Gillmor Gang 10.22.09
Sunday, November 1st, 2009Stream Splicing — Threadsy’s Rob Goldman with Kevin Marks, Robert Scoble, and Dan Farber. Recorded live Thursday, October 22, 2009.
Full transcript below the video, courtesy of Simulscribe.
Mr. STEVE GILLMOR: Hi. This is Steve Gillmor and welcome to the Gillmor Gang. It worked this time. Oh, before I forget which I did the last time, I want to thank our sponsors Rackspace and the fabulous people at New Tech who have produced this wonder machine called the TriCaster. This TriCast is one of many that is starting to emerge on the network and we’re pretty excited about - about the technology and how it’s started to have an effect. Our show today is going to be about, of course how our assess is dead, but specifically another one shot. Scoble shakes his hand like, oh wait a minute, FriendFeed is dead not some …
Mr. ROBERT SCOBLE: It’s all dead. Everything is dead.
Mr. GILLMOR: Exactly. But that’s, you know, you have to turn things to oil in order to be able to get the new stuff in, right? So, we’re going to be talking about the death of email and to help us with that is Rob Goldman. Welcome, Rob.
Mr. ROB GOLDMAN (Creator, Founder, Threadsy): Thanks. Happy to be here.
Mr. GILLMOR: Rob Goldman, you have a software package called…
Mr. GOLDMAN: Threadsy.
Mr. GILLMOR: OK. And tell us a little bit about what Threadsy is.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Threadsy is the world’s first integrated communications client. So, we combine email, Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of - about 40 other social services into one integrated UI. So, it’s sort of a one stop that - that does more than just sort of aggregate things. It integrates them so it gives you a kind of holistic view of not just all of your communication services but the entire sort of online life of the people with whom you’re communicating because as sort of things progress and especially at social media and social network is kind of start to displays the place in our lives that we had for email, we’re finding the people we communicate with are spread out across a bunch of different surfaces. They got their Twitter accounts, their Facebook accounts, their Flicker accounts to their Picasa accounts and they’ve sort of left traces on themselves all over the social web. So, we try to pull those things together so that you - you get kind of a complete picture of the person that you’re talking to.
Mr. GILLMOR: OK. And speaking of one stop shops, Robert Scoble, welcome.
Mr. SCOBLE: Hey. How are you doing? So, I’m trying to get Threadsy loaded but it’s not loading for me today. So, but I’ve used it quite a bit and it’s pretty interesting service and that it’s - places together all your email and social networks into one - one long feed which makes it a - I find it interesting because I can just put it up on my vertical screen here and just watch the world go by and choose even more stuff to engage with.
Mr. GILLMOR: Also joining us on the phone are Kevin Marks. Welcome, Kevin.
Mr. KEVIN MARKS (British Telecom): Hi, there.
Mr. GILLMOR: And Dan Farber of CBS News. Welcome, Dan.
Mr. DAN FARBER (CBS News): Good afternoon.
Mr. GILLMOR: And Mike Arrington is not joining us. He is at - at the Web 2.0 Conference. I just saw him a little while ago. But I think this is going to be what the team will be for today’s show. So, Dan Farber, just before I forget, we had an interesting conversation last night with Tim Berners-Lee, didn’t we?
Mr. FARBER: Yeah, I thought it was, you know, good to catch up with him and kind of find out how he’s evolving as thinking in regards to semantic web and Twitter and other things.
Mr. GILLMOR: So, you know, it was way over my head what he was talking about. We were luckily joined by Nova Spivack of Twine Fame who was translating in both directions I think. But I think I can characterize one thing about that conversations that I think would be interesting for today’s show which is that there is definitely an interest on the part of Tim around the notion of the PubSub aspects of Twitter or not specifically Twitter but he was talking about Identica, for example, which has the ability to be able to emits or to at least transport RDF or you know, sort of so called semantic objects. And I’m not a big proponent of RDF mostly because I don’t understand it and I think that’s one of the reasons that I think it’s had some trouble in terms of adoption. But clearly as we get to a sort of the intersection of things like PubSubHubbub, and you know these micro messages being carried over, transported - could be integrated and federated. We’re getting to the point where there’s going to be tremendous opportunity for us to regain control of the micro message based than we have - just been sold down the river by Twitter to Microsoft and Google yesterday. So, anybody jump in and comment on what they think about the Twitter moves and what it imports for, you know, for the climate of micro messaging. Robert, I want to hear from you first.
Mr. SCOBLE: I think it’s huge because it brings a whole new audience to Twitter first of all. Saying all I got on the lot - another round of hype. I mean, I was listening to ABC News yesterday and all they were talking about was this - these two Twitter deals with Microsoft and with Google. But I’ve see - I talked about on my blog yesterday that I see a new place for real time news like Twitter because if you got a Google and search on Palo Alto Sushi for instance and then you look at Google, there’s a list of restaurants there but it’s very cold and there is nothing there that’s live or human and if Google can figure out how to add in, you know, information from both the restaurants and from users, I think that will make that list a lot more useful. And that’s what I’m hoping to see…
Mr. FARBER: Google also hopes…
Mr. SCOBLE: Go ahead.
Mr. FARBER: Google also did introduce social search.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. FARBER: Where they are, just kind of taking from your friends and adding it to search queries. and something they’ll be releasing in the next few weeks. I just wanted to add something about what Tim Berners-Lee was saying about things like Twitter offset(ph) which is - if he usually has a Twitter is the fact that there’s an ever - real URL and doesn’t have much meditated with it. And without that, you know, you really can’t drop it into the bigger stream to not able to use that content and in different ways, more semantic ways.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, but I…
Mr. MARKS: Well, sir, I - I haven’t pushed back on that.
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, go ahead, please.
Mr. MARKS: Twitter does have real URL. The each (unintelligible) does have a family link. It has the cut back structure then can have its involvement.
Mr. FARBER: A short - a short URL which you know is not only (unintelligible)…
Mr. MARKS: Oh I think, obviously as the proper link, yet. The links are bad and I agree with. We’ve debated on it.
Mr. FARBER: Yeah, the links are. It’s not that, it’s the links out.
Mr. MARKS: OK, got you. Yeah but that’s - that’s I think that in fact that is a structural flaw but I’m - you know, I push back on Nova and it’s like, we need more meta data to go with the data. Well, the thing is we’ve - meta data - these things with meta data and data is many cases a mistake because if there - if they - suppose a meta data is hidden away from us in some parallel things we can’t see, then it ends up getting with out of sync with the real data and if it pushes us anything, is that even with a 140 characters, we can climb in a lot of intelligence pickling(ph) and later about the data which by using this - by using as tags, by using short links and so on. We’ve actually come up with a lot of ways of having a very compact discourse that is still human readable and machine readable. And that’s - and that’s the tension between the sort of the - that’s the hyper abstraction of RDF which is - is now abstracts to having develop abstraction. And that’s - as you said, that tends to be intention with people that are actually understanding what’s going on. And if you look at what’s - you know, what’s worked and what hasn’t, what’s worked is when you’re able to - when people are able to add data and singling themselves in useful ways but the data is not some sort of abstraction that stuck on the side of it. The people - the people can’t see and understand, if some of these articulated directly to them in a form that works for them. So, you know, so Scoble’s restaurant example that is - things like FourSquare work very well for that because you’re obviously articulating time at this place now or you’re running a little tip to it saying the fish is really good. And those stuff - that those stuff show back to other people and it’s not in some sort of gigantic abstraction. It’s in - so in a way that banks have used. So, I think there’s, you know, audience had seen the future of the web for a long time allegedly and in fact it has not - that it was on its promise over the last you know 10 or 15 years where it’s actually we spoke - what we have seen is more and more people incorporating richer data into the streams that they are already using and that’s the trend I see improving.
