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Rob Diana › Likes
A good example... Truth vs. Marketing. Which is reality? :)
Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic, David H. Chu, Brian Watkins and 69 other people liked this
How I feel... vs. how I present how I feel. :)
- Louis Gray
Louis, you look like you're a twenty-some year old college student in the first picture versus an adult.
- Jimminy
Woah:s
- Sardar Mohkim Khan
No he does, but I think it's also time you get some sl... Sleep is a waste of time for the unproductive. I don't think you've been unproductive lately get some sleep.
- Jimminy
I'm looking left. I'm looking right. Back. forth. back. forth. In the space between truth and fiction I am playing PONG.
- Micah Wittman
lol this is classic - and very brave of you to post ;)
- Chris Saad
Brave, indeed. The arched brow says everything. :)
- Mark Evans
*nods to Holden* :)
- Micah Wittman
The first is my "old Twitter default avatar face". :)
- Louis Gray
And Jimminy, one benefit of ignoring jetlag and working both time zones... Four meals! It's dinner time again!
- Louis Gray
The one on the left looks like Louis "poor college student" Gray and the right is the CEO of blah-blah company.
- imabonehead
Louis, I just ate my 4th meal without jetlag or working in two time zones, benefit of not sleeping more than 4 hours a day.
- Jimminy
I need to change your advisor photo on http://socialtoo.com/about... now
- Jesse Stay
Make sure it is the second one then, Jesse. I always hated that other photo you took. It just won't die.
- Louis Gray
What are you saying about my photography skills? :-)
- Jesse Stay
In the left one, Louis looks Vulcan. :->
- Kurt Starnes
Of course, I could use this one: http://friendfeed.com/jworthi... or this one: http://friendfeed.com/lasse...
- Jesse Stay
Jesse makes me wonder abt @guykawasaki pic in your socialtoo about page is it the left or rght pic of Guy ;)
- Sudha Jamthe
wait. is that a bib in the first pic? :)
- Christian Anderson
Here are some others: http://www.ibtimes.com/content... :-)
- Todd Hoff
Now he's been to London we're seeing the emergence on the world circuit of the true LG (face) brand.
- Thomas Power
I thought that first shot was your inspector Clouseau impersonation.
- Mark Krynsky
That's my #didntsleeponthejet look, Mark.
- Louis Gray
Ok...but can you say "Does your dog bite" with a French accent for me anyways?
- Mark Krynsky
Let's turn this into a meme! I just posted my "truth vs. fiction" here: http://friendfeed.com/got-mem...
- April Russo (app103)
The first pic looks like that of an Apple developer who's just got his iPhone app rejected from the App store.
- Mahendra (SkepticGeek)
Haha, superb!
- Kol Tregaskes
is it much like turning up for an executive type job interview in t-shirt and jeans or in a suit. You're the same person underneath.
- Ian May
they might be both marketing avatars - left youtube vs right linkedin - lol
- barbarars
Obviously BOTH are reality. The right one is not a stunt model is it? ;-)
- Kristi Colvin
isn't it true that no one has one single face?
- Martha
from BuddyFeed
It was an honour to photograph you Louis, hopefully something for you to remember your London trip by
- John Cassidy
Boom-Boom-Wow
- Cheyenne
We all try to show our best side to the outside world, particularly when it's with regard to business. But is it really disingenuous to show a happy face any more than it would be to show a scowl? Neither represents you or the collective us 100% of the time. Does this mean we need a chart with all our moods on it to greet potential clients? :) I do like the arched brow. hehe
- Sheryl
Sorry to say this, Louis, but I will attempt to run away if I see someone coming to me bearing that smile you have on the second photo. I'd be like, "Darnit, here's another salesman wanting to pressure me into buying some thingamajig again..." No offense, Louis. But even for marketing, I really think you can do without the oh-so-friendly smile :-)
- Pandu ● IT Optimizer
from fftogo
Both!
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
Louis is a pro smiler :)
- Steve Chou
Both - but the guy on the couch looks like more fun ;)
- beautiful world
lol! XD
- Bicentennial (Franc)
Google hopes to remake programming with Go - http://news.cnet.com/8301-10...
Thomas Amberg, Barry Mitchelson, Marwan Osman and 103 other people liked this
This could be very good! "Google software luminaries such as Unix co-creator Ken Thompson believe that they can help boost both computing power and programmers' abilities with an experimental programming language project called Go. And on Tuesday, they're taking the veil of secrecy off Go, releasing what they've built so far and inviting others to join the newly open-source project."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
What do you think, Paul? I know it's early, but Python latched on at Google... Think this is a response? And just on a lark, do you think Go may be headed for the browser at some point (to replace javascript)? Many of us have wondered if Chrome will take a stab at reinventing/reworking the web stack. Go feels more like a back-end tool, but wondering what came to your mind when you saw this...
- Christopher Galtenberg
Christopher, Python is nice, but we need a new system language, something high-performance to replace C/C++. This may be it.
- Paul Buchheit
Yeah, I was remembering your thoughts from here, Paul: http://friendfeed.com/paul.... Wonder how the ooc folks feel today...
- Christopher Galtenberg
My first reaction was oh yay, another C like language with brackets to make it acceptable. Having Rob Pike and Thompson on the team is impressive but makes me think of a plan9 resurrection. Using CSPs though is pretty cool and it looks like it supports mobile tasks.
- Todd Hoff
"Specifically, Go uses a technology dating back to the 1960s called CSP, or communicating sequential processes, that handles interactions among a set of cooperating programs, Pike said. The technology made an appearance in programming languages such as Occom and Erlang, but it generally hasn't been applied in systems programming."
- Paul Buchheit
If Google uses this for internal projects, that will give it a big advantage over something like plan9 in terms of being practical (not to mention the fact that it's free software, which plan9 was not, and a programming language, not an OS).
- Paul Buchheit
I am very excited about this, it's not genius or rocket science but it maybe the language to put alongisde C/C++ for real. I thought it was going to be D, maybe this is it
- Lawrence Oluyede
D seems too fragmented to be usable. All my hopes are on Go now :)
- Paul Buchheit
And note that the language is designed to be IDE independent.
- Piaw Na
Plan9 was a set of composable tools. In this case Google is providing the OS and the tools.
- Todd Hoff
Go is NOT an OS!
- Piaw Na
Where's the link to it?
- Gabe
Please ; at the end of lines... (I hate languages without ; for some psychological reasons)
- Ozgur Demir
I am no fan of language features designed to ease parsing but i suppose that's important for a system language? But it's hardly a user (i.e. programmer)-centric design. I think they should have drawn more from Scala (for concurrency model) and Io (for a beautiful syntax) instead of the messy, old languages they chose. Luckily, it's not designed for my needs so i'll never have to worry about it.
- ·[▪_▪]·
@ozgurdemir I agree. Either require them or don't. Don't make them optional in some cases. It confuses what programmers generally expect of a programming language: consistency.
- ·[▪_▪]·
Just checked and hated it. Sorry guys, it's not about the rest of the language.. it's just the ;'s.
- Ozgur Demir
while checking it, I noticed how much I love C / Java syntax and how lame to trying to change it just for to make a new product different.
- Ozgur Demir
@Paul you should know better than to confuse a language with its implementation! The people working on this all hail from the C/Java lineage and I don't know...may be fast but generally C is a hassle and Java is too dumbed-down. Trying to fix the mistakes they made in the past. Wonderful...
- Rudolf Olah
For god's sake, who cares what the syntax looks like? What matters is whether it solves useful problems or not. It's designed to clean up a lot of the problems stemming from the legacy of C[++], compile fast, execute fast, be appropriate for systems programming, and have good primitives for concurrency. Those are good goals in my book, and they fill a much-needed niche.
- Joel Webber
I do care.
- Ozgur Demir
I thought it was kinda weird the way the video highlighted how fast it compiles. Compilation speed is great, and the vid was impressive, but I've never seen a language launch where that was highlighted so much. "Look, it compiles fast!!!!!! Oh, BTW, we are trying to solve concurrency".
- Nick Lothian
@Ozgur: Sure, but as long as the syntax isn't broken in some way, or ambiguous (VB6 comes to mind), it's surely much less important than what the language is capable of (compile speed, execution speed, what can be expressed, etc). Syntax seems like a distant third- or fourth-most important aspect to me.
- Joel Webber
@Nick: That kind of struck me as well when they first started talking about it. But when you consider that your main alternative is C++, and that compile times can get absolutely brutal (try compileing WebKit sometime -- it takes hours), it makes a bit more sense.
- Joel Webber
@Joel. yea, I can't say you're wrong and I am right.. these are all preferences.. for me, syntax is an important aspect in terms of code readability that's why I care since it becomes a real pain in the ass on a midsize or bigger project.
- Ozgur Demir
This thread is degenerating into rubbish. You know who you are - please stop.
- Christopher Galtenberg
from iPhone
@Joel yeah, I guess. But compiling something like that should take hours! Back when men were men and compiling a kernel on my 386 was a major undertaking success was so much more satisfying! Who are these young'uns Thompson & Pike and what do they know anyway!
- Nick Lothian
Yeah, really! Real programmers had to swap disks multiple times to run a Pascal compiler on Hello World for the C64 :)
- Joel Webber
Yeah, compilation speed doesn't mean too much. Would be nicer if they focused on the *thinking* part with regards to concurrency.
- Rudolf Olah
Compilation speeds mean a lot when you're dealing with the google programming model. This is a company that invented code search for internal use. (See as an example: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7613693...)
- Piaw Na
Luckily it isn't named "goo".
- Peng-Toh
@Piaw - nice example. I only skipped through it, but I can't see why something like that makes compilation speed critical. It seems similar in concept to static analysis - more speed is good, but the lack of speed doesn't break the model.
- Nick Lothian
@nlothian: static analysis and compilation both include parsing. efficient parsing of C++ is rather hard to achieve, due to messy nature of multiply included files and macro substitutions. if code analysis takes hours (ok, half-hours), it ceases to be useful.
- 9000
Lack of speed totally breaks the model. When you can get your analysis and search tools to respond in sub 500ms, the model for coding completely changes. You no longer remember where files are --- you just search for them and expect the search tool to remember for you. This enables massive code sharing, and allows small teams to be extremely effective, since they can now leverage other teams' work.
- Piaw Na
Must be Google..
- ★ Soner Gönül
Why compile time matters: http://xkcd.com/303/
- Robert Felty
Use an IDE for iterative development of the components you are working on, make modules independent through interfaces, do a nightly build so the bulk of build products like libraries etc are available, then these compile issues go away. Justifying based on compile times is so 1990s.
- Todd Hoff
Ah, but how exactly does your IDE allow you to do iterative development quickly? You have to be able to compile individual modules (whatever form they take) quickly enough to make this feasible. If you take C[++] as the de facto systems language, it fails badly on this front, because the only way to share interfaces among modules is via the preprocessor, and precompiled headers only get...
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- Joel Webber
Poor Frank McCabe and his ten year old "go!" language: http://www.reddit.com/r...
- Daniel J. Pritchett
C++ allows for abstract base classes. No implementation. Compose systems this way and you minimize recompilation. And I'm assuming the initial subsystems are developed in a mocked unit tested environment and then within a very narrow scope, so interface changes are minimized until the system test phase is reached. The compilation argument would make sense if they were talking about a...
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- Todd Hoff
Sure, but you still have to define the abstract base class (interface) in a header file somewhere, and individual .cc files end up depending upon a large number of these in practice, so that any change to one of them tends to force you to recompile a lot of object files. As you say, there are some ways of reducing this effect, but in practice large C++ systems end up taking forever and a day to compile (try compiling WebKit; a lot of Google code has this problem as well).
- Joel Webber
C++ templates are also implemented badly, which makes compilation slow.
- Piaw Na
Only if you don't compose your system well Joel. I've worked very comfortably on systems that took 12 hours to compile across a cluster of 32 build machines. I'm not saying I don't want a language where you don't have to go through all these hoops, but to say it's inevitable in C++ is not so, you just have to beat make into submission and not create a big ball of mud, which is good practice anyway.
