sharp - i like. will refrain from suggesting additions though since my blog is currently the equivalent of a AMC Javelin that is being kept together by duct tape (apologies to you AMC Javelin enthusiasts out there)
danielholter
· 1 year ago
Very nice, mate! No matter how many online presences we acquire, it's good to have a place called 'home' where they can all be linked, eh?.
I think the new look is great... to be honest, your previous design did nothing to bring me by regularly, I just kept getting updates at Twitter and RSS. Now I'll stop by more often. :)
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Just testing to make sure comments still work.
Ian Betteridge
· 1 year ago
Nice stuff, Robert! What are you using to create the FriendFeed component?
Vicki
· 1 year ago
Nice. Simple. Clean. I like it :D
Matt
· 1 year ago
Would like to see Disqus comments... (as hooked as you are on all these other things I'm surprised to not see Disqus).
also.. is the seagate logo peeking up in the header not a bit much? Sponsorship is good... god bless it.. but in the header, as part of the design? Oi... not feeling that so much. hehehe
Raul
· 1 year ago
Much cleaner, Robert.
Elliott Ng
· 1 year ago
Robert,
Already commented via friendfeed. You should add a special "Classic Mode" for your loyal readers who came to the site, so the blog can be seen in its old-school, ghetto, retro fashion. Or the easier way could be just change the title font and the header photos so we get that old picture of you in front of the tree or whatever, I already forgot! :)
That would be a distinctive way to honor the waybackness of the old design. Hard to get rid of old, comfortable shoes for shiny new ones.
@elliottng
Matt
· 1 year ago
@Ian.. FriendFeed offers this for everyone.
sean percival
· 1 year ago
looking good!
Kiran
· 1 year ago
Nice design! The friendfeed on the side is really useful
Levi Figueira
· 1 year ago
Definitely an improvement! ;) Kept it simple, clean and added a lot more of "you"! I still can't like FriendFeed as it just adds even more to my "information overload" so I'm just paying attention to Twitter (less exhaustively than before these days) and follow a bunch of feeds!
But nice redesign (at last!) ;) Keep it up Scoble! ^^,
Karim
· 1 year ago
Purdy! And looks good on the iPhone. ;-)
Paul Fabretti
· 1 year ago
Absolutely LOVE the friendfeed stream Robert. It i a great way of bringing together lots of content into one neat area.
Equally, you have struck a good balance between engaging video/image content and the actual blog posts.
My only criticism is that the seagate ad is a little TOO large (and the search box above it doesn't match the width of the ad box)!
grrr.... I did not get to sneak this link in without the comment submitting... (my browsers fault, not the form's fault...) anyway... sorry for the TP:
The Things to Worry About blog is also open for submissions. Just leave a comment and I'll post it as a worry.
Thanks,
Jeff Cutler
Sada
· 1 year ago
Like the new design and especially the FriendFeed component. I dont get to see the ad's, AdBlockPlus removes all ad's on Firefox.
Sidenote - If M$FT spends some time and adds AdBlock as a default setting on IE - How could that impact Google or Yahoo! You will see fewer clicks, because people wont see the ad's
Aaron Myers
· 1 year ago
I love the redesign man, good job.
Mitch
· 1 year ago
Nothin' wrong with makin money. I'm surprised you cared so much about your previous comments that you shouldn't make money with your blog.
It hurts absolutely no one and it actually help some people. If you click the ad, you might actually be interested in the product. If you don't click it, you still see it so the brand raises its awareness.
Now, overdoing it is a totally different story :P
zebb
· 1 year ago
I am really liking the new design, only issue I have is I dislike the red "scobleizer" at the top. Just feels weird.
As far as what else should you add to the side, I'd say nothing It's already packed full of almost to much stuff.
Otherwise the new design is really clean and well organized.
Steven Hodson
· 1 year ago
I gotta admit I'm surprised - I quite like the revamp. The only thing you are missing though IMO is Disqus for your comments.
Kambiz Kamrani
· 1 year ago
I got a question, did you change your mind behind the message of this post of yours? I see ads on your refreshed blog design. Based on your post, should I trust you?
Better
· 1 year ago
Much better design.
The old one looked...well...dated. VERY dated. First time I visited, I honestly couldn't believe an A-list blog would look so bad. LOL
Adam Jackson
· 1 year ago
The friendfeed badge rocks!
Kiran
· 1 year ago
When I click on a link on FriendFeed, it is opening the page in the Iframe itself which looks bad.
Greg Lynott
· 1 year ago
I note that you have removed your phone number. On purpose? Not that I think you should list it by the way.
I like the redesign. Very clean. Very connected. Nice job.
Brad Grier
· 1 year ago
Nice look, great widgets. But I miss teh 'old skool' look now.
Dale Cruse
· 1 year ago
Is orange text on a dark blue background with your face in it the cool new thing? See Chris Brogan: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/
Jason Rodriguez
· 1 year ago
Much better than before, definitely. Good call on the FriendFeed widget.
Vinod
· 1 year ago
Not bad. I mean- Nice. The sidebar a bit longer though.
Will Spaetzel
· 1 year ago
The new design looks great.
Orli Yakuel
· 1 year ago
I like the new design, though, I'm not sure about the header... not because of the picture of course, hmm.. think it's a bit of an old school design.
Other than that, everything pretty clean and cool.
