A SEO challenge? Erm.. - Czar Derek Peterman

Ok guys let's do it! Aaron Brazell says SEO is DEAD! Let's show him how it really works, and who owns Google! Everyone LinkLove and Google Juice! Please no Rubbers, we do it Raw! http://www.igorthetroll.com/bl... - Igor The Troll

i'm really trying to see the value in video comments. if you look at mike arrington's post about voice mail, and the length of time it takes to listen to something vs. the time it takes to read something, i really think video comments fall into the same category. thoughts? - rob zand

I think it all depends on what is the statement that you are making! Some thoughts transcriber better visual via symbolism whole others are done better via written semantics! There is also the question and style of your Lexicon! Some people can say WTF in a context and make it work, others need to scream in into a microphone. - Igor The Troll

Aaron references to this "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." After watching his video do you not think he is a Hypocrite? http://friendfeed.com/e/e715b2... - Igor The Troll

Aaron, you want me to live you alone? Apologize to me for outing me out in yout thread that you told all your followers that you blocked me on Twitter and Friend Feed, even though I only sent you 3 tweets and posted 4 times on your FF page. I never said one bad word to you, but you outed me out to Flame me and to marginalize me! You keep calling me a Troll and saying how better you are than me! My name is Igor not Troll and you may be better at one thing, but I maybe better at something else. - Igor The Troll

Mike - agree that Facebook has more... but FriendFeed doesn't need that stuff. Photos, discussions, blogs, events, etc all are "in" FriendFeed in the sense that you can see them and then go interact with the direct source (Upcoming, Flickr, etc). I prefer the distributed model myself, since the individual apps are of higher quality. - Patrick Lightbody

And...FriendFeed doesn't need those things because FriendFeed shouldn't be trying to *be Facebook*! :) - Mike Keliher via twhirl

Facebook without the embarassing pics. Well, unless you have them in Flickr... - Mark Dykeman

Good question Steve - it's emerging as my favorite social network. And I like geeks...hmmm. - Hutch Carpenter

I'd say info-junkies or convo-junkies over geek - Marco

I'd have to agree with Marco - JohnBfromMemphis via twhirl

still having difficulties moving people over to ff but once they do... they stay. info over visual- startling to some. - Nice Fish Films

Facebook is not an information mediium, Friendfeed is, so comparing the two doesn't make any sense - Deepak

I'm surprised that when people talk about FF, they don't mention Digg should be afraid. Right now FF provides more relevant links & info than Digg does and the comments are much better too. I would much rather spend my time here than Facebook or Digg. - Otto R. Radke

@Deepak - I guess it depends on how you are defining "information" - I think you could argue that both Facebook and FriendFeed are information mediums but Facebook is a parking lot to FriendFeed's freeway (or Nascar track I suppose, depending on your perspective on noise) - Marco

Two are for the most part different vehicles, just like FF and Twitter - Charlie Anzman

I would call FriendFeed IRC for Web 2.0 - J. Phil via fftogo

Nah, its kind of like Google Reader on Steroids with Twitter for comments???? - Roberto Bonini

Marco, if the information is people's birthday's yes Facebook is information, but I only use it to communicate (almost entirely with people I know), never to find new or interesting material. Friendfeed on the other hand is all about information. - Deepak

Great insight, Steve. I've been thinking for some time that FriendFeed is the stripped-down-for-performance version of Facebook. The Facebook news feed is, for me, its most appealing feature, and FriendFeed is a turbocharged news feed. However, I like facebook too -- it puts me in touch with a different group of people than Friendfeed does. - Mitch Wagner

Oooh! Yes it is!! The valley of links, the river of comments, the gathering services, etc makes FF Our blended Facebook... - George The Writer

we always want it to be black and white but it almost never is. Deepak, you're engaged enough here to communicate with people you don't know (as am I) so it can't be 100% about the information. I agree with both you and Marco because I think you both can be right in this case. - Robert Seidman

geeks are better. - edythe

Tough for me to say. I could never stand Facebook. - Chris Baskind

That'll be more or less true until (if & when) it get's broader based adoption at which point all the geeks will bitch about it being too mainstream ... of course that assumes they haven't already jumped ship to some other service. - Clay Newton

geeks, nurds they can feel home with friendfeed, facebook is for the masses - Dobromir Hadzhiev

