huge win for both companies ?? is it a win for the FF community ?? who comes first ?? the business or the users ?? I bet you within 6 months, I wont be using FF as much as I use it now !!
- Peter Dawson
i agree - facebook has been getting on my good list this past year and I just love friendfeed.
- Chris Jackson
Just as I re-dedicate myself to using FF, FB acquires them. If FB can integrate FF's deep feature set, it would be a win-win-win.
- Jim Duncan
True or false: Facebook needs FriendFeed more than FriendFeed needs Facebook.
- Joel Zehring
I'm excited too, but at the same time I'm afraid facebook may make some wrong moves with their acquisition. We've seen this happen before.
- Steven (optionshiftk)
If this makes it so I have one LESS place to go to follow my social media, then it will be great. I already have too many different places with different people and different conversations for differ purposes that overlap and make it unnecessarily complicated.
- David Rondeau
FF > FB? not great, actually. diversity is better than monopoly. and i'm concerned about aggregation features getting deprecated (in the name of progress and chrossing the chasm and all that jazz.. of course ;)
- jacek
This is a IP, technology and talent grab.. I don't see the 2 sites being consolidated
- Dave Senior
It may be a big win for both companies but is likely a big lose for FF users.
- Brian Sullivan
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
I hope Facebook turns into FriendFeed. That would be great!
- Wo
I'd really love to see the real-time threaded conversation feature of friendfeed be adopted by facebook.
- Steven (optionshiftk)
Looking forward to your analysis Robert
- Ken Seto
I can see development of FF slowing down as the team brings the tech over to Facebook
- Dave Senior
Indeed, Brian. FF devotees should be pissed over this. I can't believe Facebook will do anything but carve out a few choice pieces of FF meat - likely making them even more Twitterish - and dump the rest. FF will be gone within six months.
- Shéa Bennett
This is a huge win for both companies, and a huge fail for every net surfer.
- TiTi
yeah it may not be that bad. maybe i'm exaggerating.
- Edgar Rodríguez
Well, I think the FF team can certainly help the Facebook UI. But, all I take away from this is FF going away.
- Yolanda
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
Yes, Robert. Like TiTi said, huge win for both companies, huge fail for the people who like FriendFeed. "Welcome to FaceFeed! Would you like to take a quiz?"
- Zach Flauaus
I think this is definitely a huge win for both but maybe not for the users. I think it could be good or bad for users but I hope that Facebook will allow FriendFeed to continue and push the envelope with emerging technologies. I imagine this is Facebook and FriendFeed teaming up against Twitter.
- Brandon Titus
.-( Good for Friendfeed, but horrible for people that like friendfeed and hate facebook &their UI or where FB is blocked
- Del_
It's good timing. FF uniques fell almost 10% in July.
- Shéa Bennett
this is bad news for twitter, me thinks.
- Brian Ries
Absolutely, Robert. Its a very good tech acquisition for Facebook, they get a great team with a well developed technology stack. It lets the FriendFeed founders get a good, early exit.
- DGentry
I hope so. I know my initial reaction was not as negative as most of the others I'm seeing in my stream. Maybe I'm just being naive.
- Herb Hernandez
Hopefully this means the power of friendfeed will be utilized. Awesome news
- Marcus
This is why I follow Mr. Scoble, yes that is Mr. Scoble :) always has his fingers in the breaking news.
- dennis podgorski
I'm fired up about this union between FriendFeed and Facebook. With the exception of my social media group, I've used FriendFeed primarily as an aggregator--despite it's being my favorite GUI and functionality. I think this is going to bring the substance to FriendFeed that it's been missing. Very exciting!
- Jim W
I have a hard time drawing my line of Public v Personal. I use Twitter & FriendFeed for public use and I use Facebook for private use. I have not even once made a status update on Facebook. I am not sure I want FriendFeed on Facebook. I am intrigued about the possibilities of integration but I am not sure I will adopt.
- thestaticfrost
The power of FF will be used -- but it won't be pretty and won't be for good.
