Scripting News

Rebooting the News #7

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:10:56 GMT

This week's 40-plus minute podcast with Jay Rosen and myself.

To subscribe, add this URL to your podcatcher (or iTunes).

Sony got it right

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:25:24 GMT

The new Walkman is great. Click the pic for comments, a full-size picture, link to the product page.

Retweet is stupid

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:45:59 GMT

Okay I'm going to get crucified for this, but I found myself saying this on the phone today to Andrew Baron. If I was willing to say it to him, I should have the guts to say it publicly.

Now, I'm not saying the people who retweet are stupid, or the impulse to pass on a link to everyone who follows you is stupid, but...

A retweet is the same as voting up something on Digg or Reddit. It's a piece of metadata about the tweet, and should be stored and displayed with the tweet. When you retweet something, none of the 140 characters should be used in saying that it's a retweet and who it came from.

Digg does it right, Twitter --> wrong.

Another app that does it right is FriendFeed.

Look at this post, it's been liked a lot. When I wrote this it had 225 likes! Like is FriendFeed's term for retweet.

Nothing needs to be done, but I'm glad to get this out there, once and for all.

Hope you're having a happy Sunday!

Why there will be many Twitters

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:35:19 GMT

Yesterday I wrote about the Lotus 1-2-3 of twitters, but it may not be obvious why there will be more than one network of networks -- so let me explain.

1. Twitter is growing fast.

2. Its use as a medium for news has become apparent. I've been saying that for a long time. It's both the front room and back room for news. How it's delivered and how it's produced.

3. Umair Haque suggested the NY Times buy Twitter. Of course it's too late for that. Pretty soon Twitter will be able to buy the NY Times.

4. I think it's pretty obvious that Twitter is on a trajectory to become one of the major media networks, a Turner, Fox, NBC, Time-Warner, Viacom, Disney. When it's apparent to more of the heads of these companies, they're going to start wondering why their stars are on Twitter and not on their own network.

5. The thought has probably also popped into the heads of the people at Twitter. They will try to make deals with some or all the media companies. They have a lot of power, and should be able to cut good deals. But as the negotiations go forward, it will become apparent to the execs that these guys are competitors. They will consider Make vs Buy. If they're smart, they'll do their deals with Twitter at the same time doing deals to get their own network going.

6. Luckily for the other media companies, users are portable. I'll explain. Say Ashton Kutcher (someone who I had never heard of until he showed up at a tech industry conference last year) decides to cut a deal with a major studio to head a new twitter-like network. Could happen. They'll get their network built, quietly, then start leaking it with teases on billboards of course, but also (you guessed it) on Twitter. When Oprah sees him do his network, she'll want one. And so will Larry King and Shaq, and all the celebs who have yet to make a splash on Twitter. Brad Pitt and Ed Norton will call theirs The Fight Club. George Clooney's will be Oceans Million. Prince will hang out in Paisley Park. And you think Apple won't have one? It might have a 140-char limit, but it won't just be text.

There's a lot of money to be made in these networks and it costs so little to start one. An average Hollywood film costs two or three times as much as all the money Twitter, Inc. has raised so far. Spiderman 3 cost $258 million. That's just one movie. And over time the cost will come way down. That's why I suggested that FriendFeed get a clone ready, now -- so they can do deals with the media companies when they're ready. Which might happen any week now, if it hasn't already happened.

Remember, it's not Kansas anymore, the house fell on the witch and Ev and Biz are wearing the Ruby-red slippers. Click your heels three times and say "There's no place like home."

Yours truly, over and out, Dave

The Next Killer App is to Twitter as 1-2-3 was to Visicalc

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:22:21 GMT

This post is dedicated to Mitch Kapor, Jonathan Sachs, Dan Fylstra, Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, Ben Rosen, Ev, Biz, Jack, Bijan, Fred et al. A lot of people on that list, and I have had the privilege to know most of them, and I've met all of them.

First a very brief story of what Visicalc was and how it was surpassed by 1-2-3. And please understand this is my version of the story, I'm sure all the principals will have their own versions.

Visicalc was god. It was the Twitter of the early 80s. It was credited with creating the personal computer boom led by the Apple II. The product was created by the two Dans and Bob. Mitch worked for the company. Everyone said Mitch wrote spaghetti code. The two Dans and Bob didn't take him seriously. They were gods after all and Mitch was a mere mortal.

