Eye on Winer

Excerpt from pages 14-16 of Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs, by Twitter founder Biz Stone:

As much as he’s known for his contributions to software development, [Dave] Winer is known on the web well, let’s go to the web and see how he’s known:

Ten prominent Google search results out of about 762 with the exact phrase “dave winer is a”:

Dave Winer is a jackass
Dave Winer is a pompous ass
Dave Winer is still a dick
Dave Winer is a loser
Dave Winer an asshole
Dave Winer is a nut
Dave Winer is a weirdo
Dave Winer is a bastard
Dave Winer is a pretentious asshole
Dave Winer is a hypocrite

It’s easy to dig up dirt like this on a well-known web personality. The results seem more fair if we use Googlism — a website that leverages Google to find out what the web “thinks” of a particular person. Here’s a sampling of the many results for “dave winer”:

dave winer is exhausting
dave winer is in bad taste
dave winer is one of those genius entrepreneurs
dave winer is an arse
dave winer is a software developer
dave winer is one of the pioneers of the online weblogging community
dave winer is striding forward with his latest version of rss
dave winer is an asshole
dave winer is perhaps the single most prolific contributor to the blog community
dave winer is a loser
dave winer is insuring that he will get a lot of attention
dave winer is the villain in the story
dave winer is right up there with luminaries like tim berners
dave winer is an online legend
dave winer is one reason a number of people have left
dave winer is a leading figure in the development of the internet
dave winer is maker of various nerd devices that i dont understand
dave winer is one of the world’s best
dave winer is evil
dave winer is a fanatical blogger
dave winer is entitled to express his opinions
dave winer is dave winer

The web can be a harsh mistress.

Dave is harping on Scoble to say he’s sorry, and does it not only on Twitter, but on his blog, and in a Twittergram. Can you imagine the hell Winer would raise if Scoble did the same to him? He gives some good advice, though, that we’ll remember to offer to him in the future: Just admit you made a mistake. I also took the liberty to edit the audio for the purposes of commentary:

Physician, heal thyself.

From the Twitter streams of Dave and Colby Palmer tonight:

Dave Winer: Eric Rice is a dork. Is that conversational enough for you Eric?
Dave Winer: Hope that’s “conversational” enough for Eric Rice.
Dave Winer: I’m ragging on Eric because when Calacanis was running his campaign on me, trashing my good name, Rice jumped on and scored a few points too
Dave Winer: I really dislike opportunists who join web mobs. Rice is a big offender there. Mr Judgment. Loves to hit a man when he’s down
Dave Winer: We have a word for that where I come from: Coward.
Colby Palmer: @davewiner -don’t get me wrong Dave- <3 your brilliant work…but maybe piling more trash on the heap doesn’t add gloss to a “good name”?
Dave Winer: @colbyworld, are you a PR person? because only PR people worry about stuff like that. some of us are just people, and aren’t image-obsessed
Colby Palmer: @davewiner No, and with respect, I don’t want to flame. I’m just sick of the sniping/infighting. I’d rather see advances of real thought.
Colby Palmer: @davewiner This includes @spin and @jasoncalacanis…not to single you out, but your “good name/eric rice is a dork” rant was hypocritical.

I’m not sure I’m on board with “hypocritical”, but it sure was something. I must have missed it, but what did Rice do, exactly? Besides not getting enough of his digital slobber on Dave’s electronic knob, I mean.

Twitter makes Flickr more useful:

[L]ook at how the newcomer, Twitter, made the old standby, Flickr, so much more useful.

I understand that Dave is enamored by his new toy… but let’s not kid ourselves. Spamming your photos over your Flickr stream doesn’t make Flickr more useful. For starters, people who really want to see all of your pictures can ALREADY follow your photostream via RSS, and I’m not sure why anyone would need (or want) the immediacy of Twitter for every single Flickr photo.