Daniel Falk

beefbnierf? beefbrief? beef brief? beef? Mmm…beef. - Andrew Trinh

Kevin, that's awesome. I've yet to hear anything other than FB or MS i the wild =/ - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

I love the decal -- how do we get one? ;) - Nicholas Kreidberg

http://www.cafepress.com/frien... - Benjamin Golub

Excellent! - Nicholas Kreidberg

I think I want to add Louis Gray to that list as well. I've noticed him making the rounds participating in everyone's conversations. He is a new name to me, but I like his level of involvement. - Adam Helweh

+1 for LG - Hao Chen

he seems real good-natured and works hard at what he does. can't knock that - Cee Bee

LG and the Scobelizer are real people. If I ever meet either of them in RL, I'm buying coffee. - ha3rvey

Ditto to that. They both seem like cool guys. - Shawn Farner

Thanks for the props guys. I have met Robert, and he does pay for dinner. And you can find both our cell phones on our blogs. I'm surprised mine isn't abused more often. - Louis Gray

Yeah, you're right - no doubt. - Zee from WeDoCreative

I met Scoble before I had any real notion of who he was/what his reputation was, so I'll always be influenced by my first impression of him just being a super nice dude. I also think a lot of the negative attitudes about him stem from his tendency to not completely adhere to the concept that the notable voices in the crowd are supposed to exercise all sorts of discretion before saying "This is the coolest thing ever," but I think we can all relate to geeking out about something new, cool and different. - Ryan MF

Ryan: sorry, I love technology, especially when it's done well and I'm going to get excited and rant and rave about it until you all can't put up with me anymore. :-) - Robert Scoble

Louis: it's time to do another dinner. The house is even baby proofed! - Robert Scoble

Regardless of whether its technology, the web, or startups....Scoble has been inspiring (however cliche that sounds) to those who want to immerse themselves in what they are passionate about. Scoble, when can I treat you to sushi? - Adam Helweh

Adam: sushi? You better be careful there. Louis knows I can eat a TON of sushi. :-) I'm always up for sushi, though, although the next month is really crazy. - Robert Scoble

Ummm... I'm a fairly big dude and my name is "Secret Sushi". Do you think you will beat me? I think not. I will also be at a few places you have on your calendar. Maybe we can connect for a quick meal. Lets invite Louis. Please don't tell me you only eat California rolls. :0) - Adam Helweh

I think Robert is a sweetheart! I love what he brings to the IT community. - Daynah

Daynah, love you too! Wow, what a nice thing to say. - Robert Scoble

I totally agree. I am a nobody and Scoble is subscribed to me. He's one who truly believes in conversing and engaging with the crowd, and is not selective in friendfeeding. I truly learnt a great deal from him. As I see it, some folks are however more concern about maintaining popularity than being truly social.. - Winston Teo

definitely. robert scoble is everyone's best friend. it is soooooo nice compared to all the huge egos out there. I hope last guys dun finish last!! - ming yeow

I honestly did not expect this conversation to go on for this long. Guess a few people agreed with me. - Adam Helweh

ming: who said I didn't have a huge ego? I really appreciate the kind words here, though. I needed them when I got home tonight. I want to share them with Corvida and Louis Gray, two people who inspire me. - Robert Scoble

@secretsushi - with all these oversized egos like 1938media, shel israel, mike arrington, marc canter blah blah blah, it is turning into hollywood. It is just great to have Robert Scoble around! - ming yeow

Scoble, don't get me wrong. I *love* your attitude. The typical straight-laced, dry tech commentary gets on my nerves most of the time. I relate much more to (and feel that tech lends itself to) the approach of: "This new thing could be the biggest deal ever, or it could be nothing at all, but let's all get stoked about it, discover as much as we can, and push it to its limits. If it doesn't work out, something newer and cooler will be out next week anyway." - Ryan MF

Ryan: you got it. That's exactly why I like Louis Gray so much. - Robert Scoble

@Ryan MF thats called "passion". Discretion goes the way of the wind when your emotions take over. That usually happens when your excited about what your doing. I know that happens often with me. Thats a manifestation of the internal love for what your doing. - Adam Helweh

