Utah Open Source Planet

A few weeks ago Yammer walked away with top honors at TechCrunch 50. I'd been hearing about it, so last week I went over and signed up. I'm really liking it.

Yammer is Twitter for work. The first person to sign up using an email from a particular domain establishes a sandbox for yammers from people in that domain. Since I signed up using my kynetx.com email, Yammer automatically created a domain for Kynetx and made me an administrator. Very low friction.

I sent out invites and soon had the whole Kynetx gang yammering away about work. Only people within your domain (i.e. those with emails you control) can see what the others are saying. Yammer has a Adobe Air client that makes keeping up with what folks are saying easy (you can also use the Web). In addition, Yammer has a number of features that are geared for business like the ability to input and display detailed contact info and organizational information as a crude social network.

We've been using Yammer for a week now and everyone feels it's been a good addition to our communications patterns. This is especially true with a distributed workforce like we have now.

So what of Twitter? Most of us still use Twitter too. Twitter is my public space. Yammer is my work space. That separation has real value and enables conversations and uses for Yammer that just wouldn't happen on Twitter.

We've made real decisions over Yammer that would have previously taken a phone call or email chain. Generally people are pleased with the connectivity it provides. For us, Yammer is a keeper.

Tags: yammer twitter microblogging work kynetx

How many times have you been watching a political debate on TV and wanted to get your two cents in? With the rise or things like Twitter, of course, you can at least tell your friends what you're thinking. But for the September 26th debate, you'll be able to have your comments on screen with the debate itself.

Current TV and Twitter have teamed up to sponsor something called "Hack the Debate." Just tune into the debate on Current TV (channel 366 on DirecTV, 196 on Dish, 107 on Comcast, and 87 on MStar) and tweet away. Be sure to include the hash tag #current in your tweet and Current TV will broadcast as many tweets as possible on top of O and Mc in real time. This is a pretty cool mashup.

For those of you who haven't been following along, Current TV was co-founded by Al Gore to explore how TV can be enhanced and improved by the 'Net. I don't quite understand the meaning of it, but if you look at Current's management page, there are no "vice" presidents. Only presidents. Everyone's a president at Current.

Tags: politics twitter mashups

Joseph Scott, developer at Automattic, posted that Wordpress.com has recently broken 4 million total blogs. He further mentions that it took just 4 months to go from 3 million to 4 million. Assuming the rate isn’t exponential, it will just be end of December when they hit 5 million blogs. What would be even more fascinating is to know how many self-hosted blogs on Wordpress are currently running. (This blog is a Wordpress MU install)

Wordpress seems to be no Facebook, but perhaps as projects like BuddyPress take off and people begin to virally create blogs and content with their friends it will get to that level. Where Wordpress still has left to compete is with microblogging sites like Twitter - perhaps, with the large user base that they currently have we could see this happen in the near future.

I mentioned earlier I was going to announce a big change this week. I’m “on the move“, as Jeremiah Owyang would put it. Today was my first day working full time at a new Silicon Valley startup with offices here in Utah, where I will be leading their Social Product strategy moving forward. I am phasing off my regular consulting, and moving to this new Entrepreneurial effort in helping them grow.

At the moment, I can’t reveal much more, other than the fact that we’re building the next era in Interactive Entertainment on the iPhone. The company I’m working with right now started out as a client of mine, and I liked their product so much I decided it would be worth helping them out full time. I believe fully that we are going to change much of the way you watch TV today. We will be launching most likely next week, and you can follow the Twitter account @MediaMyWay to catch our launch announcement and follow our updates (I’ll also point you there from my Twitter account when we launch - we’ll announce it there first!). Other Twitter accounts you can follow for updates and “clues” are @JustintheWhitt, @Romay, and our CEO, @BradPelo.

How will this affect the other stuff I do? In reality, not much is changing, other than what I do full time. I have received permission to keep SocialToo.com going part-time, as it has, unless it takes off. Expect some very cool things to come from SocialToo in the near future - we’re working on a completely new design and a really cool new feature that will be released in the next couple weeks.

As far as my blogging and book-writing is concerned, I see nothing changing, and I intend fully to continue blogging regular, unbiased articles that I feel inspire and educate. I will disclose where necessary if I feel my current employment has any influence in what I am writing. I still hope to continue writing in other capacities as well, as long as speak as I’m asked to do (I’m speaking in Dallas next week to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, in fact - come see me speak!).

So, keep watching the @MediaMyWay Twitter account, and you can also follow this blog and I’ll be sure you’re aware of the latest of our happenings (we’ll have a company blog here shortly, which I’ll let you know about). In the meantime I’ll keep posting regular, educational, and original content as I always have and always will. “Stay” Tuned!

Doug has put code in place to post new IT Conversations podcasts on Twitter. You can follow the IT Conversations twitter account and see new podcasts as they're published (about one per day).

Tags: itconversations twitter

As I am speaking, Utah is having their yearly Open Source conference. If you’re in Utah or outside Utah (most of my audience is outside Utah), it is well worth the trip with some great topics from ssh tips and tricks to Wordpress Performance and Scalability by Utah’s own Joseph Scott from Automattic. I would be there myself but I have deadlines I have to meet this week (I have a big announcement to make next week which will explain my lack of time this week). However, as I was tracking the updates from the conference, I noticed there seem to be way more people updating from Twitter vs. the Open Source-based blogging tool, Identi.ca. In fact, I notice many Open Source proponents even outside Utah embracing Twitter over the Open Source-based Identi.ca and I wonder why.

Now, I wasn’t paying attention during OSCON so I don’t know if it was the same there, but I’m willing to bet there was a lot of activity going on within the Twitter network there that really should have been happening over on Identi.ca. I’m wondering if it’s just lack of education about Identi.ca, or if our views of the principles behind Open Source have changed.

I remember a day where in each company I worked for I would do all I could to try and get them to let me run Linux on my desktop. I still run vim and I still run open tools like Apache, MySQL, and Perl. In some (remember Red Hat 5?), I was making a sacrifice by doing so, because I knew I had complete flexibility to make the changes and configurations necessary to make it do what I wanted to do if it did not yet do it.

When I was an Engineer at Backcountry.com we thrived on this principle. It actually made us more productive as a company because when we used Open Source software, we could configure it the way we wanted when it wasn’t working the way we wanted it to as a company. This would have costed us hundreds of thousands of dollars in custom software changes if we used a shrink-wrapped solution. Not only that but we could give back to a great cause if it didn’t meet our needs, and in fact we gave back quite a few changes to the Open Source community because of this principle.