Mr. GILLMOR: Rob, why don’t you jump in here and translate some of this into your you know, coming from Threadsy.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Well, I mean I guess I view it a little bit less from the sort of technical prospective of the you know, the PubSubHub and sort of RDF and the standards and more, just the news yesterday struck me as important practically, you know, for two reasons and I think that it have, you know, indirect impact on what we’re doing at Threadsy but I think a much bigger impact on what’s happening with Twitter and sort of short messages in general. I guess the first thing is, I mean, I think it points the way for a business model for Twitter. You know, and suppose there - there was some, it sounds like pick out some interference there.
Mr. MARKS: Something like that.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Hello?
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, keep going.
Mr. GOLDMAN: OK. Yes, I think its points to - I mean, obviously I think there was some revenue involved in both of those deals. Probably meaningful revenue when your company decides a Twitter and I think more importantly, it sort of presents the sort of Twitter body as a really interesting application for search. And I think to the extent that people interact with tweets and the Twitter database in a search oriented way, that’s a good thing for their sort of a long term revenue prospects because with search comes intention and I think the pathways to delivering values for advertisers. And I guess on the other hand, on the downside I think for Twitter is, it’s going to bring a lot more traffic across the tweets and the fact that you know people can tweet and find themselves on a landing page on Ding or on Google. I think it’s going to attract even more spam and I think they already have a really big problem fighting the spam that is happening inside the Twitter. I think this is going to make it a lot worse. So, when you put this kind of high powered traffic on something, I think you need a high powered control system to make sure that everyone stays honest and I’m not sure that’s there.
Mr. SCOBLE: I think it’s coming with the invention of the new list feature but it will take a while for Google to figure that out and it will first of all, it will take a few more weeks at least before Twitter shifts it. But I’m finding that I can - I can dream of searches based on my lists that I’ve subscribed to and I’ve subscribed to about 100 different list with - which cover probably about 90 percent of the tech industry. You know, you don’t have to subscribe to too many list before you hit almost everybody and now I could - if I could say search on my lists for something, I would get absolutely no spam.
Mr. GOLDMAN: And do you think that will part of the search engine implementation, the kind of keeping it personal?
Mr. SCOBLE: Not at first but that’s where this is heading. I mean, if you - really if you talk to the Facebook people they keep using this word of, we believe it’s your friends that really are going to affect everything in your life. And so, I would expect, the reason they buy a FriendFeed and that I’ve still have some optimism about FriendFeed is the guys there understood this search far better than Twitter did, right? We’ve had this kind of list based search for quite a while. We could always go to, you know, search Obama, search the word Obama in a title based on you know Tim O’Reilly you know, what Tim O’Reilly wrote or based on what this list of friends that I’ve set up or list of people that I’ve set up. And if they move that to Facebook and Facebook gets it first and there - everybody in Facebook talks like this so I know they’re thinking about internally what is the impact of your personal friend graph or your personal social graph and why is that different than some guy you’ve never ever met before or is not closely related to you or closely related to your social graph. I think you’re going to see some really interesting things. The interesting thing yesterday on the Google search announcement was that they’re using a two level search based on you. So, you could - at least that’s what they’re saying is - and I haven’t seen the implementation so I’m going off of what (unintelligible) Mayor was saying on stage. But you could limit the search to only people within two levels of you and keep in mind for somebody like me, that’s a lot of people. I’m following 8,000 people and each of those people are following - some of them are following hundreds of thousands of people. Some of them are following tens of thousands. Some of them following just you know a few hundred. But if you take - you know, 8,000 people multiplied by even let’s say 200 people, that’s a lot people you can search through and that search will have very little spam because I’m adding my personal friend - you know people I know in the industry and brands I trust in the industry and that I’m seeing already an alternate universe from the regular Twitter that’s being built right in front of me. You know, there’s a guy who is one of the top iPhone app offers. He spoke to a list of all the app developers. And so you could just add his list and also you can get all the app developers in the world. It’s unbelievable like what you can do now and I’m sure Facebook is working on this as well. You know, everybody is on Facebook. It’s just how are they going to surface that social graph and make it useful. Right now, Twitter - I think Twitter is actually ahead. Most people probably don’t think that, right? I think what these search deals yesterday, that put them in the lead.
Mr. GOLDMAN: So yeah, I watched your walk-through of the list product the other day, the video you did, and I thought, I mean, this is the first I’ve seen, you know, an actual practice seeing the list product roll out.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. GOLDMAN: And what struck me, which I think is super interesting, is the real power in Twitter. And I think the reason that, you know, it had sort of Facebook on its (unintelligible) for quite awhile is that information can move so quickly through it because there’s no barrier, there’s no limit to the way that the information can move. There’s sort of no walls in the system. It’s just this giant wave and if something important happens right near you, you know, you see some armed guy walking into a hotel in Mumbai, you know, that information travels fast.
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah.
Mr. GOLDMAN: And it can’t travel quite as fast inside the Facebook because you’ve got these kind of walls of your friends. In order to take a status of an event, have it move across the sort of broader universe, someone has to kind of appropriate it from me and re-share it sort of explicitly in a way we don’t have to (unintelligible). I think…
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, I think that’s over stated. I really do think that’s over stated.
Mr. GOLDMAN: What was that? I mean the speed, it get over stated, yeah. I think…
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. And just the issue of Facebook having this barrier that prevents it from competing ahead on in real time with Twitter, I just think that’s an artifact of, you know, what they’ve done to get to where they are, it’s not, you know, it’s not a technical problem.
Mr. GOLDMAN: I totally agree. And I guess what I’m saying is the list launch on the Twitter side is a step kind of in the other direction. It’s saying hey, let’s kind of erect some walls to kind of keep the spam out and focus the conversations and it feels like a different path down to smaller groups.
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, I’m not sure I agree with that either. I think that what less represent is Twitter’s attempt at monetizing at an early stage as sort of a hybrid between track, which they continue not to deliver in which they have now subsidized through Microsoft and Google and the, you know, sort of their client, you know, base of people including you, Rob, who are delivering, you know, a group functionality. What they’re trying to do is to sort of copyright the group functionality and make it a data type. And I think that will be somewhat successful, but the tension will increase on the part of their third party developers and entrepreneurs who want to access that programmatically over the APIs at which point, you know, Twitter’s differentiation becomes somewhat irrelevant. So I think that it’s a short-term way of, as Evan said on stage, boosting their flow again at a point where they’re plateauing a bit and beginning the task of setting up these sort of proprietary data types and I think they’re going to have a hard road ahead of them in terms of, you know, what happens when there was a problem that was starting to be talked about yesterday on FriendFeed about the pipe between Twitter items and FriendFeed slowing down and I, you know, basically just asked - in the common thread, I asked Paul and Brett to comment on that. And Brett replied basically saying that there’s some - I just spoke with him, so I’m not sure whether he said this in the comments or whether he said this to me. But basically, they’re a combination of economic program factors and just some technical issues that they’re working through and that they should be resolved in four or five days. So let’s say that what Robert hope’s going to happen with FriendFeed is that its capabilities are going to be absorbed into Facebook. There’s going to come a day pretty soon now where people are going to say oh, you mean Facebook can get high band, you know, full access to the pump, to the fire hose as a third party developer, you know, subject of course to (unintelligible) or whatever that is at the same level as FriendFeed did. I mean, effectively, ownership has already changed hands. So the question is, is Twitter going to allow that? And if they do, what is their differentiator? I mean, why do lists suddenly become important if anybody, including Microsoft, Google and third parties aggregating the other? If they can all do API access to these list formats, it’s, you know, its open season. Where is their value out there?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Well, so Steve, your take is that they want to box out the client apps by offering some differentiated functionality…
Mr. GILLMOR: No. I think that Evan was very clear about that, and he has been, you know, where the rubber has always met the road is that whether they thought that that’s what they want to do. They never really felt that they could pull it off because, you know, it would be abandoning the horse that brought them to the party, which is open access.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: So I don’t see how they get around that and when you do that with somebody like a Facebook, you got a real problem.
