Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Have I lost my “blog power”?

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Scott Royall — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 14:42:23 -0000

Robert,

I'm sorry but our influence largely comes from the people we keep company with. When you were with Microsoft, you were a window (pun intended) into the inside of Microsoft. Now? Microsoft does have many other blogs, but they have a very "corporate" feel. Yours did not. Now you represent a very small company that may or may not have an impact in the near future.

I am sad to say that I don't much care about what your new employer is doing. Video is video. It's the content that matters of course. Podcasting isn't yet doing things I care about, and that does make you somewhat less interesting to me. That's a PITY.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Kevin Heisler — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 21:55:09 -0000

Robert,

Don't be so hard on yourself. You're still as great a blogger as ever. It's not you.

It's the BRAND.

Before, you were the uncensored voice of Microsoft. You were more than the fly on the wall of MS. You were the guy who let the world know all the cool things MS was doing, and a lot of the stuff they weren't. Who else could ask for Flickr in Redmond or tell us the real deal on Origami?

The same thing would happen to Matt Cutts -- another fantastic blogger whose popularity correlates directly to his role at Google. Take Matt out of the plex and he would still write great stuff and do videos on SEO. A big part of his appeal, though, is his ability to provide the real scoop on Big Daddy and tap into the massive Google Brain Trust. You've got a tougher road than, say, journalists who leave a major daily because their sources don't dry up.

It's really tough to scoop someone who's 100% dedicated to getting a story in the mass media -- or a Drudge-like "blog-as-business." Plus, they can guarantee their sources wide distribution and in most cases syndication. You've got a business to run now and I'm sure revenue targets to meet as a direct result of your daily efforts.

You and Matt have created your own brands and have a group of readers who will continue to follow you no matter where you go or what you do.

You're like any player who gets traded by the Yankees. In pinstripes, they're the guys everybody loves to hate. Once out of the hated Yankees uniform, they can still be great players but they're not going to generate the same buzz in the media.

I may be wrong, but to find out, let's check in with Alex Rodriguez in a few years. In pinstripes, he's the most hated player in baseball even by his own fans. A day doesn't go by when he's not under the microscope in a way he never was as a lone Ranger.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Nick Douglas — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 15:58:53 -0000

As for the plethora of events, give it a few months and you'll get over it. I already am.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

vanni — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:02:30 -0000

you have a cool "dingy-thingy" at this url:
http://scobleizer.wordpress...
that looks liek a happy face. i think this is interesting....cause it is so mysterious! look for it just under your header image just under the "Sc". cheers
PS as someone famous once said... "if you are worried about being boring well then darling you are...."

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Michael Markman (Mickeleh) — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:57:38 -0000

1. I think you already know what's important for you to do right now. (Nike slogan goes here). Just in case you want more kibbitzing...
2. I think LayZ has it nailed: GTD
3. It's not you, it's the bubble. We're close to (beyond?) saturation point with incremental me-too variations aimed at solving the same small number of problems. The payoff for your readers in checking them all out is diminishing. Point only to things that deliver exceptional new value.
4. The audience for a "Tech Geek Blogger" might be a subset of the audience for a "Microsoft Geek Blogger."-- or it might be the same audience, but with diminished interest.
5. You have a finite amount of you to invest--you're going to need to allocate carefully between the thing you built (this blog) and the thing you're building (your show and PodTech). Granted, there are synergies and the two things can nourish each other, but that only makes it easier to avoid making the required choices. As you say video takes a lot more time than text. Therefore...

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

John Evans (Syntagma) — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:58:59 -0000

Robert, you've just hit what Gurdjieff called a "half interval in the octave" ;-) However, here's proof of the pudding.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Al — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:57:18 -0000

I think you need more focus, more filtering that gets you to the real dope.

But you have a few issues because of the shear quantity hitiing your listening channels.

Sounds like you have an itch to scratch, remember the open source adage scratch that itch for yourself.

I would move away from the old school email as it is highly inefficient for these sort of quantities.

I would also think about using your community to help create a social software that helps filter your (public) incoming information feeds. Create a companion site dedicated to this filtering have your community vote/rate on incoming streams based on categories, let the social effects move the interesting stuff to the top and then concetrate on those. A kind of social blog where the subject matter is decided by the adience/community.

'Use the force Robert'

good luck
regards
Al

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

kosso — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 07:45:23 -0000

step out of the echo chamber and back in to the fun park, Scoble! :)

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

gautamghosh — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 07:03:46 -0000

The long tail has hit the blogosphere itself I guess

And people are using more aggregators and keeping track of blogs that interest them

Now there are a lot more journalists, sales guys, PR folks apart from techies who are blogging. In fact in the list of most linked Indian bloggers the technoloogy bloggers are probably less than 10%.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Cornelius — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 04:38:56 -0000

1. Write about stuff that's relevant to you.
Don't blog about blogging, or bloggers or anything else terribly meta. Just pretend there's absolutely nothing new, exciting or unusual about the process of blogging. Instead, write like you're telling your friend about something cool you've found (50%), or like you're having a nice chat with yourself (50%).
That includes not worrying about what you listeners think - they're your friends after all, right?

2. Figuring out what's relevant means getting rid of everything that isn't.
This may well include 70-80% of your email, though I suspect you get more interesting stuff than me.

3. Focus.
Talking about something coherently means not talking about a million other things. Tough luck. It's called the blogosphere for a reason, those other guys want to come up with something interesting too from time to time.

4. Don't burn out.
Sit back and take a deep breath. If you went hiking in the Rockies now for a week, web 2.0, the blogosphere and the tech industry would still be there once you came back. Provided that you still felt like writing and talking about that stuff, nothing at all would have changed.

