There Is No Cat

La compagnie, ç’est moi

Much grinding of gears and gnashing of teeth in Blogistan over Dave Winer’s decision to disenfranchise 3000+ bloggers in one stroke by just stopping hosting them. Dave posted his excuse in an audio blog; Jeanane Sessum transcribed it to make it more accessible. Dave says that he can’t afford to host the sites by himself, that he’s only one person, and that his health won’t let him do it. Okay, that’s perfectly reasonable. Nobody (reasonable) wants Dave to kill himself. Not really.

Except.

Except there’s one question here. Why are the 3000+ web sites Dave’s responsibility? When those sites on weblogs.com were created, they weren’t presented as being hosted by Everyone’s Buddy Dave, your plastic pal who’s fun to be with; they were presented as being hosted by UserLand Software, Inc. The agreement made it crystal clear that this was a service provided by UserLand. When you signed up, you became a UserLand member. (Of course, UserLand also disclaimed any responsibility "in any manner for loss of data resulting from the use of this system.") When did UserLand abandon Manila users to the person of Dave Winer? Did they bother to explain to anyone that the service they once provided was now the responsibility of a single person rather than of the company?

I’m sure they didn’t think about it at the time. Back in the day, it was very easy to conflate UserLand Software, Inc., with Dave Winer. Dave really made no attempt to draw distinctions between himself and his company. The perception that they were one and the same was set in stone, and still holds sway today, as can be seen in Dave’s need to point out in his audio blog that there is a difference between the two.

So now 3000+ webloggers have been summarily evicted with no notice. Dave has perfectly reasonable excuses for his actions. But he has no excuse for the lack of action that led to this. And UserLand really screwed up as a company by surreptitiously abandoning a huge user base to the fortunes of one person with a bum ticker. I guess when you play with a cactus, you’re bound to get pricked.

Posted at 12:07 PM