Alberto Saavedra

Nope. I think that Android is a smartphone OS just like Windows Mobile and the iPhone OS. So it competes with them both. - Dare Obasanjo

The user experience should be portable across devices and device types. Microsoft has not been able to achieve this. Apple is not going to try. - scott anderson

A better way to see it is as a way of competing with dumb phones. - DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt: I think you have started drinking your own kool-aid ;) People only have one cell phone. So any cell phone competes with all other cell phones. iPhone competes with dumb phones, and Android phones compete with the iPhone. Features and cost play a part, as they do with every other purchasing decision. Saying they don't compete is just expectation-setting, like the candidates telling the press how bad they are at debating before every debate. - Bret Taylor

Hehe. No, my argument is that now that there is an iPhone quality operating system available, open source, for free, there will be no excuse for every device not to be a smart phone. - DeWitt Clinton

Looks like Bret beat me to the punch. :) - Dare Obasanjo

Open isn't enough to win. It has to be good too. Note though that Android != G1, so even if you don't fancy that device, just wait.... there will be more. Did you read how companies are jumping in with Android? E.g. Motorola putting 350 people on it (allegedly). - Dion Almaer

Viz "people only have one cell phone" that may be true in the US but from where I'm sitting I can see 2 of my mobile phones. In many parts of the world the number of phones is greater than 1. According to wikipedia this is true in 50 countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... - Adewale Oshineye

Agreed with Dion that open isn't alone enough to win. But open *and* a phone that is as good as the iPhone, and thus arguably at least the second best overall, and now you're talking profound. And there are something like what, 10 million iPhones, but almost 4 billion phones in existence. That's 99.75% of the market that can be upgraded, even if the end goal for Android isn't sales numbers (sales are upside for the carriers to realize). That's not Kool-Aid - that's a paradigm shift. - DeWitt Clinton

I've been quiet publicly so far about my enthusiasm for Android. But now that the covers are coming off I can say that I truly believe that Android has the potential to change the world. I think of it like this -- Google would not have have been possible without open source software, particularly the GNU tools and compilers and the Linux kernel, and the open web ecosystem to nuture it. What future Googles will Android make possible? I honestly don't know -- only time will tell, and that's why I'm excited. - DeWitt Clinton

There will still be a market for cheap dumb phones going forward. They can be made to run Android and customized by adding one or more Android apps locked into the device by the carrier. The software will be free to the carriers and the hardware commodites. I don't know if Apple and Microsoft will want to compete in the dumb phone market. - scott anderson

Android is a smart phone OS, not a dumb phone OS. Part of what makes a phone a dumb phone is hardware limitations. No one at Google has been talking publicly about putting Android on phones like the ones in the story at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04... and even then Symbian is more likely to make it happen given its popularity and maturity. Nice rap though. - Dare Obasanjo

True, to a point. But the dumbest of dumb hardware today is smarter than the smart hardware just a few years ago. A couple of years from now, just try buying a device without a capacitive touch screen, an 802.11 chip, a camera, flash storage, etc. And if you were building an ultra-low cost device for developing nations, wouldn't you chose the open source platform that was free of licensing fees? - DeWitt Clinton

And back to the original point, is no one else blown away by the fact that version 1.0 of Android -- the first public release -- is already being compared with the very best mobile OS, the iPhone OS? That Dare would even feel the need to write that post? - DeWitt Clinton

If Symbian is so popular and mature then why are they trying to steal the Android / OHA game plan? As far as I know Symbian will still have to cater to the OMA. That is a severe handicap for them. BTW, my definition of dumb phones would include a dedicated map device that you could talk to and a phone that only has a voice interface, something you would want to have while jogging, etc. You would operate all these devices over the same networks. - scott anderson

Dewitt, you should be a politician with your ability to switch positions so quickly. The point is that today Android is a competitor to smartphone OSes like Symbian, WinMobile and the iPhone OS. Of these Symbian is the most popular and iPhone has the most hype. So unsurprisingly the press is all about Apple vs. Google since is the Brangelina of trade press news. - Dare Obasanjo

Haha. I have the family name for it, too. : ) But I'll cede you the point. The Android OS *is* competitive with other smart phone operating systems, and maybe even to their market share. But what excites me is that the ecosystem -- the openness, the licensing, etc -- around Android is *nothing* like the other smart phone operating systems. Android is inventing an entirely new class there. So even if it failed against the smart phones (and I don't think it will) it will still change everything. - DeWitt Clinton

"That's not Kool-Aid -- that's a paradigm shift." ??? [reads packet of Google Paradigm Shift] hmmm... sugar, fructose, citric acid, calcium phosphate...Yellow 6 lake, Red 40 lake... artificial flavor.... What flavor? I honestly don't know -- only time will tell, and that's why I'm excited!!! Woo!!! - Karim

[grabs nearest passing stranger by the lapels] This drink has the potential to change the WORLD!!!!!! - Karim

