Scripting News: Scoble is Facebookized

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

Scoble is Facebookized

No doubt it's a Scoble world.

And he says Facebook is a black hole.

Sucking up all the data from all other apps.

But I wonder.

Could it be that the real revolution is that all the other apps were ready to be ported into any environment? That there already was enough data portability in the broad support for RSS in the base of apps that is enabling it to appear as if Facebook is subsuming everything? Could it be that Facebook is just another way of reading feeds?

I don't really know because unlike Scoble I haven't been sucked into Facebook myself. I'm enjoying the summer. I bought a car. Hanging with friends. Flirting with and orbiting around the opposite gender. Feeding coins into parking meters. Thinking about what I can do to help my country. Almost anything but getting obsessed with Facebook.

Could it be that the world is passing me by?

Yes, it could be.

Or it could be that I already have a great feed aggregator and the world is just catching up?

What do you think?

PS: Did you read this in Facebook?

PPS: I've had a chance to get to know the Parakey guys, and I can vouch for their idealism. They just joined Facebook. So that bodes well for Facebook de-siloing and really opening up to the rest of the web, in the spirit of sending them away so they can come back.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:15 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.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jun Aug