Scripting News: B. Mann loses it

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

B. Mann loses it

He says he lost it when he read my post about federating Twitter last night. He says "Forget Twitter. It has a bunch of users, that's about it." And goes on to say someone should rebuild Twitter using Jabber.

But having a bunch of users is very important feature. You can't just skip over it as if it didn't matter, because imho it's all that matters. Jabber is a good technological foundation. But we've learned over and over that that isn't enough to get people to use something.

So many people who know technology think they know better than users. The trick is to forget that and just go where the people are. Jason wants to use Twitter. So do a lot of people. That's good enough for me.

Previous citation: Twitter as coral reef.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:47 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.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

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

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.

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Apr Jun