Adam Lasnik

The false sense of security that a million cats have successfully been wrangled? - Bill Strathearn

For twitter, I know lots of people created lists with Tweetdeck. Now that Twitter has it's own lists, that's not as important. But Tweetdeck lets you do more with your lists, I think. - Laura Norvig

Plus, Tweetdeck has nice looking column layout so you can see your lists, replies, full stream all at once. - Laura Norvig

Grouping a subset of users is the major benefit. - Louis Gray

I use Seesmic (although recently it hasn't been working, so I temporarily switched to Mixero) and for me the biggest benefit is to be able to manage 2 separate Twitter accounts in a practical way. Overall, I just find that these clients are more practical in terms of filtering people and content. - Patricia Müller

Bill... heh! Laura, I'm almost afraid to ask what more is needed ;). But nicer views, okay, that I can understand. Louis, isn't that grouping now unnecessary, given Twitter's Lists? Patricia, I can't even seem to manage one twitter account :P. But you raise a good point re: filtering content -- I guess that's re: saved searches, right? But can't you also do that via Twitter? I guess it comes down to the able-to-see-more-at-once, right? - Adam Lasnik

Exactly. My primary reason for using a client was the double account issue (and yes, it's a little overwhelming, but I need to keep connections in both languages). So that reason alone justified using a client for me. Now, filtering content came as a secondary benefit as I started having to sort through everything a lot of Twitter users usually do, but in 2 different languages. (both... more... - Patricia Müller

Ah, okay, that makes sense Patricia. Thanks for the info! - Adam Lasnik

Tweetdeck has retweet and direct message buttons, Twitter doesn't. (Although it has buggy pull-down menus for DMs) - Spidra Webster

I lean towards Tweetie2 and SimplyTweet (iPhone apps) - Mona Nomura from iPhone

hmm... just tried both Tweetdeck and Seesmic. Neither of them utilize the Friend Groups built into FB; TD invites users to completely recreate new TD-only FB Friend Groups. No thanks. :( - Adam Lasnik

Columns are key, even if you mostly handle just one account. You can see the tweets mentioning you or replying to you without switching back and forth. - Paola Bonomo

I can absolutely see how that stuff is useful for at-a-glancing, but I also feel it's a massive distraction and major info-overload. I am a curmudgeon for the most part when it comes to real-timing. There's very little in life that I need to know Right Now, very little that can't wait for a nightly (or even weekly) browse-through. - Adam Lasnik

I think it's more important for people who manage a social media presence for a brand. They need to know right away if someone mentions them or @replies them. - Laura Norvig

I use Twhirl and it's only because of multiple accounts and easy of posting to Twitter and identi.ca. The Twitter website has always been crap for me. In Twhirlw with just one click, I can retweet, reply, DM, lookup a user, see all tweets from a user, etc. Bonus is that it's fast. The Twitter website is slow and unfunctional. - Anika

Seesmic & TweetDeck were both built as Twitter apps. FB is an add-on and not nearly as developed. I use Seesmic to manage multiple accounts (about me, work, & interest-specific), user lists, and to handle saved searches. - Cianna Stewart

you just answered your own question...it lets you not have to visit both sites separately - brainno722 (Peter)

oh yeah, everyone else has "retweet" except twitter.com (well, they gave it to selected users)... - brainno722 (Peter)

Peter makes a point. My browser (Flock) has FB and Twitter built-in. I can post, reply, DM and retweet, right from my broswer without going to the Twitter website (YAY). Only problem is that there are sometimes day long delays of seeing updated tweets from others. The FB sucks. I can see what my friends post, but to reply I'm forced to FB. BUT...if I want to share blog posts, Flicker, tweets or chat with FB, I can do all of that without visiting the FB website. - Anika

Infodensity. I can look at my screen with Seesmic running on it and get a lot more information than just running twitter.com. - Robert Scoble

I think it depends on how you want to use Twitter. As a tool then you would use Tweetdeck etc and if just for casual following .com does the job - Khuram Hussain

Hey everyone, I appreciate the clue'ing in. Now the benefits are much more clear to me. Once again, the FF community shines through :-) - Adam Lasnik

Content-wise, I have added a bunch of my music to the site, including (just today) a bunch of choral stuff. Much more is to come! Now if I can just figure out why the search results page is sometimes (but not always) borked in IE <sigh>. Also, I'm somewhat sheepish about violating the accessibility guidelines I've so heartily espoused in the past; the Search box I'm experimenting with... more... - Adam Lasnik

The friend-connect stuff is causing the homepage to load slowly. Took an extra 8 seconds or so after the rest of the page was done. - Aaron D'Souza

:-( that's frustrating. I had noticed bad delays both with friendconnect and facebook connect. One important question: is it delaying the drawing of the content? If that's the case, I have two key choices: 1) Take the darn thing off. 2) Redo my 3-column layout so the middle column is listed in source before the right column. or actually, 3) Have a friendly chat with our friendconnect guys :D - Adam Lasnik

You can delay loading of the widgets. That way your pages will render normally and the widgets will just fill the empty spaces afterwards, it won't slow the rest of the page down. I haven't tried it for Friendconnect & Friendfeed though, but I imagine it would work there too. - John Mueller