I am disappointed I have never been poked on FF. - Russellreno

@ amaud - lets keep it that way - Anthony

If we can't separate ourselves from the proles with technology then what is the point? - Andy Wibbels

Robert, of course. Primary use would be a better choice of words. Of course, that's how I use it. I still can't see how anyone would use Facebook as a primary information resource - Deepak

FB is good for entertainement. FF not. We're not poked on FF. I think they are very different. On FB you see what people write on their superwall, on FF you see what people doing on the web. And what they doing for us is much interesting than what they want to show of us. - Hubert Guillaud via Alert Thingy

Facebook is heading in the direction of FriendFeed, slowly but surely. In combining the Wall and Mini-Feed with the tabbed profile update it will be a definite clone. Increase the number of stories/comments from ten and also the amount of imports and what have you got... - Joe Dawson

That presumes that FF content is all geek related, I'm finding that it's not, but I'm also following 1000+ people from a diverse range of backgrounds - Duncan Riley

FF is for geeks who sit all day with browser tabs open - the TechCrunch 53651 - Sean Kelly

It's a must for me. I spend too much time in meetings not to have it since I'm an IT Consultant/Systems Integrator. For some people, I suppose it's not really useful anymore though. - Jason Huebel

only use it as an answering machine now... email has crushed it as a medium for group informing IMO - Tim Elliott via twhirl

I use YouMail, which sends me an email, sms and transcribes it. Yes, I use it. - Vince DeGeorge

YouMail++. - Hao Chen

Anymore? I have successfully avoided using it for many years. I never liked it to begin with. - Tom Harrison

Almost 100% email - why leave a voicemail when most people are instantly connected to email throughout the day. - Wayne Schulz

Voice mail is essential, because the most useful feature of a cell phone is the OFF button. - Dewald Pretorius

I find it most useful when I'm out and about in an area of poor coverage - Robin Barooah via MojiPage Bot

I have a friend who has forwarded his phone to his wife and lets her be his voicemail. He has done this more than once for weeks at a time, and loves it very much. - Tim Wright

@Dewald I couldn't agree more with you. Cellphones are electronic leeches. Voicemail allows us to disconnect ourselves from them when necessary. - Jason Huebel

I use it on my mobile phone. We don't have landlines at the office anymore. I also have it on my home landline, but that's hardly ever used now. People know the best way to get me is via mobile - voice or text, or even twitter DM, which goes to sms anyway. IM is another good way to get my attention. - jjprojects

completely turned it off and I tell people not to leave me a voice mail. been like this for years. - Loic Le Meur

does YouMail have ads or anything? I have a account but not sure if I want to switch?? - Aaron Myers

Coverage is so bad in south Louisiana that I can't go without it or I'd miss too much. - Garrett Guillotte

i use spinvox, i believe you covered it - converts voicemail to text messages & email - Zee from WeDoCreative

Visual Voicemail has made it bearable again but generally I try to avoid it all together. - David Recordon

Call my phone and you will get your answer: I hate voice mail. - Robert Scoble

I hope all the voice mail naysayers aren't the same rude people taking calls in the middle of a face to face conversation, or in a restaurant or any of the other places where calls annoy everybody around? - Brian Sullivan

my voice mail tells you to send me an email. :-) - Robert Scoble

I don't usually use the word 'never', so we'll just say that I 'hardly ever' listen to vm. - Sonciary Honnoll

No one actually calls me, although I might add that I don't personally like leaving voicemail messages. I e-mail people and people e-mail me - so much easier. - Cyvros/fyc

It gets emailed to me as an mp3. If I don't have your number in my phone, or you use Skype that comes up Unknown Numer or 0000012345 - you go to VM and I'll get an mp3 a minute later. - Aaron Brazell

Love YouMail. Let's you customize message to specific caller, as well as choose from many vanity messages, also selectable by caller. I spend at least 50% of my work day in meetings or conference calls so I have to have VM. - Kevin Shannon

You people are sad ;) Don't you have family members that call you? Doctors confirming appointments? The car repair place? The kids' school? I mean really, I'd prefer to talk to my grandparents on the phone, and if I didn't have voicemail (or if they didn't), I'd miss a lot of things... - Gabe Wachob via twhirl

