was a fella named ev who sold his three and a half year old company, Blogger, to Google and got to announce it live from the blogoshpere in a packed crowd of hipsters and nerds in an overflow event on a sidestreet in Chinatown.
wanna know how cool ev is?
motherfucker’s sitting three chairs over from me, theres hundreds of people looking at him, but they are slightly distracted by another member of the panel who’s discussing the world of blogging. the attention comes back to Ev and he says, “oh, can someone put my blog on the screen again please, im sorry.”
fucker had gotten a call on his cellphone, but, being the gentleman didn’t answer it. instead, he checked his email via the wireless network that was in the building, updated his blog live and linked to the silconvalley.com column that broke the story that Google was buying Pyra Labs, the San Fransisco company behind Blogger.
and then he told us.
everyone cheered, as Ev was answering what was announced to be the last question of the two hour discussion that included Doc Searls, Heather from the Rabbit blog, Boing Boing’s founder Mark Frauenfelder, the Reverse Cowgirl Susannah Breslin, and yours truly who didn’t say fuck even once.
that’s the only reason that i can figure that the los angeles times reporter who was assigned to cover the Live from the Blogoshpere story chose to interview me directly after the incredibly wonderful event, instead of talking to the only person in the house who has suddenly become a millionaire and a validated success right before our eyes.
while wearing a blogger tshirt.
while looking reportedly so cute that my ex, chris, and my laywer giggled the whole night and snapped picture after picture of him and blushed and covered their mouths with their hands.
It was the coolest culmination and synchronicity, wirelessness, and instantaneous publishing.
– evan williams2/16/03 1:28pm
why is that quote on the busblog and not in today’s sunday la times? and why isn’t it on latimes.com?
la times got to read Dan Gilmore’s scoop before it even went to press! they were in the house! the story was there. the founder of the company was there. lots of other sources were there too. i would imagine that the la times had a camera and were taking pictures of the event, including when the founder made his grand announcement on this, his first trip to Los Angeles.
“see what happens when you come to LA,” i shouted in the microphone a few seconds after he broke the news to us all.
if you want to know why Google bought Blogger look no further than this very story.
Dan Gilmore published his scoop at 7:41pm on his blog, Ev linked to it on his blog at 9:10pm, metafilter published the link to Gilmore’s story at 10:08pm, followed by Ken Layne, and then Azeem Azhar, Rick Bruner, Henry Copeland, Anil Dash, Nick Denton, Jeff Jarvis, Shelley Powers, Mitch Ratcliffe, Emmanuelle Richard, Matt Webb, Slashdot, and even Chinese bloggers.
Still, because no major news source other than the SJ Mercury (who Gilmore writes for) has published the story, Google’s (beta) News page only ranks it as the number 2 result, even though it’s own data says that the Merc’s story is fresher than the link that is getting the #1 return.
The value of Blogger to Google is, if Google had a faster access to blogs, it would have seen all the activity (above) pointing to Gilmore’s blog, and to the Merc article, and to Ev’s page and would have basically figured out that it’s news.
Right now, even though the humans running it know that it’s news, their own computers don’t even know that it is happening.
So what’s the LA Times’ excuse?
They were there.
And so was MC Brown who takes wonderful pictures, except when theyre of me.
Thanks to Michael August Pusateri who took a great picture of me (above, speaking on the panel) feeling on top of the world, stoked to finally meet so many people who i admire and who’s blogs i read.
Thanks to everyone who were nice enough to come up and said hi to me, thanks to the nice ladies who invited me to speak with such excellent and smart adults, and thanks for my pals for eating slippery shrimp before and getting drunk with me after.
It was a night i wont soon forget.
Doc Searls
tonight, 2/18
la times got to read Dan Gilmore’s scoop before it even went to press! they were in the house! the story was there. the founder of the company was there. lots of other sources were there too. i would imagine that the la times had a camera and were taking pictures of the event, including when the founder made his grand announcement on this, his first trip to Los Angeles.