Google Reader to share into FF (PubSubHubBub) then FF to Twitter (now Real-Time). The URL shortener is great (ff.im), and so FF is central to my social lifestream. I don't care what Scoble says, FF is technically better and feature-rich. - Keith Rowland

P.S. Conversations are still better here than on GReader, and you just can't have one on Twitter. - Keith Rowland

You didn't break the FF Facebook app while you were at it, did you? It hasn't worked since. - Tim Tyler

Oh, awesome!!! 12 seconds :) I can finally go back to Twitter (...okay no I can't I've turned into a Friendfeed junkie..) but prior it took hours upon hours for me to see a feed. Dumb I am, I never suspected a problem LMAO. - H0llywoodWh0re

Thank you! - Micah Wittman

Awesome news :) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

eyvallah hacı - Mücahit Yılmaz

Cool. Haven't tried it but yay! - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

Yippee! I love real time - Sandra Large

Paul ?? Twitter updates facebook status and then facebook creates a new feed here on friendfeed. So we have same entries both from twitter and facebook on friendfeed. Could you guys please work on how we can avoid duplicate entries? Thank you. ( If there's already a way to avoid this, pls let me know) - Murat Can Demir

Cool, thanks, Paul! :-) RT Twitter updates have been missed. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

And just as I say that, I see my tweets are not coming into FF in real-time. :-( - Kol Tregaskes

Kol. I just tweeted and it was here before I could get out of Tweetie and launch Safari... It's working :) - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

awesome.; thank you a lot.. - Jaap Willem

Nice! Thank U Paul :) - zʍıɔ

:) - ★ Soner Gönül

Oh, so nice to have that back again. - Hutch Carpenter

Johnny, cool. Just me then. It's still slow. Maybe it's FriendFeed then? - Kol Tregaskes

It truncates retweets, even in the middle of a link... - Raphael, Raphael

seems that there are only 140chars allowed for a tweet (on FF) and the new twitter retweets are being translated on the way through to old RT @name style - thus are too long. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Scott of Two Countries to Scott's feed, Formula 1

Michael Schumacher signs up for F1 return with Mercedes - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2...

December 23 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Faraz Mullick, Nicholas James, Ladybug Heather and Roberto Bonini liked this

"The German, who will be 41 on 3 January, was unveiled at the Mercedes factory in Brackley, Northamptonshire. Schumacher will partner compatriot Nico Rosberg in the team that won the drivers' and constructors' titles in 2009 in its former guise as Brawn." - Scott of Two Countries from Bookmarklet

4 more comments

You F1 fans get such woodies for Schumacher. It's adorable. :-) - Ladybug Heather

Not all of us..... - Rasmus Lauridsen

Schumi's back!! *breaks out champagne* - Roberto Bonini

Bring back Mika Hakkinen! Then I'll get a woody. - Blackeyed P

or Hill ;) - Roberto Bonini

Louis Gray

Twitter: Is There Room For Anyone Else? - http://www.louisgray.com/live...

January 12, 2009 from louisgray.com - Comment - Like - Share

guruvan (Rob Nelson), Jesse Stay, Kol Tregaskes and 18 other people liked this

Post by Rob Diana: http://www.friendfeed.com/robdian... - Louis Gray

4 more comments

Yeah - there's plenty of room for everyone. When Twitter finally dies, you'll all say 'Christ - I wish I had an archive of all my Tweets.' Peace, love, empathy. - Andy C

I keep thinking that "Twitter like" messaging (not provided by Twitter) will be added onto most web community sites. That doesn't kill Twitter the website of course. But the Twitter "experience" won't be unique to just Twitter in the very near future. - Gregg H.

I'm still trying to figure out what the Twitter experience is. - Rutger Blom

Rutger: Relating the Twitter experience to the FriendFeed experience I would describe Twitter as realtime statements without being able to meaningfully discern conversation out of those dissociated statements... is this a reply, a reply to what piece of information, was that a reply to something else... This is not a problem on FF, or at least not as big of a problem. - Gregg H.

bump! - Jesse Stay

Wayne Sutton

Foursquare + Square = Killer Small Business Social CRM - http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2009...

December 20 from Backtype - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Daniel Rowley, Robert Scoble and .LAG liked that liked this

"Interesting read. I do think Square and location based apps could be the solution for social CRM for small business. The question is will it be Foursquare or another app with so many launching now. Also there is a CC processing app on the iPhone. Couldn't a small business or someone use the api from social sites with one of those apps too? Either way location and social CRM will see a big push in 2010." - Wayne Sutton

...possibilities - .LAG liked that

Loic Le Meur

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” – Elbert Hubbard via Tim Ferriss

December 18 from identi.ca - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Alex Araujo (fotozine), Iván Abrego and 13 other people liked this

I recycle it :) - Roberto Chibbaro

5 more comments

I tried that, once. People told me I was lazy. - Pat Rice

I always followed that concept, now I am broke :\ - \(*_*)/

Reminds me of the cartoon I once saw: ''You either make dust, or you eat dust" - Deon Binneman

Oh yes! - Florin Grozea

Did anyone notice where Loic's posting (getting ideas) from? http://identi.ca/loic - A Mitchell

This quote truly makes me cry. I have a bang up quote for my email but this might be the replacement. So good - Braden Douglass

Bret Taylor

Happy holidays from the FriendFeed crew! - http://blog.friendfeed.com/2008...

December 23, 2008 - Comment - Like - Share

Keiko Yamada, HealingBrush, Pelin Hazar and 292 other people liked this

Thanks to Kevin for another great logo... - Bret Taylor

40 more comments

YAY! Snowmens! - Yolanda

Cool logo! :) - AJ Batac

I think they need scarves. They look cold. - Yolanda

Great logo! Simple and fun. - Brandon Titus

great :) çok sevdim bu logoyu :) - Burak Budak

Cool :D - Pedram

Kevin - that is an awesome logo!!!!! - Susan Beebe

A nice tribute to Bill Waterson :) - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

+102 for Bill Waterson references in picture Kevin or words Sinterclas - Steve C

cute but what happened to festivus this year? - Laura Norvig

Merry Christmas to the FriendFeed team. You guys rock! FriendFeed reacts quickly and you're adding wonderful features all the time (Thanks soooo much for the "edit" feature.) - Mitchell Tsai

Happy Festivus! - ◄ani625Ξ

Happy festive season to you all as well :) - Niki Costantini

Happy Holidays!!! - David Cook

love it~ - Sunny

Love!!! - BeeLing

Glad you like it! (And glad people picked up on the Waterson influence :-) - Kevin Fox

Merry Christmas! :D - Ron

Happy Holidays FF crue -- you've made this an excellent and memorable year for many of us. Facebook couldn't have done it without you! :) - Christopher Galtenberg

w00t you gave me the best online year in 15 years!!! ;p Thanks a lot, everyone, for what you've done here XD - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

Merry Christmas to all - Craig Eddy

Merry Christmas! - Svein Håvard Djupvik

Haha! I love horrified snowmen. Merry Christmas to FriendFeed! - Chris Lasher

Joyeux Noel a tout le monde! - Mathieu Ayel

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! - Anne Bouey

Feliz navidad a ti! - JA Castillo

Thanks! Happy Holidarys! Merry Christmas! - Bill Romanos

happy christmas, chanukah and kwanzaa. - D. Eda Goze

happy chrismas and a happy new year!!! - ethan meccage

That's when they loved us :( - Christopher Harley

Awwwww sniff - Kevin Fox

Happy holidays! Take good care of yourselves and... enjoy those days off! <o> \o, - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

Merry Christmas! - Ian May

Tks and love you all !!! - Renchin(Reina)

ahh, the good ol' days. - MikeAmundsen

Happy Holidays FriendFeers! <superbump /> - AJ Batac

cool!! - Ferzvladimir

*bump* - imabonehead

Sigh. Sometimes it is the little touches, like seasonal logos or easter eggs, that mark a site as a living project, and that you really miss when the developers have all moved on to something else. - Michael R. Bernstein

ای جان چقدر خوبه این - WALL.E

1 yıl geçmiş üzerinden bretim taylorum vay anasına dimi.. - Taylan GERDAN (Tylolhot)

Jesse Stay

And you thought FriendFeed was doing bad - check out Google Reader:

