FriendFeed was founded in 2007 by four former Googlers: Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit, and Sanjeev Singh. Before leaving Google, the guys helped design and launch several well-known products, including Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Groups. FriendFeed was their vision for a centralized sharing service — kind of like Facebook, only without all the extra stuff. It’s basically a content aggregator:

And so begins the next step in Facebook’s assault on Twitter.  Is this a marriage made in heaven?

Mark Zuckerberg and FriendFeed Co-Founders Celebrate Deal

Zuckerberg posted a photo of himself along with FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit, James Norris, Bret Taylor to his Facebook account, with the caption “Photo from our negotiation / signing party last night with the FriendFeed founders.

Twitter.com subject to a so-called denial-of-service attack, according to the firm’s official blog. Denial-of-service attacks take various forms but often involve a company’s servers being flooded with data in an effort to disable them.

The outage began Thursday morning but the geographic scale of the attack is still not known!
“On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack,” said company co-founder Biz Stone on the company’s blog. 08/06/2009

Sent to CNN.com by Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder:

“There’s no indication that this attack is related to any previous activities. We are currently the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we defend and later investigate.”

08.07.09

Twitter Service Spotty as Attacks Continue (New York Times)

A massive denial-of-service attack that disabled Twitter for much of Thursday continued on Friday. Twitter said its defenses are keeping the site largely accessible to users, but some third-party applications, such as TwitterBerry for BlackBerry smartphones, are still having problems accessing the service. (Here at The Times, we’re having trouble getting on both through apps and the Twitter.com site — tell us your experience in the comments.)

Ms. B tweeted in May about mold in her Chicago apartment, and Horizon Group Management answered with a $50,000 defamation lawsuit. News of the lawsuit went viral on the Internet after a Chicago blogger caught wind of the complaint. Horizon, denied there was mold, said it was suing because that one tweet could be heard around the world. Ms. B had only 17 people following her on Twitter- BUT she had a public account that could be viewed by anyone searching for her comments and not counting the RT from her followers and their followers and the public searches etc….. The Power of the RT.

Is there a social media lesson here? Probably! Tweeple should be careful about what they tweet. Companies should also be careful how they respond to a negative tweet – handling it badly could result in a public relations nightmare. However, many many companies have turned customer complaints into pure gold! By monitoring Twitter and other Social Media channels, savvy organizations seek out legitimate complaints from displeased customers and proactively provide resolution.

Are we underestimating Twitter’s reach.  Twitter’s 140 characters is just enough to say something powerful for good or ……

With that said: @ChrisBrogan blogged “A Brief and Informal Twitter Etiquette Guide”
“I love Twitter. I think the service is a wonderful tool that permits a whole new way of communicating. The thing is, it’s also a place where newcomers might often make some mistakes in their choices that will likely be taken in a negative manner, and will likely result in an unfollow or a block from other Twitter users.”

Here is a Chris’ take.
* It’s okay to follow people you don’t know on Twitter. They can choose whether or not to follow you back.
* It’s okay to unfollow people on Twitter. Unfollowing doesn’t automatically mean “I don’t like you.” There are many other reasons.
* It’s okay to @reply someone a question or comment vs direct message, especially if it’s an idea where others might weigh in or add a perspective.
* It’s better to direct message someone if you’re making 1:1 plans or having a very focused, personal conversation.
* It’s not polite to direct message people you don’t know well with your automated quiz results or similar. It’s great that YOU like those quizzed, but others see it as spam.
* Some people are not a fan of auto reply messages that are sent in direct messages when someone follows you on Twitter. They (and by “they,” I also mean “I”) consider these robot behavior.
* Promoting others and talking with others is a great way to show your participation to the community.
* Only blurting out your information and links doesn’t usually come off as friendly or community-minded.
* You don’t have to read every tweet.
* You don’t have to respond to every @mention.
* You aren’t obligated to reply to every direct message.
* However, the more you can respond, the more people tend to stay with you and build relationships.
* When retweeting other people’s works, it’s okay to truncate a bit to be able to retweet. Please preserve the link and also the original person’s Twitter name. (ex: RT @mackcollier “Twitter lives and dies on retweeting.”)
* When retweeting someone else’s retweet, it’s sometimes okay to drop the secondary source and just retweet the original poster of the information. (example showing a change to a retweet): “RT @chrisbrogan RT @mackcollier Twitter lives and dies on retweeting” turns into “RT @mackcollier Twitter lives and dies on retweeting.” (make sense? agree?)
* Want to avoid the above problem? Make your retweets more retweetable.
* It’s Ok to have multiple twitter identities (from Jack Bresler)
* It’s OK to disregard robots. (from Jack Bresler)
* If you’re running a customer service Twitter account, it’s polite to follow back the people following you. (from Ted Coine).
* Unless you have the author’s consent, it also may be unwise to pull from another feed stream, like mybloglog, and place the information into the twitter stream (from WWAHHMpreneur)
* Swearing/cursing might well be bad etiquette, and feels like swearing loudly in a public place. (from BizyBiz) . *Note: I sometimes swear. Sorry.
* Pitching your blog might not be the next best move directly after a follow. (inspired by cherylandonian)
* Don’t get hung up on the numbers, that’s not what matters. Its a case of who you know not how many you know. (from Justin Parks)

