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Loosely-coupled 140-char reading lists

Saturday, July 25, 2009 by Dave Winer.

I believe we will get beyond Twitter's very simplistic and limited Suggested User List, which I have written about so many times. Permalink to this paragraph

What sealed it for me was reading Glenn Greenwald's piece in Salon about Cheney's plan to use US troops inside the US. Permalink to this paragraph

Here was my thought process: Permalink to this paragraph

1. I'm going to pass this link on to my readers. Permalink to this paragraph

2. A very small number compared to the overall size of the Twitter base. Permalink to this paragraph

3. There are probably a few hundred thousand people who use Twitter who would want to know about this story, maybe 60K who would read it, as I did. Permalink to this paragraph

4. So how will this gap be filled? How will they find out about this story? Permalink to this paragraph

Well -- they won't. Permalink to this paragraph

But -- if there was a service they could subscribe to that alerted them to stories that would be of interest to them, based on their profile, a lot of people would give it a try. Permalink to this paragraph

In other words, I'm sure there's a place for editorial products delivered via the loosely-coupled 140-character network. Permalink to this paragraph

I tried this with NewsJunk, but it was either too early or there was something wrong with the way we did it. Permalink to this paragraph

It will happen. Permalink to this paragraph




 
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A picture named dave.jpgDave Winer, 54, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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