Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

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Michael Arrington vs. Dave Winer

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

Michael Arrington appears to have seen the light about Dave Winer, from the looks of this comment he made on TechCrunch:

Dave: just stop. you’ll do and say anything to get what you want. even lie. even delete previous messages and reverse your opinion.

http://eyeonwiner.org/archives/2008/dave-winer-is-loren-feldmans-puppet

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/davefeldman.png

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/13/the-rules-apply-to-everyone/

you have no integrity. you have no core ethics. it’s just all about you all the time.

This latest blowup began when Winer questioned Arrington’s integrity because TechCrunch is one of the suggested users recommended on Twitter. Winer sent a direct message to TechCrunch writer MG Siegler telling him to “stop fucking with RSS” because of an article arguing that RSS is dead. (Note that the article was by Steve Gillmor, not Siegler — Winer is a fucking genius.)

As you can see, Arrington is using Eye on Winer as a resource to document Winer’s hypocrisy. We compliment him on his good taste. They were best bros going back to the early days of TechCrunch — Arrington once served as his lawyer — but Arrington seems to have figured out why so many people in tech will never work with Winer.

If you know anyone else who hasn’t learned this lesson, send them to us.

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Posted in Dave, Ethics, Friends, Lawyers, Twitter | 6 Comments »

Dave Winer’s Obsession with Twitter Continues

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Nice example of projection from Dave Winer on Twitter:

Twitter is a big deal now. Calacanis used to be #1, now he’s a nobody. For a guy like him the difference is huge. And the resentment real.

About 21 hours ago from web

Winer keeps going on and on and on about Twitter’s suggested users list, which gave some celebs and tech A-listers many hundreds of thousands of followers compared to his 20,000. But as he bitches and moans about how follower counts like his used to make you a big deal, he completely ignores the fact that most of the people who read him on Twitter have followers in the hundreds or lower. He was perfectly happy with the inequalities of the system while he was on top. Now he’s Che Fucking Guevara.

Show of hands: Does anyone else other than Winer give a shit about the suggested users list or Twitter follow counts? Thanks to Twitter, we have learned that a 50-something obscure software developer wakes up every single day and gets his Depends in a bunch because Ashton Kutcher and Oprah and P. Diddy have more followers than he does. It’s a sad but hilarious spectacle to watch him go ape over any system that quantifies popularity and puts him at the top — as long as he stays there — and go all jilted lover when he falls off it.

Earth to Dave: You are not famous. You are Internet famous, which only means anything when something is new. When the rest of the world shows up, as they have on Twitter, the genuinely famous show up and that’s the end of your celebrity. On Twitter now your Internet fame is worthless. Ashton Kutcher craps out bigger celebrities than you each morning.

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Posted in Twitter | 6 Comments »

Dave Winer Thinks Judges Should Cover Trials

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Dave Winer at a UC-Berkeley event on newspaper journalism:

I said the sources would take over the news. Not enough reporters covering the courtroom? The judge will report, as will the jurors, the attorneys, the plaintiff, the defendent. It will be messier, I would have said had I had the time to complete the thought, but more truth will come out.

New York Times, same day:

Last week, a building products company asked an Arkansas court to overturn a $12.6 million judgment, claiming that a juror used Twitter to send updates during the civil trial. And on Monday, defense lawyers in the federal corruption trial of a former Pennsylvania state senator, Vincent J. Fumo, demanded before the verdict that the judge declare a mistrial because a juror posted updates on the case on Twitter and Facebook. The juror had even told his readers that a “big announcement” was coming on Monday.

Winer waited all that time to get a chance to speak, and yet he couldn’t come up with a worse example if he tried. Judges and attorneys are legally prohibited from writing accounts of an ongoing trial on their blogs or Twitter. They would risk mistrials and professional sanction. Jurors risk mistrials as well by covering themselves. Even after the fact, participants in a trial have to be careful about what they say because it could become grounds for appeal. There are many other examples where professional rules, confidentiality requirements or non-disclosure agreements would prevent citizens from reporting their own news. There’s no way in hell the public will get court news from the participants. And that’s Winer’s example of why we don’t need newspapers? The journalists in the crowd must have loved his naivete.

Posted in Dave, Media, Twitter | 7 Comments »

Dave on Twitter’s Suggested Users List

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Examples of Dave’s double standards (one for him, one for everyone else) are easy to come by. Few are as stark as his recent crusade against the hegemony of twitter follow suggestions. Rogers Cadenhead fills us in on an interesting back story, for those who didn’t already know it: Dave sold default subscriptions in Radio.