Adam, I completely agree. There's an argument to be made that as the gatekeepers of this geeky mess to the rest of the normal humans out there, that there has to be some discretion shown so that they'll believe us when we say "No, seriously, this is actually going to change the world." But ultimately, there has to be someone saying "Screw it, let's give it a shot." I'm glad it's Scoble. - Ryan MF

@Ryan MF: Not only do I like his attitude, I'm impressed. How on earth could a person be raving about some little technical thingy no-one has heard about yet while commenting on FF and his blog and interviewing some important people in the industry at the same time. I think Scoble is a group of people (clones?) :) - Melle Gloerich

Melle: we're a mesh! :-) - Robert Scoble

@Scoble: I for one welcom our Scoble-mesh overlord :P - Melle Gloerich

I'm an "outsider" and definitely NOT on the inside like most of you guys but there's room for both sides of the tech celebrity community...I tend to skew more towards the harder edge of the spectrum, Rev3 - GETV - Giantbombcast - Diggnation - FSJ, etc, not afraid to mix in an F-bomb here and there but sometimes I like the sweet and safe of TWiT - Cali Lewis - BOL - Amber Mac - etc. but no matter if sweet or salty, censorship and "exaggerating the truth" in the name of "being PC" really SUCKS ASS...my .02 - Live4Soccer

Carlos: I can't quite figure out what you're trying to say there. - Robert Scoble

@Carlos: I dont really see any difference between those two groups. "Safe" doesnt really have anything to do with it. Neither does being PC. This conversation evolved into an appreciation for people like Scoble who "eat their own dogfood". - Adam Helweh

He isn't subscribed to me - LOL. That's okay. I still like the guy because he hung around my daughters and talked to them like a human. Robert's a great human and Being Human on the Internet is important. - LPH™

LPH: I'm subscribed now! Are you going to CES next year again? - Robert Scoble

Carlos sounds like h's on the harder edge of drugs too. What the heck are you trying to say?? Lol... - Zee from WeDoCreative

I just like to echo those comments , despite the enormous river of email,Tweets,comments,he must get in a day. He still reaches out to the little guy. I like his passion. Not sure where he gets all the time/energy. Maybe having a toddler has something to do with it. - johnpiercy

Hate to burst your bubble, but what if it is only a script that subscribes back automatically? - Tichy

Tichy: nothing I do is automated or scripted. - Robert Scoble

Sounds like a no-brainer to me. - Tad, Fool

wow! - JA Castillo

So they hired the worlds LEAST competent exchange admin? - Soulhuntre via twhirl

Administering 1.5 million exchange mailboxes may be harder than it sounds (and of course it's a government contract, so...) - Paul Buchheit

That is quite a shift. I wonder if this is the first of more massive moves to Google Apps if this scales well. - Paul Jacobson via twhirl

email what is that? - ⓃⓄⒶⒽ ⒹⒶⓋⒾⒹ ⓈⒾⓂⓄⓃ

This is small compared to the rest of Gmail, so scaling isn't an issue. - Paul Buchheit

Has anyone ever played Warcraft and clicked on a sheep until it exploded? That's what I want to do with the "like" button on this link. - Phil Glockner

My guess is that the Exchange contract involved having many local servers and administrators (managed by Unisys), while the Gmail contract involves just letting Google do all the work in the US with SMS only doing the local integration. This is all fine and dandy until some ship cuts the submarine cable to your continent and your email doesn't work for a week. - Gabe

I work tangentially to this stuff.. the next step has to be a Apps rollout (or at least replacing Office with OpenOffice) - Nick Lothian

Of course, if the submarine cable gets cut, email won't work anyways. - Jim Norris

Presumably they're spending millions of AU$ so the students can email teachers and other students. One would hope the Exchange-based system wouldn't require transoceanic cables for teachers to email their students. With Gmail you can't even edit a draft without a decent Internet connection to some Gmail datacenter. - Gabe

There may be datacenters in Australia by now. - Paul Buchheit

All your mail are belong to us. - l0ckergn0me

Australia has something like a dozen undersea cables connecting it to a variety of destinations in Asia and the Americas. Events that would disconnect Australia from the world, or shut down Google's data centers, are so much more rare than Exchange downtime that it's not even worth talking about. There are plenty of valid reasons to prefer locally served email over a hosted solution, but undersea cable cuts aren't one of them. - ⓞnor

