I choose subscriptions based on a core-perimeter model. The core are people whose interests I know overlap with my own. But I also try to have a strong perimeter - very high quality information sources across a wide variety of areas. So I read blogs by people like Robin Hanson (economist), Terry Tao (mathematician), Ethan Zuckerman (developing world), etc. Unfortunately, FriendFeed usage still seem to be mostly concentrated in a few areas. - Michael Nielsen
Michael, it will get more interesting over time. Waiting for the synthesizer geeks to show up :) - Deepak
Michael, that is one of the best comments I've seen on FF. - David Gutelius
This is true with most things in life. Your real friends, the sites you visit, etc. Why is this so shocking? Just saying... :P - James Mowery via twhirl
it's not shocking... It's justa useful quote that sums up the service... ;) - Chris Messina
I know, but, it could be applied to every social network: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube. Even forums and such. I'm sure the Bret guy is smart, but I mean... yeah. - James Mowery via twhirl
Yeah, I'm being really picky about what I read on FriendFeed. Trying to master the "hide" functionality like so many have suggested to filter out the not-so-useful stuff. :D - James Mowery via twhirl
After working for Dell for many years, I can only agree with this article. - J. Phil via Bookmarklet
From the article: "The reality is that there was no correlation between outsourcing and perceived value; the authors suggest the companies are simply using the savings to increase their profits instead. As a result, from the consumer's perspective, outsourcing is a complete negative." - J. Phil
Exactly, J.Phil. I'll use Dell as my case in point. If I were, perhaps, getting exemplary service then I'd not be so upset. The down side is, it's just different people reading the same scripted crap and still unable to provide a real answer on most occasions that I've ever dealt with them. In all but ONE of my calls to Dell's CS while they've been outsourced, I've gotten precisely zero real answers. - Spinn
Spinn, sorry to hear that. I did tech support for 5 years at Dell, if there's any questions left you need answered, just ask me. I'll point you in the right direction. - J. Phil
Also, I haven't been impressed with Dell TS since 2000, it was around that time that I left. - J. Phil
Did you ever have a moment of absolute glee at seeing a company that laid you off (and outsourced your job) lose market share? - Harvey Simmons
Well, this was fairly recent stuff, but I've since turned to Google for the answers...as I should have in the first place. - Spinn
Nice piece. Saying links are unimportant is the weirdest thing I've heard in a while. And thanks for including the links to their bizarre world reasoning or I never would have read them. - chartreuse
Agree with you here. I think Louis looked at it only from a traffic view point, but links are a discovery tool as well. Just because one link doesn't deliver a ton of traffic doesn't mean that it won't help your traffic in the longer term via new subscribers + regular readers...it's just harder to directly measure - Duncan Riley
Links are the veins of the Internet. Blood (read: content) is nothing without veins. ;-) - AJ Batac
links are a discovery tool, period. the moment you start likning for traffic is the moment your site/blog/feed/tweet ceases to matter. - Jim Jannotti via feedalizr
Links are a meaaure of respect. 9 time out of 10 I link to something because I respect what the author wrote. Why shouldn't I encourage other people to read it? (The other 1 in 10 is when I'm mocking some fool. But they deserve to be read so that others can mock them too, - Ed Bott
What you'll find is that Steven and I agree on this 95% of the way. The headline of what I said did not say they were unimportant. I said it "seems" they are getting "less important". I believe in linking and do it aggressively. What I was referring to mostly, as Duncan mentions, was traffic expectations. It was not looking at search, but it was looking at the rising importance of aggregation and social media tools, when compared to blog links. - Louis Gray
Cont: I don't declare things "dead" or say one thing will "kill" another, as that's superlative. I also included quite a bit of data and transparency to say how I came to my conclusions. But over time, as I watch this closely, there is a shift, and I wanted to highlight it. - Louis Gray