Now, if you are not one of those types that went out of your way to use open source software for the principle, and because of the reasons I mention above, then I’m not talking to you here. However, I’m calling each and every one of the Open Source advocates out that are on Twitter and have not yet tried, nor use Identi.ca on a regular basis. This is no different than running Linux on your desktop as in the examples I mentioned above. If Identi.ca is not working the way you want it to, as an Open Source Advocate and promoter, you have a responsibility to jump in and contribute the areas you don’t have access to. That’s the true spirit of Open Source, plain and simple! Here are the reasons why you can feel good using Identi.ca, or build your own Laconi.ca instance that can communicate with Identi.ca:

• You own the content you post - All posts through a Laconi.ca instance are published under the Creative Commons license, meaning the publisher cannot own the content of its users. This is very much in the spirit of Open Source.
• Identi.ca is based on open source software - as already mentioned, Identi.ca is based on the Laconi.ca source code. You can even set up your own instance and have it talk to other Laconi.ca instances. If you don’t like what Identi.ca does, then fix it, publish your own instance, or give back to Identi.ca!
• Identi.ca talks with an Open Protocol, OpenMicroBlogging Protocol - Not only are you given source that talks this protocol, but you can write your own software that talks this protocol, and it will communicate with any other software that speaks this protocol. See my post on OpenMicroBlogger for an example of this in action. This is called “Federation”, and IMO it’s the essence of Open Standards and communication.
• Identi.ca has almost all the same features as Twitter, and more - as I’ll explain in a minute, this probably doesn’t matter, but the only features it lacks are direct messaging and SMS. SMS is expensive, and most likely won’t last on even Twitter - it costs too much! Direct messaging can be resolved by means such as e-mail or text messaging in a much cleaner fashion, although there are rumors of some working on even that. What it has that Twitter doesn’t though, and this is powerful, is that all Laconi.ca instances support XMPP out of the box, which means live-streamed updates straight from users, in real-time. Not only that, but you can track those updates, as well as any update on any Laconi.ca instance via Track functionality. Also, via OMB protocol above, you can subscribe to users on other services other than Identi.ca, and vice versa.

Let’s not get me wrong here - I’m not telling you to abandon your network on Twitter. I’m saying if you support and promote Open Source standards and refuse to use an open service like Identi.ca that is based on Open standards, you are living a double standard. You can still use Twitter in the meantime. I still use Windows and Mac for functionality I don’t get on Linux until me or someone else is able to replace that functionality for something better. The concepts are the same. I still use Twitter occasionally.

Also, many are giving the excuse of, “my network is bigger on Twitter”. I’d first like to point you to my listening/follower ratio article on LouisGray.com as to how strong your network really is on Twitter, but in addition to that, let’s pull in the Linux example again. How many Linux desktops are there in the wild? How many Windows desktops are there? We use Open Source because it allows us to configure it to do what we need it to do, and often we can get the job done better because of that. We don’t care if the majority of the population is using another closed tool because we can do much more with the open tools we’re a part of.

I’d really like to see some more Open Source proponents using Identi.ca as their primary posting platform. If you would still like to use Twitter that’s fine - there’s a bridge to enable you to do that, but it’s time we stood to our principles and why we’re using Open Source in the first place. Please don’t consider this a criticism, but rather a Bearhug to come help us out in this cause.

You can find me on Identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay.

Last week I spoke about how the ‘@’ on Twitter and other microblogging services may no longer be necessary due to the addition of the in_reply_to_status_id API call on services like Twitter and Identi.ca. In the comments of that article you mentioned several examples why that would still be necessary. I’ve spent the weekend contemplating these and still argue with a proper infrastructure these would not be necessary. In my own opinion, services like Twitter and even Identi.ca are broken because there is no easy way to tag individuals and people without cluttering up actual content with unorthodox, unorganized ways of tagging data and people. We, the users have had to come up with our own ways to do so socially, and I think that’s a hack. Let’s go over a few:

Addressing a specific person or group of people publicly.

With current infrastructure on microblogging platforms, this is the one problem that will cause people to continue to need to use the @ sign. There is no easy way currently to say you want to make sure a particular individual or group of individuals see a specific message. This is different than a reply which the recently added API calls resolve, in that these types of messages are not necessarily in reply to anyone. So instead we have to clutter up our posts by prefixing our post with the intended recipient at the beginning, whereas if a proper infrastructure were provided, we could focus solely on the content.

Facebook has overcome this pretty well with allowing you to “tag” individuals in a Facebook Note that you would like to see the message, or that might be in the message itself. Twitter, Laconi.ca, and others need to look into a new API call to allow users to tag other individuals so this is no longer needed. Imagine, for instance, if Twhirl let you choose from your list of friends and tag them in the post you are sharing. You could then have pure message in your 140 characters and not have to worry about the intended audience.

Common English (or your language) names

I mentioned before that @ wasn’t necessary, perhaps even if there weren’t an API call provided to link replies. Microblogging clients should be able to read each username and look at your friends, and tell immediately that you are referring to one of them, adding them to your list of replies.

However, this gets tricky when you get to someone with a username that is common English or even another language. For instance, what if my username were “stay”? Every time any of my friends said they were “stay”ing somewhere I would get a notification stating they were replying to me or addressing to me.

The solution for this again would be fixed with a simple person tagging system like what I recommend above. Allowing me to specify the intended users in the message would allow clients to know I was addressing those users without me having to further clutter up the actual message with meta information that doesn’t need to be there.

Hashtags

Hashtags need to be gone, plain and simple. All Twitter and Identi.ca and even FriendFeed need to add is a simple meta layer to their API, and beyond just allowing me to tag individuals to my messages, allowing me to add tag keywords to identify my message and make it more searchable. Tags clutter up our messages as well and keep us from being able to say what we need to say in 140 characters. In fact, I argue that meta layer should be completely flexibly - imagine if I could append whatever I wanted to a message. Location information, what I’m eating at the time, websites I’m surfing, etc. (I’m just listing those in theory - those could be messages themselves, but some are meta information) Part of our 140 character message should not be words not pertinent to the intended message itself.

SMS and XMPP/Track

So you ask, if we add a meta layer on top of all this, how can I then tag my messages and tag people in my messages via SMS or XMPP (Jabber)? SMS and XMPP should be treated as clients. The SMS client should be just like any other GUI client out there, just text based. I should be able to type “help” and have it give me a list of commands I can type to make it do what I want. Part of that client could be to include #hashtags and @intended’s to specify meta information about the message, but those should be part of the additional 20 characters SMS gives me outside of the 140 Characters microblogging requires. All of the same goes for XMPP. XMPP could provide an even richer experience since it isn’t bound by the 160 character limit SMS gives people. For a great example, see Dustin Sallings‘ Track XMPP clients for both Twitter and Identi.ca (Identi.ca is real time!). Type help to his client and it gives you a whole list of things you can do with it. I’m sure this could easily be expanded further to allow tagging, person tagging, and more.