Looks great - I actually just added your RSS yesterday (late adopter on that one!), and I was shocked that such a huge site was still stuck in the 90's - welcome to the two-dot-oh!
I'm with Paul on the advertising size and alignment - otherwise everything looks great; love the friendfeed action
Greg
· 1 year ago
Funny that you've redesigned and put ads on now that you hardly blog any more and your audience here (if not on Twitter, Facebook, Friend Feed, etc.) must surely have dropped.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Yes, I am going to add Disqus, or wait for Wordpress.com to update their comments functionality. I love that Disqus comments show up on FriendFeed. That'll have to come in a while, though.
Josh
· 1 year ago
Adblock Plus makes this site look better.
Sean
· 1 year ago
Robert, about freaking time. Your old web site hurt my eyes.
I like this design, nice and clean. FF sidebar looking good too!
Bob
· 1 year ago
I prefer the friendfeed at the top on the sidebar to get a quick glance without scrolling to the bottom, I am sure others expect the same too.
deannie
· 1 year ago
Better choice in fonts and still a great read on the phone and really like the RSS subscribe button location. Excellent redesign.
Ted Murphy
· 1 year ago
I like the new design Robert. Happy to see you are finally monetizing yourself with some ads.
Shams
· 1 year ago
Looks good!!
Jez
· 1 year ago
Looking good!! Even though TC just mentioned your a bit of a Sell Out, I think the advert you have works well...
Using FF though the Photos and about, appear below the submit comment button.. Perhaps its my 125% DPI setting on WinXP (UPDATE -- yep, quick check and it went back up)
Any chance of making the template "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License" for other bloggers???
Philipp Lenssen
· 1 year ago
I clicked on the big header graphic on top expecting to be taken from the permalink to the homepage, but had to click on the scobleizer logo... perhaps accept clicks on both?
Michael Letterle
· 1 year ago
Not sure I like it... I mean.. it's almost TOO busy now... I'd drop the mug from the banner, I like the scobleizer logo though. Move the picture to the right and make it smaller.... move the about to the top of the bar, make the bar thinner, takes up too much content now. Not too bad though :)
Josh Bancroft
· 1 year ago
Loads kind of slow. And where's the OpenID for comments? ;-)
Other than that, it looks good. I like the design.
Are you part of "Mansueto Digital Network" now? I saw that in the footer, and was trying to figure out what it has to do with anything. Parent company for FastCompany?
Louis Gray
· 1 year ago
The Scobleizer logo is great. The photo is one we've seen before, only bigger! The right-side links are very professional and clean. I can see getting used to this quick.
Stanton
· 1 year ago
This is nice! The whole thing flows very well and feels intuitive. Great job!
Geoff
· 1 year ago
I like it. No, wait... it needs a tree. Somewhere. Yup, all suck without a tree.
Kellnaah
· 1 year ago
I love the new design. Much more user friendly, socially oriented and definitely more pleasing to the eye.
rbonini
· 1 year ago
Sweet design. I dig the Friendfeed widget!!!!!
Dennis Goedegebuure
· 1 year ago
Congratulations Robert, The site looks clean, readable and has lots of extra features to follow you.
Looking forward to the new stories
Spencer
· 1 year ago
Looks good. I like the simple design.
Pokai
· 1 year ago
The friendfeed link part of your comment section does not display correctly if you have a friendfeed acct. It tries to open your friendfeed account within the little window. Also, how about change your picture to one that shows you with hand saying come here.
Andy Gongea
· 1 year ago
Honestly I do not like the design. But the friend feed think is pretty slick.
Keith
· 1 year ago
A little too wide, and the banner's a little too tall, but otherwise, it's one of the best redesigns I've seen (usually when a blog updates its look, it goes for heavier/busier, but yours is surprisingly clean and laid out quite well)
adrian
· 1 year ago
Robert, it's nice and clean, I like it.
engtech
· 1 year ago
I haven't tried to kick the tires, but I do like it.
llbbl
· 1 year ago
nice job!
Thomas Lopez, Jr.
· 1 year ago
I like the redesign better than the old look. The old one was boring and lacking color. This looks better.
Rob Robinson
· 1 year ago
The elegance is in the simplicity.
Based on your interest in friendfeed - I will definitely have to check it out.
Justin Jilg
· 1 year ago
Will you share your template with the community? Obviously strip out the personalized elements. Really clean and I dig the plugins.
Just a thought. Call it the Scoble and put a link to your blog on it. :)
adventureran
· 1 year ago
Outstanding!
AndyBeard
· 1 year ago
Either the designers totally ignored SEO, good IA and semantic markup, or they made it look sloppy to disguise the very obvious attempt to suck as much juice out of your blog to their sites as possible.
Bricktash Magnumpo
· 1 year ago
Welcome to the web! I hope you will enjoy blogging as much as I have. By the way, you may want to remove advertising from your blog because it may make you look like you might be blogging for money. Your readers will want to trust what you say. But either way, your blog looks nice. And don't forget: blog from the heart and all will be well.
- Bricktash
Phil801
· 1 year ago
ARGH!!! PLEASE! Get rid of Snap! It's the biggest and most annoying piece of shit on the web. Everything else is awesome with the redesign, i really like it. But Snap? @#$$@##%$ Ditch it as fast as you can. Please.
