The Steve Rubel Stream

Yup, I've been visiting a lot less too. I want a curation system that lets me explain what I'm seeing roaring by on Twitter and other aggregators like Google Reader and share it in a place that looks like Posterous or Tumblr. Sorry, Posterous and Tumblr are NOT replacements for the activity that we were practicing on FriendFeed.

@Robert totally agree - it's more about publishing then curating/aggregating. I believe smart search tools will provide what you're looking for and that these will come from Facebook or Google or both.

I am really digging Posterous! Its really easy to post any information and even integrate it with your own blog via custom domain. Wasn't really a fan of FriendFeed anyway. Hope Facebook gives that service a new lease of life!

I can explain Posterous to my NON techie friends and they get it. Twitter not as much. FriendFeed not a chance.

I think that the problem with Friendfeed is that it's not smart enough. I want more than just a free-fall of information and updates from the people I'm subscribed to. I want to see what's hot, what's going on.

Aggregation is key. Let's say you post a blog post, it gets commented on, retweeted, tweeted about, blogged about; Friendfeeds needs a way of aggregating all those different points of discussion into one coherent stream as well as letting new content from new users 'bubble up' into the mix.

Bryce: FriendFeed wasn't smart enough in the right areas. And Google Wave has the same troubles. What I want is a curation system. One where I can watch the river going by, like I do with Tweetie 2.0 and one where I can then favorite, comment on, and publish those items (and not just Tweets, either).

The problem with FriendFeed is that it forced us to have a comment area underneath EVERY item, which made the UI complex, especially when compared to Twitter, and made the noise level go way up.

The other problem is that the search on FriendFeed, while world's better than Twitter, didn't go far enough. It was almost there.

The other problem with FriendFeed is that we couldn't build a personal brand there. Until after Facebook bought it, we couldn't even put a picture on our own page. Even Twitter lets us do this and it's a key feature for why businesses and celebrities took to Twitter.

I see a potential for a new kind of curation app. Posterous isn't it. Posterous isn't an aggregator, either, and it's not a place where I can have a conversation with a community the way that I can on Twitter and/or FriendFeed. But it is nice for doing something that looks a lot to me like a blog.

totally agreed Steve
Am almost at a stage where I will move my main blog to Posterous.
Still worried about handing my content to posterous though, what happens with an acquisition,etc?

@Pat, their API supports exporting.

@Robert as more users sign up for Posterous I found their reader to become a great source of valuable content - though it's not the solution you're seeking. http://posterous.com/reader/

Robert: I guess that's an area where there are two sets of distinct user types.

You prefer the "river" of items, tweets, blog posts, photos, videos to just stream down and you can pick out the ones you like to send to your own spaces across the internet and add your own information too. You can afford to do that, you have the time.

I don't have the time to sit and watch a stream hoping to find something interesting, rather, I want to see what's happened and what the important and interesting items are. In a way, you could say I rely on users like yourself to pick out interesting items that I mix with other users to create a filtered and aggregated stream.

I have moved my blog to Posterous (on my own domain), without concern for the service's future -- for two reasons.

1. It's a blog, so unlike FriendFeed I can reproduce whatever community features Posterous has in case of acquisition with Wordpress, etc.

2. Between autopost and Posterous' API, it's not hard to get content out of the service -- should we need to.

While I wouldn't call Posterous a lifestream (sorry, Steve), email posting makes it + Instapaper on the phone the closest thing to Robert's curation system I know. For a blog, anyway.

Bryce: exactly, which is why I need a curation app. One that lets me build a page of what happened in the past few minutes in a way that people like you can read up on. Techmeme is an extreme form, though, of what you're talking about.

Norbert: Dave McClure knows what he's talking about. He's right.

We use posterous for publishing and friendfeed to aggregate. Two different approaches.

I'm still trying to figure out why I would use Friendfeed over Twitter (not that you can only use one of 'em). The interaction seems superior on Twitter

Chris: interaction is way better on FriendFeed. Twitter is simpler, has way more clients, etc but FriendFeed is built for aggregating lots of data sources in and having conversations about things in live mode. Search engine on FriendFeed is better too, but it is all for naught. FriendFeed isn't being worked on anymore -- the engineers have been moved to Facebook.

Robert! Thanks for the response - I know you're a ginormous fan of Friendfeed. I understand the aggregation part - I have not personally have alot of success interacting with others on Friendfeed. On Twitter, I've made very close eFriends and engaged on any number of subjects. I can't seem to get in the flow on Friendfeed.

Hopefully, some of those Friendfeed engineers can make Facebook a little less clunky - too many errors these days. Plus my mother-in-law just joined.

Pat's Posterous blog has me almost convinced to switch too. The thing is that with microblogging and its instant gratification of our information addictions most of us have turned our backs on [macro]blogging (both reading and writing). It's not surprising either as digesting let alone constructing a decent post takes a lot of time and energy.

