IMHO there seems to be too much coverage (in general on the web) of the MS/Yahoo deal, Apple's latest overpriced thing, Twitter downtime and never enough about Linux or open source. But then I'm sure that's because of my own interests.
ernohannink
· 1 year ago
Oh boy, I agree with you on many if not all of your points. It was what I am still blogging for, sharing great things that I find. Always trying to find the positive site, or when there is a negative story trying to look at possible improvements. Negative comments and online fights are no fun to read. Twitter once a great communications now more more people add just a feed to their profile and are just sending, not responding to questions. PR Twitter feeds. It is all part of the growing up pains of this web 2.0 area. Curious to see where this is going.
Gerard
· 1 year ago
I agree that tech blogging is becoming more difficult to attract attention and compete with TechCrunch, Mashable, Ars Technica etc. This is especially the case when you blog about generak IT stuff, new products and services from the Big Boys, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, IBM etc. However, I think there IS value in blogging about niche markets or have a blog that specialises in a certain aspect of IT. I have a news blog about FreeBSD and operating systems based on FreeBSD (www.freebsdnews.net) with a relatively small audience, but because it's small you get a chance to report news first, there's less competition and you have a more personal relationship with a a number of your readers
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Richard: yeah, Linux doesn't get coverage because it isn't used on many people's desktops. I never see Linux in the airport and rarely see it at tech conferences, so it's easy to ignore because it's only used in servers/data centers, etc. Open source? Old topic and not much new there, except when someone tries to use it in a new place (like Yahoo's search engine applied it lately).
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Tim: learning to write, take photos, build relationships with people who build stuff, and learning to do videos +is+ a skill and is needed in the industry to help sift the important from the unimportant.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
I just realized that Tim is one of those jerks I just can't stand. Gone.
FreeBSD News
· 1 year ago
Robert, please ignore my previous comment
I agree that tech blogging is difficult to attract attention. The blog needs to have something "extra" in order to be able to compete with TechCrunch, Mashable, Ars Technica etc. This is especially the case when you blog about IT in general, new products and services from the Big Boys, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple,Google, IBM et.
However, I think there IS value in blogging about niche markets or specialising into a certain aspects/niches of technology I have a blog about FreeBSD and operating systems based on FreeBSD (www.freebsdnews.net) with a relatively small audience, but because it's small you get a chance to report news first and to have a more personal relationship with readers.
Ernie Oporto
· 1 year ago
So the important thing will be what you do next with this insight. My challenge to you is to set up a blog space somewhere else. Something like a hobbyist setup of Wordpress, out of anyone else's control, and use that as a clean slate. Let someone else take the control of commenting out of your hands, like Disqus. Do your non-business stuff there and see how that grows compared to your current space. If not, then you know the old style is dead, end of experiment, wipe the blog clean, and back to business you go.
Shyam Kumar
· 1 year ago
Depends on your who you are writing for.. who you want your readers to be..
The average Joe or the average Joel?
And as you said, there are so many channels today that you can leverage, that it doesnt have to be 'OR'..
And if tech blogging has really 'failed', i dont think it'd be around and kicking as much.
One blog I do enjoy is Bob Warfield's smoothspan.wordpress.com Incisive, opinionated writing. Not just news and links.
Chris Baskind
· 1 year ago
Refreshing: Go for it, Robert. I'd be delighted to see tech blogging swing back to things which excite users, not just investors and CEOs. Awesome.
Txaber
· 1 year ago
I agree with you on many of your points. I read your blog because I am looking for opinion, not news, not latest news. I don't need them. I don't care about them. But I do care about opinions, specially when they show new ways of seeing something or points that I did not even think about. I am also happy with your slow blogging, it's the only way to keep up. You should see my google reader, I only keep up with slow bloggers.
Dirk
· 1 year ago
Ernie is right: Put "Sabbathical, some Weeks at least" in h1 on scobleizer.com, keep it accessible, and append your time and motivation to what you'd just described.
andymurd
· 1 year ago
Congratulations on your epiphany and having the backbone to realise that you need to do something about it. Tech is still cool, just because it's currently fashionable and highly monetised hasn't changed our enjoyment of it.
Working outside of the US, I have never seen the value of TechCrunch et al. I may as well wait and read the business pages in the Sunday newspaper as deals by giant west-coast companies have little urgency in my life.
BTW I'm a tech blogger that still uses Windows 2000, I just never saw the need to upgrade. I also use a five year-old iBook G4 because it's cheap and still works beautifully.
George Koiliaris
· 1 year ago
When you see many blogs dealing with the same topic and trying to reproduce it over and over again then it makes me feel that it's actually my fault as a reader. If I, you, he/she, as a reader, think that the Yahoo/Microsoft deal is really important and hot then it is expected that "every" blog will write about it in order to gain visits, diggs etc.
If on the other hand the readership shows its HOT interest on other things, let us say Google Friend Connect vs FB f8 then bloggers wouldn't make so much fuss about Microhoo and would focus on the above mentioned.
Do I sound naive? Maybe...and maybe not.
Ian Betteridge
· 1 year ago
Really good post, Robert. It's great to see the Scoble I started reading years ago (when your "latest thing" was Tablet PC!) back. Welcome back, mate.
Rachel
· 1 year ago
The news blogs, amongst which many tech blogs sit, get skimmed, titles only. Actually, those are the ones that title feeds are better - you can flick through a lot quicker. Opinions and enthusiasm are far more fun to read! Just bring me what you love, not what you think you should be writing about to get the traffic and keep up with the current hot thing
ctovision
· 1 year ago
That was a good post. "Fail" might be the wrong word to use, but as you mention, many tech bloggers have been focusing too much on the latest thing. I don't need to visit blogs to read what is in my RSS feed from the tech news sites. I appreciate your opinion and the way you connect technology to human experiences. I also appreciate your twitter feeds so please keep that up.
And if folks reply to your question "What blogs are doing the best tech blogging?" I'd appreciate seeing the list.
Socblçe, don't you thinks tools like Friendfeed, Facebook and others are what blogging needs to be saved? I tend to see these tools (as well as StumbleUpon, i.e.) as filters to what is really relevant and what is PR in disguise or just a old fashioned bad post.
So, blogging did fail, but did not become irrelevant. It just needs to be put in sync with mechanisms that allow us who's delivering the goods or not. You can't go wrong with the wisdom of crowds.
Public Relations
· 1 year ago
...
Techcrunch overcame the business focus - by creating TechCrunch IT and smaller vertical sites that CrunchGear.
Only a large blog could accomplish this and be successful - but it shows that there is an avenue for those who do not want to abandon tech for business.
Mashable too, is managing to keep some of their tech roots while focusing on the necessary business stories to survive
Jorge Escobar
· 1 year ago
Hey Robert,
Great post! It circles a lot of the sentiment that's been bounced around by Fred Wilson and others around the importance of blogging (I did a little comment on it on my new blog).
One suggestion I had, which I'm also planning to do, is to link your blog comments with FriendFeed's -- I believe there's a plugin or something. I think this is the real, active, fun crowd that can give you that sense of thrill about technology (I know I do, every day, reading my FriendFeed).
Keep up that child-wonder feeling!
bijan sabet
· 1 year ago
Great post Robert.
I feel the same way.
It would be easy for me to turn my blog into a PR machine to try and promote my investments 24x7.
But that wouldn't work for me and why work-related posts are the minority of my posts.
The part that really struck a chord with me about your post is all the negativity on tech blogs these days. I'm sure they are therapeutic for the blogger and they are trying to shine a light on something they care about it - but it seems like it's getting nasty.
We should try to help each other. Not kick each other.
Look forward to watching/reading your blog evolve.
Tony Crooks
· 1 year ago
Great post, Robert. So much blog content just doesn't have genuine value. Some is the writer's responsibility which combined with the rush to be first to post creates gushes of 'me to' stuff. And what we don't have are the tools that provided suitable aggregation along the lines of 'x says... and another 25 posts are very similar' to provide decent filtering based on content. Thankfully there are still people who think before they post. But not so easy to see any longer amongst all the other chatter online.
Richard Cunningham
· 1 year ago
Robert: Actually I see a lot of tech people moving to Linux on their laptops, work systems and home systems, but no real big headline deployments campus/company wide. This seems to be *growing* at a faster rate than any system right now though still at a lower overall percentage than either Windows or Macs. This seems to be the case at least in a couple UK Universities I know about anyway, where users tend to have more freedom about what they use. Ubuntu seems to be a lot more popular than anything right now for newbies and seems to avoid the old question of what distro to use (which used to be either RedHat or Suse).
I'd say in 10 years of using Linux there is more interest than at any time I can remember. It seems that Ubuntu is more popular than the iPhone for example, but the iPhone gets loads of coverage.
For the record - all my systems (work, home desktop, laptop) are single boot into Linux and only the laptop has a virtual machine XP install which I use to test IE7 and Safari rendering but I don't find it useful for anything else really.
David Barkan
· 1 year ago
I fully agree with your post, to much information, not enough follow up and not enough usable info this is what is make blogging like a news paper. Blogging is not new , it is something different which make you share your experience or knowledge with others. I suggest a rule for a post, 100 words only and useful to somebody.
Joel Sonnet
· 1 year ago
I definately agree with everything your saying I'm a new reader to your site I heard about you through a really good tech friend of mine and I am personally only I'd say medium knowledge on alot of technology things but by going through and reading alot of your stuff I find myself completely interested in the things you have to say and in a way I really can understand. I'm glad your going back to basics so to say and I also love it when I can just sit down with someone and get a little nerdy with a friend about a commonly loved subject. I look forward to reading more from you and apologize for finding you so late.
Bravia Stoli
· 1 year ago
Ask yourself these questions:
1) When was the last time I sat and "SEARCHED" for new tech out there? (without being sent something to read out)
2) Do I care about New tech outside the valley on a 1 to 1 level, instead of finding out about it via VC's?
3) Do I like technology for technology's sake or for the people that are behind?
4) Evaluate a tech to see if it is genuinely new, not a BBS recreated on the web?
All the 'popular' blogs have gone down the shitter with content being pushed up front based on their sponsors, not genuine user interest. And, people are sheep, they will follow.
Aravind Jose T.
· 1 year ago
Well Robert,
Am I allowed to say "Wow, Classical/Legendary Post" ? Don't keep it in the category of 14-year olds; coz, I'm 17 years old :D
Yeah, it is long. But I read it full (twice!!). Now, I'm not able to write a comment that'll compliment the class of the content that lies above this, but I just wanted to state that:
"I AGREE WITH YOU"
I'm a tech-blogger myself, but seriously a bit (or a lot ?) far away from the position you are enjoying now !!
James Kendrick
· 1 year ago
Robert, come back to jkOnTheRun. We deliberately avoid doing just what you're complaining about. There's too much fun with the tech, gadgets, etc., to be worried about the business of tech. We're waiting for you.
Walter Riker
· 1 year ago
Robert I will agree with most of what you have to say. Digg is not a good resource for information (at least for me) and as for TechCrunch or TechMeme or Google News they remind me of CNN NEWS and all I do is scan and very seldom read. I am looking for the NEW in technology and or the NEW in uses of current technology. I am a big fan of "What's happening?" not who is trying to screw who. Sometimes the stuff you write goes over my head but as time goes along I can put it together with something else. I am still trying to find my voice and your GOOD stuff helps and the other I just overlook. "Keep on keepin' on".
Sean
· 1 year ago
Robert, this was an interesting article. I find myself skimming the top tech blogs for subjects that sound like they might be discussing something new and interesting. I rarely read Techcrunch anymore, but I do see what they are linking too.
I am totally 100% in agreement and you really had my attention when you talked about Apple and the latest and greatest stuff. I am just wrapping up the XP upgrade at my firm. Windows 2000 is not that far gone for us, and I know that many of the people in the firm are still using it at home (along with Windows 98). I do think though, that highlighting the new technologies is what helps to generate buzz, and I think that buzz will lead to new people moving on with more modern gadgets and operating systems. Every so often I will have someone at work as me a question about something new in technology, and bring up your name or Techcrunch or Mashable...the message does get down to the masses eventually.
philos
· 1 year ago
Great post! So true and honest! The same thing that you observe, I also observe here in Greece, although I am not a tech blogger but I follow many tech blogs from all over the world.
Replying to your last question "What blogs are doing the best tech blogging?" I prefer to follow tech blogs that at least 5 out of 10 of their entries still today seem useful and interesting to me. I think that labnol from Digital Inspiration is doing a great job. He is choosing the most interesting news and tips and he tweets only when he has something really important to say or to notice. Maybe it helps that he is thousand miles away from the "coolest events".
David
· 1 year ago
Robert,
I look out for things I can use, and Evernote is one of them. I examine things for myself and usually don't take the hype at face value. I watch things come and go, and wonder why some of them ever came in the first place.
I imagine I am like most of your readers, most twitterers, most powncers, most bloggers.
I remind myself that quality derives from attention to detail, competence, and love of what one is doing. And if there is intended to be an audience for whatever it is that is being developed, then for the developer, quality also derives from respect for the audience and the users and a sense of responsibility in making sure the thing works right.
Some of the neatest things I use were made by people who made the thing to satisfy themselves.
So the task for you is to be a good detective, and find the good things.
Keep smiling -it's infectious.
:)
Juan Carlo
· 1 year ago
I think you've succumbed to something most of us do: why am I doing this? And truthfully, there's something about technology: it's moving too damn fast to keep up with. That's why many tech bloggers focus on the "shiny new" and never follow up. But I agree, Lifehacker does a great job, as does MakeUseOf.com. To be honest, I heard of you and knew you well on the comments, but it was only when I started following you on FriendFeed that I took an interest in what you were up to.
Autumn
· 1 year ago
This is exactly why I've stopped reading most tech blogs...the nastiness and the monotony. The comments are particularly bad. I used to read over 50 blogs that could be classified as tech, now that number hovers around 3. Now I've mostly migrated to reading what other people would term "mommy" blogs, because the community is friendly and caring, and the bloggers tend to discuss things that make me happy. I find it makes my day that much more enjoyable.
vinu
· 1 year ago
Agree to almost every word of it :-) I have cut down from 350 of feeds to 90 odd. Out of these 90 odd - they are recommendations from people who read lots. from delicious and other stuff. Some I regularly read are: Smart Mobs + Communities Dominate + some select mobile blogs. I also wish there were blogs on Nano, Bio-tech who would engage in diverse set of conversations online!
Lincoln
· 1 year ago
Thanks for the update. I look forward to the new improved scobleizer.
To use the subtitle of a book I like: We could do with REDISCOVERING PASSION & WONDER.
Don't forget the early adapters but don't pander to them either.
Ryan
· 1 year ago
I think one reason tech blogging (and blogging in general) is failing to engage audiences is because bloggers are trying to replace the comments section on news sites. Whenever a piece of news hits the web, the bloggers jump all over it with a standard "Here's the article, here's what I think" post. Now I'm not denying the different writing styles and subtly different takes each blogger comes to the table with, but essentially most of the blogs I read (or gave up on) followed the same format: "Look at this shiny new gadget, it's great!" or "Company X bought Company Y, what a bunch of idiots!" or "Obscure tech conference ABC opens tonight, and I saw these three blogger A-listers there!!" I don't see why I couldn't get this type of commentary in the news sites' comments sections.
Additionally the tech blogosphere is a giant echo chamber, with everyone basically scooping each other's news, clogging up readers' RSS feeds with identical articles. I once had to navigate seven different blogs until I actually found the original source of a story (probably Reuters). I (still) have more than 30 different tech blogs and "blognews" feeds in my Netvibes dashboard, and if iPhone is the big news, EVERYONE will be talking about iPhone (and saying the same things about iPhone). If the Yahoo soap opera is news today, sure enough Yahoo will show up in those 30+ feeds.
Here's a suggestion for bloggers: If, on a given day, CNET and Techcrunch and Techmeme and Om and BoingBoing and ReadWrite all have pretty much identical "Article+Commentary" posts about the MacBook Air--take that day to talk about something totally different. In fact, don't even mention the MacBook Air. Maybe write about the clever tech insight you came up with while skydiving yesterday. Write about the last conversation you had with a software developer who's over 50. Write about something that's not necessarily the BIG STORY OF THE DAY but that you can present from an angle that few others have considered.
Well, that's my rant. Take it or leave it
Dawn
· 1 year ago
What I don't like about tech blogging is the "They don't get it" attitude towards nontech people. I've never once seen any tech blogger even consider the notion that perhaps he is the one who doesn't get it.
