Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Brad Phillips — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:15:54 -0000

I think anything that exploits us and gets us introduced to others is helpful!

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Jeffery Jay — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:47:27 -0000

Anyone know what ihype.com is about. I am getting many calls from them about signing up

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

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Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Christopher Coulter — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:51:08 -0000

Well, congrats. Least more stable (mentally, politically and fiscally) than Podtech, and the Scoble Curse, at least here, has more fuel for the eventual burn-out rate. Wish you woulda been here, before. No more crazy start-ups for you. Sigh. :)

My advice (for what it's worth) in no particular order.

1. Make them buy you a Steadi/Glide cam. Tripods are so directional limiting. And plus, Steadicam's allow cameramen to get away with your jump-hop style.

2. Stop surrounding yourself with 'worshipping' yes-men. It's nauseating and self-defeating. Rocky (and others) should rake over coals, over the hyper-active puppy-dog lapping. As they say, iron sharpens iron.

3. Walk-Thru's and Demo's are better than talking-heads.

4. Run-on mega-paragraph sentences are bad, as are, videos.

5. No inside baseball games. I don't give an iota of a care what Mike Arrington or Om Malik had for breakfast.

6. Think Subject Matter Experts, over Tech Celebrities.

7. Incestuous navel-gazing is bad. Moving photo's of people taking still photo's, wheee. Stop covering the bloggers/techies covering themselves, covering themselves.

8. Impossible perhaps, but background yourself. Let the work speak for itself. Edit as if you aren't there. Conversations are endless and pointless. Focus and cut. History Channel over mindless never-ending Charlie Rose.

9. Prepare. The 'who are you' fumbling dumb Scoble Show questions, makes for a rough start. Do thy homework and get to the point, fast. Elevator pitch'es, if they can't do it, they have to learn.

10. Go documentary thematic, over personality-cult-of-the-moment.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Christa — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:39:03 -0000

Hi Robert,
I learned about you through my boss, Bob Giampietro. I am currently reading your book, Naked Conversations, and was happy to hear about this new assignment you've taken up with Fast Company. It's one of my favorite magazine - I read it religiously and it completely makes a difference in my career. All the best on your new adventure.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

alexander katzeff — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:44:06 -0000

If FastCompany is looking for video production talent, I would suggest checking out Ricky Montalvo from Yahoo! Developer Network, he is their video producer and has a lot of skills behind the camera. His fresh look at how video for tech can be made interesting is what we need more of. Congrats on the new gig!

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Chris Murphy — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:29:46 -0000

Congratulations, Robert. Life balance, passion and purity of spirit - along with the clarity you shared on the decision you faced - clearly shows very well.

I look forward to viewing more Qiks and those from the FastCompany.TV on March 3.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

John Cass — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:49:54 -0000

congratulations on the move Robert. Isn't it great when you get to follow your passion, and do interviews with great people!

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

dawnkey — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:14:32 -0000

Robert, I wish you would stop for five minutes and listen to what you're saying, which is:

1) You can only make money from the Web if you can personally create a large audience.

Do you really think you would have such a large audience if it wasn't for the fact that you worked at Microsoft and were one of the first bloggers? I honestly like you, Robert, and I think you deserve your success, because you were in the right place at the right time and took the right actions. Nobody handed success to you, you made it.

But let me just ask you something: If you were starting today in the techfield, and you had zero contacts and zero visibility and nobody knew you from Adam, do you honestly think you'd make it so high now? If you do, then I think a lot of people would like to hear how you would do it and how long you think it would take to get back to where you are now if it all went away tomorrow and you started from zero.

I still strongly believe that people who are not A-type personalities, people who just want to create and not be salesmen, should have as much opportunity to make money from the Web as you hyper-social guys do.

2) You can only expect to make money from digital content if you can get it into material form somehow, like your book. Give it away digitally for free, but sell hard copies, because PRINT copyright is still valid, but online copyright doesn't count. Like you often say, "copyright is dead."

