Did I harm my blog by FriendFeeding this year?

December 22, 2008 By

Since I’ve been blogging eight years this month I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my blog and how I want to do things differently in 2009.

I told Mike Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, that I wonder if I’ve made smart time investments in 2008 by spending so much time on Twitter and friendfeed. Yeah, I knew about the Chinese earthquake before pretty much anyone, and 45 minutes before CNN reported it, but doing that required being online with Twitter open late at night after most of you had gone to sleep or were watching some TV.

He just posted that I need a friendfeed intervention, which is why I’m writing this post.

About a month ago I asked people over on FriendFeed and the comments came in hot and heavy. Of course most of them thought I did a good thing by spending so much time on FriendFeed this year.

How much time? I told Arrington tonight that I bet it’s seven hours a day or more. I started in late February. So, that’s around 2,000 hours. What did I get for my 2,000 hour investment this year?

22,997 followers.
6,841 comments. (These are blogs and items I had something to say about, so I left a comment on them).
13,078 likes. (These are blogs and items made by other people that I wanted to share with you).
I manually followed 5,405 people. (You can see all the content they generate in real time here).

Anyway, what did I give up by spending time on Twitter and friendfeed?

  1. A few of my friends think I am not as good a thought leader anymore because they don’t get as many long posts as I used to do.
  2. If you check Compete.com you’ll see my overall traffic went down about 14% this year while FriendFeed’s traffic went up 4,056%.
  3. I don’t get any money from friendfeed, while on my blog I do sell ads now.
  4. I’m not breaking as many stories anymore so I’m showing up on TechMeme less and less.
  5. Arrington himself told me he is reading me less on my blog, although lots of the “A list” crowd have been showing up on friendfeed now that it has hit a certain audience size and is starting to show up on their referral logs.

What did I gain by being on friendfeed and Twitter?

  1. I now get a much wider-range of news and am available to a wider range of people.
  2. My words now get indexed by the two most popular “real-time web” search engines: Twitter Search and friendfeed search. I know people who get their news by visiting Twitter search and looking at what news is “trending,” or becoming more popular.
  3. I am now part of the conversation in a way that I’d never be if I were just blogging. Seth Godin, for instance, only blogs and he rarely gets discussed on Twitter or friendfeed. If he were active he’d be discussed 25x more.
  4. I’ve made a lot of friends that are just reading me on twitter, I’ve met many people at Tweetups and the like that I’d never have met if I weren’t so active.
  5. By being active I’ve been quoted in countless articles about Twitter or friendfeed, which helps me too.
  6. Because I listen to the conversation I am getting better video interviews. Compete.com shows that FastCompany.TV is growing nicely this year and has taken up the slack for my blog. Add that into all my new readers on Twitter and friendfeed and I’m happy about my total readership. Seagate deserves a lot of thanks there for sponsoring FastCompany.TV back when there were no viewers.
  7. I now have a new news source that other bloggers won’t have: a crowd of 5,400 people who are bringing me the best news from around the web in real time. Already I’m seeing stuff there that will turn into blog posts and insights that other people aren’t seeing. Because I’ve build relationships with many of these people over the past year they call me and warn me about important news before they call other people. This “funnel” of news could be a sizeable advantage for someone trying to compete in a very competitive space.
  8. I now have a list of 23,000 people on friendfeed and 44,692 on Twitter that I can show potential sponsors. Before all I could say is my monthly uniques.
  9. In friendfeed Mike Arrington has 15,108 followers and I have 22,999. Mike has a LOT more blog readers than I have, so he should have dramatically more followers than I have on friendfeed. But by participating in these services I have collected more subscribers. Do they offset the same number of blog readers I’d have if I spent so much time blogging instead of hanging out on friendfeed? That’s the question that got Mike and I to talk.

Why does this all matter? Well, if you are going to do this as a business you’ve got to prove how many readers you have and demonstrate both audience size as well as influence.

The other thing that advertisers are asking me for is quantitative data about who is reading me. Some companies now don’t want to reach geeks, for instance. So, they are looking at your social networks to see what kind of audience you’ve attracted.

