Scobleizer: Why my ego never gets out of control…
Colin
· 3 years ago
I have to side with Robert on this one. I am a small cog in a 35K employee company, and our meagre attempts to start internal "blogs" are not anything I can confidentantly describe as successful. The reason is internal politics, with rules like "you are not allowed to comment on "D's" blog. This attitude is simply a fact that makes internal blogs, not blogs. Blogs have to be available to the masses. Internal things are something but they aren't blogs. PS .... Robert has to be the most "out there" guy in the world, so give hime a break!
Anonymous
· 3 years ago
Some of your talk on advertisers and private blogs seems kind of egotistical. But you do have a point about MSN Spaces (or blogs in general).
The MSN Spaces Team is irresponsibly (and possibly blatently) mis-classifying blogs, which makes my blod boil as well. I've already posted my thoughts on the issue so I won't repost them here. Every single MSN Space created is not a blog. Similarly, every single wordpress blog created is not a blog.
I think you've got the right idea in brining up this discussion, it's just that no solid definition of a blog exists. And yeah, you're probably gonna get lynched for the stuff you did get wrong.
Also, it appears Maryam just voices her opinion on topics wihout giving it a thought first, no offense :).
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Well, keep in mind Maryam was half joking when she said that. That's the problem with ASCII text. You can't put all that funny facial stuff into a line of text.
As far as egotistical. Yeah, I am an egotistical baaahhhhssttttaarrrrddd on some of this stuff. But, then, there's gotta be SOME value to being an A list blogger! :-)
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Anonymous: >I think you’ve got the right idea in brining up this discussion, it’s just that no solid definition of a blog exists.
One exists. It's in my book. And in a two-year-old Bill Gates ThinkWeek paper that he accepted (and used in several of his speeches). :-)
Just because it isn't accepted universally doesn't mean it's not solid and that it doesn't properly define blogging. At least to the point where we can have a decent conversation about such.
polizeros
· 3 years ago
If an MSN Spaces blog is private or has little content then no one can (or will) link to it. Thus it doesn't really matter if it's a blog or not because practically no one will see it anyway.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Bob, but it matters if executives count them and then say "we have more blogs than anyone else." Which is what it seems like happened at TechED in New Zealand with a Microsoft executive (see my other posts for links).
Pradeep
· 3 years ago
Ok, so we agree that what MSN did was wrong. What will we do about it then?
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Pradeep: I don't know. I am going to dig through and see if I can come up with a real blog winner.
Jeff Sandquist
· 3 years ago
>Jeff, is an intranet page the same >as an Internet page?
Nope. But that is why we call them pages on the Intranet vs. pages on the Internet.
When it comes to blogs on Intranets people call internal or Intranet blogs. They prefix them with their location.
We don't need another word to describe reverse chronological posted items.
No Robert, I would have a more well thought out discussion with Bill or anyone else if that really was the point of my post. The high order bit to my post was your ego. That's why I highlighted those comments and didn't dig further at the discussion of a new name for private blogs which is ludicrous.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Jeff, did you just call them "private blogs?" You did. Even you agree they aren't just "blogs."
Thanks for agreeing with me and my oversized ego! :-)
But, let's get back on track about the real point I was trying to make, which is I suspect that when Live Spaces says they have 70 million blogs that they aren't quite being honest. Now's the time for your ego to take a gulp. Are all Live Spaces blogs? If not, which ones aren't?
brem
· 3 years ago
You know what, before I started blogging, before I knew of the word "blog", I would say "webpage". To me, all blogs were simply webpages, with a chronological list of articles, and comment enabled.
So in the perspective that static webpages aren't blogs, all blogs are webpages, but not all webpages are blogs.
n00b
· 3 years ago
"Isn't accepted universally?" Hehehe, it doesn't even seem to be accepted by any of your own blog readers judging by the comments. ;)
So why don't you put up a poll, like I asked earlier? See if people agree with you that something can't be a blog unless it meets your royal highness's five standards.
You said nobody complained about your definition back when you wrote it in your book, but you don't seem to have considered that maybe they just didn't care about it. You do realize that most bloggers haven't read your book, right?
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Oh, Brem, WHY did you have to bring comments into this? Now we'll argue endlessly about whether a blog can be a blog if it doesn't have comments! (AKA Dave Winer's blog).