Twitter and Identi.ca’s announcements supporting linking of replies via the API last week is a very welcome announcement. With just a few more tweaks I think we’re on our way to a much cleaner microblogging environment that is even more searchable, more focused on content, and definitely more organized. For now I’m stuck using ‘@’ and #hashtags.

You can follow me on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay or FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/jessestay.

I broke news last night on LouisGray.com about Twitter enabling a new API feature, “in_reply_to_status_id”, to allow developers to tie replies to their original reply source. Immediately afterwards Evan Prodromou of Identi.ca added the same functionality to the Laconi.ca source code, making two of the most popular microblogging platforms, Twitter and Identi.ca, along with the already supporting FriendFeed, supportive of threaded comments. Immediately we saw Dave Winer implement a proof of concept example, and YooPlace also implemented it into their own code. Loic Le Meur of Seesmic, the owners of the Twhirl Twitter client responded as well saying he was reading the article and looking into it.

So a big question has become evident now that we can threaded replies. Is the ‘@’ really necessary in your replies to friends on your favorite microblogging service any more? A comment by Steve Gillmor on Identi.ca got me thinking about this earlier, and I think he has a strong point. In fact, I’ve briefly touched the subject before here.

The ‘@’ is mostly a Twitter-invented custom brought to the service by its users with some slight roots in bulletin boards and forums where threading was not possible. Users decided the Twitter service made a great communications tool and began replying to their friends’ posted statuses with the ‘@’ symbol. There was no other way because Twitter wasn’t expecting to be a communications tool. The popular Twitter clients like Twhirl and TweetDeck and even Twitter’s own web-based client started catching on, and separating those posts with usernames prepended by ‘@’ as “replies”. What’s odd is that the only thing they recognize as a reply is if the username is prepended by an ‘@’ - they take no thought as to the actual username itself, which really is the actual substance of who the user was replying to. In fact, FriendFeed users are starting to do this as well since it only has one level of threading and users can’t comment on other users’ comments. (Twitter and Identi.ca are actually one-upping Friendfeed with their recent announcements)

So while the “@”’s were a custom, they really aren’t necessary to determine if a user is replying to another user. In fact, even today you can use an XMPP tracker like Twitter Spy and Laconica Spy and track your username and get notified when a person mentions your username, exactly the way “@” replies work. It was silly that the “@”’s were required to be recognized as a reply in the first place.

Now, considering you can now actually track on the back end the entire hierarchy of a conversation via the API “@”’s are even less necessary as before. I’d like to see the various microblogging clients start to ignore the “@”’s and allow users to simply type usernames when replying to another individual, assuming threads aren’t in place. Then, once threads start to show in your favorite microblogging clients, even the usernames shouldn’t be necessary.

I’ve mentioned before that IRC works this way and most IRC clients will look at the existing list of users in a room and automatically detect the username and notify the targeted user if the message is directed at that user. Not only that, but the IRC clients actually keep a cached version of the users in a particular room and will even auto-complete usernames if you begin typing in the username and hit “tab”. That’s what I’d like to start seeing microblogging clients do so long as they’re going to be supporting a communications platform, and it should start with Twitter and Identi.ca themselves on their own web interfaces.

Then again, all this may now be moot with threading available. Oh, and don’t even get me started on hashtags. (Those should be handled by the API, not in the content of the message!) I think I’m going to try a new experiment of just not using the “@”’s like Steve Gillmor does - anyone else want to join me?

There’s a new kid in town in the microblogging space, and no it’s not just “another microblogging site”. I talked to Brian Hendrickson, the lead developer behind OpenMicroblogger.org and its accompanying service OpenMicroblogger.com today and he may just have something to scare both Twitter, and Evan Prodromou of Identi.ca in their tracks. What’s amazing about it all is Brian has actually taken the OpenMicroBlogging protocol that Evan established and implemented the protocol in Brian’s own, non-laconica-based implementation of the protocol that would communicate with any other OpenMicroblogging protocol supported site, similar to the way I mentioned on LouisGray earlier. Yes, OpenMicroblogger.com and the accompanying open source software it is based on will talk to Identi.ca, and on a completely different code base. That means you can follow anyone on Identi.ca within the OpenMicroblogger.com service and vice-versa, and they were written from the ground up by two entirely different developers!

What’s even more amazing about this new platform is that while not a Wordpress implementation, Brian seems to have made the platform almost entirely compatible with the Wordpress plugin and theme API. So, basically, if you are a Wordpress developer, you can write your own extensions to the code, implement your own versions of the code, and write your own themes, all in the same way you do on Wordpress. Brian wrote the code from the ground up using a framework he built and calls “dbscript”, and it contains no Wordpress code whatsoever. He felt Wordpress was too bulky to handle a full Microblogging platform (do I smell a potential acquisition by Automattic?). In fact, adding in integration with the OpenMicroBlogging Protocol was as simple as just adding a simple PHP plugin to his dbscript implementaion. The look and feel of OpenMicroblogger.com, his own implementation of the codebase, is all just an implementation of the Wordpress Prologue theme that my friend Joseph Scott at Automattic wrote.

Brian tells me that while Laconi.ca’s codebase is very good technology (he had very good things to say about Identi.ca, Evan, and the Laconi.ca codebase, especially when compared to Twitter), the technology underneath OpenMicroblogger and DBScript is even stronger and more scalable. According to him, “dbscript is an advanced ‘Restful’ framework with sophisticated features that are not found in the Wordpress code base, it shares features with Ruby on Rails (ruby) and Django (python) — things like MVC, ActiveRecord, Routes, Content-Negotiation”. Because the underlying code is Restful, an API is almost inheritently provided for other developers to interact with your implementation of the code-base and write their own applications for it.

OpenMicroblogger and DBScript are based on an open source MIT license similar to the license Ruby is under. Brian says it took him just 8 weeks to write this advanced implementation, with other client projects going on at the same time and 2 kids, which shows how simple it is to implement the Openmicroblogging Protocol. It also shows his devotion to the work.

OpenMicroblogger.com, the service that shows off his code, has some really nice features (also available in the code) such as sharing links and pictures with friends - definitely a little more advanced than Identi.ca in that manner. He fully supports the OpenID standard (he actually wrote his own OpenID host using his framework!), and is very big on OAuth and other standards and open protocols so you can expect to see much more around that with the site.

This one simple and amazing example goes to show that we have only hit the tip of the iceberg here on microblogging technology. Now that a Protocol has been established, you will see more and more sites and developers write their own extensions of the protocol to implement their own creative microblogging solutions and layers. This very creative and innovative solution could just be a more advanced option than Laconi.ca to consider for Microbranded solutions in the future. Brian has taken “viral coding” to heart.

You can download the code, try out, learn more and help out the OpenMicroblogger.org project over at http://openmicroblogger.org. I’ve created an account at http://openmicroblogger.com/?jessestay, and you can actually just go there, follow me, and follow my OpenMicroBlogger.com updates right on Identi.ca! Or, you can go over and create an account for yourself.