Hmm. What's weird is that, using Chrome's dev tools, I'm not seeing any significant delay with the FC stuff at this point. That aside, what technique would you recommend for delaying the loading? - Adam Lasnik

Here's a quick hack -- http://johnmu.com/temp... - John Mueller

I did two main things: 1) change the CSE search from JavaScript to the static version, 2) move the FriendConnect javascript to the bottom of the page. The only thing holding up rendering of the main content now seems to be... the FriendFeed widget. Also, the FriendConnect widgets don't work because it's not on your site :-). - John Mueller

Other easy wins: set up caching for your images & css files (via .htaccess), pack all CSS & JS on your site into a single file, redo the common images to save a few bits. - John Mueller

And in fairness, I think Apple and iPhone deserve a ton of credit, too. They showed consumers that phones could be fun, beautiful, powerful. In many ways, they set the stage for a lot of the greatness we're seeing and will see even more of soon :) - Adam Lasnik

well said, Adam. - imabonehead

I second that. And I think, people who say "this year will be the year of mobile" every year, will be right in 2010. - Huseyin Savas

Now that JavaScript is required for so many web sites, it seems odd that search engines are stuck looking at the static, served HTML. - Bill Strathearn

I'd be afraid of search engines executing Javascript and indexing produced HTML. On the other hand, if it requests a PHP page, there's execution of code and generation of HTML, so that seems pretty similar. It's just a matter of where the code is executed. Maybe Google Caja makes it okay to run the Javascript in their crawlers. - Amit Patel

Amit, isn't that particularly a concern with snippets? I know that's a challenging and frustrating issue! But in many cases, I've seen the content of comments for one of my blog entries to be not only substantially more voluminous but also, frankly, often more interesting than the entry itself, and it's clear that I end up getting a lot of relevant & high quality traffic to these entries from search engines *because* of those spiderable comments. - Adam Lasnik

Should you receive "credit" (in the form of traffic) for another persons writing? - EricaJoy

A more relevant question, IMHO, is whether the content is an appropriate match for a given search query. If someone searches for "etrade problems" and there are a ton of people ranting about specific problems about etrade in one of my blog entries, isn't that page likely a good result for that query? The idea of "credit" I believe is outdated. Who should receive "credit" for wikipedia... more... - Adam Lasnik

WRT "credit" being outdated, the fact remains that people are doing any and everything in the hopes of generating more traffic for their sites (hello entire SEO industry). Now, I am most certainly a fan of having relevant information surfaced in search results, however, I would prefer the relevant information show up directly instead of having to read through your blog post, then a... more... - EricaJoy

I see your point, but I respectfully disagree with both the premise and solutions. In particular, I feel that there's a high correlation between high quality comments and high quality original posts; it typically takes dedication and thoughtfulness for a blogger to create and maintain a strong community, so in that way, why shouldn't he or she get some "credit" for others' postings (so, too, with a forum). Also, I feel that your solution would too painfully remove context and flow. - Adam Lasnik

(with that said, though, I understand and appreciate your frustration with regards to creating crap "content" just to rank, e.g., blackhat SEO. And in this regard, I think search engine efforts to better identify and reward quality authorship is a good thing in the long run). - Adam Lasnik

Heh! Or possibly like this: http://picasaweb.google.com/AdamLas... - Adam Lasnik

Ewww! What's it look like now? - John Mueller

It is called "The Annals of Improbable Research" and exists. They host the annual ignoble awards. Truefax. - Miss Elle

Feel better Adam! - Ginger Makela Riker

=( Hope you feel better! Soup, juice, and sleep (unproductive as it may be) - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

Thanks Ginger and Tina! I did have miso soup today, and just drank a massive cup of green tea. A little late in the afternoon to sleep, but will definitely hit the sack early tonight :) - Adam Lasnik

Sleep is a waste of time. Even worse, it's unproductive! - Louis Gray

:P. On a related note, I was curious to know why one feels cold / chilly with a fever, and I found this article to be informative and fascinating: http://www.askascientist.org/askasci... - Adam Lasnik

oh noes! :( hope you feel better soon! it is hard to take you seriously after reading you first comment, though :P - Claudia Petrilli

:P. And well, I've now drunken (is that the right word?) half a large jug of 100% pomegranate juice, a full glass of water, and a massive mug of green tea. So at least I don't think I'm gonna be dehydrated anytime soon! - Adam Lasnik

isn't it drunk? - Claudia Petrilli

And this is probably a good time for a friendly reminder/disclaimer. I work for Google. I am not on the Android team. I am speaking for me here, not my employer, not my parents, not harvey the invisible rabbit, not the illuminati....... - Adam Lasnik

I can't wait to be in a situation that will enable me to afford a DROID. I so want one. - Jaemi Kehoe from IM

I hear ya, Jaemi. Especially without contract, these smart phones (or "app phones" as David Pogue is now calling them) tend to be crazy expensive. But for the patient... those willing to be early-but-not-earliest adoption, I think much cheaper prices can be had. - Adam Lasnik

Droid is very exciting indeed, and just saw/liked the new commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Huseyin Savas

is it better than the iPhone? - Claudia Petrilli