Scobleizer - Latest Comments in The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Dan — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:37:38 -0000

As an educator, I find Grazr extremely useful for delivering aggregated syndicated content in all manner of web based learning environments. Grazr is perfect for this purpose - one might even say indispensable.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Ralph — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:26:11 -0000

Well, you say that Grazr is solving a problem that normal people don't have, which I think is basically true. But then you make an argument that FriendFeed won't replace Twitter, citing a bunch of things that it lacks but that normal people don't need. So I'm not really following this post, Robert.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Jesse — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:37:23 -0000

Great post. Love the Grazr breakdown, and I wholeheartedly agree with your critique. Post of the week for sure.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

InhaleExhale — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:53:53 -0000

Just to add a drop to your river of noise, check out the interview of you from the SXSW bloghaus mashed up w/google map.

http://tinyurl.com/54pjey

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Scobby — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:52:27 -0000

ARHHGHG ... Scoble slow the hell down. You are changing positions faster than a politician during a the heat of a campaign. My head is starting to hurt. I can´t keep up ...

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Brian Benz — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:32:35 -0000

Huh. what a name! Should have called it impostr. If you get too much content, maybe pestr.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Bob Ngu — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:43:13 -0000

@Scoble, I was half-kidding anyway but thanks for clarifying, good to know =)

@mikepk, agreed, that's another thing us technologist have to watch out for, unending feature creep. IMO, for Web 2.0 sites, it's much better to get the features out earlier than later because users' feedback will help drive the changes. Often times, we can't predict what the users needs are and ended up all over the map with a plethora of features that aren't needed if we wait too long to get it in front of them.

Like you, I have learned that too many features confused the users and caused them to lose interests. Also, too many features can make the site seems like a horizontal play and that's very hard (IMO) these days to build mass traction.

Just my $0.02.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

mikepk — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:03:00 -0000

There is a tyranny of the feature though you need to be careful of. We built so many features into Grazr that I can barely keep track of them all anymore. I'm constantly running into things, "we do that? oh yeah I forgot we built that feature". You can build so many features that the character of the product changes and it becomes no longer accessible to the newcomer. It's again one of those balances, between power users and first time experience.

Part of the reason we built so many features was the hope that someone would find a subset of them unique and useful and we could allocate resources to better satisfy those individuals needs. The serious downside though is that if you're not careful it can negatively impact your UI and usability. More importantly though it can negatively affect your message "what *are* you?". That's a question we struggle with.

Friendfeed does have an advantage that they've waited for people to digest their current feature set before adding. I think one of our issues is that we steamrolled ahead a little too quickly in expanding the service. We're actually considering stripping out a lot of the functionality to deliver a clearer message.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Robert Scoble — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:26:50 -0000

>I don’t think anyone wants FriendFeed to be Twitter 2.0.

Oh, Steve Gillmor wants that! :-)

I agree that it's the best social media aggregation system. It's also the best conversation system on top of that aggregation. But, it could be so much more.

It's "how much more" that we're arguing over here.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

fred wilson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:24:33 -0000

Robert

I don't think anyone wants FriendFeed to be Twitter 2.0

We want FriendFeed to be the best social media aggregation system. Which it already is.

I think we all win (the users) if the best of breed services keep getting better at the one thing they do better than anyone else.

Fred

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Richard Cunningham — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:47:00 -0000

Robert, I think 1st point and in part the second one too are going to be difficult for lifestreaming sites in general. The reason is that not that the lifestreaming site couldn't have a Instant messaging interface (e.g. XMPP), it's that getting this information for the source site (or network) is difficult.

With RSS and Atom you can get this information quickly because of ping services which notify you when someone posts, if you are willing to get this information for everybody. Also Twitter provides access to it's public timeline via XMPP. However with other sites you have to poll and they have limits of the number of requests so you can't poll that often. If that wasn't bad enough on some sites it takes quite a few requests to just find out what your friends are doing.

I think in general the source sites' APIs are not designed for this type of usage and the challenge for them will be to create some sort of push API.

Not wanting to plug my own site too much but, in response to point 3, friendbinder.com has a "strict reverse-chronological view". However we only opened up the private beta on Friday and it wasn't designed for people like you (because as you say there are not many like you!) and I know currently it can't support more than 1000 twitter users very well.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Robert Scoble — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:59:41 -0000

Tom: if you are an entrepreneur and you only hire technical resources then you focused too much of your energy on one thing, when a business needs more than just a great technology to succeed. This is a resource problem. OK, maybe it's not the CTO's problem to solve, but it's SOMEBODY's job to solve, otherwise the company won't get the attention, er, usage/customers, it deserves.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Robert Scoble — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:51:11 -0000

Bob: I get nothing from these services. If that ever changes I will disclose it.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Robert Scoble — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:48:53 -0000

I invest my time, not my money in these services.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Dave Winer — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:36:01 -0000

Here's the opposite of River of Noise.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Dave Winer — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:32:19 -0000

River of Noise -- I love it!

