The Twitter of News?

Archive > 2010 > May > 28

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

Liz Gannes has written an intriguing story about the new version of Digg coming soon, saying it aspires to be "The Twitter of News." This is very interesting. Think of Twitter as "at least a dress rehearsal for the news system of the future." They gave it a diminutive name, easy to dismiss, but Twitter does something important. It makes composing and reading news easier than it's ever been. But Twitter has been standing in the same place for a long long time. Why shouldn't Digg be able to catch up and pass them in a meaningful way? If they're motivated enough and good enough the answer is they should. What's wrong with the tech industry that it lets Twitter stagnate so long without raising a serious challenge. Google didn't do it with Buzz or Wave. Yahoo could have done something with Flickr, but they're too disorganized. Even Facebook has failed to mount a realistic challenge to Twitter. So why not Digg? Let's hope they have something good. Let's also hope they have innovated with their API, kept it simple, and perhaps offer developers a little more to play with than Twitter has. It's time for some rock and roll. Update: Zee sees it too. ";->"

Last update: Tuesday, June 1, 2010; 7:18:50 AM

~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.

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