Just think about the longterm consequences of your stance as print continues to decline. Why will people buy books for the The Kindle, for example, when they've been trained by you not to respect copyright law?

Look, newspapers could have stolen content, too, way back when they formed. But they didn't. They paid people for it. There was A CULTURE OF RESPECT for creatives. Even now, online newspapers will pay me $250 and up for an editorial cartoon, but places like TechCrunch (which makes a lot more money than a lot of online newspapers!) have NO expectation AT ALL of having to pay for content they use.

And why? Because of your "copyright is dead" attitude that puts unrealistic expectations on creators, MOST of whom are not salesmen like you are.

I do think I have the solution to all this. My company is going to work hard to resuscitate copyright and I do think we'll be successful, though it's going to take us a few years to get fully there.

In the meantime, it just upsets me that we can't be on the same side here. It's like you're making me your enemy and vice-versa.

Esstentially, this is what you're saying, Robert: Give it up, *I* have *my* dream, but yours died with copyright law."

Is that REALLY what you want???

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Robert Scoble — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:44:04 -0000

Dawn: no, they won't. Here's why. Copies never get very much distribution, nor trust, nor audience.

By the way, we put our entire book up on our blog. Did that affect sales? Yes, it is still the #1 blogging book, outselling all other corporate blogging books combined. Why? By giving the thing away it created market interest.

And, yes, I've discussed this with them.

Also, there's ways to embed advertising into the content so it's hard to remove if you're using automated copying tools.

Does an advertiser really care if you see their message here or there? No.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

dawnkey — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:28:40 -0000

Perhaps your new employer will give a hoot, given they are going to be putting ads here.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

TranceMist — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:28:41 -0000

It's good to know what you like to do and equally important what you don't want to do.

I wish you lots of luck. I've really enjoyed your shows.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Robert Scoble — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:28:18 -0000

Dawn: there are already half-dozen people who reprint my blog in a splog type situation and I really don't give a hoot.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Elliott Ng — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:05:51 -0000

Robert,

First of all, congrats on your new start! Its great to have self awareness and above all I have your family as a priority. You have some gifts of information filtering and connecting that need to be fully leveraged. I've been thinking about how I can cultivate those skills as well (or are they simply natural talents that some people have and others don't?)

Also, thanks again for your encouragement around blogging about the Chinese blogosphere. We opened hour blog at http://cnreviews.com and will get in touch with you about stuff you might find interesting. Thanks again for your good ideas and inspiration.

and an early wishes to you for a great HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

vinnie mirchandani — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:19:57 -0000

Robert, congrats. Clearly when it comes to gadgets and widgets you will continue to be on top of things I hope though you do focus a bit broadly. On my other New Florence, New Renaissance blog www.florence20.typepad.com I track innovations in over 50 categories from virtualization to telemetry...yes many of those applications are in boring old enterprises, but we need innovation in our corporations even more so than in our consumers...good luck

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

dawnkey — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:59:15 -0000

Robert, you too want control over what you want control over. Just like in this post, you said content producers should be able to keep their content off link blogs:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/...

Clearly, if somebody tried making a mirror Scoble blog so that they could run advertising on it, you'd be up in arms and you know it.

Copyright isn't dead, but it IS dying because people like you keep ringing it's death chimes and making people feel like it's okay to steal other people's content while deriding those who stand up and say no.

Note: Nobody is "stealing" your content when you allow them to have it for free. If you don't want them to do that, if you've made it plain that you don't want them to help themselves to your stuff, THEN it is stealing.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Joshua Feinberg — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:45:27 -0000

Congratulations! It's nice to hear some good news in the IT publishing industry for a change... especially given the big-picture macro-gloom-and-doom being painted by mainstream media.

As someone who watched so many great IT trade pubs fail during the bubble-burst, it's great to see Fast Company and Inc still alive and kicking.

