Chrome OS will help kill Silverlight and other non-open tech, preventing msft and others from recapturing the web. (though I expect that it will support Flash by necessity)
I hope it doesn't. After all we need good media delivery platforms.
- Swaroop
Including GNASH - the open source alternative - would solve that problem
- Bogdan Costea
yeah, nobody really needs flash. kill it.
- Zio Bonino
Chrome OS might be a compelling case for SVG/<canvas> + <audio> tag replacements for flash. Dunno what SVG's perf is like on WebKit tho.
- Matt Mastracci
Microsoft will port it. It's all about codecs & DRM. Ogg Theora isn't all that great.
- Rodfather
@Swaroop eh eh, I've got flash disabled on all my systems :)
- Zio Bonino
@Benjamin I'd prefer HTML web apps over native apps anyday. But it'll take time for it to mature
- Swaroop
Rodfather, I don't think that will be an option for msft :). If Chrome is built the way I would do it, there is no installation per-se -- everything runs in the browser and the config in stored in the cloud (and cached locally). The computer is a pure appliance.
- Paul Buchheit
What about more standard codecs like h.264? That isn't open and is in hardware already.
- Rodfather
h.264 is established and must be in there, but it's not a platform like Silverlight is.
- Paul Buchheit
I know some of the guys behind silverlight. It is some great technology. Too bad it's from Microsoft and is closed.
- Joe Beda
from iPhone
A world with no Flash and Silverlight. I can't wait.
- Paul Grav
Yeah, it's too bad they didn't open-source it. This stuff with Mono is silly -- if you want to make a real standard you need to make the real implementation be open.
- Paul Buchheit
MS are about 10 years too late with Silverlight. And they'll most likely be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting HTML5.
- Paul Grav
Zio sez (hopefully humorously): "yeah, nobody really needs flash. kill it" -- have you ever watched a single YouTube video in your life? Like seventeen gazillion other people across the wired world. yeah, you're right, nobody needs Flash. ha!
- .LAG liked that
Remember Dave Clark in 1992, "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code."
- Guy Vander Heyden
.LAG: most YouTube videos are playable without Flash now. My iPhone plays most of them and it doesn't have Flash. Certainly by the time the Google OS came out YouTube would be converted completely to non-Flash capability.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: The youtube flash application helps read the flv files on Youtube's servers and provides a UI (decoder too).
- Swaroop
Even Google admits they're not sure I'd bit for bit html5 video is less bandwitj consuming than flash. And flash isn't just media delivery, also interesting games and apps like tonepad, splicemusic.com's online sequencer, etc (I'm musically inclined, so most of my examples will be along that line) and please don't suggest we redo it all in java
- Ed F
from Nambu
Does this mean the next Silverlight release is codename Seppuku?
- Jay Cuthrell
Maybe we'll see commercials encoded in movies if everything is open.
- Rodfather
Flash is too established to kill off right now, so I'd be surprised if Chrome didn't include flash support. It will take many years to get rid of that thing. First they need to fix the standard browser to not be so broken (lack of video, multi-file upload, etc), then they need everyone to switch to the new html5 solutions.
- Paul Buchheit
Scoble ...that may be true, and YouTube plays on my Pre without Flash (yet)...but that doesn't mean that "nobody needs Flash." really? what would replace it?
- .LAG liked that
Is it just me or does Native Client (NaCl) remind you of the Microsoft Active X approach?
- Daniel Chow
But who prevents Google from taking over the net?
- Andreas
youtube videos play on iPhone/iPod Touch as they are higher res mp4 files NOT flv files. It was a big deal when Steve negotiated that deal with youtube.
- vijay
You have Moonlight to run Silverlight applications in Linux. Not perfect, but then an application made on Silverlight is "not perfect" by definition
- Marcos Marado
The point here is that Google has no motivation to include Silverlight on these machines, and installing software likely won't be an option (it's a web appliance), so it will be absent from a lot of netbooks, just as it is absent from iPhones. That cuts into market share, which is a bad thing for a platform that is trying to compete with more universal tech like Flash and HTML....
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- Paul Buchheit
@DanielChow: NaCl has very little overlap with ActiveX, apart from running native code. It runs in a provably safe way, and explicitly does *not* allow it to access arbitrary host APIs. But it can be quite useful when you need to run code that would be too slow in Javascript (even on v8): e.g., heavy encryption/decryption, possibly codecs, definitely game physics, and so forth.
- Joel Webber
There is a time and a place for Flash and Silverlight so I hope it will run it. There are simply some things you can do which aren't possible, or practical in html/css/javascript.
- Steve Temple
Paul: why wouldn't Chrome OS come with Moonlight? And if not, why wouldn't you be able to just install it? And third, why the hell would people want Moonlight for? I never installed it and not even once felt the need to!
- Marcos Marado
from fftogo
because of moonlight http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlig... the potential userbase of silverlight is greatly improved, agree that projects which don't consider compatibility are limiting their potential
- Mike Chelen
@mindboosternoori Ryanair site uses silverlight: http://www.ryanair.com/site... that's the only website I know that uses it - for this you would need moonlight :)
- Ihar Mahaniok
Flash is needed for the google os to be useful in education. Many education based websites are flash based.
- Willowdale
@Paul "Google is probably paying OEMs to ship with this OS, so instead of paying $x/machine to include windows XP, they will get paid $y/machine to include Chrome." - paying present tense, already? Isn't it enough for OEMs not to have to pay hefty licenses to Redmond, etc., while being able to ship with a free, stable OS+browser combo; they need to be paid to do that as well?
- ianf ⌘
I sure hope so. I think the wide array of JavaScript libraries have been killing Flash for years. Silverlight was never really a player. The only think keeping Flash afloat is video
- Scott Radcliff
I don't know what's under the hood of Silverlight (nobody knows), but Flash is basically a sprite engine controlled by Actionscript, which is basically an adapted version of Javascript anyway. It's nicely packaged though, and has an army of developers, so it won't go away that easily, at least not until there are Flash-to-Canvas/ HTML5 porting tools/ translators and the like.
- ianf ⌘
to follow that logic...photoshop is needed as well
- Chris Hofmann
somebody call me when http://playboyarchive.com is working in Chrome OS (it's currently implemented in Silverlight)
- Karim
If it gains any traction at all, MS will just make Silverlight version that will run on Google OS. Sure google could block it, but they haven't done so with the Chrome browser.
- Jeff Weber
Interesting. I doubt the Google OS will get that big anytime soon though.
- Scott Radcliff
from email
Silverlight doesn't have a chance now...I wonder what would Adobe Air do.
- Saad Kamal
not really, if google want to be open then they will need a plugin architecture for it and then MS could just port for it. I really don't see this troubling mainstream users any time soon.
- Darren Stuart
Though I agree with the view that MS monopoly may erode as alternative devices get adoption over PC/Notebook, and these devices will mostly run on open source OS, but it may take years to create a significant change in every day usage of normal users. In the end, OS choice is mostly done by manufacturers, and they would be happy to get paid by open source vendors for putting their OS on...
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- Kaan Bingol
People want media. Hulu, Netflix, Kindle, iTunes, etc. They need to address that or they are DOA.
- Hayes Haugen
Hayes, what makes you think it will lack media support?
- Paul Buchheit
I don't think it will lack licensed media support but what deals they are able to make will be crucial.
- Hayes Haugen
Hayes, i thought you were going to say that Netflix was using Silverlight. ;-)
- Karim
Yes, they are, what is their deal with MSFT? Can they do non Silverlight distribution?
- Hayes Haugen
i believe the Netflix non-Silverlight distribution is a format called "DVD" that works over the "Snail Mail" protocol. ;-) but clearly if Google is paying OEMs to install Chrome OS, they can pay Netflix to go back to Flash which Chrome OS will probably support "by necessity" ;-)
- Karim
How can Google make money from Chrome OS? Or does it want to make money from it except through advertisement? I still can not imagine that all software and service are free and sponsored by advertisements.
- Derek Wei
All Chrome OS questions are answered by today's Fake Steve Jobs ;)
- Hayes Haugen
Is there a need to make money? If more and more people eschew desktop offline applications in favor of online web based apps, it means more pageviews, more eyeballs, more advertising inventory, plus has the side effect of undermining a big competitor's cash cow.
- Ray Cromwell
That's the key, Google wants everything online. They figure the more people online, the stronger they become, and the more money they make. At least that what was said at the Chrome launch.
- Scott Radcliff
from email
I'm amused that the "backwards compatibility" argument against alternative operating systems has slowly turned into "does it support flash", and when you unpack that it really means "does it play YouTube". I suspect Google will make sure ChromeOS cna play YouTube and they don't need Flash to make sure of it.
- Nick Lothian
Is it possible that Microsoft will write Office for the Web using Volta instead of Silverlight? Could be a showcase announcement for their attack on GWT
- Ray Cromwell
I think Microsoft is going to focus less on the front-end of the web and more on the back-end, middle tier and database sides. Azure is a big deal that consumers aren't talking about because it's not flashy but will be pretty important to developers (and especially enterprise-level applications) when it's finally ready because everything becomes an interface to the cloud. Microsoft is...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Nosense, I want silverlight, flash, html and any other technology in my desktop & mobile phone. Silverlight? yes, there you can develop under Python, Ruby et al, instead of the outdated javascript.
- Sebastian Wain
Good Point, Paul. The web has to be free from proprietary software. And to h.264, sorry OGG Theora is free and superior.
- Ryo / Fuck Facebook
It looks like with Native Client, you should be able to write your Chrome OS app in any language you feel like. So far, they have some examples in C/C++, but one of the things they ported is a Lua interpreter. If Adobe isn't going to invest heavily in fixing the show-stopping bugs on non-Windows versions of Flash, it's inevitably going to die, and there's really nothing either Google or Apple can do even if they wanted to support Flash better.
- Victor Ganata
...ActionScript3 is ECMASCript-compliant. I know nothing about standards bodies, and shii like that, but what if Adobe dropped ActionScript and said, "You can now use pure Javascript to build Flash applications..." It wouldn't be a big leap. I'm pretty sure that would shut-up all the Flash haters. And to the folks who say Flash is hanging around just because of video...well, video is...
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- .LAG liked that
Actionscript is just the glue for the more advanced what-iffy graphic functionality of Flash. They can not drop it for Javascript, because it contains additional graphic primitives that JS lacks. But it's not the JS-or-Actionscript that makes it a target for hate, it's other things. Nobody denies that it's pretty capable, but it is also badly written, eats up memory like no other, makes...
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- ianf ⌘
I honestly don't know how necessary Flash is. Apple seems to be doing fine without supporting it. But certainly Gnash and Swfdec should be implementable on Chrome OS. The fact is that without Adobe's full support on a given platform, Flash apps will always be second class citizens on alternate platforms, and so far, there's no indication that Adobe is interested in fully supporting any platform other than Windows.
- Victor Ganata
ianf ...you bring up great points about Flash's detriments, as does Victor, but until there's a better way to bring video to the Web, I can't see it disappearing. Adobe seems to keep improving the Flash VM, hopefully they'll address those CPU-hogging issues and make a more efficent runtime. Yeah, I hate hearing the fans kick-in when visiting a Flash-heavy site too. <sigh>
- .LAG liked that
that only covers video and audio... *sigh*
- Ed F
from IM
Ed, only??? thats one of the main reasons cited for the continued requirement of flash on popular sites like youtube
- Mike Chelen
I know, and it seems I'm the only one who mentions Flash's other uses... :-/
- Ed F
from IM
Ed, those other uses can be accomplished through pure Javascript, video was the last remaining stumbling block
- Mike Chelen
Still waiting on non-Flash recreations of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch... or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch... Well aware of how someone mentioned higher up how you can combine javascript and svg to get nifty flash-like effects. I want apps like that though ^ Only real alternatives I've seen are Java-based ones, and those runs even slower than Flash.
- Ed F
Pardon me, but the OP is a ridiculous conclusion. For that to be the case, Chrome OS would have to kill Windows, OS X, etc altogether. Paul, I understand your viewpoint as being an ex-Google person, but that's just NOT going to happen. Right now the video specification from HTML5 has been dropped because of an impasse, meaning that we may be transitioning from 1 closed-source boss - Flash - to another - H264. Good luck.
