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Leo Laporte to Leo's feed, TWiT Conversations

Live now: The Tech Guy radio show with Leo Laporte. http://live.twit.tv. Today at 3p Pacific: TWiT with Dvorak, Baratunde, and Gold.

December 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Daniel Rowley, echostreamer, Johnny Worthington and 2 other people liked this

Hearing you 5 by 5 Leo... let's get this show on the road! http://techguylabs.com - Chris Heath

11 more comments

Leo, yesterday's call about solar power in Madagascar lead me to find this: http://www.rewarestore.com/pockets... - they also have bags with solar panels on the side, and say they're working on a solution for laptops. - tollie williams

http://microsoft.com/securit... --> Free antivirus/anti-malware - Chris Heath

http://malwarebytes.org --> MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (run in safemode w/ networking so you can get updates) - Chris Heath

Start --> Run --> mrt.exe - Chris Heath

What VOIP service was Leo and the current caller talking about? - Ward Seward

Magic Jack http://www.magicjack.com/ - Chris Heath

GigaOm article about the iPod Touch - http://gigaom.com/2009... - Chris Heath

hi from acold day ga - daveccorey

great Twit format. Leo + Dvorak + (insert other regular here) + hipster tech blogger + alcohol + most guests in the studio = Twit is the best network anywhere. - echostreamer

that was actually TWiT ... techguy is on before from 2-5pm eastern twit is on at 6pm eastern - Chris Heath

I didnt see today's episode, but the usual format is great with Leo, Dvorak, a couple other regulars talking tech and alcohol in the cottage. Great streams. - echostreamer

leo has been very lax in starting friendfeed rooms... i've taken to commenting on the stories directly http://friendfeed.com/twit-st... or on saturdays for TWiG http://friendfeed.com/twit-tw... - Chris Heath

This Week In Tech stories

CBC News - Saskatchewan - Sask. musician promoted via Google Street View - http://www.cbc.ca/canada...

December 6 from Delicious/twit/224 - Comment - Like - Share

A Saskatoon musician looking to promote an upcoming album has succeeded in getting his picture on the new Street View feature of Google Maps.

Possibly to go along with this: http://mashable.com/2009... -- Changed Facebook Status to Married from the Altar, and tweeted it out. - tollie williams

Kol Tregaskes to Kol's feed, FriendFeed Feedback, FriendFeed Talk

Quick poll, should new users be shown a list of suggested users or a list of suggested groups when then sign up?

July 13 - Comment - Like - Share

Mike Chelen, Ho John Lee, arjo and 12 other people liked this

Of course a list of suggested groups requires questions to be asked to the new user. - Kol Tregaskes

33 more comments

groups. like in: "Popular groups among everyone" - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

Popular groups, and also subjects, ie photography, compters, ect. - MikeDeal / ZoneDancer

Groups by keyword - RAPatton from iPhone

IMO suggested groups - yes. suggested users - no. - Jannifer @wordsforliving

Sure why not, at least for groups. Suggested users only if they have things in common, such as hobbies, etc. - Michelle Wilson

no - Laura Norvig

Laura, no to which one or do you mean no to both? :-) - Kol Tregaskes

nope - MikeAmundsen

Suggested groups is ok. Suggested users is so very Twitter... - Ton Zijp

Groups are a good way to start, you can start interacting straight away even if no one subscribes to you. - M F

Mike, no to both? - Kol Tregaskes

yeah, no to both, IMO. lists like this just skew the field, IMO. it's not friendly, but i say "once you join up, you're on your own." if someone wants to "host" a list of suggested users, that's cool. - MikeAmundsen

I think providing such a list is highly productive. Especially for new users who may be intimidated by social media. - Benin Brown

I'd like to see example posts, rather than users -- pick the ones you "like," and a list of the posters (and people who liked the post) could be generated as a quick-start. Heck, that's how I find people half of the time by hand. - Jennifer Dittrich

No, if they don't tell what they're *interested in*. Popular is such a dumb idea, seriously. aside, this is exactly why I humbly created SocialWhois: http://socialwhois.com - directeur

just randomly assign them 5 people to follow - April Russo (app103)

April, similar suggestion to this: http://ff.im/5bhNo - Kol Tregaskes

Jennifer, that's an interesting idea. - Kol Tregaskes

directeur, so the list(s) should be based on the users selected interests? Yep, I like that too. Then we need to improve the group and/or group search: http://ff.im/5avWj - Kol Tregaskes

How about they are directed to a search form and asked to type in a keyword representing their interest. Immediately they'll be shown posts on that topic as well as people who are posting about that topic - and they can subscribe, comment, etc from there. - LPH™ and his dog P™

Kol, exactly! Recommending someone should be based on what he's interested in. You won't recommend me "Britney Spears" knowing that I'm a jazz lover, would you? :) LPH: http://www.socialwhois.com/tag... :) - directeur

I wouldn't recommend you Britney Spears ever. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Thank you!! :) - directeur

++LPH....great idea. - Bonnie Foster

Yes, Kol, I meant "no" to both. I think it's much more important to provide new users with a screencast or a set of pages with screenshots that suggest how to get started. Suggested groups or users skews everything, as Mike put it. *Show* people how to find groups and users, but don't *tell* them which ones to find. - Laura Norvig

I agree with Laura. - Upesh Thapa

I'll disagree with most and say yes: They should be recommended the Friendfeed for Beginners Group and a specific FF staffer's individual account, whose sole purpose is to interact, welcome, and share -- for the purpose of demonstrating the process and modeling the etiquette of the FF community. - tollie williams

I was thinking that they could analyse the first few posts that someone imports, to try and match people, but that'd be useless if the new user still hasn't imported anything. Still, forwarding them to FriendFeed Feedback or some sort of "Welcome Room" would be a good idea. - Tyson Key

I think new users ought to be subscribed by default to FF-News, FF-Feedback, a specific Welcome to FF! group (DIY self-help), and that's about it. The last group should have a periodic, perhaps every other day repost of "what to do after you've read this" suggestions, with previous instances of it deleted by some internal script after each new one has been posted. Those participating in... more... - ianf ⌘

I like you're idea about a 'Welcome' group and should be given the option to sub to the News and Feedback group. The blog should be highlighted too though. - Kol Tregaskes

Hmm, when the user opts to create their account using another service, why not give them the chance to import their feed(s) from it at the same time? I don't see why it shouldn't be possible with Facebook or Twitter, and it gives something to start with. - Tyson Key

(After all, FriendFeed already have their credentials to perform the initial account creation) - Tyson Key

From someone who's just started using Friendfeed recently, I recommend giving users both the options. Some users would not like to be overwhelmed with groups, while others would like to get going straight into the action. I think there are a lot of users who migrate (upgrade?) from Twitter, for whom the concept of users is familiar unlike groups. For others migrating from FB or other networks, groups may be preferable. - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

yes, if those user recommendations can be based on something meaningful, such as popularity among imported friends - Mike Chelen

Leo Laporte to Leo's feed, TWiT Conversations

Live now: Security Now 214 with Steve Gibson of http://www.grc.com/intro.htm, "Your Questions, Steve's Answers #75," http://live.twit.tv. Discuss here.

September 16 - Comment - Like - Share

mahjongmi, Vladimir Prudnikov and earl wallace liked this

I would vote Steve for President! - earl wallace from twhirl

17 more comments

Love the "No." shirt :-) - Greg McIntyre

Question [ 1 ] – An ANONYMOUS GSM Provider in England UK on GSM Cracking, writes... Hi Steve. I just listened to your podcast on GSM Cracking. I work for a 3G operator and we are VERY aware (and wary) of the issues with GSM’s 2G vulnerabilities. I thought your assessment was mostly fair, so here are a couple of additional points: Data GPRS, doesn't use A5/1, it uses GEA/1 and yes this... more... - Leo Laporte

Question [ 2 ] - Austin Clark in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin wants Cookie Management: Steve, For the second week you mentioned your favorite Firefox Cookie Manager, but never gave us its name. I'm sure you're driving a number of your listeners, like me, crazy. Could you either tell everyone on the next show? If you don't want to promote it could you at least email me the name? It could be our little secret. ;) - Leo Laporte

The add-on is called "Permit Cookies" - it's sparse but it does the job. http://gorgias.de/mfe/ - Steve sets the cookie "keep until" setting to "until I close Firefox" - then uses Permit Cookies to allow trusted sites to save cookies. The add-on says it's not compatible with 3.5 but the version from the author's site IS. - Leo Laporte

Question [ 3 ] - Mateus Del Bianco in Brazil wonders about "GSM Cloning" Hi Steve! Listening to the last episode on GSM Cracking got me wondering: How easy is to clone someone's cell phone over the air? I can accept that GSM is insecure, and I don't mind someone listening to my conversations, but I DO mind if someone can use my line! Is it possible to do? What about if someone have physical access to the GSM card? How hard is to obtain the 128bit pre shared key that you talked about? - Leo Laporte

Question [ 4 ] - Dax Mars, "visiting earth via second life" wonders... Quick question: Would I be insane to try running my own www server for my website? Cash is short, my hosting is up for renewal, my ISP's personal webspace is very limited and not very reliable, and I'd rather spend the money elsewhere. I'm thinking Win2k or XP of on old PC with Apache for Windows. - Leo Laporte

Where's the chat room or is this it?? - Greg McIntyre

Most ISPs frown on running servers and they will terminate your service! - MarK

Mark Thompson updated his Simple [web] Server for Vista even. I didn't know he was back. http://www.analogx.com/content... - tollie williams

Question [ 5 ] - Tim in Rancho Cucamonga, CA wonders about a router's password strength: Hi Steve, I hear a lot of talk about having a strong wireless passphrase, but what about the password that lets you into the router setup? The same password that will let you see the wireless passphrase unencrypted? If I use your perfect password maker for my wireless passphrase, then a relatively... more... - Leo Laporte

Chat room is http://irc.twit.tv - Leo Laporte

Question [ 6 ] - Poojan Wagh in Chicago, IL wonders whether security in hardware is a bad idea? I was thinking about the security in GSM. It seems to me the problem is that such hardware-reliant security implementations have the difficulty that they can't be modified in the future. They're _stuck_ in the hardware. Perhaps it's a generally bad idea to put security in hardware, because of... more... - Leo Laporte

Question [ 7 ] - Gary McCleery in Oamaru, New Zealand wonders about Proxy Servers: Hi Steve & Leo, greetings from New Zealand (you are probably saying where the heck is New Zealand) I run the school library as well as help look after the servers, desktops, and teacher laptops, never a dull moment. Everyone accesses the Internet via an external proxy server. Some of the students use... more... - Leo Laporte

Re: Q4 Own server: Easy to install and configure and maintain is eBox and SME-server both Linux. Ebox is matained form Ubuntu, and SME from SME contrib I live in Sweden and has had a server on my ADSL connections since 1997. - Erik Trolle

Question [ 8 ] - Chris in Iron Mountain, MI brings the WAY COOL TIP OF THE WEEK! Subject: Cool Google Feature: Safe Browsing Diagnostic Report Hey Steve, I was going some unusual Google searching when I stumbled across a really cool page (feature?) on Google. It's called "Google Safe Browsing" diagnostic page. I have no idea how to access it through Google's own site, but have been... more... - Leo Laporte

There are no mod chips for the Xbox 360, but you can flash the DVD drive with third-party firmware. - 321

The Xbox 360 has a lot going on in the mod scene right now. Modding the firmware on the drives is trivial, but not really what you want. There are Kernel hacks coming along for the 360 now and on some models of the system it is possible to run homebrew software like Emulators. - Filippo Dinolfo

This is leading to a general purpose chip, but that may still be a few months off. - Filippo Dinolfo

tollie williams

WordPress Just Made Millions of Blogs Real-Time With RSSCloud - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive...

September 7 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

RSSCloud is an element that's always been present in the RSS 2.0 spec but has drawn new attention with the rise of interest in the Real-Time Web. The element was just added to the WordPress code this afternoon. The implications of this big vote of support go beyond reading WordPress blogs; this is the kind of traction that new technologies can leverage to gain support in many different applications. Supporting feed readers will now be able to request updates from WordPress blog feeds as soon as they become available, instead of polling a server periodically to check for updates. - tollie williams

Kol Tregaskes to Kol's feed, FriendFeed Talk

So FriendFeed's growth is flat, why do you think that is and how do you think that could be improved?

July 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Fake Name, Nilesh, Seb Paquet and 30 other people liked this

It's a shame that FF is not growing yet has all better features over the likes of Twitter and Facebook but what is causing the lack of growth and what could be done to increase growth in FriendFeed? - Kol Tregaskes

65 more comments

FF is too much work. Consumes time, needs a lot of effort and most people are happy with one-to-one than one-to many interactions. Twitter wins. - vijay

FriendFeed fits in a space in between Twitter and Facebook. There is very little reason to join FF if you are already using both Twitter and FB. - Daniel Sims

Is it down to 'missing' features? Is the poor introduction for new users to blame? - Kol Tregaskes

Also what Daniel said. - vijay

Daniel, I did. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Vijay, yeah it can be pretty complicated for the new user, how would you make is simpler? - Kol Tregaskes

if you make it any simpler it becomes twitter. Only way to go is to get users to replace their Blogs with FF. I think that's what they are working towards. - vijay

I have replaced some of my blogs with friendfeed. I think it's excellent for blogging (microblogging). - Svartling from email

Vijay, you meant for writing your own blog articles? Yep, that would be great. All I'd really need it a few HTML options in the first comment to do this. Nothing too fancy. Then I could blog from FF, embed it on my site and everything is synced, comments and all. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Svartling, I've done the same thing also. - Ashikur Rahman

I think what needs to be done is have a clear "walk-through" example of setting up one's full social media life on FriendFeed. It's a great box of toys for exploring and tinkering -- but trust me, new users will be quite daunted at first unless they have some hand-holding - Ashikur Rahman

It only targets content producers - Genaro Bardy

Ashikur, I see this all the time as I seek out new users to welcome them each day. A lot post their first entry as "what do I do now?". Once new users have completed the registration process they are put on friendfeed.com with no other explanation. A nice Flash anim is needed here to show the new user the basic features of the service. - Kol Tregaskes

FF should go all the way and become a fully-featured Twitter client. People will join and stay for that, then eventually fall in love with FF. Right now, FF's integration with Twitter is just half-way done and causes more confusion. - Daniel Sims

Make it a fully-featured Twitter client with better blogging functionality. - Svartling

If I could import my non-FF Twitter friends, keep it refreshed if I unfollow them and swap them to FF users if they join, then I'd use FF as my Twitter client. But the likes of Seesmic Desktop provide all sorts of useful features like RT and tabs for replies for multiple Twitter accounts and DMs. - Kol Tregaskes

FF requires more time to enjoy. Many of the features are probably difficult for new visitors to see or find. The interface may be overwhelming and it may be a bit too "Zen" in appearance for most people. People used to Twitter may find it harder to connect to others (they may find the lack of @ replies as a communication hurdle). The API isn't exploited as widely as Twitter's. Mobile... more... - phil baumann

FF hasn't gotten the buzz Twitter has. It's seems harder to find like minded people on FF. Maybe, I just don't know how to do it. I love the pictures and the ability to have real conversations. I hate 140 character rule of Twitter. Twitter more people are just talking. Not as many listeners. Lots of marketers and life coaches on Twitter. Don't like that. I like "rooms" on FF. I like... more... - Kimber Scott

Kimber, absolutely agree with you. - Ashikur Rahman

What I dont like is to properly track watch my friends, I have to follow FF, twiter, and facebook. - MikeDeal / ZoneDancer

Kimber, interesting points there. Twitter is definitely a broadcast tool whereas FF is a discussion tool. - Kol Tregaskes

I have noticed with friends that FF requires some usage on the part of the individual, so it's a hard sell and steep learning curve that way. Most of my friends I introduce here see a relatively blank page, with just my posts. They're timid to subscribe, and thus see a really whitewashed space. - anna sauce

Anna, agree about it being a hard-sell. I think the email features should be plugged more. I think there is a big market of users that I used to emails and know nothing about social media beyond Facebook. I'm trying to tempt a few friends onto FF via the email features, to them it's a matter of registration then emailing me to a different address. Eventually they may move onto the site and use all the regular features. - Kol Tregaskes

I think FF is too much for people new to social media I don't know. I think the realtime thing kinda pushed a lot of people away as well. I'm finding myself finding more people I'd rather interact with on Twitter and Facebook than FF. Discussions are nice, but they are time consuming. For anyone with a job that doesn't allow them to be online, a family to take care, a house to take care... more... - Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ

I'd also like to see it pushed as a collaborative tool. It works really well in this sense. Businesses could use FF. - Kol Tregaskes

Another thing that bothers me on FF is a user issue, but I think with some encouragement from FF is could be improved: There are too many blank profiles. People should be encouraged to say 'something.' It takes a lot of work to see if you want to follow somebody, if they have a blank profile. Also, private feeds are so off putting. I know they should be an option, but it's very hard to... more... - Kimber Scott from email

Personally I like the rate of growth, after all a good wine needs time to reach its full potential. - Kevin J Hatton

Heh, Kevin. I'm not after Twitter or FB like growth but any growth would be nice. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Some of it is habit. And herding behavior. If their friends use it, then they want to. Maybe FF should be all about quality rather than quantity. I stepped through many people to help them start up. Showed them how to use the bookmarklet. None of them wanted to use it. It's a new technology in its own right. Sometimes peeps are just set in their ways? - Marg Uerite

Peeps have to have a certain level of computer literacy sophistication, just to appreciate it! - Marg Uerite

Kimber, the user settings page is presented to new users when they register but the description is only optional. I'd like to see an explanation of how and the benefits to why to fill in this be displayed with the tutorial. - Kol Tregaskes

Kol, exactly what I was thinking - a little education will solve so many issues. - Kimber Scott from BuddyFeed

:-) - Kol Tregaskes

FriendFeed needs to think through its use cases, & survey users for their preferences between them. Examples are FF as feed reader (needs a "Subscribe to this blog" bookmarklet), or the FF as Twitter client++ mentioned above by several people, which I'm also big on. Then, once decided, make it clear for new users through usage videos, UI "obviousness" improvements, etc. how it works.... more... - Alex Schleber

the main reason why friendfeed doesnt catch fire is its lack of complete profiles...i cant search for people from munich,...or from my schools, etc, etc,... FAIL - Chris Hofmann

I kinda wish I had a local search of somekind. One way that twitter first grabs users is by finding others around you that use it as well as easy tweetups. - tomit from iPhone

Good point, Chris! - Ashikur Rahman from iPod

... and, why do I have to go all the way up to the start of a conversation to comment? Especially when it's a long one? - Ashikur Rahman from iPod

Chris makes a very good point and so does Ashikur. No complete profiles. On FB you can pretty much trust that the person is a real person by looking at the profile, you get a sense of community, you can find people you know, or used to know, etc., etc. Ashikur's point should be very easy to fix. - Kimber Scott from email

Mass media is driving twitter adoption nothing else. - Geoff Schultz

Odd, isn't it. Traditional media pushing the latest "new media" trend. - Jason Nunnelley

Having just switched over to using Friendfeed for all my social networking, I can say that making this a full-featured Twitter client would bring more people in. Once here they'd realize that's not what it's really about. But the halfway method that exists now is a major deterrent. - John Ladd

Kol, IMHO: 1) The barrier to entry increases with the character limit and inversely to the photo count. 2) Let's face it, the biggest differentiation from twitter is not comments (twitter has @ replies) or the better search (although, that's big) or attachments (twitter has 3rd parties for that) -- the differentiation is groups, yet the process of finding a group is still pretty awful (by searching - the results are cluttered at best) or non-obvious (by clicking on someone's subscribers and scrolling down). - tollie williams

The easiest thing about FF is the aggregation. The harder elements at first are saved searches and building up new friends on FF. overcome these two harder elements and it should move better. - George Hall (Australia) from BuddyFeed

