Isn't that (for the most part) the point of FF? - Justin Korn
I choose subscriptions based on a core-perimeter model. The core are people whose interests I know overlap with my own. But I also try to have a strong perimeter - very high quality information sources across a wide variety of areas. So I read blogs by people like Robin Hanson (economist), Terry Tao (mathematician), Ethan Zuckerman (developing world), etc. Unfortunately, FriendFeed usage still seem to be mostly concentrated in a few areas. - Michael Nielsen
Michael, it will get more interesting over time. Waiting for the synthesizer geeks to show up :) - Deepak
Michael, that is one of the best comments I've seen on FF. - David Gutelius
This is true with most things in life. Your real friends, the sites you visit, etc. Why is this so shocking? Just saying... :P - James Mowery
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it's not shocking... It's justa useful quote that sums up the service... ;) - Chris Messina
I know, but, it could be applied to every social network: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube. Even forums and such. I'm sure the Bret guy is smart, but I mean... yeah. - James Mowery
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Yeah, I'm being really picky about what I read on FriendFeed. Trying to master the "hide" functionality like so many have suggested to filter out the not-so-useful stuff. :D - James Mowery
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Couldn't agree more. I just added a bunch of gluten free people cause I have celiacs and then the usual band of geeks. - Ryan Cates
I'm just going to subscribe to Michael so I won't have to work so hard to track those people down. - Todd McKinney
and would even be more interesting if FF helped me discover more folks who werent like m, but were still interesting. - dave mcclure
But I'm filtering out the social news stuff, for the most part. - Tamar Weinberg
+1 Dave McClure... we need categories of interests badly! so we can filter content and subscribe accordingly; plus rooms would also be associated with said categories... (I already submitted a feature request for this) - Susan Beebe
the funny thing is that FriendFeed wouldn't work for me if it was my actual circle of friends. they like stuff that I have no interest in. - Jamie
Jamie: Funny but true for me too. I really like Susan's suggestion for finding cool new things and interesting people via categories. That would open the door for a StumbleUpon-like function for FF. - David Muir
I agree. And thats a good thing..right? Every day when I come to FF it works like "Google News" for me :) - Saad Kamal
It's exactly what u said . ... The more popular ur friends are , The more famous u are - saee:Dsharif
Obviously the content I choose to see - I am interested in. However and this is not just semantics what I am "interested in" at a particular moment and my more permanent "interests" are NOT necessarily the same things. And for me a core benefit of social networks is discovery. For that reason I would say, no, the people I follow do not tend to reflect my interests all the time. - John Samuelson
I think that would be the main reason why you would add people on FriendFeed although it is not the only reason. You could add friends (who are not on FF) by making them "imaginary friends" just so that you could keep tabs on them. - Hubert Lotilla
@Hubert turns out whoisi.com approximates the imaginary friend feature rather well... - Chris Messina
interesting ComScore stats on user start/homepages... not sure i completely believe the stats, but even if they're anywhere close then 3 observations: 1) MyYahoo still killing the field 2) iGoogle made a lot more progress than i had thought 2) MyMSN/MyAOL losing a lot more progress than i realized, and 3) Netvibes probably an acquisition target for someone. would be interesting to compare stats with a few other services like Hitwise, Quantcast, Compete. - dave mcclure
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I agree, Dave - those comscore stats seem suspect, for MyYahoo at least. - David Gutelius
thought netvibes would have bigger share - Tim Connors
is this the kind of un-web 2.0 kind of guy we want running our country as we attempt to build our information worker dominance? ... I think not. - Shawn Smith
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The things said in jest are often the most truthful things we utter, Sort of like In Vino Veritas. - Douglas E. Welch
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hmm maybe he cannot find them on Internets? - Fred Grott
After seeing McCain with Jon Stewart 13 or so times, watching him back in 2002 on SNL as a hippie high school teacher, and seeing him on SNL in the last few months making fun of his age, I sorta get the impression he has... well... a sense of humor. He can be a funny guy. Hasn't anybody else noticed? - Ken Sheppardson