That's beautiful.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

mikepk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:11:50 -0000

Darn typo... supposed to be mikepk, not mikrpk. :)

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Bob Ngu — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:57:58 -0000

Scoble, do you get stock options every time you mention FriendFeed? :)

As for MikePK's comment, I couldn't agree more. Too many startups spend way too much resources and effort in architecting a highly scalable system only to ask the question "Where are my users?". This is a trap that technologist often falls into. Better technology does not equal successful startup. It always starts with simplicity and clear value proposition to the mainstream users. For every Twitter, there are probably hundreds, if not more, of highly scalable over-architected sites that went nowhere.

Tip to Grazr, you already lost all your mainstream users with the term OPML as the first item for feed on your home page.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

mikrpk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:47:44 -0000

Tom: I'm confused what your point is, exactly. I never said it was an either/or, I said it was a balance, a balance of focus and energy. "Being on the wrong track" requires energy to explore the right track, it's not something that occurs for free. There's a myth that startups are formed from whole cloth with a plan and a path and execute and reach success... the truth is usually a lot muddier, exploring the space you begin in until you find the compelling problem/niche/technology that creates the passionate users. It's still effort.

As engineers we obsess over the hard technology problems (scaling) and can overlook other issues. Twitter has the passionate users already, I contend that's actually a *harder* problem then building a scaling infrastructure.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Dawn — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:36:00 -0000

Robert, I meant to ask you... Gillmore in that podcast kept saying that you are an investor in FriendFeed, which surprised me since you haven't told us that here. But then he finally made it sound like you are an investor in time and passion and that he really didn't mean money.

So just to clear the air, you haven't given them money, have you? Not that I would mind, it just seems not to conform to your usual openness, etc., unless I've missed a post somewhere.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Tom — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:29:07 -0000

I said>He treats “having passionate users” and “having a rock solid architecture” as an either/or proposition and it’s not.

Scoble said>I didn’t say it’s an either/or proposition, but for many small startups you have to choose where to focus your energies. On building something new that people take to, or building an architecture that can withstand every possible situation? Grazr’s CTO said he spent too much time focusing on the architecture and not enough building a service that people loved.

I Now Say>But see, that's my point. more resources doesn't make a better product if you're completely on the wrong track. To say it does would be like saying running will get you to your destination faster when you're headed in the complete opposite direction. The issues you outlined with Grazr wouldn't be helped by more technical resources.

Name – Technical Resources won't help

Solves a non-existant problem – Technical Resources won't help

Confusing UI – Technical Resources might help but people who make confusing interfaces tend to make them more confusing as they spend more time on them

Focus on A-List Blogs – Technical Resources won't help

Cold Language– Technical Resources won't help

Nothing moving on Grazr – endemic of all of the above so Technical Resources won't help

So you see, you are refuting what he said. He's saying he should have spent more resources on building a service that people love and less on scale and that, if he had, they'd be successful. Well your above points show he's wrong and that isn't the case. This in turn refutes his original point.

More important, for me anyway, is why I feel you don't see this which is that you are so engrained in your own philosophy (on scaling) that even when your own logic refutes it you can't see that. He said something that "sounded" true to you so you think he's right without subjecting it to scrutiny. When it is subjected to scrutiny it doesn't hold up.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

mikrpk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:25:47 -0000

Serves me right for taking the dog to the park and grilling dinner outside. I'm just now seeing all of this conversation. :)

Robert, thanks for the feedback. I've written a post (and cross posted it to our corporate blog) in response. http://mikepk.com/?p=18

Jeff: Yes I agree. As Technologists we look at things through the technology lens. Twitter is, to be honest, not that complicated a technology. What they do have is a community of passionate users.

Tony: We have *a lot* of features. Too many. It's something we've been thinking hard on. The videos were an attempt to make it clear what the workflow was supposed to be.

Tom: I didn't say it was an either or, but that it's a balance. Twitter focused everything on having users, we focused too much on features and our scaling infrastructure. It's a balance, one you have to deal with carefully with the limited amount of resources of a startup. What twitter has is the more important part of the equation (and in most ways a more difficult problem).

keith: I think our real issue is we've been looking for the right people to target. We haven't consciously been targeting A-listers or "weirdos" although it does happen to be the first example stream on the homepage (something we've noted and plan to change :) ).

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

keith — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:55:23 -0000

in one breath you lambaste grazr for targeting towards ppl like you, and then blame friendfeed for not having the features ppl like you want.

hey that makes sense....

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Ole Eichhorn — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:28:46 -0000

I've been watching TwitterVision for the last five minutes. Close to zero of the messages were interesting; most bordered on inane. (Example, from Australia: "burger king blows". Which was commented on by several people, probably all watching TwitterVision too. Nice.)

To my "echo chamber" point, I saw several messages with your name in them. There might be "millions" of accounts, but there must be a pretty small group of active users if you are such a common subject of discussion.

Anyway whether Twitter is the next big thing or not, we agree on the main point, which is that they've reached a point where their downtime is hurting their growth. They got here by providing something useful, but they won't get to the next level unless they stabilize.

Re: The best comment on Twitter and architecture I’ve seen

Robert Scoble — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:25:06 -0000

Ole: I'd agree with you. But Twitter reaches an audience many times larger than Grazr does. Twitter has about two million accounts already. Not too shaby and if you watch http://www.twittervision.com for a few minutes you'll see a lot of people use it around the world for a lot of different things. It was also on a good growth path until it started being down every day.