We all need to be hiding more people - Charlie Anzman

biggest reason is publicity. no Oprah, no plusk. no MarkZ. - MikeAmundsen

Better RSS reading-support would be great - I use FF instead of GReader now for simplicitiy but it's not ideal. Searchable profiles too. Searching by location would be great. I'd love to sub to more people in the UK, London or even locally in Kent but that's hard unless that stated they are from that place or join a local-based group. - Kol Tregaskes

Ashikur, yeah little, basic things like that are still missing. - Kol Tregaskes

For a "complete profile" what would you like to see included? - Kol Tregaskes

Should FF should status updates, e.g. on our profiles? - Kol Tregaskes

tollie, agree that group search results need a lot of work, what would you like to see on such searches? Number of subscribers, group description? - Kol Tregaskes

George, how could FF overcome those two issues? - Kol Tregaskes

Read FriendFeed Feedback, there's loads of ideas there... - Marlin Forbes

Marlin, what suggestions have you seen in FF-Feedback that you think would help FF in growing? - Kol Tregaskes

Kol, Re: improving group search. I think the Find groups page should look a lot like WeFollow.com, except where WeFollow has category titles, FF should be organizing the groups by "Most (subscribed/active) among (friends/everyone) (today/this week/this quarter/this year/all time)." - tollie williams

(Yes, that's 2*2*5=20 possible groups. But you would design it to show 3 categories, with the switches I put in parenthesis as interface elements.) - tollie williams

Oh, and I forgot to say: the text visible should be "subscribers", but clicking on the INFO button would reveal the group's description and an estimated activity count (similar to the new subscriber emails- "about 10 posts a day" eg). - tollie williams

We don't tolerate trolls. Hence, flat. - Steven Perez

Steve's point is most likely it. Trolls don't have an outlet here, which limits traffic to truely useful and entertaining content, rather than purely emotionally focused content. FF may have uncovered one of the core reasons for lack of traffic on any social site, in tandem with xkcd's "someone is wrong on the internet": users empowered to effectively ignore trolls limits rate of growth. - Andy Bakun from Android

Turn FriendFeed into an embedded comment system and information stream for websites. Make the fact that it's a widget less obvious, replace the commenting system of the host. Host the conversation outside of FF, and bring it back. - Marlin Forbes

Post, Kimber added you as a friend on Goodreads. We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, friends with Kimber. To confirm this friend request, follow the below link: http://www.goodreads.com/friend... &utm_medium=email&utm_source=invite - Kimber (kimberscott.art@gmail.com) - پـرستووو from email

Interesting idea, Marlin. - Kol Tregaskes

It's almost impossible to be a 'casual' friendfeed user. You either go all in and comment like crazy and spend A LOT of time reading and posting and being witty, and if you're really good you might start to get some subscribers. If you don't invest a lot of time, you don't get anything out of it and your feed sits in obscurity with very little social interaction and you wonder whats the... more... - veo

I agree with veo, and with anna http://friendfeed.com/friendf... it happened the same to me when I joined. I thought it was just another MyBlogLog. - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

..which reminds me, ff needs to adopt @reply model to be more engaging. :/ - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

I think it just needs to be more traditional. Comments start out very compact in my monitor here. Very unlike a forum and has tinier fonts. The post also feels too grayed out. The rest could be improved by discovery. Related posts like blogs. Better integration of services. Finally better unification of comments from all the things it aggregates. For ex. Posterous really won me over... more... - Fake Name

The Shoals: tollie williams

Post your comments on the @ShoalsRT profanity filter here.

August 24 - Comment - Like - Share

The intent of the filter is NOT to amount to censorship of thought, but to allow our followers a very limited peace of mind about the kind of content that ShoalsRT delivers. - tollie williams

Leo Laporte to Leo's feed, TWiT Conversations

Live now: This Week In Tech with John C. Dvorak and Om Malik. http://live.twit.tv. Discuss here....

August 23 - Comment - Like - Share

David Sim, George Brickner, Ozer Wrzl (EN) and 22 other people liked this

Sounds like a good show. Dvorak is always great, and we don't hear enough of Om Malik. - Eric Geller

146 more comments

Never miss a show - Ben

Any word on the rumor of a new Canon 5D Mark II coming out with a touch screen and dual card slots? - Craig Shipp

We love you Kirk! - Ben

hi every things workin now - daveccorey

First time i'm watching live - does Dvorak always smile? (sounds grumpy on Audio!) - Shriansh Shrivastava

Looks like Best Buy is trying to get a handle on their Twelpforce Tweet .@twelpforce reminder to twelpforce members to keep tweets to answering questions not soliciting them via @Agent10565 What does the panel think about Best Buy and customer service by Twitter? - Ed Coye

Do they have Wings already? - Johnny Worthington

yes - Dean V. White

"I just pointed to our contract with Apple" - Johnny Worthington

Sharp Introduces 2nd Edition of AQUOS DX Series with Built-In Blu-ray Disc Recorder http://www.japancorp.net/Article... - pcguru626

Well... Did they reject it? It was approved then pulled. Semantics I know but still... - Johnny Worthington

Google was testing what they can get away with - Johnny Worthington

"Apple is conspiring with Google to force the FCC to “force” Apple to, regrettably, open the door to VoIP and the Universal Inbox." -- Steve Gillmor, http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009... - Ken Sheppardson

AT&T's explanation was convoluted. I thought Apple's explanation was clear. (even if you don't believe it) - Myron Jones

Isn't that what all big companies slogans are? "Don't get caught" - Chris Jones

Google should block safari in all it's searches, just to see what happens! - Danny Jones

Android is sort of like Linux. Will it take off? Dvorak cites precedence, but not sure it applies. - Perry Lund

Is John writing off Palm at this point? - Ken Sheppardson

John is overreaching a lot. - Myron Jones

Android is Linux. I think it it's just like in the computer world. It's still geeky to run Linux even though I know plenty of non-tech people that do. - Chris Jones

Perry: Android is built on Linux, but Dvorak is making an analogy here that I think will prove to hold. What happens when there are 20+ handsets running Android? - Christopher A Carr

Palm webOS is also Linux. - Ken Sheppardson

Apple has no reason to loosen up on their app store. If other phones want app stores, they should build them. There are lots of choices out there! - Myron Jones

I'm not listening, but John wrote off Palm long ago. He's an Android fan, if given the choice between all smartphone OS's out there. - jcunwired

Safari competes with chrome so google should block safari - Danny Jones

And there isn't *an* "Android phone." There are handsets that run Android. - Christopher A Carr

WebOS is linux too. - jcunwired

Apple need to make the app store better just for PR reason - Dean V. White

Um, I thought Bing gained market share while Google lost last quarter? - Patrick Sullivan

I'd really like someone to explain to me how Apple can remain healthy as an "underdog" in the PC vs Mac fight, with a minority market share, yet no phone manufacturer can possibly survive unless they "kill" the iPhone. - Ken Sheppardson

I agree they should improve the app store, but they need not sell any and everything anymore than walmart or target sells any and everything... - Myron Jones

I think John needs several hoop earrings in that left ear :-D - jcunwired

Patrick: That came up here yesterday. Google stayed basically the same while Bing rose. The data showed that people were just trying out Bing while still mainly using Google. - Chris Jones

"Remember Cuil? Now It’s a Real-Time Search Engine" -- http://mashable.com/2009... - Ken Sheppardson

OK, watching now, I couldn't resist :) - jcunwired

I am actually using Bing right now just to test it. It is actually a pretty good search engine. - Mister IQ

Chris Jones: Oh? Hm could've sworn. And if it raises over two quarters that seems like more then just initial "tring out" to me. - Patrick Sullivan

Ken - good point on Apple-smartphone. What people don't realize is that iPhone is a very small percentage of worldwide smartphones, yet that same argument constantly comes up. Its cool, but not great. I don't get it. - jcunwired

Search for "white shirt" on excite.com and you get nothing but sponsored results. Weird. - Ken Sheppardson

Leo, I could see you three+1 talking about this story: "Business Advice Plagued by Survivor Bias" http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog... - tollie williams

John, the REAL chat room is now on friendfeed :) - jcunwired

@kshep I haven't been to Excite for years. I am surprised it's still around. - Mister IQ

Not a whole lot of news this week it seems. - Victor De La Torre

So was I, IQ... just started wondering what other search engines are still out there... - Ken Sheppardson

Wow. altavista is still there. So is webcrawler! </memory lane> - jcunwired

Because only big corporation can service the infrastructure behind it... - Johnny Worthington

"bauds"? :-) - Ken Sheppardson

Once hidef video is transportable to most households the race for more bandwidth is going to slow. - jcunwired

The entertainment industry... music, theatre, etc... is going to go through a transformation once we have HD to the home and mobile broadcast capability - Ken Sheppardson

If any band can broadcast any concert worldwide in real time... - Ken Sheppardson

John sure knows a lot about crap. LOL! - Myron Jones

95% of TV is crap... depending on the person watching it - Johnny Worthington

I'm sure that Fred kid is bringing in a decent income from his crap. - Phil Maxwell

But the "low quality" audio of today blows away the quality of what mainstream users had 20 years ago. Cassettes? 8-track? - Ken Sheppardson

5 megapixel LOLcats - Johnny Worthington

3D LOLcats - Ken Sheppardson

Second Life LOLcats? - Johnny Worthington

Tricorders - Myron Jones

Isn't is still just based on communication? - Johnny Worthington

90% of my online communication is text based on FriendFeed - Johnny Worthington

with higher speed it does mean more access for media with out a lot of the middlemen and also accurate tracking of what is watched or listened to. Joss Whedon being able to put out a show without have to go through the standard channels has a lot of possibilities. - Dean V. White

TWIT 3D? - Danny Jones

Streaming stereo camera data from one's 4G connected HUD glasses... - Christopher A Carr

No, Microsoft figured out that their code didn't have to be as clean as it once was. That's all increase in processing speed and memory did. - jcunwired

Yeah right. It'll end up being about 1mbps to your laptop. - Chris Jones

That means i can join the mile high club all on my own! - Danny Jones

The ability to flip a switch on your glasses and broadcast exactly what you're seeing to anybody else on the planet who wants to watch... in 3D and HD - Ken Sheppardson

Yeah, there's your "lifestreaming." - Christopher A Carr

Kinda scary Ken :) - jcunwired

That would actually be extremely useful in some circumstances. - Christopher A Carr

Would redefine "news" yet again - Ken Sheppardson

Health care... education... - Ken Sheppardson

Leo, you need Seat Fillers like at the Oscars - Johnny Worthington

Instead of tweets we could veet. Vidder. - jcunwired

Squarespace testimonial fail ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

You could embed clips of this data on physical objects -- tutorials and what have you. - Christopher A Carr

Yeah... extending the "augmented reality" concept beyond just projecting Yelp reviews on restaurants around you via the iPhone... - Ken Sheppardson

education could have a huge benefit from increased bandwith - Dean V. White

Education could have a huge benefit from updated software. - Chris Jones

Education could have a huge benefit from people caring about it. - Ken Sheppardson

+1 Ken - jcunwired

Ha ha I agree Ken - Dean V. White

Could not agree more that people should listen to Dave Winer more often. - Eric Florenzano

Blogging is inviting my friends to my house for a dinner party. Social Media is meeting them out for dinner. I much rather go out. - Johnny Worthington

Blogging is a broadcast of individual thoughts. Social media is sharing your thoughts with others in relative realtime. - jcunwired

Which is more rewarding (from all sides)? - jcunwired

It's not either/or. - Ken Sheppardson

The fundamental flaw RE blogging is most of us aren't writers. - Ken Sheppardson

Agreed, I enjoy and benefit from both. - jcunwired

And readers... - Johnny Worthington

"Lifestreaming" and conversation are going to be much more appealing than blogging to the 99.95% of the general population who aren't tech journalists. - Ken Sheppardson

I had my url going to my friendfeed account. THAT was my blog - Johnny Worthington

I might add that conversations about a blog give me more reason to read one than it showing up in my Google Reader. - jcunwired

What's so bad about LIFO? - Eric Florenzano

The whole page-oriented nature of the Web and HTML and "browsers" is confining. We need to blow that up. - Ken Sheppardson

I suppose the number of people who at first think http://www.theonion.com is real news might be evidence supporting John's theory. - Ken Sheppardson

What was the name of the "blog format" John mentioned as an alternative to reverse-chronological layout? - Daniel Drake

Finally! Dvoark hasn't complained nearly enough this episode. - Chris Jones

This Week in Curmudgeoning - Ken Sheppardson

But hasn't that been Microsoft's heal. They have to support it which has killed innovation - Johnny Worthington

The "Windows" of the internet is HTML, CSS, Flash, Javascript. It's web standards. Not a great analogy, IMHO - Ken Sheppardson

Johnny: No platform lasts forever but they milked it for more than enough to coast for a very long time off it ;-) - Patrick Sullivan

Orphan Books: Gruel to Text Ratio - Johnny Worthington

Why do people give Dvorak grief? Everybody agrees anymore, I like someone who plays devil's advocate. - jcunwired

*snicker*... Leo said inject - Johnny Worthington

I think we need to do a complete tech company <=> Leave it to Beaver character mapping - Ken Sheppardson

Cue: Audible ad... :P - Johnny Worthington

"Google Books for Dummies" - jcunwired

............... ok... - Johnny Worthington

EPIC PLACE NAME - Johnny Worthington

I did that with the Harry Potter books. It's a good feeling, to read a book that way. - Chris Jones

Show name - Chicken Eatsa - Ken Sheppardson

Show name - Poker in the Back - Ken Sheppardson

OK, what are they drinking today? I see no wine glasses. Leo's on a drunken roll :) - jcunwired

Wow, this show might take some editing. All this talk about "rim shots", "poker in the back" - Chris Jones

"Dvorak is just flat-out wrong — or at least that was the gist of the conversation I just had with Kundra." -- http://gigaom.com/2009... - Ken Sheppardson

I thought I heard a cork pop earlier. - Christopher A Carr

"Skip logic, or conditional branching as it is sometimes known, allows you to change the course that your respondents take through a survey based on answers they give to certain questions. " - Ken Sheppardson

The guy sounds like someone who knows a lot of tech terms to throw around, that's about it. - jcunwired

Kundra was using the term in the context of training/education - Ken Sheppardson

Its a political position. Of course its a battle of words to be at the top of the BS ladder. - jcunwired

Dave Winer should have been US CTO. - jcunwired

"Now, as broadband deployment, and more importantly, err, if you look at the megabits-per-second, err, how much, err, how much information can we get through the pipeline is going to be so important and, as new and new software and techologies are being introduced, what you going to see is huuuge-change from how applications are architected from skip-logic to video and much more human ways of interacting with these applications rather than, err, binary or COBOL ways of interacting.” - Ken Sheppardson

There was an odd coupling there of natural language processing and VR...that's where he lost me. - Christopher A Carr

I've read it three times now. Outside of a headache coming on, I've gotten nothing from it. - jcunwired

By the way, this dissection of Kundra is exactly why many smart people don't want to be part of government. - Ken Sheppardson

I think the problem is the phrase "from skip-logic to video". How do you go from one to the other? The same with "much more human ways of interacting with these applications rather than, err, binary or COBOL ways of interacting”. How does one interact in a binary or COBOL way? And how does that relate to actual humans? - Chris Jones

Chris: The context was "but imagine a Universe where you have the Star Trek holodeck where you could literally ask the computer, err, to act or ask questions to get answers..." - Ken Sheppardson

Perhaps he imagines that skip logic has something to do with human/software natural language interaction... - Christopher A Carr

Show Name - Jai Ho ... oh wait... this is post show - Ken Sheppardson

TWiT Meetup at the Novato Costco... heh - Ken Sheppardson

Ahh, it was bourbon. No wonder the liquor/poker remarks :D - jcunwired

Doesn't Cisco have that technology? - Ken Sheppardson

What technology Ken? - jcunwired

The sort of satellite studio video/audio IP tech Leo wants - Ken Sheppardson

Yes, they do. - Christopher A Carr

They've also got WebEx... which could handle the Skype part, no? Not sure GoToMeeting folks would be too happy... ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

"Only Two Blowhards Per Session" - Johnny Worthington

"Dvorak Shrugged" is perfect. :-) - Christopher A Carr

A lot of news was social so it needed to be a social show :) - Johnny Worthington

Only if you get Beatles wigs - Johnny Worthington

Old time watcher of all of your shows keep it up Leo - milesg

Have a good 'weekend' Leo :) - Johnny Worthington

did anybody else catch leo say "liquor in the front and poker in the back".. leo is so dirty, i laughed. perhaps this is an old joke. yeah i'm sheltered. - Landon

"Dvorak Shrugged" was one of the best Twits I've listened to. Great job guys. - Michael Riegger

I think by "skip logic" our nation's CIO was making a generic reference to the Go To statement, which gave rise to billions of lines of legacy spaghetti Cobol code. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he has read http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users... - John Fandl

Om Malik has some good points, but he's not a good fit for the radio show. He talked way too much. - Ben

tollie williams

Does anyone want to offer some free (gratis) expert opinions on IP with respect to sports, for the sake of free (libre) and free (gratis)?

August 19 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

You can comment here on Friendfeed, if you desire. - tollie williams

tollie williams

Poll: Does your high school have an exemption policy based (partially) on attendance? I'm calling on all schools to do away with this, require exams (get them ready for college), and as a result: STOP kids from coming to school sick and spreading their germs. I think public health demands this.

August 19 - Comment - Like - Share

I posted this conversation on Twitter, but obviously, I can't easily link to that thread. - tollie williams

I also posted it on Facebook. Here is that thread: http://www.facebook.com/profile... - tollie williams

Bret Taylor to Bret's feed, FriendFeed News

FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request - FriendFeed Blog - http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009...

