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Eric_T › Likes
Open source license ruled enforceable, hippies rejoice - http://www.engadget.com/2008...
Eric_T, Deepak Singh, Andre and 3 other people liked this
did flickr save me $20,000 in marketing by send 80,000+ folks in the past five months? http://flickr.com/photos...
Niclas Strandh, Eric_T, Nicholas James and Hutch Carpenter liked this
"I put the value of a twitter user at .25 a click."
- Adam Loving
from StumbleRead
Way too much value, twitter traffic is like digg traffic if anything. Great on the books but horrible quality (no offense my twitters).
- sean percival
i wonder how many of those people would go if the url was shown and not a tinyurl
- Allen Stern
Allen Stern: i normally post the mahalo.com url but for some reason it makes it tinyurl. sometimes i use tinyurl if it's really long. but, who cares.... it's quality content and folks love it.
- Jason Calacanis
Jason Calacanis: The question works for anyone, not just you. It would also be interesting to see a breakdown of the traffic - I assume it's not just you that's sending the traffic to Mahalo but anyone who tweets a mahalo link - by splitting it out (not sure it can be done) - then you can see how effective the community is without your/mahalo employee marketing - that's where the real...
more...
- Allen Stern
Thats a good point about seeing how effective the community is for your sites without your participation. Although you could find content relating to your site using the search and look at the "likes/comments" etc (most twitter users have friendfeed too!) and work out an approximation but it would be nice to see who's referring etc.
- Nicholas James
TubeMogul: Average Video Ad CPM Is $12.39 - http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r...
Eric_T, Anne-Marie McReynolds, Chris Bonney and 9 other people liked this
people still haven't figured out how to monetize against video content. it's not going to be an easy problem to solve. we've decided that there is video content that works like an ad but provides valuable content that aids in user decision-making. that way we don't need to serve ads against it - the unit is self-contained and meets the needs of viewer and advertiser
- Morgan
The topic you two are talking about, Sean and I talked about on his podcast tonight - not sure when it goes up, but it can be found at SeanPAune.com
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Even $12.39 seems low to me compared to what we get for our videos.
- Andru Edwards
$12.39 isn't sustainable to a professional production.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Andru: way low for me too. I couldn't do what I do for $12.39 CPMs. Traveling the world is expensive. This is why we do sponsorships and don't do CPM-style advertising.
- Robert Scoble
The two models I see working for people right now are sponsorship and/or premium content. Sponsorship works for entertainment, and/or what Robert's doing - especially for what Robert's doing. Premium works great for how-to genre stuff. Imagine a 5 minute free photoshop video that then offers you 40 minutes of step-by-step for $1.99 a pop. I could see that buying gas.
- Chris Brogan
I should say that my friends at http://gimp.tv are doing the premium model and finding it working well.
- Chris Brogan
@gregory lent I do see your point, but production takes time, and in many cases, money. For you to receive consistent, quality programming, those that create eventually need some kind of compensation. Free is great, but not always sustainable. Time, skill, and effort are in their own way currencies. If an add can help a quality producer keep going, why deny an income? My studio equipment costs way more than I have made from New Media so far, and I am one of the lucky people that makes money at this stuff.
- Eban Crawford
The reason why CPM is cheap is because it is about broadcasting a message to thousands in hope of reaching a few people. Accessing the attention of a homogeneous group of people belonging to a a target market is an advertiser's dream. The internet has the capacity to reach these individuals better than any broadcast medium. The money goes to those on the inside who will candidly deliver the message for the company in a way the group appreciates as credible and relevant.
- Brian Rendel
Flashy ads (e.g. TechCrunch) challenge my ADHD in what is an already attention economy. For this reason, RSS is my only reading platform. And commentary takes place on FriendFeed to avoid any distractions from what really matters to me. Video is the worst (e.g. abc.com), especially with automatic starts. I'm almost more willing to pay $1.99 on iTunes than deal with the same advertisement replayed (w/o ability to fast forward) throughout show.
- Anne-Marie McReynolds
Sustainable video on the web won't work the same way it works on TV. People don't want and won't use ads overlaid on content. Content creators and advertisers have to be more collaborative to drive value through their messaging for the users. It should be clearly ID'd as sponsored content but the messaging needs to be based on value - not just a "hey look over here!" The current system is too TV-driven, which doesn't work online, which is why the CPMs are terrible.
- Morgan
Companies who are most effective in producing interesting stories around their products are those who will leverage video the way people want to watch it. I am a fan of the 5 minute BMW youtube video's which starred Madonna and so forth....
- Snowboardjohn
from twhirl
Toshiba intros Camileo H10 camcorder: HD shooting on a budget - http://techdigest.tv/2008...
mhmazidi, Raoul Pop, Baard @ Pixum and 14 other people liked this
"Toshiba has announced the latest addition to is Camileo range of digital camcorders. The H10 offers 720p high definition recording (1,280 x 720 resolution) for a very reasonable £180. The camcorder comes with an internal memory card with 64MB capacity, but fortunately can also record to external SDHC's of up to 8GB, offering up to 4 hours of broadcast-quality film." USD$380-ish?
- Mona Nomura
Finally!
- anna sauce
this kinda scares me... HD is unforgiving!
- Mona Nomura
it will be cheaper in US than just scale-GBP-into-USD -- taxation is very different
- A.T.