- Todd Hoff
@Todd: Fair enough -- I'm definitely not saying you're wrong, and I have also worked on fairly large C++ code bases (mostly games) without everything going to hell in a handbasket. But you have to admit that it would be nice if you didn't have to wait many hours (or use a Google-sized build cluster) for compiling your code :)
- Joel Webber
I've worked "comfortably" on projects where the full rebuild time was a few hours on my local machine, but I can't say that I was ever working optimally. Even in the instant-on environment I'm working in now, there are occasionally changes that I have to wait a full build/deploy cycle to test and it almost always takes me 2-5x as long to solve problems in that case. You can multitask while you wait, but it's just not the same (IMHO, of course).
- Matt Mastracci
I think 12 hours to compile across 32 build machines is unacceptable. I want instant compilation. You know, the kind that Turbo Pascal used to have.
- Piaw Na
I think that there's a dramatic improvement in developer productivity when the compile-link-run cycle time goes from a minute to a second.
- Gary Burd
Piaw before you say what is or is not unacceptable you might want to take the trouble to know what problem is being solved. Turbo Pascal to a real deployed product like a unicycle is to the 5th fleet.
- Todd Hoff
But any, good, modern IDE compiles incrementally and continuously so there's no noticeable compilation step. Compilation shouldn't be a _highlight_ of a new language. It's nice and the ease of building developer tools is a benefit to uptake but, in the end, the language has to be something developers _want_ to read and write since we have to look at it so much. Syntax matters. It's why so much sugar is added to languages.
- ·[▪_▪]·
As stated before, modern IDEs don't scale to google-sized code bases. Go is not designed for your tiny projects that fit in main memory. It's designed for large scale development projects.
- Piaw Na
@piaw You seem to assume that Google doesn't organize it's code. Any good project, regardless of size, especially for large projects, should be modularized. If Google has to load every piece of code into the IDE, they have more serious problems than Go will resolve. Trust me, I work on a project with tens of millions of lines of Java code and i've been responsible for analysis and...
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- ·[▪_▪]·
Well, Piaw actually did write a fair amount of the code at Google, so I'd give him a little more credit :) I know plenty of people at Google who *do* use Eclipse/IntelliJ on Google's code base (myself included), but you do have to break it into manageable chunks to make it work. That's sometimes easier said than done, to be fair.
- Joel Webber
When I worked for a large company in the internet advertising business, I found that dependency creep was a constant problem. I spent more time than I would have liked trying to get fast compilation time in Eclipse/IntelliJ. I welcome a tool that helps with this problem.
- Gary Burd
"I have already used the name for *MY* programming language" http://code.google.com/p...
- Maxamad
I think that time spent pruning and organizing your code and library is best instead spent working on better tools that make your development environment super fast and capable of scaling. That's the way Go was designed.
- Piaw Na
If you want fast turnaround, eliminate compiles all together. There's no reason why a language can't support a double or triple hybrid model. Look at a language like Factor, image based like Smalltalk, you write a function, and can patch it into the live running app instantaneously, where it will run interpreted in combination with compiled code, until the runtime gets around to...
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- Ray Cromwell
I noticed that Go has an interpreter work-in-progress living in its source. The start of an instant-run mode?
- Matt Mastracci
Smalltalk had a massive sharing problem --- you couldn't ever replicate what was in your Smalltalk image on someone else's machine. Eliminating compiles would be nice, but again, if you're solving problems at a massive scale, interpretation would be an order of magnitude loss in execution speed that you can't afford. That said, a Go interpreter would not be out of the question, or even hard to build.
- Piaw Na
@Piaw - was just reading "Coders at Work" this week and Ingalls (http://www.codersatwork.com/dan-ing...) was saying the exact opposite. He said he pauses his Mac machine and sends his Smalltalk system state over to a Windows developer and they start right up, debug, and fix.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
The point is not to have the production version run in interpretation, the point is to increase developer productivity by allowing a fast edit-run cycle, production builds can take as long as necessary. When you're in development mode, you often don't need full execution speed, you are checking for correctness. Take GWT for example. You can make changes to Java source, hit reload, and...
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- Ray Cromwell
What does production mean? An experiment that processes a large number of records so you can decide how to proceed with your line of research is hardly production, but it nevertheless has to execute fast over large amounts of data. You might think that it doesn't matter how quickly that runs, but the difference between 10 minutes and 100 minutes is huge in terms of productivity.
- Piaw Na
Yes, if you copied the entire image over, you could replicate a smalltalk VM. The problem is, then you have to live with the other guy's image and customizations. Smalltalk is great, but it really was designed as a single-user environment.
- Piaw Na
It depends how often you are running experiments over huge datasets like that. In the case where I needed some experimental data to proceed, yes, if after every edit, you had such an experiment, then maybe programming in a neutered language would be worth it, but I'd say that for the majority of developers, this is not the case, so being able to run unoptimized builds/interpretation...
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- Ray Cromwell
No, it is not for everyone. It's very much for large scale datasets that are encountered somewhat frequently on the WWW.
- Piaw Na
Samuel Jasper Hocter is here!! http://twitpic.com/p0hyz
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Stephan Planken, Willem (@wim66) ☠, Andrew Terry and 42 other people liked this
He's just as handsome as his father. Congrats you two! Welcome, Sam!
- Derrick
ah! congratulations!!!
- Anna Lynn M.
Wow.... Congrats! what an adorable little guy :)
- fatima
Congrats!!
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Congrats!
- Anika
Congratulations!
- Micah Wittman
Mazel tov!
- Akiva Moskovitz
Congrats!!!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Many conga rats to you!
- FF's Bubba of Arizona
Congratulations!
- Stephan Planken
Wonderful!!! :-D
- Anna Haro
awwwww. Hi there tiny boy! Congratulations.
- Yolanda
woo-hoo! Congratulations, Michael and family! :D
- JA Castillo
Congratulations!!
- Charlotte M
from iPhone
Congrats and welcome Samuel!
- Penny
Congratulations to the Hocter family
- Eric Logan
Congratulations!!!!
- HollyHobby
Congratulations! Handsome boy!
- Anne Bouey
Congratulations :)
- Baard @ Pixum
Yay! Congrats to you both!
- Andrew Terry
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it" - http://www.drewolanoff.com/post...
Louis Gray, Rob Diana and Bette Cooper liked this
The Story of Google's Closure: Advanced JavaScript Tools - http://blog.louisgray.com/2009...
Rob Diana, Greg GuitarBuster and Louis Gray liked this
The iPhone-to-Android Switch: What You Need to Know [Android] - http://gizmodo.com/5398942...
Rob Diana, Roberto Bonini, Yolanda and 2 other people liked this
Someone help me decide what to do!
- Tamar Weinberg
What Tamar said.
- Derrick
Tamar, buy me the Android and I'll let you know which is better. :D
- Yolanda
:D
- Tamar Weinberg
The choice is simple, ATT suckage or a network that works? Does it really seem that hard?
- Rob Diana
Well I forgot to mention that I'm with Sprint. I don't have an iPhone. I've been shopping around for a new phone for the better part of 2 months but I am trying to see if I should switch phones and providers or stay loyal to Sprint, where I've been for 9 years.
- Tamar Weinberg
My biggest dilemma? I pay $30/month for 500 min (which I barely use) and unlimited text/data. But upgrading a phone to one that's halfway decent would cost an arm and a leg in comparison. Maybe I need to stop being loyal to Sprint.
- Tamar Weinberg
I would love to get on someone's Verizon family plan and get a Droid! ;)
- Tamar Weinberg
Looks like the connection between FriendFeed and Twitter is no longer real-time. Wonder who is to blame?
Steven Perez, Darren Heydon, Kol Tregaskes and 20 other people liked this
I think it's been that way for a while.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
It has been wildly inconsistent lately. Sometimes it is right on time, other times there is a major delay.
- Rob Diana
Paul Bucheit wrote that they no longer had access to Twitter's firehose, so it sounds like it may have had something to do with Facebook's acquiring them, but don't quote me on that.
- Jorge Escobar
it's weird that twitter signed a deal to give access to google and bing, but friendfeed seems to have lost that deal.
- gregory
Paul or Bret: what is the latest status please?
- Steve Gillmor
The latest status? They're busy working valiantly on mincing the glory of their FriendFeed UI into the horror show that is Zuckerberg's Facebook UI.
- Akiva Moskovitz
from here to Twitter things are going live
- Johni Fisher
It was mentioned previously as being an issue with Twitter. They are polling now.
- Louis Gray
what? It's OK now? Or is it true that "Paul Bucheit wrote that they no longer had access to Twitter's firehose, so it sounds like it may have had something to do with Facebook's acquiring them, but don't quote me on that. - Jorge Escobar" -
- Steve Gillmor
I am trying to locate the conversation where he said this. But it's clear that Twitter is not giving FF the firehose for *some* reason. And they still aren't.
- Jorge Escobar
"The Twitter issue is a separate problem Jorge -- our realtime feed from them is gone, but we hope to get it restored soon. - Paul Buchheit" on Oct 26, 2009 http://friendfeed.com/paul...
- Micah Wittman
Parse that as you will.
- Micah Wittman
Awesome Micah, I was going nuts for a while. So without going to speculation what do you make of "Twitter's realtime feed from them is gone"? Is it scalability issues? But Google and Bing have no problems?
- Jorge Escobar
It's speculation, but I think it's Twitter saying "Ooopsy, now how did that happen? We'll put Top Men on it." and a Friendfeed Alum with "we hope to get it restored" as technically true, but belying that they know or suspect it's a TWTR business decision dragging-of-the-feet and not merely technical. But this can all be cleared up with an official statement :) Maybe I missed it - if so I apologize for wild speculation.
- Micah Wittman
Thanx Micah, Jorge. We'll wait for the update from Paul or Bret.
- Steve Gillmor
Sounds good :)
- Micah Wittman
I wasn't seeing updates from Twitter to Friendfeed for 12 hours, but a manual refresh works ok. It is interesting to note the differences in 'real time' for Friendfeed, Twitter and FaceBook they all behave differently - only one of them seems to be 'real' real time -\
- Chris Loft
#unseenprequels The Undergraduate
Jack (a.k.a. Jeber), Ladybug Heather, Rob Diana and 2 other people liked this
#unseenprequels 9.25 Weeks
Rob Diana, Ladybug Heather, John E. Bredehoft and 3 other people liked this
Is Twitter Trying To Lure You Back To Twitter.com? - http://regulargeek.com/2009...
Rob Diana and Jesse Stay liked this
Rumors of the Death of Blogs are Greatly Exaggerated - http://www.briansolis.com/2009...
AJ Kohn, Rob Diana, Eric @ CS Techcast and 2 other people liked this
I am beginning to finally get it... If you post on Friendfeed you get comments... If you post on Twitter, you get followers. If you are marketing something (e.g. your blog/brand, your product/service) getting followers is much better than getting comments.
Amir Eshel, Lim, Kok Kim, Lora Lufark and 62 other people liked this
And if you are not wanting to get marketed to?
- Cristo
You need to than unfollow those users...:)) Twitter is a lot more about broadcasting and getting followers is like a drug.. the more you broadcast the more followers you get :)
- Bindu Reddy
Are you getting high right now? :)
- Cristo
Getting followers doesn't really mean anything: 390 of the 400 followers I have on Twitter never act or do anything with what I say on it. Getting them to convert is the meaningful part of the marketing proposition, and conversations, I've found, are far more effective at that.
- Mark Trapp
Mark is right.
- Robert Scoble
So, what's the FAQ for interaction on Twitter? I had a post that got 100+ comments the other day here on Friendfeed but no response on Twitter. I must be doing something wrong over there.
- Eric @ CS Techcast
twitter seems to be great for people who are lazy and not really savvy about marketing. it's sort of like shouting into the void, and you might get a few people to respond, but do you really get people to act?