So, what do you think? Do I need a friendfeed intervention? Looking forward to having a good conversation. Of COURSE we are talking about this on friendfeed. In fact, in multiple places. :-)

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  • http://www.Leebow.com Ken Leebow

    In a word: “Scary.” In a phrase: “Get a life.”

    Technology is grand. It’s great for education, entertainment, business and more. However, I sure am glad my family, nature, and other sources pull me off the grid — frequently.

  • http://culturekitchen.com/ liza

    maynas eric hits it over the head with his comment. i actually propose we stop talking about “microblogging” and start describing twitter and friendfeed as “social SMS”.

  • http://culturekitchen.com liza

    maynas eric hits it over the head with his comment. i actually propose we stop talking about “microblogging” and start describing twitter and friendfeed as “social SMS”.

  • Devon

    Time to balance the push and pull between your feeds and blog posts to ensure that you keep your blog relevant (and generating revenue) and your information immediate (by following / being followed) through the feeds

    All about balance

  • Devon

    Time to balance the push and pull between your feeds and blog posts to ensure that you keep your blog relevant (and generating revenue) and your information immediate (by following / being followed) through the feeds

    All about balance

  • Brian Theodore

    Robert,

    Sadly, I didn’t follow you once on friendfeed/twitter throughout 2008, but did keep coming to your blog. Every time I went to your friendfeed page, it was just too messy and disjointed to give me anything to really read – signal to noise problem IMHO.

    Unlike your blog where the focus is the content, with comments to complement, ff is basically all comments with little content – and not that interesting to someone that isn’t so heavily plugged in as yourself and doesn’t spend as much time following.

    I hope you keep blogging, because you’re an insightful guy with interesting things to say, too bad all that seems to be lost with what makes it to ff/twitter…. not your fault, just some of the limitations of microblogging.

    Have a great holiday!

  • Brian Theodore

    Robert,

    Sadly, I didn’t follow you once on friendfeed/twitter throughout 2008, but did keep coming to your blog. Every time I went to your friendfeed page, it was just too messy and disjointed to give me anything to really read – signal to noise problem IMHO.

    Unlike your blog where the focus is the content, with comments to complement, ff is basically all comments with little content – and not that interesting to someone that isn’t so heavily plugged in as yourself and doesn’t spend as much time following.

    I hope you keep blogging, because you’re an insightful guy with interesting things to say, too bad all that seems to be lost with what makes it to ff/twitter…. not your fault, just some of the limitations of microblogging.

    Have a great holiday!

  • http://bloghh.worpress.com/ Herschel

    Maybe you should take a few days during the Christmas/New Year’s break and refine you personal and professional mission statement. And then determine what strategy and tactics best support that mission.

    Since you’ve been doing videos your blog pretty much serves as an advertising space where you say “Here, watch this video for this reason.”

    I guess if 22K people actually follow you and pay attention to your feed, then there is a lot of value in that though.

    So I guess the only thing else I would suggest is balance. Don’t let one media platform dominate your message and mission. Look at the Newspaper industry. If they would have embraced the Internet 10-15 years ago and developed an outstanding online presence to compliment their traditional print service, they would have been better off during the transition to the purely digital media platform that is becomming the norm.

    On a side note and just my opinion, seven hours a day is a lot of time in front of the computer doing twits and ff. Don’t you have a personal life?

  • http://bloghh.worpress.com Herschel

    Maybe you should take a few days during the Christmas/New Year’s break and refine you personal and professional mission statement. And then determine what strategy and tactics best support that mission.

    Since you’ve been doing videos your blog pretty much serves as an advertising space where you say “Here, watch this video for this reason.”

    I guess if 22K people actually follow you and pay attention to your feed, then there is a lot of value in that though.

    So I guess the only thing else I would suggest is balance. Don’t let one media platform dominate your message and mission. Look at the Newspaper industry. If they would have embraced the Internet 10-15 years ago and developed an outstanding online presence to compliment their traditional print service, they would have been better off during the transition to the purely digital media platform that is becomming the norm.

