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Potential FriendFeed Hole Allows Users to Embed Web Bugs

Posted on December 15, 2009 by jessestay

I have discovered a feature (or perhaps vulnerability?) of FriendFeed that, intended or not, could enable marketers to track every single view of their RSS posts to FriendFeed. The feature revolves around the ability to embed images, via a subset of RSS called MediaRSS, into your RSS feed. If your RSS is MediaRSS formatted, FriendFeed automatically reads the images in the feed and displays the first one as the main image in the post to your feed on FriendFeed.com. Here’s the problem though (or maybe it’s a feature?) – FriendFeed stores the original URL to the image as the main image URL. They don’t re-format it at all or store it on their servers. This means you can dynamically produce anything you want on FriendFeed.com, set cookies, store IP information, etc. without the user ever knowing about it.

I discovered this hole due to an annoyance I had with my TweetMeme button always showing up as the image in my posts to FriendFeed. I noticed that the number of retweets was dynamically updating, right on FriendFeed. Sure enough, looking at the source of the image, the image was being generated from TweetMeme’s servers, not FriendFeed’s.

Such Web Bugs are common throughout the web, especially in advertising and other marketing-based mediums, so the threat isn’t huge. However, this may be something the FriendFeed team may want to look at if they don’t want marketers to be getting information about their users off the FriendFeed.com site itself. If anything, I’d like to see them just ignore 3rd-party image URLs altogether and maybe my pesky TweetMeme icon will stop showing up as the image on my posts to FriendFeed. Is this a feature or a “bug”?

Googling, here’s some more information I found about “Web Bugs”: http://www.leave-me-alone.com/webbugs_growing.asp

FriendFeed’s Just Fine

Posted on December 11, 2009 by jessestay

With all the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt around FriendFeed.com one would think FriendFeed is this service that is going the way of Jaiku, Pownce, Dodgeball, and others that went dead after their owners acquired them. There’s no doubt that amongst certain users in the US the activity in their streams is going down and some are talking about it. Just last month, Robert Scoble, FriendFeed’s number one user and unpaid evangelist publicly announced his resignation from the service and move over to bigger services like Twitter. Even yesterday, Louis Gray, perhaps FriendFeed’s second most active unpaid evangelist (and both good friends of mine), shared a statistic seemingly indicating his disappointment with the service. Yet, when you look at the big picture, things are up and to the right. There are no statistics anywhere that indicate FriendFeed is anywhere close to losing users when you look at the numbers and the long-haul.

Louis Gray shared a Compete.com graph of unique visitors yesterday which indicated that in November, FriendFeed had shown less users accessing the site than its low point a year ago. What isn’t shared though is that Compete is normally only indicative of US users, and FriendFeed is well known as an international site, extremely active in regions such as Turkey and the mideast. Remember the activity FriendFeed got around the Iran crisis? Even Bret Taylor, co-founder of FriendFeed, now working for Facebook admitted that since August, International activity on FriendFeed is now dominating. See the graph below.

If you look at both Alexa and Quantcast 2 year stats, which when taken as a whole are generally a bit more acceptable a statistics engine in terms of general and international traffic, they both show an up-and-to-the-right trend for FriendFeed that hasn’t stopped since last year. There are a few down points, such as when 2 months in a row, TechCrunch wrote a scathing post about FriendFeed, comparing it to “the mob”, and Mike Arrington’s fallout after that (he was one of the top-followed users on FriendFeed up until that point). The next month Facebook acquired FriendFeed, and the lash back from users ensued, many discontinuing their use of the site, especially in the United States and Silicon Valley. The other major dip occurred in November, where Robert Scoble, FriendFeed’s most followed user, announced publicly that he was moving his activity over to Twitter and lessening his activity over on FriendFeed. FriendFeed still appears to be recovering from that, but it’s way too early to determine if that started a down and to the right trend – I doubt it. If you look at the Alexa stats, the 3 dips I mentioned occurred right around the the 3 events I just mentioned. Coincidence?

Yet, when you look at FFHolic, the site which ranks FriendFeed users and their activity, you’ll notice a change in the trends. The top users all remain the same – people from the United States and especially Silicon Valley which use the site rarely, yet are very popular. But when you look at the most active users, you no longer see the Monas and the Louis Grays and the Robert Scobles you used to see in that section. The most active users on FriendFeed are now their international audience. The second most active user, VAHID, has a feed of mostly non-English posts! So you can see that yes, when a very popular Silicon Valley blogger leaves the service, a huge chunk of the US audience leaves with them, and so does their activity, yet, the most active users aren’t even listening to or following those guys. FriendFeed continues to grow.

