Oh, and @Steve, that was a 140 character comment.

@Steve, I don’t follow you - coherently, or on twitter. I follow TechCrunch.

More to the point though - Steve, I wasn’t really time to bash you in my first comment, although it came off that way. Please just keep your posts short and simple to get the point across. People like two to three sentence paragraphs and only 5 or 6 paragraphs total. After that they lose attention.

If you have the time, I am sure Erick or Mike could give you a few lessons on refining your writing so that it appeals to the TechCrunch readers.

I keep forgetting if I’m reading a gossip rag, a funded/VC news site, or a therapy tool for certain bloggers.

Blimey. Reading Mr Gillmor’s posts makes my head hurt. Either he has a brain the size of a planet or he should stop by and tell us about the cocktail bars he’s hanging out in!

Hmm .. on the other hand this could be computer generated. Anyone seen Gillmor and Asimo in the same room together?

@Joel, Steve doesn’t write these posts for the reasons you believe. It is a matter of historical record that can be pointed to after the fact. A good reason to write in metaphors and personal jargon; as, just like poetry, it can be interpreted in so many ways. “I was right again!”

“Don’t like-y, don’t read-y.”

to #45

just don’t read his post then you dumbarse

M$ has attacked the web so many times that the world don’t trust M$ anymore.

No matter what they do…

SG’s articles are always a stimulus for a plethora of rambunctious, idiosyncratic multitudes that convalesce in the dark regions of the collective alzheimeretism that truly is cranial polymorphic ejectamenta.

CranialPolymorphicEjectamenta.com

is still available!

@SteveGillmor

I’ve won quite a few poker games betting the farm conservatively…so has Greenstein.

But this is business, obviously, and not a poker game.

I’m not so sure that targeting the meaty majority of your users - rather than the top 5% of the curve that uses it in an entirely different, and resource intensive, way - is the conservative play here.

Here’s the major flaw in the way I see it: If the founders are trying to create a business that scales successfully and becomes a revenue-plus, fully functioning operation, I’m in the clear.

If, however, they are merely playing to the Valley ‘mover and shaker’ TechCrunch echo chamber with the goal of pumping their perceived/guideline company valuation - for the investor cash out…then I concede the point.

In the second scenario they don’t have to build an actual business. They can promise to be the Real Time Swarm Barometer even if unable to actually deploy the technology, because there’s an endgame that allows the founders to hand off the problem to Big Corp and walk away.

For the record, I generally like the idea of a product that does what you see Twitter as doing (Track, et al.). The problem is, Twitter doesn’t deliver it. Additionally, most users don’t see it as that product anyway.

(I think this is the part where I work in Occam’s Razor. That would bring my comment in line with Web 2.0 Blogging Guidelines for 2008.)

This was very long and difficult to follow.

Wow, this post didn’t make a bit of sense. Is this the kind of stuff “power bloggers” spin out? It sounds worse than the worst marketing shlop.

Seriously, this is embarrassing.

Did anyone notice the Mike’s comment (#7) lol

I’ve got to agree with most everyone else. This post made very little sense to me.

Damn, I was so excited about leaving praise for Steve’s article about how we need more stories like this instead of all the Facebook/Twitter B.S. — until I came across the word Twitter in the article. What a buzzkill.

This HAS to be a joke or a farce or something.

Today is June 1st…..not April 1st guys.

Steve’s posts are long-winded and pointless. Please give me back the time you just stole from me. Nothing was added here.

The Twitter hybrid homogeny transcends the marketplace’s device-oriented nomenclature to truly synergize the whole-world-view that so sublimely has been marginalized by the virtual community surrounding the technology Facebook Twitter stack 2.0 collaborative jizzmopper apex.

Cliff notes please?

http://mikesmoneyclub.blogspot.com/

Wells

You lost me at jizzmopper.

In the past, you could measure Microsoft’s success by others’ weakness.

[Oh Really? How is that Steve? You mean Ashton Tate, Wordperfect, Borland? What exactly the F do you mean Steve. Maybe you're talking about Sun and Java? The X-Box? Maybe you mean Netscape? C'mon Steve, tell us what the F you're talking about.]

