DISQUS

Tac, I like the approach, but it's not correct. We have posted five new blogs each month this year as well.

January:
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/five-blog...

February:
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/02/februarys...

March:
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/03/march-to-...

April is coming soon. Not too much time left!

Welcome, Jesse. We've appreciated your tweets, and look forward to your taking things up a notch on FriendFeed.

This looks like Scoble '98. Well played.

Happy Birthday Chris Brogan. Today is as good a day as any to mark one! (as that's what I chose to do as well)

Josh Dilworth and Adam Singer are two of the best PR people who get blogging. When I get an e-mail from Josh, there's a very good chance I'll cover that company, because he knows what I care about. And he answers e-mail past midnight, which shows he is as nuts as the rest of us.

Stage Two Consulting (Jeremy Toeman)'s clients aren't always the ones I am interested in either, but they always are careful... "Louis, I know you don't usually cover... but...", etc. so they have my respect.

PR in today's world is hard because many still don't get new media. They aren't participating, or if they are, it's tentative. The few that get it right are memorable.

The issue of having great content seeing only a few hundred visitors a day is exactly why I opened up my site to additional writers, who gain additional exposure, and downstream, more traffic to their native work on their own site. If you have a popular brand, don't compromise on quality, but extend the opportunity.

Bring on change. Feedly, Socialmedian, FriendFeed, Twitter and Facebook are all changing the way we interact and find people. Don't let somebody else do the defining for you.

The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't automatically capture the actual tweet itself. If I were designing v2, I would add the originating tweet, and show replies as nested (or a smaller size). But it just works. Copy HTML, Paste. Post.

Mary, if you're going to LegalTech tomorrow, make sure to find BlueArc's booth and say hi to Meriann Muraoka or Cliff Dutton. Tell them Louis sent you. :-)

Appreciate the summary. Often, it's not clear how interesting ideas turn into successful ideas, and later, successful companies. You've removed a lot of the mystery.

I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.

Congratulations on reaching the one year mark. As my parents always tended to say... "Good start!"

You could also value it on a per tweet model...

1.1 billion and counting.
http://popacular.com/gigatweet/

A $250 million valuation means every tweet is worth 20 cents or so.

Meanwhile, as Facebook was banning Joel, 419 scammers are setting up hundreds of fake accounts and soliciting Facebook members for cash. I got requested "to help" today.

419 Scammers Set Up Roost on Facebook
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/419-scamm...

Until those 214 accounts are removed, I don't think Joel should lose his account.

This Steve Jobs example is a good one in terms of the real-time Web, but it's not alone. If you were following the weekend's football action, you would have seen the same on Twitter (less on FriendFeed). The Super Bowl should be a very interesting test, assuming two teams anybody cares about might make it.

Ontario, I think it's very possible to agree with Robert and with me here. Apple has a history of innovation, which will continue with or without jobs. They have a sharp management team and have been pushing the Valley around since he came back. But I think we as consumers and Apple as a company will be much better off with Steve than without.

It already sold for $1,200, according to your link.

Boy, Robert, that sure does sound like a good idea! :-)

This works very well for monitoring company mentions, BTW. I've had one at work for months.

Any kind of unapproved messages to or from somebody, via Twitter, e-mail or anything else, is idiotic. Marketing 101 centers around permission, and if they don't have it, they should get out of the game. It's a very bad practice.

Some default to sending a message but offer an opt-out checkbox, and that's a little better, but too many folks are going too quickly to notice. Twitterank was a good example of that.

Justin, I am glad to have seen you develop from "nothing to something" this year. I am sure that 2009 will deliver the potential to expand that "something" to "big things". We'll be watching.

I agree that aligning # of followers does not always indicate authority. But I see little harm in the option being added to search. You know I'm a big advocate for the little guy, and I try not to let # of RSS subscribers, followers etc. measure somebody. But why not enable the Twitter search database to be very flexible and include this option? Maybe I'd use it.

Scrapplet does have some work to do. As I mentioned in my post, it is beta, and I struggled with it myself at first. But the answer is not to ignore the "edge" stuff that's out there, but instead to provide feedback and see if it has value. There will always be room (or a niche) for geeky things and geeky people to write about them. And after the early adopter phase, they grow.

There is no one way to use a service, and how you spend your time is up to you. In 2008, you felt that your time was best spent Tweeting and FriendFeeding, and it has diversified your audience in a big way. You have been exposed and participating with a significant audience that doesn't participate on Techmeme and isn't near the A-List.

Saying you spend too much time FriendFeeding is like telling Mike that he spends too much time blogging, or that Chris Brogan does too many speaking events.

And as someone who is just as invested in FriendFeed as you are, and started earlier, you'd be surprised how little time is actually needed, versus other activities. I've been tracking it since November 7th.

http://wakoopa.com/louisgray/usage

I find myself relying on Twitter Search almost as much as Google Search now, especially when it comes to News, rather than just finding Info. There is a gap between when Twitter Search finds things and Google does, and there is room for products that can get users what they want as fast as possible. Being a hard-core user of FriendFeed exposes some of that gap for other pieces, such as how long it takes RSS to hit FeedBurner or Google Reader. That SUP and XMPP are working on the problem is a big boon to the Web's future.

One more note on Gnip... while they aren't striving for growth to their direct site, the example you gave cited a different URL.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/friendfeed.com...

The above URL shows a similar graph, but 4 times higher than the URL you cited.