It's that simple.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Rob La Gesse — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:51:07 -0000

Robert - I don't think so. Since you linked to my blog earlier this week I have had thousands of visitors I would not have had - from all corners of the earth. 1300 hits from Redmond alone :)

Rob

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

joeduck — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:11:06 -0000

You just need more Paris Hilton stories....

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

jsaltz — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:35:27 -0000

An abomination.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

LayZ — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 20:46:56 -0000

How does one lose something they don't have? That's what I can't figure out.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

LayZ — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 20:46:55 -0000

How does one lose something they don't have? That's what I can't figure out.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Dimitar Vesselinov — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:08:15 -0000

Robert, I think you, John Furrier, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Tom Foremski, Matt Marshall, Rafat Ali and Danny Sullivan should work together. Make an alliance. Coordinate your efforts. Build the next media empire.

My Dream Media Team
http://divedi.blogspot.com/...

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

raincoaster — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 18:52:39 -0000

I should perhaps add that today, if you look over your shoulder in the English language Top Blogs, I'm right there at #2. And I won't be next week. I know this. I caught a meme as it was rising and got lucky. I am the biggest famewhore you'll ever meet, but even I don't take this seriously; it's a discontinuity in the blog-time continuum.

If my blog is good, I may retain a fraction of those new readers. A TINY fraction. The quality of any individual post is almost meaningless to a blog in terms of retaining readers. It's the topics explored over time and the quality of that exploration that will bring people back.

If I may overanalyze, I think there's been some unsteadiness in your tone recently; nothing I can put my finger on, but it seems like we never know what we're going to get recently, in terms of tone or subject matter. Once your life settles down a bit more, it seems natural that your self-expression in the blog will as well, and that will bring them back. I'm sure you'll see a spike soon enough.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

raincoaster — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 18:43:19 -0000

You've been very mobile recently, both geographically and topically, and I think that's definitely had an effect. When you were "off the grid" only the people who were interested in that experience were making you a must-see. And you can definitely own that space in time, but a week later you're doing something completely different, and blogging about that, so you'll lose those people. You've got to start over again from scratch building an audience.

I'm stating it extremely, but that's in effect what's happening. When you were at Microsoft you were blogging about Microsoft and things that affected it as well as about your life. That didn't change and so over time you came to own that blogspace. You were the default for that category. Now you're blogging about some main thing which switches every week or so at least, because what you're actually doing switches. That means you start to gain people in that field, but then you start to lose them when you switch to another field.

The only solution to this is to be Robert Scoble, not the brand, the blogger, the individual. It's the writing and the thinking that you do that will bring back the people you pick up in your bloggy travels. You've got it; have faith in it and use it.

Gawd knows I am the farthest thing from a techie. It took me THREE YEARS to learn how to paste a picture into a forum. But I read you because you think and discuss the larger issues of the blogosphere, like this one, and you do it with humility, openness, and intelligence. I don't always agree with you, but I always respect you.

What's juice, and does it matter? It's not heart, and heart is worth more in the long run. Remember "Love is the Killer App?" Well it is.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Nicole Simon — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:44:28 -0000

It has to do a lot with the audience. And it depends on the topic.

Haven gotten some links of you they all resultet in different clickbehaviour - some strong, some not.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

LayZ — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:38:07 -0000

@28, Dude, I'm not talking about the Outlook add in. Agree that thing sucks for high volume mail. I'm talking about the GTD practices.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

RB — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:14:37 -0000

Thanks for the link, dood. This means EGR will *definitely* get over 100 hits this month!

oh yeah, we're Keepin' it Real(tm) over here.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Rick — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:53:14 -0000

Call me crazy, but I don't think you need to blog as much as you do, particularly for someone so busy with work or who's off to another party (sometimes they seem to be one and the same).

Try adding up the number of words you've written in, say, the last two weeks. It's a lot. Possibly too much.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Marie Germain — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:26:37 -0000

Hi again Robert. It was helpful to hear your comments about your desires for a small campy get-together. Well.. you and I don't know each other well--except for the fact that both you and Tara (and other folks you know) are speaking/performing at PLEXUS 2007 this coming May. I HEREBY commit Plexus to hosting such an event for like-minded folk during the evening of May 1 (Tuesday evening, which means everyone has to go to bed at a reasonable hour and under 3 mai tais, to perform well the next day). I will make you the Guest of Honor, and in fact, I ask you to guide the look, sound and feel and I/we will deliver--let's call it Robert's Camp at Plexus 2007. You see I can't produce that during the day to a corporate audience--a scientific/geek audience yes, but not corporate. But I trust that our customers of the last 10 years CEOs, VPs, Directors of corporations including tech cos won't acclimate to camp at this point. Surely some are closet campers. With the ambitious scope of this event I don't feel like gambling with our day hours--although we aim to make it a different, sensory experience. Our site does not show what we are cooking yet (not frnaks and beans). But for the "wandering aimlessly", let's do it a la FooCamp, BarCamp--we can even pitch tents or lie around on the floor... Your call. I count myself among those lying around--will be somewhat liberating to shed a little social decorum for some authenticity, some truth or dare... So I await your comments back--I did not email you this since you are happy to share this way--true to blogging. Perhaps all campees could pitch in in creating this evening. I await you creative insights.

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

booger — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:02:48 -0000

"What I probably need is to hire someone who’ll do nothing but do my email and calendar."

That's just what a startup needs.... :)

Booger

Re: Have I lost my “blog power”?

Robert Scoble — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:17:24 -0000

LayZ: I have GTD. But it doesn't work for someone with my flow level. At least not if I'm trying to do something else. What I probably need is to hire someone who'll do nothing but do my email and calendar.