Robert O'Callaghan - Comments + Likes

Robert Scoble posted a message on Twitter

“A friend has a glass company and is struggling. Their Web site sucks. What advice do you give? Any Web designers in Silicon Valley?”

September 27 at 10:13 am - Link

James Burgos, Danielle Closs, Wallace Wilson and 11 other people liked this

Link? - Evan

35 more comments

there should be the odd web designer in the valley somewhere. - Zee. Just Zee.

I would recommend that they first think what kind of content they want to have online. Product information is good bet, but what other things they should share to people? What about history of company? Telling stories make people feel more sympathy to company. (And yes, I could have some recommendation for those designers but I have to look from my bookmarks first...) - Daniel Schildt

Given the economy they need to consider only 2 things right now: 1) how do I acquire customers; 2) how do I keep the customers I get (return business/upsell) - That should be the only purpose of the site. HOW they get there is what a good creative can help them with. - Brian Roy

SWOT analysis, strategies evaluation, objectives setting, execution planning. In that same order - Marcello Del Bono

engagement, loyalty, turn customers into sales-people. 'social-ize' your products - MikeAmundsen

Make sure your website is tested on all platforms, loads quickly, gets to the point and is attractive without being gaudy. Showcase your work in the most attractive manner possible, but keep in mind who your key customers are; What kind of glass they make (art?, Practical?, sheets for artists?) will determine how they market. One thing they teach you in an MBA is that you can't just sell a product, you have to market to a customer- the first q they should ask themselves is who do they want as their customer - Gina K

Evan: It is: http://www.southbayglassco.com... - Robert Scoble

My tips? First, think about how people are using Google to find you. Put those search terms in your title tag. Second, put a simple sentence about what you do for customers and how you are different from your competitors. Include those same search terms. Put that at the top of your page. After that, start a blog, make it personal. Add some stories of what you do. Tips for customers who are looking to hire you. That, too, will help you with Google. - Robert Scoble

It doesn't tell me their story. Doesn't give me any reason why I should pick them over any other glass company. - Alex Scoble CISSP

outsource it to asia for low cost upgrade, get a top notch result, can hook u up - imran

Agree with Alex. I want to know what makes them great, even without saying "we are better than everyone else." Maybe teach us something about glass. People may think a certain way about glass, but if we have a better understanding of what goes into giving us the product, we may gravitate towards them. - Evan

forget the Web site... how's the glass? perhaps that is the problem... - Jon Price

Make sure the fundamentals are covered. Easy to find address, phone number, other corporate info (you'd be amazed how many sites blow this). Make it easy for a customer to get in touch from every page--the moment they find what they want they can get in touch with the company and order it or get more answers. Another bit of advice is one page = one product. Get them into google on each individual item. Sitemaps are also important and good header tags. - Andrew Leyden

Marketing is more imp than product, right hand rule, unless u sell oil/gas - imran

I didn't find them on yelp. Might want to encourage customers to start some entries. I didn't see any customer reviews. There's no tag line. I like to see something about good prices, good work, leave the place clean, on time, that sort of thing. The examples of their work are too big and there are no descriptions of what makes their work good. - todd

Better yet, move to Dubai, your friend will be sold out in a month or so - imran

Start a blog and a short video show on YouTube. Write the most basic posts about glass company themes. go to Yahoo Answers and answer every questions related to glass/windows. - Jason Calacanis

Selling your friends isn't very friendly. - todd

Follow/learn from Jcal, Arrington, Scoble's marketing lifestyle - imran

I'd volunteer to help your friend - most businesses have fundamental biz development issues - they need to develop referral systems, focus on client education, reactivate dead leads, develop backend email system w/frontend free ebook optin above the fold answering most common client questions, and personalize the website with owner profile. It's cold and not that informative. Position yourself as an expert by providing helpful information. Conversion is the first thing to focus on w/only minor tweaks needed to the website at this point. Joint ventures are a big help for relatively fast money. - Vicki

Robert- I would be happy to send an complete analysis / recommendation. It sucks watching a good business fail with a bad site. I have some business basics articles I can narrow them in with, I know translating all this "net jargon" is hard for most brick and mortar businesses. - 123socialmedia

Thanks for all the tips, I just forwarded this. - Robert Scoble

they are struggling not because of their web site - this is for sure. They need to focus on their overall integrated sales/marketing strategies: like partnerships with contractors, etc; cross-marketing, referral-based incentives. People in general do not purchase these types of services because of the nice looking web site - period. There are few simple things that could be done to beautify their web site, even they will somehow drive folks to this web site-will not lead to more closed business- more needed - glfceo

more content, should have a unique page for every major glass company out there. a page for every major style of glass/glass doors.Should have a nice section that can be used as a resource by potential customers to draw them in and generate a lead. Also all the META info for the homepage(and i imagine every other page) needs a revamp. - sean percival

