Do we still get blog posts here or are you transferring your time and energy to FriendFeed and Twitter for good?
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
I'll be back, but FriendFeed definitely shows that I'm spending time on a lot of things, not just Twitter.
old dog at home
· 1 year ago
Your old friends miss the more substantial posts. Your twitter stuff is pretty content free. Something reflective and thoughtful instead of shallow and reactive is what a blog is good for. It's a bit sad to see that dying in favor the effortless.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
old dog: I'll be back. I'm just so busy with family, traveling, interviewing, and running FastCompany.tv that doing longer posts gets shoved off. But I have some bigger posts brewing in my head.
In the meantime I've been watching what's going on at TechMeme and am glad I've been quiet lately here.
Louis Gray
· 1 year ago
Robert, we're glad you took the FriendFeed plunge, and you took us up on the invitation. I think you will find your voice there, and here. We appreciate your long-form posts (as you noted Saturday) and hope they don't disappear as well. But thanks for being part of the Web's fastest-growing community!
Ben Hedrington
· 1 year ago
@Dan and @old dog - The value of FriendFeed is that it's not an on or off situation, you'll see all Scoble's posts be they quick and fleeting or deep and thoughtful it's all right there to see.
It's more realistic really; these composed pieces don't pop out of nowhere they are a compendium of smaller conversations and research that come together.
Alex Hammer
· 1 year ago
Scoble is a genuis. This may be part of a plot to suck even more people into Friendfeed, further accelerating his leading network. In all seriousness, Robert is extremely flexible and able to well integrate the new into the older. That, even more than being a voracious early adopeter, is, I believe, a key component of his great success. PS I found this via Friendfeed. Even though it's one of the first reads on my feedreader, still saved plenty of time.
I canceled my FriendFeed account. From what I could tell, it's just an aggregator for folks who don't already use aggregators. Since I (and pretty much all of my friends/associates) already use aggregators, it doesn't provide value. And it doesn't force them to see parts of me they don't want. If they want my photos, they subscribe to my Flickr feed. If they only want blog posts, they subscribe to that. Not everyone wants to know every single little thing that someone has done online.
old dog at home
· 1 year ago
Nothing personal, but Mr. Scoble isn't a friend in the sense that I want to follow is every physical or virtual movement. Wading through Friendfeed is just exhausting. I'm happy to sit raptly close by, waiting for a well considered nugget. But this happens less frequently now because people are spreading their attention so thin. Take a deep breath some time. Panting leaves one breathless.
Dion Hinchcliffe
· 1 year ago
I love the concept of Friendfeed as a social aggregator and I use it every day. Unfortunately, it doesn't pick up my social activities very well from other sites and consequently paints a very partial picture of what I do online, despite what I'm actually trying to publicize and syndicate.
This isn't unusual for these types of applications given the scale of integration required. Facebook apps often have the same problem if they're pulling activity in from elsewhere.
This kind of VLSI (very large scale integration) of highly granular social apps is going to pose whole new traffic, reliability, and response time issues for Web application creators as Web sites have to use open APIs effectively on a vast scale in near real-time. It's going to create a whole new discipline to make these types of apps work.
pokai
· 1 year ago
I'm reading Tim Ferriss 4 Hour workweek, what would he say about your twitter/friendfeed always connected habit?
John Evans (Syntagma)
· 1 year ago
This seems to be a trend. It's good to separate the grain from the chaff.
marshal sandler
· 1 year ago
I like the fact you make efforts to inform with excellent content ! I am going to officially change MY NAME TO" DIGITAL MOVE'S! " It makes me a Super Collector of Data ! I am jealous because you have a real brand ! I have to reinvent myself and hope some one Scrapes my Data ! Onward Upward Scobie ! Calacanis will never catch you ! You are the original :) !
saran
· 1 year ago
Social network researchers should take you as an example for their experiments...A report says that generally, a person can have 150 – 160 (average) people maximum in their SN at a given point. If the number goes beyond this, the quality of the relationship decreases. I hope that you are an exceptional and very highest degree node (I think it depends on an individual’s knowledge, profession, and experience). secondly, With help of better tools, one can break those numbers easily. for ex, the tools can have better personalization (to filter/search/sort/translate languages etc).
Stu
· 1 year ago
Robert, can you give us a quick post about what you believe to be the reasons we should invest our time into Friend Feed?
I'll check through the archives, might have missed it if you've already done one.
Cheers
Stu
· 1 year ago
A search for "friendfeed" on this place revealed everything :).
Chris
· 1 year ago
FriendFeed is SurfControl blocked for me (twitter isn't). Guess I'll just read via Google Reader.
frontporchforum
· 1 year ago
Robert... You did a PodTech piece on us at Personal Democracy Forum last year (much appreciated!). Now we're up for Steve Case's public online vote that's giving seed capital grants to four efforts. We're in the Top 20 out of 5,000 entrants. Check it out at... http://miyo.casefoundation.org/vote/?event_id=0...
