Eye on Winer

I never thought I’d say a day in which Dave wrote an EoW post for us. Observe:

[C]riticizing [him] is a messy business. It’s easier to say nothing.

It happens so often in discourse on the net, there are so many subjects that are taboo, people you can’t talk about without provoking personal attacks. The net is just as good at distributing personal attacks as it is at distributing accurate information. I guess it’s not a big surprise, given the course of every other medium, that as the blogging world matures, there are more attacks and less accurate information.

But when we don’t say anything we give up a bit of our future. And when you factor in that there are many products, people and companies who are poison in this way, what you end up with is another bubble, created out of the things we don’t want to talk about.

I think it’s better to take the hits in little increments than continue to build flawed businesses, built on incorrect premises.

Of course, Dave wrote this about Someone else, but I’ve never met anyone else about whom this is more true than it is of Dave.

See? No personal attacks here, Dave.

Dave’s response to Google’s announcement is amazing, sad, and revealing. From the moment Dave even heard about Google’s plan to create an open API for social networking apps, he went into full FUD mode.

10/31: He tries to undermine the whole API by parroting his common gripe: that he doesn’t get to keep his data. Of course, this is silly. Google released an API, not an application. One could just as easily say that Dave’s baby XML-RPC is “evil” because applications can be made that don’t allow you access to the data.

11/1: Noticing that his preemptive strike didn’t quell the excitement, he moved on to a “Not so fast, my friend” post, implying that OpenSocial has no users and is basically vaporware. He ended with this conceit: “Me, I’ve been around this block so many times and it’s boring. Let’s see some software then I’ll let you know if this means anything.” He also makes a veiled reference to the fact that he’s a old dinosaur who can’t learn new tricks, saying that Google is keeping “people like [him]” away… what sort of people are those? People who don’t do anything but XML-RPC.

Later that day he takes a generic shot a Google, complaining he doesn’t think it’s the way he used to think it was.

11/3: Flailing about, hoping something will make Google’s new venture a failure, Dave tries to go all Deep Throat on us, speculating as to what Google is like internally. This is the corporate version of an ad hominem… instead of debating the merits of the software the company produces, he’s going to criticize them because their employees are cocky… and that’s really just him talking out of his ass, too. In the end he comes as close as he can for begging for an “insider” to confirm his story. I’d guess he got plenty of emails from people who are happy to work at Google… but he didn’t publish anything, so I’d guess he hasn’t gotten a gripe email yet.

11/4: Instead of talking about why OpenSocial doesn’t do what it aims to well enough, he’s now complaining that it doesn’t do what he wants it to do… I wonder if Dave was disappointed when his new car wasn’t able to fly and wash his laundry. He writes: “[S]uppose I wanted to compete with Google, MySpace, Plaxo and LinkedIn, well, where’s the spec that shows me how to do that?” The spec, Dave? The “spec” that allows you to compete with other social networks is called “machine code” and there’s a LOT of different ways to come up with the “machine code” to do it.

My favorite part of this little rant is this: “[Google is] not very good at APIs. This one is a loser, for sure.” Wow. So not only has he admitted that he doesn’t know what the API is, but he’s already determined that it sucks… because… all google APIs suck? Pot/Kettle?

What’s going to be really funny is watching to see how much buy-in this “loser” gets.

(See, also, the comments to this post)

Stowe Boyd noted, in a post today, that Dave doesn’t get Facebook. He’s right, of course, as was noted here yesterday. Instead of considering that, just maybe, he hasn’t fully grasped what Facebook is, he responds with this:

Stowe Boyd is a creep. I’ve been wanting to say that for quite a long time. Now I have. Onward. 25 minutes ago from web

Stowe Boyd is just the kind of idiot who parades his idiocy around by saying other people “don’t get” something, when he “gets” nothing. 17 minutes ago from web

I’ve sent Dave a request that he explain, if he can, how those two updates are anything but hypocritical and asking if he thinks he owes Mr. Boyd an apology. Frankly, I doubt he replies. Why would he? He’d have to admit that yes, that was wholly inappropriate and yes, he does owe Mr. Boyd an apology. At which point he’d have to actually apologize, and we’ve seen that he doesn’t like to do that.