Mr. MARKS: I don’t see that. I think that the interesting positioning I had when I met him was he said twist some information that work another session at work. And I think what the goal of list is, is to expand on the - on following people who I’m interested in as opposed to I’m following people I already know. But with Facebook, Cheryl(ph) was saying, no, no. The social is the most important. It’s about your friends. It still - we’re focused on the friends list whereas, you know, Evan has grasp the power of a symmetric following of being able to follow sources as well as friends having a mix together.
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah.
Mr. MARKS: And the list is where they’re expanding that, making that more straightforward. So that was what I think happened at those two pictures there.
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. But…
Mr. MARKS: And I also think that…
Mr. GILLMOR: I think that, you know, I think that posturing on Facebook’s part. That’s pondering to their audience to say that it’s all about social and that is not about what Twitter is doing. I mean, they can do both.
Mr. MARKS: But Facebook is coming from a different place. You know, they have said, no. We let you control who gets to see this.
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. If you say what this is is public - if you say what this is is public, then you’re saying exactly what you’re saying when you put something on Twitter.
Mr. MARKS: Right. There’s a question of whether - yeah, you know, the default performance is.
Mr. GILLMOR: So if there are 50 million public users on Facebook and 50 million public users on Twitter and, you know, and those two environments are synchronized and tools are used like Threadsy to normalize that flow, throw out duplicates, you know, add or keep and retain and maybe even thread, you know, cross talk among different services into, - I mean, that’s the big problem right now in Facebook.
Mr. MARKS: Yeah. And filters.
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, exactly.
Mr. MARKS: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: That’s - we’re going there and we’re going there fast, yeah.
Mr. MARKS: Exactly. I mean, the other thing that we had last week was another set - round of activity streams and standard discussions and so on, and trying to come up with come away of expressing all these things so that they don’t balance to a particular supplier and that’s - you know, we can never expect Twitter as a lovely engagement from everyone including this space. So that’s - I think that’s a lot differently. It’s fairly clear to me that that’s something that lots will be very interested in making sense of and coming up with some standardization for that is a way forward.
Mr. GILLMOR: Scoble?
Mr. SCOBLE: I’m just playing around with Facebook and Twitter. I think Kevin is right. They’re coming at the world from a different place and that, - you know, in Facebook, I have all my friends and they’re personally-added friends and their friends who have added me and I’ve added them. It’s a two-way friendship, right? Now, that’s the private part of Facebook. In Facebook pages, you can just follow me without me being involved, but it’s hard to use your word of streams placing. Facebook hasn’t yet added streams placing from pages yet. I can’t splice the stream coming off of, you know, Oprah’s page and splice it together with…
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. But…
Mr. SCOBLE: The stream coming off of Kevin Mark’s page.
Mr. GILLMOR: But you’re assuming that - you know, I think pages is a broken concept. I don’t think that that works. I mean, why do I want to differentiate as a user between an activity stream and a so-called promotional stream or whatever pages are supposed to be? It just makes no sense.
Mr. SCOBLE: Because some things - if you want to go to your friends, your family, your - you know, you want privacy on some things. That’s why I really like Facebook, right? Because I can have a Facebook where I just have my personal friends and it’s not going to be become a public item when I, you know, I post my baby photos. On Twitter…
Mr. GILLMOR: But here is - this is where - this is the intersection with email. I mean, email is personal as well.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yup.
Mr. GILLMOR: Right. But, you know, I was supposed to have J.P. Rangaswami on the show, but the only way that I seem to be able to reach him is by direct messaging on Twitter.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: And I ran out of time to do it, so - but, you know, we’re moving toward a model and this is where - why Rob is on the show today, you know, not to mention the fact that Threadsy is a great product.
Mr. SCOBLE: Right.
Mr. GILLMOR: Is because he is - you know, I’m starting to see stuff that shows up in my so-called inbox that I only subsequently realized it didn’t come in email. It came from say, Facebook, which is your point.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: So you know, the user doesn’t have to make these decisions each time. You know, if I want to go from here to the store, I’ve got basically, you know, two or three alternatives of ways of doing it. I can walk, I can take a bus or I can drive.
Mr. SCOBLE: But that’s inbound. You’re talking about inbound there. I’m taking about outbound. If I’m putting a baby photo up, I wanted to go to a different group. Then if I put up Google just about, you know, just, you know, made a deal with Twitter, I want that to go to the public group where everybody can discuss it…
Mr. GILLMOR: But you can - you know, you’ve got a computer. It’s not coming from multiple computers.
Mr. SCOBLE: Right.
Mr. GILLMOR: I mean, it is in effect because you’re using your phone or whatever, but you’re making a distinction. You’re sending a gesture at some point about where you want this data to move to.
Mr. SCOBLE: Right.
Mr. GILLMOR: And that separate…
Mr. GOLDMAN: Robert…
Mr. GILLMOR: Go ahead.
Mr. GOLDMAN: You’re saying, if I’m understanding you right, that you like Facebook better just because the privacy controls there are a little bit sort of more developed.
Mr. SCOBLE: I actually am a Twitter guy because I live my entire life in public, right? But my wife is on Facebook because she lives her entire life in private. She doesn’t want her - you know, she talks to her elementary school friends on Facebook and that’s all she does really. She doesn’t want to be a public entity all the time. I love being a public entity that’s why I love Twitter, right? Because the publicness, the way it came about was Twitter was mostly public. Yeah, you can DM me there. But when I’m talking on Twitter, it goes to the public and everybody can see it and re-twit it or comment on it.
Mr. GILLMOR: But you’re making my point for me, which is that as the amount of email that we actually process, you know, other than spam or stuff that we have to read or sort of glance up because we know that it’s part of our jobs or whatever.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: You know, as that starts to diminish, it starts to be factored into newer form factors like a Facebook or a Twitter when they adopt those tools. Now, Twitter is way behind in terms of email. They’ve got a huge reach because most people are on, you know, Twitter if there is - the nice thing about direct messages is they’re synchronized. In other words, if you want to send something to somebody, the chances are that you have a relationship with them and there is a reason why you want - it takes the spam out of the equation in the direct message requirement.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, you can’t - DM is different than email because anybody in the world can send me an email. I don’t - you don’t…
Mr. GILLMOR: Anybody in the world can send you a ping that you have to respond to on Facebook as well.
Mr. SCOBLE: No. True. But on Twitter’s DM, you can’t send me a DM unless I’m already following it.
