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Robert Scoble › Likes
An early birthday present: The Gmail Javascript compiler was just open-sourced! http://code.google.com/closure... (it compiles JS into smaller, faster JS)
Sai Ram Kunala, Chris Lasher, Marc Dong and 107 other people liked this
We first started work on it almost 8 years ago. It has come a long way since then :)
- Paul Buchheit
Happy Birthday Paul!
- AJ Batac
Today is actually just my internet birthday.
- Paul Buchheit
Well, thanks :) But for a verbose API I'll stick with YUI :P Have to inspect the power of templating and compiler, though.
- Claudio Cicali ♋
I wonder what happens when you apply it recursively -- can you get down to 1 byte of code that takes no time to execute? ;=)
- Brian Sullivan
Finally! This is great.
- Tudor Bosman
Happy Birthday!
- Robert Scoble
Nice!
- Micah Wittman
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 you are my best-friend :`(
- Onur Gündüz
if you were starting a new site today, would you use this over jquery (which friendfeed uses)?
- Karl Rosaen
Karl, jquery is a library, this is a compiler. I would use them both.
- Paul Buchheit
well, i mean closure library :) but yeah, they could be used together
- Karl Rosaen
ah, i see this is a link closure compiler, not the broader closure tools.
- Karl Rosaen
Refactoring, JS style.
- Gabe
Now, this is a good news
- Ozkan Altuner
@Paul the Closure project has three components: compiler, library, and template language. Looks like the Closure/library might be competing with jQuery.
- Shakeel Mahate
this is sweet!
- Jay
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
Happy Birthday
- ashish
Many happy returns!!
- Drop dead, gorgeous!
Happy Birthday, Paul!
- Andrew Terry
Happy Birthday Paul
- Sandeep Kalidindi
Happy B'day Paul! don't be evil :)
- sirishkumar
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
Gillmor Gang 11.05.09 - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Karoli, Troy Benohanian, Mindaugas Dagys and 6 other people liked this
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.
Lim, Kok Kim, Lora Lufark, Gabriel and 62 other people liked this
And if you are not wanting to get marketed to?
- Cristo
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
Are you getting high right now? :)
- Cristo
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
Mark is right.
- Robert Scoble
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
Marketing, schmarketing.
- Christopher A Carr
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
Sebastian - LOL.. agree :)
- 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
Gillmor Gang recording live 1PM Pacific http://www.building43.com/realtim...?
scott anderson, Rocky Barbanica, Nir Ben Yona and 4 other people liked this
Should be a good show. Craig Burton always has something interesting to say.
- Cliff Gerrish
Waiting for call.
- Robert Scoble
Looking forward to the show.
- Matt Mastracci
A fellow Utahn - I will be watching :-)
- Jesse Stay
hmmm. silverlight plugin just went kerfluey on me...let's see if it works now.
- Karoli
Still waiting for skype call...
- Robert Scoble
Looks like we're very close to start.
- Robert Scoble
ah..working now.
- Karoli
Chris Messina is on too.
- Robert Scoble
Yay Phil and Craig! Two of my favorite Utahns
- Jesse Stay
Robert's pretty close to having a "lair" there...
- Ken Sheppardson
LIve from @ribbit http://bit.ly/Spawn on Gillmor Gang
- Kevin Marks
robert, i can't imagine going from that to an iphone. your head must explode daily.
- Karoli
Twitter.com FTW!
- Jesse Stay
Actually, I use e-mail for most of my Twitter activity
- Jesse Stay
Robert's head exploding is all part of the show.
- Cliff Gerrish
You guys should be sure to talk about the new Paypal identity proposals
- Jesse Stay
Karoli: info density is pretty crazy! Jesse: I got some good interviews on that yesterday. Should be up on Building43 next week.
- Robert Scoble
where are they again?
- Christopher Harris
Phil and Chris are at http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com
- Ken Sheppardson
thx
- Christopher Harris
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
IIW was great this year.
- Cliff Gerrish
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
"Open ID threat level Orange?"
- Rob La Gesse
OpenID is just putting on long pants, a shirt and a tie.
- Cliff Gerrish
says @chrismessina the Govt is encouraging people to use OpenID as most people have them already.
- Kevin Marks
Badfinger or Webfinger?
- Cliff Gerrish
Email seems like a bad identifier.
- Cliff Gerrish
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
We should be able to "transform" emails to OpenID, as described here: http://chrissaad.wordpress.com/2008... (see comments)
- Panayotis Vryonis
Hey Kevin how do I get involved in what you guys are doing with OpenID?
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, come to the next IIW.
- Cliff Gerrish
It would be great if Twitter supported OpenID as well as OAuth #iiw
- Kevin Marks
Watching the show but the FF stream is "frozen" from last week?just me?
- Paul Sherer
from iPhone
Twitter as an OpenID provider?
- Ken Sheppardson
Cliff, I wasn't aware of it - that would have been interesting. I was just out there the last 3 days at the Paypal conference.
- Jesse Stay
Paul, refresh. The thread has been updated inside NewsGang.
- Cliff Gerrish
Wow - I didn't realize Paypal was part of the OpenID foundation
- Jesse Stay
@Paul - working fine here. Are you at http://www.building43.com/realtim... ?
- Rob La Gesse
I don't quite understand why we need Salmon independent of Activitystrea.ms. Seems like a "feature" of activitystreams.
- Ken Sheppardson
I'll head over to building34, thanks.
- Paul Sherer
Monica's Activity Streams prezi: http://prezi.com/yxvtypx-aani/ maps out the ideas behind it too
- Kevin Marks
Calling out "comment streams" as some special case of activities seems like a dead end.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, Salmon is just the part that shows how to send the comments upstream, it fits in with Activity Streams fine.
- Kevin Marks
Of course in FF the comment thread can appear in multiple places simultaneously via iframe.
- Cliff Gerrish
So, Kevin, can Salmon support any Activitystreams objects? ... Got it.
- Ken Sheppardson
Salmon I'm Atom... I'm getting lost here
- Frank Paynter
Cool, I'm totally going to rip off the salmon idea and make my own proprietary protocol.
- Vezquex: God of FF
do you need an iFrog to use ribbit?
- Frank Paynter
Okay - I missed the last 15 mins. Did I miss anything?
- Jesse Stay
If Gillmor Gang watchers want Ribbit Mobile, got to http://ribbit.com/reserve.php and use the invite code 'gang09'
- Kevin Marks
Is Messina on the Space Station?
- Jesse Newhart
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
YES. filters to something manageable.
- Karoli
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
MySpace need a major shift to survive
- Rocky Barbanica
Rocky, keep watching.
- 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
http://cliqset.com is an Activity Streams supporting aggregator, as is MS Live
- Kevin Marks
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
anything but FB, please.
- Karoli
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
@Frank - yet!
- Rob La Gesse
Frank, yes you can
- Jesse Stay
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
perfect question
- Rocky Barbanica
Where's Microsoft in all this, btw?
- Ken Sheppardson
MSFT had a big presence at IIW - Information cards (selectors) started with them.
- Cliff Gerrish
Here's another good Google search on Facebook: site:www.facebook.com lists - status updates will very soon also be part of that
- Jesse Stay
What did Scoble just call his wife?
- Cliff Gerrish
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
We will, Rob
- Rocky Barbanica
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
Interesting show.
- Rob La Gesse
Thanks for the info Jesse
- Frank Paynter
Oh man...
- Rocky Barbanica
thanks, steve
- Karoli
Vezquex: sorry, that just does NOT do it for me.
- Robert Scoble
what more do you need?
- 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
Just in passing, Jesse
- Ken Sheppardson
We never got to it Jesse
- Craig Burton
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
Craig, that's my worry
- Jesse Stay
Scott, Facebook is joining the open web
- Jesse Stay
it's all talk until it happens
- scott anderson
they also said Beacon was going to be revolutionary
- scott anderson
Facebook is an activitystrea.ms provider right now: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.... They are also currently an openid provider.
- Jesse Stay
Facebook has openID?
- Matt Mastracci
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
openid support is defensive move
- scott anderson
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
Messina additional on IIW http://www.thesocialweb.tv/blog...
- Steve Gillmor
Super cute. I cried: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Vipul Rawat, Pavan, Robert Scoble and Jesse Stay liked this
Dang it - me too! :-(
- Jesse Stay
It's even worse if you have a daughter about that age
- Jesse Stay
wow, fantastic reaction and joy. Do yourself a favour and don't watch on youtube, spare yourself the turdity that is youtube comments. Watch it on friendfeed embedded.
- David Pascoe
You gotta love raw unscripted emotion.. but I hate crying over You Tube!!
- Chris Myles
We're developing the next version of the Facebook Connect JavaScript client library on GitHub as open source. http://developers.facebook.com/news...
Daniel Rowley, Robert Scoble, imabonehead and 5 other people liked this
David you guys rule! That's awesome news.
- Jesse Stay
Thanks, though the Connect team really deserves the credit here!
- David Recordon
In that case thanks to the other David! :-) (Morin)
- Jesse Stay
I'm enjoying playing with Google's music onebox: http://www.google.com/search... Does it work for the bands/artists you like?
imabonehead, Robert Scoble, Daniel Rowley and 4 other people liked this
Does not work that well for singers/artists from Bollywood movies. Tried A R Rahman and no Jai Ho :( Same for some of the other artists I tried.
- Atul Arora
I still miss the old music search that showed a list of albums and tracks.
- Scott Cederberg
I don't see the music onebox, unless I force it on by searching here: http://www.google.com/landing...
- Otto
"Transparency, choice and control have become a key part of Google's philosophy. Today we're doing even more." https://www.google.com/account...
imabonehead, bear (aka Mike Taylor), Robert Scoble and 10 other people liked this
Happy beyond words that this is happening. Read the introductory post here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009...
- DeWitt Clinton
This really rocks -- not just about transparency, but I also find it pretty useful as a tool for remembering stuff.
- Joel Webber
So true! I had no idea I had an Orkut profile or followers on Reader or a problem with using too many Google products.
- dju
My FF home page was so much cleaner and had much more informative conversations before Robert Scoble came back.........*sigh*
MK35540, Bruce Lewis, Rob Sellen :o) and 5 other people liked this
First! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Oh that's comedy gold right there, Jerry!
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
That's it. I am officially banning any device of any kind that is connected to the internet during Alex's bachelor party. I'm looking straight at YOU Robert Scoble.
- Chris Greene
ROFL
- Alex Scoble
Chris: I'll sneak one in! :-)
- Robert Scoble
Not for nuthin' but, short of a body cavity search, you can't stop him, Chris.
- MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
from iPod
I tend to agree with Scoble about the "forum problem", but at the same time I really like seeing comments. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's less of an issue if you keep groups relatively small. re: http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Marc Dong, John Serra, Bertrand Doux and 81 other people liked this
I think the current FriendFeed approach is close to optimal. Do you not see it that way?
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
FF has the inherant ability for the user to take control, both of what they see and the comments they allow. If a user is judicious in their lists and/or filters they should see mostly relevent content (IF that's what they actually want to see). The ability for a poster to moderate comments on their own post gives us the ability to avoid trolls/spam and/or steer the conversation (again,...
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- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Scoble and other "super users" have this problem much more than regular people because they have thousands of subscribers. This is also part of the reason that Twitter probably works better for celebrities -- it's more of a broadcast channel.
- Paul Buchheit
They could have a million subscribers and it wouldn't be an issue, Paul: turn off comments on his FF posts and it would be all broadcast all the time. It's the number of people they choose to subscribe TO that is the issue. To be honest, it's like someone walking into a football stadium and then complaining that it's too loud. If one chooses to follow thosuands of people one must surely expect that the amount of 'noise' is going to increase.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
One thing that was tossed around a while back was the ability to disable comments from anyone you're not subscribed to: that'd allow those with a lot of subscribers to have high-signal conversations that their subscribers can still see and gain value from.
- Mark Trapp
Perhaps he'd like a 'hide user' button similar to FB? This would prevent the "brings people into YOUR life that YOU DID NOT INVITE!" effect... of course the conversation could be rather disjointed. Maybe a small 'additional comments hidden' status that would show them when desired... Of course, without the conversations, FF == twitter?
- Eric Borisch
Paul, can you help me test something? :)
- directeur
The features that would make FF optimal would be to let users follow each other's hides and blocks. For most users this would be a nice, small improvement. For users like scobleizer it might make a huge difference. Of course, implementation details matter.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
The problem is that we don't keep groups relatively small. There are always those who are like me who like to connect, for one, but even normal people add tons of people to their groups. It's just natural. I remember I was first to add 1,000 people to my Twitter account and people thought I was weird. Now thousands of people do that.
- Robert Scoble
One thing with Facebook is they capped it at 5,000 friends. Which kept it from being used by super-connectors but also caused it to be seen as a place where you talk with just your real life friends. Now that public pages are coming on strong, we're seeing that change.
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: the FriendFeed approach is far from optimal. Many, many people told me they don't like joining a forum and like just lurking instead, which is why they chose Twitter (Tim O'Reilly is not the only one who told me this). Tim Robbins likes that on Twitter he can listen to his heros. He sees it as a learning engine. Those of us here love FriendFeed because it lets us talk. But it definitely turns off lots of people.
- Robert Scoble
Paul: the solution is to let us toggle comments on and off. Give the USER CONTROL. If they just want to listen to their friends, hide all the other noise. But then give us who like commenting ability to turn that back on.
- Robert Scoble
You have the ability to toggle comments on and off: Edit -> Disable Comments.
- Mark Trapp
Robert, comments _are_ content.
- directeur
Mark: that is on a PER ITEM BASIS though. Totally useless for what we're talking about.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: yes, but they are content a LOT of people don't want to see or deal with.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, but then you'll be a megaphone broadcasting "your" views.
- directeur
Robert has the same comments (or the same potential) on his blog as he does on FriendFeed, so I don't think it's the comments themselves. I think it's the fact that FriendFeed makes comments almost on equal level as the original post, instead of burying them way down at the bottom of a page or requiring a click to view. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
- Daniel Sims
Nothing in the API precludes someone from writing a FriendFeed client that hides all the comments so you just see a river of feed items. That's how Twhirl, AlertThingy, and all the native iPhone apps implement FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
I have two arms. I barely use my left one. Please cut it off!
- directeur
Turning comments off entirely would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you could authorize other users to delete comments on your items, you could minimize the forum problem.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
directeur: that's right. That's what most professional publishers want.
- Robert Scoble
I really think the "comments are awesome, why would you ever want to get rid of comments" argument falls on deaf ears at this point. The solution ought to be how to turn off comments if you want to get Scoble (or the people he's saying he represents) back on the FriendFeed train, or to say they're not worth it. I do think if it weren't for the comments, there'd be at least a half dozen other things Scoble or people like him would come up with to not like FriendFeed at this point.
- Mark Trapp
I like the idea of having another options to disable comments for people you're not subscribed to. That way you can allow conversation, but limit it to people you "know" if it makes you more comfortable or limits the noise. I think you should have the ability to set the option as a default for all new posts but be able to override it on a post-by-post basis: 1) public comments 2)...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Her Linday-ness: I want that but it would be hard to design.