- LANjackal
But why do these type of apps have to be written in Flash at all? You can easily do the same thing in C, C++, ObjC, Python, Ruby, etc., with the Native Client API that they're building for Chrome. http://code.google.com/p...
- Victor Ganata
write them yourself then. until then, I'll stick with desktop apps or Flash equivalents
- Ed F
from IM
I'm just saying, it's not like Flash is the end-all/be-all. As Apple well demonstrates, some people can live quite well without it.
- Victor Ganata
Victor ...i think the answer to the 'why do these have to be written in Flash at all' question is because Flash is installed on such a significant portion of Web browsers. But I recall that Adobe Flex had a competitor, Laszlo/OpenLaszlo, which compiled apps to SWF or to Javascript. Who's to say that Adobe doesn't have the same capability of making SWF apps into JS ones? On one hand, it...
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- .LAG liked that
Ed, such apps are possible with Javascript and HTML5 multimedia features, the question will be how difficult developers find it, and whether the performance is fast enough
- Mike Chelen
LANjackal, there is a question of degree in that Flash + H264 uses proprietary software and codec, while HTML5 + H264 requires only the codec. while OGV is no longer part of the spec, it can certainly still be used to have completely open video formats, and recent comparisons have shown it performs well http://people.xiph.org/~maikme...
- Mike Chelen
Silverlight's 3 is looking pretty impressive today but tend to agree
- Charlie Anzman
still haven't updated yet. Busy with something on Firefox
- LANjackal
from IM
What everybody seems to be missing about Flash is that it works because there is one implementation which is mostly backwards-compatible and the same across platforms. It beat Java because, among other reasons, Java just didn't work the same across JVMs and platforms. The problem with HTML5 is that it will have a different implementation for every browser, and that means your app/game...
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- Gabe
Yeah the video spec for HTML5 is currently a disaster
- LANjackal
from IM
Paul, don't you prefer brutal competition SL vs. Flash vs. standards bring to the table by definition? Or are you more into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - 2020 Google Union - type of ideology?
- Kari Honkanen
Kari, I don't understand your question. Competition is good, but with open-source we get that -- no need for flash or SL.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, no, we don't get the same level of competition with open-source only. As long as there's an opportunity for big gains (like in this case to bridge the gap before html 5 era...to satisfy demand), there will be innovations driven by that. I believe we all benefit from a free market economy that includes commercial, closed source, innovations. I am more scared of the possible future...
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- Kari Honkanen
I agree that the future is neither open nor closed, but a mixture of the 2. Been preaching that for a while now, but then again there are the fanatics on either side who can't see anything other than a homogenous future
- LANjackal
from IM
I wouldn't worry too much amount multimedia. By exposing WebGL, (and hopefully OpenCL), you can offload a lot of compute intensive stuff onto the GPU via GPGPU techniques, and NativeClient is there to take up the rest of the slack, but the for the vast majority of iPhone-like games, I'm willing to bet V8 Javascript on a modern processor is more than enough. That leaves licensing issues...
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- Ray Cromwell
Paul, so are you saying that Google will block both Flash and Silverlight from ChromeOS? That's a new take on 'open.'
- Cliff Gerrish
MSFT next smart move: get Chrome OS (it's BSD licensed), inject IE9 and Silverlight into it and go benchmark against Chrome :)
- Claudio Cicali ♋
@caludio: They've already done that, somewhat. Silverlight 4 Beta supports Chrome. However I'm pretty sure it's probably technically impractical to run another browser atop Chrome OS anyway
- LANjackal
from IM
Something feels contradictory about a system touted to 'kill' competitors being 'open'. Sounds almost predatory to me.
- Karoli
If the concept of open source didn't allow for competitive business plans then quite a few companies that depend on it wouldn't exist. The "happy smiley" image most FOSS zealots promote isn't reflective of reality. There will always be competition, even among the free
- LANjackal
from IM
I'm not opposed to non-open software, but for OS, browser, etc I prefer that it be open. Cliff, Google isn't going to "block" anything, but they can certainly choose what to include, and my guess is that they won't include SL. As Claudio points out, MSFT can make their own version of ChromeOS that includes SL, which is why open source software is nice (it can't be crippled too much or else someone will fork it).
- Paul Buchheit
I have heard somewhere that Fash uses it's own port where Silverlight works over the HTTP port. That's why Netflix works so well. To that, Flash costs more on a sever side because providers can charge more for that port traffic. Could it come down to who is cheaper? (I am fully prepared to be wrong).
- Johnny Worthington
Johnny, they both use HTTP -- there's no difference there.
- Paul Buchheit
Is Chrome OS BSD-licensed? I thought it was using a Linux kernel.
- Victor Ganata
@Paul - well, Flash can do P2P stuff over non-HTTP posts, but that is very new (Flash 10 I think). The cost isn't affected anyway.
- Nick Lothian
My understanding is that netbooks would have to be absurdly popular for Chrome OS to make a dent in the popularity of Flash or SL.
- Gabe
not rly, the defeat of Flash & SL depends on the rise of HTML5, which will b supported by multiple browsers. Unfortunately spec disagreements r holding that up. That's another advantage of closed systems : fewer cooks often makes the broth get done faster lol
- LANjackal
from IM
How is HTML 5 going to defeat Flash and SL? I haven't used it, but I don't see anything in the spec that looks like it could compare.
- Gabe
@Gabe - what do you think HTML5 is missing? It does video, drawing, local storage, "threading" via WebWorkers. The biggest hole I'm aware of is the lack of access to webcams & microphones. What have I missed?
- Nick Lothian
HTML 5's not "missing" much in terms of its ambition. What it's missing is a consensus among its contributors. Flash and SL have gone through several iterations while HTML 5's been sitting there
- LANjackal
from IM
Nick: When you say HTML 5 has "drawing", are you refering to the Canvas element? I would not consider an immediate-mode procedural raster drawing library to be much of a competitor to retained-mode declarative vector libraries like SVG or Silverlight. Programming with the Canvas tag is sort of the equivalent of programming in assembly language for bitmaps.
- Gabe
@Gabe: I think you've got it upside-down. A Canvas-style API is the fundamental basis on which you can build a retained mode structure like SVG, et al. If a platform includes a retained-mode library as a convenience, so be it. You can build SVG on Canvas, but not the other way around (hacks like IECanvas notwithstanding -- they have horrible performance characteristics and are a nasty abstraction inversion).
- Joel Webber
So, if Moonlight (Mono) runs on linux -- Will google make sure it doesn't work on Chrome OS?
- Cliff Gerrish
No they won't, because it Silverlight already runs on Chrome as of Beta 4
- LANjackal
from IM
Joel: I don't think you said anything contrary to what I said. I just don't understand why any programmer would want to waste time writing an app using a low-level library when I could use a high-level library that implements everything for me.
- Gabe
@Gabe - I agree, and people are implementing those libraries now. See http://raphaeljs.com/ for example. Also, don't underestimate the convenience factor. I don't own any Flash development tools, but my text editor works pretty well for Canvas+JS based stuff.
- Nick Lothian
Nick: Didn't the author of raphael have some massive rant about how bad the Canvas element is? And I don't have any Flash dev tools either, but I use a text editor for most of my Silverlight development. It is incredibly convenient to be able to type something like <DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding tabledata}"/> into a text editor and not have to create the data grid myself.
- Gabe
Why is Flash a "necessity" for an OS? I enjoy what flash can do, but it is like putting pimped out leather Oldsmobile seats in a Ferrari. It would definitely be nice, but certainly not a necessity.
- Dan Douglass
Early post goof up. To your original point, I agree. I like how Google is approaching the internet space with web apps that can be run with out a bloated browser.
- Dan Douglass
Dan Douglass: Flash is necessary because so many web sites rely on it. How many people would want to get a netbook that couldn't play FaceBook games or watch YouTube videos? Of course Google is in the unique position of being able to make YouTube work on ChromeOS without Flash, but they probably can't do anything about Hulu, Vimeo, or any of the other video sites out there that require Flash.
- Gabe
Awesome "no one loves you" defense from Scoble :P ""But my Google Reader account is super fast," I can hear you saying. Yeah, but you don't have any friends and you don't have many things you are subscribed to."
- Daniel J. Pritchett
Everyone uses the tool they like, GReader is clearly my information source and hub. I will skim anything I haven't filtered with my Greasemonkey script. FriendFeed is my second hub with deep interactive conversations, Facebook is mostly a little more personal interaction, Twitter is mostly quick interactions (maybe two replies) with one person. So Twitter is my lowest ranking tool out...
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- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Can't really live without GReader. Since the GReader upgrades, I have put Feedly on the shelf. It's really the best way for me to follow activity on LinkedIn and all the Ning groups I belong to, as well as the usual stuff you use RSS for.
- Bryan R. Adams
I don't like Greader ui but i'm still using it with Feedly. Feedly is just awesome for reading, discovering and share rss feeds. Twitter+feedly is a good combination.
- David Foucher
from Nambu
I look at reader before I look at my email.... Is that bad? :) (disclaimer, I work on it)
- Jenna Bilotta
I still do e-mail first, Reader second, only because Reader is much more fun, and I would probably stay there.
- Louis Gray
I would miss so much stuff if I didn't use Google Reader. I get so much less noise there.
- Jesse Stay
I've seen this meme in a few places and I guess I don't fit the base use case as I tend to sleep from time to time and can't always be on Twitter.
- Dave Hodson
All these things are such moving targets. So what is the favored anti-virus software now?
- Dawn
I could live without Twitter...but GR with Feedly I use every day without fail.
- Bonnie Foster
Am I unique then? I read all my RSS feeds in my email program on my desktop and read them after I have read my email.
- Sandra Large
Scoble has an assumption that everything of interest is inside the twitterverse. My experience is that the RSSVerse is much more pervasive. To Balance the Signal to Noise Ratio use Yahoo Pipes/GReader/Feedly to munge the data to begin with. In my case I can find many topics that have not posted to twitter
- Robert Higgins
Robert: neither of us can prove that point. I am following almost 11,000 things now in Twitter. You want to try that in Google Reader? Go ahead.
- Robert Scoble
Didn't Congressman Grayson call Scoble an "S Valley Whore"? I think he should apologize.
- Dawn
i hate politicians etc so yeah he need to apoligize
- ffcode
Robert: (I am obviously biased here). it is great that you are following 11,000 things in Twitter and that makes you special and I think that some of the issues you are raising are valid. Where I think your argument breaks down is where you think that soon a lot of people will follow thousand of things in their aggregator and therefore twitter is a better solution than Google Reader....
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
So Edwin - Is there an issue with feedly pulling the shared items from specific people you are following? I can hardly get any to come across.
- Amani
Another word and the forces will abolish all forms of Cilantro on this planet called Earth, message received from Planet Janet
- Janet
Message to Planet Janet: you know you love it with cilantro, baby.
- Steven Perez
Now see this is the interesting thing: if anybody posts, then you have to. So if everybody keeps posting, you'll just have to keep up with us. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
- CAJ, somewhere else
I CAN ATTEST THAT PEA IS, IN FACT, ALL SUGAR AND SPICE AND EVERYTHING NICE. Argue that, and let's see how mean you really wanna be. In the meantime, my head hurts so discuss this amongst yourselves. You can summarize it for me later.
- pea
Debating tip: never try to get in the last word. Always give your opponent the opportunity to get in the last word. By some sort of mysterious karmic law, your persuasiveness will improve immeasurably. :)
- Sean McBride
Steven Perez isn't a Bunneh!!! As long as he doesn't respond.
- Jimminy
This is a point that can never be proved, nor disproved until all but one of us are dead.
- Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
So... it's kind of like a "tontine" but with a pretty weak payoff?
- Mark Jepsen
Hmmm, actually, it only needs to continue until Steven Perez is dead (of very old age, i of course hope). Our victory is guaranteed. Of course, if friendfeed gets eaten by fb, it's just going to be a race to get the last comment in before the site goes down.
- Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
It's okay, he's got a Catch-22 now. Steven Perez isn't a Bunneh, so long as he doesn't respond. And we all know he refutes his Bunneh status.