I don't think Louis was suggesting links weren't important overall, just that their influence on traffic is declining. Yup, I see it Duncan's way. Links are also important to SEO as well and we shouldn't underestimate the increasing role of Google Juice. - Shey
Maybe I missed it, but I thought Louis's post was really about the declining "importance" of *blogs* as drivers of conversation in the infosphere -- links are still the medium of relaying information, but the linking is migrating to the social net sites. - Sprague D
Seems everyone is getting pretty bent up about that post Louis did. To quote the comment Louis just left, which sums up the general idea of the post very well I think; the post was about 'looking at the rising importance of aggregation and social media tools'. Now as any blogger who wants to generate traffic does Louis took this to a little bit of an extreme causing a lot of talk around the subject which is great. - John
Cont: The thing is you need links to generate traffic to your blog, these links are coming from social media more and more rather than from bloggers linking to one another is all. - John
I thought this was going to be a crap article about stuff we already know. I'm glad I actually clicked on it...and read it :) - Rahsheen Porter
I follow all 10. Got any other suggestions? - Robert Scoble
Why isn't Scoble on the list? Or did I miss it? - Kyle Lacy
Kyle, it's based on Mike's top 10 most interesting subscriptions as defined by Friendfeed. If you go to Friend Settings in the top right, then click on Stats, you can see your top 10. Scoble just doesn't happen to be in Mike's top 10. - Mark Trapp
Would have probably helped if I actually read the entire post. I went straight to the image. - Kyle Lacy
Nice nice. But this just motivates me to use FF more for so many other reasons! - Tamar Weinberg
+1 for Franklin Pettit, he's very active here and tries a ton of alphas/betas. Not to mention he had twins a good 2 years before louis gray... he's quite the trend setter :-p - David Knight
Did he say skilled? :) As my inbox fills overnight ... appreciate the mention Mark. Of the people commenting (that I know) above, add Tamar if you're interesting in the Social Marketing or SEO space. - Charlie Anzman
Well done, pleasantly surprised. :) - sergiooooooo
Thanks Mike I am glad to be one of your favorites. You are one of my favorites as well. - Franklin Pettit
I love Franklin's bio -- "His blog was recently “Louis Grayed.” " - Shey
Cool list... those folks are definitely "keepers"... fun to follow and interact with, including you too Mark!! :o) - Susan Beebe
A great post on Friendfeeds FOAF feature :) - Oliver Ding
Neat article lots of common interests there! - Geoff Schultz
The FF stats are a great mini snapshot of 10 people we find the most interesting. We all can agree on one thing, the stats are lacking
and could use a significant overhaul. - Mike Fruchter
Wow, thanks for the link love....thaaaaaat explains all the new followers. I was wondering what the heck happened today! - Sarah Perez
Now absolutely confirmed. I've been Mike Fruchter'd (with all due respect to 'the fearless leader' of course). - Charlie Anzman
One woman out of ten people? Shameful. Women are at least half the population on this planet. Your prejudices are showing. - Out Wrong
wow, this is interesting... gotta read this! - Susan Beebe
Not sure if this/he is racist or not but from all appearances Feldman is a bit of tool and deserves to lose this deal regardless. - Brian Sullivan
I've stated that the video itself is definitely racist and have refrained from labelling Loren himself. But I've been trying to find an apology and this is all I've found: http://www.1938media.com/offic... - Shey
it's sad that people choose to cast off a racist video like that as "comedy" or "satire" and instead attack those who who have a valid gripe with it as being too "pc." there's responsibility that goes along with having a forum such as that one. this clown shed all responsibility when he chose to make a mockery of an entire group of people. funny? what world are some of you living in? - Cee Bee
I put more faith in Corvida's judgment than in any of the other responses to this that I saw. She's a Verizon customer. She's part of the racial group that Loren was doing an alleged parody of. And I respect that it's up to her to determine just how offensive that is as part of those two groups. - Cyndy