So there is this echo chamber where only tech interests are considered and everybody else's interests be damned.
Greg Bond
· 1 year ago
Sboble, I'm not sure what you drank before you wrote this post, but whatever it was, I want some. I totally agree with your reflection.
I read you top bloggers religiously, and as of late, I've been pretty tired of the repetition and homogeneity. I can't say I'm doing any better myself. What can we do better to diversify, and appeal to larger audiences?
stevepaine
· 1 year ago
Dawn has an excellent point. I'll be thinking about that as much as I can as I continue my bloging. Chippy.
Curt Mercadante
· 1 year ago
Robert, I've literally only been reading your blog for about two weeks or so. I've been trying to read up to "get smart" on technology, updates, and tools.
I keep coming back to your blog because you seem to have so much darn fun.
More than anything, I watch your videos. Your interviews are like gold to me - you have fun with them, I learn new things, and get to comment real time with the other viewers.
Your blog has more personality than the others. It's fun. And, unlike other tech blogs and sites, I learn how I can incorporate new tools into what I'm doing with my clients.
Keep it up, Scobleizer.
Sheila Scarborough
· 1 year ago
Thanks for your thoughtful commentary, and for reaching out to your readership.
I've only begun reading your blog and following you on Twitter within the last year, but so far, you have intro'd me to Kyte and Qik (so I can tell others about streaming from a cell phone although mine can't do it,) you've told me about Sifry's Offbeat Guides (I just ordered one yesterday for Grand Rapids, MI - there's a beta test!) you've told me about FriendFeed and why you like it so much (I'm not that into it but thanks to you I can understand the appeal of better threading, like Plurk) and I've downloaded the Microsoft telescope thingie but just haven't had time to look at it, though I know it'll be great when I do. Finally, I met Rocky because of you, and now I can say Hi to him occasionally on Twitter and keep him updated on drag racing news.
I'm a "regular Joe" writer with a busy life who likes having you out there "on point" for me - you're my own personal tech scout.
You bring enthusiasm and kindness to a medium that is too often in danger of snarkifying itself. The fact that you sit back and think out loud about self-improvement like this is testament to your professionalism and genuine regard for your readers.
Thanks for what you do - keep writing and I'll keep reading.
paul
· 1 year ago
The Techie audience thirsty for knowledge is much smaller then the Get-rich-quick audience, but the largest demographic is the Free-lunch boys.
The blogs with the most revenue have tricked their advertisers into believing teenage boys are business decision makers.
quagmires
· 1 year ago
I'm new to the world of blogging and are still tweaking with things. Your blog certainly isn''t boring. I would appreciate if you visit my blog and give me some tips or suggestions. http://quagmires.wordpress.com/
Dawn
· 1 year ago
I agree with Sheila about your enthusiasm and kindness, Robert. And I would add that you're the least arrogant tech blogger that I know of, which is greatly appreciated, though you do have your moments. ;)
michaelb1
· 1 year ago
bravo, Jerry MCGuire.
Seriously, great insight.
The Determined
· 1 year ago
The problem with thinking about how someone has failed another is the assumption there's some obligation on your part to succeed. You don't owe anyone anything. Just do your thing. If people like it, cool. If they hate it, hot. Going to meta in your own head is what causes golfers to blow one foot puts. Just sing.
John Head
· 1 year ago
While I follow all of you in the tech world via rss, friendfeed, and twitter, nothing personal Scoble, but most of what you post has no real value to me on a daily basis. Same with the non-business side. I am a consultant in Chicago. I spend my days implementing solutions for customers. I don't care about what is 'cool' or 'fun' ... I care about what I can learn to solve my customers problems. I find so much that I read part of the bubble many live in ... and do not realize that everyone outside of that just watch for entertainment value. Did web 2.0 have a major impact on the world? of course. But I am not implementing solutions from people you video ... I implement solutions from folks like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and others. Is the iPhone appstore cool? Of course it is ... but until I can get apps from my bank, insurance customer, and things like OpenTable and DiningIn on there ... the value is pretty low.
Please, do not stop what you do. Nor do I want TechCrunch and TechMeme or other folks like SmugMug (Don is an amazing guy) to stop what your doing. But please realize those of us outside the bubble just don't care about the fights and bickering. Business Reporting is a good thing. The best situation would be a well balanced mix of business, cool ideas, video, and case studies of this being used in real world situations, with real customers, impacting the real bottom line.
eric norlin
· 1 year ago
hey robert-
i started to blog about this a bit yesterday (more under the theme of not putting the same people on stage at conferences like Defrag):
Interestingly enough, I have been meaning to go through my feeds and remove a lot of the extraneous stuff. Seems I'll see 10 articles about the same new PMP or Xbox game ... and yet, none of it really matters all that much to me. To say that you're "out of touch with the real world" is subjective. You're not touting yourself as a "real world" blog, you're a tech blog. The tech world IS out of touch sometimes. ;-)
For as long as you've been around, I only just recently found your blog. It's one of the few I actually READ, rather than just skim. First, it's not just a shotgun approach to topics ... you put considerable effort and writing into your posts. Second, for the most part, I'm genuinely interested in your topics. Finally, yours has insight. As somebody who's been doing this for a while, your name is certainly out there ... you'd be pressed to find a "geek" who hasn't at least heard of Scoble!
Please don't change up your format too much. Like I said, I've only recently discovered you and am liking what I read. However, Lifehacker IS one of my favorite sites and anything along those lines is good too.
One more thought, I dig Apple products (for the most part). But also dig my XP box and my Linux distros too. IMHO, if it works, use it. Things are shifting away from being OS-centric to being more user-centric anyway. You can open just about any format file on just about any system nowadays. Half the applications people use are web-based too, so it doesn't matter what platform you get your data from ... Wii, XP, iPhone, etc. The smart companies will realize that and make interfaces generic enough to use on any device.
Kevin Hillstrom
· 1 year ago
Well said, well done!
DGentry
· 1 year ago
I'd guess your main issue will be aggressively filtering out the torrent of junk that people constantly try to push on a pundit of your stature, to make time for the things you want to focus on.
John Welsh
· 1 year ago
Good posting. But you say "Twitter where there are real people who don’t care about the business but who are just looking to use technology to have more fun" but I find I am already being spammed http://johnwelsh.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/twitt...
Phil B.
· 1 year ago
Great post Scoble... In the long run, the approach you mention here will win you a bigger following, and hopefully will encourage other bloggers to follow suit.
Steve Spalding
· 1 year ago
Hey Robert,
First thing I'd like to say is that I loved the post. I loved it because it proves more than ever that you believe strongly in the world you spend your life reporting on, which regardless of any failings that blogging has is the most important thing in the world (which I've been rambling on and on about for the last week).
The only part I had to comment on was HP reference you made. I am an Electrical Engineer by trade, and it stuns me so much how quickly we (as "blog people") convolve the concept of technology with neat gadgets. I've had to pleasure of seeing implementations of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning (among other technologies, including so really cool Solid State research like you described) that completely blow every web app I have seen in the last 3 years right out of the water. Implementations of these technologies put together by grad students without any other commercial interest other than their degree.
There is so much more out there, and I think we get so caught up in the muck that we lose focus on a lot of it. Worse, we forget that the only point in any of this, as John pointed out, is to solve problems.
Solve problems, for people, using technology.
Either way, great post and I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
onechick
· 1 year ago
I really loved this post. I'd like to point out, though, that I do generally find your posts to be informative and interesting so I think fail might be too strong of a word. What makes me want to just log off and go do something more useful is all the bickering that goes on between some of the "top" tech bloggers. I care about ideas, not about personal squabbles. I'll come out and say it -- I don't care if Jason Calacanis is retiring from blogging for whatever reason (frankly, I'm annoyed that I even know the whole story), yet that clogged up my FriendFeed for what seemed like an eternity.
What worries me is the trickle down effect. People like myself who are very new to the tech blogging scene (though not new to the business) find it difficult to get in on the conversation. So, while the top bloggers begin to all cover the same stories, we end up emulating and only talking about those same exact stories. I blame myself for that though, more than I would blame you or any other blogger.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I found this post to be really honest and inspiring.
Keith Cash
· 1 year ago
WOW. Great article. The detail was amazing and insights with information was a very good article. Maybe one day I can strive to blog this well. I will start reading more often
tweetmedicine
· 1 year ago
Great post! Now try saying it in 140 characters!:-)
cheapsuits
· 1 year ago
Well first off I agree with the tone and focal point of this post. However, look around, the small old tech school blogger is still out there. I love reading blogs like that. The problem is the small blogger goes through life unheard much of the time. Big zero's in the comments section. Less then $10 in the Adsense account. They want to be blogstars. To do that you have to sell out and get on the corporate rat race wheel and play the myriad games. Sad really.
Dick Rowan
· 1 year ago
Nobody has failed anybody. I would guess that in the early days of telephone, people talked a lot about telephones and this life-changing new device. Over time, the technology receded and now people talk on the phone about living and working and whatever. I suppose the same will happen with web communications, once regular people--not geeks--reach critical mass. Robert, you can advance that evolution by writing for, and talking with, regular people about the things they need to learn and change to be happy in this complicated world. Thanks for you efforts.
Matthias
· 1 year ago
Hi Robert,
I can do nothing more but agree.
I'm not going to put into words what a tech blog should be about. But if you'd ask me to give one great example, it would be Mark Hoekstra's Geektechnique.org.
Maybe it's not an allrounder or the most accessible blog to read, but it's about technology and guy who loves it to death.
TDavid
· 1 year ago
Good post, Robert. Too much of what passes itself off as 'tech blogging' these days is boring and uninspired. It's stuff we've all read (or written [gasp]) years ago, just with a slightly different shade of lipstick on the pig.
It doesn't take much creativity or energy to sit back and rewrite press releases or fire off a screed about what your favorite (or least favorite) tech blogger(s) just posted.
I'm not sure FriendFeed is the tech holy grail you are seeking, though. Respectfully, I think you were on a better track when you used to keep up your Google Reader list and uncover the most interesting of the gems to blog about here. Speaking for myself, I was more interested in what you blogged about back then versus these days.
Sure, you could use FF to help out there, but if you're letting your friends/followers primarily dictate what's interesting that's not much better than writing about the top stories on TechMeme or following the digg/reddit pop lists.
I think part of the Web 2.blow movement that has it all wrong is that being popular and being interesting and/or useful are the same. Sometimes this might be the case, but not always. As we've seen through gaming these voting sites can be manipulated and thus what's "interesting" becomes muddy water.
And I don't understand the desire to push readers off to some third party, off site comment system either. What one might think is convenient could be very inconvenient to others who might not even know what FriendFeed is, much less how or why they should use it. Tell somebody who isn't a blogger and yet is interested in technology and the web why they should use FriendFeed? Forget you and I, Robert, where is the value add for this type of person?
I happen to like FriendFeed and find it personally useful (for non-Twitter non-Friendfeed discussions which unfortunately dominate the service), but feel it is getting too much hype, just like Twitter. Someday the reality distortion field clears and we get back to what is truly useful in the world. FriendFeed might be 'cool' but does it have mass market useful application in the world?
Amar Rama
· 1 year ago
Robert, This may just be tangentially related but Umair's post today hits on the same thoughts from a 100,000 foot perspective. link
John Welsh
· 1 year ago
Hi Good afternoon. Could you tell me why my comment about Twitter was not used? It remained in a "To be moderated" position and has now disappeared. I am new to blogging so if I have broken some etiquette, it would be useful to know. My comment made reference to me receiving spam via Twitter and linked back to the my original posting which I thought added something to Mr Scoble's blog. Obviously not so sorry about that. Thanking you in advance Cheers
Michael Sean Wright
· 1 year ago
Robert,
I really enjoy the passion of your post(s). Your enthusiasm is contagious, your desire to share the discovered shiny objects is winsome in nature.
I am excited about The Large Hadron Collider because as an inquisitive human I want to peek under the hood and see the really tiny parts that make up the whole. The Tech Blogging Universe may not set records in size, but without the Explorers tapping furiously on their strings the general public would never know how exciting it is down here. Robert please continue to "pick" apart the features of various connective tissues so that someone may make it stronger. Finding the weakness of channels requires you look very close at the pipes, from that perspective it can get pretty remote. Keep digging though, it's clearly in your DNA. You encourage others to play in the sandbox of ideas. Your post prompted so many great comments, discoveries and connections- not a bad life indeed Robert.
Brent P. Newhall
· 1 year ago
Great post, Robert! While I don't think it's as bad as all that, there's certainly an echo chamber. Good to see you commenting on it.
It's about *content*.
Dan Lyke
· 1 year ago
I'm a hardcore techie, my blog runs software I wrote myself, I currently pay the bills by developing both hardware and software, and I've never read the TechMeme front page or the Google news technology section.
By the time a technology hits one of those it's a shipping product, and I'm developing products in a competitive market place, I don't have the time to wait for things to get all the way through the development cycle before I use them, and if I wanted re-published press releases I'd go to one of the sources for such things.
There are plenty of *real* tech bloggers out there, and they're publishing schematics and source code and showing pictures of their soldered hacks, along side their pet rabbits. These are the people doing the innovation, the stuff that will end up on TechMeme in a year or three, but by the time it filters up that far we may as well read about it in the Finance or Lifestyle sections.
Other commenters have harked back to the days when you were excited about the tablet PCs. One evening several years ago I met you in a parking lot in the South Bay and you showed me why you were so excited about the products you were working with. Those are the sorts of stories that I want to see more of from you, the places where it's someone in the back lot after hours, not the front lobby during business. The times when someone's so jazzed about their technologies that they're going outside the channels of their company to push it. That's what pushes technology forward.
Let the mainstream journalists rephrase the press releases and represent the agendas of the PR guys, that's what they're good at.
scott
· 1 year ago
Funny, I was wondering a similar meme recently.
Basically, I was wondering is Naked Conversations, your book, relevant anymore?
Should companies, or even people, blog anymore? Does blogging get lost in the shuffle behind the a listers, behind the "top x " post writers, etc?
Does blogging add value to the company or the individual anymore?
I'm not a twitter user nor a friendfeed user. I remember when blog comments were the thing to do. I still comment, but I noticed conversations are fleeting among the blogosphere. Twitter and Friend have all caused comments to be scattered across too many areas. Additionally, the comments are so short on twitter, that I wonder how that adds any value to anyone besides time wasting.
I see that Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc... all have walls to leave comments on. How does that benefit me or you?
When Blog comments can force Kathy Sierra off the blogosphere, it makes things terrible and harsh. Who wants to write in that world?
The other part, authors, used to comment and follow up on comments. Now, people are too busy with emails, rss feeds, writing trying to catch the next digg, yahoo buzz, reddit wave.
So, what makes a good tech blogger or a good blogger in general, someone who interacts with tries to make personal communication with their audience. The rest is just public relations writing masked as a blog.
I still read 37signals.com/svn/ I follow liferemix.net blogs although that's kind of headline driven. otherwise, I use techmeme, popurls, and alltop to filter the noise to the popular.
earl wallace
· 1 year ago
Robert- This my first reply to your blog. It's the best of all the rss feeds I receive mainly because of your honesty and accurate self appraisal. I totally agree with your viewpoint on how tech bloggers have let us down. I like PCMECH for the same reasons. What is slow blogging?
S.P. Gass
· 1 year ago
Dawn, I couldn't agree more about tech blogger attitudes towards those who "don't get it."
And I agree with Robert about tech blogs generally being an echo chamber.
I also agree his commentary on problems with comments, especially on digg. In my own case, rarely receiving bad comments is one of the benefits of not having a large readership... but I'd being lying if I said I didn't want to see traffic increase.
Alex Hammer
· 1 year ago
This is a treasure trove, as always. Organize the blog post in topics with headlines throughout the post, etc. It will take twice as long to write (half being editing) but will be more readable to more people and attract more people. Editing just as important as writing.
Alex Hammer
· 1 year ago
At the highest levels, less is more. The 80-20 rule. Expand on the gems and let someone else make their profit on the scraps.
Nathania Johnson
· 1 year ago
If you do this edifying thing you're talking about, I would be more inclined to read your blog. Or anyone else doing the same thing.
Blogging could (should?) be the antidote to competitive journalism, which in this fast-paced society doesn't take the time to check facts or at least provide a story in its true context.
Some content labeled as blogs is simply digital so-called journalism.
It's not that reporting news is in and of itself is bad. I do this for a living. But the competitiveness and the nastiness is what I don't like.
