Arrington and I disagree on future... - Robert Scoble

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Arrington and I disagree on future http://m.kyte.tv/ch...

Arrington and I disagree on future http://www.kyte.tv/ch/6118/401143

April 9, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Cedric Chee, John Downey, Dadah and 72 other people liked this

I'm writing a post about this. Arrington believes that Twitter has won and that this is a winner take all market (the microblogging world, that is). I explain why this game has only just started. - Robert Scoble

Gillmor Gang:http://gillmorgang.techcrunch.com/2009... Arrington's points here have me disagreeing with him. - Robert Scoble

Agree a lot...want will be needed is to have the babble of all real-time web information being filtered by a core set of people that I trust...I need a service that says..."from all the noise that is out there right now..the people that you trust think the following is important...the following is funny...the following is bunk etc... - Mike Aikins

if you can't dominate the market, redefine it. - MikeAmundsen

The majority of the "big bloggers" that I've read over the past week (esp re: FF beta) I think that most of these guy have got the whole thing wrong. The tech market is never a "winner take all" thing. It a winner takes the current level, but then we bring it all up to the next level There was IBM, then Mircosoft, then Google, now (Twitter, FB, FF?) -But what's after that? And like Microsoft grew from the relationship w/IBM who grows from this market? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Mike, can't you do that now: e.g. friends:justinlong likes:20 or some such? - Justin Long

I agree Robert. The argument Arrington is proposing is similar to the search engine wars of the mid-90s, with prognosticators stating that Altavista was the search engine. - LPH™ and his dog P™

Nicholas, I wouldn't count him out yet. For me personally his credibility / level of influence is rebounding. And it doesn't matter so much if his opinion is wrong. A-listers don't need to be right from the start. They just need to start conversations. - Bruce Lewis

Bruce: Arrington once told me he's an entertainer. As long as everyone is paying attention to him he's going to do just fine. - Robert Scoble

While I started out in micro-blogging on Twitter and also found it a great service during Australia's recent bushfires for volunteering, I wouldn't call it the be-all-and-end-all. After all, one period of unexpected downtime on twitter had me looking at the new beta here on FF. And this morning, I'm even looking at jaiku and identi.ca. Who says Twitter's won? - George Hall (Australia)

I stopped paying attention to Arrington last year, but I'm starting to pay attention again now. Something good happened in Hawaii. - Bruce Lewis

we all here? - Nick

Nick, I'm here. - Robert Scoble

That picture is priceless. - Pat Hawks

well hi, then. I don't think ppl will move to ff the same way they didn't pick up on pownce, which (a year ago) was (already) better than twitter in terms of feature-set — it had photos, content, an air app, etc. - Nick

the key for the survival of sites like Friendfeed is not try to compete with Twitter, but to do things that Twitter doesn't. This is not a winner take all situation. - Kim Landwehr

sorry, i missed that (on kyte). how do you use office w/ google docs? - Nick

Nick: if someone sends a Word Doc to my Gmail address I can open it up in Google Docs. - Robert Scoble

John: sounds a lot like Twitter/friendfeed, huh? - Robert Scoble

Robert: Unless its a .docx format....? - Justin Long

I'm sure the issue for FF isn't search. Search isn't the first reason for users to get their friends in a specific service. People go to Twitter because Twitter is the place to go. People went to Hotmail because others were on Hotmail. Now, and only now, people realize that Gmail is better. Unfortunately, it took years for Gmail to emerge. I guess people will learn how to use the real time web on Twitter and 5 years later, they try to optimize their usage with FF. Years. - Jérôme

Justin: probably not, but those should be even easier for Google to read. - Robert Scoble

Wouldn't you think people would go where the majority of their friends are? I'm kind of divided between FB and Twitter. I wish more of my friends used FF but... - Justin Long

Robert: 1) I agree totally w/ twitter being an entirely useless way of finding ppl of value — ie it's good for following existing celebrities, and may even be O.K. for finding local randomers, but no good for finding services of value (those most likely to advertise in a highly targeted online setting!) 2) I take ALL my school notes on gdocs and i wish i could mass export just to be safe - Nick

