Michael Koby

This “Down on” thing seems to be coming around a lot lately.  First it was Pownce, then Apple, now it’s Mr. Dave Winer.  Who is Dave Winer?  Well for one thing, he’s practically the guy that inventing RSS (Check out paragraph 6 on Tim O’Reilly’s “Blogging and the Wisdom of the Crowds“), giving way to several technologies many of the folks taking time out of their busy day to bash him use everyday.

I’m kind of new to the area of social media (this blog is almost 2) and I’ve really just started getting into personal branding, social networks, and life streaming on a grand scale.  So I can understand if I missed something.  Is there a particular reason everyone seems to gravitate towards insulting this man?  I’m not trying to be an a**kisser, simply curious.  I mean this man is part of the reason we have RSS feeds, podcasting, and videocasting.  I know that I definitely don’t share his political views, but then again being raised in Texas I don’t share political views with most of the internet and people I follow.  I have seen nothing that is overly crazy, I mean aside from a “crazy” comment or two but really who isn’t guilty of that.

The reason I bring this up?  There was an article posted on the website WinExtras entitled, Dave Winer - You Are a Pompus A**.  The article picks out basically a single point out of one of Dave’s multi-point articles about the TechCrunch website and TechMeme.  While the author of the article brings up a valid point on the statement below, he completely overlooks the main point of Dave’s article.  The statement that the WinExtras’ author decided to focus all his attention on was:

Most of the authors don’t know the first thing about technology, never took a computer science class, have never written code, and don’t admit that understanding tech is a prerequisite for writing about it.

Granted, this statement does go a little over the edge.  For one thing, I have yet to take a computer science class in college.  All of my skill sets in technology come from hands on experience including but not limited to coding and administration.  One thing I do understand is technology.  When you’ve been around it as much as I have (close to 20 years in some form or other), it’s one of the side effects.  But granted I’m willing to concede to the author over at WinExtras that this statement is a little “crazy” and over the line to some degree.  But it does not change the fact that the article in question completely ignores the main point of Mr. Winer’s article.

I think this is how misconceptions get thrown around the internet.  A single writer doesn’t like something someone else said and so that person writes about it and the next thing you know, it’s all over the internet.  But when you get to the actual context of the statement it’s almost never as bad as the internet has blown it up.

Yesterday, TechCrunch posted a note about micro-blogging website, Pownce releasing an updated API to programmers this coming Friday.  The comments seem to be swayed towards most people disliking Pownce.  People saying things like "Let it die" and "I can do this through email, im, or something else" and I think people are either a) missing the point or b) to set in their twittering ways to give anything else a shot.

The "let it die" comments I will leave be.  These people offer no reason as to why TechCrunch should stop writing about the still very much active service, they just want to troll.  It is the other set of comments I want address.  Those comments that say things like, "I can do this with email or instant messaging.  Why do I need Pownce?" seem to really be forgetting one thing the internet is about, choice. 

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