A Cinch test

A short test of Cinch, a product from BlogTalkRadio.

Hey, it’s Dave Winer here, doing a little cinch task, which is something excuse me , whoa.
Whoa, I should clear your throat before you start one of these things.
It’s a service that Blog Talk Radio does, where you just call the mod and they record whatever you say into the phone becomes an MP3 that shows up in your RSS feed, and then you can take it and do with it, please.
So this and they’re really good for like, if you have a quick idea, like right now.
See, I think Facebook has to be thinking about more vertical products, products that are to do what the general purpose version of the product does, but only works with Facebook.
And because when you create a product that has limited functionality, you can make it easier.
Generality costs these views, and it goes the other way.
So if you take a general product, and now it’s a target, then you can make it easier.
And for a lot of people, as much as, you know, we don’t like this, they see the Facebook and the Internet are basically the same thing, and it’s more and more of that is happening and a lot of smart people who really ought to know better that it isn’t good for their livelihood to go that way are basically going ahead and doing it that way.
And Facebook encourages this, and it’s understandable that they do, because their whole strategy is based around this idea that they start they just suck in functionality.
Because the general functionality gets sucked in, made specific to Facebook, and therefore is easier, but is more limited.
So they have an email that’s just for Facebook users, and they have a chat that’s just for Facebook.
They, you know, they made the flicker, and it was just for Facebook, right? All those things are easier.
And I had a sort of flash when I was at Queen’s Day in Amsterdam last month, and I was hanging out with a group of people that were, you know, part of the people, the people who put on the next web conference, and Sc obal, and then there were a few other people floating around.
And this created a little social network, and we were using our, you know, even though we were, like, getting pretty high, we were using our, you know, our tools to basically try to stay in contact with people using basically text messaging, and that was all we got available to us.
And it became really clear that , well, you know, here’s, you know, five years from now, we won’t be using tools that are this primitive.
We will have this idea of an ad hoc social network that forms for one day, and just self-form s.
It notices that we’re all, like , in the same proximity, we’re moving with each other, right? And they know our names, and, you know, somewhere on the network there’s some agent that ’s watching this group of people form and seeing some of the text messages to each other, and boom, sooner or later, there’s an option that pops up and says, " We figured it out.
You’re hanging out with this group of people.
Would you like us just to communicate with all of them?" And you say, “Yeah, sure,” and everybody goes for it.
And now you can do a better job of coordinating, and it really, the world’s going to work that way someday.
And Facebook’s on their way to doing that.
If they’re not, then somebody else is going to do it.
And what that leads to is a lot more vertical integration, and if that’s their vision of Facebook, I’m pretty sure that ’s what they’re thinking, then they’ve got to be doing a browser.
Why? Because there are computers out there that run browsers, and they need to get that vertical experience, too.
So, you know, Matthew Ingram asked the right question, and he said, “Well, why would I want to use one of these things ?” I’m paraphrasing, and my answer is basically, “No, you wouldn’t want to use it, nor would I, until the day that you were able to concede that the Internet equals Facebook, and Facebook is the Internet, and that’s just the way it is. " Once you’re there, of course, we’ll use whatever Facebook tells us to use.
But I’m going to be dragging my kicking and screening to that future, and I’ll probably be the one guy out there who says, “Well, you know, back in the day,” and they’ll all be going, “Well, that’s nice, Dave.
Thanks so much for witnessing how it was back then.
Now, we’re just going to keep on doing what we’re doing. " So, anyway, I wrote a piece today, you know, obviously Facebook’s doing a browser.
It’s so obvious.
It’s obvious that Google was doing one before.
You just get to a certain point in the maturity of, you get to be a mega-company, and that’s how the mega-companies are going to fight this battle.
This is a point where you get these wars, and we’re going to have these wars now.
And I didn’t bring it on.
I’m not asking for it.
I’m certainly not participating , and I’m more like, you know, just doing what I do and trying to pretend that nothing bad is happening, but we’re at that stage where there ’s so many giant companies out there, and there are just two or three that are very giant.
Three, really, Facebook, Google , Apple, those are the three.
First, I really don’t have a whole lot to say in it.
They’re not going to do browsers, but all three of them are going to have browsers.
In fact, two of the three already do, and nobody is going to care about MSIe, and probably, I care about Firefox.
I use Firefox.
I think that by using Firefox, I’m doing something good for the net.
I hope that I am.
I don’t think they’re particularly nice people, but that’s not the point.
I mean, the point is we need to have choice and open source stuff that isn’t owned by these big companies.
That’s good stuff, basically, whatever.
Anyway, that’s my thought for Sunday afternoon.
Hopefully, I haven’t rambled on too long, and see you all real soon.