Screen shot 2009-12-16 at 11.25.42 AM.png

December 16 - Comment - Like - Share

Paul Harvey, Mitchell Tsai, practicehacker and 59 other people liked this

Regarding FriendFeed's numbers, be sure to see here: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

200 more comments

I forget to use Google Reader. I prefer FF - Mike Nencetti

Also see: http://friendfeed.com/jessest... - Jesse Stay

Isn't that because the URL most people use for Google Reader is http://www.google.com/reader ? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken is right. I always use http://www.google.com/reader. You can also get feeds on http://www.google.com/ig/ Jesse, it's time for you to retire from stats mayhem. - Louis Gray

Remember, 65.4% of all stats are made up on the spot. - Ken Sheppardson

i use google.com/reader too - Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)

Web 1.0 is to Web 2.0 as Alexa is to Compete. - AJ Kohn

There will also be users coming from other countries like us here (google.ca/reader). - AJ Batac

Louis, I'm simply sharing the same type of stats you did with FriendFeed. Who shall retire first? - Jesse Stay

Louis shared stats for FriendFeed using the wrong URL? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, http://reader.google.com is how I access Google Reader - Jesse Stay

See how it redirects to www.google.com/reader? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, my point is Louis's stats mean as much as mine do - there are way more factors that go into this, I agree - Jesse Stay

Jesse, without demeaning you personally, this is false and ridiculous. FriendFeed is a domain, a specific one, and I chose the primary domain. Google Reader is a subdomain or directory, and you chose the one that, as you show, nobody uses. The Alexa data you showed for FriendFeed illustrated something that nobody is experiencing. This isn't gamesmanship. It's just wrong, again. - Louis Gray

I have a hard time understanding the fights and points Jesse chooses to get into.....just baffling. - Matthew DeVries

So let's take this constructively - what's a better way of comparing the two if http://reader.google.com is a bad way? - Jesse Stay

Neither.... it's apples and oranges. - Jason Williams

Jason - considering some use FriendFeed as a replacement for Google Reader it's not apples and oranges - they're competition. - Jesse Stay

Really? Why on earth would anyone use FF over Reader? FF complements Reader but shouldn't supplant it. Is there really a constructive way to read rss feeds here? - Jason Williams

Jason, many people do that - it always comes out when Scoble is threatening to leave Reader. It's also why your FriendFeed stats now show up with your Feedburner stats. - Jesse Stay

looks like we gotta get louis to work more hours to get that chart moving in the right direction! - Allen Stern

Amen Allen (that's the spirit)! I'd love to see more stability and more focus on core functionality, not the social features. More stats, more organizational tools, more sharing tools. Better UI. Less bugs. I would use it more if that were the case. - Jesse Stay

Give me a better way to manage thousands of items a day and I'll read thousands of items a day. For now I've had to reduce my use due to how bulky and hard-to-manage it all is. - Jesse Stay

for the record i rarely to never use google reader. - Allen Stern

when friendfeed shows me full content RSS feeds instead of just title links, let me know. until then, I'll keep using Google Reader. that's the same notion that twitter is a replacement for it. I get it but it doesn't work for me. - Bill Kinney

Jesse knows that I read more than 1,000 items per day and am connected to more than 1,000 people via shared item feeds. The graph above is not valid. Google Reader is a great complement to FriendFeed, and always has been. It's the vast majority of my feed. Reader is also, very flexibly, able to share to different sites, including Twitter and Facebook. - Louis Gray

Yes, Bill. Jesse is just grumpy today. :) He knows better than to post data without any substance and try and get a faux argument going. He also is tempting me to post a SocialToo traffic chart and compare it to Twitter. :) - Louis Gray

i think that louis and jesse need a "time out" - both of you to your respective corners for a juice box - Allen Stern

No way, Allen! Not when there are great injustices in this world! :) - Louis Gray

louis i just sat through 4 hrs of city council hearings at city hall - not once did google reader or friendfeed come up :) - Allen Stern

Jesse, the difference is that Readers traffic isn't dependent on who else is also using it. As much as Google would like it to be, it's not a social tool. I can get my FF feed in Reader but not vice versa. Do you really get your "news" from FF? It's the same thing with Twitter. People try to make it a RSS replacement but it isn't no matter how much you want it to be. 140 characters might be ok for links and quick social commentary but in depth news, not so much. - Jason Williams

Allen, but they did mention a series of tubes, at least in passing I'm sure :) - Micah Wittman

*thinks of how to talk Jesse down from the ledge...* Jesse, Hi :) At best you are criticizing conventional wisdom web statistics in general and mixing it with a clearly flawed swipe at Reader. ### Now, carefully, come back from the precipice and live to fight another day. - Micah Wittman

You guys are all proving my point - that this argument is just as crazy a claim as this one is here: http://friendfeed.com/louisgr... - you can't trust stats - Jesse Stay

I use Feedly, which is off the back of Google Reader - Ian May

Jesse, nobody has proven your point. The only point that has been made is that you made a mistake and tried to draw a parallel, and you failed. - Louis Gray

Of course you can trust stats, Jesse. You just have to understand how they were collected, what they mean, and not try to use them to support some completely unrelated hypothesis. I've seen two graphs of US and global FriendFeed visitor stats that support two different statements... that US usage is down and global usage is up, respectively. The graph you've created for reader.google.com is irrelevant and immaterial, for reasons given above. - Ken Sheppardson

I could be wrong, but a certain someone who pronounced FF as dead cited that new features in GR were going to kill it. Just sayin'. Also just sayin' - I'm with Louis on this one. The combination of Google Reader and Friendfeed have changed the game for me, bigtime. - jcunwired

Surely not. - Will Higgins™

I'm probably in the minority but I have replaced Google Reader with FriendFeed. Pretty much for discussions like this one. I'm not sure I find the same value in Reader, I tend to bookmark and re-visit the same sites anyway. FriendFeed brings something to the table that a bookmark just doesn't. Reader, not so much. At least not for me. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

We need a UFC match between Louis Gray and Jesse Stay. The 9-lettered names of mayhem! - beersage

I'd like to append my last post with, I still scan GR, so the previous comments about using GR and FF together as a powerful combination--in practice, if not in heart--I'm in agreement with. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

See what happens when I stayed in GReader (and some Twitter) all day, I missed a good thread. I read/skim a little over 1,000 posts a day, I'm not sure if I read more than Louis (42,597 items in last 30 days) but it's my information center. Friendfeed use to be my place for discussions around the news, since engagement has dropped here (for me at least), I've moved back to Twitter for a fraction of that engagement (FB for friends/coworkers/family). - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I never knew there was a reader.google.com - Richard Lawler

Almost all of Google's (non-acquired) properties can do both whatever.google.com and google.com/whatever which is very smart actually. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

On the subject, I must thank Louis, Jesse and many others that act as filters on GReader BTW. When I don't have time to go through the bulk, these guys help bring the cream to the top. I try to do my part in filtering for others but I feel that it's a team effort to bring the signal to others as automated filters aren't smart enough (yet). - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Funny, I cut back on my usage of both services and the graph goes down. You can blame Scoble now. I don't use Google Reader anymore. - Robert Scoble

Don't talk about yourself in the third person. - Mark

I blame Scoble for the drop in the Twitter chart as well then. <smirk> - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

My use has gone down significantly and I'm seriously looking for the perfect solution to replace it. Hoping Seesmic or Tweetie or Tweetdeck do that soon. See: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

I now know Louis's Kryptonite - criticize Google Reader ;-) - Jesse Stay

Robert, please don't leave Gmail, because I still need that. Thanks. - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

Jesse - I agree with your April blog post 100%. I also want to mention that Google Alerts is also a helpful tool for monitoring blog posts. (And without a doubt, most of us use it.) - Mark Davidson from BuddyFeed

Jesse, kryptonite would weaken someone if it were their personal poison. I am not weakened by your inaccuracies and stubbornness. :) - Louis Gray

Anyone know what Feedly's numbers are?? - Roberto Bonini

it is still my best organic conversational real time tool... - Yann Ropars

Feedly is actually down 11% in Nov as well. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/feedly... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Is this a trend?? The holiday season and all?? What about Feedburner stats?? If RSS usage (i.e for RSS clients) is in decline (unlikely) it would show up there. - Roberto Bonini

manieles: feedly's content is generated dynamically in the browser so the metrics you are pointing to are just metrics of our blog (most users download feedly from the mozilla (and now chrome) sites. 2009 was a good year for feedly: we grew 1,527% from Dec 08 until Dec 09. http://twitter.com/edwk... - Edwin Khodabakchian

