Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

How to — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:59:29 -0000

thanks for your information

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Bill — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:25:40 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Kabala — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:18:08 -0000

thank you

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Jim @ jaxtr — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:56:08 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Tinu — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:03:42 -0000

Updated Jarvis link if no one has posted it- http://www.buzzmachine.com/...

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Sylvia — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:56:58 -0000

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 ;)

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Free Business Blogging Secrets — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:24:06 -0000

I appreciate your opinion and the way you connect technology to human experiences.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Tim Letscher — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:33:43 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Ethan Ambabo — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:51:56 -0000

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?

If you have some time, I had some thoughts: http://rabidspacedog.com/?p...

-Ethan
(former commenting troll hoping to rekindle discussion)

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

JoeDuck — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:49:12 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

JoeDuck — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:40:40 -0000

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!

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Nate Westheimer — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:10:50 -0000

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).

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

markivey — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:00:44 -0000

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?

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Scott C. — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:18:27 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

GaryF — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:20:26 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:12:40 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

manateepunch — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:38:44 -0000

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 ;)

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Hans Doddema — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:10:56 -0000

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?

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Rk — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:21:21 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Christopher Coulter — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:30:06 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Votre — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:27:14 -0000

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?

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Robert Scoble — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:59:46 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Robert Scoble — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:57:28 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

james henry — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:41:10 -0000

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.

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Walter Lounsbery — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:09:25 -0000

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!