- Robert Scoble
Mark, I think you make a valid point but then the question becomes: if there are no comments, is FF still the best medium to use? If so, then the ability to turn off comments on one's entire feed should be easy enough to code and implement. I suspect, though, that all things being equal (meaning: there's no ability to comment on an item) FF would no longer be the best medium for a broadcaster.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Mark: I don't think these people will consider FriendFeed at this point. Too much momentum over on Twitter. Look at the news brands: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... you're not going to get them to switch off of Twitter at this point. Sorry. That game is over.
- Robert Scoble
I think the real game is how does Facebook evolve?
- Robert Scoble
The real game is an open decentralized solution. yes, I'm a dreamer.
- directeur
Which leads everyone to wonder why you're trying to nitpick a feature like this, or base your argument on the lack of the feature. The real reason why you (and others like you) aren't into FriendFeed isn't because of the forum problem or the lack of a feature, it's because you think Twitter is better and that's where everyone is. That's fine: that's a great argument. The rest of it is inconsequential to that argument, and wouldn't invalidate it even if you got your way. So what's the point?
- Mark Trapp
I've been talking with a lot of brands and celebrities and regular people. For public studying they like Twitter better. That has Facebook wondering what it will be in the future.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: sorry, but I spent two years talking to thousands of people about FriendFeed and I'm just passing along why they didn't like it. Take that feedback or leave it. Your choice.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: did you speak at dozens of conferences about FriendFeed and Twitter? Did you show hundreds of tech influentials FriendFeed and listen to their feedback?
- Robert Scoble
But your feedback doesn't correlate to the real reason why you, and the people you say you represent, are saying why you won't ever use FriendFeed. You said there's nothing anyone could do to get people to use FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: if I want to listen to ONLY tech influentials, I can on Twitter. I can't on Facebook. I can't on FriendFeed. http://twitter.com/Scoblei...
- Robert Scoble
Robert, if you're going to pull the "don't you know who I am?" crap, it falls on deaf ears. Let's have a constructive conversation on what you're trying to talk about.
- Mark Trapp
Can't you make lists in FF?
- Dragon Goldmaple
Sure you can: you can import feeds and lists on FriendFeed.
- Mark Trapp
Mark: times change and at this point it would be hard to get anyone to take FriendFeed seriously. That said, I believe that it IS possible to move people from Facebook to Twitter or Twitter to Facebook, so THAT is the real battlefront.
- Robert Scoble
any comment thread about 20+ without threading and community promotion/demotion becomes difficult to participate in (for me). Though there is a difference between discussing the radiator on a 94 Subaru and the nature of discussion forums.
- Hayes Haugen
Robert: is the problem really comments or the fact that each time an item gets commented, the items pops back at the top of the list? Regarding the noise, I think that the "problem" with friendfeed is that it was much easier for people to plug in automated feeds and that as a result, there was less of an explicit action. I do not know how other people feel about this but I really miss...
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- Edwin Khodabakchian
Mark: OK, show me your public list the way I did on Twitter. You can't do that here, sorry.
- Robert Scoble
Hayes: BING BING BING.
- Robert Scoble
Ok, so it's not about who you read, it's who you can show that you are reading.
- Dragon Goldmaple
Bing goes the internet! lol
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Sure Twitter has a lot of momentum now, but how quickly the winds change. Frankly, it's a shame that FF is going to be neglected... I wish that someone with as much motivation and insight as Paul and the original team could take it over now that FB has consumed them. There is still SO MUCH potential in this platform that it is depressing to see it squandered. @Robert - I don't think it...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, I don't use public lists: I believe you read my blog post about why I don't. But Hutch Carpenter does, and here's his FriendFeed public list on Innovation Management: http://friendfeed.com/innovat...
- Mark Trapp
Robert, who do you call "influentials"? Do they talk "tech" all the day? Isn't it unhuman? Let's go back to spring/summer 2008, and redefine "smart" for me, please :)
- directeur
Edwin: the problem is on FriendFeed it has the chat problem -- it gets noisy and gets noisy fast.
- Robert Scoble
directeur: influentials are people who influence. I picked them. Shoot me.
- Robert Scoble
The noise is largely proportional to the circles you're in. If you put yourself in a huge room, it will be a loud room.
- Kevin Fox
Robert, do you remember the "MOAR NOISE" phrase? It was THE reason why I built NoiseRiver. Filters, I used to say when you were always saying: MORE NOISE!
- directeur
Kevin: exactly. But on FriendFeed the room gets big VERY QUICKLY because as more people join they drag in their followers with them.
- Robert Scoble
Facebook has the same problem. While we're chatting here, tons of tech news diversity have swooped by.
- Robert Scoble
So Robert, should there be something built in to "warn" others of becoming "chatty". Something that says: "This comment is irrelevant. You may post again when you have something relevant and germane to our discussion"? So WHO makes those distinctions and judgements?
- Melanie Reed
Compare this chat to http://twitter.com/Scoblei... which one brought more information to you? The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time.
- Robert Scoble
Melanie: in a chat room you can't control people that way.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: True, but [big number]*[average number] is far larger than [average number]*[average number]
- Kevin Fox
Hayes you are correct. Slashdot has actually had the best discussion forums for more than ten years because it has threading and community moderation. Its not a trendy social networking site though so no one notices. If you had a social network site where you post topics but with Slashdot like forums it would rock. Only down side is moderators tend to inject bias but /. has good signal after moderation kicks in
- Ed Millard
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :)
- Melanie Reed
Does it really have to be one or the other Robert?
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
(Where you (scoble) are the big number)
- Kevin Fox
Kevin: the problem with FriendFeed is if you and Melanie were having a conversation it would be pretty small, right? But I follow you. The second I touch your conversation it gets big.
- Robert Scoble
If only someone could figure out how to make a room that gets big very quickly appeal to broadcasters...
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
This problem doesn't happen on the private Facebook because you have two-way friending there and a cap of 5,000. But on Facebook Pages? Absolutely. Noise baby noise!
- Robert Scoble
Bruce: broadcasters don't like any of this because there's no way to monetize. Why do you think Arrington really hated this?
- Robert Scoble
Robert, I don't care about more information. I have more than enough. :) What I would like is what Tad is implying in his comment. You know you can have "...two opposites that have learned how to blaze together" ;) And excuse me, but is wrong with a big conversation?
- Melanie Reed
"The chat is more fun, cause we're engaged, but it's noisy and if you don't care about it, a waste of time. " If someone doesn't care about it on FF, they can hide it and not see it again. Problem solved.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Chatting is not intended to provide information. It is like planning -- it is the process of chatting that is what is useful not the words that are spoken/written.
- Brian Sullivan
Thank you, Tina! and Brian!
- Melanie Reed
Melanie: I love big conversations. That's why I loved FriendFeed. But most people aren't like me.
- Robert Scoble
Tina: there are so many things going by on my screen in FriendFeed that hiding them all would take all day long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert -- why is it that you think that people are like you and things should be done for your needs?
- Brian Sullivan
FF is too busy!!
- Joe Silence is not dead
Brian: again, it's not about me.
- Robert Scoble
Robert one word: APML. I used to yell it back in 2008, no one cared. You want "filters" by personal interest.
- directeur
FreiendFeed sold ME on it two years ago. I've been trying to sell others on it. The feedback I'm giving is from OTHERS.
- Robert Scoble
The Forum Problem is a problem?
- teh Dork Knight
directeur: APML will never work.
- Robert Scoble
oh dear, don't hate the messenger.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Robert: who are these "others" and what are their numbers?
- Melanie Reed
Paul nailed it - Twitter is a broadcast channel. Massive amounts of subscriptions are fine there - it's all about reach. But if you want discovery, if you want to engage, then FriendFeed and FoaF is where it's all. They're NOT the same. One you can subscribe/follow as many as you want, in the other, subscription abuse will cripple your ability to view and interact.
- AJ Kohn
Finally, a thread on this subject that makes sense.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Threading may or may not help... it seemed to hurt with GoogleWave... it was so hard to follow all the tangents... of course without threading a lot of the tangents just get lost anyway. I guess I have given up on trying to catch everything... If it's important and I didn't see it the first time, eventually the concept will bubble up enough times for me to notice. That's one NICE thing about following lots of people and participating in lots of convos.
- Her Lindsay-ness
why won't APML, or something like it, work? i missed that memo
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
Robert, go say this to Last.fm or the BBC :-) Smart recommendation engines are the future
- directeur
FriendFeed may make some audience/discussion leak out, but also makes audience leak in through seeing what your friends are talking about. Arrington may be mostly concerned about the leak out. Other broadcasters may be looking for the leak in.
- Bruce Lewis
from fftogo
Marshall, me neither! :)
- directeur
Also, the meta around the content in FF (likes, comments) is what helps turns random data into information. It's annotated and qualified.
- AJ Kohn
Lindsay: true
- Hayes Haugen
Thank you, AJ, yes. And you can sort that out when you want to on your own time. That's the utility of it.
- Melanie Reed
Perhaps one solution to the 'forum problem' is to allow posters to selectively choose who can participate in the discussion but still be viewable to the public.
- Rodfather
So maybe the real question is, why do some people prefer conversation over broadcasting and vice versa? Is the broadcast-mentality simply a matter of popularity (the inability to reciprocate all the connections, so just broadcast instead) or is the effort it takes to connect with people on a more meaningful basis a major turn-off? Or is it just the tools that people use and what makes it easier for them?
- Her Lindsay-ness
Rodfather, this will bring wars. Trust me. I'm not a commercial object. So you want to SHOUT and ask me to close my mouth? :) Moreover, close comments, other threads will be started and the noise you wanted to avoid will be even greater. The Streisand Effect, anyone? :)
- directeur
For example: this discussion has 80+ comments and rolling. I don't mind that at all. I am engaged. I am also updating a web page on our web site as I do it and switching over to grade 30 some PRF's for students on the play Macbeth. I am not having any trouble with the "forum problem" or any "chattiness" I learned the "ropes" of FF when I joined and accepted that it as it was.
- Melanie Reed
To me FF turns data (the river of content out there) into information (the good stuff - explained). The tool set FF provides is superior in this way - but it takes time to dial in the right set of filters to apply to the data set (which changes!) and many simply overwhelm the great filtering system they've provided.
- AJ Kohn
A lot of people don't want to put in the time and effort to make the tool work for them like you, AJ and Melanie. I can empathize with that. I think it also has to serve their base inclination of either broadcasting or conversation, and the tool choice is also influenced by whether they already are part of a community on it or not. Most people won't leave their community even if it us using the less appropriate tool for their inclination.
- Her Lindsay-ness
directeur, then those people can make their own thread and allow everyone to comment. I'm thinking of in case there's a roundtable event where certain 'experts' in a field can have a thread to discuss a topic among themselves without worrying about others cluttering the thread.
- Rodfather
AJ, indeed - the task is to build new concepts with and for filters. Filters, not to shut stuff out, but to mix it better to create a constant flow of narratives.
- David Bausola
AJ, is it more that FF provides the platform for the users to turn that data into information? The users are integral to FF. Now with Twitter you can program a week's worth of tweets (I have heard) but I don't wish to do that. Facebook... you could almost do that-although it does have engagement -you could certainly use it without. But FF runs on an engagement engine
- Melanie Reed
Marshall: I don't trust automatic systems to guess what I'm going to be interested in next. Never seen a system yet that works. But we should debate this.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, we should debate it! The robot that makes all my decisions for me says it's quite likely I would enjoy doing that! ;)
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
That's getting into intelligent agents and AI once full blown
- Melanie Reed
if you ask me, and you don't, the problem has always been lack of comment moderation and threading. Too many users isn't a problem if no one sees them. Slashdot was one of the first doing this, using an interface which is actually very similar to FF and it seems to work there.
- Vincent van Wylick
Web tech needs to look outside their dev environments for richer influences in filter design: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- David Bausola
Is the problem that Robert is looking for a single service solution. I see the same 'content' on Twitter and FriendFeed but I scan Twitter for 'raw information' and go to FriendFeed to 'discuss' it with others. I watch the news at home on TV but I talk about it with my friends or work colleagues around the water cooler or coffee shop table. I am comfortable existing in several spaces
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
@Lindsay: I don't know. I'd rather educate people on the power that FF can provide with a little effort. Or, that it actually doesn't take LOTS of subscriptions. Max it at Dunbar's number (which is what I do for my home feed) and you'd be fine.
- AJ Kohn
+++ Johnny Scotty would be proud of you: The right tool for the job
- Melanie Reed
@David: Exactly! My home feed - I tweak it. I use people like Robert and Rob Diana and Michael Fruchter and Anthony Citrano and Thomas Hawk and numerous others to bring a mix of themes and concepts into my feed.
- AJ Kohn
So are we saying that its not the tool itself...but HOW it is or is not used that maxes utility? If so I agree!
- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: Yes, the users are the key. The users are the filters. http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/soylent... And the engagement provides a rich annotation and a secondary level of filtering. So yes, users and their engagement absolutely matter.
- AJ Kohn
Sure, yes, how you use it maxes utility. But it also helps if it's suited to how you WANT to use it... if not it's a struggle. And people don't like to struggle, even if it's possible to make something do what you want it to... easier to use another tool if it fits your purpose better. FriendFeed fits my purpose so it's not a struggle for me... but for someone with a more broadcasting mindset than a conversational one, it's going to be tougher.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Vincent, most long-time FriendFeeders have spoken strongly against any sort of moderation/rating system for comments. No one wants mobs of people trying to control what other people can see like what happens on Digg. It's why every time the topic of 'Unlike' comes up, people rise up to talk it down because it creates an aura of competition and negativity.
- Akiva Moskovitz
AJ, yes! users are the filters.
- Melanie Reed
Akiva +++
- Melanie Reed
Anybody use Mailchimp here? It is tangential to the discussion. They have a cracker jack built in user educational system that monitors and makes usage suggestions.
- Melanie Reed
Is lunchtime finally over yet?
- Hayes Haugen
I'd love to peek in on the recommendation engine discussions. I'm in the 'they don't work camp' myself but I'm open to being convinced and perhaps technology has approached a point where it could work but ... from working in eCommerce I've seen it fail time and time again. Random factors, contextual issues etc.
- AJ Kohn
@Melanie: Know of Mailchimp but don't use. The 'monitor and makes usage suggestions' sounds interesting though.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, that's because the devs didn't pay attention when their instructors (ahem) were teaching it to them. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Another point I'd like to make is that no one is forcing anyone to read the comments here. If people want a broadcast-only medium, it's fairly easy not to click on the 'x more comments' link. Unfortunately, Robert makes a painful observation: he played FriendFeed cheerleader for two years and the people who needed to take the bait didn't or did but then cut loose. That pretty much means...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
Johnny: I am comfortable with all of these too, but it's not about me. But, anyway, the business battle now is between Facebook and Twitter and it'll be interesting to see the choices that Paul's team makes and how those compare with the team NK over at Twitter is making. Then the market will choose which one is best.
- Robert Scoble
Akiva: If I were at Facebook and knew that they could turn into the next MySpace I'd put every single engineering minute onto Facebook. Wouldn't you?
