James Clark

PeopleBrowsr FTW, that's for sure - Sociosophy Reviews via twhirl

now we need a peoplebrowsr desktop client! - sixbit

No breakthrough:( - YaDuMMeR

It's very nice. Kinda reminds me of TweetDeck in the presentation. Now they just need to expand to some more of the social services. - R. Alexander Spoerer

I know its alpha and all that but it seems wildly over-hyped to me - Trevor Cook

Remember the scene in "Big" where Tom Hanks keeps saying "I don't get it" to the toy presentation? Well, "I don't get it". - Chris Stevenson

You can *tell* (ask?) it to refresh every X minute but it, uh, doesn't. Pondering. - techPR

Interesting. Semantic web stratifying, unifying and ultimately destroying the web. The stratifying, unifying sounds like an undesirable potential side effect of Greader's new "bundle" algorithm. - Brad

cheers Robert, I've commented over there (in short: it won't "Think", but it'll help us in thinking/decision-making) - Danny Ayers

it will be in chinese, more meaning per character than in english, graphical components as well, everthing machine readable - Gregory Lent

There are as many semantic models of the world as there are individuals and groups at any given time. View the world through as many different conceptual lenses as you fancy. That's another vision of the future of the Semantic Web. The dominant global consensus model may well be wrong on a regular basis. - Sean McBride

Good point Sean. You view of a semantic result may not be my view. - Robert Miller

wow, crazy. tell her to contact me if she needs any development - Jason Pratt

I am trying to remain personally optimistic, but I don't believe the bottom has been reached. - Louis Landon

This is what I love about being a student and working with other students. I can do everything much cheaper. $1 mil would probably fund my current business for 2+ years easily. - Daniel Zarick

It'll get worse before it gets better. Next two quarters will be tough. - Patricia

@Louis Landon Me too. I still hope thing will get better. - Marcel Janus

Eventually, things will get better. - Patricia

how people/firms/investors respond in bad times is much more telling of their character than how they respond in good times. they're doing it because they think they can get away with it. that window will close. - Bryce Roberts

Look, things are really bad and getting worse. They will eventually get better as Patricia says, but it will be hard for very many people. No one is really insulated, but there's no point in panicking or worrying about what you can't fix. However, we all should try to understand WTF happened and learn from it. I just shared a speech today by Charlie McCreevy of the European Commission in my timeline that everyone should read. It's simple and clear. - IRWebReport.com

better worse better worse better worse better worse better worse ... been going on forever, every up has a down ... why complain about the inevitable? - Gregory Lent

I don't doubt that VCs are having a tough time, but Intel Capital wanting to lower the valuation to $1 doesn't mean Intel Capital is having a tough time. It means some of the previous investors who participated in the rounds leading to the $5 mil are no longer putting in more money, and Intel wants to squeeze them out. They don't want to carry nonperforming investors. Those other VCs might be shutting down, I guess. - Denton Gentry

You kinda get the feeling that the 'world' is on hold until someone, anyone, suggests a REAL solution. Crazy stuff - Charlie Anzman

I have to say I agree with Denton. Value of a company is still consistent with the market. At the end, you're only worth what somebody's willing to pay. - Patricia

I also agree what Denton and Patricia have said. - imabonehead

I recently had one of those 'holy shit' idea moments, and I am wondering if I'll even be able to get seed capital. - Michael R. Bernstein

In many ways this is just a sign of a smart VC is it not? I'm hearing that most VCs are going to be lowballing valuations in 2009, using the economy as the 'excuse'. Extend your runway if you can and wait until the funding environment isn't as unbalanced. - AJ Kohn

I can understand if the lowered value was just 1M but from 5 to 1? That's gotta suck - Canada's Web Shop

Well the other thing is that VC isn't always the ideal expansion route. Everybody gets excited about, because it can be useful and it can be the right thing - but as somebody mentored by quite a few successful serial entrepreneurs, and a few VC, everybody says the same: don't do it unless you have to. The barrier of entry and costs of web business are so low. I went three years self funding, then started to look at financing options which I didn't end up needing. In a nutshell, it's not the only way to skin the cat in financing a startup. - Patricia

AJ, if I invested in a startup now, I would invest much less than a year ago. I think the risk in the economy is enough of a reason to give a lower valuation, since there is higher risk you won't get your money back. - Chris White

@Chris: Absolutely. I'm not saying there's not a real risk. The risk/reward ratio is steeper in this environment. But VCs are going to over-correct IMO, both to protect against risk and maximize reward. - AJ Kohn

As someone working on his own startup right now I can say categorically that if you are looking to raise VC money you are nuts. There IS NO potential for massive growth right now... there is no expendable income in the economy. Bootstrap - find partners and customers... sell what you can and try and survive. That is all. - Brian Roy

Another data point here is that very serious suitors of Genalyte, the company I work for, pulled back. We're now in survival mode, but that's not to say we aren't able to get some interest from some of the bigger players. My industry is biotech, and although the sector is down like everything else, we've not have a industry-specific bubble and crash yet. I think there's tremendous potential for growth in our sector for technologies that present significant cost savings over competitors. - Mr. Gunn

