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A picture named daveTiny.jpgDave Winer, 56, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and editor of the Scripting News weblog. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

"Dave was in a hurry. He had big ideas." -- Harvard.

"Dave Winer is one of the most important figures in the evolution of online media." -- Nieman Journalism Lab.

10 inventors of Internet technologies you may not have heard of. -- Royal Pingdom.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

8/2/11: Who I Am.

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Sep   Nov

Warning!

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FYI: You're soaking in it. :-)


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Dave Winer's weblog, started in April 1997, bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Review of The Social Network Permalink.

A picture named zuck.jpgI waited to see the new Facebook movie until it was released, so I took off this afternoon and saw it at the Union Square multiplex along with a packed house of other rain-soaked New Yorkers.

A few observations.

1. It's a very watchable movie, but what would you expect from Aaron Sorkin. It flowed like a double episode of The West Wing. Nothing as great as the best West Wing dialog, though.

2. It was probably too much to ask that the movie have the bite and wisdom and depth of The Fight Club, since both movies were directed by David Fincher. Fight Club was a great movie.

3. The Social Network is not a great movie, and despite what some people say, it will not make history or be remembered. I suppose it will win some awards.

4. Having lived the Silicon Valley lifestyle, I can say they got a tiny bit of it right, but most of it is a Hollywood fantasy.

5. I was at Harvard, believe it or not, when all this stuff was supposed to have taken place. It's more a testimony to how much I was not part of mainstream life at Harvard that I had no idea what was going on with Facebook. I didn't hear about it until I visited a campus in North Carolina.

6. I'd love to know what really happened with Eduardo, the other founder. I don't believe for a minute that Facebook's lawyers pulled such a fast one on him. They have no incentive to do it. And the Winkelvii didn't really have much of a case, again, if that's what really happened. All the stuff involving them made me think they were idiots. Not much drama there, not even much humor. (Lessig, a lawyer, is embarassed for the lawyers in his review of the movie.)

A picture named microserfs.gif7. I would have loved to have known more about Zuckerberg. He was of course the main, most interesting character. I don't think they got Sean Parker right. (I've met him, he's a pretty smart guy, nowhere near as simple as the character in the movie.)

8. Some parts of what they reported on were real enough. The programmers with headphones keeping the world from interfering, that's real. I'd love to see someone make a movie of Microserfs someday, though it would be a bit dated by now, that story capture the real experience of creative people in the tech world. Obviously what happens at Facebook (the real one) is interesting, but this movie wasn't very interesting or realistic.

9. Pity they didn't call it The Social Graph. :-)



© Copyright 1997-2011 Dave Winer. Last build: 12/12/2011; 1:39:03 PM. "It's even worse than it appears."

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