@Aaron, there is a small ad with the email and transcript - at least I think - it's small enough or non-intrusive enough that I couldn't say for sure. For the voicemail portion, there are no ads that I've ever "heard." I've always been 100% satisfied with it - though please stay away from the corny greetings they offer and do your own. - Vince DeGeorge

Gabe if one of those people calls I call them back. No VM needed. - Robert Scoble

@Vince Some of the vanity messages are OK. I'm partial to the one with Pam and Michael from "The Office". I was considering the one that says "Due to the recent earthquake this call can not be completed", but it might scare the cr@p out of my mother.. - Kevin Shannon

We don't have a concept of voicemail in India.. and I hope VM doesn't catch up here. - Muthu Ramadoss

Of course I use voicemail. It's becuase I don't pick up the phone. - Gerard Barberi via twhirl

Text messages. They are faster and I get them when I'm in meetings. - Travis Murdock

I do have voicemail on my phone but everyone knows I never check it. They text or e-mail me if they really need me. I think I check my voicemail when I realize that I have about 10. - Candace Holly

I use email but a few of my clients still use my Grand Central number. - kre8 via twhirl

I don't mind voicemail, most people don't bother and text me. Trick is to stay on top of it and not let them pile up, unified messaging is nice. Visual Voicemail is one iPhone feature I did appreciate, when it worked. - Andrew Feinberg

I am completely off of voicemail at work and home, but still access it on my mobile, of course - John McCrea

I use youmail for my cell phone. I would use GrandCentral more if more people called me. - Christian Burns

I stll have it on cell and office but office forwards to email. Cell vm, I forget to check so most people don't bother. - Karen Swim via Alert Thingy

I use CallWave, works great. - Alex Sauceda via fftogo

Using PhoneTag (was Simulscribe) so just get emails and sms with transcript. Hardly ever need to listen to them and they just come in with the rest of my comms. Saves a heap of time. - Jed White

Likewise - Rolls to my inbox. Instantly screened .... delete ... delete .... :) - Charlie Anzman

I hate hate hate voicemail. Waste of time. Interface sucks. - Andy Wibbels

I get voice mail now and then and it sort of annoys me. I find email so much better for leaving messages. There's a place for phone conversations but voicemail ... I dunno. - AJ Kohn

I am trying to push people towards sending me text, but - Gabe Wachob via twhirl

Pinger makes it better. - Jay Tannenbaum

Rarely does anything go to voice mail any more. Reading these comments makes me wonder why mine are note forwarded to my inbox. I need to do that. - Sal Distefano

I HATE voicemail, but it is a necessary evil for me. Visual Voicemail on the iPhone 3G should make things easier to manage for me, but I look forward to a voicemail-free future someday soon. - Granteezy

I don't use voice mail, I have a hearing difficulty... - Jack

I use voicemail but simply for work purposes! - Joe Dawson

i hate voicemail - why can´t people just send me an email? - Dieter Schwarz

i find it very useful with skype and also enjoy my cellular provider's free vm service. let's my buddies async messages pretty much like e-mail. greatly reduces callbacks on missed calls. time and money saver for me. - Berk D. Demir via twhirl

I use VM at work so little that I have to "refresh" my memory of the system. Consequently, I usually have about 18 or so messages in the hopper. Anyone important emails me. Most of the VM are from sales or recruiters - Robb via twhirl

if a person is not reachable, send SMS/email.. never felt the need for voicemail! - Rakesh

All my voicemail messages ask people to email me, as I'll be slow in responding to email. - Jeremiah Owyang

haha jeremiah - re-read what you wrote :) - Allen Stern

It sounds like Jeremiah is telling callers/emailers -- "Piss off I don't want to talk to you" ? or is it a typo ;-) - Brian Sullivan

all my friends know not to leave a msg and just hang up. We can see who called and if we want to know why, we will call back. - Jack Scalfani

iPhone and SpinVox are both great solutions. but truthfully I hate voicemail. - Sam Pullara

GrandCentral was a great concept but Google doesn't seem to have done anything with it since they bought it. A combination of their web-based voicemail and iphone-style voicemail would be ideal. - Charlie via twhirl

