Weblogs at Work
Monday, March 19, 2001 by Dave Winer.
Weblogs at Work 
Some people say weblogs are just for teenagers to talk about cars, music and boyfriends and girlfriends. Well, they are good at that, for sure, but when a big story like HailStorm goes through the technology industry, you can see the instant publishing power of weblogs at work.
Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury-News was one of the first tech journalists to take up weblogging, and he got the first review of HailStorm on the Web, straight from Building 33 in Redmond. "[HailStorm is] the most centralized thing I've seen in years, from a company that hooted down the idea of the Network Computer until the concept suddenly seemed to translate into a multi-billion-dollar annuity income for our favorite monopolist."
Next was Kevin Werbach of Release 1.0. "Microsoft today launched its Hailstorm Web services initiative. Worth watching closely, if for no other reason than that it ties together virtually every hot topic in the computer industry today: distributed computing, component software, instant messaging, online privacy, the post-PC world, user-centric interfaces, you name it."
On the mail lists and discussion groups the conversation quickly gets to the core. What is Microsoft doing in its centralized closed box that we can't do for ourselves, openly, and distributed, with no promise of privacy, but a full promise of freedom of choice? This is the question I have been waiting for. I think an independent framework will develop alongside Microsoft's and the frameworks proposed by the other BigCo's (this is sure to come).
The beautiful thing about SOAP is that if Microsoft does it right, there's no reason the independent network can't bridge to the Microsoft-controlled network. We will publish data from our world into their cloud, which is of course the point of publishing. Our stuff will be public, the stuff people want to distribute, and theirs will be private, guaranteed by the largest software company in the world, which as Dan has pointed out, bit off quite a hunk there in that promise. (Murphy's Law and all.)
Anyway, the purpose of this email is to invite you to watch the weblog world at work, doing it's best, and scooping very other distribution point on the Internet. I'm pointing to every well-stated position on HailStorm that comes across my desktop here:
See ya on the Web!
Dave Winer