Answer three questions before you start: 1. Who am I talking to? 2. What do I want from them? 3. What do they want from me? - Michael Markman

also the mom and pop stuff is always very hard, ive done about 200 ecommerce sites, mostly for small companies like this. their focus is always on the biz first and website last, today it and in some cases it should be the other way around. - sean percival

Scobleizer, I guess it depends on their budget. If they have some budget allocated to improving their website, they should hire a consulting firm specializing in web and graphics design, like Emily Chang. However, if their budget is limited, they can search for students at nearby universities and see if any student designers will take it as a student project, or even have it as a class project competition. - imabonehead

Nothing says personal like some raw videos going up now and then showing some aspect of the business. Be it some cutting taking place and the owner talking about the business somewhat. Once it's genuine and not a "well I saw someone say to do this so let me do this" kind of thing. You would know what I mean, Robert. I think. - Evan

I'd like to see an http://www.englishcut.com style site go up for them and think that could work well. Of course using the web effectively might not translate well into business for a glass company...The other question is how effectively are they exploiting other avenues of advertising. Are they going the extra mile to get and maintain good word of mouth solicitations from current/past customers? Etc. - Alex Scoble CISSP

selling glass during real estate troubles is interesting way to to target potential customers with sense of humor - silpol

also, making search on google maps with string "glass near 63 Washington Street Santa Clara, CA 95050" (remove parethesis before search) and zooming out shows how many glass ships around -- I don't know what they are counting for... - silpol

they don't appear on page 1 of google results for "santa clara glass." lot of drilling down to find them using maps, and they have NO reviews. on web site, gotta scroll down to find out "What we do." also, glass product named "Windows 95" does not inspire confidence - Karim

They need to do more then an overhaul of their website. They need to work on SEO and targetted traffic such as through PPC campaigns. Plus wouldn't offline marketing be more effective for them? - Nicholas James

The good news is, they can do a lot more. Be compelling. Details. Engage. It's about motivation from the client-side. Go beyond the website with the "service or products that are offered... Offer something of value and show it. Talk about it. Be seen... - kilbuda

I would say that the bottom line comes down to storytelling. If I can go to their site and learn about them - what is their story? how did they get into the glass business? what makes them great? - I will gain an emotional connection and they've got my (and many others') business. Tell me the story of the process, let me gain the knowledge and make me feel like an insider because I know the terms and processes and don't feel like a fool when I call. That will make me a customer too. - Shawn Kelley

I sent a lengthy e-mail to your fastcompany addy. Please forward to your friend. :) - 123socialmedia

Before the glass company invests a lot of time, effort, and money into upgrading their Web site, they should run a small PPC (Google Adwords is your best bet) campaign to test the waters locally (under product/service related keywords like auto glass, glass windows, etc.). They can direct the Google ads to specialized landing pages that provide a call-to-action for the visitor - a small format questionnaire works great (three questions at most), with the promise of a same day response. Then, analyze the traffic to see if it's worth investing a full-blown online marketing campaign (new Web site, organic SEO, paid search placement, display ads, etc.). They may find that either their locale or customer base are more inclined to turn to the yellow pages (making their Web site unnecessary). It sounds funny saying this, being a Web guy, but sometimes adding up the niche, location, and demographic data will tell you that online is the wrong space to market your business. Best of luck to your friend - Rick from - Drive Thru

30DC for the UK: Robert O'Callaghan posted a link

A small group of us are getting together for a pub lunch and a chat in Goudhurst, Kent tomorrow. 1pm

September 3 at 8:52 am - Link

this went really well - we had Tim Brocklehurst, Kevin Brown and Martin Avis there :-) There will be another one next month. Same place/time - not sure on the date yet. - Robert O'Callaghan

30DC for the UK: Marysia posted a link

Photo of Ed in Piccadilly London today 31 August 2008

August 31 at 3:33 pm - Link

Robert O'Callaghan and Lisa liked this

We all had a great time, meeting up at Cafe Nero in Piccadilly and later going on to Wagamama for a meal - Marysia

Great photo and a good afternoon - Lisa

30DC for the UK: Marysia posted a message

“New team(s) for London & region after August? There's only one other active member now in my team. I think this would be a good place to hook up with other people who are going to stay active in the 30dc”

August 31 at 5:25 am - Link

Robert O'Callaghan liked this

more London meet-ups are a great idea. Today's went well and was well attended. I hope we can keep this going, maybe once a month? - Linda

Sounds good to me, Linda. More on this in the post just below this one (or just above - they seem to keep moving about) and in Andy's comment to it. - Marysia

Marysia - the conversations move to the top of the page when a fresh comment is added. - Linda

aha! (lightbulb moment) - thanks, Linda! - Marysia

Ed Dale posted an entry on Thirty Day Challenge

Air Hammer Brings Us HIS follow up video for this years challenge…

August 31 at 3:58 pm - Link

Judy Oppenheim and Robert O'Callaghan liked this

thanks for a great challenge ed dale. I'm only on lesson... 8 :( but i'm gonna finish and i've already learned a ton!!! thank you thank you - washwords via twhirl