Personally, I think we should be comparing the G1 to Apple's first phone, which was called the E1. You might know it as the ROKR: http://bit.ly/2062si . And just as Apple's OS and the phones that ran the OS got much better over time, so too will Android phones. With an open-source OS, anyone could write Exchange support. Dare, where are the docs on Exchange's APIs, just so people can learn about them? - Matt Cutts

Here you go - http://www.microsoft.com/about... - Dare Obasanjo

ROKR OS was not created by apple, not the slightest, Motorola made it look like the ipods of the time to add that extra oomph for the marketing department, but when everyone got to play with it they hated it. Not to mention the fact that it only came with 128 MB of ram out of the box. - Stepan Mazurov

have to agree with Stepan -- the ROKR E1 was basically a older Motorola E398 onto which Apple glommed a single application called the iTunes Client. (Which they then intentionally crippled to hold very few songs, so as not to cannibalize iPod sales.) You don't want to confuse a single app with an entire OS. [thinks about Chrome] Or *do* you? Muahahaha... :-D - Karim

Compare Mac OS 7,8,9 to Windows 3.0. Arguably, the former was way more usable. Guess which one achieved market dominance. The open system on an open architecture will beat the closed system on a closed architecture in the long run. (It wasn't obvious in 1989 that Apple was in trouble --- their profits weren't really affected until 1998 or so) - Piaw Na

Brilliant stuff. It would be nice if there was a mechanism to define various types of components or activities. Perhaps a standard dictionary and the ability to add a user-defined one. For example, we have talked about research streaming, essentially capturing events from instruments in a lab, or in silico experiments. Not social activity, but activity nevertheless. - Deepak

Is it possible to work some of this into a WordPress plugin in the interim? - l0ckergn0me

one of the reasons i'm up in the air about friendfeed is that it take the conversation away from blog posts.. - Paul Stamatiou

You mention that DiSo Project already has Action Stream plugins. Where are these? - Mark Krynsky

@mark This is the one: http://singpolyma.net/plugins/... (I have it on my blog http://dready.org/blog/ albeit being poorly styled) - Wil

(1) I put Activity Stream functionality into my WicketPixie WordPress theme, but it's not half as rich as what Chris is proposing here; (2) I'm using the FriendFeed WordPress plugin to pull specific commentary back into my corresponding blog posts. - l0ckergn0me

I'm not asserting that it isn't important, btw -- I'm just curious to hear what people think. - Paul Buchheit

For me, the combination of the track feature and im/xmpp make Twitter a whole different animal. Few know about it however, but it is _extremely_ powerful. Imagine a global chat room with your own private filters. http://www.bwana.org/2008/04/2... - Bwana

The value in it is that it's the only way lots of people see realtime communication being able to be achieved. With twitter and friendfeed web interfaces, it takes a refresh to see new comments and entries. When a really active conversation is going, you wind up responding to things out of order and out of context. - Mark Trapp

The other value for people like Gillmor is that they see it as one of the only ways they can save a backup of what they do in a service: Gmail automatically saves chat transcripts of Gtalk, for example. - Mark Trapp

It’s important to people like me, who can’t send or receive SMS to/from Twitter. I do have an unlimited data plan, so when I’m out I just leave Palringo or Fring open and tweet from there. - Guillermo Esteves

im track rocks - Ashton

Agreed with Bwana - IM allows me to filter with specific alterts from tracks and other things I want real time interuptions. Twirl takes the noise. - Elias Bizannes via twhirl

I just replied with a Qik video at http://qik.com/scobleizer - Robert Scoble

The powerusers that actually starting the conversations use it. - Sam Pullara

i don't know the exact figures, but the 7% of twitter users might represent a great proportion of twitter usage. - Jansen Lu

I'm no geek, but once Steve Gillmore told me about it, it changed my life. I could follow everything and everyone. - Francine Hardaway via Alert Thingy

chatterous - Baratunde Thurston

It's very important to me. Being notified in GTalk of replies, DMs, and tracked phrases makes time spent on Twitter much more efficient. - Dewald Pretorius

one way to look at it is how important is manual mode on a camera? Only advanced or pros use that but it sure sold a lot of cameras in my store. "maybe someday I will need it." How many millions use IM? At Microsoft 200+ million use MSN Messenger. How many use Twitter? Less than 2 million. - Robert Scoble

I miss it so much. The track feature is killer for me. - Mack D. Male

I've always said it is the minority who make the most noise about it. However, it is a pretty cool tool. I use it to pipe things through to Gmail as an archive. Gillmor and others primarily for track. - Jamie

maybe it's only the 7% of Twitter users that think it's important who keep saying it is critical - Jim Peters

Didn't Marissa Mayer kill Google Reader three times using this same logic? Heck, didn't AltaVista shoot itself in the head using this same logic? - Robert Scoble