Mr. GILLMOR: I just said that. So what I’m saying is that there is - the percentage of people that you want to communicate with via a DM that are not, you know, synchronized relationship with you is small. There’s a - it’s a smaller sample, but it’s a lot higher value.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: So the signal to noise is much higher and it’s easier to be able to do that and, you know, people - there’s a lot that’s said about differentiating the generations and the kids today are much more public facing and they’re less concerned about, you know, as Scott McNealy famously said, getting over the fact that we have no privacy.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: You know, I don’t think that’s about kids. I think that’s about all of us who, you know, work and increasingly work and play in this digital realm. The point is is that we all endlessly are searching for some sort of simple roll up of all these services.
Mr. SCOBLE: Right.
Mr. GILLMOR: And that, you know, it’s like - why the RSS equation? It’s not that RSS is bad. It’s just that it’s slower. It’s for a different environment.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
GILLMOR: It doesn’t have an economic model that’s supported in this new real-time environment. And, you know, the best that they can do is to, you know, stand - you know, is to be stable and then slowly lose market share.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
GILLMOR: This isn’t a value proposition. This is an observation.
Mr. SCOBLE: Right. I think we’re not arguing with each other really, but Facebook today doesn’t support what I need to do. Well, for instance, here’s my new list of Tech news brands. You know, it has Wall Street Journal, and MacRumors and TechCrunch, and Daring Fireball and Wireless Week. And I’m not sure if you could see that too well. But I can’t do this very easily on Facebook. I can’t just subscribe to brands without having them friend me…
GILLMOR: But you can do it on FriendFeed, all right? You’ve been able to do it on FriendFeed for a longer than your career.
Mr. SCOBLE: Not really because a lot of these brands are - a lot of these brands aren’t done FriendFeed, and they’re not…
GILLMOR: That’s nonsense because you just pulled them in through Twitter.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, but not really. They’re not easily addable, findable, like they are here. To it - now, with list, you don’t even need to search for them. You just need to come to my…
GILLMOR: Right. And that’s true not just for Twitter. Now, they’ll be easy to search for on FriendFeede or Facebook, you know. The (unintelligible) the entry is just dropping like a stone.
Mr. SCOBLE: I agree with you in the longer term but not in a shorter term.
GILLMOR: OK. We’re talking three months instead of like two weeks.
Mr. SCOBLE: OK. Bu they’re not there yet, you know. Go ahead.
GILLMOR: Go ahead, Rob.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Can I ask you a question? So, what is everyone think the sort of real motivation behind the Facebook username kind of a land grab was? I mean, my take is that that was completely about getting you public and sort of providing you with a forum through which you can share information much more broadly than to just your friend.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, one thing Twitter did really well was that at name. I mean, how did I pimp the show today? I said, you know, follow@Steve Gillmor, you know, and his show is on it one at - and that @name becomes a link in my - in everybody’s, you know, tweet deck or Threadsy or - Threadsy makes it a link, right? So, you can just click on that at and go to Steve Gillmor’s account. I can’t do that really easily yet on Facebook. And the real name was so important way for me to communicate where to go into my friends, you know. Go to facebook.com/stevegillmor or, you know, my scobleizer page, you know. Go to facebook.com/ scobleizer. That was really an important step. But they haven’t yet linked it together to make it nice like Twitter has.
Yeah, I’m with you. And I think - I mean, I guess I’m with Steve as well, which I think that will happen really soon.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
GILLMOR: Well, I thought that this…
Mr. SCOBLE: Like I said, within six months, both of this move together, right? And Steve gets what…
GILLMOR: Six…
Mr. SCOBLE: You know…
GILLMOR: Six months. You really think it’s going to be six months? I mean, the second…
Mr. SCOBLE: It’ll take a while for…
GILLMOR: Of least word and that they stop, you know, fair(ph) well, you know, with it. It will be the - you know, the day that all of the third parties will start rolling it up and providing value-added services. And then, there’s going to be a discussion about what is the third party service. Kevin Marks. Is Google a third party service for Twitter now?
Mr. MARKS: Yeah. I think it is. I think, you know, Twitter has a very expensive(ph) user. I’ve heard that this week from both (unintelligible), which is that they see the multimodality of Twitter but doesn’t made (unintelligible) of the fact that there are lot of this while(ph) getting at it. I think that’s, you know, one more reason that the (unintelligible) work is that they route toward to SMSs. So, it gives you a way of explaining to people SMS you without being able to (unintelligible). Or without having a direct phone number, in some that you can route(ph), more than one way. And that’s - that does work very well. So, there’s I think a lot of this is - is about multimodality in both directions. And that’s sort of - for me, that’s a lot – a lot of the interesting part that is connecting these pieces together. I also, you know, getting back to the - it has the real time. I think it’s also getting back the interplay between immediacy and history. And that’ - a lot of that is where the interest into this kind of way. But if you got all the stuff learning part but you also got (unintelligible) you want to keep for later and that you want make a sense of, a bit of it that will come back and being able to point out of the instantaneous flow into something broader and gather that is a key part of that too. So, we’re starting to see this with the other. And, I think, yeah, the difference between the Facebook and the Twitter or (unintelligible) search was that Facebook were exclusively – I’m not saying that they will let you search them. You know, they were – they were – they’re so very weary of that.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
GILLMOR: Well, they were saying that when they released it that they - I think there’s some nuances about what they are saying about interaction with Google. I don’t think - I think that they have a congenital mistrust or a strategic sort of opposition to Google which I think is going to go away pretty quickly now the Twitter has basically leveled the playing field between the two major players. You know, Rob, do you agree with that?
Mr. GOLDMAN: I think it’s going to be super interesting to see how that plays because my take is that the Google’s kind of worst case scenario, you know, biggest fear is huge amounts of information accumulating in places where they can’t(ph) organize it. I mean, their mission is to organize the world’s information and if all of a sudden really important relevant information to me is starting to pile up in places that they can’t see, I think that’s the threat to their mission. And I think that was happening in a meaningful way on Facebook. And I think Twitter’s kind of public approach is creating a real wedge between what I think Facebook wants to do, which is to try to keep the information proprietary and organize it for you. And what Google wants to do which is to try to be this kind of thin layer on top of the world’s information that make sense to it. I mean, as long as the information is spread out I think there’s going to be a really important role for people who try to reassemble it. And, you know, that’s what Threadsy is trying to do. We’re trying to do it as a communications tool. And I think that’s what - of course, that’s what Google’s trying to do as a search tool. And I think right now the Twitter news this week I think is probably, you know, causing the Facebook execs to have some, you know, long emotional meeting.
GILLMOR: Yeah. Except that - that doesn’t take into account the FriendFeed acquisition. Because if there’s anything that FriendFeed is about, it’s about this kind of aggregation and the sort of blurring or the normalizing between different data stores. So…
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yup, I can’t wait to hear what FriendFeed’s up to. It may be that they’re the search team that’s going to try to figure out how to surface as much of the information as they can.
GILLMOR: Robert, go ahead.
Mr. SCOBLE: I totally agree. I can’t wait to see whether what Paulo is going to show me soon. He’s already said that he’s going to give me an interview and show me something he’s working on, you know…
GILLMOR: Before he does that, I hope he - that they deliver Stream Splicing which they promised from before the…
Mr. SCOBLE: Well, that might be what he is showing me, right? Because he has promised one other FriendFeed feature that he was supposedly thinking on for a while and Stream Splicing was one that he told me - you that he was working on so. I wouldn’t be shocked…
GILLMOR: But that was in the road map so I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, the fact that Gary Burd has left the company may or may not have had an effect on that.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
GILLMOR: Either that means he’s ready or that is not happening.