Good. That will remove some of the useless crap from my feeds. I wish more people will follow your example.
M
· 1 year ago
Seems like a good way to lose readers. It's too much info.
Matt Tennison
· 1 year ago
What I'm still trying to figure out is what the big difference between Friendfeed and Plaxo Pulse is. I joined Plaxo after reading many of Scoble's Posts about it, and the pulse is cool, but what's the difference?
vanderleun
· 1 year ago
Hey, less content, more blather. 24/7/365. In a way, it is a great relief.
benb
· 1 year ago
These all or nothing bandwagoning rampages you go on are not only deja-vu, but indeed all over again. I am sure this will continue until whatever catrastrophic reason you find or new service that will then take over everything else. So it goes, from blogging, to Facebook insanity, to insert whatever fad, to twitter to friendfeed... etc. Only to find out blabla limits "sucks" or this or that. Hey watch my grainy live phone videos while I am walking around point x on this great new service that I will use for a few weeks until a different one is SOOOO much better than the last one. Sigh.
All the while meaningful content is lost and is simply replaced with the this is the greatest thing proclamation where the herd is to follow you.
It would be interesting to see what this does to your actual reading stats, not to mention the numbers of people that tire of all of this and drop. However, the actual reading stats, that is what people actually end up reading versus simply seeing it for a second and then say, sigh, another over exhuberient shill for some service that will last only until the next one.
Yes, I know I can stop subscribing, but I can also skip over what seems to have become the 85+ rate of these things. Whereas you used to have content with structured value, it seems to be no longer here. It is almost as if you are wearing your leather jacket and shorts while being pulled by a boat and yes, you have jumped the blogging shark.
The majority of these things are just white noise and I find that sad and not the least bit compelling.
benb
· 1 year ago
comment 23) You will not likely find it here - because whatever is the new one will be overtaken by something new and you are to herd to the next.
Honestly, how anyone decides to take most of their online identity and continuously fractures it, dumps it, restarts it all the while handing it all over to 3rd parties is beyond me... in the continuous fashion crosses the border of absurd.
benb
· 1 year ago
comment 16) Again, unlikely. Blindly follow without a fully though through reason, except some minor cool things today that really should not cause hoards to follow-suit... primarily because like the whole bizarre, up and down Facebook is the new religion manner, it makes no sense, because it will just end up that he switches and then does again and again. For most people the cost in time, effort and lost data from whatever they were led to would not likely provide anything more than a waste.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
benb: interesting. Facebook is used by 90 million people. Twitter, more than a million now. FriendFeed? Is exploding in use. Kyte? Go to Compete.com and look at the trend line. Qik? Everyweek there's more people on it.
So, if you watch me, you'll probably be able to watch the experiences of a very early adopter and see where things are good and where they fail. There's some value in that.
Even better, if you try them along with me we can discover together.
If you want to be a late adopter, there are lots of other places for you to hang out.
benb
· 1 year ago
Robert,
I understand that, and that is not a bash at you trying out all of these things. Indeed, you stream out a lot of services, many might not see. The thing I think many would like to see is a little more depth again with your blog. A little more explanation about the differences, the why you have decided to charge ahead with the other and so on. Over the years, and I have read your blog for year, you used to give many more thoughtful posts and it seems to have changed into an almost Twitter like blip about oooh I am going to this, oooh I am changing from this and so on.
I am simply hoping, even with all of your new toys, you view your blog as what it has been for many years and that is an open place, where people are not needing to sign up, log in, dedicate time to some company that is shilling something, and get good information as we have in the past.
Those are some key points between using services like Facebook, which certainly have value, as do the many others, but most people do not have the time or the *job* to jump ship every time you do for the simple purpose of trying out something new OR just so they can follow something useful you put there rather than what used to be your more central hub. In other words, you fracture your audience and lose people, while putting up less meaningful content by making all of these leaps... Not in phases, but in all or nothing tangents. Your blog is an open garden and most of these services require entering a new and many times walled one... (leaving out the non-portability of trying move once you are ensconced)
Muthu Ramadoss
· 1 year ago
You must add QIK to this. Twitter and QIK addiction is getting to me ;)
Jonas
· 1 year ago
Thanks for this move! I appreciate your move towards more thoughtful posts within the blog. That's the thing I want to read from you, apart from some of the fastcompany.tv shows. Blogging about every micro-move, as somebody called it, is NOT the thing I want to see from you personally ;)
Dan Guy
· 1 year ago
I can't wait for you to "discover" IRC...