Along comes the IBM PC. It's a private thing, but since Visicalc rules, they got early access. The two Dans and Bob and Mitch all saw it. They started to port Visicalc to it, but didn't do anything special. After all, their software is what made the PC boom. The IBM PC would be just another Visicalc machine. Mitch didn't see it that way. So he got together with a brilliant coder, Jonathan Sachs (so much for the spaghetti code!) and got money from a very smart man in NY, Ben Rosen, and started Lotus to make 1-2-3. The two Dans and Bob knew about it, but they didn't take it seriously, because they were gods and Mitch writes spaghetti code.

But the one thing they didn't figure out about Mitch, that made him such a killer, was that he used the product so he knew what features would be most valuable to other users. Not saying the two Dans and Bob didn't, I'm pretty sure they did, but Mitch was really tuned in and watched users get confused and hung up with Visicalc, so he knew what to focus on for 1-2-3. I don't know for sure, but I bet the Visicalc team didn't really listen to Mitch.

When the IBM PC came out everyone wanted new software for it, and the Visicalc guys just offered the same old stuff, but Mitch's software had a sexy UI (for the day) and ran like a bat out of hell, used all the memory of the PC, and had a macro language, so everyone bought 1-2-3 and that was the end of Visicalc.

So somewhere out there is an idea for Twitter that, like 1-2-3, will represent the future, leaving Twitter to own the past. The challenge for brilliant software designers everywhere is to figure out what that is and to do it!

I've been studying it as long as anyone, I started using Twitter in the summer of 2006, and have been puzzling it out every damned day, waiting for Twitter to give me something new to sink my teeth into, and I'm convinced it's going to come from a Mitch-Jonathan-Ben combo out there, not from the original team. Probably for many of the same reasons Visicalc didn't rise to meet the needs of experienced spreadsheet users.

Here's my wish list:

0. It starts as an exact Twitter clone. Command for command. Then see item #2. I get to completely redesign the UI.

1. I want to start my own Twitter, for free. You host it for me. Anyone can join.

2. I have to be able to edit the template, fully, so I can make it look like my blog. This will allow designers, for the first time, to tinker with the look and feel of a Twitter. They played a big role in the blogging bootstrap, but have mostly been sidelined by the emergence of Twitter.

3. I want to map my domain to it, so it's part of scripting.com.

4. It's gotta be fast!

5. Lots of prefs that determine who can join, what they can do, various editorial roles. If you used Manila, I want to be able to delegate to managing editors and contributing editors.

6. Easy hooks into Disqus (and competitors) so each tweet can be the beginning of a conversation.

7. Plug-ins that hook into the UI so I can add commands to my Twitter, without modifying any source code.

8. The ability to attach a picture, movie, MP3 or any arbitrary data to a tweet, basically the same power as the RSS 2.0 enclosure element.

9. Full data portability. I've got to be able to run a script on my desktop every night to get a complete XML-based backup of my community.

I guess my point is this -- soon there will be enough Twitter users who yearn for something really new, and it seems doubtful that Twitter-the-Company will want to give it to them. With all the new users just getting started, they're going to focus on getting them up the curve. So we're really getting ready for the 1-2-3 of Twitter, the next level of power, so we can build richer and more connected networks.

See, that's what I really think Twitter is -- a Network Construction Kit for Real People. Sort of a Tinker Toys or Lego for networking. We've gone a long way with a few simple pieces. We need some more stuff to play with.

It's always like this, in every layer. At first we need training wheels, and a tech company to provide the whole package. Then we get comfortable with the technology and we want to order a la carte, to design our own meal. You can try to contain the users, lots of companies have -- but it never works. If this blog is about anything, it's about that -- documenting the never-ending cycle of tech booms and busts, bright new days, and endless platform wars, starting in 1994. It's all so predictable, you'd think one of the rising stars would figure it out and plan accordingly, but it seems they never do.

Unfair Twitter, Inc backlash

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:32:49 GMT

I feel the need to make so many disclaimers here.

1. Yes I have been critical of Twitter.

2. I am not on the Suggested User List.

3. I think they're making really big mistakes in managing the community. (That they are even managing the community at all is a bad sign. They should be trying actively to stay out of managing it.)

4. And about a million other things.

But...