A great divide in contemporary American culture: crony capitalists vs. creative capitalists. Crony capitalists hate creative capitalists and feel threatened by them. That's the subtext here if you dig deeply. The Bush 43 administration (of which McCain is a part) is the last angry gasp of a particular class of crony capitalists who want to annihilate everything that they can't understand or control. The Internet is full-throttle creative capitalism -- it drives these people nuts. - Sean McBride
Ken - How can a guy this deadly serious, with that rictus grin and ever-present rage, ever make a joke? Does he look like he gets the Internet? - Sean McBride
Unfortunately his jokes tend to be about hating people and bombing countries. That bomb Iran song was a hoot. - Kevin Bondelli
This was on December 7, and the clip leaves out a part where he is using a blog as an example, so it is tough to determine whether he was being playful or not. I think the selectiveness of the clip is unfortunate. Anybody know where the whole piece is? - Dennis E. Hamilton
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Ken: I watched the video. McCain can be charming and likable in spurts. He's also a very angry man who is going to push the same war agenda in the Middle East as Bush/Cheney, at the behest of his neoconservative and crony capitalist puppeteers. If you think "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" is funny, along with $200 to $400 a barrel oil prices, you'll be impressed by McCain's wit and brilliance. Joseph Lieberman, who knows McCain well, praised him as a "Maccabee" -- an Old Testament holy warrior. - Sean McBride
@Robert Scoble: McCain's hatred of bloggers is evidence of blogger power. If a guy who can't use a computer feels the impact of bloggers, it's a cause for celebration, no? - Michael Markman
@Sean McBride: pedantic nit: Maccabee doesn't appear in the Old Testament. He appears in the Apocrypha. - Michael Markman
There's a massive lack of any kind of a sense of humor going on in this campaign, especially when it comes to McCain. He used a crack about beating his wife when he felt that a reporter asked him a "Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Senator?" question, and he got beat up about it. There have been many similar instances, and maybe this is one, too. I don't particularly like John McCain, but I think everyone needs to stop jumping his shit about trivial crap. - David Worrell
Michael: a man who attends to the details -- I like that. :) Let me rephrase: the Maccabean meme -- the archetype of the ethnic nationalist holy warrior -- is a product of the Old Testament mindset or culture. (And there are many fine things in the OT -- I am not using the term in an exclusively pejorative way.) In any case, Lieberman praising McCain as a Maccabee doesn't inspire confidence in me about McCain; nor is it a tribute to McCain's sense of humor (or even sanity). - Sean McBride
Note: Joseph Lieberman is also a big fan of Christian Armageddonist John Hagee, a fanatic who wants to set the world on fire, starting in the Middle East. Apparently Lieberman sees signficant similarities between Hagee and McCain. - Sean McBride
Sean: wow, that explains a lot! yikes - Susan Beebe
John McCain is definitely aware of the Internet. - Alexander Carlill
Sounds like he doesn't like people who express their opinions either - Judy Jones
November is going to be catastrophic for the GOP, I think. - Alexander Carlill
Susan: Lieberman, Hagee, neoconservatives and Christian Zionists/Armageddonists are counting on John McCain to expand the Iraq War to Iran and the rest of the Middle East -- that is why they are promoting him. Notice how many belligerent and threatening statements McCain has made on the subject. He's a fanatic, not a comedian. This entire political bloc also hates political dissent and often smears political opponents as "terrorists" -- hence their hatred of the free-wheeling and intellectually independent Internet. - Sean McBride
"I hate the bloggers." So, he hates the ability of people to express themselves without censorship? Seriously, even in jest, this is disconcerting. And remember the adage - never truer words spoken in jest. - AJ Kohn
AJ: One of John McCain's chief promoters, Joseph Lieberman, is also a sponsor of the Homegrown Terrorism Act, a piece of nasty legislation that is moving in the direction of censoring the Internet along neoconservative standards of political correctness. Make no mistake: these people really, really hate the Internet and diversity of opinion. "They hate our freedoms." :) - Sean McBride