- Jimminy
It was real hawt in the town that night! IF I EDIT 18 hours later like now - is your last still last if comments are disabled? A hawt question.
- L Stephen Cleary
Steven is a Bunneh!!! He responded when I said he wasn't. Bunneh's can win if they want.
- Jimminy
Steven, I'm sure that not even you would resort to cheating to get the last word. I vote we just find the comment limit. It's gonna be a number ending in '0'
- Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
You did see where I said that I like my food scared and running, yeah? Mmmmm, ferret-ka-bobs ...
- Steven Perez
from IM
I do indeed see where this is headed, and no sir, I don't like it. *calls upon the forces of Voltron
- Tsali, The Native of FF
from IM
Sadly, the only Voltron to heed your call is the vehicle Voltron. And I disabled that yo-yo by pulling out the sparks plugs in the car feet.
- Steven Perez
from IM
And what is yo-yo code for in that last statement?
- pea
It's an old Navajo word for "punk-ass bitch".
- Steven Perez
from IM
very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy
- Steven Perez
from IM
VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY
- Steven Perez
from IM
I think friendfeed only put the extra "Add comment" link at the bottom of threads because of this specific thread. It took me a full 20 seconds to scroll from one end of it to the other.
- Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
hmm... 800+ comments on this thread, and this is my first, and probably last comment on this thread. I wonder should I read all the comments, or just post?
- Mike Nencetti
Are you guys still trying to win?
- Steven Perez
from IM
23 years from now, Steven will still check his MSGoogle MyFriendFace feed every morning so he can respond to this post with 3,137,783 comments...
- joe is not going rogue...
from iPod
After half a month there must have been moment you thought it would not be a real big deal if you eventually should NOT have the last word, I suppose?
- Ruud van Wijngaarden
Now that you've nearly reached 1100 comments, I realized that I hadn't officially "liked" this yet! Error rectified, though you're clearly a comment whore, you show great panache while doing so!
- Mark Jepsen
Ohhh, you mean that place, which is totally faked by a #viciousbunneh who was in cahoots with the government in taking all the alfalfa plants into an underground hidden bunker.
- Tsali, The Native of FF
I will allow you to have the last word. But to take that last word you are surrendering your honor to a den of sightless whores.
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Eventually, the whole thread will go backwards to the beginning.
- WorldofHiglet
That sounds like more fun than I imagine you wanted it to.
- Steven Perez
from IM
It was a test. Honor is pride. A den of sightless whores is merely an event that you will carry forever. You have attained the 7th level of enlightenment.
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Considering that this thread has only been around since August, and has been shut down for the last two months, that's not too bad.
- Steven Perez
from IM
2012 is just the begining of the 13th Baktun, the long cont calendar doesn't actually run out until sometimes after 4772, that is of course if you stick with only Baktuns and don't use the other 4 higher counts, I just think FF will end in 4217 on planet Tersanzar :)
- Tsali, The Native of FF
Ah, right thread. In that thread, it's asked what you think you smell like. In this thread, I told you what I think you smell like.
- Steven Perez
from IM
I think this has lasted long enough. We already know what has to be the last word, it's already in the original quote. I will put it as the closing comment. I think we will all feel relieved we can now carry on to do greater things. For ourselves, our loved ones and the world.
- Ruud van Wijngaarden
You'll see. I'm working on that now.
- Robert Scoble
My super-duper tweet will make your supertweet look like an ordinary tweet by comparison...
- Cliff Gerrish
My mega trace busta busta will over tweet whatever fiendish plot you have cooked up. Http://victus1.victusmedia.com , ok it's just a two way search, information and ad tool. But tweets are only good if you can find the right ones ;)
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
"“I want you to estimate,” Oliver began, “how much money you think Google makes daily from Gmail ads.” Oh. My. GOSH. Was he serious? The answer depended on so many different factors, none of which I had any clue how to guesstimate. “Um, you mean a hard number? Maybe…$70,000?” Oliver’s hearty laugh told me my response was foolish. ... Now I was asked for an exact amount of revenue. “Say each G-mail user opens seven new e-mails a day. They would see 28 ads. If they click on ¼ of those ads, then only seven ads are clicked. If all advertisers are charged $0.05 per clicked ad, then the amount of revenue would be whatever $0.05 x 7 ads x the number of G-mail users is. Does that make any sense at all?” “Kind of.” Oliver sounded confused. “You lost me at the ‘only clicking on ¼ of the ads’ comment. Let’s move on.” "
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Does everyone get those estimation questions? I didn't get anything like that in the interviews I had at Google.
- Benjamin Golub
There's a reason I'm not a Google employee...
- Robert Scoble
Here's a hint: if they ask you to estimate something, don't just make up a random number. Also, don't assume that people click on 1/4 of all ads :)
- Paul Buchheit
@bgolub She was interviewing to be an APM. I imagine those interviews are quite different from Eng interviews. I can't be sure having only done Eng interviews myself.
- EricaJoy
Its unfortunate, because the interviewers need to filter, but some people don't do well when put on the spot under real-time stress, but in a job situation could solve similar problems being left to think about them. The kinds of skills needed to win lightning math competitions or TopCoder, are not necessarily the skills best needed to work on a product.
- Ray Cromwell
The problem I had with my interviews at Google were they were too literal. They were all questions that a recent college grad would be familiar with but anyone with any length of experience in the industry would have forgotten by this point. Going back and studying after I remember the answers now but I felt like I was being interviewed by someone just out of college (which was probably the case).
- Jesse Stay
I've heard of one Eng interview question that could be answered quickly by estimation (but more slowly by just computing it). (I wasn't asked that question myself, nor did I ever ask it.)
- Ruchira S. Datta
Priceless "You lost me at the 'only clicking on ¼ of the ads'" comment is priceless :)
- Micah Wittman
Jesse, I wasn't asked any questions like that, nor did I ask any. I guess the interview process can be very variable.
- Ruchira S. Datta
The "estimate something unknowable" question is something anybody interviewing for an even remotely technical position should expect these days--even though you might not get it--and you should understand the interviewer is asking to hear the process you go through, not the answer. As far as the 1/4 click through rate goes... well... that's classic.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ha-ha, clicking on ¼ of the ads seemed like a ridiculously high estimate to me. I never click on an ad. And now I have ad block pro installed so I can't even see them.
- Laura Norvig
A Google interviewer asked me similarly ridiculous questions. Why ask me about low-level database algorithms when i'm interested in java and web positions?! We danced around one question for 10 minutes while i tried to answer it to his satisfaction. It should have been obvious to him i'm knowledgeable enough about databases and database programming to just move on to the core interview.
- ·[▪_▪]·
Ray, it's not a math problem -- it's a problem solving problem.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul, there are different kinds of problem solving as well. To take mathematicians as an example, von Neumann was said to be very quick, whereas Hilbert was rather slow. So Hilbert might not have done well in an interview.
- Ruchira S. Datta
The classic variations I've heard are "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?" and "How many hamburgers does McDonalds sell each day?"
- Ken Sheppardson
Wow... how would you answer either of those questions?
- SAM
One of the people I interviewed with didn't speak very good English, and I spent 3/4 of the interview arguing with her how I thought Friend Connect could improve. I was then given 5 minutes at the end of the interview to try and answer her technical question which was about binary trees, something I hadn't studied or played with since college. 5 minutes wasn't enough to recall. The questions I was asked were math problems (and I graduated with a 3.95 GPA in college, A in stats and Algebra).
- Jesse Stay
I could never survive an interview process like that. So I won't even try.
- Laura Norvig
Jesse, sorry to hear that. I would usually ask one 45-minute interview question or two 20-minute ones. I was only asked 45-minute ones. And no non-technical questions till the end.
- Ruchira S. Datta
These are almost the same questions I was asked (which I could answer easily now): http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap... - amazing that Google hires MIT grads, considering MIT has an entire course around "hacking the Google interview".
- Jesse Stay
SAM: You'd just dive in with an estimate of *something* and walk your way through it. E.g. How many people do you know who own pianos? What % of the population do you think owns pianos? How often do they get their pianos tuned? How long does it take to tune a piano? How many people live in Chicago? It doesn't matter so much whether your numbers are right, it's the fact you know how to combine all the component estimates into an overall estimate.
- Ken Sheppardson
Not being able to do the math is fine, thinking that 1/4 of ads are clicked on is not. It's the approach and rough estimates that matter.
- Paul Buchheit
Yeah, the two important pieces of info the interviewer got in this situation are from (1) the initial random guess vs walking through some estimating process and (2) the lack of understanding of click through rates
- Ken Sheppardson
Those problem solving skills are useful when you have to model real-world systems. How many concurrent users to you estimate will we have at peak load? How many expensive vs. cheap queries are they going to perform? It's basically the same process - figure out reasonable estimates for each of the factors, do some basic stats and math and get a ballpark of how many servers you'll need vs. whether your problem is even viable.
- Matt Mastracci
Ruchira my technical questions were all at the end (except for 45 minutes on arguing with someone I could barely understand how Friend Connect could improve). I got the non-technical, easy. Going back and studying I would have gotten the technical too, which is silly considering how fast I was able to find the answers (and understand them). I think that's why non-technical should be...
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- Jesse Stay
When I interview, I look for clear, informed thinking. I'm sure that's what Google looks for, too. It's the odd personal interaction that turns an interview into something hasty and pressured. I'm fine giving a person a question, and time to mind-map or outline -- tho I do prefer someone who can do the thinking right there in the moment. Also, it's best to warm a person up to the type...
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- Christopher Galtenberg
Jesse, the technical question is supposed to be about problem-solving. You see how someone solves problems by watching them do it. It's not about looking things up.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Ruchira, 5 minutes to show the thought process in figuring out how to tell how many levels are in a binary tree isn't enough to determine if someone can problem solve.
- Jesse Stay
Call me soft, but I don't think she should have been bounced for a bad guess on ad CTR under interview stress. She worked through the appropriate steps and setup the right equation, just one of her assumptions was garbage. If she wasn't under pressure, and was asked to prepare a spreadsheet modeling out ad revenues, would she have really picked 1/4? or would she had thought about it...
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- Ray Cromwell
Jesse, agreed. That's why I like the longer interview questions. E.g., I would often find that someone was good at writing code but bad at complexity, or could think of an algorithm but not program.
- Ruchira S. Datta
RE "ridiculous questions", one of the things I try to do when interviewing somebody is ask a question to which the correct answer is "I don't know." That's one reason I might drill down on some sort of low level technical issue outside the candidates field of expertise. If you don't know, say so. Don't sit there and try to pretend you do. Be willing to admit there's something you have to learn. For extra credit, explain how you'd find the answer.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, there's major game theory going on. Does the interviewee think the interviewer wants a best effort attempt or rather an admission of insufficient data/experience.
- Micah Wittman
Another one I realized afterwords he was talking about linked lists, but he never mentioned linked lists. He had just asked how many edges it would take (asking for the exact formula, mind you - it's been 10 years since stats!) before a cycle could be made (or something like that). If he had just mentioned he was talking about linked lists I could have given him an answer much faster.
- Jesse Stay
Micah: Yup. And I want to see how much somebody will thrash before they ask what it is I actually want to know.
- Ken Sheppardson
The right answer may be both. A good communicator, person who knows how to 'read' the other will put it out all out on the table. Hopefully without being too wordy :)
- Micah Wittman
The interviewer is comparing multiple interviewees. Google gets so many qualified applicants that it's very likely that even though she was OK, compared to others applying for the same job, she didn't do as well.
- Piaw Na
The interview process is designed to have few false positives, but in the classic tradeoff it can therefore have many false negatives. Although Jesse, in your case it sounds like it was just executed badly.
- Ruchira S. Datta
The funny thing is the best answer wasn't always the answer they were looking for. For some reason interviewers never want to see the hash table answer, which is almost always the answer in the real world. (yet they never ask you why a hash table may not always be the best answer)
- Jesse Stay
I always want the hash table answer Jesse. People who use red-black trees or whatever often haven't written real software :)
- Paul Buchheit
Paul I like your style :-) So much time is saved that way.