I think some of the criticism of Twitter-the-Company has been over the top in the last few days. They've clearly been fighting some huge fires and the order in which they are 1. Acting and 2. Communicating makes sense to me, because I've been on their side of difficult situations, on a much much smaller scale, and my experience is that users don't treat the server guys fairly, no matter how you try to explain that you're doing the best that you can humanly possibly do. I've seen users do some horrible things while the fires are burning, and I see some of that now.

In the last week they've been fighting security issues, hacking, and a huge influx of new users. Any one of these things would be pretty taxing, but all at the same time -- well, it's gotta be hell on their side of the interface.

I've been watching the communication, and I think they're doing a really good job of explaining and their intentions are good.

That doesn't mean I don't think they brought on the stress themselves or that I support other things they're doing. I don't expect to be on the SUL, and I don't want to be. I'm not saying this to kiss up to them. Let's all try to be fair. That's my point.

Today's Morning Coffee Notes podcast

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:44:58 GMT

New podcast: Sidebar to last Sunday's Rebooting The News podcast with Jay Rosen, relating the blogger assignment desk idea to Hypercamp, which is a more comprehensive blueprint for how blogging becomes the backbone of news in the future.

Also a response to Kevin Marks and Steve Gillmor who, in comments, asked me to clarify a blog post about mixing data with Facebook and/or Twitter structures. Mystically they all seem to relate.

Finally, a tribute to the hippie-surfer culture of California.

PS: You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes. It's the second command in the iTunes Advanced menu. Paste this URL into the dialog that appears and click OK.

Twitter and OAuth, interesting brew

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:51:40 GMT

As far as I know Hueniverse was the first to notice that Twitter's support for OAuth put it in direct competition with Facebook Connect. This is a good thing because two-party systems work, and one-party systems don't.

Now it would be great if:

1. Facebook would make OAuth their default way to hook into their identity system. They have the power to ratify this as a standard. If they do, everyone who follows will have to use OAuth. I'm not crazy about OAuth, but one way of doing something is better than two, no matter how much better the second is. (That's a version of the brilliant always-applicable Postel's Law.)

2. One or both of them should swallow hard and use some of their investor's money to provide developers with an open storage system to go along with their OAuth support. This is the YouTube-like opportunity of 2009, the first to do it will get all the developers building on their platform and will set a standard as powerful as HTTP (if it's as simple as that, which it could easily be). This goes along with my longtime request for Payloads for Twitter, it's what we're all waiting for, in order for Twitter apps to stop being the demos they are, and start entering killer app territory.

The sign of a platform, its gravitas, macho-ness comes from the possibility of developers eclipsing the platform itself with utility and coolness. If you look back at all the really successful platforms of the past they all had this quality.

The Apple II had VisiCalc and Choplifter. The IBM PC had Lotus, dBASE, a host of word processors. CP/M had WordStar. Mac had Pagemaker and Quark. The web had Yahoo and Google, Blogger, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, Skype and on and on (probably the biggest and best platform so far).

Maybe it won't be Twitter or Facebook, but whoever builds the next consensus platform will have open data storage APIs in addition to identity. It's a vital part of identity. We've been waiting too damned long for this.

A source of inspiration: Jon Postel

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:11:29 GMT

I love doing the weekly podcast with Jay, because he's so damned smart and he surprises me with his stories. Not many people do that as well as he does.

This week his surprise was the idea that we could tell stories of inspiration to help get over the hurdles the future is throwing in our path. His example of Max Headroom was brilliant and new to me, I didn't watch the show in the 80s, I was too busy running my always-on-the-brink startup.

So he's going to bring us inspiration from media, and I expect I'll do some of that too, but I think my first tale of inspiration should come from tech, and I think it's probably going to be Jon Postel and his great law that came from experience in guiding the Internet through its early days. In all of the layers we've built on top of Postel's work, we've never found a situation that wasn't covered by his law, and never really found another law to stand alongside it. Every time I think I've figured out something I want to pass on to future generations it's always turned out to be a variant of Postel's Law. That's the sign of something profound and deep, and it's simple.

"Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."

People keep trying to break the law, but when they do, it always ends badly. Maybe someday they'll stop trying.

I suspect when the fullness of the new Land of Journos reveals itself it will also be an instance of Postel's Law.

Rebooting the News podcast for April 19

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:12:28 GMT

Tonight's podcast.