Nah, suck it up and buy the Canon Vixia HF10. It will be dropping in price as the Canon HF11 has been announced for release in Japan (and I'm sure U.S. will soon follow). :)
- James Mowery
from twhirl
even though I have a quote excellent mid-range HD camcorder Ialmost never use it because it lacks a wireless connection for immediate sharing. Gotten spoiled by Nokia smartphones and software like ShoZu and Qik.
- Jon Price
Why FastCompany is advertising on Techmeme. We spent about $5,000 to advertise on TechMeme this month. Why? 1. Techmeme has been a big part of my life and I wanted to reward Gabe for that.
Rodney Rumford, Dave Martin, Sean Kelly and 25 other people liked this
2. I also wanted to learn whether the audience that is there is likely to click on ads. 3. Techmeme almost never puts videos onto its content pages, so advertising is the only way. 4. It makes people have a conversation. So far two well known bloggers have asked about it.
- Robert Scoble
Are you also going to advertise on Twitter and Friendfeed when they start accepting advertising :)
- Sidharth Dassani
Sidharth: I would love to advertise on those.
- Robert Scoble
Maybe there's an issue I'm not aware of but I don't see an issue with choosing where you advertise your own media/product/company. It's yours and, you don't have to explain why you are advertising where you are advertising.
- Candace
How is it working out? Can you tell is techmeme's are going over to watch the videos?
- Harold Gilchrist
from twhirl
ah I guess this is coming from my post again that Gabe was so upset about. Gabe, I want you to know I love techmeme and I also want to advertise on it to support it. I will do something for Twhirl as you do not like the idea of video comments, my blog post was teasing for Robert, not for you!
- Loic Le Meur
just saw Loren's tweet ah not my post then, as Loren does not read my blog so no chance it's coming from me this time
- Loic Le Meur
Nah...asking "why" is a fair. Nice to see the very asking of the question direct more attention to a Techmeme sponsor! That said, I think FastCompany.TV is appearing only in July so we can harass Scoble for something else starting August 1...
- Gabe Rivera
More people should support sites they use/abuse
- Eric_T
I do pay attention to those advertisements, while also putting higher standards on them for my attention. It is money well spent.
- Nicole Simon
Harold: the ads are working pretty well, but I wouldn't do them if you think you are going to get hundreds of thousands of visitors. You won't. I'm not sure I will be able to share the exact results.
- Robert Scoble
Pretty funny that this post drove me to a site to check out an ad. Gabe should be paying you :)
- Andrew Smith
Good reasons for support but not from a business point of view. After all, when you buy an ad on a website (any website), don't you expect to see traffic from it and some RoI? And given the traffic that Techmeme sends to the best stories (which are very relevant and are of high importance for a reader), I can hardly believe traffic to an advertiser website is any good at all. But this is all too rational for our hard-to-explain fascination with Techmeme.
- Svetlana Gladkova
from twhirl
I agree, Gabe- pay up!
- Ryan
I want to see the online advertising space grow so good job.
- Jeremy Campbell
from twhirl
Fast Company should be sponsoring the Third Annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference. That's their market. And I'm objective:-)
- Francine Hardaway
bottom line is the techmeme audience is probably close to your audience demographics as well.
- Rodney Rumford
Nokia E90 Review - http://mobilementalism.com/2008...
Arlan Koizumi, accesine, Sean McBride and 3 other people liked this
Looking for another phone to add to your armada? :)
- Holger Eilhard
If you are looking for a charismatic-good looking phone, then go for iphone. But if you want a real business phone, E90 is the choice.The only thing i complain is not having a real browser that support javascript and flash. Other than this, just perfect !
- Hakan Deryal
very thorough review, thanks!
- Lyndon Washington
I'd love to have the N96
- Majento
@BradHill -thanks 4call.sad that AOL won't pay the $10 a post+lets salt-of-the-earth bloggers work 4 $20b company for free. not on my watch.
Eric_T and Aaron Krug liked this
As long as the "writers" are working for free too, then I am cool with it. :-)
- Eric_T
@andyburns: proud of bloggers because they care about the brands so much they will work for $20B company for free. AOL? No so proud of them.
The 2008 Tour de France - A Photo Recap [PICS] - http://www.boston.com/bigpict...
Ken Sheppardson, Eric_T, AJ Kohn and Jonathon liked this
World's First Tesla Crash (in SF) - http://hey.com/
Mitch Baldwin, Gavin, Daniel Schildt and 81 other people liked this
Dane's friend snapped this on Friday.
- Leo Laporte
from Bookmarklet
oh well
- Marc Canter
this is why you don't buy a car for 125k
- Allen Stern
First electric car crash ... nobody charged.
- Chris Baskind
@Chris - Hahahahaha
- Christopher Sacca
FAILtestdrive
- James Tenniswood
What, they don't include brakes?
- Jordan Hofker
and to think normally you would be "ouch, that was a mercedes"; to think that was the beater in this collision.
- Lou Paglia
Ouch, that really has gotta suck. I would kill who ever hit my car if I spent that much on it.
- Cameron Yeager
from twhirl
Well, at least it was more environmentally friendly?
- l0ckergn0me
Well, I think we can blame this on Calacanis. Probably was yelling about Audible, and crashed.