Can you tell I've been through this before? Heheh.
n00b: I don't see the consensus you see here. In fact, the only consensus I can see is most of my readers don't care about this issue (since I have about 30,000 everyday and only, what, a handful have checked in on this at all?)
N. Maffeo
· 3 years ago
Oversized ego? How come it seems that every time robert says something authoritative about a subject that he's more than qualified to speak on, people says he has a big ego?
Well, maybe you're right. Maybe he does have an ego.. but I would argue it's more in line with the definition of 3(b) than with 3(a) (see below) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ego
Hint: If he truly had a big ego, he wouldn't be getting his hands dirty in the comments with all us plebeians and would certainly of taken exception to the fact that a complete stranger is refering to him so informally by his first name. (see first paragraph)
PXLated
· 3 years ago
But only a handful ever check-in and comment, doesn't mean they don't have an opinion. I'll bet more would click a poll button though. And, just because you wrote "a" book doesn't mean your opinion is necessarily correct or the prevailing view. ;-) Way back, didn't they (press and everyone) call the Intel presidents internal employee postings a "blog"? Think they did and it wasn't available to you and me other than through leaks.
abc
· 3 years ago
Since you have left Microsoft, I dont know how long you will stay in the A-list, so enjoy the ego ride while it lasts.
n00b
· 3 years ago
Robert: How could you miss the consensus? You wrote the following:
"Blogging is a well-known gesture. Here’s the five things that blogging is:
1) Easy to do. Type in a box and hit publish. 2) Discoverable. THrough search engines. IE, public. 3) Social. I can track when you link to me from another domain, either through search engines, through trackbacks, or through my referer logs. 4) Permalinkable. I can send you a link directly to a post. 5) Syndicatable. I can use a news aggregator to read your content, which lets me read a lot more blogs.
Don’t have one of those five things? You aren’t a blog. Period. Not up for discussion."
Whereupon every post that I can remember disagreed with you, your dictate that it wasn't up for discussion notwithstanding. Hehehe, maybe you can claim it wasn't a consensus because they all disagreed with you in their own unique ways. ;)
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
abc: the A list is overrated. I have to put up with anonymous commenters who think they are hurting my feelings by telling me "this fun game will end soon!"
They didn't try to say it was the same thing as a regular, old, standard "blog."
Deadprogrammer
· 3 years ago
The blog that can be described is not the eternal Blog. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Chris
· 3 years ago
"Ok, so we agree that what MSN did was wrong. What will we do about it then?"
How about we have an A-list blogger rip them a new one?
Zaki
· 3 years ago
Robert, what you are talking about is relevance. Remember, when one of the search engines claimed it has twice as many indices as another one? Still that engine was nowhere near as relevant (according to a huge number of people, users of the latter engine).
So basicly your argument is that Microsoft should not count blogs that have no content, because they don't fit your definition of what a blog is. And I guess noone can deny that you are indeed an expert on blogs.
My take however is that you take it way too personal and, frankly, it starts to look like you have a vendetta against (teams in) microsoft. So instead of saying that this service is (I don't need to watch my language), how about proposing a solution. How would you count blogs on spaces? It's a tough issue, because you would have to, in a way, understand the contents of the space (or lack thereof). Also regularity, thus weighing blogs in one way or another.
Counting all the spaces does achieve one thing though: it shows you how much more convenient, easy to use and find spaces is. Whereas the other blog services probably don't attract as many people, and the ones they do, tend to be "high-quality" posters. A bit like with personal computers vs mainframes at their time. It's still a computer (albeit personal), it attracts a lot of people, many of whom don't have much to add. So how about calling these 'personal blogs'? I can sort of see these "personal blogs" interconnect and interact with one another acting as an online presence for individuals. Kind of like... you know... what internet did with personal computers. So my rant boils down to the same thing it started with: relevance. Which kind of blog will be more relevant in the future? The "elitist" or the "easy"?
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Zaki: the future relevant blog will be the same thing as it is today:
1) One with more readers. 2) One with more inbound links. 3) One with more comments. 4) One with more posts. 5) One with more metadata (like geotags). 6) One with more audio. 7) One with more video. 8) One with more photos. 9) One with more of a certain kind of content (Google ads pay a lot more for the word "mortgages" than it does for "world peace" for instance).