UPDATE: Brian corrected me about it being more scalable than Laconi.ca (see the comments below) - according to him, “Actually Laconi.ca is the more robust code and is more scalable. dbscript is a meta-object framework and runs some extra queries to “learn” about the db schema — it is currently not very optimized for performance, but is geared towards being programmer-friendly.”

A few days ago I wrote about federating with Identi.ca. Yesterday I had a great chat with Craig Burton about that whole idea. He's not buying. I asked him to respond on his blog so we could move the discussion online.

My argument was essentially that moving Twitter-like functionality onto a distributed platform was a good thing and likely to make more people comfortable with the idea of building out additional functionality in the micro-blogging space (what people have started to call the space that Twitter is in). The fly in the ointment, from my perspective, is the additional friction engendered by the need to subscribe to people on federating systems. Much harder than clicking "follow" on the Twitter page.

Craig's argument is that the advantages of a single namespace are so huge that the friction I mention is a deal-killer. He goes on:

With all of the downsides of Twitter, I still love it. Why? Because it has the big names already in it! Don't you get that?

I chortle at my cohorts--- @stevegillmor and @jessestay (twitter names) that are bad mouthing twitter and claiming that somehow other systems are better from some tech reason or another. The big names are already in Twitter. Ample reason to stay and stick out the growing pains.

From Federated Twitter Look alikes---Ho Hum
Referenced Thu Aug 14 2008 13:07:08 GMT-0600 (MDT)

Craig's got a point that goes beyond what I was considering. The namespace issue and the friction of subscription collide in unpleasant ways. But as I thought about it, I realized that with Laconi.ca based systems, URLs are the namespace. Laconi.ca, and hence Identi.ca, don't create a private namespace. That's why federation works.

So, the friction that subscription creates might the death of these federated systems. Or it might be it's salvation. Things like the gateway that WebDevStudios' put up to link Twitter and Identi.ca might make the whole discussion moot. Or, it might be something else entirely like the fact that Identi.ca doesn't do SMS.

I'm going to be talking to http://evan.prodromou.name/, the man behind Identi.ca and Laconi.ca on Monday as part of my Technometria podcast. I'm really looking forward to it--this whole thing is really heating up.

Tags: twitter microblogging itconversations

Yesterday I guest-posted on LouisGray.com about how the technology behind Identi.ca, Laconi.ca, could pose as the launching platform to brand many smaller microblogging services. Today I’d like to share one more power of the service - its working API. Identi.ca/Laconi.ca seem to have introduced a new ideology to Web 2.0 with this code, viral software.

Now, when I mention “viral software”, I’m not necessarily mentioning software that can make things viral. I’m instead meaning software in which the underlying code itself is viral. This could change the face of the way developers write code in the future, and open source is only part of it.

Today I noticed (through Steve Gillmor on identi.ca) another new interesting thing that I knew was coming - Brad Williams (@williamsba) wrote a bridge that essentially allows you to post on identi.ca and have it automatically post to Twitter, prepended by “identi.ca:”. Interestingly enough, “Hippy Steve” (@exador23) pointed out now one of the top trends on Twitter as of today, according to http://search.twitter.com is “identi”. Now, many of the posts you see on Twitter are going to become posts prepended by “identi.ca:”, and many more are going to feel pressured to join identi.ca where they are seeing all their other friends post from. I guess you could consider it competitive micro-advertising, created and distributed on purpose by the users themselves (as Charlene and Josh would put it, we’re seeing a “Groundswell“).

It should be noted that you can remove the “Identi.ca:” from being prepended, but as long as you’re on identi.ca and want those on Twitter to know you’re posting from there and not Twitter, why remove it? You are posting from the competing team, after all. Would anyone want to pretend they’re not posting from Twitter? I’d like to know where my friends are posting from.

Now, onto the viral part. Why did Brad Williams implement this bridge? I’m sure there are preferential issues of trying to get his network onto identi.ca, but the fact of the matter is, from a development standpoint these applications like Brad William’s bridge are simply easier to write for Identi.ca. The lack of limits and plan to keep off those limits on Identi.ca are just one more thing that make the software behind Identi.ca viral. Developers want to develop for Identi.ca. With an API that also supports Twitter (I mean literally, it is simply a change in the hostname for your Twitter code), developing for Identi.ca is just too easy! Again, developers jumping ship could very well mean the demise for Twitter.

I can only hope that developers of the future learn from this experience - in a social era such as today, even your software has to remain viral and easily shareable and distributable. Laconi.ca is the prime example of this - completely open source, based on open protocols, and your software should be able to talk to other instances of itself in some way, preferably using standard protocols. In addition to that, a completely open API is a must - the minute you start closing your API you begin to lose your code’s virality. Brad William’s bridge is only the start of apps that make the transition to Identi.ca much easier. I imagine you’ll see many more of these things in the coming days and weeks.

Looking to learn more on how to make the jump to identi.ca? Check out my friend, Marina Martin’s site, ohidentica.com for some great howtos and tips all in one place. You can find me at http://identi.ca/jessestay.

Twitter's performance problems over the past few months have made people skittish about basing businesses, even ideas, on it. The problem isn't just performance problems, however. When one company controls what many come to consider a key piece of infrastructure (who'd have thought they'd read that about Twitter 18 months ago), it creates a brittle situation. What if they can't perform or go out of business?

Enter Identi.ca, a Twitter-like site that's based on open source software called laconi.ca. The key problem with something like Identi.ca is that if it's just another centralized solution, nothing's changed.

Laconi.ca has the ability to federate different servers so that if I have an account on Identi.ca and you have an account on whojusttweeted.com, I can follow you and you can follow me. Until today, I've understood that in theory, but not in practice.

Jay Ridgeway has put together a short instruction page on how to federate two accounts on different Laconi.ca servers. There are seven, count'em, seven steps. That's a little more involved that most people will put up with, but, as Jay says, it's a start.

It really isn't any more involved than subscribing to an RSS feed and over the years we've discovered ways to make that less painful. Still, I'd argue that part of the lag in uptake of RSS by most people is this complicated subscription process.

I think subscriptions are a great answer to complicated syndication problems--whether it be RSS, tweets, or whatever, but we've failed to make that pattern so precise that systems take the pain out of subscriptions for users.

I think I'll set up a Laconi.ca server and play with this a little. There's something here, I think.

Tags: federation social+networks twitter

Yesterday I announced I am permanently and officially on hiatus from Twitter. Bloggers and other Twitter users, while annoyed, are giving them too much attention in both the negative and positive forms, and frankly, both of these only help Twitter. Any publicity is good publicity, especially when it comes to Twitter. I’m fed up with their lack of communication with users (try to talk to @ev or @biz - I rarely ever get a response to them, while many other companies on their own service I get an instant response from), their lack of experience and poor architecture that keeps causing these problems. It seems, while they are trying to get better, they just keep getting worse!

