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The myth of perfection

Thursday, June 25, 2009 by Dave Winer.

A picture named united.gifMyth: Twitter is perfect. If you change even one thing its magic disappears.  Permalink to this paragraph

Apple products are often thought to be perfect. Steve Jobs had a lot of people convinced that video had no place on the iPod, until he revealed the iPod with video. All of a sudden it was the Number One most sought-after feature. Permalink to this paragraph

The myth of perfection is mostly skillful marketing. Permalink to this paragraph

The reality: We Make Shitty SoftwarePermalink to this paragraph

Software is a process. It's never done. "Our software is shitty," the honest hard-working developer says. "But watch, we'll make it less shitty." You're buying a process not perfection. Permalink to this paragraph

This has practical applications. In the last Rebooting The News podcast, toward the end, the subject of changing Twitter came up. When I was able to convince Jay that Twitter could be changed, he said his #1 most desired feature was to be able to edit a tweet.  Permalink to this paragraph

Twitter will get more features. Bugs will be fixed. You can be sure of that. Permalink to this paragraph

One of the most obvious features it will get, and I'd bet really soon, are groups, which are similar to features already implemented by some of the clients.  Permalink to this paragraph

What's your number one most desired feature? Permalink to this paragraph

PS: This discussion is a continuation to the the piece I wrote earlier this week about the 140-character limit. Permalink to this paragraph




 
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A picture named dave.jpgDave Winer, 54, 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 Berkeley, California.

"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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