Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Why my ego never gets out of control…

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

anand — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 19:59:36 -0000

>>>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...

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Nigel Parker — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 15:57:04 -0000

It could be worth watching George Moore's presentation in the Tech.Ed NZ keynote...

http://www.microsoft.com/nz...

Then contrast that with Rowan Simpson's presentation who built a website that sold for $700 million dollars.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Karim — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 11:18:44 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Sean — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:54:32 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Dawn Douglass — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 09:21:13 -0000

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"? :)

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Teemu Arina — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 05:31:32 -0000

I think the definition "Dark blog" (Suw Charman) is quite nice for internal blogs. They are in the darkness, invisible from the public web.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Christopher Coulter — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 05:07:58 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

allison — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:59:42 -0000

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)

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Robert Scoble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:31:29 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Ben Harris — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:25:54 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Robert Scoble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:02:22 -0000

>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).

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Robert Scoble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:00:05 -0000

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).

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Zaki — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:49:57 -0000

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"?

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Chris — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:17:23 -0000

"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?

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Deadprogrammer — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:53:13 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Robert Scoble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:45:07 -0000

PX: Intel called it an "internal blog."

http://www.blogwriteforceos...

They didn't try to say it was the same thing as a regular, old, standard "blog."

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Robert Scoble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:43:16 -0000

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!"

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

n00b — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:37:07 -0000

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. ;)

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

abc — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:19:32 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

PXLated — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:15:45 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

N. Maffeo — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:10:11 -0000

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...

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)

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Robert Scoble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:49:00 -0000

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?)

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

n00b — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:44:31 -0000

"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?

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

brem — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:44:23 -0000

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.

Re: Why my ego never gets out of control…

Robert Scoble — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:41:30 -0000

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?