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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fairly obvious reason is complete aggregation of a brands online presence. Even though the conversation is fragmented, it is easier to hold down in one location instead of several. FF shows that we need an open commenting platform. - Julian Baldwin

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

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

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

I agree with Julian. Since brands are looking to engage customers on so many digital media channels from YouTube, to Facebook, to blogs, to Twitter it only makes sense to point your customers in the direction of something that doesn't have them running around all over the place and where you can be sure that every last bit of marketing material that you put out there is directed to the people that are interested. And as everyone else has mentioned, the conversation factor is major as well. Its a great way to interact with customers around all the different pieces of content you put out there to give it some life. - Devlin Dunsmore

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

I agree with edythe. - Ginger Makela

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

I love Twitters's raw simplicity yet Friendfeed has better features, especially the agrigation of all my web content. If Friendfeed had a killer iPhone client and I could easily import all my Twitter connections, I would switch. - David Jacobs

when Twitter is working well, it doesn't take that long for the tweet to show up here. I agree, though, they are different, and they work well together. I don't filter Twitter because I don't like it, I do it because the tweets take over the page. - Alejandro S.

Good stuff Loic. I love both services. I think they are very complementary and I think they will both succeed. Regarding the time lag of the tweets on FF raised by Mr. Gillmor - I don't think that's such a bad thing. If there is a tweet worth commenting on we can probably use a few minutes to think about it and prepare a response on FriendFeed. - Mike Doeff

http://xrl.us/bmazc tweets totally f#(%ed twitter - Noah David Simon

if there would be a good IM service or mobile client on FF i would switch totaly to FF. - Mathias H.

Wouldn't this be the right time for Google (given Twitters technical problems) to open up Jaiku and pull/win people over from Twitter? - Gabriel N.

Agree with cmiper. I wrote about Jaiku in July of last year (http://www.raoulpop.com/2007/0...), and have been using it since late spring in 2007. I loved the feed integration, back before FriendFeed even existed, but the polling times for feeds were and still are ridiculously long (sometimes days, not hours) and there's very little activity. You can go to my Jaiku account and see for yourselves: http://raoul.jaiku.com/. - Raoul Pop

e has a history of buying tools / companies then simply letting them languish and ruining them (jottspot anyone?) - Jaiku is just another exaple of that. Google might be getting too big to be as nimble as they used to be? - Soulhuntre via twhirl

Google has a history of buying tools / companies then simply letting them languish and ruining them (jottspot anyone?) - Jaiku is just another exaple of that. Google might be getting too big to be as nimble as they used to be? - Soulhuntre via twhirl

It was mentioned in another FF comment thread but go to http://JaikuInvites.com for jaiku invites. I got mine within an hour of my request - acedanger

soulhuntre - don't you hate it when twhirl refreshes and you lose part of your comment, press enter and post it and then realize it's f'd up?! anyway - I used to get excited when Google would buy a "useful" service and then get disappointed when it stagnated for a year or so... - acedanger

Yeah, it is farily frustrating(that twhirl thing) - it shoudl suspend updates while I type. Google is not the universal saviour it's rep has it pegged as frankly - they blow it on a lot of stuff. - Soulhuntre via twhirl

Friend me on jaiku - http://alexdesigns.jaiku.com/ - alexdesigns

I'm on Jaiki too (mikelewis) - Mike Lewis

Twitter ... I couldnt get used to jaiku for a reason - Alemsah via Alert Thingy

acedanger and soulhunter, I have brought the refresh issue to Twhirl's attention twice: once through Twitter and once through their support forum. The only response I have received was, "That shouldn't be happening. We'll look into it." Well, thanks, but I know it shouldn't be happening. It seems to me this is a critical bug worthy of its own maintenance release. It also appears that since Seesmic bought Twhirl, bug fixes and updates are much slower to come out. - Gregory Pittman via twhirl

Twitter aura inimitable:) - Igor Poltavskiy

@Soulhuntre Google also has a history of buying companies and turning them into wild successes. Not every acquisition works out as intended. Jottspot was handled poorly but it hardly constitutes a pattern. - Kevin D. White

