Roger L. Simon and his comrades are in NYC to open their new business--which they call Open Source Media.
It started out as Pyjamas Media, which was irreverent, funny, and something I was interested in -- for a while. It became clear pretty quickly that some compromises were being made, I didn't know the reasons, and I decided not to participate. I'd been down that road before in an internet venture with someone I knew, and although it had a happy ending, there were too many problems in the middle. Never again.
Even so, I'd been following the venture with interest. And what I've seen so far doesn't look good. The personal and snappy sites belonging to people like Simon and Charles Johnson now have the dullest and most corporate looking portal since "Tech Central Station" and perhaps the second worst name.
Anonymous, technical, and impersonal. In other words--a good, gray, Republican site. The life has been wrung out of it, perhaps by their funders, who knows?
Will it succeed? I dunno. But remember, Google and Yahoo! pride themselves on quirky and creative interfaces. So far, Open Source Media looks like the web design may have been contracted out to someone from the Republican National Committee. Oh, I forgot, they actually have someone on their board who used to run the press operation for the RNC under Jim Nicholson...his name is Cliff May.
Go back to the drawing board guys: take off your suits and get back in those PJs!
