Marc's Voice

Dave Winer asks……

Dave Winer just posted a comment and asked…..

I don’t get it — why don’t you use Radio?

What exactly was unreliable about it?

Maybe I can help figure out how to get it reliable.

Paolo was running his own RCS, right?

Anyway, I’m glad a Radio user finally had the confidence to tell the other guys that they haven’t even caught up with UserLand’s low-end product yet. Hold them to it. Let’s get a real baseline for competition here.

Marc’s reply……

First of all Congrats on the Convention - totally amazing to see how far blogging has come since you first floated the idea to me - back in 1995.

Personal publishing sure has come a long way - but we’re not done yet. The idea of a client based personal server is something I can credit you for being the first person to come up with that idea. The issues surrounding that kind of product have been revealed because of Radio - and we all you a debt of gratitude for that one - too!

So I actually felt that Radio represented a lot more than just a ‘blogging tool’. I worked with Mikel Maron on his MyRadio project and lauded Social DynamX’s FMRadioStation. We even planned to do a product called Sweet Suite - which would also have complemented Radio.

But dude - you folks fell behind. I guess that doesn’t mean you anymore - but being the largest shareholder does keep your teeth in the game. You question certainly shows that you’re still concerned with the product’s status and view - from the public POV.

So I can speak for many of us who left Radio in the past year - we loved that product, it changed our lives - but as new features, functionality and flexiblity came onto the market - Radio was incresingly keeping us behind.

Take the comment you left me.

I got an email of it, asking me to approve it - via 6A’s TypeKey system. That rocks.

There are plenty of things that Radio still leads the market with - and that was the core of my post. But there were also lots of reasons to stop using Radio.

Stability was probably the biggest issue for me. After 5 or 6 total crashes, some of them my fauilt, others Radio instability - I just gave up. Also the feeling that all development on Radio had stopped - was a disappointment.

I always felt that you didn’t charge enough for Radio, that if you had kept EditThispage going as a service and morphed it like Pyra did - the world would be a different place today.

And there was a whole “blogging support” play there - that never was taken advantage of……

Yes - Paolo runs his own RCS - and he’s your biggest supporter and develoiper - BTW. And we’re just getting started.

But for some reason - my mind flows to new kinds of micro-content, namespaces and decoupling schemas from the subscription protocol.

Isn’t there a way I can talk you into getting back involved in moving these standards FORWARD?

Instead of worrying about the width of the threads on the pipe, can’t we focus on the structured shit that goes through the pipes?

As I said before - I REALLY think that we can setup open standards for NEW kinds of micro-content. Here they are - and some of the people who should be involve don a domain specific basis. But DUDE - you know me and you and Sifry and Jon Udell should drive the overall architecture of all this. We NEED you! Here are the new kind sof micro-content I’m talking about:

- OpenEvents (Brian Dear, Peter Caputa, Andy Biao)
- OpenMedia (JD Lasica, Stewert Butterfield, Greg Elin, Brewster Kahle, Lucas Gonze, Kevin Marks, Robert Kaye and many others…..)
- OpenReviews (Alf Eaton, Paul Martino, Ross Rader)
- OpenPeople (all the FOAFnet.org folks, Tantek Celik, Sxip (Dick Hardt), Joel De Gan)
- OpenRecipes (Meg Hourihan)
- OpenResume (Phil Wolff, Phil Windley)

Now not all these folks have signed up yet - but DUUUUUUUUUUUDE - we need you!