- Robert Scoble
Like I said before, there is still SO MUCH potential here... and it's a shame to see it squandered. I think there are a lot of ways it could be taken to the next level. For sure it could be a contender to Twitter with a few enhancements, but fat chance of that now that there is no longer a dev team, and that it's "parent" is a competitor.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Robert, here's a good example: You want to debate intelligent recommendation agents? Allright, I know that you know Chris Saad. Chris is a very cool guy in fact! But do you know Deniz Oktar? Deniz, who is not as popular as Chris, is a SMART Turkish guy too and works on the same subject. If you limit your view to "popular" people, you'll definitely miss him. And debating such a subject without alternative ideas likes Deniz's or humbly mine, won't be perfect :)
- directeur
Not sure, Robert. Is turning into the next MySpace a good thing for you or a bad thing? For me, it'd be bad.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva, go take a look at (and experience) mailchimp's monitor and make usage suggestion system. It's adaptable for a number of scenarios
- Melanie Reed
I think the business battle (other than the marketing to consumers end of it) will be occupied and won by Wave. Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed are mere toys in that world.
- Brian Sullivan
Melanie, I'm not complaining about a solution that MailChimp could provide. I'm fine with FriendFeed as it is (for the most part).
- Akiva Moskovitz
directeur: most people choose news brands to curate and find new people that will have something valuable to say. See http://twitter.com/Scoblei... for instance. That already is TOO MUCH so telling people to get more people or more things into their lives just isn't going to cut it for most people.
- Robert Scoble
Allowing public panels where only the influential can talk certainly would have a useful role, Its just like panels at conferences. A lot of people would no doubt like to just follow the influential in these forums. On the down side it would make the already influential more so and it would probably lose some audience if it was done a lot because there is no democratic engagement. The people who don't spend all their time cultivating their fame and networks do say interesting things too.
- Ed Millard
directeur: and, anyway. if he's in Turkey and not in San Francisco he's far less likely to influence tech in a major way. So I disagree.
- Robert Scoble
(FYI - look at this conversation and tell me where else anything like this could take place.)
- AJ Kohn
No, we're completely boring and worthless, Ed. We're not worth paying attention to. I mean, who wants to see a picture of our kids? ;)
- Her Lindsay-ness
IRC or a phpBB messageboard!
- Joe Silence is not dead
Akiva, I meant for those who might struggle "getting" FF but would enjoy and benefit from it once they do. There's an "on ramp" to FF that rivals North Corridor Dallas coming out of an apt complex on to 50mph+ 4 lane traffic. Some of us are better at that than others, but you still see a lot of cars on the road. :)
- Melanie Reed
There has also been a lack of creative uses using the FF tool sets. Good uses of the tools inspires participation + it's easy to criticize -- harder to create.
- David Bausola
@Robert: Whoa, whoa. Weren't you arguing that adding 8K new people from Twitter Lists was a good thing? Is more better, or worse?
- AJ Kohn
+++David
- Melanie Reed
@David: Good point, no real developer platform. That's been a big boon for both Facebook and Twitter.
- AJ Kohn
Robert, yet he DOES. You just aren't into that speciality :) If you think that every "tech" thing must happen in SF you really miss A LOT.
- directeur
Woah, Robert, so you are saying anyone who doesn't live in SF doesn't count in a tech discussion? That's a little self centered isn't it?
- Ed Millard
I understand it but I really dislike any discussions where the topic seems to be "how can we turn this thing that the people who use it like into something that people who don't use it and would only use it for selfish reasons like?" Screw them. If something's not as "techy" as Slashdot and it's more chaotic because the comments aren't threaded like Slashdot and there's no moderation...
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- Mark H
Lindsay, I want to see a picture of your kids. I only wish I had some to show back. ;)
- Melanie Reed
Ed: you are NOT a careful reader.
- Robert Scoble
Robert's not saying that those ideas can't happen, or that a true revelation can't come from elsewhere, but that ... the likelihood that someone outside of SF to influence tech is less. The Capital of the Internet is SF. I'd agree with that. But that doesn't mean it'll always stay that way, nor does it mean that tech from other areas can't be influential. (least that's how I read it.)
- AJ Kohn
OK I just read it, you still said if you don't live in SF there is very little chance you will have any influence on tech. If you have no influence then you either have nothing to say on the subject, or even if you do have something to say it wont matter.
- Ed Millard
Hrm, I think the whole thing is overblown. My personal FF landing page still has as much utility as my first day (if not more). Bleh, whatever.
- Chieze Okoye
@AJ The FF API is beautiful, I don't think dev communities saw the richness that you can create with the aggregation of FF streams. A few valley PR oriented bloggers pushed 'conversation' as FF's 'killer app' - whereas, the realtime aggregation streams and republishing of content is radical and unique.
- David Bausola
Well I'm pretty sure all the people in Seattle, Toronto, Paris, London, Moscow,Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangalore, Boulder, etc. probably disagree
- Ed Millard
@David: I'll take your word on the API and wouldn't doubt it given the FF team's chops. But fostering usage, that community - that's where things may have gotten shaky. Too few people leveraging it. It could still resolve back to an inability to really grasp what FF can do for them.
- AJ Kohn
AJ, I think you're on to something. Back in the day, usability (including general user and disabled) use to be a well-known topic. Universities made it a part of the curriculum. Everything before and including e-commerce got the once over. But it occurs that the latest generation (including GLS and SM) have outpaced the community standards for usability. It's really the wild west again-...
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- Melanie Reed
Akiva: I suspect the noise problem Robert's describing from others isn't that comment threads get too long. It's that items keep popping to the top as new comments show up, when they don't want to see the new comments. I don't see any way around that except a separate client. It would take too much away from the FriendFeed experience for the default interface not to work this way.
- Bruce Lewis
Mark, I didn't mean to suggest /. is the only solution to the forum problem. If you have really big forum discussions /. is time tested way to control noise and raise the signal level. On the other hand it would probably be a horrible solution for intimate and friendly discussions among friends. Someone earlier Lindsey? kind of had a good suggestion. When you make a post have a row of option buttons and let the poster set the kind of forum for that thread, broadcast, panel, open, modded, thredded, not..
- Ed Millard
Ed: I specifically said "far less likely." I didn't say there is very little chance. But, seriously, this is an argument for another thread. Lots of people think they have influence but actually don't have as much. For instance, I love to think I have influence on Facebook but I'm far less likely to influence that then Paul Buchheit is. Facts are facts.
- Robert Scoble
Chieze glad you like FriendFeed. Me too. It's awesome. But that doesn't mean much to the rest of the world.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, how often do you use "Add This"? It's germane :)
- Melanie Reed
OK we will agree to disagree on that one and drop it. I've lived in the bay off and on, I think there are pluses and minuses to being there.
- Ed Millard
Melanie: "Add This" being the "Add Photos" at top of FriendFeed? Not as much as I should.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: No this service: http://www.addthis.com/ This is fast becoming the SM share button for many websites. Ours uses it. And FF is on it. Take a look at the entire list
- Melanie Reed
FriendFeed's feature set will mean a lot to the rest of the world when it's fully integrated into Facebook in 2011.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce: I don't think it'll take that long.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, you may be right, in which case FriendFeed is a relevant thing to look at. Maybe it isn't actually too far ahead of its time.
- Bruce Lewis
Just like Lisp can make you a better programmer in other languages, FriendFeed can make you a better thinker when writing about other social networks. Popularity isn't everything, even for a blogger.
- Bruce Lewis
You mean, it's not all about attention? :D
- Her Lindsay-ness
Who really knows why Twitter got all the traction? Does Scoble? I very much doubt it. I think there's a great effort going into finding a logical explanation for Twitter massive success and FriendFeeds more modest gains. My own best guess is that it has more to do with the madness of crowds than it does with any limitation in FriendFeed. Twitter had a decent enough foothold already by...
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- David Hall
from FreshFeed
Twitter got the traction because Twitter's easy. It requires very little effort to get into and it requires even less to participate. It's the same reason why YouTube comments are the cesspool of the Internet and MetaFilter's comments are not: anyone can sit around and watch videos all day and then trash talk them but you make people pay to comment and you'll weed out the chaff almost...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
David: I was there from early days on Twitter and studied how it grew. I know more than you might think. Remember, I was the first person to follow 1,000 people there and I was the 13,800ish user to join.
- Robert Scoble
This link is the most illuminating one on FF traction at the time of the buyout. It indicates FF was just starting to regain traction after it had stalled out for a while and it suggests if maybe FF had stuck it out a while longer things might have changed. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ed Millard
Twitter got hot in the early days because of Leo Laporte and because of SXSW and because it was goofy fun way for tech influencers to talk to their friends. It just kept growing from there. Another factor in addition to simplicity (Akiva's right there) is the API. Tons of clients and tools and services are built on top of it. FriendFeed got nearly none in comparison.
- Robert Scoble
The difference may be luck of the draw ( a la Gladwell)
- Brian Sullivan
People had to build tons of clients, tools and services for Twitter because the default web UI is so bad.
- Ed Millard
Ed: what that graph doesn't show you is what we now know. Google Wave sucked a lot of attention of geek influentials away (IE Hype) and Facebook's Connect is running away with another game. I went into FriendFeed the week they decided to sell and asked them because I knew Twitter had new features coming that would make FriendFeed less interesting. I think the FriendFeed team looked at the competition and decided to fold.
- Robert Scoble
How could I have ignored the API? It's like Firefox's plug-ins: it's the only thing that makes Twitter usable for many users. Without it, they wouldn't touch it. Heck, if it weren't for Tweetie 2, I wouldn't touch it either.
- Akiva Moskovitz
And Facebook's Connect platform is getting incorporated everywhere. I think FriendFeed was hoping to become part of the general web, like what we did over on http://building43.com and that just wasn't going to happen because Facebook's Connect platform is rocking and rolling now. In fact, I made a fundamental blunder by not going with Facebook on Building43. If I had, our traffic would have been much higher than it is now.
- Robert Scoble
You can be sure that once CNN and other assorted media outlets started plugging Twitter it was game over. Once the band wagon was rolling every "personality" was going to hop on. It is a little disturbing that Miley Cyrus has now joined the "everyone should delete their Twitter accounts" camp.
- Ed Millard
David Hall +1 Steven Berlin Johnson would be a good reference - the persistence of babble is incredible valuable in phatic communications. FF, through the web interface hides a lot of that. Instead, the babble was more bookmark centric and less about 'having a sandwich'. That's why you have, on the whole, better conversation threads on FF, and ending up having to duck out of the way of...
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- David Bausola
Disturbing REALLY????? My word, Miley is absolutely right <sarcasm/>
- Roberto Bonini
To paraphrase Louis Gray's wife, "nerds in startups are fickle". I speculate they had a lot of self doubt when they stalled out prior to that up tick, and decided to sell just about the time FF was starting to take off again. Someone waves $50 million at you during a period of self questioning that is a potent motivator, I think Zuckerberg saw that and he did nip a potential competitor in the bud.
- Ed Millard
But all the above comments is about public sharing. I use FF a lot for project planning and development - it's fast - you can discuss items with good archive search, and you can post media. I wonder how many people use FF in this way, and ignore the public babble?
- David Bausola
Having read most of this thread (and Robert, comments are VERY valueble) the"forum problem" is NP-complete. Comments are valuable becuase seeing people reason is often just as enlightening, if not more so, than the original information.
- Roberto Bonini
Ed - mind you, there's only a few ways you can get to the helm of the FB API design and product development. :) Who's to say this isn't all going according to plan?
- David Bausola
Roberto: me and you agree on that. In my research most people do not. They see these things as noise. But, if you make the comments toggle on and off we BOTH win! Plus, comments REALLY help search!
- Robert Scoble
Ed: correction, it was $50 million.
- Robert Scoble
Robert you keep talking about "your research". Is this anything more than anecdotal conversations?
- Brian Sullivan
David, Well maybe Paul and Co. are doing a trojan horse on FB but what I've read about Zuckerberg he doesn't seem likely to relinquish control of anything he cares about and I am skeptical you are going to turn FB in to FF with their entrenched user base.
- Ed Millard
@Scoble you're arguing from authority again. I think on a broadcast platform like Twitter that's an easier one to pull off. On Twitter it's a big "so what" if you've posted a load of BS because most people will simply miss any challenge to your "content." Post the same on FriendFeed and you get tackled and you get tackled in public. Reasonable enough grounds to explain your current stance and certainly as good as any reason I've heard you put forward yourself.
- David Hall
Robert, I stand corrected, and it is corrected, this editing your posts thing is one of FF's scarier features.
- Ed Millard
OPEN QUESTION: Is FF gaining or losing users? I see very little here now - but I'm told user numbers are going through the roof.
- Jim Connolly
Ed: tell me one thing. What's the biggest difference between FF and FB? There's already not as much difference as you'd might think. The one thing I miss over there? Real time search.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter got big because it's about ego. Look at me, Me, ME! Twitter flourished because people like to talk about themselves. (FF is not, which is why it hasn't gained nearly as much traction.) It was developed as an update service. It has evolved into ... something else. As for comments, they are invaluable.
- AJ Kohn
and the ability to edit comments, moderate comments, import all my feeds, bumping up of older posts
- Holden Page
from IM
Jim: user numbers are not going through the roof here. I don't know anyone credible who has said that. The registered numbers are going up, but the active numbers are going down.
- Robert Scoble
AJ: FriendFeed is just as much about ego as Twitter is. If not more so.
- Robert Scoble
Ed, the goal is to design influentially for the web. Paul B does seem to give that ethos in his startup camp talks and general interviews. I would think FB would warm to that ideology.
- David Bausola
Very true. Robert.
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: How? Seriously, I'd like to hear your opinion.
- AJ Kohn
Robert: In other words, as people like yourself, Arrington and even those little guys like myself with a couple of thousand subscribers leave - we're being replaced by less active users. Makes sense. I used to check in on and off all day. Now, 2/3 times a week,
- Jim Connolly
Jim: not true. I don't see a lot of people joining in here and I'm watching it closely. Sorry. More people are leaving the back door than are coming in the front.
- Robert Scoble
To me the two big ones are 1) perception that it more walled garden networks and not as open though certainly it has avenues which are more open like FF 2) its home to massive quantities of apps, games, spam from people trying to get rich that hold no interest to me, though obviously many others like them. FF is probably just overlooked by that crowd, if it were bigger it would be infected with all that crap too. FF seems to mostly just be good people from my limited time here.
- Ed Millard
All User Centric Design is modeled around the ego. Good software design keeps that in mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- David Bausola
AJ: Twitter is, for many people, about business now. Not ego at all. News brands: http://twitter.com/#... no ego. Tech companies: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... No ego. But here? It's ALL about ego!
- Robert Scoble
David is right.
- Robert Scoble
On Twitter the default is to show number you follow, number of followers, number of Tweets. That's all playing on ego and popularity. Nearly everything (even lists) is geared to stimulate a innate need to acquire more of something as a way to ... validate contribution or perceived influence or authority. FF does not show this in the default mode.
- AJ Kohn
Companies and brands are the most aggressive form of ego there is, and they usually are direct reflections of the ego of the company's CEO.