I predict there will be a shift, if this continues, where the most active users on FriendFeed soon will become the most followed people on FriendFeed. The more the popular users neglect the service, the more the more active users will have a chance to catch up to them. FriendFeed’s founding team has made it clear they’re not killing the service. In fact, they’ve been keeping it running and even improving it since they were acquired by Facebook. Check out the open source Tornado Framework FriendFeed is based on – it is still getting updates from the FriendFeed and Facebook teams. The FriendFeed team is all using the service still. FriendFeed was just included in the deal with Google for real-time search results, which means FriendFeed is most likely a revenue-generating site for Facebook now.

If anything, the Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed should have you more comfortable, not less, that it is going to be around for a long, long time. There is no reason for it to go away. If it does, they’ll make it easy to get the same features you are getting on FriendFeed over on Facebook itself so you can take comfort you’re not going to lose anything. But if anything should comfort you it’s that FriendFeed continues in an up-and-to-the-right pattern when you look at the big picture and not the short-term dips the big Silicon Valley bloggers keep bringing up. I still see stats for my blog on FriendFeed. As long as FriendFeed is successful Facebook has no reason to remove it as a service. There’s still too much opportunity here. It’s still way too powerful a tool to kill and I think we’re all jumping the gun with the “it’s dead” statements. There are no facts supporting that statement.

It’s About Technology That Creates Community

Posted on October 28, 2009 by jessestay

I’ve been rambling on Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook tonight about the differences in how Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed’s founders participate in each community. Look at Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Fan Page. Notice how he basically talks at the community? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a comment by him with his followers (perhaps part of the reason why it’s so difficult to manage Fan Pages right now). Now look at Ev Williams and Biz Stone’s Twitter profiles. You’ll notice a little more participation, but mostly with their inner circles and occasional outreaches to the community. Now go read Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor’s FriendFeed profiles. Notice that they’re very actively involved in the conversation, responding in their own threads to people they barely know, participating in others’ conversations, etc. I think if you look at the profiles of other employees in each of the three organizations you’ll see a similar trend. Why is it that the community where the founders and employees participate the most is the smallest community with the lowest growth rate?

I’ve been contemplating this tonight. FriendFeed, as a whole has one of the tightest communities of all. For those that participate actively in the site, we quickly come to know each other – it’s the place where everybody knows your name. That’s why Scoble, and Louis Gray, and myself are so passionate about it. It is a great place to go meet new people, find more information, and grow with a community that cares and knows you. I asked the question why Facebook and even Twitter don’t see this as an opportunity to win a new audience, much of which feels a bit betrayed by the sale of FriendFeed to Facebook, and many who have never done much venturing outside the network to new places. It seems like an opportunity to me – after all, when Facebook bought FriendFeed, they bought the technology, not the community. The community is something that has to be earned, not bought.

Yet, at the same time I wonder if it really matters. With Facebook and Twitter’s immense growth, do they really need to be paying attention to the small FriendFeed community? FriendFeed has great technology, and great talent that built that technology, now working for Facebook (one who just left). Can the community be won in other ways? I think it can, and it goes back to the first paragraph above – look at the numbers compared to participation. I argue a community’s growth is not relative to the participation of its founders, but rather the technology’s capability to build community even further. It’s the technology that trumps community any day because it creates and enables that community. Technology that empowers individuals to create their own communities wins any day, and trumps founder participation hands down.

Gasp! You say – you mean I don’t have to participate to build a community? No, that’s not what I’m saying. If you’re a user of the tools, you definitely must be participating, nurturing, and sharing for your community to grow. What I’m saying though is that no matter who the founders are and whether they participate in your personal community or not, you’re going to take your community to the places that enable you to nurter, build, and grow a community the best. That’s why Facebook grew the fastest. That’s why people use Twitter. It’s also why FriendFeed was the smallest, yet had a great acquisition of some very talented individuals who know how to build this type of technology.

Let’s look at the technologies:

Facebook

Facebook not only enables you to share status updates with your friends, but enables you to share photos, videos, notes, links, and more, all in an integrated environment. You have privacy controls to which you can control how public the information you share with your friends is. This encourages a native environment where family and close friends can communicate and share with each other, focusing on each individual’s roots to build community out of. You have lists that you can organize these individuals and filter their updates in your news stream.

At the same time Facebook provides Fan Pages, indexable by Google, for which you can subscribe, or “fan”, similar to the way you would do on the other networks. This is your public, more anonymous persona, something I think each individual needs as well. This enables you to share with the rest of the world what you’re doing, and build community and share through that means.

Then you have the API. Not only as an entrepreneur, developer, or community builder do I have access to create applications that create and nurture community within the Facebook environment, but Facebook has also given me the technology and tools to do that on my own website, all with the community I’m working to build on Facebook itself. It enables me to do that with my own community, and enable them to bring their communities into my own.

The richness of that experience is what makes Facebook so big, and is the reason for its growth. That has nothing to do with its founders or their participation. I’m not sure they need to participate so long as they keep building technology that further enables individual communities on the network.

