aside from the actual content, I love the photo. - Karoli

To be clear, Twitter has made available a realtime replacement for the firehose (the replacement is called "birddog"). We have not yet started consuming that new API because we're waiting for the lawyers to come to agreement on the terms of use, which I hope will happen soon. I think Twitter's legal team is simply overbooked at the moment. Edit: To reiterate, Twitter is not blocking us. The reason we are not consuming the new API is because the fb lawyers want to review the updated terms first. - Paul Buchheit

thanks for the update, Paul. Perhaps the open community can donate some lawyers to help Twitter out. - Steve Gillmor

Paul - very interesting... saga continues :) - Susan Beebe

lord knows we've got lots of lawyers...and I'm sure more than a few are unemployed right now. Perhaps one will step up. - Karoli

Paul, do you know if any 3rd party has BirdDog implemented? - Cliff Gerrish

wonder who will get BD up and running 1st... - Susan Beebe

Cliff, "birddog" is just a category of statuses/filter, which is available publicly (see http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Streami...). I don't know if anyone is using the birddog role or not. It's available to us and ready to go, but fb lawyers want the tou resolved before we activate it. - Paul Buchheit

Paul - "tou" typo for "TOS" (terms of service) right? - Susan Beebe

Terms Of Use, Susan, but the two are about the same I think. - Paul Buchheit

gotcha, thanks :) - Susan Beebe

Thanks, Paul. And thanks for the pointer. The "available publicly" part is particularly interesting. - Cliff Gerrish

Cliff - agreed - Susan Beebe

Cliff, it's possible that it has been added to TwitTornado: http://news.ycombinator.com/item... - Paul Buchheit

Maybe I'm mis-parsing things, but it sounds like Twitter's just offering the updates of FriendFeed users rather than the complete Twitter firehose. (see http://friendfeed.com/evhead...) If that's the case, I'm a little confused about what's holding things up. I can see how resolving rights to third party tweets might be problematic, but if FriendFeed's only being fed updates "owned" by FriendFeed users, what's the hold up? - Ken Sheppardson

What Twitter offers anyone who needs a lot of user updates (but they don't want to give the firehose) is a streaming feed that you send to it a list of userid's (with a max # per stream.) Then Twitter will send back all updates on that stream for any userid in the list. Not exactly the firehose but it is actually very useful for most client use-cases. - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Ken, that's right, it's just a different api. The holdup is due to the fact that the fb lawyers want to review the updated terms before we start using the new api. - Paul Buchheit

So the 'internet' is now in the hands of lawyers, not engineers. We're doomed! - zeroinfluencer

indeed we are - Thomas Power

Is the BirdDog TOU publicly available to read? (nothing on the Tw Wiki http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Streami... ) - zeroinfluencer

The positive thing I get from this (be it wishful thinking) is that fb is dedicating resources to having this resolved. If FriendFeed is just a floundering fish out of water, waiting to die, why would they engage lawyers... Very interesting... - Johnny from iPhone

hear hear Johnny. Zucker is a serious player. - Thomas Power

Johnny: Why dedicate resources? So Facebook can have the full stream too? If not now, then down the road as bits of Friendfeed appear on FB or in the dev platform? - Amyloo

Either way, to me, dedicating resources = severs remaining on - Johnny from iPhone

Not to get all argumentative and start throwing around the D-word, Johnny, but Facebook would really need to address this independently of whether the FriendFeed servers stay on. As Amyloo mentioned, this is an issue if they ever intend to use the new Twitter API to feed Facebook proper. - Ken Sheppardson

Fair enough :) - Johnny from iPhone

a micro community as an R&D department... - Aron Michalski

Here's the Content License Agreement for the new streaming API, by the way. You have to log into Twitter to view it http://twitter.com/help... - Ken Sheppardson

@Ken - thanks. - zeroinfluencer

"5.ii.c - No Conflicting Uses. ... Except with the prior written consent of Twitter, you may not engage, directly or indirectly, in any business activity, if such business activity conflicts with, or places you in a conflicting position to that of Twitter or the Twitter Service, or is specifically intended to purposefully divert and/or drive audience traffic away from the Twitter Service..." - Ken Sheppardson

....seems to me that would be problematic for Facebook as a legal entity to agree to. - Ken Sheppardson

aah, the famous "must suck" clause. - Aron Michalski

Ken, if Facebook doesn't have short-term plans to use birddog in their big product, it doesn't make a lot of sense to sic lawyers on the tou right now. Those terms can change. For them to invest resources *right now* on the issue makes me think they care about their little product. - Bruce Lewis

On the flip side, Bruce, one might argue that if they really cared about it they would have dealt with it by now. I don't recall when the old Twitter -> FriendFeed link started to lag, but it's been more than three months since FriendFeed became part of Facebook. - Ken Sheppardson

Do we agree that Facebook cares more about FriendFeed than the "FF is dead" crowd thinks, but cares less about FriendFeed than we die-hard fans would like it to? If I had my way they would start migrating their userbase over here as fast as the servers could take it. - Bruce Lewis

Almost, Bruce, but while I've been talked back off the d-word ledge, I think Facebook cares much more about FriendFeed *technology* than the site as a destination. I'll believe they care about it as a stand-alone UX when I hear somebody at Facebook who wasn't a FF employee mention it by name in public. I won't go so far as to ask that they suggest people sign up for the service... just acknowledge that it continues to exist. - Ken Sheppardson