2 more comments

ha ha ha. there's.... google notebook. lolol - washwords via twhirl

This guy got....balls (?) - Umit Namli via twhirl

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha - Robert O'Callaghan

ROFL.... - DirkF via twhirl

Thirty Day Challenge: Marysia posted a link

Photo of Ed in Piccadilly London today 31 August 2008

August 31 at 3:58 pm - Link

Robert O'Callaghan liked this

what a lovely action shot with the bus in the bg - Allison

Thirty Day Challenge: Dominic Goucher posted a message

“Hi to everyone who attended the London Meetup today, it was great to meet everyone and swap 30DC stories face to face - just editing the video now”

August 31 at 3:25 pm - Link

Robert O'Callaghan and Marysia liked this

Thirty Day Challenge: an entry from Thirty Day Challenge

Air Hammer Brings Us HIS follow up video for this years challenge…

August 31 at 3:58 pm - Link

laleh and Robert O'Callaghan liked this

Like I said in the post below.... drugs may have a lot to answer for in this video lol - Allison

He scared me last year. This year I'm seriously concerned - Lisa

I watched the whole video, thinking it would get better.... it didn't. - Cynthia Kasper

Robert O'Callaghan posted a message on Twitter

“Just over 24 hours till we launch have a sneaky peek -> http://a.gd/The-Freedom-Class-... <- 8 videos packed with marketing co ...”

July 30 at 5:01 am - Link

Hope Tim doesn't mind me letting you guys know early - Robert O'Callaghan

Robert Scoble posted a message

“Another Apple fan is born. Our nine-month-old son, Milan, was just crying. I show him my iPhone with FriendFeed on it and he started laughing. I will try to get this on video because it is quite funny. And a little scary. What is Steve Jobs doing to our brains? Happy Father's Day, by the way!”

June 15 at 9:07 am - Link

Lisa L. Seifert, Robert O'Callaghan, Timo Zimmermann and 73 other people liked this

My daughter laughs at any cellphone given to her, Motorola, Sony, Nokia, she doesn't mind. - Amit Morson

30 more comments

My son is a Google fan. Google image searches for cactuses and trains. Loves them. - Hutch Carpenter

Whenever Griffin (16 months) sees with my Macbook he comes over and tries to hit the keyboard. - Mike Doeff

Happy Father's Day to you, Pappa Scoble! - Mike L via twhirl

You know, whenever I see an Apple product it usually fills me with cheer too! Happy Father's day to you Scobez - and to all other Fathers! It's GREAT to be a dad!! - Friend Feed's Tad via twhirl

My daughters love PicLens searches (for kangaroos or birds etc. on flickr, smugmug, or whatever) - Alex von Halem

I'm confident its more Geek in the Genes, than Jobs' Voodoo Robert. That even I get all soothed at the first sight when i get home to my Mac is probably VooDoo Though :P - Parth Awasthi via twhirl

Whenever my 8 month old son is crying, the iPhone works every time - Brandon Wood

My 3 yr old grandson had me cut out and tape an Apple logo on his Vteck learning laptop for kids/ He call's it a Macbook correcting his mom when she calls it his laptop. - Al Degutis via twhirl

Scoble, do you use normal friendfeed.com on your iphone or any other version/address? - Jernej

I've had zero problems using friendfeed.com on my iPod Touch. Except for the fact that it does not refresh the feed - I have to manually refresh.I can even comment. I can't tell if this is a Safari problem or a iPod /iPhone one. - Roberto Bonini

jemej I just use normal FF on iPhone. - Robert Scoble

Happy Fathers Day to you Robert! - Laura

@scobleizer Happy Father's Day to you ;) My little girl is 10, Nintendo DS prodigy, laptop commandeerer par excellence, NeedForSpeed pro, she kicks my butt totally!!! ;) - Mario Olckers

Happy Father's Day. I have two kids with iPods, and a third clamoring for my old Nano when I upgrade. Eight-year-old has a Toshiba laptop, though. - Cyndy

thnx and happy father's day! - Jernej

My 3 year old daughter loves watching a YouTube Video I've bookmarked on my iPhone of a baby laughing. - Thomas Hawk

"Milan_Scoble liked this" -- what story was he reading? - Karim

Happy Father's Day, Robert! - Francine Hardaway

you do realize he's laughing because of what a joke the products are right? (ok sorry couldn't resist) - Allen Stern

Happy Father's Day Mr. Scoble. Just brought our fourth home today. - Gerald Buckley

Happy Father's Day! - Liana Lehua via fftogo

Kinda nice. If I had to cheer up a baby, I'd probably show a laptop running Linux. Come on, the baby might like Compiz effects. I mean, I do. :D Happy Fathers' Day. - possible248

possible248: I agree, no vista, no osx could win besides compiz :) - directeur

Happy Father's Day mate! - Joe Dawson (beta)

