For those unaware the big “story” blowing up the tech blogging world right now is Dave Winer’s new application, ‘FlickrFan‘. If you want to read about it go here and check out any of the dozen or so posts. Be careful which one you choose though, because you could either get one exalting it, or ripping it to shreds – there really aren’t too many in between, though a few try to take a more politically correct approach.

And this extreme polarization has really overshadowed the actual application here. Is it a “clunky screensaver” as Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins notes? Or are its possibilities “wide-reaching” as Louis Gray notes? Or maybe Winer has basically made a $600 dollar (for the MacMini this app is said to work best with) “slide show maker” as Steven Hodson notes. I don’t even want to try it because I have a feeling I might get angry at whatever side I don’t agree with.

I’m going to go ahead and alter my original definition of ‘bitchmeme‘ to move it beyond simply bitching about Techmeme on Techmeme, to bitching about anything – or one another – on Techmeme, as most of these posts do a great job calling out other posts. Please just take a minute and read some of the comments on these posts, some are from Dave Winer, some from people who watch Scoble’s live demo of FlickrFan, many are rebuttals from the authors of said postings. It’s spreading to Twitter. It’s great drama. It’s Bitchmeme.

Should this be the top headline on Techmeme? Probably not, but it’s a slow time of year and it is what a lot of people are talking about, in fact many of the biggest names in blogging. Techmeme doesn’t discriminate against bullshit, if people are talking about it, up the ladder it goes – something which I am of course perpetuating with this very post – by talking about people talking about something – but it’s not like all this hasn’t been at the top of Techmeme for hours already.

Now everyone just calm down. Maybe FlickrFeed is a glimpse of the future, maybe it sucks, or maybe everyone should just take a few days to step back and get some perspective as Frederic tried to do (though for the record he still weighs in on the debate with a couple quick “screensaver” jabs, ha ha).

All that being said, I think it is great to still see true differing opinions within the blogosphere – and that there are those who aren’t afraid to speak out. That is very important no matter who is right or who is wrong. When everyone is saying the exact same thing, that’s when the blogosphere dies.

It’s almost the new year, 2008 is probably going to be better than 2007 was as long as the economy doesn’t completely collapse. I’ve had at least some contact with most of the people I’m linking to in this post and its been nice “working” with all of you.

Can’t wait to see what the first ‘bitchmeme’ of ‘08 will be.

[UPDATE]: And here’s a transcript of the live chat during Scoble’s demonstration of FlickrFan – you’d be hard pressed to find a positive comment, or a handful that make sense. Ah the Internet…