As CEO of a startup, I gave up on Venture Capital in September. Anyone paying attention could see the signs of slowing investment since the spring. But September slammed the door. What worries me now, though, isn't the VC markets. What worries me is the credit card market. AMEX is slashing credit limits, which will hurt small businesses and slow innovation far more than any VC slowdown. Real innovation happens on the back of credit, until a case can be made to risk-averse VCs that there's a real business opportunity. When credit is gone, our economy is like an engine running without any oil. - Chris Kenton via twhirl

So a good time for the super rich to help small businesses then ;o) - Rob Sellen

The first question you have to ask yourself is - can I do this and generate profit (or at minimum be revenue neutral)? If not you've got big problems. You have to do whatever you need to do to get to profit... NOW. - Brian Roy

Biggest way for them to boost revenue NOW would be to better track what they do, what works, what don't.. to much is simply wasted. Plough whats wasted into what works..what you KNOW works.. :o) - Rob Sellen

Oddly enough, this is the time when you can actually build real businesses and not starry-eyed-shoot-for-the-moon efforts. - mikepk

Lol.. but shoot high... no point shooting low... fail often fail fast... :o) - Rob Sellen

You can shoot high without drawing the "hockey stick", "we're going to grow to 20 million users worldwide in a year" statements that are necessary for VC funding. There *is* a middle ground, but problem is, if there are enough VC backed companies giving away everything for free to get "eyeballs" they suck out all the oxygen in the space. It's tough if you're not trying to be the next Google. - mikepk

But you have to remember - it is DEAD on both sides. You can't raise capital and you have to be able to sell it to someone... who is buying? I'm not saying don't do it (hell I'm doing it right now). I'm saying get realistic... - Brian Roy

All you CAN do is RAISE the VALUE you give. :o) - Rob Sellen

I do, I'd say Twitter probably has the best shot right now. FF is still over the head of too many, they dont know (and dont want to know) about rss - sean percival

I really hope with the continuous feature additions and improvements to FriendFeed, it would soon have a universal appeal. There are so many Nay-sayers but I'm behind them 220%. :) As for Twitter - I don't really use it anyway, so it doesn't make a difference. Although I would LOL if they were to start charging monthly fees. ie: Threaded replies are only for premium accounts haha - Mona N.

This weekend I excitedly told an engineer-friend (hydrologist) about meeting the "inventor of RSS" last week. And he said "what's that?" -- Bastard. - Brian Hendrickson

I'm with friendfeed. And yes, it should go mainstream ASAP. Many just want to go to friendfeed because "nobody else but you are on there, I know". So that is the real problem. - Ryo

Twitter will go mainstream as people always want to be noticed. Friendfeed has a harder road because it is not about the user, it is about the information. If Friendfeed goes mainstream, it will be in a much different way, like a major research or news tool. - Rob Diana

FF will go mainstream as soon as people realize that it's *not* about the information, it's about the conversation. Twitter in its current form is a megaphone broadcasting system a la FB status updates, without a realistic and understandable method of replying. FF on the other hand not only let's you share information, but creates a method to *discuss* it. It's biggest obstacle for going mainstream is the UI. - Stupid Ninja (aka Tina)

Tina, I mostly agree about the conversation, but the conversation is typically based on the information at this point. I think the amount of information that passes through will be too much for most people until better filters are in place. I admit, I tend to be very pessimistic when it comes to growth and mainstream adoption of most tech. - Rob Diana

I am all for both apps hitting mainstream fast. Both serve excellent online communication needs. Twitter provides broadcasts and quick short replies; whereas FriendFeed provides the ability to share information and generate conversation / feedback regarding that info., which can blossom into an entire community around that topic. Twitter's challenge is stability, scalability and UI. FriendFeed's challenge is search, organization and UI. - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)

Rob, I can only base statements on my experience of course, and they're going to be affected by who follows me. With that said, my most engaging conversations on FF have usually been around a topic tossed up as a status update/question, not a link to an external post. Also, unlike FB and TW which offer a one to one conversation model (excepting FB groups), FF automatically offers a one to many conversation model. - Stupid Ninja (aka Tina)

FriendFeed will go mainstream because it's a better medium than email for sharing links and news. I wrote in detail on this here: http://friendfeed.com/e/c2f76d... - Bruce Lewis via fftogo

couple quick comments: not everything needs to "go mainstream" to be a success, it is ok to fill a niche & some things are not products but rather features best integrated into or augmenting something else - i think friendfeed fits both these criteria (current and future) and i see that as a good thing personally... - mike "glemak" dunn

@Mike - I've been thinking this too lately. What is "a success"? Is Apple a "success". They only have about 5% of the market of computers, yet I think there is a lot more media buzz about Apple unveiling a revised macbook than there is about Dell or HP introducing a revised 1050e or whatever they call them. If you get 1% of Americans using your product, that is 3 million people. That is a lot. - Robert Felty

What is mainstream? 25% of US population? 10% of RSS/tech geeks? 1% of the world? 10% of people who would pay for this service? FF's current UX won't scale to a large population having lots of real conversations here. But it does serve a good niche (or two or three) right now. But what % of the world has/wants to have conversations like this? Mainstream would drive FF to be everything to everyone. Would we (as early adopters) still like it then? - David Lee