You do realize you could have shown him a shiny rock, right? - Soulhuntre via twhirl

20 years ago with my kids it was my key chain that engrossed them :-) He's probably laughing thinking, "You've got the OLD iPhone!" - Kevin Shannon

Here's a cool link for Milan & Dad http://www.lookybook.com/index... I even picked one for you: http://www.lookybook.com/mainp... :-) so much fun for kids. - Orli Yakuel

Mekhi likes airplanes, via Live Image Search. Jefferson Airplane, especially. - Wade Dorrell

Did you at least take a short break for Fathers Day ????? - Charlie Anzman

Charlie: yes, had a nice time with the family in Sausalito. - Robert Scoble

the thing I fear more is that I am like a 9 month old child - I also get this warm and fuzzy feeling when seeing a apple product *g* btw. happy fathers day (you are some weeks behind us in Germany, that's always confusing for me) - Timo Zimmermann

This makes me think about the next generation of kids who are really growing up around technology like the iPhone, Google, etc. Now it is a reality for a toddler to amuse himself with image searches and flash games in a way that was barely possible in my childhood, and not at all for the older generations (no offence) - Erin

Robert Scoble posted an entry on Scobleizer's Recent Qik Videos

Diigo-social bookmarking

June 16 at 2:18 pm - Link

Robert O'Callaghan, david beckwith, Roger Chen and 17 other people liked this

This is freaking awesome. Great way to bookmark things, collaboate on them, get them onto Twitter and, soon, FriendFeed. http://www.diigo.com - Robert Scoble

28 more comments

I moved from diijgo back to delicious because delicious was supported by FF and diigo was not. What is the number one reason why diigo is better than delicious? - Thomas Hawk

You can get them onto Friendfeed now - they just added the feature a few days ago. - David Worrell

I've been using Diigo for months now. I don't use all the features, but I still think it's much better than delicious or magnolia, & I've been trying to convert all my friends...rather unsuccessfully :( - Jennifer Van Grove via twhirl

I tried Diigo. And I was impressed, but their Firefox extension isn't as good the Del.icio.us add-on. And that matters. A lot. - mrshl

I am skeptical that most of the commenters here probably work for diigo. I already use evernote.com and I love it, so why would I switch? http://www.evernote.com What do you think of that Mr. Scoble? - the constant skeptic

@Thomas, get the best of both worlds and set up auto-post to Del.icio.us from Diigo. That's what I do since a lot of services don't use my diigo stream but will use del.icio.us. My favorite feature of Diigo is the annotation stuff (highlighting stuff on the page and making notes). And the FireFox sidebar is quite nice and handy. Surprised Diigo is new to you, Robert! - Lindsay Donaghe

I use diigo to keep bookmarks both on ma.gnolia and del.icio.us, I like both services for different reasons, I hate double let alone triple posting but that have suited me pretty well so far - Dobromir Hadzhiev

I downloaded the toolbar and it promptly crashed FF3 4 times I had to disable it :( - Sally Church

It's cute - but I am not goign to trust them with that much info. delicious has my bookmarks but the important annotations and clippings live in OneNote, on my own drive, backed up alone with my other data. Why build all that knwoledge into a website app I may or may not be able to ever extract it from? - Soulhuntre via twhirl

but someone answer this one question. What is one significant reason why diigo is better than delicious. - Thomas Hawk

@Thomas it's not directly better, but ma.gnolia is better than del.icio.us(microformats, community, design) del.icio.us is an old giant whitch has all of us locked because of it's popularity, haven't seen one new thing from them lately - Dobromir Hadzhiev

I used to use Magnolia but then the "bookmark this" marklet thingy stopped working and when I contacted them they blamed my browser (Firefox) there was no easy fix so I switched back to delicious. I'm all for new technology, but it has to be be better than the current iteration. So why again is diigo better than delicious? I need more than just it's the newest thing. - Thomas Hawk

yes the main reason I stayed with del.icio.us beside the exposure was the extension, but other than that ma.gnolia doesn't have issues and is pretty nice place to hang out, can disagre that the thank you mail is a neat feature. After all if you're happy with a service living in the past, fine I say thank God flickr isn't following the same path - Dobromir Hadzhiev

Thomas et al: the coolest part of this I've found is the annotation feature. It's like Word/Acrobat annotations where you can add sticky notes and highlights and such directly to pages you bookmark. I'm not too familiar with delicious (I use magnolia myself), and I'm not really into social bookmarking, so I can't really explain too much on that end. - Mark Trapp

Mento supports FriendFeed as well. (and Twitter, delicious, magnolia, Tumblr) And it supports custom screenshots with every bookmark (even works with Skitch) What makes Diigo better than Mento? (http://mento.info) - Bwana

Bwana, so far, it's like Ma.gnolia with the ability to annotate a page on the page itself. It's a neat trick. - Mark Trapp