And you definitely went through the right thought process of deciding whether building your own venture, vs. joining a bigger-ship, was the way to go. So many people just make the decision by the seat of their pants without thinking through pros/cons, personal likes/dislikes, family issues, etc.

Looking forward to tuning in with your broadcasts real soon!

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Albert Maruggi — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:35:38 -0000

The clarity to see your priorities as you outlined them at a time when a decision needed to be made is, as they say, priceless.

I think a lot of people who start businesses either don't have that luxury, skill, or temperament.

Will you have downsides? sure everything does, even families. Well no my wife's perfect, but the rest of my five kids are not.

For the rest of the social media world this signifies two things, 1) the mainstream media is not fighting social media, but embracing it and 2) The New Influencers are getting a seat at the table of the old influencers a sign of respect for the work of pioneers.

All the best

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Robert Scoble — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:23:37 -0000

>Yet you were one of my most vocal opponents insisting that I should give my work away for free and criticized me for trying to charge for what I do and maintain control over it.

Lane and Chris,

I do give everything almost all my content for free. You might visit http://www.qik.com/scobleizer -- I did 17 interviews yesterday and several more today, including some with some very hard to find people (like the CTO of Entertainment Arts).

I make my money from sponsorships.

You should read my post again. I didn't say that YOU should give everything away for free. I just differentiated myself from your approach -- you want complete control of ever image. I don't -- take my stuff and steal it please and watch what we do at Fast Company.tv (the companies that hold tight control to their stuff won't do as well in this new world as others who let their communities have a bit of leeway). I give away MY stuff for free, which gets me more distribution and then I put my sponsor's name on SOME of my stuff. I've found this has made me MUCH more money than trying to tightly control everything. You might look into how RadioHead did when they let their fans decide the price for their work. Some, yes, didn't pay, but lots did to the tune of more than $10 million now.

I've spent more than $5,000 on my photographic equipment, and have more than $10,000 in computers and thousands in video gear too, and got a lot of professional training in photography too (I was in the photojournalism program at San Jose State University where one three-unit class now costs thousands of dollars). So, congratulations on investing in your career the way I have too.

I don't try to make money with every image and, indeed, all my Flickr photography is given to the public domain so you, even, could reuse it if you find fit to.

I did seven years of blogging without even putting an ad on my blog, either, and I've read hundreds of thousands of feed items -- all for free over the past few years.

If that's hypocrisy, so be it.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

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Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Chris — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:37:31 -0000

I gotta agree with Lane Hartwell's post.

You really blew it on that issue.
You still might think about saying you were wrong on that issue.
I wish you the best on your new job.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Jerry — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:52:24 -0000

@7. Yes, of course Fast Company's content is available online. But, where does the bulk of their revenue come from? Dead tree advertising/subscriptions or online? Point is, you are going to work for "Old Media". Will you still be a member of "Media 2.0?"

I found this interesting from the beet interview:

"Although he will continue to own and run Scobleizer blog independently from Fast Company, he is entering into agreement with the publisher to sell advertising. This would be the first time ads, besides banners for his book, have been sold on the influential blog."

Did you agree with Microsoft to sell advertising when you were working for them and had your "personal blog"? Why are you selling out your blog to your current employer? You can maintain all you want that it is independent, but advertisers will want something for their money, so you will need to be more careful who you skewer. Never can tell who your advertisers might have relationships with.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

jennifer jones — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:36:31 -0000

Robert, PodTech will miss your laugh and Rocky's hanging out in his office cutting your work. Cheers, and good luck.

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Tech For Novices — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:16:07 -0000

not covering digg reel ?

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Jim "Genuine" Turner — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:30:15 -0000

As I sat reading this I couldn't help but think about your new Year's post about what you would do and what you would better etc. Then I wondered if this wasn't something that Maryam said you should definitely do. If she blessed the move, there is no way it will fail. Good luck Robert and I'll add you to my thoughts prayers as we all jump into 2008.