Blogs Still Trump Streams for Longform Content With a Long Shelf Life

Five or so years ago, the idea that one of the most visible bloggers would walk away from their website and completely move their presence to a third party network would have been a step short of scandalous. In fact, when top bloggers even took a month or two off before rejuvenating, that in itself was news. (See from 2007: Are Leading Bloggers Getting Blog Fatigue? and Robert Scoble's response) When the well-read and highly networked Jason Calacanis exited the blogging game in 2008, we all talked about it. When PR lead Steve Rubel deleted his blog in 2011, I was not happy.

For many, the allure of instant feedback on social networks, and simple quantifiable levels of engagement are enough to call in quits on longer form content. When a much labored blog post can only score a handful of comments (if any), and a fun tweet gets dozens of retweets and favorites in minutes, or a Google+ or Facebook post has a deep conversation, the return on investment can have you wondering if blogging is even worth the effort.

Last month +Robert Scoble finally abandoned his blog, which, like mine, used to be a lot more active and engaged than it is now. Yet few people noticed. His choice is to primarily engage on Facebook, and continue a presence on Twitter and Google+. And it's no longer controversial. In parallel, ten years into +Charlene Li's blogging, she writes, "You just can’t beat the engagement that social media platforms provide, something that blogs on their own can’t do."

It's not as if this is a sudden change, obviously. Blogging was (after bulletin boards and newsgroups) the first deep channel one could have to report news, talk to peers and engage with brands on the Web. But when Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so many other social streams emerged, people learned to communicate in real time. By the time blog posts were published, and traveled via RSS to your attention, you might already have seen the news somewhere else. In effect, social media decimated blogging in the same way that the Internet decimated newspapers. Speed wins practically every time.

Just a few years ago, it'd be easy to say "Your blog is your brand (2007)", or, later adjusting, that "Blogging is the foundation in a world of streams (2009)". I still believe deeply in the second part, that all those tweets and social streams have to point somewhere, and if it's not an ad, then it's back to your blog. The rest is just real time noise that is interesting one minute and gone the next. The blog is the place where you can exchange deeper discussions, and the posts live on forever.

Blog posts I made years ago still get thousands of visits a month.

So what of the perceived decline in readers to blogs that once saw incredible attention? Like in the TV world, where one now has hundreds of specialized channels catering to every interest, which has dramatically impacted traditional network market share, the Internet has many more content outlets to choose from, for practically anything you want. You name a topic, you can find a community for it. And entertainment and soft content are winning, just like they do on TV. People love to be entertained, so even the purported news networks like Business Insider, Mashable and Buzzfeed take a tabloid approach and cater to the lowest viewer - tantalizing and teasing their way through your day.

My good friend and colleague on the +Google Analytics team, +Adam Singer, recently took on the disappearing blogs topic in a column for ClickZ, responding to a Marketing Land post on declining blog use for the first time in seven years. His takeaway echoes what I will constantly report: The best analysis is done for your own domain, you don't have to fight with social networking algorithms on whether your content will make it to viewers, and you own your space - the way it looks, your template, and your message.

In 2011, when Google+ just started, some high profile people said they were walking away from their own self-hosted domains and just redirecting to their Google+ profile, which was flying with comments and +1s. I warned against this move, saying "I Gave Away My Web Identity. All I Got Was a T-Shirt." Even when the product you're pointing to is high quality, it's very unlikely a stream-oriented product can match the quality and depth of longer form content that belongs to you.

Having a choice in destinations for your content is important. But it's not just enough to engage in other places. You have to tailor your message for each media, and the blog is still your best container to own your brand and your content for the long term. I regularly end up citing stories I wrote 6-8 years ago, and they still hold up. But good luck trying to find a tweet of yours or another social post from 4+ years ago and saying it has the same solid validity. So while I respect +Robert Scoble and others for adapting to a new world and making a tough call, I think we've lost a lot of good voices and deep thought for a quick fix.

Disclosures (per usual): I work at Google, who is behind the Blogger platform (which I use), Google+ and Google Analytics. I do have active profiles on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, of course.

Is The Web's Focus on "Now" Losing How to Find "When"?

Our attention spans are getting shorter. While being constantly interrupted or distracted by new toys, new sites, new things, new messages, new people, and new ideas, we're delivering a stream of consciousness into a void which quickly gobbles it up and waits for more. Scads of sites are helping us find out what is trending in real time, and deliver us the "now". What's hot now. What's peaking now. What's being said now. But the focus on the cutting edge of time, combined with reduced capability to search our history is making finding what happened "when" a lot harder.

Consider for a moment some simple questions that pertain to the social Web, blogging and lifestreaming - and our lack of great tools to discover the answers. I'll start with some real examples.

1. What was the first blog to cover the service backtype.com? 

2. When was the first time Denton Gentry left a comment on my blog?

3. When was the first time Robert Scoble mentioned the word Twitter in his blog?

4. Who mentioned FriendFeed on Twitter first? MG Siegler or me?

I use these specific questions with real people to help consider questions that may pop up from time to time. Substitute your own curiosities.

There are a few places we've trained ourselves to look for such answers, namely Google Web Search (and its competitors like Bing), Google Blog Search (and IceRocket, my favorite), and Twitter Search. For individual blogs, we have to hope they have integrated blog search tools, such as that from Lijit, or Google's Custom Search Engine (CSE), a subset of results from one domain. But each of these has some weaknesses.

First, Twitter Search. Two years ago, when I was a more grumpy person, I targeted the search engine for being quite broken, only going a few days deep and failing in more specific searches. The archive hasn't been built to go deep in the last two years, and the accelerated volume of posts isn't helping the issue.

Second, Google Blog Search. You can search by date, and even set custom ranges, but the archive of blogs is both incomplete, but overly full of low-quality content. So finding out a question like the first blog to mention BackType requires you to visit their own blog and hope they mentioned it, or to just know they were funded through Y! Combinator, and thus, got started with TechCrunch, back in August of 2008. Peeking at Crunchbase helps too in this regard. Icerocket offers search by date, but I didn't find any results in August of 2008, so that's a miss.

The Web has collectively accepted these sites inability to accurately deliver on archive search, with an expectation that questions such as this are only done by a small few.

For the second question, one I posed to Denton last night out of curiosity, I would have to hope one of two things - that Denton had used Disqus.com with my blog and that I could somehow see all of his comments on my domain through Disqus. But looking at his profile there only shows how many comments he's made on my blog, and that's not clickable. If Disqus has the data, it's not easy to find. In fact, the only way we arrived at the answer is that I'm enough of an information hoarder to have every comment he's ever made tucked away in my email and was able to search locally on my laptop to find his July 2008 comment on a guest post by Jesse Stay. He finally posted on an entry from me in August of that same year.

So what about Mr. Scoble mentioning Twitter? I tapped Google Blog Search, went to Advanced search, entered scobleizer.com as the domain and the keyword of Twitter and chose 2007 as the year. The results nicely omitted his URL as part of the query - so that had no value. I searched his own site, using Lijit, but there is no sort by date. One of the first results included mention of an earthquake on Twitter in 2007, but knowing Robert, there's no way that's the first mention. Just can't find it.

As for who mentioned FriendFeed on Twitter.com first, MG or me? That's something of a trick question. We already know Twitter search won't find it - nor will its realtime search partners Google or Bing. But I can guarantee that MG mentioned it first because I didn't even join Twitter until early 2008, several months after I had been using FriendFeed. By that point, MG was very active on Twitter and had no doubt mentioned FriendFeed several times. But this all requires knowledge outside of the search engines.