August 10 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

(1)Bebekvegebelik, Jason A. Samfield, Srikanth AD and 659 other people liked this

We've been acquired by Facebook! We are really excited about joining the Facebook team. (Note: FriendFeed will continue to operate - see the blog post for details) - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

514 more comments

Boom. - Louis Gray

Grr! - directeur

Woah... - Brandon Titus

Uh. Well, that's the end of that. - Akiva Moskovitz

Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Roberto Bonini

What does this mean for FriendFeed, Bret? - Kol Tregaskes

Lame. - Mark Trapp

great title bret. well played. - MG Siegler

WOW - Bindu Reddy

Congrat! So, what does this mean to your team and to FF in general? - Dilip Dand

wahhhhhhhhhh - Myrna

maaaan - Jamie

wowow - Harry Wolff

congrats - brainno722 (Peter)

Nooooooooooooo - Mushin

Wait... seriously? - Ken Sheppardson

oh, noooo - Tanju Yildiz

Congratulations to the friendfeed team. I know this is huge for y'all. Please don't let us spoil your parade as we weep. - Ladybug Heather

Seriously?!? ..... - sebastian☆rocket brother

oh boy. - Carlos Ayala

I am hoping this will lead to nice integration for cross posting! Currently using Twitter App on FB to post and I hate those ff.im links that end up on Facebook. - Ivan Zlatev

it was good while it lasted, Friendfeed. :( - holly

division by zero - Onur Cengiz

OMG - \(*_*)/

"FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team." Those are NOT encouraging things to read as a FF user. - Scott of Two Countries

gratz - Ali

My heart is sinking as I type this. Please tell me that it isn't a late April Fool's joke. :( - Tyson Key

Wow, it's true!! - Kevin Whalen

Big news! I second Kol & dilip's request for what this means for the team and FF's future. - Brandon Titus

O_o - Joe Silence

So it IS true. - Hector

Nicely done Bret - Jennifer Van Grove

Congratulations btw, guys! - Kol Tregaskes

Sniff... not sure if I'm excited about this. But I have enormous respect for the FriendFeed team... so, I assume they believe in the move as more than an exit strategy. - Michael Leggett

Congrats, Bret. - Jordan Hofker

This is just horrible - Matthew DeVries

Congratulations, I suppose. A bit worried Facebook is going to ruin everything though. I'm not fond of Facebook, to say the least. - Irma Vermaat

Um. - Barry Mitchelson

Oh my... Hopefully FriendFeed won't vanish and good luck :) - Tarmo Aidantausta

Do we call it FaceFeed? FriendBook? - Tyson Key

Oh no.... - Ben Hanten

What does mean for us? - Rich from iPod

Terrible fit. - Matthew DeVries

damn here it is... :( - Edgar Rodríguez

FriendFace!!! (i love it crowd) - Bahriye

*waits for wall-to-wall ads and constant spambots* - Joe Silence

Die. - Zio Bonino

Congrats - Zoltan Szendro

I dont want FF to end - Fee501st

Wow - Shevonne

Oh mon dio ! - Umar

What did you do? WHYYY! - Zachary TG

Ostregheta. - Reloj

Congrats guys, in a bittersweet sort of way. - Hutch Carpenter

guess there's no way of denying this anymore :( - BCK

Just another lesson in why you shouldn't put your love and trust in a company...... - Matthew DeVries

Oh no! - Erdinc YILMAZEL

Congrats, but I hate Facebook. - Zachary TG

I like Friendfeed and I do not like Facebook. Gratz to you guys though, I think. - Mark Sorrell

"Oh shit..." came to mind immediately. :( - Tyson Key

Scott, yep not encouraged by that comment. :-( - Kol Tregaskes

Congrats on the deal, best wishes to the FF'ers in helping facebook get it together! - Sean O'Connor

This could get exciting, especially concerning twitter :-P - Malte Steckmeister

Congrats for Friendfeed team, but I'm seriously worried for us :((((((((((( - Roberto

Congratulations... I'm sure this is pretty exciting for everyone at FriendFeed... We're all looking forward to where it takes you! - Nathan Chase

And FriendFeed was just getting popular. Not any more. - Zachary TG

Wow - Rodfather

*Sobs* - Tyson Key

wow - Jack Wilson, K4SAC

to the dump - Zachary TG

Wow, very disappointed - Randy Pollock

come on. Bret, facebook is so closed. so different from Friendfeed. besides that. Congrats to the team - Edgar Rodríguez

As am I - Zachary TG

machecazzo - Sba

VERY disappointed. - Joe Silence

horrible decision - Randy Pollock

Booo. But, you know, congrats. - Chris Nixon

i'm not sure i'm happy about this. - Taylan Aydınlı

OMG WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SH*T - Alp

Congrats for u guys... probably too bad for us ;-( - Laurent

God, I can see FB shutting down FF just like Six Apart shut down Pownce. - DarknessFalls

arg. - Aron Michalski

Good for you, don't know for all of us - Cristian Conti

@#$& that's all I have to say. For now. - Zachary TG

Facebook should have been aquired by Friendfeed. Why they hell would you give up your better product to a worse one? Did none of you give a shit about this service to begin wiht? - Matthew DeVries

Congrats! - Alix Whitmire

Coolest web 2.0 site I've ever seen & used. I hope things don't derail. Ads will be coming soon, which is fine, but.... then what 's next? Please no quizzes! - Ben Hanten

Who would have thought that after Facebook were shamelessly being "inspired" by FriendFeed, the inevitable would have happened? - Tyson Key

I'm pissed off. I wan to throw away the whole Internet : - DarkBls

Congrats! - Moushumi Kabir

Congrats guys. :) - Meryn Stol

Congratulations. This is awesome for you and for Facebook. - Mike Sego

mommy? - Josh Haley

Hey guys, keep in mind that Facebook is blocked in workplaces across the nation. 250 million casual users commenting about last night's party does not intelligent conversation make. - Hector

FFail - rael

What will happen to my 92 subscribers? - Zachary TG

yes you have just failed at failing, no it is not a double negative. - Bahriye

Tragic. - Shannon

I really can't see how FB would buy FF only to shut it down. There are way too many innovations and features FF has that FB honestly needs. I'm looking forward. - Harry Wolff

congrats! - Jay from ViewPoint

here come the comments - Zachary TG

Congrats? Everybody who's saying Congrats doesn't know what he's saying. Go to hell. - Zio Bonino

Yeah, quizzes are EVIL! - Tarmo Aidantausta

Wow. - Zachary TG

Oh, this does not make me happy. Not at all! I've stayed off of Facebook intentionally and FriendFeed is my favorite social network. This is like when the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. :>( - Larry Hawes

i have stopped using FB for the most part and liked FF alot more. now FF will go the way of FB. screwed again. - Joe Silence

Congratulations. Enjoy the new challenges of acquisition, and I'm looking forward to the result! - Wade Dorrell

Berge Gazen beat your score in Mafia Wars - Berge Gazen

Feedface or Facefeed? - Fee501st

FUCK THAT ! [Anyways good job guys ^^] - TiTi

Enjoy your fat paychecks, guys. You've sold us out. - Akiva Moskovitz

Bravo Bret! Been following your successes ever since we had the opportunity to work together on the YellowPages.ca / Google Maps Canada deal. Congrats! - Sebastien

I wished it was Google or even Yahoo!, instead... - Tyson Key

i really hope ff stays as it is. fb is kinder carder while ff is a great tool. - jkkmobile

Facefucked or Fuckfeed? - Matthew DeVries

Not sure what to make of this. It could eiter be a big win or a huge fail. - dorn

It could have been Microsoft, which would have been worse for everyone. :( - Tyson Key

Can I take this opportunity to say I HATE facebook? - Alex Scrivener

seems the only ppl happy here are the ones in the biz or who stand to profit from the merger. - Joe Silence

I guess we should get ready to get poked by our supposed friends and have various shit thrown at us? Plus 5,000 requests by apps that nearly all suck. - Joey Gibson

There is zero way this could have been a win for anyone, but the now rich founders. - Matthew DeVries

duh - aybars badur

I HATE facebook - Pedram

this is simply awful. - Joe Silence

If I have to go to FB to use FF then it's a lost cause - Randy Pollock

Painful. And apparently I completely misunderstood what FF was trying to accomplish both technically and as an organization. I guess Facebook must have dangled a pretty big bag of money in front of them. - Ken Sheppardson

FriendFeed is Dead! Long Live FriendFeed! :/ - Tyson Key

Awesome. Please fix Facebook email :) http://fudge.org/too-muc... - Jay Cuthrell

Facebook is going to acquire the web! - l'Ego di Gigi

To me, FriendFeed is like Porsche and Facebook a Kia. I'm curious to see which will become which.. - Moushumi Kabir

Oh noes! - Burcu Dogan

Congrats Bret! - Robin Dindayal

I will reserve judgement, i don't like or use FB but if FF maintains it's current goodness i don't care who cuts the checks. - Steve C

I hope this doesn't turn into an APP filled hunk of crap. I love FriendFeed, it was the untouched gem of microblogging. I don't want Mafia Wars invited in my FriendFeed!!! Congrats on the sale though. - Jay Farmington

Where's the "dislike" option? - Gregor Morrill

+1 Gregor - Tyson Key

accipicchia che pessima notizia - massimo mantellini

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE!!! -_- - Bahriye

I just realized this is like when K-mart bought Sears ... - DarknessFalls

/ponders the meaning of "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being." - Philipp Lenssen

And I will officially be leaving FriendFeed today. - Michael Forian

omg - John μller

@Philipp: until the new masters start flexing their muscles and bringing in their own people to enforce their own vision. - Joe Silence

I read the blog post and one statement stands out to me "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being." The time being. This is not just bad, I think it may be #FAIL - berchman

Such great news! - Steve Rubel

Not sure what to think of this. - Matthew Speicher

where is dislike button ? - Osman Üngür

OMG! - Zac Bowling

now where did I put my twitter password - Randy Pollock

big mistake :(( - emresezgin

I suppose it will be called FriendFace? http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Phil Harrison

Congratulations, guys!!!!!!!!! - Jess Lee

Oh. Hell. No. - CannonGod

Oh My God! They Killed FriendFeed! - Tyson Key

so the (once)new facebook homepage was actually the tip of the iceberg? - Onur Cengiz

It's a win/win! congrats all. - Alan Le

Time to roll your own Frienfeed clone. - Fırat Can Başarır

Congrats to you. - Evan Travers

Congratulations. I look forward to seeing what this new partnership means for users. - Aren Grimshaw

FF will surely be integrated into FB at some point? - Kol Tregaskes

damn Ken is spot on! +1000 Ken! - vijay

not good. - Jacque

Oh. My. Gosh. - Enrico Lamperti

Facebook obviously liked FriendFeed a long time ago. Why would they have copied so many features (feed item comments and the "Like" action, to name a couple) otherwise? It was only logical for this to happen eventually. Doesn't mean I like it, but acquisition is part of the game. I have the same feeling I did when SocialThing! was acquired by AOL, though. - Voyagerfan5761

"Relationship Status: It's complicated" comes to mind. ;) - Tyson Key

Wow, I finally sign up, and read this. This could end up being a very bad thing for FF fans: "Your FriendFeed friend just signed up on this poll, would you like to too?" - Brian Bommarito

sad... - Marvin

Congrats guys. And thanks for your continuos effort in helping promote and integrate web services, like mine, Wakoopa. That's awesome and I hope FB gets better because of it. - Robert Gaal

This will give FriedFeed the attention it deserves. Otherwise it would have been a geek thing forever. - Michael Netsch

Will there be a super poke feature launched tomorrow? - Matthew DeVries

aw, this sux!! Congrats to the Friendfeed team though! - acedanger

please don't merge logins!!! please - earlyadopter

They are deceived when they suffer themselves to be drawn after the image of things, without seeking for the true reason of them. - The Complex Days

I hope it works OK to you guys! - Rodrigo Jaroszewski

D: - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

+1 Netsch - I still like FF more but this finally legitimizes FF to the mainstream. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Friend request una beata fava. Pecunia non olet. - Federico Bolsoman

Yeah, I really can't wait to see what value the Ashton Kutchers and Oprahs of the world have to add to FriendFeed. - Akiva Moskovitz

Please tell me this is a delayed April Fools' Day joke. - Rochelle

Facebook & FriendFeed: don't cross the lifestreams! D:< - CannonGod

I guess this means I'll have toget a facebook account after all.... Hope the API stays up and running.... - Roberto Bonini

"Were rich B!tch!" - Chappelle - adolfo foronda

Another good thing: This ups the bar for Wave. - Wade Dorrell

What a bunch of greedy assholes. - Zio Bonino

So ? - Ercan Bülbül

Does this mean that we'll be seeing an influx of webcam spammers, a la Twitter? Along with abolishment of the rooms feature, crappification of the search feature, and more "privacy features" that really just put more nails in the openness coffin? - Tyson Key

:( - Pavlo Zahozhenko

Some people will do whatever their friends request........ - Michael Muller

I really don't see why people would be anything but excited about this Facebook freindfeed deal. Great news as far as I am concerned. The Friend feed team is going to go over facebook and make it that much easier to connect, share... isn't that what the social web is about? - Kevin Murray

I know a lot of people who use Facebook and enjoy it and that's fair enough. It's just not my cup of tea. The chaps from Friendfeed will get rich and the technology will get absorbed in Facebook but I can't see Friendfeed continuing in anything like it's present form. - Paul Nash

Don't be so negative, something good might eventually come of this... - Tarmo Aidantausta

The End. - Kaan Ertürk

Congrats! I know you all must be crazy excited right now. - Michele Lorito-Chase

chance for FriendFeed to become more mainstream... congrats FriendFeed team! - Jeroen De Miranda

Nothing could make me happier than if they integrated the good tools from FriendFeed into Facebook, which is where all my friends are. So a big "yay!" from me. - Ian Betteridge

happy for you guys, but not for all of us - Flavio

congratulations. this is going to be interesting. - Dave Beckett

I think I preferred the non-mainstream version of FriendFeed... - Tyson Key

I'm turning on my black shirt, my black trouser, my black socks, my black shoes. Although I probably must be happy for you. - Ton Zijp

NASTY NASTY BAD BAD. But we'll see... - Daniel Morgan

Game over. - stark

yeah removing feed also works. - Bahriye

Reminds me so much of Last.fm fall... - Marcos

Given that the FriendFeed team has never been anything but awesome & respectful of its community, I think it's unfair for people to assume that the Facebook acquisition is going to change that. - Jess Lee

Why in god's name are we flying over this shark?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! - Matthew DeVries

Facebook is like a giant who listens to nobody. Please keep your attitude but I don't think you will be able to do so. - Burak "cyrus" Bayburtlu

Noooooooo...... - Sung W. Lim

yeahhh - Çağrı Burak

NO - Cristian Conti

Congrats! That sucks. - Rutger Blom

Where is that evidence Jess? - Matthew DeVries

I don't know, Like it? or dislike it? - Ömer Balamir

What happens to all the content that we've created and imported here, and the associated metadata? Will all that disappear into the ether? - Tyson Key

If the FriendFeed guys can make FaceBook useful and responsive again, this seems like a pretty positive step! - Robin Barooah

Robin, the Facebook users don't want that I'm afraid. - Rutger Blom

I have big loss of data concerns. See http://ff.im/6pHjo Is there any way to archive all my FriendFeed posts, likes, comments, and pictures (friendfeed-media.com) off-line? Can some Archive.org-like snapshots of FriendFeed be made (Once a month starting Sept 2009)? I'd like to see the cross-links between my posts & other people's posts, even in 2020. - - Mitchell Tsai

Mitchell: the FriendFeed site is not shutting down. Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users. - Bret Taylor

I just overheard a coworker mention FriendFeed. This is how the world ends... - CannonGod

kafa sayımı yapıp köyü satan ağalar geldi aklıma - Alper Ömer Esin

Then provide us with a way to easily make a back-up of all of our posts and all of the posts we have Liked and Commented on. - Akiva Moskovitz

Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want it to be handed off to Facebook. - Zio Bonino

Near term future? - Kol Tregaskes

I don't see good things coming from this. Although I like Facebook, I liked Friendfeed more. Partly because of the environment and the smallness of it. That is now going to be ruined. So, 10-1 odds that Friendfeed will be no more within a year after it gets intergrated into Facebook? - Mathew™ one of a kind

I doubt it Robin. Bret can only give us assurances about the "near future." Here's what I think will happen. Just like Twitter acquired Rael Dornfest and his awesome web services, Stikkit and I Want Sandy vanished (and so did he), Facebook will acquire all the talent from Friendfeed, shut this service down and Facebook will continue to suck. - Jim Misses SP

Same question as Mitchel Tsai. How do I export my data? I don't want anything to be handed off to Facebook. And I don't want to lose anything. - Zio Bonino

Congrats obviously, but im not sure about the feeling,, different user groups which can not integrate but collide.. hope there wont be an huge integration in the future. - Yunus Tunak

I'm happy for FriendFeed! But, at the same time a bit worried about the future. Hope you guys convince FB to not be evil too. - Vishal Verma

http://friendfeed.com/sunipey... - sunipeyk

Let's hope this is like Disney's acquisition of Pixar - wherein the Pixar guys ended up in control of the animation studio... - Robin Barooah from IM

Where the f*ck is this option to undo ? - Laurent

Odd that this thread gets modded? - Matthew DeVries

I seriously thought this was a joke. Looks like its not. I don't like it, sorry. - Michael Lynton

Does anyone want to start a bounty to purchase Facebook? ;) - Tyson Key

#FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL #FAIL - Jacque

Congratulations! - John Craft

can't be, shouldn't be... - Kemal

It is! Change is inevitable, my friends. - Bill Sodeman

Jim, I'm less cynical than you - the FriendFeed founders wouldn't do this just in order to become 'talent' at FaceBook. - Robin Barooah

So will we be playing FriendFeed Mafia Wars at some point in the future? Ugh. - Alex Hellstrom

I feel if I should be wearing a black arm band. But I guess when I think about it.............. - Kevin J Hatton

Oh No! I don't like this at all :( - Peter

WTF! Horrible Bret, this the death of FriendFeed.. you know that right? - Uncle CW™

I still think Apple will acquire Facebook, Twitter Friendfeed and Google Twitter. - Thomas Power

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! - Stephen Francoeur

My condolences to all Friendfeeders! RIP! - Evgeni Leshtanski

AAAAwwwful! - carolh

I can't believe it! damn! facebook tos will apply to friendfeed too? should i start to move to another service? why anyone would think that facebook public is friendfeed public?! damn! friedfeed was my favorite! I can't understand this move! they want to kill friendfeed or what? - paula simoes ☃

"I bet I can find 1.000.0000 people who dislike this deal."...Welcome to FriendBook. - Jacque

Well, huge congraulations to you and your team, you deserve every success. To be honest I had presumed this would happen sooner or later - the only business model cool little startups have is to hope they get bought by someone bigger for their brains and technology. I'm going to be in San Francisco in a couple of weeks and was going to stop by your office to bring you a cake and thank you for a great product - maybe I still will if you're still there and there's still a FriendFeed! - Alex Lomas

The FF founders must have know this would be a very unpopular move. Most users I know here are not too fond of FB. - Rutger Blom

damn, damn, damn... - Kemal

One of the sadest news for Internet and web creativity :( - DarkBls

Woah woah... This is real? - Jason Huebel

"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" There's a bit of a contradiction in your statement, Bret. Nice try though. - jcunwired

Now I can break my Internet plan at home. - DarkBls

Grats Bret and the rest of FF. To all the naysayers... Lets see what happens before we start bitching.... - Rasmus Lauridsen

wow!! dazed and confused!! - Roberto Arancibia

I don't hate Facebook, but for sharing things Friendfeed is MUCH MUCH better! - Mathew™ one of a kind

I wonder if that Ben Darnell guy who *just* left the Google reader team knew about this beforehand? Wonder what he's thinking now? (http://friendfeed.com/friendf...) - Daniel J. Pritchett

Just great. I'm certainly not very happy about this. Let's just hope FB doesn't ruin FF. Ugh. - Elena

Who cares? Nothing's gonna change in our pitiful lifes. - bluretina

:| - Amin BZ

This ties in nicely with the fact that you soon will have the opportunity to make your Facebook profiles public and get followers there. - Michael Netsch

чатег номер два - лето ближе с каждым днем

Congrats Bret! this is so great! many congrats!!! - Jason Pollock

That is capitalism for you. Luckely, there still good 'ol usenet. - Peter

Is it April 1st somewhere in the universe? - Robert Felty

#ROFLMAO Is there anything more important than money? It seems NOT #ROFLMAO - Lora Lufark

I don't mean to be negative but there's got to be a win-win logic to each merger&acquisiton. Audience high in only quantity is clearly not a win for friendfeed in the long term by considering its unique selling points. Let's wait and see who will benefit from friendfeed's death now. - ayca

It's all about the money. I would have payed a couple of dollars each month to use FF. - Rutger Blom

#DONTSELLMYFRIENDFEED - sunipeyk

Seriously, what is this? It's like Bret just announced that he's killed all your mothers or something. It could turn out good, it could turn out bad, but at the end of the day, who cares, it's just a website (I mean honestly, come on). I could see it going either way, but in the near term, this is a pretty big win for the FF team, so congrats guys. - Chieze Okoye

OMG! - keso

To be honest, my heart sank a little but I am happy to congratulate you and the team for building such a good brand. Well done. - Kevin J Hatton

I'm just surprised, that's all. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (it certainly isn't for the owners of FF). I'm willing to sit back and see what happens. - Jason Huebel

Wow, I specifically use friendfeed b/c it is not facebook. Sounds great for the friendfeed team, but not necessarily for friendfeed users. - Evan Parker

Born to be sold, like in the old "new economy" era. Remember the late nineties? - Federico Bolsoman

Sudden desire to check out Strands again... but hey, kudos on the incoming $$ for FF team - Leslie Poston