- Ed Millard
Alright Robert. In order to reduce the signal to noise ratio, we can do one of two things, we can use "Likes" to filter the comment stream. If I Like more posts from Robert than i do from LG, Roberts comments appear but not LG's. We can use semantics to (somehow) sort the thread and show comments relevant to the original post. (simply dumping noise isin't a solution - not all noise is noise all the time. Likewise, increasing signal in an echo chamber is fruitless)
- Roberto Bonini
@Robert: Oh, I think Twitter is a great business tool! It's a marketers paradise. But I'm not sure that's what most people believe it to be. People still think they're going to get some sort of social dialog there. I think it's why Twitter churn is so high. People get it thinking it'll be one thing and quickly find out it's another.
- AJ Kohn
+1 AJ, there are some people that use Twitter in awesome, constructive, useful, ways like Tim O'Reilly and Jay Rosen but a lot of people its pure self promotion. As for news outlets using twitter they are going to go wherever the eyeballs are, and they will go to multiple networks not just Twitter. Those are pure broadcast, no engagement, they aren't really a ringing endorsement of why Twitter is great.
- Ed Millard
I'd bet FF *would* take off (but be worse for it) if it listed how many times the content I fed got liked and commented on, and that (along with subscribers etc.) were all listed right there at the top of my home feed. And that upon signing up, I'd get suggested users based on subscriptions but also who got the most likes and comments. Yet, I don't think that's conducive to what FF really excels at.
- AJ Kohn
@Robert, biggest difference between Facebook and Friendfeed - reciprocal connections. Without a doubt. The apps, the ads, other stuff, is true, but for me the central difference, and the thing that betrays a fundamental difference of worldview between the two apps is whether or not you can follow someone's content without them having to follow you back. You can only do that on Facebook...
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- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
@Ed: I realized a long time ago that Twitter was a big Internet megaphone. And if you could get a lot of people to 'listen' to that megaphone well, that's powerful stuff. It's about Reach. Twitter gives your message reach. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't see it as ... transforming.
- AJ Kohn
Those who study the art of propaganda consider reach to be everything, because following reach is influence, and following influence is control. TV is losing its reach in the Internet era so most of those "brands" and "personalites" are rushing to find a way to regain it, enter Twitter and FB. They are better because they are bidirectional.
- Ed Millard
*Noise* :)
- ashish
@Ed: I'd be interested to see more on how reach leads to influence. It often does but ... not always. Plenty of multi-million dollar ad campaigns in the graveyard as examples. Reach + ? = influence.
- AJ Kohn
Ed I think you're right. I caught that TC piece at the time too. Seems to me that the FriendFeed guys had a bit of a crisis of confidence and grabbed lunch while it was on offer. In any case I always figured FriendFeed as a place to graduate to once you'd rammed up against Twitters limitations. And, as I'm sure you know, that doesn't take long. That's how I got here. I was actually on...
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- David Hall
You don't have influence until you have reach so its the prerequisite. Then it a matter of how effectively you craft the message and push the buttons in your target audience. Some people are good at that part, some aren't, some fail, some succeed.
- Ed Millard
Robert, I just wonder. Isn't twitter more about consuming the information and FF more about sharing and discussing? Look at http://twitter.com/Scoblei.... What can anyone add to that or comment on that? I agree it is getting a lot noisy in here (exhibit, this post). But not all posts will be this noisy I think.
- Amit
+1 Jandy, she answered Robert's challenge to me better than I did.
- Ed Millard
@Ed: I'm not sure. New memes start with someone small sometimes. Say ... keyboard cat ... and someone who has reach communicates that message and it goes big. So who has the influence? The creator of keyboard cat or the person to has the reach to make it go big? I find it very interesting.
- AJ Kohn
Jandy: +100. You just nailed for me why I like Twitter and FriendFeed better than Facebook. Agreed.
- Robert Scoble
Robertt, maybe this post and the scads of comments prove your point, but maybe your point is limited to your own experience due to your unique position in tech. You speak, noise follows. But that does not make Friendfeed irrelevant or useless for the average or even just left or right of average user. You have a unique experience that is going to color any forum you put your time into....
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- Martha
+++Jandy
- Melanie Reed
Well put, Jandy.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I think the forum problem is not as big in smaller more intimate groups. Recently I've been very active in the DMU group here that includes a lot of folks who've migrated here from Flickr. The relevancy is much more higher in these venues than in the main feed because it's a smaller controlled experience. I do wish though that groups were more full featured like the rest of FF though....
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- Thomas Hawk
oh of course and photo voting pools for groups would by awesome too. ;)
- Thomas Hawk
Lists are not enough. Twitter, FF and other social networks need tagging by default, then filter on list + tag. That's the element that would kill the noise and turn them into interest networks.
- howard shippin
from BuddyFeed
Martha: you might have a point if we were just talking about me. But we're not. So, try again. Again, I've talked with thousands of people about these things. They tell me they don't like the noise that public forums bring. I've been doing this for 25 years and this isn't the first time I've heard this pushback. Facebook, by the way, on its iPhone app, handles it perfectly: it hides all...
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- Robert Scoble
You all keep referring to this as either chat or comments when actually its a discussion. I think that the ability to discuss anything on Friend Feed or anywhere else for that matter IS where you learn the most. I'm not techy like most of you, I'm just an ordinary 'average' user, but I see twitter more as a 'newsreel' of info, shallow but instant, whereas Friend Feed is more a 'thrashing out of ideas and opnions, and is therefore all the richer for it.
- Sandra Large
Sandra: chat/discussion/forum/comments are all pretty much the same thing. Yes, the two are different. There CAN be lots of learning here, it's just that this is a lot noiser than other online things in some ways.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, about noise: when you or other tech influencers introduce FriendFeed, you show the things you're excited about, which tend to be big and noisy, right? And if you're the first person someone follows on FF, they're going to get a noisy first impression. The slower growth that doesn't come through tech influencers may have less of a back door.
- Bruce Lewis
And about the 25+-year-old forum problem: Moderated Usenet was great until moderators slacked off. Decentralized moderation fixes that, at least for small discussions. Larger discussions can lead to whack-a-mole (though I notice this one hasn't), but with one of the suggestions I made earlier in this conversation the number of whackers could scale with the number of moles.
- Bruce Lewis
Moderation = censorship. Censorship sucks. Give the users control to hide and block. The less censorship the better.
- Thomas Hawk
@Paul - what about a view to only see the user's posts/content ie no comments of others and no likes => then it becomes twitter like
- Kishore Balakrishnan
Come on, it's hardly messier than Facebook, since the default view only includes the first and last comment. Basically the gist I'm getting is that people who think they're important don't want to listen to people who they don't think are important. Such is the human race, I suppose.
- Victor Ganata
+++Victor hammer meets nail.
- David Hall
Robert said "FB iPhone app ... hides all comments with an arrow that you can then use to expand the comments. That is so much better than this mess here that it isn't funny". Robert, I must be missing your point because FF also hides most comments until you expand them because you want to read them... Don't want to read FF comments, don't expand them, problem solved. Or are you saying FF is a "mess" because it shows first and last comment?
- Ed Millard
235 comments! I really don't want to expand *that* on FF! Is this a pain-point for anyone else?
- Space Cowboy
Not for me. If I'm interested enough in the topic or dialog I'll click the time stamp and open the post page to read everything. The text amount is comparable to a medium length blog post: if I have the time to read that I have the time to read this if it interests me.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
A typical blog post? Dragging & copying the comments only (which took about a min. of scrolling) produced 9200 words and 23 pages of text. Blog posts also tend to have a more easily read narrative.
- Vincent van Wylick
The problem is for big conversations like this one you need threading and maybe moderation, but for more normal conversations that are smaller flat is better. Allowing a switch between the two adds complexity. For big conversations FF lacks the button to reply to a specific poster so the viewer can thread, at least as an option. Much of the noise level in this conversation is due to people having to manually try to fake threading.
- Ed Millard
The threading vs. flat conversation is interesting to me - we've tried multiple times to put Disqus or Intense Debate on a film blog I write for, and every time we meet huge resistance to threading ESPECIALLY on long threads. People say they have a lot of difficulty finding the new comments when they aren't all at the top or bottom.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Why can't there be a summary fly-out with timestamps based on response rate to single comments and a "last comment made" link as well as "thread count" links and lastly, "participants in this thread" link? Collapse everything else except the initial post. The initial interface looking like this one, should always be available for those who want to "sort through". You want the...
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- Melanie Reed
Jandy, you kind of have to let the user flip between threading and flat to solve the chronology problem. Slashdot has a popup menu at the top that lets you view in "Threaded, Nested, Flat, No Comments". The down side is the UI gets progressively more complex both to implement and use unless you are going to force everyone to lowest common denominator UI.
- Ed Millard
But Ed, that's what I have against the traditional "threaded" approach: all the fork like structure. It does get complicated real fast. What's needed is somewhere a "summary" for those jumping in late to "catch up" but also the "single comment" link to democratize the discussion. Threads have all the indentation problems of trying to follow that way IF I am picturing what you mean by thread.
- Melanie Reed
+1 Ed
- Bicentennial (Franc)
My other observation is this: everyone creates a "story" about the ideas and information they are taking in and immediately starts associating connections in their mind creating a mental picture whether they realize it or not when they are perceiving that information. Our user interfaces don't yet lend themselves to that especially where it come to dialogue and forums. We've accepted a...
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- Melanie Reed
Here's why you don't need indented/tangential threading: FF discussions tend to be small enough to fit in the "RAM" in one's mind. It curtails many threads that might ramble; the exception (like Paul's thread here) comes when the power of the topic/zeitgeist and vibe of a live chat going strong overrides that usual point of decay. Predictablly, one or several commenters here will start a new thread or escalate it to a blog post and summarize their thoughts based on what transpired on this stream.
- Micah Wittman
Melanie, have you used Slashdot, they did forums earlier and better than anyone. The forum starts out flat, and then starts threading. Random community moderators start modding up the insightful posts, and burying the trolls, crap, etc. Once the moderation kicks in the "summary" is all the posts that were modded up to 5 which are shown expanded. All the lower moderated stuff is there but you have to clck to see. Slashdot would suck like YouTube comments if they hadn't solved the forum problem.
- Ed Millard
It's organic, not hierarchical. As other have stated, there is as much to learn from watching the process unfold as there is to gain from end result.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, no, I haven't used Slashdot but I'm willing to give it a try. I'm pretty adaptable. But when I see a problem and it becomes "the picture" for me, in this case a circle then I know its time for the leap out of the present "prison of one idea". ;)
- Melanie Reed
Micah, its true threads are bad for small friendly forums. Some of this discussion is about what happens when the forums on "celebrity" social expert's threads get so big they overflow readers brains and they turn in to *noise*. One noise problem is organization, the other is some post and some posters are better than others in the mind of the celeb and the reader.
- Ed Millard
Slashdot dealt with most of the forum problems ten years ago, they had to to survive the trolls. The problem is their UI needs to be complex to be flexible and keep everyone happy. Their audience is also mostly geek power user. When you get to social networks the other UI school is demanding the UI be dirt simple so the unwashed masses can cope, but dirt simple mean its inflexible and it ticks off nearly everyone, especially power users. Hard problem to solve... making everyone happy.
- Ed Millard
Ed, conferences have break-out groups. The same idea should be employed.
- Micah Wittman
Ed, yes, you offered a little explication for others of what happens when you lost the ability to categorize your"story" into a mental picture that is associated with previous "stories" you have stored in the brain. That end result is "noise". Some of us are better at doing that than others, that's true. But there come a point of over flow for all of us. What our UI needs to do is to amplify and assist in that "story" constructing process.
- Melanie Reed
Break out groups is a nice idea, but it seems a bit cumbersome. You need to make a new post, post a link here and get some critical mass from the first forum to move. If you do it five times you would splinter the first forum and lose critical mass, especially in a "real-time" forum where people will only watch one forum at a time. Chances are most people will cling to the first forum if its interesting.
- Ed Millard
Ed and Micah, what I hear both of you saying, and Robert as well, is that at some point in the "story" constructing process, the dialog from the forum needs to end in the narrative of a blog. Up till now, the blog component has been a random, unattached part of the discussion. AM I hearing that you think that in some way it should become part of the UI? So that the discussion gets...
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- Melanie Reed
Not sure I follow, blog is kind of a one voice, one direction thing, only way a forum morphs to blog is when once person splits off the forum to make a more in depth point and posts the blog link to the forum. I'm mostly just talking about the various methods for restoring order in a big forum, and improving signal to noise ratio. Most entail putting more options and more UI in and around the forum and making the UI more complex which many think is bad on a social network.
- Ed Millard
Ed, as I was writing this, it occurs to me that what I'm suggesting is what I may have just figured out (finally) that Google Wave is trying to get us to do. But if so, I beleive FF could actually do it better. the "noise" problem that was created by the various forms of SM, inside and outside of the platforms, was the inability to "connect the dots". We didn't have a framework for how...
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- Melanie Reed
One of the problems that we haven't solved is the usefulness of digression and random access of connective tissue in the "story" process. That's the wild card that often comes up as "noise"
- Melanie Reed
I can't speak for Robert. Some of his issue "seems" to be he only wants to see the Silicon Valley/SF movers and shakers in his feed talking about tech and social networks, and he doesn't much want anyone but that same group to be posting on forums under his auspices. Friend Feeds openness is bad for that. The same is true for all the Twitter celeberati. They don't want peons anywhere near their online presence to tarnish it.
- Ed Millard
Only way I can see to maintain FF openness for those who want it, and celeb broadcast only mode for the celebs who demand it, in one social network is you have to have an option when you make a post on your feed to control the forum methodology (i.e. broadcast only peons can only look on, panel mode where only my social elite are allowed to speak & peons can watch, private where only my circle can speak and see (FB mode), or completely OPEN(FF mode).
- Ed Millard
There also seems to be an issue where someone you follow, through the "like" process, can inject pictures of kittens, babies and man titteh in to your feed. Of course that is kind of the original point of social networks, seeing what your network sees. I think some just want hard core tech news and talk and twitter lists probably do allow an uber though somewhat lifeless feed like that.
- Ed Millard
Ed, well, that is the territory of the heart when it comes into contact with the machine. And oddly (or maybe not so oddly) there is a post on my feed that addresses that theme: http://friendfeed.com/faithx5... ;) Digression and Random access at work. lol And I find that refreshing. I'm always excited about how some new idea may be generated because I allowed what...
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- Melanie Reed
@Melanie: I fully believe in non-linear learning. The ability to take input from diverse thematic content and synthesize something ... to apply something from one world to the other. That's where I think we're heading. I think of it a little bit like a digital version of Burroughs' Cut Up technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- AJ Kohn
I can't believe I read the whole thing
- Michael Slattery
Such a simple and obvious solution: provide an optional *LIST* view for Friendfeed items. Open the comments only on items that look really interesting. Am I missing something obvious? Then Friendfeed could easily emulate Twitter on all essentials (and surpass it in many other areas).
