DISQUS

To add to what Jamie said:

-other network info you enter on your profile (delicious, flickr, digg, etc)
-Gmail/Yahoo/AOL credentials you give them when looking for friends
-FOAF, XFN

Benjamin, unless you're set on running it on your own computer, I suggest just signing up for SocialToo.com - I've implemented it on a multi-user scale there and you can also blacklist users and do other stuff, including stuff on Facebook. If you like it, tell your friends about it!

Chris, thanks for visiting! I did not realize that and I'll post an update to make that clear. I wasn't trying to necessarily point you out as a cheapskate (you were just an easy target), but rather point out the fact that a lot of startups don't pay their developers enough. I was mostly defending Guy because Kristen said he paid too much - I disagree. If it makes you feel any better, I'm a cheapskate, too - I just have to stick up for developers since I started out as one. :-)

Shahar I'm really trying to find people with Web 2.0 products - do you have a product of any sort that fits the Web 2.0 definition?

Philip, please send me an e-mail with some more info on your site - how are you making money? What does your site do? How is it unique?

Flype Club, I don't believe I mentioned you were spam anywhere. Perhaps you should take up your issues with Twitter?

Thanks Andrew! Now I guess I can say I've been "techcrunch'd".

Thanks Clint - I was looking for a link to that. John was telling me about that the other night, and I think that's awesome!

John, Twitter is also not an open platform. I don't have a problem with them choosing their own conventions - they need to build a standard off those conventions so we are not just relying on one company to deliver this communications platform. Twitter is not making money yet, so there is no saying they will be around forever - sticking to an open standard will comfort me that their platform will not die, and will continue, even if they do not survive.

I still don't like the @ style messaging though.

John, my main point was that Twitter, while an open API, is not based on open standards. I would like to see them implement an open standard, or use and improve on an existing standard.

azurelunatic those are great points - it would be nice to be able to at least tab-complete those that you follow though. That would be more of Twhirl's responsibility though, but there is no standard of any sort governing that - would love to see Twitter implement an open standard based on their platform.

keldwud, thanks for your comments. Feel free to e-mail me if you see vulnerabilities. I only speak from my own experience with Twitter and IRC.

Bryan, me too! The video on Ustream isn't coming up for me any more though - any ideas why? It used to work, I think.

Sterling, the website is built on Perl's Catalyst framework. Thus far I've released the auto-follow script as open source (need to add in my recent updates still) - that can be found here:

http://staynalive.com/articles/2007/11/14/auto-...

Be sure to check out the link in the comments to patch Net::Twitter or it won't work!

BJ - thanks for commenting! I'm a huge fan of yours. I agree - it is all very immature at the moment, and it will be very interesting to see what becomes of it, who the leaders will be, and what we'll be able to become because of it.

Lou, Corey,

I agree completely - all I ask is just a *little* interest in me in the e-mails recruiters send. Heck, I may even blog about your job if you're nice enough to me (sharing the commission is nice too, of course). :-P

Jacob, lol - you're an "all" too, eh? ;-)

Greg all great points. Thanks for sharing. Truthfully, it was quite hard other than the Media Center and corporate financial market, to come up with good reasons. Most of my other reasons were more personal than anything. One additional advantage PCs have over Macs though is the Tablet market. I have yet to see a tablet competitor on the Mac, and there are some really cool uses for those! Perhaps the demand just isn't there yet, but it's something I'd love to have.

Matt, yes, I have used Rails before and every time I try I always hit a deadend somewhere that would make it much harder to scale than if I just were to use Perl and Catalyst. Many of those I've seen switch to Rails from Perl often were not willing to take the time and learn Catalyst or another MVC framework on Perl itself. Many of the people I know switch to Ruby because of the hype. Let me turn this around - have you tried Perl and Catalyst before? You may just not look back if you take the time to learn it as well.

Regarding my comments on Python, it was pure curiosity - I simply see all this as fascinating. Python obviously gets preferential treatment by Google, but how would it fare against Java or Ruby or PHP or Perl in a popularity contest like this?

Andyed, Chris, awesome! (and Chris, thanks for visiting!) I still need alternatives to the first 4 though.

Charlie, agreed, very bitter-sweet for me. I'm very excited for the future though!

snehal, right now I'm doing smaller projects for clients, along with consulting. I also develop for my own projects, and invite similar projects to join my network in exchange for development and consulting from me. Larger projects I have a group of developers I have teamed up with which I can certainly introduce you to. Go ahead and e-mail me at jesse at socialoptimize dot com and we can talk about your needs.

sorry - there's a bug there - you have to go to http://www.socialtoo.com (notice the www). I'll get that fixed soon...

Eli, try it again. You might also want to try socialtoo.com - I take all of the hard work out of it for you by doing it all for you there.

Mike, while I agree with you that they are mostly interested in ratings (I used to work for a media company!), in both cases I list above, reporters *were* on the scene! Traditional old media is clueless when it comes to technologies such as this.

On another note, @newmediajim, a cameraman from NBC News twitters regularly about the places he visits and the news he's covering. Because of that, I generally try to watch the news that he's twittering about. I think if reporters were to get on Twitter, report straight from Twitter, and encourage those following them to watch the details on the news later, News organizations could actually see their ratings *improve*! Twitter is an excellent medium to get people excited, in 140 chars or less about an upcoming media broadcast.