Friday
Jan022009
A River of TWiT
Friday, January 2, 2009 at 8:48AM 
TWiT started as two podcasts way back when in 2005. Today it's a dozen shows, a live, nearly 24x7 video stream, a 24x7 audio stream, two very active chatrooms, a microblog for listeners, and a forum for contributors. In short, it's a large and growing community of tech enthusiasts built around downloadable and streaming audio and video content.
My experience with Twitter, the TWiT Army, the TWiT chatrooms, and the real-time feeds at Friendfeed, plus my extensive conversations with Steve Gillmor and the other participants at Bearhug Camp, have inspired me to attempt one more live feed: a live text stream of links, comments, and notes related to the live programming. The chatrooms offer something similar, but they're more conversation focused. I see this stream more like the live-blogging that occurs during a Steve Jobs keynote, or the tweets surrounding a major news event, like the recent election. Think of it as real-time show notes created by me, our show hosts, and our community. Let's call this stream the "river." This is an experiment, but I think it could be very useful, both informative and entertaining.
bear has set up a Jabber server for us at twit.im. That's the engine that would power this river. Now it's time to think about how we'll implement the user interface, both for readers and contributors. I'd like to make it easy enough to use that readers naturally become contributors.
Aside from installing a server and buying the domain twit.im, we haven't done anything else. So the following is purely speculative. I'd like to get your comments on it before we begin implementation. Consider the following an RFC.
The best interface to this river would, I imagine, be an IM client, but as with any stream there might be other ways to view it, in a Friendfeed room, on a dedicated web site, as a ticker on live.twit.tv, etc. I think these instances can be created by the TWiT community as needed over time. And since the river is just an XMPP stream it should be very simple - the API already exists. I would also like to have a real-time RSS feed of the full-river - that should make it pretty easy to write viewing tools. But initially, any Jabber-compatible IM client, GTalk, Trillian, Pidgin, iChat, or Adium, would work fine.
People post to the river by adding river@twit.im to their IM client. They'll also get the river content fed back on that channel. I think we'll encourage the use of hashtags so posts can be categorized: #link, #note, #location, #wisecrack, and the like. We might even want to require that every post be tagged to make it easier to filter the river. Some folks, for instance, might only want links, others might just want wisecracks, and so on.
More importantly, we'd also need some commands.
FOLLOW/UNFOLLOW/FOLLOWING - so users can control whose posts they see
BLOCK/UNBLOCK/BLOCKING - to prevent spamming, by handle and IP address I think
TRACK/UNTRACK/TRACKING - to allow you to watch for particular content on the river
Are there any other commands we need? Ultimately a search of some kind will be important, but we can get this for free by piping the RSS of the river into a Friend Feed room (as an example).
By implementing FOLLOW, BLOCK, and TRACK we can open up the server to anyone who wants to participate, since users will be able to precisely control the content of their feed, just as they currently do with Twitter (only better).
I would also like to be able to create special-use instances of the river. For example, at my Macworld keynote, I'd like to be able to create a one-time use backchannel, say macworld@twit.im, that attendees could post to and follow, and that, perhaps, I could put up on screen.
At this time we don't have any plans to let users register for twit.im accounts. I don't want to bog the server down with additional duties. It's going to be busy enough as it is. But if you have an existing GTalk or Jabber account you'll be able to use that.
What do you think? Have I missed anything? Is there any functionality you'd like to add? Please add your comments below. Thanks!
Reader Comments (48)
I think it'd be an interesting idea, but only if the community does a good job at policing itself. Otherwise, the "river" would be polluted with not just spam, but also stupidity and distracting comments that would deter from paying attention to the actual content. What I'm saying is, this could easily be a double edged sword. It could enhanced the communication and experience, but absolutely destroy it as well - still, if that were to happen, it's not like the "river" couldn't be turned off, right?
I say it's worth the shot, and the concept is sound enough to potentially work.
Just my 2 cents of a Peso from Argentina.
I think this is a very interesting idea Leo. My only concerns are as follows.
1. There is possibility for linkbait from any source through the XMPP system. While this may not be controllable, it would be useful to have the ability to perhaps block based on particular users if possible. This is probably going to be the biggest issue when using an IM client.