- Jesse Stay
@Paul: Agreed. I also find a surprising number of people who think they're brilliant for inventing tries, when a hash table would solve the problem faster, and with less code.
- Piaw Na
Not only that but in a search world that can make or break your search speed. We dealt with that in HIPAA transaction matching at UnitedHealth Group while I was there. The hashed digest made matching records so much faster.
- Jesse Stay
I cringe when I find out the developer interviewing me just graduated from college 3 years ago.
- Jesse Stay
I have never been asked for these estimation questions during my interviews but engineering positions need them too. Good estimators are good engineers.
- Burcu Dogan
@Jesse, why does that bother you? I was interviewed at Google by 6 folks, 5 of which were way younger than I was --- one of them so young that I remember him from when I was his TA in grad school. It didn't matter --- the questions weren't particularly hard, and I had fun. I didn't think Google's interview was any tougher than Yahoo's, Microsoft's or any other tech company known for engineering excellence.
- Piaw Na
My quickie solution to the Egg Drop problem is exponential doubling sequence + 2x linear search = 25 drops, best solution is 14. Doh! BTW, I've heard this problem stated before as a Cats with 9 lives (can survive 9 drops).
- Ray Cromwell
Piaw because a recent college grad is only going to ask you what they learned in college
- Jesse Stay
@Jesse So the 3 years in the "real world" mean nothing?
- EricaJoy
@Matt, I specifically constructed it so that it would be impossible for people to search for a pre-existing solution.
- Ray Cromwell
@Jesse: I'd been working in Silicon Valley for 10 years when I interviewed there. I did not feel that my experience disadvantaged me.
- Piaw Na
I just take more of a "get it done" attitude when I write code. I'd rather focus on getting the problem fixed in the fastest manner possible rather than spend all this time on theory. I guess it all depends on the problem at hand as to whether that's the right choice, but a recent college grad is less likely to understand that than someone who's been in the field for awhile. I like the...
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- Jesse Stay
BTW, if you're a startup that wants to take on Google that's the way to beat Google. It's why Twitter has grown so fast.
- Jesse Stay
True, if you look at many of the successful Web 2.0 startups, a lot of them didn't solve interesting computer science problems, but executed well in other ways. Implementation speed becomes a priority, as they can always go back and fix stuff later or rewrite, once they reach a certain level. Twitter ran "ok" enough on a Ruby mishmash until they broke down, but they didn't really lose their users because of it.
- Ray Cromwell
Glen, unless the speed isn't as important as getting the product out the door fast.
- Jesse Stay
All of those formulas need a "T" element (time to write the code), along with an "M" (maintainability) element
- Jesse Stay
I think the best way to get a job at Google is to build a business and get bought by them :-)
- Jesse Stay
@Glen: Are you seriously asserting that insertion into a tree (of any sort) is O( 1 / (n log n))?
- Piaw Na
@Jesse: It does no good to acquire a company whose software wouldn't scale (or whose people can't make them scale) when Google turns the firehose of traffic at them. Some of the due diligence done before a company is acquired (by Google or anyone) is to make sure that everything's technically up to snuff, or the people being acquired are smart enough to get them up to snuff.
- Piaw Na
I don't see anything "nightmarish" about her interviews at all...In fact it seems pretty amazing to me she couldn't figure out the "math" problem in the 2nd interview.
- Bindu Reddy
Well just for grins, here are a myriad of "problem solvers" trying to figure out how many golf balls you can fit on a bus: http://www.acetheinterview.com/questio... My solution to this is tell me how long it will take you to hang my wet clothes on the line without slipping on the downward slope of a ravine on 5 acres of wood...
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- Melanie Reed
If the question was really about problem solving then why would you stop at 1/4? That's just a parameter.
- Todd Hoff
You would stop at 1/4 because you've already interviewed 20 other folks, and some of them gave you a much better answer there. You would then go back to hire one of them, or keep interviewing more people because nobody was good enough so far.
- Piaw Na
wow, very insightful but clearly she is not geeky enough for the job!
- Loc
Todd: The interview didn't end when she said 1/4, they just "moved on". The point wasn't to get a specific dollar amount, it was to see her process.
- Ken Sheppardson
It's true that 1/4 is just a parameter, but choosing something out by so much shows a pretty significant lack of knowledge in an area that has _some_ relevance to Google. I'd suspect there would have been candidates who'd been able to have sensible discussions about the likely CTR in Gmail based on known CTRs on other websites and the factors which influence it. Surely that's relevant?
- Nick Lothian
Also, clicking on 1/4 of ads, with 4 ads per email means that people were clicking on an ad every time they read an email. That's pretty clearly wrong.
- Nick Lothian
Yeah, the 1/4 answer shows that the candidate did not apply her own personal experience to the problem solution. That's a negative mark.
- Gary Burd
Nick, then don't say it's about the process, because clearly it's not. The process was correct. If you care about the numbers then ask about the numbers. Ken, "you lost me" is not moving on.
- Todd Hoff
“Kind of.” Oliver sounded confused. “You lost me at the ‘only clicking on ¼ of the ads’ comment. Let’s move on.”
- Ken Sheppardson
How you came up with your estimates is part of the process. Also, the ability to do basic match (1/4 * 4 = 1) is part of the process. "Does that sound high or low to you" is part of the process.
- Nick Lothian
I wish I had learned how to reason probabilistically much earlier than I did. I never even heard about Bayes theorem until after grad/professional school.
- Victor Ganata
"@Matt, I specifically constructed it so that it would be impossible for people to search for a pre-existing solution" Ray, what's the last piece of useful technology you've worked on?
- Bill de hÓra
@Nick "It's true that 1/4 is just a parameter" - well is it or isn't it? is the model wrong or not? "but choosing something out by so much shows a pretty significant lack of knowledge in an area that has _some_ relevance to Google" - You mean like a Web based email client, or an ad serving system?
- Bill de hÓra
"How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?" - Don't care, bought a dump truck instead. These questions are to interviews as rail shooters are to video games.
- Bill de hÓra
@Plaw "It does no good to acquire a company whose software wouldn't scale" - explain Jaiku and while you're at it, explain Chubby.
- Bill de hÓra
you can click on the ads in gmail? learn something every day.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
Paul Buchheit's assumption of a 25 percent clickthrough rate on a Gmail ad is way to high. Most advertisers report an average of 3 clickthroughs per 1000 impressions. That about one one-hundredth of the rate that Paul has entertained. I suggest that he experiment with Google or Facebook advertising before flaunting assumptions that are two orders of magnitude beyond the norm.
- Rich Reader
@Rich Reader that's right you tell Paul not to flaunt his assumptions about Gmail. But maybe read his post and comments first. Oh, and maybe his bio.
- Steve Crossan
@Rich Reader: I can't quite discern whether your comment is satirical. Paul wasn't making that assumption, and I'm fairly confident he knows a bit about Gmail, Google advertising, and Facebook. :)
- Simon
http://friendfeed.com/search... Paul I am having deflamatory comments about me with my first and last name used, could you please warn this user or something, it is effecting my business and is illegal, I have told brent TWICE, but he removed my account and placed it on private now which was quite rude to be honest, now I will see a lawyer about deflamation since it effects my views as a writer if she is not removed or given a warning
- dawngordon
That's the CS Techcast camera rig. He used our camera case to prop up his laptop so he could be seen with the internal webcam. Louis Gray came over to give him the old rabbit ears on camera. Fun times
- Eric @ CS Techcast
Somehow it seems the iPhone will always win on hardware. You know, unless they make a Droid phone brown and able to squirt songs to other Droid phones.
- Alex Bourt
An early birthday present: The Gmail Javascript compiler was just open-sourced! http://code.google.com/closure... (it compiles JS into smaller, faster JS)
Unfortunately it looks like the internationalization features may be missing. I wonder why those were removed? (or if I'm just not seeing it)
- Paul Buchheit
@Paul the Closure project has three components: compiler, library, and template language. Looks like the Closure/library might be competing with jQuery.
- Shakeel Mahate
I think jQuery does a lot of stuff that might confuse the compiler, e.g. iterating over an array of string function names and creating new function wrappers (look at the way the parent/child/next/prev/etc functions get installed) The Closure library is also full of type annotations that help the compiler make better optimization choices, so you're likely to get a better compiled outcome using Closure than jQuery + fixes + compiler
- Ray Cromwell
@paul -- I know you've been wanting this opensourced for a long time. sorry it took such a long time. Nick Santos and the jscompiler team has finally done it! Cheers!
- Jing Lim
Congratulations to the team (and @Paul & Jing) -- I know everyone's been waiting a long time for this. For anyone considering whether to use jQuery vs Closure, consider that they're meant for largely different purposes. jQuery's good for enhancing static web pages; Closure's much better at building large apps. And as Ray points out above, Closure the library is going to get much better results from Closure the compiler than an arbitrary js library would, because of all the type annotations.
- Joel Webber
Paul Buchheit has been at the top of my best of pages all month. Rock on, Paul.
- Donald C. Lindsay
Hey HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL !!! Cool present!! <insert CAKE> :D
- Susan Beebe
That writeup is trolling for traffic IMHO. Nit picking 50 lines out of 200+ thousand (written for readability, which get compiled and optimized), providing no benchmarks for claims, and spending half the time bashing Java, it just seems to be struggling to find something wrong with Closure.
- Ray Cromwell
Sachin: he seems to be commenting on Closure the JS library, not Closure the JS compiler (that Paul's post was about). And he may be a douchebag, but I haven't seen anything I disagree with.
- Gabe
@Sachin: I hate to be too harsh, but that post is pretty much garbage. From what I can tell he's pretty much managed to enumerate some of the worst things about Javascript -- nitpicking the code for referencing "undefined" directly without declaring it as an uninitialized local? That's insane. Following this advice is mostly a recipe for an unreadable mess. Also, look in the comments for several refutations of the idea that some of these are even optimizations.
- Joel Webber
Joel, you're just not man enough to handle a language where 'top' is an implicitly reserved keyword, and 'undefined' which should be, isn't. But it could be worse, 'null' could be something you could override. :)
- Ray Cromwell
Louis or Robert needs to say something controversial, though, to get us started. Any thoughts on that rumor that Twitter 2 is going to totally smoke Facebook 2?
- Christopher Galtenberg
Twitter Relatime Defrag is up now. Robert mostly showed the busy stream. Talk is mostly on lists.
- Louis Gray
interesting. I wonder what his 'best of the day' was....
- WorldofHiglet
Getting traffic on FriendFeed is easy - just declare it's dead
- Jesse Stay
how often you all see posts with this much (7-8) comments? miss old friendfeed, here even the real time is done to death, discussions earlier were real time ( yeah the likes and commenting system is the best here) but now....:(
- ffcode
yeah it is dead to me but i just can't leave it :)
- ffcode
I showed it off to make a point that the world is a river of information now.
- Robert Scoble
The "condensing community" description is an interesting one, Hayes. I think that's a significant factor. Add to it the fluidity with which you can become an acquaintance, then a familiar, then an integral part of a group. With persistence and patience, some amazing things are facilitated here.
- Micah Wittman
MVB exactly. Robert: sorry right now I don't want to solve the forum problem. I'm emailing my friends cool links to old MC5 vids instead of posting those links. And I'm thinking about that.
- Hayes Haugen
Thing is Robert, my group sizes here have been stable from before the buyout and since - and rewarding/high quality. It didn't get un-focused during the highest absolute visitor count era, and it's not too narrow now. In other words, between the built-in tools of FF + how I used the site, I've maintained what for me is an optimal set of connections. I can only speak for my experience, but there you go.
- Micah Wittman
Hayes and Micah: How do you make it work for you? Give me a couple hints. Right now I'm getting mostly Robert Scoble and links, which is fine, but I know I'm missing other interesting tech stuff. Everytime I broaden my follows or add a list I get too much junk. Any specific ideas?
- Leigh Marriner
I wish FF provided more of the tools of a twitter app. As it is, I don't have much use to check in very often. If it replaced my twitter app, I would be here all the time. I do like the conversations that grow forth here.
- Andrew Schleicher
Leigh you need to subscribe to more people and then the diversity in you feed will increase.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
Actively add and remove people. Put the noisy but interesting people in their own room and visit it occasionally.