Jerome: right. But now friendfeed will be the place to go. Why? Because I can send you a link to something of great value. - Robert Scoble

If I look at my geeky friends, they all try to "manage" Twitter, and still refuse to get lost on FF (the Twitter for "advanced" users). - Jérôme

Jerome: two years ago all my friends told me that Twitter was the lamest thing they'd ever seen. - Robert Scoble

Then they all shifted when more of their friends got onto it. - Robert Scoble

See, that's what I think: the center of gravity isn't features, but friends. You have to have people in order to have substantive conversations. You go where you have a preexisting pool of sharers. - Justin Long

Unless you have enough "pull" to be able to go into a new service and bring a bunch of people with you... like Scoble...? - Justin Long

Robert: so they should have left Hotmail for Gmail once they knew Gmail had big storage, good search, threads, etc. My friends and family all know that Gmail is better, but making the change is psychologically hard. Now, the problem in social networks is that leaving Twitter or adopting FF means you've to move your friends with you. That's not the case for webmail and that's why I'm concerned about FF's future. People may admit that FF is better, but it will take years before they move. - Jérôme

Scoble: do you think it is meaningful to compare the live feed on YOUR account to that of the average user? I dont think ANYONE else has numbers similar to yours in terms of updates/minute (or even /second) - Nick

Wish there was a way to better integrate Twitter's stream into Friendfeed... so that you could see both streams and update them... that would make it easier to migrate to FF! Maybe so you could see your twitter stream but no one else could unless you happened to comment on something or like it?? - Justin Long

Jerome: right. This is why Twitter has won. The first inning of this game. - Robert Scoble

Nick: I used to be the only one following 1,000 people on Twitter and everyone made fun of me. Now that is a common thing to see. - Robert Scoble

Robert: but Twitter is your friends' first Twitter-like service. People are still learning how to use it. I'm sure FF may be the next winner, but in years. And in months, Twitter will probably have launch likes and comments. Then, what would be FF's raison d'être? Why do you think you'll want to stay on FF? You've already said that you go where your audience is... - Jérôme

I didn't realize how bad Twitter was at searching until recently. That's why I've migrated to FriendFeed as well. The 140-character message is similar to the traditional Unix bias toward flat files. It works for simple uses, but if you need metadata, you have to use more elaborate methods. FriendFeed is analogous to a relational database. - David Delony

Jerome it took Twitter three years to get to 20 million and be considered a "mainstream success." - Robert Scoble

FriendFeed has a character limit, too. It's just more than 140 is all. I would have predicted the "Disqus" and "Intense Debate" type service would be dominating the borader conversation by now... I would have been wrong. - Matt Shaulis

Matt: metadata on friendfeed does NOT take away from friendfeed's size, though. On Twitter typing "RT: " takes away four characters and typing tags takes away even more. - Robert Scoble

Robert: It's good for everyone though. It prevents rambling, hyperbole, and bloat. It has not prevented text messaging from becoming a global craze... - Matt Shaulis

Why is Twitter a mainstream success? Because of how it was used in certain cases and what sort of publicity it got by those cases. Mumbai, the Hudson River plane, Australian bushfires. FriendFeed can get the same sort of thing, all it needs is imaginitive use of FriendFeed capabilities in a crunch. The added bonuse of aggregation greatly enhances its use in such cases, too. Do it properly, Friendfeed will hold its own. - George Hall (Australia)

What takes more time and resource: implement FF's features in Twitter or gain Twitter's number of users? I love FF, but without a big promotion push from its community, I fear that FF will never go mainstream. - Jérôme

George: But FriendFeed lacks a cute name meaning the "bubble headed bleach blondes" will not like saying in on the air. ;) hehehe - Matt Shaulis

Jerome: I guarantee that in two years (Twitter is two years older than friendfeed) we'll be talking about friendfeed and not Twitter. - Robert Scoble

