The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What's Next
Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day. Then, he built the first prototype of Google's contextual advertising service, Adsense, in one day as well. Now, he's working on a much-watched startup called FriendFeed that he believes just brought to market the next big form of communication online: flowing, multi-person, real-time conversations.
"The open, realtime discussions that occur on FriendFeed," he says, "are going to become a major new communication medium on the same level as email, IM and blogging." That's a pretty ambitious claim, but Buchheit has the credibility to make it.
The Early Days at Google
When Paul Buchheit was in college in the mid to late 90's, he spent time working at both Microsoft and Sun. He classifies Microsoft as being in the "Religious Institutions Industry" on his LinkedIn profile, which is pretty funny. After graduating, he joined Intel for a year and then became the 23rd employee at Google (at the age of 23). He joined Google just 3 months after the company moved out of the garage of someone's house and he stayed there for the next seven years.
Buchheit left Google in the middle of 2006, between the launch of Google Video and the acquisition of YouTube. Those probably weren't of any concern to him, though. The same high stock price that made it possible for Google to pay the equivalent of $1.65 billion for YouTube presumably made the company's 23rd employee, Buchheit, a very wealthy man.
Fast Forward to FriendFeed
Now Paul Buchheit is investing in new startups and has co-founded one of his own. FriendFeed is a fascinating combination of a.) an aggregation tool bringing information in from all around the web, b.) a big public conversation and c.) a publishing tool for original content. The service pulls in data from all the different social networks you tell it that you participate in, allowing your FriendFeed friends to see and discuss your activities on those networks whether they happen to participate in them or not.
For example, I don't participate actively in the blog commenting network Disqus but Fred Wilson does. I follow Fred on FriendFeed, where he imports his Disqus comments automatically, so I can see and discuss that information on FriendFeed. There's a long list of services that FriendFeed can import data from, from social bookmarking to YouTube favorites, but the majority of what goes on at the site is conversation about Twitter messages.
The FriendFeed team regularly rolls out new features faster than you can say "cross-platform microblogging aggregation," but those cool features haven't led to widespread adoption of the service yet. As tech blogger Michael Arrington points out, "the fact is that FriendFeed may just be too complicated for the average user to quickly understand... The power users love it. Novices can be overwhelmed." Facebook also regularly implements the innovative features that FriendFeed comes up with and that certainly doesn't help FriendFeed's market share.
If you want to dive deep into the nitty gritty of how FriendFeed works, our podcast interview with Buchheit and co-founder Bret Taylor from more than a year ago remains one of the best ways to do so.
FriendFeed - Now!
This week FriendFeed pushed forward a radical redesign of the site based on a beta version it had been testing for just under a month.
The biggest changes were a new look and, most importantly, a real-time flow of information. Using a technology that Buchheit created in October called Long Polling, FriendFeed now streams all the information it finds from your friends down the page, just as soon as it finds it. Update: Many commenters have argued that this is just like IM or IRC. We'd argue that a fundamental difference is that real-time FriendFeed is about conversation tied to particular links or conversation threads.
David Chartier at ArsTechnica called the new version "more engaging and interactive."
Dave Winer, one of the first movers in blogging, a key player in content syndication technologies and a big fan of FriendFeed, offered much harsher feedback. "I wonder if anyone uses the new FriendFeed for any serious purpose," has asked, on FriendFeed. "Before I finish reading something, it's scrolled off, replaced by the next thing. Feeding the whole write-only-ness of the medium. I anticipate even more mindless comments based on not having read the thing they're commenting on. Now they have an excuse."
Other power users have a laundry list of complaints. The simplified interface lost some of the most compelling features and made others harder to find. The service used to offer interesting data analysis like "who you find most interesting" and "who finds you most interesting." Those options seem to be gone.
Buchheit told us that he believes "the appearance of our new interface is loved by many, and hated by others. Most people are probably somewhere in the middle."
Is Real Time The Next Gmail?
Many social networking sites are moving towards real time information delivery instead of requiring page advancement or refreshing to find out what's new. A year ago we called the real time nexus of Seesmic and Twhirl a vision of the future of the web. Twitter integrated real time search in February. Facebook made its newsfeed real time last month. Bleeding-edge media sharing network Enjoysthin.gs goes so far as to offer a real time view of activity only to paid members of its site!
