In late 2003, early 2004 we had talks with Yahoo about them acquiring UserLand.
The idea was that Yahoo would get into the weblog hosting business, along with customizable River of News aggregators.
Had we done the deal, it seems Yahoo might today compete with News Corp's MySpace.
Google Reader would still be playing catch-up.
Sure, our software was designed to run on the desktop, but the design would have easily ported to a Yahoo-scale centralized app.
And we would have given Blogger a run for the money.
Wish we had done the deal! ";->"
Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:32 PM
~About the Author~
Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. 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.
"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.
In late 2003, early 2004 we had talks with Yahoo about them acquiring UserLand. 
scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.