#DONTSELLMYFRIENDFEED - Kemal

This is wisdom. Bracing for Google Wave is a good idea............. - Kevin J Hatton

this is clearly a talent aquisition... why am i not excited about this? could it be because facebook has been blatantly stealing features from friendfeed shamelessly. Likes were clearly not an original facebook idea...realtime feeds is another i could go on... - Tate DA FF MVP

While I'm sad, because I suspect this means the best things about FF will disappear or I'll be forced to use FB in some way, if the buyout was for some awesome amount of money, I can't say I blame 'em for taking an offer -- I would. - Andy Bakun

I came to FriendFeed because I don't like facebook. Now the question is, will facebook become more like friend feed? or will they just take friend feed and turn it into facebook? - Tom Ray

FF could be a good R&D arm for facebook. - Andy Bakun

My biggest concern here is that FB has a completely different audience than FF. - Rutger Blom

Fucking morons. FriendFeed is doomed now. Think logically. Facebook has NO REASON to keep FriendFeed alive. It will simply take FF's best features, suck the life of out of it, then trash FF. Way to go, FirnedFeed, damn. - Jeremy Buff

Fail. - Big K

Big Fail! - OnuRC

This announcement should have been held off until the plans for Friendfeed were known. Regardless, this is *bad* for FF users. Best case: it continues on, but with stagnated feature development. Worst case: it's gone. - tollie williams

wtf ?! - Umut

I need to install "super PUKE" application ! - Bart LePoole

http://ff.im/6pQcu - Bahriye

FFail. - rowlikeagirl

I don't want my FF feed on Facebook :( I use both, but maintain both profiles separate - Leandro Ardissone ⍨

Sigh... Happy for the team if this is what they want, but baffled by the move. The users that are going to leave because of this will make FF a graveyard and the users it gains, well... Hello spam? Sorry, but I don't like it. - Vince DeGeorge from iPhone

JEREMY+++++1 - Ahmet Alp Balkan

Wow! - felix

Well, I guess it is time to dismantle my friendfeed. We all know where this is headed. So, so glad I didn't move all my rss feeds from greader to friendfeed like so many cheerleaders suggested. - Matthew Speicher

Jeremy +1 - F. Batuhan Icoz

so what's next? where should we go? - Flavio

It's been fun here. - Capn' One Eye - adrift

Dang, and just as I was starting to get used to how FF works. FF is useful on it's own. I hope this only improves FF's system, rather than having it disappear into Facebook's wake. - Don Faulkner

My big question to everybody here is this: What are the potential downsides / upsides to this acquisition? I mean on paper I just don't see what the pros OR cons are. I don't care for Facebook but I don't see how them acquiring FF is going to change everything. - Nicholas Kreidberg

furthermore they are 2 different things: I follow a lot of people here that are not in my facebook list, which is for IRL friends! - Flavio

I don't know where to go next either. I had just settled down to make imaginary friends for all my non-FF tweeps, etc. now, I'm not sure if I should bother. - Don Faulkner from IM

I hope friendfeed continues to operate normally but it does not look good. - ashish

integrate best features of ff to fb, then try to innovate in fb if possible, then kill ff... that's it, cheers, all the best. grrrr... - Kemal

niczak has good points. FF & FB aren't exactly competitors, but they aren't orthogonal either. Let's hope FB's smart enough to see the difference and improve both platforms. - Don Faulkner from IM

Nicholas: The upside for Facebook is they just bought an engineering team that's built many of the feature's Facebook's going to need to stay competitive. The upside for FriendFeed's engineering team is $$$ and the ability to build system for a wider audience. FriendFeed's user base is small enough that it'll either get absorbed into Facebook or move on, and FF will become a footnote on the Internet timeline. - Ken Sheppardson

Don, I don't think FB wants to maintain two platforms. - Rutger Blom

first tr.im (heard about it yesterday), now this. I wasn't a heavy tr.im user (yet), but sad to see it go, even if I think url shortening is silly. - Don Faulkner from IM

As FB said they're interested in the people and not in the site, what if the community will keep running FF without its current staff? - Flavio

Congratulations! - Sam Grover

Flavio, that's not very realistic I'm afraid, but I like the idea. - Rutger Blom

rutgerblom, I don't expect they do either, thus my angst over this. - Don Faulkner from IM

if there's a team willing to do it and money, and if we accept some ads as everywhere else, we could make a new FF without FB - Flavio

I have worked hard in avoiding signing up for FB. Does this mean I now automatically will be on FB by virtue of my FF account? - Tony Vota from iPhone

Tony, most likely - Rutger Blom

read carefully: http://blog.socialthing.com/2009... - Kemal

I'll have to go with Flavio's position too. Given this news (plus tr.im and who knows who's next), I'd tend to favor community supported or federated services for things like this in the future. - Don Faulkner from IM

I am purposely not on facebook because I don't really want to talk to people I have not talked to in 20 years. - Andy Bakun

God help us - Johnny

Once again. I'm happy for the FF team. They worked hard and now collect. That's fair. Wonder if they're sitting in a bubble pool drinking champagne while we cry out here ;-) - Rutger Blom

Congrat Bret!! :)) - Cihan Cepni

trouble is (from my perspective), that the philosophies of the two platforms are at odds. FB wants to bring people to the site and keep them there, while FF is a hub, bringing people in and then sending them back out. (That's part of why it's hard for the newcomer to understand, IMHO.) - Don Faulkner from IM

This almost confirms FF will disappear: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009... - Kol Tregaskes

Great point, Don. - Rutger Blom

+1 Don - Johnny

Does this mean I can throw someone a sheep on FriendFeed now? - Pinksy

I sure hope so, Rutger. I glad for their success too. I just hope there's a next best thing out there for us. - Don Faulkner from IM

Congrats all. Nice work, in spite of any naysaying out there. Keep up the innovation. - Tomas Remotigue

LOLI FFAIL - rael

lame. - andy brudtkuhl

This should be good news for Twitter. - Rutger Blom

post the picture to failblog... - Kemal

Quote «Taylor and Cox say that the Friendfeed product will live on independently, and eventually Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook. But the Friendfeed team is not being kept whole. Some employees will now report to Cox, others to engineering head Mike Schroepfer. In my opinion that means, long term, the Friendfeed product itself is unlikely to be a big priority.¶ But Facebook is... more... - Philipp Lenssen

+1 Kol for the techcrunch article! - Don Faulkner from IM

techcrunch: "Cox agreed, noting that Facebook is focused on being a platform and a service, and not just a destination site." I certainly hope so! - Don Faulkner from IM

Brilliant move by both Facebook and friendfeed. Congratulations!!! I have theories of what they have planned, but I doubt you would verify any of them. This is going to go so well with their SocialTV which they have been developing. I'm so happy for you! - Michael Fidler

Really saddened by this news. - Doug Beeferman

Noooooooooooooooooooooo! - LouCypher

I don't see what's so bad about it since no one knows right now what the outcome will be, everyone is just making assumptions that could possibly be wrong..... Might help just sitting back and seeing what happens first before complaining. - ChaCha Fance

Nooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrghh! I´ve resisted getting a facebook acct for so long... - Thomas Bøhm

ChaCha, if everybody would do that there would not be much discussion would there? This is part of the fun. - Rutger Blom

I wonder how the discussion over on facebook would compare to this? - Don Faulkner from IM

Drat! - Gee Ekachai

congrats guys! - Elad

Don, I doubt there is any discussion going on there. They're too busy throwing quizes at each other. - Rutger Blom

Congrats, FF! I'm approaching the situation with cautious optimism. A lot of my friends only share stuff via the Facebook wall/feed, so if Facebook is able to make their feed more like the FF feed (i.e. good, instead of sucktacular) through this acquisition, it's mostly a win for me in the end. - Brian Chang

At least my Feedburner stats might go back to normal again. - Rutger Blom

/me pokes Rutger. (just getting in practice. ;) - Don Faulkner from IM

Where will we go for the FFunderCats, bacon memes, and angry artists fighting over photo reshares now? ;) - Tyson Key

Don, LOL :-) - Rutger Blom

If anybody has doubts as to what happens to the FriendFeed community or our stored information here, read this statement from Bret (in this thread) "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users". Now maybe you can see "whats so bad about it" and curb your optimism. Not good. - jcunwired

Congrats FF. Fix their live feed situation please. - Edward Barnieh

@josh: do you think FB will throw away all the crap people use? various quiz, pick 5 and so on? - Flavio

@jc: our data will not go away in the near future. what will be in few months? in a year? - Flavio

Let's see if you can do a bit better than just not being evil this time around. - Tim Tyler

Wooohooo!!, seems like we are being sent back to "good" old Facebook. Congrats Bret!! - Danli

Looks like I'm going to repeat the same thing many others did. My first reaction was "Oh my..." I have refused to join Facebook due to its philosophy while I have been with FriendFeed from the beginning for its. I'm sad and somewhat apprehensive. - Sean Leather

Congrats. I suppose this means the end of FriendFeed but hopefully a better Facebook. - Harry Toon

Hmm. Interesting. - Ralf Becker

Add me to the fearful group. - beersage

Please say that facebook.com will be shutting down, and the combined company will still be called FriendFeed... I bet it won't happen, though. - Tyson Key

"Regarding FB/FF - Here's how it's [probably] going to work. You will most likely have an account merge, all of the services FriendFeed supports will now be aggregated on Facebook, and all of your FriendFeed friends will be in a "list" on Facebook. The FF Groups will become Facebook Groups. The FF lists will become Facebook Lists." http://ff.im/6pNxq - Ozgur Uckan

Nothing like an early retirement payout :) - Owen Greaves

Congrat Bret - Nimaa

Panic attack. Congratulations, however! :) - בייַ מיר ביסטו שיין

Congratulations Bret. For me this merger makes a lot of sense. Facebook will provide the "quantity" of users, which friendfeed deserves :). - Karthick R

:( - goodmachine

FriendFeed + Facebook... Oh noes FriendFace is coming (http://www.youtube.com/watch...)! Now sorry for that link, and seriously, thanks for your work, guys. Please don't let the spirit of FriendFeed to be blown away =) - Anton

СУКИ-СУКИ-СУКИ!!!! - Viktor

hey, that is great guys! interested to see how you integrate. - Brian Walsh

Mind blown. Never expected this. I'm also disappointed, yet optimistic at the same time. - Angus Burton

Kinda curious to see how this will all pan out...although i wouldnt want the friendfeed stuff just integrated into facebook. I feel like im among a group of people who i genuinely share interests with here...dont want to lost that. - Cassidy

Best case: Facebook will continue to support and develop FriendFeed. Worst case: this is great news for Amplifeeder. - David Gaw

aieeeeeeeeeee - Richard Akerman

FAIL. Facebook is the new myspace, and now friendfeed will become a part of that BS. Can't say I'm too surprised because eventually we all sell out. BTW I don't see friendfeed lasting more than the rest of this year, if that. The good news is that we can all be subjected to add 'Are you related to a monkey?' and Blackjack apps while having annoying personal ads on our profile pages. Fuck this shit. - Tomy Thomson

Well done, well deserved, I hope FB's means and infrastructures empower your guys to even better things. But if quizzes appear in "my" friendfeed, evil things will haunt you and your descendents for 3 generations. - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

:( - Eph Zero

Well done Bret! - Alemsah Ozturk

♪ ♪ This is the end.... beautiful friends ♪ ♪ - All for design

Well, I don't see the point of sticking around here if I have accounts in both and this is going to get swallowed whole into Facebook anyways. Put simply, goodbye. - Micah Collard

It was fun while it lasted. - Mr. Gunn

NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! This place will be just like twitter... - The Count Rob

Congrats to the FF team - you've built a wonderful product! - Michael Nielsen

Whattttttttttttttttttttt??? - Nibi

The social community that has been behind FriendFeed creators have built a wonderful product. Only problem is, we don't have Zuck's checkbook :( - jcunwired

friendfeed is a beautiful product, only god knows what facebrook will do to it. Hopefully the ability to upload files (such as mp3s) will not be removed. Zuck is a tool. - Nibi

Congratulations. I'm sorry to say that I don't plan to move with you. - Lars Juhl Jensen

I don't like this.... - Zeki Pehlivan

"Like" to follow this thread. Not because I like what happened. I'm horrified. FF could disappear now. - Kamilah Gill

Same here, Kamilah. - Tyson Key

If FriendFeed had invented the "don't like" button, today would have been the day to press it. - Vishal Verma

and I just bought BuddyFeed for my iPhone this weekend. :( - Don Faulkner from IM

Oh, joy, Facebook's privacy policy is upon us! - Joris

WTF?? NOOOOO!!! Why do such good things have to be ruined by greed? Screw Facebook, and goodbye Friendfeed. - Jason R. Hunter

congratulations! - Loic Le Meur

Facebook is lucky to have such a talented group of people ... Congratulations FriendFeed! - Rob Kurrus

doesn't look like a bad joke, better be for the good then, but... Well congrats anyway guys, you did something AWESOME now let's see where Mark takes it - Dobromir Hadzhiev

That's too bad. Liked the openness if FriendFeed, and the lack crap that is on Facebook. Once FriendFeed dies, it will be Twitter only. - Mike D.

Congrats, but concerned that FriendFeed and its tools may disappear. Merging the tools with Facebook seems impossible. - Mike Reynolds

Congrats guys (and gals) ! - Benjy Weinberger

So, what does the acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook mean to us, users of both websites: Can I make a friend request from FriendFeed, and be approved for both, on one click - Reyna Carlos

Exciting news guys. I am actually looking forward to your collaboration with / work for FB. No matter what people may or may not like about FB, it does succeed in reaching a more "diverse" audience compared to most other Web 2.0/social web companies. Paired with your team's excellence in realizing features that succeed in pleasing the geekiest of Web 2.0 affine individuals, I think you are steering towards exciting waters :) - Mustafa K. Isik

*heart sinks* actually a bit of shock - I think that Facebook will leave Friendfeed as-is but I don't think there is hope for future innovation in Friendfeed since their best superstar team members will be pulled onto 'more important' Facebook issues... - Pon

And the metastasizing, walled-garden that is Facebook, continues to eat the Web. Bring on Google Wave. - Christopher A Carr

:-) + :-( very happy for the team, huge achievement, hoping to see export of innovation but not a shut down of this unique community and location - Majento

There goes FriendFeed down the toilet. well I WAS having a good day. until hearing this crap! - Scratch5150

Congratulations, and best wishes for your future together! :-) - Ruchira S. Datta

Wow, I was beginning to use Friendfeed as my defacto social site...Facebook is more for real life friends. They'll just take what makes Friendfeed great, add it to Facebook and slowly kill this site. - Manuel Mas

What is the big deal? I think it'll make FF bigger and better. You should be happy about that! - orionstarr

Somebody has to got pay for it. - orionstarr

I am disappointed. I don't want to have to go to Facebook to do what i do here. I can not imagine they will port over all the features we enjoy here. We lose a lot for only a slight benefit to Facebook. - Robert

It could be worse, myspace could've bought them lol... - orionstarr

Awful news for users but congratulations to you guys. Ideally, FB will run FF as a distinct service but I'm not hopeful. I don't want the diversity and noise that facebook brings - people doing quizzes on which movie star they resemble and playing silly games. I also wanted to keep my day to day social activity distinct from the targeted information and discussion I use FF for. - Rajit

Only just started taking a serious look at FF after hearing acquisition by FB. Sounds like I'm laggard rather than a leader in use of web 2.0 - ManojRanaweera

I think how Pon said it is what I'm feeling: *heart sinks*. - Andy Bakun

Congratulations, i am really happy for you guys!! :) - Mona Nomura

I'm not a Facebook fan, but can't begrudge the FF gang their chance to reap the rewards for all their hard work. However, it would be a shame if FB ruins the good thing we all have going here. - Ken Morley

So what now? a name change too? FriendFace? FeedBook? FaceFeed? god Facebook really sucks. oh well. Adds anyone? - Scratch5150

Congrats to the FF team... I hope the service doesn't disappear into a fold of light and heat. - Brandon

if all the things that make FF great are brought to FB then I'll be happy to use it - Mike Chelen

The community won't be there. Been on FB longer than any other, don't have nearly the relationship or sense of community there that I do here or on Twitter. - Karoli

Karoli: that is due to the effectiveness of the FF platform and interface, which help to join conversations and find interesting people more so than FB does - Mike Chelen

Mike: I suspect that FB wants FF for the search possibilities, not the community-building aspects. But we'll see. - Karoli

i guess congrats are in order, but I'm going to now go and remove everything I have that feeds into FF, and I have to ask -- do I have any rights over my archive? I have a private feed, and I have no interest in offering up my lifestream to the FaceBook data-miners. I hope the FF folks get what they hope for out of the deal, but my FriendFeed experience has been effectively killed. - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

I just learned about the FF acquisition by Facebook - WOW~! Congratulations Bret, Paul and FF team!! holy cow ........Mooooooooo! Where's the FF Acquisition Party? :) - Susan Beebe

Friendfeed after Facebook http://ff.im/6q5EY - Ozgur Uckan

Wow thats cool! - AbZ from Nambu

RT @alirizaesin FriendFeed, R.I.P. Home tweet home!.. - Ozgur Uckan

Congrats to facebook. Now, Twitter is the best. - Ebru Baranseli

Congratulations to the FriendFeed guys on the Facebook Acquisition. Not a big fan of Facebook, so I hope my favorite Uber Aggregator, Realtime Social, Microblogging site of awesomeness is not entirely absorbed into the Facebook infrastructure. I wait with baited breath to hear what "normally for the time being" means ;). - Tom Horn

Can I now have comments propagate in both directions as far as Facebook/Friendfeed is concerned? - Piaw Na

*checks date*. Damn .. not April 1st, must be for real. While I'm happy for the FF team, since I guess this is what they wanted (congrats guys!), I can't help but think this is the beginning of the end for a great service and a vibrant community. There are reasons I don't spend any time on Facebook and do spend lots of time on FF, and some kind of "FF integrated into Facebook" just won't cut it. I hope this service will live on for at least a few more years. - Andrew Perry

Gratz to the FF team but as a user I'm not completely happy. In short, I like the FF team/product much more than I like the FB team/product. Best of luck to all. - timepilot

Dang! I've killed another site! Sorry guys... FF was doing fine until I started coming here again! Same with Pownce! Went there and liked it... went underground for a spell... came back and still liked it, so I stayed. A few months later... BOOM! I have the touch! (I'm thinking I'll start devoting a lot of time to Twitter... maybe I can kill that one, too!) - Mark "DerBingle" J

Все, блядь, пиздец! - ǝuǝƃnǝ

WOW - very happy for all of you :-) - Kishore Balakrishnan

Bret, congrats on the acquisition. You guys put in a lot of hard work to create this community. I just hope you learned the mistakes Pownce made, Jaiku etc, and ensured that you didn't sell out your community, but that you helped it evolve into something as great as this into something better. Good luck in future endeavors! - Mike Lewis

Oh yeah? Ok: take tour money and go to the hell. :-((( - Claude LaFrenière

Yay for you guys, I mean that seriously, I 'like' what this means for you personally, but -1000000 cool points for doing it with FB. Sad day. - Threepwood

Karoli: FF search is so useful because it is integrated with all the other great features that help to find relevant content. if FB wants to have a similar capability, they must also develop the underlying architecture. - Mike Chelen from IM

Sucks big time. - Drea

Sadness - Yasin Jason

I can't believe this happened - Johnny

Suggested name: FailFriend. :-((( - Claude LaFrenière

Friend facebooks feed (FFF) - Filiz Koyuncu

«Experience shows that those who never trust anyone will never be disappointed.» Leonardo da Vinci - Claude LaFrenière

So what exactly is going to happen? Is FF eventually going to disappear? Will it merge into the Facebook interface? Please don't do that - Ethan