- Brian Sullivan
I have to agree with Robert on this. I think this is likely to be a great deal moving forward. I'm excited about it, and happy for the FriendFeed crew. They've done an AWESOME job.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I am not as excited about this. I don^t like Facebook as much
- nchenga
i think this is going to add more value to Facebook
- Lee Kent
It certainly makes sense, and I agree that it adds value to FF. I wonder how many of the 250 million users of FF will be using it in its current form.
- courtney benson
Just surprised this didn't happen earlier. Facebook has been mimicking FriendFeed's functionality for a while now. Nice that FF is finally getting paid for their R&D efforts.
- Aaron Strout
I think this will make me drop friendfeed or facebook
- Nicolai Rygh
Please explain - this may be win for Friendfeed - but as far as us the users/fans... we're the big losers in this right? I really really can't stand Facebook :-( Help us have hope...
- Jannifer @wordsforliving
here is the explanation, FF have t sell the soonerr, better then laterr, they choose the right momment, wave is there and it is a big promise
- abdellah
when Google start wave, they surely shown their non desire to acquir FF it was implicite
- abdellah
The idea here is growing on me. I see the business case...I'm still not sure as to the impact on Twitter and different users who prefer one tool over another and/or use the two differently.
- Derek Shanahan
I'm trying to defer my pessimism...but I feel an "I Want Sandy"-type fail in the wings. As for FF needing to sell, that wasn't the case; the founders had the money to keep it going for as long as they wanted, basically. We'll see, I suppose. We'll see.
- Ken Kennedy
This is really interesting. This will bring a bigger pool of social media services to people. As it is now, regular folks don't venture further than Facebook, with this acquisition, many will realize that there is a plethora of great other services and social media websites that they can engage in.
- Rami Taibah
Ya know when you get a bad feeling about something - I have one about this deal. Can't put my finger on it, but it don't feel right.
- Jim Connolly
FriendFeed now to get BIGGER than Twitter?
- Jim Connolly
"when Google start wave, they surely shown their non desire to acquir FF it was implicite" - I think that probably covers it.
- John Craft
Isn't this the kind of daring move that Yahoo should have made?
- Andrew Warner
Seems like a HUGE win for Facebook. Not so sure for the future of FF, though.
- Chris Wood
This is really interesting. This will bring a bigger pool of social media services to people. As it is now, regular folks don't venture further than Facebook, with this acquisition, many will realize that there is a plethora of great other services and social media websites that they can engage in. On the side of the coin, I am kind of worried about FB privacy issues and data portability
- Rami Taibah
is there a dislike button anywhere? I did exactly the opposite FB never appealed, FF rocked...
- Valeria Maltoni
FriendFeed will not be the same place, in terms of the community, but this keeps friendfeed around for a while. Awesome! Where's Arrington? Did he reopen his account?
- Benjamin Taylor
Whatever FB and FF does, don't tell Oprah... That's a sign it's over..
- Timothy Latz
FF isn't blocked at work, FB is. FF usefulness would nose-dive for me if blocked.
- Brett Veenstra
Brett: this is likely to pave the way for more client applications for Facebook, which will not be blocked at work.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Paul - did you fix the word wrap issue for comments? e.g. on my blog comments cascade across the column into the right margin - http://blog.infinitelymeta.com/reef-ta... not a big deal at all. just wondering. great work on the beta btw.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
you know what Paul - ignore what I said....apart from letting people sign up directly via the widget. Then my friends/family who aren't on friendfeed can comment directly plus you get a whole bunch of new 'non-techy' members.
- Zee.
What Mona said. I suggested to WP that they add FriendFeed to the "trusted javascript list"; they responded promptly saying that they would add it to their "candidate library".
- Neil Saunders
I tried a couple of times to get it to work, but even with setting the width, the comments still sprawled outside the border of the widget and looked ugly.
- Jason Shultz
from twhirl
Still using the original script on the front page, but did add 'Share on FriendFeed' to the Blogger post template today. Awesome.