- Sean McBride
Sean, I think the obvious thing you are missing is there are no FF developers any more so FF probably isn't getting anything it doesn't already have. And there are camps here that don't really like the alternatives that FB and Twitter offer which is why this is such a hot button issue. I wish there was one social network that had lists, open forums, walled gardens, and broadcast mode based on the wishes of the person running a feed so everyone could be happy in one network.
- Ed Millard
Discovering Great iPhone Apps: 5 Recommendation Services Compared http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...
Nerkez, Daniel Rowley and Robert Scoble liked this
Thorough and well-written Motorola DROID review « Boy Genius Report - http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009...
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Cem Ozkaynak, Mark Harai, Daniel Rowley and 28 other people liked this
"We absolutely love the Motorola DROID. It’s a perfect storm between awesome hardware, great software, and a great network"
- Louis Gray
from Bookmarklet
My wife has already kinda resigned herself to the likelyhood that there will be a DROID being purchased in the near future.
- Wirehead
Go Google go.
- Mahmood Padura
Louis, Did you get your wife that new phone yet? This might be the one!!
- Chris Myles
Chris, she just got a new MacBook and new printer. She's spoiled enough for now.
- Louis Gray
I'm going to wait & see. I'd like to see one with multitouch, Snapdragon processor, and a better keyboard, preferably made by HTC
- Rodfather
I was really looking to this handset... until I read the reviews; nothing positive has been about the camera, and for me, that's a deal breaker. The good news is, the problems *seem* to be software related rather than hardware, so maybe a fix will appear soon.
- Andrew Terry
Sooner or later someone will release a smartphone that makes me want to buy it. I keep waiting.
- Eoghann Irving
The same here Rodfather, I'm addicted to multitouch, no reason to go.
- jcunwired
no multitouch... really. i'll try it out, but that could break the deal for me. still, my Pre may be getting nervous...
- .LAG liked that
Louis, a wife spoiled with a Droid means husbands gets to help/play/review .. at least that's the logic I'm trying to use to justify OUR purchase. Although your wife does sound sufficiently spoiled.. for now !!
- Chris Myles
There is a demo video floating around that shows a version of droid with multitouch. If they release that, and it's GSM, i'm probably buying.
- dthree
The Droid in Europe has multitouch.
- Rodfather
I /will/ be buying one on Friday. I /will/ pay the exorbitant disconnect fees from AT&T to get off of their network. I <3 Verizon Wireless and Google for giving me something to move to.
- Jason Huebel
Clojure - cheatsheet - http://clojure.org/cheatsh...
Robert Scoble, Greg GuitarBuster, alieb and NaHi liked this
Faster than grepping src/clj/clojure. Handy, if slightly out of date.
- DeWitt Clinton
I find that this page is more useful after learning the reader macros and java interop: http://clojure.org/api
- Gary Burd
@Gary - good link. And now that I have slime working I tend to browse the docstrings directly in emacs. But I usually have core.clj open in a buffer, too.
- DeWitt Clinton
Tweetie 2.1 Coming Soon With Retweet, Geolocation, And Some List Support - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Daniel Rowley, Amit, RetiredTeacherD and Robert Scoble liked this
I so want to see lists implemented on Tweetie. And soon if possible on Brizzly. I know only then will I be able to use it to the fullest.
- Amit
Sorry FriendFeed, But I Agree With Robert Scoble - http://www.sheysmith.com/2009...
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Mark Krynsky, Mike Fruchter, ffcode and 34 other people liked this
I agree with you that things are incredibly cliquey here, which is an unfortunate side effect of less fresh meat. I think there's a difference between the content of Scoble's point and how he presented that point: Scoble, in many ways, is like a kid in a candy store. He's overstimulated with a constant influx of new tech candy, and it's becomes hard to take his recommendations...
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- Mark Trapp
It doesn't give him a pass to be a jerk about it. It was very disrespectful to everyone in the screenshot he posted.
- Rodfather
That's a good distinction Mark. And you hit the nail on the head in terms of one of my main points which is the "less fresh meat".
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
See, Shey, you left space for open dialogue. You didn't come in and say it was "sad" and "dead". You just said YOUR usage has changed. You posted the exact opposite of what Robert did.
- DO ANYBODY NO MONIQUE
That's an important distinction too Monique. Thanks
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
I agree that things have gotten very cliquey here on FriendFeed.
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
Yeah, I can actually agree with Shey here. It's unfortunate that things have gone in this direction. I'm not afraid of getting jumped on for something I post or a comment I make, but I'm thinking most people are a little more conservative than I. FriendFeed isn't dead, it's just different. I also stand by the comment I have made on various occasions: Your FriendFeed is unique and...
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- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
Mark nailed it. +++
- Carlos Ayala
Rahsheen: that's just the rub. Let's say I want to follow all the iPhone app developers. They just aren't here. 90% are over on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... Or, say I want to follow the world's geolocation experts. They aren't here (go ahead and check, I did). But they are here: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... Or, say you want to follow tech companies. They aren't here. But they are here: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... -- see, when I joined FriendFeed I had hoped...
- Robert Scoble
...that a far more diverse group of folks would show up here (and brands and celebrities) so that I COULD listen to what I wanted and YOU could listen to what YOU wanted and we all could be happy. But, that didn't happen. I'm being a jerk, yes, but mostly it's just grief because it didn't work out the way I thought it would.
- Robert Scoble
Well, two things happen in a lifeboat scenario. People get cliquey (bond close together to cope/survive) and people peer into others eyes and wonder if mania or cannibalism is brewing. People are civilized and instinctual, so there is no inevitable outcome, but in the mean time drama ensues.
- Micah Wittman
I can exist in more than one place. I can follow the people on Robert's list on Twitter and my friends here on FriendFeed and my family/friends on Facebook. Social Media Maturity means you don't have to have all your sets of friends in the one room for you to remain being friends with them.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Shey, I think this title is a little misleading. As others have said here, I think you're saying something very different from what Robert said, or at least in a very different, much more palatable way. I think you're being more specific and not so general (SOME people's experiences here aren't so great. It's not horrible for everyone.)
- Kamilah Gill
Unless you just don't care; The clique thing never bothered me, I have two many of my own things going on.
- ThatDBD
"clique" implies exclusionary behaviours, and i have yet to witness that in any great quantity here.
- Joe Silence is not dead
If i was robert I would have added all his twitter list accounts to a semi-public room here on friendfeed.... much more useful in here than over there (imho) -- you can use the reply to twitter checkbox when commenting on the entries and when they reply to you it should feed into friendfeed via an ego search.... i do this exactly, but i only follow 64 ppl on twitter and am followed by...
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- Chris Heath
@Kamilah Fair assessment. I agree with Robert's assessment of the forum effect. But we're different users when it comes to Friendfeed and we want to see different things
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
I agree that FriendFeed has changed since the FB announcement, but I've been here long enough (and you have too, Shey) to have seen it change several times as people came in and left with various feature changes and overhauls. It will continue to morph into something else again, I'm sure. It's a platform that is suited to a lot of purposes and it changes as the majority of people decide...
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- Her Lindsay-ness
This also assumes that FriendFeed is used exclusively in English...
- Johnny Worthington
At first I thought Friendfeed was a refuge for the chummy crowd. Then I saw Johnny Worthington was here and I knew it couldn't be a clique. Sorted.
- Bernie Goldbach
Stage Five of Being an Early Adopter - http://blog.louisgray.com/2008...
Laurie Woo, anna sauce, Rajiv Doshi and 52 other people liked this
From June of 2008: "The adopter will, at this point, start heaping lavish praise upon the new product, in a quest to assert their dominance, and prove that they can, again, make a service successful, and to prove that all their belly-aching in the preceding months was valid. The adopter will use their blog and both the new and old service to call followers to migrate as a group, both helping the new shiny toy, and in turn, damaging the old one, out of spite and frustration."
- Louis Gray
from Bookmarklet
Just because we understand doesn't mean we have to appreciate the tactics. Robert, I like you a lot as a person, and you have brought a lot of benefit to the tech community through your discoveries and your evangelism. But this is the role of yours that I like less. I think much of my activity and visibility was gained through watching you and learning some things you do well. But also through watching you, there are aspects of what you do that I have chosen to avoid.
- Louis Gray
Despite your apologies to the people you mentioned in your post, upon their leaving, you suggested that those who made noise on the way out the door should have instead stayed quiet. This would be a good time to take a deep breath and remember the reason you were so positive on this place. I am not personally offended, but I am disappointed.
- Louis Gray
What is interesting to me (and I think one of the reasons why this has me so irritable tonight) is that this human trait and these stages aren't limited to technology adoption. I've seen it in music and other art communities, projects in non-profits, etc. and it always grates on me. I want sustainable communities, but I suppose when finding the next big thing or being top of the food chain is someone's job or goal, it's hard to cultivate those. Where is the balance?
- joey
Fair enough. I've said my last word about it. I'm sorry I'm being a jerk but I did put in thousands of hours here and participated more than most people over two years. So, a few posts of disappointment are earned by me, even if they are disappointing.
- Robert Scoble
Thanks. Hey - you know I like you. I'm in the same boat you are, much of the time, but I'm being more measured. And piling on at this point validates the naysayers who were never productive, and who can gain from cutting down your enthusiasm in the future.
- Louis Gray
P.S. I intentionally didn't send this to Twitter.
- Louis Gray
Louis: here's the thing. There's a hide button on all my posts for a reason. Or you can even block me. If I really am migrating somewhere else then it won't matter if you block me, will it? That said, it was good times and FriendFeed still has some uses, like what we're doing here and live chats and such. Although I notice Leo Laporte's fans have largely moved back to IRC or Google Wave for his Twit shows.
- Robert Scoble
I won't ever hide you or block you. That's silly. Besides, I read all your stuff in Google Reader. I see the same things you do. We've talked about it a lot 1-1 even before the FB acquisition. It's all over but the shouting. But I say let's skip the shouting. :)
- Louis Gray
Great nail-head post, Louis. I like Drew's comment. ;) Being on the educator side of things, Robert, and always having to push students into the "latest and greatest" software and current upgrade, it does get old real fast, having to crank out new curriculum for the latest toy on the market. The basics of computer science are going by the way side in many programs at universities as a result. It's not a healthy tension. It's a contributor: we've lost students adding to the mix of enrollments going down.
- Melanie Reed
Robert, I hope if you remove your imports from here you'll add them over on Facebook. These are my Twitter clients - Twitter still doesn't cut it as a client for me. I also enjoy the threaded conversation, personally. Conversation in the same stream as your posts IMO clutters the conversation. I like to respond where I'm not cluttering up my stream.
- Jesse Stay
Leo picked up a story today that i brought to his attention via a for:twit delicious tag... when it hit http://friendfeed.com/twit-st... i added in some quotes from the article and he read them out while bringing up the topic... these tools are still useful if only a handful of people use them...
- Chris Heath
Louis: sorry, you don't see the same stuff I do. But I WOULD love to debate you on Google Reader. You can even see my tech news feeds here: http://twitter.com/Scoblei... works fast. My Google Reader takes more than a minute to start up. Useless.
- Robert Scoble
Jesse: unlike Technosailor I would NEVER delete content, especially yours. That's why I thought he was such a jerk. By deleting his account on his way out he deleted MY content too. Grrrr.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, another reason I like Facebook :-) When your account is deleted your stuff stays on your friends' pages.
- Jesse Stay
Why would Google reader take more than a minute to start up? Mine took 12 seconds and that includes times to login.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
Jesse: I know you and I like conversation. The stark reality that I've come to face is most people DON'T like having conversation, or, more accurately, they don't like having conversation with people they didn't invite to have a conversation with. I hope Twitter, if they ever add comments under tweets, will let us limit to ONLY those people we've personally added.
- Robert Scoble
Robert I'll expect that from Facebook before I expect it from Twitter. Imagine if you can limit a comment thread to just a specific friend list. Facebook is *so* close! Right now I can do that, but it also includes the other networks I'm in. I'm betting on them getting there very, very soon.
- Jesse Stay
I think what you are doing with your Twitter lists is great, and you are doing them better than anybody else. But I still prefer Google Reader. There's little to debate, because there is no need for a "one right answer" response. I would prefer to not read headlines and links all day on Twitter amidst the noise.
- Louis Gray
Louis: that's cool. I predict you'll change your view there within a year or two. I'm just ahead of you and am reading more inbound (more people, more things, more brands). Google Reader doesn't scale to the level I needed it to. Can't even handle more than 1,000 people. Grrr.
- Robert Scoble
Personally, whatever allows me to consolidate my workflow the best wins. Whether it's bringing all my services to e-mail or another client, or bringing all my activity into one service, that would be ideal. Right now what I'm doing is the best workflow I can come up with. I admit for me FriendFeed is getting to be less and less of that as Facebook gets more and more real-time. As for Google Reader, there are only a couple things keeping me from switching there.
- Jesse Stay
"Ahead of you" implies there's a contest. There's not. Twitter is infrastructure, and you're using it well. But you still can't have the conversations there like we are here. You still can't type in full sentences. Blah blah. You know this stuff cold. :) Lists are filters or window dressing on a weak foundation.
- Louis Gray
If you assume this place fades away or gets messy, I'll show you some interesting alternatives where I am already engaging. But that's for another day.
- Louis Gray
Lous, you, me, and Robert should all get in a room some day and show our alternatives. I have time tomorrow :-)
- Jesse Stay
Louis: yes. I'm waiting for you to find the way through the forest so we can follow you all again! That said, again, most people don't want conversations. They just want to learn. Remember libraries? They didn't have conversations either. As to 140 character problems that's why we have blogs, no? :-)
- Robert Scoble
I have time too!
- Robert Scoble
I'm in downtown SF though without a car so I'd need a ride (or you could meet at my hotel) :-)
- Jesse Stay
You're in SF? Hmmm. Let's talk first thing in the morning (9ish).
- Robert Scoble
Well, I will be at 9am - my flight leaves Utah at 7am MST
- Jesse Stay
Call me any time though - 801-853-8339
- Jesse Stay
Robert, I disagree with most people just want to learn. To learn what? Is this the corporatization again of how society is supposed to interact with one another....not based on relationship but on outdoing someone with more information? FriendFeed does (or is attempting) to do both as it should be.
- Melanie Reed
Jesse: call me when you're in SF. Melanie: most people just want to sit on the couch and be entertained. This is why Twitter pushes celebrities so hard! No work necessary, just scan through your favorite celebrities talking about their pimples.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, Don't you think that is a rather shallow and corporatized assessment of your fellowman? I agree there is a market behavior. But who manipulated them to it? Let me use a metaphor: I can stop using any patience or long term goal thinking and just put a jar of sugar out on the table for dinner. It will give every body quick results. I can add to that some bacon rinds.... anything...
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- Melanie Reed
Robert said: "Most people...don't like having conversation with people they didn't invite to have a conversation with." But that's what's so cool about Friendfeed - no filter blocking the uninvited.
- Michael Slattery
Yes, Michael, FriendFeed is democracy in action. Every voice has a chance to be heard as if he or she was as good as the next man or woman no matter how insignificant their ratings or standing in the world of technology. We can be citizens of Whoville and FriendFeed welcomes all whos. :)
- Melanie Reed
If people don't want to have conversations how come so many people on Twitter are attempting to have conversations? People are clearly not just looking for information on Twitter or any of the other social networks.