- Bren, Photophobe
@Mark, I agree with you.. However to a lot of people having a follower number like 10K/20K, which seems like a relatively easily thing to do on Twitter, is not only just a high but it is also a good way to keep in touch with your audience without spending too much time... Here keeping in touch with your audience is way more time consuming
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, but keeping in touch doesn't mean anything if they're not listening. You can have a million followers, but if you're not getting any of them to act on what you're saying, it doesn't mean much. Getting conversations going with people, who may or may not be followers, which Twitter is pretty bad at, are more effective at getting people to convert. I just had a relatively popular...
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- Mark Trapp
Bindu, I'm following you (FF) and I just commented too :)
- Micah Wittman
@Mark, Curious how did you get them to go to your website?
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, if I knew that I'd have it made. Near as I can tell, people were doing Twitter and Google searches for "twitter list," and then started retweeting it and sharing it from there.
- Mark Trapp
Following is such a low-risk endeavor that people don't put thought into it: they'll follow anyone and everyone. You even have people thinking it's common decency to automatically follow people if they follow you without even thinking about if their content is interesting. Following is the 21st century equivalent of receiving a phone book or the yellow pages: you do it just in case you need to contact or get ahold of someone in the future, but nobody ever realistically does.
- Mark Trapp
Yep, it's like collecting business cards that get neatly filed into a big binder. It's about the self-satisfaction of the collection - you feel more connected / networked / important and avoid doing the hard work of cold calling or meeting with people and building something or whatever.
- Micah Wittman
I agree with following being a low-risk effort... However I have also heard of ppl gaining value from Twitter without much effort. Take for example this coffeshop I am a big fan of - sightglass coffee. They get a lot of customers from Twitter. It takes them relatively little time to tweet and they get customers. It would be very hard to achieve the same on FF.
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, I get lots of conversation on Twitter, too. One of the reasons I am there more than here is because people with common interest in my political obsessions are there, but not here.
- Karoli
Karoli - Yes, the Twitterverse is way more diverse than the FFverse. Curious do you get more comments/conversations per post on Twitter as compared to FF or is it that you you post more stuff because time spent per post is lower on Twitter
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, I get very little response to political conversations/comments on FF - a couple of folks follow here but a very small percentage compared to twitter. I tried to pull people over here, but they didn't understand why they should leave tweetdeck and their twitter setup for new territory.
- Karoli
Geeks (+ early adopters, influential folks, the elite ...) are on FriendFeed and the proletariat on Twitter? Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat? Calls for action work best when the audience actually cares, so prolly that's all about choosing the right medium for the targeted punters?
- Sebastian
Sebastian... yes agree the geeks and tech bloggers are on FF... However if you are marketing say a fashion or beauty blog. You won't get much interest here. twitter is the place for you :)
- Bindu Reddy
I disagree with that statement, Bindu. There's a LOT of non-tech getting traction on FriendFeed. So much so that it's the number one reason Scoble no longer enjoys being here: he says he doesn't see enough tech for his liking.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Just butting in here to mention that there are tons of uses for both twitter and friendfeed that have nothing whatsoever to do with marketing. In fact, once could make the argument that social networks such as these were designed to get away from marketing. Unlike radio, TV, or even a web search, you choose who you'll be receiving information from. If you're looking to exchange...
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- Mr. Gunn
Marketing, schmarketing.
- Christopher A Carr
Bindu, what I'm sick of is marketers broadcasting their sales pitches to all social media outlets out there, regardless whether the audience might fit or not. Anyways, i'ts possible to attract a few somewhat intelligent responses to geeky topics at Twitter, at least when xmas and independence day share the same date. Most probably I wouldn't try to sell wonder bras at FF, though.
- Sebastian
@Tina ... umm I have not been an avid user of FF lately so maybe it has become pretty diverse. Are you saying there are a lot of people on here with specific interests such as politics, beauty etc?
- Bindu Reddy
Sebastian - LOL.. agree :)
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu: Ning is a better place to go if you have very specific topics you want to talk about. They are growing a FriendFeed every 12 days (they are getting a million new users that often and have just passed 38 million registered). FriendFeed is fun if you aren't sure what you want to chat about and you're cool with seeing lots of family pictures and goofy stuff. Tina is right that the hard-core geeks are mostly on Twitter or Facebook now, I keep watching here, though.
- Robert Scoble
Karoli I get all kinds of action here on political topics. I have more followers on Twitter but rarely get a response there. Here I got 80+ comments yesterday.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
MVB, Karoli is a prolific voice on twitter. Twitter seems quite effective for political advocacy/activism even though longer form convos have to break out somewhere else. Also, just like friendfeed, volume / steady presence can make all the difference. Your tweet count is ~2K; Karoli's over 63K.
- Micah Wittman
My presence here is similar to Kaoli's on Twitter, then. So, presence is a mitigating factor. But, Micah, as you so deftly point out, for a long conversation there needs to be a move to another venue. That's where here works better, since it can stay right here.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
We agree, and can agreed at length right here, folks :)
- Micah Wittman
So link your twitter to your friendfeed. Get followers and comments. The best of both worlds.
- Hareesh Nagarajan
Does it make any difference here whether the original post was to Twitter and reposted here automatically or the original post was directly here? In other words, does the FF community prefer to comment on direct posts rather than Twitter reposts?
- Jimmy Walker
Jimmy: it honestly depends on who you interact with on FriendFeed. There are people who get irate about people only posting to Twitter and openly advocate using FriendFeed directly, and yet, there are interesting people who always get a conversation going around their tweets. One thing that sometimes helps is coming back to FriendFeed and elaborating on your tweet, or to do more than...
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- Mark Trapp
Mark, that sounds like good advice. Thanks.
- Jimmy Walker
Daniel J. Pritchett, Rob Diana and Dan Morrill AKA Techwag liked this
Jessie SmugMug has a great facebook connector already that I am using.
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
Jesse, Do you have a pointer to something you would consider a good Facebook Connect implementation? I'm trying to understand the advantages vs time/costs. You must have a couple of good example and overall benefit links in your pocket!!
- Chris Myles
Chris, look at what Huffington Post is doing at HuffingtonPost.com - log in through Facebook and you'll see
- Jesse Stay
Chris, but if you check out all the docs at http://developers.facebook.com/connect..., some of the docs on http://wiki.developers.facebook.com for Facebook Connect also have some great examples.
- Jesse Stay
Dan, I'm not talking about that type of connector - see the Huffington Post example.
- Jesse Stay
Thanks the pointers Jesse!!
- Chris Myles
Too funny I saw GFC highlighting HuffingtonPost.com in their latest blog and I couldn't find the WHERE it was.. The GFC login is buried under [Connect with Facebook]. I'll check out some other examples.. The HuffPost Social news seems a little too much for me (and certainly my FB friends).. is the Read and Commented notification automatic or do I have control?
- Chris Myles
Chris, you can turn off the auto-notifications. It's an option when you first sign in, and I think you can change it elsewhere.
- Jesse Stay
It's Friday and Shey is ready to go home
Parth Awasthi, Darren Heydon, Alix Whitmire and 22 other people liked this
I'm ready to go home and I haven't even gone to work yet today.
- Christian (Simply X)
ha!
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
Bitchlips FTW!
- Sparky, a big deal
Working from home and I'm ready to go home today.
- Derrick
Feel you, really and I've been here the sum of 2 hours today. ugh!
- Michelle
@Michelle :( 1.5 hrs to go for me!
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
That *is* a good line :-) I'd forgotten I said it. RT @adamkleinberg: Fail at something worth failing at -- @timoreilly on @dishymix
Rob Diana liked this
I LOVE when you engage in a dialogue with each other for post comments - it makes everyone's experience so much richer. Thank you!
Rob Diana liked this
Dear Google, please let me write my own identity tie-ins to Friend Connect. I want to add my own FB Connect IDs to your widgets.
Rob Diana liked this
Weblogs, Inc. Director Brad Hill interview on Technorati - http://onlinemediacultist.com/2009...
Rob Diana liked this
Poor Piglet :( - http://mona.posterous.com/poor-pi...
Iván Abrego, Rob Diana, Helen Sventitsky and 5 other people liked this
I'm bored and tired of staring at my computer screen. I think I might make a batch of brownies to pass the time. From scratch even. Yeah, I know, that makes three desserts this week. What can I say: the cabin fever has finally driven me over the edge.
Laura B., Louis Gray, Rob Diana and 2 other people liked this
why not make two batches of brownies and send one up to me :) I love brownies.
- Rob Diana
Sadly, I do all my baking in a toaster oven. A double batch of brownies is a physical impossibility.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Don't worry, I can wait.
- Rob Diana
We're developing the next version of the Facebook Connect JavaScript client library on GitHub as open source. http://developers.facebook.com/news...
Daniel Rowley, Robert Scoble, imabonehead and 4 other people liked this
David you guys rule! That's awesome news.
- Jesse Stay
Thanks, though the Connect team really deserves the credit here!
- David Recordon
In that case thanks to the other David! :-) (Morin)
- Jesse Stay
Just When I Thought I Couldn't Love Google More... - http://mona.posterous.com/just-wh...
9000, A.T., Rasmus Lauridsen and 2 other people liked this
TweetDeck Promises to Add Twitter Lists Support Soon - http://blog.louisgray.com/2009...
Venkk Sastry, Bonnie Foster, Head Ov Metal and 17 other people liked this
What about Seesmic?
- Jorge Escobar
Yes this would be awesome... #tweetdeck
- Yann Ropars
I assume Loic will provide updates soon, but I can't speak for him.
- Louis Gray
But you are on a speed dial basis with him, aren't ya? ;)
- Jorge Escobar
I am on a speed-DM basis with him. :)
- Louis Gray
Ok, so get his point of view as well for this post. Do some journalism for once! LOL j/k
- Jorge Escobar
Isn't tweetdeck supposed to sync with two computers if you have it installed and logged on? Mine doesn't do that w/home and work computers.
- Amani
Jorge, I updated the post to reflect that Loic has promised list support in Seesmic.
- Louis Gray
Thank you, I'll send you the wire tonight ;)
- Jorge Escobar
So does SocialToo :-)
- Jesse Stay
I want these in my tweetie iphone app and hopefully they'll be in the new tweetie desktop version
- Robert DeBord
Tweetdeck to Twitter list sync would be great
- Mo Kargas
I wonder why Loic only mentions update for Seesmic Desktop, not Seesmic Web. Come to think of it, I wonder what Loic's plans are with the two. It seems like they almost go to different directions (some features are unique to each other)
- Andre P. Siregar
Cool, anybody knows when twitter add GPS integration?
- Francisco Espinoza
from FreshFeed
It will be interesting to see if tweetdeck is able to transparently migrate their existing groups to twitter lists.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
I tend to agree with Scoble about the "forum problem", but at the same time I really like seeing comments. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's less of an issue if you keep groups relatively small. re: http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Marc Dong, John Serra, Bertrand Doux and 80 other people liked this
I think the current FriendFeed approach is close to optimal. Do you not see it that way?
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
FF has the inherant ability for the user to take control, both of what they see and the comments they allow. If a user is judicious in their lists and/or filters they should see mostly relevent content (IF that's what they actually want to see). The ability for a poster to moderate comments on their own post gives us the ability to avoid trolls/spam and/or steer the conversation (again,...
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- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Scoble and other "super users" have this problem much more than regular people because they have thousands of subscribers. This is also part of the reason that Twitter probably works better for celebrities -- it's more of a broadcast channel.
- Paul Buchheit
They could have a million subscribers and it wouldn't be an issue, Paul: turn off comments on his FF posts and it would be all broadcast all the time. It's the number of people they choose to subscribe TO that is the issue. To be honest, it's like someone walking into a football stadium and then complaining that it's too loud. If one chooses to follow thosuands of people one must surely expect that the amount of 'noise' is going to increase.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
One thing that was tossed around a while back was the ability to disable comments from anyone you're not subscribed to: that'd allow those with a lot of subscribers to have high-signal conversations that their subscribers can still see and gain value from.