Ah, I guess that makes my comment above moot. There goes that theory. - Roberto Bonini

Sorry Edwin, just like reader.google.com the compete numbers don't show the story of true use. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

No problem Mark (it happens a lot). Roberto: Feedly is still relatively a niche service compared to Friendfeed and Google Reader so your theory could be correct. I do not have visibility into the Google Reader usage information but I can say that the underlying infrastructure keeps on getting better and innovating at a very fast pace. They have the foundation for a distributed... more... - Edwin Khodabakchian

Sounds like what I said about FriendFeed :-) - Jesse Stay

Jesse: Friendfeed is down but they are not dead. It all depends on if Facebook will decide to invest and move the service forward or not. If they do not, at some point Twitter and Facebook will have a super set of the friendfeed features and at that point their will be no turn around possible. Friendfeed sold out too early. - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, Jesse is having an off day. Feedly is doing fantastically. Google Reader continues to have the #1 position in RSS and things are flourishing with their social features. FriendFeed has great technology and a fantastic community, but stalled momentum. Jesse should be in better form in about 5-7 days. - Louis Gray

Jesse are you sick *again*? I told you to eat more bacon! :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Would be interesting to see a metric that measures total number of posts having comments and likes versus total posts and compare that to the "glory days" of Friendfeed. How much different is the engagement now? - Steve

Louis is basing his "FriendFeed is down" on faulty stats - that's the point of this thread. FriendFeed's just fine: http://staynalive.com/article... - I agree Reader and RSS are fine. So is FriendFeed. - Jesse Stay

Steve, you can always use FriendFeed's advanced search to find 100 comments and likes posts. - Louis Gray

Jesse, discussing this with you is getting boring. That post was wrong and based on data even worse than the public information I used. - Louis Gray

Nothing on the Internet is dead until the servers are unplugged and the information is not cached elsewhere. There could be 1 unique user on a site and it still could be very useful for that one person. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Mark, that's correct. I covered that when I said I would still find value if I were the last FriendFeeder. What's frustrating about this nonsense of a thread is that Jesse made a mistake with his graph and continues to stand by it. - Louis Gray

As did Louis (I'm not standing by this graph - I was making a point), and he continues to stand by his (about FriendFeed traffic being down) - Jesse Stay

Because it is down. - Louis Gray

Louis, if you think my post is wrong, how about a post proving my points wrong - Jesse Stay

:-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

It is a waste of time. It also does not benefit me or the community to make high visibility of negativity around this site. That's why I posted what I did here previously, also knowing it tends to be written about and spun by other blogs. - Louis Gray

I don't think Louis believes his graph is wrong - who's the stubborn one? ;-) - Jesse Stay

Congratulates Jesse and his graph for making my best of day on FF. I am not a fan of Google reader. the graph looks accurate to me and the feedback I see of GR. - Mike Nencetti

Jesse: I am confused. It seems that the point you are trying to make is that graphs are wrong in general and that both friendfeed and RSS are fine. Is that correct? - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, correct - Jesse Stay

Jesse, I believe that Compete.com data is not perfect, but it is the best publicly available data that we have. I also believe that the trends it portrays about this specific site are 100% accurate. Your data showing Google Reader at zero is laughable and an embarrassment to your reputation. - Louis Gray

Mike, this didn't make "best of day". It made "most obtuse of the day". :) - Louis Gray

Jesse: which metric would you use to determine if friendfeed as a service is up or down? - Edwin Khodabakchian

It is not showing it at 0 - it is showing it at very low. - Jesse Stay

Edwin: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

Google Reader's traffic is hidden within www.google.com's data. Dare I add iGoogle for RSS feeds into that picture as well. However, Friendfeed's traffic is not hidden (for US Traffic) in Compete's numbers. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse relied on Alexa data (which is the ugly stepsister of Compete.com), and he suggested that Bret Taylor's graph showing a higher percentage of international users suggested growth, when, more accurately, it portrayed that US visitors fell away at a dramatic rate. - Louis Gray

Louis: May be you and Jesse are looking at this from different angle and are both right - Edwin Khodabakchian

Nah. Edwin, I will always support good data. :) This is bad data. - Louis Gray

Quantcast shows a similar decline. Every service that is respected shows a decline. http://www.quantcast.com/friendf... - Louis Gray

Louis, I never denied yours was based on US data. My point was FriendFeed was not down, which you claimed it to be. - Jesse Stay

May be Friendfeed has a lot more persian users which are less active but nevertheless users. But over all Friendfeed has a lot less momentum and engagement because the early adopters have moved to twitter - Edwin Khodabakchian

Jesse, I continue to claim that global traffic worldwide, including US and non-US traffic is down, period. And even if you were right, turning this into Orkut or Friendster is not a thing to be proud of. - Louis Gray

Jess: the problem is that down is not as important as momemtum and innovation. - Edwin Khodabakchian

Louis, again, you're showing the wrong state re: Quantcast - click the "all" link and you'll see something more reflective. They're down in the short-term (at least in the US), but not in the long-term. - Jesse Stay

There' nothing wrong with Alexa from a world view. Just don't mix numbers between Compete, Quantcast and Alexa. Compete clearly shows the US usage has dropped. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Louis, I never turned this into a comparison of Orkut and Friendster - where is this coming from? - Jesse Stay

Jesse, the short term is the start of the long term. You know better than this. - Louis Gray

I am. Those are sites dominated by non-US visitors, contrasted with Facebook and Twitter. - Louis Gray

Louis, I disagree the short-term is the start of the long term - Jesse Stay

Jesse: One simpler question for you: do you think that there is a chance for friendfeed to regain momentum and flourish without an engineering team behind it? - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, absolutely, but I think there will be an engineering team behind it eventually - Jesse Stay

and there is an engineering team behind it currently, or it would not be able to handle the current traffic. - Jesse Stay

Hmm. Do you have another example to point us to? Where will the engineering come from eventually? - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, Facebook - Jesse Stay

Friendfeed is clearly transforming. It may gain momentum for a while until 'other services' catch up. However once a better wheel is made... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I think that you are fooling yourself - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, absolutely not - there are numbers to prove it - whether it's still FriendFeed or transforms into Facebook, it will still be around, and serving way more than it is now. - Jesse Stay

Facebook wanted the brainpower and that brainpower is not integrated into other facebook projects - Edwin Khodabakchian

That brainpower is still keeping FriendFeed running at the same time - Jesse Stay

Here again. I think that you are fooling yourself - Edwin Khodabakchian

That brainpower still believes in FriendFeed - Jesse Stay

Jesse, I would listen to Edwin, and Matthew Davies, and almost everyone else in this thread. - Louis Gray

Facebook is in a hyper competitive space, those brains are working 150% on facebook projects - Edwin Khodabakchian

You can clearly see that the FF team is porting features into FB, they are attempting to have a friend of a friend system similar to FF. IF THEY SUCCEED, FB has become Friendfeed. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse, Bret is VP of Products at Facebook and working on Connect and the dev community which reaches 100x+ more people than FriendFeed does. - Louis Gray

Louis I didn't say FriendFeed wouldn't transform into Facebook. I did say it wasn't going away and it would continue growing. - Jesse Stay

But it is not growing, and that entire argument is dead right there. - Louis Gray

It is growing, your argument is dead. - Jesse Stay

I think that you are right that it is going to stay (that is a low hanging fruit) and it might grow in some geographies (like it does in Iran because of the network effect) and because it was ahead of its time in terms of conversation, the erosion will take longer but there is no doubt that with no engineering, it is a dead end. - Edwin Khodabakchian

AOL is not growing but it's hardly dead. Wait, I'm on Louis's side on this... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

AOL is investing massively to survive - Edwin Khodabakchian

AOL is apples and oranges - if Facebook stops growing you can start comparing it to AOL. - Jesse Stay

Mark, that's fine. I don't think there are sides. There's what's correct, and whatever Jesse is doing. - Louis Gray

Or whatever Louis is doing - he seems to think he's correct, which he's not (now this is getting repetitive) - Jesse Stay

Too bad the friendfeed team did not believe in friendfeed the same way Jess believes in Friendfeed! - Edwin Khodabakchian