Gmail is a great choice, but the funny thing is that Exchange seems like a really awful choice for this situation. To give email to a million students, it seems like some big-ass conventional IMAP servers would be a lot cheaper and easier to manage. Maybe they were sold a bill of goods about how Exchange/Outlook would integrate with educational courseware? - ⓞnor

The problem really comes down to local vs. hosted services. The article techcrunch incorrectly quoted said the email would be hosted by Google overseas, meaning there are dozens more points of failure (a submarine cable being merely one). My guess is that it was Unisys (the low bidder in 2003) that chose Exchange as the platform, and that SMS (the low bidder this year) chose Gmail. I would also guess that there is no SLA in the contract. - Gabe

gmail is so much more reliable then anything microsoft could ever manage in underfunded corporate IT environments - why even try and compare - ben rogers via twhirl

What does a GMail/Google Apps "rollout" involve? I'm assuming it must be some sort of customisation/integration? - Mike Gardiner

Gmail may be 100% reliable, but that doesn't matter because the Internet isn't even close to reliable. All it takes is one kid running BitTorrent to make every student in the school (or district) unable to access email. - Gabe

Does it frequently happen that you can't get to Google because some kid is running BitTorrent? - ⓞnor

*like* @Andy C's comment - sebmos

@ⓞnor - bittorrent isn't too much of a concern AFAIK in most schools. What is the big concern is the cost of bandwidth. Telstra (the incumbent duopolist) signed a lot of schools up to very expensive contracts with capped bandwidth (esp in remote areas). It's expensive enough that at some schools they disconnect the internet once the cap is reached (although this isn't in NSW AFAIK) - Nick Lothian

@Andy C: Google Apps has features that not possible with unaffiliated accounts: integration with organizaton's user directory, single sign on and more. - Gary Burd

It doesn't matter whether it's a broken cable, BitTorrent, a misbehaving router, or any of the dozens of other causes that could make the Internet unreliable; the point is that the Internet is inherently unreliable. Anything that relies on the Internet will eventually fail, and at some point it will fail the day before the big project is due or the final exam, and there won't be anything the school will be able to do about it. - Gabe

Yeah, but it's all about failure rates. Everything fails sometimes, including Exchange servers. Microsoft themselves, for example, have suffered *weeks* long company wide email outages while they struggle to repair broken Exchange installations. If I cared about reliable access to my mail, I know which one I would pick. And there's no secret mystery failure here: you can just ask people "is it OK if your email is approximately as available as Google?". They know how available that is to them. - ⓞnor

I believe you can find a greasemonkey script that does this... http://userscripts.org/scripts... - Phil Crissman

I agree! but, ideally, I'd love to be able to expand AND collapse them, so I can see what it is, but collapse it back to hide the really long, ugly ones. - Kenneth LeFebvre

Summize.com has the best implementation of this IMHO. - Daniel Shaw

The "expand" trick that Summize uses would be greatly appreciated - Jamie

Turn on tinyurl preview? - Bwana

"A site that visibly promotes how many ’friends’ you have turns friends into commodities, creating an economy where you are motivated to make as many friends as you can. " There goes all my feature requests for a more robust stats section of the site. - Mark Trapp

Mark, I have that very quote in my clipboard, but I admit, I was going to say it's one of my favourite things about FF. :) - felix

All right, after reading it fully, I never realized Kevin Fox was like the Jonathan Ive of Google Apps. What a loss for Google. I enjoyed the rationale behind why labels exist: never thought of it like that. Most people explain it as "It's better than folders. Now be quiet!" - Mark Trapp

Love the old Google logos! Sounds like FriendFeed has a very promising UI guy on the team. Yay... The "You said earlier you found 6 types of users for Gmail. What were those? .... No comment. ;-)" is remnants of a less-open philosophy though. - Mitchell Tsai

"People talking to people facilitated by computers." I believe that about sums up this whole social networking thing ;-) - Paul Short

Sprague, but it could definitely be applied to things like Twitter, where people subscribe to thousands of others in hopes that they get a reciprocal follower count bump, and let's not forget about Jason Calacanis vying for top spot on twitter follower activity. The ability to get into follower competitions is facilitated by seemingly benign statistics about follower counts. - Mark Trapp