Advertisers will decide which is most important to them. I think #1 and #9 combined are gonna be the sweet spot. But there's lots of opportunities in the other two, as well (I'm betting on video, since it's harder to create video than it is to create text).
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
>How would you count blogs on spaces?
I answered that in my first blog in this series. It's easy.
A blog is a blog on Spaces if it is open to the public (OK, that part is controversial), has at least two posts to the blog part of Spaces in the past 30 days, and has at least 500 words of text content.
That's an easy algorithm for a coder to write and build, although gotta make sure it doesn't kill the system (with 70 million spaces to go through that could be an engineering task).
Ben Harris
· 3 years ago
I must admit that I have been a little surprised about your rant on what constitutes a blog. Your list of recently updated 'spaces' mocking people who would write about their cat or their children is quite condescending and not something I would expect from someone who I thought wants to see blogging grow.
Here are a few rules you might like to remember about blogging that it seems you've forgotten in your elite traffic-filled days:
1. You can blog about anything. 2. You can blog as little or as often as you like. 3. You don't have to have been blogging for X years before it is considered a blog. 4. You don't need Robert Scoble to acknowledge your blog for it to become a real blog.
Btw, I agree that Microsoft touting they have the most blogs is pretty ridiculous, meaningless and utter crap too. They obviously have a size complex and I don't want to know where in the company it might originate from.
Robert Scoble
· 3 years ago
Ben: I want more blogs that add something to the conversation. Now, go back and read those blogs I made fun of and tell me ANYTHING they added to the conversation ANYWHERE.
Sometimes the world needs a little elitism.
But, you do make a good point. I should be more encouraging to new bloggers. I just don't think we gain anything by setting the bar so low.
allison
· 3 years ago
Just because YOU have a definition of a blog, that don't mean it is a definition. I thought the industry was way past the days of people defining their own standards...
Maybe you should control this a little better. Like approving everyone's request to set up a 'blog' globally. Or scanning all blogs (which you seem to have the time to do anyway) and striking people off the list because they don't hit the average word count per post bar, or because they don't post all the time (generally the reason to the latter is because they have a life outside of tech)
Christopher Coulter
· 3 years ago
After the constant blood-feeding of vapidly inane over-inflated nonsensical fuzzy-accounting from the MSN Vampires, a few bitch slaps, are more than well-deserved and so very well-earned. I think everyone (rational) agrees on that. They brought it upon themselves.
As to the trifling definition of a blog, fight among yourselves, I care not. All so much 'car-wreck-in-slow-motion' to those not playing the insipidly cultic games.
Teemu Arina
· 3 years ago
I think the definition "Dark blog" (Suw Charman) is quite nice for internal blogs. They are in the darkness, invisible from the public web.
Dawn Douglass
· 3 years ago
This discussion reminds me of the controversy surrounding the word "marriage" and who gets to decide what it means: the traditionalists or the progressives.
I was thinking of "blog" as just the form. I'm creating an "internal blog" for my company. But as a traditionalist, I do think that the people who worked to create something are the ones who get to define it, and Robert definitely falls into that category, so I think I'll call it something else.
How 'bout "ploop"? :)
Sean
· 3 years ago
I have a car. I drive it multiple times every day. Therefore I'm a car expert.
Did I design how my car works? No. Did I develop the technology behind my car? No. Do I put forth how to make my car better? Rarely, but not to car designers, since to them I'm an jerk.
Mostly I just drive my car and am vocal about it and try to get other people to drive cars. I laugh at anonymous posts that form dissenting opinions of my car. That makes me a car expert.
Karim
· 3 years ago
After the constant blood-feeding of vapidly inane over-inflated nonsensical fuzzy-accounting from the MSN Vampires, a few bitch slaps, are more than well-deserved and so very well-earned.
Word.
Nigel Parker
· 3 years ago
It could be worth watching George Moore's presentation in the Tech.Ed NZ keynote...
Then contrast that with Rowan Simpson's presentation who built a website that sold for $700 million dollars.
anand
· 3 years ago
>>>Blogging is something I’m a weeeeee bit of an expert on.
hmmmmmm................
>>UPDATE: Maryam just said “I think you’re full of it. I think you’re picking on the Spaces team because they are easy to pick on. Why don’t you go pick on someone who is hard to pick on?” (She was just screaming because her Mac didn’t display her blog properly).