The News >>> What actually happened

What do you think?  I would welcome your comments below.

Twitter or Facebook? Or Both? In the article by Steve Thornton (follow him at @stevethornton) explores the decision.

“The phenomenon of social networking is still in its infancy and it remains to be seen exactly which network might become the 800-pound gorilla in the space. It is reminiscent of the dotcom 90s, when I worked in the search industry; dozens of venture-backed search firms battled for dominance and search appeared to become a commodity, with limited monetization potential, or so we all thought at the time.”

Full article …………..<<<<<<<<<<

Are Twitters Thought Leaders?

(part 1 starts with the end of Maegan Carberry (@maegancarberry) presentation.)

Ann Curry defends foreign correspondents, Twitter; Rick Sanchez defends CNN.

From the New York Observer: >>>

Ann Curry was on fire.

“Here’s what’s pissing me off,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. She was jabbing a pale finger at the audience of more than 350 new media types who had unfolded their laptops at the 140 Characters Conference on June 16th.

“The reason I have to fight every time to do these stories is because the truth is that it’s hard to get the majority of Americans or even a significant number of Americans in NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS’s world, to care,” she told the crowd, who had, probably for the first time during the all-day conference lifted their heads from their laptops to listen. “I think journalism is a battle and I feel the scars and I see the blood on my sword on a daily basis for fights for foreign coverage to be more present in our broadcasting.”

This tutorial is an Introduction to Twitter. With Twitter you have the potential to reach millions of users instantly. Use it to issue public safety alerts, broadcast real-time news developments, inform constituents, or solicit feedback. It’s free and easy to use – here’s how to get started.

Twittelator Pro

I used Tittelator Pro to create my first podcast on Twitter. State of the Union asks @ricksanchezcnn if “Twittering” can be too much. My best feature is the Tap feature. You tap a picture to bring up more info on that user. You can reply, private, copy, retweet, email tweet and send to Instapaper by tapping the tweeter’s name. Follow links! Listen to MP3’s!

PODCAST

With TweetFunnel, managing your corporate tweeters becomes much more efficient and empowering! Staff tweeters each receive their own login to TweetFunnel and they can post their tweets to a central staging area for review. The designated Corporate Twitterer or (The Tweet Tech) then edits and releases new tweets to Twitter — either right after editing each tweet or by scheduling a “trickle” of Tweets that will post throughout the day.

In the podcast below, Sean Daily talks to representatives from TweetFunnel about the challenges of managing social media and Twitter within organizations as well as the recent 140 TC and TwitterCon conferences with Andreas Wilkens (CEO) and Nathalee Ghafouri (Marketing Manager) from TweetFunnel.

PODCAST

Meet me, and follow me on Twitter @roseclark

Leave a comment here on Twitter140. What has Twitter become to you?

Watch: Jack Dorsey (@jack) – co-founder & Chairman, twitter from 140 Characters Conference at the New World Stage in New York. June 16, 2009