Shafqat
· 1 year ago
Part of me misses the old-school, retro vibe of the previous incarnation of this site. It was almost like a throw-back to the good old days of the web. Anyway, great job with the redesign. Maybe you could revert back for special occasions. How some sports teams sometime pull out the throwback jerseys!
Dib
· 1 year ago
Robert, site looks fine, but something disturbing about the picture. Is your hand really that small or do you just have a HUGE head !
Dib.
daniela barbosa
· 1 year ago
hi robert- i like the new look especially the new banner but per my twitter message earlier you should semantic-ize your site. My suggestion is what i did is to start with a simple addition of rel=me on the submenu items like this on my LinkedIn link on my blog:
i am new at this and hope to be 'schooled' today at our DataPortability Project meetup where our topic is our new 'Do It Yourself' project and the first project which will revolve around rel=me. More info here: http://groups.google.com/group/dataportability-...
Some of us have been having a lot of interesting discussions around the use, so i think our conversation will be very interesting and productive this evening.
We will publish what we learn back into the community and hope that this project can involve both 'users' like you and me as well as 'developers' working on larger sites in order to identity and support technologies that will enable Data Portability.
daniela barbosa
· 1 year ago
ha it made the links - links how smart.
here is what they look like
a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/danielabarbosa"rel="me"> LinkedIn
a href="http://www.twitter.com/scobleizer"rel="me">Twitter Feed
Nima
· 1 year ago
Hey Robert, you should set your post's CSS line-height to 130%-150%. It would make the text a bit easier to read.
Other than that it looks like a good time.
Asad
· 1 year ago
The only thing I really dislike is the subtle subliminal ad for seagate behind your scobleizer logo. Its the Seagate logo only turned inside out. Now that is pretty ridiculous.
francine hardaway
· 1 year ago
Wow! Looks great. I am jealous. But not very. You deserve it.
pamslim
· 1 year ago
I think it looks great Robert. Much easier on the eyes than the old one.
And the ad doesn't bother me a bit. I appreciate what you share through your work. And as a fellow parent of small ones, I know diapers ain't cheap.
Enjoy the facelift!
-Pam
JKE
· 1 year ago
Dude - it was about time for a redesign. New site looks much better.
Tony E
· 1 year ago
Looking good. It's about time you took your name brand to the next level. GigOm is a great example to follow.
Pete Gilbert
· 1 year ago
Looks very nice, much better than the old style. Few issues with the FF panel but that will get sorted. Good work.
Patrick Scoble
· 1 year ago
Nice, but I miss the picture of you and the tree. Man, I love that tree..
andrew_h
· 1 year ago
im too lazy to read all the comments to see if anyone else noted this, BUT when you click a link in your Friend Feed, well it sucks. click the "## more coments" and it open a panel in the iframe or div or whatever it is... Click the Twitter link and it opens your Twitter page in the same iframe or div... suxor.
your team needs to add that target frame crap.
that and personally i dont care for the picture of you. what's the deal are you telling Rocky where to take the tripod to set it up? i think you should opt for more of a pink chin on your fists look ;)
Rodney Rumford
· 1 year ago
Robert.
I LOVE the new design. The friend feed widget is a nice touch.
I think the ads are fine! Keep up the great work. Cheers!
Rodney
Comic Strip Blogger
· 1 year ago
it is unfair that wordpress.com allows you Robert to publish banners but others cant, even if they would like to pay
Adam S
· 1 year ago
So your website went from butt-ugly to really nice looking, and that means you sold out? Meh, give me the sold-out Scoble site anyday.
John Koetsier
· 1 year ago
Very nice, very nice.
Comic strip blogger: Scoble is often a test bed for testing of new technology. Just wait, you'll probably be able to do it as well pretty soon.
Mauricio
· 1 year ago
Robert,
Good job on the new design. I love the friendfeed stream.
Mauricio
RBA
· 1 year ago
Man, you REALLY like that picture holding the camera and pointing at me :-)
Anyway, congrats, I like it. Let's just hope the meat in the sandwich also continues as juicy as usual :-)
One of the perks is you get to redesign your theme and can also put up your own ads.
xavier vespa
· 1 year ago
Can I get the same?
radiohedlover
· 1 year ago
Hey, Scoble, what happened to the Snap Shots? I saw them at Web 2.0 and was blown away by how much cooler it can be than the way TechCrunch uses it. Just because one whiner complains, you take it down? Puhleeze! Let the whiner turn it off!!
pmaiorana
· 1 year ago
We just fixed the FriendFeed widget bug you guys were seeing. Let me know if you see anything else!
Paul Maiorana Director, Technology - Fast Company
John Walker
· 1 year ago
Robert,
Just tried to click a link in the FriendFeed box, an item you shared in Google Reader, and it opened the page in a small frame within this page. Shouldn't it launch a new tab or browser window?
therealmccrea
· 1 year ago
Looks great, Robert! One more vote for Disqus. One additonal advantage of adding Disqus: if someone reads your blog in Pulse and comments there, the comment will also come back here!
I like the new design. But one kinda simple item - you might want to add your name back to the title of the page / header. Yes, we know you, Robert Scoble = scobleizer but why not remind everyone?