I use GrandCentral with email notifications that someone called me. If they're in my address book, it tells me who it was and I just call them back. I rarely actually log in to listen to the voicemails! - Kenneth LeFebvre

dupratjulien (at) gmail . com, thanks!!!!! - duprat julien

Sent ! - Nir Ben Yona via twhirl

if anyone wants some more, I have plenty to give - Marcos Marado

i would love an invite too, marcelvanderlaan(at)ghotmail.com, thanks in advance;) - Marcel van der Laan

@Marcel - Invitation Sent! - Nir Ben Yona via twhirl

did you actually copied the email address above or figured out it's hotmail instead of ghotmail? think I could't make up my mind whether to use gmail or my hotmail adress...marcelvanderlaan(at)hotmail.com it is;) - Marcel van der Laan

@Marcel oops i have sent to ghotmail...lol...should i send again? OK never mind, new invitation on the way to hotmail. - Nir Ben Yona

I would also like an invitation if possible. joseph at inthooz dot com - Joseph Rodgers

@Nir Ben Yona - thanks, now received the invitation on the right address;) - Marcel van der Laan

I used all mine up =( - ChaCha Fance via Alert Thingy

@Joseph - Sent! - Nir Ben Yona

Tad: join our sect. I'll be your guru there! :) http://friendfeed.com/rooms/da... - directeur via NoiseRiver

Go go social graph. - Eric Florenzano

Again directeur - I support the movement, I'm just bored by it. Just make it work. ;) The internets is for dumping awesome into the truck of utility. - Tad Donaghe

Tad, I myself already using some of its techs in my products :) If you're a dev do so too, if not pass the message :) - directeur via NoiseRiver

One thing I was wondering along this same vein, are there ajax widgets or something that you could put on your blog/site and allow people to subscribe/follow/digg/stumble/whatever you in one click? Must I visit the actual site every time? - Rahsheen Porter

I'd LOVE That Rahsheen! That'd be an excellent intermediate step. I think too many sites are still too worried about attention focusing. They WANT you to visit their site to stroke their ego, ads, etc - Tad Donaghe

I don't see why something like this doesn't exist for all social sites. You are adding the person so that you can interact with them at a later time on that service, so they shouldn't care if you hit the site to add them as a "friend." The "+friend" buttons on Digg work exactly how I want, I would just rather them be on MY site and work for every social network. - Rahsheen Porter

I was just twitter-moaning the same thing when I saw this in FF, some of you want leaps and bounds, I'd be happy if I could just join a new network and have all my accounts/contacts automagically connected - Scott Bannon via twhirl

actually, it seemed like swurl did that automatically... - edythe

Ya, we do, check us out http://www.swurl.com/ We try to do as much magic as we can for you, computers are suppose to be smart aren't they? - Ryan Sit

i was just about to say, I dig that swurl and feedly just kind of did that. I haven't gotten on board with feedly yet but I like the concept. Find me. Don't make me find myself. - Jason Toney

it is my hope to built it... and then "they" will come :) - Larry via twhirl

I want a FireFox plugin that auto logs me in to all the websites I use. I think that would do a lot of good. It seems like this would be possible but no one has written one! - Stefan Hayden

I still think this is like asking GM to make your key fit in a Toyota, cause you only want to carry one key. Most of these services are competitors. No (successful) business makes it easier for you to move to a competitor. - Brian Norwood

Brian, one of the reasons I don't use more web services is exactly because I'm sick of signing up for them and manually re-adding all my friends. If sites want us to use them they can either better make it brain dead simple or offer a service so compelling that we're willing to do the hard stuff. For many competitors who don't offer something that much different, an auto-subscription thing that I'm talking about would allow them to attract many more users. - Tad Donaghe

Tad, I don't dispute the truth of your statement, or deny I suffer from sign-up fatigued as well. I'm just saying it doesn't fit any business model I've ever seen to help you easily move to a competitor. What we need is a third party service who keeps track of our info and our friends, then custom shoe horns that stuff into each new service that pops up. THAT would be handy. Open ID is too passive. What we need is a sign up SERVICE. - Brian Norwood

would love to be able to import all my flickr contacts, have them match up with FF accounts where possible and create imaginary friends for the rest which would be replaced by their actual accounts as they joined over time. - Thomas Hawk