Twitter

Twitter baffles me at times, but I think I understand it. Twitter’s openness and focus on such a simple thing, status updates, is what has made it grow so big. Users can do whatever they want with the network. They can use it to update their friends with what they’re doing, respond, and grow a community through open communication.

Twitter also encourages the initiation of conversation. You post something on Twitter, link to somewhere else, and the communication continues elsewhere. Some times that filters back to Twitter. Some times the entire communication happens on Twitter.

Twitter’s API is as open as it can be. It’s fairly limited as compared to Facebook’s, but has enabled many people to bring their communities on Twitter back to their own brand and vice-versa to further grow community.

The problem with Twitter as compared to Facebook is that it is only status updates. You can respond, reply, and even retweet items you read, but it all centers around those status updates. There’s not much more depth than that, limiting the type and size of community one can build on the network. Yet at the same time the openness and lack of rules around users and its developer platform has enabled people to do things they would not normally be able to do with a community on Facebook. That’s why they’ve continued to grow and are the size (and hype) they are right now.

At the same time because they’re not quite the enablers of community in regards to their technology which Facebook is, I think their Founders and employees need to participate and get involved a little more. The technology still doesn’t quite sustain the building of community the way Facebook’s does.

FriendFeed

I could probably argue FriendFeed has better technology that encourages and enables community building better than Twitter’s. The problem with FriendFeed is that almost all the technology found in FriendFeed keeps getting gobbled up by Twitter and Facebook. There’s not much new to it, and now that they’ve been bought by Facebook, that doesn’t appear to need to fully compete – it would just be an additional complement to the community-building offerings Facebook offers.

Beforehand FriendFeed was doing a good job keeping up, and perhaps could have even caught up to at least Twitter. Its growth was even starting to show that before they were acquired. Yet their founders still participated, as did the other employees of the company. Why is this? It was possible because the community was smaller – the founders were simply growing with the community, and the community was and is still a tight-knit community of people that knew each other.

I think as FriendFeed continued to build technology that enabled others to build community and relationships, that participation would have slowly evolved to each of the founders’ own close communities. They would not have needed to participate for the community to grow.

Conclusion

So what do we make of all this? I think the moral here is that entrepreneurs need to focus more on building technologies that encourage and enable community. When you’re writing code or having others write it is it enabling people to build relationships? Is it enabling people to share with others? How much so?

The Facebook/Twitter or even Google or Microsoft or Apple battle isn’t over yet – in the end it will be the one that best enables their users through technology to build their own communities and communicate better with each other. The better competitors will master this. There will be other entrants. It’s not the participation of a community’s founders that determines its success. It’s the technology of the company which creates community that does. In that regard, technology trumps community, hands down.

Will I Jump? Louis Gray and I Talk the Facebook/FriendFeed Acquisition

Posted on August 12, 2009 by jessestay

[audio:http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/jessestay/300064.mp3]

As I was walking over Horseshoe falls at Niagara Falls today, Louis Gray and I chatted a bit over BlogTalkRadio’s Cinch service. In our discussion we talked about the Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed, and I think we both came into agreement that jumping now, while a understandable response, perhaps isn’t the best decision. I cover my knowledge of the Facebook platform and Facebook, while Louis talks about his knowledge of FriendFeed and the FriendFeed team and his thoughts on the matter. I think it was a very interesting conversation, to say the least.

You can listen via the stream above or just download it here. Be sure to follow my Cinch feed for more updates like this! (And add Cinch’s number to your phone book so you can do the same) Let me know what you think!

Facebook to FriendFeed: "You Complete Me"

Posted on August 11, 2009 by jessestay

I have to admit I’m a little behind on the news of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. My day today consisted of driving through up-state New York, and tonight I sit here typing just about a 15 minute walk from the beautiful Wonder of the World, Niagara Falls. There are so many better things to think about! (just see the pictures I took tonight) Yet, as I got the initial text via Tweet from Louis Gray today stating Facebook had acquired FriendFeed, I couldn’t get my mind off of what that would mean for both services.

For those that know my background, I’ve written 2 books on Facebook, both from a developer/platform perspective, and a marketing/user perspective (if you want to see what those books are, check out the upper-right nav of my blog). I’ve written numerous apps for Facebook, even sold one of them in just a few months after developing it, and spend much of my time consulting and helping major companies and app developers understand Facebook better.

At the same time, I have always been extremely bullish on FriendFeed. I love the open nature of FriendFeed and how it allows me to express myself publicly in ways I couldn’t before. I love the messaging capabilities, and especially the search and notification options FriendFeed offers me. I almost wrote a post about the perfect Trifecta of FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook, and how the three just work well together. I even predicted earlier this year that FriendFeed would be acquired this year. I have been rigorously researching and working on the developer platform that FriendFeed offers, and loe the open nature of it and their relationship with developers.

