Nick Halstead Whines For Fav.or.it Coverage
Apr 03 2008 
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First off, let me thank Sarah Perez of Sarah In Tampa, ReadWriteWeb, and the awesomesauce Grand Effect network for pointing out the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen today.
Sarah Perez pointed out in her post "10 Things I Meant To Blog About" a very good reason NOT to use fav.or.it . Sarah recently published an article entitled "Blog Comments Still Matter" on ReadWriteWeb. The article is great and talks about why negative commentary is so popular, the problems with giving positive feedback, and where you can find said positive feedback.
In the article, Sarah includes some commentary on a WordPress FriendFeed plugin, recently released by the awesomesauce Glenn Slaven, that allows visitors to see what FriendFeed users are saying about an article, though without having to visit the FriendFeed website. This is arguably one of the best plugins to come out since FriendFeed released their API. However, Sarah noted that in the comments section, the develop Fav.or.it, a social RSS feed reader, Nick Halstead, had some spiteful words for the promotion of the plugin:
Cannot believe that a hacked together wordpress plug-in gets coverage on RRW – when fav.or.it just demonstrated a system for tracking comments across the *whole* blogosphere and it does not even get a mention.
To demonstrate – http://blog.fav.or.it/2008/03/31/giving-the-conversation-back-to-the-blog/
Don’t get me wrong I love FF – but is never going to replace the commenting space with its stream – we work ‘with’ API’s that already exist.
Posted by: Nick Halstead | April 1, 2008 9:15 AM
I don’t think FriendFeed is trying to replace the commenting space, Halstead. And how about you make a comment on the entire article that Sarah Perez wrote, which wasn’t even about Slaven’s plugin!
Don’t get me wrong, Fav.or.it is doing some great things, but was that really necessary? Whether it was hacked together or not, it’s a great plugin and one that many FriendFeed users are using on their sites and were really excited to see released.
It’s bad PR for Halstead to whine for coverage and one that definitely turns me off to using Fav.or.it when such a whiney developer is backing it. I don’t see RSSmeme developer Benjamin Golub complaining about all the great press and excitement that ReadBurner is generating! And by not doing so, Golub is making me stick with RSSmeme and not worry about ReadBurner too much. At least he’s excited about the competition.
It’s not always about what your application does, but sometimes about who’s backing the application. So to Nick Halstead I only have one thing to say:
Don’t hate Halstead, congratulate! =P
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I'm sorry, partly because Nick Halstead is British, but fav.or.it have missed the boat.
fav.or.it are left standing at the starting blocks when all the others have crossed the finishing line. Why ? – because fav.or.it is still in closed beta. Fav.or.it *still* hasn't open to the public.
Fav.or.it may well be the killer app about to transform the Web as we know. Fav.or.it may be better than Friendfeed, Disqus and Habari rolled into one.
However, until we can see for ourselves, test it, import our OPML, feeds and comments, until we can find bugs, make suggestions and demand improvments, it's worthless. Completely worthless.
Words are cheap.
When I first heard of fav.or.it last year, I was desperately keen and eager to try the product. Not now., Friendfeed has won me over.
I am proud to announce that FF and I are due to be married on 14 July in a private ceremony in a chapel on the Isle of Mull. Gift list available now from John Lewis (http://www.johnlewis.com).
LMAO you are a trip. I was just as excited as you were when I saw Scoble
announce and talk about Fav.or.it last year. It took forever for them to
send me an invite and I was sorely disappointed when I tried the service
out. It's so confusing and could really use a lot more feedback. But as
you've stated, that's not going to happen too much in a closed-beta service.
Hopefully Nick will see this comment, then again, who wants to open up a
confusing product to the entire public?
I think Nick Halstead is worried about the increasing sense of expectation and being swamped with users if and when fav.or.it finally opens to the public.
Despite his protestations, I think Nick has concerns whether the infrastructure be able to scale and cope with a large influx of demanding users.
To be fair, when it's your baby, your life and soul and your mortgage on the line, I would probably feel the same.
How many times have I seen FriendFeed unavailable (with a witty Web 2..0 outage banner) during this recent massive and prolonged spike in activity and interest ?
Not once – that I have seen. That's a very hard act to follow. Halstead must be cursing and thinking of REM: 'It's crazy what you could have had.'
That's for bringing this issue to light. I just found it odd on a blog post about negativity, he would choose to make a negative comment.
Nick seems to have a habit of expressing his discontent. There's been numerous examples, including his rant against Mashable (story here: http://mashable.com/2008/04/04/favorit-not-favo... ). While your last line advice is spot on, I would also add: “Dont hate the player Halstead, hate the game…!”
He did a lot of apologizing after the situation blew up in his face. Maybe
he's learning after al!
He did a lot of apologizing after the situation blew up in his face. Maybe
he's learning after al!
He did a lot of apologizing after the situation blew up in his face. Maybe
he's learning after al!