Ignore Lieberman. A few Senate victories and the Dems will kick him to the curb, he'll lose his seniority and the GOP won't take him either. He's a religious zealot and a total opportunist. Picking him as VP was possibly Al Gore's worst decision since he stole all of Vint Cerf's ideas and invented the Internet based on his unfinished plans... - Andrew Feinberg
Seriously folks - he was kidding. I'm not going to defend the man as a technology pioneer but I think we can all agree that "bloggers" in the most general sense are not beloved far and wide - I don't know where Yglesias gets off calling the laughter 'tepid' either. There are PLENTY of substantive issues to disagree over - I'm ignoring ridiculous "Obama doesn't wear a flag pin" memes - no need for anyone to grab their e-muskets over this one either... - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
I'd say the Democrats have pretty much kicked Lieberman to the curb already. - Ken Sheppardson
He's still Chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, and the leadership has to kiss his ass lest he go Jim Jeffords on them. With 12 Republican Senate seats open, give the Dems a few victories and Joe gets the boot. - Andrew Feinberg
he also hates puppies, lollipops pigtails and sunlight - I mean ANY sunlight - if elected President he has a secret plan to detonate nuclear devices on the sun so that he may plunge the world into eternal darkness mwahahahahahaha Oh and he met my grandmother once (sweet, sweet lady) and he slapped her because she didn't get up when he entered the room (she was wheelchair bound at the time). - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
LOL at Marco. Need to be able to "Like" comments as well. - Robert Stribley
@ Shey, i think he's serious, but he just let it come across as being a joke - Gordon Swaby
@Gordon he's not despite whatever other problems people may have with him he genuinely enjoys a free and open exchange of ideas (simmer down - no flaming that comment folks) for well over a year now (and long before ANY other candidate followed suit I believe) he has hosted regular conference calls directly with bloggers where every two weeks or so he jumps on a conf call and takes their questions. It is undeniable that he provides journalists far more direct access than Obama - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
I couldn't help but comment more extensively on Sean McBride's "creative capitalism" comment on my blog: http://tinyurl.com/5sj5qf After looking further at Sean McBride's FriendFeed, I can see the delusions don't stop at "creative capitalism". - Jason Huebel
He was clearly joking during that clip. Senator McCain gives unprecedented access to bloggers and to all media types unlike Senator Obama. http://tinyurl.com/677vds The main benefit of web 2.0 is that it gives us a better view of how people think and what they are really like, but in this election Senator McCain is the only one with an open access policy. Senator Obama is restricting access to all but a few media outlets while Senator McCain is letting small town newspapers ride on the Straight Talk Express which gives them the opportunity to ask the candidate questions. - Michael Beach
Jason: I read your interesting blog entry. Let me clarify a bit: "creative capitalism" -- new successful and profitable businesses based on original intellectual property and fresh ideas, not necessarily restricted to the Internet or information technology. "Crony capitalism" -- businesses based on financial manipulation, no-bid contracts, oligopolies, monopolies and the like. See, for instance, Halliburton's Iraq War profiteering. Creative capitalists tend to gravitate to the Democratic Pary; crony capitalists to the Republican Party. Halliburton is a very different kind of enterprise (and culture) than Google. - Sean McBride
John McCain's script is being written by the same neoconservatives at the AEI, JINSA, WINEP and other neocon think tanks who have come close to destroying the Republican Party and the conservative movement. They are urging McCain to expand the Iraq War to Iran, thus McCain's "joke" -- "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" -- a little ditty that was also sung by neocon James Woolsey from the AEI. Is there anything funny about the prospect of $10 or $20 a gallon gas? Chaos in the Mideast? Try nightmare. - Sean McBride
Throughout the nineties I got the strong impression that old school crony and vulture capitalists were utterly baffled and enraged by the smart ass kids from MIT, Stanford and other hotbeds of radical imagineering who created the Internet revolution. They saw the entire cultural shift as mystifying, subversive and threatening. McCain is definitely old school in this kulturkampf. Ancient. - Sean McBride