2. Perhaps a community question, but could a desktop app be created to view this stream, rather than through an IM client? Would be nice to avoid the constant "Ding" from Adium for each and every message that gets posted. Within that, if you could view popular hashtags, etc that would further help to narrow the field of view for users.
An onscreen ticker for TWiT live would be nice, but you might need some keyword filtering to cut out possible bad language.
I'm sure that your healthy community will be happy to help out, as I know you already have a good team of mods for the IRC chat room.
I think its a great idea. Great for links, also cool for a "Popup Video" style use. Have a channel with nothing but facts about the subject being talked about.
My recommendation would be a limited text stream on twitlive.tv then have an IM/IRC style interface that anyone can subscribe to the "firehose" stream. It would be cool if you could record and sync the stream to your video so that when you do replays you get the same text-stream in realtime.
Picking up on the 'authority' topic, it may be useful to have some form of user feedback. That way the community could govern who has the most authority on a topic and it would police itself. How that could be implemented it beyond me.
I think an IM-like client would be better for this than a true IM client. The first thing that comes to mind is an AIR app. I'm seeing a drawer where you could drag a hash tag into a bin of things you want to follow or to float up higher in your view of the river and the same type of thing for users. This would be like following or unfollowing a user/topic. I might see a modified hash tag used for the creation of the special rooms like #macworld! or something.
Just some initial thoughts. Love the idea tho.
Picking up on the 'authority' topic, it may be useful to have some form of user feedback. That way the community could govern who has the most authority on a topic and it would police itself. How that could be implemented it beyond me.
I think an IM-like client would be better for this than a true IM client. The first thing that comes to mind is an AIR app. I'm seeing a drawer where you could drag a hash tag into a bin of things you want to follow or to float up higher in your view of the river and the same type of thing for users. This would be like following or unfollowing a user/topic. I might see a modified hash tag used for the creation of the special rooms like #macworld! or something.
Just some initial thoughts. Love the idea tho.
That sounds excellent. Get kiwinerd on board immediately, she's a great facilitator of your dslextreme chat (the elite chat I call it.) Hopefully this will boost the quality of the chat, and discourage trolls and stalkers :)
-Richard
That sounds excellent. Get kiwinerd on board immediately, she's a great facilitator of your dslextreme chat (the elite chat I call it.) Hopefully this will boost the quality of the chat, and discourage trolls and stalkers :)
-Richard
Leo, you are truly a leader in the Tech Industry. Whatever you do turns to Gold. You are like a PhD Professor. I believe a lot of your success is due to your Professional Voice, and the fact that you are one of the NICEST people on earth. I wish you the greatest in life, and in tech. PaulFrankRizzo
Leo, you are truly a leader in the Tech Industry. Whatever you do turns to Gold. You are like a PhD Professor. I believe a lot of your success is due to your Professional Voice, and the fact that you are one of the NICEST people on earth. I wish you the greatest in life, and in tech. PaulFrankRizzo
If this works, it will be a "proof of concept" for XMPP and real-time streams. I would like to see some type of integration with twit army. I hope twit army does not become obsolete once twit.im launches. Still, I am very excited about all of this, I think Leo, Steve Gillmor and the rest of the gang will be seen a true visionaries just as Dave Winer was for RSS. History is being made.
I think a nice feature would be to have a "timestamp" link that is included with the "twit" members post that you could click on that would take you to that synced part of an audio archive. I think this would really be helpful in your TechGuy podcasts that way your shownote posts could also link to the specific section of audio that the post is relating to without the user having to listen through the entire podcast to find that part. I think this would be helpful in also getting people who normally just listen to a couple of your podcasts to listen into some of your other podcasts. They could see an interesting section of the river, click on the timestamp and listen to that section of audio.
Just an idea.
I wish you much success in this.
This sounds like a great idea but I can see myself not being able to make a lot of use from this feature and here's why: I don't listen to the show live because I'm at work or busy taking care of the family when I'm at home. I listen to the podcasts over the course of the day when I can so the benefits of the live river doesn't apply to me.
