Here's why I think the FriendFeed Feedburner integration is not beneficial (or entirely accurate). I include my "fun" schwag blog, schwagaddict.com, in my FriendFeed stream. EVER since the launch of the site, I have received only 30 (yes, thirty) referrals to my blog from FF. All of the sudden, my 74 subscribers have jumped up to 2686.
When you talk about blog subscribers, it should be people who are subscribing to your *blog* and have an interest in THAT content, not the PERSON. I have friends who maintain 284824348 blogs and I only am interested in one of them. Why should their ego be inflated (and their subscriber #s inaccurate) when people are really not interfacing with the blog despite the high subscriber count?
- Tamar Weinberg
Thank you!!! That happened to me today too and I don't like it. I went from 35 subscribers who are honest to goodness blog readers only to almost 500. It feels like cheating.
- Nurse Katie
"All of *the* sudden..." -- The definite article "the" is making its way into that idiom at what seems an accelerating rate. If you don't mind, I would be curious to know what part of the country you live in...
- Christopher A Carr
I'm in the northeast, but I was raised in the southeast... maybe it's an eastern thing.
- Tamar Weinberg
Thanks, Tamar. Another question if you don't mind: as far as you can tell, do you ever use "All of *a* sudden..." ? And are you aware of the fact that that is the more common form of that idiom?
- Christopher A Carr
fair points, especially on the itchy jumpsuit. Could you say that RSS in general is so accurate anymore tho?
- Brian Wallace
I was going to say, Christopher, that I have no idea if it's the fact that I haven't slept for weeks since I have a newborn or if it's something I subconsciously say without realizing it. I'll try to pay more attention to it next time.
- Tamar Weinberg
Interesting. Thanks for suffering my linguistics nerdiness.
- Christopher A Carr
When you write in second comment "When you talk about blog subscribers" - are you talking about yourself writing in second person? [I don't see anybody else talking then.] And, continuing, "it should people who are subscribing to your *blog*…" - should it have been "BE," or something else?
- ianf ⌘
Ianf, are you also nitpicking my grammar or is this a serious question?! (and I fixed the "be" part, thanks... I edited that one too many times to try to make it make sense..)
- Tamar Weinberg
Define:serious. Besides, answering a question with a question that questions the validity of questioning in the first place is so... hermeneutically Talmudical? ;-))
- ianf ⌘
You're killing me. In any event, the "when you talk about blog subscribers," it was more of a logical assumption type of statement... so yes, I am talking for myself and most other people who think about blog subscribers by assuming they're actually interested in subscribing to a particular blog and not a username who may be involved in several other blogs/entities/endeavors/whatever. I hope that made some sense.
- Tamar Weinberg
I think of the number more as "reach". For example, if I start a new blog and add it to my FriendFeed account, it will immediately reach a large number of people because future posts will automatically appear in my feed (even if not all of those people read the posts). If I didn't add it to FriendFeed, the initial reach of my new blog would be much closer to zero. Tracking the number of...
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- Paul Buchheit
@Tamar, your hope is my command but, as I can not think of a single person who'd stoop down to thinking about blog subscribers in the way you describe[*], it only succeeded in making a lot of nonsense. [^*] analogous to the famous quote <http://thinkexist.com/quotati...> which I believe was first uttered by Hunter S. Thompson, though it is unattributed there.
- ianf ⌘
erm, it doesn't feel right, Charlie. :D And Paul, good explanation, but then it may be a good idea to really consider it to be another metric on Feedburner's end -- these aren't RSS subscribers anymore to your blog but it's the reach, just like you said. It's time to have separate counters for both.
- Tamar Weinberg
And ianf, let me ask you something quite honestly: for the FF users you subscribe to, do you read *all* their blogs? I'm going to guess that you don't. I have about 10 blogs to my name and I know that there is not a single person who reads all of them. That goes to say that my schwagaddict.com blog which now has nearly 3k subscribers is not being read by probably more than 80 people --...
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- Tamar Weinberg
Subscriber count is completely inaccurate with feedburner including friendfeed, it is like saying your twitter followers are RSS subscribers to your blog.