Wikipedia and Quora and Crunchbase are all human-powered knowledge bases that are being built to answer questions such as these that capture more than the "right now". That we have access to things like Google and Bing and Icerocket that find answers to so many things is fantastic. There are even archival sites like MemoLane (which is beautifully done) to capture your history, but the when is becoming a footnote in history. Will the big engines let the flow of social media and blogs outrun the ability to capture it?

The iPhone Fanboys Can't Handle the Truth On Android

The big news in this weekend's blogosphere circles around predictions that 2011 will be even more dramatic a success for Android than 2010, and unsurprisingly, the iPhone-aholics are coming out of the woodwork to tell us that this is a terrible thing, cornering the discussion into one where we are supposed to believe Google's march into smartphones is only winning due to price, and that the iPhone 4 (and its successors) are dramatically "better", however that is measured, than Android alternatives. This position is no better exemplified than by Robert Scoble's post saying Fred Wilson and Fortune are Right About Android (but I hate it). This follows onto Fred's position that entrepreneurs and VCs need to get ahead by investing in Android and not iOS. This mirrors my comments from July when I said mobile app developers should look to Android before iPhone and iPad.

The differences between Apple and Android this time around are not like Apple and Microsoft of 1995, even if this is the lazy man's way out to compare the two battles. Scoble says, pleadingly, "I sure hope Steve Jobs has one of those moments where he shocks the world again and keeps this game interesting." I'll tell you what, this game already is interesting, and not because the rest of the world is waiting to see what Cupertino develops in an effort to copy its innovation extremely quickly.

I once felt the same way about my iPhone and still feel the same way in many regards to my MacBook Air (even though I am currently typing this on the CR-48). But the reality is not that Apple has held the exclusive to innovation in this space over the last 12-24 months or even longer. Android led the way in true multitasking on the phone, offers a superior GPS experience with top-notch places and maps, and is years ahead of Apple on voice search, it seems.

On Christmas, a friend of mine asked if I had ever shown my kids "Ivor the Engine" on YouTube, similar to Thomas the Train who is well known here. Even though I was uncertain to the pronunciation, I simply clicked the voice search button on my Samsung Epic, said "Ivor the Engine YouTube" into the phone, and I had a video playing in full color in seconds. Android made that happen, and while I am eager to see Apple integrate Siri, who it purchased at the beginning of 2010, I believe the tremendous investment Google has made in search and voice search specifically will keep them ahead here.

The truth is that Android can go feature by feature against iPhone now. iPhone is not yards ahead of the competition, and while there may be some clear places where Apple is ahead, it comes down to an individual's preference now, including their choice to have a keyboard (which Apple seems not interested in doing), their choice of carriers (still limited here, even if Verizon comes to the party), or many other factors. This is not like the Microsoft of the 1990s, where Apple's lead was obvious and Windows 95 was arguably the first usable OS on that platform to be considered Mac-like.

The way you can tell when tech connoisseurs have crossed the line from data to emotion is when they use blanket phrases like "In my usage of the Android-based Samsung Nexus S, I’ve found it’s still behind Apple’s iPhone in almost every way," which Scoble drops in his post. If you strongly believe a high pixel density Retina Display is demanded, great. If you think FaceTime is something you use all the time and it trumps Qik, great. But blanket statements don't work for the true nature of the mobile landscape today. Android really is that good.

When I first took the plunge into Android after Google I/O, I was almost as wary as when I had to sit down with a Windows NT box for my first Valley job. I was sure it would be terrible or I would be lost. But I kept being surprised by how the device just made sense, and how the device in many ways was better than my experience on the iPhone. In the six months since, we've only seen Android phones improve, with the expansion of Samsung's Galaxy S series, the Droid Incredible, and the introduction of Android tablets like the Galaxy Tab and Barnes and Noble's NOOKColor. I voted again on Android this Christmas when I bought my wife the NOOKColor, which she'll be using to read voraciously at the expense of her iPad use, with a slimmer form factor and reduced weight.

What was wrong about Microsoft's monopoly position in the 1990s was that they used their market strength to thwart innovation and win with business muscle and side deals rather than through value. That is not what is playing out here again. That Apple has opted out of some business relationships and reduced its potential routes to market while Android hasn't is their choice, and it's making them a ton of money. Apple is still winning as a company and will be a strong #2 in this market, and #1 in profit, as that's their focus.

If the assumption is true that Android is expanding primarily due to low-end handsets, we should be asking Apple for an iOS compatible option at a lower price point. Where is the MacBook or Mac Mini of iPhones? If the company ends up being niched at the top in price while others are providing more options, that can't be a strike against Android, but instead a business decision on the part of Cupertino.

The world of mobile is better with a strong and smart Apple in it. But don't get blinded by the Apple fans trying to define Android as a cheaper, inferior solution. It's not. Get your hands on any high quality Android device at a Sprint store or a Verizon outlet or an AT&T store or a Best Buy to try them out. Even an open minded Apple fan can respect what's happened and should be able to see innovation taking place as well as serious market momentum.

Don't Fear Being Fireballed or Slashdotted if on Blogger

It can be difficult to plan for an unanticipated spike in Web traffic. One of the most amusing parts of reading Macolyte John Gruber's Daring Fireball blog is the near certainty that at least once per day, one of the poor saps he links to goes down due to the resulting crush of curious onlookers. It happens so frequently that it's practically second nature to see him update a post saying the link has been "Fireballed", opting instead to point to Google's cache of the original. This phenomenon, of course, is not a Gruber exclusive. For years, otherwise innocent bloggers have been Slashdotted, TechCrunched or even Scobleized, seeing their sites crack under pressure. But from what I can tell, if you're hosted on Blogger, this isn't an issue at all. The company was just recognized for perfect uptime during a survey by Royal Pingdom, and I've seen my own site spike in traffic following controversial posts with no ill effects.

Blogger was not always known for a stellar uptime record. In late 2006, the service practically had to write "a novel" about continued outages. In fall of 2007, I railed against Google for ignoring users during another major outage. But services mature and times change.

Royal Pingdom's Downtime Report. Blogger Scores a Zero.

With the backdrop of Tumblr's highly-publicized downtime of more than a day earlier this month, Royal Pingdom also spotted occasional outages at WordPress, TypePad and Posterous, each of whom looked great compared to Tumblr's unfortunate blip, but not as spotless as the often overlooked Blogger.

Getting Slashdot, Scoble and Spiegel Bumps Simultaneously

While escaping system-wide downtime is a major win in itself, that doesn't speak to the services' ability to scale under pressure. Gruber recommends the WP Super Cache Plugin for WordPress, letting users serve more than a page a second, as it's self-hosted WordPress blogs that often get crushed with one of his links. But I've been linked from Daring Fireball a few times and lived to tell the tale. Same for Slashdot, Techmeme, Hacker News and the Huffington Post, all of which are capable of sending solid and sustained traffic on good days.

Techmeme, Hacker News and Scoble Don't Bring Down Blog

Similar to how Google is well known for its Web site never going down, I have to assume Blogger has mastered Google's distributed architecture, and makes no single blog, or its hotspotting, an instrument for failure. This blog didn't slow or go down when tens of thousands of visitors dropped by this July to tell me I was an idiot for switching from iPhone to Android. It also didn't go down when I questioned the usefulness of Google Wave last year, or when the Huffington Post liked my recap of David Kirkpatrick's Facebook Effect.

