I'm followed by more people than anyone else here, according to http://www.ffholic.com/ but yet only one out of j39 people here are following me (26,009 follow me, TechCrunch reports that there's a million unique members on friendfeed). News organizations should understand these changes because they used to have great centralized distribution. Those days are now over. More to come shortly. - Robert Scoble

I read your friend feed daily Robert to pick up on new information, see what you have to say about what's new in the world of technology and anything else that sparks my interest. - Steve Eisenberg

Is it because the Kindle 2.0's coming out soon..;o) - The Real sofarsoShawn

It used to be that we watched three TV stations and read one or two newspapers. Those days are over. Now we follow our friends and get our news through http://search.twitter.com and Facebook. That has huge implications for news brands who no longer will be the place that we go to get news. - Robert Scoble

Friendfeed is giving us a new kind of news distribution system. Thanks to "likes" we can tell our friends about things that are important. The news brands are NOT in charge of that distribution method and it drives them nuts and they don't understand it at all yet. - Robert Scoble

The beauty of this is that it's interactive, and on friendfeed people actually want the discussion. There's something for everyone. More importantly though the network effect is still in play here. - Richard A.

It was eather you or Ivan d'Troll - paul mooney

I talked with execs from LeFigaro, France's #1 newspaper on Thursday. They were interested, but from the look in their eyes I could tell they really don't understand how Facebook and friendfeed work to distribute news, not to mention http://search.twitter.com which was important during the aftermath of the plane crash. - Robert Scoble

Richard: EXACTLY. This is two-way and news brands can't control it. They don't like this kind of news. They like the old way where they reported and you watched or read. - Robert Scoble

One implication I see is that the traditional method for a news organization to build a brand are no longer relevant. What suggestions do you have for a news organization that does want to build a brand? - Daniel Bachhuber

this is adding proof to Rubel's piece about friendfeed as the new blogging platform http://friendfeed.com/e... - The Real sofarsoShawn

Daniel: make lots of friends on Facebook and friendfeed and Twitter. Understand how news gets spread and found and produced on these networks. Get EVERYONE that works for you a Kodak Zi6 camcorder or FlipCam and make them post videos. Get on Seesmic and Twhirl and TweetDeck. Understand why entrepreneurs around the world now have a TweetDeck screen on their desks. - Robert Scoble

Daniel: I now have a real-time-web desk in my home with four computers so I can track what is going on in real time from around the world. Every news organziation should do this. Also, I now am following 7,000 here, 21,000 on Twitter, 5,000 on Facebook, 900 on Google Reader. That inbound lets me see what the world's conversation is and lets me see news before most people do. If I were an assigning editor at a newspaper, this is what I'd be doing. Then I'd be sending reporters out to get the real story. - Robert Scoble

FriendFeed is a data flow that anyone can manipulate to get the right information for them. It's 1-to-1 news. It is annotated and made more valuable via comments, providing a real-time interaction with your own personal news. [edit] Welcome to the world Gibson imagined. - AJ Kohn

Robert, even though brands can't control it, whats great is the Freindfeed encourages them to converse. By allowing to cross post a FF comment on Disqus for instance, brands and their customers can engage in the discussion both here and on their properties. - Sameer

Sameer: been using diqus and I like how easy it makes commenting on all blogs that use it, and how simple keeping track of those comments is. - Richard A.

I think it means 97.4% of people on FriendFeed do NOT use FF to keep up with the latest social media or web tech news. I'd say most people don't use FF as a source for news at all, but rather, to keep up what their friends are doing across the internets. - Daniel Sims

Daniel: I would also open up hundreds of rooms here on friendfeed where they can track news stories and companies and people who are interesting to them and shove in all sorts of RSS feeds. Like what I'm doing with my Davos room. http://friendfeed.com/rooms... - Robert Scoble

Robert: I don't disagree with you, but I think that it begs a larger discussion about the role of a *large* news brand. The news industry, imho, should focus on empowering communities to report their news, because the day and age of reporters as information *collectors* is gone. - Daniel Bachhuber

Daniel: that is true, but that is also news and news spreads through these networks very quickly because we trust our friends and family to tell us when important stuff is happening in the world. - Robert Scoble

