Shripriya - Comments

Affordances. They are important. What does that mean? A door knob "affords" being turned. It almost demands it. Yet FriendFeed is screwing with things like links. Here, click on "hide." That should just hide one item, right? That's the affordance. Yet you'll soon find there's a whole world stuck under that little link. You can hide Tweets. You can hide me. You can hide all sorts of stuff. - Robert Scoble

324 more comments

Is it difficult to use? - Manuel Mas

Hmm.. is it difficult to use?! - Orli Yakuel

It's a peace of cake - Mark

i heard larry wall once say about perl "make simple things simple, and hard things possible"... the simple things are definitely *not* simple in ff, increasing the learning curve right at the start... i rekon if they fix that... they have it made! :) - simran

Ooooo. One does not often see Robert swear. He's really worked up about it. Care to respond Kevin?? - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

#2 Look at the time stamp. Did you know that's also a link? Where's the affordance? Not there. Yet did you know you can click that and that is your permalink? Many people have trouble figuring this out. But here's an ultra affordance killer. Did you know you can click it twice and get a popout menu? Not many people do. Kevin has overloaded links with too many features and he has broken the affordances of what links usually do. - Robert Scoble

Orli: actually, yes, it's difficult to use. - Robert Scoble

Scoble: You may be right now that I read what you had to say. I don't think there is a proper FAQ/guide for all the little details hidden in FF. - Manuel Mas

And noses were designed to support eye glasses. - Todd Hoff

well I just managed to wipe out my entire friend feed account when I was trying to add a new one for a different twitter account - NW Angel

I agree - too many possible results from a given action. Manuel, no one reads FAQs and if you need to, the app is DOA - Sameer

Well, I don't see it as difficult to use. Its more that there are many things in here hidden that would aid users if there were more upfront. - Manuel Mas

Most of us get basic functionality out of the site with how things are at the moment. - Manuel Mas

Look at this complaint too about FriendFeed being difficult to figure out: http://twitter.com/sethgol... Seth Goldstein runs a tech company. He's a geek. Adverse to more pain than a lot of us. Yet he can't figure out how to delete a list. He's not the only one to tell me that FriendFeed is too difficult to figure out. FriendFeed still needs a design rethink to make these issues go away. - Robert Scoble

Sameer: Agree. - Manuel Mas

Valid points, Robert, but a complex interface, once learned, becomes simple, too - although that's not the best design philosophy for a massively public website. - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Its the visual impact of seeing too many options even if you dont use them. V. overwhelming for the try and buy new comer - Sameer

I think it is one of the worst UIs on the web today. Which is why I hardly use it. It violates all the rules of good design. Stuff is not obvious, it is not easy and it is not even quickly learn-able. I've spent years in product management and really, this is one of the worst. - Shripriya

I think the issue here is Discoverability. There are a lot of little hidden secrets to FriendFeed that become obvious only after you've figured them out. They're not very obvious on their own. Personally, it doesn't bother me but that's because I know it. If I were a new user, I'd be at a loss as well. It seems to me that the primary design goal at FriendFeed is a minimal UI (perhaps at all costs). - Akiva Moskovitz

Roberto: I can't think of another web app that messes with link affordances the way that FriendFeed does. Can you think of one? - Robert Scoble

People who figure out how to use a system are often the last ones to recognize how difficult it is to use. It's a self selection thing. - Ken Sheppardson

But affordances are subjective and reliant on the end-user. Take the @ sign or hashtags for instance. Unless you're talking about Apple, it's hard to blame a designer for affordance rule enforcement. - Sam Harrelson

There is a balance with "affordances" though -- if you have a very complex set of features you could have a knob/button/link for every feature but that would not work either - Brian Sullivan

@Robert, do you think FF need More Icon? - abdellah

Sam: we've all clicked on hundreds of thousands of links. We all have an idea of what happens when you click a link. - Robert Scoble

Sam, the @sign in Twitter was emergent - something users created. - Sameer

Sure, but I've seen lots of platforms use the date function as a permalink enabler. - Sam Harrelson

Manuel, agree. Robert, I wouldn't say it's difficult, but confusing (or useless sometimes). I'm not sure it's a design problem though. - Orli Yakuel

abellah: an icon is probably better than a link, yes. I know that Kevin (from an interview I did with him more than a year ago) likes sparse UIs. He is of the school that you just watch where people trip over themselves and then build UI for that. I think that's smart, but I wish that FriendFeed would iterate its UI faster to pave paths where people are having troubles. - Robert Scoble

Robert, sorry, but you're late on this trend too :) First, being not to follow everyone on Twitter. FF ui has always been terrible. Most tech people I know don't understand how to use it. And I think I use less than 10% of the available features. - Shripriya

I like FriendFeed as it is. It's obviously a power users tool as is, but then I wouldn't want it stupid simple reminiscent of installing a Windows OS. There just needs to be a decent screencast on the home page explaining all the features. No one reads FAQs these days. Video Game designers just turn the first level into a tutorial for 99% who won't read the manual and I don't mind. Maybe FF needs a tutorial when you first sign up? - CannonGod

Think about the affordances of FF and compare them with Twitter. Then compare the relative effectiveness of desktop / mobile applications developed for both. There is not a one good app for FriendFeed. This is because of the MANY "extra shite" links and an overly complex API, not because of popularity differences in the services. - Michael Owens from iPhone

Holy shit this item is already in Google: http://www.google.com/search... -- Google is going real time! - Robert Scoble

Great designs shouldn't need tutorials. - Manuel Mas

@Sameer right, but we created the @ sign to do a certain feature. Folks on identi.ca have their own signifiers. That will inevitably happen here as well as folks grow comfortable with this platform. - Sam Harrelson

Shripriya - I think most people who come back dont find it confusion. Its the first timers that run away - and thats FFs biggest problem. - Sameer

Needless to say, we all love Friendfeed, but we also need a Greasemonkey script to learn which service was posting into the time-line, and the entire issue of groups/rooms really needs a rethink because it's so hard to find any, especially If you're a newcomer.. - Nir Ben Yona

Engagement is deep; Adoption is sparce. - Sameer

TV ads (at least in australia) are considered misleading if "a person of slightly less than average intelligence" misinterprets them... i think you will find that it takes "smart techies" a while to figure out the nuances of ff, not saying everything should be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, but the defaults that way would give everyone a great start... especially when introducing innovative stuff (like "the live web") :) - simran

Scoble: That Google real time thing is even more impressive than this discussion! - Manuel Mas

Shripriya: I've been complaining about this stuff both in public and in private for a long time. And I wasn't behind in following everyone on Twitter. Come and study how I use FriendFeed to follow small groups of people closely, especially for Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Manuel - Yes. I like to say that if you need to write a manual for your product, it's too complicated. - Jeff Harbert

Wow, this did get into Google fast. - phil baumann

Robert: Holy shit, that's impressive - http://www.google.com/search... - sod Twitter I say, if you're in marketing then you need to get on FriendFeed for instant Google indexing of a subject! - CannonGod

@Manuel there will be always a need to manual and tutorial, people have to sell or to promote so event if you have to explain a basic evidence, write a document make it in pdf format, sell it or share it, but for the sake of simplicity please never ever do FB style document. - abdellah

UI design is a very difficult thing to do because so many people have different ways they use things. However, I do agree with you Robert that FF does need a redesign to make more of the feature more user-intuitive. - Jack Wilson, K4SAC

Sameer - I've been back many times, I still barely use it. All the stuff Robert mentions, I had no clue. And its not worth my the time investment. - Shripriya

i would expect to see the tweet before this one.. http://www.google.com/search... - Orli Yakuel

Robert - the twitter thing (ie. unsubscribing and not following everyone) was a bit of a joke. But on FF, you are the biggest proponent. If you can't get them to change, no one can. - Shripriya

Phil: THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT GOOGLE REAL-TIME INDEXING! XD - CannonGod

Agree Sam, but Twitter nor identi.ca expose a gazillion features in the core app.. Its about managing the "first impression is the lasting impression" thing - Sameer

Here's the interview I did with Kevin last year: http://qik.com/video/73962 Shripriya: yeah, I keep hearing that from other people I try to evangelize FriendFeed to. One guy, who is a tech advisor to celebrities in Hollywood told me they will never use it because it's too hard to figure out and because there aren't good mobile clients for it, like there are for Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Jake - :) - phil baumann

@Sameer That's true for a certain demographic, but I look at sites my 8th graders frequent often and I have no idea how they put up with the features. Or take an xBox 360 controller... lots of buttons that do way too many things for my old 30 year-old mind, but my students find it intuitive. - Sam Harrelson

http://scobleizer.com/2008... - 18 months ago you said their UI was brilliant :) - Mark