I have a radical idea... how about Twitter just finds a way to make some money. Mainstream is great... but completely misses the point... - Brian Roy

I am "mainstream", but I've been on FF for a year as of tomorrow. - Anne Bouey

Has anyone else noticed the push the major media give to some services and not others? How often did Television Programming (news, sitcoms, talk shows) talk about "googling" something; did you ever hear them talk about "yahooing" or "asking" anything? Then it was myspace, myspace, myspace followed by Facebook. Makes me wonder if those who own the media heavily invest and then push their investments. - Internet Strategist

Internet Strategist: media people just want to be cool. It's easy to understand why they push certain stuff. I do the same. I have no investments in anything. - Robert Scoble

Will Twitter and FriendFeed become mere commodities, fed to the masses by media moguls, to sell their product ? Because that is their job. I think Twitter is becoming more mainstream, more noticed and talked about - but not generally understood. How would it be affected by advertising and ten times the traffic? FF will take longer to catch on, even though it is better. Twitter plants seeds that can be grown in FriendFeed. - Chris Loft

frankly i don't think Joe the Plumber is really that interested in such a mass of content/dialogue, Facebook is about as much feed as an average person can handle. FF/Twitter are downright manic for them and they don't have/don't want the mental faculty to deal with the multiple perpetual conversations/topics - it creates more anxiety than fun and if it's not fun it's toast. Neither will get double digit % of the population using them - Bob

OTOH, is text messaging considered mainstream yet in the U.S.? (I realize we lag way behind the rest of the world in this.) I don't think the "mainstream" can handle more than one technological breakthrough at a time :) I still know people who are even just getting used to using a computer. - Victor Ganata

@Bob I think Twitter is so powerful that it can be used for many different purposes. Imagine a multi-dimensional Twitter with single or more refined services. For local councils, government, media companies, business services, geeks, gossip, etc. Each with their own customised Twitter serving their needs. This is where Twitter will produce an income stream; hiving itself off into customized services, without the noise. - Chris Loft

i dont think it is a "we dont want it to go mainsteam" it is more of a "the technology isnt quite ready for it to go mainsteam, we couldnt handle all our friends and family and colleagues nattering on our feeds, we can barely handle the information flow at the moment". We need better filtering, a better way to have several spheres in parallel on these services. - Joelle Nebbe

(translating my previous comment in pragmatic speech:) I am happy to have all that crowd happily segragated on facebook sending each other quizzes, i dont want them coming on my FF and twitter. I love them to bits but they are, well, embarrassing! I don't want "what peanut character are you" on my friendfeed, and it will come with the mainstream - Joelle Nebbe

hmmm, this bubbled up so I re-read it. man, that was a great old post - Sarah Perez

By old you mean 9 weeks, right Sarah? :-) - Louis Gray

Just remember what comes with being mainstream...tons of spammers. - April Russo

FriendFeed should go mainstream. Despite our selfish desire to want to keep it to ourselves, it is a smarter way for news and information to be disseminated that would benefit all once they are aware of it. - Thomas Hawk

No question, when a service hits critical mass, the conversation will change. Look at YouTube - people are always bemoaning the boorish, illiterate nature of the comments there. Will we stick around when Scoble or Louis pose an interesting question and half the comments are spam and profanity? - Laura Norvig

I liked the old one.. was getting used t it nicley.. could have asked us to give em feedback first lol.. :o/ - Rob Sellen

I preferred the old one as well - Duncan Riley

And how hard would it be to just give the user the choice as to how it looks? - James D Kirk

It's just a case of getting used to it. I think. I didn't like it originally but it does grow on a person - Paul Sharrock via IM

I was quite disappointed about the change as well. - trextor

Ugh -- not a fan either. Much like with the stink I raised over the iGoogle shift a while back, I'm not sure why they can't give us an option here, as James said above. - JR R.

I was happy with the old one. Don't much like the new look even though it is a subtle change. Wish they would put a "change back to old view" like Yahoo does. - Jeff P. Henderson

I like it, except the line items need to go back to their smaller size. - Jordan Hofker

Just seems like change for change's sake. The look isn't an improvement on the previous style. It's too washed-out now. Bring back the colored background for the left column at least. - Rowan Hanna

some themes can be added just as what had been done with Gmail. - pestwave

Missing the old google reader. We had just gotten to know eachother well. We were vibing. - Ebm

I like the new GReader... nice and clean... - Aad 't Hart

I think it's neater. Is it faster or am I just a big enthousiast ? - Genaro Bardy via twhirl

i didn't even notice the change, and I spend a LOT of time in my reader - William Harryman

I like the new look. - Denton Gentry

My reader on the iPhone is messed up. The lines don't wrap. I tried clearing the cache but no luck. This happening to anyone else? - Brian Newman

I liked it at first, but that wore off quickly - Shey

the overly bold text is grating to me... my whole left column is nearly all bold - Nathan Chase

yeah... be nice if we can have own themes like in gmail :o) - Rob Sellen