donloeb.com

first off…i love friendfeed…it’s become my rss reader, content discovery engine / daily 5 minute break, and primary way to track friends :)

i’ve been meaning to post a list of things i’d like to see friendfeed do…well, fred beat me to it. i agree with him completely and had a number of his on my list…here are a few more that fred didn’t mention, most of which focus on data (think flickr…everyone wants stats!):

1) display all my items that have activity (not just what i’ve commented on) in reverse chron order and listed by most commented and liked

2) allow me to get a daily email update of the activity - even if i’ve logged in recently :)

3) items should be deduped and global stats for each item should be front and center…explore putting it in the UI next to each item (# times this item was shared, # comments, # likes, # clicks, etc.). if it’s too cluttered, at least make “stats” a tab…

4) let me see the most popular items (shares, comments, likes, clicks, movers and shakers (”interestingness”)) over different time periods across my items, my friends’ items, and all of ff…and, turn those into rss feeds :)

5) allow me to share/rebroadcast any item directly from within ff

6) search should be full-text - ff should index the landing pages of all shared links

7) please create a smaller logo :)

re fred’s list, i especially want the ability to display thumbnails of images from blog feeds ala flickr, explode blog posts, and post comments back to flickr ala twitter…

i’ve tried all sorts of things with feedburner and yahoo pipes to create a good feed of me, and i settled on using pipes to splice flickr into my wp source feed with feedburner on the front-end (this works better than the flickr splicer in feedburner as each photo can have flare). that seems to work for my readers (i.,e not too much content), but if you want my complete exhaust, use this feed as it’s a true feed of me…

interesting new yahoo SERP - completely different design. and, yes, includes their new auto suggestions feature…

is anyone else seeing this?

i called this (well…i hoped this would happen) a while ago - it’s exactly what yahoo needs…jerry can drive product vision and set the tone for the future, while sue can own operations and finance. this is great for them. while i’m now at google, i’m happy for yahoo. of course, this makes them an even more dangerous competitor…which, as matt said, is good for users…

congrats to jerry, sue, and yahoo…

given that it’s memorial day and we have a lot to think about, this is going to be a relatively short post. but…i wanted to point out a couple of massive changes re how yahoo and facebook think about openness and monetization.

both are significant…but different. and, that’s on purpose as i’m not trying to make an apple to apples comparison between facebook and yahoo’s social apps. in fact, i’m not even including info about delicious, flickr, yahoo 360, mybloglog, upcoming, or yahoo groups…etc. etc. etc…

first off, yahoo decided to test adding “external/non-commercial links” to the frontpage. i’ve known for a while that they were contemplating this, but it looks like they’re doing it now (see mike’s post). this is fantastic for publishers of all sizes across the web - bloggers and others can now take advantage of the firehose that is yahoo.com.

while i applaud this move, yahoo should have done this a while ago. back in the mid-90s, they were focused on organizing the web and helping people find things as quickly and efficiently as possible. somewhere along the way, they forgot about that (except for yahoo search and my yahoo’s groundbreaking rss integration), and instead fell in love with their wonderful on-network margins. yahoo now realizes that enabling discovery (outside of search) is critical - users want to be delighted and they trust yahoo to bring them the best of the web. additionally, yahoo is focused on building an off-network ad network, complete with a suite of publisher services (search, mybloglog, flickr, delicious, etc.). and, traffic (via frontpage programming, rss on my yahoo, and search, etc.) is a necessary building block…

now, contrast this with facebook’s recent announcement re their social operating system. facebook is not only opening up to widgets, etc, but also encouraging developers to leverage facebook’s social graph, i.e., all of the relationships and data…and, it gets even better -> they are allowing developers to put ads directly on facebook web pages…all without revenue sharing. they realize that their core asset is their social graph / people platform. as such, they’re creating an ecosystem that is good for both end-users and developers.

but, what about facebook revenue? all they know is that what’s good for users is good for facebook and monetization will work itself out. besides the obvious benefits of a huge number of incremental pageviews across the facebook service and more rich data about those users, i also think they have a chance to add another type of advertising to their arsenal. facebook has a history of experimenting with application specific advertising and they clearly don’t feel tied to IAB ads. again, they want to create the right experience so that ads actually enhance the product…i.e., like their self-serve campus flyers and sponsored news items. so, what can facebook do with these all of these developers and new apps? well, not everyone is going to be as successful as iLike (congrats hadi!) and therefore can’t just rely on viral distribution. facebook can turn these developers into advertisers and promote their apps as sponsored news items or trial apps, etc. -> perfect for folks in need of distribution and most importantly, useful for facebook users…hmmm… perhaps a “cost per add” fee for all apps…this is very similar to what we’re doing with feed-powered ads and the feedburner ad network -> giving publishers tools and the ability to reach an audience full of opt-in users…

while in many ways this is a leap of faith for facebook, it’s absolutely the right strategic move. i just wish fox, yahoo, and others could do this…maybe they can…

congrats to dave m, james, dave f and the rest of the facebook team…

for the past few weeks, i’ve been monkeying around wtih how to post my links from myweb, google, delicious, etc. i finally decided that once-a-day summaries from delicious made sense.