- Hayes Haugen
Also start filtering. Hide all (whatever) from everyone. That sort of thing.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
These guys are pissing me off..give me a break talking about how much better the apps are - Android just needs a little more time until the apps are mature - iPhone didn't have apps at first. The 1st version of the Facebook app wasn't perfect, there have been enhancements, upgrades etc
- Kenny
Android is where the market is heading, more so outside the US, where iphone is a bit player.
- mark w webster
mark: when I travel overseas I see iPhone usage very heavy.
- Robert Scoble
I am very happy with my Droid. The apps are updating for the new Android 2.0. A new update to Twidroid will be out next week according to a tweet from the developer today.
- Mike Shulman
True Robert, but I think Android will only improve as time goes on, just like Apple and the iPhone did.
- Kenny
I can see the back of Robert Scoble's head right now. This is too much real time web. ;)
- Eric @ CS Techcast
The bar should not be set solely on platform and hardware -- the devs are a huge part of a phone's success. If Android developers step up, and the iPhone stays proprietary to AT&T, that opens up a whole new ball game.
- Mona Nomura
HTML5 may make the apps more irrelevant.
- Rob La Gesse
How is it that guys like this who love Tech, are considered the Top of Social Media all have the worst Web Cams, Audio Levels at all ranges and are crying about cutting each off like they are in some Playground, this is why nobody pays attention to them, blah!
- Lorenzo
the Droid is just one phone. think about the difference between G1 and Droid. the next leap will be just as significant.
- scott anderson
Not if your data plan cannot support it. AT&T's 3G is garbage and I don't have the patience to wait for sites to load. Hence, apps FTW.
- Mona Nomura
HTML5 is key - the new platform for mobile web on all phones
- Kevin Marks
I love all the commentary regarding Apple control of the app store. You should have tried building apps for Verizon. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get an application cleared to be put into their deck. You couldn't even write apps for Verizon if you didn't have a small war chest.
- Jerry Schuman
Even RIM hardcore fans are ready to jump to Android.
- Karoli
I suspect the most disruptive thing to happen to the handset industry will be a regulatory end to carrier lock in in the next 3-5 years.
- Ken Sheppardson
@Lorenzo I am a big fan of these guys. By the way, who was that guy in the East Coast Vegas video?
- PC Easy
Am I really listening to grown men talk about Cell Phones? This country is doomed
- Lorenzo
iphone market share over here tops less than 5%, though app availability is high on buyers minds, Android is making good strides in that area, it's a two horse race IMO.
- mark w webster
RIM will be implementing WebKit browser in 2010
- Marc Delurgio
RIM hasn't progressed - at all, and their attempts have been nothing but FAIL. BB Storm? Really??
- Mona Nomura
Scoble - I have ridden with you while you use a cell phone for navigation - it is VERY scary!
- Rob La Gesse
Palm Pre was introduced only recently here, a real Turkey, just in time for Xmas.
- mark w webster
Lorenzo - I've seen you on Twitter and I know you use vulgarity.
- PC Easy
Apple doesn't do cloud services. A single iPhone app developer will have a hard time competing with Google on that front.
- scott anderson
Android will take over handsets because Windows Mobile is pitiful and iPhone OS is not available to 3rd-party devices.
- Vezquex: God of FF
PCEasy, are you not the person on twitter that continues to make horrible comments about Leo's face?
- Lorenzo
Rob: that's because iPhone doesn't do turn-by-turn so you have to look at the screen.
- Robert Scoble
WM is dead, or at least, its in dire need of defibrilation
- mark w webster
I still think the Droid reminds me of the feel of a 80's Transformer. I think the HTC Hero is a much more polished phone and will get better with Android 2.0.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Google Nav does work pretty well, especially since its free, but it does need some improvements - but it's good enough that I canceled my Verizon Navigator
- Kenny
apps will die - web apps will prevail
- Marc Delurgio
The Pre does turn by turn, for free and it works great. I still think the Google map app is pretty good.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Robert Scoble, why is it you top tech geeks cant get your audibles to the same level, let alone have a decent webcam? Also, do you feel that 1938Media is slightly over-rated? Thank you
- Lorenzo
HTML5 is not Reality. Not until we get rid of IE6
- Luke Kilpatrick
Lorenzo: that's Steve Gillmor who has control of audio levels.
- Robert Scoble
Luke: IE6 isn't a problem on smartphones :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
IE6 is dead. anyone who develops for it is a fool.
- Karoli
Who is 1938media? I heard he's telling lies but I blocked him so I don't know what he's up to.
- Robert Scoble
Lorenzo: I don't care. He lies. That's all I need to know.
- Robert Scoble
IE only when my machine needs to dial home to Microsoft for something
- Ken Sheppardson
I tried Chrome in Ubuntu and couldn't access any https:// pages.
- Vezquex: God of FF
Yes but as a developer that builds web apps I still have to target IE6 which sucks majorly but its still the standard at enterprise.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Android is licensed with Apache 2.0, a very business-friendly open source license
- scott anderson
Every iPhone developer enters a royalty agreement with Apple.
- Rob La Gesse
"Large market share" isn't the same thing as "network effect"
- Ken Sheppardson
IE6 is the main reason I like doing Mobile dev better than just core web dev as you only need to target 1 main rendering engine - Webkit. Although there are some differences between iPhone, Andriod and Palm Pre. iPhone has the best implementation.
- Luke Kilpatrick
Still waiting on my Ribbit Voice invite code.
- Jerry Schuman
On the net - Apple could fade like AOL, The Apple Tablet will make Iphone, android Apps quite secondary. Phone will have a much smaller earprint.
- Arnie Klaus
imagine if our phones ran on closed networks
- scott anderson
It's really just a question of whether any node can listen and talk over the network.
- Cliff Gerrish
How do we define variable communities?
- Arnie Klaus
Scott: they would be like IM was for years.
- Robert Scoble
Scott: They do. Call Sprint and ask them if you can use your iPhone on the "open" phone network. Or the device you slapped together from parts you got at Fry's
- Ken Sheppardson
good comment Robert (there's your break)
- scott anderson
Will the textbook publishers allow that to happen without lowering profits? I hope they realize that new form interactive ebooks can create more market opportunities.
- ashish
another great show Steve. Your production keeps getting better.
- Paul E. Ester
"The Internet is not about technology; it's about communication. The Internet connects people who have shared interests, ideas and needs, regardless of geography." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
I like it, but I think it doesn't go far enough. The telephone allows you to communicate. But when you hang up the phone the call is gone. The internet has persistent objects that can be manipulated, so it is also about cooperation and collaboration.
- Neil Kandalgaonkar
Technology sure makes that communication much easier, though. Long live Friendfeed!
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
I always thought the Internet was for porn. At least that's what I learned one year at SXSW.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you still owe us (me and Joge) $5000, btw ;-)
- directeur
I think porn falls under the connecting people with shared interests and needs. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
Hmmm -- I think saying the" internet is not about technology, it's about the communication" is like saying driving is not about the car, it's about the journey. I like John Dupuis' way of putting it -- the communication part was an emergent property -- Michael Neilson has interesting things to say on this topic, too, but I've gotta dash so I'll link later.
- Mickey Schafer
YAY, I love the internet. Couldn't agree more. GLOBAL unfettered communication amongst all peoples, socio-economic class, philosophy, etc. is what it's all about; whereas, the technology is there to support the communication layer. THAT is very important in the DESIGN of Information Systems.
- Susan Beebe
The following (wild) question just dawned on me: If in 1440—the approx. year of Gutenberg's press—a global electronic network had magically emerged instead, A) What purpose would the power structure at the time deem for it, and B) How would it actually be used within the first few decades? Hundred years?
- Micah Wittman
Neil: different communication formats have varying values for similar properties, such as bandwidth, delay, and rate of decay
- Mike Chelen
Neil: Good point about persistence, except that Twitter has objects called tweets that last only about 7 days ;)
- Alex Schleber
Alex: one compensating strength is that posts are publicly web accessible, allowing them to be independently mirrored
- Mike Chelen
High communication: words. Medium communication: pictures. Low communication: grunt, poke.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Internet = TV + Radio + Books + Newspapers + Magazines + Telephone + Soapbox + [add your medium] = Media melting pot
- Ciro
Actually, the Internet may be about the incarnation of cosmic consciousness, and may not be primarily about anthropocentric intraspecies communication. I only half jest -- sometimes species are only vehicles that don't necessarily understand their function in the big picture, or what they are birthing. With the Internet, one senses something trying to pull itself together that is bigger than human.
- Sean McBride
let's say it again: it's. com. mu. ni. ca. tion. :)
- Alberto D'Ottavi
+1 Mike Chelen; to Ciro, Alberto -- conflating function, social value, and technology diminishes the ability to understand what the "internet" is/does/could be, etc. The internet is not portable; certain technological devices are. The infrastructure that supports portability is inconsistent; radio rarely is. It's very difficult to "listen" to books using the internet; the internet is...
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- Mickey Schafer
I agree with you 100% - The connections made here can't be made anywhere else! The transparency and accessibility of people, good people, is prevalent!
- Angels In Action
I didn't read all the comments above, but I don't think it's just communication. It's also about knowledge, data, availability of knowledge and data. creativity, etc... I'm afraid with this situation of lots of social networks people are a bit too preoccupied by the community-factor. Internet is more than that. Please don't forget that.
- Ton Zijp
To Mickey: 1. "The Internet is not portable; certain technological devices are." splitting hair...Give me the Internet without the "technological devices" as you call them. 2. "The infrastructure is inconsistent..." Video is video, audio is audio...otherwise the TV is also inconsistent and so is the radio and books, I digress on this one. 3. " And I believe it is actually important to...
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- Ciro
Ton, I agree! Ciro -- As someone who teaches undergrads who have to use technology and the net, I can't afford to be blithe about "they can if they want to". One of my interests is the relationship between discourse and behavior, so for kicks, I conducted a survey last year to get a feel for how students related to tech developmentally. One overwhelming result was that sometime during...
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- Mickey Schafer
I don't agree. Technology IS COMMUNICATION. Please consider W.J. Ong's Orality & Literacy or Pierre Levy's essays. Our literacy is still evolving and that's possible just because we can write (and communicate) with different technologies. So... Nice quote indeed, but wrong.
- Matteo Balocco
Bruce: language, art, and gestures are all forms of communication technology, each of which can be used to greater or lesser effect
- Mike Chelen
Internet is technology, great and simple technologies which work well and so you can focus on communications stuff
- Luca Zappa
Mickey: internet access may not yet be a universal commodity like paper, yet this property can shift rapidly in degree, redefining its qualities. regarding user expectations, to some extent this may be addressed through improved software design, for example google docs automatically save every few seconds
- Mike Chelen
Matteo: is that different from saying that all communication is a form of technology?
- Mike Chelen
Mike, I'm afraid it is different. While communication is a natural competence shared by all the living beings, technology is just an optional layer for just a niche of them. So we may say that all the technologies carry some informations (and we must consider them communication) but certainly not all communication is a form of technology.
- Matteo Balocco
However we agree that this is nothing more than an academic discussion. The quote by Taylor is still really good for some slideshows. :)
- Matteo Balocco
Mickey, thanks for your feedback. I don't disagree with any of your latest observations regarding the importance of keeping machine (medium) and internet (content) separate and the dangers of not doing so...My point was simply directed at the idea that in the context of pure content utilization, the hardware such as the cables (or airwaves) as transport media and content presentation...
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- Ciro
did you know you can make a lot of money trading options, buying and selling stocks, buying foreclosed homes, using secrets to sell stuff online, ebay is a wonderland for making money, and then of course you can just get free money from the government
- Allen Stern
It's keeping me from getting the Swine flu from the rest of the family - keep it up! ;-)
- Jesse Stay
I set up a couple lists on Twitter, subscribed to a few more but mostly Tweetdeck doesn't support lists either making or checking or subscribing
- WarLord
The overwhelming majority of lists have more people in them than subscribers.
- Louis Gray
I'm using lists as more of an endorsement than anything - I just don't use the Twitter UI enough to use the lists for reading data. I also don't read every single post in my stream. That's what Facebook is for.