Dawson
· 1 year ago
Robert,
First, thanks for your honesty and openness. It's refreshing to hear the human behind this screen I'm staring at. Your post actually gets me excited about the human race and about the tech community. I hate writing, but your post (nearly) inspires me to write! :) I look forward to reading more that you have to share.
Second, you're not an idiot. Idiots don't recognize their finite knowledge or respect the knowledge and intelligence of people who know more about something than themselves.
Finally, I had one idea about dealing with the flood of press releases. Perhaps bloggers should clearly identify the source of information. I believe my journalism classes called this "attribution." Rather than writing as the source of information, bloggers who want to be taken seriously ought to disclose the sources of information. Whether that is in a headline ("Apple Claims To Be Cooler Than You") or in the lead graph ("According to a document releases by Apple today, Steve Jobs is bigger than Jesus AND The Beatles"), sources should be attributed... even yourself ("I THINK owning an iPhone will increase your happiness by 12 percent").
Thanks for your contributions.
Alfred Thompson
· 1 year ago
Well my comments on this post on my own blog made TechMeme. Maybe that means the long tail is still getting some attention afterall.
Thanks for asking the questions Robert. A lot to think about here. Many of the items you bring up would be worth a post and discussion of their own. Comments for example might be worth two - problems with being hard to comment and the idea of people just being nasty little children at times.
Michelle Lentz
· 1 year ago
I really like this post - and I tend to agree.
I write occasionally for bub.blcio.us, and I'm supposed to cover tech. That also includes when Company A buys Company B and so on. The journalist in me cringes at publishing anything before it is confirmed, so a lot of times I'm a little late to the party with announcements. I'm okay with that.
I have a hard time digging up stories that I really want to write about for bub.blicio.us, because so much of techmeme is mired in Yahoo and Google and Apple. I love Apple but really, I don't care about the big guys. I want to read - and write - about the little guys with the cool new web-based application, whatever that may be.
Tech blogging is changing, but there are still good bloggers out there who don't care if they aren't on the Techmeme Leaderboard (I could care less) and who search out the real story and ignore the business-y boring stuff. And there are still some great developers out there who haven't hired a huge PR firm and just want to be found.
Jason Kolb
· 1 year ago
Excellent post, Robert--very heartfelt. Feeling that you deserve to be on the A-List because of ideas you post, but realizing that being on the A-List requires a marathon of blogging, commenting, and almost perpetually being in front of a computer can be frustrating.
I think you do a good job of exposing the flaws in the current paradigm in this post. I think eventually the dust will settle and there will be two types of blogs: the news-based, reactionary blogs, and the thoughtful, innovative blogs (or what I like to call the "good blogs"). It seems the blogosphere is going through growing pains right now, and what it will grow up to be remains to be seen.
Once again, great post.
Aaron
· 1 year ago
Robert, I appreciate what you are saying, and am glad that others share the same opinion as myself. What happened to being the guys who always had some tech trick that seemed like magic to the uninitiated? The joy of tech for me is showing that magic to others and getting them interested in what's out there too, and lately we have all become business whores a little bit. I don't know how it happened, but I am glad that you have seen it too. I look forward to the future content coming from this blog.
Rex Pechler
· 1 year ago
How about a tech blog focused on real world effect on your life?
Kevin Briody
· 1 year ago
Good post and great comment stream. A couple reactions:
"Bickering" and the like (from a commenter) - I think this more than anything has caused me to substantially reduce the amount of tech/geek/gadget/etc blogs I subscribe to. So often otherwise good blogs and eloquent writers degenerate into name calling and finger pointing - Arrington did this, Winer yelled that, Calacanis spun this, Scoble claimed that, etc. My view of podcasting is still stained thanks to reading all the Curry vs. Winer stuff years ago. It gets old - we all have enough stress and drama in our lives, we look to tech blogs to talk about...tech.
Tech blogs as PR outlets - having seen this first hand (worked on a PR team for a major tech company, reaching out to bloggers), I can say you are 100% spot on. Some of the highest trafficked tech blogs are nowadays indistinguishable from "traditional" news sources, albeit faster to the story and with more snark. They want (demand in many cases) the scoop or exclusivity, as that first 2 min of a story garner all the traffic. And traffic drives ad revenue, which is really all that matters. They love embargoes so long as it gets them "in" on early news or reviews, get invited to the cool parties and treated like royalty, etc. It's all part of the game, which has taken a chunk of the fun out of blogs as you mentioned. It also turned me off a lot of them when I jumped out of that game - why read them when they all print mostly the same story? I mostly read bloggers now with strong opinions and fun angles, with an occasional techmeme wander to see if anything big is happening.
David Evans
· 1 year ago
I resonate with being attracted to the latest and greatest while missing what we already have. How about a tech blog on how to use the standard (aka old) stuff better? We only use 30% of an apps abilities because we don't dig deep and think creatively.
Watts
· 1 year ago
I'm just a technology blog reader rather than writer (I've tried starting my own tech blog more than once and realize I just don't have the motivation to write daily, let alone multiple times a day), but this is an interesting set of observations. I wonder if tech blogging is "failing" because it's succeeded: namely, that it's succeeded in mostly supplanting those expensive weekly publications like Infoworld and PC Week that, a decade ago, did all the "serious" news reporting anad analysis. To stay on top of things in the most fast-paced parts of the tech industry now, you don't read the top magazines, you read the top blogs. But as that's been recognized, the blogs attract the same kind of attention--both kind and quality--that the 'zines did. Coverage on TechCrunch is as valuable as coverage in Infoworld was.
Unlike Rodrigo, however, I'm dubious that tools like Friendfeed are "what blogging needs to be saved," at least yet. That's for a reason that you touch on--it's like turning on a firehose. I only subscribe to *seven people* on the site and it borders on too much for me to keep up with. If I subscribed to just a few dozen, I'd damn well *have* to find a way to be a professional blogger because I wouldn't have time for my programming job. I think Friendfeed is onto something with the idea of social networking aggregation, to be sure, but if a company goes mainstream with social networking sometime in the next decade--by which I mean "gathers an audience past the obsessively connected," which I don't think even Twitter has done yet--it'll be because they've crossed the next bridge past good aggregation tools: good mediation tools.
That's freaking weird Robert because I wrote almost same thing just very short. "Where is THAT tech news"
Anyways great post mate.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
John Head: I regularly do interviews with "old school" companies too. SAP, Microsoft, IBM, HP have all had time on my show recently. Maybe we need to go a little deeper into enterprise stuff once in a while. Point taken.
Craig Maloney
· 1 year ago
Robert, don't worry; the "suck" of commercialization will arrive at Twitter and Friendfeed soon enough. It's not the medium that sucks, it's the people who use it, and the maturity of the medium. That's why TV, radio, and movie theaters suck, and why blogs are now coming under attack - it's all about the money.
Shannon Nelson
· 1 year ago
Robert, you are dead on. So many of us who have been in blogging for years sometimes lose sight of why we started in the first place as the direction of blogging has gone more mainstream. Thank you for reminding me why I do what I love in the first place and that I need to keep that focus.
Ontario Emperor
· 1 year ago
Wow! You covered a lot of ground in that post, so I'll just limit myself to the first one, tech blogging focusing more on business issues.
Obviously the purpose of a blog is going to depend upon the capabilities, or lack thereof, of the individual blogger. For example, when Twitter was having huge uptime problems in the spring, I tended to focus more on Twitter's then-lack of communication then on any technical issues. The reason was simple - I do not have the technical knowledge to state whether Ruby on Rails was, or was not, the cause of Twitter's problems. (My last professional programming job was in Hypertalk.)
Whether you're taking a technical approach, a business approach, or another approach to the topic, it helps if you can either (a) add original content, or (b) feature content which your readers may not know about.
Business blogging in and of itself is not bad, but business blogging which regurgitates press releases doesn't help anybody.
BizGirl aka Sally Strebel
· 1 year ago
Welcome back, Scoble. It's good to see you energized. This energy that you're putting out is the reason I started following you in the first place. Keep it up. You're doing great things.
All the best, Sally
Phil
· 1 year ago
Wow. This isn't just about tech blogging, even though that's your specialty. Same could be applied to other interests.
Robert, could you do something to rescue those 14 year-olds you mention? They are, after all, the future. I think if you carved a little time to speak at schools, you could sew a few good seeds. They'll be adults in only a few years. They could use the in-person inspiration (lord knows they're missing that I'm afraid). Perhaps you already do this. If not, please think about it.
You're one hell of a blogger. Off to FF.
Paul Bearne
· 1 year ago
I would love it if when new cool items come out all the bloggers could link to the source website and just a comment a bit like the comments on Google reader And this was the aggregated using the source URL so I get to see their views and opinions but it was all tried together as a single article/Aggregation view.
We need a new RSS value for source URL this would work a bit like add a keyword/tag for an event in Flickr etc.
Wish to different views but I do wish to have aggregated.
Veetrag
· 1 year ago
I completely agree with your view point. Tech blogging/reading is becoming a bit boring these days, just because whatever new thing comes up, the view point, comparison strategy is same.
If we take some article written 3 months back on some new web 2.0 startup and compare with something similar that came up now, we find them almost similar. I have also reduced the number of feeds that I used to subscribe.
dan
· 1 year ago
I know that I have tapered off blogging since the hacker storm in April/May, it just doesn't feel right, more of a psychological effect, plus everything seems to be the same over time. There is only so much enthusiasm you can have over your 20th zombie brain sucking super poke share with your friends on facebook review that you can do. My 2 cents, but like many of the bloggers I know, we will eventually come back after being gone a while and seeing what else is going on, but please goodness, no more facebook apps, I wanna see something that will blow my socks off.
Justin Flood
· 1 year ago
Thanks for this post Robert, usually I'm not the biggest fan of your stuff, but this was spot on!
There's nothing inherently wrong with covering tech business, but I agree with ya, a lot of the blogs out there will cover EVERY story just because. There's also the problem of bloggers who will do and say anything to get hits.
On my site, I tend to just cover what interests me. That strategy isn't going to get me to the top of the techmeme leaderboard, but it's guaranteed to make sure that whatever I write is quality
I'm always going to do better work if I'm interested in the final product.
No matter how many PR people contact me, I just follow the stories that interest me. If there were more sites like that, I think we'd have a more honest and probably more interesting blogosphere. Keep up the good work!
Chuck
· 1 year ago
Wow, I stumbled across this through a Twitter post. If this is how you really feel, I just might start reading and watching you again. I quit awhile back because I just felt like I was being hammered all the time.
Best of luck on finding what works. I will be watching.
Chuck
Baratunde Thurston
· 1 year ago
your complaints about comments are obsolete. just shut up and install disqus already! :)
supercw
· 1 year ago
running out the door but had to say this is one of your best posts scoble.
aloha, cw
Shawn Farner
· 1 year ago
I agree. For me, it has become almost a chore to go through my feeds every day. Why is this? What happened? Everyone is writing about the same things and the tech blogosphere is becoming increasingly stale.
Everyone needs to start having fun again. Tech blogging isn't just a job for some, it is a passion. Find that fire that's dying within. Excite people! If you don't, someone more interesting will come along to replace you.
Kacy F.
· 1 year ago
I'm at work right now, so I can't comment for too long as I've spent too much time reading this post. This is the best posting I've seen in a while from a tech blogger. You've hit a nerve, and that excites me. I'm sick of hearing about the newest social networks and the latest deals in Silicon Valley. As you know, social networks work for different people.
As you say, tech blogs have left their primary audience to focus on things that the average geek doesn't care about. Thanks Scoble for a great post.
Aaron Stannard
· 1 year ago
I'll tell you what, Robert. If you can live up the promise that you're implying here (to make an earnest effort to move back to your roots) then maybe I'll start subscribing to your blog again. I'm a marketer, I blog about marketing, and I read tons of blogs about marketing. Watching Apple's PR team string tech bloggers along gets tiresome when I just want to, as you put it, find out about new technologies to make my life better.
Right now I can't find a lot of good "hey, check out this cool service" articles from the mainstream tech blog articles because it's all anchored around the vicious cycle of buying into the PR process.
So I'll tell you what: you start writing about cool new services beyond the latest iPhone app, beyond "whatever's hot now," and I'll subscribe again. FriendFeed, iPhone, Twitter - they're all over-exposed and well known; tell me what I don't already know.
Chris Kim A
· 1 year ago
Well, it really seemed to fly apart at the seams when the "A-listers" noticed they were the A-listers, and while all friendly and in fun at the onset, turned into a frenzy that not only took up way too much airtime, but even hurt some folks along the way. Funny thing is, this isn't new, either. Same kind of thing happened 10-12 years ago, it just wasn't as close to the mainstream media as this round has been, and so the phenom was largely overlooked. However, it was just that (IMHO) that set the stage for what would be known as "dot.com", now forever tainted, but similarly driven by speculators, VC groups and such, kind of like what may very well happen with "Web 2.0".
I'm glad Scoble is able to examine what he's doing while he's doing it; it's one of the more outstanding things I first noticed about him. Mostly, though, what really got me following is the endless exuberance over cool stuff and the people who think up cool stuff that is the solid thread. Is there money in it? Probably enough, but it's obvious Scoble's motivation isn't the cash (but it never hurts), and you really don't have to be friends with people to be friendly to them. The genuinely genteel approach he uses works very well across a wide variety of people, and raises the signal level above the noise.
One of these days I'm going to sort out my own experiences over the last 15+ years with the 'Net, from BBSs to a direct SLIP connection to the San Jose hub and all the blah blah in between then and now. 12 years ago we were video conferencing via CUSeeMe with people all around the world over a 9600 baud modem! Talk about your early adopters. So when I finally get it blogged someplace, you can blame Robert Scoble for reminding me how happy and exciting being around cool people doing cool things in and around the the ever-meshing, always morphing tech/life/art world can be if you stay focused on what you love about it.
Kathy Sierra
· 1 year ago
Phil said: "Robert, could you do something to rescue those 14 year-olds you mention? They are, after all, the future."
Ze Frank recently said, "I'm trying to inject some humanity into this..." after a suggestion that perhaps Digg and YouTube commenting was becoming the training ground for young people in 'how to behave online'. Not encouraging. And unfortunately, it's not just 14-year olds.
Michael Arrington has made the point many times that the 'relentless background of hate' in his part of the tech world is not sustainable. But this post is one more example of why I continue to admire and be inspired by Robert Scoble.
Adam
· 1 year ago
Wow! Clearly I've come a bit late to this post; everyone has pretty darn well said what I wanted to say.
But nonetheless, I'll add this: Robert, I have gained a lot of additional respect for you with this post. I've not always agreed with your take on blogging and online communications (in fact, I've pretty strongly disagreed with you at times), but I found myself nodding my head in agreement again and again with you in this long but spot-on entry.
Thanks for the having the selflessness and thoughtfulness to post this, self-criticisms and all. Your points are worth reflecting upon by ALL of us who blog, all of us who read blogs, all of us who reward both the good and bad in the blogosphere with our time, our comments, and our respect.
Eden
· 1 year ago
Yay! Lots of good ideas here. But will they be implemented or was this just a wild rant?
Robert Nelson
· 1 year ago
Robert,
This is a (very long) but excellent post. I want to thank you for writing it. I am someone who currently earns a full-time living from blogging, but would consider myself far from an a-lister, which I am OK with, and in some ways prefer because I can do a little more of what I like and not what other people think I should.
The portion about the PR and the same stories hitting at the same time really hit me, as its a topic that has been bugging me personally lately.
See, I wanted to get to a point of earning a full time income from blogging and that was the easiest path, so I to have become wrapped up in that same cycle and have been looking for a way to move past it, and also encourage the other writers on the site where I am a senior editor to do the same.
While I personally think FriendFeed is not all that its cracked up to me, maybe its just because I have not spent enough time on it. Perhaps because I have been to busy covering the "tech news" and have had less time to be a blogger.
And, PS, Evenote is awesome, especially the iPhone app.
James
· 1 year ago
Y'know... Digg has *always* had horrible comments. I think the average level of spelling and reading comprehension might have improved somewhat in recent months, actually.
mikecane
· 1 year ago
>>>Look at all the stories on TechMeme or Google News’ tech section.
Well there's your -- and their -- frikking problem right there. Stop doing the circle jerk and get out to blog that DON'T do all-tech all-the-time. Man, when the economic sh*t hits the fan, you'll all be crying in front of your HDTVs. Suckers.