I find it interesting that when you started out as a podcast only show, it freed us up from being slaves to programming schedules. But now that you're doing live shows for the majority of the day, it seems that you are, I think unconsciously, slipping back into the mold of traditional broadcast media with set schedules, etc.
I understand that the podcasts will always be there for us who listen to whenever we want but the more features you add to the live version, the more I feel that I'm being 'asked' to follow a schedule which is not compatible with mine all over again.
Anyway, as the number of viewers you have in the chatroom can attest, there is a substantial percentage of your viewers that are able to watch you live and benefit greatly from this live river. I think it's worth a try and I'm definitely interested in seeing what you and other content providers can learn from this experiment. You definitely have the user base to pull it off.
For people on the move, I guess they can listen live and contribute on their iphones/G1s/nokias etc. but I don't have any of those nor the time during the day to sit through my favorite live shows. Good luck!
Actually the whole idea germinated because I wanted a better way to create full show notes for the shows. We'd tried doing it ourselves (very time consuming), using volunteers (very inconsistent), and live-blogging (using CoverIt Live) but none of them did the trick.
You won't have to consume the river live at all. We'll pipe it into a Friend Feed room where you can search, read, and comment on it at your leisure, and also incorporate a cleaned up version into the actual show notes that go out with the podcasts. This is a benefit for the downloaders as much as the live viewers.
I love this idea, Leo, but whatever you do, please somehow get it to interface with Digsby!
That's the point of having a FOLLOW command. We'd populate it with a default set of follows (say, me, the show hosts, and a few trusted contributors) but you could add others. You won't see ANY spam unless you explicitly follow a spammer (or watch the unedited feed, which few will do).
How is this different to laconi.ca/twit army ?
You already have follow, track, block, IM, air and xmpp there.
As it is open source why not just mod it and create clients to your spec ?
In fairness to Leo, there always was a schedule. How else would he arrange all the guests? He is now just broadcasting the recording of the podcasts for people that can watch them. The podcasts are (and probably always will be) available as normal. I think the real concern is that Leo continues to focus on great content and guests vs. growing the empire and adding extra "features" to the network. TwIT has worked so well up to this point because it's simple and direct. Although I'm sure the community will always enjoy trying out these new ideas with Leo and the network, I just hope he doesn't over extend himself. We can't forget he has a family and a life outside of TwIT......
I am in the same boat as mellowgeorge most of the time. I too use the network time-shifted as do the majority of the people who listen to the shows I would bet. I know the "Live Web" is the next big thing, and TWiT needs to be at the forefront of the next big thing, please keep in mind that a huge percentage of the users here are time-shifters.
I am super interested in seeing what this turns out to be, but one of the things that might keep me from using it is the fear of spoilers. Am I going to read something that will take the joy out of listening to a podcast a day or two later?
But, I am of two minds, because I love the shows and I want to participate more in the conversation and this sounds like just the tool to encourage that. I like that TWiT can serve as a sandbox to learn and explore the value of emerging web trends. It plays a huge part in my decision about what my company invests its online time in.
I guess the long and the short of it is, don't foget about the 90% of us who will be listening to this two days from now and allow the focus and format of the shows be bent to much toward being live.
The problem with Laconica (and Twitter) is that XMPP is an afterthought - starting with a messaging system then building static web pages makes much more sense. Laconica is decidedly not real-time - or even that reliable.
I think that the clients can be designed to handle this. For instance, I LOVE someone's idea of putting a slider in a client that can titrate the rate of flow. These things are easily solved with XMPP and RSS.
I am currently thinking you get a default set of follows and then add others you're interested. The default is just the basics but you can build it up to Scoble levels of noise if you're so inclined. That's why FOLLOW is so important.
Great idea!
I don't know anything that could help set this up, but from what you've mentioned, Leo, it sounds like a great idea. It would be yet another great source of content from the TWiT infrastructure. Do you have a mock-up of what this could look like? Would it be a scrolling bar on live.twit.tv? Or would it be a separate page?
My first concern is always for the download listeners - they're the biggest audience and, in fact, the ones the advertisers pay for. Dont worry!
And as far as I can tell this is practically free content for me - so I'm not worried it will overextend me.
You bet! We just don't want to begin and end with Friend Feed.