@Kevin: Great interview, though the pic above looks like a promo for "Kevin Fox's Chiller Theatre Macabre 3000" :-) - Chris Reed

Mark: When looking at Jason Calacanis's stats this morning http://friendfeed.com/e/bf02d8..., I was surprised to find that almost 45-50% of his readers are age 3-17, VERY different from Robert Scoble and Leo Laporte's age demographics. Is that because of how Jason went about gathering followers? Through the MySpace and Facebook communities maybe? - Mitchell Tsai

I like the flat hierarchy of titles @ friendfeed, I'm a UI Designer, so of course I look up to kevin's work. Any user experience person should be as flexible and willing to contribute more than interaction sketches. I super like, super karma, super kudos this entry if friendfeed had those UI elements :) - Karl

This is madness!! Folks you can't be serious! I'm sure it's a big joke or something... :) - directeur

I'm curious how one gets photos to show (as above) in this type of FF entry. - Greg Clinton

Greg, it's using the FF bookmarklet. When you use it, you can click on a picture to add it to your post. - Vince DeGeorge

Greg http://friendfeed.com/share/bo... watch the video - Brian Sullivan

Awesome article. I'm really enjoying reading about user interface design, even though I've never really done it. Very inspiring stuff here. - ha3rvey

Mitchell: Was it 3-17, or 13-17? If it's the former, that's awesome. And I would agree with that hypothesis: when Calacanis is active on Twitter, he's constantly demanding people react to whatever he's doing, either via comments or follows or whatever. I do know a few months ago he had a goal to get higher than Scoble in followers on Twitter, as well. - Mark Trapp

Thanks, Vince, it really brightens up the page. - Greg Clinton

Three cheers for Kevin. :-) - Jason Wehmhoener

Mark: 3-17 (but 12-17 was about 90% of the whole 3-17). See Calacanis chart stored here http://picasaweb.google.com/Mi... or the live one here http://quantcast.com/calacanis... - Mitchell Tsai

How does it even know that? You can't legally track someone's data if they under 13 to begin with. - Mark Trapp

Not only am I a happy user of all of the products mentioned in this article, as a UI designer I often find myself referring to these products in design discussions with my teams. - Jason Wehmhoener

Mark: No clue... Maybe Quantcast does some estimating based on subsampling to fix the raw data? (e.g. conduct in-person interviews on a random subsample of the population) - Mitchell Tsai

Seriously, you're doing all this for a thesis? a PhD? WHY? I mean... Are you "sciencizing" and "theorizing" socialmedia? All this is so ephemerous, so humanly erronous and lying, It doesn't deserve nobody's time and efforts... - directeur

directeur, maybe this isn't the community for you. - Mark Trapp

Mark: Let me very friendly don't agree :) Because in THIS community you have to study these things to be admitted? (no trolls, nothing, just a notice) - directeur

@directeur what is it exactly that you're talking about? - Shey

reading this was like...read, read, *lightbulb*, read, read, *lightbulb*, *lightbulb*, read, *lightbulb*.... - Iain Baker

@Shey: I was wondering on the life in a socialmedia context, I find it so exagerated to study things like Scoble/Dupont/Smith followers and such... I asked if it's for a thesis... because if not, I'm really wondering how come I feel the only one to think that it's exagerated and somehow strange behavior... - directeur

What, exactly, is exaggerated or strange about it? - Mark Trapp

Mark: saying "Calacanis chart" for example, I find it exagerated... I wonder about the need to study this... You are free to do whatever you want!! I'm just wondering, I wanted some exaplanations, I really needed to know why would someone like me or you spend time on studying a so vague and IMHo useless thing as the "Calacanis chart"... I may be wrong, so please correct me if i'm wrong - directeur

directeur, you jumped into the middle of a conversation between a few of us about a specific part of the story: calling what we're doing strange, exaggerated, stupid, silly, or any other abusive term isn't constructive. Think of this like real life: how would you feel if someone interrupted a conversation you were having with someone to tell you that what you're talking about is stupid and wrong and exaggerated? - Mark Trapp