    On a side note and just my opinion, seven hours a day is a lot of time in front of the computer doing twits and ff. Don’t you have a personal life?

  • http://jimpick.com/ Jim Pick

    I don’t see the problem with heavy use of Twitter/Friendfeed, because that means you don’t have to clutter up your influential blog with ephemerata. I love Todd Sieling’s concept of a ‘slowblog’.

  • http://jimpick.com/ Jim Pick

    I don’t see the problem with heavy use of Twitter/Friendfeed, because that means you don’t have to clutter up your influential blog with ephemerata. I love Todd Sieling’s concept of a ‘slowblog’.

  • greg

    Robert,

    Are you in the news business? Or are you in the commentary business? I would think the latter. You write about trends and issues before others may see them, but that is part of the process of being in business/technology commentary.

    I think your greatest advatage and best product, is not short little tweets, but the longer thought peices. The longer items are what demonstrates your knowledge, expertise, and forecasting. These traits are what give your opinion weight and make you valuable.

    I agree with

  • greg

    Robert,

    Are you in the news business? Or are you in the commentary business? I would think the latter. You write about trends and issues before others may see them, but that is part of the process of being in business/technology commentary.

    I think your greatest advatage and best product, is not short little tweets, but the longer thought peices. The longer items are what demonstrates your knowledge, expertise, and forecasting. These traits are what give your opinion weight and make you valuable.

    I agree with

  • http://www.makeitbigingames.com/ Jeff Tunnell

    With all of your Twitter, FF, cell phone video interviewing, and Fast Company TV, I didn’t even realize you blogged any more. I miss your old blogs.

    To be honest, I think you have spread your personal brand too thin.

    Though the Internet is filled with noise and a seemingly endless amount of info, in reality there is too little new, thoughtful content being created. Seth Godin does create a lot of original thoughtful content that spreads on its own. He does not need to try to become his marketing department by spending too much time on FF or Twitter.

  • http://www.makeitbigingames.com Jeff Tunnell

    With all of your Twitter, FF, cell phone video interviewing, and Fast Company TV, I didn’t even realize you blogged any more. I miss your old blogs.

    To be honest, I think you have spread your personal brand too thin.

    Though the Internet is filled with noise and a seemingly endless amount of info, in reality there is too little new, thoughtful content being created. Seth Godin does create a lot of original thoughtful content that spreads on its own. He does not need to try to become his marketing department by spending too much time on FF or Twitter.

  • http://www.blogworldexpo.com/ Rick Calvert

    You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….

    You were featured in this very funny video:

    In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.

  • http://www.blogworldexpo.com Rick Calvert

    You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….

    You were featured in this very funny video:

    In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.

  • http://www.blogworldexpo.com/ Rick Calvert

    You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….

    You were featured in this very funny video:

    Well you made part two anyway =p

    In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.

  • http://www.blogworldexpo.com Rick Calvert

    You forgot to mention something else you gained from spending so much time on Twitter and FriendFeed Robert….

    You were featured in this very funny video:

    Well you made part two anyway =p

    In all seriousness I think you are both right. Spend just a little less time on twitter and a little more time on your blog and your video blogging.

  • http://www.tonywright.com/ Tony Wright

    Robert,

    (First of all, you should use RescueTime to truly understand what percentage of your work life you invest where! <– Shameless plug!)

    Twitter & Friendfeed are pretty much forums/chatrooms… They are great places for you to invest some time… 2-way conversation is good.

    But I’d question what you’ve “gained”. I don’t think a lot of people there constitute a “new” audience for you. I don’t follow you on either service (sorry, it’s like drinking from a firehose!), but many/most of the things you write about that are relevant to me get to me somehow (retweeting, techmeme, what have you).

    Further, I’d question the number of “followers”. First, most of those people aren’t reading what you say… Following does NOT equal consumption/engagement.