- Eoghann Irving
I blogged about this here: http://scobleizer.com/2009...
- Robert Scoble
Wow, just catching up on this.... I too have invested THOUSANDS of hours here on FF - evidenced by over 18+K comments and 26+K likes. Very sad to see this platform die a slow death. The "forum" problem is real. I was horrified by how Mike and later Aaron were treated here on FF (crowd feeding frenzy at it's worse). I would LOVE to know what you all think is the next platform to "Discover" :)
- Susan Beebe
Guess how many people on FriendFeed I "invited" to be on my feed that I already knew? Maybe two. That's it. Everyone else I originally met because of Friend of a Friend or because they commented on my posts or those of other people I met earlier. Thank God for FriendFeed's "noise." My life, both online and off, is better for it.
endiaferon, Jerry Griffies, Robyn Hawk and 80 other people liked this
[Terms in quotes are to be understood according to Scoble's definitions, as I understand them, though I acknowledge I am to some extent taking "noise" from the fringe of his definition.]
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
"Thank God for FriendFeed's "noise."" <---- Best line I have seen all day. +googol, Jandy
- Josh Haley
I love noise too. I study it. It's just the reason why person after person told me they didn't like it. I'm just the messenger. Even Tim O'Reilly told me this is why he didn't like FriendFeed.
- Robert Scoble
Agree completely. Same here.
- Melanie Reed
I don't think I invited any real-life contacts. I've enjoyed the noise and found some interesting people because of it.
- John (a.k.a. dendroica)
Robert, that's not what you've said in various posts over the past few days and weeks - you've continually said that you can't find the content you want here anymore because it's too noisy. I think what you mean by that is that the content you aren't interested in drowns out the content you are (whereas before the noise was mostly tech, so therefore not noise to you). But still. You've...
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- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
+1 Jandy
- Joe Silence is not dead
Thanks, Josh. :) I was kinda partial to your "It was a dark and stormy night" appropriation earlier.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Amen, sister.
- Steve Lowe
COME ON FEEL THE NOISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Trish R
makes me wanna ask, "can't we all just get along?" (friendfeed, twitter, gReader...)
- brainno722 (Peter)
In my world, FF and Twitter are for following people, GReader is for following topics. I will quickly unsub a feed in GReader if it gets noisy because I'm looking for info, but I fully embrace the noise here, because making noise is part of being a person. I suspect that to Robert, people and topics are interchangeable... it would explain a lot about his perspective.
- Roger Benningfield
I only know 2 people here IRL. The rest are FF only contacts.
- Alex Scrivener
I know 0 IRL
- Mike Nencetti
I think that's a good point, Roger - I wouldn't necessarily say that about Robert without caveat, but in terms of the way he uses social media seems to be much more for business/learning/information/data then for personal reasons. For me, I generally subscribe to people on FF after deciding I like what they post (i.e., I like their content), but it's not long before I like their content...
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- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Alex, of people who actually post here (rather than those who joined at my behest and now just dump feeds), I knew one before IRL. But now I know at least ten or fifteen people IRL that I met on FriendFeed. And I don't consider them just contacts, I consider them friends.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Preach, Sister Jandy.
- Derrick
OH HAI DERRICK! See, there's one right there. :)
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Jandy is Dandy. I wouldn't have known that if not for the noise of FF. God Bless FriendFeed! (or Cosmic Force of the Universe be kind to FF - for any atheists out there )
- Morgan Haley
*does the Jandy dance* :D
- Derrick
derrick - how does that dance go? i ain't got moves, so i might need some schooling!
- Morgan Haley
I don't know, Morgan. I just made it up. And only because I know Jandy sees a lot of shows. I can't imagine she doesn't do a little boogieing in there from time to time. Jandy, WHAT SAY YOU?
- Derrick
I've met 1 FF person IRL (guess who!?)
- LogEx
i'll just do the 'cabbage patch' as a default, if that's ok with all of you
- Morgan Haley
and I need to warn the masses that I am a white boy, so my idea of what the cabbage patch is might not be up to muster..
- Morgan Haley
Derrick, that all depends on how drunk I am. ;) LE, really?! I feel all special now. :)
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
yes, calling it "friendfeed" is misleading but i guess finding the perfect name would not be easy either
- Loc
Amen
- Louis Simoneau
Hahaha Jandy ... keep being you ... even the parts when you drunk post at concerts and twitpic and all that.
- Amani
Agreed. Definitely. RT @dburkes: Scoble finally wrote something insightful http://scobleizer.com/2009...
Robert Scoble liked this
FriendFeed and Scoble and the crowd-as-community problem - http://code-bear.com/bearlog...
Iván Abrego, Susan Beebe, Kol Tregaskes and 16 other people liked this
Great post man... hope robert sees it
- Chris Heath
i've made a couple of edits - my "real" writing skill has atrophied so I made some very basic mistakes
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
and *shucks* I am tickled that you guys liked it :)
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
I saw it and liked it. I answered over on the post already too.
- Robert Scoble
I'm an IRC person myself
- Jesse Stay
Mike, you said what I would say if I were able to stop hyperventilating in anger and irritation over this thing for a moment. That's my weakness. Bravo for being very reasonable and to the point about this situation.
- Kamilah Gill
he's beating a dead horse at this point, and I'm not sure why he continues. we get it, you're done with friendfeed. Move along then... But I'll keep following Scoble because he's got good ideas.
- Bill Kinney
it's a plea for attention, methinks. next he'll be doing MySpace-style photos of himself. :P
- Joe Silence is not dead
Picked up a Magic Mouse today. It scrolls pages like the iPhone does. Nice.
Kol Tregaskes, Robert Scoble, Deepak Singh and 5 other people liked this
Picked mine up Friday. Agree completely. Best mouse I've used.
- Gregg Morris
may have to get one of these.
- Thomas Hawk
The only thing I don't like is the edges seem kind of sharp.
- Cristo
Does it have Windows or Linux drivers?
- Vezquex: God of FF
so you can flick it, like an iphone?
- Gunny Wallen
I was a little concerned about the edges too, but I naturally hold it on the sides and don't even feel the edges (which are not really sharp like they look in the pics). The scrolling and multi-touch stuff is really nice, but I do wish it was wired and I miss the extra controls I had on the Mighty Mouse (though I don't at all miss the problem-prone scroll ball).
- LogEx
no middle click = useless to me. :(
- mjc
LogEx, I have one. The edges could have been rounded more.
- Cristo
I thought it did have a middle click? It's fully multi-touch and programmable; you can assign a gesture or something to the middle-click function. (Aside: why do you need middle-click? just curious…)
- Glen Campbell
I used to press the ball in Sketchup do change the viewpoint in 3D. Not sure how to do that now.
- Cristo
The Private Web - http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009...
Denise Howell, Daniel Rowley, Robert Scoble and 8 other people liked this
In our day we had our Home phone and it was private if you could close the door
- paul mooney
this is our day and there are other alternatives now
- Steve Gillmor
In our day you could have an affair and your GPS coordinates couldn't be traced
- Francine Hardaway
maybe you could
- Steve Gillmor
Steve - Fabulous post! I love the deep level of investigation, research and analysis in this well-thought out and artfully crafted piece. Well done my friend! (Francine LOL)
- Susan Beebe
Geek And Poke: How To Be Sensitive With Twitter Lists [Why be sensitive? Be REAL] - http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekand...
Jack, Robert Scoble and Sheryl liked this
"How To Be Sensitive With Twitter Lists"
- Ken Camp
from Bookmarklet
ooc - low-level / high-level goodness - http://ooc-lang.org/
Shivanand Velmurugan, JMaultasch, Benjamin Golub and 56 other people liked this
Looks promising. C++ is too much of a disaster -- we need a real successor to C. "ooc is a modern, object-oriented, functional-ish, high-level, low-level, sexy programming language. it's translated to pure C with a source-to-source compiler. it strives to be powerful, modular, extensible, portable, yet simple and fast."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Meh. I dislike post-fix'd declarations, and given that the assignment operator is frequently used, I think C's decision to make it a single character operator is the correct one. Otherwise, it doesn't seem any better than say, Objective C, D, or any of the other languages vying to be the next C.
- Piaw Na
Have you looked at the D language? http://www.digitalmars.com/d/ It's been around for years and near the top of language shootouts in performance.
- Ray Cromwell
Pointers? Do we really need pointers?
- Gabe
Yes, if you're doing a systems language, you need pointers --- for writing device drivers, if nothing else.
- Piaw Na
Based on the sample code, it appears to have a very direct interface to C, which I think is important for a systems language. For most things I'd rather just use Python, but for lower-level, perf-critical stuff, we need something else. D looks like too much, but I haven't tried it.
- Paul Buchheit
Type inference, yummy - a main reason why Scala has mad traction these days
- Christopher Galtenberg
Start by creating a really lightweight and easy to use development environment. I should be able to teach Jay Rosen to program in it. Back in the 80s there was serious compeititon in this area -- from Borland with Turbo Pascal and on the Mac, from Think Technologies with their C and Pascal systems. The languages aren't the issue, at least not for me. I want to program in C again, but the curve is too steep in all the environments. Give me a Turbo environment and some nice libraries, and lets go! :-)
- Dave Winer
Dave: http://tryruby.sophrinix.com <- that kind of easy
- Christopher Galtenberg
Piaw Na: For ':=' I've just made a homepage edit to make it very clear. := is decl-assign. Regular assign is '=' as in C/Java/etc. RTFM! ;)
- 'n ddrylliog
Piaw Na: As for trying to be the next C... well, no =) The next C is probably C itself, since C hackers are way too picky to be satisfied with anyside above C (in high-level/low-level terms)
- 'n ddrylliog
Btw, why is everyone thinking of ooc as a systems language? It can be used as such, but it's not really the goal. Do you all think so because it's compiled?
- 'n ddrylliog
I'm thinking of it as a systems language because that's what I want. We already have reasonable options for higher-level stuff, but when writing a database or whatever, we're stuck with C or C++.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul Buchheit: Hmm. High-performance implementations of current reasonable high-level languages are still pretty much experimental :/ (unladen swallow, shedskin, etc.) Why sacrifice performance? Many compiled languages have shown that expressivity isn't reserved to "interpreted" languages. =)
- 'n ddrylliog
Piaw Na: about ooc being better or worse than Objective-C, D, etc. Well, D is really complex. It gives a *lot* of control, but it makes code less readable imho. As much as you may currently dislike it, the ooc syntax is (for some at least) more readable, so more maintainable, in general simpler, etc. (a lot less trickier than C++, for example. And if you don't see what I'm talking about, you haven't done enough C++)
- 'n ddrylliog
Ocaml is pretty expressive, it has a REPL, and it's been in the top of the language shootout benchmarks for years.
- Ray Cromwell
How does ooc compare to C#? If I had to write something like a compiler, I'd use C#.
- Gabe
The missing dots really bother me.
- τorƍue
C++ a disaster? I don't think so, its main problem is the lack of high level straightforward frameworks. IMHO generic programming is a deeper paradigm than OOP, but like functional languages has a slow learning curve, look at the matrix implementations/compiler optimizations in Boost!
- Sebastian Wain
from iPhone
Sebastian: C++ has lots of significant problems. For example, it's actually 3 languages: precompiler (#define), C++, and templates. The template language is so powerful that you can't even tell if the compiler will halt on a given program, let alone understand the error messages it produces. Just the shear size of the language, manual memory management, things like multiple inheritance, and vast overlapping standard libraries make it hard to program in by giving the progammer an overly large cognitive load.
- Gabe
My two biggest gripes: Error messages from templates, specially from STL, can be notoriously hard to track down. And secondly, default implicit conversions can lead to hard to track down bugs. When you have a type system so complex you have to mentally "run the compiler" as you code, something's wrong.
- Ray Cromwell
I've been doing nothing but C++ lately. It's not bad, but only because everyone subsets it. The compilers are horrible, but I don't think that's because nobody has an incentive to improve g++'s front-end.
- Piaw Na
Ouch. decl-assign is terrible. I hate that. I think C's syntax (e.g., int a = 3; ) is much better than decl- assign. If you want to imitate C, at least make the declarations C-like. Personally, I think language design should be performed so that you can hand-code a compiler (i.e., no lex & yacc). Why? Because hand-coded compilers can much more easily produce human readable error...
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- Piaw Na
I've seen it argued that LL(k) compiler-compilers don't have this fault, because they generate recursive decent parsers that look somewhat like what you'd write by hand, JavaCC certainly has this attribute for example. Although I'm quite fond of the parser-combinator approach now.
- Ray Cromwell
Gabe: the issue is: when you need performance you must follow the C++ path. Don't forget http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp...
- Sebastian Wain
What Ray said. yacc uses an LALR parser, and LALR parsers are kind of notorious for producing inscrutable error messages. LL(k) compiler-compilers can generate much more intuitive error messages, and the code they generate often looks like something a human would write. Both JavaCC and ANTLR are good LL(k) compiler-compilers. I believe LL(k) parsers aren't strictly as powerful as LALR...
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- Laurence Gonsalves
On the topic of ooc: the "object [space] method-call()" syntax is the most jarring thing about the syntax for me. I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be any actual introduction to that syntax on the linked page -- it's just used several times without explanation. Also, I have to say I'm not a fan of conservative garbage collection.
- Laurence Gonsalves
Yes, when I hand code parsers, I write them in recursive descent form. The problem with C++ is that it's not easily parseable in that form. And seriously, any language where you can write map<string, string>, but have to write map<string, vector<string> > is seriously messed up.
- Piaw Na
+1 to Laurence's comment about conservative GC: that's plain evil.
- Piaw Na
Yeah, Piaw only uses progressive GC, and even then he keeps complaining that it's finding ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
- Daniel Dulitz
I believe JavaCC grammar repo has a relatively straightforward C++ grammar implemented, using LL(k)
- Ray Cromwell
Piaw Na: You got so much wrong in so few comments that it's actually worrying. Decl-assign is not terrible. It's called type inference, and is used in a lot of modern languages (ML, C#, Scala) to make our lives easier, and limits repeating yourself and it works damn well. Grow up and learn other languages. So no, the goal is not to imitate C. Go use Objective-C/C#/C++/Java/D if you want C-like languages.
- 'n ddrylliog
Piaw Na: Second: I have hand-written the ooc 0.3 compiler's parser, and it was a piece of cake, because the syntax is so simple and unambiguous. Having "object[space]field" is a non-issues since declarations are "name: type". And you're mistaken in thinking that the fact you can hand-write a parser for a grammar means that it's simple. It's the other way around. If you can write a LL(K)/LR/PEG grammar, then the syntax is *very* straightforward. And the new ooc compiler (rock) uses a PEG grammar..
- 'n ddrylliog
Conservative Garbage Collector: There are advantages 1) the performance is a lot better than you would expect (and actually faster than plain malloc/free for lots of small objects) 2) there are advantages, e.g. seamless integrations with all the C libs out there. 3) Writing a GC isn't easy, the Boehm has been around for years and is well-tested/optimized, portable, etc. Read the papers please :/ This thread is a showcase of ignorance and arrogance.