Not Even Daring Fireball Could Take the Blog Down

Even the largest services have occasional downtime. Facebook was down last week, intentionally, due to a code push ahead of schedule. Twitter has had its share of bumps, though the site has gotten much better in the last year, and even Facebook subsidiary FriendFeed went down this weekend. But Blogger users are sitting pretty knowing their blogs are going to be up and responsive, even under pressure.

Filter, Unfollow Or Get Out of the Way

Go Ahead and Filter Me Out of Your In Box.

The recent launch of Google Buzz has once again surfaced an undercurrent in the social Web - where a small number of active accounts can gain the lion's share of activity, either through their own interactions, or those of an active follower base. Whether earned through years of consistent activity on their blogs or parallel networks, or having volume thrust upon them through celebrity or suggested user lists and bundling, there are brand name individuals who command a greater share no matter where they go, and if you choose to follow them, your stream runs the chance of being overwhelmed.

Buzz, evolutionary but not revolutionary, has not yet made it simple to follow very active accounts, such as those from Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, Pete Cashmore or me, as updates on our threads bounce to the in box by default - almost as a penalty for anybody who has chosen to engage, or who may have seen their ID added to a thread through the service's @Reply feature.

A Common Complaint. But A Wrong One.

Busy accounts can be a nuisance on practically any network, whether that's Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, Buzz or any other. But in services where active feeds are resurfaced or pushed to the top, such as FriendFeed and Buzz, the impact is not actually from the originator of the content, but from their community. Comments on active feeds push the items back to the in box, or back to the top of the feed, and if you are following some of the more prominent accounts, you'll no doubt see the same names at the top.

Engagement is Not the Problem. It's Bad Filtering.

That said, if this is getting in your way, and you are seething with rage at these social media power users, you're not using the tools well. Practically every network gives you tools to solve the problem.

1. On Twitter, you only have to see the updates from those you follow - with the exception of items retweeted by those you follow, from their connections, which you can opt out of on an individual basis. If an individual is too noisy, you can unfollow them at any time. Some innovative applications, including Brizzly, let you even "mute" a user for a short time so you can have them disappear during particularly busy times.

2. On Facebook, you can hide an individual's updates from your News Feed if they are too talkative. You can also hide all updates from specific applications (like Farmville or Mafia Wars) if you never want to see those updates. And yes, de-friending or blocking is available.

3. On FriendFeed, you can hide individual posts, block individual services (like Twitter or Disqus), block specific service updates by user, or, most successfully, you can put noisy people in their own lists, to sequester them from the rest of your feed. If worse comes to worse, again, you can always unfollow them, or block them outright.

4. With Buzz, you don't yet have the option to hide specific service updates or updates by user. But you can mute any thread just my using the "m" key, and as Buzz is integrated with GMail, you can use the same kind of filters available to any other e-mail. For example, I have set up a rule to move all Buzz entries into a mail box I call "social", taking them out of the in box.

Buzz Never Hits My In Box On My Mac

If you want to quiet the impact of busy users, like Tom Foremski did by unfollowing Robert Scoble and me in Buzz, you can use GMail filters to your advantage - taking them to a dedicated folder and out of your in box.

For example, set up a filter where the Subject is "Buzz from Louis Gray", "Skip the Inbox (Archive It)" and "Apply the Label" of "Noisy", or whatever you like.. Then do the same for Robert and Pete and Chris Pirillo, Jason Calacanis, or anybody else who is swamping your Buzz experience.

Should we be blaming the noisy folks?

Like I mentioned last night, in sharing my social media data flow, I know there are people who have chosen to stop seeing my updates because of their frequency. But I don't plan to change my activity because of a new way it is interpreted and displayed by a new social network.

Part of the reason I am among the more active and visible people on Buzz is because over the last few years, I have promoted and cultivated the use of Google Reader and having active conversations there. I took the time to connect to and talk with more than 1,000 people in my shared items, and Buzz has taken advantage of that social network, moving it to a new place. Where others have not optimized for sharing, they are starting with less of a community.

1,300+ People Can Comment On My Shared Reader Items

But because of this, the community is also very comfortable talking on my feeds, as they are with other engaged folks. It is the ensuing conversations that bump them to the top, not the frequency that I share. I have been sharing 20-30 items a day in Google Reader every day for years, and it is filling Buzz the same way it has filled Reader and Facebook and FriendFeed.

If it's too much for you, use the tools that are there. Mute. Filter. Unfollow. Block. But there will always be discrepancies between the average users and those most active. Go ahead and make mine more active.

Sitting With @Scobleizer and @Jesse As Part of a Big Silicon Valley Day

With friend and fellow blogger Jesse Stay in the Bay Area for the day, I played the part of chauffeur and sidekick, hitting a number of key Silicon Valley landmarks this afternoon. After he finished a lunch at eBay/Paypal, the two of us drove up Highway 101 to meet with the API team at Twitter. Then we headed south and caught up with our mutual friend, Robert Scoble, who true to form, turned on the video camera and engaged with us in a discussion around social networking applications, product development, and our thoughts on Twitter, Foursquare, Google Wave, etc. The video is about an hour long, so buckle your seatbelts.



Afterward, Jesse and I made a quick stop at Apple headquarters in Cupertino and then got dinner at home in Sunnyvale, where he met the twins, and then I took him back to pick up his car, after swinging by Cisco HQ just for show and tell. In the eight hours I dragged Jesse up and down the Peninsula, we managed to see or visit eBay, Yahoo!, EMC, Cisco, Twitter, Apple, AMD, Extreme Networks, TiVo and National Semiconductor, to name a few. All part of the Silicon Valley experience.

If you're a die-hard who can't get enough of our repartee, there was more of the discussion that tripped into a "part two", which you can catch here.

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FTC Disclosure: I got a free t-shirt from Twitter AND a free t-shirt from Robert that says Building 43 on it. Oh yeah, Jesse also runs SocialToo where I am an advisor. Also, at one time, I visited TiVo headquarters and got a grab bag of goodies. Also, a TiVo employee paid for lunch that day. :)

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Automated Tweets Don't Always Mean Less Genuine Tweets

With the introduction of an updated terms of service last week, Twitter once again had people buzzing about what was accepted behavior on the fast-growing microblogging site, and what crossed the line. In one of the site's frequent list-based articles dedicated to the San Francisco company, Mashable claimed one of the targets of the update was what they termed "bots", which were updated by RSS feeds moreso than by humans. In the post, Jennifer Van Grove specifically used the popular IMDB account as an example of one that should "live in fear of death". But all drama aside, I don't think that's Twitter's intent, nor do I believe that the sole delineation of whether an account is pulled by RSS instead of through text, for example, calls for the label of "Spam".

The truth is that a significant number of news-based accounts are clearly automated, very often by the use of RSS, because Twitter has become more than just a place to send updates. It's infrastructure. And even if these accounts aren't automated through RSS, practically all of the top accounts are full of a stream containing only headlines and links, with Mashable being no exception. (See also: TechCrunch, Techmeme Firehose and ReadWriteWeb for example)

It's clear that while "The Twitter Rules" say that "If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates" is one criteria for being labeled spam, it cannot be the only criteria. We must believe, and I do, that Twitter would know how to separate the good from the bad in this type of a case.

The truth is, and I have said this many times, that you should participate and make your data available where your audience may be. And often, even if you are initiating content in one place, the audience may be somewhere else - like Twitter. As a result, it makes sense to move that content to Twitter to give them access.


TwitterCounter Shows Growth for @lgshareditems and @scoblefaves
A recent experiment I kicked off on Wednesday was creating a dedicated Twitter account for my Google Reader shares and Delicious bookmarks at @lgshareditems. This combination has always been available on FriendFeed (and Facebook), but not Twitter. In parallel, Robert Scoble, also a guy well known for trying new things with social networks and data, has been tracking favorite tweets from those he follows with a dedicated account called @scoblefaves.

