So far, the commenters on my site _don't_ want Twitter and FriendFeed to go mainstream. Do you want to keep these technologies to yourself? - Louis Gray
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 Blogger (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 Blogger (aka Tina)
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
Lol Bob i dont think Larry & Sergey will be sleeping like babys...the N97 seems good competition for android in my opinion - Eldon
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Eldon, there is no, and there will be no competition in near future for Android. If you want functionality, a open world of apps, there is no alternative. When you want to have a lifestyle gadget get an iPhone. Android (which is a whole platform, not a single device) is for tech guys and Google users, not for snobs. If there are some who can sleep like a baby, it's the one from Google. There will be new Android phones, when the iPhone is already history. - Ryo
@Scobleizer I have a "disagreement" in point of view, to me, S60 application development is up to Symbian not Nokia, at least that's my take on it. Nokia develops it's own software, but they're not in the same "genre" (bad word choice) as Apple... - Sociosophy Reviews
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Sociosophy: Nokia owns Symbian now and is open sourcing it too. - Robert Scoble
Holy moly! That's huge news to me... Nokia owns Symbian? I had to jump to Google News just to verify that's so awesome. Ok, yea - Nokia needs to step their friggin game up on dev now for sure then... That's... I'm excited - Enrique Gutierrez
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@robert; But there are serious differences. Android is a real open system, a nice gui and infinite possibilities. The iPhone is a closed, very cool gui for snobs, running from a insane genius with a lot of disciples. And Symbian is simply a pile of shit. - Ryo
Androids short comings are the fact that the phone feels like a pile of under developed garbage. The iPhone has a large dev base, but once Adobe releases mobile Flash & god forbid AIR, that game is up. Symbian needs work, but if anyone can make an improvement, it's Nokia - Enrique Gutierrez
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Aren't we all too focused on the US? Mobile phones are fast proliferating in other parts of the world where Nokia has a strong base and market share.I believe that means a strong Symbian developer base too? Thinking aloud... - kamla bhatt
Kamla: It's been that way forever too. Back in the early 2000's GSM was all the rage with 140+ countries adopting the technology, partly due to poor land line services. Nokia's been ahead of the curve (globally) for ages. - Sociosophy Reviews
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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
Mailed you yesterday about coming but near fatal wounding this morning will probably prevent all travel :( Not a geek anyway but would have been nice to say hello. Maybe next trip. - Nicola Quinn
Nicola: that sucks, sorry to hear. Hope you do better. - Robert Scoble
Just look at the Container Ship Time Charter Assessment Index. It's down from 1 022 points in February to 416 points. - Marcel Janus
If I may be honest, I'm sick of reading how bad economy is. Heck, what is the economy? Isn't it but the sum of single business and their relations? If a single business is in trouble, then likely because it isn't producing something useful, isn't able to sell it or doesn't have the funding and the stamina to survive the dip.
Maybe on the big scale it isn't that different. Maybe we weren't producing the things that we needed. Maybe we didn't build good, strong relationships. Maybe we, as a society, have become crybabies and simple lack the stamina to push through this. - Dushan Wegner
The guy at dinner that Robert mentions was Jordi Soler (@jordisoler). He's really remarkable. He's running a family-owned business that trucks containers around Europe, and is totally plugged into the web tech scene, reading all sorts of blogs, signed up to lots of services, etc. And a really nice guy. - Terry Jones
I'm the guy working at the docks. The Tweetup was excellent and I learned a lot about startups with you guys. As to the economic situation, yes, here in Barcelona times are pretty rough right now. I'm still holding up because I have a little family business, but right now big companies are suffering a lot and firing workers. Business is clearly slowing down and we can only hope that the situation recovers soon. - Jordi Soler