Buchheit explains the paradigm's appeal:
"Realtime is often an easier and more efficient way of communicating because an entire conversation can happen in a matter of minutes or seconds. It's similar to the difference between a phone call and a series of voice mails -- the phone call occurs in realtime so the entire conversation can often be concluded very quickly. It's also critical for timely information -- for example, on our internal FriendFeed group I may post a message about running an update on the live system, and it's important that everyone see that message immediately."One of the advantages of FriendFeed over other realtime systems such as IM is that it also works non-realtime. For example, at the end of the day I'll often browse my "best of day" view to see what the top stories and discussions of the day were."
That makes sense to me. Though real time conversations can feel overwhelming, the pause button on the Friend Feed site should help and in time I expect we'll all get used to it. There was a time when I felt totally overwhelmed by Twitter, and the discovery of what RSS feeds can deliver to a feed reader left me in a daze for weeks (and led to a new career).
Enterprise adoption of real time communication in general and FriendFeed in particular are topics that some people are discussing. Sameer Patel has written a lengthy article exploring the potential for using FriendFeed in the enterprise and we've heard of several companies using the service as a lightweight intranet.
The Future of FriendFeed
Things are changing fast at FriendFeed. Buchheit says that the company believes aggregation to be less important than real time conversation. "The open, realtime discussions that occur on FriendFeed are going to become a major new communication medium on the same level as email, IM and blogging. The aggregation component of FriendFeed is a convinient feature and a component of that openness, but not as central as the discussions."
People have complained for some time that all the different sources of information and long list of features make the service confusing for new users. Tackling that problem was a key element of the new redesign.
"It's very important that new users can look at the product and immediately understand what's going on and how to use it," Buchheit told us. "The new User Interface is much more straightforward because all they see is a list of messages and comments from friends, and a box for posting new things. Over time, they are able to discover other features (such as groups, saved searches, imported feed, etc), but those things aren't part of the initial experience."
Many early adopters of the service really don't like what the company has done with its website. Buchheit says that they will soon have far more control over customizing the experience.
"Visual design is clearly a very personal thing -- the appearance of our new interface is loved by many, and hated by others (though most people are probably somewhere in the middle). This is why one of the goals of the new design was to accomodate skinning/themes. We don't yet know the exact timing of the release, but we hope to have a version 1 of themes available in a matter of weeks."
The Big Picture
So, here's a summary. The father of the best web email program on the planet believes that a real-time streaming interface for simplified aggregation of conversation and content from all around the web is going to join the handful of tools we use regularly, like email, IM and blogging.
The biggest question still remaining? Facebook. Buchheit on Facebook:
"Facebook is still very much a closed world of its own. That's sometimes useful, but other times I want the ability to interact with the outside world and also other systems. For example, if I post something on FriendFeed about a product that I'm using, often someone working on that product (or very knowledgeable about it) will join in on the conversation. That kind of thing can't happen on Facebook. [Because cross-site search is limited by default privacy restrictions. -ed.] FriendFeed also interoperates much more smoothly with other systems, so I can easily import my blog posts, receive updates via email or IM, or post messages on to Twitter. Things I post on Facebook are not allowed to leave Facebook (except under very strict terms that require deletion within 24 hours, which is why clients such as Seesmic can interface with it, but services such as FriendFeed have a harder time)."
Do you buy that? I'm not sure. But if anyone can lead the charge against incumbent technologies with a new paradigm that combines powerful richness and ease of use - Paul Buchheit might be that person. He did it with Gmail, now time will tell if he can do it with FriendFeed.
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Real time conversation? You mean like freaking IRC?
No sir, real time conversation isn't what's next. Real-time conversation means noise which is why IRC died and evolved into IM.
Don't try to recreate the desktop experience on the web. How about we envolve instead?
"Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day. Then he built the first prototype of Google's contextual advertising service Adsense, in one day as well." - so he practically invented whole Google. What are all these other engineers doing?? ;)
Posted by: Meryn Stol
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May 1, 2009 12:04 PM
FriendFeed seems to be taking more than a day, what gives?
Posted by: Daniel J. Pritchett
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May 1, 2009 12:07 PM
@marshall
This is a really great way to write a story! Going a bit beyond technical and business details and into the people behind it. Do more of stories like this!
(and friendfeed by itself is interesting, but I also find it a bit too engagement-demanding)
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
fantastic write up Marshall
Posted by: Jamie
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May 1, 2009 12:52 PM
Marshall said...
The father of the best web email program on the planet believes.
That comment sounds like someone who worships Gmail. C'mon Marshall, email is just email, there is no God given features in email programs.
Falafulu, said like someone with an @yahoo.com email :) Gmail was a total game changer.
"This is a really great way to write a story! Going a bit beyond technical and business details and into the people behind it."