Sameer said what I'd say. Now if I could just nudge a few of mine to converse here. The flow is great on friendfeed + the ease of seeing what people say on their other services they've linked here. - mrsha

But the problem is that the technorati sometimes forgets about regular people and get so busy with recycling the same info and blowing flowers up each others backsides that you don't get any traction unless your content is tech related. How would a brand of soap, a car maker, or a blog about b grade movies use this kind of network? - MarkCarras

Being able to discuss news, is where the power of FF lies in comparison to 'old-style' news. It's also a main differentiator of FF over Twitter. FF let's you get into discussions and get to know people. Twitter is 'just' the start/intro of that conversation. Each having their own merits. - Ronald

Ronald, you also don't wait for a moderator to say they like the comment. As soon as it's said you get feedback. - Richard A.

Robert, just because there are lots of people here doesn't make this a particularly interesting place for brands. Most of the stuff happening here is volatile. Btw I noticed that I'm nr 556 on that list. Pretty high imo since I tend to not be so serious about FF ;-) - Alexander van Elsas

FF, twitter, FB, etc all provide word of mouth recommendations, which most of us trust much more than something being "sold" to us - Ryan

Alexander: newsbrands will LOVE friendfeed rooms. Just wait and see. - Robert Scoble

I hope to bring FriendFeed to my friends and Norwegian people. I'm trying as good as I can to talk positive about both FriendFeed and Twitter, but Norwegians are not that easy to convince... I see the potential. - @LarsenTweet

Alexander: Brands don't have a choice really. If critical discussions start happening on this platform and the Goog starts indexing it, it better become "particularly interesting" over night. Volatile or dormant becomes less of an issue. - Sameer

"from the look in their eyes I could tell they really don't understand" Likely those execs were born too soon to get it. Eventually they will retire and they will be replaced with those that understand. Not sure how long that will take. - Phil Margolies

Yes, this means that the decentralized networks are important; but I'd guess that at least 1 in 3 FF users gets their news from mainstream news sites like CNN.com, Bloomberg.com, cnbc, etc; many FF and Twitter users use microblogging platforms to get less formal news - the info not available through the traditional platforms. - Barry Graubart

Maybe a future video-blog post: I think it would be neat to see your real-time-web-desk with four computers. - Bill Romanos

@robert scoble if you film that do it in the highest res possible :-) - Richard A.

if one out of every 39 on here follows you, and everyone on twitter is worth $42, how much does that make us worth on here? hmm? - rob friedman

does the fact that Twitter doesn't allow its tweets to be indexed by search engines (a good move IMHO...can you imagine the clutter otherwise?) decay the total value of the service? - Jason Salas from IM

Jason, what do you mean? If you think tweets aren't indexed, try a Google search for "wajiii plightbo". - Bill Jackson from twhirl

Robert - At present, agreed that your comments could in fact make a difference ... maybe even be a responsibility. On the other hand, that 'power' could quickly be diluted by someone (or numerous people) working hard to generate a similar following on Friendfeed. In the meantime. Use it wisely and YOU can make a difference. Everyone else needs to realize that the landscape has changed .... and they can too...in many ways - Charlie Anzman

Robert - I do not think any larger news brand that is currently out there could implement the type of news aggregation and reporter assignment system that you spoke about to the other Daniele earlier. I think that any incredibly innovative idea like that has to come from a new, fresh organization. Journalism of the future will soon be coming. But not from a CNN, MSNBC, FOX, or other. - Daniel Zarick

p.s. I have seen a picture of your real-time desk, but I would like to see a video of it all in action too. - Daniel Zarick

@daniel believe me you don't wanna see it. You must be a currency broker to get used to the speed of his real-time feed. I've seen it on CES and it was just crazy. Btw. as someone who just explored twitter and friendfeed and all this stuff, a couple of weeks ago, my personal conclusion is: Hell, i missed something out. - Sascha Pallenberg

@Robert Scoble: FFholic (aka FriendFeedHolic) tracks 185207 public and 23445 private users on FriendFeed, now. And surely, this is nearly the total number of users on FriendFeed. - Webrazzi