Some screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/i... http://www.flickr.com/photos/i... - Mark Trapp

Ah I see, but will people have the patience to do this correctly? I could see some use in it - Bwana

I work with clients who swear by similar features in Office and Acrobat. I could use this, especially since I can share my annotations with friends. Plus, it seems to have feature parity with Magnolia only zippier. I'm switching for the time being. - Mark Trapp

This is very cool for collaboration (as probably noted already by Robert). Question though, do you have to sign up for Diigo in order to view the annotations? - Bwana

Playing with the "Diigoet " (essentially a toolbar) in Safari, and it looks like as long as you have that (or a Diigo toolbar), you can see all public annotations on a page. Interesting. - Mark Trapp

Ugh, ok. One can hope. - Bwana

The toolbar also provides alexa type information regarding bookmarking: http://twurl.nl/l1maqe - Mark Trapp

so then the only reason to use diigo over delicious is so that you can view annotations? I'm not sure this is a compelling enough reason to switch. - Thomas Hawk

Find the ability to annotate and highlight useful. For me, it's worth switching. - Tom Landini

And while most of my tags are still one word, I do occasionally find the ability to use multi-word tags useful. Diigo lets me do that. - David Worrell

Wish this were in the form of a screencast video .. cell phone cameras aren't just ready to capture computer screens. - Amit Agarwal

Between Scoble and Gray, I now say 'morning' to my wife and spend the rest of the day playing with new (free) toys. Is something wrong with this picture? - Charlie Anzman

@Charlie: I don't know. sounds pretty good to me. What do you do at the end of the day? - edythe

@Charlie, why waste your morning like that? - Louis Gray

Bindu Reddy posted an entry on Bindu's ramblings

Please Facebook - Do something about those spammy apps

June 12 at 9:53 pm - Link

Robert O'Callaghan liked this

Bindu Reddy posted a link

Your Privacy Is An Illusion: Facebook profiles for sale on eBay

June 12 at 4:21 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Robert O'Callaghan and Srikar liked this

This reminds me - the other day I saw a few people sitting at Ritual Roasters and harvesting information from 100s of facebook profiles :( - Bindu Reddy

Robert Scoble posted a message

“Heh, Rob La Gesse just deleted his FriendFeed account along with all my comments (he hates that comments were happening here on FriendFeed)”

May 26 at 12:32 am - Link

steven shaffer, Robert O'Callaghan, Kenichi Matsumoto and 15 other people liked this

What a nasty thing to do. He just deleted his account and took all MY content with it! - Robert Scoble

46 more comments

Yeah, I noticed that. I'm kinda mad. I had a bunch of IP claims on my comments in those tweet discussions. - Mark Trapp

We were having an interesting discussion about the "evilness" of FriendFeed and how it helps conversations happen around content here on FriendFeed rather than on over on his blog. He sees this as important to his "ownership" of his audience. I am going to ask him to delete all my comments from his blog. - Robert Scoble

the people at FF must be sitting back and enjoying all this free hype...via feedalizr - Siddharth Mitra

Wow. Comment Wars 2008. Some people just don't get it. All the more reason we need Data Portability and the ability to suck our content out of all these silos. Personally, I really want a backup of my Twitter updates asap. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

This is one reason why I'll never participate on Rob's blog again. - Robert Scoble

Oh, and now he's blocking me from commenting on his blog. I was going to post a link back to here and tell him to please remove all my comments that I just left on his blog. - Robert Scoble

This is the difference between wanting a conversation vs. and "audience". Rob seems to want the latter....via feedalizr - Lon

I doubt he's blocking you from commenting on his blog. sometimes his comments go weird -- I've had it happen a couple of times. But this does raise a larger issue -- he took YOUR content? Your comments on his feed are yours? I say they are your content, so why don't you have control? OTOH, I'd argue that comments on his blog become his content, since he hosts them. - Karoli

Is that why my latest comment got spammed? I wasn't trying to harass him, was just disagreeing with him. Oh well. I was also trying to figure out where everything went. I guess he utilized my advice on how to delete the RSS feed after all. Because in the end, FF doesn't 'randomly pick up your content' you have to put your information into it. Sheesh. - Lucretia Pruitt

Just realized the irony in the fact that since he blocked comments, we *can't* discuss it on his blog any more and now HAVE to discuss it here if we want to talk about it at all. So he kind of forced us to move the discussion here. Weird. - Lucretia Pruitt

I have control of my comments here. I can edit them, I can delete them. That's one reason why Iike commenting here more. I'm sad that he could so easily delete my comments just by deleting his posts, but that's OK. All that did was destroy my trust in him and made me extremely unlikely to ever comment on his blog again. - Robert Scoble

Stole my content too. And ignored my DM on Twitter. And my latest Tweet. Oh well. - Louis Gray

And people wonder why readers want to have discussions in other places than their blogs. People want to talk about things on their own time not when your blog isn't acting funky or when you say it's okay. - Mark Trapp

it is just too much sometimes for people to accept that conversations happen multiple places and not just on the blog itself. too bad for him. - Rodney Rumford