Shripriya- thats ok. Plenty of people I personally know that have signed up for Twitter and never come back because they couldn't find a use case. No app is for everyone. Its about appealing to a large number of folks that see relevance. - Sameer

Wow, not only is this indexed in Google, but the Likes are getting indexed as well. Don't see the comments indexed yet, tho. - Sam Harrelson

Maybe FF will always be the power aggregation tool online that only a few use. But is the "few" large enough? I wonder. - Shripriya

47 emails in my gmail inbox already from this thread (as i commented and said follow updates on twitter)... surely they can batch them at least by the minute... after all... email isn't realtime :) - simran

Search results for "I don't get FriendFeed" - http://friendfeed.com/search... - phil baumann

Mark: you took me out of context. I said it both sucks AND is brilliant. That is true. Even today. - Robert Scoble

@Robert, can I add that UI is so clean that functionality are just a part of the design, they need to make more light on them (hey they are all blue link the same sized blue link) :) - abdellah

The missing mobile client certainly is a downer. I love a lot about FriendFeed, but lack of a *good* mobile client, and other minor annoyances may keep me from staying here. Sure I know I will come back from time to time (and I haven't left yet), but not sure I can live here on a daily basis like I can with Twitter because of the great clients for my desktop and phone, like TweetDeck. - Timothy Federwitz

Sam, the feature laden apps you mention that your students use, have intent built in them. The purpose is known before you came. XBox = don't do homework. Hell, Id learn how to use very button too :) - Sameer

I think FF is a different beast altogether and not as easy to create a mobile app for, based solely on service functionality and what we actually do here. - Manuel Mas

Tim: that's why I like the IM integration wtih GTalk. Gets around the site UI and works great on the mobile as well. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Scoble: I think this was a pretty rude way of giving your feedback. Why are you being so provocative lately? - Eric Florenzano from iPhone

difficult for who? the basics are easy....getting the most out of all the tools available is a different story but at least the tools are there. Not so in twitter - Craig Shipp

Sameer: Yep, good point. Similarly, I see FriendFeed having a very useful apparatus in my work/personal flow as a news/twitter/info client. I mostly use it via IM but also find the site pretty intuitive for how I use it and prefer it over Twitter, etc. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Eric: because no one engages unless you make a strong point and I sure wish Kevin would fix this stuff so I can evangelize FriendFeed better. - Robert Scoble

Craig: I have shown FriendFeed to many hundreds of people over the past year and I keep getting this complaint over and over. - Robert Scoble

I disagree with that approach Robert. A strong point is not always necessary. Most times it's a turn off and sets the wrong tone. Sure you get a lively discussion, but half of it is trying to explain you're not reallllly upset about it. - Bwana ☠

It's fine to complain but I don't see any useful suggestions here from Robert or any other commenters. A problem without a proposed solution is essentially a whine. - Brian Sullivan

Bwana: we've been complaining about these issues for more than a year. And I am upset about it. It keeps me from having a good time evangelizing FriendFeed. Just search here for how many people don't get FriendFeed. And those are the ones who'll tell you in public. - Robert Scoble

Just reading this, I have learned 4 things I DID NOT KNOW about friendfeed functionality. - Liza

Back again, to say FF still isn't cool! - K.N. Ajit Narayan

Robert: I couldn't disagree more. Please don't fall into that Arrington/Loren Feldman trap. People engage in a more constructive way when the topic is interesting. Just look at Leo's shows for proof that I'm right. - Eric Florenzano from iPhone

I didn't say this wasn't a case for a strong point, I'm simply stating it's not always necessary per your statement "no one engages unless you make a strong point" - Bwana ☠

Liza: that's another reason I did it in a strong way. I knew it would get engagement. WHen you get engagement your item gets spread to more and more people and that helps out the community overall. - Robert Scoble

Timestamp? Click, double click? Permalink? I wish I knew all of this before. - Liza

Ultimately the best thing to happen to FriendFeed would be the mass proliferation of 3rd party apps that offer a better user experience overall. Let the market sort out best functional IxD. How many highly active Twitter users use Twitter.com regularly? Not many, because there are several Twitter apps that afford a more active Twitter experience. Without them, Twitter would be news from 2006. - Laura Scott (@lauras)

I disagree. I came here because I agree with the point (as I stated in another thread), not because of the strongness. You may attract certain types with that, but not moi. - Bwana ☠

The best level of engagement that I've seen regarding Leo Laporte is when Arrington called him out openly and there was the big fuss of him getting thrown off the show. Just saying. - Michael Owens from iPhone

I also show twitter and friendfeed to a lot of new Internet users and they get confused easily. I think the only solution is to show one simple process and then after they master that for a week or so then show them another feature. - Craig Shipp

Eric: OK, heard and understood. But name another designer who does stuff with links that Kevin does. That needs to be pointed out strongly, I think. But then I get crazy about design, especially when people keep telling me over and over that FriendFeed is too hard to use and figure out. Even Liza, who has been here a lot, didn't know all that stuff was "hidden" under the affordance of the link. - Robert Scoble

Robert - I appreciate your sharing this info, but it feels strange that all of this seems like a secret. Intention is bizarre. - Liza

So Robert, do you really think Kevin and FF are actively ignoring this issue? - Bwana ☠

Bwana: yes. Why? Because it's been like this for 18 months. - Robert Scoble

As a user, I do feel like it is intentionally hidden. - Liza

Interesting - Bwana ☠

It isn't about ignoring. It's about continuance. These affordances have been here since FF started. - Michael Owens from iPhone

Michael: and they f**k with the affordances that everyone has learned on EVERY OTHER WEB SITE. This is why I used strong language. - Robert Scoble

Oh, and the "new ui" upgrade that happened a while back did nothing but add to the hidden complexity - Michael Owens from iPhone

Robert, The UI's difficulty is best expressed in comment threads with a huge number of comments, such as yours - http://friendfeed.com/bitchfe... - Aaman (Clone of FF)

And I am tech savvy, not an idiot, but the argument is, oh, you just aren't enough of a techie to get it. - Liza

I think the beauty of friendfeed is the fact that it can be used as a very basic tool but also has the power to do much more in the right hands - Craig Shipp

Who are the right hands? - Liza

And once these get fixed, the real thing that people can't figure out is what is new. On every other website there's an affordance for that. Even in SimplyTweet new Tweets are green. Quick, figure out what is new here that you haven't seen from the last time you were here. You can't. - Robert Scoble

Robert speaks truth. - Bwana ☠

Craig: That's the biggest copout I've ever heard. Maybe Kevin needs to go bak and read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. - Michael Owens from iPhone

Liza: people like me who click on everything looking for secret features. :-) - Robert Scoble

Don't Make Me Think ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) by Steve Krug may be the kind of design you are looking for. - Todd Hoff

@Todd: great minds think alike - Michael Owens from iPhone

Robert: but even Wordpress.com uses the date affordance as a permalink. http://bit.ly/Dwnm6 I understand the concerns about the mass of feature clarity here, but I don't see that particular date/link function as a standard bearer. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Scoble: OK point taken. So let's make this constructive: what should they do to fix it? For the timestamp, my suggestion is to make it bluer and underlined--which everyone associates with links. Do you agree? How can they fix the hide functionality, though? I'm struggling to think of a way. - Eric Florenzano from iPhone

Liza: I found a lot of bugs in WIndows 95 by unplugging my mouse and trying to use the entire UI via the keyboard. But then I'm weird. Most people will never try anything. In fact, Google's own research shows that fewer than 1% will click on "advanced search." These weird affordances are even harder than THAT to figure out. - Robert Scoble

So if this doesn't change, FF may not get as wide of an adoption that it deserves. Hide, permalinks, and little things make a huge difference. The technology is too good for this to be its downfall. - Bwana ☠

Not having older items shaded or otherwise marked as old does effectively contribute to noise. - phil baumann

I'm not saying friendfeed can't be made better. I'm just saying it can be used from a basic level with little training. - Craig Shipp

I was accused of working for Friendfeed at an event 2 nights ago, for being an evangelist, and I still know very little about the functionality. AND I do like to think, I do click on a lot, but I also appreciate the intention of inclusion. - Liza

Eric: I would NOT put two hidden features under one link. They need a tab of "customizations and secret features" and put all that stuff there. - Robert Scoble

I'm not sure it's ever going to change at this point... which is sad - Bwana ☠

Liza: everyone knows I'm so excited about FriendFeed that they whine when I don't bring it up. Seriously. It's funny. - Robert Scoble

Whoops sorry Michael, didn't see yours. But it is a good book. Affordances is a bit abstract. He does a good job making the idea concrete. - Todd Hoff

what social site is better? - Craig Shipp

Twitter made a big improvement with contextual menu, such may add a value in FF too. - abdellah