Twitter is NOT a chat client.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Dan: I was on IRC. It sucks compared to Twitter. Why?
1. No permalinks PER post. 2. No RSS feed. 3. No FriendFeed services. 4. Can't block assholes effectively. 5. No API so other weird tools like http://www.twittervision.com can be built. 6. Kevin Rose doesn't use IRC.
But nice try.
Paul Chaney
· 1 year ago
I had commented somewhere about my belief that "smarter" apps like FriendFeed would develop, but with brandable capabilities. You reference the redesign and FF playing a role in that. I, for one, would be interested to learn more.
Guess I can wait and see though, but anxious nonetheless, as I believe what's to be revealed will in some ways be a glimpse into the future of personal branding. And, that excites me to no end!
W3G
· 1 year ago
Nothing personal but I do love the concept of FriendFeed. -W3G
All Comments
In the meantime I've been watching what's going on at TechMeme and am glad I've been quiet lately here.
It's more realistic really; these composed pieces don't pop out of nowhere they are a compendium of smaller conversations and research that come together.
In all seriousness, Robert is extremely flexible and able to well integrate the new into the older. That, even more than being a voracious early adopeter, is, I believe, a key component of his great success.
PS I found this via Friendfeed. Even though it's one of the first reads on my feedreader, still saved plenty of time.
http://blog.coda2go.com/managers/?p=9
This isn't unusual for these types of applications given the scale of integration required. Facebook apps often have the same problem if they're pulling activity in from elsewhere.
This kind of VLSI (very large scale integration) of highly granular social apps is going to pose whole new traffic, reliability, and response time issues for Web application creators as Web sites have to use open APIs effectively on a vast scale in near real-time. It's going to create a whole new discipline to make these types of apps work.
I'll check through the archives, might have missed it if you've already done one.
Cheers
And go vote for Front Porch Forum! ;-)
Michael Wood-Lewis
Front Porch Forum
Vote for FPF and make a difference!
http://frontporchforum.com
All the while meaningful content is lost and is simply replaced with the this is the greatest thing proclamation where the herd is to follow you.
It would be interesting to see what this does to your actual reading stats, not to mention the numbers of people that tire of all of this and drop. However, the actual reading stats, that is what people actually end up reading versus simply seeing it for a second and then say, sigh, another over exhuberient shill for some service that will last only until the next one.
Yes, I know I can stop subscribing, but I can also skip over what seems to have become the 85+ rate of these things. Whereas you used to have content with structured value, it seems to be no longer here. It is almost as if you are wearing your leather jacket and shorts while being pulled by a boat and yes, you have jumped the blogging shark.
The majority of these things are just white noise and I find that sad and not the least bit compelling.
Honestly, how anyone decides to take most of their online identity and continuously fractures it, dumps it, restarts it all the while handing it all over to 3rd parties is beyond me... in the continuous fashion crosses the border of absurd.
So, if you watch me, you'll probably be able to watch the experiences of a very early adopter and see where things are good and where they fail. There's some value in that.
Even better, if you try them along with me we can discover together.
If you want to be a late adopter, there are lots of other places for you to hang out.
I understand that, and that is not a bash at you trying out all of these things. Indeed, you stream out a lot of services, many might not see. The thing I think many would like to see is a little more depth again with your blog. A little more explanation about the differences, the why you have decided to charge ahead with the other and so on. Over the years, and I have read your blog for year, you used to give many more thoughtful posts and it seems to have changed into an almost Twitter like blip about oooh I am going to this, oooh I am changing from this and so on.
I am simply hoping, even with all of your new toys, you view your blog as what it has been for many years and that is an open place, where people are not needing to sign up, log in, dedicate time to some company that is shilling something, and get good information as we have in the past.
Those are some key points between using services like Facebook, which certainly have value, as do the many others, but most people do not have the time or the *job* to jump ship every time you do for the simple purpose of trying out something new OR just so they can follow something useful you put there rather than what used to be your more central hub. In other words, you fracture your audience and lose people, while putting up less meaningful content by making all of these leaps... Not in phases, but in all or nothing tangents. Your blog is an open garden and most of these services require entering a new and many times walled one... (leaving out the non-portability of trying move once you are ensconced)
Blogging about every micro-move, as somebody called it, is NOT the thing I want to see from you personally ;)
Twitter is NOT a chat client.
1. No permalinks PER post.
2. No RSS feed.
3. No FriendFeed services.
4. Can't block assholes effectively.
5. No API so other weird tools like http://www.twittervision.com can be built.
6. Kevin Rose doesn't use IRC.
But nice try.
Guess I can wait and see though, but anxious nonetheless, as I believe what's to be revealed will in some ways be a glimpse into the future of personal branding. And, that excites me to no end!
-W3G