So true…

Same conclusion — sucks.

The mentality of this guy, that is.

I saw him speak at FOWA in Miami – Jan 2008 – probably one of the last public appearances of Cook. Not having been a user (or fan of) Twitter at that point, I was stunned that *this guy* who I was watching stumble and bumble for words was the “chief architect” of this big web app that everyone had been raving about for months.

His geekiness was one thing, but his schoolgirl-like snickers and giggling, along with his flighty ideals, quite amazed me. I kept thinking, “Is this a web app being run by DVD pirates or something?”. In stark contrast to every other web appreneur that was there, it was like watching the one guy who snuck in via back stage.

If you think I’m kidding, listen to the MP3 of his talk, especially the Q&A during the last third, at as long as they keep it up there. It’s embarrassing. I was actually embarrassed for him (knowing nothing about him previously) when he was giving that “speech”. I know speeches by code guys are always a bit suspect, but this was beyond stage fright. It was a deep insight into a singular and real problem at the company: Blaine Cook.

A few gems:

“So, rails is slow. Just in case there was any question. But I love it. It works well.” (Huh?)

“When we enter the rails stack, it takes a long time to go through that stack, even just for a cached request, relatively long time, I think about 20ms. We want to get that down to 2ms.”

“Oh, it looks like someone is calling me. Cause the site is down. Great.”

“For what it’s worth, the site’s been doing really well for the last two or three weeks. All the downtime so far has been when we’ve hit something, some key, incorrectly, and bring the site down.”

“I probably would use Rails again. I’m not… I love Ruby. It’s a fantastic language.”

“Building a great product is all about execution. There are plenty of sites that basically did the same as Twitter. You could use Blogger as Twitter… all these sorts of things. But none of them really took off.”

“When you build a web app, you’re building something that people use. And you need to make sure that people can actually use it. We haven’t done the best job of it.”

“You know, you want to fix things. This is something that is kind of, you know, a sore subject. Make sure that, when things are broken, do everything you can to fix problems.”

“I think a lot of sites have a big problem with shipping products. They want it to be perfect before releasing it to the public. I think that’s a flawed mentality. It’s never going to be perfect. And you want to make sure that when you work on something, that you get it out there. And you iterate on it, and you build, and you make sure that you’re just moving forward. Because it’s easy to get caught up in trying to make something perfect, and then you’re never going to ship it, and then you get depressed because you’re not shipping something, and then you get in Valleywag ‘Are they ever going to ship?’, and these sorts of things. And so, as much as possible, you know, avoid that. You know, working on the web is a really exciting thing. And part of working on the web is releasing things, and building new things, and making the internet a more interesting place, and making the world a more interesting place. I think that’s, uh, really important.”

Yeah, this was his advice to OTHER web app builders. I frankly couldn’t understand why FOWA even had this guy lecturing the attendees on this stuff. It wasn’t like he had ten great web apps under his belt. He had one – and a half-assed one at that.

There are dozens more quips in there.

He might be a great code guy, and he might be a great code team guy, but he should avoid microphones. And maybe, as Arrington has noted here by pointing out this singular Twitter, just maybe Cook should avoid the public controversy of it all. He isn’t a PR guy… that much is evident.

BA

2 Straght advices:
1. READ BLAINE’S ARTICLE CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU JUMP THE GUN
2. STOP ASSOCIATING WITH SCOBLE, HE IS THE SCUM OF THE INTERNET SOCIETY

Your well established and you have a new baby .

Leave the Twitter stuff alone , go for a photowalk with Thomas Hawk and chill out .

Let Twitter figure out its own deal .

Also, a lot of traffic seems to be along the lines of “shut up already”. I’m just hoping for a better ratio in both so I can read Friendfeed again without seeing your curious fungus creeping about.

And whats up with the video comments? I wish they would take seesmic or whatever it is, turn it sideways and shove it straight up their ass.

I agree with your ends, but not with your means. I think you know (from previously) what I am talking about.

Scoble is ruining my web experience even when I try to avoid him. At least when Arrington annoys me he keeps himself to his own site.

And there is your new Web 2.0 company folks, create a service where I can ignore people across the web and not just on a single site. You will get VC money somehow, trust me.

If you wrote it, it’s not unofficial, that’s for sure!

Something is shifting here, this place, the net, the communication mechanisms. Twitter is at the forefront of it with the creation of instant micro blogging, what are we thinking and doing and who wants to consume the data. And more importantly that information is freely accessible, not controlled by corporations with no heart only the eye of the $.

The gatekeepers of the old guard have lost the battle. Books used to be locked up and chained inside churches to protect the information and knowledge from the people (sheeple in the eyes of the so called illuminists) The printing press changed all that, after many deaths ensued.

When radio came out if threatened the old guard, ARPA created networks, the networks created other networks and the media giants did not see the threat. DRM, intellectual property rights etc, its over all over. We are now the producers.

And here we sit on the cusp of the new dawn, the state is threatened, no one, no one! knows the true picture, nor see the the depth of the next revolution and enlightenment.

You guys are the self professed thought chiefs, prime enablers of this dawn, yet you act like the old guard, those gatekeepers are dead in the water … think about that the next time you create content, and people create content above it.

The next new thing, is macro blogging mash-ups (tumblr’s et al) for want of a better word. If twitter lives or die it does not matter, what matters is the new forms of communication are not controlled by media companies, guru’s of thought enablers.

So stop bitching and get a grip we are all in for an amazing ride.

Am I the only one who read this and thought Scoble is a major cock? Who the hell says this in front of their audience? Oh yeah, Scoble says that kind of stuff in front of anyone, I forgot.

If you guys are going to rag on him at least put some identity behind your comments.

Techcruch these days is like the Inquirer that we usually avoid in the supermarket.

Scoble reminds me of a desperate loser.
Please dont become him.