Right Thomas - and you ought to be able to do that just by clicking a single button that says "Import my contacts." Or at the very least have a single button and a drop down - Import -> Flickr - Tad Donaghe

I really like swurl, haven't messed with feedly yet, but even with swurl I had to manually input all of my account names/URL's/etc. to bring everything together. It wasn't hard, but it wasn't automagic either. Brian mentioned OpenID as too passive, I disagree with that and think user data could be expanded to contain the social network connections you have, then when you join a new service with your OpenID that service could automagically grab everything for you in the background. I'm not pushing for OpenID as the answer, just saying that's one possibility that wouldn't be overwhelming to achieve. - Scott Bannon via twhirl

I was really impressed with how well swurl worked. - Jason Wehmhoener

concur on swurl doing that automatically via each service - doubt i'll live in it like tend to in ff but it is a cool environment - mike "glemak" dunn

I'm probably the only one who uses rather different sets of “friends” on each network. - Amit Patel

Isn't this what gnip is supposed to do? Also, about swurl -- I would say it's been working a LOT of magic, it added a TON of friends of mine on different services. Ryan - Could you consider some bulk-editing tools for the friends tab? Like "mute all people not on swurl", for example? - J. Phil

Agreed that swurl is fantastic behind the scenes once you enter in your account names/url's for each service... what I'd like to see though is a hubbed identity source so that when you join a new service you don't have to enter your FF username, your Twitter username, your FB feed url and etc. Just let me click "join" and find me--and my connections--everywhere. - Scott Bannon via twhirl

Also, if it gets too magical, you get a service like spokeo. It's kinda scary. - J. Phil

Yes, I'm shamelessly promoting ;) - Mona N

Most definitely!! - ChaCha Fance via Alert Thingy

no, you shouldn't.... just kidding: YES! - Alex Barredo

maybe... But friendfeed works well only with other services around it. - k00pa

No. It's not the same as Twitter. I use Twitter for communication and FF for quick overview of what's happening. - Tad Chef

david what makes rooms awesome in your opinion? duncan thinks they've jumped the shark. how are you using them? just social media? - rob zand

No, first post can stay with Twitter. - Stuart Forsyth

Unchanged - most people I deal with professionally still use email - so I have no option. - Craig Thomler

I use it a lot for business- it's about who you're talking to and how private it has to be and if you need attachments,etc- I network with industry peers via SM, but also some email- but my day to day biz and client interaction is still phone and email. So it's about who's using the comm channel and what functionality you need. I probably comm more overall tho, with SM, so the % of my comm that's email has probably decreased. - Brian Carter

My email has vastly increased, and mostly just a lot more spam. I do a lot of real business via email, as not everything works on Twitter, Facebook, and other socnets. I am not sure how much of the spam increase is directly related to my getting accounts on so many socnets, but it seems like to some degree, it is. - Cathryn Hrudicka

I think not only has email increased, so has the number of email accounts and other tools for inbound messages. At this point it continues to just push all limits of information overload. - Tony

Email is my method of last resort. Synchronous communication, twitter / FF, phone, chat, etc is first in my book. - Dean Terry

Decreased for communication with general people, work communication has stayed about same - Justin Yost

I hate email, but it's still a necessary evil. If you asked me whether my attention of email has declined, the answer is yes. It still keeps coming in though..if anything it's worse than ever. - Duncan Riley

SM hasn't killed my email. It has, though, killed my use of AIM/YIM/MSN/etc... - Ed Healy

Could Friendfeed or Twitter ever become mainstream alternatives to email? A lot of the email I get is targetted at groups. We certainly have a mission - should we choose to accept it - to educate our clients, businesses and friends on the potential benefits of social media over email. - David Sim

Technically it has increased, because of bacn. But in terms of actual use, it's probably decreased a little bit. - Rubin

Actually, I use email MORE now than before this social media phenomenon. - ChaCha Fance via Alert Thingy

i use email more because all the social networks require it for authentication and the services send me email when there's activity on my account (a peeve.) it's a flaw to have to know someone's email to invite them to a service - rob zand