While I am glad that Loren's behavior is being examined at the Corporate sponsor level, I feel that the industry (i.e. individuals in it) should resist jumping on his back, creating controversy and/or seeking to add to one's one fame/notoriety at the expense of another industry individual. That's not right. - Alex Hammer
Shey - I think I can label Loren. He's a jackass. I don't think he'd even argue it. - J. Phil
@Alex Did we create the controversy or was that Loren? Your logic seems a little backward. He brought this on himself. - Shey
Alex, you don't think that's a bit ironic considering that's how he's spent the last several months? Or was that tongue-in-cheek? I didn't see a winkie there. - Cyndy
Everyone should stand-up against all kinds of racism. Loren Feldman still has thousands of followers in Twitter and FriendFeed. Do something against racism and don’t follow him anymore. - Kerem Ozkan
I disagree with you Cordiva, I thinking the bigger problem which was debated last year is when is jokiiing about such subjects as racism correct or incorrect as we seem to have this unwritten rule that only the minority that is being poked fun at can do the joke.. Chris Rock's comedy skits are but one example. - Fred Grott
Wow -- what a complex subject if one is strongly against racism, strongly against political correctness and strongly for free speech simultaneously, as I am. My mind is going in every possible direction on this. I enjoy satire and parody when it is carefully targeted, and I detest vicious ethnic and racial stereotyping. I defend the right of jackasses to embarrass themselves and self-destruct. I deny their right to harm others. - Sean McBride
Fred, I can understand your stand here, but does that mean that you also like the stuff that Loren puts out, regardless of the ethical quandary? - J. Phil
J Phil does that mean that the racist gangster rap gets free pas on Verizon? - Fred Grott
My $.02: Loren exercised his right to post that video and now Corvida is exercising her right to express her strong feelings about it. I think that's exactly how it should work. Telling her to stay quiet about it makes about as much sense as telling Loren he didn't have the right to make the video in the first place. - Mike Doeff
Rap lyrics *always* get a free pass. That is a major double standard. I mentioned that back when Don Imus' firing was in debate and got shot down. - Morton Fox
Just in case anyone gets upset at Corvida's response - you might be interested in reading Loren's response to a stupid Guy K. remark in his post http://www.1938media.com/guy-k... (he wrote in the comments "Im so not sensitive about the jew thing, but this just smacked me in the face a bit" - leigh himel
All I can say is 'thank you.' That was a brave and motivated thing you did and I support it all the way. - Tsega D
My opinion anyway is Loren's right to post the video doesn't mean that he is free from the consequences of posting that video. We all too have the right to boycott, shun, or speak out in response. - Morton Fox
why are people bringing rap music into this argument as a way to level the debate? lol - Cee Bee
'm so glad that Corvida, in her usual, straightfoward and articulate way, spelled it out. If there was an equivalent to the n-word for white people that carried the same lacerating power, that would be easier. But there just isn't. "Blasting political correctness" is just the skinny tree that bad comedians of the world hide behind when they're aiming for satire and can't manage to get past crude or cruel. Loren might have been aiming FTW, but he failed. - Merredith Branscombe
@Fred Grott - It's not about the fact that he used the n-word. I know plenty of people that use it black/white/hispanic/ you name it. It's the way in which he went about degrading the African-American community. It was more than the words he used. It was the entire video. It was his looks. It was his actions. Saying the n-word doesn't get press like this if you're a true comedian. - Corvida
And Chris Rock doesn't get a free pass. Chris Rock does his comedy, but he doesn't degrade his community in the process. He points out truths and does so in a way that's not crossing the line because if he insults the African-American community, he's insulting himself simultaneously. Hispanic comedians to the same thing. Caucasian comedians do the same thing. They don't degrade, the state facts that either make people squirm or make people laugh. That's as far as it goes. - Corvida
I can see why LinkedIn hasn't been heard of. Not many people are into putting resumes and stuff online anyway and it seems very enterprise-ish - Corvida via twhirl