ROFL :) Actually scoble still needs microsofts help to get attention. He does not have much to talk about his own company... the scoble that we know who provided sensible criticisms is history now...
All Comments
This attitude is simply a fact that makes internal blogs, not blogs.
Blogs have to be available to the masses. Internal things are something but they aren't blogs.
PS .... Robert has to be the most "out there" guy in the world, so give hime a break!
The MSN Spaces Team is irresponsibly (and possibly blatently) mis-classifying blogs, which makes my blod boil as well. I've already posted my thoughts on the issue so I won't repost them here. Every single MSN Space created is not a blog. Similarly, every single wordpress blog created is not a blog.
I think you've got the right idea in brining up this discussion, it's just that no solid definition of a blog exists. And yeah, you're probably gonna get lynched for the stuff you did get wrong.
Also, it appears Maryam just voices her opinion on topics wihout giving it a thought first, no offense :).
As far as egotistical. Yeah, I am an egotistical baaahhhhssttttaarrrrddd on some of this stuff. But, then, there's gotta be SOME value to being an A list blogger! :-)
One exists. It's in my book. And in a two-year-old Bill Gates ThinkWeek paper that he accepted (and used in several of his speeches). :-)
Just because it isn't accepted universally doesn't mean it's not solid and that it doesn't properly define blogging. At least to the point where we can have a decent conversation about such.
>as an Internet page?
Nope. But that is why we call them pages on the Intranet vs. pages on the Internet.
When it comes to blogs on Intranets people call internal or Intranet blogs. They prefix them with their location.
We don't need another word to describe reverse chronological posted items.
No Robert, I would have a more well thought out discussion with Bill or anyone else if that really was the point of my post. The high order bit to my post was your ego. That's why I highlighted those comments and didn't dig further at the discussion of a new name for private blogs which is ludicrous.
Thanks for agreeing with me and my oversized ego! :-)
But, let's get back on track about the real point I was trying to make, which is I suspect that when Live Spaces says they have 70 million blogs that they aren't quite being honest. Now's the time for your ego to take a gulp. Are all Live Spaces blogs? If not, which ones aren't?
So in the perspective that static webpages aren't blogs, all blogs are webpages, but not all webpages are blogs.
So why don't you put up a poll, like I asked earlier? See if people agree with you that something can't be a blog unless it meets your royal highness's five standards.
You said nobody complained about your definition back when you wrote it in your book, but you don't seem to have considered that maybe they just didn't care about it. You do realize that most bloggers haven't read your book, right?
Can you tell I've been through this before? Heheh.
n00b: I don't see the consensus you see here. In fact, the only consensus I can see is most of my readers don't care about this issue (since I have about 30,000 everyday and only, what, a handful have checked in on this at all?)
Well, maybe you're right. Maybe he does have an ego.. but I would argue it's more in line with the definition of 3(b) than with 3(a) (see below)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ego
Hint:
If he truly had a big ego, he wouldn't be getting his hands dirty in the comments with all us plebeians and would certainly of taken exception to the fact that a complete stranger is refering to him so informally by his first name. (see first paragraph)
And, just because you wrote "a" book doesn't mean your opinion is necessarily correct or the prevailing view. ;-)
Way back, didn't they (press and everyone) call the Intel presidents internal employee postings a "blog"? Think they did and it wasn't available to you and me other than through leaks.
"Blogging is a well-known gesture. Here’s the five things that blogging is:
1) Easy to do. Type in a box and hit publish.
2) Discoverable. THrough search engines. IE, public.
3) Social. I can track when you link to me from another domain, either through search engines, through trackbacks, or through my referer logs.
4) Permalinkable. I can send you a link directly to a post.
5) Syndicatable. I can use a news aggregator to read your content, which lets me read a lot more blogs.
Don’t have one of those five things? You aren’t a blog. Period. Not up for discussion."
Whereupon every post that I can remember disagreed with you, your dictate that it wasn't up for discussion notwithstanding. Hehehe, maybe you can claim it wasn't a consensus because they all disagreed with you in their own unique ways. ;)
http://www.blogwriteforceos.com/blogwrite/2005/...
They didn't try to say it was the same thing as a regular, old, standard "blog."