This time it’s different. Google rolls out a five-pronged disruption to the smart phone, the Visual Studio developer base, social media, offline storage, and Webtone pricing - and it bolsters Ray Ozzie’s hand.

[Woo Woo ! Webtone pricing. And that social media thing. Woo Woo!]

With a month to go, Bill Gates’ “transition” from 80-20 to 20-80 has Redmond shaking.

[You mean his "retirement", idiot. Exactly how are they shaking. Because they might have to watch another YouTube video of Gates "playing" ping pong with Warren Buffet? Indeed that would be torture]

The old games just aren’t working. Windows chief Steve Sinofsky spends a ridiculous half hour fending off CNet’s Ina Fried with zero information on Windows 7 and way too much repetition of the purpose of the interview: to discuss the process by which information will be given out in the future. We get it, Steve. You’re not telling the media anything except the ground rules for what you’re not telling the media. Thanks for the heads up.

[We'll just have to take your word for it on this winner, Steve. Sorry we didn't have time to get around to watching it. We were too busy watching Gilligan's Island reruns and couldn't be bothered by something unless is was really important]

In classic media terms, this is a Microsoft death spiral story.

[Steve, we don't want classic media. We want contemporary media, don't you know? Please change your frame of reference. We are the audience, you know]

Vista sucks, Apple market share grows, the PC/Mac ads win awards. iPhone 2 approaches, Android looks cool and competitive, the AT&T WiFi takedown looks like it’s spreading to the Blackberry, the N95, and maybe, just maybe, the other carriers.

[Whoa. There all set for a Nobel price I guess. These are going to make the front page any day now.]

The Google Web Toolkit harnesses Java developers, the Eclipse dev environment, a growing number of APIs and Javascript libraries hosted on Google servers, and Amazon-slashing AppEngine pricing. Developers, developers, developers.

[Steve, I know you couldn't write a line of code if your life depended on it. Please. Reveal your genius sources for us. After all, we simply must know where you got the "developers, developers, developers" line. Its going to forever remembered, I'm sure. And to think, you thought of it. It's almost as good as the one from the biggest group of idiots in America today --- those people who say "location, location, location" all the time.

But each chink in the old Microsoft armor cuts two ways - as a minor glitch in the continuing revenue power of the IT-controlled Windows and Office upgrade path, and a strategic boost for Ozzie and his Mesh strategy.

[Yes. The mesh strategy. A stroke of BRILLIANCE. Sheer BRILLIANCE. Makes me think that Ozzie must actually be a Brit, its so BRILLIANT. Mesh is the hottest thing the planet. Right up there with the SEMANTIC WEB. Thanks for the early pointer on that one Steve. We'll be watching it closely.]

When you hear the open crowd attack the notion of trusting Microsoft to route our data a la Hailstorm and its Passport albatross, you’re also hearing the first stages in acceptance of the new Microsoft mantra.

[Earth to Steve. Earth to Steve. No one has even mentioned Hailstorm or Passport for 5 years. Thank you for bringing it up. Next time I search on Google news for those terms, surely this article will come up first]

Mesh abstracts devices and operating systems into objects that can be coordinated and orchestrated to deliver the appearance of a single or composite device.

[It was keeping me up at night wondering how the Mesh was going to work. I kept thinking that I needed to invest in silicon dust or something. Now I know. Whew. I'll sleep a lot better now knowing that the Mesh is still on the Intertube roadmap.]

That’s the guiding principle behind virtualization, which permits applications to address these virtual devices as single entities while spreading computational load across machines, domains, and business processes.

[Steve, this is the first point I'm going to have to respectfully differ with you on. You see, I really feel that the guiding principle about virtualization is to run a program on any computer you want. Now, that's just my guess, because virtualization is a really complicated idea, otherwise it wouldn't have such a long name. But after all, it's kinda what we used to do on mainframes all the time. But I'm no expert like you.]

When you hear people both outside and inside attack Mesh as a synchronization technology, you are hearing political spin about a strategy that has not yet been fully implemented or acknowledged.

[Well, that's just because those people are stupid dumb dumbs. Everyone will eventually understand that the Mesh is not political, and that once the Mesh is in the digital household, everyone's feelings about it will change. For now though, don't worry. The Mesh can look after itself. It's secretly being downloaded by Bots. The whole upgrade will be delivered by digital certificates using Azureus.]