I have watched both accounts creep past the 100+ follower stage, even though both accounts are new, and both are exclusively feed-based. Each is a new way to try and utilize human filters and pass the results to Twitter, with the difference being that I am betting on content from outside of Twitter, and Robert is betting on other Tweeters. I bet both have strong value to separate audiences looking for news and tech updates - even though our data sets are different.

My shares to @lgshareditems are equally as genuine as my posts to @louisgray. While I may have more personal updates at the @louisgray feed, I do also post my new blog updates there, as well as my Delicious bookmarks, to give those authors additional exposure. And as noted above, practically every self-respecting blog and news source can see their Twitter feed to be extremely link heavy. So I expect it will take a lot more than you seeing a lot of blue underlines in my feed to be in danger of getting the big boot from Twitter, no matter what their TOS says.

To Jump on the Massive Unfollowing Trend Would Be a Mistake

For weeks, in my ever-increasing list of potential future blog post topics, I have had one titled, "What If I Purged My Twitter Followers?". Trust me, the option has crossed my mind on the rare occasion I log in and try to use Twitter or any of its 3rd party apps in the way the Twitter team had intended - as I watch update after inane update swim in a sea of half-baked offers and hashtaggery. But even as I see some notable folks talking about taking apart their list of connections with the subtlety of Jack Nicholson wielding an axe in The Shining, I'm still ignoring the temptation to join them. While I may weed out some clear spammers now and again, I think to massively prune my list would introduce more problems, real and emotional, than it would present solutions.

Since I started using Twitter in early 2008, I have somehow amassed more than 12,000 connections. Thanks to my employing an auto-follow capability from SocialToo, a company run by Jesse Stay who I advise, those who add me as a connection in Twitter gain a reciprocal move almost instantaneously, without my lifting a finger. While some may think this is "disingenuous", doing so saves me the time of reviewing each new follower one by one to gauge "worthiness", and it also enables them to send me direct messages - as Twitter will block the capability otherwise.


Scoble's Unfollowing Is Easily Seen Via TwitterCounter
I recognize there are problems with spammers on Twitter. I get my fair share of automated direct messages. I see ridiculous accounts that look more like robots than people. But if I set an artificial standard that required me to have a personal relationship with an individual in order to follow them on Twitter or any network, I would be selling myself short in terms of getting to potentially know the person, and I would be selling them short by not giving them a chance when it is likely they just wanted to be connected in an environment where they were comfortable.

Assuming I were to abstain from using an auto-unfollow service (SocialToo does this also), and I took 10 seconds to review each of the 12,000 accounts, it would take more than 33 hours to adequately cleanse my feed. And I know if I did use an unfollowing service, a lot of great people would be thrown out with the bathwater. I saw Scoble's experiment, only to have it impact friends of mine like Drew Olanoff and Kent Newsome, who are both real humans who contribute on Twitter and other networks. I know, without question, that there are many future peers on the Web that I just haven't had the luck to meet yet.

Benjamin Franklin, once paraphrasing Blackstone's formulation, said, "It is better [one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer." So too do I see it better that 100 spammers fill my feed than I lose access to the innocents who remain. I am not so self-centered as to believe I know the full set of people who I can learn from and derive value. So don't look for me to start shaking my numbers down on any of the networks - even if it is getting more popular.

Also see: Twitter is for Following Topics and Listening, Not for Following People from February 26th for more background on this.

FriendFeed Plans Features to Stem Conversation Flare-Ups

After a testy exchange with Leo Laporte during a taping of the Gillmor Gang last month, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch saw a boom of negative reactions across the Web, from pointed YouTube mashups, comments on TechCrunch, and a flurry of conversations on FriendFeed, where the live conversation for the Gillmor Gang was scheduled to take place. In the aftermath of the blow-up, Arrington closed his FriendFeed account, later blaming what he called "mobs" for having congregated and piling on. During a panel today at TechCrunch's real-time CrunchUp, Mike talked with FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor and Robert Scoble about the situation, and Bret promised changes were being worked on at the service, which would help stem future flare-ups from happening.

While Arrington aggressively tried to position FriendFeed as encouraging mob mentality, Bret touched on an interesting point that helped explain the scenario. Essentially, most conversations are decentralized across social networks. But on FriendFeed, conversations are centralized. While not threaded, all of the site's users have the ability to make comments on any open public conversation - meaning those people with extremely popular accounts can have a high amount of comments, and as comments come in, these items are pushed to the top, making them visible again.

Bret said that new tweaks are going to soon come available on FriendFeed that would enable users to stop comments on particular entries, or on the person's entire feed itself. This means that if Arrington were to re-enable his account, as he said he would do today, he could opt to mute threads that got out of control, or simply post his feed and make it unavailable for interaction. Interestingly, Bret said that the conversations on those accounts that had either a small amount of followers or a large amount were of the lowest quality.

Scoble, the most-popular person on FriendFeed, who had trouble getting his audio into the conference from London, actually agreed with some of Mike's assertions, saying "there is a mob mentality, and we caused it". He added. "We brought a huge crowd... and people are going to get in the bleacher seats and throw rotten tomatoes every once in a while."

Bret did not give a timeline for the new features, but if FriendFeed's speed of feature improvements thus far is any indication, they won't be too far away.

You can also see a timeline of this panel here: Mike Arrington, Bret Taylor and Robert Scoble starting the "Online Mobs" discussion.

The Marketing 2.0 Revolution: Who Is Driving?

This evening, the San Francisco American Marketing Association put on a panel featuring the just departed from Google Kevin Marks, Jeremiah Owyang, Mark Silva and Robert Scoble. I took notes on the panel and posted them to FriendFeed. These notes are embedded below. The topic was billed as how tech bloggers are pushing the new version of Marketing 2.0, and strayed away from the core topic, bouncing to PR, social media, and how marketers and advertisers can take advantage of these new tools.

In a month, I will be back up here, participating with Guy Kawasaki, Scoble and others, discussing the potential demise of Marketing and PR, hosted by Mark Evans, who just so happens to be the president-elect of the SFAMA and father to triplets.

The Rumors Are True - I Bought Robert Scoble's BMW

What Was Once Scoble's... Is Now Mine
I don't consider myself a car person - and on both occasions where I have had to replace my car, it has been only after a mechanical problem's repair costs look to far outstrip the true value of the vehicle. That was true in 1999 when I returned my used 1991 Ford Escort GT, picking up a used 1998 Mercury Tracer, and true again this week, as I leave the Tracer behind, trading up to a used 2006 BMW 325i. The Tracer, with more than 140,000 miles on it, has served me well for a decade, but with its transmission toast, it was time to let go.

But, as with most things we've discussed on the blog over the last couple years, we turned to the Web to solve our issue, when it presented itself, starting back on March 28th.

Upon hearing I needed to pay upwards of $4,000 to fix my broken Tracer, my tendency would be to walk down the street to the nearest dealer and find something, anything to replace it. But instead, this time, I posted a note to FriendFeed, explaining the situation, and asking the vibrant community for feedback. In the discussion, seeing more than 80 comments, I explained I wanted to be more like my peers in Silicon Valley, but honestly didn't want to go in debt for the privilege.

In the middle of our back and forth, Robert Scoble swooped in with an offer I had to pay attention to. He posted, "Louis: we are selling our 2006 BMW 325i with 56,000 miles. Make me an offer. Well maintained and fun to drive."