Surely that should be "What WAS Facebook"? - Chris Nixon
I actually think that FF is what I wanted Facebook to be. - Chris Nixon
"What the (bleep) is the internet" - Jay from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - George Smith
I'm a student. Facebook is the only thing alot of them know. Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin -- like speaking Klingon. - Phillip Jeffrey
What closet, rock or hole have they been living in? Doesn't know what Facebook is? OMG you've got to be kidding me! - Susan Beebe
Facebook's a little green patch. Or a place where someone can buy you as a pet. - Christine Cavalier
Did you tell them it's where they let the asylum inmates play? - Todd Jordan
BTW, most college kids are pretty unaware of social networking. My husband is an undergraduate advisor. They concentrate on texting, mostly. The middle-to-upper class white kids know FaceBook, but that's about it. I wouldn't call 21-25 year olds digital natives. The ''true" digital natives are about 3 years old or younger right now. Corvida, I would guess that many more of your peers will come to ask you this in the coming months. - Christine Cavalier
wow, that beats some of my friends - they know what it is, but don't see the point! - Sarah Perez
LinkedIn is for when you have a career (and are establishing a professional network). Incoming freshman may not know facebook, but most do by the time October runs around. In terms of "digital native", the way I think of it is that the digital natives are those who don't understand the concept of a tv show being on at a specific day and time. My 9-y-o daughter has always known Tivo, whereas I used a 300 baud modem in my first job out of school - Barry Graubart via twhirl
Evan just launched an open source twitterish thing called identi.ca. He's got tons of traction in a few short days (that surely have been long for Evan and the rest of the crack team at Controlez-Vous), including lots of interest from luminaries such as Dave Winer, Tm O'Reilly and others. So: first, a big kudos to Evan.
Identi.ca also has its pooh poohers, including the knife sharpeners at TechCrunch, who wrote a lukewarm piece called The Problem with Identi.ca Is That It's Not Twitter. And that's been pretty much the line of those less than impressed: It's got fewer features, why bother, everyone is on Twitter, why would they leave, and: who cares if it's open source, it still needs to be good. etc.
Which speaks of breathtaking short-sightedness, not to mention, a total erasure of the last, oh, half-decade plus of the most recent Internet history. - Sarah Perez
Shifting to FriendFeed per your request: I don't think commenting is dead. I think it has shifted to other mediums. People are still actively chatting and the social media concept is all about active participation and conversation. That's a form of commenting. It's just changing...or is it evolving? - Corvida
You're right, it is shifting. And that's what I'm getting at with the King is Dead metaphor. Commenting is actually more alive than it was before; but the traditional format of commenting is metaphorically dead. Before FriendFeed and Twitter and Disqus, comments on blogs weren't nomadic. As time goes on, we'll see more fragmentation (which I see as an opportunity). So I think it's both changing and evolving. - phil baumann
great headline! people believed that? crazy - Sarah Perez
People are believing Apple is pulling iPhones from Canadian Apple Stores. TechCrunch is guilty as well, and I fell for it. It just ain't true. - Bwana McCall
I wrote a blog entry back in 2005 that deep-references a term of art useful here: egoboo. http://zamiel.livejournal.com/... If you don't have a concept of egoboo and it's place in this new media age, you're doomed to social irrelevance. - Alexander Williams via NoiseRiver
Looks like it's already there. Look under the dialog box on the site: "Drag bit.ly to your browser toolbar to shorten URLs anywhere" Just did and it's working great! - Kevin C. Tofel
already there...I'm using this. Hotness - Bwana McCall
This looks great. Now we just need support for it to be added to Twhirl. - Mark Krynsky
Did anyone else found it hilarious that Marshall used is.gd to link? - Stepan Mazurov
I like this one and the API is a great idea, but it doesn't do the autocopy to clipboard when a URL is created. I know that's a fairly simple add but it's not there currently.
I still like http://is.gd for the time being and it's also built into twhirl, which I use often.