Edwin, the FriendFeed team saw what we all see and sold at the right time for a fantastic opportunity. - Louis Gray

I will agree to disagree with Louis - that's about the only way I'm backing down on this. I believe passionately in FriendFeed, and I see no reason it's dying. - Jesse Stay

Edwin look at how much the FriendFeed team uses FriendFeed - they still believe passionately in the service. They believe so as much as I do. - Jesse Stay

(and I never said it was dying, nor did I say I don't believe in what was built here) Go find me saying that anywhere. - Louis Gray

Jesse: would you have sold to friendfeed? - Edwin Khodabakchian

I don't get what you are saying Louis - what is your argument? - Jesse Stay

Start from the top. (And read your DMs). The graph you show here has zero validity and it is in no way relevant to the graph you are discussing from last week, period. - Louis Gray

All I know is that public statistics lie. Paul B knows the real answer for FF, as does Jeff Huber for GReader stats. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Okay, so your argument is that FriendFeed is declining - isn't that the same as dying? - Jesse Stay

If you get the flu, do you always die, Jesse? - Louis Gray

If you lose 20 pounds, is it guaranteed that you will eventually hit zero? - Louis Gray

Louis, okay, whatever - I see no reason it's declining - Jesse Stay

Then you are being naive and ignoring all the public data, plus anecdotal data from this site itself. - Louis Gray

The FF sale is more than a flu, it's a handicap scenario. It makes it harder to see a perfect future. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Louis: I am not sure that facebook was/is a fantastic opportunity for the friendfeed team. Facebook connect is awesome but this space is still at its infancy and I am not sure that the centralized facebook/twitter model will be the model of the future. Friendfeed had the advantage of understanding search really well and being distributed at its core - great asset! - Edwin Khodabakchian

Louis, not naive at all - I shared the public data publicly on my blog, showing backed evidence the site is still growing. Where's your rebuttal? Do I have to show this again?: http://staynalive.com/article... - Jesse Stay

Using your links in your article, Jesse, Quantcast topped out in August and has fallen significantly since. And we already noted that the Alexa data, which is the outlier, shows a small upward trend. - Louis Gray

Louis, your argument is it's falling short-term. My argument is that it's growing long-term. My data supports that. I'm definitely not naive and frankly I'm beginning to be offended you're calling me that. - Jesse Stay

OK. Good discussion. I think that Louis and Jess should go get a beer and huge each other. Time to go write some code! - Edwin Khodabakchian

Yes, if you put the calendar back far enough, the trajectory is upward. Of course it is. And Edwin, I can't get Jesse to drink beer. - Louis Gray

Great, then we agree - Jesse Stay

I agree that if you go over a 2 year calendar, traffic to FriendFeed has increased. - Louis Gray

I guess I missed something... I've seen (1) Quantcast and Compete charts of US reach/visitors which says domestic use is down (2) an Alexa chart that says international use is up (3) a comment and accompanying chart from Bret saying "international growth has started to completely dominate since August (4) a pretty significant shift in the FFholic Most Active user list to international users, and (5) lots of anecdotal evidence from English-speaking users saying they've seen reduced (or stable) activity. - Ken Sheppardson

...is somebody taking exception to any of those observations? - Ken Sheppardson

Nope. Agreed, Ken. - Louis Gray

But the entire thread originated with the Google Reader flat line, which was a mistake. - Louis Gray

Yeah, I think everybody's just trying to ignore that at this point ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

I just don't get why Jesse's trying to make this you-can't-believe-stats/charts argument. I think there's something in my list of 5 point that Jesse thinks is wrong. - Ken Sheppardson

Jesse doesn't believe the Compete or Quantcast data showing a decline. - Louis Gray

I don't think I ever agreed the above graph was correct - it was put there to show a point - Jesse Stay

So you believe US usage is up, or not declining, Jesse? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, I didn't mean you can't believe them - I mean they can often be deceptive - Jesse Stay

Which is amusing, because the blue line here is identical to the same blue line I posted last week. - Louis Gray

My head hurts. - Ken Sheppardson

I thought I'd post it up against the same deceptive result so we were on the same terms - Jesse Stay

Jesse - Next time use a red line .... :) - Charlie Anzman

Sigh. I could also show a graph that over the last 120 years, GM sales are way up, and compare that to the sale of unicycles. - Louis Gray

Just laughed out loud at that one Louis - Hutch Carpenter

Damn, you mean Unicycles sales are up right now? Tomorrow is free shipping day.... :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Are you saying Google Reader is like a Unicycle? - Jesse Stay

Nope. - Louis Gray

So Google Reader is going to be like GM? - Jesse Stay

Ah... sorry... a light bulb just went off... showing a chart that shows US traffic is declining is deceptive in that some people who look at it might conclude that's overall activity, when in fact total, world-wide activity is steady or increasing. - Ken Sheppardson

That's one of Jesse's theories, Ken. (Still doesn't explain the Google Reader non-sequitir) - Louis Gray

If Google Reader is like a Unicycle, it's like the Honda's U3-X..... a very cool one! - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I'm starting to piece this together... so showing reader.google.com traffic is declining when in fact total Reader traffic is up... ? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, correct - Jesse Stay

reader.google.com is a domain nobody uses. Reader traffic is unknown, but certainly not the flat line displayed here. - Louis Gray

Louis, I use reader.google.com - Jesse Stay

I'd agree with that theory. The World growth is outpacing US internet growth. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I just took a look at the graph at http://www.alexa.com/siteinf... Turns out that although international reach is up as shown in your graph, Jesse, Alexa shows a 20% or so decrease in their pageview graph since the peak near August. More users spending less time... - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, that is short-term though, which was another point of mine. Long-term they still have an upward trend. It is still much too early to determine if they are declining yet. Maybe in 6 months you guys can all show me I'm wrong. - Jesse Stay

Facebook bought FF in Aug, that throws a trendline in completely different direction. It's an inflection point. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Mark, FF took a dip after that, but they recovered and went even higher than before the FF acquisition. I wouldn't call that an inflection point. - Jesse Stay

Which chart shows traffic higher than before the acquisition (not counting the spike after due to curious people who never heard of FF before they read it)? Are you looking at Alexa's "Reach"? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Yes, Mark... Alexa's chart of international reach shows that the % of worldwide internet users who are visiting FriendFeed is up. It's also the 47th most popular site in Turkey, 227th in Italy, and 412th in Pakistan. :-) - Ken Sheppardson

Mark, correct, which is more accurate because it compares visitors globally, not just US - Jesse Stay

In fact Alexa says 20.7% users are from the US and 20.6% are from Turkey, and another 20% or so from Italy, Japan, and India combined. - Ken Sheppardson

Right but the question would be what were those percentages between countries back in August? A shift in demographics needs to be adjusted by online population in those countries. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

There's roughly 74M people in Turkey. For every 1% drop in US visits, about 4% would automatically gain for Turkey in the Pie Chart without a single new user in growth. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I don't believe they're breaking out the % of users in each country that are visiting FriendFeed, they're talking about what % of FriendFeed users are coming from each country. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken is correct. - Louis Gray

Strongly Disagree. Look at my coupon work site: RedPlum.com 92.2% are from the US. I highly doubt I have that much audience but I'd love for it to be true. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Disagree with what, Mark? That stat means for every 100 people who visit your site, 92 are from the US. - Ken Sheppardson

Sorry, I misunderstood your comment. It's a pie of % of FF visitors are coming from which country. We are on same page. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Yeah, sorry... I switched from "reach" to the user breakdown midstream there. - Ken Sheppardson

So as I was saying, a 1% drop in US visits moves Turkey up 4% when you factor populations and no new additions. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

To tie that together with Compete's US view, the US audience dropped 20% in last 90 days so Turkey would naturally rise in the pie chart regardless of new user growth from that country. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Actually digging that information a bit more, only 21.1% of the Turkey population uses the internet so the spread would widen even further. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

wow - ★ Soner Gönül

Interesting...... - Keith Griffiths

What a ridiculous discussion! It has already been said: the stats are apples and oranges. Let's look at the comparative numbers for internet users who are brain-dead versus those who can type. It would appear graduation from grade school bans internet access. - Douglas Hopkins

Facebook hurts ! - Desirade

Yeah, don't bother. Senestezi is spamming. - Ken Sheppardson

Dave Winer

It seems there are never any discussions on FriendFeed. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?

