Blogopalypse
Just got off the phone and video with Loren Feldman, who is approaching a complete system crash mentally. I have been eagerly anticipating this, not wanting to accelerate the thing for fear of creating a dangerous life-threatening condition, but at the same time hoping that the continuing meltdown of the flogosphere would reach an epic moment.
Of course, twittering is helping the crisis immeasurably. Scoble pointed out to me yesterday that I was way too late in making any kind of anti-twitter statement by opting out: “That’s so old,” he said as I watched over his shoulder as he hit refresh over and over again on the twitterstream. Poor pathetic bastard. Reminds me of the night Joe Cocker sat slumped on the floor up against the wall at ShangriLa with a beer like he was watching TV. What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and twitter on me?
In other news, it seems Jon Udell has returned to IT Conversations, where he and Dana Gardner and Doc and I started the Gillmor Gang all those years ago. I detect absolutely no impact whatsoever on Jon’s output from the move from InfoWorld to Microsoft, which both augurs well for how he’ll intersect with the upcoming MixO7 “Hi, we’re Microsoft and we’re not saying anything else” Tour and provides an alternate universe theory for the Great Blogosphere Implosion of March 07. I can’t wait for Steve Rubel to christen this twitting point sometime soon. But wait, Bob Lefetz is now railing against the Dave Clark Five joining the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Lefsetz continues to amaze. Hank Barry hipped me to him several years ago, and I quickly became mostly addicted to his 60’s stream-o-unconsciousness. But recently he’s moved into a kind of William F. Buckley stance, decrying Patti Smith’s entry and repeating once too often his hatred of the pinheads controlling the cartel archives. McCartney signing with Starbucks, now there is a real cartel-busting move. I don’t buy records except at Starbucks; just picked up a live Neil Young record from 1971.
So tonight I signed up for Twitter. Not sure why, except perhaps to feel more a part of the Blogopalypse. Scoble, please put some Twitter feeds in your link feed so I can understand it better. My bet is that aggregating them in Google Reader will either compress the signal to noise or create a swarm gesture lever. It would also be nice if Dave Winer would abstract his Twitter engine so I could pump such a Gesture feed through my Twitter feed instead of documenting the silence in incremental non-bursts. When someone says, “pull my finger” I find it hard to resist.
March 19th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Steve,
When is the Gllmore Gang coming back? I always enjoyed my weekly dose of you and the gang, thus I miss it dearly.
-Chris
March 19th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Hey Steve, I added you as a friend even if you don’t actually add anything to Twitter because you’re such a nice guy! Sue sends her regards BTW. We both enjoyed the time we spent with you at DEMO a couple of months ago.
March 19th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Well, I haven’t figured it out, maybe because I don’t have all that many “friends” that I need to keep notified of my every move. If you spend most of your waking hours in front of a PC, either at work or at home I’m not sure what there is to say other than document your bodily functions. *burp*
We seem to be transitioning from a read-only culture of couch potatoes and magazine subscribers to a write only culture of blogs, podcasts, and now documenting our every flatulence. Like an accident, it’s ugly, but we can’t look away.
Well, I guess some people can’t look away anyway. I think I’ll get away from the computer for a while. Maybe go check out that house that caught fire down the road last night. Yeah, maybe I’ll twitter what I found out.
March 19th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Oooh, coherence with this one — nice choice.
I’m still trying to both figure out and get over Twitter, with the hopes of dodging Scoble’s (and our collective) inexorable decline into the idiocracy. “Good luck with that,” I know.
Unfortunately, the monolithic firewall I work behind for the monolithic corporation is already blocking twitter.com. I’ll look you up on the other side.
March 19th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Hi Steve,
I drank the Kool-Aid yesterday. I have found Twitter to be not much more than an exercise in frustration. I assume Twitter’s infrastructure is getting pounded, but geez… The website won’t come up and I refuse to clog my phone, blackberry, or IM with banter. My user experience has been fun to watch, painful to use. One word … Next!
March 21st, 2007 at 10:26 pm
So whats your Twitter ID Steve? Search don’t find.
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
@starbucks. Should I get the mocha or latte? tough decision.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
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March 23rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
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