It’s because of this background that I had to think seriously about what I thought about this new relationship between Facebook and FriendFeed. I came to the conclusion that the two complete each other. They’re like two puzzle pieces just waiting to be joined. The thing is, I can’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t be together. Here are just a few reasons why:

FriendFeed Needs Privacy Controls

I was actually about to put together a post on this exact topic. I’ll try to keep it short here. I noticed recently that Louis Gray’s wife joined FriendFeed. I was excited, because this meant my wife, who is friends with Louis’s wife (albeit virtually), could actually have a chance at being convinced to do the same. The problem is that we have children old enough that I would prefer we kept their identities off the internet as much as possible.

At the same time I have had threats of physical assault before via my blog and elsewhere. I want to be more careful about what I type and who sees it. The problem with FriendFeed is that not only do my friends see it, but so do their friends, and their friends’ friends, and that pattern has the potential to go on forever. We saw this with the “mob” mentality that drove Michael Arrington off the site much earlier. Yes, this is also a strength and what makes FriendFeed powerful, but I want on occasion to have some control over who gets to see that, and from what Friend List I have on the site.

Privacy is Facebook’s main strength. Imagine FriendFeed being able to educate the Facebook team based on their own experiences with allowing “friends of friends” to see the data and cycling newly “liked” items back to the top, while at the same time allowing Facebook to give their own expertise of allowing those same users to make their items more private?

I think there’s a lot of power in that, and it’s something FriendFeed doesn’t have yet.

FriendFeed Needs Profiles

I’ve asked for profiles for quite awhile now. I want a way to identify myself on FriendFeed, so people can know who the person is regarding the feeds their reading. This one is simple – there’s no doubt that Facebook is good at this.

Facebook Needs Search

Facebook just proved today that this is a focus for them. And guess what – one of the first things they announced in their rollout of a new search engine was their recent acquisition of the FriendFeed team! This gives a lot of potential, not only for search, but also for the ability for broad, real-time search, across all of Facebook and more, something the FriendFeed team is really good at. The FriendFeed team will also be very good at making this search more accessible to the public, all of this while respecting their privacy preferences.

Facebook Needs Better Notifications

We all know FriendFeed is good at this. On almost every page (and it was soon also going to be on search pages) you have the option to have posts, or posts and comments sent to you via e-mail or IM. Also, each page has its own RSS feed, with support for PubSubHubbub, something the FriendFeed team helped instigate. This enables real-time updates via RSS. Facebook enables RSS on only very few pages – the FriendFeed team is very aware of this, as they have been trying to import that data from Facebook themselves! The FriendFeed team knows the headaches of the Facebook platform more than anyone!

Now, what if we could take Facebook’s current SMS capabilities, something FriendFeed does not have, and apply them to the FriendFeed-style posts, agreggation, updates, and search notifications we see on FriendFeed currently? I know I would certainly become a happy user, as this is something I’ve been asking for on FriendFeed since day 1!

Facebook Needs Better Messaging

I saved the best for last. Facebook has had its static Inbox for quite awhile now. We know they’re working on a new solution from posts by TechCrunch, AllFacebook, InsideFacebook, and others, but we know this is something Facebook just isn’t very good at. The FriendFeed Team re-invented messaging with their bare hands. Let’s put this in simple terms: Paul Bucheit, cofounder of FriendFeed, is the creator of Gmail. He now works for Facebook. End of Story.

Be at Ease

Sure, this news took a lot of people by surprise (although it shouldn’t have if you read my blog). Some people dislike Facebook. FriendFeed was the “new early adopters playground”. Early adopters don’t like going back to old things. It’s a little scary for some.

I suggest you wait a little. FriendFeed has a very competent team. We still don’t know what was in that contract they signed. Sure, we have some hints, but FriendFeed has yet to let us down. They have a perfect track record for long-time users of their service. They know what’s going to happen at Facebook, and while sure, things can change, you better bet they’ll be fighting for their existing loyal users. You now can know you have a team you can trust at Facebook, if you didn’t have that trust before.

Also, here’s what we do know: FriendFeed.com is still up and working just as well as always. Facebook now owns FriendFeed. FriendFeed may start integrating more deeply with Facebook. We don’t know that for sure. That’s all we know. Before you jump, think of your trust for the FriendFeed team and their track record so far. Let’s see what happens, and when they do take action that effects us we can make our decisions. Until then I’ll be waiting and supporting them and celebrating their recent success.

The two businesses could not have asked for a better relationship. I think because of this, Facebook all of the sudden has put out the announcement that they want to become more open like FriendFeed. We should be applauding them! FriendFeed has just announced that they leaped over Twitter and are more mainstream than they could ever imagine, as the exact same service they always were. We should be applauding them, too! Now think about that for awhile and let’s see what happens.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go spend some more time at the ‘Falls.