Just Wednesday, Twitter, while not on purpose, removed mine, and others’ followers in some sort of mistake that took a day to fix (I’m guessing someone erased too much data in the database via a bad query on live data, and they had to restore from Tape backup to get it all back). This hit the breaking point for me - they violated the most important thing to me about Twitter, my followers (which are also those I follow and have a deep interest in), and I just can’t trust that things like this won’t keep happening in the future. They crossed the line, whether on purpose or not, and it’s time for me to take action.

I’ve endured them being down in times I needed them most. I’ve endured them removing API features from us developers with little to no notice. I’ve endured them launching things into production without telling developers or warning users. I’ve endured their lack of a proper staging environment and other simple architectural issues that they still have yet to fix (I’m still not convinced they’re not developing in their production environment!). I’ve endured their lack of a proper and regular launch schedule to warn other developers and users when new features and bug fixes are being launched into place. I’ve frankly, been too patient with them and I’m fed up with it.

Unfortunately, after only one day I realized I could not do it cold-Turkey. I have a good number of followers on Twitter that have some interest in me (and I thank you so much for that support - it really means a lot to me), and regardless of whether I want to leave or not, abandoning Twitter would mean abandoning those followers, and I just can’t do that to all of you. To me, you’re not just a number - you’re all people interested in me in some way, and I follow each of you back because of that (and will continue to do so). I do care about you, and need to do what I can to encourage you to join me in more productive, more reliable and trustworthy sources however. Here’s what I’m going to do:

I’m going to post much more on Identi.ca

My followers from Twitter are already very quickly joining the open source communications and micro-blogging service, Identi.ca. I use identi.ca with Twhirl and have it open at the same time I have Twitter and FriendFeed open. I will be posting to identi.ca much more often - follow me there so you don’t miss anything!

Why identi.ca? Distributed or not distributed (some argue it isn’t, which they have a point), identi.ca is open source. This means I, as a developer, can actually have some sort of chance at giving back if things ever go wrong. Everything’s plain, simple, and out in the open. I know Evan, the identi.ca founder, has also been very open with the community and has maintained that communication. I don’t get that from Twitter, at least not on an individual level. Also, identi.ca, like Twitter, now imports to FriendFeed, and now satisfies my status updating needs to initiate conversation (which is what FriendFeed satisfies).

I’m going to be much more involved on FriendFeed

On Wednesday at F8 I realized something significant - I was using FriendFeed as my primary communication mechanism throughout the day, and I really wasn’t missing Twitter much by doing so (and most of it from my cell phone). FriendFeed, frankly, is much more viral and advantageous to my blog and brand than Twitter because every time anyone likes or comments on an item I post or comment on, that item goes right back to the top of the feeds for all my friends. It brings instant exposure, and in fact, for many posts on this blog I get more traffic on FriendFeed than Google, Twitter, or any other service out there. FriendFeed takes power away from the A-listers and puts it right back in your hands - it can happen to you too, and very easily!

Some people, for whatever reason, won’t give up Twitter

As long as the majority of my followers remain on Twitter and don’t join FriendFeed or Identi.ca, I still have an obligation to you, and frankly, I’m outvoted at the moment until the scale tips. I’ll still follow your Tweets on Twitter, respond to your @replies, and direct messages, assuming you’re not already on the other services. You gave me your attention and I need to continue to give you mine. For the most part, my blog posts will keep posting there (although they are also on FriendFeed - discuss below!). Please don’t hesitate to contact me - I respect you having your own opinion. I hope this post can convince you otherwise however.

SocialToo.com still lives! It has to.

The fact of the matter is, there is still a large audience using Twitter and frankly, there’s a business opportunity there as long as people are still there. I built SocialToo.com to work across many social networks, and as you switch, so will SocialToo.com. For now though, there’s an opportunity, and Twitter will still be a part of that opportunity, as will Identi.ca, Facebook, and even FriendFeed in the future. It is already powering hundreds of Twitter accounts helping you follow those that are also interested in you and I have no intention in giving that up. If I can do my part in making Twitter a better place, I’ll at least try, so long as they let me. I’ve actually got a really cool new feature that will be released soon for both Twitter and Identi.ca.

I will not give Twitter any more attention!

I’ve given Twitter too much attention, both positive and negative already. We as bloggers, if we’re frustrated with the service, need to take a stand, and my hiatus starts with blogging about Twitter, and that happens right now, cold-turkey. This, unless Twitter does something absolutely profound, will be my last post about Twitter.

How Twitter can get me back

Twitter needs to do something profound - they need to show they have the experience necessary to protect those that follow and are interested in me. Twitter needs to open up more - let us into what you’re doing. Allow other services to sync with my updates in a federated, open manner. Open your source code like identi.ca. Any one or two of these will do, but, frankly, I’ve been disappointed too many times. Twitter has to gain my trust back, if some other service doesn’t beat them to it. Show your support by joining me on Identi.ca at:

http://identi.ca/jessestay

Or, more importantly, join me at FriendFeed at:

http://friendfeed.com/jessestay

I hope to see more of you there!

On the heels of a post this morning by Biz Stone, it appears Twitter is beginning to bring the rate limit for posts through the Twitter API back to the 70 per hour it used to be. For the last several months, Twitter has brought that limit down to only 20 requests per hour. Per the Twitter developers mailing list just now, Twitter has now raised that limit to 40, and will gradually be raising it back up to 70 in the upcoming week.

This is welcome news in the week of months of API and service outages. What this means is that you, as the user will no longer see the “Rate Limit Exceeded” error you may be seeing through clients like Twhirl. In regards to the API this leaves mainly just the XMPP stream that they need to re-enable for developers - this may not be happening any time soon however, as Twitter may be looking to only enable a select few developers access to the stream.

Has this request limit affected you as a developer? How about as a user?

Today I was introduced to a new service called identi.ca, which claims to provide Twitter-like functionality, in a nice, Open Source interface. The service implements the OpenMicroBlogging protocol which, from their FAQs, states, “you can have friends on other microblogging services
that can receive your notices.” This means complete transparency and no reliance on any one service to trust your data with. I am unable to find any other services that have utilized this protocol, however.

The service seems to maintain an open atmosphere across the board. They publish all the details of the code identi.ca is based on, stating they run on the Open Source microblogging platform, Laconica. They state that “soon” they plan to implement SMS updates and notifications, a Twitter-compatible API, Maps, Cross-posting to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc., Facebook integration, Hashtags, Image, video, audio notices, and even a multilingual interface. Relying on the open source community, on an open standards-based platform may just put them in direct competition with Twitter very soon.