While there remains a place for both 140 character microblogging and 1000+ word [macro]blogging, I believe there is a middle ground that sites like Tumblr and Posterous fill: miniblogging. That is, those ~500 word "incomplete thoughts" that are better shared than kept secret but which are too big for a tweet and too small for a full fledged article.

Sam

Chris, I'm finding almost exactly the same thing you are with Twitter and FriendFeed. Like you, I'm not finding any movement of the great engagement I've found on Twitter to FriendFeed in spite of a good number of those with whom I engage on Twitter being on FF. I can see great potential for FF being something more than an aggregator of social media feeds, but it seems like making FF something more than an aggregator is an uphill struggle. The bottom line in my case is that Twitter's still where most of the action is.

Posterous has the advantage of numbers, because everyone gets e-mail. I can go up to anyone and explain what Posterous does and they get it, because they get e-mail. For people who are interested in something like a blog, Posterous makes a bunch of sense because to capture interface makes a lot of sense to them. I try to make it to FF at least 2 - 3 times per week. I used to go every day.

Now that is interesting - I didn't even realise you can comment by email (as I am now).

FriendFeed just never stuck with me too much fiddle factor. Posterous's drop dead simplicity make it useful to me and also I can see it being useful to my dad, a man who is just now starting understand email. I think what is missing in a lot of these apps is a consideration for the wider world. If your app requires a Valley zip code to understand, you haven't done a very good job. Posterous will hockey stick because it gets the wider world and lets the user work from the first interaction instead of spending time learning the UI. If only I could say the same for Google Wave! The invite was so exciting and the product so confusing.

I've never had a problem with using FriendFeed. I wasn't too keen on the fluid streaming when it switched but I'd not want to go back to a static one anymore.

I really like Posterous, as although I have self hosted blogs, it's just so easy to forward emails I get to it, and then get them to autopost forward to my own blogs too. OK, it's a lazy way to blog, but so what? It saves time too, and I can always edit before or after posting.

I don't use FriendFeed as much as I used to lately, but that's as much as being busier lately, and having less time, than anything else.

Twitter started me on the road to blogging, now 140 characters isn't enough. Posterous is amazing. Embedding video, sizing photos. cool design. Crazy easy to use. What's not to love. I read Armano used it as a collaboration tool when he was in Australia. I may try it on my next project instead of basecamp.

friendfeed is lists of opinions and comments, not really communication ..

so far, a true holistic communication service has not been invented

Besides the fact that I agree with the notion that there is a gap between something like Twitter and something like a Wordpress blog (which is why I initially started using Posterous) there is the added feature of being able to interact (1) mobile and/or (2) via email-only.

This interests me specifically with regard to "Government 2.0" because many government agencies block URLs like Twitter.com, Facebook.com, and so forth. Here's a way that in theory people could produce online content in near-real-time from their official emails and MS Outlook (which is typically what's used). No doubt this is applicable to Edelman clients and many other large companies.

WOW this is the best post and comments I've seen on Posterous yet; not surprising it's on Steve's posterous - how fitting!

I am a huge fan of Friendfeed and now Posterous. I joined Posterous last year, but didn't use it much until they adding the uber-simple auto-posting features...wow, so awesome!

So really, Friendfeed is a massive aggregator and Posterous is a massive blaster (broadcaster) of information - feeds other feeds, interesting to say the least.

I've been tempted to do what Steve has done, i.e. abandon my self-hosted WP blog, and use only Posterous, but I think it's lacking the ability to tie in other services I'd like to use. So I would be loosing some cool blog features / functionality, but gaining tons of ease and simpification of blog admin (plus, posterous is free - for now, anyway). A provactive argument here.

I think Posterous is disruptive and highly valuable as the layman can easily understand and quickly make use of it's features vs. complicated blog admin.

Better yet, check out Twitter vs. CNN and then think social media future: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=cnn.com%2C+twitter.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

I'm still a dedicated user of FriendFeed as well as Twitter. It's still obvious that FF's the best at what it does; I've tried other services (Streamy, Social Median), but they still don't compare. I think Posterous is the perfect complement.

As for blogging, when I started with Posterous, I thought it might end up replacing my main blog (http://thespacehelmetshow.blogspot.com). But it now occupies a niche of its own among my blogs: It now complements my main blog; it's for the shorter entries I write (I post my longer entries on my main blog now), and it's easy to share articles, pictures, music, and videos using the bookmarklet. So my Posterous blog has found its place in my Internet presence. And yes, for me it's mainly a blog platform intermediate between Twitter and Blogger.

I forgot to mention how much I love the ability to post to my Posterous blog via email. Even so, I can do that with my Blogger blogs as well, even though I don't.

Posterous is great, and I've been using it to autopost to my old blog (www.sumolabs.com).

I find that posterous has made blogging fun again. A true "lifestream" if you want to use Steve's terminology :)

Good points made by all, the issue is still up for grabs, as Robert already mentioned a little while back with his "curation" post on here.

FriendFeed had massive potential, but I agree that it was mostly still too much work/too cumbersome to get it to work for meaningful use cases. It's like their team somehow forgot about deciding what FF was really supposed to for...