- MLx
I created my own widget using feedburner's RSS setup and some CSS code, so as I can get my entire lifestream, as set up on FF, to show up. Since I'm a crappy web designer, I may end up using the FF widget, after all... :/ Can we also use Yahoo Pipes on the Widget? I'm thinking of using Rasheen's duplicate removal setup, once he gets it to work...
- Helen Sventitsky
i haven't because i'm trying to figure out where to put it on my blog.
- Morgan
Not sure Paul. I'm using Chris Pirillo's Social Media theme. Not a WP guru myself. Willing to test though.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
FYI: Adding the widgets (other than the "Share on FriendFeed" link) to self-hosted WordPress requires zero knowledge of WordPress templates. You login to WordPress, click on "Design", then "Widgets", and add a "text" widget and paste in the code.
- Benjamin Golub
No because my blog sidebar is too narrow and changing the widget width cuts the text off mid-line. May redesign my blog one day when I'm bored.
- Deborah Fitchett
I did, before Godaddy lost the location of my blog they host and I can't get it back :(
- Johnny Worthington
I had it on my old site design, just added it to my latest. Thanks for the reminder.
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
I just did the other day when someone posted the link here on FF. It rocks, thx.
- Victoria Plautia
Used it as an experiment in the 'blog that posted itself' recently. Great. Now I'd like to use it in sidebar as widget. Can't change text size tho'. Too big.
- Kate Foy
Ditto Loic - but switched to the newer wider one. Would love to be able to do like 7 or 8 in instead of 5 OR 10. Try to keep the stream clean there for others. Think 7 would be perfect but one size doesn't fit all :)
- Charlie Anzman
you can do different numbers, just change the num= variable. I use num=12
- Justin Long
I don't feel like my friendfeed content meshes very well with my blog. I enjoy friendfeed quite a bit, but I don't really feel the need to try to get more people to look at my friendfeed. I did try it a couple months ago before it was really public, when I noticed it on your blog, Paul. I do use the friendfeed comment plugin. Maybe I will add a share on friendfeed button.
- Robert Felty
I did install it but I don't really like its size. I'd like something narrower and with a smaller font. I don't know if this is something I can fix with CSS magic, but that's not my thing.
- Robert Konigsberg
From my point of view: How exactly would it help the readers of Blogoscoped? What's the problem it would solve? Not everything I say on Friendfeed is relevant to the content of Blogoscoped. Now, give me a widget that I can customize to make it be relevant just to a single specific blog post and I will give it a try perhaps... an RSS feed for "comments on URL xyz" (where I can make xyz be a Blogoscoped permalink of a new post) would be interesting :)
- Philipp Lenssen
+1 to Philipp. The only widget I have on my blog is delicious tags, and I'm not even sure that's useful to my readers.
- Amit Patel
Word wrap issue for comments. Will that be fixed?
- Dennis Metzcher
thanks @Benjamin Golub for the removing of the border code. worked great.
- Thom Allen
I would use it if only for one thing: the word wrap issue with comments.
- Ryan Stanley
Just added it to www.woodysworld.tv under What's the Word. Carries my Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and Pandora. Customized CSS. I'll be changing title to "My Friend Feed"
- Jim W
When will the fact that the comments do not wrap when using the widget on my site be corrected? Please update us. :)
- Dennis Metzcher
Dennis: that is by design so that long comments don't cause the widget to be super long in narrow places. You can make comments wrap with this CSS: .friendfeed.widget .feed .entry .comment { white-space: normal !important; }
- Benjamin Golub
Yes, but I just moved it to the sidebar (it was on the bottom, because the comments weren't wrapping). I am not fond of the background color, and I don't know what to do with the CSS. http://miniaturemage.blogspot.com
- MiniMage TKDteacher of FF
when i use the css to wrap comments, at the beginning of each line of the comment there displays a different 'comment' symbol. very weird.
- Patrickometry
I've just learnt of this today and already adapted it to my Google Blogger, but I find I can't embed it on wordpress.com blog. Pity. It's something that would greatly add to blogs.