Hey look! It's an interview with Kevin Fox! ;-) - Jason Wehmhoener

Mark: My bad, sorry, I though that the discussions here were open to everyone. and indeed they are, but it's still my fault, why the heck have I the need to share my own opinions? Sorry. - directeur

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Directeur: Mark said it very well: The discussions are open and you're free to say what you like, but so are other people. If you come in and harshly criticize others, you have to accept the reality that others will harshly criticize you back. It's just like the real world. - Kevin Fox

Kevin, I was wondering, like any "mediterranean" usually do, maybe it's my english, but I never meant to be harsh... anyway.. Sorry again! - directeur

directeur: No worries. I appreciate your comments, and love that we're getting such diverse international usage! - Kevin Fox

I'm so impressed that Bret set up and configured everything before your first day. That says a lot. - Ginger Makela

I like the concept of everyone having the same title. Excellent read. I have learned something. - Mathew A. Koeneker

@Ginger That says Bret has no need for a Field Tech person to me. ;) - Erica Baker

I like the photo. Kevin's got the classic visionary staring-into-the-distance pose but at the same time he has this critical are-you-sure-this-is-right expression. It's the heroic UI reviewer. - ⓞnor

I call that look "Magnum" - Kevin Fox

Oh! Oh! Now do "Blue Steel" - April Buchheit

If you roll over the thumbnail above, it changes to me doing "Blue Steel". - Kevin Fox

oooh... when do we get to see Le Tigre and Ferrari? - Ross Miller

So cute to see April's picture pop up over her name. :-) - Mitchell Tsai

there is productivity and then there is productivity. It depends on where you are standing, and how you define it. I always had a bad conscience when checking out Twitter, Flickr or Facebook. But not anymore. I have gathered so much knowledge about social networks. I thought I was being procrastinating, but I was being productive all the time. Now when considering something I say, to scoble or not to scoble :-) - Baard Overgaard Hansen

i don't get this discussion. Scoble does all the stuff he does cause it's his job. It's like asking a dude who reviews books if all that book reading is a time waster. - Stan Schroeder via twhirl

Stan: I was doing it long before it was my job. I've been playing with new things ever since I helped unbox an Apple II in my Jr. High in 1977. - Robert Scoble

we are doing all of these stuff because we like to do. - ahmet bulent

. - Stan Schroeder via twhirl

damn twhirl. Anyway, @Scoble: then it was your hobby. Same thing. A guy who's not interested in all this stuff should simply pick and choose what he likes and forget about the rest - Stan Schroeder via twhirl

Totally agree to the meaning of goals and motivation. That's why people are different and everyone is unique. - 0123456789 via Alert Thingy

Stan: I think it goes deeper than that. People who aren't looking to learn new things bug me for some reason. It's like they are celebrating their ignorance and their willingness to stay ignorant. I had a father-in-law who loved telling me he never touched a computer and never would. I found that fascinating. - Robert Scoble

Its not his (scobles) job unless he wants it to be his job. I think in Bobs case he might be unproductive if he was engaging in all those activities that Scoble spends his time on. It all depends on what you want to get out of your day/life? It all depends on who you are and what you do. I thin what bob is asking might apply to him or people who are not directly ingrained in creating technology. - Akshay Dodeja

I'll give you a simple analogy. Let's imagine that you're a car fanatic. You tweak your car every day, and it goes faster. You get to work at least 10 minutes faster each day, however, all the tweaking you do takes many hours of your time. A regular guy just sits in his car and drives, and goes to the mechanic when something goes wrong. Who's right and who's wrong here? No one, I say. - Stan Schroeder via twhirl

I've been answering this question a lot lately. Why is twitter better than my message board? Why not just use email? Who has time for that stuff? In my opinion, the fact that they are asking is just another sign that it is becoming more accepted. When my 85 year old grandmother knows what Facebook is, and why my 65 year old mom living in BFE knows what MySpace is, that is the definition of mainstream. - Robert Peterson

Btw, the nickname i sometimes use, "frantic" comes from my frantic desire to learn everything there is to know about a topic (i get this 2 times per week at least). So I get where you're coming from. But, not everyone is like that. - Stan Schroeder via twhirl