Photo courtesy http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/08/friendfeed-accepts-facebook-friend.html

FriendFeed Opens Up the Firehose to Developers

Posted on July 20, 2009 by jessestay

FriendFeed seems to be staying one (or two or three) step(s) ahead of Twitter in everything they do. Today FriendFeed released their real-time stream of data in beta to any and all developers wishing to write applications. Unlike Twitter, there is no application necessary, no NDA to sign, and all is controlled by simple OAuth. This also means users of FriendFeed-based applications will no longer need to get their special key to manually enter as was previously required.

The real-time stream is based on long-polling techniques to receive near-immediate updates of data from FriendFeed. With Long-polling, developers send a request to a given address, which the server holds open until data is ready for that request. The result is real-time data from the polled source, in this case FriendFeed. It is also less server-intensive as compared to the typical push updates similar to what Twitter is using for their /track and real-time streams, so in theory will scale better (and to me shows the maturity of the FriendFeed team as compared to Twitter’s).

In addition to their real-time stream, FriendFeed released an OAuth solution to developers, enabling users one-click access to the FriendFeed data stream for compatible apps using the platform. SocialToo, my service currently using the Twitter and Facebook platforms, will be using this authentication as well as we integrate FriendFeed into our environment. It will enable simple, one-click login and registration into our system, making it much easier for users to use socially-based applications.

My favorite addition is the integration of social graph data into the stream returned by FriendFeed. Previously, only the list of people a user subscribed to was available via the FriendFeed API. Now, both the list of those subscribed to, and those subscribed to a user are provided, enabling apps like my SocialToo to very soon be able to provide useful analytics around those following you on FriendFeed. Yes, this will also enable auto-follow and auto-unfollow (to keep out spammers) as well if users opt to do so.

Other features released in the API are the ability to upload almost any file attachment to a user’s FriendFeed stream, access to the powerful (and more than 140 character) direct message features of FriendFeed, sharing to multiple streams at once, and more. In addition, FriendFeed is returning the HTML for users and groups, so developers don’t have to differentiate between the two. Hopefully, this will also enable FriendFeed to maintain control of the API and, if you ask me, provide advertising and monetization opportunities via the API in the future as well, which Twitter has completely lost control over.

FriendFeed’s API has proven to have potential as a much more flexible option for developers than Twitter’s in the past, and I think they’re proving that with the new features. In addition to the features launched today, developers can also opt to customize the requests they send to FriendFeed, specifying query parameters about exactly what information they want to retrieve about users, allowing much smaller and much fewer requests to the platform. This is a welcome site as compared to the Twitter platform, which forces entire requests to pull information about a user and their friends, forcing much larger data requests, and higher costs for developers in the end.

FriendFeed is putting the pressure on Twitter with this release. My hope is that developers will see this, and try the platform out, giving Twitter more pressure to fix their own platform issues. If you haven’t tried it, today is the day for Social Platform developers to try FriendFeed’s API.

Reason #552 to Be on FriendFeed: Real-Time Search

Posted on July 2, 2009 by jessestay

I’ve talked in the past about how I read your blogs. I rarely subscribe through Google Reader any more – I read all of your blogs through FriendFeed. Therefore if you want me to read your blog, I strongly suggest taking the first step of importing it into FriendFeed. Well, if that weren’t reason enough, FriendFeed just gave you even one more reason to import your blog and other social data into their site: real-time search.

If you’ll look down in the lower-right sidebar of this blog, you’ll see an example of it in action – every mention of “realtime”, “real time”, “social”, “friendfeed”, “twitter”, “facebook”, or “Jesse Stay” anywhere on the web, at any time that has been imported into FriendFeed now appears real-time, as it’s happening. Go ahead – change the search parameters to something like “earthquake”, or “iran”, or “michael jackson”. You’ll quickly see the value of having such real-time, on-demand search at your fingertips.

FriendFeed is said to be getting ready to also release notifications, probably in the same way they do your other friend lists and feeds via e-mail and IM for the various search terms you’re trying to find. As the terms come in real-time, you’ll receive them. This is powerful stuff!

Over a year ago Twitter had a similar feature – they called it “track”, which they’ve recently re-introduced to developers via their API. It was the main reason I joined and stuck with Twitter. As soon as their competition was dead they removed it. It looks as though FriendFeed has one-upped Twitter once again with this feature.

So if you haven’t already, go to FriendFeed, get an account, import all your Twitter and Facebook friends already on the service (you’ll find most of your active friends probably already are!), and start adding your blogs, Twitter feeds, facebook feeds, photos, videos, and more into your stream so they too can be indexed by this powerful search. The web just got a whole lot more real-time, and FriendFeed just got a whole lot more powerful.