- Jesse Stay
Also subscribed to one of Robert's - congrats btw on becoming the king of lists
- Michael Slattery
from iPhone
@scobleizer Robert, you are dead on! FYI @Peoplebrowsr already supports lists (read-only, I think).
- Alexandros Georgiadis
I use my lists as filters. Their primary use is for me. Others may find them useful, but that wasn't my purpose in assembling them.
- empireofno
from FreshFeed
I'm trying to slowly build lists. Its hard to find the time. I wish Twitter would let me search within my friends for keywords to help make the process faster.
- Mary-Lynn
When I see someone write something interesting I add them to a list, simpels :D
- Asgeir
I will subscribe to lists when they become more sophisticated and complete; that is, ones that are built around specific organizations (all off Google's official Twitter accounts, for example) or based on user statistics (Favstar is off to a good start with that). Otherwise, lists are just subjective categories that I can create best for myself.
- Cloud
I'm just a little confused about lists. What benefit is there in actually following a list? Why can't I say bookmark one of Robert's lists and visit it directly? Seems to give me the same information.
- Pavan
Lists are no different than the rest of Twitter - not without it's issues and used however you want to use it. I use them to track groups of friends, colleagues, categories. Some use them to unclutter their main stream. Use them however you want.
- Damien Basile
Pavan: I think following a list will pay benefits in the future. Right now it just adds a link to that list on your home page.
- Robert Scoble
I see many people have made lists and added me. I am not sure yet how i want to use them.. I have subscribed back about 22 out of 72+ lists that have followed me since I felt they would be interesting to follow. One day I will make my own! Want to be on it? lol
- Amy Flynn
Robert, if I could subscribe to someone's curated list and then further edit my copy, now THAT would be powerful (think Yahoo! Pipes). Also, merging lists or breaking ones down into sub-categories could be interesting.
- Cloud
I like @audioClouds ideas. A way to it would be to create private copies of public lists and take it from there. We also need an acceptable UI to manage lists
- Alexandros Georgiadis
The echo chamber--it gains a new cave. Great! ;-)
- Kathy Fitch
Does listorious also check if you are on many lists from one user account? Dont think you can add yourself to a list but I wager you can create 300 lists on a second account, add yourself to all of them and WIN. You can also pick all kinds of cool list names to shape your list metadata rep. Let the gaming begin.
- Ed Millard
We have a bunch of airline miles we need to cash in. zz
- Andrizzle Gizzle
I'll be in Portland in early December (Dec. 11) for my brother's wedding.
- Robert Scoble
I live in Portland. I'd say wait till May or early June. But that all depends on what you like to do. Lots of outdoor stuff? Do you get weirded out by misty rain? Will it destroy your complicated hairdo and suede jacket? Do you put a sweater on with it's noon and the temperature is 65F? Wait till May or early June. Eat and drink, stay indoors, lay about? Visit any time. I know it's not realistic for everyone to consider this, but I think Portland is a great place to visit anytime one chooses to come here.
- Christopher Harley
davidrauf: @Rackspace just posted the 3Q earnings release. revenue up 17.4% and profit jumped 8.8% compared to same time last year. - http://twitter.com/davidra...
Feldman is telling anyone who will listen you are about to be fired
- Mark
Mark: and if you ask @gweston (Rackspace's Chairman) he'll tell you that Loren is incorrect. He wrote me personally last night to tell me to ignore Loren. Funny, I didn't even know what was going on because I've blocked Loren. Why is Loren picking on me? Rackspace decided to turn him down for a sponsorship request (I had nothing to do with it, but Loren decided I did and decided I was fair game for whatever crap he wants to say).
- Robert Scoble
The false sense of security that a million cats have successfully been wrangled?
- Bill Strathearn
For twitter, I know lots of people created lists with Tweetdeck. Now that Twitter has it's own lists, that's not as important. But Tweetdeck lets you do more with your lists, I think.
- Laura Norvig
Plus, Tweetdeck has nice looking column layout so you can see your lists, replies, full stream all at once.
- Laura Norvig
Grouping a subset of users is the major benefit.
- Louis Gray
I use Seesmic (although recently it hasn't been working, so I temporarily switched to Mixero) and for me the biggest benefit is to be able to manage 2 separate Twitter accounts in a practical way. Overall, I just find that these clients are more practical in terms of filtering people and content.
- Patricia Müller
Bill... heh! Laura, I'm almost afraid to ask what more is needed ;). But nicer views, okay, that I can understand. Louis, isn't that grouping now unnecessary, given Twitter's Lists? Patricia, I can't even seem to manage one twitter account :P. But you raise a good point re: filtering content -- I guess that's re: saved searches, right? But can't you also do that via Twitter? I guess it comes down to the able-to-see-more-at-once, right?
- Adam Lasnik
Exactly. My primary reason for using a client was the double account issue (and yes, it's a little overwhelming, but I need to keep connections in both languages). So that reason alone justified using a client for me. Now, filtering content came as a secondary benefit as I started having to sort through everything a lot of Twitter users usually do, but in 2 different languages. (both...
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- Patricia Müller
Ah, okay, that makes sense Patricia. Thanks for the info!
- Adam Lasnik
Tweetdeck has retweet and direct message buttons, Twitter doesn't. (Although it has buggy pull-down menus for DMs)
- Spidra Webster
I lean towards Tweetie2 and SimplyTweet (iPhone apps)
- Mona Nomura
from iPhone
hmm... just tried both Tweetdeck and Seesmic. Neither of them utilize the Friend Groups built into FB; TD invites users to completely recreate new TD-only FB Friend Groups. No thanks. :(
- Adam Lasnik
Columns are key, even if you mostly handle just one account. You can see the tweets mentioning you or replying to you without switching back and forth.
- Paola Bonomo
I can absolutely see how that stuff is useful for at-a-glancing, but I also feel it's a massive distraction and major info-overload. I am a curmudgeon for the most part when it comes to real-timing. There's very little in life that I need to know Right Now, very little that can't wait for a nightly (or even weekly) browse-through.
- Adam Lasnik
I think it's more important for people who manage a social media presence for a brand. They need to know right away if someone mentions them or @replies them.
- Laura Norvig
I use Twhirl and it's only because of multiple accounts and easy of posting to Twitter and identi.ca. The Twitter website has always been crap for me. In Twhirlw with just one click, I can retweet, reply, DM, lookup a user, see all tweets from a user, etc. Bonus is that it's fast. The Twitter website is slow and unfunctional.
- Anika
Seesmic & TweetDeck were both built as Twitter apps. FB is an add-on and not nearly as developed. I use Seesmic to manage multiple accounts (about me, work, & interest-specific), user lists, and to handle saved searches.
- Cianna Stewart
you just answered your own question...it lets you not have to visit both sites separately
- brainno722 (Peter)
oh yeah, everyone else has "retweet" except twitter.com (well, they gave it to selected users)...
- brainno722 (Peter)
Peter makes a point. My browser (Flock) has FB and Twitter built-in. I can post, reply, DM and retweet, right from my broswer without going to the Twitter website (YAY). Only problem is that there are sometimes day long delays of seeing updated tweets from others. The FB sucks. I can see what my friends post, but to reply I'm forced to FB. BUT...if I want to share blog posts, Flicker, tweets or chat with FB, I can do all of that without visiting the FB website.
- Anika
Infodensity. I can look at my screen with Seesmic running on it and get a lot more information than just running twitter.com.
- Robert Scoble
I think it depends on how you want to use Twitter. As a tool then you would use Tweetdeck etc and if just for casual following .com does the job
- Khuram Hussain
Hey everyone, I appreciate the clue'ing in. Now the benefits are much more clear to me. Once again, the FF community shines through :-)
- Adam Lasnik
you can use columns in tweetdeck to setup searchs based on keywords, that is not possible in twitter currently, you would have to manually search each keyword separately if using twitter, also you can log in to your twitter and facebook accounts and see all updates from one interface, also, haven't tried it in tweetdeck but with seismic desktop you can log into multiple accounts at the...
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- Loc
No insult to Windows Mobile, which is still pretty nice (and has my beloved .NET stack) but Android seems to have better developer ease-of-use of all the platforms.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
That's assuming the iPhone doesn't improve.
- Robert Scoble
Even if the iPhone improves on the developer side, I don't see much hope for Apple becoming less jerkish. I swore off of them a long time ago.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Even though I'm an Android fanboy, I have to ask; have you taken a look at Maemo?
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
Yes, it has some of the same sins that Android has, plus Nokia hasn't been successful in US market.
- Robert Scoble
Nokia has been pretty successful up here in Canada, at least before everyone started going to smartphones. But all the focus has been Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and "when will we have more than one GSM provider so I can use an iPhone", lately, and little of anything else.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
Walk into any storefront location for a mobile service provider in the GTA, and most of the people will look at you funny if you mention Android. Our providers (and the service reps they hire) suck.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
So someone in *your* family doesn't grok Twitter either. My brother says he'll never even set up a Twitter account at all; he sees no point either. Apparently these people see the words "What are you doing?" above the text box and think it's nothing but the Facebook status update without Facebook. Some people just don't get it at all...
- Dennis Jernberg
In *my* family (asterisks per Dennis), most of them use Facebook. Nobody else uses Twitter at all.
- Louis Gray
Sure enough, Facebook is exactly what everybody in my family but me uses, too! Well, I'm on Facebook too, but I don't use it like they do. For one thing, I don't play any of the games; I hide them instead. And none of them has even heard of FriendFeed...
- Dennis Jernberg
hahaha that is epic!! Twittter got dissed by Ms Gray :D
- Susan Beebe
My family is the same. Twitter is pointless to them. There's so much more than just status updates to them.
- Jesse Stay
Well, I don't get Twitter either. Anyone want to explain it to me?
- Cristo
It's not fun when you sign up and have no friends / people to interact with...and all the interesting people only talk to each other. All my friends didn't "see a point" until they built their own network(s). Just sayin'
- Mona Nomura
My wife is also that way, btw - I may *just* be able to get her to join FourSquare though.
- Jesse Stay
As if Twitter is some brilliant thing that only a certain so-called tech crowd gets.
- Cristo
My sister has known that I've used Twitter for several years now. Whenever I brought it up, that was her reaction, "Don't get it. Don't see the point." She created an account a month or so ago and she's totally into it now. When I asked her what made the difference, she shrugged and said she wasn't sure. "Your friends started using it, didn't they?" I asked her. "Yes." heh. :D
- pea
Why don't you guys go have this conversation on Twitter? :)
- Cristo
Pfff. Cristo, you know full well twitter can't deal with the c word. :)
- Micah Wittman
I will make the bold prediction that most of my brothers and sisters will never join or use Twitter. I have one brother that does, occasionally, but the rest will never, ever use it. There's no point when they can get the same thing from Facebook and more.
- Jesse Stay
Re Mona: I myself didn't even bother to sign up for Twitter till this last June, when I discovered an existing online songwriting community I belong to had a Twitter presence. That's when I set up my account and started to use Twitter. Then I found that some of the NaNoWriMo offshoots I take part in also had a Twitter presence. That was the beginning. Since then I've built up a much...
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- Dennis Jernberg
my girlfriend has no interest in it either. she uses facebook for all her net communication needs and is quite happy...
- Terry O'Fee
I got all my friends to sign up for Twitter, all found it pointless. So, I really don't get the point either. I'll delete mine too. :D
- Faraz Mullick
Only a few of my real-life friends are even on Facebook, and the ones that are rarely update. The social web can be pretty disappointing sometimes.
- Michael Slattery
from iPhone
Most everyone I know is on Facebook now, with a few exceptions that refuse to use much of anything on the internet except for youtube and blogs. Nobody gets the point of twitter, especially with facebook/friendfeed offering the same type of communication options, if not more. However, the nice thing about twitter/friendfeed is that it's searchable. The other day I was watching the events from Fort Hood unfold on twitter. I couldn't do that easily on facebook. That's where twitter shines.
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
My Second Life avatar started on Twitter in the good old days, when everyone you followed followed you back. But my real life account has about 20 followers, so it only really works as a reader - and that rocks.
