[Warning: social satire ahead--for entertainment purposes only! The only genuine quotes in this are from Tom Foremski, who also wrote this piece under his alter-ego A. Tom.]

By A. Tom for AP (Apparent Parody newswire) and SiliconValleyWatcher

Amidst the mourning for the loss of their top visionary, A-list bloggers began to maneuver for Dave Winer's abandoned audience.

"It would be a shame to have those eyeballs go to waste," said Doc Searls, Mr Winer's loyal right hand man for years. "Dave would have wanted me to take care of his beloved readers."

But others, such as Om Malik, who writes the popular GigaOm news blog said that he was Mr Winer's natural successor. "It's time for the old guard to shuffle off and join Dave Winer in the offline afterlife. I've sucked up to those bastards for years, I've got the worn-out kneepads to prove it. I've been waiting for this to happen and I've got a dozen stealth blogs ready to roll at a drop of my hat. I'll help them get on the Cluetrain and get out of here."

Mr Malik won't be the only one trying to scoop up the millions of eyeballs looking for a new home following Mr Winer's sudden departure from the blogosphere.

Tom Foremski, who writes the popular news blog Silicon Valley Watcher, denied that his series of news parodies ("Dave Winer takes his ball home") was opportunistic.

"I'm just doing my job as a reporter and chronicler of these amazing times. Dave Winer is the single most towering tower of intellect in the blogosphere. It is completely believable that he might suddenly have a moment of lucidity and remorse that his life had taken a wrong turn and that he had to take back his real life. This is a great news story--parody or not"

The jostling for position caused by the power vacuum in the blogosphere could get ugly and experts fear that unless it is quickly corrected, the blogosphere itself, could collapse.

"Winer single handedly was responsible for about 40 per cent of all blog traffic directly and indirectly," said Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati, the leading blog tracking service. "We've already seen an alarming drop in traffic and linking between blogs. But that could be because of the new Sopranos."

One fear is that if other bloggers cannot fill the huge gap in informed, and intelligent reasoning, that was the hallmark of Mr Winer's selfless contributions--blog readers will abandon the blogosphere as quickly as they discovered it.

And the blogosphere's biggest enemy, mainstream media, is already gloating and happily predicting the downward spiral and demise of blogging--a thorn in its side for years.

"I always said it was all a bunch of twaddle. Now I can go back to doing just one job instead of having to write a blog as well," said a jubilant Kevin Maney, senior reporter at USA Today.

Other mainstream media reporters said that this demonstrated the fickle and temporary nature of the blogosphere.

"These bloggers think they are journalists but then they just walk away when they get bored. We have to do it everyday, whether we like it or not. They make me puke," said an unnamed news editor in the San Francisco news bureau of the largest financial daily newspaper covering Wall Street, Don Clark.

Dave Winer left because the blogosphere "is BS, it is a gigantic failure that benefits no one except big business," said Andrew Orlowski, news editor for The Register--a tabloid-like daily news tech site. "He should be arrested and sent to The Hague for trial. Winer is responsible for massive crimes against humanity, His efforts have alienated millions of people from their experience of humanity, and convinced them that computer based communications is a real "conversation."

The pugnacious Mr Orlowski, who has tangled with the BlogoSphere many times before, said he was celebrating with friends at the Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco, minutes after hearing the news that Dave Winer was leaving the blogosphere. "I didn't care that it was 9am in the morning--we kept going until 2am!"

"I've got a bit of a hangover this morning" he admitted. But he said his mood of righteous victory would easily carry him through many more celebrations and hangovers. "I'm taking salsa lessons so that I will be able to dance on the grave of the blogosphere," Mr Orlowski said.

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Please see related:

Dave Winer shockwave