Craig: define better. Twitter is easier. Facebook has more hooks and more users. - Robert Scoble

Which social site has the better UI? - Bwana ☠

Bwana: which is why I used strong language. - Robert Scoble

Until FB and twitter update in real time they aren't even in the game as far as I'm concerned - Craig Shipp

Robert: Twitter has the best UI? - K.N. Ajit Narayan

better UI!! ask myspace ugly by purpose. - abdellah

The problem is w/o knowing the affordances, Newbies create too much noise, feel embarassed and retreat - felt that but did not retreat - Liza

Facebook used to have a great UI imho. It's changed so much, now I can't find anything - Bwana ☠

FF has the better UI would be my guess. But better is such a subjective word. - Brian Sullivan

K.N. define "best." It's certainly easier to understand than FriendFeed is. Especially if you use a great client like SimplyTweet on my iPhone or Seesmic on my desktop. - Robert Scoble

Scoble: I'm not sure about the tab idea. It would add a lot of visual load on ever pageview. Instead, I'm thinking maybe if hide was a hover dropdown. When you hover over it, it says "Hide just this item", and "Hide all items like these" so that you know what you're getting into. This could work just like the top subnavigation items in many websites, which people are familiar with. Thoughts? - Eric Florenzano

Agree Twitter's UI is great - was in a studygroup of power users - most of us use web interface with multiple browsers rather than Tweetdeck, b/c simplicity is preferred. - Liza

Eric: this is why I'm not a UI designer. I like your solution better. - Robert Scoble

Hover is an evil thing in a real-time interface - Bwana ☠

I may repeat it but contextuel menu, yes do it well, that all , FF have to do that , twitter have done it. - abdellah

i hate chasing links - Bwana ☠

Bwana: Ahh yeah, good point. Maybe it would have to pause realtime (considering you are actually doing an action) - Eric Florenzano

Robert: Was talking about Twitter, the site...It's really easy to work with, provided you are not following too many people.. - K.N. Ajit Narayan

On FF you can type in the box and hit enter. How difficult is that? - Craig Shipp

Yeah Eric, it would have to - Bwana ☠

Even this thread is hard to read. No ability to specifically reply etc. Another reason I rarely visit. - Shripriya

FF used to pause real time whenever you your cursor was over a posting or its comments-- somehow that feature got removed. - Brian Sullivan

Basically, Robert, you're saying that FF is too clever for its own good. - Mistletoe Glen

Shripiya: This conversation will definitely stink unless you find the hidden permalink - Bwana ☠

lisa, that's one thing and four words :) - Craig Shipp

Which supports Robert's argument - Bwana ☠

I don't know if I will be able to handle a better FF - Craig Shipp

I went to grab a glass of water, and have no clue what is going on now - see what I mean? - Liza

@Craig Oh for sure you can remember the alpha version and when beta come. - abdellah

Maybe using IM is best, don't know, but, for now, I find it labor intensive vs. Twitter. I like BOTH, and I will continue to use BOTH, but that does not mean there are not simple fixes to improve the UI. - Liza

@liza no you know for sure what is going on , you know that this thread is about "....", you remmeber what you have said before, you remember the person for whome you talked so for sure you know were you are at the discussion. - abdellah

It would be nice to see some of the FF team on this discussion, Kevin Fox in particular. - phil baumann

I want to reply to indiv comments, it is impossible unless I say @robert or HEY BWANA, that is silly, crappy design. Am I missing something? Plus, everyone calls me LISA not LIZA, so I can hardly answer the questions directed at me without looking for both. - Liza

Robert should have cc'd the FriendFeed feedback room - Bwana ☠

Phil: it is Sunday and they do need some time off of their work. Hopefully Kevin will show up tonight or tomorrow. - Robert Scoble

Liz: yep, I love FF's IM integration. I've got a popout window open on the side of my desktop and can keep up with things (from this thread and everything I monitor on FF) much more easily. - Sam Harrelson from IM

LIZA - not lisa or liz, ha ha - Liza

With that said, I love FriendFeed's comment UI. That's what hooked me to the service - Bwana ☠

After reading about affordances (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...), it appears the problem is that many of them are hidden when they should be perceptible. - Mistletoe Glen

Robert - I am clicking on everything in site, so if I blow up something, oops, sorry. - Liza

Liza apologies. multi-tasking fail. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Glen, yep, that's where discoverability comes in. Things should be easy to discover based on visual cues. It shouldn't be like playing a game of Myst. - Akiva Moskovitz

UNaffordances - Liza

Robert - yeah, even if they read this tomorrow, there's good stuff here that's important if the service it to grow in use. - phil baumann

Say it with me folks : User-friendly-ability. We HAZ NONE here. - Sean

Robert - now that you are here, I also think it is a mistake to expect users to choose FF or Twitter - recently you have backed off and choose to use both, BUT many of your "followers" are testy with those of us who use both. Until FF is easier to use, I will use both. That is my choice. Positioning FF as Twitter hating is bad move, ppl. - Liza

Who is positioning FF as a Twitter hater? Some people hate Twitter (I personally think Twitter is a waste of mindwidth). How does that have anything to do with FF other than the fact that they post on FF? - Brian Sullivan

Brian, do a search, you will find MANY ppl are positioning FF as anti-twitter, and I don't agree with the approach. I personally get a LOT of grief from both sides of the fence for using both, and I am not going to pick a side just b/c others tell me I should. - Liza

Annoyance: There's no comment, like, etc link at the bottom of the comments. So... I read 160+ comments and have to scroll back to the top to comment? WTF? - Kevin Donahue

Kevin - yes, that is a frustration. - phil baumann

Kevin, totally agreed with that comment, especially when using via the iPhone. It's nice to see comments per OP, but the UI for managing things is horrible and wastes a lot of time, denting my enthusiasm for more participation. - Sally Church

Officially PISSED OFF - using IM FAIL. Opens new page for every feed. Then I respond in Gtalk and get unknown command. F this. Time to breath deep and try not to explode. - Liza

Liza, type in "help" for the list of commands in IM or there's a list on the site. Not sure about the page thing... I don't get that in GTalk. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Liza: consistently when people meet me they ask "what is next after Twitter?" I don't answer FriendFeed, I wish I could. - Robert Scoble

I don't like help menus or reading instructions. I appreciate your efforts, but I am just pissed off in general b/c I like to figure things out on my own. I can't spend yrs clicking on FF for hidden treasures. - Liza

People always ask me why should they use FriendFeed over Twitter.... it gets old after a while - Bwana ☠

Robert - exactly, if we knew what was next, it would be dull. Beauty in playing, mashing, exploring. - Liza

Wow Robert, way throw out an HCI term! Are we going to discuss GOMS or Fitts' Law next? :-) - Bill Welense from iPhone

Bwana - I gave it a shot yesterday with some success in the last day. - http://ff.im/6kbAN - phil baumann

Robert - nice comment. Would love to tweet it to share, but don't know how to isolate it on this f-d up interface. - Liza

Liza - I'd like to be able to tweet comments they way Disqus allows it. - phil baumann

This is Liza frustrated and cranky, sorry for letting my evil twin out, but this feed triggered it. #blamescoble - Liza

I'm wondering if FriendFeed will remain the domain of us geeks. Is that a BIG enough market for their business model though? - Jim Connolly

I secretly hope so, Jim. Twitter was great in 2006 B.K. (Before Kutchner) when it was populated only by geeks :) - Sam Harrelson from IM

Holden: Well, I'm pretty sure someone hopes to make some money from FF. - Jim Connolly

Sam: I have to admit, I would hate to see FF flooded like Twitter is. - Jim Connolly

The fact is Robert that These problems have never crossed my mind. Actually, come to think of it. A unified settings page would be nice. However. Just becuae the UI is unconventional, going against the grain, does not mean it's a bad UI. I'd love to see a mockup of how you would do it better. - Roberto Bonini from iPhone

Holden: I didn't say it wasn't great. I still use and love Twitter. I just miss the good ole days. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Don't even get me started with a wish list of options. - Liza

CONFESSION: I did not know until now about double clicking on the time-link to get a pop-out window. - Jim Connolly

Holden: Twitter's a spam-filled hunk of crap. - Jim Connolly

Holden: You may not automatically see a business model, but they would have had to produce something to get $$$ funding. BTW: Twitter's got the audience, though. It's where the people are. Only reason I use it. - Jim Connolly

Friendfeed is not difficult to use. It is so intuitive. I love that I can easily block certain things, search for items that have a specific number of likes, see a user's likes, etc. It's wayyyyyyy easy. - Ben Hanten