Also, not sure if you can do this with wordpress or not but one feature I really like at TechCrunch in their comments is that the TC authors comments are colored differently from everyone else - I'd suggest seeing if that is possible (so your comments and any future guest posters if any - perhaps Rocky's comments for example, might be highlighted differently from everyone else's and stand out a bit)
Also re advertising - I may unique here (indeed full disclosure, this is a core part of my new company, Nearness Function) but I personally think multiple brands/sponsors is better for everyone involved than a single sponsor. Yes, it can (potentially) raise more conflicts, but it also serves to separate you a bit from any one sponsor. The price any one sponsor might pay may be less than the likely high cost Seagate is paying now but I'd guess the aggregate is higher. (for both good and perhaps ill think Nascar here - beyond the excess of the sponsors logos plastered everywhere, there is also a strong degree of loyalty to the sponsors from the fans of a given driver in no small part because such sponsorships are seen as both key to success and as long term commitments - not short fads but quite literally investments in terms of usually many years)
But overall glad to see the design shifts and look forward to seeing how it all settles down!
Shannon
Mo Cheeks
· 1 year ago
Viewing from my iPhone, looks great. Takes a while to load on edge with such heavy graphics and such... But thats AT&T's fault.
Keep up the good work & good for u selling out!
@MoCheeks
omfut
· 1 year ago
Yeh, thats a cool one. No jazzy stuff. I like the simplicity of the design. Iam sure micheal got u on the ad part. Who cares! as long as the reader love what u say, i dont think its that big of a deal. You just rock and love reading some of ur articles. Keep up the great work
Cheers, omfut
Sam Daams
· 1 year ago
That old look had kind of become your style to me Robert. Not sure I can get used to all these colours :) I do like the Friend feed though. Guessing we'll be seeing that all over the web in no time...
petnos
· 1 year ago
now here is better... just go on like that.
Matt Garrett
· 1 year ago
Clean and Simple design, I like it! :) MattG
Craig Mische
· 1 year ago
Nice job. I like it.
Cathryn Hrudicka
· 1 year ago
Robert, I really like your new design, and the FriendFeed widget is great. I've thought about putting FriendFeed on my blogs (I have Tumblr, Twitter, and other feeds on them now), so I think you're setting a good example by doing it. I also appreciate the links to your calendars and other main socnets.
Selling out? Aw, come on—since when is good design and a well thought-out UI selling out? That's always appropriate—it's attitude, not aesthetics. Your community verifies your integrity.
Andrew Warner
· 1 year ago
I think the best part of the redesign is that the posts are somehow easier to read. The whole thing is more functional.
Andy C
· 1 year ago
Different and better IMHO.
Please, please don't install Disqus.
My Disqus powered comments are working fine and you already have 103 comments on this post alone.
The addition of your blog would probably bring the Disqus infrastructure to its knees. If you insist, maybe ask for a dedicated server and pay for a VIP service :-)
Joe
· 1 year ago
Nice redesign!
Connor F. Feldman
· 1 year ago
Looks great! I think you were due for a change! Love what you do... keep it up.
Chris Howard
· 1 year ago
Great design, Robert. Very inspirational. Clean, clear, sharp.
Also like your robotic right arm with the camera attachment. ;)
Prokofy
· 1 year ago
Love it, nice and fresh, picture a lot better, love the ad, ads are good, getting paid is good.
On the side could be other blogs you recommend maybe or people on Twitter you like to follow, and you could rotate it.
The FriendFeed box is a nice touch. I recently added it to my main blog, above my Twitter box.
Regarding the comments at TechCrunch (with an ad at the very top, it should be noted), small ads do not bother me that much, or cause me to doubt someone's credibility. The ads that drive me up the wall are the ones on InfoWorld, in which the slightest click on the corner of the ad results in an ad displaying over the entire page, blocking the content that you want to read.
But different people use different designs. I like Dave Winer's blog design, and feel that it's fitting for his blog. Did you notice that he uses Disqus for comments now? :)
Angela
· 1 year ago
It's not "selling out," it's "cashing in." Playing blog diva is a full-time job. Right, Scobie?
Maurice Cheeks
· 1 year ago
Viewing on my iPhone & the site looks good! It loads rather slow with all the graphics and such... but thats AT&T's fault I guess.
Keep up the great work & good for you for selling out! :-)
@MoCheeks
sarahmeyers
· 1 year ago
It looks great!
Evan Sims
· 1 year ago
Fantastic, Robert! Loving the new look.
Steve
· 1 year ago
Much easier to read, I'll say that. Can't wait to hear the John Kerry-esque explanation of the ads given your past position.
Don't know which picture is worse: the Teletubby Scoble, or the "Look at me! I'm taking High School A-V" Scoble picture.
BTW, it's not polite to point :-)
antje wilsch
· 1 year ago
hi Robert, we emailed you last week about the photo walking group - can you point us in the direction to sign up for that? thx
PooPsTech
· 1 year ago
Well Scoble - it looks good! I like the style. What I like even more is the Seagate advertising! LOL! I guess it was time for you to take on the bazar and sell it all! LOL!
Todd W
· 1 year ago
Glad to see you redesigned, but man...Seagate's all over this place. I especially think the inverted and inside-out Seagate logo in your banner has to go.
BTW: Fast Company is awesome! The mag is great.