Gimme my OPML export - Sriks7

Money is the root of all evil - Shakeel Mahate

shakeel, the reasons for friendfeed to join facebook are probably about other things besides money, since many of the FF staff left high-paying jobs to join in the first place - Mike Chelen from IM

Well I've thought about it, and I'll stick around until I start seeing that crappy Facebook logo, I only have 71 subscribers here, I hate to do it but I'll probably scrap the whole thing and start over somewhere else. still can't believe that shit. - Scratch5150

Congrats, team! It's bittersweet, though. - Anne Bouey

So now we will have FriendFeed blocked at work too. Darn. - Mark Scrimshire

"Your data will not go away any time in the near term future" is not exactly inspiring for the long term for those of us who came here to escape Facebook for a) it's walled garden and b) privacy concerns. Nice for the Founders to make a pile of cash but for the many of us, it feels like we got sold down the river. Sad. - Sally Church

This is tragic. Tragic. Tragic. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

cacarr: updates for FB have progressed rapidly in the past, count how many months since new features such as api calls and site redesigns have have been implemented - Mike Chelen from IM

I can't believe it either. I feel as if — for the moment — I am lost in the wilderness, adrift. - roamin

Congratulation to the FF team! You guys deserves this. I just hope that Facebook does not change the directions of FF. - Vinko

congrats, I'm happy for friendfeed... - amelia arapoff

Congrats you guys, well deserved. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Congrats Bret! Hope the transition goes smoothly for you guys. - Cristo

I hope this means better integration: liking here will auto-like on fb and such :D if that's the case, I won't mind the ads *wink* *wink* - 'Like' robot (frɐnc)

Franc, cant stand facebook ads in their current format, hope they will be fixed eventually :P - Mike Chelen from IM

Grats, dont spend it all in one place..... - Robert Higgins

congrads. I think it will be good for BOTH companies. - Logan Lindquist

boo. - kelly

The Borg has struck. Alas. Prepare to be assimilated. (Will FB add my FF subscriptions to my FB friends list?) - Dennis Jernberg

Boo - Amit Morson

Logan: What do you mean by "both" companies? - Christopher A Carr

Now that you guys have $$$ you should swap out the not so very pleasing default avatar! - See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

Hope you guys enjoy your new jobs. Meanwhile we get to watch a great alternative to Facebook with a promising future go down the tubes. A really sad and unfortunate day. - Todd Holmes

BOO! Hiss! Mondays really do suck. - Dale

Congratulations to all the FriendFeed team. I hope you'll be able to keep the FriendFeed spirit up at Facebook. Kudos for all the great work you've been doing. - Paul Papadimitriou

Congrats and good luck.. - Can Koklu

Thanks for all the fish. Saving the so long... for now. - abacab

Goodbye FF, it was wonderful.. - Francesco Cugurra

I use FriendFeed and Facebook so it would be awesome to see FF features in Facebook. Congratulations! - krzychukula from IM

judging by the nearly 600 comments as i type this, including my own earlier one, FF could use a Don't Like button as well. or would, if we were going to be using it much longer. - kelly

Nice, i like to wish you all the best for your new job (and it's really hard, i know). I'm happy, but... don't let die FF!! - Seo (ignobile) Guru

Hope FriendFeed remains open. Love the spirit of FF - Bernaldo Barrena

Seriously, what a coincidence! Just on Saturday I claimed to be both twitter- and facebook-free. I loved FF product and personally helped to bring at least a dozen of my friends into the community. I'll stick around for a while though. - ǝuǝƃnǝ

This deal makes sense, now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask! Congrats facebook and ff! - Garin Kilpatrick

I suppose Facebook had to do it, with Twitter and Google Wave as competitor... - Alexander Kruel

обычные дела. http://www.youtube.com/watch... - ǝuǝƃnǝ

Congratulations Friendfeed :D - paniaguai

Ok. I'll quit friendfeed, so. Goodbye. Ciao - valerio fiandra from iPhone

I am noticing a lot of people going to re-esumate their lifestream.fm account now! - Flavio

I don't think FB acquiring FF is bad. But I don't think it's good either. We'll see. :-) In the meantime, keep up the good work! - Alexander Gieg

Oh shit. Love FF, hate FB. I'll NEVER, EVER merge my two accounts. I'd rather unsub from both than merging. I'll wait for the developments, and in the meantime look for an alternative. - Alliandre (la Ippe)

How long until ex-FriendFeed employees start jumping ship from Facebook? I wonder... - Tyson Key

Thomas Power still believes that Facebook/FF/Linkedin (2010) will be acquired by Apple (2011) and this is a transitional acquisition in the SN market cycle. The world is shifting to Mac, iTunes, iPhones and FB own the next generation. Apple have $29bn of cash on deposit price is not an issue. Google must jump for twitter while MS fiddle in the sticks with Yahoo. BillG will be back at the MS helm 2012. - Penny Power

:( Happy for FF people, sad for the service. Was going to move from fb to ff this week.. - Martynas

congrats! - Ronald

thts good!so i can workin both in my Fb online next - Arini dewi muchtaram

Flavio: never heard of lifestream.fm before, but I'm going to go check it out. I'll reiterate, though, that I'm now shy of any service like this, since it can disappear just as it's getting good. I heard about sweetcron.com last night (via http://ff.im/6pR2w). Maybe it's time to move from centralized to distributed again. - Don Faulkner

Just finished setting up my lifestream.fm at http://lifestream.fm/dfaulkner. Lifestream does what it says, and no more. FF's search blows lifestream away. FF is more flexible about adding source feeds, but lifestream does fine without the flexibility I suppose. FF still wins, or would, if I thought it would be sticking around. :P - Don Faulkner

Must See - Hitler blows up over Facebook / FriendFeed - http://friendfeed.com/dffrnt... - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

Dave, I'm not happy. That video gave me some much needed comic relief .. after waking up to this news. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

good for you, bad for us - Zachary Earl Strader

I also hate facebook, not because of their silly quizzes and pokes, but because I suspect they would like to maintain massive user base as the determining factor in choosing a social network. I would love to switch to orkut as I use so many other google services, but I can't because nobody else does. That should not be my criteria.... I thought friendfeed would try to make social networks work together. - Ru Viljoen

I don't understand why everyone is so negative about the situation? - orionstarr

@orionstarr - it's like Starbucks buying your neighborhood coffee shop and saying it still cares about the customers. You know it's just not going to be the same as what you've come to love. - Robin Barooah

Presumably FF will go on the back burner - and the team will try and "fix" Facebook. - Tim Tyler

sad, sad, sad. - scott willeke

Congratulations! That's huge. I hope all is well. - Juan Bruce

bad bad bad - kakilang

bye bye friendfeed! - Jonathan Crossland

Why-eee!!! ??? What next? - Wayne Lewis

I've watched Facebook morph from a relatively organised and well implemented social networking tool into the hulking mess it is now - and I really, really hope that a similar thing doesn't happen here with the inevitable changes this will bring about. - Leslie Moore

Come on guys, out with the long-term game plan, this is tedious. - Andrew Eglinton

NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, I mean Cool. - sofarsoShawn

Teach Facebook how to be FriendFeed. Let the small but fast teach the big but slow. Don't forget what Paul says - don’t be evil. - whatidiscover

Paul Buchheit

August 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Siddharth Parmar, Nate Pilling, Gordon Saunders and 103 other people liked this

That's nice. Just random, or in response to something. :) - τorƍue

71 more comments

Does that mean you got a little sleep? - Anne Bouey

Good news? People like Paul don't usually get in the office so early especially after a lack of sleep, on a Monday morning, if there wasn't a great reason. - Louis Gray

this could be big. - vijay

Aww Man, see now I am not going to get any sleep tonight! DAMN YOU PAUL and your teasing little smiley face. OK, must go and get some coffee! - Travis Koger

O.k., I'll smile too :) (and open my ears and eyes) - Martha

10 bucks says that they add emoticons soon. :) - Joe Beda ()

This emoticon makes a little more sense now... - Stephen Foskett

Guessing this was about the Facebook announcement? - Ben Hedrington

Cheshire cat? - Hutch Carpenter

Good for you, Paul. I can't help but feel a little let down, though. - Matthew Gifford

well done! - michael sean wright

Congrats! Let us (well, our chef) cook you lunch before you're no longer walking distance! :) - Don MacAskill

I have the same feeling as Matthew Gifford... Congrats to you, Paul, but I'm not sure this bodes well for the rest of us. - Fa La La La Lindsay

Congrats, Paul. :-) - Jordan Hofker

Congratulations! - Ethan Herdrick

Congratulations to the whole team, Paul! - Ryan Kuder

yeah they signed away the community :(- - Peter Dawson

Congrats Paul if they're truely in order :) - Jason Cronkhite from iPhone

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - andy brudtkuhl

congrats to the team, but to be honest i'm not liking it at all - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Good news or bad news? :) - Arda Çetin

Congrats Paul! I was really hoping this would happen. Friendfeed and Facebook need each other. Cheers! - Akshay Dodeja

Now I get it. Congrats on the $$. - Yolanda

Now I know...and knowing is half the battle - Bwana ☠

:( - TiTi

Congratulations!!!! A 'worthy' smiley ... ;-) - Bo Stern

I think Paul's emoticon was charming and that Louis Gray is either super discerning or super informed. - Michael Muller

Congrats to the FF team you guys are awesome (keep this place awesome) - Ryan

WHAT'VE YOU DONE!!!! THAT'S TOTALLY SH*T! - Ahmet Alp Balkan

http://bit.ly/jC1DE - Bo Stern

congratulations, may your road ahead be smooth... - Nathan Chase

That can imho only mean good things for the FB UI ... - Bo Stern

Congratulations, definitely. - DGentry

congrats! - Peter Warnock

Congrats to you and the entire FF team. I hope you guys are in it for the long haul. - Mike Doeff

hey congrats to the FF team! I look forward to seeing what the future holds - (jeff)isageek

Congratulations Paul & FF team! - Charles Ying

congrats dude - Jason Pollock

:( - Alex Scrivener

Congratulations. - 321

congratulations.. but liked the whole UI & funtionality of ff than fb!! it'll b gone!! - Gtp19

You're totally ::stpd:: - Ahmet Alp Balkan

its business after all, sell it but get back to make a better product for your old users. dont 4get the users !! - Peter Dawson

http://friendfeed.com/sunipey... - sunipeyk

:( - acedanger

the results of good work - Juan Pablo Ruiz

congratulations! - Hareesh Nagarajan

Congrats! - DS

GZ! - Sarp

:) we will learn from the process - abdellah

Paul, will you respond to this? This is *bad* for FF users. Best case: it continues on, but distracted by Facebook and with stagnated feature development. Worst case: it's gone. Middle of the road: Facebook forces its ads into the timeline and friendfeed starts acting like Facebook by ignoring its users. - tollie williams

@tollie, I imagine Paul's ability to respond is now constrained, which is just one of the changes we'll see coming. There's new management in town, folks. - Ken Kennedy

scared!!! - abdellah

Good luck Paul... it's gonna be a great partnership. - Andrew

Congrat's Paul. Great news, and I'm really happy for all of you! - Michael Fidler

Congrats to the whole FriendFeed team! - John McCrea

Way to go Paul - bet you sleep like a baby tonight whilst Biz and Ev scratch their heads once more! - Jan Simmonds

Sure congrats to you!!! - susan mernit

http://friendfeed.com/markzuk...... Hold on! markzukerberg?!?! - Lora Lufark

Congrats! - fbrunel

congratulations! - Loic Le Meur

Congratulations Paul - I am very proud of you... no wonder you couldn't sleep! :) Now we know why! As you know, I am a huge fan of your FriendFeed product. I am very happy for you guys and hope you keep your fabulous culture of innovation going strong. This is really amazing.... nice exit! :) - Susan Beebe

I have been wishing facebook could get more like Friendfeed :) awesome. - Christian Burns from iPhone

Nice job, Paul and team. Congrats! - Rob Shillingsburg

many congrat. from UK. ;) @GarethWong - Gareth

I bet you never forget your anniversary EVER ever now. - Pete Delucchi

boo-urns - Raphael, Raphael

:D - paniaguai

:-( - Jannifer @wordsforliving

Congratulations, great for you and the team. - Rocky

i like the way the deal was done! - Siddharth Parmar

G.Z.s - Ugur Akdmr

Robert Scoble

Talk about Facebook buying FriendFeed here (on FriendFeed, of course):

August 10 from iPhone - Comment - Like - Share

HealingBrush, Chris Martin, lolise and 164 other people liked this

I'm not sure what it means, but I hope the goodness of Friendfeed stays intact. - Tom Landini

223 more comments

About time! - Rob Haas from iPhone

I guess Facebook just got real time search engine! - Robert Scoble from iPhone

What do facebook get out of it? - Ruchit Garg

Fact or fiction? - Jason Cronkhite from iPhone

I haven't seen likes and comments stream real-time this fast before. - ydfeed

It depends on who lays claim to our posted and aggregated material. - jcunwired

it could work. if Friendfeed completely replaces Facebook - Edgar Rodríguez

I think it's a brilliant move, although bringing this into the Facebook walled garden would ruin it. - Derek Shanahan

how much for? - Ruchit Garg

Is it true Robert? - Kevin Whalen

BAD 'n SAD :(( - sid 【ツ】

Great match to take on the Twitter machine. - Ryan Cummins

what is next..facebook killing twitter integration...SCORE....?? - Denis

++Edgar - Ryan

Presumably a technology acquisition then, Facebook is buying the team and the tech. - DGentry

Good for Facebook, BAD for us. NOOOOOOOOOOOO - Nir Ben Yona

I don't like it - Jason Hargrove

Bad news, if true. - LogEx

Just because Facebook bought Friendfeed, doesn't necessarily mean they will do anything with the service. At least maybe not right away. People need to chill out. - Alex Knight

hope it doesn't mess w/ twitter integration - Ken Seto

makes a lot of sense - f.b. now has a power house of real-time all-stars. fixes many of the feature 'wish' lists for f.b. - actually a major positive sign for innovation. congrats to the F.F. team. - michael sean wright

How can i shut down my ff account? - Fotis Alexandrou

I need a few hours and possibly large amounts of chocolate - Bwana ☠

If you are right, that "Facebook just got real time search engine", that is good - as FB really, really needed it for a long time. - Bora Zivkovic

:( - Sinem Co

yes, this is fast. Reminds me of a few hours ago when I was on Freenode - Ian Tindale

There goes your data. - Jason Hargrove

This will probably be bad. like all purchases, it will be an "afterthought" and never be fully allowed to develop and flourish. - Ryan Jones

Man this is really SUCKS!! :((( we all know Facebook strategies on the web :(( Whey will drive FriendFeed to the helll and I'm pretty sure of this :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( BAD SUCKS SAD :((( - FFTornado

Funny thing is, if you posted about this on Facebook, 99.9999% of it's users would go "huh, what's FriendFeed anyway?" - Richard Matthias

It almost seemed inevitable since Facebook has been copying so much of Friendfeed in recent months. It's good for the founders of FF and may benefit those of us who use both on a regular basis. Maybe they'll just leave FF alone? - Kenley Neufeld

someone tell me what they will do with it? Nothing maybe? Kill it, maybe? - Francine Hardaway

Wonder how they'll integrate, separate services with more interaction or FF swallowed by Facebook. - Steven Cains

Buy as is use it's IP and close it down or run as separate business? Either way, didn't see that coming. - Keith Bennett from BuddyFeed

It was bound to go down. Like we used to say on the block shootin' dice "Big Bank Take Little Bank" - professor daddyo

I do, however, wish tha tmore sites would implement this commenting engine. - Ryan Jones

Fotis: haha, wait too long, and you'll never be able to close your FF account ;) - Jason Hargrove

not believing it until another source confirms... - Benton

Congrats to the friendfeed team. Worried about the future though. - Andy Roth

Whats FriendFeed anyways? - Marco Horta

so that Facebook can maybe copyright the "Like" button? lol - Than R

How are we going to abbreviate it now? FBFF? FFFB? F^3B ? - Harry Wolff

I receive the breaking news via BNO News at this moment: Facebook acquires FriedFeed... - Torsten Eckert

haha you're right Richard - Ken Seto

Wow - Rodfather

I am stuck in Texas and have not confirmed myself. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

OMG. - Nathan Chase

maybe they can implement threads? - Jeremy Toeman

It looks like a defensive move. I think it's better fro FB to acquire FF than incorporating twitter functionalities in their status feature. - Pablo Paniagua

double wow. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Friendbook? Facefeed? - Jeff Harbert

If it's true, I suspect FriendFeed as we know it will be gone, but Facebook will be greatly improved. - Costa Walcott

bah. i will go do something else. this news isn't helping - Edgar Rodríguez

trying to look on the bright side - maybe we'll get those iPhone/Blackberry apps for better access to FriendFeed - Stuart Miniman

But if it isn't true we would have heard by now. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

apprehensive about this - Liz Polay-Wettengel

Official: http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Brandon Titus

I want to hear the $$$ number - moo yu

Congrats to ff team...but how does this work? I have 2 different accounts...and I like it that way...I don't want to share/spam my friends on facebook with what I have here... - brainno722 (Peter)

@robert no we wouldnt have - Jeremy Toeman

It's official: http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... - Costa Walcott

Originally posted this to your other FF/FB post before you astarted this one: I don't see the point of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. They are pretty much identical services (well, FF represents just the News Feed portion of Facebook) I don't see how they can incorporate FriendFeed into Facebook. If they really did buy it, then I see this as them going for programming talent more so... more... - Christopher A. Wichura

From FF blog http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... - Tom Landini

I'm hoping this improves Facebook (just like everyone else). Facebook has gotten horrible stale for me of late. - Harry Wolff

Bad bad bad bad bad bad ::runs screaming down the hall:: - Kandeezie from fftogo

This stream itself is the evidence of WHY Facebook bought FF. - Steven Walling

What's looking shiny and new now? :-) - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

I've been needing a reason to get re-interested in Facebook, this could be it. - JonInteractive

Friend management will need to be enhanced/overhauled. Otherwise, the noise will make the combined product unusable. - Peter Ghosh

No! I am going to cry! I HATE FACEBOOK! I have a Facebook account, but FriendFeed is way better. Life is over! Apocalypse. - Zachary TG

Seriously, how can i shut it down? - Fotis Alexandrou

We'll have to wait for more details to see exactly what Facebook is planning to do with FF. - 321

Bodes badly for FriendFeed. --rj - Roger Jennings

Bad bad bad bad bad bad ::runs screaming down the hall:: - Kandeezie from fftogo

I think this is more of a "send the friendfeed traffic to facebook" than any kind of technical leverage. My biggest concern here: in order to exchange dialogue with people on facebook I need to be friends with them vs. being able to do it on friendfeed without having to friend them up. I find this valuable as there may be a topic or 5 that I want to engage with user "X" on, but I don't... more... - Erik Boles

I am disappointed by this news... I don't like Facebook at all... And I'm afraid they will just kill FriendFeed with their awful cluttered interface... - Fa La La La Lindsay

It depends on how they integrate it. Did they buy it for the search engine, or did they buy it as a potential for extending the reach of Facebook into real time conversations? It's all about the life stream now right? So probably Facebook's attempt to stake a claim there. - Tony "Frosty" Welch

bad days are coming - Ahmet Soyata

Fotis, why do you want to shut down our FF account? - Alex Knight

This is bad news for Yahoo 360°. Oh wait, too late. - Ian Tindale

Bad bad bad bad bad bad ::runs screaming down the hall:: - mary

Crap! - Zachary TG

This is disgusting. - Zachary TG

First of all, I love the name "Facefeed." ROFL Second, this is business boys. Happens all the time. Why do you think innovation keeps happening. FB will integrate or kill off FF, and something else will happen. It's a natural cycle. - Francine Hardaway

For a second I thought it was a joke, but then I checked Friendfeed's Blog. http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... Damn it. - Alejandro