Ben: A lot of new users tell me they can't figure it out. - Jim Connolly

they're not trying then, Jim - Chris Heath

If this was put up to a vote, I would vote to have a better FAQ, but I would definitely keep the design as free of extra buttons as possible. - Ben Hanten

Hmm, wow, lots of comments fast on this post. Too bad it's a Sunday, I imagine Kevin is up to other things right this second... - Jason Wehmhoener

Can someone help me find the link to create imaginary friend? - Krishnamoorthy

Holden, well that's their loss if they can't 'get it' - friendfeed is simple and IMHO if you can't 'get it' then that's your problem, not friendfeed's - Chris Heath

http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Chris Heath

Krishnamoorthy - http://friendfeed.com/setting... - phil baumann

the Imaginary Friend function is now a part of Groups. for example, I created a private "group" with my wife's name and brought in all of her feeds since she's not on FriendFeed. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Ok, the imaginary friend thing is a different story. Awesome concept; but way too much work to add a bunch of users. - Ben Hanten

I think a good start would be to have a totally different "entry point" for setting up hiding rules. Also, defaults might need to be reconsidered. Is it the best to always start off by showing everything from a user? FF already asks you to select your "top five" feeds you want to show off in your profile... Could it make sense to only show stuff from people's top five by default, so one needs to opt-in to get any more of their feeds? - Meryn Stol

Perhaps a big, dedicated "mute Twitter" (though I'd prefer "Kill Twitter" ;)) button would also make sense. After all, Twitter is in itself responsible for most items - and thus most potential "noise" - on FriendFeed. - Meryn Stol

you can still quickly create an imaginary friend (as Sam said it's part of groups now) but if you don't want to choose the private group setting yourself just go here http://friendfeed.com/setting... - Chris Heath

maybe i'm wrong and an imaginary friend is different than a private group, but the functionality seems the same - there was a discussion a few months ago about this: http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Chris Heath

Chris, yep... good point. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Imaginary friends are easy to setup, but... you really should be able to do a whole batch of them. - Ben Hanten

Ben, it's rather janky, but my students have private Twitter accts for labs in my class that I read and interact with using the Imaginary Friends + private Groups feature. Plus, I have a nice archive of all student activity that I can search through. Not a great solution, but a good workaround for my extreme case. - Sam Harrelson from IM

there's a lot on the friendfeed roadmap, and i think that's one of the items... if you participate in the friendfeed feedback room you can get lots of answers to these types of questions http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Chris Heath

You can search for the official FriendFeeders' feedback, as Chris suggested, with this saved search: https://friendfeed.com/ffss... - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Interesting topic. For me personally I use FF for reading rather than contributing or commenting, and via mobile more than the web, but I do agree the UI isn't the best. I would like a google reader or better still, a Feedly style interface. I want to know about what I haven't seen that's in my groups or feeds. And I want that simple and easy with no hidden features or maybe simple and expert interfaces. - Keith Bennett from BuddyFeed

You'r right Robert. - ALPER DURUKAN

It's not the UI that's keeping the mainstream from using the site. This is akin to asking why the mainstream has yet to discover the wonders of traditional message boards. Fact of the matter is most people don't have the desire (not to mention spare time) to continually engage with a stream full of random social media tidbits on a regular basis. But if that's your cup of tea, I think the UI is excellent for sharing, discovering, and keeping up with the real-time chatter. - Aviv

ANNOYANCE: Why is it so difficult to find a list of just my "likes"? I can't find it at all. I can only find my likes through the "My discussions" link. Ugh. - Kevin Donahue

Kevin, it's pretty simple to get to your likes. http://friendfeed.com/samharr... - Sam Harrelson from IM

Has Kevin Fox responded to this thread? - Manuel Mas

Not sure he should -- seems like Robert made vicious and personal attack -- and a lack of response might be appropriate and classy. - Brian Sullivan

I certainly wouldn't join into this pile-on if I were Kevin. "Oh hey, I noticed you all were kicking me while I was trying to have a weekend, here I am now, go ahead for another round!" - Jason Wehmhoener

On the bright side, you know your service is about to hit mainstream when your biggest cheerleader starts to hate it (see Twitter). - Aviv

Aviv: nah, that's not a good predictor. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Have you noticed that the time stamp behavior of acting like a permalink is pretty much the norm across many sites? Check facebook and twitter for example. - Tsega Dinka

One thing I would like to know is, where is the link in friendfeed to the application key? I always have to search it from google. - Ru Viljoen

it's unnecessary to be brutally rude RB but these comments are valuable, we are expecting alot from 12 FF supergeeks, they cannot be perfect but they are incredibly good already. - Thomas Power

I think "hide" was perfectly designed. The user doesn't get smacked in the face immediately upon loading a page in friendfeed that resembles the control panel of an old fashioned telephone switchboard. One simple hide link, that the user will click when they want to hide something, that then asks what you want to hide. It's called not overwhelming the user with too much info at once,... more... - April Russo (app103)

April: they can put a lot of functionality into "settings" that would also do the same thing as hide does today. Most people don't figure out that the hide link has extra functionality. - Robert Scoble

It's better than what facebook does, which is to hide their multi-function hide button, until you hover over the item. I'd rather have it the friendfeed way and at least know it's there by looking and not by having to play "find the invisible features" game by moving my mouse all over the page waiting for all the little facebook easter eggs to make themselves known. You have no idea how... more... - April Russo (app103)

I DON'T KNOW WHY WE'RE YELLING! I LOVE LAMP! - Mark "DerBingle" J

(I'm being facetious. Robert's STRONG points are still pretty tactfully expressed, IMHO.) - Mark "DerBingle" J

http://ff.im/6n4fT - hachure

And I don't understand how any twitter user could possibly not know that the timestamp is a permalink. Timestamps on twitter are permalinks too. Ok, the clicking again thing was a bit of an easter egg, but how else could you add a nifty little feature like that without adding any clutter? Even if you gave a full tutorial FAQ, how on earth could you present all these little extras in a way that doesn't overwhelm a newbie and make them run away without reading the huge FAQ? - April Russo (app103)

Missing the point, not about geeks vs non-geeks, even geeks disagree on UI issues,and it is dismissive and insulting to act as if mainstream is not geeky enough to understand crappy UI. My opinion matters, and it was not until a fellow geek, Scoble, brought it up that anyone acknowledged that there may be some UI issues. - Liza

So go back to using twitter. - jcunwired

I know of a site that has worse issues, for example, clicking the RSS icon on a page takes you to a forum thread with a gazillion posts explaining how to subscribe to the content you want, using all the custom crap they have. You basically have to learn how to build your own RSS url before you can subscribe. And don't click the "Mark" button on a forum thread there unless you want to... more... - April Russo (app103)

FF may be messing with affordances, but I don't see it as f*cling with them. I see it as an attempt to innovate. The 'nonintuitive' behavior is a bit of a PITA, but it adds richness to the app. It is also innovation in action. The most painful upshot of suck innovation ia the fet associated with playing with a UI's functionality - you might end up breaking something really important or... more... - Jason Miller from iPhone

JCUnwired That is not helpful or constructive. Stick to one-sided debates. - Liza

Funny thing is though... I have used Excel and Word without ever reading a manual. Now I'm pretty ninja at both but never had any formal training. Neither has about 95% of the people I know how use it, yet everyone I know has worked it out enough to use it well. See, they have these things up the top like File, Edit etc that hold the functions. Those things are not always required and... more... - Johnny Worthington

Well put johnny - Mark from iPhone

Which social app has the best interface? Easy Facebook. - John Hardy

As far as I can tell "affordance" and "discoverability" are different ways of looking at the same concept. And I've been complaining about the timestamp thing for a long time. - Karl Knechtel

I've been complaining about FF's ease of use since I started using it. I'm glad there's some traction on it. ridiculous that the time stamp is not displayed as a (permanent) link. - jbrotherlove

Never mind that the timestamp isn't displayed as a link. The problem is that it makes no sense for the timestamp to be the thing that is clicked. - Karl Knechtel

I like it, its a nice gate. It keeps FF tech based. It keeps things relevant. Its an Acid Test. There are plenty of alternatives. And those alternatives that cater to everyone, are full of Blither Blather. If you pass the gate, and pass the Acid Test, you learn about the community and the discussion. With a robust Community and Discussion, Self Policing and Spammers are annihilated. Self Healing Robust System. - Robert Higgins

Apostol Apostolov, Ana ( http://friendfeed.com/ana ) has confirmed that they're on the issue of adding recipients and groups after posting an item about a month ago - http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Chris Heath

I totally agree with Robert HIggins & Johnny Worthington's recent comments - Chris Heath