To subscribe, add this address to your podcatcher:

http://scripting.com/rss.xml

A bit of housekeeping -- the podcast now has a name -- Rebooting the News. Perfect name, cause it's got the technical side with rebooting, and boot is the first part of bootstrapping. And News is what it's all about.

I hope you enjoy this show!!

Notes for tonight's podcast

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:38:34 GMT

We're going to start recording our weekly podcast in about 20 minutes at 6PM Pacific, so I have to hurry up and put my notes together! I love a deadline.

I loved this classic exemplar for Jay's Curmudgeon Studies J-school curriculum, esp the part where he says that some (huge) percentage of everything in the world originated in his word processor (I'm exaggerating).

The exact quote: "Several studies have shown that more than three-quarters of the news you see, hear or read anywhere is at least derivative of something that originally appeared in a newspaper." I have a very neat rebuttal -- 100 percent of everything you read in a newspaper originally appeared in the world unless they got it wrong, which happens far too often.

The sources originated everything Mr. Brinkley -- and last time I checked -- we don't get paid bupkis, so that part of the news system should make the transformation pretty well.

I watched Bill Moyers on Friday, he had David SImon from The Wire who is a great writer, but contradicts himself when it comes to the Baltimore reporters. In the first part of the 50-minute interview he says that the reporters never really got the story and were' never effective. But in the second part he says the opposite, and laments their failure, though he doesn't blame bloggers, that's the least of it.

The problem with all the curmudgeons is that they stop at hand-wringing, no one wants to talk about next steps to reboot the news. As you know if you're a regular listener to the podcast, I think we're far along in the reboot.

I want to talk about the 40-twits app, and next steps.

Briefly about my visit at Nieman in Cambridge last week with Josh Benton and Zach Seward.

I want to talk about Oprah joining Twitter, and what might be coming next.

And of course I want to talk about whatever Jay wants to talk about.

Jay's 40-twits page actually just has 20 for now.

Gartner's curve

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:16:33 GMT

On Twitter early this afternoon, Sarah Lacy posted a link to a TechCrunch article she wrote admonishing bloggers to go easy on Twitter. It included a graph called Gartner's Hype Cycle, which I loved, but I think it's complete nonsense, and in no way reflects what's going on with Twitter.

Now this is what I think, not a proven fact in any way. Twitter is the current holder of the baton in a series of social media bootstraps, each of which built on what came before. It is not Google, which is a search engine, rather it is what came after MySpace and captured its growth. Extrapolating, something will come along and do to Twitter what it did to MySpace.

Before all that there was LiveJournal, blogging, podcasting, Flickr, etc. Depending on who you ask different things came first. If you ask me, blogging came first, and it had the longest ramp. I saw podcasting grow at a much faster rate simply because the blogging network already existed and was used to promote podcasting.

Just for fun, I drew my own Gartner-like diagram: Dave's Continuous Bootstrap.

It would be foolish to believe that Twitter will not have a successor. And I'm pretty sure it'll grow faster than Twitter because word of its existence will spread on Twitter. That's why all this is a bootstrap. You can use iteration N to spread word of N+1.

Google is a search engine. A completely different beast. I don't buy that Twitter is search. Most of the stuff that you see on Twitter isn't worth finding. Try searching for something in the news and see if you don't agree. It's easy to conduct an experiment.

So what's the relationship betw Google and Twitter? For sure you can put ads on Twitter, just the kind of ads that Google loves to put on email or web pages. They can tell a lot about you by knowing who you follow and maybe who follows you. But Google is also a search engine, and I believe there's a connection there as well, but only when you push links through Twitter. You can view that as contributing to PageRank. Will this make search better? I have no idea. They'll have to try it. Maybe Twitter is working on it. If they'd open the firehose to developers (and not the limited firehose they're promising, the full thing) we could find out without waiting.

But Twitter is definitely leading edge, so it would be silly to predict what it will go through. Maybe Oprah will invest. And we know how much the entertainment industry respects and fears Oprah. Having her on board, in a fiduciary way, would do a lot to protect Twitter from competition in the US entertainment business. Without that, I'd worry about NBC or ABC starting their own Twitter for their programs. Or Comedy Central. And who knows, people in the news biz might figure out that instead of fighting last century's battle with Google they might try to take some of the growth from Twitter in the news system of the 21st century, which probably looks more like Twitter than Google News.

Anyway, just some random thoughts on my first Sunday back in Calif.