I agree something like Friendfeed will be more interesting, certainly. - Dominick R. Brady

what makes twitter a mainstream succes is the cases that goerge mentions PLUS the mobile aspect FF weill never get there until I can have it on EVERY mobile devices - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

How boring is it to say "I posted a FriendFeed message" versus "I Tweeted" .... Come on... it might sound silly, but it's marketing 101. The media and the glitterati will not adopt FriendFeed because it's not "fun" to talk about. (Not to mention, it is confusing to average people and will only get moreso.) - Matt Shaulis

guruvan: what if every mobile device becomes a clone of the iPhone? That's where it's headed. - Robert Scoble

I tend to agree. I am already really into this new version- even being in beta. - Chris Parton

Matt, all its missing is a cute little mascot. The name's good enough...and cute enough...but it needs something visual. Mascot, visually identifiable immediately. Something that stands out in the minds of a bubble-headed bleach blond. Hmm, do bleach-blonds HAVE minds? - George Hall (Australia)

Matt: fair enough. Twitter has a fun attitude. - Robert Scoble

Robert: don't you think there's going to be legacy TXT for a while though? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

WOW, scoble. that's a bold statement. i have a hard time believing that. they just dont have the brand equity - john erik metcalf

but yes the clone of the iphone is for real - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

George: yes yes yes.. the mascot too.. all the way. Great point as well. - Matt Shaulis

John: so did MySpace two years ago. - Robert Scoble

twitter is becoming a household name. - john erik metcalf

@Matt and George. Marketing is FF problem right now. Media coverage, for sure, name maybe. - Jérôme

John: so was MySpace two years ago. Twitter is only used by 10 to 20 million. Facebook is 200 million. If Twitter's success means anything then it shouldn't even exist. - Robert Scoble

Medai coverage + Name + Mascot + Etc. == Marketing - Matt Shaulis

Matt: Financial Times is writing about friendfeed on Monday. And so it starts. - Robert Scoble

friendfeed could easily become a household name too if there were 50 different clients to meet everyone's different wants and needs for friendfeed - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Even google figured out android needed a visual mascot. It's worked, too, for linux, having Tux the penguin. Twitter has the bird and the fail whale. At the moment, we have the incredible Scoble, but due to similarities with the Hulk, we have copyright and trademark issues there. Other suggestions? - George Hall (Australia)

Rob: friendfeed is simplifying its API to get more people to be able to write for it. Twitter's API is so simple even I could write an app for it. Friendfeed's API is far more complex. - Robert Scoble

Robert: LOL @ Financial times.... hehehe... I suppose it is a start... but it's no Tonight Show with Jay Leno. :-D - Matt Shaulis

Ellen and Jay talked about Twitter for a good 2.5 minutes - Matt Shaulis

Matt: In a year Ellen and Jay will need to talk about something else. - Robert Scoble

Robert: my gut tells me that if that is true, it won't be FF. It will be something newer. But yes... Google will soon buy Twitter which means it is getting shelved and we will all have to move on. - Matt Shaulis

Matthew broke FF. - Rochelle

Speaking of third-party stuff and API's, the iphone clients for Friendfeed need some work. Too much crashing in motherfeed and and Nambu - George Hall (Australia)

Robert: agreed re: twitter api simplicity...I think I could do it too. Eager to see easier ff api and more clients esp mobile ones....then I can get tons of people to take it everywhere they go....then people will really be engrossed in their phones walking thru traffic ;) - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Matt: there will probably be something new that +I+ will be onto, but I usually look for the newest and best way to do something. - Robert Scoble

Well, Jive.ly's certainly not it! - Chris Parton

Chris: when I see it I'll probably talk about it here all day long and get everyone pissed at me. :-) - Robert Scoble

Facebook seems to be doing alright without a cute name or mascot. - Bruce Lewis

Bruce: so does Microsoft and Google and Amazon. - Robert Scoble

And Seesmic seems to fail with a good name AND a cute ratoon :) - Jérôme

You sure Microsoft's success isn't because of Clippy? :-) - Bruce Lewis

And remember Microsoft's Windows emblem? That's practically a mascot/trademark instantly identifying it - George Hall (Australia)

