Hey everybody, it's Dave Winer
here and I was just reading an
article on GigaOm by Matthew
Ingram and he said there's a
little bit of confusion about
what this @Anywhere thing is
that Twitter announced
yesterday. I'm not sure that In
gram is really confused. It was
a pretty botched announcement.
But I can explain what it is
and maybe even provide a little
context on it. It's in the
answer to something that
Facebook has been doing and it
's also
another one of these sort of
salvos in what you might call
the identity wars. It's
basically
you've got a lot of different
competing identity systems on
the net these days. Always have
had a bunch of them. Gmail is
an identity system. Or Google's
login is an identity system.
They played a bit of identity
system warfare with the whole
Google Buzz thing and
connecting
it up with Gmail saying well we
've got a lot of users here. Why
don't we turn them all
into users of a new social
network, community discussion
thing. It didn't go over very
well.
So think of that, all of these
things as sort of repurposing
identity, trying to get people
to think of their identity with
one company as being more than
just an identity with that
company. So on Facebook it has
Facebook, I think it's called
Facebook Connect where
you can use your Facebook login
to blog and stuff like that so
you can comment there without
having to create another
username and password. Kind of
pointless actually because well
maybe
not pointless because all the
comments that you leave are
then part of the comments
stream
that your updates, your status
stream, or whatever you call it
over Facebook. So there's a
little
bit of integration there that
maybe people like. I've got a
big Facebook user so to me
it doesn't mean a whole lot. So
what Twitter noticed presumably
is that they've got a lot
of reporters that use Twitter
and it's true, they do. And so
if you notice that when you
go to read an article on The
New York Times or The Huff
ington Post or any number of
different
places that they provide a way
to contact the author of the
article. So what they're
saying here is well, and they
want to give you the email
address would be sort of like
the default way to contact the
author. And they're saying
basically well your Twitter
ID is pretty important too and
so why don't we just make it
easy for these publications
to link from the author of the
article to their Twitter
identity. And so that when you
hover over their name you get
the same pop-up that you get
over on Twitter which honestly
I didn't think was all that
innovative. Frankly I think it
took features out of Twitter.
In
fact in a piece I wrote
yesterday I even think in some
ways that it broke Twitter
because
clicking on a user's name in
Twitter actually got you some
important stuff. You might
argue
well the number of followers
that is so important and the
number of people that they
follow.
Okay, well it is kind of
important actually. But I can
understand them wanting to de-
emphasize
that and certainly the pop-up
does do that. But it also makes
it very difficult I've found
at least using Firefox to find
the tweet stream from that
author. And with 140 character
messages
people tend to connect their
messages. The last message is
an extension or an end. It
assumes that you've read the
previous one and there is so
much confusion when you do
that. It's bad enough that
people don't click on it. Now
they'll never get there. So you
end up having to repeat
yourself, that's one choice, or
just never stringing things
together. So forget about ever
explaining anything that might
require a little bit more than
140 characters. That becomes
more and more unlikely over
time. So I guess the question
is, is the Twitter identity
really the important
information about an author? I
don't think
it really is. And I think that
the owners of these sites will
not simply link to the
Twitter identity. They'll
probably include that amongst
the many different ways of
accessing
an author of an article. So is
it a big deal? Sure. If you're
following the vendor sports
and you're interested in who's
kicking who's ass over there in
Silicon Valley, yeah. In
that context it's important. It
's also more an example of
really how convoluted this
whole
mess is. You've got these
companies, technology companies
out there getting more and more
inside, insidious, you know,
means like getting inside of
something, getting into places
where
they really don't belong. I
mean, why does Twitter belong
on Huffington Post? I don't
get it. I mean, do they really
think that goes anywhere? I
mean, you know, in their
boardrooms over Twitter, in the
boardroom of Twitter when they
have the discussion about
this, they're thinking long-
term multi-step strategy they
want to sort of extend their
reach out further and further
and further. But, you know,
there's another school of
thought
that says, we'll look back on
this as being ridiculous five
years from now. It will be
long forgotten, only mentioned
in the context of some other me
galomaniac, you know, some
technology company. I don't
think this is one we need to
worry about, in other words.
But if you're a worrying sort
of person and you're in the
media, this is another reason
to think about maybe you want
to get your own real-time news
system out there or work
with some of your competitors
to get one out there because
the tech industry is really
so many days you're going to
figure this out. There are ways
to do this, but they're trying
to do that. We'll work. And
this, I don't think is one of
them. But anyway, those are
my thoughts about at anywhere.
Hope you're all having what is
today. Great Tuesday. It's
beautiful here in New York
today. The rainy weather seems
to finally be over. It's a
sunny day. It's a little bit br
isk outside. It's probably the
high 40s, maybe low 50s
right now. It's going to head
up toward 60 later today. So, I
think you can fairly say
spring is here on the east
coast. And hope you're having a
great Tuesday. See you all
Thank you.