PS: It's impossible to take anything TechCrunch says about Twitter seriously. Like Mashable, they are on the Suggested User List and have received a massive influx of new followers as a result. It seems a very likely explanation why they make fun of those who criticize Twitter, or in Lacy's case, urge them to go easy. It's as if they do PR for Twitter.

Highdef scoreboard at Citi Field

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:56:24 GMT

Click on the pic for more detail, there's lots of pixels.

And compare with this picture of the defunct Shea Stadium's mostly analog scoreboard taken three years ago, before they tore it down.

What I learned about being rich

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:15:13 GMT

Interesting piece in the NY Times magazine about Twitter and how connectivity is for poor people. I learned about this when I made enough money in the late 80s to realize what wealth buys -- distance. Then it took a few years to learn that distance is not what I wanted, in fact I don't think it's human to crave distance. People are built to want to be among others, at least I was.

I bought a house with a 750 foot driveway in the middle of the woods. My neighbors built houses the size of high schools. You couldn't walk anywhere.

Now I live among humanity, much more modestly and I'm happier.

So it may be true that connectivity is for the poor, if so, the rich aren't happy.

Hefernan is right to bring this question to Twitter, because it is the struggle it's going through, as classes emerge. It won't be like other class struggles though, as the rich and powerful strive to make sense of Twitter, they will encounter the contradictions of 21st century decentral communications. Oprah hasn't really come to Twitter yet, it'll be interesting to see if she ever really does.

An interesting experiment for her, if she ever has alone-time, create an account that isn't attached to her media persona and mingle with the common folk, be one. It's got to be the rarest experience for someone so instantly recognizable. A way to collapse all the distance, to communicate with people who aren't employees, who don't want anything from you. Then when she sells the Twitter experience, if that's what she's doing, she'll have some idea what she's selling.

I have a feeling Oprah could be a good rep for Twitter, but not if she does it from inside her bubble. Then she'll miss the whole point. Its value is not only as a promotion machine, I think -- there's value elsewhere.

BTW, Paul Boutin reports that the media backlash against Twitter is beginning. He says it's fake, but everything about the media is fake, so it's as real as it gets. I don't think too many early adopters will come to their defense when the media turns on them. I never wanted to help build a network that would be turned over to the mainstream guys. I heard second-hand that Ev "isn't building a network for Scoble." Too bad. I think someone should. And someone will. Scoble is one of the most real and honest and effective evangelists anywhere. I think Ev will come to regret his snobbery. At least I hope so.

At breakfast this morning I found a way to explain my feelings about this to my mother who is a regular watcher of the Oprah TV show. She reads many of the books and uses products Oprah recommends. My mother was also a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton for President during the primary, and Oprah campaigned for Obama. I said that's how I feel about Twitter. I didn't sign on to help build a network for the big media, just as she hadn't supported Oprah so she could use the power to help Obama against Clinton. That's why Oprah probably came to regret being so vocal during the campaign, and why Twitter the corporation will probably regret that they took sides here. A new kind of media is booting up, and Twiitter should have been a leading proponent of it. Okay if the big media types want to use it, no problem -- but don't go on their shows and support them over the individual users. You're just inviting backlash.

Citi Field

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:36:46 GMT

I had the priviledge of going to the new Mets ballpark in NY last night. The Mets won in an uncharacteristically elegant way. Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, Luis Castillo hits a bullet deep in the pocket betw short and third. The Brewers shortstop makes the play, but it's hit too fast and makes him turn too far. Castillo beats the throw at first and the runner scores from third. The team, excited at the thrilling finish, runs on the field and piles on the baserunners.

Everyone at the new stadium had a nice but uneasy feeling. Too many people greeted us at the entrance. Everyone smiled more than seems right for New Yorkers. Try as hard as they could, no chant of Lets Go Mets took hold in the crowd. At the beginning of the game I was enchanted, by the end -- it didn't gel. No suspension of disbelief.

I've traveled a lot in my life and I've seen the Mets play a lot of away games at foreign ballparks. That's what this felt like.

I felt like a child whose father has a new wife being asked to accept her as my mother. It just doesn't work. In the end I would have much rather gone to a game at the old Shea Stadium, warts and all.

Baseball is all about tradition. It's not an exciting game like basketball or football, it's a game where the past matters. I'm sure the people who run NYC had their reasons for wanting a new ballpark. Maybe it would have worked better if they had put it somewhere else, but with the ruins of Shea still visible from the new stadium, it feels like we haven't had the proper period of mourning, at least, for an old established shrine of our religion.