Louis says we have to wait a year or two before people don't act like dopes over conversation fragmentation. But even Steve Gillmor could tell you that conversation wherever it happens does wind up = audience, it just might take him 4,000 words :-) - Robert Seidman

http://twitter.com/kr8tr says when he deleted his feed here FriendFeed didn't warn him that it was deleting other people's content. Fair enough. I still will never post on his blog again. - Robert Scoble

In this case, if the remote discussion fragment links back to the source, I don't see the harm - at all....via feedalizr - Lon

lol So he is loser :)) - Farzad

Wahhh wahhh wahhh. - Kambiz Kamrani

Robert, what is your opinion on who should own thus control the content submitted to third party commenting services like Disqus? If a blogger deletes a Disqus comment should the registered Disqus user that submitted the content lose access to that comment? - scott anderson

Perhaps... but pretty sure his blog didn't say "hey, they'll have to move the conversation if you block everyone that disagrees with you on anything" - so the primary transgression stands. - Lucretia Pruitt

this seems to be an issue with friendfeed, not rob - Christian Burns

Not a loser. He wants "control" of the comment content....via feedalizr - Lon

It's an issue with Rob because he took his ball and went home when people responded to his tweets on Friendfeed instead of his blog. Lon, he has no right to that control. He doesn't own the rights to what other people say in comments. He doesn't have the right to say to me or anyone, "you can only talk about my content in the predefined free speech zone on my blog." - Mark Trapp

>If a blogger deletes a Disqus comment should the registered Disqus user that submitted the content lose access to that comment? I don't think so. I think that it should just hide that comment from that blogger's community's view. I'm not sure how Disqus deals with such a situation, though. Do you know? - Robert Scoble

so is it a terrible thing to admit i am deeply and delightfully amused by the spirited and fervent nature of this Twitter/FF feud thingy? it's just such delicious fun. i feel guilty for having his much fun watching everyone go at it. - (dot)lizard kelly

Can we get an IRC back channel for this conversation? - Andrew Hyde

Robert, if the person is registered with Disqus they can still access the content even if it was removed from view on the blog by blog administrators. - Robert Seidman

Oh, and Rob just lost control of where the conversation can happen. Here's his post about me on his blog. http://friendfeed.com/e/7ea9b7... - Robert Scoble

I see this as a really important issue and hope the personal reaction doesn't overwhelm the primary question. Rob deleted his feed, not Robert's comments. And that deletion caused others' comments -- others who are still on FF -- to be removed because they were linked with the feed. (It also made people mad). Not to be obnoxious here, but that wouldn't have happened on Twitter. Just sayin'. - Karoli

BTW, the comments you posted to his feed that you cross-posted to Twitter? Still on your feed. - Karoli

No, it'd just be too much of a bother to find in between the 100 other non-related tweets from other people and the really slow pagination system. - Mark Trapp

Comments are ephemeral. It's just the same thing on blogs. - Benedikt Koehler

Karoli: yeah, but only a few of those comments were cross-posted to Twitter. - Robert Scoble

The original post now is being discussed here: http://friendfeed.com/e/7ea9b7... -- notice that I have the right now to bring stuff in here via RSS thanks to Google Reader's shared items and I can comment on it here and the blog author can't control that at all. - Robert Scoble

Wahhhh... yea some of mine are gone too... damn the reliance on FF.. least the twitter comments would stick - Jono Haysom

Rob just posted these things to Twitter: """This is one reason I will never participate in Rob's blog again" - Why? Because FF deleted some shit w/o warning me? 3 "" RESPONSE: No, because you decided to "take your ball home" without thinking about the impact of your decision. - Robert Scoble

Another one: "" And Robert - you KNEW your comments were still in YOUR feed when you wrote that. NOT kewl."" RESPONSE: 90% of my comments that I left on your Twitter posts are gone. You knew when you deleted those posts that you would delete everything underneath. NOT kewl. - Robert Scoble

BTW Robert, I just saw your somewhat snarky response to my comment on Techcrunch last night. I guess if you'd posted it here I might have not seen it sooner. I hate chasing down fragments of conversations all over the place, especially when it means it's too late for me to snark back. ;-) - Karoli

If Disqus is now providing registered users access to comments that were 'hidden' by the blog owners that the comment was submitted to then that is a new feature. I tried to have this same conversation with Dave Winer a while back and he did not appreciate my position so he deleted a lot of relevant content from that disqussion ... http://scripting.disqus.com/fe... - scott anderson

Re: Disqus "A unique plus to Disqus is that comments are no longer chained to isolated websites. Thus, comments are owned by (and can be attributed to) the commenters" If you register via Disqus, you have control. If you post anonymously to my blog, I have control. - Karoli

deleting a top level post shouldn't really delete child posts from other people ona site like FriendFeed. Given that no one *owns* FriendFeed in the way like a hosted blog, how can deleteing other people's content be the correct action when pressing delete on a top level node. This is definately something that Kosso has got right with phreadz.com - chris dalby