I wasn’t on that list. I poured a lot of effort into Radio, and while I wasn’t in the top tier of bloggers I was solidly second-tier. Former MTV veejay Adam Curry was on the list, and in July 2003 he revealed why — he secretly paid Winer $10,000:

Time to come clean on an investment I made a year and a half ago. At the time, UserLand software had released a Mac OSX version of Radio and I was totally digging the built in news aggregator. I came up with a cunning plan: I asked Userland if I could purchase a pre-installed feed on their aggregator, which supports RSS xml feeds. I paid $10,000 for a one year license. To date I’ve been delighted with my purchase and although I haven’t checked recently, I’m pretty sure Userland still has me in the defaults. …

The $10k didn’t ‘just’ give me an automatic base within the userland community, it got pasted on web pages all over the world and I’ve built up an audience that consists of 50% aggergator users.

So when Winer was in the same position as Twitter, his software included a paid placement, something he never disclosed to his users.

(more…)

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Posted in Twitter | Comments Off

Dave Winer’s Head is a Bubble

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Dave Winer’s having an envy fit today on Twitter over how the service gives new users recommendations on who to follow:

  • There are at least two Twitters, the Friend-Of-Ev Twitter, mostly people who put in little or no effort but have 100K-plus following… about 2 hours ago from web
  • …and the old Twitter for people who work to get a sizable following, sometimes for years. It’s like the banking system that collapsed, Ev. about 2 hours ago from web
  • There’s a bubble here. Not sure how or when it pops, but with hindsight as a guide — it will pop. about 2 hours ago from web
  • One of the lessons of bubbles is that few are willing to say it’s a bubble and people who say it is are thought of as party poopers. about 1 hour ago from web

Winer is, of course, not one of the recommendations. Company founder Evan Williams surely knows enough about Winer’s many emotional flameouts not to expose new users to that junk. (Probable reason for Winer’s fit: Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington are among the recommended people to follow.)

As he goes on and on about the unfairness of this system, keep in mind that when Winer was running UserLand Software, he secretly sold Adam Curry a place in the default subscription list of Radio UserLand’s RSS reader for $5,000. It didn’t come to light until Curry blogged about it — users had no idea the list contained paid links. For him to complain about Twitter’s recommendations is just brazen hypocrisy.

Posted in Dave, Twitter | 7 Comments »

Dave Releases Tweet Pirating Software

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

As we’ve already covered Dave’s most recent OPML editor extension’s sole purpose is to rehost the copyrighted material of other people. Unsurprisingly, he does so without permission.

Now, he’s decided to make the ability to steal and re-host other people’s tweets widely available.

If you’re still not sold on the copyright, take a look at this passage from Dave when it was about his content:

The next step is to look at the copyright issues his service raises. They are quite interesting. Scripting News, both in HTML and RSS, has a clear copyright on it. Should I have a say in publications created from my content? I generally don’t mind, but shouldn’t I have to give permission? Suppose a magazine started publishing all my writing. Would I have recourse? I am not a lawyer, but it seems clear that I would. Is Pilgrim somehow immune to copyright law? I’d love to hear the legal theory that allows him to do what he’s doing with my work.

So . . . is Dave “somehow immune to copyright law?”

Posted in Copyright, Projects, Twitter | 3 Comments »

Bit.ly Shortens Team by One Dave Winer

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Dave Winer’s collaboration with Bit.ly didn’t last long:

As you may know I participated in the intial design and rollout of the bit.ly URL-shortener. It was one of the most instantly successful projects I’ve ever participated in, up there with the release of Radio 8 in 2002 and MORE 1.0 in 1986. Sometimes the time is right for a product, and the execution is great and the communication is crisp. Everyone gets it, and it takes off like a rocket. Bit.ly is one of those phenoms. They’re getting ready to grow a real business around it, and I want to go on to do other things. So we worked out a deal that leaves me satisfied with how things turned out and am no longer a shareholder. I wish the company and the team the very best. Onward!

Bit.ly launched only seven months ago, so the decision to part ways with Winer this early suggests the working relationship wasn’t going so hot. With Winer’s copiously documented inability to work with others, that’s definitely the safe bet. But the Bit.ly crew is making nice about his exit as well.

Here’s John Borthwick, the founder of the company that runs Bit.ly:

Dave is moving on from his day to day involvement with bit.ly — I want to thank him for his ideas, help and participation. It was an amazing experience working with Dave. Dave doesnt pull any punches — he requires you to think — his perspective is grounded in a deep appreciation for practice — the act of using products — understanding workflow and intuiting needs from that understanding. I learnt a lot. From bit.ly and from from me — thank you. A pleasure and a privildege.

