I made a post a little while ago which brought up a sore subject and now, I think we need to have a talk. 

You see...I don’t like Dave Winer. 

It’s hard for me to write this post because I am very much against talking against anyone.  If anything I feel that the blogosphere talks too much about individual personalities and not enough about individual ideas. 

That’s the blogosphere I want to be a part of, the one where people share and discuss their ideas without petty squabbling over who likes who and who doesn’t like who.  But that’s where I get caught. 

Ideas are ideas no matter where they come from and if I come across an idea that I find interesting I’m going to comment on it which is what this blog is all about.  But when I do that I want people to be able to take my opinion and not have to wonder if I have other motivations which means I have to put all the factors that might make me partial on the table. 

I’m lucky in that I’ve been kicking around the blogosphere for a few years now and I really don’t dislike anyone out there…with one exception.  That exception is Dave Winer.  I don’t really want to spend a lot of time detailing why I dislike him because I don’t think that’s fair to him and I know that’s not the type of person I want to be. 

Bottom Line: I feel he’s unnecessarily mean to people in that he’ll have an argument with someone and then continue to bash them even after its long since past and even when its not related to anything else (e.g. he’ll bring it up rather than it being something that’s relevant to a current discussion) 

Beyond that I’m not going to say anymore about it.  I’m not asking you to dislike Dave Winer (you should make your own decisions about people) and I’m not trying to attack him (I’d be fine if he never read this blog) so there’s little reason for me to detail individual issues I have with him. 

Anyway, I put a lot of thought into what to do about this.  I thought I could get away by just not reading his blog and not reading any blogs about him but he still comes up via other people and again, I love ideas.  If someone presents an interesting idea I’m going to comment on it regardless of its origin. 

So this is my solution, one post that I’ll link to whenever I comment on one of Mr. Winer’s ideas that gives people my bias in what I hope is the most benign way possible and then is done with it.  Thanks for putting up with the personal nature of it. 

Now back to ideas…

Scoble has a post about how Digg has become a (as he puts it) “stream of noise” and how it would be better if there was a Digg type site that featured the picks from a select group of people (a point taken from a larger post by Dave Winer)

My first thought after reading Scoble’s post: ”wasn’t that what Slashdot was?”   

The answer there is that yes, that is exactly what Slashdot was but the Slashdot guys got lazy and/or too selective so people moved on to a better group (which is what the initial Digg users were) The solution to this problem (imho) is one of those that is easily identified but hard to accomplish.  Someone needs to make software that (a) makes it easy for people to share what they want to share and (b) makes it easy for other people to aggregate their friend’s shares in to a mix they prefer.   

The first point is a biggie.  If Scoble reads a bunch of personal blogs by friends and family I don’t necessarily want to see that and I doubt he necessarily wants to show it to me.  Any solution that hopes to accomplish the above has to come up with some way for users to pick which tags they wish to share and any software that tries to make this work needs to find a way to allow the users to pick without making it tedious.   

As I said, easy to identify but very hard to do. 

I have to say that Fortune’s various “Lists” have made it all but impossible for me to take the magazine seriously.  Today’s article on the “25 most powerful people in business” is as perfect an example of this as any.  In it they name Steve Jobs of all people the “most powerful man in business” 

Here’s the quote… 

Since returning to Apple in 1997, he has changed the dynamics of consumer electronics with the iPod, and persuaded the music industry, the television networks, and Hollywood to distribute their wares with the iTunes Music Store. With his hugely successful Apple Stores, he gave the big-box boys a lesson in high-margin, high-touch retailing. And this year, at the height of his creative and promotional powers, Jobs orchestrated Apple's entry into the cellular telephone business with the iPhone.

That's five industries that Jobs has upended - computers, Hollywood, music, retailing, and wireless phones. At this moment, no one has more influence over a broader swath of business than Jobs. 

Upended?  Really?  Because last I checked all those industries were still working in pretty much the same way they always had.  Did Apple really “destroy, overthrow or completely change” these industries or does someone at Fortune just need to consult a dictionary?   

Don’t get me wrong, I’m obsessed with my iPhone and the only thing stopping me from getting an iBook before Christmas is my good judgment (since I already have a relatively new notebook) which doesn’t stand much of a chance against my gadget lust.  But Jobs is a guy who still runs a relatively small computer company (albeit with an extremely large market valuation) and whose other businesses are dependent on a group of people who have all but turned against him.   Those “other” businesses being iTunes and that group of people being the heads of every major media company who all seem to think Jobs is getting too much power in their industry.  Heck, if Murdoch alone (#2 on the list btw) decides to pull his support from iTunes then Apple is all but out of the TV business.   

I’m not saying that Apple isn’t doing well or that Steve Jobs isn’t more powerful than he’s ever been (and certainly more powerful than most people in the business world) but they still have a ways to go before they conquer the world.  This Fortune article seems to think they’ve already having done it.