- ZayneHumphrey
No, Calacanis was probably pitching Mahalo while filming with his n95 and crashed
- @baratunde
from twhirl
Oops.
- Mitchell Tsai
who's Tesla is that? The Google founders just got theirs on Thursday.
- Robert Scoble
oh, and Elon Musk said they crashed quite a few for their official crash tests.
- Robert Scoble
While it's in the shop he should get a golf cart as a loaner
- Andrew Smith
I wonder how much the insurance on that is...
- Chrimmus Tad
They said #9, so than its not Jason Calacanis' car
- Fred Grott
expensive way to change the tires
- sdfx
What a painful sight to see.
- imabonehead
Ouch. Anyone know who was the owner?
- Royce Mathew
Oh god, it hurts my eyes.
- Johan
@Royce Mathew: maybe it was Jason C.'s. I think I can hear him crying all the way over on the East Coast :-)
- Bob Blunk
Was Shia LaBeouf behind the wheel?
- Roger @ CineVegas
ouch!
- Jason Calacanis
Ho damn'...
- Jean-François Amadei
from twhirl
Is Calacanis okay :)
- Grant
- George Aranjuez
from twhirl
who was at faul? It looks like the Tesla was rear-ended by the Nissan and then pushed into (and under) the Benz.
- George Aranjuez
from twhirl
dont worry... i'm fine. haven't taken delivery yet. :-) mine is orange btw :-)
- Jason Calacanis
In a fit of nostalgic rage, I'm downloading ICQ (this came up because the backchannel was laughing at how all of these apps won't mean squat in a few years)
Eric_T, Rishabh Mishra (p248), sean percival and Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah liked this
Dude, I am on an old school tip too! Not ICQ but some 2000-ish Japanese music from when i first got to Japan. Also looking at an old school RX-7 (1st Gen) for the hell of it. Might as well get ICQ while i am at it... (@_@)
- Eric_T
Final Fantasy IV DS Walkthrough - http://www.mahalo.com/Final_F...
Eric_T, Les Zaldor and Aaron Krug liked this
Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you - http://scobleizer.com/2008...
Yaroslav Nikolaev, Adam, Dimitar Vesselinov and 174 other people liked this
Long rant, sorry, had to clear the air so I can start blogging again. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Wow...I'm very interested and excited to see/hear/read what is to come from Scobleizer land next.
- Justin Korn
I hope I make your list and if not, please let me know why so I can potentially improve.
- Allen Stern
Glad to see that you are starting to realize, despite Techmeme that the world doesn't revolve around just the bay area.
- Harold Gilchrist
from twhirl
Gotta say you're bang on the mark there. Tech blogging should be about the tech, not the biz.
- Luke Robinson
Allen: I like your blog. It's just that I love hanging out with all of you and talking geeky stuff a lot more than talking about this deal and that deal and all that.
- Robert Scoble
Harold: I've always realized that. I feel I got unfairly tagged with believing the world only was about the Bay Area. I guess I deserved that to some extent, but this area is quite dominant in the world of tech (including the tool you're typing on right now) so some of my boosterism is to be expected. Funny that the top Israeli company has offices here too.
- Robert Scoble
Kudos to you Mr. Scoble, what a very bright post you delivered today! Thank you for bringing some fresh perspective, that's always refreshing and welcome. I'm also happy you cite Lifehacker as an example. They focus on the smartest digital experience possible and help us improve ourselves. That's the biggest deal of all. Techbloggers should never forget it.
- c0wb0yz
I love the tech first and foremost but the business is important too, especially in respect to the sustainability of said tech.
- Jamie
Jamie: I agree. But the business needs to serve the customers and the customers/participants/users or whatever you want to call you and me aren't coming first in this industry anymore and that's worrying.
- Robert Scoble
Wow funny enough thats the way i have been feeling for a while now I am looking forward to seeing what is next from the Scobelizer...
- John Spencer
from twhirl
I agree overall - CN has only a small percentage of biz - most is trends, analysis, and reviews. I had an interesting discussion about this with someone last week - if i had a computer that could handle video, i'd make a quick video to explain - there's an important part you are missing
- Allen Stern
Next is to get some sleep. Gotta be up at 7:30 to be at Fortune Conference at 8 a.m. for breakfast. It's an incredible conference, hope to see some of you at the Tweetup at 5:45 p.m.
- Robert Scoble
Allen: will be watching in the morning for what I was missing. I'm sure I'm missing a lot. I had to stop ranting at some point, it was getting too long! :-)
- Robert Scoble
This is often relevant from major blogs/ celeb bloggers. The smaller and more personal blogs are still focusing just on tech ;) Perhaps you need to update your feeds :-)
- Dennis Bjørn Petersen
from twhirl
Dennis: I know. It's why I spend a lot more time here lately than on blogging. The smaller stuff shows up here a lot more regularly and I see a lot less "Yahoo business news."
- Robert Scoble
Excellent post Robert. It's why I don't read Techmeme as much as I used to. The life and joy in exploring, playing with and dissecting tech, the geeky exuberance in 'new stuff' has been lessened across almost all tech sites in general, leaving a bland veneer that is just business talk. Things a geek like me doesn't care about, as I'm not an investor.
- Mo Kargas
Techmeme has suffered because most of the tech blogs they follow have become nothing more then PR outlets like you said.
