Ryan Junee

Lol Bob i dont think Larry & Sergey will be sleeping like babys...the N97 seems good competition for android in my opinion - Eldon via twhirl

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 via twhirl

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 via twhirl

@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 via twhirl

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

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)

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

This is for Barcelona? - Paul Denlinger

Yes, Barcelona. - 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

Unsubscribe - Jeff McNeill via twhirl

sometimes when the VCs or stock market love you, it can make you slip away from sound business practice. I am someone who always advocates giving employees some space and enough fun (we all work better when we like our job), and for flat structures and openness. But some of the things at google seemed preposterous - very dotcom excess. Excess is frowned on at the moment. - Joelle Nebbe

My point is more along the lines of: it's better to keep a smaller group of star employees happy, than to hire with abandon and then have to cut the quality for everyone. - Chris White

Hmmm. I once mocked the idea of Google selling any of its properties. Now it seems plausible. And maybe sensible too. Who knows... - Nikos Anagnostou

("Like" in this case just means interesting, in case there's any doubt.) - Bruce Lewis via fftogo

Completely agree with you Chris.... However, at this point, I wonder what choice GOOG has. IMO, to get to the nirvana stage of having a smaller group of happy employees, GOOG will have to do lay-offs and I doubt they will do something like that. - Bindu Reddy

Bindu, yes. It's just too bad that they couldn't prevent the problem while they had the chance, but I've seen a lot of companies go crazy on hiring when times are good. - Chris White

While it's good to treat employees well, I don't think it's good when the perks / benefits get so cushy that employees are more focused on them than the product that's being made. As a case in point - look at the car companies. - Jason Kaneshiro

Jason, I'm not sure that's a fair criticism of Google. In my experience, most of the people were focused on their jobs and excited about them. The perks just made it more attractive and were used as advertising for hiring and partnering. The car companies are something completely different and I have no direct experience with them, but it does seem having a profitable company should be job #1. - Chris White

Jeff, were you trying to unsubscribe to someone (or something)? I'm pretty sure typing unsubscribe as a comment doesn't do that in FriendFeed. ;) - Chris White

Jeff is not subscribed to me right now, Chris. :-) I can take it. - Louis Gray

@Chris, I didn't mean that it's happened today, but if Google keeps going on with the perks you will get there. Yahoo! is a great example of a company where people lost focus on the product. Many companies during Web 1.0 overdid it with the perks, too. Google should cut back now to avoid turning into Yahoo! at the very least. - Jason Kaneshiro

Jason, hiring more people is not as cost-effective as hiring really good people, and treating them really well. You can control how many people you hire, and therefore you can control your costs. Perks are rarely a huge percentage of your overall costs. - Chris White

Sometimes what the star engineers want most is more engineers. :-) - Kevin Fox

The article is misleading. "He says the company is 'not going to give' an engineer 20 people to work with on certain experimental projects anymore." This has nothing to do with 20% projects. It just means that a project like Lively is not going to get an entire team working full-time on it. - Andrew Bonventre

Begs the question[s] what is innovation? what is net neutrality? how does google view invention & patents? when will users get to share in the upside of how data mining & tracking is used to drive google profit-centers? what is the value &/or definition of "privacy" & "fair use"? - Scott Moskowitz

+1 to Andrew. The WSJ clearly says "20 people" projects, which is completely different from 20% projects. This article confuses the two, in my opinion. - Matt Cutts

But isn't "hiring more people" the mistake Google has made? Otherwise, why are they supposedly cutting costs at present? Meanwhile, there are really passionate people to whom perks are completely secondary. Those that work for the love of an idea even without getting paid and for Jolt cola and a pizza. Those are the folks who work at startups. - Jason Kaneshiro

@Jason You appear to be making the assumption that the majority of existing Google employees hold perks above all else as their primary reason for working there. Startups offer a certain dynamic, and a larger company offers another. Both can be rich with or completely devoid of passion and perks, but the two are not mutually exclusive. - Andrew Bonventre

Sometimes what the star engineers want most is fewer engineers. Or so I hear. - Jim Norris

Google Reader got an interface update too. Its like Christmas on the internet. - Nathan Gilmer

Sweet, that must mean that version 2.7 is imminent. - Mark Krynsky

Played around with 2.7 a bit on WP.com and really looking forward to the WP.org release. Nervous about upgrading though with all the plugins and all. - Graham English

They had a countdown to roll-out, too! Hey Robert. :) - Mona N.

I'm also really looking forward to the 2.7 release on WP.org. Ditto the concerns of Graham on upgrading though especially since the Podpress plugin already doesn't really support the current version. - Phill Ramey

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

excellent weather this time of the year - Dave Hodson

"excellent weather" = "bring insulated, waterproof clothing"... - Jules

Nice to have you visiting our fine country for the weekend. Gives me hope that you're maybe able to tell us all about some amazing "something" from the UK. :) - Matthew J Hendrickse

I am here in London for the first time and loving it. Working on getting a visit to Google's HQ with no luck so far. - Johnny Makkar

Bring thermal undies, the weather is atrocious at the moment. Not that it's great under normal circumstances. - KateB

Look forward to hearing what you're up to here Robert - Drew B

welcome. it's a lovely place - Sofia Gkiousou

Robert, nice to have you in London. What about the Sunday meet up, you talked about earlier today? - Bastian

I feel like I haven't seen much of you. When does LeWeb start? - Francine Hardaway via twhirl

Have fun... http://portlanders.ning.com is the best place in the uk ::o) here we have the only olympic site yet to be finished. the sailing. :o) - Rob Sellen

...much more complete and much faster. Plus, more interesting because we all get to participate no matter what "list" we're on. - Robert Scoble

underpaid :) - Glen Campbell

Heh. Underpaid and overworked! - Robert Scoble

paid at all? - Jeff Douglass

So true!!! - Susan Beebe (Santa Claus)

Loquacious Lemmings. - Colleen

Radical democratization of media filtering. What's the tradeoff? - Chris Kenton via twhirl

splendid - Duncan Riley

... really good at scraping up bacon and LOLCAT images. ;-) - Chris Baskind

I have a new slogan. FriendFeed, free crowdsourcing at its finest! - Mark Krynsky

Increasing the number of people doesn't necessarily make the selection of material better. Plus, you also end up with a lot of duplication. - Morton Fox

Louis Wins! Flawless Victory! - ♫ Rahsheen ™ ★

Morton: heh, the repetition tells me it's important! :-) - Robert Scoble

Morton, with the new grouping feature, the duplication just bubbles the story up again. This promotes the "importance" angle while complimenting the "freshness". - Rob Diana

"FriendFeed: The Freshmaker!"? ;) - Tyson Key

Robert- Here is something interesting... you were asking about the permanence of the Newspaper... http://ckwebb.com/publishing/b... - Colleen