Would the Boston Red Sox tear down Fenway, could the Cubs exist without Wrigley? These questions have obvious answers to me, as obvious as whether the Catholic Church would tear down the Vatican just to get some skyboxes.

The new park is a beautiful stadium. I'm not saying it will never fill the place of Shea Stadium, but it doesn't now. I miss the old place.

Random thoughts over morning coffee

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:58:15 GMT

I'm writing this sitting in a cafe in Harvard Sq drinking coffee and enjoying the beginnning of the day. No newspaper to read, just my netbook, a net connection and my own thoughts.

Doc Searls likes to say that markets are conversations, but people are conversations too. I have no way of knowing for sure how it is for other people, but inside me is a constant back and forth chatter, with lots of different voices, each expressing opinions of minor and major events that take place all around us (i.e. me).

It's all those different voices that come up with ideas, collaboratively -- we're like a 24 hour group brainstorming session.

The sticker on the back of my computer says MEAN PEOPLE SUCK. Maybe not such a great sticker. I find it attracts attention, but not many comments. I've seen people leer at me, not sure what to make of it. The stupid thing is they all seem, at least to me, to be mean. I imagine the conversation that never actually takes place to go like this: Is that about me? asks the mean person pointing to my sticker. I say "Sure I knew I'd run into you in the cafe or airport even though we've never met and I wanted to be sure I didn't have to talk to you, now go away." I think maybe I'll look for a new sticker!

Had a thought maybe FriendFeed ought to put a layer on their app to make it a blogging tool. They'd still have the UI they have now, but it would be a back-end. Then I could use it to host a blog with comments, sort of an alternative to wordpress.com. If I were them I might go this route if they're getting tired of being compared to the Twitter juggernaut. Maybe they could be seen as breathing new life into the blogging market, making it more "real time" perhaps.

One of the reasons I don't like reading newspapers these days is that they're all about Twitter. I'm so tired of hearing how great Twitter is. It's a sore spot for me, cause they get all the glory, and there's nothing but boredom for me, a two-plus-year tireless Twitterer. I used to feel Twitter was exciting. Now all the news on Twitter is about how much money they're worth, and how many followers some Hollywood asshole has, and isn't it funny that CNN didn't even know they didn't own the CNNBRK account, and isn't it even funnier that they got all those followers from Twitter putting them on the SUL and how much you want to bet they didn't know it wasn't really CNN behind it either.

I shake my head. It's so seat-of-the-pants. They run a nascent media empire like it was Biz's personal blog. Where do I fit into their big plan? Nowhere. Obviously. It totally reminds me of the time when Netscape ruled the browser biz. We need at least a two-party system. This thing is dying. I know it doesn't seem that way to the company and its investors, good for them. But it sure feels that way to me.

You do understand that a blog is a personal thing right? Your mileage may vary and you may have a different opinion. I'm under no obligation to see it your way, and vice versa.

Anyway, I'm having a fine time on this east coast schmoozing trip. The weather is pretty good, kind of cold for mid-April, but it's not raining, and the crispness makes it nice to walk around, and I'm doing lots of that. I met a future President of the United States yesterday (he's still just three months old). I have a few meetings in Cambridge this morning and then I'm on the 3PM train from Boston to Penn Station, and tomorrow night I get to see the Mets play in their new stadium before heading back to Calif on Saturday morning.

Twitter is at least a dress rehearsal

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:23:52 GMT

I read Farhad Manjoo's piece in Slate about Twitter. It's the best of a class of commentary that says that Twitter is something you can skip if you aren't interested in periodic 140-character reports on mundane people's lives. As I read the piece it made sense, so I was left wondering why I was and still am attracted to Twitter and use it, daily.

When I took a picture of the shark tank at the NY Aquarium, or the Cyclone at Coney Island or the traffic on the Belt Parkway, I had a background script on my server that automatically published a pointer to each picture to Twitter. I feel the pictures are more interesting because people see them while I'm still there. It's a very small window into my mundane life. I post them not because I think anyone cares about my life, rather because I want to see what ideas it gives me for next steps.