FF Search is very powerful and has pointed in the right direction for all to follow (missing mainly only time-based search operators), and even now is still the best way to archive your and your core "Following" (i.e. those that got onto FF and/or you hand imported) Twitter stream, the only fly in the ointment is the idea that it could all be turned off someday (let's hope that never happens).

Yeah ff is seeing decline but it's a great thing and should be used well. i don't think posterous can replace ff, though posterous is a great service in itself...ff search is good but they need to implement advanced search features and filters, and it would be good if we have streams of best of day,week,month too, friendfeed is great but mostly people now days are using it to integrate their stuff only, miss the real time conversation on ff, hope facebook doesn't let it just disappear, most of the people at ff have their twitter accounts integrated so instead of conversation/posts at ff, most of the things are the ones imported from twitter, and @ replies doesn't make sense sometimes till you trace them back...
love ff and posterous...

What killed FriendFeed for me was too many people with too much time trying to gain too much attention, and not enough smart people looking for an interesting discussion. I'd have to trawl through the crap to get to the good stuff. Now I mainly use FF to view photographs.

I get life streaming and aggregation but think them a bit like fruit cocktail: no distinct fruit flavor, just a syrupy taste. We all have our art and sometimes that art doesn’t translate across media. You might think me funny on Twitter, but a pedant on my marketing blog. Were I to post artless videos and pictures or fill my space with where I’m drinking coffee, my stream (sorry urologists) wouldn’t compel. Fruit cocktail. But if you like my wit, follow me on Twitter. If you think my marketing musings not 3/4s bad, tune in to the blog. Social media should remain “separate but compelling.”

Friendfeed still entices me to pop by at least once per day--sometimes I peek in via Facebook. And if "Posterous Catches Friendfeed", well for me, Friendfeed Caches Posterous. Really, a Posterous Friendfeed marriage could create more of a lifestream reality.

And the trouble with Friendfeed: not enough Scobles. The earlier adopters are cliquey, basically ruining the essence of Friendfeed while perpetrating that their contributions are making Freindfeed great. I've done a lot of listening, though, and only a pioneering few like @Robert will actually engage and truly network. Others are just publicly acting like middle schoolers. Which is like so last decade.

Eric, that is so true. I subscribe to a ton of folks on FF - my "best of Friendfeed" email that I get.... it's all Scoble. Robert Scoble rules, but you are right - FF needs more people like him

I guess for full disclosure I should mention that I'm a documented Scoble fan: http://bit.ly/HuiGB -- but I'm not some pal of his who toots is horn, I admire his web presence and consider him a thought leader. And, bottom line, he responds when so many others ignore.

If you are looking for a true 'hub and spoke' service that integrates Tumblr and Posterous seamlessly for lifestreaming, please consider checking out: http://flavors.me

FF is still there and still operates the same. I guess I don't get why people are using it less. Sour grapes to FB? Still no real substitute for FF functionality.

Steve, solid, succinct. Agreed. Further, between Posterous' auto post feature to Tumblr and Seesmic/Tweetdecks search column for "tumblarity" It's reallllllly easy to form grass roots content syndicates.

So @Dan Perlman, No Need for FF.

@scobelizer, i'd say its only a matter of time before Posterous/Tumblr fully replace FF... the content producers LIKE YOURSELF are migrating.

Very cool, I have been using Posterous for a while. The main functionality is there and works great but they are still lacking some features that would add a lot.

I think we're missing the real story a bit here: Facebook has no intention of growing FriendFeed. Facebook is building an email client to integrate with the rest of the site and they wanted Paul Bucheit, who built Gmail.

Friendfeed was better before the redesign and before the acquisition. The platform was terrific for some things (still is) but fails in other ways. Easiest platform for monitoring, searching and participating in open conversations.

I never used Friendfeed so cannot comment on that but do believe that Posterous and Tumblr are filling a gap, I have to say though that Tumblr feels a little noisy and based upon people linking to each others stuff a little too much and not enough original content, Posterous still has time to grow into a 'lifestream' - I believe worth sticking with.

clicking on those tumblr and twitter links tells the whole story. you guys are talking about the wrong two services. but i'm biased.

curation, curation, curation - mentioned several times already, but ability for easy lifestream/activity stream curation is the only way for me to be the information filter in my topics of expertise. In this way I am still able to have random ramblings on the services I use and not worry they'll be out of place in my public/business activity stream vs. my personal/private activity stream. For example, I have 3 different Posterous blogs but creating, mapping & managing the streams of content into different homes for different purposes is time consuming and, while I do it, I'm a geek and by no means representative of the average user who needs this!

Somehow, this makes my forgetful neglect of FriendFeed "rooms" feel a bit more justified. Like others, I tend to use FriendFeed as a news aggregator rather than an active posting venue. Posterous, on the other hand, does fit a neat middle ground between full-blown blog and Twitter. No surprise the stats are on such a steep upward curve.