Topix is kicking FriendFeed's ass. 125,000 comments a day!!! How are they doing it? They are focusing on local communities and anyone that doesn't read Scoble. In this video Topix' CEO, Chris Tolles, talks about what is going on in his business. - Robert Scoble

Scoble is moving on from FriendFeed? - Pat Hawks

Pat: no. But everyone else who isn't in the tech early adopter world is probably on Topix. - Robert Scoble

Yes, pretty much what I was saying yesterday, FF doesn't have a very diverse user base. - Ross Maguire

It does seem like a nice cross between Google News and fav.or.it - Pat Hawks

Topix used to be the only source I could find for local news. But I don't like how it happily embraces partial-text feeds and don't bother to add context at all, to the point of some entries being a vague headline with no text! - Phil Glockner

And before you say it, I know, FriendFeed is like that too. *sigh* - Phil Glockner

I don't know any non-early adopters that are using any of this technology...yet - maybe we define them differently. Topix provides more of an innate value prop for their time than FF does now, but I think that will change as more people begin to understand the value of a global federated conversation. Working on some music promotion use cases now :) - Erica Toelle

http://www.topix.com/topix... More than a million people, 360,000 forums - Robert Scoble

I think we should conduct a poll. Everyone here because of Scoble raise your hand (Raises hand). - Roberto Bonini

There's 5 topics in my area just ostracizing the city and its inhabitants, 12 more doing the same for religion, and the rest are classic local news stories (murders, robberies, gangs, etc.). I think I'll stick with FF, Digg, SDR News, and NPR for my news. - xero

Topix made a lot of its progress by being the default commenting host for many, many newspapers. It's majority owned by Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune Co. to begin with, but they've enlisted more competitors as partners. My company, MediaNews, joined up last year. Almost every paper in the Bay Area outside the SF Chronicle is owned by MediaNews (the fourth-largest owner in the country), and they all use Topix in some way to host their comments. Instant community (though poorly harnessed by the media). - Kevin Hessel

I always find a lot of comment on my blog posts coming from Topix. At first I was puzzled, then I realized it was Topix's geo-specificity that made it so cool. I guess I need to pay more attention to Topix. - Tom Guarriello

First topic I saw on the forums - "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" - Last comment by "X-RAINBOW KRISSY-X". I'll be sticking with FriendFeed, thanks though. Honestly, it's not a bad news source at all, but I feel more comfortable with the topics at FriendFeed when it comes to discussion. - Vince DeGeorge

A post I stumbled across the other day drew a distinction between hyper-local and hyper-personal style news aggregation. Topix at first seems to fit into the hyper-local mode when you restrict it to your city or zipcode. But there's also search that will bring up all the stories about your search term - no matter where they originated. Subscribe to the feeds for a bunch of search terms, and you've got yourself a hyper-personal aggregator. (Wish they'd use full text instead of partial text feeds, though.) - Tom Landini

Oh, I love this poll (not): http://www.topix.com/forum... -- yeah, that's news. Glad I wasted my 5 minutes looking at that item from the Topix front page. - Craig Eddy

I guess for non-tech people everything they see on FF is just noise, where to us the Zac and Cody conversations et al is just noise. Topix may end up being used as a tool by tech people, but probably not as a conversation forum. Then again, this begs the question of FF's growth beyond the tech/early adopter community. - Kevin Bondelli

I have found Topix in my blogs log several times - paul mooney

I still feel Topix is a little old fashioned, but they are generally under-rated, where as they should be what a lot of the 2.0 aggregation sites aim for. Community + they give back, no reposting full feeds, full links back etc... - Duncan Riley

Fun fact: Thousands of web sites have more traffic/users than FriendFeed, but you won't catch me on them. - Bwana ☠

Topix actually looks interesting. I doubt I'll sign up on it but it's worth Bookmarking. - Outsanity

I wanted to like Topix, but I agree with Duncan - feels old fashioned. I signed up a long time ago, but found no real use for it. Maybe I should look again. - Mack D. Male

Agree with Mack...lost interest upon initial viewing and have not returned since the 2007 revamp. - Andy Angelos

Wow... I just emailed them about my hometown being incorrect. They responded within the hour! Talk about service! - Mike Wills

Mmmm. Tastes like Usenet. - Ernie Oporto

Had a look at the UK area and it looks like it is full of racist comments and not somewhere I would want to hang out. Shame. - John Cooper

First off: Great video, Robert! Thanks for this; I'd never heard of Topix before, and now I'm intrigued. Second: No, Topix is not a Friendfeed clone; different market. Third: This is finally where I can really get local news, and a window into local opinion. Fourth: Yes, the conversations leave something to be desired. This opens an opportunity for improvement, no? - Brent Newhall

Great interview - Mark Nassal