    Pretend you’d invested ALL of that time in your blog and instead of losing 14% of your traffic, you gained. And pretend you did a bunch of A/B testing to get your RSS subscription up. And pretend you focused a bit on SEO. And pretend you created/emphasized an email subscription program and promoted it. How many more individuals would you have touched? My guess is way the hell more than the 20-30k represented on Twitter/FF (lots of overlap in the two userbases, I’d imagine).

    Heck, how many unique visitors does the 14% by itself represent?

  • http://www.tonywright.com Tony Wright

    Robert,

    (First of all, you should use RescueTime to truly understand what percentage of your work life you invest where! <– Shameless plug!)

    Twitter & Friendfeed are pretty much forums/chatrooms… They are great places for you to invest some time… 2-way conversation is good.

    But I’d question what you’ve “gained”. I don’t think a lot of people there constitute a “new” audience for you. I don’t follow you on either service (sorry, it’s like drinking from a firehose!), but many/most of the things you write about that are relevant to me get to me somehow (retweeting, techmeme, what have you).

    Further, I’d question the number of “followers”. First, most of those people aren’t reading what you say… Following does NOT equal consumption/engagement.

    Pretend you’d invested ALL of that time in your blog and instead of losing 14% of your traffic, you gained. And pretend you did a bunch of A/B testing to get your RSS subscription up. And pretend you focused a bit on SEO. And pretend you created/emphasized an email subscription program and promoted it. How many more individuals would you have touched? My guess is way the hell more than the 20-30k represented on Twitter/FF (lots of overlap in the two userbases, I’d imagine).

    Heck, how many unique visitors does the 14% by itself represent?

  • Josh

    Scoble – i read your twitter/FF posts all the time and find them extremely useful as i don’t have 15 – 20 minutes to read blog posts. Little snippets of advice/direction/updates/trends is getting me what i need.

    Each tweet that i find useful reinforces my intuition to look to Scoblizer, Fast Company.tv, and other places on the web where I know i can find you.

    In other words, it builds your “brand” and will pay off in the long run.

  • Josh

    Scoble – i read your twitter/FF posts all the time and find them extremely useful as i don’t have 15 – 20 minutes to read blog posts. Little snippets of advice/direction/updates/trends is getting me what i need.

    Each tweet that i find useful reinforces my intuition to look to Scoblizer, Fast Company.tv, and other places on the web where I know i can find you.

    In other words, it builds your “brand” and will pay off in the long run.

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  • http://harrisonpowers.com/ Harrison Powers

    Robert, I wanted to thank you for linking that friendfeed discussion on saving journalism! I was curious where you’ve been, and have been ignoring friendfeed for no real reason. I now see how useful it is.

    It does not look like you have been wasting any time, rather participating (dare I say leading) in this growing new world of communication. Keep up whatever you’re doing.

  • http://harrisonpowers.com Harrison Powers

    Robert, I wanted to thank you for linking that friendfeed discussion on saving journalism! I was curious where you’ve been, and have been ignoring friendfeed for no real reason. I now see how useful it is.

    It does not look like you have been wasting any time, rather participating (dare I say leading) in this growing new world of communication. Keep up whatever you’re doing.

  • http://ravant.com/ Daniel

    I actually miss your blog. I’m not into the whole twitter/friendfeed thing.

  • http://ravant.com Daniel

    I actually miss your blog. I’m not into the whole twitter/friendfeed thing.

  • http://websearch.about.com/ Wendy

    Quantity does not equal quality.

  • http://websearch.about.com Wendy

    Quantity does not equal quality.

  • Pete

    Robert – I left a similar comment on TechCrunch also. I unfollowed you on Twitter a couple months back because I found myself constantly scrolling through your tweets. As someone who is focused on working and family life, there is no way I can parse your endless stream of Twitters into something coherent. A lot of it is @ replies, as if Twitter is your replacement for IM. Maybe this is where you see the value.

    You should also factor the “quality” of your followers into your analysis. You may have 22K followers, but my guess is that a vast majority of those people followed you and Guy Kawasaki, etc., because someone told them to follow you when they joined Twitter. It’s common wisdom (why, I have no idea) to start on Twitter by following the high volume tweeters.