Thx for the write-up! - Chuck Reynolds via FriendFeed MT Plugin
I found a bookmarklet for bit.ly, and replaced TinyURL bookmarklet. Fingers crossed. - Todd Defren
In time, I hope bit.ly auto-generates and auto-copies the link a-la is.gd, adds tags a-la del.icio.us, and supports services such as Twitter a-la the "TwitIt" bookmarklet. All to save a few keystrokes, I know, but that's what spurs adoption (at least with me). - Kawika Holbrook via FriendFeed MT Plugin
Just cranked out an AIR app that lets me drag and drop URLs to turn them into Bit.ly urls. Great find Marshall! - Ryan Stewart
"I'll admit, I'm a little confused by the title.
Getting linked boosts Google traffic. Google traffic is more than double FriendFeed traffic and still your #1 source of traffic. Looks to me that linking is still extremely important.
What's really going on is that FriendFeed is now another channel for incoming links (like Charlie says above).
The stats I'd *really* like to see are the incoming referrals from Google.com over time. Were they higher prior to FriendFeed's launch? After FriendFeed became popular have the Google referrals decreased? If so, then you could say linking is "less important." If not, then you could say FriendFeed is a big source of traffic. But just because FriendFeed traffic has increased, that doesn't mean Google traffic has decreased (has it?)" - Sarah Perez
I left a comment agreeing with you on this post. - Robert Scoble
Linking may be less important but as I've said elsewhere the alternatives do not always provide quality traffic to go with the quantity. - Colin Walker via fftogo
'Like' * 3!!! You said what we've all wanted to say, Louis - thanks for this great post. - Jesse Stay via twhirl
Interesting... and I wonder what this is going to do to Google's rankjuice flow model... if linking to others as part of a mutual info/attention ecomony starts to decline in importance and value. - Tom Beardshaw
@tombeardshaw, you can see how old-school google is .. - gregory lent
There's now a pretty good dialog in the Disqus comments on Louis' blog as well. Good reading - Charlie Anzman
@louisgray this is totally wrong. Linking is one of the most powerful signals you can send to Google about your importance and authority in your topical area. I will leave a bigger comment on your post but basically just read @DannySullivan comment carefully because he said it well. And he should know. Especially brand new bloggers NEED high quality links to even be found in Google. What % of your traffic is through Google? 60%? 75%? Enuf said. - Elliott Ng
@gregorylent maybe... searching people and what they've found here vs searching pages and their content on google? I find FF more useful for finding the latest content. Google still rules as an archive though. - Tom Beardshaw
@Elliott - I think the point of the post was that Louis is getting traffic from FF, google etc rather than from blogs linking to his posts. - John
I guess this could be seen as a Tipping Point for your blog, Louis. When you started out you relied on other people linking to you but now you generated enough content, authority and page rank that the referral traffic from blogs is minimal compared to what you get from Google searches. - John
John, that could be one way of looking at it. Also, year over year, a link from Scoble is about the same. I didn't get linked to from the big guys, aside from him, in 2007. I would get about 200 visits from his stories last year, and the FriendFeed one drove about 350 this year, with other mentions being in the 70 range. Also, this post wasn't supposed to be about me, per se, but about how the biggest blogs drove such a small amount of traffic, relative to social media, in general. - Louis Gray
IMHO, it was always the case that you got more comments the more you commented on other people's blogs. Sort of symbiotic relationship. FF seems to just be the next incarnation of the same rule. FF really is just a single portal to view a member's complete content stream and comment inline. - Shawn Smith
It would be interesting to take a look at a relatively new blogger who is active in social media to see what kind of numbers they are getting. - John
I agree with John above. I went through this with my niche blog. Now, my biggest worry is to keep advancing my game so I stay on the other side of the tipping point. Social Media is a part of that game, adding other services, networks, etc are an important part as well. But they're just tools. - John Frost
I'm inclined to think that there is something much bigger going on here. - Kevin