- Harold Gilchrist
from twhirl
As I posted in your comments, that's a really good post. It's great to see the old Scoble back - the one who I started reading back when your "latest thing" was Tablet PC! Welcome back, mate.
- Ian Betteridge
Robert, blogging is becoming commercialized, as it becomes popular. I do not see it as a problem. It just might mean that you and a bunch of other likely minded people have to move on to a greener, more fascinating and less populated pastures. Like friendfeed, etc. Luckily, there are lots of them around and tons in the pipeline. Enjoy!
- Павел Романовский
I don't know, Robert. On the one hand I agree 100%. And can I say that as editor of WebWorkerDaily I am the one who gets those 15 press releases a day and I *constantly* have the "is this useful?" filter on. I hope that's clear in our postings. Anyway...Your post is kind of like the person who is used to picking their own corn complaining about the supermarket because it's not the same garden. It's not. The grocer has to pay its bills, as does the paid tech blogger.
- Judi Sohn
I know I am a newie to all this but I have been reading blogs for a while. I've bee thinking up a response and I'll post later. Long comments on the iPhone make for one queasy bus ride.
- Derick Valadao
Finally. Thank you. I follow 357 feeds. Everyday. Granted I have many pop-sites (lifehacker, engadget, etc) on the list. But not one is of these "new breed" of tech bloggers out there. Even though I am in the industry, they do not speak to me. They are just another form of CNN to me. Linking to each other and regurgitating the same gibberish, no matter how relevant or important, it does not speak to me. Anyway, welcome back! This is very refreshing news to me. I will be following it with much interest. TY!
- Carlos Ayala
We should all just organize a "Tech Blog Strike", unsubscribing to those blogs that only push press releases. Let's see how they sweat when they see their subscriber count falling...
- Jorge Escobar
Obviously my previous comment was "tldr". I just wanted to say how great it is that a person in your position is able to repurpose his content to better fit the goal you are trying to reach with your content. It's a great direction to take in a time where most blogs are just trying to echo up to the top.
- Derick Valadao
Excellent post on the state of the blogging nation.
- Sheila Thomson
My only real problem with tech bloggins is how easily ideas take hold and spread to get page hits. This is very easily seen in the Vista hatred - there was never any objective reasonf or it... but it was so useful for traffic generation and looking cool that it was rampant.
- Soulhuntre
from twhirl
It's probably less about the business/tech divide, and more about me-too echo blogging
- Dave Pelland
I think so... tech bloggers are jsut as easily victims of peer pressure and memes as anyone. Once an Idea ("love google") defines someone as "getting it" then few will look at it objectively.
- Soulhuntre
from twhirl
This is a welcome breath of fresh air. Fantastic.
- Pete Gilbert
Scoble. Great post. Agree completely.
- Tom Quinn
Super excellent post and, ironically, exactly what blogging is all about. One good thing about an economic downturn, it will weed a lot of fluff out of the infosphere -- with less incentive to act as promotional platforms for startups, blogs may get more informative about using established tech.
- Sprague D
Great article Robert. It is your authenticity even more than your tech blogging that has made you the great writer that you are. Anyone can report Apple's earnings yesterday. You have always had an honest voice though that makes your writing stand out.
- Thomas Hawk
The take away is 'sensational headlines'. Add to the "Rumor:" and we don't need this stuff unless it's coming from a tabloid format site
- Charlie Anzman
Blogging is about saying what I want to say, and sharing things that I like with anybody who cares to listen. I'm not interested in driving traffic (thank goodness) or repeating what others have said, but contributing to a discussion.
- Chris Nixon
Great post Robert. Very good read and right on the mark. I religiously read feeds in Reader, but only a few that help me. I love Lifehacker. Almost everyday I find something new and useful to my job.
- Gary Schmidt
The Techie audience thirsty for knowledge is much smaller then the Get-rich-quick audience, but the largest demographic are the Free-lunch boys. The blogs with the most revenue have tricked their advertisers into believing teenage boys are business decision makers.
- paul mooney
I love tech bloggers and the things they write about. The good ones will always come at a common topic from a different angle and I just LOVE that because it makes me think outside the box and start connecting dots all over the place. Robert you are definitely one of those bloggers that I love to read and I don't think any of the ones I read have failed me.
- Devlin Dunsmore
from twhirl
Awesome reading! THX a bunch!!
- Ronald
I have to agree about the comments system though. One thing that we started to see a while ago was data portability and being able to communicate accross services. I think Disqus does that quite well and it's a great first step to making sure that the comments system becomes a little more useful on blogs.
- Derick Valadao
Well said Robert, left a comment, said my piece, cheers!
- Steve Spalding
Wow, an impressive and honest assessment of some major issues in the techblogosphere.
- Richard Akerman
Robert - I'm not in the tech industry. But I love what lots of tech stuff has done for learning stuff in my life and for others. And I want to keep on learning. You've certainly helped me here - I wouldn't know a fraction as much about using Friendfeed productively, for example. Glad we're going to see more of this kind of stuff. Welcome back.
- Tom Landini
Knocked it out of the park. If we can just get back to being geeks again, a lot of this drama will calm itself...
- Jared Smith
Great read, but kind of depressing the way things have gone. I just like being a bit geeky and all things will work out in the end.