The "New to Me" BMW Safely In Our Parking Lot
56,000 miles sounded a bit high, but considering Robert's visibility, it'd be bad for him to pass along a lemon. I was definitely interested. In April, I saw the car at an tech meet-up in Mountain View, and was even more convinced it was the right way to go, even after independently looking at alternatives throughout the Bay Area, to see if I could get a newer, better, car for the price Robert was offering.

In the meantime, Robert and I said we would target the end of May for a purchase. He was awaiting the delivery of a new Toyota Prius, and on Monday, it arrived. This put everything in motion, so on Tuesday night, we packed up the twins, headed to Half Moon Bay, and made the deal. Now, the car that was once Robert's is now mine (assuming my check clears the bank, and I have no concerns).

By Friday, a charity will come pick up my Tracer, and give me a tax deduction of a mere $500.


The Obama/Biden Sticker is From Robert. Should I Ditch It?
That I bought my BMW from Robert instead of a random car salesman or third party advertiser on Craigslist, eBay or the San Jose Mercury News speaks volumes in terms of how we can leverage our connections forged online. Though I've grown to know Robert well over the last few years, I learned of him through blogging, and he found out of my situation using FriendFeed. Much of our discussion about the transaction has been public, in fact, leading from the first offer, to his later posting, on April 15 that he was still planning to sell it to me.

Robert is happy that he has his new Prius, and no doubt happy he was able to pass along his car that he enjoyed to a good friend. Our family is happy because we managed to find a respectable, nice car without having to sell one of our kids or mortgage their future. And both of us are no doubt happy that we used the social networks we both have been promoting for years. Unfortunately for me, the BMW doesn't have any aftermarket enhancements that tap into the real-time Web. I was hoping Robert would have made the car one of a kind. But it's still a great deal and I'm glad I could leverage the Social part of the Social Web to get it done.

Once You Start, You Can Never Stop

Ever run into friends who tell you they want to start a blog, or are thinking of signing up for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or some other network, and you just know it's doomed to failure, because they won't commit to it? Starting is easy, but maintaining a pace can be hard. Whether for business or for pleasure, the number one thing I tell people about blogging is that once you start, you can never stop. Blogging is not something you do on a whim, or start and then abandon for the search engines of tomorrow. You must find a pace and always keep going - so if you start, be sure you've got a topic or ideas that are sustainable.

This week, thanks to work, family and other items hitting my schedule, I went a little light, not just here on the blog but on most of the networks - after a strong Monday. And while previously, I've told bloggers to "relax" as "nobody is keeping score", once you have established a pace, absence gets noticed. Today, while still at the office, I got a call from Robert Scoble, just checking in to see if all was well. And yes, it is. Just working and making sure everything is done before being out of the area all next week thanks to an upcoming tradeshow.

That Robert noticed shows how in tune he is on all the networks. I hadn't gone completely silent, but I did slow down my pace for a few days, and he caught me.

But while this was a mere blip in my usually regular posting schedule, it's one that happened well into my fourth year of blogging on this site, after nearly 2,000 posts, added on to tens of thousands of actions on FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else. I'm not stopping. I'm not anywhere near done. But if you know folks who you think would walk away, see if you can stop them before they start, especially if how they present themselves has a chance to impact how your company or your project are perceived.

Rackspace Stock Undergoes the Scoble Effect Following Robert's Hire

In the two weeks following Robert Scoble's official announcement that he was to be joining Rackspace, Inc. and embarking on a new project called Building 43, the company's stock has jumped by more than 30 percent, rising at a pace three times that of the NASDAQ, as the broader market tries to recover from a horrific year. And while yes, the argument should be made the two are not connected, the rise in the company's stock has added approximately $300 million to Rackspace's market cap. If Robert were responsible for even 1% of the jump, he would already have delivered $3 million of net value to the company.


Rackspace's 2-week Rise Has Been Impressive
While Scoble hasn't been blogging as much as he used to, in his most-impactful years, simply getting linked to would deliver what smaller bloggers called "The Scoble Effect", as new visitors to the site could dramatically outnumber their regulars. And it's fun to think just maybe he can do the same for the Web hosting firm.

At the close of trading on Friday, March 13th, the last day before Scoble's news was unveiled, Rackspace stock closed at $5.98 a share. At the end of trading today, the shares closed at $7.81 apiece, a move up of 30.6% in two weeks. In fact, according to Google Finance, Rackspace stock has been up on 8 of the 10 trading days following his announcement.


Meanwhile, Microsoft Has Been Slowly Sinking
In contrast, Microsoft, the last public company where Scoble worked, having left their offices in June of 2006, has seen their stock decline more than 15 percent since he left. Of course, so has just about everyone else...

Scoble Joins Rackspace to Lay Foundation for Building 43

Times are tough in both old media and new media, as old media sites fight to try and stay relevant in the face of a rapidly-evolving sphere where disparate voices, from bloggers to social networks can command attention that was once only possible through corporate brands and news organizations. Robert Scoble, who has achieved one of the more visible personal brands online in the technology space, recently sat at the crossroads of this development, trying to make an old media brand (Fast Company) into a new one. The trial proved difficult, and as has been announced today, he's striking out again in a position I believe will have much more success - as he joins the Web hosting company, Rackspace, building a new plan he calls "Building 43". In his new role, Robert will have the chance once again to leverage his personal brand, offering new media expertise, to a technology company that wants to be seen as a thought leader.

Building 43 is named after the famous Google and Microsoft buildings, both number 43, intended to be what he calls a "decentralized community for people fanatical about the Internet". And Scoble won't be limited to simply posting a blog on the Rackspace site. You can expect the Building 43 plan to be diverse, on all the social media networks where Robert has been building a solid presence the last few years, including Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.

When I talked to Robert by phone about his news a few weeks ago, I was impressed by the plan - not so much because it's a clear path to riches, because it's not, and all work will still be a challenge, but instead because it put him back in the trenches of Silicon Valley, doing and creating and evangelizing. (Although yes, his work at Microsoft was in Redmond, WA) The move by Rackspace will help the company be better known for innovation, and will undoubtedly raise their visibility as Internet innovators work with Scoble to be featured and interviewed. The end result could even mean that many of the people Robert and his team work with could end up being hosted by Rackspace, for starters.

There's a big difference between writing about the news and following the news and making the news. Scoble, who has a resume of working at tech companies like DEC and Microsoft, now gets the chance to be a part of a company that's doing just that, while letting him stick to what he enjoys. When he and I talked, he made it clear that this would not be a one person deal. Over time, he hopes to bring in more folks to be part of Building 43. Joining him at start will be his pal Rocky Barbanica, who also was part of his team at Fast Company.

You can find out more about Building 43 at http://building43.com/. TechCrunch's writeup on it is here: Scoble’s New Thing: Building 43 and Robert's is here: Robert and Rocky ride again at Rackspace.

Stand for Something and Become Someone

On Thursday, I was invited by Brian Solis to attend a dinner briefing in San Francisco with one of his clients. Shortly after arrival, other invitees began to dribble in through the door - a venerable who's who in the tech blogging space, including Jeremiah Owyang, Harry McCracken, Robert Scoble and Loic Le Meur - making me feel very small indeed, not to mention a tad out of place. And while the client had an interesting offering (more on that soon), it was, of course, the side conversations between the attendees that drew the most value. (See the Photos)

Seated between Robert and Loic for dinner, I got the feeling there were Twitter users, bloggers and entrepreneurs who would have paid good money to trade places with me, but I wasn't out to sell anything or pitch anything. In fact, the best conversations I had were with Loic about why we do what we do, the reasons we don't push for ads on the blog, how we try to separate the work life and the blog life, and debate on whether I could be trusted with pre-release info on one product if I already used the competition or knew what they had planned.