I only joined a couple of days ago but didn't like the UI and found Twitter to FF easier to play with. It doesn't make finding your existing friends easy. - Sally Church

I like Jaiku but people have chosen to use twitter - if I leave twitter I leave my community and join one that they may not want to be involved in. I also agree about the feeds they are slow. I also agree that Google will offer a very stable service. But truth is - twitter is where everyone is at and the service that they have chosen - so more happens there. BUT recent problems associated with twitter may just change the playing field. Everything will hinge on how long it takes them to "fix" things. - Dave Gray

I have some 20 invites for jaiku, leave your email on my channel. I'v read all these comments from ff mobile, works great. About jaiku, jaiku was doing feed integration from any Rss feed when FF was still a tought or a dream, they have been silent since the Google acquisition, but i have the feeling they where they are going.. - Ben Borges via fftogo

I have some 20 invites for jaiku, leave your email on my channel. I'v read all these comments from ff mobile, works great. About jaiku, jaiku was doing feed integration from any Rss feed when FF was still a tought or a dream, they have been silent since the Google acquisition, but i have the feeling they where they are going.. - Ben Borges via fftogo

Weren't Google accused of much the same behaviour - buying, neglecting and letting an acquisition wither on the vine - with Writely ? Then, eventually, Google Docs emerged. Hope the same is true for Jaiku. If anyone can integrate with gMail, gTalk, gReader, iGoogle tightly and provide a performant, scalable service, it should be Google. - Andy C

Actually I trust Google's ability on integrating their acquisition than other company. Jaiku should integrate with Gmail so all email, IM and messaging go under one roof. - Leon Ho

Personally, I prefer Pownce to either of these services. I really like the ability to share files as well as text. - Tim Finucane

To twitt is just to scream out in space, when writing on Jaiku people engage you. - Tomas Seo

Tomas Seo, do you think it's because there are relatively few people on Jaiku? - Dewald Pretorius via twhirl

I would have rated Pownce above both services, mainly for its ability to file and photo share, and also to post to groups of contacts, but the service is horribly slow and following threads is next to impossible. - cmiper

cmiper, that just shows how difficult it is to scale these services - Dewald Pretorius via twhirl

invites available at http://jaikuinvites.com/need-a... -- took me 20minutes .. all thanks to @gregeh - Jez Arnold

Dewald - I agree, but then right in the thick of it, Pownce upped the file upload limits to 100MB (from 10mb) for non-paid members and 250mb (from 100mb) for paid members and also added the ability to show those files to the public, increasing the amount of hits/download/bandwidth on the system. Seems as though they should have worked out the issues before adding to the cause IMHO. - cmiper

sues, but the noise / bandwidth problem gets insane. - Soulhuntre via twhirl

@Nzben is responsible for this crazy conversation. (he prompted me to start it in email). Thanks! - Robert Scoble

Okay, after seeing how gigantic the Jaiku vs. Twitter comment threads went, I'm giving it another shot: (http://BeardedDave.jaiku.com/). I tried it out a while ago but it somehow seemed like empty space, compared with what is going on on FF ;) - Bearded_Dave

hahaha...how creative. ...via twhirl - Tina K.J

lol :-)) (via sobees) - PlaTyPuS

om nom nom nom - Jim Norris

I want to get one of those for the movie theater :) - Mike Reynolds

@engtech: Suddenly, I envisioned people everywhere using laptops in public, only in cubicles. Then I envisioned Daleks. - Cyvros/fyc

awe. some. - Sarah Vela

If you like it so far show us your digg love - http://digg.com/software/Frien... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

@felix: It doesn't appear to be hiding the stuff I have configured on the site. And the semi-transparency is driving me batty - can we get a setting for that? - Voyagerfan5761

@Voyagerfan5761 yeah, I'm with you on that. I wish it had a more twhirl like configurability on a few fronts. More generically, I wish that AIR was a better desktop citizen with more OS appropriate chrome. AlertThingy next to Twhirl sort of highlights the wild west of AIR apps. - felix