Robert, thanks for your thoughts. Three quick responses: affordances aren't something that someone fucks with, they're something that a designer gives to a design and it's fine to say that you don't think I'm designing a product with proper affordances or strong enough affordances, but the implication that I fucked them up is that I took the gestalt natural affordances of something and... more... - Kevin Fox

The above distinction is important because the argument then becomes one of whether or not FriendFeed has been imbued with proper affordances or not. Now naturally the answer varies from person to person, as it does with any UI for any product. FriendFeed is trying to balance functionality with simplicity and, as is the case for any product with that task, any point on the spectrum could be criticized for either hiding too much of the complexity or showing too much, even at the same by different people. - Kevin Fox

So the strategy then becomes, as has been mentioned here, one of making the simple things easy and the complex things possible. The most common tactic to enable that strategy, and one we rely upon a lot at FriendFeed, is that of progressive disclosure. This works for some people and not for others, but it's usually an excellent way to make a UI that's not intimidating to a new user, and... more... - Kevin Fox

As for the timestamp also acting as the permalink: Well, you're absolutely right. This is a completely improper affordance that only makes sense if you happen to be familiar with blogs that use the same convention. Fixing this (with something less heavy-handed than a link that says 'link' or 'permalink' or (gasp) an icon of two links in a chain) is high on our list and I want to fold it... more... - Kevin Fox

When we get that worked out in a way we're happy with then we'll roll it out. Until then, it's also important to consider user confidence, and that tweaking a UI too often when trying to find the right answer makes users less comfortable with the design and their ability to manipulate it, even if they don't consciously notice any change. For this reason a few things stay rough a little longer until we have what we think is the right answer, not just a stopgap one. - Kevin Fox

As always, thanks for the feedback, and for trying to make FriendFeed a better place. - Kevin Fox

Wow - Bwana ☠

Wow. +500 xp to Kevin. - Sam Harrelson

Kevin I love you because you explain why you are messing with the affordances! :-) - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Doesn't sound like they're ignoring it to me, Robert :) - Bwana ☠

Bwana: me neither! Glad Kevin explained. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

I'm liking this article simply because of Kevin's explanation of why things are the way they are here on friendfeed. He knocked that one out of the park. - Alex Scoble

Kevins camp. In Japanese there is one word for beauty. Kirei. Actually, it is the same word for Clean Kirei. 奇麗 FF for me is clean and beautiful. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" Leonardo daVinci - Robert Higgins

So if we're going to change the time stamp from being a permalink, can we use it to sort posts chronologically? That is the one affordance no one can discover. - Andrew Smith

I didn't read the full thread, but reading the top and (what is at this point) the bottom really helps me understand what the UI people do. Thanks Robert and Kevin! - Andrew

Big props to Kevin Fox. - Sameer

Kevin rocks. Even on a Sunday night. They pay me to say stuff like that at work. The thought of having to step up to the plate anytime 24/7 with that level of professionalism is daunting, to say the least. So yah, big props to Kevin Fox. - Jason Wehmhoener

I actually like the current UI. I like the feature set. I agree it DOES need a more intuitive and quicker way to know about and learn the deeper features. - George Hall (Australia)

There is something to be said for having the conversation first - then Kevin calmly explaining his pts. It gives others a chance to respond honestly, and then Kevin gets far more valuable feedback. Selifishly, I also like the fact that I can see others' views - many who did not address UI issues but showed a defensive sense of entitlement (see Louis's chart on new adopters)...Robert,... more... - Liza

Great responses Kevin. For the record, I'm a fan of the "progressive disclosure" approach. - Mike Doeff from iPhone

Really great points, Robert. I've learned some things because of this discussion. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. - Brian Adrian

One answer to Kevin. Blogs, since the beginning of when I started to use them used the "permalink" or "#" convention. I guess the thing is that in FriendFeed the CSS here is hiding the blue underline, so people don't know that the time stamp is a link. It's tough designing for the web, I know. That's why I don't do it. At least very often. :-) - Robert Scoble

Twitter uses a time stamp as a perma-link as well. </fuel to fire> - Bwana ☠

Yeah. I just tweeted about that myself. </more fuel to fire> - Dennis Jernberg

Fascinating. Didn't know about the timestamp as permalink, but I didn't suffer from unnatural affordance issues prior to reading this discussion either. Not an ubergeek, but I don't suffer. So, maybe FF is not "above the heads" of the average, but merely yields enough at any level to meet whatever the particular need might be, wacky affordances or not. And people who avoid it because it is "too hard" need to toughen up a bit. This is 2009 and the Internet, after all. - Martha

Also, the "Share" link exposes the permalink as well which I think was a great addition to alleviate the time stamp confusion. - Bwana ☠

Wow. How did Kevin get those 5 paragraphs contiguously posted? Copy-paste-post. Copy-paste-post? Or is there some other secret weapon not yet released? - Nick in Manila

Nick - I'd bet 1000 gil on Notepad/Textedit :) - Bwana ☠

I'm waiting for the twitter theme for friendfeed, to show people exactly how easy FF is to use considering its features and exactly how braindead twitter's UI is. - Andy Bakun

Nick & Bwana: Textedit and copy/paste/post. As I was c/p/p-ing I thought about how I could make a tool using the API to allow for this kind of thing, then envisioned how that would break FriendFeed and banished the thought. (and then I just commented about it anyhow. Oh what have I wrought? I am become death, destroyer of words.) - Kevin Fox

Bwana: hey, at least FriendFeed's designer listens and answers back. That might get more mud thrown his way, but a whole lot of love too. Personally Twitter's design isn't very good, but everyone thinks it is because it doesn't have many features so they perceive that as simplicity. I perceive it as inferior but that really pisses off the Twitter types and they start arguing with me about stuff like the above. - Robert Scoble

Robert - I was just thinking that. We would NEVER get this kind of interaction with a Twitter dev on a work day. - Bwana ☠

Part of me knew Kevin would address this at some point. It was merely a matter of when. - Bwana ☠

I hope this thread/conversation doesn't end any time soon, either here on this post or elsewhere. I want FF to be the best it can. - phil baumann

I think FF is waaaaaay easier to use than Twitter and recently started using FF to follow my twitter feeds. Images and videos are inline and comments are threaded (no silly @ replies). I only wish more of my friends were on it!! (also, it would be nice if comments were formatted with the commenters name first which seems to be the convention on most sites i.e. "May: blah blah blah"). - May

To go back to the top a little bit: does anyone think it ISN'T weird that not all the links on FF are blue? Not just the time stamp: the service your content was imported from, your name at the top of your profile, and the time stamp are all non-blue links. Is there a logical reason for those inconsistencies? I've never understood that. - Andrew

Awesome explanation by Kevin. I happen to love FF's progressive disclosure. I think the 'hide' feature is a great example of this. You could argue that they might make the second stage a bit more obvious, but it's still a lot better than a huge drop down menu at the start. - Ben Reierson

Even Twitter has a ramp up time. It took me about a month of working it to get comfortable with it. Only slightly longer than it took me with Twitter. And it is light years better in most every way. I agree with Robert's desire to enforce change through public criticism, but I think it important to keep it in perspective: FF is generally a better experience on all fronts. Kudos to Kevin Fox and the rest of the team. I feel confident they are more than capable of seeing issues and resolving them. - Martha

i never really had a problem with that Andrew, and I never had the problem with the permalink either... if your mouse changes from pointer to finger, then it's a link and you can see the destination in the status bar - Chris Heath

Andrew: I actually hate blue underlines. Designers have hated that affordance for years. They look ugly. They make text harder to read. I'm in Kevin Fox's camp on that one. Get rid of underlines! Just make affordances that people can figure out without being told about (like clicking twice on hide or clicking twice on the time stamps). - Robert Scoble

robert, i don't get your clicking twice on hide problem... hide seems fine, and while i don't use it much i don't recall clicking twice, like with the timestamp - Chris Heath

Chris: normal people don't mouse over every word in a UI to discover whether there is a secret link there. Also, explain how hovering over "hide" would tell a user that there's different functionality there if you click twice on that word? - Robert Scoble

Chris: if you click twice on the word "hide" you will get different UI that will give you different choices. If you click twice on the time stamp you will get a popout window. Not intuitive at all. - Robert Scoble

when i click hide i get an undo and hide options links, that seems the correct UI - i agree with you on the timestamp, but the hide thing isn't the same - Chris Heath

