Let's quickly review the 3 golden rules of software development :

• Rule #1 of software development : You never perform a featurectomy unless your users and/or clients ask for it. Especially when it's a feature intrinsic to user behaviour and interactivity with the product.
• Rule #2 of software development : Coders cannot forsee all uses for their products. Users usually discover what the product eventually can do for them through use or misuse or unforeseen uses.
• Rule #3 of software development : Break rules #1 and #2 and prepare yourself for a backlash of epic proportions

The people at Twitter have broken these golden rules in the matter of just a few hours and there's a deluge of complaints under the hashtag #fixreplies. A reaction that I am certain the people over at Twitter had no idea they would get what with the update posted by one of the founders (Biz Stone : @biz) on the company blog.

So let's take a moment to break down the train wreck created by the gentlemen (all the coders in the company are guys) of Twitter:

Twitter Blog: Small Settings Update

"Small settings update"? You have got to be a software developer to write a headline like that.

Most software developers make terrible user interface designers because to them software (and by extension the internet) is all about code. Software developers rarely think about the people who are going to use their product because 99% of the time they set out to create a product that only they themselves want to use. Coding to them is to satisfy an itch and not necessarily to serve or give wonderful experiences to others.

It's no wonder most people consider coders to be social misfits. When you have people who think tech (and the web) is all about the code and not the people, it's hard to look at them as "people persons".

And it's highly ironic that social media is so "code dependent"; especially if their code is proprietary. Especially with products like Twitter which is, in many ways, like one big cocktail party.

The thing is that back in the day Biz was "the guy" to go to for web design and development inspiration --to the point that Google hired him to clean up the Blogger/Blogspot mess they had bought from Pyra (which happened to be co-founded by another Twitter co-founder Evan Williams).

Of all people, Biz should have known that taking away a feature from users is never a "small thing". Especially if you have no real explanation other than "I thought it was a good idea".
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What is SocialWeb FooCamp? This is literally a camp out in the grounds of O'Reilly Media were geeks and nerds from across a spectrum of industries get together to brainstorm life in the age of Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Seriously. This is all we're talking about : Facebook, Google, Twitter. For all intents and purposes of this crowd, blogging is dead or on its last leg. A part of the crowd wants to put the last bullet in the head of blogging: Facebook totally looks at themselves as competing with Blogger (Google), WordPress and Twitter and want to take over as "the blogging platform" of the web. Others don't even consider blogs relevant to the conversation. The rest? There's people here working with Drupal, Blogger, Six Apart and WordPress (among other big and micro-blogging platforms) who are spending time thinking and re-purposing blogs in this brave new and fractured "social media" world.
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In thinking about a list of technology tricks I've got up my sleeve, I couldn't but help but notice that I have been using several social networking technologies to cope with my technological pain. I work alone at home, so unless I call somebody or actually reach out to meet and touch someone, I don't get to spread my discontent.

So I've resorted to using a myriad of technologies to ease my pain

1. Blog about it.
2. Twitter your screams of anguish with a 140 character AUUUUGH!
3. Profile your unhappiness at MySpace with a long winded profile update.
4. Vlog about it.
5. Change your GTalk, AIM or iChat status to OMGWTF I DON'T HAVE A COMPUTER!
6. Close every email with a tally of the days you've survived without your tech.
7. Wear a firewire chord around your wrist in solidarity with your computer (especially if it is a Mac)
8. Podcast it
9. Create a Facebook support group and asked to be superpoked with Powerbooks.
10. Go to I has a cheezburger and go to town on their LOLCAT (and sometimes dogs) builder.

There!
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Tomorrow is Personal Democracy Forum's 2007 Conference. The theme this year is "The Flattening of Politics", a hat tip to one of the most important 'manifestos' of this millenium --The Cluetrain Manifesto.

The cluetrain was put together by a group of entrepreneurs, corporate communications experts, software engineers and new media scholars who saw 'the writing on the wall' with the new marketplace that was emerging with the rapid adoption of the internet. Yes, there was a time when many CEO looked at the web with suspicion and with a "but how are we going to make money out of this".

Notwithstanding the 1999/2000 bubble and crash, the naysayers got it all wrong.

The internet is not just changing the way we buy products or ideas. It is changing the basic dynamics of human engagement from how we meet, how we learn from each other, even how we mate.

Of course, the internet has proved to be powerful as a tool for political resource building, but in my book, it has not been used powerfully enough.

Applied to politics, the Manifesto reads as a primer on how the internet squashes any pretences of republic-like politics. Gone are the days in which engagement is only mediated by an elite 'entrusted' by the masses with every single policy and political decision making that will end up affecting their lives.

People Powered Politics is just starting in this country, but we are not there yet. Still, I believe 2008 will go down in history as the last Plato-centric, republic-like elections. Yet, after 2008, I cannot imagine the US Electoral college system surviving because people will demand more and more direct engagement in every single aspect of the political process.

Democracy literally means people (demos) power (cracy). And no self appointed leader of anthing ending with -roots will be able to rationalize a republic-like electoral system as people engage more and more with "social-technology" mediated "people power politics".

The 2008 hint at what is possible, but we are not there yet. If not, we would have had a candidate by now publish their own own 95 Theses for a new politics.

So let me take this opportunity to do it, if not for the candidates then for us, the people who are powering the movement that is flattening politics --even with this here blog. And to keep it in the spirit of the original, it would be cool if you "signed it" in the comments or with a link back to your blog.

So I give you,

The Cluetrain Manifesto for People Powered Politics

Online Constituencies...
Networked political constituencies are beginning to self-organize faster than the governments and political organizations that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, constituencies are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most political organizations.

...People of Earth
The sky is open to the stars. Clouds roll over us night and day. Oceans rise and fall. Whatever you may have heard, this is our world, our place to be. Whatever you've been told, our flags fly free. Our heart goes on forever. People of Earth, remember.
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This weekend is the Personal Democracy Forum Conference here in New York City. I will be participating in what I know will turn out to be a kickass panel. The title of the panel is on this post Is Cyberspace Colorblind? Addressing Race and Class Online.

Ruby Sinreich, of LotusMedia and Orange Politics, is the moderator. The panel promises to be tight with Cheryl Contee Assistant Vice President of IDI.net, Chris Rabb, my blog bro from Afronetizen and Anil Dash, Vice President of Six Apart.

I am really excited about this panel. I know Chris and Anil for quite a while now, have the luck to have met Ruby earlier this year and work with her as part of the advisory crew over at TechPresident and have heard good things about Cheryl's online demographics work.

I have noticed that my list of MySpace friends doesn't grow linearly. You can't just go to the last page of your "friends" to see who's added themselves to your train.

New "friends" seem to get added and sorted at random. I am assuming it is a ruse used to maximmize pageviews and thusly ad revenue. Still, it lends itself for some unplanned and quite humorous comingly of people who may have never met outside your list.

Like the case of the smiley death-match between Hanifah Walidah, DJ, video producer & master networker extraordinaire; and Barack Obama, presidential rock star. Who has the biggest grin, illest fashion sense and flawless-ler skin? You decide!

Then there's the war of the geeks. There's the policy geek and anti-war powerhouse, Senator Russ Feingold. On the other corner is Jason, "i am lawgeek, hear me roar" Schultz.

I think I heard somewhere that you are attracted to the same 3 or 4 people that made indelible impressions on you early in life, including your parents. If you look at blogdiva|my list of friends, you definitely find a narrative there.
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