Movies are noted for their overblown representations of death, with the actual scene of death being the high dramatic point of the movie. This latest flare-up of chattering about the so-called death of RSS is beginning to resemble one of those often over-acted movie scenes. This latest round of fortune telling hits the blogosphere as we head into a long weekend because some ex-CEO of Feedburner, ex-Googler has become the COO of Twitter.

This of course has choruses of Twitter is the next RSS (ya right) and that RSS can finally be declared dead as a doorknob (if you say so). Of course this is all predicated on the fact that everyone is ignoring a very simple fact – if RSS was to die the majority of social media services would either be severely hampered or wouldn’t exist in the first place.

After all Friendfeed was built on top of RSS feeds. Every single one of their copycats is based on RSS feed. This doesn’t even take in to fact that you would be hard pressed to not find a single Web 2.0 and social media service that doesn’t expose a RSS feed of some sort; or make use of them.

Without RSS social media and Web 2.0 would collapse flat on its face. So to think that RSS is dead only shows that the people arguing this point are either linkbaiting or they don’t have the faintest clue about the plumbing that powers their newest playground.

Therein is the point – RSS is plumbing, a protocol used to transport data. A protocol that is nothing short of a beautiful method to simply deliver everything from simple data to the most complex data you can think of. An RSS feed is nothing more than an XML file – the same type of file that Twitter clients use to show you your timeline. All those clients are in effect just a RSS feed reader with a different coat of paint on them.

Alan Patrick from Broadstuff noted today

Lest we forget, once upon a time in, oh, 2004, RSS was held up as one of the underpinning technologies of Web 2.0. How times change.

The thing is that when you really take a good look at the web things actually change very little. RSS equals XML, Twitter feeds equal XML. Even DOCX, the Open Office XML format, is XML. What has changed is that we are finding new ways to transport different types of data for new and interesting purposes.

The other thing that hasn’t changed either is the ability to slap a fresh coat of paint, some snazzy verbiage around something old, and call it new and earth shattering. So someone pass Dave a hanky and let him know that his baby has more than few years of living ahead of it yet.

I just wish that stupid discussions like this didn’t have the same life expectancy.

image courtesy of remarkablogger

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Dave Winer wrote a nice long historical review ala diatribe yesterday on why Twitter is destined to either fail or be surpassed by some young snot-nosed upstart. He uses the example of VisiCalc versus Lotus 1-2-3 and how because the big brains (egos) behind VisiCalc didn’t listen to the smart guy who actually used the software and listened to the users was quickly overshadowed. As nice a story as that might be it is only Dave’s prelude to his spiel about how Twitter should be – which from his ideas would end up a bloated cumbersome web app.

First off let’s look at some of the reasons why Twitter has possibly taken off the way it has. If there is one thing that is the big neon sign point to its success it is that Twitter knew (what Dave has missed) to

Generally you can look at just about any Web 2.0 web application and they all have that very low entry bar of how it is used. If there was one key that developers brought to Web 2.0 and services like Twitter it was that simplicity for the user was tantamount. Twitter has had competitors but where are they now  and why didn’t they succeed?

Because they forgot the key – K.I.S.S.

Both Jaiku and Pownce have vanished into the bowels of bigger companies because they couldn’t get the traction they needed. They didn’t get this traction because they believed that if they provided more bells and whistles than Twitter they could blow it out of the water. Twitter stayed the course and as time has shown us they are still here.

However Twitter did one other very smart thing – they pulled a Microsoft and went for the developers. While their competitors were still trying to out bell and whistle them Twitter gave the developers the biggest gift of all – a full working API. In keeping their web interface as simple as possible in order to encourage new users (some will say a little too simple) and providing the API as soon as they did they gave developers a chance to build on to the service and add those bells and whistles. They built a community; which they are currently in danger of alienating, that enriched the user experience IF the users wanted it.

Dave Winer on the other hand wants to change all that – he wants to remake Twitter in his image.

In his post Dave provides us with his wish list of what he wants to see changed with Twitter and these wishes go something like this

0. It starts as an exact Twitter clone. Command for command. Then see item #2. I get to completely redesign the UI.

- this one I don’t have much of a problem with except for the redesign part because this is where we start to go off into fantasy land

1. I want to start my own Twitter, for free. You host it for me. Anyone can join.

- then this isn’t Twitter. This is your creation but one that you don’t want any responsibility for the costs of running. How magnanimous of you.

2. I have to be able to edit the template, fully, so I can make it look like my blog. This will allow designers, for the first time, to tinker with the look and feel of a Twitter. They played a big role in the blogging bootstrap, but have mostly been sidelined by the emergence of Twitter.

- I guess this would also include removing the Twitter logo and replacing it with the same one from your blog. Excuse me but whose company and service is this? This would be like taking a bottle of Pepsi and slapping a “Uncle Dave’s Sodie Pop” label on it.

3. I want to map my domain to it, so it’s part of scripting.com.

- again we have this idea of Twitter absorbing the costs of you having your own branded version of the service – and for free. Ya that makes a lot of business sense for a company that already isn’t making hardly any money.

4. It’s gotta be fast!

- hmm … here’s a hint – Use Twitter.