- Alan Ashley
from twhirl
Shripriay, you hit it on the head. It is a shame that all the tech bloggers just wants to be Engadet or Gizmodo these days.
- Harold Gilchrist
from twhirl
Nice writeup Robert. I enjoyed your detailed analysis & history of the situation. Perhaps you can lead us in a new direction?
- Mitchell Tsai
i read the tech bloggers then try to actually use the gadget. would like to hear more results from the usage angle.
- Lee Kent
Shripriya, I agree with you wholeheartedly. My original comment was much longer but got cut due to length. I wish more blogs were like Louis Gray and Lifehacker which take a step back and then hit us with posts that are useful/interesting almost 100% of the time. Zero Punctuation is a great example for the gaming crowd--one post a week, internet fame.
- Derick Valadao
Hmm... A Scoble article I like.... Is this the Seventh Seal? Seriously, you're right on in that the echo chamber of groupthink has made tech blogging boring and predictable. I think there's a few people out there fighting it, and FF makes it easier to find them. I think you're off on the business side, though... I think it SHOULD be about the technology, but the entrepreneurs coming out of the Valley have made it necessary for us to discuss the business side by not having solid business plans.
- Jason Carreira
Anyway, hope this is a sign of things to come from you.
- Jason Carreira
Thanks Robert. Great read, and perspectives. Love to see more on productivity, like Lifehacker. Just became a GTD convert BTW and loved the David Allen piece.
- Jericho
Thanks for that Robert -- perspective is key.
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
I'm sorry but those that don't scale are toast, from a commericial and traffic standpoint. I know that is part of the point (varying aims and objectives of blogging etc.)
- Alex Hammer
Slap your self and get back on that horse Robert. You have NOT failed us. Human nature makes us want what we do not have. For some it's page views/revenue, for trolls it's attention, and others it's n-list status. The rest of us are looking to quench our thirst for knowledge. And please give our group a little credit. We have become ever-so-skillful at weeding out those sources that do not provide this knowledge. I repeat...You have NOT failed us.
- Andrew Smith
I appreciate what you are saying, and am glad that others share the same opinion as myself. What happened to being the guys who always had some tech trick that seemed like magic to the uninitiated? The joy of tech for me is showing that magic to others and getting them interested in what's out there too, and lately we have all become business whores a little bit. I look forward to the future content coming from you, and getting back to what made tech cool in the first place, the tech itself.
- Aaron Krug
One of the things I value most about Robert is his inner homing mechanism. He's very prone to get lost, but something always shakes him loose and he re-calibrates. Or is that re-boots? (Kind of like iPhone 2.0 now that I think about it.)
- Michael Markman
I agree w/ your article, Robert. The wonder that makes so many of us interested in tech does get lost at times- I never saw tech blogs as the place for that stuff, but appreciated it when I found it there.
- anna sauce
Alex: While scaling is necessary if you want more people to view your content, why should that come at the cost of the content itself? Too many startups are trying to replace a solid marketing plan with social media and end up trying to use big blogs as a means to advertise their product and ride the traffic tail to customers. From what I gather, this tends to make jaded bloggers who...
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- Derick Valadao
I kinda find this funny.. the comments are so distributed between FF channel and Scobles blog channel ? which one am I too follow ? I mean yesterday we had this big huge augments about cluster and fragmentation of conversations. So Robert, here's a suggestion. Turn off comments on your blog and let your readers comment on FF only. Else dont post your blog entry to FF and break your own...
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- Peter Dawson
I just approved a bunch of comments that were held in moderation. Now there's 88 comments over there. Whew.
- Robert Scoble
melmcbride: good point. It's easy to just stay on FriendFeed all day. It's hard to come up with something new to say that takes more than a short paragraph. Damn, I'm sounding so old school. The neat thing is when I do a longer blog is comes in here and improves everything.
- Robert Scoble
i think this is part of the echo chamber that is the silicon valley. people who live there use the "new" thing for so long they soon get sick of doing it. they are same people who think everyone elses use technology the same way they do and feels the same way they do.
- Jonathan Jesse
Scoble steps out of the bubble and takes a breath of fresh air... hopefully more follow or we're going nowhere fast.
- Harish V
I thought this was great! Robert, I think what I hear is your desire to just do whatever the hell you want to without regard to "The Man". Go for it. You of all people can do that!
- Elliott Ng
Robert the real issues is that everything really only needs to exist once. Conversations don't neeed to exist in many different places. Your blog comments and the conversation here are all the same conversation. I'd love to explain the solution as i see it but it'd take too long.
- Anton Mannering
Robert I am still lost- How can you profess to be be a convo aggregator , yet approve 88 comments on your blog ? @Anton, no Blog comments and these comments on FF, are two different sets of conversation happening on the same topic. Lets not confuse this fact !! There is a fork in the convosphere.
- Peter Dawson
@ Anton: I sort of agree with you, but i don't think comment fragmentation is all bad. Sometimes well-written comments appearing somewhere else can draw attention to good ideas. If I don't subscribe to a particular blog but see the feed posted here on FF, I'll pick it up and then maybe I'll go straight to the blog. There's value in fragmentation along with the frustration.
- phil baumann
I think a service like disqus should be used so that friendfeed comments on links to blog posts (with comments therein) will all show up no matter which medium you use to discuss them. Does this exist yet? I thought disqus would have this covered by now.