Alex Hammer
· 1 year ago
Congratulations on the redesign. It looks fabulous, IMO. Between Scoble and Arrington, they are going to make each other rich (at least in traffic) with all the "controversy". Hmmmm. That said, they are two of the hardest working individuals anywhere. Robert is genuinely kind to people across the board. I like that.
adsensestrategiesadsense
· 1 year ago
I just redesigned mine too, though I suspect you know a hell of a lot more about these things than me. Still, despite it having been as easy as falling off a log for me (relative Newbie that I am, and using the super-simple easy-peesy app that I did), I think she's a-looking pretty sharp, and certainly better than before (though there is some code mucked up in one place, gotta fix that somehow). Check 'er out at http://adsensestrategiesadsense.wordpress.com
Douglas Karr
· 1 year ago
Robert - congratulations on the design. Very light and friendly! A nice improvement from your last design. :)
Gregg
· 1 year ago
"UPDATE: TechCrunch says my sell out is complete"
Don't you listen to them Robert. TechCrunch is dead wrong! I'm sure your sell out is only just beginning.
Matt Cutts
· 1 year ago
Hey, good stuff! I like it.
Ethan
· 1 year ago
Hey Robert, looks pretty good! Couple things though.
1. There should be more posts on the first homepage, there is a setting somewhere in wordpress for this. That way people can get a better idea of the different content without having to go through archives.
2. Logo is good, but not liking the search bar design. And Subscribe should be vertically centered with the feed icon maybe.
Best, Ethan
Luke Gedeon
· 1 year ago
It looks nice. It really does. It's just not Scoble. Oh well. As long as you like it.... that's what counts.
LPH
· 1 year ago
Nice change! Portrait mode on a Tablet PC forces a scroll to the right. Maybe this can be fixed in any patches or changes to the design.
Larry Kless
· 1 year ago
Nice one Robert, the new design is slick and suits your higher production quality work at FastCompany. Don't worry about being a sell out, people will love you and hate you either way. The Friendfeed and FastCompanyTV widgets are cool too. Out with the old and in the with the new. Best regards!
Anuj Choudhary
· 1 year ago
Nice layout Robert.I love your blog and with this redesign may be there are more reasons to visit your page. For google reader addicts like me, it's only the content tat matters :D
@JoeHobot
· 1 year ago
Why is so against you? I don't understand lol. Btw love the new design!!!!!
Ed Shull
· 1 year ago
The design is great. I'm a little disappointed that the Fast Company team didn't use Drupal for your site like they did for theirs. It would have been great to have more community features like their site.
Dileepa
· 1 year ago
Looks great, really.
rishi
· 1 year ago
Hi robert, Great redesign. I really love the freind feed. But it only shows the last 3-4 items. It would be great if there were a scroll bar so that the last 15-20 items could be seen.
Josh
· 1 year ago
I'd say you're missing a link to your Qik page from the sidebar.
mark lucovsky
· 1 year ago
Robert, Nice job on your site.
Johnny Sutherland
· 1 year ago
Excellent Robert - nice work. Nice and clean. Well done.
Matt
· 1 year ago
This looks really good.
kosso
· 1 year ago
good stuff! and about time too! :))
btw: I dont like how friendfeed doesn't pick up the author's name of a post. It's just "posted a blog post..." - tested with a feed containing the author tag. still didn't work.
anyway. great stuff! You were looking a bit young in the old pic! lol
looking forward to showing you what I've been working on - but I'm still sorting code for what I call the 'scobleizer effect' :)) heh - hey! you're a feature!
Eric Hamby
· 1 year ago
alot better :P
Jack
· 1 year ago
Presumably Haewon Kye knows how "text size" works (or doesn't) in Internet Explorer. So presumably there are no longer enough Internet Explorer users to bother about.... ;-)
fpettit
· 1 year ago
Looks great. Love the FriendFeed stream on there. Also with Adblock plus in Firefox the ads are nuked as well. The ads do not bother me because I will NEVER see them.
So is the wide format blog the "HD" of blogging templates? :)
Nice FriendFeed widget - didn't realize it was available. Learn something new every day!
BTW - for those of you with a more enterprise than personal slant, our quarterly research topic for Q1 was Enterprise 2.0 - go get a free copy at www.aiim.org/enterprise20 - pushing 1000 downloads as of now.
Cheers, Dan
Adam
· 1 year ago
Wow... It's totally different.. Threw me off this morning.
LoveTheCool BLOG
· 1 year ago
@mitch - are you kidding with that POV on ads on this blog? There are plenty of commercial places on the web for people to "click and learn something". And as far as raising a brands awareness, that's best left to sites that aren't expected to be objective.
Marc Eisenstadt
· 1 year ago
Nice .. great and tidy use of sidebar widget-space, providing useful links without overwhelming the reader! Hmmm... although you'll obviously have your own 'big stats' tools a la Google Analytics, Wordpress blogstats, etc., I'd be interested in your thoughts about a compact 'show em all at a glance' type of geo-hit-counter widget for your sidebar, namely our own ClustrMaps. Despite the shameless self-promotion of this comment, I actually think it addresses a different kind of need (compared to a standard counter widget), and would be in keeping with your new useful-without-overwhelming approach: ClustrMaps shows the rest of your readership where everyone else is, in the most scalable and compact format of any comparable widget now available. Anyway, shout if it's of interest - you can obviously have the no-ads-and-better-maps version, ClustrMaps+, which we can set up for you.
