Evan Williams vs the Internet (Scripting News)

A Dave Winer reality check (see the full post and comments therein for more context-setting)

I read the piece on TechCrunch and thought it sounds like the transcripts of conversations from Microsoft in the mid-90s. Both were trying to compete with the Internet. Ev's problem is how is he going to keep his key engineers from defecting to the competition. How are they going to let developers use the "firehose" without using it to kill TwitterCorp. These are problems the Internet doesn't have. It doesn't employ any engineers, and when they leave one company to work for another they still work for the Internet. On the Internet no company owns all the data, so no one can control it. If you don't like the way a service works, use another. 

The tech industry keeps having this argument with the Internet. It keeps thinking "this time we gotcha" but nahh, the Internet keeps right on going. 

Moral of the story: If you find yourself in competition with the Internet, you should find a way out. Imho.

Evan Williams vs the Internet (Scripting News)