- Mark Trapp
Perhaps he'd like a 'hide user' button similar to FB? This would prevent the "brings people into YOUR life that YOU DID NOT INVITE!" effect... of course the conversation could be rather disjointed. Maybe a small 'additional comments hidden' status that would show them when desired... Of course, without the conversations, FF == twitter?
- Eric Borisch
Paul, can you help me test something? :)
- directeur
The features that would make FF optimal would be to let users follow each other's hides and blocks. For most users this would be a nice, small improvement. For users like scobleizer it might make a huge difference. Of course, implementation details matter.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
The problem is that we don't keep groups relatively small. There are always those who are like me who like to connect, for one, but even normal people add tons of people to their groups. It's just natural. I remember I was first to add 1,000 people to my Twitter account and people thought I was weird. Now thousands of people do that.
- Robert Scoble
One thing with Facebook is they capped it at 5,000 friends. Which kept it from being used by super-connectors but also caused it to be seen as a place where you talk with just your real life friends. Now that public pages are coming on strong, we're seeing that change.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: the FriendFeed approach is far from optimal. Many, many people told me they don't like joining a forum and like just lurking instead, which is why they chose Twitter (Tim O'Reilly is not the only one who told me this). Tim Robbins likes that on Twitter he can listen to his heros. He sees it as a learning engine. Those of us here love FriendFeed because it lets us talk. But it definitely turns off lots of people.
- Robert Scoble
Paul: the solution is to let us toggle comments on and off. Give the USER CONTROL. If they just want to listen to their friends, hide all the other noise. But then give us who like commenting ability to turn that back on.
- Robert Scoble
You have the ability to toggle comments on and off: Edit -> Disable Comments.
- Mark Trapp
Robert, comments _are_ content.
- directeur
Mark: that is on a PER ITEM BASIS though. Totally useless for what we're talking about.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: yes, but they are content a LOT of people don't want to see or deal with.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, but then you'll be a megaphone broadcasting "your" views.
- directeur
Robert has the same comments (or the same potential) on his blog as he does on FriendFeed, so I don't think it's the comments themselves. I think it's the fact that FriendFeed makes comments almost on equal level as the original post, instead of burying them way down at the bottom of a page or requiring a click to view. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
- Daniel Sims
Nothing in the API precludes someone from writing a FriendFeed client that hides all the comments so you just see a river of feed items. That's how Twhirl, AlertThingy, and all the native iPhone apps implement FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
I have two arms. I barely use my left one. Please cut it off!
- directeur
Turning comments off entirely would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you could authorize other users to delete comments on your items, you could minimize the forum problem.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
directeur: that's right. That's what most professional publishers want.
- Robert Scoble
I really think the "comments are awesome, why would you ever want to get rid of comments" argument falls on deaf ears at this point. The solution ought to be how to turn off comments if you want to get Scoble (or the people he's saying he represents) back on the FriendFeed train, or to say they're not worth it. I do think if it weren't for the comments, there'd be at least a half dozen other things Scoble or people like him would come up with to not like FriendFeed at this point.
- Mark Trapp
I like the idea of having another options to disable comments for people you're not subscribed to. That way you can allow conversation, but limit it to people you "know" if it makes you more comfortable or limits the noise. I think you should have the ability to set the option as a default for all new posts but be able to override it on a post-by-post basis: 1) public comments 2)...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Her Linday-ness: I want that but it would be hard to design.
- Robert Scoble
Mark, I think you make a valid point but then the question becomes: if there are no comments, is FF still the best medium to use? If so, then the ability to turn off comments on one's entire feed should be easy enough to code and implement. I suspect, though, that all things being equal (meaning: there's no ability to comment on an item) FF would no longer be the best medium for a broadcaster.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Mark: I don't think these people will consider FriendFeed at this point. Too much momentum over on Twitter. Look at the news brands: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... you're not going to get them to switch off of Twitter at this point. Sorry. That game is over.
- Robert Scoble
I think the real game is how does Facebook evolve?
- Robert Scoble
The real game is an open decentralized solution. yes, I'm a dreamer.
- directeur
Which leads everyone to wonder why you're trying to nitpick a feature like this, or base your argument on the lack of the feature. The real reason why you (and others like you) aren't into FriendFeed isn't because of the forum problem or the lack of a feature, it's because you think Twitter is better and that's where everyone is. That's fine: that's a great argument. The rest of it is inconsequential to that argument, and wouldn't invalidate it even if you got your way. So what's the point?
- Mark Trapp
I've been talking with a lot of brands and celebrities and regular people. For public studying they like Twitter better. That has Facebook wondering what it will be in the future.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: sorry, but I spent two years talking to thousands of people about FriendFeed and I'm just passing along why they didn't like it. Take that feedback or leave it. Your choice.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: did you speak at dozens of conferences about FriendFeed and Twitter? Did you show hundreds of tech influentials FriendFeed and listen to their feedback?
- Robert Scoble
But your feedback doesn't correlate to the real reason why you, and the people you say you represent, are saying why you won't ever use FriendFeed. You said there's nothing anyone could do to get people to use FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: if I want to listen to ONLY tech influentials, I can on Twitter. I can't on Facebook. I can't on FriendFeed. http://twitter.com/Scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
Robert, if you're going to pull the "don't you know who I am?" crap, it falls on deaf ears. Let's have a constructive conversation on what you're trying to talk about.
- Mark Trapp
Can't you make lists in FF?
- Andrizzle Gizzle
Sure you can: you can import feeds and lists on FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: times change and at this point it would be hard to get anyone to take FriendFeed seriously. That said, I believe that it IS possible to move people from Facebook to Twitter or Twitter to Facebook, so THAT is the real battlefront.
- Robert Scoble
any comment thread about 20+ without threading and community promotion/demotion becomes difficult to participate in (for me). Though there is a difference between discussing the radiator on a 94 Subaru and the nature of discussion forums.
- Hayes Haugen
Robert: is the problem really comments or the fact that each time an item gets commented, the items pops back at the top of the list? Regarding the noise, I think that the "problem" with friendfeed is that it was much easier for people to plug in automated feeds and that as a result, there was less of an explicit action. I do not know how other people feel about this but I really miss...
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
Mark: OK, show me your public list the way I did on Twitter. You can't do that here, sorry.
- Robert Scoble
Hayes: BING BING BING.
- Robert Scoble
Ok, so it's not about who you read, it's who you can show that you are reading.
- Andrizzle Gizzle
Bing goes the internet! lol
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Sure Twitter has a lot of momentum now, but how quickly the winds change. Frankly, it's a shame that FF is going to be neglected... I wish that someone with as much motivation and insight as Paul and the original team could take it over now that FB has consumed them. There is still SO MUCH potential in this platform that it is depressing to see it squandered. @Robert - I don't think it...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, I don't use public lists: I believe you read my blog post about why I don't. But Hutch Carpenter does, and here's his FriendFeed public list on Innovation Management: http://friendfeed.com/innovat...
- Mark Trapp
Robert, who do you call "influentials"? Do they talk "tech" all the day? Isn't it unhuman? Let's go back to spring/summer 2008, and redefine "smart" for me, please :)
- directeur
Edwin: the problem is on FriendFeed it has the chat problem -- it gets noisy and gets noisy fast.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: influentials are people who influence. I picked them. Shoot me.
- Robert Scoble
The noise is largely proportional to the circles you're in. If you put yourself in a huge room, it will be a loud room.
- Kevin Fox
Robert, do you remember the "MOAR NOISE" phrase? It was THE reason why I built NoiseRiver. Filters, I used to say when you were always saying: MORE NOISE!
- directeur
Kevin: exactly. But on FriendFeed the room gets big VERY QUICKLY because as more people join they drag in their followers with them.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook has the same problem. While we're chatting here, tons of tech news diversity have swooped by.
- Robert Scoble
So Robert, should there be something built in to "warn" others of becoming "chatty". Something that says: "This comment is irrelevant. You may post again when you have something relevant and germane to our discussion"? So WHO makes those distinctions and judgements?
- Melanie Reed
Compare this chat to http://twitter.com/Scoblei... which one brought more information to you? The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time.
- Robert Scoble
Melanie: in a chat room you can't control people that way.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: True, but [big number]*[average number] is far larger than [average number]*[average number]
- Kevin Fox
Hayes you are correct. Slashdot has actually had the best discussion forums for more than ten years because it has threading and community moderation. Its not a trendy social networking site though so no one notices. If you had a social network site where you post topics but with Slashdot like forums it would rock. Only down side is moderators tend to inject bias but /. has good signal after moderation kicks in
- Ed Millard
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :)
- Melanie Reed
Does it really have to be one or the other Robert?
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
(Where you (scoble) are the big number)
- Kevin Fox
Kevin: the problem with FriendFeed is if you and Melanie were having a conversation it would be pretty small, right? But I follow you. The second I touch your conversation it gets big.
- Robert Scoble
If only someone could figure out how to make a room that gets big very quickly appeal to broadcasters...
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
This problem doesn't happen on the private Facebook because you have two-way friending there and a cap of 5,000. But on Facebook Pages? Absolutely. Noise baby noise!
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: broadcasters don't like any of this because there's no way to monetize. Why do you think Arrington really hated this?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :) What I would like is what Tad is implying in his comment. You know you can have "...two opposites that have learned how to blaze together" ;) And excuse me, but is wrong with a big conversation?
- Melanie Reed
"The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time. " If someone doesn't care about it on FF, they can hide it and not see it again. Problem solved.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Chatting is not intended to provide information. It is like planning -- it is the process of chatting that is what is useful not the words that are spoken/written.
- Brian Sullivan
Thank you, Tina! and Brian!
- Melanie Reed
Melanie: I love big conversations. That's why I loved FriendFeed. But most people aren't like me.
- Robert Scoble
Tina: there are so many things going by on my screen in FriendFeed that hiding them all would take all day long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert -- why is it that you think that people are like you and things should be done for your needs?
- Brian Sullivan
FF is too busy!!
- Joe Silence is not dead
Brian: again, it's not about me.
- Robert Scoble
Robert one word: APML. I used to yell it back in 2008, no one cared. You want "filters" by personal interest.
- directeur
FreiendFeed sold ME on it two years ago. I've been trying to sell others on it. The feedback I'm giving is from OTHERS.
- Robert Scoble
The Forum Problem is a problem?
- teh Dork Knight
directeur: APML will never work.
- Robert Scoble
oh dear, don't hate the messenger.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Robert: who are these "others" and what are their numbers?
- Melanie Reed
Paul nailed it - Twitter is a broadcast channel. Massive amounts of subscriptions are fine there - it's all about reach. But if you want discovery, if you want to engage, then FriendFeed and FoaF is where it's all. They're NOT the same. One you can subscribe/follow as many as you want, in the other, subscription abuse will cripple your ability to view and interact.
- AJ Kohn
Finally, a thread on this subject that makes sense.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Threading may or may not help... it seemed to hurt with GoogleWave... it was so hard to follow all the tangents... of course without threading a lot of the tangents just get lost anyway. I guess I have given up on trying to catch everything... If it's important and I didn't see it the first time, eventually the concept will bubble up enough times for me to notice. That's one NICE thing about following lots of people and participating in lots of convos.
- Her Lindsay-ness
why won't APML, or something like it, work? i missed that memo
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Robert, go say this to Last.fm or the BBC :-) Smart recommendation engines are the future
- directeur
FriendFeed may make some audience/discussion leak out, but also makes audience leak in through seeing what your friends are talking about. Arrington may be mostly concerned about the leak out. Other broadcasters may be looking for the leak in.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Marshall, me neither! :)
- directeur
Also, the meta around the content in FF (likes, comments) is what helps turns random data into information. It's annotated and qualified.
- AJ Kohn
Lindsay: true
- Hayes Haugen
Thank you, AJ, yes. And you can sort that out when you want to on your own time. That's the utility of it.
