If Dave Winer Hates Yahoo360 (Can it be all that bad?)
I am experimenting with Yahoo360 for three reasons.
1) Yahoo has some seriously smart people, e.g. Jeremy Zawadny. If he had anything to do with Yahoo360, I am interested. If not, I am still interested.
2) I’m a notorious early adopter. But when products or services don’t live up to their promises, I drop ‘em like a hot rock. I was an avid LinkedIn and also Plaxo user, for a few months. When I realized it was all just a shell game, I not only dropped them, I made sure both outfits scrubbed my data out of the system. (I am still playing with http://tribe.net which has a fresh, loose, playful feel to it. )
3) Last and least: Dave Winer, a seriously smart, creative, even GIFTED dude, is coming down hard regarding the negatives he perceives in Yahoo360 as launched. That alone is enough to make me want to find out for myself. Dave has been right on lots of things, but he has also been dead wrong often enough that I can’t automatically trust his judgement.
I must say Winer’s 2005 April 1 “Open Letter” is about as droll and funny as it gets. If the guy would just lighten up, not take himself so seriously, stop constantly worrying about whether he recives the credit he’s due (and sometimes he doesn’t) and quit being such a pathetic whiner he would be much more influential.
So Dave (who I have only read for several years, but have not yet met) “This one’s for you.” I’m going to prove that Yahoo360 is either as great as some claim, or as lame as you assume it will be.
(Originally posted on 360.yahoo.com/ron_jeffries on or about
Saturday, Apr 2, 2005 – 07:21pm (PST)