From a technical perspective, the largest chunk left to be finished is affinity grouping - taking the atomized identity and social metadata and organizing micro-communities that can act as power brokers in the new information model Mesh creates.

[Yes Steve, but first they have do design some new chunking algorithms, in order to support affinity grouping. Otherwise you get a scaling problem like Twitter is having.]

From a political perspective, these groups will quickly produce revenue in much higher proportion to the broader less targeted audiences of existing clouds.

[Steve, there is too much politics in this post, but to those who are politically include, we really need to appeal to the broader, less targeted cloud, yes. That would be the niche mass market, or in modern parlance, the "short tale of the parabolic curve"]

As that power is increasingly parceled out via Silverlight to the enterprise crowd, Windows and Office become services to be maintained much in the same way that IBM uses open source via its Global Services group.

[Steve, that power can never be parceled. Ballmer is struggling with display advertising. Plus, enterprises are just getting use to Ajax. They might want to adopt Silverlight, but they cannot hire Silverlight programmers. It will take years to get their CRM on Silverlight going. They would be better off programming in Visual Basic for Silverlight on Java ++, don't you think?]

Key to the transition is the interactive two-way nature of the communication services of the Mesh and Google platforms. Google collects behavioral data from Gmail, Apps, and search, but increasingly the roundtrip between Gchat and Google Reader is producing the high value signals (gestures) that fuel affinity group formation and targeted feedback loops.

[It might take years for the Mesh to support gesture interfaces. Think of all the messaging that the Mesh would have to handle. And the superusers would surely make it crash. After all, there are a million points of light out there, at least. I think the Mesh will start working about the time we reach "Synchronicity". You might want to ask Kurtzweil about that though".]

Mesh atomizes the Google, Facebook, and other social constructs into virtual devices that can be combined from the ground up to attack viral opportunities as they emerge.

[I think that the Mesh will atomize everything, which is why we do not need to worry about an energy problem. We will shortly have Mesh reactors which will power our datacenters too.]

If that sounds like Twitter, that’s because Mesh is Twitter’s Plan B. In recent weeks, we’ve seen Twitter quickly come to terms with the underlying problem of their viral success, and particular the unique but transcendent power of swarm characteristics that the (mis)use of the service has created. The very real time XMPP stream that proves irresistible to Twitter power users and its “track” conversation enabler are at the heart of what Ray Ozzie and his team discovered when they first began testing Groove . Mesh leverages that emergent behavior as the central construct of a virtual device router.

[Well, it didn't really sound like Twitter. Somebody might have Twittered it though. I think you should refer to the Twitter architectural roadmap on this. The fact is, that nothing we want really sounds like Twitter, because Twitter has been screeching a lot these days.]

The conversation with Twitter and its satellites FriendFeed (listen to the recent Gillmor Gang with the FriendFeed founders), Twhirl, and to some degree Facebook, in recent weeks has really been about Twitter’s sole asset: its people.

It’s taken a few punches to the middle to soften things up enough to encourage more transparency on Twitter’s part, but now that the dialogue appears engaged via the media, the real work needs to begin in earnest with Twitter’s owners in the Track cloud. Because Track requires the availability in real time of a dynamic swarm of affinity members, that service makes maximum use of the system, which still can’t deliver it.

[Things are going to be better now that the Twitter Nanny has moved back to the UK]

Twitter’s problem, then, is to convince its users that they will restore that feature. Those that reject that as important can remain secure knowing virtually every Twitter clone can provide the basic commoditized services they require. In other words, they don’t need Twitter, just Twitter-like functionality. Those who are addicted to Track and real time services know otherwise. In aggregate, as affinity groups, they derive much greater yield from their behavior and micro-cast contract offerings than the rest of the marketplace - better resolution of information streams, increased economic clout, and the Darwinian favoritism of swarm resolution over less dynamic and more static problem solving.

[What Twitter needs now is sponsorship from Michael Jackson. "Ooh hoo, hoo. Shamal..."]

