I think it was probably the copycat/followup effect rather than anything coordinated, but I haven't looked closely.

Trying to decide whether to merge the threads and/or which of them should 'win'...

If the datastar team was capable of such a coordinated marketing effort I doubt they'd be in the business of running a non profit, or building a niche HTML streaming framework. Or having a one off purchase model for pro.

I mean unless you consider me linking my dumb demos everytime someone accuses hypermedia of not being suitable for realtime/collaborative apps. That I'm 100% guilty of.