It turns out that Dave Winer isn’t washed up after all. His “River of News” led to the creation of both Facebook and Twitter, according to one of his recent tweets:
@Scobleizer — Matt is a mensch. R.O.N. was the prototype for what Facebook became & Twitter. Idiot programmers thought itwas abt format. 11:04 PM November 26, 2008 from web in reply to Scobleizer
For some reason this fact is missing from Winer’s Wikipedia entry. To the Davepole, Betsy Devine!