    Pete

  • Pete

    Robert – I left a similar comment on TechCrunch also. I unfollowed you on Twitter a couple months back because I found myself constantly scrolling through your tweets. As someone who is focused on working and family life, there is no way I can parse your endless stream of Twitters into something coherent. A lot of it is @ replies, as if Twitter is your replacement for IM. Maybe this is where you see the value.

    You should also factor the “quality” of your followers into your analysis. You may have 22K followers, but my guess is that a vast majority of those people followed you and Guy Kawasaki, etc., because someone told them to follow you when they joined Twitter. It’s common wisdom (why, I have no idea) to start on Twitter by following the high volume tweeters.

    Pete

  • JCLeftie

    Robert,

    Part of the issue is that we are becoming more of an ADHD society on a daily basis. I agree with the others that have stated you should try to balance both your blog and Twitter/FriendFeed. At the end of the day, you should consider a blog post summary (to share with those who don’t hang on your up-to-the-nanosecond updates). Not a regurgitation, but what you learned or achieved throughout the day, and what you can use out of it for tomorrow and beyond.

    I think THAT is what people are looking for.

    Jamie

  • JCLeftie

    Robert,

    Part of the issue is that we are becoming more of an ADHD society on a daily basis. I agree with the others that have stated you should try to balance both your blog and Twitter/FriendFeed. At the end of the day, you should consider a blog post summary (to share with those who don’t hang on your up-to-the-nanosecond updates). Not a regurgitation, but what you learned or achieved throughout the day, and what you can use out of it for tomorrow and beyond.

    I think THAT is what people are looking for.

    Jamie

  • http://davemartin.blogspot.com/ Dave Martin

    Robert, continue to be true to yourself no matter the rants of the crowd. You have built a following for a variety of reasons including your tireless dedication and hard work. Let me suggest the obvious: a great many have come to enjoy this multichannel “living out loud” that you do so very well. Keep on keeping it real and doing so in ways that you find rewarding. Please accept my sincere best wishes for continued success in 2009.

  • http://davemartin.blogspot.com Dave Martin

    Robert, continue to be true to yourself no matter the rants of the crowd. You have built a following for a variety of reasons including your tireless dedication and hard work. Let me suggest the obvious: a great many have come to enjoy this multichannel “living out loud” that you do so very well. Keep on keeping it real and doing so in ways that you find rewarding. Please accept my sincere best wishes for continued success in 2009.

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  • http://andybeard.eu AndyBeard

    Your blog traffic isn’t down as much as mine, but then I haven’t blogged at all for 6 months (that doesn’t mean it is time to unsubscribe though)

    Friendfeed isn’t Quantified, but Scobleizer and Fastcompany.tv are.

    Seems to me there is a huge correlation between Robert Scoble driving traffic from his BLOG to Friendfeed, and their traffic as estimated by Quantcast.

    http://www.quantcast.com/profile/traffic-compare?domain0=scobleizer.com&domain1=andybeard.eu&domain2=fastcompany.tv&domain3=friendfeed.com&domain4=

    Friendfeed really need to get Quantified.

    At Friendfeed, my feeling is you are a big fish, ok a whale… in a very small pond. Sure you can help grow that pond and influence it, but it is very hard to grow it from within.
    I tried that when in the games industry, growing first a CD publisher then a dev studio in Poland. It was a constant uphill battle.

    Alternatively you are in the fortunate position to be able to grow from the outside. You can still be a part of the community. Send your likes at the same time as your old shared feed (no one mentioned the influence you played growing Google Reader)

    You are such a huge participant in FF, but for some reason you don’t have the FF comment widget here on the blog, there are a number of alternatives.
    Just by participating with FF in that reduced capacity, but from here on the blog, you will have a lot more chance to grow it from without.

    How much additional time you spend on FF/Twitter really depends on how you want to manage your time, but there are many aggregation methods that can be used to pre-filter.