- Justin Germino
A substantial portion of those 30 referrals from friendfeed to schwagaddict were me, sometime over a month ago. I'm a sucker for tchotskies. ... I really dislike that friendfeed inflated my RSS subscriber numbers. Before, 30-40% of the RSS subscribers would fetch the complete article. I don't know if they actually read it or if their software just fetched it, but at least it was an indication of intent. Essentially nobody on friendfeed actually reads my blog, yet it doubled my RSS subscribers.
- DGentry
Yes, it feels totally wrong to me too. Like padding or fluff that distort what was previously decent analytics. I know a guy who is a FF hustler and has lots of subscribers, and now it says his blog has "2123 subscribers" and he doesn't even get a single comment - so it's not accurate. No one seems to read or interact with it. Clean up Feedburner analytics, Google!
- Brett Borders
Reminds me of the Einstein quote: Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Ryan Massie
I have one video I want to upload and it just keeps saying "upload failed." Sigh.
- Robert Scoble
what about e-mailing a 12 second video to 12seconds.tv?
- Craig Shipp
I agree, when it works, it's like ROCKIN! but when you have to reenter discriptions. ANGER!!!!!!!
- SolidSmack
I email mine to 12seconds but it still compresses when emailing.
- Richard Mackney
I also do not like the built in uploader in iMovie. Not enough control there either. Best to output to mov and use the web uploader.
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
Can you add the video to a playlist when you upload?
- Craig Shipp
On the other hand I do like shooting with the iPhone video as it's always with me and I catch great little moments.
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
Has anybody used Posterous to send video to Youtube? I would use Posterous by itself regardless as it has better quality than Youtube.
- Jay Caruso
It shows upload progress if you go to that video in Photos and have the controls up. The thing that kills it for me is that I haven't found a way to easily upload to multiple accounts.
- David Potts
from iPhone
@JP Holecka Not bad for iPhone vid.. I haven't filmed a lot yet with my iPhone 3GS
- Sebastiaan van den Akker
#8 sums up apples philosophy in a nutshell. They dumb everything down so that you don't have to hurt your brain thinking for yourself.
- Steve Feinstein
I don't like the idea of compression beyond what's needed for the hosting site. Been playing with pixelpipe and pretty happy with it so far.
- James Deaton
@Steve very true, but the questions is.. aren't there just times when want shit to work... I love tinkering with Linux, Win and the all other stuff... but I just love the idea that my mac is rock solid.. and it workz..
- Sebastiaan van den Akker
does pixelpipe work over 3g for video uploads?
- Craig Shipp
Another reason why I only have an iPhone 3G
- Chris Heath
haha love the creative title....beats "here's why:". i hope this is a trend.
- Carlos Ayala
Not a big fan of the upload quality... posting to youtube after i've uploaded to my Mac is much much better
- Danny
I use the Pixelpipe app for photo & video uploads on the iPhone. You can upload up to 200MB without recompression, supports uploads to YouTube, Viddler, blip.tv and a bunch more.
- Brett Butterfield
There isn't a Pixelpipe app for the 3Gs? Works like a god in Android. With that you can get it into Vimeo, Seesmic, Qik, Flickr video - all with a single upload.
- Matthew DeVries
I think I'm going to wait until my 3g contract is up next summer and see if ATT has their act together by then. If not Verizon here I come!
- Craig Shipp
You can download Pixelpipe for the iPhone 3GS directly from the App Store or at http://tr.im/s893. Makes getting video off the 3GS pretty effortless.
- Brett Butterfield
I totally agree! At least save all the text I entered when it crashes!!
- Che Hodgins
send a cease & desist letter - with note that maybe there is some misunderstanding of ownership but that you will pursue action. if he doesn't stop, then take action.
- Mark Ferneau
If you parted on good terms talk to him. If you parted on bad terms then I'm with Mark above.
- rshore
For those too lazy to check the links, the other NY Post headlines were "GOOGLE GLITCH CAUSES SURFERS TO REAP PAGES OF FEAR" and "GOOGLE STROKES PORN GUY" and "GOOGLE SCARES SENATE." Ionut, it's a real newspaper but tends a bit toward the tabloid side.
- Matt Cutts
Why would anyone be worried if the links are being checked...that's like giving someone money and then asking them what it'll be used for.