Stan: I understand that, but that's not what I'm talking about. I drive a car and don't care about tinkering with it, taking it apart, and all that, but I'm not going to celebrate my ignorance of it. If someone says "hey, here's a way to get more enjoyment out of your car" I'll at least listen and see if it interests me. Even if it doesn't, I'm not going to celebrate the fact that I'm ignorant. Like "I'll never see why we need Hybrid cars, my Hummer works just fine." - Robert Scoble

Good analogy, Stan. Although if you are tweaking your car, most likely you enjoy doing that. Even though you are loosing "productivity time" while tweaking you are expanding your knowledge. That knowledge has a worth to you as a car tweaker and would be worth nothing to another person. As you said tho no one is right or wrong. Just depends on how you look at it :) - Akshay Dodeja

Stan, you're analogy is great. - Timothy Neilen

@Scoble: Well, some people just go through life without knowing anything about anything. Don't think you can change that, either (;. - Stan Schroeder via twhirl

This is very normal for those who did not discover the potential of social networks, or whether the same technology. I live here and in Latin America is very common that everyone do the same question as Bob, but you have to have a lot of patience to explain the possibilities that the experience provides. The examples you gave were very good to try to explain to Bob and the list can continue. - Cesar Sanchez

Stan: a more accurate analogy is I come over with my new car that has GPS and a navigation system and you run on and on about how you'll never own a car with a GPS or a navigation system. I just don't like hanging around people like that. I guess we have Amish who still drive around in horse and carriage for a reason, though, but I won't choose to hang around with them, sorry if that makes me a jerk. I just don't like people who celebrate remaining in the past. - Robert Scoble

@Scoble: those same people who run on and on about not trying new things will buy those same things when they read it in the newspapers. Capitalism: replacing innovative thinking since 19th century. - Stan Schroeder via twhirl

I don't think I can improve on the original post (at all) but I follow these things to pursue my ambitions. It's that simple. And my ambitions (video game design) require that I stay current with the times. I just happen to have a blast doing it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find out what Flickr is. - Avery Tingle

Bob is sadly very typical in my limited experience. It's like some people are proud of being and remaining ignorant. They have no curiousity and are stuck in their old ways. I'm a scientist; I love finding new things and simply cannot fathom why other people aren't equally fascinated. - Sally Church

Robert, i think you are being untypically nasty to good old BOB BLY. by the end of your long blog post you might of well called him a beer drinking TV watching ignorant slob. he says: -------"Can you help an old guy from the old school understand what he’s missing? - P.S. Your column is well written and there are obviously a legion of people who get all this stuff. I’d like to see if I could become one of them or at least understand what all the fuss is about."------- i don't think you answered him... - djp

Your post says it all. Thanks. My experience as someone coming from the non-tech world is that I need to defend the amount of time I spend in social networking on a daily basis. As an artist, I see this is THE new medium, not sure how it will manifest new work but very sure this is it. And that excites me and keeps me listening, talking when I think I have something to contribute, but present most days. Some of my friends don't get it and most don't participate. Oh well. More will be revealed. ;-) - Mary Anne Davis

djp72: fair enough. So, put yourself into my shoes. How would you answer it? - Robert Scoble

i think you took it too personally when BOB BLY says "I don’t have any of it — for that matter, I don’t own a Blackberry, iPod, wireless laptop, or even a cell phone — and I get along fine without them."------- your rant doesn't actually prove your point, if i put myself in Bob's beer stained shoes for a second, i'm sure he's sitting there going "i was right.... this is all about nothing...." - djp

djp72: again. One more time. Answer the damn question then. How would you answer it? Stop attacking me and answer the question! - Robert Scoble

one last point Robert, imagine if Bob was your uncle, or old high school mate, or someone you knew, i'm sure you wouldn't end up being all sarcastic and calling him ignorant. i'm sure you'd take your time and explain and answer his questions... sorry for the long comment out of the blue, it just struck me as a tad sooky..... - djp

djp72: again with the attack. Actually, when people get all Luddite on me I usually just walk away because I've learned long ago that you'll never convince someone to join you by fighting with them. They usually come around and if they don't, well, there's that photo on my blog to remind you what happens eventually. I really wish you'd answer the question yourself. - Robert Scoble

Mary Ann: Well said, that sums up my experience with my biotech peers too - they just don't get it and I spend a lot of time explaining it to them, to little avail. You have to wait for them to get it and the penny to drop. - Sally Church