Mr. SCOBLE: But I think Stream Splicing is really important for getting Facebook into this new world of giving me one feed of all the things I want to watch. I mean, why are we talking of Threadsy, right? Threadsy is doing stream placing of email and Facebook and Twitter into one stream that I can watch on my screen. It’s very useful. And right now, I can’t watch Oprah’s Facebook page along with, you know, TechCrunch’s Facebook page and mix them together into one stream that I watch. I can’t do that. I can sort of do that with, you know, some of these tools but not easily. Here, you know, here on Twitter I can just click, click, click, click, click, add them to a list and now I have those streams spliced together in a useful and easy to manage way.
GILLMOR: We you can’t splice list together.
Mr. SCOBLE: Not list yet but you can sort of see where that’s going to go.
GILLMOR: Right.
Mr. SCOBLE: You know, I’m guessing. You know, this is a race between both tech teams, right? FriendFeed is going to have things that Twitter can’t do easily. I mean, Facebook already has comments. Twitter doesn’t have comments and people keep complaining - I mean, that’s one legitimate thing that we’re still doing on FriendFeed, you know. Over here is my FriendFeed window with the Gillmor Gang. I can’t do that on Twitter and I can do that on Facebook to some extent before it rolls up. The problem is I can’t find that thing on Facebook again.
GILLMOR: The other thing.
Mr. GOLDMAN: I mean, I think the bigger question is just, is it going to end all centralizing in one place? And if it doesn’t, you know, what’s the role of the integrators who are going to try to connect this thing? I mean, to just look at it in practical terms over the last year. I mean, the number of people using social media and regularly updating their status is just - I mean, exploded. I mean, it’s probably 200 million people have come to this in the last 18 months with just huge volumes of new content. So, you’ve got lots of new stuff in lots of new places, and the places are open via API. And to me it’s just a natural - you know, it’s a natural opportunity for integration. And, you know, that’s where we’re playing at Threadsy. And, I think unless it all centralizes in one place, the people who are trying to make sense of it across your sources are going to have a really important role to play.
GILLMOR: So, when you say that that’s where you play, you know, what do you see as the landmarks for your company in terms of what’s you’re going to try and accomplish next?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Well, I think it’s - in a high level, what I can say, is our position is a very special sort of privilege spot on top of all of your communication services. And if we want to sort of deserve that position in your life, we have to add value that you couldn’t get by going to anyone of those services. You know, we’re never going to be able to be the best that everything we do, we’re not going to be the best email client, the best Twitter client, the best Facebook client,, the best social web browser. What we’re going to be is the best integrated communications experience. So, we’re going to try to do things that no single service could ever do. And I think, you know, if you look at great integrators, I think that’s what they’ve done in the past. So, Mint is a good - I think a recent example in the lots of our minds. You know, they had access to all of your financial accounts and they gave you things you couldn’t get at anyone of them. Play like for example your net worth, and so we want to do similarly. We want to integrate all the people you talk to and all the things you’re saying across your services and try to provide value that you wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else. I mean, to Robert’s point, maybe that’s just slicing streams between Facebook and Twitter. And, you know, who knows it might look like something much more complicated.
Mr. SCOBLE: Are you guys working on any curation features? Because once I get everything into streams and I get it my system all working really well and I’m really close to that with Twitter and I’m still working with that on Facebook, but I assume, let’s say that Steve is right, in the next three months we’re going to get all the toys we need to manage our friends and our streams and splice them together and make them usable and make search work and life will be great. The next step is curation. I want to take all that stuff coming across my stream. I want to pick this little tweet or this little Facebook item and shove it out to my audience and explain why that’s important and explain why the person is important who said it.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yup, yup. So, you mentioned this yeah, once before. I mean, so, we’re very interested in the sharing aspect of your social media kind of command center. And we’re thinking a lot about sort of what the best ways to facilitate that. I mean, so far, we don’t have any meaningful sharing features of our own. We let you, you know, favorite a tweet through Twitter or like a post to Facebook, we’re using the underlying services.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yup.
Mr. GOLDMAN: And, we’ve been talking a lot about sort of what we might do to kind of make that happen with a lot of good kind of sharing tools that are out there, posters and the lots of other things. And so, you know, it’s on our minds but if not, at the top at the road map right now.
Mr. SCOBLE: OK.
Mr. GOLDMAN: I mean, what are you using and what would you like to see?
GILLMOR: Hold on a second.
Mr. SCOBLE: Go ahead.
GILLMOR: Kevin, send video, please. Sorry, Roberts. Just - OK, good. Thanks. Go ahead Robert.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, there’s no good tool yet. You know, for instances, I’m looking at Twitter, right? And I want to share this tweet. My choice is to either re-tweet it out or click favorite on it which will put on my favorite list, or I have to copy - I have to make almost a screen capture of this image, copy the screen capture, and then put it somewhere like Flickr or something, and then link it in and then link in everything, which is really over on word press run posters or something like that. And then, I want to write a blog underneath that, you know, tweet. The tweet is the news. And it’s amazing how much news is breaking in Twitter now. I mean, Marissa Mayer announced the Google deal on Twitter, right? And that was the top - that should have been the top item on everybody’s blog is start there, that’s the news. And then we fill in the details where put in more screen captures, where if I met her in the hallway I’d ask her to demo it for me a record a video. Or I – how did I found about FriendFeed’s news, right? I was walking around the Alamo in Texas and I was looking at my tweets come really - and somebody said, you know, somebody said Twitter or Facebook just but FriendFeed. Well, I immediately re-tweeted that out. And then I immediately got on Blog Talk radio with Paul and the Facebook team and recorded an MP3 file which got put in to FriendFeed. But there was no real good way for me to put it all together as one, long stream and to keep adding on to in. So, as Techcrunch add an article or read, write web, or you know, or see or, you know, anybody in the community as they added more information on I can’t just keep adding on to that item. FriendFeed got really close that’s why it goes - I’m still…
Mr. GILLMOR: What do you mean it got really close? It is really close.
Mr. SCOBLE: FriendFeed does not give the ability to curate without other people involved. I’m sorry. It doesn’t. It does not let…
Mr. GILLMOR: I don’t know what that means.
Mr. SCOBLE: I want to write a blog post without you being able to put your comments in between.
Mr. GILLMOR: Oh, this is the fabulous control of the universe.
Mr. SCOBLE: Absolutely. Does TechCrunch let…
Mr. GILLMOR: As Craig Burton says, get over it.
Mr. SCOBLE: Does TechCrunch let me write a blog post? Give me a break.
Mr. GILLMOR: Get over it, Scoble. It’s just absolutely not going to happen.
Mr. SCOBLE: Do you let me enter into your blog when you’re writing a blog?
Mr. GILLMOR: Do we have to re-run that show for you to…
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yeah, again?
Mr. GILLMOR: I think you at the end of that show and said OK.
Mr. GOLDMAN: No, I didn’t say OK.
Mr. GILLMOR: Why didn’t you say you’re back to – tell me honest - how are you going to control…
Mr. GOLDMAN: So you could be your repress - Steve, can you give me your passwords so I can edit your blog while you’re writing it?
Mr. GILLMOR: It’d be fantastic. I don’t have to do any more writing.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCOBLE: If you believe that…
Mr. GILLMOR: If you update everyday…
Mr. SCOBLE: There’s no feed…
Mr. GILLMOR: As long as you…
Mr. SCOBLE: Just give me your – just post your WordPress…
Mr. GILLMOR: You just have to keep, you know, a steady flow of content and I’ll give it to you right after the show.