I think what's really going on is web browsing behavior is changing. People are less inclined to click on blog links. I think louis is right - folks are relying on aggregators and search engines to find content, or they're in their reader subscribed to so many blogs following the links within articles is less appealing. - Jason Kaneshiro
I think there is a point at which what Louis says is true, but it's after his blog "arrived" in a sense. After all, a link from Mashable that only give him 77 readers isn't much when he's getting 3,000 visitors from Google that same day. But it's a ton when no one knows who he is (including Google). I agree with John above about the "Tipping Point." - Bob Caswell
Great piece describing the changing landscape for how blogs are discovered and read. Interesting that the #1 and #3 blogs that drove your referrals were posts that themselves were powered by Techmeme and Digg. You indirectly got the benefit through those services. - Hutch Carpenter
i think i have to agree here. i used to find all kinds of new sites through post links but rarely click out of google reader unless i want to comment these days. ff and twitter drive me to more new sites now. - Steve Long
This applies to those people in the thick of the blogosphere and social media, NOT to the rest of the people on the Web who don't know what all this newfangled Web 2.0 stuff is. And quite frankly, that's a good 99% of the people getting online. - Wendy
I believe I agree with the change of discovery of content, but in the end it's still a link whether it's from a blog or from an aggregator such as FriendFeed - I still click on a link. We are simply adding multiple layers (shared thru Google Reader -> FriendFeed -> actual content). - simonpure
There's no irony of it being on Techmeme. I said that's where many people find their news... so it shows the system works. - Louis Gray
Links are still *extremely* important. Your 'Google/Organic' results wouldn't have happened unless you'd established yourself as a hub and authority in your 'neighborhood'. The only way Google understands this is by looking at links: quality and quantity. In addition, you don't get full credit for links right away. It takes time for Google to fully weight the links you have, thus avoiding ephemeral link gaming strategies. - AJ Kohn
Louis, great article on the sliding landscape of traffic aggregration, but I didn't see you make mention of the quality of your visits - only volume. SU for instance offers some great volume, but I'm not seeing a lot of stickiness from that source. However, I do see the smaller referers seem to build longer lasting communities - and yes FriendFeed has offered some great interaction. - ChangeForge via twhirl
Hey FriendFeed, 99% of your users don't know where the store is because there's no link to it anywhere on your site. Help your happy users be your walking advertisements and make it more visible. - Louis Gray via Bookmarklet
I am sure if I walked in wearing one of these my partner would assault me. She hates my obsession with the site and doesn't understand why I frequent it so regularly! - Joe Dawson
Anybody like to send some free schwag halfway 'round the world? (I can't buy from cafepress 'coz the shipping costs are usually greater than the item costs. sigh) - Yuvi
i need one in black perhaps with a heavy metal devil's horn thrown in - Cee Bee
heck, allow users to design their own. - Kyle Lacy
Ok, I need to buy a FF shirt el pronto! - Susan Beebe
Anyone can create a CafePress store with anyone's logo, and it's hard to tell who's reaping the profits. So I wouldn't use this as a way to "give back" to the service. - Paul Whitaker
Paul, this is the official store, not a fan site. - Louis Gray
Thanks for sharing Louis - now my baby can be a true Swag magnet ;) - Jesse Stay
Agree with Susan - no surpise. When you read peices by Corvida, it's as though she speaking to you. Her personality really comes through and that's what makes her writing so great! - Elliott via Alert Thingy
Sasha - thanks for the reminder of the grand effect master feed! I'm going to go sign up for that right away. - J. Phil
J. Phil - much better way to track them all from one place. The only ptob is that you can't see the authors and original blog in the master feed. Sarah passed this bug to somebody to fix, but it's still not. Maybe you have more influence :) - Sasha Kovaliov via twhirl
Congrats to Corvida. I stopped reading RSS feeds a long time ago though. I prefer my news filtered through the social filter that is FriendFeed. - Thomas Hawk