The letter was a bit weird coming from a guy who has as a url www.bly.com. A 3 letter .com url? sounds as though he is extremely wealthy or way ahead of the game to me! - Geoff

Mr. Bob points are perfectly valid, but the question is if Robert is the right person he should address them to. ;-) - Peter

It's not all about quantifiably productive experiences for everyone, in fact personal progress seems to come when people just do their thing, find their groove..... and if Bob prefers to find his groove without engaging with the Twitters and Flickrs of the world then I say - good luck, enjoy your free time (probably alot of it spent waiting for the post)....if on the otherhand like me productive means immediacy, fulfillment, collaborative insights then you can't do much better than the web (and said apps) right now...not right, not wrong, just whatever floats your boat... - Mia Walczak

Scoble, you write a blog that is read by thousands. You answered your own question! How would WE respond to Bob? HA! That is the very thing: that you can engage hundreds into a conversation about this topic. The idea that anyone has access to this discussion is revolutionary. If you wrote out your blog posts and sent it by mail... where would be the fun in that? Who would be able to read it? Who would be able to comment? - Alana Taylor

You get excited about the internet because you understand it's potential for COMMUNICATION. Phones, cameras, pictures, blogs, micro-blogs... these are all means for bringing people together. The World Wide Talk Show is what I recall you telling me. A man who doesn't use these tools must not be very interested in communication at all. The irony lies in the fact that he used the internet to ask you why the internet is special. I think he also answered HIS own question: COMMUNICATION. - Alana Taylor

Really good post Robert, and really interesting question originally from Bob. I get excited about the things that I write about because through some of them, we see glimpses of the future - and, it's fair to say, in some of them I see glimpses of future failures too. The thing is that without playing with this stuff, it's much harder to understand its implications. - Ian Betteridge

Geoff - Maybe Bob is ahead of the game. Maybe this was his tactic to get his name out and to be talked about. ;) heh. - Alana Taylor

Robert Scoble is a scout and explorer and he likes telling people what he finds. You need that kind of person in order to introduct and create change. Some people have a natural inclination to do that. - Mark Dykeman

I think you missed Bob's point here, Robert. He's not attacking your choices, but rather wanting to find out what could be in it for him. The alternative to not engaging in all the social stuff does not have to be getting a beer in front of the TV, it could just as well be writing a book. When I read the question I immediately thought of Don Knuth who is rarely (if ever) online, yet manages to write books and software that will have a long lasting impact. - Niklas Morberg

Niklas: no, sorry, you aren't a very careful reader. When someone says "It seems to me that all these things — Twitter, Facebook, iPhone, Flickr — are a thundering bore and an utter waste of time" that does NOT mean that the writer is wanting to find out what could be in it for him. It means he's already considered whether or not these things could be useful for him and has decided no. And, further, he's decided to denigrate those people who chose to use their time that way. - Robert Scoble

Robert Pirsig wrote a book about this wormhole called "Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence"... changed my life - Peter

if you do it for a living and it puts food on the table and you enjoy it who cares, it's about finding balance to enjoy your personal life too - Jason C.

A little historical context here: In late 2004 Bob Bly famously wrote a newsletter dissing the potential of blogging as a marketing & communications tool, mocking it, some would say. Great link bait and blog fodder. He then, surprise surprise, started a blog himself. Talk about built-in attention & controversy. Funny thing, he maintains that blog pretty actively to this day. I'd say he's planning to get on Facebook, Twitter etc. in about 2 weeks & just wants to make sure people are paying attention ;) - Elisa Camahort Page

Scoble: Did you know the Amish are way ahead-of-the-loop on solar panels. Almost every Amish house has a solar panel. It helps that they are frugal with power. - Mitchell Tsai

there's an endless list of stuff people get into that from the outside, seems totally pointless, because we're not as into it - nascar racing, fly fishing, scrapbooking, cat shows, knitting clubs, professional dwarf tossing, whatever. Everyone should just be honest with themselves about what they love doing, and everyone's different. But one of the great things about the 'net is whatever nutty obsession you have, you can meet other people who share your interests more easily. - Jason Kaneshiro