December 15 - Comment - Like - Share

david beckwith, Penguin It's Cold Outside, Kirsten Mitchell and 48 other people liked this

Unfortunately, discussions here have gone south... Vocal users have moved to twitter, but there discussions are lost. And then, there's facebook -IFAIC, I try to keep it "private"... - Panayotis Vryonis

104 more comments

Nope, *plenty* of discussion here. It's when you're not around that you miss it. - Itachi

There was an article about how FF's quality has gotten better recently. I don't see it either, which brings a tear to my eye. We had some great, deep discussions on topics over here. That was Friendfeed to me, it was deeper engagement. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

And I can't give Scoble all the credit but clearly he was part of that... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Where DID Scoble go?!... things have gotten awful quiet. - Thom Kennon

He fell in love with Twitter Lists and gave up on FF after Facebook acquired... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

*wonders if he has transformed into chopped liver* - Morgan Haley

What kind of discussions are you looking for. We've been talking about the best Robin Hood all morning! - Jeremy (on vacation)

I agree. Little discussion here and every one I generate takes root elsewhere. I occasionally join one here, but conversation on FF has dwindled in everything I see. - Ken Camp

See here's the problem I see here: There are people that I have rarely, if ever have seen in this thread. Dave Winer is a guy who is famous in the social media world. People often sign up and follow the feeds of Winer, Scoble, and the like and that's all they see. When Scoble leaves and others, they agree with them for saying FriendFeed is dead. However, to the contrary, it's very much... more... - Itachi

I think for some of these people if you aren't a techie, your conversations aren't that important. That's one thing I've noticed that has changed on FF. There is less of some things, but a lot more meaningful interaction among the people who have remained. The people still here are the ones who value a different type of personal interaction. FF is still very active and alive. - Junebug (aka Sarah Jill)

dave - everyone moved to social median - Allen Stern

I think there's a big difference between "tech" and "social media". People like Scoble often mix this up. There is plenty of "tech" discussion on Friendfeed. And I agree, with Junebug on that respect as well. - Itachi

Dave, Jesse blogged this http://friendfeed.com/jessest... + http://friendfeed.com/jessest... . DeWitt is back http://friendfeed.com/dewitt... and Glen http://friendfeed.com/dewitt... is going strong. Also, Itachi (mohomed) has a good points. - Micah Wittman

Maybe we just aren't talking about what you want to see? Your FriendFeed != My FriendFeed :) - Johnny Worthington

Once again, the color of the speech bubbles are very telling here. Morgan, Micah, Johnny, Allen have blue. People I'm subscribed to. Names I recognize. The rest of you? White. What are you guys subscribed to, exactly? - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Bingo, Rah. The less than active tend to be subscribed to only the A-listers of social media who they are familiar with. And who, alas, aren't active on Friendfeed. - Itachi

the italian section of friendfeed is quite vocal... - Alb.

The problem is Dave that many of the tech influentials, CEOs, programmers, journalists, etc spend their time elsewhere now. There are conversations but they are dramatically different than what were happening six months ago. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

I think Itachi said it best earlier. The influentials and the like were the common glue (or routers so to speak) that joined various circles together. The routers are now gone, so now we are left with disconnected LANs. Each hold their value to that island but there much fewer bridges any more at least for the technical community. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

There are still some very interesting conversations that happen here - you just have to be subscribed to the right people. Follow some of the OpenID guys (Micah mentioned a few) - there is still a lot of conversation in that area that goes on here. It's a great conversations medium, much better than Twitter. - Jesse Stay

I would argue many of the developers and programmers who used Friendfeed are still on here. Just because it's not the hot fad of the season doesn't mean it's dead. Slashdot isn't covered much by the social media kings, yet it's still alive and well. - Itachi

Entries on my home feed with 3 or more comments: http://friendfeed.com/search.... You're welcome to modify the number to come up with your own definition of "discussion" - Benjamin Golub

my FF has slowed down recently - people I used to have regular discussions with are either not as active, or not at the same time I am... as a result I use it less, and it probably trickles like that - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

I think those people who formed a unique community on FriendFeed are noticing less of a change because their community is staying here. Those whose community exists outside of FriendFeed and merely uses FriendFeed as one channel of communication may find more volatility because it's easy to shift to the latest thing. Dave, as someone deep in the tech industry filled with early adopters (and early abandoners) your FriendFeed may be more adversely affected than others like myself. - Kevin Fox

Dave subscribes to only 122 people -- maybe he needs to broaden his horizons? - Brian Sullivan

My feed has never been busier, and I'm getting new subs every day. Of course, I'm not very techy so if you are, our paths might not cross. - Derrick

Building on Benjamin Golub's search: here's the same thing, but for friends of Dave Winer: http://friendfeed.com/search... Looks like a bunch of discussions, several in the last couple of hours. - Mark Trapp

I think everyone nailed it on this one... FF is no longer the holy land of social media zealot discussion, but has retained a very real connectivity to it surrounding non-tech and some-what tech individuals. IMO, Scoble and the like are not the celebs of current FF, but true wonderful characters like Derrick are becoming them in their absence. If left alone long enough this place could really be cool. - SAM

Not all discussions are in the main feed either. There's a ton of active groups. - Rodfather

Kevin should win an award or something for clarity of thought. And to throw in my two cents behind many of the others here, my feed is nuts. I often have to rely on a subset list along with RSS notices just to keep up. Also, unlike the last few months, I'm starting to see a lot of new subs recently. My guess is that FriendFeed is not dead; it was just tired after a long squawk. Seems to be perking up quite nicely now. - Akiva Moskovitz

+1 Rodfather. Group discussions don't show up in the main feed unless someone cross-posts to their personal feed. Also, techy discussion is fairly limited these days, for the reasons previously mentioned. Mostly it's discussion about our personal lives, work or some article that may be about tech gadgets, but isn't really a technical discussion. - Jason Huebel

Oh, and for one, I would like to see more tech-oriented discussions here. Sure, I'm all about the hyper-hangout that FriendFeed has become but I also miss the hardcore geek-outs that used to occur here. And I just seriously can't get my head around people having the same quality discussions about tech on Twitter that we used to have here. - Akiva Moskovitz

Yeah, it's not possible to have a discussion on Twitter. I've posted some tech-oriented things recently and I'm beginning to move more toward geeky stuff in general, but a lot of my geekier discussions are in groups that don't make it into the main feed. - Jason Huebel

I actually think the conversation streams and peeps have diversified from more hardcore tech to more cultural, art, cooking! not a bad thing. just a different tone and nature of the conversations. i still like that quote from a FF denizen who said "Facebook is where i hang out with people i already know. FriendFeed is where I hang out with people I'm getting to know." Speaking of FB -... more... - Thom Kennon

Dave, let's back up here... Looking at your feed, 99% of your posts are just imports from other services (mainly Twitter). Then you hop over to FriendFeed and say "why doesn't anyone discuss anything anymore?" It's because you aren't participating here. Gotta give something to get something. Commenting on your own Disqus imports isn't participation, either. I think the fact of the matter is that people don't feel an obligation to feed the geekeratti egos now that they've all but abandoned the service. - Jason Huebel

The last reply you made to a post that wasn't your own was back on December 1st (http://friendfeed.com/chrisme...). Two weeks ago! And you haven't even replied to this post, which you made 3 hours ago. - Jason Huebel

I also appreciate the fact that a large majority of users are having discussions in languages OTHER than English. - Johnny Worthington

It's an elegant social network for a more civilized age. - Goran Zec

Johnny, why? - Akiva Moskovitz

Because it counters the thinking (or lack of thinking) of a few social media experts that places like FriendFeed and Twitter and other social networks only exists in western, English speaking countries... - Johnny Worthington

Not everyone has an iPhone, not everyone can watch Hulu, not everyone can play Foursquare, not everyone has unlimited (uncapped) bandwidth, not everyone wants to know the news the second it happens, not everyone cares who someone reads and not everyone wants to talk tech 24/7. I like it outside the bubble :) - Johnny Worthington

Maybe I do need to follow more people, but with the same number of followers there used to always be something interesting in FF to read about and comment on. - Dave Winer

I also love the non-English. gives the place both a global feel - and reality. I have peeps, clients, etc. around the world and FriendFeed is our agreed great leveler. - Thom Kennon