Google has also its Clippy, it was for Google Docs, to make it mainstream :D http://blogoscoped.com/archive... - Jérôme

I try to jump out on Seesmic every now and then; I want to get into the video interaction but it always seems like the same 15 people are out there. Like a big video conference on odd topics - Lou Paglia

seesmic is certainly trying to branch out and make more interaction happen - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Hey, i started on Seesmic this week...it's actually quite good. I like it more than Tweetdeck. It's only let down in one area, the userlists. As groupings, they're too static. Tweetdeck lets grouped friends be a column that's actively updated. Other than that, it's superior to Tweetdeck. - George Hall (Australia)

Patrick: thats actually why I like FF so much...as I get better and better at it it relieves the fatigue by aggregating my content and republishing it for me - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

George: I am a huge fan of peoplebrowsr ....way more powerful than anything I've used ....better than tweetdeck for sure - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I think the aggregation makes people more voracious -especially when they see how it reposts to where THEIR friends are. If friendfeed were to be able to repost stuff to Facebook as well as twitter it would be a SMASH hit - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I think that, as I grow more and more into social apps, FF grows at a comfortable pace with me. But that's just me +shrug+ - Chris Parton

Chris: good point...I think people are generally comfortable with the pace on facebook (and myspace and similar) and they're just becoming comfortable with the pace on twitter - the pace on friendfeed is a little more hectic even still (omg with the realtime feed even more so) and will take some getting used to for people, but they will.. Especially if FF develops the outbound feeds...out to twitter is good, but it needs to go to where the people have their friends ....whereever that is - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I don't know my history too well, but in my limited time following you, you guys don't totally agree too often :) - Bwana ☠

Very good points. I feel as though I have outgrown many of the other services and am ready for a fluid and fast-paced real-time entity. Also, my FF doesn't seem to be posting to Twitter haha! - Chris Parton

100% agree - if everything feeds into everything else, in the end it may just be a question of interface / controls. Friend Feed is well on its way to being a streamlined interface for both Twitter and Facebook at the same time with all the relevant meta data. An interface, that I personally prefer. But, ultimately, agreed we are in the stone age and this is barely started much less over! P.S. Love the edit feature : ) - JP Maxwell

Chris: I bet if you tried to hit their website youd get you a failwhale...doubt its on FF's end ;) -----and I agree about out growing the others...but my friends have not, so I still use them...but more and more, as a way to get stuff into FF - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Robert's goin' Green! Ahhhhh! - Charlie Anzman

Bwana: lol! probably not, but which guys are you referring to? - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

And how fun would the discussion be if everyone agreed on it all....little mutual lovefest and that's it heh. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

I was referring to Arrington and Scoble - Bwana ☠

My extended family is set up to get a weekly FriendFeed summary by email. It doesn't get more comfortably paced than that. - Bruce Lewis

Again, just so right on w/ Twitter being just the beginning. When you introduce something new to a group of people previously not exposed to it, often the simplest thing wins at first. It is only once the adoption has occurred that people start wanting more. The simplicity becomes limiting and people demand this or that, but you never could have started out with it all. - JP Maxwell

And the internet itself is founded upon the idea of using the simplest thing as the base layer and then building onto that base....FF build well onto the simplest layers like twitter - being able to like and comment on tweets over here is a great addition...but still leaves twitter as an important piece - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Laying down the gauntlet. The drama!!! - sofarsoShawn ~presque...