To net down what was a great discussion, I primarily told Loic that:

1. Our reviews of products and services are honest, but primarily positive
2. We prefer not to write negative pieces, for our benefit and readers as well
3. That we can be trusted to keep things quiet when asked
4. We don't seek out or respond to controversy for page views' sake

And to me, all of those boil down to a major headline, which is "Stand for Something". Stand for being trustworthy and try to be remembered for quality, not controversy.

In the last few days, just following the conclusion of the dinner, you saw headlines about how Scoble has concluded his time at Fast Company TV - and speculation has started as to what's next for the visible technology evangelist. And yes, the issue was discussed a bit at the dinner as well. To be fully transparent, I knew about the change earlier in the week, from a phone call I had with Robert. And yes, he told me what's next, as well as some of the reasons for his leaving, which hasn't been discussed. But as a friend and someone I want him to trust, that's where it ends, as I believe the news is his to make and break - and if someone else beats him to the punch, it won't be me.

I could have stomped all over the relationship and posted the information Tuesday or Wednesday, but I thought it better to hold off - because the short-term burst of visibility and traffic would be outweighed by the longer-term negatives of breaking the confidentiality, and changing what you could expect from me on the blog.

At one point during Thursday's conversation, Loic said, "For some reason, I think you're someone I would trust." And this came even as we discussed the fact I helped raise the visibility of TweetDeck, a Thwirl competitor, when Iain first released his product. Would my previous posts on TweetDeck mean I would never give Thwirl the same opportunity? To me, it would not - with good examples being my coverage of Posty and PeopleBrowsr, when those products were launched or updated. Loic, and other entrepreneurs making news, should know that if they pass along confidential or embargoed information, that it won't be posted early, and it won't be sent to their competition. That's a big part of being trusted and standing for something.

For those longer-term readers of the site, you've seen me address the issue of writing negative posts, and another where I talked about what I believe as a blogger. I occasionally write these inwardly-looking posts to explain why I do what I do, and how I want to remain personal and understood.

Even though we don't have the strong traffic and visibility of some sites, the blog has gotten a good share of early access to services and to people. There are probably a dozen interesting products and services that I know are planning things before SXSW which have already gotten my interest. And every time I get an e-mail asking if I will respect a timeline, I write back "the next time I break an embargo will be the first time." As somebody who plays on both sides of the "make news" and "break news" wall, I get what people are trying to do, and the short-term rush of breaking the rules won't make me feel good for very long. And doing so can severely damage my reputation.

After discussing another issue, on how to deal with criticism, and ignoring those who would put you down for the sake of riling you up to get attention, Loic noted that we both try to be positive and avoid controversy, even if it can get you noticed. And that's likely a factor of why he posted a note to Twitter, saying, "You got me think again about quality versus quantity. Quantity matters less."

There's no question I would like to increase the quantity of posts here on louisgray.com. I wish there were a way to cover every single good story I run across with the same level of review and enthusiasm I can give the top stories. That's part of why we've gotten help from additional writers. But we will work very hard to avoid reducing the quality of the posts, even if it means we won't post as many, and we will miss stories as a result. And that's okay. Because I would rather stand for quality and stand for being trustworthy than to be known for throwing articles over the fence that could have been done much better.

As I told Brian yesterday, I greatly appreciated being invited to the dinner. It was at the dinner that I met Jeremiah and Harry for the first time, and it was also the first time where I could speak with Loic for more than five minutes. And as can always happen in a room full of people who really care about technology, we got to thinking again.

They say that everything you put online can eventually be found by Google. In August of 2007, well before most of you had seen this site, I said that your blog is your brand. So when you post things online, make them stand for something, and think about who you are and how you want to be interpreted. I want to stand for quality and trust, and we will refuse to compromise there.

Let the FriendFeed Data Mining Begin In Earnest

With the FriendFeed co-founders' pedigrees including Google as their last stop, it has largely been presumed the team knew the value of search. In March of 2008, the online social aggregator first turned on their search engine, but as the site grew in popularity and features, many users were calling for more granularity in search - asking to see search results within a specific time period, or, more loudly, to see results from entries that had been gauged as interesting from the community, based on total likes or comments. Today, FriendFeed delivered the popularity end of the search database, and people are already diving into the data to see what they can find.

For example:

If you search for entries that have both 100 comments and 100 likes:

There are 11 total entries. The first ever was when we announced the birth of our twins. Of the other 10, see here, 4 are from Robert Scoble, and a second entry is by me, about Robert, and his potential monetization of FriendFeed. Other single entries are from Mona Nomura, Thomas Hawk, Monique, Conformist, and Akiva Moskovitz, also on the announcement of a new baby.

So yes, FriendFeed loves Scoble, tolerates me, and loves babies.
Of those 11 items, one was a tweet (mine), 7 were native FriendFeed entries, 2 were blog posts, and one was Robert's Facebook status update.

The most comments any post with the word bacon in the title has had is 80. (via Lindsay)

The most comments any post with the word sex in the title has had is 64. (via Mona)

15 Different Entries Have Been "Liked" More than 200 Times (see query)

In fact, the first entry ever to get more than 200 likes was an entry announcing a Jabber/GTalk IM bot for FriendFeed. Oddly, it got 445 likes and only 3 comments. Hmmm...

Of the 15 items, 5 were from Bret Taylor, FriendFeed co-founder, announcing new features. 3 more were fun items from Mona. Scoble only makes it once, though his note on January 10 did get 312 likes and 464 comments, which was epic.

Of the 15 items, 5 had both comments from me and likes from Robert. 4 were Bret Taylor entries. The fifth was Akiva's baby announcement. Matthew, a tad older, is already practicing his pickup lines.

Only one blog entry has ever received 150 comments on FriendFeed.

Avoiding accidental script anomalies, only one post has ever gotten 150 or more comments on FriendFeed. The conversation is completely in Italian about a cat, I assume.

Most blog posts don't get tremendous numbers of comments. (see query)

Aside from the previously mentioned Scoble monetization post, only one post I have ever made has hit 60 or more comments - a post in July on Web racism. And earlier that week, we managed 50 comments for the discussion of friending people online well outside your age range on the low side. Matt Dickman's guest post from last week also exceeded the 50 comment barrier. In contrast, Robert Scoble has six posts that reached the 50 comment mark on the site.

Also noted: 10 internal shares of mine reached 50 comments, while 46 internal shares have reached 50 likes. Of those, 26 were baby pictures of Matthew and/or Sarah. Such exploitation!

Only 4 Tweets have ever received 100 likes on FriendFeed. (see query)

Two were from me - one announcing the arrival of the twins, and the other, when my wife said she joined Facebook, but didn't add me as a friend. The other two? Akiva announcing the arrival of his baby, and Kevin Rose fooling e-mail correspondents by pretending his computer was an iPhone.

Eight FriendFeed entries with the word iPhone in the title have 50 comments. (see query)

Of those eight entries, three are from Robert, one is from Mona, and others are from Tina, Lindsay, Bret Taylor, and Chris Pirillo.

Seven entries with the word "Cat" in the title have 50+ likes. Dogs win with nine such entries.

I already predicted that search and the real-time Web, on both Twitter and FriendFeed, would be a big deal in 2009, and this step takes us even closer to being able to dig deep into the immediate (and historical) reactions of one of the Web's most unique and vibrant social communities.

You can see some more data mining fun in Scoble's feed.