    Fastcompany.tv will benefit from Scobleizer being front row rather than FF – it doesn’t matter how good the content is without people seeing it.

  • http://andybeard.eu/ Andy Beard

    Your blog traffic isn’t down as much as mine, but then I haven’t blogged at all for 6 months (that doesn’t mean it is time to unsubscribe though)

    Friendfeed isn’t Quantified, but Scobleizer and Fastcompany.tv are.

    Seems to me there is a huge correlation between Robert Scoble driving traffic from his BLOG to Friendfeed, and their traffic as estimated by Quantcast.

    http://www.quantcast.com/profile/traffic-compare?domain0=scobleizer.com&domain1=andybeard.eu&domain2=fastcompany.tv&domain3=friendfeed.com&domain4=

    Friendfeed really need to get Quantified.

    At Friendfeed, my feeling is you are a big fish, ok a whale… in a very small pond. Sure you can help grow that pond and influence it, but it is very hard to grow it from within.
    I tried that when in the games industry, growing first a CD publisher then a dev studio in Poland. It was a constant uphill battle.

    Alternatively you are in the fortunate position to be able to grow from the outside. You can still be a part of the community. Send your likes at the same time as your old shared feed (no one mentioned the influence you played growing Google Reader)

    You are such a huge participant in FF, but for some reason you don’t have the FF comment widget here on the blog, there are a number of alternatives.
    Just by participating with FF in that reduced capacity, but from here on the blog, you will have a lot more chance to grow it from without.

    How much additional time you spend on FF/Twitter really depends on how you want to manage your time, but there are many aggregation methods that can be used to pre-filter.

    Fastcompany.tv will benefit from Scobleizer being front row rather than FF – it doesn’t matter how good the content is without people seeing it.

  • http://www.stealthmode.com/ francinehardaway

    I invited a bunch of people to Friendfeed yesterday from Twitter and got a lot of pushback. Most people who don’t do this for a living can only concentrate on one service. Keep blogging.

  • http://www.stealthmode.com francinehardaway

    I invited a bunch of people to Friendfeed yesterday from Twitter and got a lot of pushback. Most people who don’t do this for a living can only concentrate on one service. Keep blogging.

  • http://lettershometoyou.wordpress.com/ ian in hamburg

    Twitter is getting cluttered with newsfeeds and other crap, and will soon be taken over by the corporations and the marketers. Yuck.

  • http://lettershometoyou.wordpress.com/ ian in hamburg

    Twitter is getting cluttered with newsfeeds and other crap, and will soon be taken over by the corporations and the marketers. Yuck.

  • toivo

    hi

    it is not an insult but …. you are just crazy. in a _bad_way. you could just write short (140ch) posts on the wordpress as well. you could just have different layout per post or category.

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/art-direction/

  • toivo

    hi

    it is not an insult but …. you are just crazy. in a _bad_way. you could just write short (140ch) posts on the wordpress as well. you could just have different layout per post or category.

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/art-direction/

  • Christopher Coulter

    I think it’s a good thing, keep the sociopaths offa the blogs, isolate them on virtual islands, where they can tweet and yap all day, not messing up Google and other engines with inane fluff.

  • Christopher Coulter

    I think it’s a good thing, keep the sociopaths offa the blogs, isolate them on virtual islands, where they can tweet and yap all day, not messing up Google and other engines with inane fluff.

  • http://www.magmawave.com/ danielmcvicar

    pls write mmore blogposts. :) ok? twitter and friendfeed klutter and your posts let me enjoy some thoughts. am I over 140 characters yet?

  • http://www.magmawave.com danielmcvicar

    pls write mmore blogposts. :) ok? twitter and friendfeed klutter and your posts let me enjoy some thoughts. am I over 140 characters yet?

  • http://techiteasy.org/ Vincent van Wylick

    truth be told, I always attributed your decreasing blogging to your video-work, back during the (was it pre?)fastcompany-days. It’s so much harder to index that kind of stuff through Techmeme et al and feels pretty incompatible with this whole blogging thing anyway (whereas you can skim text, you can’t really skim video).

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