In a way, as a user of Twitter, I have the same business model as the investors in Twitter. I don't know what it is, but I have a feeling there's something here. I look at it this way, if you tried to tell me what we're doing on Twitter has nothing to do with what we'll be doing with networks in the future, I'd be 100 percent sure you were wrong. There's something here. The challenge is to figure out what it is.

However increasingly I'm sure that Twitter itself is not it.

If it were, by now we'd see one killer app built on Twitter that was as game-changing as Twitter itself, if not more so. I think this is because they have put limits on what developers can do, trying to save the good stuff for themselves. The danger in doing that is that you leave nothing juicy for developers. And you leave the door open for a competitor who will take advantage.

Things I'd like to see -- unlimited, open architecture metadata hanging off the 140-character messages, payloads for Twitter. And open access to the firehose by anyone who wants to develop on it. Both these things would guarantee Twitter, Inc. a role in the future. Without giving up control of both, they leave opportunities for others and make it more likely they will be a stepping-stone.

BTW, I was able to finish this post on my 1000HE on the Jetblue flight while it was waiting at the gate. The free wifi from the terminal is strong enough to be accessible on the plane. It's amazing how quickly you can write when you're under deadline!

Update: Early-on I compared Twitter to a coral reef. I think the analogy is more apt than ever.

Update: An example of a competitor completing the promise of a disrupter: Netscape's browser was only sort-of free. They looked the other way when people downloaded it without paying for it. When Microsoft came out with their browser it was totally free. Netscape's complaint that this was unfair rang hollow.

Marc Canter's vision/nightmare come true

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:52:24 GMT

15 years ago Marc Canter was a cashed out ex-founder of a Kleiner Perkins startup, rushing through his money in the lifestyle of a rich and famous rock star Hollywood movie mogul. It was a huge bonfire, built around a spectacular vision of commercialism, entertainment, network technology and physical venues like bars, football stadiums, bowling alleys and restaurants.

Marc turned his house on Potrero Hill into a demo for his vision.

I'm writing this from the JetBlue terminal at JFK which is a total realization of the vision. And I totally hate it!

In front of me is a HD video screen I'm trying hard to ignore, but it won't let me. All around me are similar screens with people sitting around them trying to ignore them. Hanging off the ceiling everywhere are more HD screens showing sports, news, commercials, schedules announcements. Off in the distance is a ruckus of a central hallway, total confusion, people unable to figure out even the most basic things like how to get a coffee and blueberry muffin. I don't dare go into the men's room!

On the monitor in front of me is one of Marc's favorite ideas. I can swipe my credit card and go to a menu where I can choose from all kinds of food that they will bring right to where I'm sitting. I didn't try it.

In a few months I'll probably love this place, but right now -- I'm Mr. Luddite. Give me a plain Jane terminal anyday!

Update: On the other hand, one thing everyone who reads this blog will appreciate -- free wifi, and it's good.

This week's podcast with Jay Rosen

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:42:10 GMT

I spent 40 minutes this evening talking with Jay about news, tech and the future of journalism. As always it was a great learning experience with the NYU journalism professor.

A frequently asked question -- what feed should I subscribe to to get the flow? The answer -- the feed for Scripting News. When I do a podcast it's included as a standard RSS 2.0 enclosure.

At the end of the show I promised to create a room on FriendFeed to post links to stories we'll discuss on future shows.

Does Mashable have credibility re Twitter?

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:28:44 GMT

This article by Pete Cashmore at Mashable is now the top item on TechMeme.

Cashmore is one of very small number of users who Twitter includes in their Suggested Users List, which has resulted in huge growth in their number of followers.

Three months ago, he had 28,621 followers. Today he has 417,347. In the same timeframe my Twitter feed grew from 16,062 to 21,108, which represents something of a baseline for users not gifted by Twitter with placement on the SUL. (Source: twittercounter.com.)

Did Twitter favor him with this gift because they like what he says about them, or to encourage him to be more favorable in his writing? Or some other reason? Did he pay for this placement? (Note that would, imho, be the ethical thing to do, and the same deal should be offered to everyone.)

Would Cashmore withhold or temper criticism of Twitter because he fears they may cut him off?

Would a reader question his impartiality? (This reader does. I can't see how he can help but be influenced.)

Does this kind of favoritism hurt Twitter as a medium for journalism?

Another question will likely come up at some point -- Will Cashmore have to pay taxes on this gift? It could turn into a pretty big liability, even in a non-ethical sense.

I wrote about this previously on March 12.