It actually reminds me of newspaper stories. Those feature persons quite prominently often. I think one of the reasons for that is people simple like to read about other people. The subject clicks better when considering another person's fascination/obsession for it.
It's nice, but I don't know if I like it for RWW in general. I kinda liked the no-nonsense technical reporting.
Maybe make a "RWW backstage" section?
As a new friendfeeder I find it fascinating that Paul Buchheit is chasing his ghost by competing with gmail on some level.
Guys, the discussion(s) are going on here: http://friendfeed.com/search?q="The+Man+Who+Made+Gmail+Says+Real-Time"+comments:10
Unfortunately, other than the repetitive mention that Paul was behind Gmail, this article provides unconvincing reasoning of why FriendFeed matters as much as you seem to imply it does.
OK, my previous comment is useless as RWW doesn't support quotation mark in URLs (which, btw, sucks).
So, the discussions are going on, in real time ;), here: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=The+Man+Who+Made+Gmail+Says+Real-Time+comments:10
David, did I mention that he created Gmail??? lol, fair enough. I wasn't really trying to prove that FF has any more importance than that the guy who made Gmail is behind it, it's going real-time just like all the cool kids are, and the co-founder made a big daring statement about the future of real time websites. Come to think of it, that all sounds pretty significant to me, as websites go.
it is true that this hype makes it difficult to ignore the obvious origins of online chat... from IRC to regular chat rooms on a website to Instant Messaging.
and let's be honest.... most normal people are not going to get too excited over this. Micro-Messaging like twitter is too much for most. It's def not for the older crowd. I'm 34 and def an Internet geek and though i appreciate the technology that makes it possible, the actual effect is too much for me. Of course their are info whores like Scoble who are just addicted to the social pulse second by second. And that kind of instant info has a purpose out there.... obviously look at news, sports and stock tickers on TV etc.
it's not that the tech is bad or useless. it's just that it's not ideal for regular people. so regular people and geeks on friendfeed may be valuable test subjects but inevitably, friendfeed will need to monetize this type of service to higher-end entities.... like newsrooms (ie. CNN Info Leaches) and other corporate/business environments.
And even there.... they are entering an existing market with competition from advanced technology companies that have been focusing on that for a long time using tech like Java for Push and so on.
I was excited about a service a few years ago called Tangler (http://tangler.com) because it was a nice real-time chat room that allowed for rich conversations (embedding media). It was written about a bit here and there and over time, i stopped using it. But if the emphasis is not nec on aggregation, as suggested in this interview/article, then why not hype tangler or one of the plethora of other real-time chat services out there?
It's cool but I feel like maybe Paul Buchheit is in a bit of a bubble on this topic. Look around and there are so many ways to provide real-time chat. Who's even asking for it?
The notion of a huge global chat room has it's merit and intrigue... but again, it just stinks of being overwhelming for ordinary people and then some.
last point I'd make is that client software for interfacing with twitter is a big deal and tweetie for the mac has really made the micro-messaging experience an enhanced one for me. It is as instant as i need it to be. Afterall, dont we all have work to do and a life to tend to?
@sull
I agree with commenter #11
I am most excited about the IM additional features as well as the bookmarklet. I understand now about removing the icon which shows us where an item is getting shared from and making it easier for new users to understand and use the service. Let's see if it works. Very nice interview. Themes will be a nice addition as well which will please old/new users.
>Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day. Then, he built the first prototype of Google's contextual advertising service, Adsense, in one day as well.
Please stop perpetuating that kind of nonsense. Nontechnical people might read that and believe that it is true, then putting undue pressure on engineering teams around the world. Thanks.
How exactly was GMail a "game changer" other than the fact that it was built by Google? Labels - no one likes them. Threads - been around for ages. Apparently all it takes for an idea to be exciting is for "the guy who built something for Google" to slap his name on it.
Thanks for the link to Pretzel Logic, Marshall.
Ironically, I was at a lunch meeting about the time you published this and we were talking about other use cases for a FriendFeed-esq platform in the enterprise. There's so many more places where this makes sense in the business world. I'll do a follow up in a few weeks.
Sameer, cool. :)
Posted by: Meryn Stol
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May 1, 2009 3:20 PM
"Many social networking sites are moving towards real time information delivery instead of requiring page advancement or refreshing to find out what's new... Facebook made its newsfeed real time last month."
FALSE - Facebook is not real time and requires a page refresh.
Loved this article, Marshall. FYI the link to http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbuchhei is 404, MIA.
>Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day. Then, he built the first prototype of Google's contextual advertising service, Adsense, in one day as well.
mouhahahahaha (thank you for making me laugh). is it the brother of Chuck Norris ?