Cheers -Marc
JP Adams
· 1 year ago
Your "about" section is not only too professional, but its moving into the realm of 'corporate speak'.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
JP Adams: funny, it's the same wording I've had for the past three years.
Brendan Cosgrove
· 1 year ago
Love the redesign. Navigation is nice a easy. Don't listen to the haters about the ad space. Makes perfect sense to me.
Jim
· 1 year ago
I miss the guy next to the tree!
This new design is slick and very polished, but I miss the turn-of-the-century look of your old blog - it was so delightfully simple.
See you on FF!
d3vmax
· 1 year ago
Although I would like to shout out 'sell out, sell out!'. I refrain as I see that putting an ad does not make a difference and I don't really care but it but it does seem a bit hypocritical (As you were agaisnt it before and made big posts on it) and maybe a sign that you were better off before than today due to a few failed business decisions you made in the past.
Well like the redesign and hope all is going well but I do have one objection. I can see that you have a seagate advert but why the seagate swirls behind your name in the banner? I hope you get some more individuality. If you want a free logo made I wouldn't mind helping you make a kick ass one.
later!
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Believe it or not, the swirls were an accident and we're redesigning the banner to take them out.
chrisbrogan
· 1 year ago
Looks really good, Robert. Congratulations on a new, smooth design.
Greg
· 1 year ago
The site looks much better. Good job. Cheers
DP Dan
· 1 year ago
Hey Robert,
Congrats on the redesign. It's a perfect opportunity to add a "Disclosure Policy" link to the bottom/side of your blog, linking to a brief statement of any conflicts and you policy of disclosing them for readers.
For example, if you blog about a Seagate competitor, do you plan to remind the reader that Seagate is a sponsor of yours? What if you blog about a competitor to FastCompany, who isn't a cash sponsor of yours but you definitely have the potential for financial gain from FastCompany success?
It's easy to think that everyone already knows your interests/conflicts/policy, but the reality is new people stumble across your blog daily and have no idea. Like Privacy Policy links, a Disclosure Policy link on every page provides old/new readers a standard phrase to look for and build trust with the publisher they are reading.
A disclosure policy is smart. I plan to disclose every bias I have.
The problem isn't what happens when I blog about a Seagate competitor. If there was a real bias I just wouldn't blog about the competitor at all.
But, I'd love to help my readers figure out my conflicts in an easier way.
jack
· 1 year ago
it looks good..too bad we can say the same about the content
Venu
· 1 year ago
The design looks great and loved the font. Any reason for avoiding the navigation menu in the header ?
Interesting to see that no pages are hosted locally except "archives" !
Also loved the way you've linked "About Me" linking to Wikipedia only that the wikipedia page needs to be updated (It doesn't say that you are currently working in FastCompany :) )
DP Dan
· 1 year ago
Glad to hear it Robert!
I just used the Seagate competitor as one example. There are a variety of scenarios where you might blog or converse with a spectrum of conflict involved, including financial and non-financial gain/loss. In fact, the Disclosure Policy at your blog is a great one-stop place for readers to learn about your conflicts and disclosure practices across a variety of services. Imagine including in your DP how you intend to disclose on your blog, comments elsewhere, Twitter, FriendFeed and others with less real estate involved -- the emergence of such a cross-service standard would move the whole transparency topic into the post-blog era.
I care less about what your specific policy is -- that's a personal decision. I do, however, believe that posting a DP and linking from every page with anchor text "Disclosure Policy" will help users -- and possibly encourage other social media early adopters to do the same.
Therefore, my follow-up question is: Did you intend your comment above "I plan to disclose every bias I have." to be your Disclosure Policy or do you plan to create a specific Disclosure Policy page, linking it from your footer or sidebars? My suggestion was the latter...
Given your integration of blogs, twitter, friendfeed and the like in this redesign; I'd love to highlight your Disclosure Policy as one example of how to increase transparency across services.
All Comments
like the new look to the site. good job.
I think the new look is great... to be honest, your previous design did nothing to bring me by regularly, I just kept getting updates at Twitter and RSS. Now I'll stop by more often. :)
also.. is the seagate logo peeking up in the header not a bit much? Sponsorship is good... god bless it.. but in the header, as part of the design? Oi... not feeling that so much. hehehe
Already commented via friendfeed. You should add a special "Classic Mode" for your loyal readers who came to the site, so the blog can be seen in its old-school, ghetto, retro fashion. Or the easier way could be just change the title font and the header photos so we get that old picture of you in front of the tree or whatever, I already forgot! :)
That would be a distinctive way to honor the waybackness of the old design. Hard to get rid of old, comfortable shoes for shiny new ones.
@elliottng
Kept it simple, clean and added a lot more of "you"!
I still can't like FriendFeed as it just adds even more to my "information overload" so I'm just paying attention to Twitter (less exhaustively than before these days) and follow a bunch of feeds!
But nice redesign (at last!) ;)
Keep it up Scoble! ^^,
Equally, you have struck a good balance between engaging video/image content and the actual blog posts.
My only criticism is that the seagate ad is a little TOO large (and the search box above it doesn't match the width of the ad box)!
Still no link to http://blendingthemix.com though!
http://friendfeed.com/embed
Feel free to visit and comment on any of my blogs...
http://www.bowlofcheese.com
http://www.thingstoworryabout.com
http://www.jeffcutler.com
The Things to Worry About blog is also open for submissions. Just leave a comment and I'll post it as a worry.