Scoble. Thank you. I'm sure it was not easy to write.
1. Seth Godin talked about something similar. It sounds like what you're describing is the "Passion Pop Gulf" (http://tinyurl.com/5zgmc7)
2. Marc Andreessen is the best tech blogger, hands down. He teaches people how to build companies, lead, and make the tough choices.
3. You remain valuable to the young guy. Take it from a new comer to the field (25 yr. old, about 1 year in). I watch your Fast Company TV religiously.
Erik
· 1 year ago
From some of the most recent posts I see on your friendfeed, it is really in line with the book I just started, ironically the same day as reading your post. The Pirate's Dilemma, by Matt Mason.
The first chapter is about the punk revolution, and the peoples' desire to break out from the status-quo. How this ultimately affected many industries from music to tech to retail. Mass media and the underdog individual are an important part of the story. Check it out, there is a PDF you can download on his website.
Josh
· 1 year ago
It occurs to me that if you need to monetize your blog via pageviews, that's the whole game right there. You can't afford not to chase the minute-by-minute scoop, quantity over quality, and the leaderboards at hubs which drive traffic. That's where the money comes from, and most (not all, but most) niches simply cannot be effecitvely monitized to make up for an order of magnitude fewer eyeballs.
More contemplative, more relaxed, more in-depth blog conversations may flow from when we see a resurgance of writing as a labor of love, not a means of supporting one's self. When your postcount is a means of putting food on the table, that can't help but effect the output.
Derrick Burns
· 1 year ago
If we ever meet, Scoble, I'll owe you a drink.
I've been feeling that something wasn't right in blogging--and tech blogging in particular--for a while now, and I think you might have just hit the nail on the head as to what it is. The coolest thing about technology isn't the glitzy packaging and the blinking lights, it's the way that it changes peoples' lives. In fact, this post goes a long way toward summing up why I've decided to have another go at blogging (shameless plug: First post today!).
I may be the freshest face on the social Web block, but I've considered the Web home for as long as there's been one. And bloggers, columnists, analysts, and activists like you have done a lot to build what I love so much.
Here's looking forward to the coming months.
Barry Graubart
· 1 year ago
I think there are some valid points here but a lot of what I read here is the problem with the scobleizer blog, not the problem with blogging.
For example, you write "Many of us can seem out of touch with the real world. Do we write about all the forclosures going on? No, and while we’re waiting in line for iPhones and buying the latest games, that can seem pretty out of place right now while people are losing their homes or their life savings."
Well, no, on tech blogs there's not a lot of coverage of foreclosures. But, on blogs like www.researchrecap.com, we started writing about subprime related problems before the first iPhone came out.
You write: "Tech blogging has become way too controlled by PR agents.". Well, yes, if your tech blog is focused on trying to "break" tech news. But many blogs are about insights, not just news. I think Read/Write Web is a great example and I hope that my own Content Matters fits that description as well. I get pestered by some PR types (not a fraction of the ones you hear from) but unless it's something that I think my readers would care about, I don't write it.
You write: "So, off I go to FriendFeed and Twitter where there are real people who don’t care about the business but who are just looking to use technology to have more fun, be more productive, or do something more interesting with their lives."
I use Twitter and Friendfeed, but also find that it's a much more insular community than the blogging world. So, it's all about the fail whale and waiting in line for iPhone 2.0 or, perhaps, seeing the Batman movie or riding in Jason's Tesla demo.
There are hundreds of compelling blogs out there providing interesting insights. It's not the medium that's broken, its just the noise that many of the tech bloggers are now generating that makes it harder to hear.
Charles
· 1 year ago
I can't praise this post enough -- it's the most insightful, thoughtful piece you've written.
And this is coming from a guy who thought you were the "People Magazine" of tech bloggers, at best.
Great work, and I look forward to more of the same in the coming months.
madpotter
· 1 year ago
In spite of what you say about comments, you seem to have quite a few right here. Also, I am not a tech blogger, I am an art blogger with a mix of all kinds of stuff that is personal but ultimately there to increase my brand visibility. At least that is what I tell my bookkeeper who is very aware of my bank balance and my time spent online. As a small producer of hand made things, I have to think about business and the blog-sphere is where I come for free, expert advice about productivity, tech news and community development, which is where I see all business heading. Don't be too jaded, Robert. It is all just beginning.
Jeff Crites
· 1 year ago
I find I spend less and less time on and worrying about what the A list blogs say, unless it's a unique post about something I find personally relevant.
I love discovering new ways normal folks and real businesses are using new technology to improve life and business. Robert, you're one of the lead scouts, a kid in an expanding candy store with the ability to take the complex and simplify it for non-geeks ... explain how tasty and challenging that new jawbreaker is.
Most interesting thing I did today, besides spend time with a client and discover ways to bring her dreams to life, was enjoy Chris Brogans Webinar on 'Who Owns the Brand'. Watching live video discussions interlaced with real-time Twitter questions and comments ... centered on a rally interesting topic ... now THAT was an hour I"m glad I spent in front of my computer. And tomorrow, I"m going to interview an ice cream shop owner, use my Nokia N95 to do some Qik-ing (learned that from you Robert), post about his secret sauce, why people are so passionate about it. Can't wait.
Francine McKenna
· 1 year ago
I agree that the popular blogs are often too corporate. But it's not all that way. Many ask me how I find time to write mine. It's called 24/7, baby. I read everything. Without a reader tool. I'm not that disciplined to check one aggregator every day consistently. I like the surprise of finding an obscure reference to my beloved Big 4. Like by a KPMG intern in Malaysia who posts pics of a drunken KPMG party with obligatory lap dances by the girl interns in the same post where she laments the fact that not all of them will get the chance after graduation to work for the louts. But I admit I do have help from Google Alerts so I at least know when my subjects are written about.
I just write about the same four firms, over and over, in what's been called a "refreshingly unexpected" way. I've also been called a "bitch" who "talks shit". And I'm a girl who wears stilettos. No one else really writes about these things in the same way that I do. Call me old school, but my blog has an audience and it's growing.
Rob Olson
· 1 year ago
Like the 100+ people before me I also want to thank you for writing this post Robert. I see the stuff you talked about everyday and I think you are dead on.
The "tech blogs" are no longer focusing on the "tech" and instead of looking more and more at the "business" because that's the lowest common denominator among the readers. We can all easily understand business news but real tech news has a much smaller audience.
Colby Olson
· 1 year ago
More lifehacker stuff? Yes please. Lets get geeky and find new cool things instead of rechewing the same old rumor gum.
Partners in Grime
· 1 year ago
"[W]hile we’re waiting in line for iPhones and buying the latest games, that can seem pretty out of place right now while people are losing their homes or their life savings."
Do what brings you joy. Not standing in line isn't going to save those folks' homes one iota.
Hello, Robert. First off, not everyone that disagrees with you is a jerk. I'm about to disagree with you, and I am by no means a jerk. What I am is a businesswoman who looks at social media with a critical eye and tries to figure out how each app/environment/flavor that comes along could be leveraged to be more productive in business, to enable people to do their jobs better/smarter/faster. That's my job, and that's what I look for when it comes to social media.
Second - how has tech blogging failed me? Well, everyone keeps talking about the iPhone, which I have determined is NOT all that, much less a bag of chips, and I'm sick of it. It clogs up my Google Reader something awful! Please, make it stop! :D
Bryan
· 1 year ago
Robert,
I used to really enjoy what you were doing at Microsoft & Channel 9. Sometimes I wish you'd go back to that. Except I still want to see transcripts and/or better sound, because (as someone with hearing problems) I could barely understand many of the interviews.
And the comments were better back then, too. How can you bring that back? Go deep again, talk with the people doing stuff, not the people selling stuff. Don't worry about the next big thing, or about kudos/criticisms of newly launched products. Talk to people who are doing stuff. Show us what they are up to - and let the other folks pick the trends, write the kudos, write the criticisms.
Go back and watch your own video on the Kindle. Ask yourself if you really wanna be that guy. Then go back and look at when you interviewed Jeff Snover, and ask if you wanna be more like *that* guy.
I know which one I'm rooting for!
Julie
· 1 year ago
A refreshing read! Thanks for being so candid! How did we ever get into a culture where "yee with the most tweets wins"??
Luke Westra
· 1 year ago
Great post. I've been working on a site focused on the unappreciated facets of the world of design for the past year and I've struggled to both keep up with quality content generation and post frequency due to the issues you discuss. Tech sites like TechCrunch and even Engadget or Gizmodo and many other practice in such a time to market space that they are forced to publish early and often to have potential bragging rights. This can often hurt the quality of the content. The other aspect of this story is that with financial markets and corporate politics fluctuating as they do, the business stories tend to outnumber the stories about the new widgets or services and are therefore easier to latch onto for a quick headline.
Try not to be too hard on yourself. Posts like yours above that offer perspective and a bit of humility are few and far between. It never hurts to take a step back and look at the true purpose/focus of your content. It could be said that the whole nature of tech news is always going to involve some frivality - most people don't find these shiny gadgets as essential as those "in the know"... Keep up the good work.
Please get behind the camera again and away from tech for tech sake alone. Just as people find it fascinating to watch a "star" cook, chat, or generally opine on things unrelated to their profession -- so too this can apply to the general coverage of tech.
I watched a video segment of Jay Leno in his garage and read follow up articles on his fascination with cars. I would never have watched or read something about how he tells jokes for a -living-.
Nerds and geeks are interesting but there is no Barbara Walters for this medium. Everything has been dissolved into an elixir of buzzwords and business drama.
Can you be Bahbwah Wawah?
-J
Prasoon
· 1 year ago
Scoble, First lemme clear teh air. You ahve tons of followers and if any of those actually felt that you were failing them, woudl we still be following you. Hell with the bad comments that you get - even Mac OS gets those ;-) [Did you just see what MS has begun saying about Vista that it has far less vulnerabilities than any other OS and all that - heck, tomorrow if I give an OS that does not connect to Internet everytime without my permission and it wont download a file without me clicking YES over a hundred times, I would call it "very" secure but thats not what it is meant to be like]
Dont bother as to why you are unable to follow up on shiny objects two weeks down the lane. COme on - its teh tech industry and we can expect things to be stagnated. We like to see new tings coming really fast and thrashing out the old. We like staying updated about the new and not necessarily the old things. Isn't it one of the many reasons why Mac OSX is beter than anything Windows. The duration between Vista and Windows 7 was enough for Apple to lauinch 2 OSs and that means that they were/are much ahead and its Windows doing teh catching up. Similarly, when blogs like techcrunch and say yours talk suddenly about what you heard and what you saw[referring to WWT], it brings in interest in us readers and thats what is prime. We are all fine with your posts - cant be happier. or lets say, we are in need of 10 scoble's updating scobleizer - yes 10 updating one blog. Its not the info overload, its not you failing us - trust me.
ps: The Apple/MS comparison is inevitable you see. One stands for latest stuff soon out of the box and the other is just outdated n all that. When was iPhone design started tell me and did you hear about teh Zune phone? nah! Apple is much ahead and we want to stay much ahead with others doing the catch-up. So, there is nothing like the follow-up syndrome you should get into.
You asked what we read - for me, I read a very few blogs but then, I dont follow Gizmodo/Engadget for the Gizmos - I love to read DVICE.com for the latest in gadgets and crazy stuff and according to me, it satisfies "my" needs. I dont follow techcrunch or crunchgear other than have them as a widget on my iGoogle page but I follow you using Google Reader and my friends would vouch for the fact that I keep sharing your posts everytime I really like something and want others to read. In short, we readers would read what aligns to our though process and to teh pace with which we want to stay updated - you dont have to change anything just because you think you have failed us. It might be just a few whom you failed - forget them because you cant please everyone all the time. Today if you get back to WWT after say you ee something nice on your monitor, you think we all might love to read about it - I really doubt that ;-)
Keep scribbling..
Yakov Fain
· 1 year ago
It's pretty simple. There are people who don't run businesses. They have nothing to promote in their blogs and provide technical content and commentaries. I started blogging four years ago and had nothing to sell - just pure technical stuff.
Two years ago I became a partner in a company, and we created a blog on our business Web page. That blog is a mix of technical stuff and ads of our training. I turned the other blog into a personal one. 80% of that blog is my observations of IT. But once in a while I use it too to announce some events that are important to our business. I don't see anything wrong with it.
I don't publish there any PR announcements of other companies even though I receive lots of such emails - just delete them.
As long as I'm not bored with blogging, I'll keep doing it. Tried twitter for a little over a month, but it seems to be a waste of time. Some people just write something like I'm now at this location. Great. Let's tell this to the entire world. Noise. If you don't have anything to say, just leave the keyboard alone. Lots of junk there and Twitter is the most unstable software I've ever seen so far.
Peter J Cooper
· 1 year ago
Nice. I agree sooo much. A return to real content, real values. It might just catch on.
Andrew Feinberg
· 1 year ago
Robert,
I just got around to reading this, and it almost brought me to tears with how right you are.
What do you care about? Not just the shiny objects, but how have they changed your life?
You have a job. This isn't your job. Write about you, your family, your interests, what you care about. Have a conversation, and I guarantee the less you engage in the "tech blogosphere" and the more I see of the guy I spent a week in DC with, you'll be on the right track.
What excites YOU?
Damon Billian
· 1 year ago
In short:
The larger bloggers have become exactly what they claimed not to be. Some of the larger blogs are businesses, no different than the NYTimes or any other medium.
The focus has been on expanding distribution, be it via the new tools that enhance the blogging medium or some other method (Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.).
Focus has been on friends (twitter, facebook, friendfeed, etc.). This is the old quantity over quality argument...
Tech blogs, in particular, all tend to gravitate towards the same topics. See below:
Microsoft xxx Google yyy Twitter zzz Yahoo and Microsoft xxx, yyy, zzz Apple aaa, Iphone this.
This is honestly the first post of yours I've read in a bit, for a wide variety of reasons. If some of the tech bloggers focused on the reason(s) why they started blogging to begin with, I am certain that many things would change for the better (simply for the love of talking about the things that they love) . Right now, and I say this with all honesty, the average person probably questions the honesty of many of the blogs and/or the intent behind a post of any sort.
And, without sounding like a complete ass, the average person only cares about the following:
1. Does it make my life simpler? 2. Does it help me keep in contact with the ones I love? 3. Does it make my life better? 4. Can I still send email?
Too many of the technologies launched these days are more advanced than the average person cares to use. I have a wife, one that is not a techie at all, and she questions why we spend so much time on things not connected to establishing real relationships with real people. She almost crapped her pants when two of my friends, and yours truly, were stuck on laptops not talking to one another whilst in the lush beauty of Koh Samui, Thailand.
Even if she (my wife) isn't as tech smart as I am, I am starting to actually question if she might be smarter than I am.
Chris Treadaway
· 1 year ago
Find me anything that hasn't been overtaken by business interests. Hell, they're about to rename Wrigley Field!!!
Other facts: - search engines really love blogs, - search engines love comments even more, - a lot of people are looking for an angle to get heard above the "noise", - publishing tools have never been easier to use.
i.e. the problems are just beginning and the only current solutions require "un-democratizing" the Web. there is no easy short-term fix.
Mark Graybill
· 1 year ago
Several good catches here, Robert. Applause from this quarter. Don't beat yourself up for covering new tech toys when there're economic problems going on, though. That's not the problem. I think you're on the right track when you're concerned about the lack of follow-up to early reports, and the general lack of depth.
Go ahead and do the early reports, but come back with more later. As to the folks getting on daily with Win2K/etc., I think a realistic assessment of where the new stuff gets us with respect to that is something worth commenting on. I often find myself asking where I stand now with my present systems vs. my Kaypros of years ago. There are a lot of places I can easily point out real-world results showing my present situation is better--but not everywhere, and its worthy of some concern and reflection.
My gray Win laptop is the one with the tattered old "Linux, It's not just for breakfast any more" sticker on the lid. ;)
Lisha Sterling
· 1 year ago
This article is *exactly* like the conversation we've been having amongst the founders of Crictor.co.il. I don't want to talk about business. I want to talk about technology, the juicy, hard-core, how-the-heck-did-you-guys-DO-that?! questions and the what-else-can-we-do-with-this questions and the sociological questions of how all this stuff is changing us, changing our societies and changing life as we know it.
JC John Sese Cuneta (謝施洗)
· 1 year ago
I actually read every letter, periods, and commas, which I seldom do nowadays because there are just too much content to absorb and get updated with.