Here’s Andrew Kortina on the Bit.ly blog:

We had the pleasure and privilege of working with Dave at bit.ly — he helped design and create bit.ly and he worked with us during the first phases of its development. Thank you Dave for your help, ideas and your passion for making great, truly wonderful products. Best wishes and please look after your puffer fish.

Startups occasionally snuggle up to Winer, presumably to exploit his Scripting News audience, which is heavy with tech reporters and Web 2.0 bigshots. Mike Arrington cozied up to him when launching TechCrunch, as did Loic Le Meur with Seesmic and Adam Curry with PodShow (now known as Mevio). The smart play is to do what Borthwick has accomplished here, which is to get away from Winer after the initial hype fades and before the inevitable moment where he completely loses his shit and attacks his partners.

Posted in Dave, RSS, Twitter | 2 Comments »

2 Girls 1 Twittersphere

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

What’s more pathetic — Dave Winer’s New Year’s Day dump on Robert Scoble

You can’t be on Twitter or FriendFeed and not be inundated with comments from and about Scoble. I don’t know how he does it, but it’s really annoying. I find myself relaxing when he takes a break from Twitter, for example to fly from Europe to the US. Finally I can speak without having everything one-upped by Scoble. Whatever it is, he’s done it better, or bigger, or with more important people. It’s irritating because I don’t believe it. I’d really like it if he just turned down the volume. I’d really like it if he just turned down the volume. Or if there were a way to segment the Twittersphere, I’d like to be in the part where Scoble isn’t the main topic of conversation 24-by-7.

or Scoble lapping it up like 2 Girls 1 Cup?

Interesting post and one I’ll consider! I clicked like on it in friendfeed so that all my followers could see it. I also retweeted it. I think I’ll do a video on how to get rid of Robert Scoble out of your view. It’s actually not that hard thanks to the “block” feature in friendfeed.

As James Robertson points out, there’s already a way to “segment the Twittersphere,” and it’s called the Remove button.

Posted in Dave, Friends, Twitter | 4 Comments »

Dave Winer Invented Facebook, Twitter

Monday, December 1st, 2008

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!

Posted in Dave, Facebook, Twitter | Comments Off

Dave Winer is Loren Feldman’s Puppet

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Dave Winer killed a blog post last night related to his feud with Loren Feldman, creator of a Winer puppet that mocks the shit out of him:

Shel got a reprieve

Saturday, June 28, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Well, it worked.

They let Shel Israel off the hook. He gets his name back, the puppet is retired. The mock trial they were planning for the TechCrunch summer party, that I learned of this morning, is cancelled. I don’t know what Heather and Mike were thinking, or if they were even in the loop, but people need to be a lot more careful with each others’ reputations, if we ever want to get anywhere.

Maybe after a breathing period we can resume some of our friendships.

Lately Winer has been complaining about the treatment of Israel, another butt of Feldman’s jokes who has been turned into a puppet. Winer’s comments on FriendFeed show why:

Do you think they would be doing this if Shel’s name was Kathy Sierra? Why is it funny to destroy a middle-aged Jewish guy?

It amazes me the people who just stand by and do and say nothing.

I don’t just think his Jewishness has anything to do with it, I’m sure of it.

Israel is, of course, a stand-in for Winer’s own beef with Feldman — the poor middle-aged Jewish tech blogger that the Nazi puppetmaster and his anti-Semitic thugs wants to destroy. First they came for the A listers, but I did not complain, for I was a B-lister …

The notion that anti-Semitism is at play here is deranged. As J. Michael Arrington pointed out on that FriendFeed discussion, Winer praised the puppets (including the Israel one) as recently as June 28 — Twitter messages he has since deleted.

In a discussion on Feldman’s site, Winer pleaded with Feldman to “cancel the vendetta against me”:

I just heard today what you think I said to or about your girlfriend. Loren, listen to this carefully — it never happened. Think about it. What if you got this wrong. How the fuck are you ever going to make it up.

Accusing a man of abusing women is the worst thing you can say about him. You really have fucked up here big time. And if you feel like a mensch, you should apologize, cause you really wronged me. Swear to god.

PS: I heard about it from a woman friend who knows your girlfriend. I asked her to let her know that what you said about me is absolutely untrue.

Winer has so little self-knowledge that he can’t understand how his actions might make him a rich target for mockery. In his head, the only reason Feldman could possibly be going after him is some personal slight involving Feldman’s girlfriend.

Feldman, who has to be loving Winer’s overwrought hysterics, has big plans for Puppet Dave:

Im preparing a documentary with puppets of course about Dave Winer. Please email me all Winer Incidents, all replies in strict confidence.

Posted in Dave, Friends, Twitter | 7 Comments »

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