Mob Wars – Tomayto, Tomaahto…

Posted on June 28, 2009 by jessestay

The GodFather Since today seems to be a slow news day and some sites seem to be anxious for traffic I thought I’d put my hand into the ring for a piece of that traffic (hey, at least I’m being transparent). Let’s start by saying I really like Mike Arrington, founder of TechCrunch. Quite honestly, I gained a new respect for the way he handled and explained the misunderstanding which happened between him and Leo Laporte on a recent (and possibly the last) episode of the Gillmor Gang. I do think he is a genuinely nice guy with good intentions and an amazing brain for business – I highly respect him for that. I think we could be good friends in person. He quite often gets a lot of flack which I think is undeserved – I think that gets to him at times.

That said, I think his recent article comparing FriendFeed to “Syphilis”, a rapidly spreading disease that will kill those in its path until it evolves is quite unfounded. First of all, I’m only aware of 3 people that has happened to (quit FriendFeed, not contract Syphilis), which happened only recently, and only after Mike Arrington started this idea that “Mobs” were killing FriendFeed. Each one of those cases (besides Arrington’s) were people that only post to the service and rarely interact. One of them even admitted he just didn’t have time for an extra service – a somewhat legitimate answer.

I also admit that about a year ago there was one additional “mob-driven” departure from FriendFeed during the political campaigns – a Conservative (most of those leaving seem to have been conservatives claiming to have been driven out by their Liberal counterparts on FriendFeed – note that I am also a Conservative) left briefly from the service due to disagreements and attacks on his own Political views. He is back in full force on FriendFeed today. I admit, it’s hard to be a Conservative on FriendFeed and express your political opinions (I usually choose not to). Heck, it’s hard to be Conservative on the internet in general! The organized nature of FriendFeed, while it has this con (which does not stand for Conservative), is still a very strong platform for organizing well-thought-out conversations.

However, there are 2 sides to this “Mob War”. Remember last July when I decided to leave Twitter? Check out the comments of that post – they look very similar to that of my friend who recently decided to do the same with FriendFeed. That was just my blog (I especially like the one that called me a “self-centered douche” – that made me want to stay on Twitter even longer) – the problem is I have no way to organize all the comments that occured on Twitter which were offensive or hurtful. You should have seen how bad it got after that post made it on TechMeme (which wasn’t my intent for that post – I had only been on Techmeme about once before that post I think). TechCrunch’s rage towards FriendFeed is easy to understand – FriendFeed is much easier to point the finger at because the discussion, both the good and the bad and even the ugly, is all in one place.

Is it a Mob or a Groundswell?

Now let’s look at another side of the coin. Remember that term, “Groundswell”? If you haven’t, go check out the book by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li tomorrow from the Library, or purchase it from Amazon. All this “Mob” stuff sounds very familiar – in fact, it was originally termed by Forrester as a “Groundswell” – in Bernoff and Li’s book they define it as “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations”. That sounds awfully similar to a mob, with the exception of the Technology part. So would this more accurately be called a “Groundswell” instead of a mob?

One example they cited was that of Digg’s users rioting against Digg due to its original stance on the HD-DVD encryption key. Those users wanted to see Digg pay for their actions. I’m sure it hurt a lot reading some of the things which were said at that time. Digg rectified the situation and listened to those complaining, and turned around the entire movement to a “Mob” or “Groundswell” promoting Digg and fighting the AACS instead. Mobs can be controlled, but a mob’s still a mob, no matter which side they’re on. Was that a Mob or a Groundswell? What about when Digg turned it around to their benefit?

The problem with today’s “Groundswell” is it now targets the personal brand as well as the corporation. We see that in Arrington’s situation, as well as several others that have recently been targeted. It could have happened on Twitter. It could have happened on Youtube, or Digg, or anywhere else. The fact is when someone the majority likes is targeted, or the service the majority likes is targeted, or has the appearance of being attacked, the mob goes in defense mode, attacking back. When this is someone’s personal brand we’re talking about and not just a corporation or entity, it hurts a lot more. It’s impossible to not take at least some of the comments seriously – we’re all human after all.

At the same time, Groundswells can be used for good as well. Look at what Drew Olanaff is doing with his #blamedrewscancer on Twitter. He’s gotten me to donate $25 a month to the American Cancer Society because of it, along with many others. Or look at what is happening in Iran – I’m sure it looks like a “Mob” to the Iranian government. It’s still a Groundswell no matter which way you put it.

I still think the recent article on TechCrunch is wrong in targeting only FriendFeed in this matter. The words he used were quite harsh, and unfair to the service’s hard-working founders whose service has been working far better than that of the hard-working founders of Twitter. Arrington seems to be offended (or looking for traffic for his upcoming conference – it’s hard to tell), and riling up his own Groundswell against the service – perhaps this is just his response to the Groundswell. Just check out the comments on his post, then read the comments on Scoble’s FriendFeed response and those comments that are being deleted from TechCrunch. If that’s not the case I really don’t understand the strong words against the service, and why TechCrunch is seemingly only targeting one service in all this.