I had a feeling they might be like facebook groups. - jjprojects

I don' - Dave Winer

They were a novelty at first but they have their uses. I'm going to use a FriendFeed Room so friends and family can follow my adventures in Japan in a few weeks' time. It might make a few of them stick around here too. http://14sandwiches.com/2008/0... - Martin Bryant

The identi.ca room's pretty busy :) - Charlie Anzman

Haven't really used rooms much after the initial launch experimenting. But I think that's just because I don't need this feature at the moment and there may be many use cases for others for this. I guess Friendfeed has the real usage stats on their server... hey FF, care to share? :) - Philipp Lenssen

I've found that rooms are not that useful - but what would be really useful for me would be to be able to assign different people to different groups (or rooms) so I could separate social from business topic from political, etc. Then being able to watch three or four feeds side-by-side rather than have to choose between tabs. - Craig Thomler

Of course every user could choose to group people together in the way that made sense to them - which makes these groups fundamentally different to rooms - which are the same for everyone in them :) - Craig Thomler

rooms may be better suited to private use. i know small groups using them for work collaboration - rob zand

I've only just started to use rooms, so I'm not sure whether they've got staying power. It seems one subscribes to people for themselves but rooms for topics, and that seems like a useful distinction to me. - Michael C. Harris

Yeah, they jumped it. Same syndrome as creating too many subforums on a bulletin board. Fragments the conversation. FF'll need Rooms when the rest of the world turns up here later. - laurence timms

Rooms are a weird concept for subscribed content. If I go to a bar with only people I know and like, why would I put some of them in a room? Why not just stay in the bar? - Cait

Cait, I see it as the difference between going to a bar with people you like - you'll have a good time even if the bar is crap - and going to a bar you like on your own - you might meet some like-minded folk. - Michael C. Harris

No, they've just finally dropped to normal levels of a post-launch. Just like every other product. Now you weed out the bad room and keep the good ones. - Ben Parr

I think the real problem is lack of (easy)discoverability for public rooms - Brian Sullivan

I periodically step through the rooms I am subscribed to and leave the ones that look dead. - J. Phil

I think notifications would help, or some way to integrate new items into or beside your regular feed. That way people would see when new items were posted and jump in. That and some sort of rooms directory. - Josh Lowensohn

I think the rooms are pretty useful for "private" groups where you're focused on collaboration but maybe not so much for general use. The public ones are good for discussion of new stuff (Identi.ca) or for sharing (the Invites group) but it's easier just to post to your main feed for other stuff, IMO. - Lindsay Donaghe

Rooms have some really good use cases for business (lightweight collaboration) and special events (Apple conferences). As specialized discussion places, their usefulness is decreased a bit due to the nature of FriendFeed: your subscriptions determine the content you see. People that would really be into say, knitting, don't need a room. They just do their normal thing here and others decide whether to subscribe to them or not. - Hutch Carpenter

I left a bunch of rooms because they were just spammed. The rooms I moderate are slow but steady (I need to import some feeds). Even FF itself recognizes that they need to do a lot with rooms to make the more usable so I'm sure we'll see improvements soon. - Jennifer Leggio

I grabbed a couple of rooms and haven't yet set them up ... lots of potential, just no time. - AJ Kohn

Most of the rooms that I am subscribed to or moderating are pretty slow. I still think they have huge potential. I think part of the problem is FF doesn't currently offer an easy way to discover these rooms. Some room directories (not hosted by FF) have popped up but these haven't gained much traction as far as I can tell. - Mike Doeff

I'm in a ton of rooms but I just haven't gotten into them yet. I think I need to get rid of 99% of the rooms I'm in and focus on one or two rooms. Bootstrapping community is very tough work. The only way these things will get popular is for one person to really care about a room and tend to it daily. That's the kind of work that I just don't have time to do anymore. - Robert Scoble

That's not what "jumped the shark" means - Bjorn Tipling

yup - Gary Dobkin

Bjorn, "jumped the shark" in the context of past its peak. Happy Days reference. Mind you, they may still come back again. - Duncan Riley

I have not even looked at rooms, I just don't see the point. - Cait

Duncan, it requires some ridiculous event like Fonz jumping over a shark, that signifies desperation. Something past its peak might never have jumped the shark. - Bjorn Tipling

Great, now I'm getting room spam... and I can't report it... rooms doomed to fail - Cait