at first i used the daily blog posting feature. it’s great, but i don’t blog enough. as a result, my blog became “too delicious.” :) so, i decided to go back to having only real blog posts on my site, but splicing in a daily summary using feedburner’s link splicer. then, those links are only in the feed. of course, i also implemented a sidebar widget (using feedburner’s buzzboost offering) that has my delicious links. so, i think i’ve got everything covered.

the only downside is that my feed now has double postings of my delicious links. it’s temporary..i.,e until i start posting new things, but the posts are there and it’s annoying. so, sorry for mucking up your rss reader.

btw, does anyone have suggestions about how best to do this? i think i’ve found the right solution in that my blog has a set of modules - flickr photos, my delicious and google links, and my blog posts…but my feed has everything. i.e., i’ve spliced stuff together to create a “feed of me” for folks consuming my content via a feed reader.

what does everyone think?

what a boring, but semi-productive weekend…

i spent 5 hours on saturday dealing with applecare and the folks at the genius bar (see my earlier post). at least my data is backed up now. plus, i’m fully “online” and set to work on any available computer….thanks to gmail, gcalendar, greader, meebo, xdrive, gdocs, salesforce, delicious, flickr, feedburner, and my blog…

besides spending half the wknd on my mac, i worked, started our taxes, and mowed the lawn, etc. wow…exciting….

at least i watched a little madness (go hoyas!) and saw casino royale - daniel craig is going to be a great bond…

i know everyone’s already written about this, but i’m allowed as i used to work on “my” :)

the new my yahoo has finally been released…i won’t comment on all of the changes right now (some i agree with and others i don’t), but i will say this…it’s quite a product. very beautiful, easy, and most importantly for rss fans…it’s full-text!

it’s going to be interesting to see how consumer behavior changes as this gets rolled out to the tens of MMs of my yahoo users. will they like the new full-text rss reader or will they turn it off and keep the dashboard experience?

btw, this is actually a nice hybrid product that allows users to put headline style content on a dashboard (cnn, bbc, nyt, etc.) while also allowing users to efficiently read full-text blogs. this approach isn’t new (google IG does this with the reader module), but it’s the first real mainstream implementation as it just “works.” this should dramatically impact time spent on my yahoo…

anyways, congrats to david, tapan, james, joseph, shanan, and everyone in eng and design…

dave is right…my netscape was the first major service to include RSS (back in ‘99). they did it to compete with my yahoo. netscape wanted to provide a differentiated experience, and didn’t want to play content BD catchup. but, at the time, folks weren’t used to the whole linking out experience and there wasn’t much content available in RSS. since then, blogging, search, and broadband happened…and, every major media company adopted rss in one form or another…thanks to dave and others for pushing this early on..

anyways, congrats to netscape…it’s nice to witness the product’s rebirth…

ps - here’s the obligatory link to the netscape fish cam and a picture i took when i visited AOL back in may. and yes…this wonderful/quirky part of internet history is still there…

either that or the title should be “oh, the irony”

last week i switched from yahoo mail to gmail for my work email (i route my work email thru gmail to take advantage of the spam filtering and web access). being a long time yahoo person that was sort of a tough decision…

the main reason i switched? yahoo mail was putting too many good emails (three a week at least) in the spam folder. and, if that wasn’t bad enough, you can’t search spam…

however….that’s a whole lot better than being down for 12 plus hours like gmail was today for a subset of their user base. and, to top it off, i lost all my email for that period. maybe it will come back, maybe it won’t…

ughhh….gmail, i’ll give you one more chance…why? i understand what it’s like for companies to provide applications (free as well!) like this at scale…service interruptions do happen. also, it helps that i love the product - it’s fast, has great mobile access, and the threading is fantastic…so, please please, don’t disappoint…

ps - if you sent me an email today, please resend it…thanks!

update: seems like i’m starting to get email from earlier today…it’s trickling in..

appears that yahoo was just granted another patent for serving dynamic custom pages, i.,e my yahoo…need to dig in and read more about the patent. it’s from ash patel’s work in the mid-90s.

wonder what they are going to do with it…