- Michael Slattery
from iPhone
second life.. i read books like snow crash, get excited and find SL nothing like it ;)
- Terry O'Fee
If new users have no followers and fail to get the reader part, of course they stop. And the statistics confirm that.
- Michael Slattery
from iPhone
I do agree. It is really difficult to convince someone to use twitter. And even if I do, they don't stay active on the service. They too state "I don't see any point in the service". Often are the times when they are convincing me it is nothing but a blog platform with 140 characters limit.
- Amit
I've learned that it's not a good idea to try to convince friends to join Twitter. Unless they get it, they will simply annoy you with Facebook style Tweets. Better to seek out Twitter users who have learned the knack of posting interesting Tweets.
- Jimmy Walker
If she doesn't get it, or anyone else for that matter, be glad they're on their way. Twitter never worked for me either and I'm happily not participating as well.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
I just realized I've been forgetting to tell them to start by following interesting people and not even think about posting their own tweets for the first little while (Robert's advice) - I wonder if that would make more of a difference.
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
from iPhone
My 25 year old brother said the same thing.
- Rochelle
+Mona I think there is a follower critical mass that needs to be achieved (of real interacting/interesting people) before anyone 'gets' Twitter
- JSNFLMNG
from iPod
I see Twitter as another information portal, and a social channel (albeit limited). For those things it's great. I don't use facebook all that much, but it's good to chat with old friends to say howdy and share current happenings. I'm me no matter what social hub I'm on, but the local laws/rules/community etiquette fits my preferences better in some virtual hangouts.
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
My daughter of about the same age also got and shortly thereafter canceled a twitter account.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
Twitter is useful as a minimalist news broadcasting system. Twitter is worse than useless as a medium for conversation. I mostly use Twitter in combination with Topsy searches to pluck off the most interesting news stories of the day on selected topics. Without Topsy, I would stop using Twitter entirely because of the information overload.
- Sean McBride
Mona's point is pretty much spot on. I kind of "imported" a Revision 3 forum network into Twitter, which led to FriendFeed, which had sort of a recursive bend back into Twitter, which led to finding Twitter recommendations, which then opened me up to following people from IRL, and then...ah crap. I've stopped using Twitter as much, though, because Facebook is where the people I CARE about really are. And in case you're wondering, I'm friends with Mona on Facebook ;)
- Mike Nayyar
I've hit a wall trying to get my friends to sign up for Twitter. It's like they've got an image issue. Whenever I try to explain it's value for news and as RSS replacement, people sort of stop listening. They're left thinking it's Facebook without the "fun stuff," which is lesser and redundant for them.
- Jeremiah Green
Is it fair to say that the tweets related to tech news that some folks think are so wonderful and important are primarily links to web sites, blogs, new articles, and so on produced by someone other than the tweeter? So far as I've seen, subscribing to, say, all the employees of a company doesn't produce much news about the company; instead you see posts about where the employees ate lunch and stuff like that. Of course I may just not be looking at the right people.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
Unless you have a defined business strategy, there really is not much point to Twitter, unless you just want to connect for fun, which is under my business strategy :)
- Steve Borgman
Actually I don't see the point either, but I'm still here :)
- scott willeke
I keep a Twitter account just for a case of emergency, because it gets translated everywhere, and their mobile client is the lightest.
- 9000
I have all three FB, FF and Twitter - FB is for people I know personally save very few exceptions, FF & Twiiter overlap and are people I tend to follow but I dont know from adam - I prefer FF tho . I now have GW as of last night but am still struggling to get the hang of it- will lose my twitter acct I think
- viki saigal
SuezanneC has summed twitter up quite well. None of my family use twitter, took me ages to 'get it' but although my family all use Facebook, I don't like it. I stay to keep in touch with them.
- Sandra Large
It is very hard to keep motivated with all the bots, spam, ads, slaves and etc. Don't feel bad if you make mistakes because this is a new thing that is evolving underneath the feet of everyone on it. Like a quick sand that none of my family understand and I'm finding month to month that the growth of twitter it is getting more chaotic and the numbers of fake profiles is increasing, but...
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- Christopher Scott Ostini
Holden, you're always welcome - your articles are always well thought out
- Jesse Stay
Oh, so is Holden saying FriendFeed's lists are wrong? (FriendFeed doesn't have any limits while Twitter does). I disagree with Holden. I am bummed that FriendFeed didn't win in the marketplace so we are stuck with a service with limits.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
I never saw once in that article "Friend Feed is wrong". He used FF as a point of comparison. The article was good. The average Twitter user (me) won't have a list of 500 people. Plus, the cap on 500 helps keep the lists more organized as well.
- Candace McCarty
Didn't you mention FF or am I reading two things at once again? Hell, I don't know. It's late. I just got in. *keyboardface*. Edit: No you didn't, the other blog I was reading mentioned FriendFeed. Fail. :(
- Candace McCarty
Which makes my point have even more oomph. Well, my first point. Because if FF wasn't mentioned then the article really didn't say "FriendFeed is wrong". ...Yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
- Candace McCarty
The average FriendFeed user won't have that many either. That said limits are easy to work around.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
If you say limiting Twitter to 500 on lists is good you are DEFACTO arguing that FriendFeed did it wrong because there are no limits here. I have one list with more than 10,000 on it here.
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
Haha, I bet that's a real useful list. Enough with the numbers already. I have a hard copy list right in my hand with over 200,000 names on it. It's the North London phone directory. I don't get much use from it, to be honest, unless I know what I'm looking for..
- Andy Connell
I am beginning to finally get it... If you post on Friendfeed you get comments... If you post on Twitter, you get followers. If you are marketing something (e.g. your blog/brand, your product/service) getting followers is much better than getting comments.
You need to than unfollow those users...:)) Twitter is a lot more about broadcasting and getting followers is like a drug.. the more you broadcast the more followers you get :)
- Bindu Reddy
Getting followers doesn't really mean anything: 390 of the 400 followers I have on Twitter never act or do anything with what I say on it. Getting them to convert is the meaningful part of the marketing proposition, and conversations, I've found, are far more effective at that.
- Mark Trapp
So, what's the FAQ for interaction on Twitter? I had a post that got 100+ comments the other day here on Friendfeed but no response on Twitter. I must be doing something wrong over there.
- Eric @ CS Techcast
twitter seems to be great for people who are lazy and not really savvy about marketing. it's sort of like shouting into the void, and you might get a few people to respond, but do you really get people to act?
- Bren, Photophobe
@Mark, I agree with you.. However to a lot of people having a follower number like 10K/20K, which seems like a relatively easily thing to do on Twitter, is not only just a high but it is also a good way to keep in touch with your audience without spending too much time... Here keeping in touch with your audience is way more time consuming
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, but keeping in touch doesn't mean anything if they're not listening. You can have a million followers, but if you're not getting any of them to act on what you're saying, it doesn't mean much. Getting conversations going with people, who may or may not be followers, which Twitter is pretty bad at, are more effective at getting people to convert. I just had a relatively popular...
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- Mark Trapp
Bindu, I'm following you (FF) and I just commented too :)
- Micah Wittman
@Mark, Curious how did you get them to go to your website?
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, if I knew that I'd have it made. Near as I can tell, people were doing Twitter and Google searches for "twitter list," and then started retweeting it and sharing it from there.
- Mark Trapp
Following is such a low-risk endeavor that people don't put thought into it: they'll follow anyone and everyone. You even have people thinking it's common decency to automatically follow people if they follow you without even thinking about if their content is interesting. Following is the 21st century equivalent of receiving a phone book or the yellow pages: you do it just in case you need to contact or get ahold of someone in the future, but nobody ever realistically does.
- Mark Trapp
Yep, it's like collecting business cards that get neatly filed into a big binder. It's about the self-satisfaction of the collection - you feel more connected / networked / important and avoid doing the hard work of cold calling or meeting with people and building something or whatever.
- Micah Wittman
I agree with following being a low-risk effort... However I have also heard of ppl gaining value from Twitter without much effort. Take for example this coffeshop I am a big fan of - sightglass coffee. They get a lot of customers from Twitter. It takes them relatively little time to tweet and they get customers. It would be very hard to achieve the same on FF.
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, I get lots of conversation on Twitter, too. One of the reasons I am there more than here is because people with common interest in my political obsessions are there, but not here.
- Karoli
Karoli - Yes, the Twitterverse is way more diverse than the FFverse. Curious do you get more comments/conversations per post on Twitter as compared to FF or is it that you you post more stuff because time spent per post is lower on Twitter
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu, I get very little response to political conversations/comments on FF - a couple of folks follow here but a very small percentage compared to twitter. I tried to pull people over here, but they didn't understand why they should leave tweetdeck and their twitter setup for new territory.
- Karoli
Geeks (+ early adopters, influential folks, the elite ...) are on FriendFeed and the proletariat on Twitter? Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat? Calls for action work best when the audience actually cares, so prolly that's all about choosing the right medium for the targeted punters?
- Sebastian
Sebastian... yes agree the geeks and tech bloggers are on FF... However if you are marketing say a fashion or beauty blog. You won't get much interest here. twitter is the place for you :)
- Bindu Reddy
I disagree with that statement, Bindu. There's a LOT of non-tech getting traction on FriendFeed. So much so that it's the number one reason Scoble no longer enjoys being here: he says he doesn't see enough tech for his liking.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Just butting in here to mention that there are tons of uses for both twitter and friendfeed that have nothing whatsoever to do with marketing. In fact, once could make the argument that social networks such as these were designed to get away from marketing. Unlike radio, TV, or even a web search, you choose who you'll be receiving information from. If you're looking to exchange...
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- Mr. Gunn
Bindu, what I'm sick of is marketers broadcasting their sales pitches to all social media outlets out there, regardless whether the audience might fit or not. Anyways, i'ts possible to attract a few somewhat intelligent responses to geeky topics at Twitter, at least when xmas and independence day share the same date. Most probably I wouldn't try to sell wonder bras at FF, though.
- Sebastian
@Tina ... umm I have not been an avid user of FF lately so maybe it has become pretty diverse. Are you saying there are a lot of people on here with specific interests such as politics, beauty etc?
- Bindu Reddy
Bindu: Ning is a better place to go if you have very specific topics you want to talk about. They are growing a FriendFeed every 12 days (they are getting a million new users that often and have just passed 38 million registered). FriendFeed is fun if you aren't sure what you want to chat about and you're cool with seeing lots of family pictures and goofy stuff. Tina is right that the hard-core geeks are mostly on Twitter or Facebook now, I keep watching here, though.
- Robert Scoble
Karoli I get all kinds of action here on political topics. I have more followers on Twitter but rarely get a response there. Here I got 80+ comments yesterday.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
MVB, Karoli is a prolific voice on twitter. Twitter seems quite effective for political advocacy/activism even though longer form convos have to break out somewhere else. Also, just like friendfeed, volume / steady presence can make all the difference. Your tweet count is ~2K; Karoli's over 63K.
- Micah Wittman
My presence here is similar to Kaoli's on Twitter, then. So, presence is a mitigating factor. But, Micah, as you so deftly point out, for a long conversation there needs to be a move to another venue. That's where here works better, since it can stay right here.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
We agree, and can agreed at length right here, folks :)
- Micah Wittman
So link your twitter to your friendfeed. Get followers and comments. The best of both worlds.
- Hareesh Nagarajan
Does it make any difference here whether the original post was to Twitter and reposted here automatically or the original post was directly here? In other words, does the FF community prefer to comment on direct posts rather than Twitter reposts?
- Jimmy Walker
Jimmy: it honestly depends on who you interact with on FriendFeed. There are people who get irate about people only posting to Twitter and openly advocate using FriendFeed directly, and yet, there are interesting people who always get a conversation going around their tweets. One thing that sometimes helps is coming back to FriendFeed and elaborating on your tweet, or to do more than...
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- Mark Trapp
Mark, that sounds like good advice. Thanks.