People you used to follow here have moved on to Twitter. Not many techies around these days. This leaves the rest, regular guys talking about regular stuff. But maybe this kind of discussions don't interest you. - Jordi Soler

It's like a garden, if you don't tend to the garden bed, weeds will grow. If you don't prune your roses, you just have dead twigs. - Johnny Worthington

@Thom and Johnny, I participate in the non-English posts fairly often. It's easier with FF Translate, even though I can only reply in English (and hope they can read it). Hey Micah, any chance you can make a translate thingamajig that goes the opposite direction? Translate my English to the language of the post? - Jason Huebel

Jordi there are still a lot of Techies - follow Dewitt Clinton, myself, Chris Messina, Dave Recordon even some times participates. Then there's Paul, Bret, Benjamin, Kevin, etc. of the FF Team. Cristo's a techie. I could go on and on... - Jesse Stay

In fact I probably participate with more techies than non on here. - Jesse Stay

There are a ton of conversations here and some are tons more interesting than others. This one is interesting. The question is though if you are not having a conversation here - where are you hanging out lately? - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Dave, I've been following you since at least 1995, and long before Friendfeed and Twitter. It was because of you that I heard about and joined Friendfeed and I regret the fact that it's lost its momentum since being absorbed into Facebook. There is still no substitute for what FF used to be. But the circus has left town now and there is no way of bringing it back. FF will continue and... more... - Tim Ostler

@Jesse: Perhaps I don't follow the right people then. Anyway, it was not a complaint, it was just a theory of what has happened to Friendfeed recently. More international content (myself) and more "social" posts. Which does not mean that there aren't any techies left. I'll follow your recommendations, thanks! - Jordi Soler

I blame Facebook for all problems related to any lack of participation over here (j/k) - Jannifer @wordsforliving

Although "blame" is a harsh word, the Facebook acquisition was a significant turning point. Whether that's a downturn or not is debatable, but that's when most of the tech-elite skipped town. I admit to feeling down-in-the-mouth occasionally because I miss the technical involvement of the FF devs. But there is still a lot of good discussion here. It's just not as technical in nature. - Jason Huebel

Discussions are not missing. They're just harder to find. - Louis Gray

Jason, it's worth a good hard think and discussion. Posting translated text is a thornier issue (thinking form the POV of the tool maker). It commits to record an imperfect source, with any successive translations further degrading the signal (copy of a copy). Maybe I'm overly concerned about it, but like I said - needs more discussion. Thanks for getting the ball rolling :) - Micah Wittman

@kr8tr tried to hold a 30 min real-time Q&A yesterday via Twitter on "What's it like to be Scoble's boss". I bailed because little way to follow. Twitter search on "@kr8tr" kind of worked but you had to keep refreshing. Google search a little better. But it would have been ideal had he announced it on Twitter (where everybody is) and then pointed to Friendfeed for the Q&A. Not sure there's a better platform for that kind of rt discussion. - Nick in Manila

Another prob with Twitter in above context is everyone is using different Twitter apps that regurgitate the firehose at different rates so some people see comments much later that others. On Friendfeed, the sequence is at least consistent across participants. - Nick in Manila

Dave, you might need to broaden your interests. - zeroinfluencer

Nick: I agree. One little datapoint, though. Since Facebook bought FriendFeed I've gained 14,000 followers on Twitter. That is more followers than all but five people on FriendFeed have. The reason Twitter is popular is, well, it's popular. I'm sad that FriendFeed lost out, but it did. Oh, and Facebook has similar threading to FriendFeed only you have to refresh the page to see new... more... - Robert Scoble

Robert, with the 14,000 new followers, is that a spike or did it follow natural upward trends? - Johnny Worthington

Johnny: it's definitely going up faster lately due to new list feature. - Robert Scoble

So do we assume conversations are "dying"? (Hate the word, every once in a while something "dies" in the internet...) - Jordi Soler

It would also be helpful to evaluate the level of conversation that was here and has now left. Quantity != Quality - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

For each of us it depends who we are following and who is following us, and whether people with interests in discussing certain things overlap in time sufficiently with you to get a conversation going - I guess I need to change my follow profile - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

:D - ★ Soner Gönül

There's 59 comments and 32 likes on this thread. What are you looking for exactly? That said, I tend to read only the 1st and last comment in these long threads. - Vincent van Wylick

Vincent you got me there. Of course I knew there would be 33 likes and a zillion comments on this when I posted it. I am such an unreasonable person and you could see that! Your mother must be so proud of her little Vincent. :-) - Dave Winer

thats why i am out of here and spending my time in boredom ,reading or sleeping - ffcode

Vincent, the reason there is so much activity on this thread is because the topic is Friendfeed, specifically lack of activity on Friendfeed. People will flock to a topic if they can prove it wrong. - Jason Williams from iPhone

@Jason, that's a kind of cynical view, don't you think? This is a topic that's of common interest to everyone on FF. Most other posts are only interesting to smaller groups of people. That's not a bad thing. I think there is just a wider array of topics to talk about on FF now that tech evangelists have moved on. So the activity is spread out. - Jason Huebel

And again, looking at your feed activity, you spend very little time interacting with others on FF. Most of your activity is importing from Facebook. So your experience isn't going to be as good as someone who actually shows interest in the posts of others here. - Jason Huebel

I wasn't saying there aren't conversations to be found but I'm talking about his experience. He wasn't seeing any interactions on his posts until he posted about FF. Make your own conclusions. - Jason Williams

Which is why I said "again". Dave Winer's interaction with other people's posts is minimal as well. He comments on his own posts all the time. But you'll never start a conversation if you only talk to yourself. - Jason Huebel

Dave has obviously not visited the Life Scientists room :) - Deepak Singh

it's a hard sell when you can't engage with your own content, for sure. I'm trying to be better at adding commentary as to why I thought it important enough to (re)post what I (re)post rather than leave it to a bunch of bots to aggregate/shovel it out. - ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ

But he did start a conversation, it's just that it was about Friendfeed so others joined in. Go look at best of day at any time and you'll find multiple items about Friendfeed. It doesn't bode well for a service if the most popular activity on that service is about said service. If you looked at Twitter and saw half of the trending topics looking like (Twitter fail, twitter is dead,... more... - Jason Williams

Jason, I don't comment on my own posts. That's the second time you said it, and you're wrong. I hooked up my Disqus feed to FF so you're seeing my comments there echoed here. Stop being such a wiseass, you're not half as smart as you think you are. - Dave Winer

I'd love FriendFeed discussions. You can't have them on Twitter because of the lack of threads and you can't keep track of everyone's message. One of my biggest issues with Twitter. - Patrick from twhirl

Ah, nice. Name calling and insults. But you've just proven my point. The "comments" are also coming from somewhere else. You expect to have people interact with you but you invest very little time in FF yourself. If you put even a small percentage of effort into FF that you do other services, you might actually see results. It's no longer good enough to import one's feeds into FF and expect people to pay attention. That ended when many of the tech elite left the service back in August. - Jason Huebel

The truth is, the people left here on FF are mostly "little fish" when it comes to tech. So one really can't expect to get 1000 likes and 2000 comments on a post anymore. None of us have a "fan base" that can support that. - Jason Huebel

I don't expect anything -- I asked a question. - Dave Winer

I think Friendfeed is evolving into something quite different of what some people predicted a while back. But it's not dying, no way. - Jordi Soler

Except when I'm addressing the issues I've pointed out with your feed, when I say "you", I'm using that as people in general. I can change all the you's to "one", if that will clarify. (Done.) - Jason Huebel

Jordi, what is your definition of dying? Is it different than people leaving en mass (with the exception of non-english speaking countries) and the talent behind the service bought up by a mega-site all the while people arguing weather the service is viable/dying? - Jason Williams

Good point. Dying as in "Geocities dying". But I see people talking about many things everyday. Just not the same topics there used to be. - Jordi Soler

OK wait, Dave. First you claim that there are no discussions on FF. Then you say you don't comment on your own posts. The way I was brought up was that a discussion is when you say something, then other people respond, then you respond back, and so on. FF, like most anything else in life, is what you make it. If you don't interact with people here, then you have little basis for complaining (sorry, _observing_) that there are never any discussions here. - vicster is...