++Kevin - Cristo

Chris: Hide does act differently, I agree, but most people, in my experience, don't look at the second page because they don't expect to see more options. Remember 99% of people never click on Google's Advanced Options. Do you REALLY expect people to click twice on Hide? I don't. And even if they did, shouldn't those features be in settings too? Where people expect to find them? - Robert Scoble

i don't buy your beef w/ hide, but i agree on the timestamp - i also agree with you on not having to hover everything to see if it's click-able and also don't like underlining, so there needs to be some other visual cue of the link/feature - Chris Heath

sometimes features do need to be learned/taught and everything can't be intuitive... i think we might be overshooting our ideals for usability. remember the days of three ring binders and books and manuals for using any given system or software package? we've come a long way, but users do have to learn some things. i think friendfeed has done a good job of making the site usable for the... more... - Chris Heath

Given a top complaint about FriendFeed is too much noise, Hide needs to be more intuitive. - Bwana ☠

Since I still get the dumb blonde / not techie treatment from many, I am going to go w/ it and say that even I figured out hide early on. The timestamp stuff was news to me. - Liza

I'd wager at least half of FriendFeed doesn't know about the second page of hide options. I've had to explain it countless times and a ton of people didn't even know you could selectively hide services based on comment/like behavior, etc - Bwana ☠

Kevin, Thanks for listening and major props for taking your time to listen to constructive critisicm. - Jack Wilson, K4SAC

9/10 of the folks that use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc don't know all the features and functions. Having every single function be completely intuitive and/or labeled is not needed for mainstream acceptance or usage if that's what we're all worried about here. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Every single function, I agree. Hide, needs to be more intuitive. - Bwana ☠

Bwana, I agree as a power-user, but how many folks would actually use "Hide"? It's an edge-case function that will/would never catch on with the mainstream. I just don't get these complaints. - Sam Harrelson from IM

Sam: you're right. But I didn't get this kind of pushback when I evangelized Twitter and Facebook had many more hooks to get people into their system than FriendFeed does (and keep them there) and even Facebook doesn't have a lot of the weird affordances that FriendFeed does even though it's more complex. The complaints I get consistently on FriendFeed (a lot of which have to do with... more... - Robert Scoble

Oh, and the number of comments here tells me a lot of people feel very passionately about FriendFeed and want it to be better, even if they are telling me I'm full of it. - Robert Scoble

The complaint is noise. There's too much. There's too many duplicates. I don't want to see "X". These are complaints I see and answer often. The solution is hide and they don't know about them. It's not a power user function imho. - Bwana ☠

FF lost a lot of users during the initial launch because people didn't know about or want to properly hide unwanted stuff. - Bwana ☠

"FriendFeed is full of baby photos" Classic complaint. Solved by hide. - Bwana ☠

It's always the user's fault. Always. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

Robert, I got on Twitter around Thanksgiving of '06 b/c of your evangelicalism (thank you/curse you btw!). But the concept there was/is much more easy to grok. Of course folks are going to think FF is hard b/c it is hard. But to bastardize JFK, "we choose to go to the moon and do these other things in this decade not b/c they are easy but b/c they are hard!" - Sam Harrelson from IM

friendfeed isn't hard...unless you think a blank piece of paper is hard. - Alex Scoble

Depends on your definition of hard. Some people think complicated or inconvenient is hard. - Bwana ☠

Alex, have you ever written a book for a publisher that loaned you money and expects the money back? A blank piece of paper is incredibly hard! - Sam Harrelson

Look at lists. Very powerful tool of FriendFeed, but for some, it's too much work. Some may call it hard, some may call it.... too much work :) - Bwana ☠

Sam: but this blank piece of paper can write itself thanks to the integration with other sites :) - Andrew

I know in the apps I've tested, if the UI was difficult for the end user, they would avoid using it. - Bwana ☠

Andrew, you are completely right. Good point. I'm thinking from a contributing point of view (b/c I'm a teacher and I always want to influence, etc) but you're right. - Sam Harrelson

Alex: is blank paper sort of like a blank Wordpress entry screen? I get it then. - Robert Scoble

Seeing a real-time stream of the full conversation is highly desirable and one of the best features of the service. I design and use software all the time and didn't know about the time stamp link until someone told me about it. Robert is doing them (another) favor by using controversial language to bring attention to the issue. I bet we see an update in a week or two and the service will be better for it. - Chip Ramsey

I can see it now: if entry["from"]["id"] == "scobelizer": theme = "lots-o-links" - DGentry

either that, or entry["body"] = pigLatinize(entry["body"]) - DGentry

Wow ... Great dialog. Kudos to Kevin for his comments! I have demo'd Friendfeed for more people than I can count. Most of the issue has to do with people's time vs value (or just fun). Is it harder than Facebook? NO! Nobody says you have to use it all and 9 out of 10 people I've demo'd Facebook for have NO IDEA what a permission is (Think about that ... and the defaults?!). Twitter has... more... - Charlie Anzman

Then ... The Friendfeed Browser and OS! - Charlie Anzman

Robert, given Kevin's responses, you might want to edit/tweak the Original Post/headline. I wish there was a way to promote the comments so they were 'pinned' to the OP - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Aaman: what's an OP? The headline? - Robert Scoble

Oh, thank goodness. I was wondering what an OP was, and feeling dumb that I didn't know. I didn't want to have to read 328 comments to find out. - Mistletoe Glen

Yes, the Original Post - I wasn't familiar with the term myself, and saw it first on this very thread, then googled it. (It can also mean Original Poster) - Aaman (Clone of FF)

Glen: I'm not scared of feeling dumb. I feel dumb every day given the quality of the people I hang out with. - Robert Scoble

@Kevin: wondering if there could be a link that would take you to a page that would show what features have been added, disabled, or removed. - Harold

Robert, you should lock comments, so it's immortalized properly at Kevin's reply - Matthew DeVries

Matthew: you make sense. I've locked the comments here so you can see Kevin Fox's reply without digging back too far. - Robert Scoble

Long rant, sorry, had to clear the air so I can start blogging again. :-) - Robert Scoble

90 more comments

Wow...I'm very interested and excited to see/hear/read what is to come from Scobleizer land next. - Justin Korn

I hope I make your list and if not, please let me know why so I can potentially improve. - Allen Stern

Glad to see that you are starting to realize, despite Techmeme that the world doesn't revolve around just the bay area. - Harold Gilchrist from twhirl

Gotta say you're bang on the mark there. Tech blogging should be about the tech, not the biz. - Luke Robinson

Allen: I like your blog. It's just that I love hanging out with all of you and talking geeky stuff a lot more than talking about this deal and that deal and all that. - Robert Scoble

Harold: I've always realized that. I feel I got unfairly tagged with believing the world only was about the Bay Area. I guess I deserved that to some extent, but this area is quite dominant in the world of tech (including the tool you're typing on right now) so some of my boosterism is to be expected. Funny that the top Israeli company has offices here too. - Robert Scoble

Kudos to you Mr. Scoble, what a very bright post you delivered today! Thank you for bringing some fresh perspective, that's always refreshing and welcome. I'm also happy you cite Lifehacker as an example. They focus on the smartest digital experience possible and help us improve ourselves. That's the biggest deal of all. Techbloggers should never forget it. - c0wb0yz

I love the tech first and foremost but the business is important too, especially in respect to the sustainability of said tech. - Jamie

Jamie: I agree. But the business needs to serve the customers and the customers/participants/users or whatever you want to call you and me aren't coming first in this industry anymore and that's worrying. - Robert Scoble

Wow funny enough thats the way i have been feeling for a while now I am looking forward to seeing what is next from the Scobelizer... - John Spencer from twhirl

I agree overall - CN has only a small percentage of biz - most is trends, analysis, and reviews. I had an interesting discussion about this with someone last week - if i had a computer that could handle video, i'd make a quick video to explain - there's an important part you are missing - Allen Stern

Next is to get some sleep. Gotta be up at 7:30 to be at Fortune Conference at 8 a.m. for breakfast. It's an incredible conference, hope to see some of you at the Tweetup at 5:45 p.m. - Robert Scoble

This is often relevant from major blogs/ celeb bloggers. The smaller and more personal blogs are still focusing just on tech ;) Perhaps you need to update your feeds :-) - Dennis Bjørn Petersen from twhirl

Allen: will be watching in the morning for what I was missing. I'm sure I'm missing a lot. I had to stop ranting at some point, it was getting too long! :-) - Robert Scoble

Dennis: I know. It's why I spend a lot more time here lately than on blogging. The smaller stuff shows up here a lot more regularly and I see a lot less "Yahoo business news." - Robert Scoble

Excellent post Robert. It's why I don't read Techmeme as much as I used to. The life and joy in exploring, playing with and dissecting tech, the geeky exuberance in 'new stuff' has been lessened across almost all tech sites in general, leaving a bland veneer that is just business talk. Things a geek like me doesn't care about, as I'm not an investor. - Mo Kargas

Techmeme has suffered because most of the tech blogs they follow have become nothing more then PR outlets like you said. - Harold Gilchrist from twhirl