All of your updates posted to the service are under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and you have to agree to this when you sign up. They seem to remain open across the board - and this will make them successful. I have talked previously about how the mistake Twitter is making is that they are not open enough - they are not basing their protocols on open standards and open techniques of web development. It is showing now, as they are stuck fixing their own problems as the world watches. With a service like this, were it to go down, ideally other services would also sync data and you would not be without service when one service goes down. This is powerful!

The founder of identi.ca is ironically named Evan - they seem to be going head-to-head with Twitter in an Open platform. Based on my experience with open standards in the past, I can already tell which one has the strongest potential. They state to have 1,000 users already and are growing very fast (in Evan’s words). I look forward to seeing them grow, and hopefully contributing as I can - will you join me? You can find me at http://identi.ca/jessestay.

With all the frustration lately about Twitter going down, disabling features, and developers leaving the service, people still keep coming back for some reason. Frankly, there just isn’t anything that can fully replace Twitter. I think people have simply gotten so used to Twitter and have figured out their own ways to use the service, that moving to a new service and spending time adopting new ways of organizing communication is just too much for most people. Bring in FriendFeed - now, I know I have said previously that FriendFeed is not a competitor to Twitter, but they are getting closer and closer to being a reasonable alternative every day. At the same time, FriendFeed is just more stable and encourages conversation in ways that Twitter just can’t (especially when @replies are down!). I’d like to share with you a few ways that you can use FriendFeed to kick that Twitter habit, and utilize the full power of FriendFeed at the same time.

Not on FriendFeed yet? Sign up and see what you’re missing!

Joining is the first step. Be sure you have given it all of your favorite Social Networks, and especially your Twitter credentials. Don’t be overwhelmed though - the tips I’m about to give you will help ease some of that frustration, and most importantly, try it out for a little, give it a chance like you did Twitter, and you’ll begin to see why it’s so powerful. Remember that when you joined Twitter it didn’t make much sense at first either. It took getting in and using it for awhile before you were able to realize how powerful it actually was.

Find all your Twitter friends that are on FriendFeed and add them

One of my biggest worries of moving to another service from Twitter is abandoning the near 900 people following me. For some of you this number is much smaller, and therefore should be a little easier to migrate. There is a nice little program by Eric at InternetDuctTape (click on the link to get it yourself!) that searches through all your Twitter contacts, and then using the Google Social Graph API, identifies which of those are on FriendFeed. Run this now (sorry, Windows only - I ran mine on Parallels), and it will automatically send friend requests to all of your Twitter friends that are currently on FriendFeed.

This is only the first step to migrating your Twitter network over to FriendFeed and using the service on its own. Only those Twitter friends that are already on FriendFeed will be able to see your updates (you can actually post updates via the “share” button in FriendFeed), but now you can tell those other Twitter friends to come follow you on FriendFeed if they want to continue receiving your updates and join the conversation. The advantage FriendFeed gives you is that for every update and/or link posted to the service, users can actually have a discussion underneath that link as a community instead of guessing what it is they are talking about.

I fully expect someone to write a script (maybe socialtoo.com?) that will automatically post your “shares” on FriendFeed out to your Twitter account, with a link back to FriendFeed to discuss the shared post eventually. Look to see that soon, and all your posts can now be on FriendFeed with no worries of abandoning your Twitter network.

Get an imaginary friend (or two or three)

FriendFeed supports the concept of “Imaginary Friends” for all of those you follow on Twitter and other services that aren’t on FriendFeed. Simply click on the “friend settings” tab in the upper-right of FriendFeed, then click “imaginary” in the navigation. Click on “Create an imaginary friend”, and follow the instructions to create a name for that friend and what network they belong to. Now, those friends’ updates will appear in your list of other friends’ updates on FriendFeed, and you won’t miss a thing!

Reply to your friends’ Twitter statuses via FriendFeed

Now that you have all your Twitter friends in FriendFeed, on any post they make, you can reply, directly from FriendFeed! On any Twitter post, click on “Comment”, then comment and check “Also send this comment as an @reply twitter from (your username)”. Now, when you post your comment, not only will it appear under that user’s Twitter post in FriendFeed for other FriendFeed members to discuss, but it will also send an @reply to Twitter itself so the conversation continues on Twitter as well! I only suggest using this for those Twitter friends that are not on FriendFeed, because, hey - you’re trying to give up Twitter, aren’t you?

Get very familiar with FriendFeed mobile

Just today FriendFeed announced a new iPhone version of its service. The new design is very intuitive and easy to navigate, and I can only imagine will get better over time! The coolest feature is a link to their built-in ability to send photos to FriendFeed that you take on your cell phone. If you send any photo to yourusername+your_api_key@mail2ff.com it will automatically post it to FriendFeed for others to discuss and talk about. The iPhone version gives you the e-mail address you need to send to, but you can also get your api key via https://friendfeed.com/account/api if you don’t have an iPhone.

The other service to check out if you don’t have an iPhone is fftogo.com. FFtoGo.com gives a nice, mobile-formatted version of FriendFeed to your cell phone. Up until today I was using this, and it works very well at viewing what your friends are posting and discussing, what you’re posting and discussing, and who is discussing on the things you post.

Install the FriendFeed Comments Plugin for your blog

Okay, there’s really nothing in Twitter that compares with this or can compare with this, but it does demonstrate the power of FriendFeed. The FriendFeed comments plugin enables you as a blogger to allow your readers to comment to the blog post right on FriendFeed, and read what is being said on FriendFeed, right on your blog! It also shows who has liked it, and lets your users like it right from your blog. Ideally, you could really remove the current comments on your blog and completely replace it with this. You can see this in action right below this blog post above the Disqus comments by clicking the “show” link next to “Join the Discussion on FriendFeed”. Comment there and then go to FriendFeed and check it out!

RSS, RSS, RSS! — Learn to organize your FriendFeed data

Almost every page on FriendFeed has an associated RSS feed with it. Someone asked me today why Summize doesn’t support FriendFeed - that’s because FriendFeed has Summize functionality built into it! Open any page in FriendFeed, then scroll all the way down to the bottom, and click on one of the links next to “other ways to read this feed”. You can have new items on that page sent to your RSS Reader, Facebook, Google Reader or iGoogle, or even e-mail!

This has power. One way I use Twitter is I follow all those that follow me (using socialtoo.com), but I send all those I really need to pay attention to, and that are most interesting to my cell phone via SMS. FriendFeed doesn’t support SMS, but it does have another way to send you new updates of a particular user. Simply click on any username in FriendFeed (or just go to http://friendfeed.com/username or http://friendfeed.com/username/discussion if you want all of their likes and comments as well), and now all of their posts will be delivered to you via RSS! Add to this the power of Google Reader on your Cell phone and you have a superb way of staying up to date on the discussion of the most interesting people you follow.