Thanks,
Jeff Cutler
I dont get to see the ad's, AdBlockPlus removes all ad's on Firefox.
Sidenote - If M$FT spends some time and adds AdBlock as a default setting on IE - How could that impact Google or Yahoo! You will see fewer clicks, because people wont see the ad's
It hurts absolutely no one and it actually help some people. If you click the ad, you might actually be interested in the product. If you don't click it, you still see it so the brand raises its awareness.
Now, overdoing it is a totally different story :P
As far as what else should you add to the side, I'd say nothing It's already packed full of almost to much stuff.
Otherwise the new design is really clean and well organized.
The old one looked...well...dated. VERY dated. First time I visited, I honestly couldn't believe an A-list blog would look so bad. LOL
I like the redesign. Very clean. Very connected. Nice job.
Other than that, everything pretty clean and cool.
Congrats
Ian, try this one: http://friendfeed.com/embed
I'm with Paul on the advertising size and alignment - otherwise everything looks great; love the friendfeed action
I like this design, nice and clean. FF sidebar looking good too!
Using FF though the Photos and about, appear below the submit comment button.. Perhaps its my 125% DPI setting on WinXP (UPDATE -- yep, quick check and it went back up)
Any chance of making the template "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License" for other bloggers???
Other than that, it looks good. I like the design.
Are you part of "Mansueto Digital Network" now? I saw that in the footer, and was trying to figure out what it has to do with anything. Parent company for FastCompany?
The site looks clean, readable and has lots of extra features to follow you.
Looking forward to the new stories
Based on your interest in friendfeed - I will definitely have to check it out.
Just a thought. Call it the Scoble and put a link to your blog on it. :)
- Bricktash
site looks fine, but something disturbing about the picture. Is your hand really that small or do you just have a HUGE head !
Dib.
My suggestion is what i did is to start with a simple addition of rel=me on the submenu items like this on my LinkedIn link on my blog:
LinkedIn
so your Twitter link would be
Twitter Feed
More info on rel=me including a quick video overview here:
http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me
i am new at this and hope to be 'schooled' today at our DataPortability Project meetup where our topic is our new 'Do It Yourself' project and the first project which will revolve around rel=me. More info here: http://groups.google.com/group/dataportability-...
Some of us have been having a lot of interesting discussions around the use, so i think our conversation will be very interesting and productive this evening.
We will publish what we learn back into the community and hope that this project can involve both 'users' like you and me as well as 'developers' working on larger sites in order to identity and support technologies that will enable Data Portability.
here is what they look like
a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/danielabarbosa"rel="me"> LinkedIn
a href="http://www.twitter.com/scobleizer"rel="me">Twitter Feed
Other than that it looks like a good time.
And the ad doesn't bother me a bit. I appreciate what you share through your work. And as a fellow parent of small ones, I know diapers ain't cheap.
Enjoy the facelift!
-Pam
your team needs to add that target frame crap.
that and personally i dont care for the picture of you. what's the deal are you telling Rocky where to take the tripod to set it up? i think you should opt for more of a pink chin on your fists look ;)
I LOVE the new design. The friend feed widget is a nice touch.
I think the ads are fine! Keep up the great work. Cheers!
Rodney
Comic strip blogger: Scoble is often a test bed for testing of new technology. Just wait, you'll probably be able to do it as well pretty soon.
Good job on the new design. I love the friendfeed stream.
Mauricio
Anyway, congrats, I like it. Let's just hope the meat in the sandwich also continues as juicy as usual :-)
Check out this link for the WordPress VIP Program: http://wordpress.com/vip-hosting/
One of the perks is you get to redesign your theme and can also put up your own ads.
Paul Maiorana
Director, Technology - Fast Company
Just tried to click a link in the FriendFeed box, an item you shared in Google Reader, and it opened the page in a small frame within this page. Shouldn't it launch a new tab or browser window?
(Another Joseph Smarr project.) :)
http://blog.plaxo.com/archives/2008/04/sharing_...
I like the new design. But one kinda simple item - you might want to add your name back to the title of the page / header. Yes, we know you, Robert Scoble = scobleizer but why not remind everyone?
Also, not sure if you can do this with wordpress or not but one feature I really like at TechCrunch in their comments is that the TC authors comments are colored differently from everyone else - I'd suggest seeing if that is possible (so your comments and any future guest posters if any - perhaps Rocky's comments for example, might be highlighted differently from everyone else's and stand out a bit)
Also re advertising - I may unique here (indeed full disclosure, this is a core part of my new company, Nearness Function) but I personally think multiple brands/sponsors is better for everyone involved than a single sponsor. Yes, it can (potentially) raise more conflicts, but it also serves to separate you a bit from any one sponsor. The price any one sponsor might pay may be less than the likely high cost Seagate is paying now but I'd guess the aggregate is higher. (for both good and perhaps ill think Nascar here - beyond the excess of the sponsors logos plastered everywhere, there is also a strong degree of loyalty to the sponsors from the fans of a given driver in no small part because such sponsorships are seen as both key to success and as long term commitments - not short fads but quite literally investments in terms of usually many years)
But overall glad to see the design shifts and look forward to seeing how it all settles down!
Shannon
Keep up the good work & good for u selling out!