- John kowal
maybe they are just trying to offset Randall Stross' pro-Google cheerleading in the New York Times? ;-)
- Karim
I was wondering why in the world people would want to quote the NY Post.
- marziah
Congrats, Tamar! And good to see you back. If you're interested, you can run your own baby pool contest on my site here: http://bebepool.com ~ all the best!
- Micah Wittman
Yay! I can talk about it publicly now! Congratulations, Tamar. Great to see you at SXSW. (Also, sounds like I have to send a louisgray.com onesie)
- Louis Gray
Tamar, I find that after using it a few days, it gets more and more useful. So you might want to give it a week before concluding that it's not helpful.
- Matt Cutts
Observed a strange thing. it is enable when I use it on Firefox but not on Chrome. Anybody else seeing the same issue.
- Atul Arora
Good trick: use google.co.uk. If you don't tick the "uk only" box you get the same results as .com, but I dont see any searchwiki mention on it (which I get on .com)
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
Matt, I really don't want it. I hate "personalized" results as it is.
- Tamar Weinberg
Well, you can always log out if you don't want personalized results.
- Matt Cutts
i wanted it upfront but don't at the moment. are we equally pissed off?
- Berk D. Demir
Matt, but why should I log out? How about making it, erm, optional? Should that be really difficult? I mean, c'mon... why should I log off my Google Accounts that I use regularly (read: Gmail) just because of SearchWiki? How about Google acknowledge that people DO NOT WANT and give the users the power to do what they want? Usually Google has empowered the user, but not in this case.
- Tamar Weinberg
Just add &pws=0&hl=all to the end of your search string, very easy to do with search toolbars
- Barry Schwartz
personalized and search tailored to intention is kinda like your local bartender, you pull up a chair and they are already pouring you a beer(cause since you go there FREQUENTLY they ASSUME they know what you want) when at THIS MOMENT what you really wanted was a vodka martini! ie. let search be just search!
- shayne catrett
Barry, as I told you on IM, that's not a solution. Google should make these things optional -- it's not fair to enforce it upon all users who definitely don't want it.
- Tamar Weinberg
Good luck Bergy, thank you for all of your hard work.
- John Honeck
Also note that JohnMu goes on a vacation and they start quitting...what does that say about the work load that John carries. Hmmm?? I'm just saying...
- John Honeck
I've recently started seeing warnings that "All the URLs in your Sitemap have the same priority." I see no problem with that if all my URLs have the same priority. And the funny thing is that one of these sitemaps only has one URL anyway, so this warning will never go away!
- Tony Ruscoe
Yeah, the single URL case is definitely something to look at on our side :-). However, for the rest, if you don't want to specify Priority or any of the other optinal values, it's better to just leave that tag out instead of making a default value up. Priority doesn't really matter since it's relative to the site, but if your Sitemap is being generated automatically and you thought Priority was being assigned, this warning may help you to spot a problem in your processes.
- John μller
Of course, I see. That makes sense. Even for the single URL. (If you've only one URL, why would you want to assign a priority to it?) The problem is that my sitemaps are automatically generated using a script which assigns priority based on directory level. I guess I'll just remove it so that the warning disappears. Thanks John!
- Tony Ruscoe
John, yea, I warning - didnt mean it was an error in Google...
- Barry Schwartz
From somebody who's Internet experience has been heavily influenced by you (you were one of the first blogs I ever followed), best of luck and I look forward to seeing the results of your new opportunity!
- Damon Cortesi
from twhirl
Reading this in Friendfeed. Doesn't seem appropriate to "like" it. More "ackknowledge that it is news". You seemed like a force for good in a good company Jeremy.
- Scott Koon
from twhirl
Congratulations ;) What's next ? Google or Own project ;)
- David Berrebi
from twhirl
"There is nothing wrong with the article. Maybe someone else should write an article on how stamp prices have gone down relative to inflation? Problem is, we need to find someone who doesn't mock other people to write it. Stop staring at the title of the post and read the other details."
- Barry Schwartz
"You at the other stats, not just the stupid title. Interesting trends and averages. Oh, but wait, you didn't bother to click through a read it."
- Barry Schwartz