Cole Orton › Likes

Hats off to Jesse Stay, whose recent blog post on Twitter gave me the idea to suggest it's time for us to move on to greener pastures. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

I think with the huge recent popularity of Twitter that more people will understand what social networks are and perhaps understand why FriendFeed is so awesome. But right now, Twitter wins on the mobile interaction game. Tweetie (and other apps as well) on the iPhone is much better than Buddyfeed or Motherfeed. - Aaron Hood

Aaron: It may be winning in mobile, but that's because there really isn't any competition to it there right now. If there were competition in the mobile feed, perhaps Twitter would do something to un-fuck SMS for Canadians like me. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy from IM

Not only is this line of thinking narrow minded, but it's very short sighted. I think as a technologist, we should all want services to prosper and be something even our moms would use. Otherwise, what's the point right? - drew olanoff

Perhaps it's time to dump FriendFeed? Personally I like one tool to do one job. Multi-tools, like FriendFeed, may do lots of jobs, but they generally do them all badly. There is a reason I don't post videos to Flickr. Twitter still does the job it was intended for better that anything else I've seen. Facebook isn't Twitter, and FriendFeed isn't Twitter. Use Twitter for what it's intended to be used for and - Alasdair Allan

Drew: That's why I'm suggesting a move to another service, not the complete abandonment of microblogging itself. Services will prosper if they take care of their users. If they don't, they won't keep users, and they sure as hell won't prosper. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Honestly, right now Twitter is just more fun. Follow five of your favorite comedians and it is a good read. It also seemed to be that FF died down quite a bit in the time that Twitter really exploded. - Keenan

Alasdair: LOLWUT? FriendFeed is no multi-tool. It has one well-defined purpose (to unite a person's feeds all in one place) and it does a damn fine job of it. Besides, Twitter is the issue here. And it doesn't do its job very well. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Link not working http://coldacid.net/blog... - RetiredTeacherD

Chris: The "gaming" you speak of is so ridiculously small, percentage wise. The value of the company, the medium, the people using it far far far outweigh the fictional "shark jumping" you describe. - drew olanoff

@DBlack: Try refreshing shortly; Drupal 5 is resource-heavy and there's really only one way for my host to deal with that. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

I say abandon FriendFeed. Good example. I clicked on the link above and it took me to an error page on your blog. This was actually the third click to get to the error page. FriendFeed doesn't actually send you to the link referenced by Twitter or any other spot, especially FriendFeed. It just propagates links to broken URLs. Twitter may be adding features that won't pan out, but when you click on a shortened URL, it does take you somewhere. - Michael Sommermeyer

Michael: FriendFeed is supplying the correct link. My site is just deranged. Hopefully it'll improve when I can get rid of my Drupal 5 dependencies and upgrade to 6, but for the meantime just refresh. I get that problem a lot myself. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Drew: Going at it by percentage is bullshit. There's enough gaming to be visible for a lot of users. When you're seeing gamers follow and de-follow you every day, you get pissed. It detracts from the quality of the service. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris: And FriendFeed is bulletproof to any type of "gaming"? How about we do a poll of people who are not in the 2%, ie: people who don't work in this space for a living...and see how they feel about it? - drew olanoff

Drew: What purpose would there be to gaming FriendFeed? These people aren't gaming the system because there aren't any controls against it. They're gaming it because they see some twisted value in it for themselves. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris: How are people gaming Twitter? My mom uses it to keep track of what I'm up to. I use it to keep track of what friends are doing and ROFL at what Shaq says once in a while. I follow who I want to follow, and if someone wants to follow what I have to say, rad. If not, I don't worry. I don't get your point here. - drew olanoff

Drew: Just as an example, ever seen someone with interesting looking tweets, who you then followed just to get a bunch of spammy DMs from them? - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris: Yes. I unfollow them. And it's happened like 3 times. - drew olanoff

Chris: Have you ever been out on a date and they seemed cool so you give them your #? And then they say something that bothers you and you don't want to talk to them anymore? And when you tell them that they still contact you? Are you going to remain single for life? - drew olanoff

I'm reading Chris Charabaruk's post on friendfeed, need I say more? :-) - tom

Drew: I unfollow the gamers too when I find them. But it's not just the gamers. It's the fact that Twitter can't keep their service running properly, they don't communicate well with their users (the company blog is every bit as helpful as DreamHost's service blog, i.e. barely useful), and the fact that the top folk there just seem to radiate unhelpfulness now. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

On other services, like here and on Blellow, I know that if I have a complaint about something, I can quickly make sure it gets seen by someone working at that service, and even get a response. Here users get value as much as they provide it, from the people in charge. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

With all the crap and poor service on Twitter, it's only a matter of time before it's simply an outflow of my activities elsewhere. (I'm just waiting for an app ecosystem for Blellow, and then *bam* I'll move.) - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