@MoCheeks
Cheers,
omfut
:)
MattG
Selling out? Aw, come on—since when is good design and a well thought-out UI selling out? That's always appropriate—it's attitude, not aesthetics. Your community verifies your integrity.
Please, please don't install Disqus.
My Disqus powered comments are working fine and you already have 103 comments on this post alone.
The addition of your blog would probably bring the Disqus infrastructure to its knees. If you insist, maybe ask for a dedicated server and pay for a VIP service :-)
Also like your robotic right arm with the camera attachment. ;)
On the side could be other blogs you recommend maybe or people on Twitter you like to follow, and you could rotate it.
Regarding the comments at TechCrunch (with an ad at the very top, it should be noted), small ads do not bother me that much, or cause me to doubt someone's credibility. The ads that drive me up the wall are the ones on InfoWorld, in which the slightest click on the corner of the ad results in an ad displaying over the entire page, blocking the content that you want to read.
But different people use different designs. I like Dave Winer's blog design, and feel that it's fitting for his blog. Did you notice that he uses Disqus for comments now? :)
Keep up the great work & good for you for selling out!
:-)
@MoCheeks
Don't know which picture is worse: the Teletubby Scoble, or the "Look at me! I'm taking High School A-V" Scoble picture.
BTW, it's not polite to point :-)
BTW: Fast Company is awesome! The mag is great.
Check 'er out at http://adsensestrategiesadsense.wordpress.com
Don't you listen to them Robert. TechCrunch is dead wrong! I'm sure your sell out is only just beginning.
1. There should be more posts on the first homepage, there is a setting somewhere in wordpress for this. That way people can get a better idea of the different content without having to go through archives.
2. Logo is good, but not liking the search bar design. And Subscribe should be vertically centered with the feed icon maybe.
Best, Ethan
For google reader addicts like me, it's only the content tat matters :D
Great redesign. I really love the freind feed. But it only shows the last 3-4 items. It would be great if there were a scroll bar so that the last 15-20 items could be seen.
btw: I dont like how friendfeed doesn't pick up the author's name of a post. It's just "posted a blog post..." - tested with a feed containing the author tag. still didn't work.
anyway. great stuff! You were looking a bit young in the old pic! lol
looking forward to showing you what I've been working on - but I'm still sorting code for what I call the 'scobleizer effect' :)) heh - hey! you're a feature!
http://www.clayton-nichols.com
Nice FriendFeed widget - didn't realize it was available. Learn something new every day!
BTW - for those of you with a more enterprise than personal slant, our quarterly research topic for Q1 was Enterprise 2.0 - go get a free copy at www.aiim.org/enterprise20 - pushing 1000 downloads as of now.
Cheers,
Dan
Cheers
-Marc
This new design is slick and very polished, but I miss the turn-of-the-century look of your old blog - it was so delightfully simple.
See you on FF!
Well like the redesign and hope all is going well but I do have one objection. I can see that you have a seagate advert but why the seagate swirls behind your name in the banner? I hope you get some more individuality. If you want a free logo made I wouldn't mind helping you make a kick ass one.
later!
Congrats on the redesign. It's a perfect opportunity to add a "Disclosure Policy" link to the bottom/side of your blog, linking to a brief statement of any conflicts and you policy of disclosing them for readers.
For example, if you blog about a Seagate competitor, do you plan to remind the reader that Seagate is a sponsor of yours? What if you blog about a competitor to FastCompany, who isn't a cash sponsor of yours but you definitely have the potential for financial gain from FastCompany success?
It's easy to think that everyone already knows your interests/conflicts/policy, but the reality is new people stumble across your blog daily and have no idea. Like Privacy Policy links, a Disclosure Policy link on every page provides old/new readers a standard phrase to look for and build trust with the publisher they are reading.
You can create a basic DP at http://www.disclosurepolicy.org/ or you can create your own. Whaddya say?
The problem isn't what happens when I blog about a Seagate competitor. If there was a real bias I just wouldn't blog about the competitor at all.
But, I'd love to help my readers figure out my conflicts in an easier way.
Interesting to see that no pages are hosted locally except "archives" !
Also loved the way you've linked "About Me" linking to Wikipedia only that the wikipedia page needs to be updated (It doesn't say that you are currently working in FastCompany :) )
I just used the Seagate competitor as one example. There are a variety of scenarios where you might blog or converse with a spectrum of conflict involved, including financial and non-financial gain/loss. In fact, the Disclosure Policy at your blog is a great one-stop place for readers to learn about your conflicts and disclosure practices across a variety of services. Imagine including in your DP how you intend to disclose on your blog, comments elsewhere, Twitter, FriendFeed and others with less real estate involved -- the emergence of such a cross-service standard would move the whole transparency topic into the post-blog era.
I care less about what your specific policy is -- that's a personal decision. I do, however, believe that posting a DP and linking from every page with anchor text "Disclosure Policy" will help users -- and possibly encourage other social media early adopters to do the same.
Therefore, my follow-up question is: Did you intend your comment above "I plan to disclose every bias I have." to be your Disclosure Policy or do you plan to create a specific Disclosure Policy page, linking it from your footer or sidebars? My suggestion was the latter...
Given your integration of blogs, twitter, friendfeed and the like in this redesign; I'd love to highlight your Disclosure Policy as one example of how to increase transparency across services.