Thanks for all the comments! keep them coming, although remember this is just a v1.0! - Jeremy Baines

when minimized, can it not show up on the taskbar? (via Alert Thingy) - Craig

@Jeremy: More in-depth comments on my blog, hot off the keyboard: http://voyagerfan5761.blogspot... I'm looking forward to all the enhancements I'm sure are already in the works for v2.0! :-) - Voyagerfan5761

The font size is tool small for me. Comments written in Chinese is almost unreadable. Can we get a setting for "font" ? - Roger Chen

This def needs to group stuff like the site does, I'm getting overrun by Scoble (via Alert Thingy) - Ryan

Currently I'm only using it for popup alerts, nothing more. It has potential, but it's not ready for everyday use for me. - Vince DeGeorge

Wow the response has blown me away - http://www.flickr.com/photos/a... (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

Commenting here from AlertThingy (via Alert Thingy) - Tad Donaghe

@TechCrunch sending a comment via alertthingy, testing, 1, 2, 3, (via Alert Thingy) - Julio

Wow, this is really takes personal broadcasting to a new level. Amazing that Adobe has found itself in the middle of a revolution. Brilliant. (via Alert Thingy) - Yaron Samid

Alert Thingy definitely needs tweakig of its interface with respect to mouse/keyboard interaction (via Alert Thingy) - David Blumenstein

why is this transparent...and for petes sake lets get some color. (via Alert Thingy) - Zee from WeDoCreative

trying to think of a reason to be excited about alertthingy ! - Murali

I told it to turn off the sounds and it still plays them when a new alert comes in. FAIL! (via Alert Thingy) - Jared Mehle

@Jared: Same things happening for me. (via Alert Thingy) - Cyvros/fyc

@ Jared Mehle - you hit save, right? - Jeremy Baines

@Jeremy: Don't know about Jared, but I hit save, restarted the app, sounds kept going, so I selected, saved, unselected and saved. Still getting sounds. - Cyvros/fyc

OK thanks, will look at that one. Apart from a few glitches, I hope some of you are enjoying the app :) (via Alert Thingy) - Jeremy Baines

I was frustrated with Friendfeed because it screamed for a twhril style interface. This looks really promising. (via Alert Thingy) - Michael Groner

Wow, that really looks awesome. (via Alert Thingy) - Martin Gommel

For the sounds to stop, turn them off, save and then restart AlertThingy. After that they stopped for me. (via Alert Thingy) - Ryan

I guess there is no need for Twhirl now? - Cesar H Castro Jr

Cesar, you can't post to twitter from Alert thingy (yet). I imagine Twhirl is going to add FriendFeed in the future. I'll be watching that one with close interest. - Bwana McCall

Jeremy, nice version 1. Do you plan on integrating with Twitter as well directly? Output as tweet? The future is like a search engine choice, send a tweet, jaiku, friendfeed or what have you. (via Alert Thingy) - Jason

Its a good start but the transparency needs to be worked out and the ability to hide things like twitter (seeing as how I get double posts for tweets via twhirl and alertthingy, still need twhirl not all of my twitter friends use friendfeed atm) - BCK

Gotta say that if twhirl would let me switch channels between ff and twitter, its big lead in features would lock alert thingy out for quite a while. - Janet Tokerud

Runs very high CPU, around %10 on my MacBook Air. Its not normal. (via Alert Thingy) - Ahmet Oren

neat v1.0. can do with some more configuration options though. useful. (via Alert Thingy) - Rajiv

problem with alert thingy: if a FF notification occurs while you're typing in your comment. you lose your comment and must start over. very bad (via Alert Thingy) - Baratunde Thurston

It's great, just a couple of little issues, when I double-click on the system-tray icon it should restore the app (via Alert Thingy) - Glenn Slaven

And auto-linking urls in comments would be nice too - Glenn Slaven

Oh, and can the alert bubble please not steal focus? (via Alert Thingy) - Glenn Slaven