@Chris Charabaruk: If you want free Twitter SMS updates I'd suggest signing up to http://twe2.com :¬) - CannonGod

CannonGod: I don't care about getting SMS messages from Twitter (I'd switch to Bell if it were that important to me). I'd rather that incoming messages worked as advertised, though, with them appearing once and only once in my tweet stream. Not multiple times over the course of weeks. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

UPDATE: Twitter, after a couple of months of complaining by users, is finally looking at the SMS reposting issue that Canadians (such as myself) are suffering. MONTHS. TO SIMPLY RESPOND. If that doesn't scream shitty service, nothing will. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Why is everyone so concerned with Twitter? Who cares. It's supplementary to the services we use and clearly not going anywhere for a while. I don't care if celebs are there or not. As a technology enthusiast, I am HAPPY people are understanding Social Media more. - Mona Nomura

Mona: It's because Twitter is one of the best known social media services and the (currently) primary one for all us social media wonks. So of course, every little thing with it gets the attention of an electron microscope, and every time something about it is disliked, we all enjoy screaming about it. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy from IM

Chris: Clearly this is sparked from something personal in nature, and this isn't a discussion about usefulness or technology at all. I have found no problems with getting answers from the folks at Twitter, and their Status blog at http://status.twitter.com is always updated. I think people who understand what goes into a service that has to scale, realize that there will be hiccups. - drew olanoff

Drew: I'll not deny that I have issues with Twitter. But I started off enjoying it and making great use and great connections. As time's gone on, though, the great things about it started disappearing, to be replaced with crap. I came in back when it was going through its early growing pains. It was understandable then. But since those days, the use of the service has expanded while the management acumen of its leaders hasn't. And that's caused a drop in the quality of service for me. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Any one of Twitter's problems, on its own, isn't that big a deal. A mosquito or two. But brought together, all at once and at one time, and the problem becomes more than the sum of its parts. And it's gotten to the point where I just can't stand it any longer. And I doubt that I'm the only one who feels this way. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

its easy to say you will abandon but if you have friends there you might not, for example I abandoned facebook but all my tweets get posted there as status and get messages in sms. I joined friendfeed cuz scoble's tweets kept taking me here I dont use much find it hrd to follow lol but it actually works on cell, twitter mobile is a little better. - David Gross

No love from FriendFeed? Or is it just that no one has done this before? ;) - Andru Edwards

what tips do ya need here? it's pretty straightforward... but happy to help if i can! - Jeremy Toeman

Basically...I dunno. I'm just frightened. Although, I guess I have a Time Machine backup if all else fails. The end result, though, would be that when I open up iTunes or iPhoto, it grabs the database and files from the NAS-attached Drobo, where I want to store the library. By the same token, when my wife opens up HER iTunes or iPhoto, she gets the exact same libraries from the NAS Drobo. So no more having to make sure I have iPhoto open at all times so that she can get into the library through sharing. - Andru Edwards

Andru, this article is worth reading... http://www.ilounge.com/index... - Mike Doeff

Oh, thanks for that article Mike. In the middle of reading now. Good info there. - Andru Edwards

I do this with my home media server. If you have questions hit me on twitter. Be more than happy to help. - Jay Martin

It seems that the issue I am seeing in a lot of the solutions is that it either doesn't allow two people to use the iTunes library at the same time, and/or Apple TV can't see the library. I want to be able to have both my wife and I in iTunes if need be, and also want Apple TV to be able to see that library as well and play files from it. This can't be impossible, can it? - Andru Edwards

my honest advice would be to keep the libraries separate. iTunes gets messy with 2 clients accessing one database, particularly if you are playing music at the same time. We just kept them separate and enabled library sharing to access each others - Jamie

I hear you Jamie, but the thing is, keeping things separate is going to get expensive with the App Store. Right now, if I buy Super Monkey Ball for $10, and my wife wants to play it, she also has to pay $10 from her iTunes account. However, if it is centralized, then when I download the app, the next time she syncs her phone, she will get the app at no cost. Same if I buy an album that she wants to load onto her portable device. It's at the point where it is getting ridiculous to keep them separate. - Andru Edwards

You can sync smb to multiple iPhones with one iTunes account can't you? A bit messy but my girlfriend and I just use the one account... - Jamie

I wish I had good advice. I've avoided doing this at home. The result isn't great either, with our music spread between two libraries, with plenty of discs ripped twice at different bitrates. I imagine that two ore more people in the same household using iTunes isn't an uncommon situation, and it is lame that Apple doesn't address it better. - Erik S

Well, as it pertains to iTunes, my main concern is the iPhone apps. We have Apple TV and library sharing for the music, so I guess that is okay. I think what I will do is use something like ChronoSync or FolderShare, just to make sure our iPhone apps are in sync. However, on the iPhoto side of things, looks like I still need to do some digging. Although, I can likely just do the same thing there as well. - Andru Edwards