5. Lots of prefs that determine who can join, what they can do, various editorial roles. If you used Manila, I want to be able to delegate to managing editors and contributing editors.

- excuse me? What happen to simple? this idea obviously is coming from a mind that hasn’t grasped the fact that Twitter isn’t in business for him. they are after the masses – the ones who came because it was a simple way to broadcast their thoughts and maybe do a bit of name dropping. They didn’t come looking for some new style of blogging which this is. They came for a 140 characters not to be editors of them.

6. Easy hooks into Disqus (and competitors) so each tweet can be the beginning of a conversation.

- please … let’s get serious for a minute. Twitter isn’t, hasn’t been and never will be about having conversations no matter how hard you try to warp it into doing so.

8. The ability to attach a picture, movie, MP3 or any arbitrary data to a tweet, basically the same power as the RSS 2.0 enclosure element.

- that got Pownce and Jaiku pretty far didn’t it. The fact is there is a rich third party ecosphere that has built up around Twitter that provides a lot of that functionality so why should Twitter incur the added infrastructure costs. Once again this takes Twitter beyond the simplicity that has been its strongest drawing card.

9. Full data portability. I’ve got to be able to run a script on my desktop every night to get a complete XML-based backup of my community.

- huh? who other than Dave would actually want to be able to do this on a nightly basis – please raise your hands. Sure I can see having some way to backup your Twitter stream but this is just being nitpicky.

Whether or not as Dave points out a time will come when a subset of Twitter users will desire more than just the plain 140 characters is moot. The fact is that because of the rich developer community that has risen around Twitter just about everything imaginable that can be done with the service will find a way to be done.

What Dave wants though by his wish list is to mimic, complicate and benefit from the Twitter infrastructure without any cost to himself. Tell you what Dave why don’t you grab the open source to Jaiku that is on Google’s AppEngine and have a go. Then get back to us when you’re ready to push Twitter to the wayside.

All this said there is one very important thing that could see the demise of Twitter. Through much of Twitter’s time there has almost seem to be a love hate relationship with developers. From the throttling of the API calls in the early days because they couldn’t keep the service running through to the recent incident of limiting the number of Follower calls per day Twitter has kept developers on edge. They also don’t communicate well with the developers as witnessed by this recent Followers incident that apparently was in place for three days before they told developers about it.

As I pointed out in an earlier post you can only push developers so far before they will just throw up their hands and say enough is enough. The real threat to Twitter isn’t from ideas like Dave’s but from Twitter themselves. All it would take is a couple of developers with the smarts to understand the principals that has driven Twitter’s success and then build the most robust API possible. Once built put the call out to the developers to have at it.

Build the infrastructure that will be able to handle everything that developers can throw at it both now and in the future. Then make the default user front end Twitter simple.

That is the danger to Twitter – not playing host to Dave’s Twitter-alike Knock-off.

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Mark takes the valid libertarian line, that we are better off without Government interference in the tech sector. It’s a just idea, and as much as no Government interference is a noble cause, it’s also unrealistic. In the United States at least the tech sector is a major driver of growth and jobs and naturally the Government will notice, the question then becomes whether they participate from an informed position or one that is completely clueless, and I need to point no further than my native Australia to give an example of what clueless Government interference offers.

The appointment on a CTO of the United States may be in part symbolic, but it is a position that has the possibility of delivering real knowledge to the gears of power. Real knowledge that understands the dynamics of the Valley and the broader internet industry. Perhaps knowledge that recognizes the issues with copyright law and the DMCA. Knowledge that understands and respects the notion of the public good and the public domain, and that the American Constitution dealt with copyright as a notion to promote scientific and artistic endeavor, not corporate greed.

From a global perspective we need the United States to lead on this front. It’s a given that should the United States appoint a CTO, that other countries will follow. The word of the potential of technology and the internet needs to be spread far and wide as a force of good, and to give a voice and platform to many as opposed to a select few.

The Inquisitr is backing Dave Winer for the spot, and although there was some jest in the original post, the more I talk to people about the idea, the more I may actually believe it has validity. Winer is a strong Democrat, who introduced me as a foreign blogger to Dean in the last cycle, and although he may not be the worlds happiest person, he offers a depth of thought that is often lacking in the world of governance. Winer would challenge norms, he would make people think, and he’d use the position to champion much of which we all support. On a ticket that promotes change, Winer offers a boat load of difference.

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The next challenge is CTO, and as we wrote yesterday, Dave Winer is in the running. The following graphic from Sean Percival:

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The question is though, who will become the first CTO of the United States of America? There’s no set criteria, no precedent, no rules or regulations around the position, which opens the candidate field wide. Robert Scoble has chimed in with his list of possible candidates, and alongside Bill Gates he suggests the god father of blogging, Dave Winer.

I won’t be able to vote, but given most of you reading this live in the United States, you may have influence. Dave Winer would make a most excellent US CTO, and we now give him our full support should he decide to officially put his name forward. Winer knows RSS, he knows blogging, and he isn’t shy is sharing his opinions. Spread the word: Winer for CTO.

I haven’t got access to Photoshop at the moment to create Winer for CTO buttons, but if you do decide to join the cause, leave a comment with link to logo and we’ll add it to the post.

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