- 'n ddrylliog
As for "Language blah is better". No, sorry, apples are not better than oranges. That's your personal taste. Well, good for you =) One size doesn't fit all. Why do you even bother?
- 'n ddrylliog
why `diagonal := Vector3f new()` instead of `diagonal := new Vector3f()` or even `diagonal := Vector3f()` is this because someone felt he must not be like any other language?
- Tzury Bar Yochay
I know several typed inference languages. I dislike them --- again, type inferencing never took off not because the technology was hard, but because programmers preferred the declarations --- it really helps. Not to mention tools like ctags/etags, etc., do a good job for popular programming environments (i.e., vi and emacs), which meant that languages without such support never get widespread use.
- Piaw Na
Conservative Garbage Collector: 1) this is more an argument abut gc than conservative gc. I have no problems with gc, I just want accurate gc. 2) That's a fair point, but not enough to make me want to use conservative gc. I'd be happier managing resources from C libraries manually than worrying that hash values are confusing the collector. 3) Yes, writing a gc isn't easy, but I'm sure...
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- Laurence Gonsalves
@Piaw, a type inferenced language just means that the type is concretely there, just it doesn't need to be declared in syntax. Thus, any smart editor or IDE, or other tool could reify or show types on demand if the developer so chose. Ctags are a relatively primitive mechanism for source code indexing, once you have an editor which understands your language's AST/semantics, you don't...
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- Ray Cromwell
Tzury: why 'diagonal := Vector3f new()'? Because new is simply a static method: http://ooc-lang.org/blog... Your definition of "any other language" must be "Java and C++" and both are inconsistent/magical on this issue, as opposed to, yeah, pretty much "any other language" (Smalltalk, Ruby, Io, ...)
- 'n ddrylliog
I've never heard of this before. Feel a bit disconnected.
- mikepk
Ray: for better or worse, most programmers out there are using Emcas and vi. Why? Because no other tool scales up when you're dealing with large code bases. (That's one reason why even some Java programmers at Google use vi and Emacs) I don't care how primitive the tools are, they have to get things done.
- Piaw Na
I agree with Laurence about conservative GC. The big one is memory fragmentation. Once upon a time, when all we ever wrote were desktop apps, memory fragmentation didn't matter. For server side applications, it matters a heck of a lot, and any language that uses conservative gc might as well provide the delete operator.
- Piaw Na
C++ can be used quite effectively without STL or complicated templates, but it will never be safe from corruption or memory leaks.
- Todd Hoff
I love lamp.
- Mark Jepsen
@Laurence 1) Yes and no. The performance gap between good conservative and precise (/accurate/exact) garbage collectors is less significant than one would think. 2) That's a valid point 3) Actually, I've thought of using Steve Dekorte's libgarbagecollector (look on GitHub). These are still plans though, Boehm was clearly the easiest option to start with, and ooc itself isn't bound to...
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- 'n ddrylliog
Easily one of the most fascinating threads on FriendFeed right now. You guys are talking mostly over my head but it reminds me that I need to get my ass out of managed languages one day.
- Akiva Moskovitz
@mikepk The language+impl has only been out there for a few months. =)
- 'n ddrylliog
@Todd Totally agreed, which explains some design choices in ooc. Memory leaks is a non-issue with a GC, and as for corruption, as long as you stay out of manual memory manipulation, the compiler does most the checking for you, statically.
- 'n ddrylliog
@piaw: I think we're mostly in agreement, but I really don't think it's fair to say that "most programmers use Emacs and vi". I use vi a lot, but when it comes to Java/Scala code bases, I still use Eclipse (or IntelliJ, or whatever). Even at Google. I just don't map the *entire* Google Java code base into my workspace at once. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Java developers at...
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- Joel Webber
Joel: sure, you can play tricks like mapping only what you use. But a surprising number of Java users at Google kick up vim/emacs just so they can use the *fast* low-latency search tools when they need to read code outside of what they've mapped. The numbers were really surprising to me.
- Piaw Na
I've been using emacs for 2 decades and I still use it when I need to quickly edit something or slice and dice text with macros (or I write sed/perl to do it). But when I'm developing stuff, a switchover point occurs where emacs is no longer sufficient and I desire the IDE. Emacs is great for scripts where you can test for errors via a quick eval, but the cost of a compile is high in...
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- Ray Cromwell
There is, once you get into Google-size (or even Linux-kernel-sized) code bases. But I guess I've living in the Google bubble for so long, the concept of not having mega-libraries doesn't even occur to me. And we've built enough fancy tools at Google that make Emacs way faster than Eclipse/IntelliJ (see http://code.google.com/p...). Latency matters!
- Piaw Na
Ultimately, this is a search problem, something that google excels at. I'm not sure why you think Emacs has any innate advantage over Eclipse/IntelliJ for this. If GTags can be built for Emacs, it can be done for those IDEs. (Those IDEs already index all symbols and store them on disk) The issue here is that "find symbol" is necessary, but not sufficient, especially on large code bases....
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- Ray Cromwell
Heh. I open sourced all the infrastructure, but not the ranking algorithms for code (which are google proprietary) Having seen lots of old Google hands work in Emacs, I think you'll find that they disagree. People have tried adding plugins to gtags for Eclipse/IntelliJ, but none have succeeded --- those IDEs aren't designed to take plugins quite the way Emacs does. Even Vim isn't as...
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- Piaw Na
As a practical example, the Linux kernel core (minus the whole driver universe) is about 500kloc. The GWT compiler, which I work on, is about 500kloc. I have zero complains about my IDE's ability (IntelliJ 9) to deal with this code base. Call it a medium sized code base if you will. Too big IMHO to practically use with Emacs/VI (where I desire refactoring and other navigational...
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- Ray Cromwell
What you'll find is that top engineers everywhere have heavily customized environments, scripts, editors, libraries, even their own programming languages, that make switching hard. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really prove anything, if "old hands" is meant to covey argument by authority. Like I said, I've been personally using Emacs since 1987, I use a bevy of ELisp, Perl, Awk, and other...
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- Ray Cromwell
I think the mindset difference is huge. Codebase too big? The IDE solution is to subset. The EMACS solution is to create a search index held in memory and apply search technology to it. The size of the community hacking away on these tools also matters.
- Piaw Na
Piaw, you do realize that the IDE solution (I can't speak for Eclipse), is to build a search index and apply search technology? IntelliJ spiders all your reachable code and files on project setup (now, as a background process since it can take some time) and serves up IDE functions by consulting the index. In fact, it's very much like Google Suggest. I can type symbol lookup requests...
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- Ray Cromwell
Oh yeah, but they do it on disk and so have high latency when the code base scales up. I know, because people switch to Emacs/gtags from those IDEs for that reason. :-)
- Piaw Na
Google's code base is large? I mean, I know the data it holds and indexes is very large, but somehow I assumed the code itself was quite small.
- Andrew C
Actually, they cache some or all of the indices in memory depending on heap, at least according to the IntelliJ lead, if you increase heap, you lower cache thrashing. I still don't see why you think ETags/CTags/etc is any different in this regard. IntelliJ uses a similar index structure, it just records a bitmask on each tag as to the context (comment, identifier, method, field, etc)....
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- Ray Cromwell
@Andrew: I assume Piaw's talking about the *entire* code base, apps and all. That's a lot of code.
- Joel Webber
gtags keeps it all in memory on a server, so there's no disk seek latency. There's nothing fundamental about the IDEs that makes this stuff impossible to do. It's just far easier to do in Emacs when there's just one of you. Once the prototype gets going, it's usefulness allows others to add in more useful functionality. Until recently, things like IntelliJ weren't even open source, so...
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- Piaw Na
Thanks Joel. Yes, I'm talking about the entire codebase. All of it. :-)
- Piaw Na
@Piaw, Ray: It's becoming clear to me that we're all essentially saying the same thing. To deal with a large, complex code base, you need good tools. IDEs vs. Emacs isn't really much of a dichotomy if they're both building indices and cross-references of your code base and serving them up to you within the editor. They're both IDEs, n'est-ce pas?
- Joel Webber
Yes, I'm just saying, if you need to build something in a hurry, it's far easier to do it in Emacs. But more importantly, ignoring a base of Emacs/Vi users when designing your programming language is ignoring a large percentage of the population. And in some cases, it's a large percentage of a very influential population.
- Piaw Na
@Piaw I somehow lost your point between the "omg I don't like type inference" and the "you're ignoring Emacs/Vim users". It's still straight-forward to look for declarations of things, what's your problem? It's precisely why := and = are separate operators
- 'n ddrylliog
You'll get no argument from me. I'm a fan of diversity in programming, and I do use emacs daily. IntelliJ/Eclipse would do well to offer a simple in-editor tool for building plugins via any Java scripting engine and support saving those persistently. I guess my point is, I can't live without Etags functionality, and now I can't live without all the other features I've gotten used to:...
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- Ray Cromwell
Even without any support, editing ooc in at text editor (I personally use Vim and Geany for .ooc) is very easy, cause you can search for "whatever:" (notice the ':') and be done with it. Try doing that with a C/C++/Java codebase =) That's the payback of a simple, non-ambiguous consistent syntax
- 'n ddrylliog
And AFAIK, most ooc users/contributors/hackers use vim. A few use emacs, too. We have a vim syntax file, and a contributor is looking into writing an emacs mode. =)
- 'n ddrylliog
@Piaw, Ray, et al: To finish my previous thought -- There will always be some point at which an IDE (be it Emacs or Eclipse) will fail to scale. The time and space required to deal with the code base eventually grows without bound, and you simply aren't going to load it into a single machine's memory. Even if you could load all of Google's code (or at least its index) into a single...
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- Joel Webber
Or you do the work to integrate the external search tool (or whatever) into the IDE. Emacs is designed to make that easy. The other IDEs that are around today, not so much. Code Search introduces a lot of latency. gtags as implemented internal to Google has sub 300ms response times. Whenever it goes down, I get complaints from people, declaring that "it's just too much work to remember where files are."
- Piaw Na
I think Piaw's concern with type inference comes from the fact that explicitly stating the type of something acts as documentation. With type inference that documentation goes away. For example, in ooc, suppose I search for "whatever:" and I see "whatever:= foo()". What's the type? Whatever foo() returns. So now I have to look up foo(). Suppose it uses type inference on its return type (assuming that's possible in ooc). Now I have to dig even deeper.
- Laurence Gonsalves
I'm guessing the IDE digression related to the fact that a sufficiently smart IDE can add the implicit type information back by doing the same type inference as the compiler. The problem with going down that road is that you're coupling the code editor and the language. Either your editor needs special language support so it can do the type inference, or you have to put up with not having an easy way of knowing something's type.
- Laurence Gonsalves
I don't understand how you can do conservative garbage collection without leaking memory.
- Gabe
Gabe: In theory, you can't. In practice, Hans Boehm did a lot of studies in the 1990s showing you that the leakage is very tiny. The real problem is memory fragmentation. With accurate GC, you can actually improve the locality of your data structures in memory (e.g., by putting elements of a linked list or array next to each other so a cache fetch brings them all into cache), with conservative GC, you can't do that.
- Piaw Na
@Laurence: type inference: For me, the advantages far outweighs the drawback(s) (And, no, no return type inference in ooc). Plus, you don't *have to* use type inference. You can declare type explicitly in your whole codebase if you feel like it.
- 'n ddrylliog
For the record: I'm not saying I necessarily agree with Piaw's distaste for type inference. I've thought about the issue in the past, but haven't used languages with type inference enough to have an opinion one way or the other. The lack of return type inference might be a good compromise, as it would tend to limit how far you'd have to search to figure out the type of something, while still eliminating a lot of the "busy work" in languages that require that you specify the type of everything.
- Laurence Gonsalves
@Laurence You've come to the exact same reasoning as me =)
- 'n ddrylliog
I do still think you should explain the "object[space]method-call" syntax somewhere on that page. Up until the point where you use that syntax ooc looks vaguely similar to C/Pascal/Algol/etc., so seeing this unfamiliar syntax with no explanation is confusing.
- Laurence Gonsalves
@Laurence I just edited the homepage. Better now?
- 'n ddrylliog
w.r.t. fragmentation and conservative GC: take a look at "Compacting garbage collection with ambiguous roots" by Joel Bartlett. Worked very well when I used it in a home-brew JVM for alphas at Dec/Compaq about twelve years ago.
- Sanjay Ghemawat
I really like the way C# handles pointers and GC: All objects are allocated from the GC heap. If you need a pointer to a GC-able object, you only get it by pinning it. Once the pointer goes out of scope the object gets unpinned. And you can only use pointers in code marked "unsafe" so it's obvious to the reader.
- Gabe
Gabe - does the fact that C# is not compiled to machine code like C++ make it slower?
- Robert Felty
Rob: C# gets compiled to native machine code when you run the code. There's also a program that ships with .Net called ngen which will create a native image without having to run the code.
- Gabe
It would be nice if Microsoft open-sourced C#/.net. I know there is Mono, but that seems like it will always be second-class.
- Paul Buchheit
What happened to the "Opening .Net Framework's Source Code" project, any ideas?
- Ozkan Altuner
I guess Rotor isn't good enough, huh?
- Gabe
I was thinking of an actual open/free license.
- Paul Buchheit
Paul Graham on object orientation: http://www.paulgraham.com/noop...
- Donald C. Lindsay
We added a few features you might have missed recently: support for imgur.com thumbnails (http://friendfeed.com/search...) and "Best of" for users/groups on the iPhone (http://friendfeed.com/iphone...)
Chris Martin, Kol Tregaskes, Vishy and 51 other people liked this
Rumors of FriendFeed's death are greatly exaggerated. (Thank you, Ben!)
- Stephen Mack
Thanks, guys :)
- Bicentennial (Franc)
Stephen, very happy to see new features like this, but I think the "death" part is the major users reducing their activity. I'd love to see some support from Facebook in promoting FriendFeed more to encourage those users to go back. Or maybe they don't want to? Regardless, bonus for me! Thanks Benjamin - you're awesome!
- Jesse Stay
Jesse, fair enough but major users always did come and go. Some of the departees who left said they were doing so because there was no new development. Clearly not all development is halted. Last week Paul hinted that FF may receive a major new feature, and characterized his participation as "20% time" -- I'll take that.
- Stephen Mack
I backed down off the all caps. The group "best of" is really useful, love it.
- Stephen Mack
Stephen, I agree - I'd just like some confirmation that Facebook cares about all this so I can know whether to focus my efforts on Facebook or FriendFeed or both.
- Jesse Stay
I noticed the best of on the iPhone the other day, wrote it out on a cake and then ated it.
- Josh Haley
Thanks for the update Ben
- AJ Batac
Jesse, I think you should focus where your users are focused. What do SocialToo users want? But if they want Facebook focus, you should still keep an eye on FriendFeed, since the future Facebook will look a lot more like FriendFeed.
- Bruce Lewis
Bruce, I'm not sure we know that.
- Jesse Stay
Paul Buchheit said the FB acquisition was attractive because of shared vision/direction. I would be surprised if a lot of that vision wasn't already embodied in this product right here.