One other way to utilize this is through the search box on the right of FriendFeed. Type in any text in the search box that you want to “track” (note that track is currently broken on Twitter), add the resulting page to your RSS Reader, and now all found discussions with that term contained (for instance, your brand, or your competitor’s brand) will be delivered automatically to your RSS Reader. This is powerful!

Use Twhirl for all the rest!

Now that you’re paying attention to all of the most interesting people you are following, you’ve brought over all those you can from Twitter, you’re tracking the terms you want, and you’ve integrated FriendFeed commenting onto your blog, you may want to skim over all the rest.

While the FriendFeed UI should be sufficient, Twhirl is an unbelievable tool for general FriendFeed use. From Twhirl you can skim over all of your friends’ posts and comment and discuss on the interesting posts, or just watch all of the posts you have sent to FriendFeed along with anything you have liked or commented on. If you click on the “Me” tab and “like” the interesting posts of your friends, you can then track the conversations that go on within each of those posts that you “like”.

USE the service!

The most important advice I can give to any Twitter user looking to move over to FriendFeed is to use the service! More people will talk about your posts, more people will “like” your posts, and your experience and conversation will get much better the more you use the service. If you just use it as an aggregator and don’t “like” or comment it will still be an interesting tool, but it just can’t replace Twitter until you start using it.

In the meantime, come follow me on FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/jessestay. Join the discussion below! I think you’ll start seeing me much more over there, and much less on Twitter as we all begin to utilize the full functionality of FriendFeed. Let’s just face it - we’re all getting tired of this Twitter downtime!

UPDATE: Sasha Kovaliov made the point (on FriendFeed) that I had the fftogo.com link wrong (I had it as ff2go.com). Thanks for the correction, and I’ve corrected it now.

I’m going to dub this Part 2 of my Twitter Love/Hate fest - this should be my last installment for awhile on this topic, I hope. In reality, I really love Twitter. I have a good network on Twitter and frankly, I wouldn’t have met many of you if it weren’t for Twitter. Twitter, in many ways, has changed my career. For that reason I really don’t want to see it fail. It is perhaps this reason that I am so critical of it at times - it’s my hope that someone at Twitter can read these and at least see what the world is really thinking, hoping, and wishing at a given point in time about how their service is performing and being perceived.

Twitter is still continuing to fail developers!

It’s examples like the one I learned about recently where the service, Gridjit, was put offline entirely because of a rash decision on Twitter’s part to remove a feature from Twitter’s API with little to no notice for the developers to respond. In the time Gridjit was down, they have since added FriendFeed support, and I’m willing to bet they have other strategies that don’t include Twitter. Now that Twitter has re-enabled that feature, they are now back up and running, but Gridjit is just another example of the frustration that is occurring amongst developers in the Twitter development community.

Just today, for example, I noticed Twhirl was no longer working with @replies. I remember seeing posts on the Twitter blog recently stating that the @replies tab would be removed, but I remember no notice to developers stating that the features that enable this on clients like Twhirl would be disabled in the API (they did let us know the API was down today though - still no notice it would be down when they took down the replies tab, and nothing to the developer mailing list that I’m aware of).

Twitter tries, but not quite enough

I mentioned last week that Twitter was hiring on their site, but it just wasn’t enough because I think the problems they have exist at the management level. True, they even hired 3 new individuals recently, but they are developers used to being managed, not managing large groups of other developers. Twitter really needs one or two individuals at the top that have true Enterprise-level experience managing these types of IT issues, and very large groups of developers. Remember, Twitter isn’t just the developers that work for Twitter, but the vast group of developers that are also writing applications for their API. The individual in charge of development and IT efforts at Twitter has to have strong experience in managing very large development teams, and working with a very large user-base, in which any change to any part of the system could effect. Twitter needs a staging environment in place, and a system of testing every single change that goes into place before it actually goes out live into the production environment.

They are showing some promise though!

Just this week Twitter announced the inclusion of 2 new investment partners in their list of investors. One of those, Jeff Bezos, does have experience managing the types of issues and large development audiences that Twitter lacks. This is a huge move for Twitter, and long overdue! Jeff will bring Amazon’s firm experience in scalable web environments, and I hope, enable Twitter to enter the cloud more than they currently are, and reduce the tough scaling issues they are experiencing right now.

You can bet you’ll see Twitter begin adopting Amazon’s AWS Cloud services here soon now that Bezos is on board. Amazon has the capability to scale almost instantly as traffic spikes hit, and they seem to be doing it better than any other right now. Twitter really needs this service!

Why I think they’ll still survive, no matter how many developers leave

Twitter is a Marketer’s Paradise. Twitter is full of content about the every-day life of millions of individuals and their friends, who they connect and communicate with, and what their frustrations and interests are. Businesses are beginning to embrace this and use services such as Summize to track information about their Brand, their image, and even their competitors that they could never track before. Businesses can finally track real people instead of just “visitors”.

This is powerful and valuable information to many businesses out there. Because of this it doesn’t matter how many times Twitter goes down or how many developers stay or go from Twitter. So long as users still have networks on Twitter and the Twitter user-base continues to rise as it appears to still be doing, businesses like H&R Block and Comcast and even NASA will still flock to Twitter as a valuable tool in gathering data about their customers and fans. These businesses have it in their best interest to see Twitter succeed, and you better bet they’ll do their best to help out in that effort. Twitter isn’t going anywhere my friends, and I still haven’t retracted from that statement.

This morning Justin R. Young of TalkingHeadTV interviewed me via webcam (couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the yellow whitebalance on my webcam - I’m really not that yellow!), and asked some great questions in follow up to my article mentioning my concern on developers leaving Twitter. I think we covered a lot of the criticizing articles‘ (they were only somewhat critical, fortunately) issues in the interview. I wish we recorded the entire discussion because some of the best conversation occurred after the cameras were rolling.

To sum up, I’m not necessarily anti-Twitter. I’m as big a fan, if not more than any regarding Twitter - in fact, in the interview you can see I even wore my Twitter shirt that Ev and Biz gave me! I actually wore it all day yesterday, and was proud to show it off. I’m just worried with what I’m seeing and hearing from Twitter developers, and I want to be sure Twitter knows this so hopefully, they can come up with some way to fix it. My hope is they are already doing this, and they say they are. Here are the highlights of the interview:

Why Are Developers Leaving Twitter?

Despite Outages, Complaints Why Does Twitter Still Thrive?

How Do We Know When Twitter Is Dying?

I’ve been following various development mailing lists lately, and I’m seeing a trend of developers starting to bail on Twitter. This is a scary thought, because when the developers bail, so will the users. It all started with a conversation on the Twitter Developers’ mailing list with the subject, “Shame” by a developer named, “nath“, in which he said,

“Well, twitters always down or unusable due to the speed; the api’s
keep breaking and are down just as often; the groups now packed full
of spam which is littering my inbox.