- Derick Valadao
Great points as always Robert. We're with you on this.
- Missionary Broadcasting
Peter: I approved about 40 that were being held in a moderation queue. I don't let newbies post a comment on my blog because then it'd be overrun with spam. FriendFeed has a much better system to protect against spam than my blog's comments. I think that it'd very cool if I could replace my blog's comments with FriendFeed, but that'd require an API that would make a URL, return it to my blog, and get it linked in, all really quickly.
- Robert Scoble
I haven't read the comments here, but feel I can comment. Robert, as someone who as known you for five years now - just before the mania began - I am pleased to hear this. What got me into your blog in the first place was your ENTHUSIASM for technology, particularly GTD. Never let that go. You be you. I will be me. And everyone else will be everyone else. In the end, you gotta follow what you love. It works for everyone from Steve Jobs to the Pope. Your friend online and off - SR
- Steve Rubel
@ phil bauman Ok 2 things. First of all I didn't say it shouldn't appear in many places. I'm saying that if you're in Roberts comments and I'm on Friendfeed then we should be able to see ALL the conversation from both. But it need not exist in a whole bunch of places only be visible from there. Second I think the argument that there is value in fragmentation is similar to saying there is value in using a ploughshare pulled by an ox. Ther is but not to most people.
- Anton Mannering
@ Robert Scoble: Interesting you should mention your blog comments being friendfeed. I know a startup or two working on those problems. In reality though the issues become way bigger when such a service is subject to really large numbers (non-tech crowd). Solving those problems is where the fun and games are and I only know one startup with a real solution for that.
- Anton Mannering
Ironic, isn't it--the influences (PR, marketing, big media) the original bloggers were trying to break away from are--surprise-- still here and the game hasn't changed as much as we thought. PR people still push their stories, tech and news blogs focus on a few big name co's and start looking like traditional media, etc. What's needed is more of the energy, enthusiasm and original thought that Scoble and others brought to the game earlier on--otherwise, we've only duplicated the old media on a new platform.
- mark ivey
I send you a tweet also but I believe that I must also write here how spot-on was your post... I can't wait to see more real Tech news coming from you and I hope that this will force other bloggers to remember how they started back then...
- Manos Matsakis
This is clearly your best post ever. Thank you for all of your hard work. I read your blog because it entertains me. I would love more posts "sharing geeky things." On the other hand, if you blog about news, technology, and a few pro-company biases, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Just because you (or any other blogger) do not provide a perfect balanced news experience does not mean that you have failed. People are responsible for finding their own news this day in age.
- Brian Wilson
Great post and I totally agree. "What's needed is more of the energy, enthusiasm..."
- Eric_T
Great stuff Robert. As blogging and social media continues to spread outside of tech and into other niche industries and verticals, those of us facilitating and evangelizing that spread should continue to look back at this post so history isn't repeated. See you at the Ritz tonight.
- J.J. Toothman
"I think that it'd very cool if I could replace my blog's comments with FriendFeed, but that'd require an API that would make a URL" - yeah I second that motion. If I had a widget that could do that but with bi- directional flow , that would really be a convo aggregator. This will certainly be an interesting challenge to some of the geeks out here !
- Peter Dawson
You can, if you're willing to give up the content. Glenn developed a great plugin that allows for bi-directional flow. It works for Wordpress and (I think) Blogger http://blog.slaven.net.au/wordpre...
- Steve Spalding
Great timing :) I got strange looks this weekend when I said that I don't review anything that has been 'pitched' to me - but rather things I discover that I think are cool. I discovered something this weekend at BlogHer that I will review. But no one sent me a press release. :) It's just a really neat gadget!
- Lucretia Pruitt
I think you should watch the movie 'Resurrecting the Champ' - its about a Writer. Drew the analogy to your post and the movie (that I just happened to see yesterday) http://mrinal.vox.com/library...
- Mrinal Desai
Enjoyed that rant, Robert. I'm not a tech geek, I don't read techmeme or techcrunch as the gist and trends can be followed here on FF, but I do read blogs like yours, Louis, Jeremiah and Hutch's, mainly to learn new things. Before FF I had never heard of Rescue Time, Jott, Evernote or TSheets for example, but hearing about new ideas and then experimenting with them myself, well that gets me interested and excited. The corporate enterprise stuff leaves me cold, it isn't nifty or flexible enough for users.
- Sally Church
Nice post. The PR influence bit reminded me of this article by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/submari.... Agree to the fact that Tech blogging has been less 'tech' than it was a couple of years ago.
- Nikhil Dandekar
I loved the rant earlier yesterday, and even more impressed by the ff reaction. My take on your blogging, having followed you since MS days. Stay on what you think, not what others think. Avoid the whole Gillmor Gang bs, and associated groupthink.
- Bankwatch
I think that every new medium matures as it becomes possible to make real money at it - this is inevitable. I don;t think it will be the death of blogging certainly but we are in a new phase. Older blogs will mature and still keep that flavor or they will stagnate and die. The personalities will decide that. One of the things I like about your work Robert is the enthusiasm. Sometimes it makes you a bit naive, others it makes you a little to fast to declare something game changing but it is always good input
- Soulhuntre
Robert, just read your wonderful post now, and I'm still fascinated by it. I'm commenting here because I know you'll read here first. You know, this competition that you were taking about, almost cause me to stop blogging, but then I realized that I'm writing because I like it, so as far as I'm concern, I'm not trying to compete anyone, this is why I'm taking things easy and on my own...