Chris: actually the person who started the comment cluster does "own" the cluster. For instance, you are commenting on my cluster here. I can delete your comment. I could also delete the whole cluster including everyone's comments on it. I've already deleted one comment to remove spam. This is like you are commenting on my blog and I have the same rights there. - Robert Scoble

Well whenever he has an interesting post someone will post a link here and we'll discuss it here anyway. *shrug* - Shey

yes, i see it on the colin walker blog post. i don't know what to say. - Roblogger

"actually the person who started the comment cluster does "own" the cluster." Ahhh. Now I understand.... It's not really about "where the conversation is" but rather about transferring ownership of the conversation up the power curve. If a popular figure starts a comment cluster, they will "own the rights" to that conversation, no matter who actually posted the original thought. Thanks for clarifying, - Jason Brown

there is another challenge in this as well - I just 'reshared' your post on charging super users to our Social Media Club room and it started a new thread, separate of your comments on the post and in FF - this is the conversation fragmenting in real time - Chris Heuer

Why fight it? If people want to talk on FriendFeed, they will. A couple years from now I'm sure we'll all be chatting on some other service. - Mack D. Male

Robert Scoble shared an item on Google Reader

Robert Scoble has a "Social Problem"

May 26 at 12:54 am - Link

Ron Emrick, Roy Montero, Atul Arora and 12 other people liked this

I'm going to talk about this post a lot more over on FriendFeed at http://www.friendfeed.com/scob... -- participate in the conversation there. - Robert Scoble

4 more comments

So, Rob La Gesse now you lose all control of the conversation. See how this happens? Now I'll comment on your things twice: once in Google Reader (I used the note feed to post the comment above to all my readers there) and now I can talk on FriendFeed all about what you said here. - Robert Scoble

Here's his points with my counter point: >He loves everything new on the web and often tells us how great it is. MY RESPONSE: I don't love everything new on the Web. I have a folder of more than 10,000 emails from PR people in the past two years. Most of which I've never talked about anywhere. Why? Because they don't deserve getting passed onto you. I read a lot of blogs, follow a lot of conversations, and try things after the earliest of early adopters try things out. I wasn't the first to use FriendFeed.. - Robert Scoble

>>Maybe FriendFeed (but I think that lasts another three months for Scoble, tops). RESPONSE: Rob, tonight, guaranteed I'll never comment on his blog ever again and will always respond here on FriendFeed. That will last a lot longer than three months. - Robert Scoble

>>And like any other "Sales Pitch" - people need to know how it will help them. RESPONSE: Absolutely true. Our new show, called WorkFast.TV, will be VERY FOCUSED on productivity and helping people get more work done. Tools that don't reach that bar will be discarded and won't make the show to waste your time. We'll have lots of experts on to make sure that the best stuff gets on, and also that only stuff that actually helps people gets on. - Robert Scoble

The topic of comment deletion and control of where conversations can happen on FriendFeed or on original blogs (which this post started) is being discussed here: http://friendfeed.com/e/e4fa46... - Robert Scoble

lol - This feels very much like http://garfieldminusgarfield.n... - Robert O'Callaghan

Robert Scoble posted a message on Twitter

“I am seeing a ton of Tweets about an earthquake in Japan.”

June 13 at 5:03 pm - Link

Deborah Micek, mhmazidi, Michael J. Cohen (mjc) and 28 other people liked this

Twitter as the ultimate source for breaking news... - Jerry Chacon

26 more comments

I hope that they're false! - directeur

6.9 magnitude http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqc... - AJ Kohn

Major news outlets are carrying it. - Greg via twhirl

Major news outlets are carrying it. Except CNN. Fox news, Reuters, etc... - Greg via twhirl

Wow that's cool. Upto date information provided by Twitter. - Nick Defina

Reuters has it here: http://www.reuters.com/article... - Greg via twhirl

Odd that its not breaking on TV. Lots of coverage of Tim Russerts passing at the moment. Fox News had a two second blurb about the earthquake. Thats where I first heard it. - Greg via twhirl

The Epicenter was in Iwate-Ken. 6 on the ground there which is strong. Felt quite strongly here in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo but nothing too out of the ordinary. The TV stations have, as usual, broken regular coverage to give updates about perceived magnitude in the surrounding areas and pictures from cameras around the area. No damage or injuries are reported yet. - Stuart Woodward

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqc... USGS info on quake. - Robert Scoble

Twitter, the ultimate source for fast news - as bad as they might be :( Hope for the best! - Holger Eilhard

Mahalo already has a page: http://www.mahalo.com/Japan_Ea... - Robert Scoble

Summize (shows anyone on Twitter talking about earthquake) on search for "Earthquake:" http://summize.com/search?q=ea... - Robert Scoble

Summize (shows anyone talking about "Japan" on Twitter): http://summize.com/search?q=Ja... - Robert Scoble

2 minutes after you posted "seeing a ton of Tweets about earthquake in Japan", Twitter died! - Brian Henderson

Brian: ahh, that explains why fewer messages are coming through IM right now. It still seems somewhat up. - Robert Scoble

Japanese TV is talking to people at the local government office near the epicenter and there are no reports of any injuries though a water pipe has broken.. several aftershocks have been felt. TV is showing live pictures from a helicopter and it is a very rural area, no signs of damage at all. - Stuart Woodward

I just saw the news on CNN - Alejandro S.