- Melanie Reed
Perhaps one solution to the 'forum problem' is to allow posters to selectively choose who can participate in the discussion but still be viewable to the public.
- Rodfather
So maybe the real question is, why do some people prefer conversation over broadcasting and vice versa? Is the broadcast-mentality simply a matter of popularity (the inability to reciprocate all the connections, so just broadcast instead) or is the effort it takes to connect with people on a more meaningful basis a major turn-off? Or is it just the tools that people use and what makes it easier for them?
- Her Lindsay-ness
Rodfather, this will bring wars. Trust me. I'm not a commercial object. So you want to SHOUT and ask me to close my mouth? :) Moreover, close comments, other threads will be started and the noise you wanted to avoid will be even greater. The Streisand Effect, anyone? :)
- directeur
For example: this discussion has 80+ comments and rolling. I don't mind that at all. I am engaged. I am also updating a web page on our web site as I do it and switching over to grade 30 some PRF's for students on the play Macbeth. I am not having any trouble with the "forum problem" or any "chattiness" I learned the "ropes" of FF when I joined and accepted that it as it was.
- Melanie Reed
To me FF turns data (the river of content out there) into information (the good stuff - explained). The tool set FF provides is superior in this way - but it takes time to dial in the right set of filters to apply to the data set (which changes!) and many simply overwhelm the great filtering system they've provided.
- AJ Kohn
A lot of people don't want to put in the time and effort to make the tool work for them like you, AJ and Melanie. I can empathize with that. I think it also has to serve their base inclination of either broadcasting or conversation, and the tool choice is also influenced by whether they already are part of a community on it or not. Most people won't leave their community even if it us using the less appropriate tool for their inclination.
- Her Lindsay-ness
directeur, then those people can make their own thread and allow everyone to comment. I'm thinking of in case there's a roundtable event where certain 'experts' in a field can have a thread to discuss a topic among themselves without worrying about others cluttering the thread.
- Rodfather
AJ, indeed - the task is to build new concepts with and for filters. Filters, not to shut stuff out, but to mix it better to create a constant flow of narratives.
- David Bausola
AJ, is it more that FF provides the platform for the users to turn that data into information? The users are integral to FF. Now with Twitter you can program a week's worth of tweets (I have heard) but I don't wish to do that. Facebook... you could almost do that-although it does have engagement -you could certainly use it without. But FF runs on an engagement engine
- Melanie Reed
Marshall: I don't trust automatic systems to guess what I'm going to be interested in next. Never seen a system yet that works. But we should debate this.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, we should debate it! The robot that makes all my decisions for me says it's quite likely I would enjoy doing that! ;)
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
That's getting into intelligent agents and AI once full blown
- Melanie Reed
if you ask me, and you don't, the problem has always been lack of comment moderation and threading. Too many users isn't a problem if no one sees them. Slashdot was one of the first doing this, using an interface which is actually very similar to FF and it seems to work there.
- Vincent van Wylick
Web tech needs to look outside their dev environments for richer influences in filter design: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- David Bausola
Is the problem that Robert is looking for a single service solution. I see the same 'content' on Twitter and FriendFeed but I scan Twitter for 'raw information' and go to FriendFeed to 'discuss' it with others. I watch the news at home on TV but I talk about it with my friends or work colleagues around the water cooler or coffee shop table. I am comfortable existing in several spaces
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
@Lindsay: I don't know. I'd rather educate people on the power that FF can provide with a little effort. Or, that it actually doesn't take LOTS of subscriptions. Max it at Dunbar's number (which is what I do for my home feed) and you'd be fine.
- AJ Kohn
+++ Johnny Scotty would be proud of you: The right tool for the job
- Melanie Reed
@David: Exactly! My home feed - I tweak it. I use people like Robert and Rob Diana and Michael Fruchter and Anthony Citrano and Thomas Hawk and numerous others to bring a mix of themes and concepts into my feed.
- AJ Kohn
So are we saying that its not the tool itself...but HOW it is or is not used that maxes utility? If so I agree!
- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: Yes, the users are the key. The users are the filters. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/soylent... And the engagement provides a rich annotation and a secondary level of filtering. So yes, users and their engagement absolutely matter.
- AJ Kohn
Sure, yes, how you use it maxes utility. But it also helps if it's suited to how you WANT to use it... if not it's a struggle. And people don't like to struggle, even if it's possible to make something do what you want it to... easier to use another tool if it fits your purpose better. FriendFeed fits my purpose so it's not a struggle for me... but for someone with a more broadcasting mindset than a conversational one, it's going to be tougher.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Vincent, most long-time FriendFeeders have spoken strongly against any sort of moderation/rating system for comments. No one wants mobs of people trying to control what other people can see like what happens on Digg. It's why every time the topic of 'Unlike' comes up, people rise up to talk it down because it creates an aura of competition and negativity.
- Akiva Moskovitz
AJ, yes! users are the filters.
- Melanie Reed
Akiva +++
- Melanie Reed
Anybody use Mailchimp here? It is tangential to the discussion. They have a cracker jack built in user educational system that monitors and makes usage suggestions.
- Melanie Reed
Is lunchtime finally over yet?
- Hayes Haugen
I'd love to peek in on the recommendation engine discussions. I'm in the 'they don't work camp' myself but I'm open to being convinced and perhaps technology has approached a point where it could work but ... from working in eCommerce I've seen it fail time and time again. Random factors, contextual issues etc.
- AJ Kohn
@Melanie: Know of Mailchimp but don't use. The 'monitor and makes usage suggestions' sounds interesting though.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, that's because the devs didn't pay attention when their instructors (ahem) were teaching it to them. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Another point I'd like to make is that no one is forcing anyone to read the comments here. If people want a broadcast-only medium, it's fairly easy not to click on the 'x more comments' link. Unfortunately, Robert makes a painful observation: he played FriendFeed cheerleader for two years and the people who needed to take the bait didn't or did but then cut loose. That pretty much means...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
Johnny: I am comfortable with all of these too, but it's not about me. But, anyway, the business battle now is between Facebook and Twitter and it'll be interesting to see the choices that Paul's team makes and how those compare with the team NK over at Twitter is making. Then the market will choose which one is best.
- Robert Scoble
Akiva: If I were at Facebook and knew that they could turn into the next MySpace I'd put every single engineering minute onto Facebook. Wouldn't you?
- Robert Scoble
Like I said before, there is still SO MUCH potential here... and it's a shame to see it squandered. I think there are a lot of ways it could be taken to the next level. For sure it could be a contender to Twitter with a few enhancements, but fat chance of that now that there is no longer a dev team, and that it's "parent" is a competitor.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, here's a good example: You want to debate intelligent recommendation agents? Allright, I know that you know Chris Saad. Chris is a very cool guy in fact! But do you know Deniz Oktar? Deniz, who is not as popular as Chris, is a SMART Turkish guy too and works on the same subject. If you limit your view to "popular" people, you'll definitely miss him. And debating such a subject without alternative ideas likes Deniz's or humbly mine, won't be perfect :)
- directeur
Not sure, Robert. Is turning into the next MySpace a good thing for you or a bad thing? For me, it'd be bad.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, go take a look at (and experience) mailchimp's monitor and make usage suggestion system. It's adaptable for a number of scenarios
- Melanie Reed
I think the business battle (other than the marketing to consumers end of it) will be occupied and won by Wave. Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed are mere toys in that world.
- Brian Sullivan
Melanie, I'm not complaining about a solution that MailChimp could provide. I'm fine with FriendFeed as it is (for the most part).
- Akiva Moskovitz
directeur: most people choose news brands to curate and find new people that will have something valuable to say. See http://twitter.com/Scoblei... for instance. That already is TOO MUCH so telling people to get more people or more things into their lives just isn't going to cut it for most people.
- Robert Scoble
Allowing public panels where only the influential can talk certainly would have a useful role, Its just like panels at conferences. A lot of people would no doubt like to just follow the influential in these forums. On the down side it would make the already influential more so and it would probably lose some audience if it was done a lot because there is no democratic engagement. The people who don't spend all their time cultivating their fame and networks do say interesting things too.
- Ed Millard
directeur: and, anyway. if he's in Turkey and not in San Francisco he's far less likely to influence tech in a major way. So I disagree.
- Robert Scoble
(FYI - look at this conversation and tell me where else anything like this could take place.)
- AJ Kohn
No, we're completely boring and worthless, Ed. We're not worth paying attention to. I mean, who wants to see a picture of our kids? ;)
- Her Lindsay-ness
IRC or a phpBB messageboard!
- Joe Silence is not dead
Akiva, I meant for those who might struggle "getting" FF but would enjoy and benefit from it once they do. There's an "on ramp" to FF that rivals North Corridor Dallas coming out of an apt complex on to 50mph+ 4 lane traffic. Some of us are better at that than others, but you still see a lot of cars on the road. :)
- Melanie Reed
There has also been a lack of creative uses using the FF tool sets. Good uses of the tools inspires participation + it's easy to criticize -- harder to create.
- David Bausola
@Robert: Whoa, whoa. Weren't you arguing that adding 8K new people from Twitter Lists was a good thing? Is more better, or worse?
- AJ Kohn
+++David
- Melanie Reed
@David: Good point, no real developer platform. That's been a big boon for both Facebook and Twitter.
- AJ Kohn
Robert, yet he DOES. You just aren't into that speciality :) If you think that every "tech" thing must happen in SF you really miss A LOT.
- directeur
Woah, Robert, so you are saying anyone who doesn't live in SF doesn't count in a tech discussion? That's a little self centered isn't it?
- Ed Millard
I understand it but I really dislike any discussions where the topic seems to be "how can we turn this thing that the people who use it like into something that people who don't use it and would only use it for selfish reasons like?" Screw them. If something's not as "techy" as Slashdot and it's more chaotic because the comments aren't threaded like Slashdot and there's no moderation...
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- Mark H
Lindsay, I want to see a picture of your kids. I only wish I had some to show back. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Ed: you are NOT a careful reader.
- Robert Scoble
Robert's not saying that those ideas can't happen, or that a true revelation can't come from elsewhere, but that ... the likelihood that someone outside of SF to influence tech is less. The Capital of the Internet is SF. I'd agree with that. But that doesn't mean it'll always stay that way, nor does it mean that tech from other areas can't be influential. (least that's how I read it.)
- AJ Kohn
OK I just read it, you still said if you don't live in SF there is very little chance you will have any influence on tech. If you have no influence then you either have nothing to say on the subject, or even if you do have something to say it wont matter.
- Ed Millard
Hrm, I think the whole thing is overblown. My personal FF landing page still has as much utility as my first day (if not more). Bleh, whatever.
- Chieze Okoye
@AJ The FF API is beautiful, I don't think dev communities saw the richness that you can create with the aggregation of FF streams. A few valley PR oriented bloggers pushed 'conversation' as FF's 'killer app' - whereas, the realtime aggregation streams and republishing of content is radical and unique.
- David Bausola
Well I'm pretty sure all the people in Seattle, Toronto, Paris, London, Moscow,Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangalore, Boulder, etc. probably disagree
- Ed Millard
@David: I'll take your word on the API and wouldn't doubt it given the FF team's chops. But fostering usage, that community - that's where things may have gotten shaky. Too few people leveraging it. It could still resolve back to an inability to really grasp what FF can do for them.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, I think you're on to something. Back in the day, usability (including general user and disabled) use to be a well-known topic. Universities made it a part of the curriculum. Everything before and including e-commerce got the once over. But it occurs that the latest generation (including GLS and SM) have outpaced the community standards for usability. It's really the wild west again-...
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- Melanie Reed
Akiva: I suspect the noise problem Robert's describing from others isn't that comment threads get too long. It's that items keep popping to the top as new comments show up, when they don't want to see the new comments. I don't see any way around that except a separate client. It would take too much away from the FriendFeed experience for the default interface not to work this way.