Robert, true, the game has just started and we do need better filters, but there is nothing stopping Twitter from implementing some of the same features we see on Friendfeed, Facebook and more. Threaded conversations and a like button do not constitute barriers to entry. - Erick Schonfeld

Can someone please tell me how either of these startups are going to make money? Please? - Bwana ☠

which startups? - wannagot

Erick - twitter has only just got its service engineered to handle it's existing features, whereas FriendFeed has been built as a well maintained scalable infrastructure right from the start. I wouldn't underestimate FriendFeed's technical lead - it may be larger than Twitter's user-base lead. Not to mention the fact they'd have to lead their user-base perhaps unwillingly. - Robin Barooah

google wasn't first, but they had a great idea and incredible execution. FF might have the same effect on soc-net. - MikeAmundsen

Robert I agree with you 100% on the value of the "meta data" aspect of FF. I'm not so sure that advertising isnt already viable on twitter. Google adwords functionality integrated into the side bar of twitter would be much more targeted than the google content network. So even on a basic level it is viable. I agree that it could be much more. Google can just sit back and integrate into any or all existing social networks. The myspace deal paid of in much the same way. - James Ketchell

Ewww, Cheyenne yo you do know he's married. - sofarsoShawn ~presque...

That is true. - sofarsoShawn ~presque...

correct...current state of information is chaos, jumbled mess...need organization...ff is a start - Michael

Alasdair: advertising is a $300 billion a year business. THAT is why I concentrate on it. - Robert Scoble

nice - the difference between *THE* answer and many solutions. It's just what solutions dominate, what ends up being a robust niches and what dies (and it's an ever shifting playing field in this case). - Stuart Miniman

FF FTW!! :) - Susan Beebe

the metadata angle to the discussion on twitter versus FF/FB is an interesting one. for first time users harder to grasp; on the other hand richer metadata structures make it indeed much easier to really filter the information; not only for directly using FF, but also for third party engines building on top of FF API's - Jeroen De Miranda

Alasdair: Advertising is far from dead. Just because you're not a fan doesn't mean the rest of us are not. The truth is advertising is prevalent in our society because we need it. You need to know where those people, things, services and such are. The best of anything goes to waste if no one knows about it. The key to advertising, though, is to deliver it to you in such a way that you like it, and is relevant to you. Most current media doesn't allow for that. Social medial advertising does offer potential. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

Who cares what Arringtoin says? Last week he said Google was buying Twitter - paul mooney

I think twitter has much more metadata capability than we see on the surface. A good search correlation algorithm could take temporal and spatial metadata as weighting vectors; more weighting vectors: indexing + analyzing link targets (and their metadata), retweets, replies, follows, tweets sources, and the kicker indexed RSS feeds from the top N news/info/media web sites, etc. Correlate a search term against these vectors and self-tune using user rating. $.02 - Ankush Narula

I disagree with you on so many things, Robert, but I watched this video, and you make excellent points. I do believe you're right. - Stan Scott

Get arrington to set up a realtime private room for techcrunch staff - Christian Burns

This is the future speaking: you are both wrong. - Todd Hoff

The meta data and "likes" you are describing that is the advantage of friend feed is reminding me of what Plurk is trying to do. I don't like it over there, and I'm trying to figure it out over here on Friendfeed. Maybe when you have 19,000 subscriptions FF makes sense, but for the little guys, it's not so transparent. - Peggy Dolane

Twitter's victory will be short-lived and potentially Pyrrhic. It's a cool toy everybody can play with but not a great tool for serious users. I still can't see it paying for itself over the long run unless as a data collecting device for Google. And the best point: all the metadata is currently within the 140 characters. And apps not limited to 140 characters are so obviously more useful. - The Web's Wendell Wittler

Definitely love Robert's calling out of Mike at the end. They're both nice, smart guys, and I'm glad we have a system (the Internet) where they can discuss this for all of us to see, and discuss with them/each other as well. - Tyler Hayes

hint you on the next challenge: Servers will distributed into multi-region server farms management that somehow will focus on local activities but still synchronized with primary server farm.... That would be how megatons of meta data will be delivered seamlessly without causing too much traffic collision and bandwidth waste... I think.. - Pico Seno

I finally understand the value Robert gets out of FF, and it's because he can easily pool lots of useful metadata (likes, links, comments) to each of his own posts out of the vast trove of friends. For the rest of us, there's the live feed, which works better on Twitter than FF. I still think that in the future, we will all be Scoble though and have gadzillion more friends. - Prokofy Neva