Mr. GOLDMAN: OK.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCOBLE: Just post in the form that -your password – just post it there so that we can all…
Mr. GILLMOR: No, I didn’t say I’m going to give it to everybody. I’ll say I’d give it to you.
Mr. SCOBLE: Oh…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCOBLE: (Unintelligible) is a control, too, huh?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GILLMOR: No, I’m into free content.
Mr. SCOBLE: OK.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GILLMOR: Kevin Marks, what about Google Wave? Do you think that they’re a threat to Threadsy? I’ll ask you Rob in a minute.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MARKS: Yeah, potentially in some ways in terms of the e-mail cyber. The Wave is small group collaboration. That’s what is – that’s what its weak spot is. It’s not plugged in to the public, web in the same way. It has the – if you have my Wave address you can send me stuff issue. So, it’s not…
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, they actually do have a public thing that…
Mr. MARKS: They have this sort of send - yeah, (unintelligible) thing…
Mr. GILLMOR: You can add to public identity and it’s available to everybody who’s not – who’s on Wave.
Mr. MARKS: Right. But it doesn’t have…
Mr. GILLMOR: It’s kind of like that other thing that Scoble’s so freaked out about. Sidewiki.
Mr. MARKS: Sidewiki. I ran into Ward Cunningham this week at Web 2 Summit, who’s the mentor of the Wiki, had a chat about this. And he said Google has two parts they call. Wiki’s the arm - Sidewiki and Searchwiki - and one that is a Wiki which they don’t call a Wiki, which is Wave. So his take was that Wave is a Wiki and it feels very like, you know, the first iteration of Wiki that he built where the comments were into leave with the document you’re editing. And then you had to go back and clean them up by hand and so on. So, he was seeing it as sort of an evolution of Wiki Space rather than as an evolution of e-mail.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, you know, we were – Alex(ph) and I - we’re visited by the Wave team this week. They were sort of, you know, giving us an update on what the progress and so on. And I was sitting next to, or behind Steph’s machine and this is just about the time of the Apple announcement broke. And then they kill this just for the plain(ph) to go by. Hang on a second. And the – it’s just her screen is - you know, she’s got 5,000 Waves that are – that she’s tracking. I mean, probably not that many but a lot. And it’s what Scoble is talking about. It’s kind of what Threadsy starts look like. It’s this – you know, you can see these stories kind of bubbling up and painting themselves at various points on the screen. It’s very interactive and, you know, I think too much is made of, you know, interruption problem and, you know, people jumping in as Scoble is talking about, and writing all over your blog. But, there is at some point what we’re looking for here, when we talk about stream splicing, we’re talking about, you know, what AJAX-enabled, which is this - you know, the stuff it goes back to what Robert care was doing with PubSub and, you know, opening an HTTP connection back on the peer to peer(ph) days. You know, and basically painting little bits on the screen that added up to provide an interactive, socially-aware reference into what’s happening. So, you know, this is where we kind of got bugged down with what Robert’s concern is, and I think they went it as well, about, you know, taking over your page. It’s not your page anymore. It’s the page of the user and how they orchestrate these bits to be able to provide information. It’s not under your control. It’s under their control.
Mr. MARKS: I think - I mean that was - to me that was the interesting thing about the (unintelligible) announced it was social search, which is saying everyone does not have to see the same results page for the same query, which has been true for a little while with local search and national-based result changing and geographic-based result changing. But to say that you now see different results depending on who you’ve told us your friends are that’s very important – for Google…
Mr. GILLMOR: Does that change the economics of – I imagined that it’s both less of a broad reach and also much more of that targeted, therefore, you know, more likely to click kind of audience. So, the - probably the economics go up.
Mr. MARKS: I – well, this is more the search side than the @ sign. So, the primary value there is that you get better search results, I think. Setting ad against social stuff has always been harder but with Google – with Google – when you’re searching on Google we do the term intent of saying I’m looking for X. So, drawing that through your friends that - that – it maybe a wash on the commercial side. You may actually find it, oh, I’m going through my friend’s click as much more compelling than this broader advertising-based on the other side they may see attention that cause it the other way. But overall it should provide more useful information for people searching.
Mr. GILLMOR: I don’t understand why people think that search is about - you know, social search is about your friends. It’s not about – for me, it’s not about what my friends think…
Mr. MARKS: So, you…
Mr. GILLMOR: It’s about who my friends are interested in and what they think. It’s like at least three, you know, separations removed.
Mr. MARKS: Right. But do you think what the – you think it’s about…
Mr. GILLMOR: I agree that is what the listing is about. Unfortunately, there’s no tools. Tthey’re (unintelligible) once again to the third parties to develop all those tools. And once the third party has named Facebook they’re going to have a real problem.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GILLMOR: Rob?
Mr. GOLDMAN: I mean, so there’s a lot there. I guess – well, so starting with Wave, if you wan to go back there, my take on Wave is very similar to Kevin that is primarily a collaboration tool. I haven’t seen anyone using it in the way you describe Steve where there’s, you know, hundreds of conversations kind of percolating. You know, I imagined that’s probably only the Wave PMs at this point who have that kind of used pattern for it. I think it would be….
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, you know, the reason that’s relevant is that they’re the ones that are designing the product. So, they’re designing from the perceptions of somebody who’s actually, you know, knee-deep in the environment. So, I mean…
Mr. GOLDMAN: Sure. I mean…
Mr. GILLMOR: Other the right and this is going to be a useful paradigm for the wrong, in which case we don’t have to worry about it.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yeah. I mean, my take is that they’ve done really interesting things with the communication protocol underneath kind of building these Waves and message together, the ability to kind of see what happened over time, rewind and playback. What I think they’re missing is what Threadsy is trying to do, which is pull people together across their services and Wave, you know, say what you want about what it can do. It can’t do that, at least not yet. And I think there’s also something kind of important that they’re missing in the way that people are sharing concept today, which is by and large not through small group collaboration and more in the sort of broadcast model either the Twitter style or the Facebook style. And I was surprised to see that more or less missing from Wave. It’s kind of a very slight extension of the e-mail-sharing models as supposed to kind of whole field adoption of the new more sort of social-sharing models. You know, in terms of the way social search is going, I’m with Kevin as well. Again, you know, I think different search results based who your friends are is more interesting in many cases than searching your friend’s stuff. And I think Google is in a very unique position to be able to kind of experiment with that.
Mr. GILLMOR: And what about you? Are you starting to see synergies? What’s your user-based right now? I’m sure you’re not going to tell me but…
Mr. GOLDMAN: Web, the user-based?
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Oh, we’re still in private data and, you know, not talking about using up (unintelligible) anything like that but I guess I would say is that if anyone wants a second out(ph) go to Threadsy (unintelligible) and we’ll send out invites (unintelligible?).
Mr. GILLMOR: I think Google is trying to jam your signal when you said your – give your – say that once more. How do you get there?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Www.threadsy.com and sign up for an invite.
Mr. GILLMOR: So, that’s to be approved personally by you?
Mr. GOLDMAN: That’s to be what?
Mr. GILLMOR: Does that have to be approved personally by you?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Absolutely, not. No. We’re sending them out to, you know, everyone who’ve comes right now.
Mr. GILLMOR: But you won’t tell me how many?
Mr. GOLDMAN: I won’t say how many. Lots.