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- Orli Yakuel
Orli: you know me too well! :-) Yup, agreed. Just do it because it's fun. The problem is that posts that make us all smarter don't stick around very long because of the flow.
- Robert Scoble
Robert, maybe it's because 'blogs' are not so unique anymore. Lets take Friednfeed for example: everyone can get noticed here just because they favorite picture on Flickr or dugg story on digg (regardless if they writing a blog, or giving any other opinion in the subject) this and other massive content mixed up together on a daily basis is flowing so fast, it almost seem that if you'll...
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- Orli Yakuel
Hong Kong on a Sunny Day - http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3123...
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Kim Landwehr, tomio geron, Kol Tregaskes and 31 other people liked this
That is an amazing picture!
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
i want to go back to China, and also visit Japan and Korea this year. wish someone would invite me to keynote something. :-)
- Jason Calacanis
wow, takes me back. I haven't seen my home town look so good for a long time. You can even see the Lamma ferry heading home
- Jon Dillon
awesome pic
- Sujal Shah
That truly is stunning photography.
- James Mowery
The loopt debacle - http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r...
Joe Breen, Eric_T, Dennis Jackson and 10 other people liked this
Those sneaky bastards!
- Dan Kaplan
The most hated man in productivity - http://scobleizer.com/2008...
RAPatton, Bryan Landers, Alex Hammer and 20 other people liked this
Tim Ferriss is on in 20 minutes (at 10 a.m.).
- Robert Scoble
"hated!?" Tim is great! Who hates Tim, I'll punch them in the mouth.
- Veronica
Hate.. how can I hate Tim??
- Dave Peck
I love his book...I read it in 4 hours during work...J/K great book! :)
- Pokai
I hate him. I hate him because he does things so well. (Jealousy, etc., I don't really 'hate' him.)
- Kirk Kittell
Tim is loving these comments.
- Robert Scoble
will You record it? how long is it?
- Luca Conti
I am Fan of Tim
- Kreg Steppe
scoble, why suit and tie?
- Pokai
I hope the video will be up after i get off of work (in 4 hours)
- Eric_T
are you going to re broadcast the vid?
- Tanya
I have a crush on Mr. Ferris
- Andrea Baker
i thought outsourcing his online dating to people who prettended to b him and schedule 1 hour dates with pretty girls all lined up in 1 day was creepy. especially when he fired some outsourced labor 4 picking girls not pretty enuff. if i remember story right that's pretty messed up.
- Marshall Kirkpatrick
from fftogo
It's a great book, I think i bought the audio book on iTunes then lost it through some HD crashing DRM goodness. Then went out to the book store and bought the "real" book. That guy owes me a beer next time he is in Seattle or where ever I am when we cross paths. I used to recommend it to my coworkers but then I thought maybe i should just recommend it to people I DON'T work with...
- Eric_T
He seems like a "unique individual" but love him or hate him you have to respect what he's doing, what he's done and how well he has made it work.
- Nicholas Kreidberg
Thing is, his book's title is there only to grab attention. And then he spends the bulk of his book trying to make the content fit the title, and spends his interviews defending his book title. Why couldn't he have been more honest in the first place, and named his book something like "Outsourcing unpleasant tasks"? I'll tell you why. Because that was already known, and because it wouldn't have sold. So he created controversy to boost book sales. In my book, that's DISHONEST.
- Raoul Pop
Tim is awesome. The title is what it is and frankly it's probably time folks got over it. He doesn't try and "justify" it - he explains it because people keep asking. Reality? Even in the book itself he is clear and honest about the title. Tim has good advice, and more than that he is a living example of thinking outside the box - just knowing he is out there, pulling it off, helps me think laterally.
- Soulhuntre
How can you hate this guy? He's got a unique take on a lot of things and some of it is tongue in cheek but, he's also got some very good things to say.
- Candace
Scoble, your welcome for the suggestion to interview Tim, how bout some props?
- adolfo foronda
Adolfo: I have known Tim for more than a year, and he was always my first choice to have on the show. I also got dozens of people asking me to have Tim on the show, but thanks! He was a great guest.
- Robert Scoble
Good FastCompany interview, Robert. Enjoyed it.
- Phil G
An Open Sourced Twitter Emerges: Identi.ca - http://www.bwana.org/2008...
Mitchell Tsai, Dobromir Hadzhiev, Paul Kane and 47 other people liked this
that's the way to go..twitted is an utility and open source Is the way to go to guarantee availability
- PF Thaler
registered as well
- Naor Mark
ericortega is on there
- Eric Ortega
from twhirl
It's PHP based, which disappoints me for some reason. But the code looks pretty clean.
- Fred Yankowski
I'm there - mwsmedia
- Matthew Wayne Selznick
from twhirl
Port it to python :) http://laconi.ca/
- Bwana ☠
Open source and Twitter? I think I smell awesome.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
and i thought that pownce will benefit ...(from twitter whale)
- Naor Mark
I hope this works
- Alejandro
Time to test another site.
- Eric_T
Why built another website? There already is Pownce, Jaiku, and Plurk.