I can relate to most of what you've said, and I can imagine the rest. Been there, done that. It was the past weeks that I also started thinking about blogging in general, not just for myself but for everyone. It evolved, but just like you said, it evolved to become just another medium for PR Agents.
As someone who also acts as a PR Agent (on an unofficial level), I am guilty to that practice. Shape the bloggers to be a PR tool, no more and no less. But ask me, do I allow it on my blog? Not much (I used to). I realized, there are just too many sites and blogs out there who are doing the same thing, why follow? And I don't blog to become their PR tool.
Also true that most A tech bloggers caters to the Western World, where most of the English speaking nations are. Here in the Eastern Hemisphere - ASEAN, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Oceania, we are mostly ignored. Yes, most of us can't relate with all the Apple stuff being blogged (I ignore them all, I don't even care about iPhone). Only few English speaking Easterners care about Apple. Yes it is a good product - but "we already know that", anything else we don't know?
Sadly, as much as we want to cover that "anything else we don't know", we do not have access to that as much as you guys in the West have. In this side of the world, it is all about politics and we are tired of it.
So can we all or most of us go back to the "golden years" of blogging? It is about LIFE. Go back to it and let's retrace AND enhanced it for the future.
This is why I continue to post on Ajaxian.com. It allows me to focus on the technology, and not the other stuff (with the odd bit of politics that sneaks in due to standards work and the fact that humans are involved.)
marc duchesne
· 1 year ago
Robert : maybe you're just realizing that you've got to do something for the *community* - not to say *the World* ;-) See, you and me we're born the same day same year. It's time for our generation to prepare the ground for our children' s children, don't you think ?
ps : what a tremendous step forward you've made between Milan' s birth day and today, right ?...
BetterThanTechCrunch
· 1 year ago
I disagree with Scoble. If you take a look at our publication you will see that most of our users do leave comments on articles.
Thank you so much for this! I subscribe to you on FriendFeed because I value your opinion and comments. While I'm not really a 'techie', I really enjoy learning about new technology and gadgets. I have also noticed the same info and rarely read any of my RSS feeds, but find myself going to Feedly, and FriendFeed for my news. I love that you said, and saw on this post, you're getting rid of the jerks! Kindness, tolerance and respect go a long way.
Julie
· 1 year ago
Your entire article sounds more like a PR pitch for FriendFeed than anything and this is one of the major problems with bloggers these days.
They write advertisements for products and sites while trying to disguise them as articles. Blogs such as Techcrunch have become infomercials.
George Tsiolis
· 1 year ago
Our success at AGORACOM came from turning financial discussion forums (far worse than blog comments) on their head by handing moderation control back to the members.
A reputation system (votes by other members + site activity) determines the ranking of every member on the site. The higher the ranking, the greater authority to delete posts and even terminate members.
As such, we now have hundreds of highly-ranked and trusted members providing moderation on the site.
It has served to eliminate 95% of the noise and increase quality by several magnitudes.
I would guess that a similar system would work very well for blog comments.
Regards, George
Nancy
· 1 year ago
Hi, Robert. You've once again proved yourself as one of the rare people able to frankly reevaluate yourself and your direction, and, make it public. I respect that most about you. Tho' it's not the only thing you've got going, of course.
jimconnolly
· 1 year ago
Hi Robert,
I just blogged this "Scoble Wars: Attack of The Trolls"
For the top bloggers and RSS feed consumers, blogging is second life. It's an escape from reality with the ultimate effect being a reality disconnect.
Sewing the two worlds together is difficult for the top tier. Realistically, blogging brought them/you fame. Given the choice of being an idol focusing on celebrity topics vs normal life, what's more exciting? Many people have serious trouble hanging on to reality.
I know I'm disconnected at times. I'm arranging a geek dinner outing in Philadelphia while For Sale signs stand in neighbors windows for 12+ months. I use Google Docs on OS X, iPhone, N82, and EeePCs while my wife uses Win2k and Excel to wrangle hundreds of thousands of lines of data (65k per file).
Gary Vaynerchuk compared blogging to the 1980's hip-hop movement. He's exactly right... A few big names will become extremely famous. Huge numbers of others will try and fail. And the people that made it to celebrity status will have psychological issues and disconnects with the world.
Tony
· 1 year ago
Robert: "We used to link to each other all the time, telling you when all the other cool bloggers have done something new and useful."
cheapsuits: "The problem is the small blogger goes through life unheard much of the time. Big zero’s in the comments section."
The little guy who blogs purely out of a desire to share his thoughts can't get noticed. And it's not helped by the A-list bloggers when they're trackbacks are broken, and they don't respond when they're told about it (That wasn't you, Robert - but it's happened a few times elsewhere)
I have my own blog (shameless self-promotion: http://patternsofchaos.net/ ) - and I like to think that I'm offering worthwhile content. But I have no way to know, since, as far as I can tell, nobody reads it.
I can't help but wonder how many blogs like mine are out there, that I can't easily find. Blogging was supposed to give a voice to the little guy, but they're now drowned out by the big players - just like happens everywhere else.
Christopher Coulter
· 1 year ago
Well, it's a free service, so take what will. But, like I always say, if you approach everything you hype up, and bet on the opposite, then you provide a very valuable service, telling the real movers and shakers what they can safely avoid paying attention to. Don't sell yourself short. Whomever employs/sponsors you, invest heavy in their competitor, no more so evident as in the doubling WDC stock price. The 'Reverse Midas Touch' you are gifted with, has tremendous value.
It used to be a closed-chummy-club, now it's all play-doh journalism niche-news hounding, but even yet still lots of good tech and non-tech blogs out there, but prayers chance they will ever be noticed. Blogging is just another power distributional curve, "blockbusters" still exist and those in the "long tail", might as well cash in chips for all the time and effort, hardly worth it. But when you do a massive rant, with machine-gun name dropping, you are beyond fixing. Nor do you really want to fix it, you are on top, occasionally insincerely self-flagellate and move on. That way you can say, I know it's broke, but it's the system...dontblameme.
Walter Lounsbery
· 1 year ago
Robert,
I've followed your postings for several years. This one made me jump out of my feed reader (RSS Bandit) to see your blog Website and check things out directly. Clearly, blogging is now an establishment of its own. Please continue shaking things up!
james henry
· 1 year ago
scoble is a personality, very much like geraldo rivera or rush limbaugh. his main job is networking and self-promotion. he is very, very good at both. he is also very good at adopting any new technology that will aid in both of these pursuits.
technologies that fall outside of personal productivity, he has little or no training to judge and rarely takes the time to find authorities who do. be warned: make business decisions using scoble's advice regarding technologies outside of personal productivity at your career's peril.
much like rush and geraldo, that small minority of people responsible for creating or managing technology that read scoble do so for his entertainment value.
he is very entertaining.
just don't mistake his certainty for learned or researched insight.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
James: what the hell are you talking about? When have you ever seen me recommend something I didn't personally get knowledgeable about? I haven't recommended SQL Server over Oracle or anything like that.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Chris: you are a real winner. I've picked lots of winners too. I guess you forget the multiple months of praising Facebook that I did. I guess 90 million users isn't winning in your books. And there are plenty of others, too.
Votre
· 1 year ago
Your post was a welcome breath of fresh air.
One thought occurred to me after I read it: In some respects, technical blogging sets itself up for problems in that most of it takes the form of a "one-person" show. Hubris is an easy trap to fall into when you're working alone.
Gathering and reporting the news requires a variety of skills (investigation, interviewing, writing, editing, fact checking, cultivating reliable sources, etc.) that have traditionally been handled by team members that brought their individual areas of expertise to bear on each of those requirements. In short, the skill set necessary to do a good job of reporting is usually beyond the compass of any but the most rare and gifted individual.
So why is it so many bloggers believe they have become such merely by virtue of the fact that they share their thoughts online instead of at a saloon?
Christopher Coulter
· 1 year ago
You went from talking about it all day, running a few scripts, crying that they didn't conform to your edge-case needs, to hating it (after people complained your non-stop spam hijacked their feeds), and not using it much, not checking it in months, and then going gaga over the new shiny toys in Twitter and Friendfeed.
Plus at the time, Facebook was getting these insane deep-space bubble-territory valuations, knowing that you were hot on it, was a sign that it would cool seriously off, becoming just another fad, and it has, stooge Microsoft, wanting to be the cool kid on the block, knew not such.
And more people use MySpace, so can we call that a winner too? Raw numbers mean very little, the 'eyeball-accounting-era' should have taught us that well enough. And Nielsen Online surveys, in April, showed only 22.4M, and seriously dropping...so from your 90 million to 22.4 million, I mean you called it perfectly right, just in reverse, predicting Facebook fatigue, just by getting interested in it. Valuable service indeed.
Rk
· 1 year ago
I am surprised to find you realize you were heading nowhere, by just staying in the race. But, I guess you will back to your same ways, within few days.
Hans Doddema
· 1 year ago
Great insights Robert, agree for a great part. It reminds me of preparing for my literature interviews in high school, when we just read the summaries of some great book. Yeah, we were missing out on great content, groupthink was all over the place.
Isn't blogging becoming like that in a sense? There's just so much content out there, so we skip straight to the summaries, and ignoring possibly useful, insightful, out-of-the-ordinary gems of blog posts and writers?
manateepunch
· 1 year ago
All I know is the A listers get 99.9% of the attention and the rest of us get table scraps. You've gotta have a REALLY new and creative idea to get everyone's attention these days. A little link baiting dosen't hurt either ;)
Anonymous
· 1 year ago
Blogging has become a game and, more importantly, a marketing tool. Didn't you and your cohorts not define and heavily promote it as such?
Blogging has also become about rules; mostly, rules aimed at SEO, media relations, brand reputation, and most important for bloggers, self-promotion.
Blogging stopped being about simply writing and sharing years ago. Those days are gone and will not return. You can't go home again. Game on.
GaryF
· 1 year ago
Robert writes: ...I’m going to be changing my approach to being one that’s more practical and useful ... Do you agree or disagree?...What blogs are doing the best tech blogging?
Reply: Yes I agree. Thank you for noticing and implementing changes.
As for the best tech blogs - I don't know - I seek your help - but I didn't notice many of the 180 previous comments identify any.
Scott C.
· 1 year ago
I like coming here because it's an interesting Tech Blog...but I think it's pretty unfair for you to be so harsh on people who comment (and don't agree w/ your posts) and then say Blogging in general is oversaturated and apparently useless nowadays.
The truth is that a blog w/o the ability for people to leave comments is NOT a blog (it's just a standard ol' webpage). The moment I get the impression a site is moderating comments so that only people who conform get heard, that's when I leave. Now that you've made it clear that readers won't have an equal say on your site from here on out, you can expect a huge drop off. Honestly, this may be exactly what you want. Less readers, but more "me too" people. I dunno...I personally don't mind criticism if it helps me later on and when I'm wrong I'll admit it.
As far as saying other blogs are pointless because they repeat info from other sources, that's unfair also. The whole point of most well-known blogs now is to keep up that visitor traffic for advertising reasons. Why YOU may not like it that sites A, B & C are talking about the Microsoft/Yahoo deal, that doesn't make it any less of a good topic to post about.
Personally, I'm absolutely sick and tired of all the Apple gushing that goes on in the tech community. I'm almost positive the key bloggers of the world are Mac fanboys and use their insane web traffic (through Podcasts, Blogs, etc.) to try to push this on everyone else. I'm getting to the point where I'll just ignore a person for awhile if they talk about the iPhone or how superior OSX is, but why should I have to? If you really want to be a different sort of blogger, blog about different things instead of complaining about what other bloggers do.
Maybe it's time for you not to blog anymore at all. I'm not saying do it...but if you honestly feel like blogging is a chore, maybe that's a sign you should stop. I've never thought blogging and business should mix because there's just too much risk of becoming blatantly biased...and when that happens, you better expect readers to be just as divided or leave altogether.
markivey
· 1 year ago
I agree with Votre. Just because someone can write a sentence, have an opinion and carry on a blog doesn't make them a journalist/reporter anymore than my ability to throw together a dinner makes me a professional chef. Somewhere along the long we've elevated blogging to a higher status than it is, that of opinions and commentary. There's nothing wrong with this--just quit trying to pretend it's a replacement for the NY Times, WSJ, etc. Indeed, like their old media colleagues, the tech bloggers spend a lot of time talking about the same companies--yes, gushing about Apple--rather than doing critical analysis and original thought. We need more of the latter, and less of the poor imitations of traditional media. Otherwise, what IS the point of blogging?
Nate Westheimer
· 1 year ago
Thoughtful post, Robert.
I agree with much of what you're saying, but wouldn't be so hard on most of the top bloggers, including yourself.
a) Everyone has trouble dealing with success at first, especially when it's been brought from the bottom up. How do you remain famous and down to earth!? It's tough.
b) The last four years have been the social bubble. Noise. Noise. Noise... and I'm not talking economics and companies -- I'm talking social interaction wise, with the "tech set." This will mellow out (though we'll always, due to our closeness with innovation, be a little hyped up in this area).
JoeDuck
· 1 year ago
Robert you are one of the great blogging ambassadors, and this post proves it. No need to apologize - just keep on trucking my good man!
JoeDuck
· 1 year ago
Adding my .02: I do not think should be about *people*, rather about *ideas*. I think we need more sites like TechMeme that focus attention on the conversation and then surface many conversations about the topic. Yet even TechMeme fails to surface most of the good commentary, which is buried by the "OK" posts by the big guns in blogging that get most of the links. Solution? After a brief innoculation period to eliminate spam, elevate the relative importance of new blogs until they have some traction - ie consider flipping the "old blogger wins" on it's head in blog search routines. Downplay the value of links and look for better content ratings systems that use community input more effectively. Former is risky but worth a shote, latter is happening, but slowly.
Ethan Ambabo
· 1 year ago
Hey Jeff,
I really appreciate you standing up and making this statement. It takes a lot to discuss where you think issues have arisen and to take agency with finding a solution. You mention that there is a disconnect from many discussions taking place in this sector of the internet and the rest of the online community (and the world in general), but have you thought about ways to rectify that, or if it's even necessary to?
-Ethan (former commenting troll hoping to rekindle discussion)
Tim Letscher
· 1 year ago
Well put, Robert, especially the bit about being out of touch with the general population. I'm primarily a designer but have a geek side that can get the best of me. Very few of my friends Twitter and fewer still Pownce. Some are just now getting Facebook accounts and it's actually made me more interested in the site again as more "regular" people my age (40) are signing on.
I ran into you at SXSW and even called your cell (following a Twitter post) to find out where Gary V was having his wine shindig (DeLoach). You're very accessible, so don't go changing! I look to tech blogs to find the shiny things and share them with us so don't go changing that either. Just stay true to yourself, brother; the rest will follow.
Free Business Blogging Secrets
· 1 year ago
I appreciate your opinion and the way you connect technology to human experiences.
Sylvia
· 1 year ago
Have you considered backing away from the tech and, say, handwriting instead?
I'd give you a link but as I actually lost my pen today, I don't think I'm a good advertisement for luddites ;)
@Robert: I could give you many reasons why tech blogging has 'failed' but fairly top of list for me would be 1. a failure to undertake meaningful analysis that locates technology in and around business 2. an assumption that all new things are 'good' without thinking about their implications 3. the PR driven nature of much of the stuff we see out there. 4. an unhealthy obsession with Google.
One of your prime sponsors is SAP. You know, boring old ERP, yet they remain one of the most interesting companies on the planet and have some of the most interesting and engaging people I've ever met. As does Oracle, Adobe, Microsoft and a few others. They're old skool if you like but they get what delivers the bacon and pays the bills.
It may not be your thing but tech needs business just as much as business needs tech. That's how the money gets made to support Silicon Valley the way it does. Learn to love the business just like I've had to learn to love the geeks. You might be surprised at what you discover.
Jim @ jaxtr
· 1 year ago
This is a very cool and thoughtful post. I definitely understand the feeling of information overload. So much is going on, it's kind of hard to wrap your brain around it some times. That said, I think as a tech blogger that you get a chance to be a little bit of a visionary. It's really easy to get caught up in rating the latest apple apps and trying to grab traffic from digg, et al by catering to a popular topic. It's also really fun, but taking a step back to look at the big picture and offer thoughts and musings about where it all may be headed, I think that's the fun part. And I think that sparks other people in the tech community and is a really valuable service.