Geez, Robert, what a long winded way to answer a simple question! :-) The short answer is, "It's simply human to want to 1) know more, and 2) be known more." AWARENESS is the key. Without it, there would be no UNDERSTANDING. First comes self-awareness, which is what makes us human. Then comes awareness of others, which is what the web and social software enable in a very efficient way and broad way. Lastly, it's helping others to become (more) aware .. by blogging, friending, writing books, going to conferences, etc. This is the virtuous cycle of BEING HUMAN! Anyone, who doesn't get this is simply not living up to his/her full potential. - Lawrence Liu

I'd say: "Bob, 5 billion years have working to make this neat little box. Wanna peak inside?" - phil baumann

Thanks for the great article. Already added the MarsPhoenix Twitter feed and other related RSS feeds. - Bill Bittner

Not everyone wants to keep in touch with the latest technology. Some folks just want to sit on a stoop and watch traffic. I don't understand that but I respect their choice. - Morton Fox

I posted my comment to your blog, but here's a snippet: It all boils down to this: We must *master* our productivity tools (technology included) in order to maximize production of our quality work in a time manner. So how do you use technology to accomplish this? Are you an advanced user that has figured out how to organize, sort, filter and glean the best data from all your tools? The person who is best capable of using each tool with mastery, will achieve the highest productivity ratio. - Susan Beebe

Great post Robert whether Bly is real or not - people often miss that this is NOT about technology but about connections and learning and PEOPLE. Alas, the problem today for folks like you and I who just freakin love learning new stufff is that well -we have SO many opportunities from so many people thanks to the tech! Well said Lawrence!! - deb schultz

http://bly.com/blog/?p=333 that's the link to Bob's blog post about this very letter he sent you Robert. - James Dasher

Great post Scoble...keep going after the interesting conversations! - Mack D. Male

I *just* had a chance to read the actual article. I don't know Bly, but I couldn't disagree with him more. Your response was dead on. I think Bly has missed the point that these are just tools. I also think his response is like writing in to Car & Driver and telling them they have too many articles about automobiles. - ha3rvey

Defining a choice not to use (or more properly) _venerate_ networking tools as "ignorant" is part of the problem. You assume that everything happening in the world is happening in these environments. It is not. And if you really are sitting on a couch watching TV when you're not on Twitter, you ARE missing out. When I was off Twitter yesterday, I was eating ice cream with 5-year-old nieces reading them a story. and being wrestled to the ground by them. I hope your son can look forward to such memories. - Shelly Brisbin

It's the same old story over and over again. Some will fight against new technology (tools), kicking and screaming all the way. Others will adopt and improve. At some point the tools that make it will have been subsumed into mainstream and we'll laugh about the early resistance. Telephone, yes, and railroad... come to mind. Is social networkiing here to stay? Who knows? But why condemn it without trying it out? - Alex von Halem

Life is about a Path of Curiosity - Either you choose to go down the path or sit down. Regardless of your chosen profession, the world is changing fast and you can either grow or wither. I just don't want to be the last one holding the buggy whip when the first car rolls on by Mr. Bly. Keep doing what your Doing Mr. Scoble - we are all better for having you in or lives. - Glenn Gleason

Two things that have really stuck with me from this article over the past couple of days: "Whenever I am faced with a productivity problem I ask myself “what do I want to get out of life?”" which is damned good advice. It might seem selfish but I now think that you can't ask yourself this enough. Too many people go through life doing things they don't want to do just because they ask themselves the wrong questions. Start asking this one. - william douglas watson

The second thing which I find infinitely for powerful than the first: "The real thing I’ve been doing for more than eight years now is to try to arrange my life so that I have an interesting conversation every day with someone interesting." What an awesome life you have made Scoble. The fact that you have come to a point in your life that this is a feasible goal is just awesome. Wow. Thanks for the inspiration. - william douglas watson

I think my answer to Bob Bly would be this: 'I was a copywriter. Then, while following Robert Scoble's Microsoft blog, I found out about tablet pcs. And have since become a visual facilitator, earning approximately twenty times more per gig than I ever did as a copywriter. Social media is the most powerful learning tool I've ever dealt with.' (Thanks for turning me onto tablet pcs, Robert.) - Roy Blumenthal