- Andrew Bashore
from twhirl
How long before @SteveRubel declares FF dead and identi.ca the new google? ;D
- Gez
I'm just curious how the distributed part works, how do I connect my install of laconica with yours? So that I can see your feed on the friends timeline of my install. Or is that not how it is supposed to work?
- Frans
Does anyone have an answer to Fran's question?
- Ontario Emperor
from fftogo
This is the spec for OpenMicroBlogging: http://openmicroblogging.org/ I don't think it works like that, Frans. The idea behind it, as far as my understanding goes, is that there's a protocol to allow you to write to identi.ca's data store, and eventually identi.ca will support other microblogging services that use the OMB protocol, but it's not federation.
- Mark Trapp
I'm pretty sure everyone's wishing, out of thin air, something that identi.ca is not. All it's really doing is implementing a standard like REST, JSON, or whatever; it's just standardizing the fields so you don't have to guess or rely on a specific API for each microblogging service. I guess you could federate based off of it being interoperable, but it's nowhere near that. For one, identi.ca is the first service that I know of that even implements OMB.
- Mark Trapp
fd
- Justin Coleman
from twhirl
Bwana - You do a good job explaining the potential on your blog. Thanks
- Charlie Anzman
Suppose you have an account on server A and you want to follow somebody who created an account on server B. You can subscribe to the remote user, and your server (A) will contact server B to set up a remote sub. After that when the user on server B posts an item, it's also posted back to your server. Sync/decentralization is handled on a user-by-user basis.
- Ken Sheppardson
I'm sure Laconica looks very much like Twitter did two years ago when it was just starting out. Simple SQL tables on the back end, basic UI functionality, no API, etc. Twitter's had two years to work on this full time, and they haven't been worried at all about building a distributed network. I'm all for open source, but I'm skeptical. It's not obvious to me that a community-based effort can catch and pass a venture-funded, full-time team with two years of operational experience.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ken, you highlight two huge misconceptions of this hype: 1) it's not federated yet. It's not even close to federated. and 2) it's not a community project. To make changes you either a) have to get identi.ca to buy into it and push it to http://identi.ca, or b) fork the project and run your own instance. This isn't the power of the internet working against the machine. This is a locked-in cathedral style development. Only one party has access to the final release (the server on which identi.ca resides)
- Mark Trapp
Yay Mark! Yes, yes, yes. While anyone can GET the source code, any major changes have to come from a main hub for separate instances to work together. There's always this misconception of Open Source that it's this completely democratic process and anyone can just do whatever they want.
- Cyndy
Exactly, Cyndy! You have a huge problem open sourcing a software-as-a-service, especially one that needs to interact with all other copies of itself: there is no way to run a bazaar style development without compromising the security of the main distribution points. It REQUIRES a single development team controlling the project scope and direction. Maybe the guys that run identi.ca are the next Linus Torvalds or the next rms or esr, but the law of very large numbers suggests they probably aren't.
- Mark Trapp
What does that mean for everyone else? The exact same scenario as Twitter. One development team who contributes the vast bulk of the code that makes it into the final release. You're still at the mercy of the design decisions they make, and the preliminary reports about the nature of the code does not bode well.
- Mark Trapp
It seems very slow
- Greg
I definatly think that Identi.ca is extremely slow in loading
- Tyler (Chacha)
from twhirl
AKA this is not a big deal :) This is the argument I was trying to make earlier but couldn't. This isn't a revolution, it's just a company using everyone else to try and improve their Twitter clone.
- Shawn Farner
from twhirl
After the server move (if your DNS has caught up), the speeds have improved. It's day 2. I'm treating it as such.
- Bwana ☠
I'm confused. Where in my article or in these comments is anyone calling this the next big thing? Why are there so many quick to shoot it down? Seems like a lot of assumptions are being made.
- Bwana ☠
If you want more details of the architecture, join the identica room where this has already been discussed - http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Bwana ☠
i'm not a fan of being forced to accept creative commons licensing where my content is concerned.
- Brooks Bayne
Mark, I give you a +10. I felt like I was spitting into the wind on this one.
- Cyndy
Bwana, I'm quick to shoot it down because a PHP app with a database back-end is going to end up as the same mess as Twitter. Adding the shiny "open source" tag doesn't make it any cooler OR more stable. It just makes Dave Winer happy to jump on the bus.
- Cyndy
@wolfsbayne you aren't being forced- you don't _have_ to use the service, CC is part of the feature set of the service- some people prefer freedom of content- and as always you still have the freedom of choice.
- Nathan Eckenrode
You're assuming way too much. My article's tone was simply to watch it because it's the first major effort that I know of that's open sourced and is testing the waters of OpenMicroBlogging. The point is not whether it'll fail or not, the point is that is taking a different direction. I stated many times that I don't believe open source or federation will automatically equal success. It's ok to use it and not be gung ho that it's going to kill anything.
- Bwana ☠
And yes if Dave Winer is happy, it'll get attention. Whether that's right or wrong is irrelevant to my point.
- Bwana ☠
@nathan i think it was implied by my post that i wasn't going to use it because of CC. thanks for telling me i don't have to use it. lol!
- Brooks Bayne
I think the "Replies" feature is out now. Time to update your article. :)
- Shivanand Velmurugan
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