Kabala
· 11 months ago
thank you
Bill
· 5 months ago
Comments that are trollish are just as annoying as "I agree -- Way to go" type comments ("Sugar Gliders" if you will). If you are really interested in dialog you need to moderate those comments as well. You mention "Why can’t commenters be nice". I say why can't their be "ideas". If I say "Scoble, your an ignorant slut" but pose a good idea and dialog whats wrong with that? But comments like: "Well said, well done!". No content, no idea, no nothing other than the poster seeing their words posted. If you don't comment the trolls AND the Sugar Gliders the comment section will become like the stepford wives.
All Comments
Negative comments and online fights are no fun to read.
Twitter once a great communications now more more people add just a feed to their profile and are just sending, not responding to questions. PR Twitter feeds.
It is all part of the growing up pains of this web 2.0 area.
Curious to see where this is going.
This is especially the case when you blog about generak IT stuff, new products and services from the Big Boys, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, IBM etc.
However, I think there IS value in blogging about niche markets or have a blog that specialises in a certain aspect of IT.
I have a news blog about FreeBSD and operating systems based on FreeBSD (www.freebsdnews.net) with a relatively small audience, but because it's small you get a chance to report news first, there's less competition and you have a more personal relationship with a a number of your readers
I agree that tech blogging is difficult to attract attention. The blog needs to have something "extra" in order to be able to compete with TechCrunch, Mashable, Ars Technica etc. This is especially the case when you blog about IT in general, new products and services from the Big Boys, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple,Google, IBM et.
However, I think there IS value in blogging about niche markets or specialising into a certain aspects/niches of technology
I have a blog about FreeBSD and operating systems based on FreeBSD (www.freebsdnews.net) with a relatively small audience, but because it's small you get a chance to report news first and to have a more personal relationship with readers.
The average Joe or the average Joel?
And as you said, there are so many channels today that you can leverage, that it doesnt have to be 'OR'..
And if tech blogging has really 'failed', i dont think it'd be around and kicking as much.
One blog I do enjoy is Bob Warfield's smoothspan.wordpress.com
Incisive, opinionated writing. Not just news and links.
Working outside of the US, I have never seen the value of TechCrunch et al. I may as well wait and read the business pages in the Sunday newspaper as deals by giant west-coast companies have little urgency in my life.
BTW I'm a tech blogger that still uses Windows 2000, I just never saw the need to upgrade. I also use a five year-old iBook G4 because it's cheap and still works beautifully.
If on the other hand the readership shows its HOT interest on other things, let us say Google Friend Connect vs FB f8 then bloggers wouldn't make so much fuss about Microhoo and would focus on the above mentioned.
Do I sound naive? Maybe...and maybe not.
And if folks reply to your question "What blogs are doing the best tech blogging?" I'd appreciate seeing the list.
Cheers,
Bob Gourley
http://ctovision.com
So, blogging did fail, but did not become irrelevant. It just needs to be put in sync with mechanisms that allow us who's delivering the goods or not. You can't go wrong with the wisdom of crowds.
Techcrunch overcame the business focus - by creating TechCrunch IT and smaller vertical sites that CrunchGear.
Only a large blog could accomplish this and be successful - but it shows that there is an avenue for those who do not want to abandon tech for business.
Mashable too, is managing to keep some of their tech roots while focusing on the necessary business stories to survive
Great post! It circles a lot of the sentiment that's been bounced around by Fred Wilson and others around the importance of blogging (I did a little comment on it on my new blog).
One suggestion I had, which I'm also planning to do, is to link your blog comments with FriendFeed's -- I believe there's a plugin or something. I think this is the real, active, fun crowd that can give you that sense of thrill about technology (I know I do, every day, reading my FriendFeed).
Keep up that child-wonder feeling!
I feel the same way.
It would be easy for me to turn my blog into a PR machine to try and promote my investments 24x7.
But that wouldn't work for me and why work-related posts are the minority of my posts.
The part that really struck a chord with me about your post is all the negativity on tech blogs these days. I'm sure they are therapeutic for the blogger and they are trying to shine a light on something they care about it - but it seems like it's getting nasty.
We should try to help each other. Not kick each other.
Look forward to watching/reading your blog evolve.
I'd say in 10 years of using Linux there is more interest than at any time I can remember. It seems that Ubuntu is more popular than the iPhone for example, but the iPhone gets loads of coverage.
For the record - all my systems (work, home desktop, laptop) are single boot into Linux and only the laptop has a virtual machine XP install which I use to test IE7 and Safari rendering but I don't find it useful for anything else really.
1) When was the last time I sat and "SEARCHED" for new tech out there? (without being sent something to read out)
2) Do I care about New tech outside the valley on a 1 to 1 level, instead of finding out about it via VC's?
3) Do I like technology for technology's sake or for the people that are behind?
4) Evaluate a tech to see if it is genuinely new, not a BBS recreated on the web?
All the 'popular' blogs have gone down the shitter with content being pushed up front based on their sponsors, not genuine user interest. And, people are sheep, they will follow.
Am I allowed to say "Wow, Classical/Legendary Post" ?
Don't keep it in the category of 14-year olds; coz, I'm 17 years old :D
Yeah, it is long. But I read it full (twice!!).
Now, I'm not able to write a comment that'll compliment the class of the content that lies above this, but I just wanted to state that:
"I AGREE WITH YOU"
I'm a tech-blogger myself, but seriously a bit (or a lot ?) far away from the position you are enjoying now !!
I am totally 100% in agreement and you really had my attention when you talked about Apple and the latest and greatest stuff. I am just wrapping up the XP upgrade at my firm. Windows 2000 is not that far gone for us, and I know that many of the people in the firm are still using it at home (along with Windows 98). I do think though, that highlighting the new technologies is what helps to generate buzz, and I think that buzz will lead to new people moving on with more modern gadgets and operating systems. Every so often I will have someone at work as me a question about something new in technology, and bring up your name or Techcrunch or Mashable...the message does get down to the masses eventually.
Replying to your last question "What blogs are doing the best tech blogging?" I prefer to follow tech blogs that at least 5 out of 10 of their entries still today seem useful and interesting to me.
I think that labnol from Digital Inspiration is doing a great job.
He is choosing the most interesting news and tips and he tweets only when he has something really important to say or to notice.
Maybe it helps that he is thousand miles away from the "coolest events".
I look out for things I can use, and Evernote is one of them. I examine things for myself and usually don't take the hype at face value. I watch things come and go, and wonder why some of them ever came in the first place.
I imagine I am like most of your readers, most twitterers, most powncers, most bloggers.
I remind myself that quality derives from attention to detail, competence, and love of what one is doing. And if there is intended to be an audience for whatever it is that is being developed, then for the developer, quality also derives from respect for the audience and the users and a sense of responsibility in making sure the thing works right.
Some of the neatest things I use were made by people who made the thing to satisfy themselves.
So the task for you is to be a good detective, and find the good things.
Keep smiling -it's infectious.
:)
To use the subtitle of a book I like:
We could do with REDISCOVERING PASSION & WONDER.
Don't forget the early adapters but don't pander to them either.
Additionally the tech blogosphere is a giant echo chamber, with everyone basically scooping each other's news, clogging up readers' RSS feeds with identical articles. I once had to navigate seven different blogs until I actually found the original source of a story (probably Reuters). I (still) have more than 30 different tech blogs and "blognews" feeds in my Netvibes dashboard, and if iPhone is the big news, EVERYONE will be talking about iPhone (and saying the same things about iPhone). If the Yahoo soap opera is news today, sure enough Yahoo will show up in those 30+ feeds.
Here's a suggestion for bloggers: If, on a given day, CNET and Techcrunch and Techmeme and Om and BoingBoing and ReadWrite all have pretty much identical "Article+Commentary" posts about the MacBook Air--take that day to talk about something totally different. In fact, don't even mention the MacBook Air. Maybe write about the clever tech insight you came up with while skydiving yesterday. Write about the last conversation you had with a software developer who's over 50. Write about something that's not necessarily the BIG STORY OF THE DAY but that you can present from an angle that few others have considered.
Well, that's my rant. Take it or leave it
So there is this echo chamber where only tech interests are considered and everybody else's interests be damned.
I read you top bloggers religiously, and as of late, I've been pretty tired of the repetition and homogeneity. I can't say I'm doing any better myself. What can we do better to diversify, and appeal to larger audiences?
Chippy.
I keep coming back to your blog because you seem to have so much darn fun.
More than anything, I watch your videos. Your interviews are like gold to me - you have fun with them, I learn new things, and get to comment real time with the other viewers.
Your blog has more personality than the others. It's fun. And, unlike other tech blogs and sites, I learn how I can incorporate new tools into what I'm doing with my clients.
Keep it up, Scobleizer.
I've only begun reading your blog and following you on Twitter within the last year, but so far, you have intro'd me to Kyte and Qik (so I can tell others about streaming from a cell phone although mine can't do it,) you've told me about Sifry's Offbeat Guides (I just ordered one yesterday for Grand Rapids, MI - there's a beta test!) you've told me about FriendFeed and why you like it so much (I'm not that into it but thanks to you I can understand the appeal of better threading, like Plurk) and I've downloaded the Microsoft telescope thingie but just haven't had time to look at it, though I know it'll be great when I do. Finally, I met Rocky because of you, and now I can say Hi to him occasionally on Twitter and keep him updated on drag racing news.
I'm a "regular Joe" writer with a busy life who likes having you out there "on point" for me - you're my own personal tech scout.
You bring enthusiasm and kindness to a medium that is too often in danger of snarkifying itself. The fact that you sit back and think out loud about self-improvement like this is testament to your professionalism and genuine regard for your readers.
Thanks for what you do - keep writing and I'll keep reading.
The blogs with the most revenue have tricked their advertisers into believing teenage boys are business decision makers.
Seriously, great insight.
Please, do not stop what you do. Nor do I want TechCrunch and TechMeme or other folks like SmugMug (Don is an amazing guy) to stop what your doing. But please realize those of us outside the bubble just don't care about the fights and bickering. Business Reporting is a good thing. The best situation would be a well balanced mix of business, cool ideas, video, and case studies of this being used in real world situations, with real customers, impacting the real bottom line.
i started to blog about this a bit yesterday (more under the theme of not putting the same people on stage at conferences like Defrag):
http://defragcon.com/Blog/?p=244
let's catch up soon!
ejn
For as long as you've been around, I only just recently found your blog. It's one of the few I actually READ, rather than just skim. First, it's not just a shotgun approach to topics ... you put considerable effort and writing into your posts. Second, for the most part, I'm genuinely interested in your topics. Finally, yours has insight. As somebody who's been doing this for a while, your name is certainly out there ... you'd be pressed to find a "geek" who hasn't at least heard of Scoble!
Please don't change up your format too much. Like I said, I've only recently discovered you and am liking what I read. However, Lifehacker IS one of my favorite sites and anything along those lines is good too.
One more thought, I dig Apple products (for the most part). But also dig my XP box and my Linux distros too. IMHO, if it works, use it. Things are shifting away from being OS-centric to being more user-centric anyway. You can open just about any format file on just about any system nowadays. Half the applications people use are web-based too, so it doesn't matter what platform you get your data from ... Wii, XP, iPhone, etc. The smart companies will realize that and make interfaces generic enough to use on any device.
First thing I'd like to say is that I loved the post. I loved it because it proves more than ever that you believe strongly in the world you spend your life reporting on, which regardless of any failings that blogging has is the most important thing in the world (which I've been rambling on and on about for the last week).
The only part I had to comment on was HP reference you made. I am an Electrical Engineer by trade, and it stuns me so much how quickly we (as "blog people") convolve the concept of technology with neat gadgets. I've had to pleasure of seeing implementations of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning (among other technologies, including so really cool Solid State research like you described) that completely blow every web app I have seen in the last 3 years right out of the water. Implementations of these technologies put together by grad students without any other commercial interest other than their degree.
There is so much more out there, and I think we get so caught up in the muck that we lose focus on a lot of it. Worse, we forget that the only point in any of this, as John pointed out, is to solve problems.
Solve problems, for people, using technology.
Either way, great post and I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
What worries me is the trickle down effect. People like myself who are very new to the tech blogging scene (though not new to the business) find it difficult to get in on the conversation. So, while the top bloggers begin to all cover the same stories, we end up emulating and only talking about those same exact stories. I blame myself for that though, more than I would blame you or any other blogger.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I found this post to be really honest and inspiring.
I suppose the same will happen with web communications, once regular people--not geeks--reach critical mass. Robert, you can advance that evolution by writing for, and talking with, regular people about the things they need to learn and change to be happy in this complicated world. Thanks for you efforts.
I can do nothing more but agree.
I'm not going to put into words what a tech blog should be about. But if you'd ask me to give one great example, it would be Mark Hoekstra's Geektechnique.org.
Maybe it's not an allrounder or the most accessible blog to read, but it's about technology and guy who loves it to death.
It doesn't take much creativity or energy to sit back and rewrite press releases or fire off a screed about what your favorite (or least favorite) tech blogger(s) just posted.
I'm not sure FriendFeed is the tech holy grail you are seeking, though. Respectfully, I think you were on a better track when you used to keep up your Google Reader list and uncover the most interesting of the gems to blog about here. Speaking for myself, I was more interested in what you blogged about back then versus these days.
Sure, you could use FF to help out there, but if you're letting your friends/followers primarily dictate what's interesting that's not much better than writing about the top stories on TechMeme or following the digg/reddit pop lists.
I think part of the Web 2.blow movement that has it all wrong is that being popular and being interesting and/or useful are the same. Sometimes this might be the case, but not always. As we've seen through gaming these voting sites can be manipulated and thus what's "interesting" becomes muddy water.
And I don't understand the desire to push readers off to some third party, off site comment system either. What one might think is convenient could be very inconvenient to others who might not even know what FriendFeed is, much less how or why they should use it. Tell somebody who isn't a blogger and yet is interested in technology and the web why they should use FriendFeed? Forget you and I, Robert, where is the value add for this type of person?
I happen to like FriendFeed and find it personally useful (for non-Twitter non-Friendfeed discussions which unfortunately dominate the service), but feel it is getting too much hype, just like Twitter. Someday the reality distortion field clears and we get back to what is truly useful in the world. FriendFeed might be 'cool' but does it have mass market useful application in the world?
This may just be tangentially related but Umair's post today hits on the same thoughts from a 100,000 foot perspective. link
Good afternoon.
Could you tell me why my comment about Twitter was not used? It remained in a "To be moderated" position and has now disappeared. I am new to blogging so if I have broken some etiquette, it would be useful to know.
My comment made reference to me receiving spam via Twitter and linked back to the my original posting which I thought added something to Mr Scoble's blog. Obviously not so sorry about that.
Thanking you in advance
Cheers
I really enjoy the passion of your post(s). Your enthusiasm is contagious, your desire to share the discovered shiny objects is winsome in nature.
I am excited about The Large Hadron Collider because as an inquisitive human I want to peek under the hood and see the really tiny parts that make up the whole. The Tech Blogging Universe may not set records in size, but without the Explorers tapping furiously on their strings the general public would never know how exciting it is down here. Robert please continue to "pick" apart the features of various connective tissues so that someone may make it stronger. Finding the weakness of channels requires you look very close at the pipes, from that perspective it can get pretty remote. Keep digging though, it's clearly in your DNA. You encourage others to play in the sandbox of ideas. Your post prompted so many great comments, discoveries and connections- not a bad life indeed Robert.
It's about *content*.
By the time a technology hits one of those it's a shipping product, and I'm developing products in a competitive market place, I don't have the time to wait for things to get all the way through the development cycle before I use them, and if I wanted re-published press releases I'd go to one of the sources for such things.
There are plenty of *real* tech bloggers out there, and they're publishing schematics and source code and showing pictures of their soldered hacks, along side their pet rabbits. These are the people doing the innovation, the stuff that will end up on TechMeme in a year or three, but by the time it filters up that far we may as well read about it in the Finance or Lifestyle sections.
Other commenters have harked back to the days when you were excited about the tablet PCs. One evening several years ago I met you in a parking lot in the South Bay and you showed me why you were so excited about the products you were working with. Those are the sorts of stories that I want to see more of from you, the places where it's someone in the back lot after hours, not the front lobby during business. The times when someone's so jazzed about their technologies that they're going outside the channels of their company to push it. That's what pushes technology forward.
Let the mainstream journalists rephrase the press releases and represent the agendas of the PR guys, that's what they're good at.
Basically, I was wondering is Naked Conversations, your book, relevant anymore?