Brief story posted to cnn.com six minutes ago... http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/... - Spam

There more earthquakes in Japan than days of a week. Unless it is big like Kobe, do not report it. - Igor The Troll

The TV coverage is now showing a few rural roads blocked by landslides. A few Isolated injuries are reported, traffic accidents, broken legs due to falls, people cut by glass. etc. - Stuart Woodward

It is fascinating to see the internet micro-blogger at work. Faster than a speeding bulletin. - Mindy Koch

we noticed the twitter activity as well and started a "guide" the quake: http://mahalo.com/Japan_Earthq... - Jason Calacanis

I've got a few quake links at the top of this page (it's one of my old legacy things) USGS confirming 6.8 ... http://www.behindtheweather.co... - Charlie Anzman

godzilla! - ⓃⓄⒶⒽ ⒹⒶⓋⒾⒹ ⓈⒾⓂⓄⓃ

Gojira!!! - Brian Norwood

Homer simpson!!!! - Robert O'Callaghan

sad. I still can't over the China one... - Orli Yakuel

5 dead, more missing. http://tinyurl.com/56nm9j - David Sim

Jeremiah Owyang posted a message

“Friendfeed could benefit from a profile description, I want to know more about people, sometimes it's hard to tell from their shared items. Do you AGREE or DISAGREE?”

June 12 at 3:03 pm - Link

Christian Burns , Martin Recke, Nicole Simon and 61 other people liked this

Agree. I believe this is already in the plans, and has been requested for some time. - Louis Gray

67 more comments

At first blush, I would disagree. What could be more "profile-ish" than dozens of blog posts, tweets, photos, StumbledUpon items and more? I guess there's no downside to including it, but part of the beauty of FriendFeed is its simplicity -- and I'd hate to see that ruined. - Mike Keliher

I was thinking that just a moment ago when someone new subscribed to me...it's hard to figure out who they are, and why they've found you... - Trent Olson

Definitely agree. - Chris Rossini

Agreed, but let's not go crazy with it... Location, maybe age.... - Chris Reed

that will save the click to the user's twitter page - Dobromir Hadzhiev

I want to be able to add in my dailymugshot profile so people can see how FriendFeed addiction ages me ala Whitney Houston style! - Joe Dawson (beta)

AGREE. My usual process is to click over to their Twitter page and read their profile there. - Damon Cortesi via twhirl

Agreed. Brief bio + web link would be fantastic. - Evan Sims

Agree - Hutch Carpenter

Amen - told the same to Paul else its always the usual suspects - Mrinal Desai via twhirl

One alternative would be to have the opportunity to import profile data from somewhere...say openID or something. I do think ff needs access to profiles, but I don't think I need yet another place to create a profile. - Trent Olson

Fine import in, that's fine! FYI not everyone is going to be a twitter user. - Jeremiah Owyang

I agree, but make it smart! Import data if possible. Data Portability is the way to go :-) - Magnus Jonsson via Alert Thingy

I've been thinking this as well. Why not have more detailed optional info, a link to their profile could easily be ignored by those craving simplicity. - Leif Hansen

Ok, so if we want to import profiles from somewhere, what options would we like? - Trent Olson

what about having something similar to retaggr, where your avatar allows to supplement a lot of info about you, without having to peruse lots of pages? - Kara Carrell via twhirl

Definitely agree-not enough to see their feed icons and avatar - Mark Forman via twhirl

yes, importing is the way to do it! Have you thought about how much effort would be required to update ALL of your profile(s) if you moved, for example? - Thomas Ho via fftogo

of course some basic profile would be good but not another duplicate profile, rather an integration with a profile we could chose would be best, so a blog about page, linkedin or fb profile or even the basic ones of twitter or seesmic would be good - having to many diverse profile locations is such a waste in today's easily integrated online world - mike "glemak" dunn

sorry one more point - this is not about authentication but rather information right, so a good transparent about page or the public linkedin profile is what I've been looking at and sometimes flickr because I find you can get a sense of someone by the photos they publish - but maybe that's just me ;) - mike "glemak" dunn

Agree wholeheartedly that there is a need for profile info. If it's done by leveraging information from an existing source, the user needs to have the ability to specify the source, in order to control the messaging. - Andrei M. Marinescu via twhirl