I, too, would love it if links were auto-linked. More config options on the interface would be lovely as well! Other than that I love it so far! (via Alert Thingy) - Bob

Air gets more and more useful. But both Thwirl and Alert Thingy NEEDS color settings. I find both of them a bitt annoying when it comes to colors... (via Alert Thingy) - Oyvind Solstad

This should boost my FF use exponentially, as twirl did my Twitter use. Agree that it should minimize to system tray, though, and get off the taskbar. (via Alert Thingy) - faithx5

If you click the close 'x' link it minimises to the system tray rather than the taskbar (via Alert Thingy) - Glenn Slaven

I wish the lower-right alerter alerted me more often. Refreshing FF proves to be much more "current". - Mike Reynolds

that alpha is KILLING my font - anyway to change? (via Alert Thingy) - martin ollman

even though i unchecked the sound box, I'm still hearing it. And it just scared the sh*t outta me. (via Alert Thingy) - Andy Sternberg

I'm also getting sounds when I have the sound off. Just woke up the gf b/c the stupid preferences don't work :-/ (via Alert Thingy) - Bob

It's a good start. Hope it fix the font size issue soon. Maybe a different color theme will make it easier to read. Also, hope it could also display the poster's image from the profile (via Alert Thingy) - Joel Yen

This and Twhirl will most likely be always on my desktop. At what point do I start haveing a varienty of AIR apps vs one firefox session? (via Alert Thingy) - Monty

Restart your copies of AlertThingy v1.1 is here! ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

jeremy, you are not seriously adding that message everywhere? this is what apps have a built in notifier for ... - Nicole Simon

Comments are no longer automatically displayed, now you have to click on "Show all 50 comments"... hoping the sound problem was fixed in 1.1 ...via AlertThingy - Bob

@Bob yes the sound problem should be fixed. Let me know if you have any more issues with it. ...via AlertThingy - Jeremy Baines

Some issues need to be worked out, like not dumping my comment while I am typing it when a new alert comes in. More configuration options needed. Also, some interaction with twitter such as sending a new tweet or replying would be nice. Not sure how the thwurl people would like that though. I am really liking it so far regardless of all that. (via Alert Thingy) - Rolf Schewe

I'm no longer having the sound problem so it looks like you fixed it ...via AlertThingy - Bob

For those discussing the frequency of the alerts, the only real-time tweet client I believe is Gtalk. (via Alert Thingy) - Rolf Schewe

I actually did try to put Disqus on my blog. It just resulted in a post that had comments closed, so I had to undo. I'll try again sometime. - Louis Gray

@Nicole Agreed. A universal, integrated commenting system is about as likely as everybody in the world agreeing to use Emacs :-) - Andy C

@louisgray I know @danielha is always jumping at the opportunity to help blog owners install Disqus. - Paul Arterburn

Crikey I just realised that I am turning into a true evangelist. Just because I have seen the light (Disqus, FF et al). I am now shouting 'Hallelujah' from the roof-tops. Worse, I am also trying to dictate to others that they must now conform and I am embarking on a personal crusade to save everyone who doesn't 'get it' (yet). Absolutely the worst sort of evangelism that I despise in born-again Christians. Please forgive me and pass me a pint of Holy Water and two aspirins :-) - Andy C

You know...FF could put in some code that would ping the trackback URL. It might be hard to know what the trackback URL is all the time, but it could try just pinging all the popular formats (ie. add /trackback/ to the end of the URL) to help out short term. - Paul Arterburn

Good point on Disqus and I will look into that. My thinking is that there is not a consistent way to track everything at this point. Thank you for digging around and commenting on the blog as well. I probably would never have seen this. - Rob Diana

@andyc igitt! ;) [in english: yuk] - Nicole Simon

@Rob No problem. I just thought it was an interesting exercise but the point is that, on most occasions, I wouldn't have commented on the source blog (simply because I am lazy). Let's face it - for now the conversation is well and truly fragmented ! - Andy C