Should companies, or even people, blog anymore? Does blogging get lost in the shuffle behind the a listers, behind the "top x " post writers, etc?
Does blogging add value to the company or the individual anymore?
I'm not a twitter user nor a friendfeed user. I remember when blog comments were the thing to do. I still comment, but I noticed conversations are fleeting among the blogosphere. Twitter and Friend have all caused comments to be scattered across too many areas. Additionally, the comments are so short on twitter, that I wonder how that adds any value to anyone besides time wasting.
I see that Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc... all have walls to leave comments on. How does that benefit me or you?
This post, Merlin Mann suggests, seems to hit on the head. Blogs are becoming impersonal. http://www.43folders.com/2008/07/21/blog-pimping
When Blog comments can force Kathy Sierra off the blogosphere, it makes things terrible and harsh. Who wants to write in that world?
The other part, authors, used to comment and follow up on comments. Now, people are too busy with emails, rss feeds, writing trying to catch the next digg, yahoo buzz, reddit wave.
So, what makes a good tech blogger or a good blogger in general, someone who interacts with tries to make personal communication with their audience. The rest is just public relations writing masked as a blog.
I still read 37signals.com/svn/ I follow liferemix.net blogs although that's kind of headline driven. otherwise, I use techmeme, popurls, and alltop to filter the noise to the popular.
What is slow blogging?
And I agree with Robert about tech blogs generally being an echo chamber.
I also agree his commentary on problems with comments, especially on digg. In my own case, rarely receiving bad comments is one of the benefits of not having a large readership... but I'd being lying if I said I didn't want to see traffic increase.
Blogging could (should?) be the antidote to competitive journalism, which in this fast-paced society doesn't take the time to check facts or at least provide a story in its true context.
Some content labeled as blogs is simply digital so-called journalism.
It's not that reporting news is in and of itself is bad. I do this for a living. But the competitiveness and the nastiness is what I don't like.
First, thanks for your honesty and openness. It's refreshing to hear the human behind this screen I'm staring at. Your post actually gets me excited about the human race and about the tech community. I hate writing, but your post (nearly) inspires me to write! :) I look forward to reading more that you have to share.
Second, you're not an idiot. Idiots don't recognize their finite knowledge or respect the knowledge and intelligence of people who know more about something than themselves.
Finally, I had one idea about dealing with the flood of press releases. Perhaps bloggers should clearly identify the source of information. I believe my journalism classes called this "attribution." Rather than writing as the source of information, bloggers who want to be taken seriously ought to disclose the sources of information. Whether that is in a headline ("Apple Claims To Be Cooler Than You") or in the lead graph ("According to a document releases by Apple today, Steve Jobs is bigger than Jesus AND The Beatles"), sources should be attributed... even yourself ("I THINK owning an iPhone will increase your happiness by 12 percent").
Thanks for your contributions.
Thanks for asking the questions Robert. A lot to think about here. Many of the items you bring up would be worth a post and discussion of their own. Comments for example might be worth two - problems with being hard to comment and the idea of people just being nasty little children at times.
I write occasionally for bub.blcio.us, and I'm supposed to cover tech. That also includes when Company A buys Company B and so on. The journalist in me cringes at publishing anything before it is confirmed, so a lot of times I'm a little late to the party with announcements. I'm okay with that.
I have a hard time digging up stories that I really want to write about for bub.blicio.us, because so much of techmeme is mired in Yahoo and Google and Apple. I love Apple but really, I don't care about the big guys. I want to read - and write - about the little guys with the cool new web-based application, whatever that may be.
Tech blogging is changing, but there are still good bloggers out there who don't care if they aren't on the Techmeme Leaderboard (I could care less) and who search out the real story and ignore the business-y boring stuff. And there are still some great developers out there who haven't hired a huge PR firm and just want to be found.
I think you do a good job of exposing the flaws in the current paradigm in this post. I think eventually the dust will settle and there will be two types of blogs: the news-based, reactionary blogs, and the thoughtful, innovative blogs (or what I like to call the "good blogs"). It seems the blogosphere is going through growing pains right now, and what it will grow up to be remains to be seen.
Once again, great post.
I appreciate what you are saying, and am glad that others share the same opinion as myself. What happened to being the guys who always had some tech trick that seemed like magic to the uninitiated? The joy of tech for me is showing that magic to others and getting them interested in what's out there too, and lately we have all become business whores a little bit. I don't know how it happened, but I am glad that you have seen it too. I look forward to the future content coming from this blog.
"Bickering" and the like (from a commenter) - I think this more than anything has caused me to substantially reduce the amount of tech/geek/gadget/etc blogs I subscribe to. So often otherwise good blogs and eloquent writers degenerate into name calling and finger pointing - Arrington did this, Winer yelled that, Calacanis spun this, Scoble claimed that, etc. My view of podcasting is still stained thanks to reading all the Curry vs. Winer stuff years ago. It gets old - we all have enough stress and drama in our lives, we look to tech blogs to talk about...tech.
Tech blogs as PR outlets - having seen this first hand (worked on a PR team for a major tech company, reaching out to bloggers), I can say you are 100% spot on. Some of the highest trafficked tech blogs are nowadays indistinguishable from "traditional" news sources, albeit faster to the story and with more snark. They want (demand in many cases) the scoop or exclusivity, as that first 2 min of a story garner all the traffic. And traffic drives ad revenue, which is really all that matters. They love embargoes so long as it gets them "in" on early news or reviews, get invited to the cool parties and treated like royalty, etc. It's all part of the game, which has taken a chunk of the fun out of blogs as you mentioned. It also turned me off a lot of them when I jumped out of that game - why read them when they all print mostly the same story? I mostly read bloggers now with strong opinions and fun angles, with an occasional techmeme wander to see if anything big is happening.
Unlike Rodrigo, however, I'm dubious that tools like Friendfeed are "what blogging needs to be saved," at least yet. That's for a reason that you touch on--it's like turning on a firehose. I only subscribe to *seven people* on the site and it borders on too much for me to keep up with. If I subscribed to just a few dozen, I'd damn well *have* to find a way to be a professional blogger because I wouldn't have time for my programming job. I think Friendfeed is onto something with the idea of social networking aggregation, to be sure, but if a company goes mainstream with social networking sometime in the next decade--by which I mean "gathers an audience past the obsessively connected," which I don't think even Twitter has done yet--it'll be because they've crossed the next bridge past good aggregation tools: good mediation tools.
Anyways great post mate.
Obviously the purpose of a blog is going to depend upon the capabilities, or lack thereof, of the individual blogger. For example, when Twitter was having huge uptime problems in the spring, I tended to focus more on Twitter's then-lack of communication then on any technical issues. The reason was simple - I do not have the technical knowledge to state whether Ruby on Rails was, or was not, the cause of Twitter's problems. (My last professional programming job was in Hypertalk.)
Whether you're taking a technical approach, a business approach, or another approach to the topic, it helps if you can either (a) add original content, or (b) feature content which your readers may not know about.
Business blogging in and of itself is not bad, but business blogging which regurgitates press releases doesn't help anybody.
All the best,
Sally
Robert, could you do something to rescue those 14 year-olds you mention? They are, after all, the future. I think if you carved a little time to speak at schools, you could sew a few good seeds. They'll be adults in only a few years. They could use the in-person inspiration (lord knows they're missing that I'm afraid). Perhaps you already do this. If not, please think about it.
You're one hell of a blogger. Off to FF.
And this was the aggregated using the source URL so I get to see their views and opinions but it was all tried together as a single article/Aggregation view.
We need a new RSS value for source URL this would work a bit like add a keyword/tag for an event in Flickr etc.
Wish to different views but I do wish to have aggregated.
If we take some article written 3 months back on some new web 2.0 startup and compare with something similar that came up now, we find them almost similar. I have also reduced the number of feeds that I used to subscribe.
There's nothing inherently wrong with covering tech business, but I agree with ya, a lot of the blogs out there will cover EVERY story just because. There's also the problem of bloggers who will do and say anything to get hits.
On my site, I tend to just cover what interests me. That strategy isn't going to get me to the top of the techmeme leaderboard, but it's guaranteed to make sure that whatever I write is quality
I'm always going to do better work if I'm interested in the final product.
No matter how many PR people contact me, I just follow the stories that interest me. If there were more sites like that, I think we'd have a more honest and probably more interesting blogosphere. Keep up the good work!
Best of luck on finding what works. I will be watching.
Chuck
aloha, cw
Everyone needs to start having fun again. Tech blogging isn't just a job for some, it is a passion. Find that fire that's dying within. Excite people! If you don't, someone more interesting will come along to replace you.
As you say, tech blogs have left their primary audience to focus on things that the average geek doesn't care about. Thanks Scoble for a great post.
Right now I can't find a lot of good "hey, check out this cool service" articles from the mainstream tech blog articles because it's all anchored around the vicious cycle of buying into the PR process.
So I'll tell you what: you start writing about cool new services beyond the latest iPhone app, beyond "whatever's hot now," and I'll subscribe again. FriendFeed, iPhone, Twitter - they're all over-exposed and well known; tell me what I don't already know.
I'm glad Scoble is able to examine what he's doing while he's doing it; it's one of the more outstanding things I first noticed about him. Mostly, though, what really got me following is the endless exuberance over cool stuff and the people who think up cool stuff that is the solid thread. Is there money in it? Probably enough, but it's obvious Scoble's motivation isn't the cash (but it never hurts), and you really don't have to be friends with people to be friendly to them. The genuinely genteel approach he uses works very well across a wide variety of people, and raises the signal level above the noise.
One of these days I'm going to sort out my own experiences over the last 15+ years with the 'Net, from BBSs to a direct SLIP connection to the San Jose hub and all the blah blah in between then and now. 12 years ago we were video conferencing via CUSeeMe with people all around the world over a 9600 baud modem! Talk about your early adopters. So when I finally get it blogged someplace, you can blame Robert Scoble for reminding me how happy and exciting being around cool people doing cool things in and around the the ever-meshing, always morphing tech/life/art world can be if you stay focused on what you love about it.
Ze Frank recently said, "I'm trying to inject some humanity into this..." after a suggestion that perhaps Digg and YouTube commenting was becoming the training ground for young people in 'how to behave online'. Not encouraging. And unfortunately, it's not just 14-year olds.
Michael Arrington has made the point many times that the 'relentless background of hate' in his part of the tech world is not sustainable. But this post is one more example of why I continue to admire and be inspired by Robert Scoble.
But nonetheless, I'll add this:
Robert, I have gained a lot of additional respect for you with this post. I've not always agreed with your take on blogging and online communications (in fact, I've pretty strongly disagreed with you at times), but I found myself nodding my head in agreement again and again with you in this long but spot-on entry.
Thanks for the having the selflessness and thoughtfulness to post this, self-criticisms and all. Your points are worth reflecting upon by ALL of us who blog, all of us who read blogs, all of us who reward both the good and bad in the blogosphere with our time, our comments, and our respect.
This is a (very long) but excellent post. I want to thank you for writing it. I am someone who currently earns a full-time living from blogging, but would consider myself far from an a-lister, which I am OK with, and in some ways prefer because I can do a little more of what I like and not what other people think I should.
The portion about the PR and the same stories hitting at the same time really hit me, as its a topic that has been bugging me personally lately.
See, I wanted to get to a point of earning a full time income from blogging and that was the easiest path, so I to have become wrapped up in that same cycle and have been looking for a way to move past it, and also encourage the other writers on the site where I am a senior editor to do the same.
While I personally think FriendFeed is not all that its cracked up to me, maybe its just because I have not spent enough time on it. Perhaps because I have been to busy covering the "tech news" and have had less time to be a blogger.
And, PS, Evenote is awesome, especially the iPhone app.
Well there's your -- and their -- frikking problem right there. Stop doing the circle jerk and get out to blog that DON'T do all-tech all-the-time. Man, when the economic sh*t hits the fan, you'll all be crying in front of your HDTVs. Suckers.
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/
1. Seth Godin talked about something similar. It sounds like what you're describing is the "Passion Pop Gulf" (http://tinyurl.com/5zgmc7)
2. Marc Andreessen is the best tech blogger, hands down. He teaches people how to build companies, lead, and make the tough choices.
3. You remain valuable to the young guy. Take it from a new comer to the field (25 yr. old, about 1 year in). I watch your Fast Company TV religiously.
http://thepiratesdilemma.com/about-the-book
The first chapter is about the punk revolution, and the peoples' desire to break out from the status-quo. How this ultimately affected many industries from music to tech to retail. Mass media and the underdog individual are an important part of the story. Check it out, there is a PDF you can download on his website.
More contemplative, more relaxed, more in-depth blog conversations may flow from when we see a resurgance of writing as a labor of love, not a means of supporting one's self. When your postcount is a means of putting food on the table, that can't help but effect the output.
I've been feeling that something wasn't right in blogging--and tech blogging in particular--for a while now, and I think you might have just hit the nail on the head as to what it is. The coolest thing about technology isn't the glitzy packaging and the blinking lights, it's the way that it changes peoples' lives. In fact, this post goes a long way toward summing up why I've decided to have another go at blogging (shameless plug: First post today!).
I may be the freshest face on the social Web block, but I've considered the Web home for as long as there's been one. And bloggers, columnists, analysts, and activists like you have done a lot to build what I love so much.
Here's looking forward to the coming months.
For example, you write "Many of us can seem out of touch with the real world. Do we write about all the forclosures going on? No, and while we’re waiting in line for iPhones and buying the latest games, that can seem pretty out of place right now while people are losing their homes or their life savings."
Well, no, on tech blogs there's not a lot of coverage of foreclosures. But, on blogs like www.researchrecap.com, we started writing about subprime related problems before the first iPhone came out.
You write: "Tech blogging has become way too controlled by PR agents.". Well, yes, if your tech blog is focused on trying to "break" tech news. But many blogs are about insights, not just news. I think Read/Write Web is a great example and I hope that my own Content Matters fits that description as well. I get pestered by some PR types (not a fraction of the ones you hear from) but unless it's something that I think my readers would care about, I don't write it.
You write: "So, off I go to FriendFeed and Twitter where there are real people who don’t care about the business but who are just looking to use technology to have more fun, be more productive, or do something more interesting with their lives."
I use Twitter and Friendfeed, but also find that it's a much more insular community than the blogging world. So, it's all about the fail whale and waiting in line for iPhone 2.0 or, perhaps, seeing the Batman movie or riding in Jason's Tesla demo.
There are hundreds of compelling blogs out there providing interesting insights. It's not the medium that's broken, its just the noise that many of the tech bloggers are now generating that makes it harder to hear.
And this is coming from a guy who thought you were the "People Magazine" of tech bloggers, at best.
Great work, and I look forward to more of the same in the coming months.
I love discovering new ways normal folks and real businesses are using new technology to improve life and business. Robert, you're one of the lead scouts, a kid in an expanding candy store with the ability to take the complex and simplify it for non-geeks ... explain how tasty and challenging that new jawbreaker is.
Most interesting thing I did today, besides spend time with a client and discover ways to bring her dreams to life, was enjoy Chris Brogans Webinar on 'Who Owns the Brand'. Watching live video discussions interlaced with real-time Twitter questions and comments ... centered on a rally interesting topic ... now THAT was an hour I"m glad I spent in front of my computer.
And tomorrow, I"m going to interview an ice cream shop owner, use my Nokia N95 to do some Qik-ing (learned that from you Robert), post about his secret sauce, why people are so passionate about it. Can't wait.
I just write about the same four firms, over and over, in what's been called a "refreshingly unexpected" way. I've also been called a "bitch" who "talks shit". And I'm a girl who wears stilettos. No one else really writes about these things in the same way that I do. Call me old school, but my blog has an audience and it's growing.
The "tech blogs" are no longer focusing on the "tech" and instead of looking more and more at the "business" because that's the lowest common denominator among the readers. We can all easily understand business news but real tech news has a much smaller audience.
Do what brings you joy. Not standing in line isn't going to save those folks' homes one iota.
Cheers, Neil
http://www.cyclelogicpress.com
Second - how has tech blogging failed me? Well, everyone keeps talking about the iPhone, which I have determined is NOT all that, much less a bag of chips, and I'm sick of it. It clogs up my Google Reader something awful! Please, make it stop! :D
I used to really enjoy what you were doing at Microsoft & Channel 9. Sometimes I wish you'd go back to that. Except I still want to see transcripts and/or better sound, because (as someone with hearing problems) I could barely understand many of the interviews.
