$300 for blog

by on February 24, 2006

Last night, when I got home from the radio interview, Maryam had left the TV on and right when I got in the door (seriously, I wish I could make this stuff up) Who Wants To Be a Millionaire was asking some guy the $300 question: “what is the word “blog” a name for?” The guy had to ask the audience cause he wasn’t sure. 90% knew that blog was short for “weblog.” Wild. Five years ago no one knew what blog meant and now 90% of a general TV audience knows.

Along these lines, BusinessWeek has an interview with Mena Trott about the Future of the Blog. Heck, I remember when Mena came to one of my geek dinners back when she was unemployed and just playing around with this blog thing. That was less than five years ago. Now they have 120 or so employees and are off to the races trying to build a world-class company. Well done Mena! We all forget just how bad things were for geeks five years ago.

  • (smile) "I'll take the prize behind Blog #3, Bob!"
  • What was even funnier was that only about 76% of AOL's users could pick the real name.
  • David
    How sad that they allow the internet-illiterate to play that show...
  • What were the other options?
  • That's because AOL users could give a rat's ass about the internet.
  • Goebbels
    Umm, it was a $300 question: I'm sure the options were something like: A. Blue Frog, B. Brown Log, C. Web Log, or D. The Sound Scoble makes when he takes a dump!

    Even in an audience where no one knows what a blog is, 90% could have gotten it correct!
  • Hard to believe as this is, 27% of people in China supposedly know the term Web2.0 according to a Chinese study I posted about yesterday.... http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/02/23...
  • Well, more accurately, 90% of them could pick it out of a list of four, and even that assumes that they were four equally credible options. I sincerely doubt 90% of the general TV audience could answer the question: "Blog stands for ______"
  • Dmad
    once again proving how clueless Scoble is about the mind of the general public. As much as you like to believe it Scoble, 90% of the country likely doesn't give a crap about blogs, let alone knows what they really are. As others have pointed out 90% likely knew it wasn't one of the other 3 answers, but that doesn't mean that know what one is. Nice try, though.
  • This isn't meant to bash AOL users who participate in Millionaire but...

    Have you noticed that the responses from the "Ask the AOL audience" are consistently less correct?
  • Ug.... yeah... I remember those times. Very very harsh.

    Kevin
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