- Bruce Lewis
not enough, best of day should be like a stream that can be traced back
- ffcode
ffcode: you can do that. Here is the "Best of week" from one year ago: http://friendfeed.com/summary...
- Benjamin Golub
thanks Benjamin
- ffcode
ITS ALIVE!!!!!!! MUH HA HA
- Roberto Bonini
Is the LinkedIn Platform Dead? - http://gigaom.com/2009...
Daniel Rowley, Roberto Bonini, Robert Scoble and 13 other people liked this
oh, yet another death news. aren't people sick and tired of killing platforms?
- Mengu
Their Serious Business PR is still rock solid Especially because they are slow to open up for privacy invasions running amok among other more "popular"social sites.
- Bill Whetstone
I know many people who segregate LinkedIn off from Facebook or Friendfeed--different groups of friends for different social networks. Is there still a place for pure business connections who don't want to know what you had for breakfast or your score in Scrabble? I think so.
- Andrew Leyden
Next: "LinkedIn killers" start popping up
- TheIndustryStandard
That's pretty interesting. I use the Wordpress app on LinkedIn, but was wondering what others are available. Om links to a page where you can see all 10 (count 'em) apps. I can understand their worry about apps allowing mining of their data - with limited possibilities for interaction, the data is about all they've got.
- Michael Slattery
monthly visit numbers have nearly doubled in the last 12 months...hard to think the platform would be dead...maybe just not the hellbent for leather place that we've grown to expect? http://siteanalytics.compete.com/linkedi...
- jeff hammond
So my wife gets lists before I do. We know whose account will get used as my test account now :-)
Geert CONARD, Hutch Carpenter, Susan Beebe and 15 other people liked this
What's funny is I have 6 accounts of my own and she gets the lists.
- Jesse Stay
You are blacklisted.
- Louis Gray
I guess so. Time to change Twitter identities?
- Jesse Stay
Seriously, Louis?
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
I thought everybody got lists yesterday. I did. So what was the selection criteria do you suppose?
- Melanie Reed
Ryan Sarver told me it was completely random, no selection criteria at all. They couldn't even put me in as a developer until my number got picked. (which is BS because I know developers "chosen" for the developer beta)
- Jesse Stay
Well,Jesse, if I could give you mine, I'd do it. I'm not particularly ready to play with it yet as I have other things I'm concentrating on at the moment.
- Melanie Reed
Melanie, the only reason I want it is for development. I'm much more enthusiastic, from a user perspective, about Facebook. I do see ways to incorporate this into SocialToo though so I want to play with it to do that. Also, Facebook doesn't yet let you group fan pages into lists or anonymize lists like Twitter does so I might find some benefit there as well.
- Jesse Stay
Actually, I'm wrong - I just realized I can add fan pages to lists. Cool. Wondering if I can do some stuff from an API perspective now.
- Jesse Stay
So it looks like in Facebook the only capability I need now is the ability to share my lists with others. Ideally those that I share with should only be able to see those with permissions set to be visible to others. This would include all fan pages (the equivalent to a Twitter profile).
- Jesse Stay
Which I can already do via the API
- Jesse Stay
Jesse - with your brilliance a) everyone -even Twitter - knows you've been doing your own "lists" for a while! b) you'd test it so heavy the system would blow up! *giggle*
- Arleen Anderson
Arleen, lol! In all honesty, I have been doing lists for awhile via FriendFeed and Facebook, so you're right there. The only reason I really want to test it right now though is for SocialToo - for those that prefer Twitter I really see some potential for lists to remove the need for unfollow.
- Jesse Stay
Keep in mind I'm in this as an entrepreneur, not to necessarily find news. I can find news, but it's not my sole purpose or mindset right now.
- Jesse Stay
I am still waiting for lists myself,
- Rob Cairns
Can I share FriendFeed lists on SocialToo? I can imagine API calls to dump list data there and subscribe to others.
- Bruce Lewis
I finally got lists, so I've finally stopped complaining (at the end, I begged @twitter on bended knee). Once I got lists, the first thing I did was create my big NaNoWriMo list which is probably the biggest one built so far. When I saw how many lists I was on, I found out that I was on just about everybody else's NaNoWriMo lists already. So I'm pleased, though I might now complain about how hard it is to create big lists out of my nearly 1,500 followers. So it goes...
- Dennis Jernberg
Gillmor Gang recording live 1PM Pacific http://www.building43.com/realtim...
Susan Beebe, Karoli, Mike Doeff and 5 other people liked this
Looks like Bret Taylor of Facebook is talking with the Gang....
- Cliff Gerrish
Hopefully Bret shows up. Otherwise we'll be forced to talk about Twitter's new lists feature and you know where THAT will lead!
- Robert Scoble
I want to get a few words in about http://bit.ly/Spawn on Gillmor Gang today
- Kevin Marks
we will start in a minute.
- Robert Scoble
Only 13 viewers?
- beersage
Gillmor Gang is recorded live in front of a live studio audience.
- Cliff Gerrish
Oops, missed my calendar notification for this week's episode.
- Matt Mastracci
The names have not been changed to protect the innocent...
- Aron Michalski
Gillmor Gang is recorded live in front of a real-time web audience...
- Kevin Marks
I'm happy to see a simplification of the Facebook API. That's one issue I've always had with the platform. The initial learning curve is very steep.
- Matt Mastracci
Scoble still wants to port your email address out of Facebook...
- Cliff Gerrish
I don't have enough friends in my email address book to make Scoble's screen look busy enough
- Aron Michalski
I did a little hacking on this with @bradfitz's code at http://unmung.appspot.com
- Kevin Marks
The question is should Scoble be able to send your email address to another platform, or another application.
- Cliff Gerrish
Do I have to agree to TOS with Scoble or does he have to agree with me?
- Aron Michalski
Facebook is the intermediary. Although you have a social contact with Scoble.
- Cliff Gerrish
Cliff: I did a brute force workaround. I just manually copied the email addresses I wanted into Outlook myself.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, it's the programatic access that can lead to looting of addess books.
- Cliff Gerrish
The TOS doesn't forbid me from doing that and it only took a few hours.
- Robert Scoble
Cliff: yeah, but sorry, if you are a spammer you just go to Mechanical Turk and pay someone to do it.
- Robert Scoble
Yes, I agree. But the question is should Facebook facilitate the process?
- Cliff Gerrish
Putting money in front of a spammer's problem will reduce the amount of spam dramatically (which is why spammer probably won't use mturk). Maybe Facebook should charge per-user/per-transaction fees to extract email addresses?
- Matt Mastracci
"Facebook is an identity platform." Very interesting competitive landscape -- Twitter, Google, MSFT, Comcast?
- Cliff Gerrish
"Your inside is out, and your outside is in"
- Cliff Gerrish
Comcast? You mean Plaxo?
- Ken Sheppardson
"Open Graph API" is a really confusing name for adding webpages to FB as feeds
- Kevin Marks
Actually I'm thinking of Comcast making Cable available through the Network for its users.
- Cliff Gerrish
And the topic of attention and identity which were of interest to a small group of us is now an issue for a very large group of users.
- Aron Michalski
Haven't checked the roadmap but I wonder if there will be more possibilities for API use with pages and not just the main FB friend stream.
- beersage
Seems like financial institutions have a better identity play, but they're hopeless with this kind of thing. Credit Cards have a jump on it. Telecoms could also have an opening.
- Cliff Gerrish
Does the open graph address pages or items in a stream?
- Cliff Gerrish
Anyone ask about the problem of Facebook owning our social graph?
- Kurt Jarchow
so FB's "Open Graph API" is the opposite of the Social Graph API that reveals existing connections.
- Kevin Marks
This aspect is interesting, in that presence on the internet for a long time could be anonymous and now the value will be from having a unified ID.
- Aron Michalski
So it Bret saying it's just marketing spin at this point? ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
You'll see that the owners of the pipe, the bankers and the retailers all want to know who we are so they can get paid.
- Aron Michalski
can we identify the source of the metadata item and allow for filtering of what's a valid linkage?
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Robert, are you coming out for SideWiki for Facebook profiles?
- Cliff Gerrish
:-)
- Robert Scoble
wonder if Bret saw the Realtime chat games orkut launched http://code.google.com/apis...
- Kevin Marks
shared labels - is what i would like to see
- Bastian
For 'movies' shouldn't I just be able to pipe my Netflix data over?
- Cliff Gerrish
Netflix already exports Activity Streams of your movies - FB should read them
- Kevin Marks
Yes, rather than building a new and separate data set. Our combining the sets.
- Cliff Gerrish
Bret really shouldn't speak of FriendFeed in the past tense.
- Cliff Gerrish
Cliff: FriendFeed is not getting new engineering work.
- Robert Scoble
Yeah he said "was"...
- Bastian
It's often more revealing to hear how people talk about things indirectly than to hear them answer direct questions.
- Ken Sheppardson
better late than never...i'll have to catch the first 30 minutes on replay.
- Karoli
Friendfeed's conversations aren't duplicated by any of the other players.
- Cliff Gerrish
Why would FB buy FF if they weren't headed down that road? To use it or kill it?
- Aron Michalski
Interesting to hear the idea of protocols driven by User Interfaes in the realtime space.
- Cliff Gerrish
FriendFeed is still rolling out features: http://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- LogEx
I totally agree with Robert. The Friendfeed search is incredibly powerful and useful.
- Karoli
Permalinks for stream items is a critical feature.
- Cliff Gerrish
how long has Bret been in the FB world :) - he's being asked questions about future growth and planning that he may not have even been in the meetings that cover those new items yet :)
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
FB conversations are fractured, across different pages and places. Mobile experience can be a cul de sac of death for a conversation...
- Aron Michalski
my criticism of Facebook has nothing to do with the stream. it has to do with the mashup of everyone I've ever known in my entire life.
- Karoli
i think it's great that i see other people's comments when i comment on an item on FB
- Bastian
I'd like my stream to show me things that I initially reject, and then later come to accept.
- Cliff Gerrish
Facebook represents my "real" social network only as it existed 25 years ago.
- Ken Sheppardson
we need more depth as to what a "friend" is - need to factor in FOAF items
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
Ken, i wish it was that way. It has pieces of every aspect and social graph I've had for my entire life.
- Karoli
I'm starting to realize and appreciate Robert as an underdamped dynamic system, oscillating wildly but eventually settling/converging on a steady signal, e.g. the comments today on Wave vs the initial reaction. And I mean that as a compliment, Robert :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
There is plenty of conversations I am glad to leave off of FB; 90% of the people from my past have no clue about any of what we are discussing and don't care.
- Aron Michalski
Ken, yea - that's a great way to describe him. I agree that he should take it as a compliment
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
I do.
- Robert Scoble
Again, it is easy to bring content into FB but why can't I subscribe to an RSS feed of a page like I can w/ a Twitter user?
- beersage
my problem: 90% of the people I have contact with in real life have me friended on FB and HATE my politics, leaving me with fluffy little bullshit updates. No conversation. Just nonsense.
- Karoli
The FB pipes need to be full duplex.
- Cliff Gerrish
I think the part of FF we'll never see in FB is the basic lack of walls in FF and the philosophy that anything and everything can flow freely into and out of the system.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, FF may be the outside part of FB.
- Cliff Gerrish
how is the spewing of netflix queuing any different that all of those mafia wars or farm app updates I get on FB ;)
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
If that's the case, Cliff, I'd like to see them embrace that. I may have missed a bunch of signals, but I'm still working on the assumption that FF is feature frozen and will be subsumed into FB.
- Ken Sheppardson
I'm glad that neither FF or FB or Twitter will be the hot new toy we all talk about this time next year!
- Bastian
Bastian: Twitter is about to release more new features than it has EVER released. Are you sure we won't be talking about them in a year?
- Robert Scoble
Bastian, where would be talking about whatever we'll be talking about.
- Cliff Gerrish
By the way, Tina says 'hi' to the chat...
- Cliff Gerrish
Robert, only if Twitter survives their own creativity and popularity
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
We should have OpenFF any day now... :-/
- Ken Sheppardson
hi back at Tina :)
- Karoli
Robert is raring to have a discussion about Twitter lists. :)
- beersage
bear: I'm pretty sure that in a year we'll be doing Twitter. Two years, though? Maybe not. Things don't change that fast when they have such momentum.
- Robert Scoble
I'm loving this shot of the studio. Rock on.
- Karoli
Robert: Twitter maybe, but i'm even more excited about new third party tools build on Tiwtter. Even so everything i was told from the people i know at Twitter, there are cool things coming.
- Bastian
yea, that was a great studio shot - nice layout
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
"talking a little about"... so, it's not imminent :-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Generalizing twitter to many kinds of Activity Streams is interesting, and I hope Bret picks up on that
- Kevin Marks
The thing about FF & Twitter is that they make it possible to curate a stream of a niche topic and put it into context w/ other content on a website. Lost of potential. With FB, you cant use any valuable stream there outside. Still a walled garden.
- beersage
I have to say, time listening to the Gillmor Gang is always well spent!
- Bastian
yay sponsors!
- Karoli
bye all
- Karoli
good show
- Jamie
Hah, Kevin got cut off. That was a short edition.
- beersage
great show - I am loving the increase in quality discussion and the decrease in loud noises - thanks!
- bear (aka Mike Taylor)
http://bit.ly/Spawn is Ribbit's launch next Thursday
- Kevin Marks
Defrag is week after next - agenda: http://defragcon.com/2009...
- Kevin Marks
I was on EconTalk with Russ Roberts last week: http://www.econtalk.org/archive... Finally got a chance to listen, and think it came out pretty good :) Let me know what you think.
Alexander Arsky, David Bausola, Micah Wittman and 32 other people liked this
Cool, checking it out now...
- Susan Beebe
I agree that it came out pretty good. Is that the raw conversation, or is it edited?
- Gary Burd
Thanks Gary. It's the raw conversation, I believe.
- Paul Buchheit
this is really good... :) that's because Paul is uber smart and that makes this really fun
- Susan Beebe
I was pleasantly surprised to see it show up on my iPhone. Great conversation.
- Cliff Gerrish
I listened earlier this week and liked it.
- Bruce Lewis
Russ rocks! I'm an avid Econtalk viewer . I thought the interview was good and useful considering I work on the product you championed.
- Hareesh Nagarajan
I was listening to the show while running some errands this afternoon. Had to give friend feed a try and more importantly see the toe shoes.
- Eric Nelson
very good Paul so open and honest
- Thomas Power
Just got to listen. Nice podcast, I liked the perspective on Google, on mindshare problems, and how you got your "toe shoes" in there :) Thanks!
- Vincent van Wylick
Great interview Paul.
- τorƍue
Stalqer Peers Into Your iPhone For A New Level Of Location-Based Creepiness - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
Daniel Rowley and Robert Scoble liked this
clever!
- harper
CommonJS Spec Wiki - http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki...
Daniel Rowley, Robert Scoble, Nick Lothian and 3 other people liked this
"Welcome to CommonJS, a group with a goal of building up the JavaScript ecosystem for web servers, desktop and command line apps and in the browser." Noble goal.
- DeWitt Clinton
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