As I posted in your comments, that's a really good post. It's great to see the old Scoble back - the one who I started reading back when your "latest thing" was Tablet PC! Welcome back, mate. - Ian Betteridge

Robert, blogging is becoming commercialized, as it becomes popular. I do not see it as a problem. It just might mean that you and a bunch of other likely minded people have to move on to a greener, more fascinating and less populated pastures. Like friendfeed, etc. Luckily, there are lots of them around and tons in the pipeline. Enjoy! - Павел Романовский

I don't know, Robert. On the one hand I agree 100%. And can I say that as editor of WebWorkerDaily I am the one who gets those 15 press releases a day and I *constantly* have the "is this useful?" filter on. I hope that's clear in our postings. Anyway...Your post is kind of like the person who is used to picking their own corn complaining about the supermarket because it's not the same garden. It's not. The grocer has to pay its bills, as does the paid tech blogger. - Judi Sohn

I know I am a newie to all this but I have been reading blogs for a while. I've bee thinking up a response and I'll post later. Long comments on the iPhone make for one queasy bus ride. - Derick Valadao

Finally. Thank you. I follow 357 feeds. Everyday. Granted I have many pop-sites (lifehacker, engadget, etc) on the list. But not one is of these "new breed" of tech bloggers out there. Even though I am in the industry, they do not speak to me. They are just another form of CNN to me. Linking to each other and regurgitating the same gibberish, no matter how relevant or important, it does not speak to me. Anyway, welcome back! This is very refreshing news to me. I will be following it with much interest. TY! - Carlos Ayala

We should all just organize a "Tech Blog Strike", unsubscribing to those blogs that only push press releases. Let's see how they sweat when they see their subscriber count falling... - Jorge Escobar

Obviously my previous comment was "tldr". I just wanted to say how great it is that a person in your position is able to repurpose his content to better fit the goal you are trying to reach with your content. It's a great direction to take in a time where most blogs are just trying to echo up to the top. - Derick Valadao

Excellent post on the state of the blogging nation. - Sheila Thomson

My only real problem with tech bloggins is how easily ideas take hold and spread to get page hits. This is very easily seen in the Vista hatred - there was never any objective reasonf or it... but it was so useful for traffic generation and looking cool that it was rampant. - Soulhuntre from twhirl

It's probably less about the business/tech divide, and more about me-too echo blogging - Dave Pelland

I think so... tech bloggers are jsut as easily victims of peer pressure and memes as anyone. Once an Idea ("love google") defines someone as "getting it" then few will look at it objectively. - Soulhuntre from twhirl

This is a welcome breath of fresh air. Fantastic. - Pete Gilbert

Scoble. Great post. Agree completely. - Tom Quinn

Super excellent post and, ironically, exactly what blogging is all about. One good thing about an economic downturn, it will weed a lot of fluff out of the infosphere -- with less incentive to act as promotional platforms for startups, blogs may get more informative about using established tech. - Sprague D

Great article Robert. It is your authenticity even more than your tech blogging that has made you the great writer that you are. Anyone can report Apple's earnings yesterday. You have always had an honest voice though that makes your writing stand out. - Thomas Hawk

The take away is 'sensational headlines'. Add to the "Rumor:" and we don't need this stuff unless it's coming from a tabloid format site - Charlie Anzman

Blogging is about saying what I want to say, and sharing things that I like with anybody who cares to listen. I'm not interested in driving traffic (thank goodness) or repeating what others have said, but contributing to a discussion. - Chris Nixon

Great post Robert. Very good read and right on the mark. I religiously read feeds in Reader, but only a few that help me. I love Lifehacker. Almost everyday I find something new and useful to my job. - Gary Schmidt

The Techie audience thirsty for knowledge is much smaller then the Get-rich-quick audience, but the largest demographic are the Free-lunch boys. The blogs with the most revenue have tricked their advertisers into believing teenage boys are business decision makers. - paul mooney

I love tech bloggers and the things they write about. The good ones will always come at a common topic from a different angle and I just LOVE that because it makes me think outside the box and start connecting dots all over the place. Robert you are definitely one of those bloggers that I love to read and I don't think any of the ones I read have failed me. - Devlin Dunsmore from twhirl

Awesome reading! THX a bunch!! - Ronald

I have to agree about the comments system though. One thing that we started to see a while ago was data portability and being able to communicate accross services. I think Disqus does that quite well and it's a great first step to making sure that the comments system becomes a little more useful on blogs. - Derick Valadao

Well said Robert, left a comment, said my piece, cheers! - Steve Spalding

Wow, an impressive and honest assessment of some major issues in the techblogosphere. - Richard Akerman

Robert - I'm not in the tech industry. But I love what lots of tech stuff has done for learning stuff in my life and for others. And I want to keep on learning. You've certainly helped me here - I wouldn't know a fraction as much about using Friendfeed productively, for example. Glad we're going to see more of this kind of stuff. Welcome back. - Tom Landini

Knocked it out of the park. If we can just get back to being geeks again, a lot of this drama will calm itself... - Jared Smith

this, along with Luis Grey's article today about Techcrunch and Techmeme, are both really interesting features on why blogging, and more specifically high-profile bloggers that were once more passionate, more personal, more engaged, more interesting, are falling to the wayside - Kevin from twhirl

Great read, but kind of depressing the way things have gone. I just like being a bit geeky and all things will work out in the end. - Alan Ashley from twhirl

The key issue for me is that there isn't enough analysis. Just reporting what an app does is useful, but very baseline useful. What are the implications? That's where tech bloggins has really failed. - Shripriya from twhirl

Shripriay, you hit it on the head. It is a shame that all the tech bloggers just wants to be Engadet or Gizmodo these days. - Harold Gilchrist from twhirl

Nice writeup Robert. I enjoyed your detailed analysis & history of the situation. Perhaps you can lead us in a new direction? - Mitchell Tsai

i read the tech bloggers then try to actually use the gadget. would like to hear more results from the usage angle. - Lee Kent

Shripriya, I agree with you wholeheartedly. My original comment was much longer but got cut due to length. I wish more blogs were like Louis Gray and Lifehacker which take a step back and then hit us with posts that are useful/interesting almost 100% of the time. Zero Punctuation is a great example for the gaming crowd--one post a week, internet fame. - Derick Valadao

Hmm... A Scoble article I like.... Is this the Seventh Seal? Seriously, you're right on in that the echo chamber of groupthink has made tech blogging boring and predictable. I think there's a few people out there fighting it, and FF makes it easier to find them. I think you're off on the business side, though... I think it SHOULD be about the technology, but the entrepreneurs coming out of the Valley have made it necessary for us to discuss the business side by not having solid business plans. - Jason Carreira

Anyway, hope this is a sign of things to come from you. - Jason Carreira

Thanks Robert. Great read, and perspectives. Love to see more on productivity, like Lifehacker. Just became a GTD convert BTW and loved the David Allen piece. - Jericho

Thanks for that Robert -- perspective is key. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I'm sorry but those that don't scale are toast, from a commericial and traffic standpoint. I know that is part of the point (varying aims and objectives of blogging etc.) - Alex Hammer

Slap your self and get back on that horse Robert. You have NOT failed us. Human nature makes us want what we do not have. For some it's page views/revenue, for trolls it's attention, and others it's n-list status. The rest of us are looking to quench our thirst for knowledge. And please give our group a little credit. We have become ever-so-skillful at weeding out those sources that do not provide this knowledge. I repeat...You have NOT failed us. - Andrew Smith

I appreciate what you are saying, and am glad that others share the same opinion as myself. What happened to being the guys who always had some tech trick that seemed like magic to the uninitiated? The joy of tech for me is showing that magic to others and getting them interested in what's out there too, and lately we have all become business whores a little bit. I look forward to the future content coming from you, and getting back to what made tech cool in the first place, the tech itself. - Aaron Krug

One of the things I value most about Robert is his inner homing mechanism. He's very prone to get lost, but something always shakes him loose and he re-calibrates. Or is that re-boots? (Kind of like iPhone 2.0 now that I think about it.) - Michael Markman

I agree w/ your article, Robert. The wonder that makes so many of us interested in tech does get lost at times- I never saw tech blogs as the place for that stuff, but appreciated it when I found it there. - anna sauce

Alex: While scaling is necessary if you want more people to view your content, why should that come at the cost of the content itself? Too many startups are trying to replace a solid marketing plan with social media and end up trying to use big blogs as a means to advertise their product and ride the traffic tail to customers. From what I gather, this tends to make jaded bloggers who... more... - Derick Valadao

