You’re under the false impression that Winer’s recent business failures are caused by his lack of drive. He lost out on PodShow for the same reason Microsoft never did a deal – you’d have to be completely fucking crazy to get into business with him.

Ever talk to people who worked for LuserLand? The Russo lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg on how he ran the company into the ground. Winer had no business model back then, either.

Amen to that.

Winer’s latest pedantic piece of nonsense: Don’t blame bloggers because the Gizmodo crowd consisted of “reporters.” Um, not. Gizmodo is a tech blog. There’s no special pixi dust they sprinkle on “bloggers,” big Dave, And yes, they were being – in your delicate term – “assholes.” Then again, maybe it says a lot about the level of honesty and integrity – your favorite terms – of the blogging crowd.

Hmm. Maybe the evil corrupt MSM has something to teach after all.

He makes and distributes software but doesn’t run that effort like a business.

He has several web server but doesn’t run those sites as businesses.

He hints about potential start-up efforts, Venture Capital jobs or working for a publisher but doesn’t run any of those efforts towards something resembling business.

But he blogs about making money… and maybe is he but it’s probably from investing money he made from actually running businesses in the past.

Why he thinks he should give anyone starting out advice based upon his current circumstances is amazing. If he role played being cash poor and idea rich make a better advisor for most internet entrepreneurs or wanna be’s.

There are several podcast media network start-ups. With PodShow being Dave’s major near miss. At this point he’d rather indicate that that whole effort at making a business from PodCasting is just a “no go” and no one should even try to find a business model for the effort. But the reality is closer to the fact that PodShow is making money and Dave’s lack of belief in that media as a marketplace is the main reason why the ship sailed without him on board. He didn’t have the fire in the belly to make a start-up commitment and “sell the idea” of a new media that could create revenue.

20/20 hindsight indicates that he’s past the point of wanting to do a business and financially he’s too comfortable to feel the need to make a lot more money anyway. Managing investments and hacking out code for people to play with in more than a full plate.

But there are valid concerns regarding some of the podcast networks and the way they are working for people making the investment in that new media. Once you start with a business model that assumes you’ll pay the infrastructure costs and deliver value for free you have a hard time changing the audience into customers. “Open source” audio is assumed to be free content and advertising revenues also create an audience “backlash” that inpedes any ROI.

Dave’s major role in podcasting was to make it essentially profitless for the creator and a great value for the audience. He resists any efforts to change that. Too bad because he could actually let the media find it’s own models without insisting it is free by design.

Like most of Dave’s most misguided ideas it’s his opinion and his authority is being used to the detriment of good people who simply disagree with him. He gets upset and then starts to attack those who disagree. Patterns based upon financial security that assume everyone should be able to do as he does. Most simply can’t make his “business model” work because they haven’t cashed in yet on their previous efforts. If you told him in the early start-up yars to give away your product he’d have thrown you out of his office.