Mr. GILLMOR: And what are your plans in terms of going, you know, broader, so that people can – once they’re in this system they can invite people.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Well, so it has been fantastic to talk to these early passionate users and see how they’re using the products and what they want from the product, and we are trying to respond as quickly as we can. So, we just added last week the ability to talk back to Facebook so you can now comment back on your Facebook streams and like things directly from Threadsy. We’re bringing your wall post in now and that was a very frequent request from the users. And we have a bunch more of the sort of top-of-the-list needs that we want to take care of and then we’ll open it up.
Mr. GILLMOR: Can you pipe Facebook comments out to the broader network?
Mr. GOLDMAN: No - like re-tweet of Facebook comment essentially?
Mr. GILLMOR: Uh-uh.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Not right now.
Mr. GILLMOR: Is that a violation of the Facebook Connect terms of service?
Mr. GOLDMAN: You know, I think - that’s a good question. I mean, you can cut and paste and do whatever you want with what’s in your stream now. There are limitations about how you can store it on the server side. So, I mean, my sort of quick off-the-top-of-my-head answer is it would depend on the implementation.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, if it was, you know, a status stream of somebody who is - declares themselves the every one status, in other words, open it would follow logically that somebody who’s commenting on that is essentially dealing(ph) that conversation element to the open space.
Mr. GOLDMAN: You would think….
Mr. GILLMOR: Right, so…
Mr. GOLDMAN: That you would think they spoke – would be, you know, excited about having that spread.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, wouldn’t you like that, Robert, if there was some sort of way of being able to - I mean, I find these orphaned Facebook conversations incredibly annoying.
Mr. SCOBLE: Oh, they’re horribly annoying, you know. When you - when you, you know, chat in Facebook conversation - I was just doing that - it disappears and then you can’t get back to. You can’t even search for it. It’s ridiculous.
Mr. GILLMOR: Right. So, what do you think it’s going to happen there? Is there going to be a third party’s? I mean, even…
Mr. SCOBLE: No. That’s something on Facebook themselves has to solve and I think that’s why they bought FriendFeed. And that FriendFeed always left me get back to my old conversations. Every conversations had a permanently. Every conversation was searchable and I can’t do that on Facebook. It was very frustrating. It’s one reason I haven’t put a lot of effort into Facebook yet. When I do get that then I’m going to re-look at Facebook.
Mr. GILLMOR: So, Rob, what is the – how do you walk up to Facebook data? How do you manage this kind of confusing on ramp(ph)?
Mr. GOLDMAN: You mean, how do we integrate it into Threadsy?
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, I mean, you’re using Facebook Connect, right?
Mr. GOLDMAN: We’re using Connect and we’re being really careful to make sure we’re staying in compliance with all their terms of use. And we’re trying to give you as much control as we have kind of inside the playing field that they have set for themselves. And, you know, I think there are big limitations on what you can do with Facebook Content that don’t exist in the case of Twitter Content. And I think right now, that’s a challenge for Facebook.
Mr. GILLMOR: So, in terms of this Talk Back, you’ve just enabled the ability talk back into the Facebook stream, correct?
Mr. GOLDMAN: That’s right. And, you know, it wasn’t like a super straightforward easy API use case but it’s there now, it’s live and it’s working really well. So, yeah, you can comment. You can talk back on wall post. You can comment on things in the stream. You can like things, you know, all the sort of everyday use cases for Facebook you can do inside Threadsy.
Mr. GILLMOR: So, inside Threadsy, you’ve got what we’re all looking for outside of Threadsy.
Mr. GOLDMAN: I guess you could say it that way. I think you all wanted inside Threadsy.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, that’s fine…
Mr. MARKS: So, what’s with me(ph) of Threadsy was that I go there and it says give me all your passwords and it’s not using delegated (unintelligible). And I went on that page and I thought, hmm, no, there are better ways to doing this - this way.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yeah. Well, I saw your comment there. Well, so – I mean, we are implementing Twitter OAuth right now and we implement Facebook Connect. So, in the case of that social media service that has sort of developed, you know, password policies with OAuth, we don’t know your passwords. We don’t want to know your passwords. We just want to do whatever you want us to do with that content. In the case of e-mail, we’re kind of stuck in sort of yesterday’s, you know, authorization architecture. And there’s basically no way for us to get your e-mail without your password today and as soon as that’s available we’re all for it. I mean, we’re not - you know, we’re not anxious to fix things you don’t want give us. We just wanted to deliver the service and right now with e-mail there’s no other way to do it.
Mr. MARKS: I thought there was a pre-based API for e-mail.
Mr. GOLDMAN: I’m sorry?
Mr. GILLMOR: What did you just say, Kevin?
Mr. MARKS: I feel there was pre-based API for e-mail but I may be wrong there.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Well, so you can OAuth with Gmail but you can’t…
Mr. MARKS: Yeah.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Get messages and just get headers. And that - that doesn’t really do it if you want to be an email client.
Mr. MARKS: Right.
Mr. GILLMOR: Robert, you’ve been following the chat, right?
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: Any interesting questions that are bubbling up there that you want us to put here?
Mr. SCOBLE: One was that Ken Sheppardson asked if Facebook still prevent developers from caching data for more than 24 hours. What’s the terms of service - the state of the terms of service? We should do a blog post on that, by the way. What’s that – what’s that looked like…
Mr. GILLMOR: That was the Facebook Connect contract, wasn’t it? So is, right? Rob?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yeah. So it’s covered in Connect, you should check the terms on. I can’t speak to what the current terms are in detail, but what I can say is Threadsy uses the client’s side version of the API so our servers are pretty much out of the loop when it comes to Facebook. It’s all happening down on the client.
Mr. GILLMOR: All right. I just want to walk around the table one more time and then we’re going to wrap this up.
Mr. GOLDMAN: We’re not going to talk about Windows 7 or Flickr tags or anything?
Mr. GILLMOR: Windows? How about server leg(ph), huh?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Looks pretty good.
Mr. GILLMOR: It’s getting better all the time.
Mr. MARKS: Flickr – Flickr people APIs do about – people (unintelligible) people tagging us it’s nice. But it does point out the issues that in each of these cases you could only point to a person whose number does the service. That makes that more obvious when it’s Flickr and with Facebook as well. Certainly what these - and got all these photo tagging things but they’re all bound to the members(ph) of a particular service, you know, the bridge across services that’s going to be a bit more important. That’s why - I thought what was exciting about Threadsy is potentially you’re getting a bundle of different identities from me and correlating them. I think that’s a very useful concept. But the fact that we’re doing it through giving all your passwords it was – it gave me a pause. That said, OK, that’s…
Mr. GILLMOR: Right.
Mr. MARKS: I’m not ready to give you the ability to impersonate me on Google yet.
Mr. GILLMOR: We walk before we run, right?
Mr. GOLDMAN: I promise we won’t.
Mr. GILLMOR: But I mean – you know, real question…
Mr. GOLDMAN: You would know my (unintelligible) account.
Mr. GILLMOR: I mean, the problem with that Flickr thing, I was sent an e-mail. They’ve got some new marketing campaign around this new tagging feature, right? And I wasted about half an hour trying to find out what my Yahoo! Id is and getting wrapped(ph) for the 10th year in a row.