Nir Ben Yona +1 - Muge Cerman

Turmoil - Ian Tindale

wondering if i should continue aggregating all my online activity in frienfeed now that facebook owns it!! - Gtp19

Geeks and fb not a good mach - thomas elton from iPhone

I can't begin to process this right now. Too much work to focus on. Later when I read this 10,000 mile long thread and have a glass of Cab in hand. - Michele Lorito-Chase

We fear change - Ian Tindale

Not feeling real good about this, hope fully Facebook will do right by the FF community, but I'm not holding my breath. Glad for the FF team though - Kim Landwehr

Twitter dissed again. - JonInteractive

if you look closely at FF the large majority of FF posts are twitter posts, so there was not that much original content on FF in the first place... - Ingmar

So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter.. - Nick Halstead

Makes a lot of sense for Facebook. And we find this very healthy ^^ - twitscoop

People need to stop freaking out. The Facebook/Friendfeed buy out was just announced. Wait for details people. - Alex Knight

It could be bad, it could be good. As long as Facebook doesn't try to port their functionality over, I'm fine with it being a financial acquisition. - Adam Reyher

Crap, its official ! - Peter Dawson

This is really bad... a wonderful tool based on killer technology will go over into this mass market teeny poking culture. Bah! - Markus Tressl

then again it is great for linking FB, TW, flickr and so on - Ingmar

Here is the FF post on the acquisition: http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... - Mrinal Desai

Great, why did I bother creating an account here? I could have held out. - desinole

if this is true, for the love of god, please don't Facebook go and mess up FriendFeed as they have their own system, Facebook is a mess these days, Friendfeed is one of the 2.0 sites that actually has concentrated on doing a few things well, complete opposite to Facebook. - Carl Grint

I suppose Friendfeed was considerably lacking in LOLcats. - Ian Tindale

Cuz we all know that facebook doesn't respect user's privacy and you've got basically everything on ff, youtube, twitter, digg whatever you do - Fotis Alexandrou

http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... - tollie williams

Paul Buckheit will now be a house husband:-) - Francine Hardaway

Confirmed by FF http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009... - David Peacock

Smart for Facebook but I prefer Friendfeed the way it is.What, we'll be throwing rabbits next? - Janet Fouts

FriendFeed listens to the community. Facebook doesn't. Not to mention they're ENTIRELY different communities. - Adam Reyher

If true, congrats to the FF Founders! - Jason Cronkhite from iPhone

If they keep FriendFeed as a separate site, and still upgrade regularly, this is fine. If FriendFeed winds up in the dead pool, then it sucks. - Steve Sill

Maybe I should rediscover my Orkut account. - Ian Tindale

I was just thinking how Friendfeed had stayed out of recent takeovers, mergers and hence cyber attacks. Will Friendfeed now be taken over by celebs and spammers too? - Nils Geylen

Not sure why this news makes me nervous. Please tell me it's going to be ok Scoble... - Lucas

FF has been FB's incubator for awhile. - Peter Warnock

it's true damn!!!! - Edgar Rodríguez

How can I spam on this thread please ? Any idea ? - Toucouleur

Quickest/Biggest thread ever - Ian Tindale

Facebook has ZERO respect for users' wishes... Friendfeed is incompatible with that. Friendfeed will be going away. :( Their blog post says as much: "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally **for the time being**. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product" - tollie williams

Ideally, FB will leave FF to do the sweet innovating they are doing and just take the awesome features and put them into FB - Ryan

This is the first time I've used Friendfeed in a year. Good move on their part. - chantelle

How Much ? $$$ ;-) - Jacopo Gio

I'm heading back to Jaiku where it's nice and quiet - Ian Tindale

So, where do we migrate to now? - Byron McCollum

FriendFeed functionality on Facebook would be nice. The reverse, not so much. They're trying to address two entirely separate purposes and as such, need to remain completely separate. - Adam Reyher

back to the twitter - emresezgin

I want numbers. how much did facebook pay? - Zac Bowling

soon friendfeed will = Jaiku - johnny2009

Hum...let's see what happens. - Chip Hanna

Stay here until FB does something dumb with FF - Ryan

The rhetoric seems a bit too "Facebook will do what they want with us" and not "we will remain FF and continue forward". Seems as if FB went for the tech and we could lose FF as a seperate entity. Boo. - Derek Shanahan

confirmed by facebook press release. - Zac Bowling

Love 'em or hate 'em....Facebook made a phenomenal purchase. - Kevin Pruett

I see a ton of Wall Spam. Facebook users just don't get it when you port your twitter updates over. There is too much for them to wrap their heads around. This will be a hard transition. - Ryan Cummins

And I was REALLY getting fond of FriendFeed. From now on only downhill applicationwise? - Bart

Not happy about this. I use Facebook, but don't like it. It reminds me of AOL from 10 years ago. - David Sharpe

I agree that I don't want FB to mess up FF, but this will also give FF a higher profile and bring in many more users...which we may or may not like, judging by what happened on Twitter. I hope FF doesn't die off like Jaiku because I really think FF offers a more valuable and useful interface. - Cathryn Hrudicka

One thing to consider is this: If we have "trusted" the FriendFeed people not to screw things up, hopefully we can trust them to make sure they're still in control in the terms of the acquisition. - Adam Reyher

What's it going to be called? Failbook? - Ian Tindale

Its going to be called Facebook. - DGentry

I hope this is a joke.. Damn it, I dont like Facebook now there is nowhere to go... F*** - Jacque

I am trying to imagine how this will be a good thing for existing FF users. It feels so right and so wrong all at once!...Maybe at least my kids and wife will finally get what I've been ignoring them for over the past year. - Thom Kennon

FeedFace - Ian Tindale

Is that means we're going to see more extremist groups around, now that FB has acquired FF? - Nir Ben Yona

so where do all the cool kids go now? we need another startup, stat! - h1ro

I am afraid... what johnny2009 have said can really be the future... soon friendfeed will = Jaiku - Ahmed Mubbashir Khan

Damn,I've just"got friendfeed,and i love it.I definately don't like facebook.What does it mean for twitter? - Paul Downing

Any investors want to predict the buyout price? - Kevin Pruett

am gonna wait for google wave... coz in facebook, i cant access the complete stream for a month ago, the site goes down very often while browsing, and privacy issues galore!! congratulations for friendfeed but its jus me!!! - Gtp19

Maybe we´re seeing here one of FriendFeeds biggest discusions ever. I´m sceptic about the future of FF as a standlone service... - Torsten Eckert

What concerns me most is what happens to my friends here (and that I have to interact with my friends THERE). Will we have to be friends to interact in the same way we have the last couple of years? - jcunwired

This is very good for FriendFeed as long as Facebook doesn't corrupt them. I would have preferred to see Google buy FF but I know with their focus on Wave I don't think it would have been a good fit. I like the Facebook platform, but they have done too many shady things in the past for me to trust them. - Adam Teece

all of the conversation is happening on FriendFeed and Twitter - nothing on Facebook. Think we'd scare away Facebook if everyone starts having lots of conversations there - like on Scoble's fan page? - Stuart Miniman

They can or don't have to fix FF's FB app now. - ydfeed

Is Twitter going to buy Myspace? - marcus bösch

Ha Stuart - great point *Facebookers take cover* - Kimberle Kelly

That does it. I'm going back to usenet. - Ian Tindale

What's next- Macy's buying Gimble's? - Thom Kennon

Apple buys China - Ian Tindale

what do you think Robert? - courtney benson

All I can think of is now a lot of people can feel the pain the dedicated Pownce community felt, but at least you're not getting shut down, just yet. - Mike Lewis

I'm not a big facebook user, but my gut feeling is that like twitter buying summize, it will mark the end of major innovations. I hope I'm wrong. But they should totally go with the facefeed mashup name. - motownmutt

I dont see any potential for competition with twitter FB and Twitter serve different purposes as does FriendFeed - iluvblackwomen

Sorry but renaming Facebook to 'Facefeed' is utterly stupid. - Alex Knight

It'll be called ScobleFeed - Ian Tindale

does making google reader more social has anything to do with this buyout??! - Gtp19

yeah this was good for facebook. bad for anyone who liked friendfeed. - Liz

FriendFeed is very good, a better way to use Twitter & etc. Knowing this, I still rarely use FF. Not going to start using Facebook more. - Nicole

Actually, this could be death for Twitter when you think about it. The people I know who are in FB are not likely to add TWO more nets to their lifestream. FriendFeed makes more sense for them. Maybe Twitter just stays as the dumb pipe it's become for many of us here. - Thom Kennon

Echoing what others have said - My guess: Facebook will get better, Friendfeed will get worse, Twitter will matter a lot less. - Matthew Blaisdell

Good for FB UI and search, questionable for the FF community and its independent spirit ... - Bo Stern

last comment 2 hours ago on FF by Paul Buchheit, FF CEO, was just " :)" http://friendfeed.com/paul #friendbook - Jacopo Gio

The main reason why I came to FF was because when I tried to treat FB the same as FF, i was talking to a wall. At least people interact here. At FB, it's all about the cheesy games/apps. - Matthew Horton from iPhone

http://friendfeed.com/sunipey... - emresezgin

Just like most acquisitions, it could be good and it could be bad. I trust that FriendFeed will live on as FriendFeed, only sharing their tech with Facebook. Possibly more integration between the two sites. If you were FF/FB, what would you do? - Nick Humphries

Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook are three entirely different animals. Facebook eats Friendfeed and poops out little bits of content that once belonged to us. Twitter continues to thrive as the broadcast conversation-wannabe that it always was. - jcunwired

Nick - think again. Its going to go away - read the tea leaves in this statement: "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" - Bret Taylor in this post https://friendfeed.com/friendf... - jcunwired

Please no. I don't like FaceBook... - Svartling

We need a Friendfeed alternative: http://www.fftogo.com/e... - Marcos Marado from fftogo

Facebook must want real time soc-net search badly... - martin smith

The biggest thing here, at least within the Twitter context, is that this merger will combine 'verified' identity (in terms of Facebook user ID being slightly more 'real' than Twitter) with real time status updates. - Dan Patterson

I'm looking forward to what this brings to Facebook. I have enjoyed both networks but wondered when FriendFeed/Facebook would face-off and/or be absorbed by the other. I think FriendFeed's tech will improve the Facebook experience. - Jacob Sloan

FriendFeed + Twitter = disruptive. FriendFeed + Facebook = one more app for FB . Facebookers dont know the power of FriendFeed. I agree with : "" So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter.. - Nick Halstead "" - Rocky

Most likely scenario is Facebook assimilates the FriendFeed guys, has them work on improving Facebook newsfeed/realtime/status, and lets FriendFeed die a slow unmaintained death. - Richard Akerman

Well, my friends on FB doesn't give a damn about sharing links, news, pics, vids etc. So I'm not sure how I will use FB+FF now. I don't think FriendFeed will exist, just implemented in Facebook. The name FriendFeed will die. And: on FB you don't want the whole world to see everything you're doing, just your friends. And it will stay this way. So the question is: Who will build the new FriendFeed? - Patrik Johansson

Do this mean, by the way, that we (the FriendFeed users) should start to connect with each other on FB? How will they like that? People who get's 2-3 maybe 4000 connections? - Patrik Johansson

Robert, it means all the time you invested building friends lists and updates there will go to Facebook :-) - Loic Le Meur

could someone start to develop a Frienfeed clon , please ? ASAP ! - Rocky

Seems bloody terrible from this users perspective. Good for Friendfeed the company though. - Quasar

Given Facebook's past, this could be really bad. Given FriendFeed's past, this could be really good. No real way to speculate without talking to the FF crew. - xero

+3273 Quasar! (one for each of my Likes, already on a death march) - jcunwired

Robert, do you know if Facebook is going to put on limits here at FF??? Oh crikey... so much for our citizen journalism here.... Admittedly I am bummed. Uber bummed. - Arleen Anderson

EndFeed. - Alex Schleber

your blog is the most important thing you can own on the web. these sites can come and go. it's a great social point but true friends you've made here you talk outside of ff, right? - Terry O'Fee from BuddyFeed

It's a good time to sell to Facebook, cause Google Wave is imminent and is going to destroy all of Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. I think FriendFeed employees might even go back to Google eventually as soon as their contracts with Facebook are up. - Charbax

Robert - wow. just wow I am stunned. Sorta sad actually. I love FF innovation and don't want to see that stop !!!!! - Susan Beebe

(RE: Your tweet earlier) When you say the minor league team going to the majors, I don't always feel that this is a positive thing. As in this case, it's like Ferrari being acquired by Ford. I don't think I like this acquisition. - Richard Merritt

the free ride couldn't last forever. I know it sucks that things will change, but they've got a lot more sense than Twitter has about these things.. - Terry O'Fee from BuddyFeed

You must all assimilate to the new FaceFeed - Jonathan.Rivera

From what I'm gathering, this acquisition is more about FB acquiring the talented engineers of FF than it is about the FF software itself. A smart play by FB. Unfortunate for us that value FF. I personally feel that FB is just slowly becoming the new Myspace. Which I don't think I need to explain how lame that is. - Richard Merritt

According to WSJ — FB paid $50 million — a mix of cash and stocks. http://bit.ly/SVTA5 - Richard Merritt

If you ignore all the crappy apps and just comment and post photos, your main feed on Facebook is fundamentally a pretty similar experience to FriendFeed - people post stuff, people comment on it. That is, at-least, the way my network tends to use Facebook. The main difference is that Facebook defaults to being very closed and private while FriendFeed defaults to being very open and... more... - Edward Coffey

edward - pretty much. it's FF for the layman. remember back in the day they used to have forums too? - Terry O'Fee

friendfeed is very cliquey. you have your group of people who usually gather round for conversations. now imagine some of this friendfeed stuff in facebook. done right it will help them a lot. - Terry O'Fee from BuddyFeed

I don't think I am liking this but FB does need to add the "edit" feature like on here. - Marika Dye

FriendFeed is Facebooks Summize. It’s All About Search. http://bit.ly/11ZW6l - paul mooney

Thinking Out Loud: Echo issues during a high profile tech show http://www.talkshoe.com/talksho... - Alex 'BuckyBit' Covic

FF acquisition is expected. But, as a user, I would be bumned, if FF would become a feature of FB. As, I tend to use Twitter as my social network and not FB. - Vasu Srinivasan

It doesn't make much sense talking about 'Facefeed" and 'Friendbook'... Facebook simply bought a cool 12-people company called Friendfeed for its great search technology paying 15M plus some shares, which is really very cheap in this context, given the value of FF's technology (as it is perceived by us). They are also hiring the talented FF team, which makes the deal even more interesting for FB. Probably there are also some deeper hidden motives and implications that I am not able to get. - Liviu Barbat

I would love it if Facebook integrated the FriendFeed features. I would love it if Facebook had FriendFeed's flexibility with Facebook's privacy control. It sucks that the world may lose FriendFeed, but it is great the Facebook will likely get better. - Andrew

Andrew, Facebook will get better - over time. There won't be any Vulcan website meld of FB and FF overnight. - Bill Sodeman

thank god someone understands that, andrew. it's like "i liked this band better before they went to a major label!" ;) - Terry O'Fee

Bill - But we can dream, can't we? :) I mean, what I love about Facebook is that I'm interacting with my friends as my friends, not as usernames and avatars. But I hate their bookmarklet, the weird delays when I post anything, the comment system, and I hate the Photo gallery tech. I love the FriendFeed community, but would love bringing the FriendFeed technology over to Facebook even more. If only Facebook could buy Flickr next... - Andrew

as long as fb start thinking in creative commons terms... one day .. - Terry O'Fee

they are both great services I think will be a good thing - Logan Lindquist

oh NO! I don't spend much time at FB (everybody there's too busy playing stupid games, at least in my little network), and besides it's more private unlike FF. And now they've gone and bought FF? And I just joined! I guess I won't be around here for long, since FF won't... - Dennis Jernberg

I don't like it... - Harry Mahardhika

No mention of Yahoo. Totally irrelevant these days. Sad. - Scott Schnaars

This deal makes sense! Now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask! - Garin Kilpatrick

One of my facebook accounts got closed up. Into this account I fed my friendfeed. And into friendfeed I fed for example my socialmedian shares, diggs, stumbles etc. - Wilhelm Bauer

Time for the next generation app. *Taps foot impatiently for Google Wave* - Karen Masullo

I don't think it's about getting Friendfeed it's self; but having the developers and the information about real-time search. - Chris Martin

tollie williams

Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin - TIME - http://www.time.com/time...

August 9 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Could pushing people to exercise more actually be contributing to our obesity problem? In some respects, yes. Because exercise depletes not just the body's muscles but the brain's self-control "muscle" as well, many of us will feel greater entitlement to eat a bag of chips during that lazy time after we get back from the gym. This explains why exercise could make you heavier — or at least why even my wretched four hours of exercise a week aren't eliminating all my fat. It's likely that I am more sedentary during my nonexercise hours than I would be if I didn't exercise with such Puritan fury. If I exercised less, I might feel like walking more instead of hopping into a cab; I might have enough energy to shop for food, cook and then clean instead of ordering a satisfyingly greasy burrito. - tollie williams

tollie williams

Flickr: Advanced Search - http://www.flickr.com/search...

August 5 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

New Flickr search. - tollie williams

FriendFeed Feedback: tollie williams

When did Friendfeed start enforcing a 161 character limit on descriptions, even if you copy/paste? :-( Update: I tried it on a group, and FF told me that display names are limited to 3-25 characters now.

August 4 - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes liked this

I just posted one with 267... where are you getting this? - Johnny Worthington

5 more comments

Did they? - Sasha Kovaliov(.com)

Uploading screen shot... PS. I haven't tested this with groups - just my profile. - tollie williams

Screen shot: http://tollie.org/images... - tollie williams

WHOA! I tried it on a group, and FF told me that display names are limited to 3-25 characters now. I can't update the description without losing the display name. Double :-( - tollie williams

Also, it's plain-texting (escaping) all HTML code. Note that this very group's description would no longer work since it includes <a href, and <strong HTML that makes the total description exceed 161 characters. - tollie williams

Thanks to Kol's post: http://ff.im/2wExB, I've figured out that this isn't new behavior. It's just FF quirks. 161 / plaintext only applies to profiles. And display names can be CREATED with more than 25 characters, but changes to name/description are locked unless it is brought down to 25. - tollie williams

Zee. to Zee.'s feed, TheNextWeb Forum, Appetite

Posterous adds autoposting to Picasa, Vimeo, Delicious, Friendfeed, YouTube and more. - http://thenextweb.com/2009...