“It’s a real shame to see such a great app crumble and die like this :(”

Alex Payne, a developer for Twitter, responded by saying,

We own Twitter’s speed a stability; my our metrics, it’s been pretty
solid over the last few days.

We do not, however, own spam prevention for this group. That’s up to
Google, and if it’s a hard problem for them, I’d imagine it’d be a
hard problem for anyone.

I go through and clear out spammy posts, but time they reach my inbox,
they’ve reached everyone else’s as well. There’s just not much I can
do about it. Please make use of Google’s “report as spam” features.

After which another developer that goes by “rlansky” responded:

Sorry, but I have to agree with the original author, it is a shame
that the service and the API are so unreliable. The potential for the
services that could be built on an API like the one offered by twitter
are endless. They really are.

Statements like this:

> my our metrics, it’s been pretty solid over the last few days.

don’t do much to boost my confidence. When you make an API available,
you are essentially saying to the world, “here’s our service, come and
build something great on top of it.” You can’t build anything of any
real value or widespread use on something that “has been *pretty
solid* over the last couple days (emphasis mine) .” You just can’t.
You need something that is rock solid all the time.

I’m not trying to start a flame war or bash twitter at all. Like I
said, I think it is a shame because the potential is so great. The
idea is great, the acceptance is great, the use is great, the
possibilities are awesome. But they just can’t be fulfilled given the
reliability of the service as it is today; try to build something on
top of the API that will see wide-spread use and you’ll find that when
you push the gas, the wheels fall off the car… at least that’s been
my experience. It’s been *extremely* frustrating and disappointing.

Peace.

After following a few threads on the Perl development library for Twitter, Net::Twitter, I recently found out that Net::Twitter’s original maintainer too has jumped ship. He has handed it over to a new maintainer, but developments like this are not a good sign for Twitter! It is very clear that frustration amongst Twitter developers has hit a maximum level and I fully expect to see this only increase in the short term.

At the same time, developers like Kee Hinckley are giving advice to Twitter, and they are graciously accepting it seems. Some great tips are being given on ways to enhance the API, and I even suggested they do a public bug tracker which they seemed to like. Twitter clearly doesn’t seem to have enough expertise in-house, although they do keep saying they are hiring. Their jobs page doesn’t seem to have any upper-management positions though which I think is really what they need right now.

I’m very worried for Twitter. As more developers jump ship and work on other platforms such as Plurk and FriendFeed (which really isn’t a direct competitor to Twitter), this great tool is going to be left in the dust with no new development and large networks of people moving elsewhere. Twitter’s largest traffic comes from the API itself, and as that traffic dies down, so will Twitter. Imagine, for instance, if Seesmic were to stop development on Twhirl due to the costs associated with keeping up with API flaws? That would be quite a chunk of Twitter’s users being forced over to the other Twhirl clients, FriendFeed and Seesmic itself - it’s such an easy transition were Twitter support to be dropped! What happens when Twhirl begins supporting Plurk?

Twitter needs to do something, and they need to do it fast. I agree they need to get their infrastructure in place, but before even doing that they really need to put every hack possible in place to keep the API up, keep it working, and work with the developers to ensure they are staying happy. A large revolution is about to take place, and I’m afraid it won’t be pretty.

UPDATE: See the little FriendFeed box below? Click “show” and join the discussion on FriendFeed about this right on my blog! Subscribe to my updates here.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about the Flock Browser, and after checking it out today I thought it was time for an update here at Ubuntu Tutorials.  For all of you that are addicted to all of the social networking sites (Digg, Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, Flickr, etc) you get an integrated-into-the-browser experience with the Flock Browser.  Follow the steps below and give ‘er a try:

Install Flock Browser v1.2 on Ubuntu 8.04

Unfortunately there are no .deb packages for the Flock Browser so you’ll have to install things manually.  Yes, this’ll require some commands at the terminal.  Yes, I’ll give you cut-and-paste commands.  No, the terminal won’t eat your cat.

1. Download Flock Browser v1.2 and select “Save File” to store it on your Desktop.
2. Open a terminal and run: sudo tar -C /opt -xzvf Desktop/flock-*.tar.gz
3. Create a link to the new browser within your PATH: sudo ln -s /opt/flock/flock /usr/bin/flock-browser
4. Dump the following into a new file: /usr/share/applications/flock.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Flock
Comment=Flock Web Browser
Exec=flock-browser
Icon=/opt/flock/icons/mozicon128.png
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Applications;Network

You should now have a new entry in your Applications menu called “Flock Web Browser” (your menu may need to refresh first).  You can also launch the browser from the terminal using the command:

flock-browser

Enjoy!  Anytime there is a Flock Browser update you should be able to safely repeat steps 1 and 2 and you’re set.

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How did I get to spend a day with Robert Scoble? How did I get to participate in the interview with Twitter founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, that ended up on the front page of TechCrunch? I joined the discussion on FriendFeed.

I think some would probably consider me a Twitter power user. I think Twitter is great for posting updates, getting conversations going, and seeing what your friends and followers are up to. However, FriendFeed is where the true conversation is at. With threaded conversations, the ability to “like” and share items, it provides a much stronger catalyst for conversation that Twitter could never provide.

How do I use it? Well, I actually thought it was too cluttered at first. I am finding as I use it more I am coming up with my own ways to better organize my conversations and keep track of what is going on. First of all, I use the “Me” tab religiously. I often also click the “see both” link (just add “/discussion” after your username when on the “Me” tab) on the right sidebar to see not only the things I have posted and the discussions within, but also the things I have “liked”, and commented on. This allows me to keep track of the existing conversations I have entered.

Then, I skim the “friends” tab to see the interesting things others are posting (If you have over 100 friends, there’s no way you’ll be able to read it all like you do in Google Reader or some do on Twitter). I find as I join other conversations and like and comment on others’ posted items it shows them I have an interest in the things they too are interested in, and true friendships get nurtured from these conversations. Then, if you want a mobile solution, I use http://fftogo.com to read FriendFeed on my mobile phone (a internet plan for your phone is required, but if you haven’t signed up for one of those yet you’re still in 2007! ). It formats FriendFeed in a nice, easy-to-read browser format so you can track things in the same way you do on your computer. You can send photos to yourusername-yourapikey@friendfeed.com from your cell phone.

FriendFeed is not Twitter. Twitter is hard to replace in what it gives me. I will still use Twitter to post status and other items to get the discussion going, but I will now begin using FriendFeed to continue that discussion. Will you join me on FriendFeed? Subscribe to my updates at http://friendfeed.com/jessestay. You can see what I’m discussing at http://friendfeed.com/jessestay/discussion.