vicster++ - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I don't understand why people think the convo on friendfeed has gone down hill. It is the same if not better then it was before. If you don't like the discussions from the people you are following then find some new people to follow. - Mathew™ one of a kind

i dunno about other people, but my FF is jumping so fast lately that i can barely keep up...and now it's mostly things i DO want to read about. - Joe Silence

vicster+++ I just skimmed, but this dude sounds like he hasn't been skiing for three years and says "how come no one ever skies anymore?" If you came to the FF mountain once in a while, you'd see my crazy ass every freaking day. I use FF more now than I ever have, more than I ever dreamed I'd enjoy. Now maybe you think the mountain has been taken over by hooligans, and that may be a fair point, but the caliber and content of my discussions do not make them non-discussions. - Lo

My conclusion, based on this thread, is that there is indeed some discussing going on on FF. Mostly of the "Neener neener" variety. :-) - Dave Winer

You can't base your conclusion on one thread of conversation with a topic like this. Why don't go and look for other people to follow and you'll see some activity. - Mathew™ one of a kind

Well, sure. You called us out. So there's going to be a bit of that. But in all honesty, there's a lot of good people here with a lot to talk about. You just have to seek it out. - Jason Huebel

@Dave: "Neener neener" is the response your comments require lately. - Joe Silence

Of course you don't see any conversations taking place...you aren't even subscribed to me. - Alex Scoble

+1 Alex, the Scoble of FF. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

When I said "Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?" I was (in case it wasn't totally obvious) looking for suggestions not lectures. I'm now following Alex Scoble. I check FF many times each day. - Dave Winer

Woo! I finally hit the big time! Seriously, though...thanks for the subscription, Dave. Much appreciated. - Alex Scoble

Dave, what type of topics are you most interested in? - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

If the FriendFeed community were not so oversensitive, one of the 100 comments above would have answered Dave's question by pointing him to the advanced search form, specifically the "at least _ comments" field and the saved search feature. Then he could quickly find discussions on his favorite topics every visit. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Bruce: That was the 23rd comment, from Benjamin Golub. How more/less oversensitive does that make us? ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

Good point, Ken. I searched for "advanced", "comments" and one other term, but didn't find that one. It makes the community 34.7% less oversensitive. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Sweet. - Ken Sheppardson

Friendfeed and Twitter lack the depth and breadth of Facebook, no matter which way you slice it. Gather the best minds of our generation, in many fields and areas, on Facebook, and you will not have to complain. Friendfeed and Twitter are, however, useful as secondary feeds into Facebook. - david beckwith

FriendFeed still saves my stuff, unlike Facebook where my posts are lost in the ether, but I do miss the more active FriendFeed of times past. I think once "best of" became a standard feature, FriendFeed shifted to more family, personal life, etc... discussions rather than "tech" stuff (for better or for worse). Even for techies, new/lost jobs, new/old romances, etc... generated more feedback & discussion than most tech topics. - Mitchell Tsai

Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Robert Scoble didn't make FriendFeed. FriendFeed was already here. People were using it. Scoble showed up and brought thousands of his minions. They clogged up the feed for a few months. Some of them weren't total Scobleites and stuck around. The rest bounced when he did.

December 16 - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Mitchell Tsai, Bette Cooper and 50 other people liked this

To hear people talk about FriendFeed's high point being related to Scoble really bothers me. I think R. Scoble is a cool dude, but he isn't and wasn't the God of FriendFeed by any useful measure in my book. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

31 more comments

Plus, I think I've had more meaningful discussion and engagement from his brother here. :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Totally agree. - Mathew™ one of a kind

I also think it's important to note that I don't think Scoble ever claimed to 'make' FriendFeed himself. That idea was placed on him by others that did not understand his evangalism. I like Robert, don't always agree with him, but I like him and what he did for FriendFeed :) - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

But, ever since he pretty much declared Friendfeed dead he has been saying that since he "left" friendfeed has gone down hill. - Mathew™ one of a kind

Mathew, people left before Scoble made that statement. It was at least a month inbetween the sale and that post. - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

Thanks Rah! I do understand Scoble's (apparent) complaint, though: the alpha-geeks and uber-nerds (and people that orbit around them) that **he** follows -- because he's a tech blogger/media person and that's how he makes a living -- aren't participating here as much, nor are the founders, who also happen to be part of that alpha-geek set, participating here as much as they once did, if at all. - .LAG liked that

Johnny I realize that, but I'm trying to say that the way he acts makes it seem like he thinks he put the nail in the non-existent coffin of Friendfeed. - Mathew™ one of a kind

Mathew, I am willing to give Robert the benefit of the doubt on this one. 140 characters is a difficult medium to explain oneself. He calls it as he sees it, he may not be seeing much past his own nose, but he makes statements and reacts to the reaction. - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

i dont know why he just doesnt make a discussion board for himself and getting all his fans join that.. solve his problem then... - Terry O'Fee

Wait. You mean Scoble didn't invent Friendfeed? Doesn't the fact that he invented the Internet mean, by extension, that Friendfeed exists because of him? :) - Curtiss Grymala

Agreed Johnny. I'm not really blaming Scoble, it's comments from others that get on my nerves. I should have clarified that initially. I can't say that he's ever called himself the master of FriendFeed or anything.... - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I guess for me it is just his actions as they appear through the tubes. - Mathew™ one of a kind

...haha! no, silly, he didn't invent Friendfeed, but as with many things, some people have a great talent for popularizing stuff and launching trends. In the Silicon Valley tech world, Scoble has a huge audience and some level of influence, and he certainly brought a lot more attention to Friendfeed than it was generating on its own. I guess the question is: can he take away just as much attention by pronouncing its last rites? Rahsheen doesn't seem to think so. - .LAG liked that

Not wanting to be a Scoble lover but I have come to realise that Robert isn't a normal user. His job and personality drive him to be where the biggest audience is. He promotes his sponsors and discovers small things and tries to promote them. He has to be cut throat because he is pitching to a cut throat audience of early adopters and techies. The key is not to take it personally, because it's not about users, it's about new, popular and promotions. - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

With Scoble gone, I think FF is back where it was before he came. For many users who have stuck around, nothing has changed. For some, they're feed is less cluttered from Scoble's huge following. No, he can't kill FF by pronouncing it dead. Let's say I frequent a bar and some celeb brings his entourage. The bar will probably make a lot of money that night, possibly get some publicity or something, but when he leaves...it's business as usual. Doesn't really matter if he liked the drinks or not. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Johnny W... well-said. For me, it just makes me realize how strange the world of "technology media" really is. On the one hand, Scoble is a sort of journalist, and if that's true then it would be reasonable to expect complete objectivity on his part: when he says something perhaps it should be fact-based and not an opinion. But on the other hand he, and the Techcrunches, ad infinitums... more... - .LAG liked that

I agree. I like Robert Scoble, and I actually find his comments here and on other sites to be far less self-absorbed than some others I could name (but won't.) I didn't come here because of Robert Scoble or any other individual, so I won't be leaving on that basis either. - Mark "Lykkelig Nyt Ǻr" J

Rahsheen... I like the bar/celebrity analogy. Also, similar to Mark DBJ, I actually enjoy Scoble's contributions to the techmediascape, and I have no problem with him speaking his mind, but his participation (or not) never affected what I'm doing here, what I will do here, or even how I found FF in the first place. - .LAG liked that

To be fair, Robert was following people away from FriendFeed, not leading them. - Bruce Lewis

Exactly, .LAG! I like to see him around and usually read/listen to what he says, but I'm not one of his sheep. He has quite a few of those and I wonder how he feels about that :) - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

I think Robert's ego often gets in the way of any value he provides. I know he's usually creating controversy to link bait, but his vanity tries my patience more often than not. - Mark Davidson

:-) - Robert Scoble from iPhone

LOL, Using vitriol for a good cause ==> http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... - Eric Logan

<- Not a 'Scobleite', unless it's an AlexScobleite, he's an ok guy. - Will Higgins™

Robert is so "mignon" ;-)))) - Desirade

Bruce is the most right on this thread. Since Facebook bought FriendFeed I've gotten 14,000 new followers on Twitter. That alone would put me at #6 on FriendFeed's user list, which is a great demonstration of why I'm investing a lot more of my time on Twitter now. FriendFeed is fun for a small group of people and that's OK. But I am spending my time where the geeks are and that's mostly on Twitter or Facebook (which I'm ramping up time on too). - Robert Scoble

Many of those who have been paying attention do share one observation about why people have migrated to Twitter: it's so we can post links to drive traffic back to our own sites or employer's sites. This, I continue to advance, is because neither FF or FB or anyone else has yet got it through their thick skulls that WE ARE THE CONTENT ... or, if they do understand that basic fact,... more... - michael silverton

michael: good point! The real problem here is that conversations that are interesting to each of us are buried amongst conversations that really aren't. - Robert Scoble

Clearly, your usage of social media is going to vary significantly if you're not actually trying to sell anything. - Victor Ganata

Good point, Victor. Many people just want to chat, have fun, maybe meet someone or learn something new. Yet, even in those cases, I'm of the mind that we're all selling something: our thoughts, our perspectives, our ideas, our sincerity. However, one need not share this perspective to see that you and I and Rah and everyone here create the value of sites like FB and FF. It's the... more... - michael silverton

Robert: as so often, you nail it. Mozilla Raindrop? :-) - michael silverton

*shrug* I also don't expect to make money off of everything I do. (If I did, I certainly wouldn't be in the field I'm in.) - Victor Ganata

Louis Gray

By the Numbers: Facebook’s Road to an IPO - http://gigaom.com/2009...