June 25 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Niranjan, murray, HealingBrush and 94 other people liked this

Don't get me wrong - I love all of this compatibility and how everything works together. However, I am starting to go a little crazy with all of the options one has to share information and distribute it throughout various networks. Do I post to FF then share to Twitter? Do I post on Posterous than share to other networks? But then if I do that how will it effect the comments on the... more... - Mike Bracco

26 more comments

I'm curious as to what Posterous can do that FriendFeed can't. It just looks like another Tumblr to me *shrugs* - LANjackal

LANjackal: They seek to be the defacto standard of how people share rich media on the web - check out this interview with founders - http://ff.im/4nQqS - it's pretty good. I wish FF gave you the ability to create a FF site with FF as the backend. I wish I could create a site that was essentially just my FF stream where people could interact with my stream in a manner that wasn't a... more... - Mike Bracco

@Mike: Thanks for the explanation. Doesn't sound reason enough for me to use it, but if you want to go ahead :) - LANjackal from IM

LANjackal: I hear ya :) I don't really use it either. I have an account setup just to play with it but not sure I see it fitting into my workflow/life in anyway. But who knows....I do love the simplicity and strategy of making posting really simple. I think it will be great for the less techno savvy who understand email and all they have to do to make a blog post or photo gallery is send an email to post@posterous.com - Mike Bracco

Just tried it out, and auto-posting to FriendFeed looks the same as if you import the RSS feed. Personally I would rather FF pull items in, instead of a service pushing to FF. - Daniel Sims

Why is this better than using Ping.fm and Traffic Geyser/Tubemogul? hmmmm - dhamza

@dhamza, I doubt anyone would just use Posterous only as a middle-man for posting content to others sites (like you would use ping.fm or pixelpipe). It is a nice feature for auto-sharing your posterous blog posts, without having to use another in-between service. - Daniel Sims

I seriously don't get the point of tumblr, posterous, *duplicating* data. Just link to the original sites! And I doubly don't get the point of nested tumblr/posterous/etc shares. - Andrew C

I like Posterous, but haven't found a regular use for it yet (other than storing and organizing my media content). I agree with Mike, though, that it is nice to "own" your information and have it all originate from one source. With the many services out there that pull and aggregate data, Posterous is unique in its pushing abilities. I even think FriendFeed has been changing its focus to be more of the starting point of a conversation than the end. - Cloud

One thing Posterous can do that FF can't (at the moment) is accept iPhone3G(s) videos via email. - tollie williams

Daniel Sims, push is faster and more efficient than pull. - Raphael, Raphael

@Tollie - exactly. They've told me they're working on pushing video to flickr (right now it only pushes photos to flickr)... but I've used it for pushing video to Facebook from the iPhone and it works great. - Jen (SquirrelGirl)

Posterous is awesome. I have an account but my Blackberry 8330 has no cam :( but once I get the new iPhone expect greatness :) - Garin Kilpatrick

Eventually, with every social media site pushing updates to every other, somebody is going to break the loop detection and we'll get an infinite number of duplicate posts about somebody's kitteh, causing the interwebz to collapse into a singularity and destroy civilization. Damn cat! - DGentry

DGentry, agreed. It's going to take some planning now to make sure posts do not get posted in loops. - LPH™ and his dog P™

Isn't this what FF was supposed to be for? I use FF as my central posting for text and websites, and PixelPipe for media (created by me). - Matthew DeVries

What does suck? Custom bars..... STOP USING CUSTOM BARS INTERNET! THEY SUCK METRIC ASS! - Matthew DeVries

Been reading a lot about it. Don't have an iphone and it doesn't really provide me anything that I need or already have. - Bill Kinney

It does seem to be a bit easier to love posterous if you're looking to share iPhone 3GS video with it. - Daniel J. Pritchett from IM

It's really the posting audio and video from the iPhone (and other mobiles) that I think is interesting. FF should add that feature quickly if they want to become the social MMS to the Twitter social SMS. Having private groups for these personal mobile captured images, audio, and videos is an important feature both FF and Posterous share. Posting to a public YouTube to get your video into FF is far from ideal. - Chip Ramsey

iPhone video can be shared very easily to FriendFeed via email share@friendfeed.com or upload video to YouTube and be sure you've added your YouTube service to FF and wala you're all set. Posterous does have more sophisticated posting options *hint, hint FF team* - Susan Beebe from BuddyFeed

I was under the impression that you could not send videos from the iPhone 3GS to FF and have them display inline. I guess I will have to test the functionality when my 3GS arrives. I understand the YouTube route, but want to keep my family videos, etc. in a private group. I don't think most people want to be spammed by videos of my son doing the robot as he slides down his new slide or my daughter singing like a bizarro Mariah Carey. I could make a private Posterous, but would prefer to keep it in FF. - Chip Ramsey

Personally I'd like to see both of them. :-P Molly - Molly from email

I like Posterous I really do but I've yet to find the problem it solves. My primary output comes via my blog, misc content via Tumblr, and Friendfeed for most everything else. Posterous doesn't really offer much that I need right now. If I didn't have a blog or tumlbr it would be a good fit I guess. - Keith - @tsudo

The biggest benefit that I can see at the moment is mobile posting. Posterus makes it drop dead simple to upload to anywhere/everywhere remotely. Updating a blog, twitter, flickr, etc, etc, via one email post makes Posterus a very shiny (if not quite silver, yet) bullet for mobile users. - Kevin Donahue

Interesting ... gonna sign up now. - Amani

Posterous is the best, simply put. - "Jazzperous" Isaksson

Twitter: tollie williams

Hi Room. Has anyone here ever found themselves removed from Twitter search? What did you do? I feel like I have been false-positive'd. And perhaps it's silly, but as someone who's been on Twitter since January 2007, and who constantly tells non-adopters of its usefulness (though, less useful after the #fixreplies issue), I feel a bit betrayed.

July 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Not that I'm aware, but let's hope it's just a glitch. U know how those #TwitterGremlins act sometimes... ;) Keep the faith. - CarolAnnB

8 more comments

Thanks for your reply Carol. I hope it's a glitch, but my gut is that it isn't. And frankly, I'll probably be better if it's not.... Story: I went months without twitter fixing a major glitch that had 2 accounts inhabiting the same namespace (now @oldshoalsbiz1 and @oldshoalsbiz2 -- both used to be @shoalsbiz). See pic: http://twitpic.com/4on82 - Finally, on a less moody day, I managed... more... - tollie williams

Hi Tollie. That has been a problem for me now for going on 40 days. My efforts to have it corrected seem to fall on deaf ears as do those of many others. Have a look at the comments attached to this *help forum*: http://help.twitter.com/forums... My take is that they either lack the human capital to solve it or even worse the financial capital. Either conclusion should be keeping the investors awake at night. - Phil Harrison

Phil, I think they have the human and financial means. Truly, I think they just don't care. The creators don't use Twitter like we do and they seem only concerned with getting numbers (via celebrities and news media). Sure, rescheduling downtime for Iran was a good move, but otherwise, I don't see them actually respecting their members. Most early adopters felt betrayed when the #fixreplies issue started. I was one of them, and now I feel it doubly so. - tollie williams

Yes! my account was not removed, but several people I know have been. They just disappeared one day from the "find people" search. Then we realized they weren't showing up in # discussions either. Basically, twitter turned their account to only projecting to their followers and off the open feed. When they contacted twitter to open a ticket, they were ignored and each ticket was closed... more... - Felicia Adams

Thanks Felicia. Through their persistence, did they ever get a "real live" response, or did they just show up in search one day? @Crystal seems to just ignores my messages (like she does most people's) and the help tickets only get me automated, useless, replies. - tollie williams

They finally got reassigned to @tiger for their issue. He (?) has been super helpful and responsive. He explained why they were flagged as possible spam. Too many RTs and not enough original posts. Crazy to be edited that way! won't twitter users take care of that themselves?? If someone is spamming, won't people drop them? Seems weird to have a "police" force for this. Anyway, he heard... more... - Felicia Adams

Thanks to Felicia and @tiger, I am now restored to the Twitter timeline. While I felt a bit wrongly chastised for being pointed to the "best practices" page (I follow them) and that I was unflagged "for now", apparently I somehow I tripped a "posting duplicates" switch that threw me out of search. - tollie williams

What REALLY bugs me is that it took personally @'ing someone who is not listed anywhere on Twitter.com to get help. The support tickets I opened up about the issue were CLOSED without ever receiving an actual reply from an actual person. If it hadn't of been for Felicia, and a fairly friendly @tiger, I am completely convinced that I would still be wrongly accused of being a spammer and have none of the benefits from appearing in search. PS, @crystal completely ignored my @ messages to her. - tollie williams

Twitter is obviously now "big enough" that they don't HAVE to care about each user and so they don't. I feel truly spited. I remember 2.5 years ago people asking me "what are you doing? who are you txting" and telling them "I'm twittering this," and trying to explain what twitter was. Now, I don't matter to twitter- at all- Oprah and her 56 tweets do, but I don't. That's wrong. - tollie williams

The Shoals: tollie williams

For those who want tweets containing #shoals delivered to their home timeline and/or via SMS, follow http://twitter.com/ShoalsRT. Some relevant tweets not including #shoals will be retweeted as well. Breaking news tweets will be retweeted without delay. See comments for details.

July 16 - Comment - Like - Share

To have your breaking news (eg. bad weather, wreck, police activity) tweets retweeted before the usual 30 minute cycle, add @ShoalsRT to the *end* of your tweet (not the beginning). - tollie williams

8 more comments

Breaking news and other general interest tweets from the Shoals may be manually retweeted, even if they do not include #Shoals. - tollie williams

Tweets containing strongly offensive language and accounts which include #shoals in every post will be ignored. - tollie williams

Other accounts like this you may want to follow: - tollie williams

@ShoalsBiz - RTs #shoalsbiz and follows businesses in the Shoals. - tollie williams

@ShoalsArea - RTs #una, #handyfest, and #shoals. - tollie williams

@ShoalsArea compared to @ShoalsRT - ShoalsArea RTs more. ShoalsArea does not link back to the original, but ShoalsRT does. ShoalsArea RTs some retweets, while ShoalsRT ignores all RTs not starting with original content. ShoalsRT and ShoalsArea may ignore different users. ShoalsRT emphasizes breaking news tweets by RTing them quickly, and ShoalsRT will also RT general interest tweets even if they do not include #shoals. (See 1st comment on this post.) - tollie williams

Update: ShoalsRT now also strips out the #shoals tag to make more room for text and to not duplicate content in search results for #shoals. - tollie williams

Update: ShoalsRT now also ignores tweets containing some other tags, like #UNA or #HandyFest, so tweets containing those tags will be ignored by ShoalsRT. For instance, a post by @WCHandyFest that includes #shoals #una #handyfest #north_alabama will be RTed by ShoalsArea but not by ShoalsRT. The logic is this: if you want info about #UNA you will follow either @north_alabama or @ShoalsArea. Or if you want info about #HandyFest you will follow either @WCHandyFestival, @shoalsevents, or @ShoalsArea. - tollie williams

Further, ShoalsRT deliberately ignores accounts that use the #Shoals tag on every post. If people want their content, they should follow that account. The idea is that ShoalsRT is to help people discover other people's content about the Shoals. From time to time, ShoalsRT may manually retweet posts from accounts ignored for this reason. - tollie williams

Robert Scoble

Wait a second the whole Amazon Kindle thing yesterday was ABOUT STOLEN property! That changes ALL the anti-Amazon arguments. More:

July 18 from iPhone - Comment - Like - Share

Marko Saric, RAD Moose, John Wang and 21 other people liked this

Those books were stolen property. Amazon had every right to delete them. Police will come into your house and take your TV if it was stolen. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

108 more comments

Amazon had no right to sell those books to you in the first place. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

If that's the case, I agree. And if you buy stolen goods, the cops don't refund your money. - Chris Baskind

Interesting to see who was anti-Arrington and anti-Amazon too. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

We sure knee-jerk online, don't we? - Chris Baskind

If you are anti-arrington you must be pro Amazon today. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Chris: yeah. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

About a month ago, I put a 3 x 5 index card on the board behind my computer. It says WAIT. I think it has helped. ;-) - Chris Baskind

The stolen TV analogy only goes so far since it was Amazon that was selling the stolen merchandise in the first place. I wonder how this has affected Kindle sales. - Justin Doub

If a printing company illegally produced copies of your book, you could rightly expect the rights-holder to go after them and even demand that unsold copies be destroyed but they certainly wouldn't demand to burn all copies sold to customers. See my comments here: http://www.torgo.com/blog... - Daniel Appelquist

You guys need to go to law school. If you buy stolen property from a store, you are the rightful owner of the goods. The police won't bother you. - Ward Mundy

Ward: is that true? I always thought that receiving stolen goods would get them taken from you. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

That's not to say Amazon wouldn't be liable for damages to the legitimate copyright holder. Just not the buyer in the ordinary course of business. - Ward Mundy

I disagree. Amazon should have found a way to work it out with the publisher (i.e. write a check). You should NEVER do what Amazon did. Pull it from the store, don't sell any new copies, fine. Don't yank content from a consumer's device. Ever. - Brian Baggett

Amazon is still at fault here, by the way. For selling something it didn't have the legal right to sell. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

We can all agree on that. :-) - Ward Mundy

George Orwell is rolling over in his grave. http://nerdvittles.com - Ward Mundy

Brian: I agree, and it looks like Amazon agrees now too but those arguments have less teeth today. By the way did you argue for or against TechCrunch publishing the stolen Twitter documents? - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Amazon should have communicated to their customers before taking any action. Amazon = Fail - paul mooney

Ward: Orwell has lots of reasons to roll over in his grave. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Paul: agreed. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Paul: I completely agree. Their actions caused uproar that could have been avoided by sending a clear message before preforming the pull. - Joshua

Amen, Big Bro. - Ward Mundy

Seeing the Twitter docs pop up over at Techcrunch felt ... "dirty". Just because you can doesn't mean you should. - Brian Baggett

I was also under the impression that stolen goods are subject to seizure. But I've no interest in law school. ;-) - Chris Baskind

Brian: lots of journalism is done with stolen info. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

It depends upon where you purchased the stolen goods. - Ward Mundy

Ward: even from a second hand store? - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Absolutely Brian, starting to read that I felt as if I were a part of some sort of espionage... I stopped reading. I think I may be done with Arrington/TechCrunch... :( - Trae Ruge

The real root of the anti-Amazon, anti-whoever, sentiment is that we all know copyright is broken and that these books SHOULD be free. - tollie williams

If the store is in the business of selling the type of goods you buy, then you are a buyer in the ordinary course and are protected. - Ward Mundy

Yeah, I realize that. The difference is when it's something like Watergate or exposing massive corporate fraud, that's one thing ... when it's exposing the inner thoughts of a company that's yet to make a dime ... it just seems senseless. Know what I mean? - Brian Baggett

Not to be pedantic, but it's important...it's not stolen property. It's a work under copyright sold w/o a license. There's a difference. "STOLEN PROPERTY" (in caps, no less) means you don't have the property anymore. That isn't the case here. It's still wrong, no question, and Amazon is in the process of working through this. But it's different, and it's complicated. All caps doesn't help. - Ken Kennedy

Robert re:"lots of journalism is done with stolen info." http://kara.allthingsd.com/2009071... - Ian Paul

Robert: Amazon isn't the police; remember the analogy; if Books Inc sold me an illicit copy of 1984, they have no right to come into my house to get it back; they'd have to follow a legal process to do that. - Stuart Liroff

Wouldn't the police need a warrant to come into my house and get the stolen property. I mean they couldn't just break into and then leave. That's what makes Amazon's action so bad, they made no attempt to inform the consumer of what they were doing. After all the consumer didn't know the item was stolen and had no reasonable expectation it was stolen. - Kim Landwehr

Oops...I capped the whole thing "ABOUT STOLEN". Sorry. I'll not edit above, but consider this my oopsie acknowledgement. - Ken Kennedy

Ken Kennedy: Excellent point and that isn't pedantic at all. - Brian Baggett

Ward, if you buy my stolen t.v. I have every right to get it back. Your money is gone and you could face charges for receiving stolen property, depending on the circumstances. - Kimber Scott from BuddyFeed

Ian: Kara is wrong there. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Ken: so if this isn't "stolen property" but content sold without out a license, doesn't that mean it was illegally obtained--at least by Amazon if not the end user? - Ian Paul

The end user asserted to Amazon that they had the rights to publish the work. - Ken Kennedy

I wonder if Amazon will ever start removing books from the kindle that you got from somewhere else, i.e. pirated content. - RobinDotNet

Robin: I doubt that. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

If somone took one of David Pogue's (the NYT writer that one of of the first to write about this), OCR'd it, put it up on Amazon via the Kindle's small authors publishing programs, and sold a couple thousand copies at $0.10 before Pogue figured out what was going on, what do you think he'd want to do? Leave them out there, or make Amazon take them back?? (I'm willing to bet $20 right here on the latter). - Ken Kennedy

Robert: I don't want to go too far off topic here, but why don't you buy the argument that there's a difference between taking company documents in the name of the public good versus a hacker doing a cyber B 'n' E? Wasn't the whole Twitter affair basically a case of prurient (okay, prurient isn't the right word here, but you get my drift) interest for the reading public? - Ian Paul

@Robin. There's no technological way to make sure that you don't have the right to that work. I think Amazon would be crazy to even try. - Ken Kennedy

Scoble: I absolutely believe the content providers won't put pressure on Amazon & Apple eventually to do just that ... - Brian Baggett

Robert i think you're conflating things again, maybe just to be a gadfly or "start a conversation," but you're equating things that aren't equal. Amazon thought they had the right to sell the book -- they didn't not *knowingly and wilfully* violate copyright. morally speaking, that is not the same kind of "crime" as buying something you KNOW is stolen from a self-admitted thief. - Karim

I misspoke. I meant to say "I absolutely believe the content providers will put pressure on Amazon & Apple eventually to do just that" - Brian Baggett

Ian: My public interest is your purient interest. - Robert Scoble from iPhone

Amazon's already said: "“We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances". Props for that...probably. But what happens when someone scarfs the next "Harry Potter-alike", uploads it with a slightly different name a day before release, sells TENS of thousands of copies before they're caught (because I bet lots of... more... - Ken Kennedy

Amazon made a mistake that had no financial benefit for the receiver of the goods. Arrington received stuff he *knew* was stolen and used it for page views. HUGE moral difference. - Karim

So they only remove content that *they* allow you to put on there illegally? That's good, bec. if Amazon did that, think what Apple could do to people's iPods... - RobinDotNet

Robert: Amazon had the right to _lawfully_ request the 1984 copies to be returned. They didn't have the right to commit a felony by "breaking and entering" in order to retrieve the property: Definition: "Entering can involve either physical entry by a person or the insertion of an instrument with which to remove property. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Stuart Liroff

Robert: maybe I don't see it the same because I am not a journalist, but I am a banker. If your information is stolen and sent to Tech Crunch et al. you would not want to see it posted I would imagine. Perhaps this isn't similar, but posting anything privat be it account balances, personal info, loan committee minutes, business dealings etc. they are all private information... - Trae Ruge

KenKennedy -- they could compare title against copyright availability. - RobinDotNet

I'm still dismayed about the reports that some books can only be downloaded a specific number of times, and that's not documented. Anybody had any problems downloading books repeatedly? (I have 2 kindles, and use iPhone kindle app too). - RobinDotNet

Robert: I think we'd need a new thread to keep this discussion going. I just can't believe that the Twitter info was in the public interest. - Ian Paul

Robin: Why would you want to download books repeatedly anyway? - Ian Paul

@Stuart: C'mon. This wasn't a masked Amazon employee in your bedroom. It's a wireless device that you authorize (and in fact expect them) to move stuff around on. You agree to a lengthy terms at purchase. Amazon can't agree to give you rights to a permanent copy of something that they don't have the rights to give you period. - Ken Kennedy

IanPaul: I might want to download it to multiple kindles. But sometimes I download a book, read it, and remove it, so my list isn't so cluttered, since they don't let you folder them. - RobinDotNet

Robin's comment brings up a good point: http://medialoper.com/hot-top... - Brian Baggett

Isn't it ironic that the books by Orwell were deleted. "He who controls the past, controls the future" is the party slogan of the govt. in 1984. Maybe Amazon thought they could go back and change history too. - Robert

BrianBaggett -- I agree, they should disclose it. I feel like I need to back up the files from my kindle to my PC just in case. Because you CAN copy them off, then copy them back on there, yourself. - RobinDotNet

Oh, the Orwell irony I think is "great" (note the quotes). It's part of what gave this story legs, IMO. - Ken Kennedy

Ken: If the perception is you're buying something from Amazon rather than renting it, then it is unreasonable. Obviously, they just made clear to anyone who wasn't sure that you own nothing on the device; you're just renting. - Brian Baggett

Robin: I see. Can the Kindle sync with your computer or a memory card and you can put them on your hard drive instead? I don't have a Kindle, just interested to hear how it works . - Ian Paul

@Brian @Robert I wholeheartedly agree...back up your files. It's trivial. - Ken Kennedy

Robert -- It would have been ironic if it happened with Fahrenheit 451 !! - RobinDotNet