Here's a question from left field -- did you guys ever think of open sourcing the backend for FF? - Dave Winer

Once upon a time the XMPP interface for Twitter was by far the most useful way to use it. It was actually more reliable than the API or the website for a good long time. - Jason Wehmhoener

Now that would be amazing. - Jeremy Felt

Actually, twitter's underlying engine, called Starling, is an open source project. - Andrew Feinberg

and the XMPP interface is pretty important because the most loyal users use it. Never piss off your core fanbase. - Andrew Feinberg

Scoble's Qik response: http://qik.com/video/92567 - Jason Wehmhoener

I don't use it, although I used to. - Morton Fox

Today, most accesses to Twitter are via the polling request/response interface provided by the REST API. That is an inevitably non-scalable interface and only works today because Twitter message traffic is so light. If Twitter, or similar publish/subscribe applications are to succeed, they MUST use protocols optimized for pubsub. Twitter's REST API should be deprecated as a design mistake. If not, then Twitter will fail and be replaced by some service that relies on a pubsub protocol like XMPP... - Bob Wyman

@Bob, that's a really interesting comment. Are you proposing that any site with an API that wants to be fully scalable, shouldn't use REST but use XMPP instead? I have one site that uses XML-RPC for its API, and another one where I wanted to build a REST API, so your comment really caught my attention. - Dewald Pretorius

I find the XMPP interface indispensable especially for tracking keywords (and getting direct messages.) That's the reason for creating a similar bot for FriendFeed (im@mojipage.com) - Wil

I use gtalk at work to twitter it appears to be the best way to do it, besides going to twitter.com - Anthony Farrior

am in the non-7% - Kishore Balakrishnan

@Dewald, XMPP isn't necessary or appropriate for *all* sites. But it IS the right thing for sites whose focus is on real-time or near real-time updates. REST polling APIs create a "Tragedy of the Commons". Excessive polling swamps servers but no one is motivated to poll less than the maximum permitted since anyone who polls less will simply see worse service and others polling more. Push protocols allow everyone to get updates "as fast as possible" without trashing the servers. REST will kill Twitter... - Bob Wyman

Listen to the likes of Scoble and Gillmor and keep it in the back of your mind. But please don't put it in the front of your mind for a good 3-6 months. don't worry about designing the service for them. You've built a really, really cool service and there's plenty of low hanging and higher up fruit you can pick off to make the service you intended to build appealing to a much wider audience. I wouldn't worry about designing Gillmor or Scoble's ideal real-time instant messaging service until that is done (and I'm not sure I'd worry about it then, either). - Robert Seidman

Its called a vocall minority, or in this case, some have a bigger soapbox to stand on. - Lon via twhirl

I don't use twitter, but when I'm using ff the main negative I'm struck by is that it doesn't have the instantaneous feel of a chat room. When I'm chatting with others I *literally* feel like there's a physical space behind the chat client and the conversation is coming out of that space. The conversation feels immensely present. ff just feels like a web page -- I'm intellectually aware that it contains conversations, but the conversation doesn't feel compellingly or viscerally present. - j1m

Now, that said, I'm not sure that if it was instantaneously updated it would have the feel of a real conversation. After all the conversations here are all fragmented into threads related to particular articles -- often, there really is no one in my circle of friends updating the thread I'm updating. - j1m

lol afk brb - ⓞnor

Thanks for the replies everyone. Unfortunately Qik seems to be down at the moment, so I can't see Scoble's video reply. A lot of people are mentioning the "track" feature, which seems somewhat distinct to me. Would the demand for im/xmpp be as high if track were available through other interfaces? Btw, im accounts for an even lower percentage of message (5.5%). Also, I agree that sometimes things are very important even if only a small percentage of people actually use them. - Paul Buchheit

I like/miss it. My guess would be those 7% contribute 20-30% of the posts on twitter. - Sumit Chachra

Track is unique to Twitter because it works in real time. I saw posts show up in Google Talk as soon as they were made. It's an amazing thing and FAR better than waiting a few minutes to do a search on Summize or something. While going through news events like earthquakes it's even more important. - Robert Scoble

I used the XMPP service often. It allowed me to post without having to authenticate with Twitter. - Joel Franusic

Paul, my video is up again now here: http://qik.com/video/92567 - Robert Scoble

What about SIP/SIMPLE, I want to join in from my Cisco/Microsoft IM at the office - Rif Kiamil

@paul put xmpp in friendfeed. you will have more friends and people will like you - Tyler Gillies

I heavily relied on the AIM interface (great for mobile devices) but it's never available. If it were, it would be my primary usage. - Chris DeSalvo

too often you end up with making popcorn as a tweet, I look for insight when I decide to follow a person if it isn't there I don't follow (via Alert Thingy) - BCK

i find the "(via Alert Thingy)" signature quite annoying - can you turn it off in Alert Thingy? - Alex Gawley