Blame FriendFeed

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/24/blame-friendfeed/

by markbao • 18 years ago

12 17 18 years ago

techcrunch.com

tptacek• 18 years ago

Can somebody translate this to English? I can't tell what parts are sarcastic, and I can't decode the cryptic in-jokes.

randy4• 18 years ago

Translation (as I read it):

Twitter was down due to a bug in their Jabber APIs.

Although FriendFeed does not use this API, I obviously don't know that, so I'll pretend to act smart and smugly blame them for Twitter's downtime.

Also, FriendFeed has nothing going for them minus Twitter. Forget about their 34 other supported services, evangelical community, and the fact that we already proclaimed them this years Twitter (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/friendfeed-is-this-year...). Yup, nothing.

Now if you'll forgive me, I must return to sucking on the teat of my God that is Twitter.

In other news, I am high as a kite.

breily• 18 years ago

Nice try at playing Mark Pilgrim - evidently you disagree with the article. You're right that Friendfeed probably doesn't use the Jabber API, but what else is wrong about it?

I don't use friendfeed, but whenever I see friendfeed widgets on people's blogs, they have nothing but Twitter messages and RSS entries - I can get those elsewhere, with no trouble at all. If Twitter blocks friendfeed, what else do they have going for them?

joao• 18 years ago

The difference between TechCrunch posts such as this and Valleywag: at least Valleywag don't take themselves too seriously.

brlewis2• 18 years ago

What should I do right now? Should I do some hacking or write "Why not to get on covered on TechCrunch"?

brlewis2• 18 years ago

Hacked a tiny embeddable slide show.

nuggien• 18 years ago

Where do I sign the petition to ban *crunch posts on HN?

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

You'll find the petition here: http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

or here: http://news.ycombinator.com/submit

to get other content to the front page

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

I think a petition for down-voting on articles would be more productive.

I, for one, wish there were a ban on all Twitter related posts...

ojbyrne3• 18 years ago

I'm not a big fan of Mr. Gillmor, but some of this was nearly cogent, and even funny.

And it seems to me, the fact that friendfeed is entirely parasitic makes one wonder how it can survive once it actually starts to compete with the sites it aggregates. Of course the same thing could have been of google once upon a time.

randy4• 18 years ago

I don't know, maybe by perhaps driving traffic back towards the original site? Yeah, I think that's how it worked for Google (and all other services that have APIs). You might even have heard of the little known market known as SEO these days (or in more familiar words: parasite baiting).

ojbyrne3• 18 years ago

"Perhaps" is a good word. Not to be snarky, just that the result is still in doubt. You have to be large relative to the sites you're aggregating to "drive" traffic.

jonknee• 18 years ago

TechCrunch didn't exactly have a high bar for technical knowledge before, but Gillmor is definitely lowering the bar. He's the John Dvorak of web 2.0. He's perfect for TC's style of throwing shit up against the wall and not linking (and possibly blocking) anyone that refutes it.

Blame FriendFeed

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