Mike Arrington calls this a “Mob” – I call it a “Groundswell”. Is there really a difference?

Here’s a great video portraying in real-life how quickly a “Mob” or “Groundswell” can be formed:

Gmail is My FriendFeed Client

Posted on May 27, 2009 by jessestay

A couple days ago I showed you my own unique way of managing Twitter. This method utilizes my e-mail client, Gmail, to track and force Twitter messages to come to me instead of myself needing to constantly check the site or my preferred Twitter client for new messages about me, my brand, or other topics I like to monitor. I’ve also spoken recently about my hiatus from RSS and how I’ve significantly reduced the number of feeds I monitor and instead I “media-snack” (as Robert Scoble calls it) on FriendFeed where I am still able to get as much, if not more information about the latest and greatest tech news as I have always done before. But how do I manage FriendFeed? You may be surprised to hear that I do it in almost the exact same way I do Twitter – I use Gmail. Here’s how I do it:

Native FriendFeed Notifications

Let’s start with the fact that FriendFeed actually provides its own useful ways of monitoring your conversations so you don’t have to keep coming back to the site, something Twitter and various Twitter clients have not been very good at doing (PeopleBrowsr seems closest to providing the ideal solution to this). On any page (except saved searches – we’ll get to that later), you’ll notice a new feature in the upper-right that says “E-mail/IM”. If you click on that it will drop down some more options. You can select it to deliver just new posts on the given page, new posts and just your friends’ comments, or new posts and all comments. You can then select any option to deliver those to either your e-mail, IM client, or FriendFeed’s own native desktop popup client (which you can download and install here). FriendFeed then uses the e-mail and IM settings you have set in your settings to deliver this information to your desired location. The great thing about this is that you can use it for any of your friend lists, any room on FriendFeed, or even your own discussions page (“My Discussions” on the right).

So here’s what I do: I simply went to my “My Discussions” page, selected the option to deliver all new posts and all comments to my e-mail client, and now anything I comment on, or like, or any likes or comments on the posts that I import into FriendFeed now get delivered to my e-mail account. I don’t miss any of the conversation this way . I think everyone should do this, even if you don’t participate on FriendFeed because it ensures you know, immediately, when anyone comments on one of the things you’re already importing into FriendFeed. If you’re not actively using FriendFeed, you should do this out of respect to those that are.

Now here’s where Gmail is important: if you actively like or comment on other members’ posts, you’ll then get every single comment on that post afterwards. Usually, that’s not so bad, if you’ve ever participated in one of Robert Scoble’s threads, or any other hot topic on FriendFeed, you’ll quickly notice that the number of comments can go into the hundreds at times. This will very quickly fill up your inbox!

Gmail solves this problem easily. On the thread in Gmail you’re tired of hearing from, simply click the “m” button on your keyboard. Instantly, the thread gets moved to your Archive folder and you’ll never see it again unless you click your “All Messages” folder. You’ll notice in that folder it now has a “muted” label next to it. Go to the thread and click “m” again and it will un-mute itself. There’s no better client for managing this. And if you know me, I’m religious about reading all my e-mail. Gmail makes this possible.

In addition, FriendFeed also enables users to respond to the conversation, right in their e-mail client. I simply hit “reply” on any conversation I want to add to right in Gmail, and my comment immediately (yes, in real-time) gets added to the conversation. Not only that, but you can easily DM me on FriendFeed, yes, via your e-mail client. Simply send any message, including photos (works great from my iphone!) to jessestay@friendfeed.com (my username@friendfeed.com – works the same for your username) and your message will go straight to my FriendFeed DM box. Or, send any message, or photos (again, works great from my iPhone!) to share@friendfeed.com and your message and/or photos will go straight to your public stream on FriendFeed. You never have to leave your e-mail client.

Now, what if you want to track what others are saying about your brand, and don’t want to have to keep checking back in your saved searches links on the right in FriendFeed? (you are using saved-searches, aren’t you?) Yes, there’s an app for that.

Introducing BackType

We’ll cover this in the next post in this series more thoroughly, but BackType is a service that tracks and reports comments around the web. FriendFeed is one of the sites it tracks comments for. To get notifications when your name is mentioned on FriendFeed, simply go to BackType, set up a saved search for your name, brand, or whatever other terms you want to track, enable e-mail alerts for those saved searches, and now you’ll get mention of everything anyone says about you on FriendFeed. I don’t miss a thing anyone says about me – try and mention my name somewhere and see!

By enabling users to manage their brand and conversation via e-mail, FriendFeed has just become the most manageable micro-blogging client and service on the internet. Now I get to treat my news like a newspaper – pick it up at my own leisure, “media-snack”, read what I like, and put it down. I don’t have to worry about missing anything, and most importantly, I don’t waste time needing to constantly check the site to see if someone has said something I need to know about.