Plan B is not for Twitter, or even Microsoft; it’s for us to do. If Twitter execs respond directly to the marketplace with straight talk, we’ll likely stay with them. But it is incumbent upon us to begin Plan B now, by beginning the process of harvesting our Track/Follow clouds and readying them for the day when other more robust services arrive. Starting now, we use Twitter behavior that reinforces core constructs (140 characters, TinyUrl pointers, Track, asynchronous follow) while discouraging features such as @replies which encourage non-real time use.

[Things will improve once they change Twitter to the standard 55 characters per line with one inch margins]

Syntax that records conversational techniques needs to be baked out across our affinity groups, for example dropping not just the @ sign but the Twitter name as well after the first citation, only reading upon a context switch. With XMPP and Track down, we have no way to archive via Gmail, but Summize and FriendFeed offer workarounds. If FriendFeed quickly implements XMPP as we discussed on Friday’s Gillmor Gang (you decide whether that will happen) we will have some redundancy on our side sooner than later. Plan B makes sense for more than just tactical Is Twitter Up reasons, but also because Google has similar services available. Adapting and morphing the Gmail/Gchat/Greader tool set to emulate the core Track model is doable, but requires some incentive for the company to move up the stack.

[It's hard to know where to begin. I think it would be Plan C. Plan C would be to take the VC money and run. I think this is a lot like the movie "The Producers". You could call it "The Programmers".]

Google’s recent efforts suggest they understand the reality here, that this effort will not be about damaging Microsoft but closing the sale with their users to allow them legitimate trustworthy access to all the data they are collecting. On Microsoft’s side, Twitter needs to end the rivalry between Exchange and SQL Server on the delivery side, and (to be blunt about it) put Office and Windows in their place down the stack. And every time Google announces another disruptive chapter in their creation of the collaborative social network, the champagne flows in Ozzie’s group. Welcome to Plan B.

[Google is going to take the Yahoo Twitter clone being developed in the Yahoo Brick Chityard and apply the 20 / 80 rule, and let every employee at Google work on it 20 percent of their personal time for free. Problem solved. Facebook will license it and Microsoft will open source the API when they acquire Facebook. Right?]

Its a shame how small minded the TechCrunch audience is.

Steve posts, what - once a week? Out of the 87.5 posts on TechCrunch every week (thank you GReader). Im glad we get something a little different over the usual recycled press release. if its not for you, dont read the article.

But for those who clicked through their RSS reader, took the time to submit a comment just to whine - log off, go outside and get some fucking fresh air.

didn’t understand a word and I’ve been tested at over a 150 IQ. Don’t quit your day job (this isn’t your day job is it?)

Long, rambling and written to impress rather than to inform.

TC is all about cutting through the crap, as opposed to dishing out hackneyed terms (”producing the high value signals (gestures) that fuel affinity group formation and targeted feedback loops”).

I actually understood about 85% of what SG wrote … it’s an obvious truncation of about 15 episodes (16 hrs) of the gillmorgang rolled into one post. There are some valid points in here, especially better use of the XMPP stream that he is suggesting be put to more use. And for those of you who think this is just a 0.17% anomaly need to look back a google’s start as a geek only search tool.
May I suggest to have someone as a follow-up guest commentary (Part 2) to this article as an appropriate remedy to the ongoing contrarian rants?

Agreed. Instead of posting silly replies to the comments in this thread, he should be re-writing his original post so that it reads more clearly.

Who the fuck is Steve Gillmore?

Steve okey, like you!

#69 William – I would say there are two responses to your point.

1. I honestly think it’s kind of rude to speak in a way where you are obviously trying to make yourself look smart because the opposite side of that is the fact that you are doing so at the expense of your audience. Trying to sound intelligent with buzz words and fancy jargon only works if you make the reader feel overwhelmed by them. For that alone Mr. Gillmor deserves to be called out.

2. One of my fears in life is that Mr. Gillmor actually does have something profound to say and that it is missed because his posts are completely unintelligible. I mean, even when I understand what he’s saying the writing is so poor that I’m not completely sure I understand what he is saying.

Oh and bonus #3

3. It comes across as pretty hypocritical for Michael Arrington to bash the mainstream media for shoddy work while publishing this type of thing on his blog. I don’t actually agree with this point because I love the post where Arrington takes the mallet to the mainstream media but I thought I’d throw it in there because I know some people are thinking it.

huh?