So why he can't build something better than twitter even after several years ?
thanks Pat! fixed that link, was missing a letter
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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May 1, 2009 3:47 PM
I can see in the future, an open wire VOiP link that everyone can share, there will be SIG channels that groups can side track too, and then go back to the main channel & listen. You would invite like Twitter or Friend Feed (maybe Google) to control the channels. We used this type of intercom system with NASA where we all could talk to each other at the same time for downrange communications. It sounded like mass confusion, but we all were aware of problems instantaneously. Your brain can pull out a voice by concentrating on it. It does take a little time and practice to use it, but it works! They still use this ground operations intercom system today.
Posted by: HamRadioActive
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May 1, 2009 5:36 PM
Interesting, Gmail team seems to be light years ahead of the other departments.
They need to take some of what the GMail team is creating and apply it to other areas, like the ip session checker should be instituted overall for all Google accounts so that you can see who's logged on to an account at any time, etc.
Don't we already have this??? hint: its a chatroom folks
the other day i was bored so i invented a parallel universe ...
Jon,
You do that every time you you make a choice or do anything or anything is done period.
Good article. It is interesting that people don't see why this is different than old-school chat.
Posted by: Robert Scoble
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May 1, 2009 6:10 PM
I can introduce FriendFeed to my friends by using this article.
Posted by: Amit Nangare
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May 1, 2009 6:13 PM
This sounds great. Still most of my friends are not aware of this. But as the crowd starts gathering in, the fun begins. Wish friendfeeds a great success.
Sounds and looks a lot like haveing a IM interface to IRC which in itself is driven channel-wise by a USENET form of topic.
As long as they have:
1) A easy to use mobile version
2) The ability to hook into topics form toher wibsites - akin to the FACEBOOK/DIGIT type ease.
Then you could have a platform that you could grow and also have the ability to offer comment serverces for all those sites that have user/comment/feedback. Those take admin/moderation and a user-based moderation is always cheaper as lok as supervised.
Still, has potentual. That said its almost at a stage were a portal application to handle the multitude of social interactive sites/means is needed.
So all this will come around again, to the ultimate Holy Grail system.
Full duplex multi channel, fully sensory 3D communication.
Being able to have two or more people meet in person and real time and share conversation with each other face to face. What a concept! I bet I could write a something in one day to get that to work. It's called a flyer and you put them around town.
Group of people with similar interest gathering
Time Date Place. Thats it. WOW, Can't wait for people to discover that. But will they be able to communicate after so many years of TwitSMSfacebooktIMfeeding?
Perhaps they will just stand around texting each other.
I am very confused here. Paul is either lying or embelishing what element of Adsense he worked on. An article that states Paul Buchheit built the crown jewels of Google should definitely go into detail about such a claim. And maybe even do some of their own research regarding the matter.
"The underlying technology behind AdSense was derived originally from WordNet, Simpli (a company started by the founder of Wordnet, George A. Miller), and a number of professors and graduate students from Brown University, including James A. Anderson, Jeff Stibel, and Steve Reiss.[2] A variation of this technology utilizing WordNet was developed by Oingo, a small search engine company based in Santa Monica founded in 1998 by Gilad Elbaz and Adam Weissman.[3][4] Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics in 2001,[5] which was later acquired by Google in April 2003 for US$102 million.[6]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense
Either the many editors of that wikipedia article are 100% wrong or your man Paul Buchheit is full of it.
Did Paul work on Adsense when it was Wordnet? Did he work for Oingle? Or even Simpli? I really hope You have your facts right.
I think he's not too far off the mark, but i think the largest barrier to entry has always been, and will always be, convincing people to use your service. It's one thing to build a great social network but it's entirely a different thing to convince people to use it.
I love friendfeed and I use it for professional purposes, but the article seems like another obfuscated/biased press release.
Personal comments:
i) "The father of the best web email program on the planet". Some people argue the best one is Outlook... others miss Eudora... it's not serious for an author to confuse an opinion with the truth.
ii) I don't like the "Big Picture pitch", I believe FF must think harder to live longer, because soon or later FB, Google, Twitter, etc will achieve the same functionality of FF.
iii) In some sense Web x.0 (x>1) killed the previous Internet and didn't grow organically: I don't think the past was always better but newsgroups were/are great, instead of things like disqus or commenting for the same post in millions of different sites (fb, ff, disqus, blogs). Now if you want to talk about math you have a lot of places but nobody will hear you like posting on sci.math.* newsgroups.