- George Hall (Australia)
Hi George: you should be able to embed the image versions of our widgets on your wordpress.com blog. Just pick "Image" as the format.
- Benjamin Golub
from email
Building43 is going to go even further than a simple embed. More later.
- Robert Scoble
I've added Friendfeed widgets to the About pages of coverbrowser.com and sketchory.com ... it's displaying feedback in regards to the site.
- Philipp Lenssen
"Why not?" Good Question. No blog is The Answer.
- ianf ⌘
I would like my Friendfeed page to sit in place of my blog on my website, but none of the widget styles are close enough for that (and iframing my Friendfeed page is a little much).
- Glen Murphy
This is back? I have my FF profile on the blog. An embedded widget would likely take up too much space.
- Louis Gray
I wanted but simplicity matters, so took it back.
- Burcu Dogan
Not sure. But I have helped others embed (example http://bebepool.com/arthur ) their own feed into one of my online services (http://bebepool.com - which, over the past 3 months, had 4% of new pool accounts try to use the ff embed feature. The success rate of signing up for ff then plugging in the new user account into their bebepool settings and also not marking their account Private...
more...
- Micah Wittman
Wow....Bottom line; YES that is a TON of time, but you wisely defended it as you're migrating your "content" here on FF, generating more buzz for your blog and engage way more people. I, of course, am biased cuz I need "intervention" too. I was going to launch a "blog" but found that FF became my blog for short term writing / sharing needs. I still plan to launch a blog in 2009, but am planning that out
- Susan Beebe
Ask him when he's taking up @guykawasaki on his absence from Twitter for a week bet
- Jesse Stay
I would like to see more of you doing short video responses via QIK than reading. Seeing you is much more interesting that reading, and it makes you much more "real". You can SAY more with an INFLECTION in your voice than a paragraph of words.
- Ari Burton
I think another gain would be the broadening range of topics you are able to cover in dynamic discussion versus a static (by comparison), drawn out blog. Twitter is to blogs what the Internet was to newspapers.
- Jim W
Hello, my name is Alan and I'm addicted to Twitter :-)
- Alan Kodzasov
I think you should do it all. Blog, tweet, and 'feed. What the split should be? I dunno.
- Eric Florenzano
your realtime funnel of friends is impressive
- Genaro Bardy
We have Scoble and YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM BACK! :P LOL
- Ari Burton
you're saying you chave 68000 people you can show potential sponsors. Did you ever ?
- Genaro Bardy
What are there 40,000 BOTS answering Scoble? LOL :)
- Ari Burton
Michael, you're funny. Genaro: I haven't been asked by my current sponsors yet, but they can look at all the people I'm interacting with on FriendFeed to get a good sense of who is here and on Twitter you can see all of my followers. Same on Facebook. So, sponsors generally have a pretty good idea of what kind of people I'll reach.
- Robert Scoble
Robert you are doing a fantastic job pioneering new apps and showing us all the way, keep going and ignore the criticism. You are practising being a Thought Leader without the need to blog too.
- Thomas Power
What you have done is balanced out your activity between Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogging, Videos, etc. Others who would prefer you stay siloed don't like that you've diversified. Why close the door on a significant audience, like one here, to maintain an old one?
- Louis Gray
What?!? You blogged your response? You're falling right into his hands.
- Christian Anderson
Robert and Michael, call me paranoid but I bet you guys both organized this rant & rave together to raise some valid questions about the changing nature of the social web. I think there's a place for focused writing of blogs but I can't help thinking Robert's experiment of jumping into the fray is both bold and worthwhile. It could easily be said that M's clinging to the old for reasons like thought leadership could possibly put him in a position of being obsolete very quickly. Love both of you!
- Lance Shields
I wanted to agree with this post but Ari's comments are making me laugh too much.