- Bruce Lewis
Mark, I didn't mean to suggest /. is the only solution to the forum problem. If you have really big forum discussions /. is time tested way to control noise and raise the signal level. On the other hand it would probably be a horrible solution for intimate and friendly discussions among friends. Someone earlier Lindsey? kind of had a good suggestion. When you make a post have a row of option buttons and let the poster set the kind of forum for that thread, broadcast, panel, open, modded, thredded, not..
- Ed Millard
Ed: I specifically said "far less likely." I didn't say there is very little chance. But, seriously, this is an argument for another thread. Lots of people think they have influence but actually don't have as much. For instance, I love to think I have influence on Facebook but I'm far less likely to influence that then Paul Buchheit is. Facts are facts.
- Robert Scoble
Chieze glad you like FriendFeed. Me too. It's awesome. But that doesn't mean much to the rest of the world.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, how often do you use "Add This"? It's germane :)
- Melanie Reed
OK we will agree to disagree on that one and drop it. I've lived in the bay off and on, I think there are pluses and minuses to being there.
- Ed Millard
Melanie: "Add This" being the "Add Photos" at top of FriendFeed? Not as much as I should.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: No this service: http://www.addthis.com/ This is fast becoming the SM share button for many websites. Ours uses it. And FF is on it. Take a look at the entire list
- Melanie Reed
FriendFeed's feature set will mean a lot to the rest of the world when it's fully integrated into Facebook in 2011.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: I don't think it'll take that long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you may be right, in which case FriendFeed is a relevant thing to look at. Maybe it isn't actually too far ahead of its time.
- Bruce Lewis
Just like Lisp can make you a better programmer in other languages, FriendFeed can make you a better thinker when writing about other social networks. Popularity isn't everything, even for a blogger.
- Bruce Lewis
You mean, it's not all about attention? :D
- Her Lindsay-ness
Who really knows why Twitter got all the traction? Does Scoble? I very much doubt it. I think there's a great effort going into finding a logical explanation for Twitter massive success and FriendFeeds more modest gains. My own best guess is that it has more to do with the madness of crowds than it does with any limitation in FriendFeed. Twitter had a decent enough foothold already by...
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- David Hall
from FreshFeed
Twitter got the traction because Twitter's easy. It requires very little effort to get into and it requires even less to participate. It's the same reason why YouTube comments are the cesspool of the Internet and MetaFilter's comments are not: anyone can sit around and watch videos all day and then trash talk them but you make people pay to comment and you'll weed out the chaff almost...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
David: I was there from early days on Twitter and studied how it grew. I know more than you might think. Remember, I was the first person to follow 1,000 people there and I was the 13,800ish user to join.
- Robert Scoble
This link is the most illuminating one on FF traction at the time of the buyout. It indicates FF was just starting to regain traction after it had stalled out for a while and it suggests if maybe FF had stuck it out a while longer things might have changed. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ed Millard
Twitter got hot in the early days because of Leo Laporte and because of SXSW and because it was goofy fun way for tech influencers to talk to their friends. It just kept growing from there. Another factor in addition to simplicity (Akiva's right there) is the API. Tons of clients and tools and services are built on top of it. FriendFeed got nearly none in comparison.
- Robert Scoble
The difference may be luck of the draw ( a la Gladwell)
- Brian Sullivan
People had to build tons of clients, tools and services for Twitter because the default web UI is so bad.
- Ed Millard
Ed: what that graph doesn't show you is what we now know. Google Wave sucked a lot of attention of geek influentials away (IE Hype) and Facebook's Connect is running away with another game. I went into FriendFeed the week they decided to sell and asked them because I knew Twitter had new features coming that would make FriendFeed less interesting. I think the FriendFeed team looked at the competition and decided to fold.
- Robert Scoble
How could I have ignored the API? It's like Firefox's plug-ins: it's the only thing that makes Twitter usable for many users. Without it, they wouldn't touch it. Heck, if it weren't for Tweetie 2, I wouldn't touch it either.
- Akiva Moskovitz
And Facebook's Connect platform is getting incorporated everywhere. I think FriendFeed was hoping to become part of the general web, like what we did over on http://building43.com and that just wasn't going to happen because Facebook's Connect platform is rocking and rolling now. In fact, I made a fundamental blunder by not going with Facebook on Building43. If I had, our traffic would have been much higher than it is now.
- Robert Scoble
You can be sure that once CNN and other assorted media outlets started plugging Twitter it was game over. Once the band wagon was rolling every "personality" was going to hop on. It is a little disturbing that Miley Cyrus has now joined the "everyone should delete their Twitter accounts" camp.
- Ed Millard
David Hall +1 Steven Berlin Johnson would be a good reference - the persistence of babble is incredible valuable in phatic communications. FF, through the web interface hides a lot of that. Instead, the babble was more bookmark centric and less about 'having a sandwich'. That's why you have, on the whole, better conversation threads on FF, and ending up having to duck out of the way of...
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- David Bausola
Disturbing REALLY????? My word, Miley is absolutely right <sarcasm/>
- Roberto Bonini
To paraphrase Louis Gray's wife, "nerds in startups are fickle". I speculate they had a lot of self doubt when they stalled out prior to that up tick, and decided to sell just about the time FF was starting to take off again. Someone waves $50 million at you during a period of self questioning that is a potent motivator, I think Zuckerberg saw that and he did nip a potential competitor in the bud.
- Ed Millard
But all the above comments is about public sharing. I use FF a lot for project planning and development - it's fast - you can discuss items with good archive search, and you can post media. I wonder how many people use FF in this way, and ignore the public babble?
- David Bausola
Having read most of this thread (and Robert, comments are VERY valueble) the"forum problem" is NP-complete. Comments are valuable becuase seeing people reason is often just as enlightening, if not more so, than the original information.
- Roberto Bonini
Ed - mind you, there's only a few ways you can get to the helm of the FB API design and product development. :) Who's to say this isn't all going according to plan?
- David Bausola
Roberto: me and you agree on that. In my research most people do not. They see these things as noise. But, if you make the comments toggle on and off we BOTH win! Plus, comments REALLY help search!
- Robert Scoble
Ed: correction, it was $50 million.
- Robert Scoble
Robert you keep talking about "your research". Is this anything more than anecdotal conversations?
- Brian Sullivan
David, Well maybe Paul and Co. are doing a trojan horse on FB but what I've read about Zuckerberg he doesn't seem likely to relinquish control of anything he cares about and I am skeptical you are going to turn FB in to FF with their entrenched user base.
- Ed Millard
@Scoble you're arguing from authority again. I think on a broadcast platform like Twitter that's an easier one to pull off. On Twitter it's a big "so what" if you've posted a load of BS because most people will simply miss any challenge to your "content." Post the same on FriendFeed and you get tackled and you get tackled in public. Reasonable enough grounds to explain your current stance and certainly as good as any reason I've heard you put forward yourself.
- David Hall
Robert, I stand corrected, and it is corrected, this editing your posts thing is one of FF's scarier features.
- Ed Millard
OPEN QUESTION: Is FF gaining or losing users? I see very little here now - but I'm told user numbers are going through the roof.
- Jim Connolly
Ed: tell me one thing. What's the biggest difference between FF and FB? There's already not as much difference as you'd might think. The one thing I miss over there? Real time search.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter got big because it's about ego. Look at me, Me, ME! Twitter flourished because people like to talk about themselves. (FF is not, which is why it hasn't gained nearly as much traction.) It was developed as an update service. It has evolved into ... something else. As for comments, they are invaluable.
- AJ Kohn
Jim: user numbers are not going through the roof here. I don't know anyone credible who has said that. The registered numbers are going up, but the active numbers are going down.
- Robert Scoble
AJ: FriendFeed is just as much about ego as Twitter is. If not more so.
- Robert Scoble
Ed, the goal is to design influentially for the web. Paul B does seem to give that ethos in his startup camp talks and general interviews. I would think FB would warm to that ideology.
- David Bausola
Very true. Robert.
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: How? Seriously, I'd like to hear your opinion.
- AJ Kohn
Robert: In other words, as people like yourself, Arrington and even those little guys like myself with a couple of thousand subscribers leave - we're being replaced by less active users. Makes sense. I used to check in on and off all day. Now, 2/3 times a week,
- Jim Connolly
Jim: not true. I don't see a lot of people joining in here and I'm watching it closely. Sorry. More people are leaving the back door than are coming in the front.
- Robert Scoble
To me the two big ones are 1) perception that it more walled garden networks and not as open though certainly it has avenues which are more open like FF 2) its home to massive quantities of apps, games, spam from people trying to get rich that hold no interest to me, though obviously many others like them. FF is probably just overlooked by that crowd, if it were bigger it would be infected with all that crap too. FF seems to mostly just be good people from my limited time here.
- Ed Millard
All User Centric Design is modeled around the ego. Good software design keeps that in mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- David Bausola
AJ: Twitter is, for many people, about business now. Not ego at all. News brands: http://twitter.com/#... no ego. Tech companies: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... No ego. But here? It's ALL about ego!
- Robert Scoble
David is right.
- Robert Scoble
On Twitter the default is to show number you follow, number of followers, number of Tweets. That's all playing on ego and popularity. Nearly everything (even lists) is geared to stimulate a innate need to acquire more of something as a way to ... validate contribution or perceived influence or authority. FF does not show this in the default mode.
- AJ Kohn
Companies and brands are the most aggressive form of ego there is, and they usually are direct reflections of the ego of the company's CEO.
- Ed Millard
Alright Robert. In order to reduce the signal to noise ratio, we can do one of two things, we can use "Likes" to filter the comment stream. If I Like more posts from Robert than i do from LG, Roberts comments appear but not LG's. We can use semantics to (somehow) sort the thread and show comments relevant to the original post. (simply dumping noise isin't a solution - not all noise is noise all the time. Likewise, increasing signal in an echo chamber is fruitless)
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: Oh, I think Twitter is a great business tool! It's a marketers paradise. But I'm not sure that's what most people believe it to be. People still think they're going to get some sort of social dialog there. I think it's why Twitter churn is so high. People get it thinking it'll be one thing and quickly find out it's another.
- AJ Kohn
+1 AJ, there are some people that use Twitter in awesome, constructive, useful, ways like Tim O'Reilly and Jay Rosen but a lot of people its pure self promotion. As for news outlets using twitter they are going to go wherever the eyeballs are, and they will go to multiple networks not just Twitter. Those are pure broadcast, no engagement, they aren't really a ringing endorsement of why Twitter is great.
- Ed Millard
I'd bet FF *would* take off (but be worse for it) if it listed how many times the content I fed got liked and commented on, and that (along with subscribers etc.) were all listed right there at the top of my home feed. And that upon signing up, I'd get suggested users based on subscriptions but also who got the most likes and comments. Yet, I don't think that's conducive to what FF really excels at.
- AJ Kohn
@Robert, biggest difference between Facebook and Friendfeed - reciprocal connections. Without a doubt. The apps, the ads, other stuff, is true, but for me the central difference, and the thing that betrays a fundamental difference of worldview between the two apps is whether or not you can follow someone's content without them having to follow you back. You can only do that on Facebook...
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- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
@Ed: I realized a long time ago that Twitter was a big Internet megaphone. And if you could get a lot of people to 'listen' to that megaphone well, that's powerful stuff. It's about Reach. Twitter gives your message reach. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't see it as ... transforming.
- AJ Kohn
Those who study the art of propaganda consider reach to be everything, because following reach is influence, and following influence is control. TV is losing its reach in the Internet era so most of those "brands" and "personalites" are rushing to find a way to regain it, enter Twitter and FB. They are better because they are bidirectional.
- Ed Millard
*Noise* :)
- ashish
@Ed: I'd be interested to see more on how reach leads to influence. It often does but ... not always. Plenty of multi-million dollar ad campaigns in the graveyard as examples. Reach + ? = influence.
- AJ Kohn
Ed I think you're right. I caught that TC piece at the time too. Seems to me that the FriendFeed guys had a bit of a crisis of confidence and grabbed lunch while it was on offer. In any case I always figured FriendFeed as a place to graduate to once you'd rammed up against Twitters limitations. And, as I'm sure you know, that doesn't take long. That's how I got here. I was actually on...