Plan B? It sounds more like a beta-test of Google Article Generating Automaton (GAGA). I would love to see the results after couple of iterations through the Google translator to a foreign language and back.

I wish I had done something better with my time than clicking on this link.

@Judo - I think you’re spot on.

I read this thing twice and I still can’t figure out what Steve is trying to say! The whole article is extremely convoluted without a clear point. COme to think of it, there is no point. Twitter this, MS that, add some techie terms like XMPP

What the heck are you trying to say Steve??????????

PS: You’re touting Google Web Toolkit… could you name one app that uses it? Hint: NONE of the Google apps use it!

PPS: Dear Steve, you should retire. You sound like you have Alzheimers.

( Head explodes… )

Two consecutive posts by Gilmore that are incoherent gibberish. Arrington, you aren’t paying this guy are you?

This kind of “writing” makes Forrest Gump sound like William F. Buckley.

A post by Raymond Babbitt would make more sense than this.

Steve Gillmor: “I have no fucking clue what I’m saying”

Going after Visual Studio? With Eclipse? You’re a fucking moron, Steve.

Meh that was rude of me - I apologize. Either way, this is an unintelligble post and Steve’s response to the first reader who pointed this out: “It’s just you, Bob” incited me to be rude.

Eclipse is a good IDE, but it doesn’t come close to Visual Studio - especially for web development.

what a waste of time….

Does Steve have vaginal fluid on the brain?

@ 69 - LOL !

I feel a big fart coming on, and it’s aimed at Gilmore’s post.

Man I can’t wait for Valleywag’s 100 word summary of this because I have no idea what this said. Bob’s your uncle.

The advantage of print journalism is that contributions go through editors, unless you’re Jerry Pournelle in the good old days of Byte. But even Pournelle’s rambles left the impression that English was his first language.

The advantage of the Web is that you get instant feedback, and in the face of a response like this, can gracefully acknowledge that your 1200 words are spinning their wheels, and can take the piece down and have a crack at a rewrite.

You see, Steve, the Web lacks garbage collection.

–
Chris

Google Health uses Google Web Toolkit, and probably most new Google products moving forward.

Visual Studio sucks compared to Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA. For years it never even supported refactoring.

“But each chink in the old Microsoft armor cuts two ways - as a minor glitch in the continuing ”

do you mean “click” or “chink”? that’s very racist comment if you mean “chink”.

OMG.. WTF.. TIS..
Microsoft has a core value. How to make money with software. They sell it, want to rent it, develop it, release it in clumps, protect it, obfuscate it, confuse it, but most of all, they monetize it.

Get with that idea. There *is* no other idea here. Twitter twatter, who cares. Its simple broadcast group SMS, so what? What is interesting is that millions(billions) of people are connected with an IP and an address. Who owns the address? Wake up. You want a hearty, self-sustaining software solution? It must generate revenue, SMS does - for the phone company. Thank you Twitter. SBC/AT&T thanks you. We all thank you. What I want to know, is why no one is following the money here. ‘Atomize’? SMS costs more per bit than Hubble Space telescope transmissions. 4 times more.. Twitter is a HUGE step backwards. Proving that LESS is more, for some. SMS message limits? Who’s idea is that? Scoble? Gilmore? The point to me is 140 bytes laughable, but proves a point. You can make a huge amount of money with a 300 baud connection to the net.
Finally the US Government Internet strategy begins to make sense. A series of tubes, all gummed up with videos.. now finally freed up to ‘tweet’ ha ha ha.. I love these views of the future. Where’s my CB radio..

just with 4 short words, from someone who just loves reading about whats going on in the tech world…
IT SUCKED…. BIG TIME….

Mesh is a great strategy. It was what Sun was talking about perhaps 6 or 7 years ago but didn’t have the installed base or mind share or money needed to pull it off. I suspect Eric Schmitt played a big part in the development of this strategy when he was at Sun and I doubt he left this idea behind.

The next 5 years will be fun. The winner will be us as long as we keep both players in the game. Google and Miscrosoft are smart sompanies that know how to compete but have had mixed success outside their core business.

PS — I thought it was me not understanding the post till I read the comments. Thanks community for making me feel better.