And the comments were better back then, too. How can you bring that back? Go deep again, talk with the people doing stuff, not the people selling stuff. Don't worry about the next big thing, or about kudos/criticisms of newly launched products. Talk to people who are doing stuff. Show us what they are up to - and let the other folks pick the trends, write the kudos, write the criticisms.
Go back and watch your own video on the Kindle. Ask yourself if you really wanna be that guy. Then go back and look at when you interviewed Jeff Snover, and ask if you wanna be more like *that* guy.
I know which one I'm rooting for!
Try not to be too hard on yourself. Posts like yours above that offer perspective and a bit of humility are few and far between. It never hurts to take a step back and look at the true purpose/focus of your content. It could be said that the whole nature of tech news is always going to involve some frivality - most people don't find these shiny gadgets as essential as those "in the know"... Keep up the good work.
-Luke.
http://www.designkloud.com
Please get behind the camera again and away from tech for tech sake alone. Just as people find it fascinating to watch a "star" cook, chat, or generally opine on things unrelated to their profession -- so too this can apply to the general coverage of tech.
I watched a video segment of Jay Leno in his garage and read follow up articles on his fascination with cars. I would never have watched or read something about how he tells jokes for a -living-.
Nerds and geeks are interesting but there is no Barbara Walters for this medium. Everything has been dissolved into an elixir of buzzwords and business drama.
Can you be Bahbwah Wawah?
-J
Dont bother as to why you are unable to follow up on shiny objects two weeks down the lane. COme on - its teh tech industry and we can expect things to be stagnated. We like to see new tings coming really fast and thrashing out the old. We like staying updated about the new and not necessarily the old things. Isn't it one of the many reasons why Mac OSX is beter than anything Windows. The duration between Vista and Windows 7 was enough for Apple to lauinch 2 OSs and that means that they were/are much ahead and its Windows doing teh catching up. Similarly, when blogs like techcrunch and say yours talk suddenly about what you heard and what you saw[referring to WWT], it brings in interest in us readers and thats what is prime. We are all fine with your posts - cant be happier. or lets say, we are in need of 10 scoble's updating scobleizer - yes 10 updating one blog. Its not the info overload, its not you failing us - trust me.
ps: The Apple/MS comparison is inevitable you see. One stands for latest stuff soon out of the box and the other is just outdated n all that. When was iPhone design started tell me and did you hear about teh Zune phone? nah! Apple is much ahead and we want to stay much ahead with others doing the catch-up. So, there is nothing like the follow-up syndrome you should get into.
You asked what we read - for me, I read a very few blogs but then, I dont follow Gizmodo/Engadget for the Gizmos - I love to read DVICE.com for the latest in gadgets and crazy stuff and according to me, it satisfies "my" needs. I dont follow techcrunch or crunchgear other than have them as a widget on my iGoogle page but I follow you using Google Reader and my friends would vouch for the fact that I keep sharing your posts everytime I really like something and want others to read. In short, we readers would read what aligns to our though process and to teh pace with which we want to stay updated - you dont have to change anything just because you think you have failed us. It might be just a few whom you failed - forget them because you cant please everyone all the time. Today if you get back to WWT after say you ee something nice on your monitor, you think we all might love to read about it - I really doubt that ;-)
Keep scribbling..
Two years ago I became a partner in a company, and we created a blog on our business Web page. That blog is a mix of technical stuff and ads of our training.
I turned the other blog into a personal one. 80% of that blog is my observations of IT. But once in a while I use it too to announce some events that are important to our business. I don't see anything wrong with it.
I don't publish there any PR announcements of other companies even though I receive lots of such emails - just delete them.
As long as I'm not bored with blogging, I'll keep doing it. Tried twitter for a little over a month, but it seems to be a waste of time. Some people just write something like I'm now at this location. Great. Let's tell this to the entire world. Noise. If you don't have anything to say, just leave the keyboard alone. Lots of junk there and Twitter is the most unstable software I've ever seen so far.
I just got around to reading this, and it almost brought me to tears with how right you are.
What do you care about? Not just the shiny objects, but how have they changed your life?
You have a job. This isn't your job. Write about you, your family, your interests, what you care about. Have a conversation, and I guarantee the less you engage in the "tech blogosphere" and the more I see of the guy I spent a week in DC with, you'll be on the right track.
What excites YOU?
The larger bloggers have become exactly what they claimed not to be. Some of the larger blogs are businesses, no different than the NYTimes or any other medium.
The focus has been on expanding distribution, be it via the new tools that enhance the blogging medium or some other method (Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.).
Focus has been on friends (twitter, facebook, friendfeed, etc.). This is the old quantity over quality argument...
Tech blogs, in particular, all tend to gravitate towards the same topics. See below:
Microsoft xxx
Google yyy
Twitter zzz
Yahoo and Microsoft xxx, yyy, zzz
Apple aaa, Iphone this.
This is honestly the first post of yours I've read in a bit, for a wide variety of reasons. If some of the tech bloggers focused on the reason(s) why they started blogging to begin with, I am certain that many things would change for the better (simply for the love of talking about the things that they love) . Right now, and I say this with all honesty, the average person probably questions the honesty of many of the blogs and/or the intent behind a post of any sort.
And, without sounding like a complete ass, the average person only cares about the following:
1. Does it make my life simpler?
2. Does it help me keep in contact with the ones I love?
3. Does it make my life better?
4. Can I still send email?
Too many of the technologies launched these days are more advanced than the average person cares to use. I have a wife, one that is not a techie at all, and she questions why we spend so much time on things not connected to establishing real relationships with real people. She almost crapped her pants when two of my friends, and yours truly, were stuck on laptops not talking to one another whilst in the lush beauty of Koh Samui, Thailand.
Even if she (my wife) isn't as tech smart as I am, I am starting to actually question if she might be smarter than I am.
Other facts:
- search engines really love blogs,
- search engines love comments even more,
- a lot of people are looking for an angle to get heard above the "noise",
- publishing tools have never been easier to use.
i.e. the problems are just beginning and the only current solutions require "un-democratizing" the Web. there is no easy short-term fix.
Go ahead and do the early reports, but come back with more later. As to the folks getting on daily with Win2K/etc., I think a realistic assessment of where the new stuff gets us with respect to that is something worth commenting on. I often find myself asking where I stand now with my present systems vs. my Kaypros of years ago. There are a lot of places I can easily point out real-world results showing my present situation is better--but not everywhere, and its worthy of some concern and reflection.
My gray Win laptop is the one with the tattered old "Linux, It's not just for breakfast any more" sticker on the lid. ;)
I can relate to most of what you've said, and I can imagine the rest. Been there, done that. It was the past weeks that I also started thinking about blogging in general, not just for myself but for everyone. It evolved, but just like you said, it evolved to become just another medium for PR Agents.
As someone who also acts as a PR Agent (on an unofficial level), I am guilty to that practice. Shape the bloggers to be a PR tool, no more and no less. But ask me, do I allow it on my blog? Not much (I used to). I realized, there are just too many sites and blogs out there who are doing the same thing, why follow? And I don't blog to become their PR tool.
Also true that most A tech bloggers caters to the Western World, where most of the English speaking nations are. Here in the Eastern Hemisphere - ASEAN, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Oceania, we are mostly ignored. Yes, most of us can't relate with all the Apple stuff being blogged (I ignore them all, I don't even care about iPhone). Only few English speaking Easterners care about Apple. Yes it is a good product - but "we already know that", anything else we don't know?
Sadly, as much as we want to cover that "anything else we don't know", we do not have access to that as much as you guys in the West have. In this side of the world, it is all about politics and we are tired of it.
So can we all or most of us go back to the "golden years" of blogging? It is about LIFE. Go back to it and let's retrace AND enhanced it for the future.
Are you in? Or are you out?
the link which is at http://metadatta.wordpress.com/2007/03/02/why-i...
See, you and me we're born the same day same year. It's time for our generation to prepare the ground for our children' s children, don't you think ?
ps : what a tremendous step forward you've made between Milan' s birth day and today, right ?...
TL - http://offur.com/BetterThanTechCrunch
They write advertisements for products and sites while trying to disguise them as articles. Blogs such as Techcrunch have become infomercials.
A reputation system (votes by other members + site activity) determines the ranking of every member on the site. The higher the ranking, the greater authority to delete posts and even terminate members.
As such, we now have hundreds of highly-ranked and trusted members providing moderation on the site.
It has served to eliminate 95% of the noise and increase quality by several magnitudes.
I would guess that a similar system would work very well for blog comments.
Regards,
George
I just blogged this "Scoble Wars: Attack of The Trolls"
Hope you enjoy it!
Jim Connolly
www.thetechnewsblog.com
Sewing the two worlds together is difficult for the top tier. Realistically, blogging brought them/you fame. Given the choice of being an idol focusing on celebrity topics vs normal life, what's more exciting? Many people have serious trouble hanging on to reality.
I know I'm disconnected at times. I'm arranging a geek dinner outing in Philadelphia while For Sale signs stand in neighbors windows for 12+ months. I use Google Docs on OS X, iPhone, N82, and EeePCs while my wife uses Win2k and Excel to wrangle hundreds of thousands of lines of data (65k per file).
Gary Vaynerchuk compared blogging to the 1980's hip-hop movement. He's exactly right... A few big names will become extremely famous. Huge numbers of others will try and fail. And the people that made it to celebrity status will have psychological issues and disconnects with the world.
"We used to link to each other all the time, telling you when all the other cool bloggers have done something new and useful."
cheapsuits:
"The problem is the small blogger goes through life unheard much of the time. Big zero’s in the comments section."
The little guy who blogs purely out of a desire to share his thoughts can't get noticed. And it's not helped by the A-list bloggers when they're trackbacks are broken, and they don't respond when they're told about it (That wasn't you, Robert - but it's happened a few times elsewhere)
I have my own blog (shameless self-promotion: http://patternsofchaos.net/ ) - and I like to think that I'm offering worthwhile content. But I have no way to know, since, as far as I can tell, nobody reads it.
I can't help but wonder how many blogs like mine are out there, that I can't easily find. Blogging was supposed to give a voice to the little guy, but they're now drowned out by the big players - just like happens everywhere else.
It used to be a closed-chummy-club, now it's all play-doh journalism niche-news hounding, but even yet still lots of good tech and non-tech blogs out there, but prayers chance they will ever be noticed. Blogging is just another power distributional curve, "blockbusters" still exist and those in the "long tail", might as well cash in chips for all the time and effort, hardly worth it. But when you do a massive rant, with machine-gun name dropping, you are beyond fixing. Nor do you really want to fix it, you are on top, occasionally insincerely self-flagellate and move on. That way you can say, I know it's broke, but it's the system...dontblameme.
I've followed your postings for several years. This one made me jump out of my feed reader (RSS Bandit) to see your blog Website and check things out directly. Clearly, blogging is now an establishment of its own. Please continue shaking things up!
technologies that fall outside of personal productivity, he has little or no training to judge and rarely takes the time to find authorities who do. be warned: make business decisions using scoble's advice regarding technologies outside of personal productivity at your career's peril.
much like rush and geraldo, that small minority of people responsible for creating or managing technology that read scoble do so for his entertainment value.
he is very entertaining.
just don't mistake his certainty for learned or researched insight.
One thought occurred to me after I read it: In some respects, technical blogging sets itself up for problems in that most of it takes the form of a "one-person" show. Hubris is an easy trap to fall into when you're working alone.
Gathering and reporting the news requires a variety of skills (investigation, interviewing, writing, editing, fact checking, cultivating reliable sources, etc.) that have traditionally been handled by team members that brought their individual areas of expertise to bear on each of those requirements. In short, the skill set necessary to do a good job of reporting is usually beyond the compass of any but the most rare and gifted individual.
So why is it so many bloggers believe they have become such merely by virtue of the fact that they share their thoughts online instead of at a saloon?
Plus at the time, Facebook was getting these insane deep-space bubble-territory valuations, knowing that you were hot on it, was a sign that it would cool seriously off, becoming just another fad, and it has, stooge Microsoft, wanting to be the cool kid on the block, knew not such.
And more people use MySpace, so can we call that a winner too? Raw numbers mean very little, the 'eyeball-accounting-era' should have taught us that well enough. And Nielsen Online surveys, in April, showed only 22.4M, and seriously dropping...so from your 90 million to 22.4 million, I mean you called it perfectly right, just in reverse, predicting Facebook fatigue, just by getting interested in it. Valuable service indeed.
But, I guess you will back to your same ways, within few days.
Isn't blogging becoming like that in a sense? There's just so much content out there, so we skip straight to the summaries, and ignoring possibly useful, insightful, out-of-the-ordinary gems of blog posts and writers?
Blogging has also become about rules; mostly, rules aimed at SEO, media relations, brand reputation, and most important for bloggers, self-promotion.
Blogging stopped being about simply writing and sharing years ago. Those days are gone and will not return. You can't go home again. Game on.
...I’m going to be changing my approach to being one that’s more practical and useful ... Do you agree or disagree?...What blogs are doing the best tech blogging?
Reply:
Yes I agree. Thank you for noticing and implementing changes.
As for the best tech blogs - I don't know - I seek your help - but I didn't notice many of the 180 previous comments identify any.
The truth is that a blog w/o the ability for people to leave comments is NOT a blog (it's just a standard ol' webpage). The moment I get the impression a site is moderating comments so that only people who conform get heard, that's when I leave. Now that you've made it clear that readers won't have an equal say on your site from here on out, you can expect a huge drop off. Honestly, this may be exactly what you want. Less readers, but more "me too" people. I dunno...I personally don't mind criticism if it helps me later on and when I'm wrong I'll admit it.
As far as saying other blogs are pointless because they repeat info from other sources, that's unfair also. The whole point of most well-known blogs now is to keep up that visitor traffic for advertising reasons. Why YOU may not like it that sites A, B & C are talking about the Microsoft/Yahoo deal, that doesn't make it any less of a good topic to post about.
Personally, I'm absolutely sick and tired of all the Apple gushing that goes on in the tech community. I'm almost positive the key bloggers of the world are Mac fanboys and use their insane web traffic (through Podcasts, Blogs, etc.) to try to push this on everyone else. I'm getting to the point where I'll just ignore a person for awhile if they talk about the iPhone or how superior OSX is, but why should I have to? If you really want to be a different sort of blogger, blog about different things instead of complaining about what other bloggers do.
Maybe it's time for you not to blog anymore at all. I'm not saying do it...but if you honestly feel like blogging is a chore, maybe that's a sign you should stop. I've never thought blogging and business should mix because there's just too much risk of becoming blatantly biased...and when that happens, you better expect readers to be just as divided or leave altogether.
I agree with much of what you're saying, but wouldn't be so hard on most of the top bloggers, including yourself.
a) Everyone has trouble dealing with success at first, especially when it's been brought from the bottom up. How do you remain famous and down to earth!? It's tough.
b) The last four years have been the social bubble. Noise. Noise. Noise... and I'm not talking economics and companies -- I'm talking social interaction wise, with the "tech set." This will mellow out (though we'll always, due to our closeness with innovation, be a little hyped up in this area).
Downplay the value of links and look for better content ratings systems that use community input more effectively. Former is risky but worth a shote, latter is happening, but slowly.
I really appreciate you standing up and making this statement. It takes a lot to discuss where you think issues have arisen and to take agency with finding a solution. You mention that there is a disconnect from many discussions taking place in this sector of the internet and the rest of the online community (and the world in general), but have you thought about ways to rectify that, or if it's even necessary to?
If you have some time, I had some thoughts: http://rabidspacedog.com/?p=435
-Ethan
(former commenting troll hoping to rekindle discussion)
I ran into you at SXSW and even called your cell (following a Twitter post) to find out where Gary V was having his wine shindig (DeLoach). You're very accessible, so don't go changing! I look to tech blogs to find the shiny things and share them with us so don't go changing that either. Just stay true to yourself, brother; the rest will follow.
I'd give you a link but as I actually lost my pen today, I don't think I'm a good advertisement for luddites ;)
One of your prime sponsors is SAP. You know, boring old ERP, yet they remain one of the most interesting companies on the planet and have some of the most interesting and engaging people I've ever met. As does Oracle, Adobe, Microsoft and a few others. They're old skool if you like but they get what delivers the bacon and pays the bills.
It may not be your thing but tech needs business just as much as business needs tech. That's how the money gets made to support Silicon Valley the way it does. Learn to love the business just like I've had to learn to love the geeks. You might be surprised at what you discover.