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- David Hall
You don't have influence until you have reach so its the prerequisite. Then it a matter of how effectively you craft the message and push the buttons in your target audience. Some people are good at that part, some aren't, some fail, some succeed.
- Ed Millard
Robert, I just wonder. Isn't twitter more about consuming the information and FF more about sharing and discussing? Look at http://twitter.com/Scoblei.... What can anyone add to that or comment on that? I agree it is getting a lot noisy in here (exhibit, this post). But not all posts will be this noisy I think.
- Amit
+1 Jandy, she answered Robert's challenge to me better than I did.
- Ed Millard
@Ed: I'm not sure. New memes start with someone small sometimes. Say ... keyboard cat ... and someone who has reach communicates that message and it goes big. So who has the influence? The creator of keyboard cat or the person to has the reach to make it go big? I find it very interesting.
- AJ Kohn
Jandy: +100. You just nailed for me why I like Twitter and FriendFeed better than Facebook. Agreed.
- Robert Scoble
Robertt, maybe this post and the scads of comments prove your point, but maybe your point is limited to your own experience due to your unique position in tech. You speak, noise follows. But that does not make Friendfeed irrelevant or useless for the average or even just left or right of average user. You have a unique experience that is going to color any forum you put your time into....
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- Martha
+++Jandy
- Melanie Reed
Well put, Jandy.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I think the forum problem is not as big in smaller more intimate groups. Recently I've been very active in the DMU group here that includes a lot of folks who've migrated here from Flickr. The relevancy is much more higher in these venues than in the main feed because it's a smaller controlled experience. I do wish though that groups were more full featured like the rest of FF though....
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- Thomas Hawk
oh of course and photo voting pools for groups would by awesome too. ;)
- Thomas Hawk
Lists are not enough. Twitter, FF and other social networks need tagging by default, then filter on list + tag. That's the element that would kill the noise and turn them into interest networks.
- howard shippin
from BuddyFeed
Martha: you might have a point if we were just talking about me. But we're not. So, try again. Again, I've talked with thousands of people about these things. They tell me they don't like the noise that public forums bring. I've been doing this for 25 years and this isn't the first time I've heard this pushback. Facebook, by the way, on its iPhone app, handles it perfectly: it hides all...
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- Robert Scoble
You all keep referring to this as either chat or comments when actually its a discussion. I think that the ability to discuss anything on Friend Feed or anywhere else for that matter IS where you learn the most. I'm not techy like most of you, I'm just an ordinary 'average' user, but I see twitter more as a 'newsreel' of info, shallow but instant, whereas Friend Feed is more a 'thrashing out of ideas and opnions, and is therefore all the richer for it.
- Sandra Large
Sandra: chat/discussion/forum/comments are all pretty much the same thing. Yes, the two are different. There CAN be lots of learning here, it's just that this is a lot noiser than other online things in some ways.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, about noise: when you or other tech influencers introduce FriendFeed, you show the things you're excited about, which tend to be big and noisy, right? And if you're the first person someone follows on FF, they're going to get a noisy first impression. The slower growth that doesn't come through tech influencers may have less of a back door.
- Bruce Lewis
And about the 25+-year-old forum problem: Moderated Usenet was great until moderators slacked off. Decentralized moderation fixes that, at least for small discussions. Larger discussions can lead to whack-a-mole (though I notice this one hasn't), but with one of the suggestions I made earlier in this conversation the number of whackers could scale with the number of moles.
- Bruce Lewis
Moderation = censorship. Censorship sucks. Give the users control to hide and block. The less censorship the better.
- Thomas Hawk
@Paul - what about a view to only see the user's posts/content ie no comments of others and no likes => then it becomes twitter like
- Kishore Balakrishnan
Come on, it's hardly messier than Facebook, since the default view only includes the first and last comment. Basically the gist I'm getting is that people who think they're important don't want to listen to people who they don't think are important. Such is the human race, I suppose.
- Victor Ganata
+++Victor hammer meets nail.
- David Hall
Robert said "FB iPhone app ... hides all comments with an arrow that you can then use to expand the comments. That is so much better than this mess here that it isn't funny". Robert, I must be missing your point because FF also hides most comments until you expand them because you want to read them... Don't want to read FF comments, don't expand them, problem solved. Or are you saying FF is a "mess" because it shows first and last comment?
- Ed Millard
235 comments! I really don't want to expand *that* on FF! Is this a pain-point for anyone else?
- Space Cowboy
Not for me. If I'm interested enough in the topic or dialog I'll click the time stamp and open the post page to read everything. The text amount is comparable to a medium length blog post: if I have the time to read that I have the time to read this if it interests me.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
A typical blog post? Dragging & copying the comments only (which took about a min. of scrolling) produced 9200 words and 23 pages of text. Blog posts also tend to have a more easily read narrative.
- Vincent van Wylick
The problem is for big conversations like this one you need threading and maybe moderation, but for more normal conversations that are smaller flat is better. Allowing a switch between the two adds complexity. For big conversations FF lacks the button to reply to a specific poster so the viewer can thread, at least as an option. Much of the noise level in this conversation is due to people having to manually try to fake threading.
- Ed Millard
The threading vs. flat conversation is interesting to me - we've tried multiple times to put Disqus or Intense Debate on a film blog I write for, and every time we meet huge resistance to threading ESPECIALLY on long threads. People say they have a lot of difficulty finding the new comments when they aren't all at the top or bottom.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Why can't there be a summary fly-out with timestamps based on response rate to single comments and a "last comment made" link as well as "thread count" links and lastly, "participants in this thread" link? Collapse everything else except the initial post. The initial interface looking like this one, should always be available for those who want to "sort through". You want the...
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- Melanie Reed
Jandy, you kind of have to let the user flip between threading and flat to solve the chronology problem. Slashdot has a popup menu at the top that lets you view in "Threaded, Nested, Flat, No Comments". The down side is the UI gets progressively more complex both to implement and use unless you are going to force everyone to lowest common denominator UI.
- Ed Millard
But Ed, that's what I have against the traditional "threaded" approach: all the fork like structure. It does get complicated real fast. What's needed is somewhere a "summary" for those jumping in late to "catch up" but also the "single comment" link to democratize the discussion. Threads have all the indentation problems of trying to follow that way IF I am picturing what you mean by thread.
- Melanie Reed
+1 Ed
- Bicentennial (Franc)
My other observation is this: everyone creates a "story" about the ideas and information they are taking in and immediately starts associating connections in their mind creating a mental picture whether they realize it or not when they are perceiving that information. Our user interfaces don't yet lend themselves to that especially where it come to dialogue and forums. We've accepted a...
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- Melanie Reed
Here's why you don't need indented/tangential threading: FF discussions tend to be small enough to fit in the "RAM" in one's mind. It curtails many threads that might ramble; the exception (like Paul's thread here) comes when the power of the topic/zeitgeist and vibe of a live chat going strong overrides that usual point of decay. Predictablly, one or several commenters here will start a new thread or escalate it to a blog post and summarize their thoughts based on what transpired on this stream.
- Micah Wittman
Melanie, have you used Slashdot, they did forums earlier and better than anyone. The forum starts out flat, and then starts threading. Random community moderators start modding up the insightful posts, and burying the trolls, crap, etc. Once the moderation kicks in the "summary" is all the posts that were modded up to 5 which are shown expanded. All the lower moderated stuff is there but you have to clck to see. Slashdot would suck like YouTube comments if they hadn't solved the forum problem.
- Ed Millard
It's organic, not hierarchical. As other have stated, there is as much to learn from watching the process unfold as there is to gain from end result.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, no, I haven't used Slashdot but I'm willing to give it a try. I'm pretty adaptable. But when I see a problem and it becomes "the picture" for me, in this case a circle then I know its time for the leap out of the present "prison of one idea". ;)
- Melanie Reed
Micah, its true threads are bad for small friendly forums. Some of this discussion is about what happens when the forums on "celebrity" social expert's threads get so big they overflow readers brains and they turn in to *noise*. One noise problem is organization, the other is some post and some posters are better than others in the mind of the celeb and the reader.
- Ed Millard
Slashdot dealt with most of the forum problems ten years ago, they had to to survive the trolls. The problem is their UI needs to be complex to be flexible and keep everyone happy. Their audience is also mostly geek power user. When you get to social networks the other UI school is demanding the UI be dirt simple so the unwashed masses can cope, but dirt simple mean its inflexible and it ticks off nearly everyone, especially power users. Hard problem to solve... making everyone happy.
- Ed Millard
Ed, conferences have break-out groups. The same idea should be employed.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, yes, you offered a little explication for others of what happens when you lost the ability to categorize your"story" into a mental picture that is associated with previous "stories" you have stored in the brain. That end result is "noise". Some of us are better at doing that than others, that's true. But there come a point of over flow for all of us. What our UI needs to do is to amplify and assist in that "story" constructing process.
- Melanie Reed
Break out groups is a nice idea, but it seems a bit cumbersome. You need to make a new post, post a link here and get some critical mass from the first forum to move. If you do it five times you would splinter the first forum and lose critical mass, especially in a "real-time" forum where people will only watch one forum at a time. Chances are most people will cling to the first forum if its interesting.
- Ed Millard
Ed and Micah, what I hear both of you saying, and Robert as well, is that at some point in the "story" constructing process, the dialog from the forum needs to end in the narrative of a blog. Up till now, the blog component has been a random, unattached part of the discussion. AM I hearing that you think that in some way it should become part of the UI? So that the discussion gets...
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- Melanie Reed
Not sure I follow, blog is kind of a one voice, one direction thing, only way a forum morphs to blog is when once person splits off the forum to make a more in depth point and posts the blog link to the forum. I'm mostly just talking about the various methods for restoring order in a big forum, and improving signal to noise ratio. Most entail putting more options and more UI in and around the forum and making the UI more complex which many think is bad on a social network.
- Ed Millard
Ed, as I was writing this, it occurs to me that what I'm suggesting is what I may have just figured out (finally) that Google Wave is trying to get us to do. But if so, I beleive FF could actually do it better. the "noise" problem that was created by the various forms of SM, inside and outside of the platforms, was the inability to "connect the dots". We didn't have a framework for how...
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- Melanie Reed
One of the problems that we haven't solved is the usefulness of digression and random access of connective tissue in the "story" process. That's the wild card that often comes up as "noise"
- Melanie Reed
I can't speak for Robert. Some of his issue "seems" to be he only wants to see the Silicon Valley/SF movers and shakers in his feed talking about tech and social networks, and he doesn't much want anyone but that same group to be posting on forums under his auspices. Friend Feeds openness is bad for that. The same is true for all the Twitter celeberati. They don't want peons anywhere near their online presence to tarnish it.
- Ed Millard
Only way I can see to maintain FF openness for those who want it, and celeb broadcast only mode for the celebs who demand it, in one social network is you have to have an option when you make a post on your feed to control the forum methodology (i.e. broadcast only peons can only look on, panel mode where only my social elite are allowed to speak & peons can watch, private where only my circle can speak and see (FB mode), or completely OPEN(FF mode).
- Ed Millard
There also seems to be an issue where someone you follow, through the "like" process, can inject pictures of kittens, babies and man titteh in to your feed. Of course that is kind of the original point of social networks, seeing what your network sees. I think some just want hard core tech news and talk and twitter lists probably do allow an uber though somewhat lifeless feed like that.
- Ed Millard
Ed, well, that is the territory of the heart when it comes into contact with the machine. And oddly (or maybe not so oddly) there is a post on my feed that addresses that theme: http://friendfeed.com/faithx5... ;) Digression and Random access at work. lol And I find that refreshing. I'm always excited about how some new idea may be generated because I allowed what...