I kinda find this funny.. the comments are so distributed between FF channel and Scobles blog channel ? which one am I too follow ? I mean yesterday we had this big huge augments about cluster and fragmentation of conversations. So Robert, here's a suggestion. Turn off comments on your blog and let your readers comment on FF only. Else dont post your blog entry to FF and break your own... more... - Peter Dawson

I just approved a bunch of comments that were held in moderation. Now there's 88 comments over there. Whew. - Robert Scoble

melmcbride: good point. It's easy to just stay on FriendFeed all day. It's hard to come up with something new to say that takes more than a short paragraph. Damn, I'm sounding so old school. The neat thing is when I do a longer blog is comes in here and improves everything. - Robert Scoble

i think this is part of the echo chamber that is the silicon valley. people who live there use the "new" thing for so long they soon get sick of doing it. they are same people who think everyone elses use technology the same way they do and feels the same way they do. - Jonathan Jesse

Scoble steps out of the bubble and takes a breath of fresh air... hopefully more follow or we're going nowhere fast. - Harish V

I thought this was great! Robert, I think what I hear is your desire to just do whatever the hell you want to without regard to "The Man". Go for it. You of all people can do that! - Elliott Ng

Robert the real issues is that everything really only needs to exist once. Conversations don't neeed to exist in many different places. Your blog comments and the conversation here are all the same conversation. I'd love to explain the solution as i see it but it'd take too long. - Anton Mannering

Robert I am still lost- How can you profess to be be a convo aggregator , yet approve 88 comments on your blog ? @Anton, no Blog comments and these comments on FF, are two different sets of conversation happening on the same topic. Lets not confuse this fact !! There is a fork in the convosphere. - Peter Dawson

@ Anton: I sort of agree with you, but i don't think comment fragmentation is all bad. Sometimes well-written comments appearing somewhere else can draw attention to good ideas. If I don't subscribe to a particular blog but see the feed posted here on FF, I'll pick it up and then maybe I'll go straight to the blog. There's value in fragmentation along with the frustration. - phil baumann

I think a service like disqus should be used so that friendfeed comments on links to blog posts (with comments therein) will all show up no matter which medium you use to discuss them. Does this exist yet? I thought disqus would have this covered by now. - Derick Valadao

Great points as always Robert. We're with you on this. - Missionary Broadcasting

Peter: I approved about 40 that were being held in a moderation queue. I don't let newbies post a comment on my blog because then it'd be overrun with spam. FriendFeed has a much better system to protect against spam than my blog's comments. I think that it'd very cool if I could replace my blog's comments with FriendFeed, but that'd require an API that would make a URL, return it to my blog, and get it linked in, all really quickly. - Robert Scoble

I haven't read the comments here, but feel I can comment. Robert, as someone who as known you for five years now - just before the mania began - I am pleased to hear this. What got me into your blog in the first place was your ENTHUSIASM for technology, particularly GTD. Never let that go. You be you. I will be me. And everyone else will be everyone else. In the end, you gotta follow what you love. It works for everyone from Steve Jobs to the Pope. Your friend online and off - SR - Steve Rubel

@ phil bauman Ok 2 things. First of all I didn't say it shouldn't appear in many places. I'm saying that if you're in Roberts comments and I'm on Friendfeed then we should be able to see ALL the conversation from both. But it need not exist in a whole bunch of places only be visible from there. Second I think the argument that there is value in fragmentation is similar to saying there is value in using a ploughshare pulled by an ox. Ther is but not to most people. - Anton Mannering

@ Robert Scoble: Interesting you should mention your blog comments being friendfeed. I know a startup or two working on those problems. In reality though the issues become way bigger when such a service is subject to really large numbers (non-tech crowd). Solving those problems is where the fun and games are and I only know one startup with a real solution for that. - Anton Mannering

Ironic, isn't it--the influences (PR, marketing, big media) the original bloggers were trying to break away from are--surprise-- still here and the game hasn't changed as much as we thought. PR people still push their stories, tech and news blogs focus on a few big name co's and start looking like traditional media, etc. What's needed is more of the energy, enthusiasm and original thought that Scoble and others brought to the game earlier on--otherwise, we've only duplicated the old media on a new platform. - mark ivey

I send you a tweet also but I believe that I must also write here how spot-on was your post... I can't wait to see more real Tech news coming from you and I hope that this will force other bloggers to remember how they started back then... - Manos Matsakis

This is clearly your best post ever. Thank you for all of your hard work. I read your blog because it entertains me. I would love more posts "sharing geeky things." On the other hand, if you blog about news, technology, and a few pro-company biases, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Just because you (or any other blogger) do not provide a perfect balanced news experience does not mean that you have failed. People are responsible for finding their own news this day in age. - Brian Wilson

Great post and I totally agree. "What's needed is more of the energy, enthusiasm..." - Eric_T

Great stuff Robert. As blogging and social media continues to spread outside of tech and into other niche industries and verticals, those of us facilitating and evangelizing that spread should continue to look back at this post so history isn't repeated. See you at the Ritz tonight. - J.J. Toothman

"I think that it'd very cool if I could replace my blog's comments with FriendFeed, but that'd require an API that would make a URL" - yeah I second that motion. If I had a widget that could do that but with bi- directional flow , that would really be a convo aggregator. This will certainly be an interesting challenge to some of the geeks out here ! - Peter Dawson

You can, if you're willing to give up the content. Glenn developed a great plugin that allows for bi-directional flow. It works for Wordpress and (I think) Blogger http://blog.slaven.net.au/wordpre... - Steve Spalding

Great timing :) I got strange looks this weekend when I said that I don't review anything that has been 'pitched' to me - but rather things I discover that I think are cool. I discovered something this weekend at BlogHer that I will review. But no one sent me a press release. :) It's just a really neat gadget! - Lucretia Pruitt

I think you should watch the movie 'Resurrecting the Champ' - its about a Writer. Drew the analogy to your post and the movie (that I just happened to see yesterday) http://mrinal.vox.com/library... - Mrinal Desai

Enjoyed that rant, Robert. I'm not a tech geek, I don't read techmeme or techcrunch as the gist and trends can be followed here on FF, but I do read blogs like yours, Louis, Jeremiah and Hutch's, mainly to learn new things. Before FF I had never heard of Rescue Time, Jott, Evernote or TSheets for example, but hearing about new ideas and then experimenting with them myself, well that gets me interested and excited. The corporate enterprise stuff leaves me cold, it isn't nifty or flexible enough for users. - Sally Church

Nice post. The PR influence bit reminded me of this article by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/submari.... Agree to the fact that Tech blogging has been less 'tech' than it was a couple of years ago. - Nikhil Dandekar

I loved the rant earlier yesterday, and even more impressed by the ff reaction. My take on your blogging, having followed you since MS days. Stay on what you think, not what others think. Avoid the whole Gillmor Gang bs, and associated groupthink. - Bankwatch

I think that every new medium matures as it becomes possible to make real money at it - this is inevitable. I don;t think it will be the death of blogging certainly but we are in a new phase. Older blogs will mature and still keep that flavor or they will stagnate and die. The personalities will decide that. One of the things I like about your work Robert is the enthusiasm. Sometimes it makes you a bit naive, others it makes you a little to fast to declare something game changing but it is always good input - Soulhuntre

Robert, just read your wonderful post now, and I'm still fascinated by it. I'm commenting here because I know you'll read here first. You know, this competition that you were taking about, almost cause me to stop blogging, but then I realized that I'm writing because I like it, so as far as I'm concern, I'm not trying to compete anyone, this is why I'm taking things easy and on my own... more... - Orli Yakuel

Orli: you know me too well! :-) Yup, agreed. Just do it because it's fun. The problem is that posts that make us all smarter don't stick around very long because of the flow. - Robert Scoble

Robert, maybe it's because 'blogs' are not so unique anymore. Lets take Friednfeed for example: everyone can get noticed here just because they favorite picture on Flickr or dugg story on digg (regardless if they writing a blog, or giving any other opinion in the subject) this and other massive content mixed up together on a daily basis is flowing so fast, it almost seem that if you'll... more... - Orli Yakuel

1600 blogs are now discussing this. - Amit Agarwal

5 more comments

I saw the icon earlier today, though I thought it was already wideknown. I should have blogged it and rode the trend wave! - Colby Olson

echo chamber. chamber. chamber. chamber. :) - Shripriya from twhirl

/Like Shripriya's comment. - Voyagerfan5761

Aren't there more important things to discuss? - Svartling

I must admit, it did kinda screw me up. When I have search tabs open, I'm use to seeing that capitol G. The new logo is going to take some getting used too. - Andrew Dobrow

Agree with Andrew - getting used to the new icon is taking some time.. I also missed few Google tabs because of the new icon - Amit Agarwal

Shripriya › Comments