December 16 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James liked this

DeWitt Clinton

timbray: Now dead: Comet, long-poll, Ajax, keep-alive. Killed by Web Sockets, says Joe Armstrong: http://is.gd/5q9TO - http://twitter.com/timbray...

December 16 from Twitter / Favorites from... - Comment - Like - Share

Priyank Mishra, Ho John Lee, Nicholas James and 11 other people liked this

Yes and no. Clearly WebSocket provides a clean, efficient implementation of all these things we've been hacking around. On the other hand, we won't be able to throw away the hacks until WebSocket is widely supported. Which will be a while. - Joel Webber

7 more comments

Though I suppose if your goal wasn't to support all browsers back to IE6, but just modern browsers, then you could build a specialized service that depends on WebSockets very soon. Clearly something a Google or Yahoo couldn't do, but maybe something a startup would do to innovate quickly with cutting edge functionality. Honestly, if I just wanted to build a fun and functional site for a small tech-savvy demographic, I wouldn't shy away from requiring modern browser capabilities. - DeWitt Clinton

Fair enough, but to be clear, we're talking about *all* IE's, up through 8. I.e. (no pun intended) 70-ish % of clients. IE 9 TBD, unfortunately. - Joel Webber

Chrome Frame? - DeWitt Clinton

Sounds good to me. If we can just get everyone to install it... - Joel Webber

Socket can be implemented in flash and work in all major browsers (see Juggernaut Ruby on Rails plugin as an example, http://juggernaut.rubyforge.org/ ) - Pavlo Zahozhenko

I think application programmers should get together and join a "bleeding edge" consortium that agrees to freely implement the latest web standards and require the latest technology to access it. As is, sites are reluctant to deny access to users with legacy tech because they know those users will jump ship to the competing site. If all the competing sites in one space (social media, news, etc) all made the requirement at once, they may actually begin to make a dent in new browser version adoption. - Bill Strathearn

Bleeding/Cutting Edge? How about the 'Open Razor Group'? - Michael R. Bernstein

Its still a shame there is no provision for binary/blob data, this makes implementing stuff like video/audio streaming problematic. - Ray Cromwell

Matt Cutts

Firefox adds support for multi-process plugins: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Interne... A nice win for users--congrats to the Firefox folks!

December 16 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Matt Ellsworth, Henner Zeller, Rebeca and 3 other people liked this

Louis Gray

Friendster Valued At Just $26.4 Million In Sale - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...

December 16 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James and Michael R. Bernstein liked this

Scott Beale

China cracks down on personal websites, by banning individuals from registering domain names http://www.cnn.com/2009... via @ivynova

December 16 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James and Matt Cutts liked this

Jesse Stay

Zuckerberg’s No Fool – He Only Shows What He Wants You to See - http://staynalive.com/article...

December 11 from Stay N' Alive - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, AJ Batac, Oğuz Serdar and 4 other people liked this

Wish I'd seen this before writing up my last post...nice write up - Justin Korn

8 more comments

Perhaps you could update this post now that he's made his profile private again. - Ken Sheppardson

Is that link working for everyone else? It doesn't work for me. Can't even get to plain staynalive.com. - SuezanneC Baskerville

Not working for me either - Ed Millard

That's very clever of him... showing us a blank page. - Juan Pablo González

Try again - I've been working on a plugin - sorry for the trouble - Jesse Stay

Very nicely put. - Juan Pablo González

I can't seen Mark's photos, but after a little troubleshooting session with Marshall Kirkpatrick during net@night (http://friendfeed.com/twit-co...), it looks like Zuckerberg might have it set to Friends of Friends. Who here sees a "Photos" tag at http://www.facebook.com/zuck#... ? Only see "Info" and "Wall" - Ken Sheppardson

That's the point - there is no "public" or "private" any more. It's all about what you enable others to see. It's custom per user. He's public on some things, private on others, just like anyone else can be. The power of this new update is it gives you more control on an item-by-item basis, whereas before that wasn't quite the case. - Jesse Stay

Umm... Actually, this update gives you far less control, since it groups a lot of items together that used to be separated. The update really does two things: 1) brings attention to it, allowing FB to lie and say "now we have better privacy controls", and 2) allow FB to change the terms to make more things public (like friends list) that were not public before. The whole update is a big... more... - Otto

Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Facebook Privacy messages re: search engine indexing.

December 15 - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Daniel Rowley, Jason A. Samfield and 4 other people liked this

Here's the real question. How many times do you have to be knocked down before you say "enough!"? - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

Some set-and-forget settings would be nice. I would prefer to establish my own defaults rather than have them be changed for me and then be required to change them back. That part can be annoying. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

The fact that this is a total lie is what annoys me the most. I had to disable search engine indexing because Facebook recently made my friends list into public information, when I had it set to be private before the change. My information is NOT safe because Facebook has intentionally made it so. "Basic set of information" my ass. - Otto

Keith Coleman

Official Gmail Blog: One button to merge all duplicate contacts - http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009...

December 15 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

marx, Nicholas James, Siddharth Deb and 31 other people liked this

This makes Gmail contacts sync (e.g. to phone) work way better. - Keith Coleman from Bookmarklet

7 more comments

I can't believe how many duplicates I had. At least 80 people with 2-20 duplicates each! - Kevin Fox

Works quick and effortlessly .. - johnpiercy

Worked great - Benjamin Golub

This is super great! Waited for this for long time. - Bryan Tsai

Does work great, however I'm proud of myself that I've kept my contacts so organized! I only have 1 dupe. - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

Been wanting this forever... thanks! (121 dupes found. Merged. Tried again. Found 1 more dupe...) - Dan Hsiao

YES. Thank Og! - Archangel ωαřмaiden

Yes -very much needed - near 1500 dupes here - Jesse Stay

Atul Arora

Tweetmeme: Twitter Statistics - URL Shorteners - Last 24 hours - http://tweetmeme.com/about...

December 15 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Amber, Random Time Lord, Michael Fidler and Louis Gray liked this

Will be interesting to see if fb.me/goo.gl start showing up on this a week from now. - Atul Arora from Bookmarklet

I have set up my blog to leverage goo.gl via FeedBurner, so that may contribute a minor sliver. :) - Louis Gray

Matt Cutts

I replied to a nofollow question: http://www.google.com/support... Also, Blogger just shut down ability to make such links. #dontbother

December 15 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Chatsohbet, Louis Gray and John μller liked this

Johnny Worthington

If I was going to make a URL shortner... I'd try and get http://u.rl

December 14 - Comment - Like - Share

Nicholas James, Penguin It's Cold Outside, Kol Tregaskes and 6 other people liked this

Or john.ny? I was thinking lg.me. - Louis Gray

7 more comments

I want jes.se - Jesse Stay

Ideally I'd like to form my own country and just own the tld - Jesse Stay

someone beat me to rasm.us :-( - Rasmus Lauridsen

I have photostakenby.me / shutterspeed.tv / thatisepic.com / thatjustblewmymind.com / likeaspidermonkey.com and dudethatsnotcool.com - Johnny Worthington

I was surprised to learn about *.museum. http://about.museum/ - Otto

.rl not defined yet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - so possible in the future I suppose. - Micah Wittman

I own stay.am :-) - Jesse Stay

I want gar.in! - Garin Kilpatrick