So thus far I’ve managed my online identity through:

Significantly reducing my Google Reader and RSS subscriptions by unsubscribing and “media snacking” on FriendFeed subscriptions

Managing my Twitter brand through TweetBeep and my e-mail client

Managing my FriendFeed brand through IM/E-mail notifications, BackType, and Gmail

My next installment of this series will be about how I subscribe to your blogs through Gmail. Sure, I’ve talked about how I use Google Reader to manage the subscriptions I absolutely can’t miss, but what about the stuff that slips through the cracks? I’ll show you how to use BackType, Google Alerts, and other tools to ensure this doesn’t happen.

You Don’t Own Your Data on Social Networks

Posted on April 9, 2009 by jessestay

I get asked often by clients, reporters and media folk and others about Facebook’s recent Terms of Service updates, essentially saying they own their users data and have a right to do as they wish with their data. They’ve turned around on that and will be releasing newly revised Terms soon, but at least they’re being honest about it. The thing is, any service on the internet you belong to, which includes Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, even Gmail, and more, owns your data. It’s their right to change their Terms for their users any time they want, and the only choice you’ll have at that point is to leave the service, or continue on, recognizing what you already knew – that what you’ve stored on their service is theirs to own forever. I think people have come to accept that – they just get all up in arms when it’s thrown in their face.

The thing is, as a brand, you can’t afford for this to happen. Owning, and losing rights to your data can make or break your business. People take risks to be able to take shortcuts and survive by joining such services, and frankly, it’s important to still have a presence on these services because people are talking about your brand and you could be missing out on that conversation. But can you really trust your content on such services? What if Twitter, or Google, or FriendFeed were to pull a Facebook and with the drop of a hat own all your previous data. They are within right to do so – you gave them that right when you signed up for their service.

The Social Web Needs More Open Protocols

We were discussing on FriendFeed today how the new FriendFeed beta, with its real-time nature, is a lot like IRC, and enables people to chat, in a completely new way, in real time. The thing is, it’s not at all like IRC. IRC is an open protocol. It’s software businesses can own, modify, and change to their hearts content. They can wrap their brand around it. With IRC a business has the ability to own the community that subsides within the environment they set up, on their own servers.

Not FriendFeed, or even Twitter enable this capability, which is why if they don’t adapt in the future things will change. Facebook is attempting to address this with their Connect product, and that’s a step in the right direction. Facebook also provides quite a bit of their underlying developer platform code, as open source, freely and openly to the community, also a step in the right direction, but they can always do more.

Keep in mind that this is all about owning your own community. Can Guy Kawasaki set his own rules about what is, and isn’t spammy? Can Leo Laporte provide a Geek-friendly environment for his TWIT Army? Can ESPN provide a sports-enthusiast friendly environment for Football fans, and properly advertise and provide things, in their own way, that those fans would appreciate? You can’t do this on any of the networks right now (with the exception of Facebook Connect).

Laconi.ca is headed in the right direction on this. As is Automattic, and SixApart. They all have their own major services, but all of their services enable you to focus on owning your own community. And even if you don’t have enough control, they provide you the source code to give you the control you need, should you need it. This is the future!

Why does this matter to the end-user?

You may think, well, I’m not a business. I’m just a casual user so this doesn’t matter to me. I’m willing to bet if you’re an Athletics fan, or a Boston Red Sox fan, or a 49ers fan, or a Mom, or even a Dad, that you put much more interest in those things than you do the brand name Twitter or FriendFeed or Facebook. Those things are your real life! Now imagine if those brands started to give you a way you could communicate with like-minded individuals, and what if different brands could talk with each other? This is one reason Facebook is going to succeed, and one reason Laconi.ca is going to succeed, because I can chat in the environment I want, and my friends all still get to hear me! As an end user, and especially a brand targeting that end user, that’s powerful!

This is why TodaysMama Connect is seeing great participation in their new Connect community for Moms. Now, with their service, Moms can connect with each other without having to sift through the massive data mine of Twitter. At the same time, TodaysMama gets to own and control the community in a way that works well for Moms and is inviting for them, while maintaining their brand image. You see the same with Leo Laporte’s TWIT army, and I’m already talking to several other major brands that are considering the same.

How do you control your data?

Will the future be full of everyone creating their own communities of “followers”, competing for who visits their site and embraces the community? It’s possible, but that’s far down the road. We need more open standards. The Twitters, the FriendFeeds, and the Facebooks all need to be providing and leading these open standards and serving instead of being data hoards, becoming network Connectors, providing ways to connect multiple smaller networks with each other. They need to be the directories and the places where people can go to find each community. They need to be the search, and the stream of the “brand-owned” data, and providing as many ways as possible for those brands to completely own and customize the experience for their own communities. Their role is the glue of the Open Web.

Let’s truly make these services the IRC of the Social Web. Thank you, Laconi.ca and Automattic, and SixApart for leading the way.

Photo Courtesy Eric Kilby