- Jimmy Walker
I love how all the Identity pieces are fitting together now with OpenID+OAuth Hybrid, WebFinger and XRD and Activity Streams and PoCo at #iiw this week
- Kevin Marks
Robert, I'm getting more info on it as well - they want to be much more open than it appeared in the keynote
- Jesse Stay
Jesse: I will try to introduce PayPal's identity moves into this conversation. Also, what @marcglasberg http://icents.net is doing to turn Twitter into a micropayments system for content.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, missed what @marcglasberg is doing - can't wait to hear more
- Jesse Stay
Someone tell Craig to turn the sounds off on his TweetDeck ;-)
- Jesse Stay
and tell them I said hi from the chat (I don't think they're watching this)
- Jesse Stay
http://webfinger.org - it is a protocol to map an emial address into an OpenID endpoint - works with gmail and yahoo already
- Kevin Marks
Just ran into this on stackoverflow.com... they have logos for 10 different OpenID providers or your own URL and I think I have IDs on 8 of them... and I have no idea which one I used to create my account.
- Ken Sheppardson
The right number of id providers is 1. Selectors can solve this problem.
- Cliff Gerrish
I wish somebody would put together some sort of over-arching reference document that explains how you build something that uses PSHB, OpenID, OAuth, Salmon, Activitystreams, etc in the "correct" way in an integrated system.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, check out the identity commons.
- Cliff Gerrish
I really wish Phil and Craig were in here. I need to get those guys together for lunch some time. That would be a fun meeting.
- Jesse Stay
I think you can catch both Phil and Craig at the Kynetx conference. It's coming right up.
- Cliff Gerrish
Conference de jour, literally ;-) Can't we all just agree to get together once a year or so in one place and deal with everything at once? :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
how about adding lists to lists? when's that coming?
- Frank Paynter
Ken, that's what the weekly Gillmor Gang is for. Everyone in one place in real time.
- Cliff Gerrish
I love how Atom is so flexible that we can add all these extra layers on top of it. ActivityStreams, Salmon, PSHB, etc
- Matt Mastracci
frank, isn't that what listorious is for? :)
- Karoli
Cliff: It's just that all these conference give me the apparently mistaken impression that there are more than 10 or so folks who I really have to follow ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Karoli... mebbe, but I'm a fan of bundling functionality within the native platform
- Frank Paynter
Seems like building a bunch of translators is the best way to get adoption.
- Cliff Gerrish
Isn't that what Gnip's supposed to be doing?
- Ken Sheppardson
Facebook just needs to remove the 24 hour storage limit and it will be free
- Jesse Stay
@cgerrish yes, translators into Activity Streams rather than n by n translators is an important saving
- Kevin Marks
Cliff, yeah - I'll be at the Kynetx conference
- Jesse Stay
I see Phil all the time - haven't met Craig yet (except online)
- Jesse Stay
Amen Mark - more clients need to support activitystrea.ms
- Jesse Stay
Myspace is still very much in the game
- Jesse Stay
Wait and see - there are some huge things coming to Myspace
- Jesse Stay
So we're all going to speak activitystreams on the global back-end bus and all these sites just become "clients"? Cool. I'm down with that.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, all but Twitter, at least the way they're going
- Jesse Stay
But if *everything* else is connected, we can all just pool our API call limits to pull the full feed out of Twitter and translate it to AS
- Ken Sheppardson
Go tell @loic to support Activity Streams from MySpace and Netflix, @scobleizer
- Kevin Marks
That's the theory, Ken. At least until the next time something closed and exciting comes along, ;)
- Matt Mastracci
It will be everyone supports open standards, then you'll also have to support Twitter's own standard - at least if you ask John at Twitter
- Jesse Stay
JK's sane, Jesse... if this all got widespread adoption I think you'd see a different bottom-up attitude from Twitter...
- Ken Sheppardson
The custom adapters actually creates a value proposition.
- Cliff Gerrish
Facebook needs public indexing to get legit... they can't because of privacy aspect of their service... FriendFeed can provide the opening to public indexing of Facebook users' wall content...
- Frank Paynter
Ken, yeah - I just don't like his attitude around it
- Jesse Stay
Frank, you can use FQL to search Facebook pretty much site-wide (at least as privacy allows)
- Jesse Stay
I can sorta see Twitter's point... I mean Evan came to them a year ago and said "Hey, you should support OMB" and their natural response as "Uh... no.... why? Nobody's using it..."
- Ken Sheppardson
I should note Twitter doesn't allow specific queries like FQL btw
- Jesse Stay
I'd just as soon not search Facebook. or even use it.
- Karoli
Jesse...yahbut, you can't find Facebook content on google
- Frank Paynter
There's a strong current of relevant discussion on Facebook that is hard for me to ignore
- Frank Paynter
If Activitystreams was implemented widely, I suspect the engineers at Twitter would warm up to it. That might not be a sufficient condition, but it's certainly necessary.
- Ken Sheppardson
sad that no-one from @twitterapi came to IIW this year; @blaine came + helped invent OAuth when they were 1/10th the size
- Kevin Marks
Facebook encourages self-censorship, or disownership, depending. (Basically I don't really want my Republican spouse reading my liberal rants)
- Karoli
@Kevin - they are busy building lists.
- Rob La Gesse
Kevin, yeah - that's been my perception - they're taking no part in any of the open efforts, which concerns me
- Jesse Stay
I think we all scared them off at BearHugCamp last fall ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Kevin, is Facebook there at all? I imagine Recordon's probably there?
- Jesse Stay
That's consistent with what Bret said last week, RE Facebook
- Ken Sheppardson
hubs will be distributed. facebook will lose their advantage.
- scott anderson
scott, i think so too. Google federating wave is one step closer to that...
- Karoli
As soon as grandmas start using a service, Robert bails... so... y'know... ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Scott, Facebook is becoming distributed
- Jesse Stay
Jesse... thanks for the "site: facebook" clue, but it's weak... I've just been testing it and nothing relevant emerged in response to specific search requests
- Frank Paynter
Ken - MS is busy building layoff packages and not serious software.
- Rob La Gesse
MSFT had a lot of good people at #iiw, and they are really contributing to the Activity Streams and OWF efforts
- Kevin Marks
@KevinMarks. Thanks for the mention. Yes, we (Cliqset) currently normalize activity from 70+ services into activity streams compliant atom feeds. We also share them in real-time through our APIs.
- Darren
Frank, a lot of cool articles about Twitter lists - I thought it was interesting "site:facebook.com lists"
- Jesse Stay
Save the demo for a building43 video :)
- Rob La Gesse
Frank, status updates are also very soon going to be included in that as well. Very soon you'll see those come up in search results.
- Jesse Stay
Seeing individual engineers and marketing folks from MSFT at different events reminds me alot of my old NASA days, when you'd always find some sort of "rogue" engineer off working on pretty much any project you can imagine. Every once in a while all the "rogue" engineers from the different centers who were working on similar projects would get together... but they were rarely funded and projects never went anywhere. But on the flip side... I'm glad they're involved :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Scoble is such a non-programmer. Everything he says that's hard sounds easy. "How do I bundle 3 tweets?" Just use take their URIs or copy the text.
- Vezquex: God of FF
Vezquex: I want to put them on a page and have them look like Tweets, mixed with YouTUbe videos, mixed with photos. Make it freaking easy. Copy and pasting and doing screen captures is NOT easy for most people.
- Robert Scoble
Did they mention the Paypal identification proposal at all? I think I missed it.
- Jesse Stay
Ken, I'm very fascinated by that, because it's true identity. If they can make that open along with the existing open standards around identity they're going to do some great things. I'm supposed to get a briefing by them soon (I hope).
- Jesse Stay
Vezquex: look at the Tweets I put into Wordpress: http://scobleizer.com/2009... that took a LOT of work. Way too much for normal people and WAY too much for real-time work. Did you watch the World Series last night? MSNBC had a Tweet out AS THE BALL HIT THE GLOVE TO END THE GAME!
- Robert Scoble
Craig, great seeing you, btw! I don't think we've ever met in person.
- Jesse Stay
This is a real time world and copying and pasting URLs is too freaking hard.
- Robert Scoble
Thanks Jesse, we need to make that happen.
- Craig Burton
Plus, I do everything on my iPhone now. Did you remember how we broke the news of Facebook buying FriendFeed? That entire thing was done from an iPhone, including an audio interview.
- Robert Scoble
Craig, just sent you and Phil an e-mail. Let's definitely make it happen.
- Jesse Stay
Paypal is still very weak. They are not quite clued in to the selector imperative.
- Craig Burton
Jesse: applications running on the open web will always be able to innovate and provide more functionality than apps running on top of Facebook. With activity streams, hubs, openid, etc. the reduced friction advantage that Facebook has is diminished.
- scott anderson
I think you see it now with the work Recordon and the ex-FriendFeeders are doing... but the IP limits, 24hr cache limits, and EULA mythology seems to cast a shadow over everything
- Ken Sheppardson
BTW, most this stuff was around even before Recordon came on board
- Jesse Stay
Yeah, I realized that after I wrote that, Jesse... he's just sorta the flag bearer these days
- Ken Sheppardson
Scott, they've had that support for at least 6 months now
- Jesse Stay
Facebook led much of the activitystrea.ms standard - it is not a defensive move. They were part of the organization, and are also members of the openid foundation. They're leaders in this, not followers.
- Jesse Stay
openid support is a defensive move because they don't want google to dominate the openid space. if activity stream content expires after some period of time when it leaves Facebook, then that is another defensive move and one that is not truly open.
- scott anderson
Scott, I'm not sure they've said much about that content expiring. As long as you're a user I'm pretty sure you're able to get your content out, no exceptions. Developers have a few more strict rules, but nothing's stopping a client from enabling that for users themselves. The RSS News Feed app on Facebook's still around, so I think they're opening up to enabling that: http://www.facebook.com/apps...
- Jesse Stay
Also, see Facebook's latest news - their entire JS client library is now open source on GitHub: http://bit.ly/48FO1s
- Jesse Stay
If it's not already out there, somebody should start a site called LOLBacon. They would make a mint. (Something better than this: http://lolbacon.ytmnd.com/)
- Louis Gray
And we're about due for another service switch in the next 10 days or so.
- Andy Bakun
Yeah. It wouldn't be such an issue if just switched services but he does it quite often. It wouldn't be such an issue if he switched services as often as he does but each time that he does so, he switches with a much fanfare as he can muster, proclaims it the greatest thing that's ever happened to technology, and admonishes everyone who doesn't hop the bandwagon now. As I repeatedly say, I really like Robert but how many times can he cry 'wolf!' and still expect to be taken seriously?
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, to Robert's credit he often does have a point. His intention with being so loud about it is to get your attention, to get people talking about it, and in return they really start to think about it. I admit he's gotten me thinking.
- Jesse Stay
Robert has acted this way about "new technology" he finds as far back as I have known him -- a kind of technology ADD I think - his career is predicated on it -- it is him. He always loudly claims that the technology is going to change his and everybody's life (and occasionally he might even be right).
- Brian Sullivan
Jesse, that may be true but it's the fact that when the particular doesn't work out, he washes his hands of it as if it were diseased.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Brian, for that reason I think he's a great person to follow because he does introduce you to some really cool new technology. He keeps us from feeling comfortable in any one environment. He constantly reminds me to continue looking elsewhere for something better - I think that's a good thing.
- Jesse Stay
Robert has also done some amazing things for entrepreneurs with worthy technology trying to get exposure for that technology. He's really helped the tech community with his style of finding the latest and greatest and best stuff I think.
- Jesse Stay
Jesse -- I follow what he does, I like and respect him as well. I have known him since the late 90's when he and I were Microsoft MVPs. But he certainly does and likes to stir the pot.
- Brian Sullivan
When you say it that way it sounds like a disease. ;-)
- Brian Sullivan
Brian, that would be fully true if this wasn't like the second or third time twitter has become the darling technology. It's not always just the "new" technologies.
- Andy Bakun
Some of it may be serious backlash, but some of it is probably just horsing around. Robert can generally take it, and if you do cross the line he'll tell you, so people can mess with him without worrying too much.
- Bruce Lewis
Andy: true but with Twitter and FriendFeed you can take a new approach that dramatically changes their utility. Also, sometimes I catch wind of new features coming. Do you remember a dinner with @ev I had a few months back?
- Robert Scoble
from iPhone
However, taking a new approach doesn't mean the end of utility of doing things the way you previously did.
- Andy Bakun