Google swallows Pyra whole
Coming as it does on the heels of some talk from AOL that they were going to introduce a blogging tool to their unwashed masses, this is the surest sign yet that weblogs will be more than just a foot note in the history of the web. It doesn't strike me as a fad either - it's a little too long in bone already to just be a fad. Even if currently new users are joining in the phenomenon in the key of natural e . I am an example of that myself. This weblog is brand spanking new. I hoisted this auto-piloted wonder out the Userland well as I have written previously after watching some MeFi neocons try to stomp out the Trent Lott brush fire before it burnt down their forest. Regarding the story itself and everybody's "what it all means" a good way to follow the story is with the main blogdex entry for this. Or I suppose you could Google the story.
Offhand I'd say that this is a good thing, whether it really is or not I'll leave up to the industry watchers or what digerati are left. Weblog tools are going to become more powerful, complicated, and accomplished and they are going mainstream. Too often original developers of a product or product type are left by the side of the road, when the big rush comes by. Their vision of the thing or even their ability to keep their vision as part of the thing, gets lost. Evan Williams; hopefully, has some capital now and a seat at the Google table and is in a position to nurse the blogger revolution along.
Still it is tempting to take the view that I saw last weekend during the weblogs'n'powerlogs debate that played out on a number of sites. One view point in particular that rankled me turned up in the commentary phase on the DiveintoMark sites part in the debate. He doesn't like news aggragators bundled with weblog tools [t]he combination news-aggregator-plus-blogging-tool is probably the worst possible invention for the long-term health of the blogging community. . Which is really to say he doesn't like all the people that Dave Wiener has brought in with Radio Userland (what this is), and he doesn't like the power it gives them to jump into debates. Though he frames it as being against lazy reposting. The new bands are ruining the scene. What with their fuzzboxes, e-bows, flangers, and their punk beats. Its not real rock and roll man! Most telling is his prescription: he doesn't tell people to get better, he tells them to get out. And he calls them newbies. Its worth remembering that this is occurring in the middle of a discussion as to wether some natural law will organize all weblog commentary (and reciprocal linking) around what is being said by 20 percent of active sites (commentors). Now, I figure I'm about the same age as this web author, and over the course of the years I've been introduced to, learned, and developed experience at many different things and. Not once have I ever felt the impulse to call someone else whose skill set I perceive as differing from mine a 'newbie' It's an obnoxious putdown revealing far more about the person using it than who it's directed too. I have a difficult time respecting people who resort to such a prejudicing locution. The whole thing smacks of what growing up in Massachesetts we used to call the "last over the bridge syndrome" This is where people who had just discovered or bought property on the Cape, would decide that whatever just hauled their ass over the canal was the last legitimate thing on wheels. The Sagamore and Bourne bridges should now just be hacksawed free of their foundations fall into the current and leave the Cape the island it was meant to be.
I don't need anyone to call me a newbie or to tell me to get a new hobby. Whatever Pyra-Google or Winer-Harvard has coming; bring it on.
6:15:51 PM  ;
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