Watch for the Telephone Game in Your Short Attention Span World

One of the recurring themes on this blog has been how to handle a seeming overflow of information. We've discussed creating a social media consumption workflow. I addressed a new concept I called continuous parallel attention. I said how you handle the information overload Is up to you and later said there is no social media overload and cautioned bloggers to relax, because nobody is keeping score. But we still see problems crop up when a story gets passed from person to person and details get lost. It's the modern equivalent of the popular "Telephone" game we all played as kids, where the last phrase was never close to how it started.

Take a look at an example from this weekend, after Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch wrote a piece saying FriendFeed had seen site growth that reached almost 1 million visitors in December of 2008.

Seems straight forward enough. The data came from Comscore, which shows a higher growth rate for FriendFeed than do other services, including Quantcast and Compete.com. Compete reports 700,000 visitors or so to FriendFeed in December, by the way.

But then, Robert Scoble, a good friend, good blogger, and fellow FriendFeed user relayed the story a little differently, saying that the report said FriendFeed had surpassed a million user accounts.

Using that as the baseline, Robert stated the 26,000 or so subscribers to his feed represented one of every 39 users. (See the FriendFeed thread here) But that only exacerbated the flub. Having used the site myself for quite some time, I'd be shocked if there were more than a million registered accounts, and FFHolic estimates the number to be closer to 200,000 total accounts, one fifth of a million. This of course makes Robert's penetration even higher, as that means one of every eight users follows him, but that's not the major issue.

If you're FriendFeed, and you know your actual user count, you can't exactly issue a correction saying that you "only" have a quarter million users. And if they did announce such data, which they don't, it might seem to be a letdown now that the higher, incorrect number has been released.

The service is now becoming a destination site as users share links on Twitter, their blogs, Facebook and elsewhere, so it's no surprise that the unique visitor count is higher than the number of users. After all, if I visit from home and on my wife's laptop and the office, doesn't that count as three unique visitors?

This is but one example, and I know practically all of us have made the mistake of reading stories too quickly, or coming to conclusions and extrapolations based on only partial data. For example, Stowe Boyd wrote a great piece tonight saying I was "Wrong About Twitter Funding", but he had only seen one of the two posts, which had taken point/counterpoint positions. That's not a victim of the telephone game, but he is a busy guy, like the rest of us, and no doubt overlooked one of the items.

When we're reacting to other items, or relaying them, we should be careful that we're not making new stories based on data that's not true. We're all going fast, and maybe reading a ton of RSS feeds, seeing thousands of Twitter updates, and rushing in an effort to post quickly. But there's something to be said for watching for the telephone game.

Scoble Starts His FriendFeed/Twitter Monetization Strategy

Uber-blogger Robert Scoble came under criticism in late December when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington said he had neglected his blog, in factor of spending time on FriendFeed and Twitter. Arrington said It’s Time For A Friendfeed Intervention, saying he was contributing to the popularity of those services but getting nothing for himself, adding, "How much of that value does Robert receive? Zilch." Well, thanks to a tip from one of Robert's Twitter friends, it looks like he is trying to capitalize on his popularity on these new services, through embedded Amazon affiliate links.

Whether it is a one-time experiment or a sign of things to come, tonight Robert sent a note to his now 25,000 FriendFeed followers, and nearly 50,000 followers on Twitter, saying: Want a news tip? Amazon Kindle is sold out. Hint here:, and adding on FriendFeed:

"I just bought a version 1.0 machine. It's sold out. Will they make more? I doubt it. So, why are they still accepting orders? I just bought one and will let you know what shows up. I'm hearing that new version comes in next few months."

After that introduction, he gave a personalized affiliate link, which would give him a percentage of the sales made during the session of any of his followers. (See the FriendFeed thread here)


Note the Scobleizer tag in the destination URL...
As simple as that sounds, the power of Amazon affiliate links on the Web can often be underestimated. John Gruber of Daring Fireball made nearly $6,000 in just over a week by encouraging his blog visitors to buy Mac OS X 10.5 from his affiliate link instead of directly from Apple.


Scoble is caught "red handed" without disclosure...
Robert probably won't make $6,000 from this experiment tonight. Assuming he also gets 7.5% referrals from Amazon, It would take $80,000 worth of orders to get him a similar return - meaning 223 of his more than 50,000 followers would have to buy the $359 Amazon Kindle for him to reach that mark. But if he continued to drop Amazon links into his FriendFeed and Twitter stream, it could be some good spending money over time.

Of note, when Gruber asked for users to visit his affiliate page, he was very clear about what he would get from such a purchase. Tonight, I noticed and asked Robert myself if this was his "FriendFeed revenue strategy". His answer? "You caught me red handed!" I don't mind him trying out the idea, and think it's an interesting approach, but I would have preferred disclosure.

---

Update: As anticipated, this topic is being discussed on FriendFeed on my feed as well as that of Robert, who says I missed some important points. Also see: Free Rides Can't Last Forever from Dennis McDonald and Network World's Paul McNamara: Blogger Catches Scobleizer With His Hand in Amazon's Kindle Jar.

The StatBot Crunches My Google Reader Link Blog

Following last week's discussion around 10 ways you can maximize your Google Reader Link Blog, Yuvi from The Statbot went to work and pointed his super-geeky analytical skills at my own link blog, which I've been filling with shares for the better part of two years. Given I can only look at my Google Reader trends over the last 30 days, his data has brought a lot of insight.

You can see the full leaderboard for the last 10,000 shares embedded here via Zoho:



Excluding the fact I often share my own items (not a big surprise), an interesting mix of sources emerges. Yes, you see TechCrunch, Inquisitr, ReadWriteWeb and other A-List blogs leading the top 10, largely due to their prolific publishing schedules, and ability to attract tips from developers early in the process and time to chase down rumors. But below the top 10, there is a heavy mix of personal blogs, from Hutch Carpenter, to Jesse Stay, Chris Brogan, Rob Diana, David Risley and Mike Fruchter, who all place in the top 25.

In the 25-50 tier, you see John Furrier, Mona Nomura, Kara Swisher, Kyle Lacy, and Sarah Perez, mixed in with company blogs like those from Socialmedian.

In all, 379 different sources are represented in the last 5,000 shares, and 577 in the last 10,000... which shows a fairly diverse data set.

What I like about this data is that it is personal and it is natural - something that organically has developed over time based on my own interests - and is not intentionally manipulated. Yuvi also ran the data on Robert Scoble's leaderboard this week, which you should check out.

If you're not reading the Google Reader linkblog, you can find it here.

What FriendFeed Needs to Do To Grow and Keep New Users

That I like FriendFeed and so does Robert Scoble and so do a few thousand other Web-addicted Silicon Valley-centric people doesn't matter very much. That thousands more have signed up to the service and imported their data doesn't matter very much either. That the service has a ton of bells and whistles and some smart people behind it and manages to have some great uptime, compared to other services, also won't make it successful. Because what I'm seeing, and continue to hear, is that the site is too busy. It's too intimidating for new users, and some who have even stepped up to give it the old college try are asking for help (See: Om Malik of GigaOM).

Why? Because as great as I believe the service is, the learning curve is sharp. People aren't getting its utility right away. They aren't finding friends right away, or understanding why they should spend time to participate. Others are intimidated by the sheer volume of updates coming from people seemingly embedded in the Web, be they Robert, myself or many others.

In December, Robert wrote a piece, "10 Reasons why Twitter is for you and FriendFeed is not", where he outlined some of the top-level differences between the two services. And while he was jokingly saying Twitter's lack of features made it a better option for some people than FriendFeed, there was truth to it.

