Every Friday, rain or shine! 

On Twitter there's been a tradition called "Follow Fridays," where you tell your friends who they should follow. It's nice, but I've got another idea, a way to help build and diversify the Internet, and probably help preserve a record of what we were thinking way back in 2009 and 2010.

Every Friday, rain or shine, write a blog post.

These days when I think an idea needs elaboration I ask for a blog post.

When you see an interesting idea expressed in 140 chars that you think could use elaboration, ask them to do a longer-form post to explain. Especially on Fridays.

Maybe Fridays will become #blogpostfriday.

It'll be good for the Internet!

Remember, Scoble's blog still loves him, and your blog still loves you, even if you haven't called in a while!

Loose.ly coupled 140-char message network 

A few ahems...

Farhad Manjoo, writing in Slate, sings the anthem of the new republic. "Microblogging has become too important for one company to rule the field." I agree with most everything in the piece, it's largely a summary of thoughtfully chosen quotes from Scripting News. However, I vehemently object to death metaphors for software, systems and networks. The goal is vibrant, thriving, survivable networks. The headline of the piece is something I can't support. Otherwise, excellent!

A few days ago Taylor Heffernan, a student at the University of Delaware, asked if I would drop the insurrection if Twitter became a revolutionary in the cause of loose-coupling. In a heartbeat! In a blink of an eye! In a cycle of a netbook microprocessor! In the time it takes to say the "Y" sound in You Betcha Fer Sure! He reminded me of the way we pulled a fast one on Netscape in 1999 by throwing in the towel on our syndication format and using theirs instead. I'm always a sucker for unconditional surrender, even when it wasn't asked for, much less demanded.

As Michael Jackson said to Paul McCartney, "I think I told you I'm a lover not a fighter." He also encouraged McCartney to "keep dreaming."

I also love that there are bright young people with enthusiasm for the future who are happy to learn from the past. There's hope for the world.

And to our friends at Twitter, I know you don't put me on your list of favorite Tweeters and you haven't verified my account, but I would still work with you to make all this stuff work right.

One more thing. Even though the loosely-coupled 140-char message network won't need URL shorteners (at least when messages aren't traveling over SMS) our two guests for this evening's Bad Hair Day podcast are Eric Woodward of tr.im and Brian Hendrickson of rp.ly. These guys are very interesting leaders in our little micro-community. If you recall earlier this week tr.im made headlines by first announcing it was shutting down and then in response to the incredible outpouring of support decided to give it another go. In the interim, Brian whipped up rp.ly -- and announced it on BHD 7.5 on Monday. It was a welcome surprise, which I wrote about the next day, in a piece that was reprised by Doc Searls.

And don't forget in the midst of all this michegas, Facebook bought Friendfeed, leaving Scoble with his blog. Of course it still loves him, always will.

TechCrunch doesn't cover us, we block TechMeme, we're committed to a new beginning with all-clean energy. We've done it before we'll do it again.

Join the revolution!

People who RWW readers follow on Twitter 

Yesterday Marshall wrote a story about the Twitter subscription lists app that I put up as part of the rssCloud project. As a result a few hundred people tried it out, and in the process I cached their follow lists.

Then it occurred to me this morning that this is an interesting data set. It represents some slice of the RWW readership and tells us something about who they follow. Unlike the usual argument that Twitter follower lists are garbage, these clearly are not. They represent real people with an interest in some bleeding-edge tech. Who they follow, to me, is intensely interesting.

So here's the list, see what you think.

Custom browser for Facebook 

Marshall Kirkpatrick, my partner in the Bad Hair podcast, has a scoop worthy of comment on Scripting News.

Apparently Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape and a new venture capitalist, is backing a venture to create a custom browser for Facebook.

There are many millions of people who would go for this, it's a no-brainer.

On the other hand, it's a throwback to an earlier era -- AOL also had its own browser. Helps cement Facebook's position as the AOL for this decade.

The silo gets cushier, but it's still a silo.

Marshall goes on to say "it's contrary to the growing storm of support building for a distributed framework for social networking." Amen to that.

http://rsscloud.org/

BTW, we have a great pair of guests for our podcast, live this evening at 7PM Pacific. Details forthcoming.

Seeing superiority 

So many connections are missed because people feel superior to others.

"He doesn't know how to make systems scale," observes an engineer who does. But he fails to observe that the other guy knows how to do things he doesn't. Sometimes people miss what they don't have (wish I was thinner, richer, younger) and other times we're so oblivious we can't even see it exists (he knows how politics work, he knows how to reduce things to their core simplicity).

Better to assume that everyone you meet has something to offer that you can use. Otherwise, why did you meet them?

Sometimes you meet people who are so open, so ready -- and sometimes people are too open and too ready -- you get scared and back off. Gotta strike a good balance. Don't stand behind a huge wall and don't get in the other guy's face.

Do you believe in a purposeful existence -- that everything happens for a reason? Well, you just ran into this guy for a reason. Now are you going to find out what it is or let the opportunity pass?

I guess it's unavoidable but we erect barriers to keep people out. We tell ourselves stories about how much better we have it than they do. Too old, too young, too fat, too needy. But you can always flip it around and imagine it the other way. I've seen ridiculous examples of people who had almost nothing, feeling superior to others, who it could be argued, are vastly better off than them. The mind can play some really huge tricks.

I can't tell the specific stories behind these observations because they involve people who are living who I care about. But I can share the observations and hope to help make more of the connections that want to happen, actually occur.

For whatever reason, this is what my eyes are open to right now.

I try to remember that:

1. We're all bozos on this bus.

2. My shit stinks. (So does yours.)

3. It's not like anyone gets out of this alive.

7/31/09: "Don't waste time on other people's qualities, intelligence, hypocrisy, honor. Distractions. What matters is what you do."