How about we have an A-list blogger rip them a new one?
So basicly your argument is that Microsoft should not count blogs that have no content, because they don't fit your definition of what a blog is. And I guess noone can deny that you are indeed an expert on blogs.
My take however is that you take it way too personal and, frankly, it starts to look like you have a vendetta against (teams in) microsoft. So instead of saying that this service is (I don't need to watch my language), how about proposing a solution. How would you count blogs on spaces? It's a tough issue, because you would have to, in a way, understand the contents of the space (or lack thereof). Also regularity, thus weighing blogs in one way or another.
Counting all the spaces does achieve one thing though: it shows you how much more convenient, easy to use and find spaces is. Whereas the other blog services probably don't attract as many people, and the ones they do, tend to be "high-quality" posters. A bit like with personal computers vs mainframes at their time. It's still a computer (albeit personal), it attracts a lot of people, many of whom don't have much to add. So how about calling these 'personal blogs'? I can sort of see these "personal blogs" interconnect and interact with one another acting as an online presence for individuals. Kind of like... you know... what internet did with personal computers. So my rant boils down to the same thing it started with: relevance. Which kind of blog will be more relevant in the future? The "elitist" or the "easy"?
1) One with more readers.
2) One with more inbound links.
3) One with more comments.
4) One with more posts.
5) One with more metadata (like geotags).
6) One with more audio.
7) One with more video.
8) One with more photos.
9) One with more of a certain kind of content (Google ads pay a lot more for the word "mortgages" than it does for "world peace" for instance).
Advertisers will decide which is most important to them. I think #1 and #9 combined are gonna be the sweet spot. But there's lots of opportunities in the other two, as well (I'm betting on video, since it's harder to create video than it is to create text).
I answered that in my first blog in this series. It's easy.
A blog is a blog on Spaces if it is open to the public (OK, that part is controversial), has at least two posts to the blog part of Spaces in the past 30 days, and has at least 500 words of text content.
That's an easy algorithm for a coder to write and build, although gotta make sure it doesn't kill the system (with 70 million spaces to go through that could be an engineering task).
Here are a few rules you might like to remember about blogging that it seems you've forgotten in your elite traffic-filled days:
1. You can blog about anything.
2. You can blog as little or as often as you like.
3. You don't have to have been blogging for X years before it is considered a blog.
4. You don't need Robert Scoble to acknowledge your blog for it to become a real blog.
Btw, I agree that Microsoft touting they have the most blogs is pretty ridiculous, meaningless and utter crap too. They obviously have a size complex and I don't want to know where in the company it might originate from.
Sometimes the world needs a little elitism.
But, you do make a good point. I should be more encouraging to new bloggers. I just don't think we gain anything by setting the bar so low.
Maybe you should control this a little better. Like approving everyone's request to set up a 'blog' globally. Or scanning all blogs (which you seem to have the time to do anyway) and striking people off the list because they don't hit the average word count per post bar, or because they don't post all the time (generally the reason to the latter is because they have a life outside of tech)
As to the trifling definition of a blog, fight among yourselves, I care not. All so much 'car-wreck-in-slow-motion' to those not playing the insipidly cultic games.
I was thinking of "blog" as just the form. I'm creating an "internal blog" for my company. But as a traditionalist, I do think that the people who worked to create something are the ones who get to define it, and Robert definitely falls into that category, so I think I'll call it something else.
How 'bout "ploop"? :)
Did I design how my car works? No. Did I develop the technology behind my car? No. Do I put forth how to make my car better? Rarely, but not to car designers, since to them I'm an jerk.
Mostly I just drive my car and am vocal about it and try to get other people to drive cars. I laugh at anonymous posts that form dissenting opinions of my car. That makes me a car expert.
Word.
http://www.microsoft.com/nz/events/teched/keyno...
Then contrast that with Rowan Simpson's presentation who built a website that sold for $700 million dollars.
hmmmmmm................
>>UPDATE: Maryam just said “I think you’re full of it. I think you’re picking on the Spaces team because they are easy to pick on. Why don’t you go pick on someone who is hard to pick on?” (She was just screaming because her Mac didn’t display her blog properly).
ROFL :) Actually scoble still needs microsofts help to get attention. He does not have much to talk about his own company... the scoble that we know who provided sensible criticisms is history now...