Given FriendFeed is relying largely on word of mouth from users, and press from bloggers and other tech publications to help raise awareness, and hasn't yet invested in a Marketing department or a more official outreach strategy, they can consider this abbreviated Marketing Requirements Document to be pro bono:

FriendFeed Must Have a Lite Version for New Users

New users signing up to FriendFeed, by default, see all updates from all friends who they are following, as well as updates from friends of a friend. This means that even if you start out following only a few dozen people, be they those automatically synchronized with your Facebook account, or recommended well-known Silicon Valley digerati, you can be flooded with updates from Twitter, Blogs, bookmarking sites, external commenting sites, BrightKite location notices, photos from Flickr and other sites, videos from YouTube, and even items from Amazon.com wish lists. And not only do you have to see all this from the people you know, but you'll even have to see updates from friends of those you know, if your friends have made an action on their updates.

What needs to happen is that FriendFeed must tier their offering, for "small", "medium" and "large" consumption. The Lite version would probably start out with blog postings, Flickr photos, and native FriendFeed entries. The default behavior should be that you would need to "opt in" to see a service, rather than be forced to opt out or hide every single one of them as FriendFeed adds them. FriendFeed already supports more than 50 different services, but the excitement this may bring to power users is just overwhelming to new folks.

The data should still be available in a tab that says "Show Me More" or "What You're Missing", etc., but you have got to not aim the firehose at those who aren't ready.

FriendFeed Should Help You Find Your Real Friends Better

If you weren't referred to FriendFeed from an existing user, you're starting off from scratch in the friends department. FriendFeed helpfully offers you an array of popular users, based on other subscribers' activity, but it's highly unlikely you're on a first name basis with all of them, and they're probably not "really" your friends.

Assuming you register your Facebook account with FriendFeed, it will check your existing friend base and see if they are registered with FriendFeed, and automatically add them to the people you follow. You also can find your friends by importing your address book from GMail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail. But as many found when Google Reader assumed those you e-mailed most out of GMail were your real friends, that doesn't exactly solve it either.

FriendFeed should do a few things here. First, they should enable you to cross-reference those people you follow on Twitter (which is a noisy option). Second, you should be able to synchronize those you follow on LinkedIn as easily as you do your friends on Facebook. If you're linked on LinkedIn, maybe you should have the option to follow them on FriendFeed, getting you connected with colleagues. Third, and most importantly, FriendFeed should have content-based intelligence. You should be able to list your interests, much as Facebook does, and get recommendations for who discusses those topics. Fourth, you should be able to add details to a profile, including hometown, schooling background, etc, and get friend recommendations very similar to Facebook's often spot-on "People You May Know" feature.

You would also have the option to get weekly e-mails with updates on "People You May Know", much like LinkedIn shows you that new colleagues and classmates have started to use the service.

FriendFeed Must Be Doing Outreach and Communication With Inactive Users

Having always been active, I wouldn't have encountered the team's doing this, but I have seen a significant number of people who have had very little activity on the service following initial registration. They may not have had comments or "liked" anything in months. But they sure do count when it comes to total users, and their data is quietly pouring into the service!

FriendFeed should be actively courting these stale, abandoned accounts, and updating them on new features, or highlighting site usage case studies. It's practically a pastime on the Web to register for new sites, but it's not doing the FriendFeed community any good to be browsing and acting on the items of digital ghosts.

FriendFeed Should Help to Get New Users Engaged More Quickly

Long-time users have a distinct advantage over new users in terms of feeling engaged on the site. As with high school, or any other forum on the Web, you have regulars who get in a state of comfort, communicating with the same people who interact in small social circles. New users who join the site do so invisibly until they start acting on other people's items. New users who understand the service and register their feeds may see almost no activity as they are not added or even seen by other users at first, and the comparative silence on their own feeds is sometimes enough for people to feel ignored and leave.

FriendFeed could, instead, choose to have an area dedicated to new users who have joined the service over the last 1, 7 or 30 days (as they do with top items), and assuming you can fill out any identifiable data, as mentioned above, around hometowns, school, and interests, these new users could be grouped. (e.g. 25 new users within 30 miles of 94086 joined in the last 7 days)

FriendFeed Should Deliver A Desktop Application and iPhone App

The introduction of TweetDeck has changed the way many people use Twitter. It takes all the different options of Twitter and put them in a highly-customizable app, incorporating DMs, Replies, Groups, and Search. I've heard people say they won't use FriendFeed until it gets integrated into TweetDeck, and the current third-party apps for FriendFeed pale in comparison to the Web offering. The iPhone offering is good as well, but doesn't feel as polished, and lacks options one would expect in an app written for the device.

FriendFeed Needs to Better Define What It Is and How People Use It

Scoble (yes him again) recently posted a video on how you can be a power user of FriendFeed, showing 20 things it's useful for. (video link)

But it took him almost half an hour! No offense to Robert, but the service has got to become a lot more simple than 30 minutes worth of explanation to get new users engaged. All sorts of companies, from consumer to enterprise, utilize case studies and customer demo videos to explain aspects of the service and benefits, and they should be done in segments as small as 30 seconds to no longer than 5 minutes.

You can see FriendFeed's early efforts to answer questions from users on their lengthy one-page FAQ. They also have a FriendFeed Feedback room on the site, which augments the service's now largely stale Google Groups forum. But "how to" videos are either non-existent or made incredibly hard to find. The "why" to use FriendFeed and how power users or more mainstream users use FriendFeed case studies are missing altogether.

FriendFeed Must Have a Sense of Urgency

2009 does not look like it is going to be friendly to companies that are long on hope and short on revenue or momentum. The team can innovate better than any other that I have seen, per capita, but the appearance is that the service is doing so in a relaxed, jovial way. Questions about a business model seem theoretical and eventual, rather than immediate. And no clear visible activity is happening that makes me think the team is working on a more aggressive way to increase awareness and adoptability of the service - all while many curious adopters are turning away from the noise.

Lacking This, What Is Happening?

Simply put, people aren't getting it. I understand the team's Google-born mentality of "build it and they will come", and the hope that if the user experience is so good, people will gravitate to it over time, or that word of mouth will be all the marketing they ever need, but usage growth has stagnated compared to other faster-growing services, like Facebook and Twitter. (See Quantcast or Compete, who both agree on the flat to downward trend.)

As one of the more visible, more active users, I tend to have a lot of activity on my feed. It's a factor of participating, having been visible early and consistently championing the service. But even the most active items rarely approach a few dozen actions, be they comments, or likes. And this number has not grown much over the last several months. Assuming FriendFeed were growing and doubling in size consistently, I should be seeing a great article, picture or update getting hundreds of actions, as the user base grows, but they're not. Popular items get 20 to 30 likes, and top ones approach 100, about the same amount of actions as the number of comments on a single TechCrunch post, even though simply "liking" an item takes much less time.

I recently ran a third party tool that compared those people I was connected to on Twitter and FriendFeed, letting me match up my lists. I was surprised to see how many people I knew on Twitter who were also using FriendFeed, or at least had registered, but had not been active. Account after account after account had seen no activity in weeks.

While I have a core of very active users who I see every day and can expect to engage with, I see those initial quiet signups as a lost opportunity, for both them and for FriendFeed, and before the problem gets worse, I think the team should make the revitalization of these abandoned accounts a priority, along with easing the transition of new accounts, reducing the dramatic potential for noise, and starting to market themselves. There's a reason I keep getting asked by people for help on getting up to speed on FriendFeed. I get it because I've been embedded for more than a year, and it really shouldn't take so much work.