IanPaul -- you can connect it to your compute and see the files, and just copy them off to your PC or wherever. - RobinDotNet

From my attorney (just a quickie, simplistic answer): "Yes, stolen property is generally subject to seizure. The buyer would have recourse against the vendor." And Ken is right: It's the Orwell angle that gave this story da sexy. - Chris Baskind

They can reclaim stolen property, but they would tell you, they wouldn't just steal it back from you secretly. - RobinDotNet

@Brian The Ars Technica article is good on this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... Amazon does consider that you have a permanent license; it's no "rental". But...(and there's always a but in contracts), it can't give you a license to something it doesn't have rights to license! That's what happened. - Ken Kennedy

Whoever said stolen property can't be taken away is wrong. In California, receiving stolen property is punishable by the law and often includes jail time. Even if you didn't know it was stolen and paid for the item. It can and will be taken by the law and held as evidence until a hearing or trial. - Marc Flores

It's NOT stolen property. It's unlicensed property. And the short answer is Amazon should have bought a license for the number of copies they already had sold. - Ward Mundy

If you buy a book from a book store, you have an absolute right to keep the book whether it was originally stolen or not. - Ward Mundy

If you buy a stolen book from somebody on the street corner, you do not have a right to keep the book. - Ward Mundy

Ken, Amazon's License and Terms of Use clearly gives the purchaser the non-exclusive rights to keep a permanent copy of the digital content on your device; nowhere does it give Amazon the right to delete it. http://www.amazon.com/gp... - Stuart Liroff

Why worry about the stolen property statues of 50 states? This isn't a big-screen TV! @Ward, that's not a bad idea (short answer), except a) what if I don't WANT to license my work, for any price. You can't make me. b) after the fact, maybe I am willing to license to Amazon...for $100,000 a pop. - Ken Kennedy

@Stuart: I know, since I quoted that about 2 minutes ago. *grin* But they can't license stuff they don't have a license to license! - Ken Kennedy

"Copies of copyrighted works CANNOT BE REGARDED AS STOLEN PROPERTY for the purposes of a prosecution under a statute criminalizing the interstate transportation of such property." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Karim

You might also search for Buyer in Ordinary Course under UCC which applies in most states. http://bit.ly/49QRid - Ward Mundy

So do those who bought 1984 have the legal standing to launch a class action suit against Amazon? A case that like that could have some serious implications for the future treatment of digital content. - Ian Paul

Depends if you can make a case that the users suffered damage, I would think. - Chris Baskind

I still don't see why Amazon deleted the books from the Kindle. Apple doesn't do the same thing for their apps. Kindle may be okay, but I'm sticking with Stanza on the iPhone for now. - darnell from BuddyFeed

So wait. I unknowingly buy a book from a store that doesn't know it's stolen. The store owner realizes it was stolen, comes to my house, breaks in and takes the book back? Since when does he have the right to do that? The police, probably. The store owner? Definitely not. - shandel from iPhone

What if you bought a car and the maker decided they didn't like how they designed the dashboard. Would it be ok for them to come take your car back that you already paid for? - Bradley Farless from iPhone

shandel, the police can't enter your home to retrieve stolen goods without 1) your permission, or 2) a search warrant issued by a court. So what Amazon did was purely breaking and entering, unless their TOS said they could do so. - Jeff P. Henderson

I think the point is that if it was a real book they couldn't do anything about it. In this case they can. This situation won't be the last since music and dvd's are also going digital - brendaries

You do not own the kindle downloads. Amazon licenses them to you. - russellcoleman

Yes, you own a license to the books. Where is it stated that Amazon has a right to yank your license? - Jeff P. Henderson

@Jeff: That's the point; you own a bogus license...what does that give you? Amazon didn't have a legitimate license. Orwell's estate pointed that out; they had no choice but to stop selling. I imagine Amazon's interpretation of the TOS is that you never had a legitimate license either. They appear to be changing that interpretation now, based on feedback. - Ken Kennedy

Ken, there is something called due process that should have been used in order to right the wrong. Amazon should not have 'broken in' and taken the books back. They should have used the proper legal procedures for doing so if that was their best resolution to the problem. - Jeff P. Henderson

Disagree Scoble. This is not about STOLEN property. This is about censorship and the rights of individuals. This is about TYRANNY pure and simple. - Richard

The Kindle is a nascent, emerging technology (sure e-book readers have been around for years, but like the iPod was to MP3 players, this is to e-books) and Amazon should do everything in their power to not leave a bad taste in consumer's mouths. Period. That 'kill switch' should be for viruses or malicious trojans or something that is really a problem. - Brian Baggett

In a case like this, the publisher should've worked behind the scenes with Amazon to license the books. If the publisher wouldn't budge, Amazon could've had the courtesy to email or post a notice on what the publisher was asking them to do. The widespread ill-will would've shifted from Amazon in a heartbeat. They could've spun this blunder into a PR opportunity if they were smart ("The big bad publisher wants us to delete your content, but we said no ...") - Brian Baggett

@Brian --- It's not any of my (or Amazon's) business why Orwell's estate (or anyone else) does or doesn't want to license electronic distribution. I personally think it's short-sighted for people not to do so, but that doesn't mean I think leaning on them the way you're describing is a good idea. Heck, I'd be MORE pissed w/ Amazon if they sent a letter like that. That's them using mob... more... - Ken Kennedy

@Brian -- there are lots of (academic, for example) works that I'd like to see on the Kindle that aren't there. I unfailingly click the "I'd like to see the on the Kindle" button, and I hope Amazon does something with it. I've even emailed authors and publishers directly. But I DON'T hope that someone rips them off and publishes things illegally, giving Amazon leverage to send "big bad publisher" letters. - Ken Kennedy

The whole debate raises a question about tightly controlled platforms such as the Kindle and iPhone, versus their ancestors that you could load with anything you liked... - Jonathan Beckett

@Ken - Had Amazon *intentionally* sold something it wasn't licensed to sell, sure they should be held accountable. However, a publisher they deal with sold Amazon something that *they* didn't own. That's not Amazon's fault; the ill will should be focused at the publisher who sold it to Amazon rather than Amazon playing copyright-cop. - Brian Baggett

"MobileReference, the publisher in question, formats and sells public domain books on Amazon. The only problem is that George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 are not yet in the public domain, at least not in the US. According to Amazon's statement to Ars Technica, "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books." -- http://bit.ly/Depgj - Brian Baggett

I really think Amazon's learnt a very important lesson today. I guess the kindle marketplace is a nascent one, and a new foray for Amazon into DRM-encumbered file distribution. One would assume this will not happen again. - Bryce Roney from iPod

Do I have to be anti either? - Jesse Stay from iPhone

Robert Scoble 2009: "Wait a second the whole Amazon Kindle thing yesterday was ABOUT STOLEN property! That changes ALL the anti-Amazon arguments." Philip Mauro, 1906: "All talk about dishonesty and theft in this connection from however high a source is the merest claptrap for there exists no property in ideas musical, literary or artistic except as defined by statute." - Loryn Jenkins

Another point: this story has nothing in particular to do w/ the DRM on Kindle files. The "big deal" is the always-on (by default) connection that you don't often think about, since you don't pay monthly for it. WhisperNet is convenient, but that convenience has a downside. File DRM isn't the issue is b/c Amazon can and does sell ebooks w/o DRM; I bought a Kindle copy Mur Lafferty's... more... - Ken Kennedy

DRM isn't exclusive to a file; DRM can be an aspect of the hardware. - Brian Baggett

Valid point, Brian. But the Kindle isn't really DRM'd in a direct hardware sense...it mounts as a drive if you connect it to a USB port, and you can drag off the files. Most people don't, but there's absolutely nothing stopping you. I backup all my purchases (and yes, that includes stripping the encryption; I have unencrypted backups of all my books). If Amazon made it impossible for... more... - Ken Kennedy

@Brian...just saw your earlier comment: "the ill will should be focused at the publisher who sold it to Amazon". I agree 110%; sorry if it seemed otherwise. There's an argument that could be made that the complicated nature of copyright makes this stuff confusing (ie, the fact that these books are in the public domain in Canada, Australia, and Russia already), but that's no excuse. If... more... - Ken Kennedy

Amazon clearly violated federal "computer tampering" laws. See http://cid-c072ace4f752027c.sp... - Brian K. Stanley, Att'y

tollie williams

Demanding the source code to USA's OS- 'the laws need to be readily available to all, not locked to be purchased' - http://www.boingboing.net/2009...

July 14 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

"to establish a basic principle: the laws of our society need to be readily available for all to read, not locked behind a cash register. The past practice of parceling out the public domain to private parties is illegal and needs to stop." - tollie williams from Bookmarklet

FriendFeed Feedback: tollie williams

From my comments elsewhere, I figure it's best to post these as separate entries: idea #1: The fact that one post with ongoing comments can appear to "flood" a group might be an issue that the team wishes to consider rethinking. Perhaps "bring to top only if entries since last comment are > x" such that, the entry being commented on will continue...

July 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Kol Tregaskes liked this

... continue to scroll down, but be brought back to the top if it's, say, 20 entries down the page. - tollie williams

Thanks for the feedback, Tollie! - Ross Miller

FriendFeed Feedback: Marlin Forbes

I'm now posting my Twitter stream to FriendFeed using a Yahoo pipe to cut out any @replies and filter the format. The pipe is here http://pipes.yahoo.com/datasha..., put in your own username, copy the RSSlink. Setup a custom RSS feed in FF. Leave both checkboxes unchecked. And obviously, don't feed it back into Twitter! :)

July 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Pistos, Nilesh, denise and 13 other people liked this

cool - Petr Buben

6 more comments

I use a similar pipe. Problem is, if I share something on FF, sending a copy to Twitter, it comes back to FF. Any idea how to circumvent this? - Peter

This is great! Thanks! - Svartling

Great idea. I love pipes. Thanks! - Michael Fidler

Thanks for sharing. I made one change, to make it remove entries posted to twitter from friendfeed, just incase FF was reimporting them. This might be the solution to Peter's question. It was my first time using pipes, and I gave credit to this friendfeed entry. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes... - tollie williams

tollie, that works if you have tweets linking back to ff, but I have tweets linking directly to the source. - Peter

Yeah, I'll write a parser that looks for a link at the end of the tweet optionally prefixed with a '-' and replace the rss link with the found one. That should work, not sure how to do it yet on Yahoo Pipes, we'll see tomorrow. :) - Marlin Forbes

For the re-sharing thing, you just have to disable sharing that RSS feed back to Twitter in the Twitter publishing options. Feedback loops are not fun... :) - Marlin Forbes

FriendFeed Feedback: tollie williams

idea #2: If someone is silently removed from a discussion they are participating in (by being blocked by the entry's owner), I feel like it should be noted in the comments. Perhaps "if C has comments on O's entry and O blocks C, add a comment owned by O saying C has been blocked." (O could then proceed to remove the comment, if they really desired...

July 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Ladybug Heather, Tyson Key, Kol Tregaskes and 3 other people liked this

... really desired to.) - tollie williams

both good ideas - Petr Buben

Hi Tollie, thanks as always for the feedback! - Ana

tollie williams

Why FriendFeed's growth is flat, IMHO: 1) The barrier to entry increases with the character limit and inversely to the photo count. 2) Let's face it, the biggest differentiation from twitter is not comments (twitter has @ replies) or the better search (although, that's big) or attachments (twitter has 3rd parties for that)... continued in comments.

July 10 - Comment - Like - Share

-- the differentiation is groups, yet the process of finding a group is still pretty awful (by searching - the results are cluttered at best) or non-obvious (by clicking on someone's subscribers and scrolling down). (From my comments here: http://friendfeed.com/friendf...?) - tollie williams

2 more comments

From my comments elsewhere: how to improve group search... the Find Groups page should look a lot like WeFollow.com, except where WeFollow has category titles, FF should be organizing the groups by "Most (subscribed/active) among (friends/everyone) (today/this week/this quarter/this year/all time)." - tollie williams

(Yes, that's 2*2*5=20 possible groups. But you would design it to show 3 categories, with the switches I put in parenthesis as interface elements.) - tollie williams

Peter to Peter's feed, FriendFeed Feedback, FriendFeed Rooms

Someone stole my comments. I can't read what I wrote in http://friendfeed.com/iphone... I attach part of the entry that was still in my browser cache

new-highly-sensitive-person-ff-group-room-check.h... 26 KB

July 10 - Comment - Like - Share

Ladybug Heather and Kol Tregaskes liked this

Apparently, the entry still exists. Others can read it, they can read my comments, they can comment on my comments, but all this is hidden from me. This is *bad*. Friendfeed should not make these things possible. - Peter

24 more comments

The entry was originally posted to these feeds/groups: http://friendfeed.com/wordsfo... http://friendfeed.com/painsup... http://friendfeed.com/psychol... http://friendfeed.com/introve... http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - Peter

I think I will add the first user to my hide list (and a user I don't even directly subscribe)... - Marco Neves from IM

Hi Peter, I'm not sure I'm following. I see the entry as being deleted. Can you clarify how you know that the entry still exists? It's possible that you were blocked by the poster, and that's why comments continued on the entry that you could no longer see. But as far as I can tell, the entry you're referring to has been deleted. - Ana

When I click the link, I get redirected to http://friendfeed.com/painsup... and a message appears: "The entry you requested is private" - Peter

Hi Peter, it looks like you were blocked then, b/c when I click through to that entry (or if you tried doing so while logged out), it says this entry has been deleted. - Ana

The entry was deleted. - Alix Whitmire

So why doesn't it say I was blocked? And why can I still read all feeds/group this was posted to? - Peter

Either way, a shame someone deletes a discussion - Peter

Hi Peter, for social reasons, we don't display anywhere that someone has been blocked. - Ana

Hi Ana. I'm really curious what you mean by "for social reasons." What are the positive benefits that you/FF see by not letting the crowd following a discussion know that someone has been removed by force? I'm not saying it's the right or wrong decision. I'm just curious as to the reasoning. Consider IRC, where a user being kicked or banned is public and the mods will be held accountable to the other members of the channel if they feel like the kick was unjustified. - tollie williams

Hi Tollie, block only works for the user who instigated the block. If you, Bob and I are participating in a discussion, you still see the comments that I made, even if Bob chose to block me. The decision to block someone is personal, and not something that we chose to share with the blocked or other users. - Ana

Peter - I apologized to you, but you are still offended. I don't know what you want from me. The option to moderate comments is a FriendFeed option to users. The option to remove an entire thread is a FriendFeed option to users. The option to block is a FriendFeed option for users. If you don't believe those features should be options for any users, maybe put in a request to FriendFeed. But I still don't know what you want from me. - Jannifer @wordsforliving

So I was blocked, and after that the entry was deleted? What if it weren't deleted? Than you'd have the situation as described above, anyone but me being able to read/comment my comments. Or would blocking me remove my comments from the entry? Which ever way, I don't like it. I like the way usenet works. There you can "killfile" someone so you don't have to read his/her posts, but you can't make someone shut up. - Peter

Now I'm confused. Being blocked does not deny me access? Then why does blocking give me the message that an entry is private? What actually is blocking supposed to do? - Peter

Blocking is a way for someone to protect themselves or protect others from being offended by their words and presence. - Jannifer @wordsforliving

Hi Peter, sorry I should have been more clear. Blocking only denies you access to an entry if you were blocked by that entry's originator, which essentially means that that user no longer wants you to be able to see his entries, nor do they want to see yours. If a fellow commenter in an entry blocks you, it doesn't affect your ability to participate in an entry. That said, I believe... more... - Ana

I simply deleted the whole entry due to someone else (not you peter) and made the group room it was posted in private. I'm sorry that I offended you. Now just agreeing with Ana to not hash things on on FF Feedback room. - Jannifer @wordsforliving

So, again, if I understand correctly, if the entry's originator blocked me, then the thing would happen that I objected to. That I would not be able to read my own comments nor any comments made by others to me in that entry. People could critisize me, maybe misreading my original comments, and I would not have the opportunity to defend my point of view. I would not even know I was... more... - Peter

Hi Peter, I'm sorry to hear that you feel this way. That is the way the feature currently works, and your described circumstance is not the use case the feature was designed for. Of course, on the internet, there will always be people who do things that are disagreeable. But we do continue to evaluate our feature set and make adjustments. Thanks for your patience. - Ana

I would like to understand what this feature was designed for. What purpose did you have in mind? There are private groups, were only members can read and write. That makes sense. There are group admins, who can remove unwanted content from a group. That makes sense too. I can block someone so I don't have to read his or her messages. Makes sense. I can remove any comments posted to an... more... - Peter

I think we are misunderstanding eachother. - Peter

Hi Peter, when you block someone, you essentially make your feed private and remove that person from your list of subscribers. It is not about any one entry, even if it does have that effect. This is already possible within FriendFeed if someone does exactly that (make their feed private and remove the subscriber). We tend to think of entries as owned by the originator, and so, they can... more... - Ana

Ana, although it's your job, I still think you are one patient person. I would have given up on this guy a while ago. He doesn't seem to understand a very very simple behavior on FF no matter what is said. - Mattie Kenny from fftogo

Hi Ana. I have the utmost respect for you, and respect that you said "I'd rather not continue to flood this group," but I would like to comment on this topic. The fact that one post with ongoing comments can appear to "flood" a group might be an issue that the team wishes to consider rethinking. Perhaps "bring to top only if entries since last comment are > x" such that, the entry being... more... - tollie williams

The fact that this "very very simple behavior on FF" causes confusion and irritation should be enough reason to rethink and discuss this thing. If ff-feedback isn't the right group for this topic, what group is? - Peter

tollie williams

Cyclist body slammed by NYPD cop sues for $1.5 million - http://carlosmiller.com/2009...

July 9 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Take the case of Christopher Long who was participating in a Critical Mass bicycle ride through Times Square last summer. The then-29-year-old New Jersey native doesn’t appear to have ever have stepped into a weight room or a courtroom. It is safe to say that the last thing on his mind that day was that he would be body slammed by a New York City Police Officer, then thrown in jail for 26 hours on charges of assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Then there is Patrick Pogan, the NYPD officer in question. He was 22 years old at the time and had been on the force all of three weeks. As a third-generation NYPD cop, Pogan knew he had a lot of power with that badge. And the former high school football player wasn’t going to waste any time to use it. It is safe to say that the last thing he expected was for someone to be filming the exact spot where he chose to body-slam Long for no apparent reason before conjuring false charges against him. - tollie williams

tollie williams

ATT is still the worst part of the iPhone - limited to 384 Kbps upstream - http://www.macworld.com/article...

July 9 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

a teardown at RapidRepair of an iPhone 3GS shows that it has a UMTS/HSDPA chip. UMTS is the earliest 3G standard deployed on GSM networks, and it tops out at 384 Kbps. It’s easy to test, if you have an iPhone 3GS. Go to any speed tester, like Testmyiphone when you’re outdoors with a good signal. Downstream, you might hit well over 1 Mbps; upstream, under 384 Kbps. Dunklee examined the specs on a number of GSM network smartphones, and found none included HSUPA. It’s possible that there could be a firmware update from UMTS to HSUPA, but that’s unlikely. There’s usually a reason for using an older standard, which is related to power consumption, chip size, or cost. In contrast, Dunklee noted, phones that handle EVDO Rev. A—the 3G standard used on CDMA networks like those operated by Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless—have the full high-data-rate upload speed. - tollie williams

tollie williams

FT.com / Comment / Opinion - Copyright laws threaten our online freedom - http://registration.ft.com/registr...

July 8 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all. On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down. This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored. Where technology opens up possibilities intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them. Linux is held back by patents copyright. - tollie williams

tollie williams

Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro sleep issues with Mac OS X 10.5.7 update - MacFixIt - http://www.macfixit.com/article...

July 3 from delicious - Comment - Like - Share

Fix: make sure ethernet isn't disabled. - tollie williams

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