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- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: I fully believe in non-linear learning. The ability to take input from diverse thematic content and synthesize something ... to apply something from one world to the other. That's where I think we're heading. I think of it a little bit like a digital version of Burroughs' Cut Up technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- AJ Kohn
I can't believe I read the whole thing
- Michael Slattery
Such a simple and obvious solution: provide an optional *LIST* view for Friendfeed items. Open the comments only on items that look really interesting. Am I missing something obvious? Then Friendfeed could easily emulate Twitter on all essentials (and surpass it in many other areas).
- Sean McBride
Sean, I think the obvious thing you are missing is there are no FF developers any more so FF probably isn't getting anything it doesn't already have. And there are camps here that don't really like the alternatives that FB and Twitter offer which is why this is such a hot button issue. I wish there was one social network that had lists, open forums, walled gardens, and broadcast mode based on the wishes of the person running a feed so everyone could be happy in one network.
- Ed Millard
I got tired of trying to take a decent, respectable, trustworthy, don't-look-stupid profile pic for my employment sites. So I took a MySpace-y photo to say hi to FriendFeed instead. Hi!
phil baumann, Charlie Anzman, Richard ¿digame? Walker and 150 other people liked this
OH HAI
- tinypants - Hagitha of FF
Things I note in this picture: the "MySpace angle" makes my eyes look baggy. And it's time for a haircut, though perhaps I'll cheap out and just have someone gimme some bangs.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
What's wrong with your Friendfeed picture? The seriousness gives a touch of personality.
- Jordi Soler
you have a very sexy and intense look to you. Your eyes are way intense-in a very good way....
- Morgan Haley
I'm not trying to replace my FF profile pic, Jordi. I'm trying to get a decent new pic for my 'official' profiles used in my job search. Right now they have the default goofy face (which is better than most of the shots I took, trust me!).
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
And Morgan, that's my "I DARE YOU to ask me to sell insurance!!!" look. Well, almost: I'm missing the snarl.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Hi there, how YOU doin'?
- jcunwired
hi!!
- Eric @ CS Techcast
For official profiles try one with glasses on (fake glasses if you don't use 'em). The sexy-dirty-secretary look is a winner!
- Jordi Soler
LOL! Jordi, that was the problem with the pics I took: I had my glasses on and either kept getting reflections in the lenses or inadvertantly crossing that dirty secretary look. Not what I wanted!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
i wouldn't dare try to sell you insurance....no way....but a rice cooker? Hmmm, maybe I'll try...
- Morgan Haley
Hi, Tina. :)
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
The proper profile pic is important! The pic on my LinkedIn page is NOTHING like any of my other profile pics. I think you did a great job.
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Puuuuurdy!
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
I'm still without the proper profile pic, Tutivillus. This was me giving up and taking a shot for FF since the profile shots all made me look like a doofus. I are not a doofus! Wait...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
*swoon*
- Derrick
Derrick, you just love me for my kitchen magic. And I am AOK with that!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
...cool, a Tina sighting! ;-)
- .LAG liked that
holy crap. so so so pretty.
- Bren, Photophobe
this is way too awesome to be myspace-y.
- Jim Hearts FF
Tina, if you can get your hands on a polarized filter for you camera, that'll solve your reflection problem with your glasses.
- Jason Huebel
I'd say that's like 4 on the richter scale of MySpacey photos :)
- anna sauce
I know, Jason, but the polarizing filter I have isn't for the camera I have. If I had a job I'd buy a new one, but then I wouldn't need the filter to take the picture if I had a job. Catch 22s suck...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
no,no,no...no hair cut! :)
- ovigia
nice
- ffcode
I still don't have a pic on LinkedIn. Tina, I'm no photographer, but I bet if you had a little fill light you could de-emphasize the bags under the eyes. (I notice this with myself, because I am incredibly vain. And have giant bags under my eyes, even if I have enough sleep, etc etc)
- Andrew C
I'd say raise up your chin a tad, sit up straight, and place the camera on a pile of books with a liht source- lamp, etc. eye level and off to the side. It would lessen the bags and make it a little less MySpacey, also think of something funny and don't worry about averting your eyes. This is really done best by someone else- it's *so hard* to take a good self-portrait.
- anna sauce
OT, but how come FB doesn't have a portrait "style" like Myspace does?
- Andrew C
Andrew- it does, it's called "me and my kids" or "just my kids" or "me in foriegn country" or "me with a girl/boy cut out because we broke up" lol
- anna sauce
The picture I use practically everywhere is from my brother's wedding reception. I cropped out the Black and Tan beer I was drinking. That wouldn't be very professional. ;-)
- Jason Huebel
Wow, that's uncanny. You and I share no friends on FB AFAIK and yet you just described most of them.
- Andrew C
Just to clarify: this isn't one of my profile photo attempts. This is a cell pic taken with no light other than what's coming in a dirty window. Sad part is I wound up looking way less douchey in this than in my the actual attempts =P I think the profile photo will be tomorrow morning's challenge: take advantage of the morning light since I won't have to be at a farce of a job interview.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
H3LL0!
- AJ Batac
This needs to be in my feed every day. Is there a script for that? :)
- Josh Haley
TECHTECHTECHTECHSOCIALMEDIATECH. Sorry, had to make this relevent since it looks like it's gonna wind up in best of day...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
*stammer*
- Joe Silence is not dead
I like this one better than your current profile pic. :)
- Louis Gray
rawr
- Tendonitis' Bitch
i like this photo!
- Joe Silence is not dead
Louis, that one is pretty tough to beat, but this one definitely makes it a tough choice.
- Josh Haley
That is an excellent picture I think. very "au natural"
- Rasmus Lauridsen
bella gnocca
- khenzo
dopo il tema-Tarantino, mi ritrovo completamente d'accordo con khenzo :-)
- Mobys
@khenzo ...dici che "bella gnocca" lo capisce? :)
- ӊooқ
ma si hook, certe parole fanno parte del linguaggio universale :-)
- Mobys
ma non fate i soliti! :D
- claire
la gnocca è gnocca ovunque
- khenzo
e allora sarà abituata :)
- khenzo
ma non si era detto che le tue amiche sono anche le nostre amiche (specie quelle con questi occhi) ??? :-)))
- Mobys
nessuna è perfetta
- khenzo
le migliori se le prendono tutte e subito ! ma prima o poi arrivano alla scadenza del contratto e si fa valere il diritto di opzione.
- Mobys
Keep!
- Micah Wittman
O HAI!
- Steven Perez
*whispers* That looks pretty sexy - OH HAI TINA!!
- Helen Sventitsky
OH HAI HELEN! techtechtechnotnoisetech. See, still keeping it relevent!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
lovely. i really like the intensity of your gaze.
- T. Brent, technopeasant
*maxiswoon*
- Mo Kargas
srsly. this should be re-posted to the 'beautiful women' group. :)
- T. Brent, technopeasant
So what were you coding at the time you took this pic? In BASIC, you say? How very relevant!
- WorldofHiglet
In fact, I was attempting to hone my photography skills, as a portion of my research on the state of the unemployed in today's economy. Very deep stuff...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
I look forward to your white paper in due course.
- WorldofHiglet
Love it! Now I'll go back and see what everyone else said.
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
nice
- Cagdas Seichter
Really like the pic! You look sophisticated, intelligent, and very attractive.
- Bonnie Foster
from iPod
Very Pretty Picture !!
- Floyd Burnett
Those eyes enough to show the qualifications that you've talk. (decent, respectable, trusthworthy xP )
- Mert K.
Friendfeed - beautiful, wonderful, neat looking site,
- Petr Buben
you are hired.
- فی دل
love the thought behind it-I know what you mean, Said the woman wiht the hotpink background avatar.
- Kirsten Mitchell
I wonder who the hot pink gal is
- فی دل
You so pretty, Tina.
- nakachi
This is a woman NOT to be trifled with. *quickly hides all evidence of trifling...ness*
- MASTER OF THE OBVIOUS
eccola, la strafiga
- khenzo
è la sorella di Boxxyyy?
- gondolanera
Random Passerby in the Cube Farm: WHO'S THAT; Me: That's my friend Tina, now go away; RPITCB (drooling): SHE'S PURRRRTY; Me: GO AWAY
- MASTER OF THE OBVIOUS
We all know you rock Tina .... Can't understand why you haven't be 'scooped up' yet ..... Keep pluggin' !
- Charlie Anzman
la isla bonita
- فی دل
or lolita shall i say?
- فی دل
Barry, that's freakin' hilarious! Tell them that if they stare too long I'll eat their soul or something equally weird and see what they do!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
These losers would chance it.
- MASTER OF THE OBVIOUS
indeed!
- Joe Silence is not dead
hi Tina ;) good luck on that job application!
- Bicentennial (Franc)
Hello blue-eyed cutie! :) Hope you are doing well today!
- JA Castillo
Hi Tina! Best of luck with your job hunt!
- Louis Simoneau
Great pic!
- Harold Cabezas
very neat, intelligent glamor look site! ... too bad it's married - to Faith Bough. ..why can't ff have profiles just as mySpace, or ..similar big social sites ? has the development stopped again? ,
- Petr Buben
Wow, I just saw this today, sorry I'm late. I think it's a great pic for employment profiles. You've got an utterly beautiful face, Tina, and you certainly don't look like a douche in this pic. Good luck with everything!
- phil baumann
Hi Tina, don't know ya, but this is an ABSOFREAKINLUTELY great pic...those eyes, WOW!
- Samuel Ancira Jr
I was going to setup a mock studio in my front room this morning and get serious about the profile photo: tripod, diffuse light, backdrop, the whole shebang. I didn't forsee a very major issue, though: I am feeling lazy and don't wanna do it. Hrm....
Rob Diana, pea ♥ fierce as a woozle, Carmen and Christopher Harley liked this
What if I requested a Carmen-esque bouncing off the wall shot?
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
But but but... I'd have to brush my hair and put on normal people clothes and put on a face. Laziness doesn't make these sound fun at all =/
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
My wife's comment on ScobleGate_1109: "nerds are so fickle". :)
Martha, Michele Lorito-Chase, Kol Tregaskes and 37 other people liked this
ScobleGate... I like it.
- Jan Ole Peek
What were these types of events labeled before Watergate?
- Brian Sullivan
Nerdemberg
- Joe Silence is not dead
Brian: "scandals"?
- Stephen Mack
Joe, that was funny...
- Ed Millard
+1 Joe
- Eric Logan
Mrs Gray coined a phase. Long live ScobleGate.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
*curtsies*
- Joe Silence is not dead
wonderful. :)
- Jenna Bilotta
The Gray family is showing us how it's done, folks. Excellent.
- Micah Wittman
Since we're nerds, though, wouldn't it be more like ScobleGate.11.09.a or something like that?
- Curtiss Grymala
ROFL
- Alex Scoble
I AM NOT A CROOK!
- Alex Scoble
It's your fault we're in this mess, Alex. :)
- Curtiss Grymala
fickle early adopters - nooooo :-p
- mike "glemak" dunn
I think its more the fault of Alex's parents.....
- Ed Millard
My parents have little to do with how Robert turned out. :)
- Alex Scoble
Snort! (Not true, though. Only "let us be first or die" social networking nerds are fickle. Plain old tech nerds? Not so much.)
- Kathy Fitch
Louis...I'm trying to tie this into the world series...lol...it just doesn't work...lmao
- Bill Heslin
Yeah Alex, control your brother, man! :P
- Jan Ole Peek
now whats scoblegate?
- ffcode
Double love on that commentary!
- Martha
Congratulations to @drew for kicking cancer to the curb! See his blog post: "That's not what I ordered..." http://www.drewolanoff.com/post...
Carmen, ffcode, Alfredo and 35 other people liked this
rock on @drew
- Thomas Power
grats, @drew
- brainno722 (Peter)
That's awesome!
- Shevonne
So glad to hear it! I hope the others I know battling cancer right now can get some much needed reinforcement from this news...
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Awesome!
- David Cook
That's not what I ordered... - http://www.drewolanoff.com/post...
Andrew Terry, pea ♥ fierce as a woozle, Rob Diana and 4 other people liked this
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