This was the article that convinced me to join Friendfeed. The way Friendfeed documents a conversation is very compelling.
Posted by: JR Holmes
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May 1, 2009 8:21 PM
No way dude, that is too much like talkin on the phone. Nobody likes to talk on the phone!
RT
www.anonymity.ru.tc
I think this whole real time conversation around a social object concept is very powerful. Social Objects anchor the conversation in shared context between participants.
Posted by: Zaki Manian
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May 1, 2009 9:34 PM
It's called IRC smartass.
Nothing new under the sun, Poster no.1 said it perfectly..
Frankly I'm a wee bit surprised by the amount of vitriol directed at this article, especially by those who miss the point altogether. Services like Friendfeed, Twitter and Seesmic are still evolving but all have huge potential as media disruptors, for example.
I think we will look back in a few years and accept that 2008/09 were crucible years for some highly innovative products. What is certain is that in this economic climate only smart, edgy applications that deliver real value (and have the potential to cross over into the enterprise) will survive.
Managing busy streams of real time data is certainly a problem asking to be solved at present. But the important question that users must ask involves how to identify value in all that data/noise. IMHO IRC,SMS and IM simply do not deliver on that level.
At iWantMyName we envisage a world where digital identity is at the centre of personal and commercial networks and services. Smarter search tools will be the real power brokers and enablers in this setting. We have really only just begun to map out that future.
@Paul Spence
Managing multiple streams of real-time data is a problem, but the real issue is managing the metadata of real-time information. Context and relevance are crucially missing from most 'social' applications out there, barring a few limited examples.
You've hit the nail on the head - Identity is key. But what does identity mean here? We need a rich set of considerations for what data is considered contextually relevant/identity. Chck out Iotum's relevance engine for a good starting point.
Man, 1 in 4 comments on that article are yahoos smugly asserting that FF is an IRC clone and that Marshall/Paul are lying or dumb to think otherwise. Why are blog readers so quick to judge?
Posted by: Daniel J. Pritchett
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May 2, 2009 5:41 AM
The first comment says it all. What's described here sounds much too noisy to be efficient or even fun.
+1 Daniel.
Posted by: Sameer
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May 2, 2009 6:00 AM
Exactly, we want to converse about what we just read, with the person who wrote it. If that person is not on your IM you cannot have that conversation..
I'm curious to learn more about real time conversation.
I agree. I am a fan of Friendfeed. Much better than Twitter.
Posted by: ramiromarques
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May 2, 2009 11:35 AM
Some thoughts on the Ups and Downsides of Real Time communication...
As our lives are increasingly consumed by Facebook pages, IM, Twitter, RSS feeds, Digg Thumbs Up’s, url shorteners, embedded HTML, emoticons and hyperlinks, there is little doubt about the premium placed on timely information. It has reached a point where the value of information seemingly diminishes in direct proportion to how old it is. As if an article written six months ago might well as be ten years old.
This tendency will only increase as we hurtle towards a real-time web. FriendFeed has launched the world’s first real-time, live streaming, social media service that is set to revolutionize all media. Yet as people constantly and seamlessly update their “lifestream”, I wonder about the role of meaningful communication?
The funny - and yes timely - Flutter April Fools joke (below) parodied our growing obsession with instantaneous information, exposing the growing misunderstanding that the newness of a means of communication automatically makes that communication meaningful.
The important distinction, as Zeus Jones points out, is that while real time information loses value over time, timeless pieces grow in value.
When you consider brands also rely on an emotional connection with their customers to motivate their behavior, this confusion can be costly. Of course, a meaningful connection isn’t always timeless but the same limitations apply. Hoping to generate trust, interest or loyalty in 140 characters alone is as misguided as a guy wheeling out his best one-liner at a bar. Brands must use a composite of media to build an effective relationship with their customers, rather than see social media as an end in itself. Even when a brand, its products or social entrepreneurship becomes the focal point for conversation it must also play the overarching role of “aggregator and curator”, as Joseph Jaffe asserts, “to provide a place where consumers can see the conversations pulled together, engage with the brand, hear the story in the brand’s voice”.
A means of communication is not an end in itself. It exists to create a connection that enables us to recognize ourselves in others. If our daily exchanges are reduced to a teeming sea of quips, asides and blunt reductions, we simply enlist ourselves in the service of data tracking. As if our lives were some enormous marketing focus group and our communication ticks for empty boxes.
When communication becomes a shooting gallery, the first casualty is dialogue that adds meaning to our lives. As both marketers and consumers, we would be foolish to let this happen.
www.simonmainwaring.com/blog
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