- james rock
Michael, I think Robert mainly gets input from his readers. That said, advice is also good for grown ups
- Alexandros Georgiadis
I like michael´s funny comments here. I never bothered reading anything else but the headlines from TC before but now I may take a closer look (get it, michael..? ;)
- Thomas Bøhm
This reminds me of the ladies who cried fowl when computers came along..."Noooo don't take my Smith-Corona away!"
- Susan Beebe
I don't have a Tech Crunch comment account so I am pasting this here. In response to Susan Beebe, Michael Arrington stated: "and the “conversation” is fine. But Robert’s brain is better used actually writing articles that I want to read. Watching people grunt back and forth is entertaining but hardly educational." My response: "Rude."
- Mona Nomura
If you were just a regular guy with a regular job OK, it may be a little much. But..you're a leader in this business and trying to keep us informed. Frankly, I'm a big fan, and feel like I would be missing out if you contributed less.
- Missionary Broadcasting
Thought Leader = Adopting Today What Others Will Be Doing Tomorrow = Robert Scoble
- Joe Lima
Mike makes good points and he does it out of respect for Robert. These are two of the hardest working guys I've come across. Mike sees the value he is building at TechCrunch and sees the value Robert is building for Twitted/FriendFeed. As far as I know, Robert doesn't get anything for that. I don't agree that Robert's time is not well spent, but can definitely see Mike's point.
- Christian Anderson
"S**gate" getting a mention here from Robert every time there´s talk of storage is better promotion than plain ads on his blog. They should be happy about that, and I´m sure pay him equally well for that.
- Thomas Bøhm
Yeah, I agree with Christian that M has good points and I think this debate is very good to consider. How do we spend our time? What is truly valuable? Is Robert poorer than he used to be? ;-)
- Lance Shields
Your audience is more qualified than any else... That's interesting. No Media can link to facebook / twitter / ff accounts to give insights about its audience ! That's Power my friend
- Genaro Bardy
Hey Robert! I hate to say this but I kinda agree with Michael on this one. I use to read you blog every day. I loved how insightful your post were. I could tell that you put a great deal of thought into your blog, and in turn, your blog provoked me to think. I like following you on friendfeed, but it is just not as thought-provoking. I have also started visiting your blog less because there is just not as much there.
- Craig Fogle
I think Robert's brand is portable enough that he can survive outside of his own domain. At the end of the day, it's about engaging people through whatever means possible, whether that's your blog or FriendFeed, Twitter etc. For what it's worth, I had never read Robert's blog before I used FriendFeed. In some respects there's probably an element of Michael using Robert's popularity to drive a bit of traffic his way. Looks like it worked too.
- Sam
Mike hasen’t noticed your videos, does that tell us more about Mike or your videos?
- paul mooney
How about spending time where it matters to you? Maybe Mike should spend less time worrying where others spend their time. It's your time, spend it where you want.
- Brett Nordquist
Your post a while back on *real* productivity, helped me a lot and I feel answers this already. Outside of your family what you want to do more than anything else is have lots of great conversations with people. FF enables you to do this more than your blog can. So by that standard you don't need an intervention - you're possibly the most productive person on the planet! :)
- Matthew J Hendrickse
How do I sign up for this rehab thing? seems like all the "cool" people are doing it.
- Bob Blunk
Honestly, I believe all these services should be merged somehow... Maybe if Friendfeed allowed for longer posts (although then it wouldn't be microblogging, but isn't Twitter for that?) people would start to move here. FF is a very young service yet: let's see how it expands and then we'll be able to choose between FF and traditional blogs.
- Jordi Soler
Honestly, I feel that half the time I spend on Friendfeed could be more productively spent elsewhere. It *is* addictive, and you don't want to miss out on anything, but I've spent hours there without much to show for it. On the other hand, there are times where it's sheer genius to have that much input.
- Glen, Bespectacled Elder
Once nanoblogging and picoblogging catch fire, this microblogging will seem tedious and time-consuming. Last Thursday, at 10 AM, I picoblogged an entire week of bloggage. Took about ten minutes.
- david beckwith
Wow David, that's maybe the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
- Geoffrey Hamilton
from twhirl