I don’t want to bore you guys or suck up to him, but I am amazed that no one points this out.
1. He invented RSS.
2. He, along with Adam Curry, pioneered podcasting.
3. He knew people would love Twitter in 2001.
4. He was one of the first bloggers around.
5. He is a visionary in journalism.
6. He pioneered the concept of editing pages without messing up with the code.
Yet, he sucks at webdesign. Don’t have to link to anything here, just look at the websites above. I think he does this on purpose to emphasize the technology behind his sites.
I also laugh at the people who criticize him and say that RSS is dead. If it is dead, stop using it! It is the backend of thousands of web applications and it enables cool new innovative products. Twitter is cool and all of that, but it is completely limited and controlled by a single company. Plus, RSSCloud and PubSubHubBub is coming.
Anyway, what do you guys think about him?
What’s wrong with Dave’s design? It’s actually similar to yours, John, but minus the ads. I happen to like the simplicity and functionality of it.
I’m disappointed to see an experienced tech journalist like yourself spread the falsehood that Dave Winer invented RSS.
Dan Libby and Ramanthan V. Guha at Netscape created the first version of RSS in March 1999. Winer created ScriptingNews format, an early syndication attempt he scrapped when he switched over to RSS.
Why does everything have to be so extreme? Why does Winer have to be either a genius or an idiot?
Apparently, he is not a particularly charming individual. I know very little about him. Specifically, I heard him on TWiT once and I hated his guts right away, even though he was introduced by Leo as some kind of genius and described a very interesting (and outrageous) problem he had with Apple and his notebook’s hard disk. I don’t like Apple, but that was certainly not enough to overcome the strong, negative impression I had of him. I also checked a few of his articles afterwards and did indeed detect a fair bit of arrogance.
Winer is just a tech guy doing a pretty good job. I don’t looove his “inventions”, but it seems an awful lot of people do. That’s pretty good credentials to me. Apparently, Einstein wasn’t such a nice fellow either. That’s their business, no one else’s. We don’t need to be their friends, we just need every guy out there constantly wearing a thinking cap and coming up with ideas, especially since there are so few of them.
The whole problem is this article:
1. He invented RSS. No, he didn’t!
2. What is the big deal about “pioneering” something on the Internet? That’s as annoying as those silly characters who use the “I’ve been around since BBS” line as credentials in their online discussions. I spend a lot of time on the Internet, too. I must have “pioneered” a lot of stuff that became very popular or remained totally obscure. What’s the big deal? Is this a gold rush where you get dibs on exploration of stuff you didn’t create yourself to begin with?
3. He knew people would love Twitter in 2001. “He knew”? He just chose a format that he liked and “he knew”? Then how come he didn’t invest a lot more on that idea? Give me a break. That page is not even that similar to Twitter. It’s something quite different. How about another theory: Winer didn’t really have a clue. Someone else saw that page (or some other) and came up with Twitter. Who in fact created what?
The article sticks firmly to this idea that Winer “pioneered” stuff so he is a genius. So someone invents the wheel, you like the wheel, you use the wheel and – bang – YOU are a genius? The overall tone of this article is quite silly.
Jägermeister #7 #13, either someone is using your screen name or you form an opinion amazingly fast!
Wow! That’s an impressive list of contributions!
I guess I’d really admire him if he wasn’t Jewish.
did you actually click on the links you gave?
“RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Guha at Netscape in March 1999 for use on the My.Netscape.Com portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9.[4] In July 1999, Dan Libby of Netscape produced a new version, RSS 0.91,[2] which simplified the format by removing RDF elements and incorporating elements from Dave Winer’s scriptingNews syndication format”
And most of the other links are also way overstated.
RSS 2.0 *IS* dead, nobody uses it today (we use RSS 1 and Atom), he had nothing to do with PubSubHubBub, rssCloud has been vaporware for ages and he’s doing it wrong all over again.
Credit is given where it is due. He did help some things along but he’s not a genius.
1. he pioneered RSS and clearly had a LOT to do with it’s creation as we know it today.
2. yup, same.
3. So what, I did too.
4. Yea, so?
5. Winer is not a Journalist, he’s a op/ed writer.
6. Yup, and he should go back to developing that platform.
7. You forget. He also created MORE! which was the precursor to powerpoint and other outline based presentation tools.