Mr. MARKS: Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: I mean…
Mr. MARKS: Yeah, Yahoo! use two-week time out is already a bad idea.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, how about a 10-year time out? When do I get my name back? I mean, I entered it on some email address that I’ve long since been fired from and…
Mr. MARKS: Yeah. We’ll that’s why, you know, she bundles. This is one of the things that frankly got very right, which was when you sign in with your old Google ID, your old Facebook ID and your old Twitter ID, it wraps them together and then you can use them again overtime with – and you (unintelligible) with anyone you need to pull it back together again. Which means that you don’t have - you don’t have this - oh, I don’t have that email address anymore because the bundles are wrapped together. I expect to see more of that every time as well.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, I’m still - how’s that blocking of Scoble going? I block Scoble the other day just so we could test out the - whether or not that was, you know, propagated across Lists and it turns out that it’s kind of broken, right?
Mr. SCOBLE: Somewhat. First of all, I can still go to Steve Gillmor – you know, twitter.com/stevegillmor and I can still obviously see your page even though…
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah, I can write Scoble too, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be…
Mr. SCOBLE: And I can’t - oh, this user has blocked me from following them. So, I can’t follow you and I can’t put you on a list ’cause there’s no list here because you blocked me. But, if I went to a list that you’re listed on - let’s see if I can find on that has a small number of people. So, this easy Julie trend has list - has put you on a list.
Mr. GILLMOR: All right. How do you spell that? I got to block them too.
Mr. SCOBLE: No, I’m not going to let you do that. And I can see you - you are still - I can still see that you’re on this list. And I can still click on you. I just can’t - you know, I can’t automatically, you know… I can see that…
Mr. GILLMOR: OK. So, there’s a hole there.
Mr. SCOBLE: I’ve (unintelligible) you’d blocked me. But it’s on like FriendFeed – on FriendFeed if you blocked me I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t - you wouldn’t show up in search…
Mr. GILLMOR: That’s why I mentioned in the context of what Kevin was talking about. FriendFeed really closed the holes in this architecture and Twitter continues to have these weird side cases.
Mr. MARKS: Well, I said the thing that I found wrong with the Lists stuff in Twitter is that if we make a Gillmor Gang list, it filters out as acting each other. It doesn’t show us talking to each other within that list, whereas, you know…
Mr. GILLMOR: As you know, I don’t really consider that to be a limitation since the @ sign I think is broken to begin with.
Mr. MARKS: You know, but that’s a separate - you know, that’s a separate debate. The point is that hiding a chunk of the stuff we say even if we’re talking to each other. So actually…
Mr. GILLMOR: Right. So, you have to put a period, and unless you’re like me and you just take the @ sign off and everything is fine.
Mr. MARKS: I think – that doesn’t look at all. Yeah.
Mr. GILLMOR: No, it works fine. And when you have clients like Threadsy respecting, you know, doing a look-up on Twitter for a name, a username, and lighting that up, then the @ sign goes away too. That’s then would rack a 139 characters.
Mr. MARKS: Yeah. But my point is that the way to do what List does at the moment is to make a new account and follow a bunch of people and then you can use that account as a proxy and you can share that with other people.
Mr. GILLMOR: Right I don’t understand it. That’s what Scoble says, right?
Mr. MARKS: So that’s - I mean – well, if you’re using what – if you’re using…
Mr. GILLMOR: To get over the 200 limit or the 500 limit or - what is it?
Mr. SCOBLE: For what? For numbers, it’s 500 officially, although I found out last night that Twitter can white list you into a longer least limit. So, we’ll talk about that…
Mr. GILLMOR: You know what? I can’t wait for - I can’t wait for the suggested user list list.
Mr. Mr. SCOBLE: Well, it’s not – it’s suggested they mark the special user list web…
Mr. GILLMOR: Yeah. There are two people on the suggested user list list, right now. Microsoft and Google.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah. They get their full feed. That what we all want, we want to feel those – suck down that 10 terabytes of a bit or a gigabytes of data a day and…
Mr. GILLMOR: Let them eat cake. All right. So, Rob, final thoughts?
Mr. GOLDMAN: You know, no, it’s been a great conversation. I mean, my take is that, you know, at a high level, everything we talked about is really kind of part of, you know, logical and expected sort of expansion of innovation as all of this communication stuff is kind of shifting underneath our feet. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes over the next couple of years and then it’ll probably comeback together we kind of have our patterns established and we have a kind of winners and losers. So, I think right now, you’re going to see lots of exciting new things and you know, Threadsy is just kind of one of the voices that are emerging to kind of put these things together.
Mr. GILLMOR: Robert?
Mr. SCOBLE: I’m having fun out there looking at all the stuff and playing a bit. I don’t have too much to say other than I have Windows 7 behind me and say, I want to go play with that.
Mr. GILLMOR: OK. And you got FriendFeed in front of you.
Mr. SCOBLE: FriendFeed, Facebook Twitter, and a few other things. Threadsy.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Threadsy.
Mr. SCOBLE: Yeah, I’m playing with it. First of all, I can’t get in for some reason even though I deleted the cookies like you suggested and the UI is still (unintelligible). And the other problem with U is I’m doing - I’m doing probably somewhere around 80% of my social networking on my iPhone. And it’s tough for me to see a role for Threadsy there until you get an iPhone client.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Oh, yeah. So, you know, you’re not the first person to have said that. We’re thinking a look about that.
Mr. GILLMOR: And what about support for FriendFeed?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Threadsy support for FriendFeed?
Mr. GILLMOR: Uh-huh.
Mr. GOLDMAN: Probably will happen first with RSS.
Mr. GILLMOR: How do you mean by that?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Well, I mean, all the FriendFeed search and lots of the FriendFeed stuff is just available via RSS so it’s just the easiest path in, I think.
Mr. GILLMOR: What’s the delta in terms of delay?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Oh, I don’t know. That’s a good question.
Mr. GILLMOR: So you haven’t explored South or PubSub PubHubbub?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Well, we looked at it but - I mean, not seriously. We just have too much on the plate.
Mr. GILLMOR: So, you don’t see yourself as competitive with them?
Mr. GOLDMAN: No. I mean, I think it’s an enabling technology that we could integrate and should, you know, especially once there’s some consensus.
Mr. GILLMOR: So, you might wait until some of those feature service in Facebook?
Mr. GOLDMAN: Yeah, I mean. I’m - I think we’re all, you know, waiting with bated breath to see what happens to FriendFeed.
Mr. GILLMOR: Well, the reason I asked you is that if you do come up with an iPhone client, there’s a hole you could drive a truck through for a decent FriendFeed iPhone client. So, you could solve a number of problems with a single shot. OK.
Mr. GOLDMAN: I’m making notes.
Mr. MARKS: So, I - have you looked to the activity stream stuff yet? That’s another push-push over the Threadsy is. The activity stream spec is designed to do this kind of intra-operation that has a chunk of interesting stuff and it’s already got MySpace, Facebook, NetFlix and a bunch of others who are outputting stuff in that format. So, I think that would make sense for you to look at that that may give you a way to do a sort of feed-based integration that you can then use in several places.
Mr. GOLDMAN: OK. We’ll look. We’ll take a look. Cool.
Mr. GILLMOR: All right. This is Steve Gillmor. This has been the Gillmor Gang. I want to thank everybody who showed up. Robert Scoble, Rob Goldman, Kevin Marks, a brief appearance from Dan Farber, driving my director crazy with - I never get this right. Again, I want to thank Rackspace for sponsoring the Gillmor Gang Live on Building43.com. And this TriCast is brought to you in conjunction with New Tech. And I want to thank everybody who showed up and especially those who didn’t. We’ll see you again next time. Bye-bye.
Mr. MARKS: Thank you.
Mr. GILLMOR: Thank you.
